bene gesserit-trained

(tw for past hansresa)

The weariness finally hits his bones. After Skalitz was razed, he was swept immediately into a constant din of distraction. Naturally, the grief did not cease to break over him, and he spent the nights gulping acrid mouthfuls of it into his lungs, but the days were kinder, and kept his feet planted, his hands on a rope. There are things to be done under the silhouette of Trosky Castle. There are warring serfs, and false hermits, stolen lutes. And it's not a complete waste of time, because Henry needs to keep moving, always moving, always, so that he may fall into whatever bed greets him at the end of the day too exhausted to scrape the meaning from his thoughts. But when you're left alone, there is no safety from the silence. More often, it is quiet moments like these—where he swirls his shirts and braies in soapy water, pours out the bucket into the pond, and all is still but the cattails—that his resolve starts to falter and the sadness seeps in, dulling his wits jaundice yellow. Henry sets the bucket down, and grips the pier, steadying himself. He dreamt of the mill again last night, only this time he couldn't partake in the sin, since he was buried beneath the dirt floor they fucked on. He could only thrash and plead under their horrible dampened sounds, screaming until he suffocated with the company of questions embossed into the powder of the earth: why can't they hear me? Why won't he help me? Why doesn't she want me? Henry is not so removed from his sanity to recognise that in retrospect, the final question was the least pressing. It is, however, the only one that remains coherent upon the break of day. Why doesn't she want him? "Because I'm handsome? Because I'm Lord of Rattay?" Henry blinks into his reflection in the water. He lifts a finger to his temple, curls it around a lock of his tawny hair. Pinches the end of his unpointed nose. His lips don't have the same humour in them. His eyes don't catch the light in the same way. He is not beautiful in the same way Hans is. He's not radiant like that. Sometimes, he fools himself into believing you can see it: Radzig's blood bursting through his heart. That he's a noble's son first, and a bastard second. But, Henry supposes only a bastard would chase a little strip of silver with the same mania as a starving mongrel with a gristle of meat. And after all, if he really was some secret prince, Tess wouldn't have been so quick to discard him. He imagines Hans is probably in the company of some bathwench now, watching her do his laundry with a cup of rich red wine pressed to his mouth, all the while Henry laments his many failings and the soap lye cracks dry, painful lines in his ugly hands. The way of things. Bellatores. Laboratores. Perhaps this is simply the nature of it, then: the sleepy gloom of a life cast in Hans' shadow. Maybe, in some perverse way, it's understandable, what Theresa did. Maybe he would do it, too. Little moths: shackled to the irresistible draw of an unrestrained sun, drunk on the warmth of the light.

Dragon Age Kiss Week | Day 3 - Fade

Solas and Leilah Lavellan 🥹💚