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Lady Fortune has abandoned him.
That fact has become increasingly obvious to Hans over the past few months, but it reaches previously unimaginable heights this day. No arrow to his arse or bucketload of shit could even hope to compare to how clearly his current circumstances spell out his incredible misfortune.
God above, but it started out as such a good day. For the first time since Trosky, Henry and him were neither held captive in some way nor were they fighting for their continued survival. Nebakov and Maleshov were in the past, at least for the moment, and Hans was dying to have a few hours alone with Henry to tell him about… everything.
Nebakov. The wooden beam.
The reason why he had to pull his hood low over his face as they left for the hunt and turn his face away from the sun, why he now wore riding gloves at all times and why he couldn't smile and laugh at Henry's jokes anymore, lest his friend catches a glimpse of something he should not.
About the hunger threatening to turn man into beast every single fucking hour of the day.
A hunt out in the woods would have been the perfect opportunity. If Henry wished to slay him on the spot, he could simply claim they were attacked by a wild boar and no-one would question Lord Hans Capon's tragically early demise. He'd let Henry kill him, too. Gladly even, for if Henry—kind, selfless, forgiving Henry—thinks him enough of a monster to run a stake through his heart, then surely he must deserve such a fate.
But, for what it is worth, Hans had at least hoped that that would not be the way things would go. Henry is a good man, but not one unfamiliar to sin or unkind to the unfortunate. And he… he is Hans’ friend. Surely that counts for something.
Hans could do nothing but hope when they left for the hunt, not that it mattered much in the end. Because, of course, they had to run into a group of bandits while both of them were entirely unequipped to deal with anything of the like. They were both merely clad in light hunting gear, no plate or even helmets, and those bandits outnumbered them one to four. Impossible odds, and they both knew it. So Hans did the only sensible thing and gave up, even if Henry looked murderous at the mere notion.
But Hans had no inclination whatsoever to risk Henry's life when the band's leader wanted them captive, not killed. And while the thought of chains closing around his wrists once more so soon after Maleshov drove Hans near mad with fear, the image of Henry dead was worse.
It has always been so much worse.
And so that is how they found themselves in the situation they are in now: chained to the wall of a deep cave like filthy beasts, their only source of light a stream of moonlight falling in through the cave's entrance. The bandits are camped somewhere outside under the stars, laughing amongst themselves, and Hans is yearning for the same freedom as he curls into himself somewhere in the furthest corner of the cave and tries his hardest not to cry like a fucking child.
Although, perhaps ‘yearning’ is too soft a word. Too kind. The feeling in his chest is neither; it is cold dead fingers carving their way into his lungs, stealing air he no longer needs to breathe. No heart races in his chest, and yet Hans hears a rushing in his ears, deafening in the darkness.
It was the same in Nebakov and in Maleshov, this panic that feels so very alive and human when he is no longer anything of the sort. Still, it feels deadly. It feels like his chest will cave in, his heart is being ripped out of his chest and he cannot stop it–
“Sir Hans?” Henry's voice echoes in the cave just as it does in his own mind, and Hans jerks his head from side to side to banish it from his mind because it hurts.
“Kurva, these fucking chains,” Henry curses somewhere on the other side of the cave, the scrape of metal against stone too loud in the dark. “Hans? Please, could you just– just look at me? Is this the same thing as Maleshov?”
A nod, quick and sharp, just as a sob is torn out of his chest and Hans curls up further into himself, choking on spit and dirt, dirt in his lungs and eyes and under his nails, pressing down on him–
“Hans, I need you to breathe.”
He wants to laugh at that, at the absurdity of the request Henry is making of him, but all that spills past his lips are more sobs. Perhaps Henry is right. Perhaps he can pretend at least, if nothing else. If his lungs scream for air which they do not need, then maybe taking unnecessary breaths is not so stupid an idea after all.
“Try and follow my breathing, alright?”
And so he does. Breath after agonising breath, Hans mirrors the sound of air passing Henry's lips across the space, the air feeling hollow in his own lungs and leaving his lips unchanged from how it entered them. And yet, it helps to settle something in Hans that came loose as they were thrown into and chained to opposite walls of this tiny cave.
“Feeling better, Sir?”
Sir. Lord, does he hate when Henry calls him that. It is proper of course, but it feels wrong on so many levels these days that Hans wants to laugh at it. There are no expectations around his given name, only the cadence of Henry's worry, joy or fear. His title on the other hand never fails to remind him that he is failing to be worthy of it with his decidedly immature behaviour, especially as he feels tears covering his face.
“Yes,” Hans rasps in response instead of saying any of this, drying the tear tracks on his cheeks by pressing the back of his hands against them. The shackles are bound tight enough to make him wince upon moving his arms. “I really need to get a grip on this. A lord can't simply break down in tears whenever something doesn't quite befit him. Uncle would have my hide if he saw me crying like a babe.”
Henry's answering silence goes on just long enough to turn Hans’ desperate attempt at lightness awkward, the absence of laughter charging the air like lightning. Hans squirms where he sits, feeling Henry's gaze on him even in the near-darkness, uncovering the layers beneath the deflection with way too much ease. When has this peasant boy learned to read him like so?
“Well, fuck Hanush. He isn't here now, is he?” Henry answers when the silence stretches on for long enough to become unbearable, and Hans cannot help but choke out a surprised laugh at his friend's bluntness. “And for what it's worth, I don't think your panic is unreasonable.”
“You think it was reasonable of me to forget how to breathe as soon as we entered this cave?” Disbelief clearly colours Hans’ voice, for surely not even Henry can rationalise such a reaction.
For a moment the other man simply stays silent, perhaps considering his next words. Hans thinks he can make out how Henry worries his lower lip with his teeth in the low light.
“Back in Skalitz, I had a friend. Matthias,” Henry starts then, his voice this combination of soft and pained that it often takes when he talks about his home. “He was… deathly afraid of spiders. Whenever he saw one in his home he'd scream so loud I'd hear it all the way up from the hill at the forge. And he would panic, not too unlike you just did.”
A huff leaves Hans’ lips, although it isn't a particularly amused one.
“Why thank you Hal, so I'm as reasonable as a wimpy child?”
Henry's eye-roll across the cave is as loud as any spoken answer. “Do you ever let other people finish speaking before spouting your own bullshit?”
Touché, Hans thinks, and sighs. “Go on then.”
“What I was trying to get at was that no matter how often Matthias’ father tried to beat the fear out of him or how much Matthias tried to overcome it as he grew older, it didn't work. His mind wasn't his own at that moment, so there was nothing he could do about it.”
“Very encouraging,” Hans mumbles and yelps when a pebble suddenly hits him in the forehead. “Hey!”
A small smirk is audible as Henry continues, pretending that he hasn't just thrown a rock at his liege lord. The nerve of this peasant.
“This panic is not something you might ever get rid of entirely, my lord. But it also isn't anything within your control. And there are things that help. Whenever I heard Matthias scream I'd run down to his house and calm him down after I killed the spider. ‘Would help him breathe again and hold him until his heart slowed once more.”
Hans can all too well imagine how being wrapped up in Henry's arms might calm even the worst of his panics. Though if he had still been human, Hans couldn't say if Henry's arms would have calmed his frantic heart back in Maleshov or sent it into a gallop all on their own.
God above, but he yearns to feel it once again. Henry's warmth around him, chasing away the ever-present cold, making him forget about the reality that is now his own. His steady heartbeat against Hans’ chest, so gloriously alive.
“Christ, do I have to spell everything out for you, Capon?” Hans makes an inquisitive noise, not trusting his voice to not betray the longing he feels for Henry's company. “Come over here, will you?”
Hans’ stomach clenches at the offer as much from yearning as it does from hunger. And while this is not an entirely new sensation when it comes to Henry, Hans suddenly wishes it were only the threat of sin twisting his guts with familiar fear, and not the memory of flesh tearing beneath his teeth and blood filling his mouth as the body beneath him writhes and twists and screams in the throes of deadly agony.
The Frenchman didn't even live long enough to introduce himself before Hans pounced onto him like a starving animal.
He cannot risk Henry's safety like that.
He can't, because Henry is the only good thing he has left in this godforsaken life that awaits him now. His presence across the room will be enough for Hans. Where he is safe from the monster lurking in the shadow of Hans’ soul.
“Don't bother, Hal. I'll be fine.” Hans knows well that his voice trembles and cracks around the syllables passing his lips, a lie so unconvincing the answering silence feels like judgement.
“Suit yourself.”
Hans tells himself it is best this way.
After all, what power does Henry's disappointment hold as long as he's sitting unscathed across the room from Hans? No matter how much Hans craves to crawl across the space between them and meet in the middle of the cave for an embrace, chains and arms pulled taught behind them where they are fastened to the wall, Henry's safety matters more than his whims. It matters more that life courses through those veins than it does for him to feel alive for a fleeting half-moment.
Life, as it is, is beyond him now, one way or another.
—
Their captors bring them food in the morning, as the sun starts to squint through the entrance of their cave and Hans has taken to the furthest shadows that his chains allow him access to. Henry meanwhile looks up from where he is lying stretched out in a spot of sunlight as a piece of bread and some dried meat are thrown into the middle of the cave.
“Enough to satisfy his Lordship, or to feed master and dog,” the bandit mocks, looking from Hans to Henry and grinning widely as Henry bares his teeth at him.
His laughter echoes between the stone walls as he turns around and leaves, and it is the only sound that can be heard in the cave for a few seconds. Neither of them moves to take a hold of the food lying in their midst, and Hans dislikes the implications Henry's stillness holds.
“What are you waiting for, Hal? I can see you're about to eat your fucking shoes with how hungry you are.”
Henry's stomach growls as if to underline the truth behind Hans’ words, which makes Henry clench his jaw and turn his eyes towards the ceiling with silent resolve.
“Food's meant for you, so it's your call if we split it. Sir.”
Whether he should laugh or cry once more, Hans doesn't entirely know.
“Is this about that fuckwit calling you my dog?” Henry does not answer, but his chest rises from the floor in a deep and controlled breath, and Hans knows he's got it right in one. “Hal, what the fuck did I tell you on our way here?”
A huff echoes in the cave, torn between amusement and pain, as if the reminder of their previous conversation tore at Henry's mind and heart.
“You said that I'm more than your minion these days.”
“I said that you're my friend. Not my servant or guard or dog.” The word alone leaves a sour taste in Hans’ mouth, because he very well remembers a time in which he called Henry exactly that. But that Hans from just a few months ago feels as foreign to him now as any vaguely acquainted lord he has met over the years. “And, I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't really have friends. You're it, Hal. So please, stop behaving like I'm your liege lord and father and take the damned food for yourself.”
A frown pulls Henry's eyebrows together at those last few words and he turns his head to look at Hans even through the shadows he is sitting in.
“For myself? Aren't we at least going to share?”
“Don't think I could get a bite down right now,” Hans murmurs, failing to look Henry in the eyes lest he somehow picks out the missing pieces to make sense of his lie in his own gaze. He isn't ready to face that particular truth yet. If Henry still questions their friendship after all this time, then how could he possibly trust him after such an admission?
“Go ahead and eat it. We will share the next one.”
It will have to wait. Even if Hans’ stomach clenches in a reminder that there might not be too much time left before he is forced to face reality.
—
A truth that Hans has come to acknowledge only during his last captivity is that starvation is not a sensation he handles well. Unlike most peasantry he has never before known what it means to hunger, to rarely ever be satisfied after a meal. No, when Hans Capon had ever hungered for something, he had only had to snap a finger to see his wishes fulfilled.
To starve for the first time in his life in Maleshov had been a particularly humiliating experience, but to do so out of a hunger for blood had been nothing short of terrifying. No sooner had he watched the third sunset beyond the windows of his prison had he lost all control of his own being. Hunger, thirst and blood had taken over both body and soul, and he'd clawed and screamed and begged in front of the door like a thing possessed by the devil.
It only stopped when he drained the Frenchman so thoroughly of his lifeblood he could see the redness fade from his lips, leaving only skin dry as parchment and eyes hollowed by death.
So when the claws of hunger become an insistent threat at the back of Hans’ mind now, fear is quick to cast its shadow on him. Hans paces the length of the cave as far as the chains allow. The constant scrape of metal against stone grates at his sanity nearly as much as the clenching of his stomach does.
From across the space Hans can feel Henry's exhausted gaze on him, kept awake by his pacing.
“My Lord.”
Hans pauses his pacing for just a second to stare disapprovingly at the other man, and Henry sighs heavily.
“Fine, Hans. Do you have ants up your arse?”
Hans laughs, short and clipped, caught by surprise by Henry's crass choice of words.
“No,” he answers, only the barest hint of amusement slipping past the fear into his tone. There are a few beats of silence in which Henry keeps staring at him, and in which Hans keeps his eyes decidedly bound to the floor.
When it is clear that there is no more answer following that first one, Henry groans, clearly exhausted.
“Then why the fuck are you pacing as if you're back in the Trosky dungeon.”
A bold memory to bring up, really, but it is enough to stun Hans out of his continuous stride and force him to blink. He had been pacing in Trosky, too. That much is true. Back then he had been pacing out of a fear for his own demise, a tragic end to a life he had not yet been ready to part with. There had still been so much left to see and do. The sea, the holy land. Places to travel to with Henry by his side.
Not that his readiness mattered much in the end when the beam fell down upon him.
He would never have been ready for the feeling of his heart slowing and stopping in his chest as he cried out for Henry to save him. Never would have been prepared for how it would feel to wake up six feet deep in a darkness so complete it still haunts his every waking hour.
Hans wasn't ready to die then. And he will never be truly ready for this now. For Henry's reaction, his disappointment, his judgement, his fear.
But he has to face it now, before he loses his mind entirely and it won't matter anymore if he was ever ready.
“What do you remember of Nebakov?” Hans blurts after a moment and slides down onto the cave floor to stop his pacing and to hug his knees to his chest in hopes of calming himself.
On the other side of the cave Henry blinks, clearly surprised by the change of topic, but he catches himself quickly enough.
“Why Nebakov of all things?”
“Humour me,” Hans mumbles, and Henry sighs.
“Fine. I remember the Finger of God. Godwin praying. Everything between the firing and waking up in the cart is blurry. Might have heard you calling out for me in the chaos.”
Hans takes a deep breath. Albeit unnecessary, the action is calming in its familiarity.
“I did call out for you,” he murmurs, running a hand through his hair and pulling sharply to keep himself from slipping into the memories he begins to recount. “Henry, that beam in Nebakov, it– it didn't just knock me out.”
“What are you talking about?” Henry's tone is wary as much as it is confused, and Hans squeezes his eyes shut against the images etched into his memory.
“The beam crushed me, Hal. It fell down on me and crushed my chest beneath it and when I felt my heart stutter and slow to a halt I screamed for you to save me from Death's claws.”
A frown pulls at the rough lines of Henry's face and the shadow of guilt darkens his gaze.
“I'm sorry I couldn't help you at Nebakov, believe me Hans. But the explosion knocked me out cold and I only really woke up on the way back to Trosky.” Silence stretches for a moment before Henry continues, false cheer lightening his tone. “At least you're here now though, aren't you? Kicking and all. A fucking beam couldn't get the best of Sir Hans Capon, Lord of—.”
“I died, Henry.”
The words echo in the cave as if they were ripples of water in a pond. A minor disturbance that reverberates throughout the entire room—raised goosebumps, hairs standing on end, a shudder so violent Hans sees Henry flinch across the room, shaking his head absentmindedly.
“What are you even saying, Hans? You're very clearly not dead.”
The ripples grow bigger, as does the tension and the familiar rush of panic in Hans' ears. He squeezes his eyes shut and lets his head hang between his knees, concentrating on forming the words Henry so desperately needs to hear.
“I'm saying that the beam in Nebakov killed me. When I cried out for you to save me that was the last thing I could do before I knew it was over for me. God above I was dying and all I could think about was you saving me once again, or– or at least seeing you one last time before the end.” A wet sob escapes Hans at the memory and tears fall to the stone floor of the cave, creating ripple after ripple until the wave of emotion crests.
“They buried me. Six feet of dirt pressed down on me once I woke, there was only darkness around me and I couldn't breathe. I clawed my way back out of my grave, I lived, but I wasn't the same any longer. No heartbeat, no breathing. The sun scorched my skin the moment I reached the surface damn near to the bone and all that was on my mind was blood.”
Silence.
The ripples have ceased.
Quiet sobs catch in Hans’ throat as he tries to breathe through his panic, unnecessary breaths, breaths that serve no other purpose than fooling his own mind into believing he is still a man. There is no more fooling Henry now, and yet Hans keeps breathing.
The panic subsides slowly with each breath, and through it all Henry remains still and quiet across the room, as if he too knows that there is more which Hans needs to say.
“I must have killed a man upon awakening,” he whispers eventually, red-rimmed eyes blinking against the sliver of light the setting sun casts between them. Light as powerful as the bars of any prison, for Hans cannot cross it such as it is. Perhaps the sun tries to protect Henry, one of her own, against a creature such as him. “I don't remember killing him, but I know that once they bound my hands with chains they were warm and slick with blood.”
Another moment of silence hangs between them. There have been more of those since they've stepped foot into this cave than there had been in all the months they have known each other before. Hans fucking hates them, hates the focus they put on him and his sobbing, hates having to wait for Henry's reaction, for him to laugh or judge or shun him.
When Henry finally breaks it, it is enough to make him flinch away, further into the safety of the shadows where the inevitable fear and hatred of his only friend might not hurt him quite as much.
“I could have lost you.” The words are no more than a whisper. Hollow, disconnected—as if the mere idea is enough to shake Henry to his very core. “If it hadn't been for a– a fucking curse you would be dead and I– fuck I could have just lost you.”
There is rustling on the other side of the cave, and Hans slowly raises his head from between his knees to look at Henry, just to see his friend fall to his knees in the middle of the cave, as close to him as the chains will allow. Close enough for Hans to reach him, were it not for the dimming sun. Close enough to smell, to hear the beating of his heart.
Hans’ stomach churns and he damn near groans, out of pain as much as out of temptation.
The reaction only barely registers in Hans’ mind through the sudden rush of sensations, and when it does it does not seem to make any sense.
“Did you not listen to me, blacksmith's boy?” he hisses, pressing his eyes together and turning his head away in an attempt to escape the sweet siren call of Henry's blood.
“I heard that you died, Hans,” Henry repeats, insists, as if that were the only important part of all Hans had said.
“I am cursed, Henry! Cursed to kill mindlessly, to hurt those I love most. You should stay the fuck away from me, or–or run a stake through my heart before I rip you to shreds like I did the fucking Frenchman.”
A pained frown paints Henry's face as Hans blinks against the dizziness.
The sun dims further. In a moment it will be hidden entirely behind the treeline, leaving Henry victim to Hans’ hunger.
“Do you trust me, Hans?”
With his life, if he still had one left to lose. But Hans cannot speak anymore, can only dig his fingers into his icy flesh and pray that Henry may develop a sense of self-preservation before he loses his wits. Yet he nods once, sharp.
“Then please, come here. You don't have to suffer like this.”
He's weak.
He is so fucking weak, because there is nothing Hans wants more than to heed Henry's call, to feel his warmth and taste his sweet sweet blood on his tongue. Hans’ limbs move without his say, rather controlled by some base instinct that knows it must feed, must feast on willing prey.
But Henry is no prey, and so the small piece of rationality left in Hans’ mind locks his jaw tight as he stumbles to his knees in front of his best friend, the chains pulled taught and painfully twisting his shoulders in their sockets as he lets his head drop onto Henry's shoulder and his nose presses against the point where a pulse hammers beneath warm skin.
A sound escapes him that starts as a moan and ends as a sob, something guttural and desperate and absolutely terrifying.
“You won't hurt me, Hans. It's okay. Drink.”
The permission runs like the current of a river through Hans’ body, washing away any inhibition that kept Hans from sinking his teeth into the flesh beneath his lips.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” Hans whispers repeatedly as he maps out the span of Henry's neck, where the blood flows and where he could bite down to bleed Henry in seconds. It is not where he lets his teeth pierce skin. No, he avoids the area entirely in a last desperate grab for control and bites down just beside it.
Blood is slow to coat his tongue, agonisingly so, but once it does Hans groans like a man tasting water after nearly dying of thirst for a week. Hans begins to suck on the wound his teeth left, coaxing mouthfuls of nectar past his lips and swallowing them hungrily.
Of course Henry's blood tastes nothing like nectar, but it may still be the food of the Gods for how addicted Hans becomes to it upon first taste. Henry's blood tastes like fire and smoke, like his stupid Mutt and the woods and the stars.
Freedom bursting on his tongue, while his hands are bound behind his back. Hans nearly laughs at the irony of it all, were it not for the fear of spilling a drop of the precious liquid.
“You'll have to stop now, love,” Henry murmurs after what feels like hours or days or years, and Hans snaps back into himself at once. Fuck, he got so lost in the taste—the bliss—he nearly forgot the fleeting warmth beneath his hands is that of his best friend's life. Hans pulls back as quickly as his sluggish limbs allow, licking one last time over the wound and making Henry shudder with it.
Their eyes find one another as they kneel opposite of the other, their knees nearly touching, perfectly in symmetry on the two sides of the cave. Henry sways slightly, drunk off the blood he lost, and Hans knows his eyes and pupils must be blown wide, high off the blood offered to him.
“You're fucking insane,” Hans whispers eventually, just for Henry to snort and grin tiredly.
“Worked, didn't it?”
“I could have killed you. You had no way of knowing I'd actually stop, why the fuck would you do that you bloody idiot?!”
A soft sigh, which sounds like it might have been a bigger one if Henry had any energy left to use on it whatsoever. “A change in diet doesn't suddenly erase the trust we have built over the past few months. You could have killed me a hundred times over before Nebakov, too, had you intended to.”
Hans absolutely fucking hates that Henry is making sense.
“Besides, it'd be mighty hypocritical of me, considering you're not the only one changed by our time apart.”
Now it is Hans’ turn to frown wordlessly at his friend. What the fuck does Henry mean by that?
“They tortured us at Trosky, did I tell you that?”
However Henry can say such a thing so nonchalantly is beyond Hans. A normal fucking Tuesday in the life of Henry of Skalitz: eat breakfast, walk Mutt, get tortured at Trosky castle. If Hans could break his chains to take Henry by the shoulders and shake some sense back into him, he would do so in a heartbeat.
And may Istvan Toth rot in Hell for all eternity.
Some of Hans’ inner turmoil must reflect in his eyes, because Henry's tired gaze softens as he continues.
“I think Istvan didn't mean for the torture to go as far as it did, but I kept provoking him so that his attention would stay on me instead of Žižka or Godwin,” Henry sighs and blinks, no doubt chasing away memories of his own that he wishes he could forget. “The tools they used on me were already slick with blood from another poor sod they tortured to the point of death in the cell next to ours. We had been hearing his screams and cries and begging for hours already when he finally croaked.”
A shudder visibly runs down Henry's spine, and Hans shuffles a little closer, hoping to provide what little comfort he can with his presence. Henry throws him a tight smile and takes a deep breath to order his thoughts.
“I'm sure now that it's the blood on the tools that held the curse. And since our blood mixed, the curse is now within me, too.”
There is really only one curse Henry could possibly be talking about, only one that is spread by the very blood that Hans can still taste on his lips.
“Lycanthropy,” he whispers, less a question than it is a statement, and Hans is surprised to find that there is no terror, disgust or judgement in his own tone.
Hypocritical, Henry called the prospect of his own judgement. Hans finds he too thinks the word fitting.
“Is that how you managed to escape Trosky?”
Henry nods sharply, clenching his jaw and flexing his hands repeatedly as if to keep himself from tensing up. “There was a full moon, not too long after they tortured me. Chains and locks pose little challenge for a werewolf, they snap apart almost as easily as bones break between their jaws.”
“Speaking from experience?”
Henry takes a heavy breath and runs a hand over his face, trying and failing to hide the thin tears that have escaped his eyes. “I should be used to killing by now, shouldn't I? All these months of Cumans and bandits and sieges, I killed more people than I dare to count. And yet, it's different when you can feel their flesh and bones give beneath your teeth.”
When Hans first planned to tell Henry of his turning, he never imagined for even a moment that his friend might be the possibly only person in his life that could ever understand his newfound plights. The horror of losing control over themselves to a point where they kill mindlessly, in ways that will brand their souls for all eternity, is miraculously an experience they seem to share.
Somehow, the comfort of this knowledge makes Hans bolder, makes him want to excuse the inexcusable because it is suddenly so very easily done. When it is Henry and not him that would be judged, the reason for judgement seems woefully inadequate.
“I know what you mean,” he answers quietly and shuffles close enough to nudge Henry's foot with his own. “But what is it you tried to get into my head when I thought the cave was collapsing on us?”
“That Hanush is a bitch?”
Hans cannot help but snort at that, although he does level Henry with a disapproving glance for his attempt to change the trajectory of their conversation.
“No, you menace, you pointed out that I cannot be at fault for something I cannot control, and therefore beating myself up over it does fuck-all. Now tell me, did we choose our afflictions?” Henry shakes his head slowly, though he still looks like he might fight Hans on this particular point given the chance. So of course, Hans does not give him one. “We can't help what we are now. All we can do is make the best of it.”
“Alright, alright, father, are you done with your fucking sermon? Never thought I'd live to see the day where Sir Hans Capon becomes a priest.”
The nerve.
Hans’ mouth falls open in sheer indignity and disbelief. Him, a priest. Surely Henry has gotten the wrong idea about men of the cloth, what with Godwin as the pinnacle of priesthood in his eyes.
“You take that back!” Hans orders sternly and abuses his position to kick Henry in the shin, which only serves to make the other man break out in quiet chuckles.
“Have mercy!” Henry laughs, but a giant yawn disrupts that laughter much too quickly for Hans’ liking. Although it serves as a good reminder that Henry is currently suffering blood loss and should probably sleep for at least a week.
“Just this once, but only because I nearly bled you dry,” Hans answers wryly, his voice dropping down to nearly a whisper. “Catch some sleep, Hal. I'll keep watch.”
Moonlight paints the room a bright silvery grey as Henry lays down close enough to Hans that their legs brush together. And as Hans turns around to look outside through the entrance of the cave, he notices that the moon is almost at its fullest.
Another day or two at most and they will be free again.
—
Two days later, Hans wakes up late into the evening to Henry pacing the length of the cave much like he himself had not too long ago. Hans watches three turn-arounds with growing amusement before he dares to speak up.
“Ants up your arse?”
“Piss off, Capon!” Henry whips around and glares at him, which only serves to make Hans snort.
“Alright, alright! Tell me though, why exactly are you pacing, Hal?”
“The full moon is coming up tonight.”
“I realised that part. How does it connect to your pacing though?”
Clearly that is not the thing Henry expected him to ask, as he whips back around to Hans with an incredulous frown marring his handsome face.
“You're asking me how me turning into a murderous, mindless monster tonight connects to my pacing? I don’t know, maybe because I have no way of controlling myself once I turn and I could fucking kill you the moment the moon comes up?”
“You won't,” Hans answers immediately, more certain about this than he'd been about anything else in a very long time. “Henry, you would never hurt me. Not even by accident.”
“I fear I can't share your faith in me,” Henry murmurs, but he does eventually sit down to instead stare at the entrance of the cave, where the sun is slowly setting behind the treeline.
“You're essentially a wolf, right? Wolves know their own.”
And Hans knows that he is Henry's, in all the ways that will matter. He is his… his friend. They trust each other with their lives. Surely that will be enough.
“If I rip you apart, don't say I didn't warn you,” Henry murmurs as the last rays of sunshine disappear and moonlight floods the cave.
Almost immediately the sound of snapping bones and warping flesh echoes between the stone walls, broken up only by sobs turning slowly into snarls as Henry's body begins to warp and contort before Hans’ eyes. Limbs crack and elongate, claws break through skin and the blood coating them shines in the silvery light as Henry cries out in pain, sending a cold shiver down Hans’ spine. The sounds he makes as his jaw dislocates with a pop and grows into a snout together with his nose are monstrous indeed, something between an animalistic howl and a scream still so achingly human.
Outside the cave the bandits sound an alarm, clearly woken by Henry's cries, but they won't be fast enough.
The chains snap as easily as rotten wood as Henry pulls at them, clattering to the ground and Hans cannot help but revel in the strength displayed in front of his eyes. Henry transformed is fucking magnificent. Even covered in fur and more wolf than man, he still somehow looks like himself. The slope of that brow, the wild glint in those eyes, the shoulders and thighs.
There's more to him now, but the core is still Henry.
So when the creature slowly stalks towards him, downturned blue eyes staring right through his soul, Hans only smiles lopsidedly.
“Be a good boy and free me of these chains?”
For a moment Henry only stares at him, but then his nose seems to catch a scent and he starts nosing at Hans’ chest, stomach and finally his neck, breathing in deeply and rubbing up against him as if to mark.
Hans decides to ignore the satisfaction stirring within his very soul for the moment being, but only because the bandits choose that moment to step into the cave, weapons drawn.
Though when Henry moves to stand between the bandits and him, ready to protect what is his, Hans cannot help but grin indulgently.
Blood paints the ground of that cave tonight, a feast for both master and dog—vampire and werewolf.
And they are now both free of the chains that held them.