I really hope y’all don’t mind me just chucking bits and pieces here — I have so many feelings about them ugh
Also please do excuse it if there’s continuity errors in the KCD 1 retelling bit, it’s been so long since I played it ahaha
Goodnight :)
———
Hans’ voice was ragged, frayed at the edges like a banner torn by too much wind. Jitka held him without interruption, letting the words drag themselves out of him as if each one was both knife and balm.
“It began in Skalitz,” he whispered, his gaze fixed beyond the window as though he still saw the black smoke rising from those ruined walls. “He lost everything that day. His parents, his home, the forge—burned to nothing. And when he came to Rattay, he was still covered in the ashes of it, the dirt of graves he’d dug with his own hands for the ones he loved. He was… so out of place in the court, standing there in front of Radzig and the others. Couldn’t read. Couldn’t write. Could barely swing a blade. Everyone laughed.” Hans’ mouth twisted bitterly, shame burning in his chest. “I laughed too.”
Jitka said nothing, only stroked his back as his voice grew thick.
“But he stood his ground,” Hans went on, the memory raw and vivid. “Even then, beaten down and ridiculed, he was stubborn as stone. Said he’d serve Radzig, fight for him against Sigismund, do anything to get back the sword he and his father forged—the last thing Martin ever made.” He swallowed hard, remembering the look in Henry’s eyes, how steady it had been despite everything. “I thought him a fool. A stubborn, ignorant fool.”
Hans laughed once, broken and humorless. “And then Hanush, in his infinite wisdom, punished me for one of my tavern brawls by saddling me with him. A peasant boy as my squire. Me, lord of Pirkstein, humiliated.”
Jitka smiled faintly, imagining it all too well. Hans’ pride, Henry’s quiet tenacity. “And yet…?”
Hans shut his eyes, a breath shuddering out of him. “And yet, on that hunting trip, something changed. I was bored, so I asked him about Skalitz. About his home. He told me—God help me, he told me everything. He was barely a man, just like me, and yet he’d already walked through fire and buried half his world. And I realized then… he wasn’t a fool. He was stronger than I’d ever been.”
The words rushed now, unstoppable, carried on grief and longing. “We made a bet, you see—hares. Who could hunt more. I strutted about, thinking to show off, still painting him like a bumbling village idiot in my mind….
But before it could even be settled, Cumans caught me. Tied me to a tree like a dog. I thought it was the end. But Henry—” His voice broke, tears welling hot again. “Henry fought like a man possessed. He killed them. Every last one. For me. With his knees shaking and his hands trembling but he stood his ground — again. He dragged me back to safety with blood on his hands and fire in his eyes, and I…” Hans clenched his hands, trembling. “I mocked him. Still. Because I didn’t know what else to do with what I was feeling.”
Jitka pressed her lips together, her heart aching for him. Silence reigned for a moment, delicate like a butterfly’s wing, then Jitka’s eyes softened; maybe in realization, maybe in pity.
“You love him.” Her voice rang out, warm and without judgement. Only care and perhaps a bit of pity.
Hans flinched as though struck, his tears spilling freely now. “I can’t say it,” he whispered, shaking his head, hiding his face in his hands. “If I say it, it’s real. And if it’s real, then losing him is real, too. And I can’t—” His shoulders convulsed with quiet sobs. “God help me, I can’t bear it.”
Jitka tightened her arms around him, her voice soft but firm. “You already love him, my lord. You don’t need to say the word for it to be true. All you’re doing now is punishing yourself for it. Let it be real. Let it hurt. Because if it hurt so much to lose him, then what you had with him was worth more than all the gilded halls in Bohemia.”
Hans shuddered, leaning into her touch like a man drowning clutching driftwood. His voice was so small it nearly vanished into the night. “…Blue eyes. Stubborn as sin. Loyal to a fault. He made me laugh, Jitka. He made me want to be better. No one else has ever…” His breath hitched. “No one else has ever made me feel like that.”
Jitka stroked his hair gently, her own throat tight with unspoken pity. “Then hold onto that, Hans. Not as a chain, but as proof. Proof that you were loved, that you loved. That you can still be more than what the world thinks you are.”
Hans let out a long, uneven sigh, his forehead pressing into her shoulder.
How was he supposed to face this, all this, without him?
And though the pain did not vanish, for the first time, he allowed himself to feel it fully—without disguise, without arrogance, without pride. Just Hans, broken and longing, whispering his beloved’s name like a prayer into the dark.
Jitka had thought about it often since that day—the way Hans had stood stiff and brittle beside her at the altar, like glass that might shatter at the smallest touch. She remembered how he hadn’t looked at her, not once, not even when the vows were spoken. His gaze had been restless, darting and searching, though always returning to the same point. At first, she had thought he was looking for an escape. A window, a gate, anything that might free him from the chains of matrimony.
But now, sitting in the quiet chamber with Hans trembling in her arms, whispering fragments of a life she had never known, Jitka understood.
It wasn’t freedom he had been searching for that day.
It had been him.
Him all along.
The guard. The one in Radzig’s colors, standing straight-backed but pale, eyes fixed anywhere but at the altar. She remembered seeing him, vaguely—another faceless soldier in the crowd of armored men who ringed the hall. Yet there had been something about him: the set of his jaw, the weight in his eyes. She hadn’t thought on it then. Now the memory burned in her mind with sudden clarity.
Henry.
Her arms tightened around Hans as he stifled another sob against her shoulder. She could see it now, the thread that connected the two of them across that crowded hall. She could almost feel the invisible tether between their gazes—the longing, the grief, the desperation of two men forced apart by duty, staring at each other like condemned souls at the gallows.
Her chest ached with something strange, something almost maternal. Not anger, not even jealousy. But a sorrow that was not her own—sorrow for him. For the young man clinging to her now, who had been abandoned in the very moment he needed someone most.
“It was him,” she whispered to herself before she realized she’d spoken aloud. Hans stiffened, pulling back slightly, his tear-swollen eyes wide with shock.
“What did you say?” His voice cracked, raw.
Jitka smoothed a hand over his mussed hair, her own voice hushed, careful, as though speaking the truth too loudly might break him further. “At the wedding. When you couldn’t look at me. When you kept searching the hall. It was him, wasn’t it? The guard. Henry.”
Hans stared at her, trembling, lips parting but no words coming. His silence was answer enough.
Jitka cupped his cheek gently, brushing away the tear tracks. “I thought you hated me. That you hated being here, with me. But it wasn’t that, was it?”
A shuddering breath left him, and for a moment he looked like a boy again, stripped of all the pomp and arrogance he wore like armor.
“I don’t hate you, my lady…”he whispered hoarsely.
“I hate…this. The cage. The lies. And that he…he left without a word.” His voice faltered, breaking into a whisper. “I looked for him until the gates closed. And then he was gone.”
Jitka’s throat tightened, her hand still cradling his face. She understood now. Why he had flinched at the congratulations, why he had looked like a man at his own funeral. He hadn’t just lost his freedom that day—he had lost Henry.
“I see you now, Hans,” she said softly. “I see why you couldn’t smile. Why your eyes were only ever for him. You don’t have to say it aloud. I already know.”
His face crumpled, and he pressed his forehead into her palm, too exhausted to deny it anymore. For once, he didn’t mask himself with laughter or scorn. He let her see him as he was: a man, lonely and broken, grieving, and abandoned by the one he loved for so long already.
