Prompt 9: atonement
Mar. 2nd, 2026 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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40daysofdrabblesTitle: Standing By And Waiting At Your Backdoor
Fandom: Dark
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Hannah, Michael, Ulrich, Katharina (Hannah/Ulrich, Hannah/Michael, Ulrich/Katharina)
Warnings/Spoilers: Mostly spoilers for season 1
Summary: When Michael brings home the movie Atonement, Hannah flashes back to her own allegation against Ulrich in 1986.
Author's Notes: Set pre-canon
Michael had brought the movie home; since he’d only arrived in Winden around the same time in 1986 that it had happened, he probably didn’t remember it (if he’d even really known what had happened in the first place), so he wouldn’t have made the connection. But as Hannah watched the character named Briony telling her story of the character Robbie’s alleged assault on Cecilia, which turned out not to be true, she found herself flashing back to the day when she had gone to Egon Tiedemann with her false allegation of Ulrich’s rape of Katharina.
Of course, Ulrich and Katharina had gone on to have the happy ending that Robbie and Cecilia had been denied; no one had mentioned the incident in years, but as far as Hannah was aware, Ulrich and Katharina still believed Regina Tiedemann had taken the story to her grandfather, and Hannah had never come under suspicion. In the moment when she had made her statement, she had been lashing out at Ulrich for what she perceived as his rejection of her; as time went on without him being released, Hannah had begun to fear that he might never come back, and that her plan to keep him and Katharina apart was only going to separate Ulrich from her as well.
If Michael had noticed Hannah’s reaction to the movie, he’d never said anything. Since watching it, Hannah had gone down the Reddit rabbit hole, reading threads about whether Briony Tallis truly was the heartless conniving little shit some viewers had painted her, or whether she was misunderstood, whether the people who came down hard on her weren’t taking into account her young age at the time and whether she had truly understood what she was doing (Hannah herself had, in fact, been only a year older than the Briony character at the time she had made her false allegation; the Reddit users were divided over whether Briony had truly intended any malice or had genuinely misinterpreted the situation. If Hannah herself were being debated there, none would have shown her that same mercy.)
Hannah did not seek atonement; what was done was done. Yet that night she dreamed of Ulrich and Katharina, separated for the rest of their lives because of her words on that one day in 1986.
Fandom: Dark
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Hannah, Michael, Ulrich, Katharina (Hannah/Ulrich, Hannah/Michael, Ulrich/Katharina)
Warnings/Spoilers: Mostly spoilers for season 1
Summary: When Michael brings home the movie Atonement, Hannah flashes back to her own allegation against Ulrich in 1986.
Author's Notes: Set pre-canon
Michael had brought the movie home; since he’d only arrived in Winden around the same time in 1986 that it had happened, he probably didn’t remember it (if he’d even really known what had happened in the first place), so he wouldn’t have made the connection. But as Hannah watched the character named Briony telling her story of the character Robbie’s alleged assault on Cecilia, which turned out not to be true, she found herself flashing back to the day when she had gone to Egon Tiedemann with her false allegation of Ulrich’s rape of Katharina.
Of course, Ulrich and Katharina had gone on to have the happy ending that Robbie and Cecilia had been denied; no one had mentioned the incident in years, but as far as Hannah was aware, Ulrich and Katharina still believed Regina Tiedemann had taken the story to her grandfather, and Hannah had never come under suspicion. In the moment when she had made her statement, she had been lashing out at Ulrich for what she perceived as his rejection of her; as time went on without him being released, Hannah had begun to fear that he might never come back, and that her plan to keep him and Katharina apart was only going to separate Ulrich from her as well.
If Michael had noticed Hannah’s reaction to the movie, he’d never said anything. Since watching it, Hannah had gone down the Reddit rabbit hole, reading threads about whether Briony Tallis truly was the heartless conniving little shit some viewers had painted her, or whether she was misunderstood, whether the people who came down hard on her weren’t taking into account her young age at the time and whether she had truly understood what she was doing (Hannah herself had, in fact, been only a year older than the Briony character at the time she had made her false allegation; the Reddit users were divided over whether Briony had truly intended any malice or had genuinely misinterpreted the situation. If Hannah herself were being debated there, none would have shown her that same mercy.)
Hannah did not seek atonement; what was done was done. Yet that night she dreamed of Ulrich and Katharina, separated for the rest of their lives because of her words on that one day in 1986.