Warnings: None
Spoilers: General for all of season two
Pairings: None
Author's Notes: I took a season break with the show, but I'm back now! :D Enjoy and review, loves.
Hank has spent his life, up until this point, being so in sync with his younger brother that this sudden disharmony between them is jarring and leaves him feeling dizzy. He hates fighting with Evan, really fighting with him, not their usual sniping and bickering. No, this is real, this is something that he doesn't know how to fix with a joke or some smart ass comment. He can't make Evan smile anymore.
He knows that it's all their—Evan's—father's fault. He doesn't understand how Evan could just forgive everything that he's done and not done for them over the past twenty years. He doesn't understand why Evan would want to. This is the same man that left their mother when she needed him most, left Evan when he needed him most, and now Evan acts like it doesn't matter. He's angry with Evan, angrier than he's been in a long time and he doesn't want to forgive him for what feels like the ultimate betrayal.
He knows he'll never forgive Eddie. There's no way that would ever happen. There's too much hate and resentment to overcome and, to be honest, he doesn't want to get over it. There's something strangely comforting about the familiar ball of anger that clenches in his chest every time he lays eyes on the man.
All he really wants to do is protect Evan from Eddie, from his lies and the inevitable hurt and heartbreak that's going to come of Eddie getting back into their lives, but he realises, now more than ever, that Evan is an adult, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Hank can't pick and choose who Evan allows into his life, no matter how much he wishes he could right now. If Evan wants Eddie in his life, then that's his choice and Hank really doesn't get a say so in it.
He just wishes Evan would understand how much it hurts him to know that Evan is, in a way, choosing Eddie over him. He doesn't understand it and doesn't want to, but he wishes Evan wouldn't be so blind when it came to Eddie.
But mostly Hank wants to protect Evan from Evan because he is too much of an optimist and he trusts too easily and he gets hurt and who's going to be the one to pick up all the pieces after Eddie gets done shattering him for a second time? Hank. He just doesn't know how well he'll be able to put them back together when it's all over.