It's cold. The stone is cold. The flames from the flickering lamps are cold. The dead seem warm by comparison, at least they're welcoming in their own silent way. There's a heat down there in the catacombs, Will can feel it. Like a moth to a flame it knows will kill it, he heads for it, walking through the arches, between the pillars, around the bones that have stood guard for hundreds of years.

'Hannibal?'

He doesn't know if he's relieved or angry but he isn't scared. All the fear ran out of him along with his blood in Hannibal's kitchen in Baltimore, It's a freedom he's never known and it's more empowering than holding a gun in his hand.

Pazzi is somewhere behind him. He can hear him like a blundering fool, every step echoing like a hammer crack. If Hannibal is down here, he'll kill him; snap his neck to shut him up. It won't have anything to do with being captured or shot, it'll be because he isn't welcome here, at their reunion. He's being rude and Hannibal hates people who are rude. Hannibal tends to hate people who aren't him. It's a burden and uplifting at the same time.

'What will you do if you catch him?'
'I'm curious to know the answer to that myself.'

He's fooling no one, let alone himself. He couldn't fool Abigail's ghost. She came all the way to Italy with him and he banished her because she was only telling him what he was telling himself, his own words coming from her mouth like a ventriloquist's puppet. She would have gone with Hannibal. In the kitchen, she'd gone willingly into his arms and let him slit her throat like a wounded animal. Will would do the same now: take Hannibal's hand and step into the circle of his arms, just to feel that heat at his back, to close his eyes and welcome death. Why did it take a linoleum knife to the gut to realise that? If he'd only gone with them, if he hadn't fought so hard for what he'd believed to be the right thing.

'They know.'

Hadn't he tasted the wrong thing with that phone call? Hadn't it tasted good?

'Hannibal?'

The shape of that name on his lips feels like benediction. He meant what he'd said to Abigail (talking to himself like some madman in the church); Hannibal would stand at God's side, compare their work and believe himself the better creator, the better judge, the more benevolent ruler. It was tough not to get pulled into that orbit. If Hannibal is the devil, surely it was better to be on his side than against him?

Will's breath catches in his throat and he stops.

He can hear him, even though he's barely breathing. He can feel him even though he's as cold as the stone that entombs them.

He swallows. There's a flame burning inches from his cheek, steady. It occurs to him he might have walked into his own grave but then again he's spent the last two years doing the same thing. The only difference is that this place isn't a warm psychiatrists's office in blues and mahogany, or a high class town house where he should have felt like an ink blot but instead felt welcome. Back then he was inside the devil's realm. Down here, at least, there were souls older than both of them resting in the darkness.

'Hannibal,' he says, and can feel him, imagine him so close he can feel the brush of nimble fingers across the back of his neck, warm breath against his throat. His pulse is racing, heart beating so hard he's surprised it doesn't echo around the stone walls. But it isn't fear. It's excitement, relief, the climax of the chase even if the chase has been slow and at times painful. He takes a deep breath and lets it all go: his illness made worse, his imprisonment and trial, the knife to the gut that didn't kill him. The warped love of a psychopath, a serial killer. If Hannibal wanted him dead, he'd be dead. The only conclusion was that Hannibal wanted him alive, liked having him at his mercy. Will's fascinated by the idea that he might like that too. He'd never imagined himself to be a masochist.

He can feel him, his heat, so close he could step around the next pillar and come face to face with the countenance he's dreamt about every night since waking in the hospital. He licks his lips, tips his head up and says,

'Hannibal. I forgive you.'

Even the ghosts hold breath they don't need.

Then the heat retreats and the cold returns and Will knows he isn't getting his reunion today.

But Hannibal is close by and they'll meet soon. Eventually they'll have to collide because God, or fate, or whatever it is that runs the universe demands it. And then they'll find out just what this connection is between them: feed or fuck, Will suspects. He doesn't much care which. As long as it's done.