"Wait," he says, round blue eyes squinting at her through the afternoon sun. "You. You're the mill wench Henry talks about."

Theresa knows who he is, of course. She has seen him haunt the corners of both of Rattay's taverns, the splendid caparison of his stallion hitched outside, somehow not quite as yellow and regal as the hair which falls in an all-too-orchestrated manner across his soft temples.

Theresa knows she must wait for him to excuse her. She knows this. Even without his celebrity in this town, his fine clothing is more than enough to indicate how this exchange is supposed to go.

But, he is yet to introduce himself. He is stuck in thought, and she can hear his mind keening, turning over itself.

He grips her arm. She is desperate to be elsewhere.

"Would you kindly excuse—"

"Sir Hans Capon of Leipa and Pirkstein," he says abruptly, and, with a smile, releases her—physically. His hand now free, he throws it in a gesture to the seat opposite. "Stay. Have a drink with me."

what's up my period is due and everything i make is complete shit. anyway here's a snip before i go on an indefinite writing break:

yea i'm writing horrible things again (sequel to apostrophe if u want to learn what it is theresa might be ashamed of)

day one: eight years / left behind

Over the course of eight years, eight letters are left in a concealed corner of a Crestwood grove.

Rules: you will be given a word. Then you share one sentence/excerpt from your wip(s) that starts with each letter of your word! The word I was given: wine

thank u for the tag @mrspizzle and for showing us a glimpse of your f1 au which i am thinking purely respectful thoughts about. i'm gonna tag @queenaeducan @darethshirl @katkrisis @skogrr @miralparis and your word is: trees

these are taken from the next installment of the hansresaverse saga, in which hans tells henry he slept with theresa while they're both flinging proverbial knives at each other in the pillory (idea courtesy of @myheatoppressedbrain, let's see if i can pull it off LOL)

it's kind of spiralled into a big piece and i'm always scared when that happens bc i get intimidated easily and also can lose sight things more easily in multichapter fics, but it's currently looking like it might be four chapters (wtf lmao.... kill me) anyway. the girls are fighting

"We ran into problems, we quarrelled, and he left. Haven't seen him since." "What did you quarrel about?" "Back in Rattay he slept with my…. With a girl I cared about."

In his nightmares, they roll around like a marble in his skull, pale and naked.

Night falls in earnest, and its chill takes hold of their bodies; a captive, shivering audience to the night watch of the Troskowitz guards. Occasionally one of them murmurs some sort of heckle, but Henry is too exhausted, too fraught with pain and shock to care.

tagged last week by @queenaeducan thank u beloved

been working on two wips this week!! first, here's the opening to an extremely cursed hans x theresa fic (successor to my hans & theresa fic) which will surely kill us all once i eventually unleash its toxic fumes upon you all

and second.... may i submit my humbling offering of suffering hans who just wishes he'd never grown up.... (he's sobbing as he's having these thoughts lol someone hug him please)

"Help me, Henry! Please!" He tries to speak, to explain, but even here his body fails him and nothing comes out but a pathetic half-whine. The pain is overwhelming. He can't think over the top of it. Once more, he tries to shift the beam but he barely has the strength to raise his arm. His hand shakes. His fingers curl. He can't even grip the wood. With a defeated thud, his hand drops to the floor, the rest of him following, a cloud of dust echoing the impact. He watches with an almost detached fascination, as his fingers crawl to find Hans' gauntlet, threading mournfully between his lords'. "I'm," he manages, hauling his lungs like sacks of coal. …sorry. …dying. …here.

thank you for the tag @gifographicmemory ! i'm so close to being done with this fic it's making me a little crazy so here's post-fuck hansresa for everyone's viewing displeasure:

"If I hear anything about… about the monastery, I can..." He loses his nerve abruptly, can hardly bring himself to look at her with empty, pacifying words. She's no longer even worth lying to. Is this what it is to be like from here? Too afraid to utter Henry's name lest the wind spirit word of their betrayal to Sasau? Maybe it's better that he doesn't return. Theresa suspects she would rather have watched Henry's eyes fog as he rattled his way to death on the cot than watch them fill with disgust, then turn away forever.

hey thanks for the tag @exia-1! (and sorry for accidentally unfollowing you when i was going through my notes... rip. i have rectified this though... 4give me 😓)

rightly or wrongly i am planning a post-kcd2 longfic featuring jitka very heavily so i'm currently in the figuring-her-out stages. as part of this i'm trying to write a few monologues from her POV and here's today's offering (this is very throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks vibes. it is not polished. i need this to be known):

I don't remember ever in my life curtesying deeper than I did the very first time I curtseyed for Hans Capon. The journey to Rattay felt thrice as long as my uncle promised, and the carriage half as comfortable. I tried counting each tree it passed me on the road, but found I had no stomach for it beyond the number 'one'. Some part of me knew that it was a childish, fruitless exercise — that these gentle landmarks would not meet my eyes again. That they would slip past me, fleeting, vanish back into a cold white sky. None of it felt real. For a long while, I had convinced myself that this was how I preferred it. When my Uncle Botschek relayed the news a little over a year ago, that same, fleeting feeling washed over me, and I had embraced it. It is not unfamiliar — to be a woman is to learn how to be completely absent, after all. To reach out either side of oneself, and feel nothing but a draft. I know what the Bohemian lords say about me. And, even if I did not, the truth of it is so apparent that it screams. The dowry my father sent me with was eye-watering. What more could this young lord want than a young, noble wife, with coffers so heavy that four draft horses are barely enough to cart the silver? Somehow, when the door unlatched, fell open, stairs carefully placed before me, and I stepped out to meet the man who was to become my companion in whatever remains of this earthly life, I felt empty-handed even still. The young lord was only newly a man it seemed, though he was unusually tall. Lean and slender, a face like a fox's, and hair as fair as a February sun. His reputation with women had indeed spread as far as Moravia, and now was no surprise. Of course, he was not the only person under scrutiny. I knew from the way he beheld me then, as if he was peering through me, behind me, that he was trying to make out where the rest of me may have been stashed. For none of the money was mine to begin with. I had simply fetched what was already owed, and he was searching for a gift that I had seemingly overlooked while packing. "Lady Jitka," he said, just slightly tipping the fair crown of his head. His voice was gentler than I had expected, especially with cheeks as sharp as those. And then I began that ungodly curtsey, like God was pulling at my ankles, pressing me into Hell just to see if I might be able to claw back out again. "My lord." It is a pleasure, Sir Hans. What a blessed relief to finally reach your lovely holdings. I pray the day finds you well. All these words died on the floor. Needful deference knocked them out of me, and the effort to pick some of them up and polish them off, like all things, felt empty and meaningless and wasted. When I rose up to meet his eyes again, we had the very first of our silent conversations. And we understood each other perfectly.