knightedgales

[knightedgales]

I'm uploading my clip again, but I love this ABSOLUTELY MISSABLE scene with Henry finding Markvart. Markvart telling him he remembers Henry's mother and father, the very people he killed. Henry hearing Markvart ask him to put him out oh his misery. Henry choosing not to let it go despite this human side Markvart is expressing, fired up when Markvart dares compare Henry to him, Sigismund, all these warmongers. "Are you sure you didn't kill someone's father or mother?" No. Henry isn't sure. In fact, considering everyone he has killed, he's no doubt left his own share of orphans. But him killing people dead set on killing him, armed, trying to destroy him for some profit or something selfish desire isn't the same as Markvart slaughtering his peasant family who had done absolutely nothing to warrant such a sudden slaughter. So, he has Markvart ask him, ask him to not have him just die like a pig, but Henry decides: no. No, you will. I will kill you the way you killed them. I will kill you when I have all the power to let you go. I will kill you because I will never rest and forgive myself if I let the executioner of all I held dear pass to the crawl of time. Like I said: the anger of the serf!!!

[knightedgales]

Over and over again I have had to conquer infinite hopelessnesses.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[knightedgales]

If she presses him for an answer, Henry might just let slip the truth. It'd be redundant on her part, of course, as tried as her asking if the summer is hot, but who can put it past her with her swollen-fat ego? She should ask. She should ask him if he likes her feisty and snarled. Caging about her front, their knight feels it, the smothering of her laughter dulled in her throat. It makes something buoy at his spirit like some stone's throw from ale out his fifth-or-so tankard, and so what if she favors the merciless and testing? So does he! My word. With his own laugh -- huff, ravine-purrs -- he shows a glimpse of a wolf with means.

"That how you think of me?" Why shouldn't it be? After all, he's a peasant right down to every last stitching -- just like she is. Just like always. She loathes the reality of it, however, where Henry would gallivant proudly with the earthy scent of parsnips. It speaks of a life of drudgery, of fighting tooth and mail for the barest pleasures, and just like Vex with the fire on her tongue? He tastes it. Aye. Loss and fierce fights: they were hewn by both. "But that doesn't bother you none, does it? You like butting heads, and gods know why. What other reason is there for you to go running about flapping them gums of yours? Needling folk? Tempting fate and the like?" Ha! As though Henry of Skalitz is Vex's fate? That's a brainworm, isn't it?! Astride her, he keeps her wrists locked down and her hips pinned tight. "If there isn't a struggle, it's not worth it, is it? Alright. Go on then." Cocky bastard! "Show me. Struggle."

what had started as playful and flirtatious energy began to shift into something more COMPETITIVE as they spin to lock each other's eyes again. a tenacity sparked like flint to tinder. " lies ?? oh haha [ . . . ] i'd never lie to y-AH !! " the world begins to tilt !! whatever barbed quip had gathered onto the soft of her tongue dissolves into breathless shock as his shoulder finds the cradle of her stomach , knocking the air from her lungs and the smugness from her smirk. vex's laughter , once a silver thread , unravels. she shouldn't have taunted. what good are quick feet if she couldn't use them ?? you know the woods , ranger. you know better than to provoke and challenge a prowling , growling wolf with nothing at your disposal. no traps. no tricks. really , the fight was unfair to begin with. nervous chuckling bubbles up and takes over , thin and breathless , as hands scramble to find purchase in order to stabilize until the earth beneath them meets her back.

HIGHNESS ?? oh she wishes. on stars every night with the softness of a young child lonely and wanting. only to wake up in their small farm hovel with mother , vax sleeping nearby , burned ashes lingering on the tongue. only to wake up in a cold palace with a father whose glare was colder. what a joke. one that stings each word. " huh you'd like that wouldn't you ?? " she grunts with effort being used to try and wrestle against henry's hold , failing miserably under the weight of him. what use is your dexterity now !! " got me under you all hot and panting. " a chuckle seeps out , hoarse and defiant , hands desperately trying to push against the his solid form , shoulders , chin , chest , anything !! and finding her energy sapping in high noon's heat , yet unwilling to call out uncle. just a trapped rabbit panicking under the wolf's paw.

[knightedgales]

Reality bears an edge to it. Every breath, every shadow, would seem to him like dagger. It's like all the world's movements would smart his senses in some facsimile of pulling on a scab just healed. All the colors go shadowy, grey to teeming swaths of the inkiest blues, and his eyes flash like stars where they gleam from in his skull. Not stars. Rather, hook-points, knife-ends, and the end of a blade.

His sword shines. The teeth in his mouth grow long and hungry.

Henry, half-creature, something...something evil bellowing angry in his belly, feels more than wrangles this damning situation. Above him, the moon's not yet fully bloated, but nonetheless silvered as it trickles through the huts. It frames his figure as he clashes with bandits yelling of demons and some hell-raised devilry. Right. Devilry, he growls darkly, what with the trouble you're levelling on these decent folk, but the devilry he bears in the cradle of his marrow? He doesn't realize it. Behind him, the villagers he fights for yowl of beast.

Where? Henry lunges forward and tears into jugular.

"God have mercy!"

"Aye! Pray, you should! Because I haven't any of that to offer!"

Why did he sound so rumbling? Savage? Like glass piped through the crank of machinery? Henry swallows, the warm of blood but sweet-saliva down this throat. Tossing aside the bandit, the rasping lout goes careening until he's met with the bosom of a nameless wanderer. Peering up, it's with eyes gone shadowed that he gasps for help. Henry, ears perking, rears back around.

Eyes like halos. Teeth sinew'd. Cuirass stained. "It's not safe here." / @brokenmagxc, plotted.

[knightedgales]

[knightedgales]

Her mind, evidently smitten by all things pretty, works in ways that did her favors. Under the trembling ceiling fans, after all, those flowers go fluttering like those wings off of moths. They sit like sun-pricks in her hair or even bobby pins of summer to tame calm her waves, and at once, Henry reckons that this image does her rightly; that is, that she, all spirit, is mad like ocean.

She smiles, undeterred, and realization strikes him like a mallet.

"I hadn't meant-- No, no. Of course. They're very pretty! One of my favorites, actually. Not here telling you you don't do them any justice. You do! What I'm getting at is it isn't something most people go about wearing, do they?" Which is a shame, mind you, but that's neither here nor there. Today, in truth, talk encompassed only whatever harebrained nonsense he could pull from his concussion to offer like a tip. Sure, she may have more enjoyed some dollars and even some begging to sweeten it up, but maybe she can take his flush like a candy. He raises his hands. Like candy! Like the sour-sweet peach rings before a trip to the theatre.

Anyway... "That bad then." Quite. His expression loosens into a wide smile, pulling the tear at his lip, as she offers that little flower. She does so easily, bright and peppery. He smells night-time ordered pancakes about her and thinks of strawberries on top. "I know. I look into them flowers sometimes, but I'm leaning more on the Advil these days. You study them?" Then, taking the flower, smile a little cheeky: "This what the doctor prescribing? Flower from a girl and a good dose of humbling? In that case, miss, can I have some dumplings and a coffee with two creams to take it with?

it'd been a last minute choice,  swiping two from the mess of them she'd left scattered across the dining table and tucking them into her hair as she hustled from home to diner.  they'd been a pretty trophy from a hike just a couple days before,  but they seem close to their end, so she takes advantage of the last of the vibrance.

and honestly,  she's more surprised that he knows what they are than by the idea that they don't suit her.  still she's rocked back and forth by the words as they spill from his lips like a leak  -  smile going from uncertain to amused,  half a grin.

"thank you."  it's a compliment in the end,  she thinks.  fingers reach up to ghost over the soft edges of the petals.  "i found them on a hike a couple days back.  so pretty,  i couldn't resist."  and she'd left some behind.  either for the next greedy hiker,  or just so the bees had a little more food if they pleased.

dark eyes flit over his face,  worn as it is with that cut by his brow,  and plucks one of the flowers from her hair without thinking.  "they used to use these for medicine,  you know."  the hand is held out to him,  eyes moving purposefully between his and the sliver of his skin.  "it looks like you could use it more than me!"  maybe now would be a good time to take his order?

[knightedgales]

hopefully anons arent annoying but your writing is really nice to read and idk theres so much atmosphere to it. Nothing feels like filler to get to reach a certain piece of dialogue

Anons are never annoying. If anything, anons brighten my day. It meant a lot to check my inbox and see this sitting there... I don't expect anything so encouraging to just pop up, so, really, I'm very very pleasantly surprised! I appreciate it. I really do try my best to give as good as I get without chewing on too much fat. Mood and atmosphere have always been two of my favorite elements to explore when writing, the hardest bit being to capture cadence and flow which, while difficult, is very rewarding. What is a character feeling? How are these emotions bleeding out into the world? How is it likely to make other people react? How have their experiences in life come to color what reality looks like to them? Soooo many fun avenues. Of course, I would never be able to do any of that if my partners didn't provide such wonderful opportunity to at every turn. As I said, I give what I'm given, and everything you read here is really heavily influenced by everyone who's taken the time to give me and Henry a chance.

Thanks again for taking time out of your day to send this over. You didn't have to, but it means all the more for it. :)

[knightedgales]

@pawnedprince asked: ' you are destined for greater things. ' / VULNERABLE CONFESSIONS: still accepting.

It's 1419. Years before now, Henry might have laughed to that. He might have nudged softly at his lord and asked where that came from. Unfortunately, those halcyon days have ended as they all of them cartwheeled down some ditch with a gasp. In the end, it wasn't even glorious, that fire it inspired when stood beside their love. Instead, it wheezed like a candle as it guttered to the shadows — grey, uninspired, and tragically remorseful.

Older now, Henry, thirty-nine, eyes Hans down the hall.

"Don't you start with me," he begins. He's sporting that beard more, and there's cropped a telling tightness about his eyes. Still, he can hide nothing from Sir Capon, can he? There's yet want steely and bright and cool like oceans. Oh, Henry. Ever the simpleton he shall always remain, the poor thing. With their talks having failed, it's time to go home. "I'm not hearing that from you. It's a torment, it is." No. He can't just go. Ask me to stay. Come here, Hans. What's greater than when I stood right by your side? "Nothing I've done deserves that."

[knightedgales]

Do you have a wanted plots list or wishlist? I adore your writing style but don't know where to begin! ;;

I actually don't have any plot list or wishlist. Honestly, I'm excited to write anything and everything, so I don't normally think of things I'm dying to explore. Live in the moment sort of mindset.

That said, that means I'm super open to winging it. Just getting started is a joy, and I have prompts here you can send in if you really want to break the ice. Otherwise, if I don't have a starter call floating about, you're always free to simply DM me. :) I'm always, always happy to receive you!

If I really had to scratch my head for wishlists, though, I wouldn't mind exploring a possibly older Henry à la the Hussite Wars. The general summary for that being Henry has to face old friends turned adversaries, one of them potentially being Hans Capon. This would pave the road for a darker tone and a conflicted Henry who, at that point, would have reaped what vengeance he could and is now emotionally if not also spiritually unmoored/listless. It's like he lost home again, and he's still steep in bloodshed and war.

Beyond his canon KCD verse, though, I could always chew over more fantasy threads where Henry is a werewolf. First kill. First morning after a turn? First time he scares the person he's with for that animal anger he has? Just ideas! Always happy to explore more with a chat! :D

[knightedgales]

It helps. It helps to have someone chase the lonely in the night. On his own, all the horrors would wade murkier, made fouler upon those edges of his dreams too terrible. However, some nights crawl heavier, the comfort of his company failing lamely in its promise, lagged behind by seas and the stretch of far countries. Some nights, the tragedy over Skalitz casts a shadow too far.

Too grave.

On Thero's desk, his tomes and papers rest sorely forgotten.

Henry, vision red, penumbra pitched like tar about its edges, sees armies, mad horses, and corpses stacked high. In his haze, the candle just beyond him climbs those levels of inferno. He tosses in his sleep, he knows that, and he knows even keener how Thero says nothing when he wakes in his panic. When stirred, he'll come to scold himself, mourn his half-buried trauma too looming to ignore, but hell -- the crush and press against that windpipe...! Henry must wake first. And Thero must live.

"No!" Fearful. Angry. Henry's eyes are wide, seeing, un-seeing, and despite his strength, is again that weak, middling boy. "You don't say my name! You don't get that, not you. What? Skalitz -- was it not enough?" How couldn't it be? Bastard. He sees the hetman. Grief bears a hole into his heart just as acid froths in his belly, and with his fearsome strength, Henry shucks them off to smack into the desk. Henry presses him down, connected in every way with that hand to that throat. The candle bobs madly, and its heat burns at his eyes. He's growling. Gasping. Thero's eyes are wraiths. "Why shouldn't I kill you?"

It is not unusual for Thero to be up late, burning down candles until they were hardening puddles of wax and the sky started to turn that hopeful light grey as night loosened its grip on the world. He found it to be incredibly annoying for people he traveled with, but Henry never complained when they shared a room and he sat up at the table pouring over books and maps, muttering to himself.

Henry dreams. Thero knows that too and has the decency not to go prying. Magic is not made to be invasive unless necessary. And Henry's sleep habits, the mumbles and the flinching, or the other more embarrassing things, are none of Thero's business.

Except tonight.

Just before the candle burns itself out, Thero snaps and grows it back to keep a warm yellow glow in their shared quarters. It's cheaper this way. And easier for them to mind each other. Thero was grateful for it tonight because Henry was shouting and writhing and at first it frightened Thero. Before he recognized it for what it was. A nightmare.

Thero hesitates for a moment before moving to try and wake him. "Henry-- - You had a nightmare. Wake up!" His hands go for his shoulders to try and shake him. But Henry's going for him right back. Thero hadn't been afraid before. Because Henry's never hurt him. Not once. But there's something wild and angry and frightened in his eyes. Thero doesn't recognize it. "Henry!" There are hands around his throat and Thero jerks backwards, dragging Henry with him. "Henry!"

[knightedgales]

It's rare, these moments. Here when the tension wore them and the exhaustion peeled, all that trickles to the surface comes their heart's steep wailing. It now quakes like the earth in these shadows, the wild pang of their souls ferrying out their marrow. Henry's half back at Skalitz, mind more-than-half-blaze with the smoke of his home, and how it goes wresting at his guts and his insides? He breathes. Its flavor is but ash and char and flame. Sure, they'd slaughtered that creature, they had, and they all of them tip-toed on that line of death. Yet, rather than drink and lose herself to pleasure, Vex, growing warm, swallows his left.

She takes him. Hands joined, the fearsome line in his shoulder starts plummeting away.

"No. Never." Henry shakes his head. Vex's fingers curl, and he flips them to hold back tighter, firmer, as though not doing so would cast him helpless to ocean. He's never been a swimmer, unfortunately, more likely to sink like a stone with anchor, so the greater span of his forge-rough hands -- it squeezes. Smothering tears, he averts her smile, a scalding weight in his eyes. "I won't stop fighting. I won't run away neither. I gave my word. I'll always carry my sword, I will, and I'm not going to let what happened then happen again, not if I can help it." Not the torching, the orphans, and the heat to well one's tears! No. How she gets that eats him up violently. "They're still there, calling my name, and I... Forget it. Enough with my blathering. Hadn't you plans tonight?" / @sinaeths continued from here.

[knightedgales]

There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

[knightedgales]

He wondered if Bartosch had always been plain to read. Then again, Henry supposed he was decently bare even back at Trosky. It was perhaps for the manner of the night, Henry would gather, with its curious magics and its promise of pleasures. He was hardly blind to it neither, wont as he was to let bear his heart, but here beneath the stars and away from the liquor? Henry saw him: that hope, that smile, and its subsequent death.

Oh. And how Bartosch eyed his mouth -- he remembered that, too.

"What are you on about?" Spirit? Dead? Henry's grip on his sword gentled but a twinge, and beyond them, a dry branch groaned with the start of a snap. He couldn't mean... "You telling me you gone and turned your back on him? And not only him. You'd left Bartosch, too." How mad. "You're bluffing," he breathed, though those talons of belief have already clawed inside him. Who'd torch one's name in a grove or thicket? "Why do it?" Why? "How's someone to even start calling you?"

Good question, that. At the very least, Henry's begrudging suspicion surrendered to curiosity's chokehold. Behind him, the Pack yowled louder, and some song or another piped shrilly past the windows in some over-composed travesty. It framed Henry just barely, a tickle of warmth goldening the back of his head. He looked to Bartosch like some...hope perhaps, an end to misery on the road if only for a second. It seemed he needed that, that company, that camaraderie, and that little taste of solace. After all, wandering a traitor was difficult enough, but wandering as ghost was different entirely.

"So, what? You meaning to just haunt us, too, then? Hang about them corners just out of reach?" Henry frowned. Seeing the shame and ache on that face... Though not to sheathe entirely, his sword mercifully lowered. Thank god. "What was so worth condemning yourself to this for? Hadn't you everything?"

He risked a little widening of his smile, at the cheer and hope in Henry's call of his name. The least cynical corner of Bartosch's mind, that stubborn romantic softness, dared to imagine the other's blade dropping to make way for an embrace. But as the tension began to twist instead, he felt only another clench in the cold grip of fear. Those icy talons touched his heart, enough to lance an ache, as Henry's welcoming joy gave way to suspicion.

Steady, man, Bartosch warned himself as he swallowed silently. He doesn't know, not the lie or the truth. Just tell him. He can keep a secret.

"Even if I wanted to, he'd see me as a spirit come to haunt him," he replied with a wry huff of a laugh, though the whole of his smile soon faded. "Trosky thinks I'm dead, Henry. Von Bergow thinks I feared the chamberlain exposing my sodomy with one of his enemies, that I instead burned myself alive below the castle cliffs." A faint scoff through his nose; as if he could ever be that ashamed. "So however you've dealt with him, I wish you no ill. He's not my lord anymore. I'm only here because..." Half a breath's pause, as Bartosch braced against embarrassment at telling this truth too. "Because I saw the lights there, and I wanted to at least hear a crowd, since I can't join it."

He missed more than just Prague, these days. He missed sitting in the shade of any little village's alehouse, laughing and bantering over a dice table. He missed casual sparring, and teaching basic stances or counters. He missed good drinks and well-seasoned meals. He missed real beds, missed sharing one - or at least the same room - with a warm, handsome man. He missed not measuring every hour of his life in risks.

[knightedgales]

Henry tastes nothing but ash on his tongue. It's fresh, nigh scalding, while bearing with it the bitterness of torched-hot flesh.

There, he sees his village laid burning, the fierce howling of his neighbors lancing through the pealing of greed and war. Henry's an ocean from ma slumped rotting over father whose eyes have greyed over. It makes panic seize his insides, stomach all but wrested by a tree's greedy gnarls, and when a hand comes upon him as the temperature blisters?

He jolts. Like beast. Or wolf. But no more lamb.

Shouting, he doesn't know what he says, really, except there's anger in it, venom, and a poisoned desperation. He lunges at the figure, his sure, strong hands grasping for their neck. It doesn't yet strike him that it had all been a dream — and that that smear of a Cuman is a worried companion. Oh.

You had a nightmare, Henry! Wake up! No, no, no. "To hell with you, you bastard!" / OPEN.

[knightedgales]

🔸RETURN TO SKALITZ🔸

— Next time I won’t run. I’ll never run away again, I promise.

[knightedgales]

That's the thing about beautiful things, isn't it? In just the next second, its terror trumps all.

Henry, earth shuddering beneath him, feels it: the might in Wendell's voice and the crackle past his skin. It makes something leap wicked up his swallow, half a gasp, half a sputter, and every bloody quarter of wonder and awe. The air shivers with his majesty in the likeness of heat off a summer-smoldered stone. It makes everything so balmy, Hal's insides gone gummy and molasses-thick, but to dare a glance at this man before him? Sacrilege. But maybe, just maybe, he can risk one peek.

He does so. That his eyes don't alight seems merciful, indeed.

What's happening? It's hard to say. Nails biting into the grass -- vivid there, too, in a shade of green like perpetual peridot -- Henry watches as Heaven both froths and seethes. At Wendell's flank, the canopies hum a song with the surging of their canopies and their all-swaying bower. It's as though the world has sprung to life in a flavor and an ardor that's been never before felt. Wendell looms all burnished, more golden, more fearsome, and so fair in his image as though to blind frail men, and Henry thinks him an angel, perhaps a missive from god or forged by the suns, but still he jumps between hare and wolf-thing. Temper. Like the beast gods spurn for nothing at all.

"No," he forces. You're not being vague. Rather-- "I think you've just made yourself plainer than you ever had." But still... What is he? Henry can't say. He holds Wendell's gaze -- fearsome blues, cornflower, steel-silver against that fairied gleam -- and is barer, too, than any time prior. Here, his emotions are felt keenly, strong enough already but with its colors made bolder. He longs rightly for his sword, to grasp at its grip out of want for weapon. Yet, he remains obediently lowered, knelt close enough to ghost those boots with a stray touch. he wonders if gods like that, if all their children and angels, too. Blind obedience and deference, no? He heeds Wendell's words. The 'bandits', their finery... Just why is he hunted?

"Then what? You can do all this, and what? I just wasn't worth lifting your almighty fingers for?" Wendell coughs. Henry peers back through lashes, through a hard jaw, through beard and scruff and confusion, and begrudgingly -- amazement. There, he's praying, spurning, and perks when Wendell moves. Gutters. Eyes shining, the fact that he's with tears nearly throws him. Use your brain, Henry. What am I? What am I here for? Why have I taken you to the cradle of Eden? Think. "And how exactly does one go about doing that? Making themselves worthy enough for you? Is that something you've even bothered to think about?" Or is heaven too lonely for you to have tried? Henry frowns. He stays bent, flowers tickling his knees, and gathers his voice as blasphemers do. "It doesn't have to be just you or just me neither. You're looking for something, too. I get that. But just as yours mean something, so does mine, and--" Wendell feels it, right? His hurt? Grief? That little chasm in his heart? God-- "I'm not like to lose anymore. Maybe you aren't either. So, what will it take to make me worth it?"

To bind them. Properly this time. Some repenter's fealty. "Be that sword at your side?" Protect you? "I'll do it. I swear."

This world is far more beautiful than anything a mortal can imagine. Blossoms float around them, some even stopping mid-air and twirling as though caught in an invisible spiderweb. Though Wendell does appreciate it all, his dark gaze is still locked on the squire. Henry has yet to admit defeat, after all. This is not done, despite the wonders. Despite Henry's current state of bewilderment.

All the while Henry's sword, abandoned when they tipped between realms, is being overtaken by ivy. The growth of the plants is noticeable, the earth hungerly consuming the blade and then wrapping its tendrils around the hilt. Wendell doesn't notice. It's not out of the ordinary to him. Nor does he notice the way the sun at his back makes his hair shine like liquid gold. Nor the way the forest responds to him, the plants and trees tilting as though showing him their reverence.

Here more than before he can feel Henry's heartbeat, taste his panic. He's almost like a frightened rabbit in a way, a thought that passes briefly and is replaced by trepidation for whatever may be lurking in this unknown woods. He may be fae, but this is not his realm. Whoever does preside over it may or may not be too accepting of surprise visitors. Wendell doesn't particularly want to jump from one fight straight into another, at least not when Henry's so clearly not accepting of his truce. Damn him.

"Am I still being vague?" His voice booms in clear frustration, echoing through the forest. "I've been told I have a habit of saying too much, yet you need me to spell out everything for you, now do you?" His grip tightens on the handle of his new sword. He'll have to find himself a nice scabbard to go with, perhaps when they return to the mortal realm. "Clearly I meant that group pretending to be robbers. Have you ever seen robbers with a sword as nice as this one? Even the fact that you only managed to knock off a couple of them should be proof enough that they were more than-- Just forget it." It's very beneficial Henry's already on his feet when he tosses about throwing himself on his knees because Wendell too finds himself momentarily at a loss for words, for thought even. He coughs.

But the emotion slides over him like water, his vexation returning as quickly as it had disappeared. "Where the hell do you think you are? Use your brain, Henry. Or is it too clouded with your anger at me for, what, sleeping in? For not being as dedicated to your cause as you are? Have you ever met a man as selfless as you think I am meant to be?" He takes a step back, shaking his head. "Think about it. Did you assume I'd want nothing out of joining this quest with you? That my reward would also be the joy of rescuing your illustrious lord? That I simply wanted to meander the countryside because I have so little to do? No, I very much do have a reason and it's..." He stops speaking abruptly, his tongue turning to lead. He still cannot say it. His eyes water and he curses his stepmother over and over in his head. He still cannot say it.

[knightedgales]

He should call her beautiful. After all, he thinks it already. And laugh if she must if she's not the strength to face it, but Henry, darling Henry, only says what he means.

Poor girl. He'd tell her with the certainty of a man of faith, wouldn't he?

He would. Like blood and oath and life, he most certainly would.

Sat there, Henry watches her -- closely, as he's won't to do, as it is -- as she fidgets to her nerves as though the girl's been stripped. It's earth-shattering, surely, to go from sequestered all one's life to suddenly noticed. Still, the man scarcely realizes just how violently it shakes her like like a fault-line to her marrow. To him, he'd always seen her easily, the colors she favored to the way she would fluster if he so much as praised, so how could he fathom that this all so threw her? After all, his own heart so warm was stitched to his sleeve.

Knightly. What a brave, unshrinking, and selfish, knightly boy. How ardently he wants her to see and want it.

"Like what? Twisted up inside? What's that to apologize for? I'm right there with you, knotted and crooked, too." His hand moves slow and so careful. Like this, he can feel every pass of her remarkable fear. It simmers beneath her skin, all a creature to a snare, and like stone, ripples down her muscles like the surface of a lake. Henry knits up his brows, a serious sort of line finding its way to straighten his mouth. He tries with effort to chase them, the nerves and doubt plaguing her mind, and how small she seems at the strong of his hands... Fragile, she is. But like dream. Or flowers. "I won't say sorry for mine, not with how you treat it. I don't feel ashamed with you, I never, ever had, and I'm not allowing you to when I'm around, either."

Calloused but balming. A whorl of his thumb. Voice soft, he doesn't even notice that her eyes are welling. "How's that?"

were he to call her beautiful, she might laugh. not necessarily at him, but more in disbelief.

her gaze is almost blank as she looks up at him, being told he stays for her. that he likes being around her. she's never simply been around anyone, more used to hiding behind trees or in shadows or in silent obedience. being seen, actually seen, is alien. annette shifts awkwardly, gaze returning to the creaking floor. she feels his eyes on her still, like a creature under a magnifying glass.

no, it's far too difficult to think anyone can or should care about her.

him being selfish? what could he possibly gain from this, except to see this peculiar creature crack from being handled gently. she's always been fragile, sure, but always like a crumpled piece of paper or a discarded shard of glass. never handled, & not kindly when the rare occasion should arise. the gentle swipe of a salve along the back of her neck causes a small flinch, more reflex than anything. thin fingers curl at her skirts, a sudden jolt of something hitching in her chest. how pathetic, she thinks. one touch & you crumble.

"s-sorry, i --" a sniffle, her head shaking. one touch, really? his hands are warmer than expected. why is he being so gentle? sure, he says he likes her company. but liking someone's company & this are two vastly different things. at least, she would assume so. the thin sliver of calm she holds on to is cracked as she feels her eyes sting again with wetness.

"i ... i don't know why i'm --" another sniffle. "like this."