28 w/ one of hans' brothers u choose!
TWENTY EIGHT. THINGS YOU SAID BUT NOT ALOUD.
this was when he was five years old . he was a very small thing . nothing fancy , nothing magnificent . his brothers were all already big and tall with shining eyes and quick tongues and handsome faces . he’s walking around asking brothers to play with him . a thing , he thinks , he’s been doing his whole life . this will be the first memory of his abuse . runo’s fists would feel like concrete thrown across his jaw , rudi’s kicks will feel like a branch has snapped itself under his chest . he didn’t breathe for an hour . when jasper found him later , crawling and shaking behind a curtain in their playroom with his broken trojan horse all over the floor : he stepped on them , snarled how useless hans was .
and hans will sniff , convinced himself that maybe it’s him . he’s asked too many times of his siblings . he should’ve known better . he deserves this . every pain , every misery . and so , to a retreating shadow of his tenth brother , hans whispered the words he can’t quite croak . i forgive you .
hans learns the taste of never admitting defeat well by the time he’s ten years old . blood tastes horrible and metallic against the roof of his mouth . he’s pinned on the floor with rudi on top , keeping him down while runo feeds him hays . sharp hays . hays that makes hans’ white teeth coats with the colour of hideous , hideous red . there’re tears streaming down his eyes , from the pain and sorrow and the strings of ‘stop’ that can’t come out . somewhere , in the background , jasper is laughing . they’re so young , hans will think this later when he’s older , never could quite getting rid of the shiver that will run down his spine when he sees the mad twinkle in his brothers’ eyes as hans continues to suffer . they’re so young and already so rotten . how could that be ?
“ you’re weak , hans . father will never see your worth . nobody will . ”
you’re right , but hans has injuries in his mouth for the next two weeks — so that never comes out properly enough . half of him will be grateful this happened . the other half would never have him open his mouth as wide when he enters the stables again .
countless of times , every time . at one point it begins tiring repeating the same thing again and again . he hates caleb for being so bloody important , the second son for being so pretentious and pretending the rest of his brothers don’t exist ( because in his mind , they probably never matter ) , lars for never quite standing up where it counts , ruben who went away and almost always never come back , the fifth who saw hans’ injuries and poked at it with the hilt of his sword with a wicked smile , devon for being enchanting and maddening when hans makes even the smallest of mistakes around his wondrous collection , the seventh for sneering at hans like he’s any better , the first pair of twins who admitted to pinching hans when he was a toddler for experiments purposes whilst laughing at how loud he would cry , jasper for thinking he’s alone in his misery and as though the rest of them aren’t sharing the same horrible father , at the fraternal twins that never tires of taunting and mocking and putting hans down the most .
sometimes hans says it fast enough to lose its meaning . somehow , it never does .
i’m sorry we couldn’t love each other.
“ did you say something , o’ brother of mine ? ”
“ keep that up , and you won’t be speaking for the next week . ”
sometimes , these missed sentences are better left as they are — unheard.
casually tags @duodecimumfuit / @gildcd / @vvestergccrd because i couldn’t choose !↳ “the things my muse said…” meme — selectively accepting .
