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A maid brings them to a soft, quiet room at Trosky.
“I’ll come fetch you later, sirs,” She says with a curtsey, and then it’s silence. No ringing of bells, no jeers of the crowd, no shouts of Hans or Henry’s voices, desperate against the inevitable.
Just their breaths, now. In tandem, in twain, for every breath that Hans takes Henry must take two more, lest his ears deceive him into believing it’s just the echo of a ghost.
“At least,” Hans starts, and Henry startles.
He whips his head to Hans, hands outstretched. The image of Hans in plainclothes, wrists tied, dances in his vision.
The vision fades and Hans is there, still in plainclothes but his hands are free. He stares at Henry wildly.
Henry puts his arms back down. He’s not sure what he looks like right now. Dressed in rags, covered in muck from sneaking about, sweating like a pig. Has he blinked yet?
Hans swallows, and it clicks in the silence of the room. “At least they have the wherewithal to give us proper clothes, those— “he coughs. “Those bastards.”
Henry watches him turn, posture too tall and too stiff. The trunk in the corner of the room is thrown open.
The first thing Hans pulls from the trunk is a deep brown gambeson, with a high collar. Hans hisses through his teeth like he’s in pain. Henry watches from somewhere far away as his lord’s hand absently reaches up to touch his throat when he says, “No. Too tight.”
He stands guard— no, he stands dumbly by the door still, frozen in time after moving through it so quickly. Hans is moving, Hans is alive. It is a miracle, it’s sheer dumb luck, it’s divine intervention.
Hans holds something out with the full length of his arm. “Come here, these will suit you.”
Henry stares at the green tunic and soft red cloak. Hans finally looks back, looks at him properly. There’s a vein in his throat that pulses with his heart. Henry can see it pushing out against the skin, the—
The delicate skin of Hans’ neck rubbed raw by the tight vice grip of death. He can’t look away. If he looks away, then the mark will turn to rope, and the rope will snap and Hans will leave this world, but if he keeps looking if he keeps—
“Henry,” Hans says in a fierce whisper, but his voice cracks at the end. He sounds just as scared as he did on the gallows. “Don’t disappear on me again. Come on now, your clothes. Just- just try these on, aye?”
Henry staggers from where time rendered him immobile. He doesn’t think about station or deference, doesn’t keep his careful distance as he slides his hand over Hans’ to take the clothes from him. The ticking of Hans’ pulse over the back of his knuckles soothes the pit in Henry’s stomach. There’s a rippling shudder answered through Hans’ torso.
Hans takes another shaky, raspy breath. “There. There, put those on. And I’ll take these, see?” He gestures to the trunk again, where glimmering threads of gold and red are lying deeper within.
Henry dresses with Hans shoulder to shoulder. They aren’t a lord and a page. Henry is as shaken as he was when he took his first punch in Skalitz, and Hans’ eyes could be described as comically wide if not for the bleak view Henry knows those eyes had seen only thirty minutes ago.
He feels no older than when he first held a wooden sword.
The gentle rustle of fine fabrics draws Henry out of his memories. A beautiful red cloak with woven golden accents, leaves fluttering down from Hans’ shoulders. The gold pourpoint beneath only goes as high as his collarbones, and he fidgets with the cloak so that its hood lies squarely away from his neck.
They look nothing like they did in their brand-new armors and padding on their initial ride to Trosky. At least then, when they had sparred and laughed and Oats and the others were still alive, Henry had pushed Hans to the edge of the fence with the tip of his sword at the young lord’s neck—
Hans is making small sounds, like he’s humming to himself. Nothing like the hollering he did in the cellar to draw the guards’ attention away. The red of the rope burn stands to match the red of his hood.
Henry sucks in a breath. It gets stuck somewhere just before his lungs.
He has to say something. He has to apologize, to tell Hans it won’t happen ever again. “I-“
“You’re shaking,” Hans murmurs. He eyes Henry’s hands, caught on the loops of his belt.
Henry doesn’t know what to say. For all his cunning and scheming to get himself and Hans out of trouble, now his words run dry on his tongue. He looks down too, at the hands that couldn’t even save his only friend.
Hans takes his hand; Henry jumps again, flinching against memories of blood and the woods and his head pounding while Hans begged him to stay alive.
“It’s over,” Hans says, pulling Henry’s hand up a bit, to rest on his chest, “See? You did it, I’m fine.”
I did nothing, I just screamed and yelled, and it didn’t help.
“I shoulda dragged you with me to the wedding with your hands and legs tied,” Henry gasps out, and is horrified as he continues, “Then maybe I could’ve kept you out of trouble, kept you safer.”
“Like you could have stopped me, blacksmith’s boy,” Hans replies. It holds no menace, no malice. Just truth.
Henry tips forward until his forehead rests in the hollow of Hans’ throat, framed by the silken edges of his hood. His hand is crushed between their bodies, but Henry only has a mind for the thud of Hans’ heart beneath his skin.
The trembling doesn’t go away, not even when Hans leans down and brushes his lips to the edge of Henry’s temple. He doesn’t know who Hans is trying to comfort himself or Henry. He can’t even think about how strange it is, for Hans to lower his head like that.
Henry breathes a full breath again, tilting his chin so his nose just barely brushes over Hans’ neck. He imagines the heat of the rope burn cooling under the trail he leaves. Hans makes another odd hum in the back of his throat, his palm sliding up along Henry’s shoulder.
“Von Bergow will be waiting for us,” Hans whispers against Henry’s ear, and then squeezes the back of his neck. It feels reluctant.
Henry pulls away all the same. He is Lord Capon’s escort, after all, and when the maid comes to fetch them, he’ll take the young lord upstairs to speak with other bellatores. He reaches out with a finally steady hand and squeezes Hans’ forearm, briefly.
“Aye, he will be.”
Hans looks like he means to smile, though it doesn’t stretch very far. But the corners of his eyes crinkle ever so slightly, the laugh lines deepened in cups of Sylvan red wine and games of Farkle.
It’s not until the maid takes them out of the room and up to wait for Von Bergow that Henry processes the shake in Hans’ voice, the softness of his lips against his forehead, and all the ways their hands moved: uncertain, reassured, hesitant, soft.
He tucks it away into the companionable silence that sits between them as they stare out onto the courtyards of Trosky.
