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Henry is delighted to realize that when Hans said “somewhere more private” he was entirely sincere.
He rents them a run down little cottage with more cobwebs than roof straw, and the first few days are spent fixing the place up a little. Or, rather, Henry fixing up the place and Hans yelling instructions that Henry barely listens to.
And, of course, stoppping every so often to retire to the dusty bed and learn each other’s bodies properly, without the threat of imminent death hanging over them.
Hans is still so distressingly thin. Henry slimmed down too, but he had enough bulk beforehand to not look that much different. But Hans still has visible ribs and gaunt cheeks, and Henry damn near bullies him about eating enough, even though Hans is doing a fine job of that on his own.
It’s the middle of summer, so there’s no real rush on fixing up the place, and despite Hans’ constant nitpicking and complaining about spiders crawling everywhere, he seems mostly at ease. At least for a while, it seems the recent horrors as well as any worry about the wedding are far from his mind, and Henry revels in it. He can’t stand to see pain on Hans’ face, as it turns out. Mental OR physical. It slices right through his heart, and makes him forget everything else.
He supposes it must be the love. A different love than he had for Bianca. Not a greater love, per se, but one he knows will never leave his heart, just as his love for her never did. Even now, there’s still a hole inside him that Bianca used to take up. He’d planned to marry her eventually, and it’s still only been a few months since he lost her. Hans takes up most of the space in Henry’s chest now, but there’s still room for grief, and Henry takes the time to just sit with it sometimes. To remember and allow himself to feel hurt.
He usually does that alone. Takes off with Mutt and Pebbles for a few hours to just exist in a world where he’s not rushing off to the next mission, where there’s no war hanging over him and no ghosts chasing him. It’ll take time to properly heal, but at least now he can believe it’s possible. After Skalitz, while Toth and Markvart were still alive, it felt like his entire soul was one massive bleeding wound that would never close.
But he can see it now. See the future for himself. Even though Hans will inevitably get married and won’t be for Henry alone, he’s utterly convinced that there’ll always be a space for him at Hans’ side. There’ll always be a place for him to belong. And that’s enough.
Hans, however, doesn’t take time for himself like that. He gives Henry space as he needs it, but otherwise stays close. Henry can’t blame him, he spent weeks in Suchdol wondering if Henry was even alive, so having him within arm’s length at all times is an understandable need.
And for a while, it seems like it’s enough. Hans gains a little weight, smiles and laughs freely, and spends most of his time bantering with Henry or whittling.
But the darkness is still there, inside him, and sometimes he falls into bouts of melancholy. They usually pass within a few hours, and Henry figures it’s only natural. However, as the seasons creep into late summer, the bouts get longer.
There’s still no word from Hanush about the wedding, but it probably still looms over Hans, even if he’s not mentioning it. Pretending it doesn’t exist seems to be his main coping method, and Henry starts wondering if Hans isn’t healing so much as slowly festering.
He still laughs and jokes and makes love with nothing but enthusiasm, but the worried lines on his face grow deeper every day, and Henry doesn’t know what to do to fix it. He feels like he should know. It’s his job, his duty. As Hans’ right hand, confidant and protecter, it pains him that he can’t offer anything other than hot tea and quiet companionship.
He hopes time will do what he cannot. Perhaps once the dreaded wedding is over with, things will improve. It’s the only hope he can cling to now.
They’ve been here about a month when they wake up to a rare rainy day that reveals several missed spots in Henry’s roof patching job. Nothing is over the bed, at least, and with a few strategically placed buckets and bowls they mostly avoid wet floors. Hans still grumbles about it, and makes quite a mess when he slips on a damp spot and falls on his ass. Henry would normally laugh, but Hans just curses and angrily kicks away the nearest bucket, rather than rant and complain about his sore arse. He stomps off to the outhouse, and Henry quietly dries off the worst of the wet floor and sets up the buckets again.
Hans returns damp and gloomy, and refuses Henry’s lustful offer of warming up in bed. He’s only refused intimacy maybe twice in the whole time they’ve been here, and only because he was so tired he could barely stay awake. Henry doesn’t push, and watches him with some concern as he settles down at the table to read the same book he’s already read three times.
Around noon the rain eases up, and they move outside to get some fresh air and let Mutt run off some energy. He hopefully runs up to Hans with a stick a few times, but Hans waves him off, and goes back to whittling something that seems to not really take shape so much as just reducing in size.
Henry throws the stick for a while instead, and puts together some nice lunch for them. Hans eats a little, but mostly still just mopes, and Henry is getting more and more concerned. His melancholy should have lifted by now. It’s never gone on this long.
He tries to gently ask if there’s anything particular bothering Hans, and gets some vague mumblings about not sleeping well before he waves Henry off.
It’s as good of an explanation as any, and Henry tries to just stay near and hope that the next night will offer better sleep.
Hans just keeps whittling until there damn near nothing left of the wood in his hands, and Henry is just about to attempt a joke about it to hopefully lift the mood, when Hans’ knife slips and he nicks his thumb.
It’s a tiny cut, and Hans just curses and licks off the blood, but Henry has been on edge all day with Hans’ mood, and decides to at least clean the wound to make sure it won’t get infected.
“I’m fine, leave it be,” Hans grumbles as Henry reaches for him.
“Still, it could get worse. Just let me clean it, at least.”
“It’s a scratch, Henry-”
“A scratch that could get infected and fester! Just let me-”
“Let you what,” Hans snarls, suddenly angry. “Let you fix me? Let you come in like a knight in shining armor and just save the world? Well, you can’t, Hal! You can’t fix everything! You can’t just swing your sword and magically make it all better! You can’t heal every wound, you can’t kill every bandit, you can’t stop my fucking wedding and you can’t stop everyone I love from dying!” he shouts and gets to his feet, throwing the sliver of wood away into the trees.
“Hans-”
“No! No, stop pretending everything will be alright, it won’t be alright, no matter how much we hunt and drink and fuck it’s all gonna end eventually! Us, this, all of it!” he screams into Henry’s face, rage twisting his face into a terrifying grimace. “We can try all we like to run from it, but it’ll come eventually! You can’t stop it! You can’t-”
His voice cracks, and the angry snarl wavers. “You can’t… stop it from happening,” he grits out, and Henry cautiously reaches for him, touching his arm softly, as if he’s a spooked horse.
“Stop what? The wedding?”
“The wedding, the war, death,” Hans says, voice dying down to nearly nothing. “It’s going to happen no matter what. Everything you love will be taken from you. You’d think Skalitz would have taught you that.”
It hurts to hear, but it hurts even more to see Hans in such despair, and Henry cradles his cheek in his palm.
“Yeah, but. It also brought me you. And Sam. New family and friends.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll lose them too. And I’ll lose you.”
“Not if I can help it,” Henry says, attempting a smile, but it seems to have been the wrong thing to say, because Hans slaps his hand away with a noise of anguish.
“There you go again, thinking you can just do things! That you can just decide not to die! But you can’t! Everyone fucking dies, and I’m just here, left behind again, fucking useless-!”
He curls in on himself with a choked noise and turns away, but Henry pulls him back by the arm.
“Hans, sweetheart-”
“NO!” Hans shouts, but he doesn’t pull away. “Don’t tell me you’ll stay, don’t tell me I won’t lose you!”
“But you won’t.”
“YOU DON’T KNOW THAT!” Hans shrieks, whirling around with tears in his eyes, fists seizing the front of Henry’s shirt with a grip hard enough to tear the fibers. “I lose everyone! There’s nobody-” he swallows wetly. “No one ever stays. God is cruel. And He always takes away everything I love.” Tears flow freely now, and Henry watches with ache in his heart.
“My parents. Every friend I ever had, few as there were. My inheritance. My freedom.” He looks up at Henry through the tears, pain written on his face. “And I’ll lose you too. I’ll… I’ll lose you-” As if his strings were cut he crashes to his knees, pulling Henry down with him, and Henry scrambles to gather him up in his arms as he chokes out a painful sounding sob.
Hans claws at him, clinging and shaking as he heaves out sob after sob of what must be a lifetime’s worth of pain remaining unsaid.
“I dreamt you died,” he hiccups into Henry’s shoulder. “I saw you there, cut into pieces, just a pile of flesh, burnt, bleeding, reduced to wolf fodder.” He wails, as if seeing it again, and Henry rocks him, feeling Hans’ pain echo through his own chest. He’s had nightmares like that too.
“And then I woke up and you were there, but all I could see was death. Coming for you. Scythe at the ready. And all I could think of was how nothing ever lasts. Not for me.”
He sobs more, and Henry holds him tight.
“Well, I can promise you this: death will be the only reason I’ll ever leave you, Hans. And if I have anything to say about it, you’ll die first, old and wrinkly in your bed.”
Hans makes a wet gurgle of a laugh, and then clings even harder, as if trying to fuse them together. “Everything always ends,” he whispers, and Henry kisses the side of his head.
“Yeah. And it should. But we’ll make our end a happy one. Alright? We can do it together. I believe that.”
Hans snorts inbetween sobs. “Your faith is greater than mine, Hal.”
“Perhaps. But we’ll find yours too. Somehow.”
For a long minute Hans just keeps crying against Henry, and it almost seems like he’ll never stop. Eventually his sobbing does peter off, and he stays there, head tucked into Henry’s neck, and breathing wetly against his skin.
“Come to bed,” Henry murmurs. “Not for- that. Just so we can lie down and I can hold you properly.”
“Alright,” Hans mouths, muffled against Henry, but disengages easily enough as Henry gets up.
He doesn’t let Hans move away far, though, curling an arm around him and holding him tightly to his side as the move back into the cottage. They manage to step out of their shoes, and Henry makes sure Hans is laid down comfortably before joining him, pulling them tightly together, and Hans sighs heavily against Henry’s chest.
“There,” Henry whispers, kissing the top of his head. “I’ve got you, Hans.”
“I know,” Hans says, tired. “I know you do.”
“And I love you. I hope you know that too.”
“I do.”
“Then know this as well,” Henry says against Hans’ hair. “Nothing can stop me from loving you. Nothing can force me to leave you. And anything that ever tries to stand between us? I’ll destroy it. Understand me?”
Hans nods, lets out a shaky breath and fists his hands in the back of Henry’s shirt.
In a way, Hans is right. Everything will end. But until that end comes, Henry will do everything in his power to keep Hans safe and happy. It’s the only thing that matters to him now. And if that makes him a fool, then so be it.
He never claimed to be a wise man anyway.
End.