Chapter Text
Tuesday morning. A magical sunrise tinges the sky orange, birds are singing, the trees are whispering, their leaves dancing in the cool breeze, and Henry... Henry is stuck in a traffic jam. There was an accident somewhere up ahead, a collision with grave consequences.
Henry has an important lecture to get to. If he skipped it, it could seriously mess with his final exam results. He grips the steering wheel tighter, the material creaking quietly under his fingers.
God, he's been so disciplined for years, he attended all his lectures like a diligent student, and rehashed the material like he had a gun at his temple. It's almost like the universe is spitting in his face now, after all the effort he's put in to succeed.
He's already messaged the group chat; if Henry doesn't make it, he'll have to copy their notes. So far he's received no replies. His eyes drift to the screen again, but the only thing looking back at him is his playlist. Frustrated, he taps into a different one and shuffles it, then turns the radio's volume all the way up.
If he's already going to be stuck here much longer than he'd like, he might as well make it everyone's problem. Usually that's not his style, but he's slept terribly, Sam forgot to pick up more coffee on his last grocery run, and Henry didn't have time to take a detour and get some before attending the lecture. Only that Sam forgot the coffee on purpose, university is still kilometers away, and he's not moving any time soon. To say that Henry is pissed the fuck off would be an understatement.
“You'll only pull another all-nighter, you need some rest, Henry,” he repeats Sam's words in a mocking tone, drowned out by the loud blast beats of the song.
Leaning back and closing his eyes, his fingers drum along against the wheel in an attempt to distract himself from the anger lodged in his throat like a very insistent cold. It's moments like these that make him regret ever thinking that higher education was a good idea for him. It's only two more months until exam season starts and his finals come up. Every minute spent studying is valuable, but the sacrifices he's made to get this far have already started seriously weighing on him long ago. Henry's mental health is holding on for dear life at this point. Getting out of bed in the morning has become increasingly difficult, and his anxiety is making it almost impossible to relax. Henry can't seem to take proper breaks anymore, or he'll go insane.
Perhaps Sam's right; maybe he needs to sleep more and cut back on how much caffeine enters his system. The constant fatigue has turned him into an absolute mess, his temper rising to the surface more often. He only has to get through his finals and then... he can probably take some time to get his bearings back together.
Cracking one of his eyes open just slightly, Henry peeks at his phone again. There's a new notification from the group chat, and he immediately snatches the device from its holder, careful not to tug it off the aux cable.
John
I was going to ask the same, been stuck for a good half hour. Looks like I'm not making it either.
Henry feels the sudden compulsion to roll down the window and launch his phone into the concrete as hard as he physically can. Defeated, he slumps forward, his forehead hitting the horn for a few drawn-out seconds. The blaring sound of it is almost as loud as his music. He only lifts his head off the wheel to read the new messages that come in a moment later.
Rosa
No way, we're all stuck? What now?
John
Oh please, not you too!
Rosa
Sorry, Johnny boy! It is what it is!
Things can't get much worse from here, Henry thinks. So many days to choose from, and of course Murphy's law had to pick this one. Waiting for him to finish his studies would've been too much to ask for, apparently. Just his luck, really. If one more thing goes wrong today, he'll lose it.
Henry's entire body is hurting from the anxious tension in his muscles and the grinding of his teeth. First signs of a headache gather in his temples, and he has to force his jaw into a standstill. Making it worse won't help him.
John
An acquaintance of ours returned from his travels abroad recently. His family's library is huge, does that sound like an idea?
Frowning at the message, Henry's fingers move across the screen faster than his brain can catch up with him.
Henry
You think he'll let us borrow some books and catch up on the lecture?
John
If we ask nicely? Soon as we get out of this mess, we'll meet there. I'll let him know we're coming.
It takes another ninety minutes for the cars in front of Henry to finally move again. Slowly but surely, he starts making his way towards the address John gave him. The closer he gets, the fancier his surroundings become; Henry drives past increasingly expensive homes, and something in his chest tells him he shouldn't be here at all. These lavish mansions with their perfectly groomed gardens behind extravagantly ornate gates make him feel uncomfortable on a level only someone as broke as him can truly understand.
Henry doesn't know how many of the people living here hail from aristocratic bloodlines, but it's not like that matters to him in the slightest. Old money or new, most rich folks have something dodgy about them that annoys him. Whether it's their attitudes, their shady business practices and corruption, the tax evasion, the unreasonable hoarding of wealth or whatever – every single one of those loaded business owners has a few skeletons in their closet. If he didn't need the help, he'd turn right back around and go home.
Someone honks behind him, and when a look in the rear view mirror reveals John's white AMG, Henry rolls down the window to flip him off with a grin. They both come to a stop around the next corner, meeting on the sidewalk just outside an old but very well taken care of mansion.
“I feel so out of place with my shitty tin can here,” Henry grumbles. “The sooner we get out of this bougie neighborhood, the better.”
“You know I only live ten minutes from here, and people are still too busy minding their own business to care about your ancient VW,” John assures him with an affectionate roll of his eyes.
Henry sighs, fishes his cigarette case out of his pocket, and lights himself a roll-up. Leaned against his car, he looks at the mansion as he smokes in silence. Taking note of the building's structure, he can instantly tell it's at least a few centuries old. Great, so they're very likely dealing with old money here. That definitely does nothing to ease anything.
“Tell me something about your acquaintance,” he demands, throwing John a glance.
Crossing his arms and shifting his weight onto his other leg, John follows Henry's eyes towards the mansion. “Oh, I should warn you, he's a bit infuriating at times. Handsome, though.”
“So he's a pain in the ass all the time, got it,” Henry deadpans.
John grimaces and shrugs, and that speaks louder than a simple yes.
Wonderful – Henry is already not having a good time here, but it seems he's about to hate it even more. If there's one thing he has absolutely no patience for, it's annoying rich brats. He should've told John and Rosa to go alone and let him copy their notes later. Right about now he could be back home, catching a much needed nap, but no. No, instead Henry is here. Tired, grumpy, and uncomfortable. All because some incapable driver had to have a huge fuck up on his route to university.
Life can't just give him only lemons, no, it has to spit their juice right in his eye on top of that. As if existing isn't hard enough already.
For just a moment he wants to throw his cigarette butt to the ground in an act of disrespect. Henry thinks better of it and opens his car to snuff it out in his travel ashtray. Even now his environment is more important to him than angering the upper class.
Just as he locks the car again, he can hear music from around the corner, and he doesn't have to turn his head to know it's Rosa's dark pink Fiat. He can tell because he's heard that goddamned Pink Pony Club song so many times in the last five weeks that he could even sing it in his sleep.
Every time they'd hang out after lectures to study and drink, whether it be at John's, Rosa's or his place, she'd always sneak that song into their shared queue. Henry has grown sick and tired of hearing it, but he doesn't have the guts to make her stop. Raining on her parade is something he just can't do; as long as she's happy, he'll endure. God, the compromises he makes for his friends.
Rosa parks right behind John, and Henry fights the urge to pick her up off the ground and spin her around when he sees that she's approaching them with three cups of coffee.
“My savior,” he exclaims, much to Rosa's amusement.
“Good morning to you too, Henry,” she laughs and carefully twists one of the cups out of the holder, which she hands off to him. “Here, your usual.”
“You just prevented a crash out, thank you.”
Despite knowing that he'll burn his tongue, Henry immediately takes a sip of his coffee, grimacing at the scorching heat going down his throat. John shakes his head at him but doesn't comment, thanking Rosa for his own coffee instead.
“Didn't know you knew the Capons,” Rosa mumbles as she takes the lid off her own cup to cool it down faster.
“Looks like everyone but me knows them personally,” Henry throws in. “I only know the name because we study this shit.”
“No offense, but everyone in this neighborhood knows them. They either went to school with Hans, or know first hand that Hanush is an unbearable prick,” she explains to him, and John sighs.
“Okay, rude. You're right, though. He can be quite... how do I put it... irritating.”
“Great, I guess,” Henry groans. “Let's do this.”
Of course a butler would open the door for them, and of course said butler knows who John and Rosa are. Henry feels more and more uncomfortable by the minute. It's like he's snooping where he shouldn't, intruding where he doesn't belong. The mahogany floor is expensive enough to put him in life-long debt if he so much as scratches it with his boots. He's not even sure that breathing the wrong way won't put him in life-long debt to be completely honest.
“Jesus, Henry, relax,” John mumbles at him and drags him along by the arm, down a long hallway.
But how could Henry possibly relax when everywhere he looks he can see things higher in value than his car? Embroidered velvet curtains he wouldn't dare touch, carpets he would rather not walk on if he had a choice, busts and statues that must have been handed down from generation to generation for centuries, even oil paintings that should probably hang in a museum. And oh God, there's so much more, it makes his head spin. If the library is just as posh as everything else he's seen so far, he'll drop dead from discomfort.
John opens one of the heavy wooden doors at the end of the hallway, ushering Rosa and Henry inside before closing it carefully. Henry almost suffers a heart attack right then and there; the library is indeed massive. Rows upon rows of dark wooden shelves from front to back, so tall they touch the ceiling and require a very long ladder to reach the top. He swallows hard, overwhelmed by the vast amounts of knowledge in front of him.
“Are you sure they didn't just stuff the entire library of Alexandria into their pockets? There's like... thousands of books here,” Henry hisses at his friends, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“Nearly a million, if you really have to know,” a voice speaks up from somewhere behind the shelves.
Henry looks up as the man the voice belongs to emerges from in between the sea of books and walks towards them, his eyes fixed on a Shakespeare play. John is right, he is handsome, and shockingly so. His hair is a sunny shade of blonde, and messy in a very deliberate way. Oh, Henry doesn't even know where to start with his face. He looks every bit the noble's descendant he is, with his perfectly shaped eyebrows, high cheekbones, straight nose, elegantly curved lips, and a jaw that Henry can't help but want to trace with his fingertips. As if he sensed Henry's thoughts, the man lifts his gaze from the play, delivering the final blow: his eyes are a stormy sky blue, piercing right through Henry's soul.
Henry's mind flashes with images he can't make any sense of. They rush at him all at once – a group of men on horses, two of them riding side by side. One is sitting atop a dapple gray mare, the other has his draped in yellow. Henry can't make out any faces, but he recognizes the voices ringing in his ears like the echo of a very vivid dream.
“What is that you keep yelling, Sir Hans?”
“Good gracious, Henry! You don't mean to tell me you don't know Latin?”
“My apologies, your grace. Unfortunately I was too busy shoveling shit and picking turnips to find time for studying Latin.”
“We shall have to rectify that! I can't have an ignoramus for a personal bodyguard!”
Henry rapidly snaps back to attention when John takes a step forward with a smile. “Hans, it's been a while! How was Milan?”
The man, Hans Capon, looks at Henry for a few more seconds. Assessing. Curious. Then he turns to John with a fake smile – it doesn't reach his eyes at all, and for a second Henry wonders if Hans felt it too. This strange pull, the visions, or the deep fondness that seemed to hang in the air between them for a fraction of a moment.
“Dreadfully boring, but you know Hanush! There's no sense in suggesting he go alone. Someone has to take over, so I'm stuck accompanying him to every important meeting,” Hans explains with a shrug, making conversation like he was born for it. It's easy to give him undivided attention, Henry finds.
“Really makes you wish you had siblings, I get it,” Rosa cuts in with a nod.
“If I have to sit through another three hours of graphs and business talk, I'll jump out the nearest window,” Hans mumbles with a dark expression. Just a breath later his entire face clears up, and he regards them with another one of those fake smiles. “But that's enough for now, who's your friend here?”
Henry's fingers flex nervously. He clears his throat before speaking. Which, admittedly, is difficult when he's got those pretty blue eyes on him.
“I'm Henry. We study together.”
Hans eyes him up and down, stopping at his hands. He can probably tell Henry is nervous. It almost comes as a blessing that Hans simply turns away and motions for them to follow him.
Together, the four of them weave through multiple rows of shelves. Henry is quick to notice how meticulously they're organized; not only are the books sorted in alphabetical order by name first and title second, they're also divided by topic. He finds himself marveling at some of the rare pieces featured in this vast collection, wondering what it must have taken to acquire them. At least a fortune, that's for sure. Henry is well aware how different life can be when you're wealthy, and yet he gains a whole new understanding of what it really means, just by looking around. Any public library would kill to be what he's currently looking at.
“Some of these should be in a museum, not some rich man's bookshelf.”
“We've had offers, but they went ignored,” Hans throws over his shoulder with a sigh. “My uncle refuses to sell our heirlooms.”
“And you would?”
“Some of them, yes. We are in possession of tomes that would be of great interest to the public. What good are they catching dust here?” Stopping in front of a shelf, Hans spins in a slow circle with his arms outstretched. “Anyway, here we are. Whatever you need, you'll find it in this section. Handle the books with care, please. Hanush will kill us all if you don't.”
John laughs, shaking his head. “Hans, you know us.”
Hans' eyes narrow, and he points a finger at Henry. “I don't know him, though.”
“I can vouch for him, he gets heart attacks when people bend the spines of their paperbacks. I doubt he'd be careless with something old enough to have real value.”
They exchange a look, and then Hans turns his attention back to Henry, a little smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. It's genuine this time. Just a small quirk of his lips, and yet it's enough to turn Henry inside out and make his heart race in a way that feels distantly familiar.
An hour later, they're sitting at a table in the back, taking notes from a selection of books Rosa picked for them. They work in silence, passing books back and forth with practiced ease. Occasionally they compare notes. Henry has already filled multiple pages, but his mind is somewhere else entirely.
He can't shake the feeling that there's so much more to what he saw when Hans first looked at him. Like the sharp sting in his left shoulder blade that he can't explain. It feels like he was shot in the back, and an unnamed fear lingers just behind the pain. Old. Wordless. Powerful. Henry couldn't comprehend it if he tried, but he can feel it squeezing his heart with an iron grip. It tastes like loss, and he can't figure out why.
“Henry, breathe,” Rosa cuts through the silence like a knife, but he doesn't hear her. More questions pile up; Henry can't find answers. His throat constricts harder. Nothing makes sense, and he doesn't understand what's going on. Would they call him crazy if he told somebody?
“Henry!” Rosa is shouting this time. Henry startles with a yelp and drops his pen on the table.
“Are you alright,” John asks and leans forward, his forehead wrinkling with genuine concern.
“I... I'm not sure,” Henry confesses. He puts his head in his hands, looking at them through his fingers. “Have you ever experienced something that contradicted everything you thought was true?”
“Sure, but... what happened?”
With both Rosa and John looking at him like that, it's not getting any easier to take a proper breath. Knowing them, Henry can refuse to elaborate; they won't bother him about it for too long, but they'll never forget. Which means they'll discover the truth eventually, whether he tells them or not.
Rosa is very observant, and John is excellent at drawing the right conclusions. There's no way Rosa didn't clock the shift in the air when Hans approached them, and it won't take John long to figure out it's all because of him. And yet, it'll buy Henry some time to decide what to do about the entire situation and deal with it.
“I'm not sure. It was... fucking unsettling, that's all I can say.”
And that's putting it mildly. How would he possibly explain that reincarnation is most likely real without sounding absolutely insane? Why should anyone believe him? Henry wouldn't be the first – thousands of people have claimed to remember their past lives. There's just one small problem with all those statements: most people don't take them seriously. If he told anyone about this, he'd automatically kill his own credibility.
“Well, you know where to find us when you're ready,” Rosa murmurs softly, her hand carefully reaching for one of Henry's arms.
“Thank you,” he mutters back, giving her the faintest hint of a smile.
“John told me what happened today. Bad traffic, eh?”
“You don't know the half of it,” Henry groans at Sam as he slumps on the couch. Hugging one of the pillows there close to his chest, he weighs his options. He could tell his brother, at the risk of sounding weird. But Sam is a reasonable man. He's always heard Henry out, judging only after gaining an understanding of a situation.
If anyone's going to believe Henry, it's Sam.
The couch dips beside him, and a hand comes to rest on his shoulder. Henry just breathes, steeling himself for the conversation he's about to start. God damn it, he can't do this sober. Carefully shrugging off Sam's hand, Henry gets some distance between them and grabs himself a beer from the fridge. He pops the bottle open like it's nothing and takes a long drink from it.
For a long moment he hesitates. Settling back beside his brother fills Henry with a sense of dread. He reaches for the pillow again and hugs it even tighter. No way out but through, no better time than now.
“There's something I need to talk about, and you're the only one who won't judge me right out the gate.”
Sam scoffs and grins at him. “I always think you're crazy, it can't get any worse than that.”
Henry shakes his head. “We'll see. No sense beating around the bush, so... do you believe in reincarnation?”
There's a shift in Sam's expression, curiosity etching into his features at record speed. “Why? What makes you think it's real?”
And there it is. Sam has always caught on quickly, and even though Henry cursed him for it at times, now he's glad he doesn't have to spell everything out in excruciating detail. His posture relaxes, and he takes another swig of his beer.
“Did John tell you we visited the Capons to have a look at their library?” Sam nods, and so Henry continues. “One of them, Hans, triggered something.”
“I'm all ears.”
Time to get serious. Henry turns his body towards his brother, searching eye contact so he can gauge Sam's exact reaction. “I swear I'm not hallucinating, I know him. Or I used to know him. I was his personal guard, and I believe I did my job a bit too well.”
To underline his words, he puts his beer down to reach over his left shoulder, his fingers tapping the spot that still hasn't stopped hurting. Sam follows the movement with his eyes, his curiosity growing.
“I remember riding beside him, with a group of men behind us. Four of them,” Henry explains. His mouth feels too dry, but he has to keep pushing.
Furrowing his brows, Sam looks at the floor. “Whose colors?”
“Black and yellow, I assume Rattay?”
Humming thoughtfully, Sam falls silent. His fingers tap out a rhythm against his knee, and Henry waits. One thing a philosophy student needs in order to come up with something good is time. There's never enough time. A minute ticks by, then two, and finally Sam's face lights up with an idea.
“Hans Capon of Pirkstein?”
“Wait-”
As if stung by a wasp, Henry jumps off the couch and takes off at a sprint towards his room, almost stumbling into his research shelf in his haste. He pulls out his studies on medieval Bohemia and slams the quite heavy folder on his desk. Hans Capon of Pirkstein, that rings a bell. Henry knows he's heard the name before. For crying out loud, he's a historian in the making, how did he not think of this?
Rifling through the folder with the haste of a desperate man, he scans pages upon pages for his notes on the Capon family. Henry can hear his brother at the door, but his eyes stay focused. It feels like he's turning pages for hours, but finally he finds what he's looking for. There it is, black on white: Hans Capon of Pirkstein, married to Jitka of Kunstadt, died in 1419. His son Hynce was the cousin and ally of a Bohemian king, and together they supported the moderate Hussites under the Utraquist-Catholic alliance.
Henry's brain fogs over; he grips the edge of the desk with bruising strength as voices echo through his head once again, clear and sharp.
“As you no doubt know, there is a big change in store for Hans. He's getting married.”
“He has to get married!”
“Has to, wants to, it doesn't matter. He's going to! As you can see, he's none too pleased.”
Henry doesn't feel his knees giving out and hitting the floor, or Sam's hand on his shoulder. His eyes are vacant, his mouth hanging open around a scream that died in his throat on the way up. His temples throb as the taste of loss grows heavier on his tongue, and an emptiness the likes of nothing else spreads through his body. Henry doesn't realize he's crying until his sight blurs.
“I'm not sure what to do... after what happened... you know? I mean... me and you. I suppose we'll just have to... wait and see how things turn out.”
With a whimper, Henry curls in on himself, making himself small. “He didn't want to get married, and I know why,” he sobs, clutching at his chest like he can dig his heart out through his ribs and squash it between his fingers.
Sam's thumb strokes along his shoulder in a comforting gesture, but all it does is make him sob harder. Henry doesn't have to say it out loud for his brother to understand; a lord and his squire, tangled up in feelings they weren't permitted to express freely. Feelings that could've dealt them capital punishment if ever discovered. The fondness Henry felt was familiar for a reason – his heart recognized the one it was allowed to have but never keep.
It all makes sense now, and he's aching. Deep down he knows his Bohemian self prayed for the opportunity he's got now: a chance to love Hans without the secrecy and constant threat of deadly consequences breathing down their necks at all times. Henry has no clue where to begin; he doesn't know how to come to terms with the reality of things.
His heart belongs to a man who might not even recall his existence.
“What will you do about it, Henry?”
Swallowing the lump in his throat, he slowly looks up at Sam over his shoulder. Tears still blur his sight, but Henry can still make out his brother's face just fine. Gaining awareness of his situation makes him realize he's never felt this lost in his entire life.
“I don't know... what if he doesn't remember me?”