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Chapter Text

Hal—Hallasholm, 647 C.E.

The slate-gray sea was tumultuous, waves roaring like thunder come to earth. Sea spray misted his face, but Hal only had eyes for the boy below him on the shore. His blond hair gleamed in the faint sunlight as he reached out with a pole, trying to lift the lobster trap from the water.

Something about the way he carried himself was mesmerizing, Hal thought. He had never spoken to the other boy, but he felt a sort of kinship with him. They had both grown up without fathers: the difference was that Hal had become quiet and shy after Mikkel died, but Stig remained brazen and loud and unafraid of the world.

Hal watched, his heart in his throat, as Stig leaned out a little farther, the lines of his body stretching, straining. Then, suddenly, his foot slipped. There was a single moment—a standstill in the flow of time—where he teetered, arms outstretched, before he overbalanced and toppled into the ocean.

Hal didn’t have to think about what he did next. His body reacted instinctively—the muscles in his shoulders bunching, his knees flexing—and he threw himself off the cliff.

The wind whipped around his ears as he fell like a stone towards the ocean, and he had just enough time to streamline his body before the cold water hit him like a hammerblow. Hal broke through the surface, gasping. Salt stung his face and eyes as another wave swamped him, but he barely heeded it. His mind was pounding with a single mantra, one objective only: to save the boy who had fallen into the sea.

He kicked out, propelling himself towards Stig. The cold sank its teeth into his blood and bones; his legs felt like wood, rotting away to useless nothing. He ignored it and pushed on through the wind and waves, seizing the back of Stig’s collar.

Stig had stopped struggling, succumbing to the freezing water. Hal might be too late. The thought filled him with blind panic. Stig could be dead already—dying, at the very least. What if Hal couldn’t save him, and he drowned out here, lost to the relentless tug of the sea? 

Bile rose in his throat, and another wave caught him square in the face. Hal choked and coughed. He tried to fight his way back to the surface, but his vest felt like it was made of lead. And it was cold… so cold. It would be the simplest thing to let himself sink, to let his bones rest at the bottom of the bay. Hal’s head drifted listlessly until his chin nodded against his chest–

He saw Stig’s eyelids flutter, and suddenly a wave of renewed willpower surged in his chest, driving out the all-pervading cold. He could not stop fighting, because that would mean Stig’s death—and somehow, at that moment, Hal cared for Stig’s life more than he cared for his own. 

He broke through the surface again, gasping for breath. The cold air scraped at his throat, but the oxygen seared through his blood like fire, giving him new energy, and Hal kicked again towards shore. His fingers ached where they were locked onto Stig’s collar. The other boy was a deadweight, trying to pull Hal down to the watery depths, but he would not let go.

Every muscle in his body seized, but the shore was so close. He couldn’t fail now, not this close to safety. Not if it meant failing Stig too. Anything, he found himself praying. I’ll do anything if Stig survives this.

Kick by aching kick, stroke by agonizing stroke, Hal struggled towards the beach. Sky and sea seemed determined to set themselves wholly against him. And yet, he kept on. There were ten meters left—five meters—his feet touched ground again. 

With a monumental effort, he heaved Stig onto the rocky beach and crawled onshore beside him. Hal allowed himself five seconds rest, flopping on his back and staring towards the clouds. His entire body went limp, exhaustion pounding through him like a living thing. It felt as if he’d been hit by a wolfship. 

“Enough,” he said aloud, and the sound echoed off the rocks. Stig needed him. 

Hal rolled over and placed two fingers to his neck, searching for a heartbeat. “Please,” he croaked. “Please be alive.”

There was no pulse.

Hal pressed harder, as if that could bring Stig back to life. “Please,” he said again, but there was no one there to hear him. Only the sea roared back, the sound primeval, unfeeling as the distant stars.

“Please.” One more time, faint as a cat’s step, almost lost in the wind. 

Hal looked down at Stig, at this boy he’d never spoken to but with whom he felt inexplicably connected. His lips were tinged bluish, blond hair plastered to the sides of his face, cheeks pale as sea foam. “You can’t die,” he said aloud. “You can’t.” 

When he was a boy, the same week his mam taught him to swim, she’d also taught him how to save a man’s life. Even if that man had no pulse. 

Hal placed both his hands on top of Stig’s chest and began to push, rhythmically and hard. At the same time…

He looked down at Stig’s face. It was as still as if it had been carved from marble. I’ll do anything , he thought again. Anything, anything. Heart thundering in his ears, Hal lowered his mouth to Stig’s and began to breathe for him. He imagined his lifeblood was flowing out through his lips and into Stig’s chest. That he was sharing his very soul, exhaling parts of it into Stig with every breath.

Ten more compressions. Another breath. Hal placed his fingers at Stig’s neck again, hardly daring to breathe for thought of missing even the smallest sign that he was alive. 

There was a pulse! Faint, like the fluttery wingbeats of a bird, the tick of an ancient clock. But it was definitely there—and that meant Stig was alive. 

Hal sat up, his shoulders trembling. Waves of relief poured over him, nearly overwhelming in their intensity, and the world tilted over again. He keeled over against the beach, feeling his nose and forehead press against the pebbled shore.

When he got back up again, his cheeks were wet. Hal did not know whether that was from sea spray or tears. What he did know was that Stig was alive, and that was all that mattered. 

  ~ § ~ § ~ § ~ § ~

Stig—Hallasholm, 651 C.E.

Tursgud drew back his fist, the movement calculated, deliberate. Hal jerked to avoid it, but the two members of the Sharks held him fast. There was a crunch as the blow collided with his nose, and Hal made a noise, the involuntary gasp of someone trying to hold back agony. 

Stig would rather tear off his own ears than hear that sound again. He would rather go blind than watch Tursgud keep torturing Hal. Because it was torture, plain and simple, Stig thought. There was no other word for it.

The anger that followed that thought took his breath away. Stig was not a stranger to anger, but he was used to the kind that was loud and furious, the kind that blazed with the fury of a thousand suns and turned his vision red. This rage was as cold as a glacier, as primal and ancient as the Stormwhite Sea.

Stig thought with a chilling clarity that he would lay waste to the entire world before Tursgud laid another hand on Hal Mikkelson.

He threw himself against one of the Sharks holding him with all his strength, slamming his head into the boy’s skull and hearing a satisfying crack . Stig wobbled, seeing stars, and then two more assailants were on him. He swung out again, but the Shark dodged it and landed an uppercut to his cheek. His face stung as he staggered back, pressing a hand to it. 

On the ground, Hal cried out again, his voice wracked with pain, and Stig’s heart froze over in his chest. “Hal!” he shouted, lunging desperately towards his friend.  

Then he felt a foot hook the back of his legs, and he crashed to the ground. Stig gasped as the impact drove the air from his lungs, sending spots dancing across his vision. The next kick he took was to the ribcage, and he cried out as he heard something crack. It felt like vials of acid were being crushed in his chest.

But this pain was nothing compared to Stig’s agony over Hal. Hal, he thought, eyes stinging with tears. Hal, I’m so sorry . He groaned aloud, pulling himself forward with one arm. It was less about trying to escape the blows and more about trying to reach his skirl, his best friend.

“Stop!” The shout suddenly rang across the clearing, and Stig sensed rather than saw the Sharks look up, taken aback. He used the brief respite to push himself into a sitting position, trying to see who had yelled.

Rollond was standing at the other end of the clearing, his brotherband fanned out behind him. One of the Sharks—Karl, Stig thought his name was—let out a strangled sound, backing into a nearby tree. “Tursgud, what are you doing?” Rollond demanded.

The leader of the Sharks spat, missing Hal by an inch. “Teaching the Araluen brat who his betters are.” 

Stig saw red. He was going to kill Tursgud. He wanted to snap his limbs off, one by one. Wanted to take his head off his neck like unstopping a bottle of brandy. 

Only after he’d staggered to his feet did Stig realize he’d voiced the thought aloud. 

“Going to kill me, huh?” Tursgud advanced on Stig, his voice deadly soft. Stig saw a glint of steel, a flash of movement, and then Tursgud was at his throat, saxe knife drawn. “And how, exactly, were you going to go about that?”

“Be careful where you point that,” drawled Rollond’s second. Derrick, or maybe Dell? “You can get disqualified from brotherband training very quickly for pulling a knife.”

Tursgud snarled, dropping the dagger. Then, fast as lightning, he pulled back his hand and slapped Stig across the face, the sound ringing through the air. Stig staggered back, his face burning with pain and humiliation. 

“You don’t do that,” he heard someone snap, and through watery eyes, he saw one of the Wolves—Henjak, he realized—throw themselves at Tursgud in a blur of movement. And then all hell broke loose. 

Stig was knocked to the ground as Jesper and Stefan tore free of their Shark captors, eager to exact revenge. The rest of the Wolves launched themselves into the fight—he recognized Bjorn, swinging out at a Shark attacking Henjak, and Rollond, advancing on Tursgud himself. 

He wanted to join the fight, but there was Hal, still lying prone on the ground and in very real danger of being trampled. Stig pushed himself upright again and began crawling towards him, a sob breaking from his throat. “Hal, Hal, I’m so sorry.”

Someone grabbed his shoulder, and he tried to shake them off to no avail. The movement sent a burst of pain through his chest.

“Stig.” The person bodily pulled him to his feet, and Stig looked up in surprise. He wasn’t used to people—Ingvar excepted—being able to do that. 

This boy was almost as tall as Ingvar, but the most noticeable thing about his appearance wasn’t his height. It was his eyes, clear as spring water, green like a cat’s. “Your name is Stig, right?” he asked. 

“Hal,” Stig croaked in response. “Let me… let me get to him.” He pushed against the boy’s shoulder. It felt like trying to move a mountain. “I need… he needs me.”

“You’re in no condition to do anything but sit down and rest,” the boy said firmly. “I’ll pick you up and carry you somewhere else if I have to.”

“I don’t care,” Stig managed to say. He summoned up the rest of his strength. Clearly this boy did not understand how important it was that he get to Hal—Hal, their navigator, north star, compass needle, and safe harbor. Hal, the better half of his soul. “Get me to him, or I swear to Loki–”

“Friha,” the boy grumbled, setting Stig down on the edge of the clearing. “If you stay right here and do not move , I’ll go and fetch your boyfriend.”

“He’s not–” Stig said, but the boy was already gone, shouldering his way through the brawl. Your boyfriend , he heard again in his mind. 

Stig couldn’t pretend that he’d never looked at Hal, never seen the lines of his legs braced firmly against the deck of the Heron, the curve of his body as he pushed the tiller towards shore. But Hal didn’t reciprocate the feeling. He acted with Stig as a skirl would to a first mate, and nothing more. Nothing different. 

The boy reemerged from the fight, carrying Hal as gently as a mother would a child. He set Hal on the ground next to Stig, and Stig had to fight the sob threatening to tear from his throat. “He’s in a bad state,” the boy said gently. “My name is Frey, by the way.”

“Thank you,” Stig whispered. “Thank you so much.”

Frey waved a hand, now digging through his pack for bandages. “I’m a medic. It’s my job.” He peered down at Stig. “By the way, that’s a hell of a bruised ribcage. You might’ve broken–”

“Look after Hal first,” Stig interrupted with surprising force. “Make sure he’s safe.”

The corner of Frey’s mouth quirked upwards. “Alright. But don’t move and make your ribs worse, or I’ll get Vali on your case. They’re the biggest mother hen, I swear.”

Frey knelt over Hal, and Stig felt gratitude and envy in equal measure churn through his stomach. He wanted to be able to sit up, to be the one to push Hal’s hair back from his face and tend to his injuries. That was his duty as Hal’s first mate, not Frey’s. 

As Frey worked, he talked more about the members of his brotherband. Stig’s mind whirled as he tried to keep them all straight—fire-haired Keld and Henjak who was like the sun; Rollond and Dell, their skirl and first mate; Torval, who reminded him of Hal; bitter Anton and darker Jens. Frey paused here, as if weighing his words.“Jens, Jens, Jens,” he said, shaking his head. “He’s going to be the death of me, I swear. Actually, I would die for him, plain and simple.”

“I understand that,” Stig said. He remembered how he and Hal had first become friends, how Hal had pulled him from the freezing water and hauled him to the shore. Stig had sworn later that day that he would give his life for Hal, but what use was that when Hal lay broken and bleeding before him? 

I will be better, he vowed silently. I would die before I let anything hurt you .

“Oh, look,” Frey said cheerfully. “Sleeping Beauty doth wake.”

Painfully, Stig turned his head to see Hal’s eyes flutter and open, his gaze shadowed with pain. Stig let out a noise, something on the knife’s edge between desperation and relief. “Hal,” he said, for what felt like the millionth time. His name was etched into Stig’s tongue, simple as that. He could be deaf and mute and still know the sound, could be walking hand in hand with Hel on the edge of death and still have it on his lips. 

“Stig?” Hal croaked. “That you?”

“Just kiss already,” Frey muttered, and Stig flushed bright red. “You’re worse than Henjak and Bjorn, and that’s saying a lot.”

“We’re not–” he began, but something about the way Hal’s mouth twisted made him subside. Stig saw a glimpse of something familiar on his face, an emotion adjacent to the hungry want that consumed him sometimes when he looked at Hal. 

“I’m just glad my skirl is safe,” he said instead, and Hal shifted until he was looking Stig square in the eyes. His gaze was lit with an inner intensity, part of the same blazing fire that drove him to invention, to creation, and Stig felt his heart jolt in his chest. A bubble of hope rose in him, paper-thin and feather-light, and he hardly dared breathe for fear of popping it.

“I heard you shouting for me,” Hal murmured. He was on his stomach, his cheek pressed flat against the earth, facing Stig. They were just two boys lying on the ground, the light shafting through the trees and firing their skin to bronze. Stig forgot about the fight, breaking up now as the Sharks retreated, or Frey, rummaging for something in his pack. It was just Hal and Stig, the way it had been that day on the rocky beach. 

“So—thank you. For fighting for me.” Hal’s eyes fluttered again, but his voice was calm. The world could be ending, and Hal would still be calm; his soul was a beacon that Stig could sail to from the edge of the earth. 

“I couldn’t get to you,” he croaked. “I tried… I’m sorry–”

“Well, I’m alive, aren’t I?” Hal asked, a smile breaking through his battered features. “How bad could it have been?”

Stig thought back to that cry, the one that had made all the blood in his body stand still. That sound would stay with him forever, he knew, some awful reminder of Hal’s pain. A reminder of how badly it would hurt if he were to ever lose him. 

Wordlessly, he shook his head, and Hal stopped grinning. “Oh,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Stig.

“But thank you anyway,” he said softly. “It was enough, wasn’t it?” 

Hal shifted his arm, and Stig moved his, and slowly their hands crept towards one another, fingers tangling. They fit together. Like key in lock. Hand in glove. Sun in sky. 

Two souls split from one. 

And to Stig, it felt like a promise. Never again .

Chapter Text

Hal—Hallasholm, 651 C.E.

The sun was setting over the sea, throwing rays of gold over the white-capped waves. Hal glanced down at the harbor, where the Heron was still moored next to Porpoise and the dismasted Lynx . It had been a close race, he thought. His throat went dry as he remembered that final mad dash into Hallasholm harbor, those minutes when the Heron was trailing the Porpoise and it seemed like they might lose. It had been a really close race. 

“So. It’s over,” Stig said behind him. Hal jumped, his hand flying to his saxe knife. He’d been too preoccupied to hear his friend approach. “You did it.”

“We all did it,” said Hal. “Brotherband champions, huh?” 

“Yeah.” Stig stilled for a moment next to him, looking out towards the sea as well. Hal felt the distance between them like a physical ache. Stig pulled him closer like the moon drawing the tides, the tug unrelenting and eternal. It hurt to resist.

He suddenly felt compelled to fill the silence between them, to not let it stretch for too long. “How are the Wolves doing?” he asked.

“They should just happy to be alive, if you ask me,” Stig said. “But Rollond got into this huge fight with someone—he came back with a black eye and everything. A lot of the Sharks are mad at Tursgud too.”

“As they should be,” Hal said distantly, his eyes fixed on the ocean churning below them. There had been a day when he’d stood on a bluff like this one and watched Stig fall into the unforgiving waves. When he’d dragged them both through the freezing water and brought Stig back to life.

Stig didn’t remember not having a heartbeat, and Hal had decided never to tell him. He had no wish to relive the feeling of kneeling over his friend, seeing his chest go still, his face pale and smooth as marble. No one on earth deserved to go through that, he thought. 

Still, a part of him wished that Stig knew it was Hal who had breathed him back to life, Hal who had shocked his heart awake again—because if he did, maybe Hal could finally share this all-consuming fire in him. This magnetism that had drawn him to Stig ever since that day on the rocky beach, daring him to edge closer when they swam together, sparred together.

When Stig had wrestled Bjorn, Hal had felt as if his very heart was going to burst from his chest if he didn’t look away. But he couldn’t have looked away, not for the life of him.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t damn fair.

The sun sank lower so that it touched the ocean, setting the surface of the world to flame. Hal was suddenly very aware of Stig next to him, gold specks skipping through his hair and eyes. He wanted to repaint the Heron in that shade of blue, remake his one world to match the other.

“We have an hour before we’re due on watch at the Andomal,” Stig was saying. Something in his voice was edged rougher, stone scraping on stone. He drew his new sword, watching it gleam in the sunlight. 

Hal reached over, closing the distance between them even more, and touched the blade with a care approaching reverence. “Would that I could craft like this,” he said. 

“I think you could, if you tried.” Stig turned to face him so that his face was half in shadow, half out, one eye burning blue fire and the other dark as midnight.

Hal reminded his lungs to keep taking in air.

Stig sheathed his blade again, his gaze dropping to the ground for a moment. Hal watched the way his lashes cast fine shadows over his face, the way his hair curled near the nape of his neck, the way his chin pointed stubbornly—as if he wanted to fend off the whole world—and knew that if he didn’t step away right now, he’d never be able to again.

And Hal did not want to step away.  “Stig,” he began. “I...” 

His voice petered off as his nerve failed him. What was he thinking ? He was going to tell Stig how he felt and then—what? If he didn’t reciprocate, Hal ran the risk of ruining their friendship for good. 

“What?” Stig asked.

Hal wordlessly shook his head. Because if he gave his heart a voice, bared his soul for Stig to touch, and it wasn’t enough? That would kill him. “Just… nothing,” he said, and took a step away from his friend. From the edge of the cliff. 

“Wait,” croaked Stig. His hand moved, as if he wanted to touch Hal’s shoulder, but he desisted at the last second. Hal froze, wanting Stig to touch him, dreading it at the same time. Because he needed it, needed it as fire craved oxygen, but perhaps it would burn him to ashes to be so close. “I have something. To tell you.”

“Then do,” Hal croaked. His mouth suddenly felt as dry as the Arridan desert. 

Stig took a deep breath. “Today. Well, no. Earlier. When Tursgud ambushed us that one time—no, before that, even—I’m sorry!” The words burst out of him, raw and desperate. “I don’t know how to put this.” 

“Don’t apologize,” said Hal. There was the smallest waver at the end of the word, a tremor that told him his mouth had forgotten how to make steady sounds. “Just—don’t.” 

“Okay.” Stig took a deep breath. “What I’m trying to say,” he said, his eyes now fixed on a point some five meters beyond Hal, “is that I like you.”

Hal’s brain joined his mouth in the realm of forgetting basic functions. “I certainly hope you do,” he blurted out. “Since you’re my first mate and all. It’d be awkward if we hated each other.”

“No!” Stig said forcefully. “Not like that, you idiot. I, well—I like you . I don’t know how else I’m supposed to spell it out, just… ever since you became my friend,” he continued, more quietly now. “When you flooded your mam’s kitchen. When you took the Heron into the harbor for the first time, when you came up with all those devious plans that somehow turned us into brotherband champions, when you saved me—I liked you.”

Stig stopped and looked at him, anxiety written in every line of his face. Hal swallowed. His mind was unable to wrap itself around the little speech, unable to process what was happening. “I–” he croaked. 

“And I get it, if you don’t feel the same way,” he continued. “I had to say it.”

“No,” Hal managed to rasp, and Stig’s face fell before Hal said, “That time. That time when Tursgud ambushed us. I could only hear you, shouting my name.” He shook his head slightly, recalling the agony of that day. But also Stig’s voice: Hal, Hal, Hal. The one thread he had clung to, lying on the ground and waiting for unconsciousness. 

“It just amazes me how you keep doing that. How you keep going so strong, even when everything seems messed up.” He remembered watching Stig at the beach that day—loud, blustery, angry Stig, unafraid despite life trying to teach him fear—and wondering how that must feel. “And you saved me too, from Tursgud.” 

A little smile spread across Stig’s face, but his shoulders were still tense. “Technically that was Rollond.”

“I don’t care,” Hal said roughly. “My point is, Stig Olafson—I like you too.” 

“Oh, Friha,” Stig breathed, and then they were moving with the deliberation of a hundred years and the impulsivity of no time at all, two asteroids destined to collide and burst into molten flame.

Hal had to stand up on his toes to meet Stig’s mouth, but he didn’t care. It was gentle at first, like Stig was afraid he would shatter, but then Hal made a noise, a whimper at the back of his throat that shattered the silence at the beginning of the world, and Stig was leaning down, pressing him closer. His body was flush against Hal’s, all hard muscles and thundering heart, his callused hands rough on Hal’s skin. 

It felt nothing like the other time, when Hal had tried to breathe for Stig, brought his heart back to life. Because now Stig was kissing him back with the same urgency, and it felt like the two halves of the same whole finally coming together. It felt like lightning striking ground, like fusion in the core of a newborn star. 

When they broke apart, they were both gasping. Hal’s heartbeat was roaring in his ears, but then he met Stig’s eyes and smiled.

It felt like creation. It felt like the beginning of a new era.

Chapter Text

Hal—Limmat, 651 C.E.

The streets were burning. Hal looked desperately around him as they ran through Limmat, hunting for Zavac or his crew. The smoke was getting thick, and he pulled his collar higher around his face. Soon, they would have to double back towards the harbor and hope they could find the Raven at sea. 

“Come on.” He motioned to Stig and Jesper, who were behind him, and they turned right, running down the street, eyes peeled for enemies. The raiders were retreating from the city, but persistent pockets of fighting still remained.

For a moment, all was silent except for the clink of their weapons and their footsteps on the road. Then Jesper shouted, “Look out!” He drew his sword in a flash as a group of raiders charged at them from a side alley. Hal wheeled around, reaching for his weapon, but someone— Stig , he thought—shoved him hard, making him stagger forward.

A dagger slammed into the doorjamb of the house behind him, its hilt quivering. Hal stared at it in shock, realizing it would have hit him if Stig hadn’t pushed him out of the way. 

A raider took advantage of his distraction and charged Hal, sword flashing. He instinctively parried the first stroke, stepping into the pirate’s reach, and reversed the grip on his sword and slammed the pommel into his head. 

“Good one,” Stig yelled, swinging his axe with no apparent effort. Another raider went down, and he stepped to guard Hal’s back. The two of them moved in tandem, slashing and swinging. Enemies fell before the onslaught, melting away like the spring thaw. Stig’s back was pressed nearly against Hal’s, his presence as steady as the earth under his feet.

He lunged forward to engage one of the raiders attacking Jesper, who nodded his thanks, blood running freely down his arm. Behind him, Hal could hear Stig laughing, his berserker blood exulting in the adrenaline of battle. He turned around again to see his boyfriend swing his axe like a pinwheel of light, outlined against the smoke and crackling flames fifty meters down the road. 

Something flickered in his peripheral vision. Hal registered a faint gleam, the suggestion of a razor-sharp edge flying from a raider’s hand. Carrying death through the air. 

Towards Stig. 

Stig, who he had once knelt beside, still as death, pleading for his heart to beat. Anything , Hal remembered thinking. I’ll do anything. 

Even if that anything required laying down his own life. 

Before his brain had even finished the thought, before his neurons could fire off another order, Hal threw himself headlong in front of his boyfriend. Determined that nothing should touch him as long as there was breath left in his body. 

As if in slow motion, he felt the steel rip through the front of his jerkin, through skin and muscle, blood and sinew. Felt the belated sensation of pain sear like fire in his side as he tumbled to the ground, hands still outstretched.

There were worse ways to die, he reasoned. Far, far worse ways.

Very dimly, now, he saw Stig turn, ax falling from his hand. Fear flashed through Hal’s mind—had he been hit?—before Stig dropped to his side, a yell tearing itself from his throat: “HAL!”

“Stig,” he tried to respond, but his brain, overwhelmed with shock, decided to shut itself down.

“You numbskull. You absolute, goddamned moron—I swear on Loki’s name, what were you thinking?”

Hal opened his eyes to the blue sky overhead and the gentle rocking of the Heron ’s planks beneath him. “Stig?”

“Yes, it’s Stig,” his boyfriend said explosively. “Hal–”

“Easy, now.” Edvin laid a hand on Stig’s arm. “Hal here just got stabbed, remember?”

Stig recoiled slightly, and Hal saw the guilt in his expression. “Right. Sorry. Just—what were you thinking?” he repeated in a slightly quieter tone.

“Was… thinking I had to save you,” he said, surprised at how dry his throat was. Hal let out a cough, wincing as it sent another jolt of pain through his side.

Stig held a canteen to his lips. “Here,” he said softly, letting it trickle into Hal’s mouth. “Water.”

Edvin was watching them with an expression that was equal parts bemused and tender. “You idiots are so cute together,” he said, shaking his head. “If only you’d stop making grand romantic gestures, like trying to die for one another in the heat of battle.”

“I wasn’t trying to die,” Hal protested. “And I’m not dead, so there’s no problem.” 

Edvin threw up his hands. “Yes, there is a problem. Once we’re under way–”

“We’re not under way?” Hal interrupted, trying to sit up. From his current position, the only thing he could see was the sky, a uniform shade of bright blue.  

“Hal, we’re sitting in the harbor,” said Stig.

He swore. How much time had they lost already? “The Raven –”

“You can worry about Zavac after I pull you back from the brink of death.” Edvin’s voice was exasperated as he made Hal lie back down again. “And it’s going to take a lot of pulling, mind you. The dagger nearly punctured a lung.”

“You were unconscious for four hours.” Stig sounded uncharacteristically shaky. “I don’t know what I would’ve done, if—if…” He trailed off, but the unspoken words hung in the air.

“I’m not dead,” Hal said, very firmly. “And I don’t plan on dying in the near future.” He reached over and laced his fingers through Stig’s. “Not until I’ve settled down, enacted my full tax evasion scheme, and driven Erak mad.”

“I’ll join him in the insane asylum,” Edvin muttered, getting to his feet. “I don’t think my sanity can take your general existence—” he gestured vaguely in Hal’s direction—“for much longer.”

“Wait—Edvin. Thank you. Really,” Hal said, realizing how much worry he’d just put the medic through. “For everything.” 

“Just doing my job.” Edvin nodded at him, seeming mollified. He stayed another minute to check that Hal’s condition was stable, and then went to patch up Jesper, who’d sustained a shoulder wound in Limmat. 

“We... lost Zavac, didn’t we?” Hal asked once he’d gone. 

“Yeah.” Stig squeezed his fingers. “But we couldn’t go anywhere with you in this condition.”

Hal nodded his understanding. Still, there was a bitter taste in the back of his mouth. They’d been so close to getting the Andomal back, so close to being able to go home. Because he’d jumped in front of the dagger, they’d lost that chance.

But in his heart, he knew that if he had to choose between Stig and the town he called home, he’d choose Stig every single time.

“I haven’t thanked you yet,” Stig said quietly. “For, you know, saving my life. But I was so scared for you, Hal.”

Hal thought back to the split-second when he’d seen the dagger. He remembered realizing that Stig was about to die unless he did something, remembered the sickening fear that had engulfed him. “So was I.”

Maybe dying for someone wasn’t the unselfish act. Maybe it was intrinsically selfish, because you couldn’t stand to live in a world without that person. Maybe it was worse being the one left behind.

Stig tucked an errant strand of hair behind Hal’s ear. His hand brushed against Hal’s cheek, light as a butterfly’s wing. “I love you, you know that?”

Hal smiled up at him. At the boy he would choose over and over again above nearly anything in the world, above even his own life. Without question. “I love you too.”

~ § ~ § ~ § ~ § ~

Stig—Raguza, 652 C.E.

Stig leapt back onto the Heron , axe clenched tight in his hand. His blood thrummed with the red rage of battle, but as he landed back on deck—safe territory—his heart rate began to slow.

“That should do it,” he said with satisfaction, looking back at the Raven. The huge holes Ingvar had torn into the deck were slowly filling with water, and it was listing to one side. Stig smiled coldly at the sight—Zavac had gotten what was coming to him. The Herons had been avenged at last. They could go home as heroes.

He turned, about to say so to Hal, expecting him to be at the tiller. 

He wasn’t there. 

Stig spun around, searching wildly for the pale shape of his face. Nothing. Panic seared in his chest like a wildfire. “Hal,” he said, turning to Thorn. “Where is he?” 

Thorn did the same about-face as Stig, and he saw the same horror rise in the older man’s eyes.

“Oh, Gorlog,” Stig said, looking back at the sinking Raven. She was still connected by one grappling line to the Heron. “He’s still going after Zavac, isn’t he.”

“I saw him go into Zavac’s cabin,” Lydia said from the stern. “I thought he’d be out by now–”

Stig heard nothing else from her. He backed up to the mast, taking a running jump from the Heron back onto Zavac’s ship. It was an impossibly long leap, nearly six meters, and there was a heart-stopping moment where he sailed over nothing but the open ocean below. But the core of him, as if by some sort of magnetism, was pulled towards the deck of the sinking ship, where Hal was. Hal, again—the better half of his soul.

He landed heavily on the deck, and he could tell at once that Raven didn’t have long. She was riding far too low in the water, waves splashing over her gunwales, seawater pooling on the deck. Stig ran towards the cabin, where Hal had gone after the Andomal. His heartbeat roared in his ears. What on earth had Hal been thinking? What if he was already dead, overpowered by Zavac? What if Stig was running towards his cooling body right now?

He half ran, half tripped down the stairs and burst into the low-ceilinged cabin in a crouch. It was disorienting, all darkness and swirling water waist-high. Stig’s eyes took a second to adjust, but when they did, all the blood in his body froze over.

Hal’s struggling form was pressed up against one of the walls, his head barely above water, dark hair plastered against his forehead. Zavac was poised over him, and they were grappling over something. It glinted in the darkness—the silver blade of a dagger. 

Zavac threw his whole weight behind the lethal point, forcing it towards Hal’s throat, inexorable, sure as gravity, sure as death. Hal’s hands were clenched around his, terror etched in every line of his face. 

Never again , Stig’s mind screamed, jerking him back to brotherband training. Never again. 

He threw himself at Zavac and seized both of his arms in a viselike grasp. “ Get your hands off of him .” The force of his grip tightened, tightened, tightened, crushing the fine bones in Zavac’s wrist against one another.

He was dimly aware that Zavac was screaming, tearing at Stig’s hands with his nails, but he barely felt it. Stig was an angry person by nature. He’d learned to control it— Hal had helped him learn to control it—but now he was fixated on one thing, and one thing only. Causing as much pain to the bastard who had threatened his boyfriend’s life.

“Stig,” he heard Hal say, as if from far away. “Stig! We have to go.” There was a tinge of desperation to his voice that cut through the smoldering rage in Stig’s head.

He looked down at Zavac, who was doubled over, clutching his arm and sobbing. “Shut up.” Stig grabbed a length of rope, tying Zavac to his own bedpost as the water level rose. “A good captain,” he spat, “goes down with his own ship.” 

“Stig!” Hal repeated from the door. A sack was clutched in his hand: the Andomal they had risked so much for. “Let’s go.”

Stig gave a short nod. With a last look at Zavac, crumpled against the wall, he followed Hal up to the deck and into the sun.

The Raven was so low in the water that they were forced to paddle across the deck, pulling themselves over the gunwales. Hal was still holding the Andomal in his arms like a baby. Stig looked at him, at his water-drenched hair and wide eyes framed by dark lashes, and knew he would never forget that look of terror on Hal’s face as long as he lived.

That was the look of someone who knew that they were going to die, and that there was nothing they could do to stop it.

I let you down again , Stig thought, looking at Hal. First Tursgud, now Zavac. He thought of the knife in Limmat and the day at the cliffs. It was always Hal saving him, he thought bitterly. Not the other way around. 

Thorn hauled them bodily aboard the Heron . “Idiots,” he muttered, and pulled them into a very wet hug. 

Edvin scanned them both from head to toe before shaking his head and handing Hal a blanket. “Idiots,” he repeated, but his tone was affectionate. “You never learn.”

I’m the one who doesn’t learn , Stig thought. This shouldn’t have happened. He should’ve kept a closer eye on Hal—should’ve never let him get into that situation in the first place. If he’d gotten there thirty seconds later, his life might be very different right now. What would it be like to live in a world without Hal? he wondered. Stig hoped he would never have to find out.

Hal was looking towards the Raven now, still sinking steadily into the sea. Only her bulwarks and mast were visible now. “I thought I would die alone,” he said quietly. “Sink into the sea, just like that. And no one would come for me.” 

“I’m sorry,” Stig said, and he felt his heart crack in two. Hal was his boyfriend, his skirl. They were bound to each other twice over. And still, he hadn’t noticed Hal was missing until it was nearly too late. Never again , he’d promised, and yet it had happened. “I failed. I failed you .”

“No!” Hal looked up suddenly, shock in his eyes. “You didn’t—that’s the thing.” He pulled Stig closer to him, placing one cool hand behind his neck. “You came for me. You saved my life.”

Stig closed his eyes, leaning into his boyfriend’s touch. “I’m sorry,” he whispered again. “I just… I almost let you die.”

Briefly, he remembered brotherband training, listening to Hal’s screams as Tursgud hit him again and again. This had been worse, Stig thought. This had been a hundred times worse.

The dark cabin flashed through his head in frames, in the split seconds behind his closed eyelids when he blinked: the silver dagger, swirling seawater, rope knotted to the bedpost, Hal’s gaunt face.

Something must’ve shown on his expression, because Hal reached over and pulled him into a hug. Stig felt him bury his face in his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around his boyfriend, wanting to keep him safe forever. 

“You’re not going to lose me that easily,” he heard Hal whisper into the crook of his neck.

“Nor you me,” Stig promised. Never again. He felt the words vibrate through him, trembling in the air, touching the heart of the world, and hoped to the gods they were true. 

Behind them, the mast of the Raven sank beneath the surface, casting her forever to the depths of the sea.

~ § ~ § ~ § ~ § ~

Hal—Santorillos, 657 C.E.

The elevator box shook under his feet as the caldera let off another eruption. The air filled with sulfurous steam, hot and cloying and reeking of rotten eggs. A falling rock missed them by what seemed like centimeters, and Hal felt Stig flinch—his boyfriend was terrified of heights. He edged closer to him. “It’s going to be okay,” he said quietly. Stig only nodded, his face pale. 

Another tremor shook the little box, which suddenly seemed extremely flimsy. A few wood planks and a thin cable were all that stood between them and the lagoon twenty meters below. Hal glanced up at the elevator house, which held the cable that in turn supported the entire contraption. A fissure was snaking its way beneath the structure, growing wider with every quake, as if the earth itself was bursting from its seams. If the structure went, so would they.

He decided not to voice this thought to Stig. Instead, he said, “Thank goodness Constantus and Olaf went down first.”

Stig managed a weak smile. “Imagine how mad the Empress would be if we rescued her son, only to let him fall to his death into the sea.”

“I doubt she would be, actually,” Hal said, recalling Olaf’s description of the Empress. She didn’t govern Byzantos in her own right: she was merely the Regent, ruling in her son’s place. Constantus’s death would guarantee her the throne for life. “Maybe she orchestrated the kidnapping in the first place.”

“I’ll have some choice words for her for getting us into th–”

Another shower of rocks tumbled from the cliff, and a rock the size of Hal’s boot bounced off the railing. The box gave an alarming jolt. Stig cried out, his knuckles white against the sides. His breathing was coming harder now, his chest heaving as he tried to gulp down air.

“Is it okay if I touch you right now?” Hal asked quietly. The most important thing he could do was stay calm, even as the box shook again and he was sure they would plummet to their deaths. Stig gave a single nod, so Hal stepped up next to his boyfriend and wrapped one arm around his waist.

“Only ten meters or so to the lagoon now,” he noted. “If we have to fall, we might live.”

Stig groaned. “Don’t say that. Don’t make me think about falling.”

“Sorry,” said Hal, but he looked up again at the elevator house. One of its supports had already gone. The fissure was widening, like the rock was opening its jaws, ready to swallow the clifftop whole.

They were probably going to have to jump.

Once, when the Heron had sailed to the northern edge of the Stormwhite Sea, Hal had seen a glacier for the first time. He’d watched as part of it caved away, silently falling into the sea, before the soundwave hit him half a second later. It had been terrifying, like thunder on the surface of the ocean. 

This was so much worse than that, because now the glacier was made of stone, and they were directly beneath it and in imminent danger of being killed by falling boulders. 

Down below, he could see the worried faces of his crew. Hal hoped that Edvin and Lydia would have the sense to steer the ship away from potential danger. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if the Heron was hit, or worse, sunk.

“We’re shaking more now,” Stig said, making a huge effort to keep his voice level. “I–”

The rest of his words were drowned out by a horrible, resounding crack as another structural support gave way. Hal felt a horrible check in the motion of the elevator before it began to accelerate, plummeting faster and faster. Soon they would be in free fall, with no control over their movement at all, like a ship losing steerageway on the rapids. 

Hal grabbed one of Stig’s hands. “Do you trust me?” he asked. 

Stig didn’t respond. His breathing was coming fast and shallow. The lines in his neck stood out, stark against his pale skin. 

“ Do you trust me? ” Hal asked again.

His boyfriend looked up at him, eyes wide and terrified, but he gave a single, shaky, nod.

“Hold on tight,” Hal said. He made his way to the edge of the box, knees bent for balance. After a split-second, Stig followed. His grip on Hal’s hand was so painful it was almost bruising, their fingers locked tightly together, but Hal didn’t care. It only mattered that he didn’t lose Stig. That he got Stig through this.

The lagoon churned down below, black in the moonless night. His ears were filled with the thundering sound of falling rocks, the hissing of the caldera releasing steam. But he was locked tight against his boyfriend. If this was the way he was going to die, at least they were together.

Hal took a deep breath and plunged toward the sea.

The only thing he could feel for a moment was Stig’s hand, still gripped tight in his. It was their promise to one another, repeated over and over again in moments like these, an oath sworn in blood and fire and sacrifice—to Hal, anything ; to Stig, never again . So together they plummeted, like shooting stars plunging through the heavens, rocks whistling by their ears, the wind ruffling their hair. 

They hit the water like a load of bricks.

In the impact, Hal lost Stig. The water foamed white around him, pale bubbles against the black water, the black night, and he tried desperately to orient himself in the dark. His lips parted involuntarily in a shout for his boyfriend, and coughs wracked his chest as he got a mouthful of water. He couldn’t breathe—he had to find the surface—he had to find Stig. 

And then Hal felt a hand on the back of his jerkin, yanking his head out of the water. “Get... away... from here,” Stig gasped, and they both kicked out, trying to get as far from the avalanche zone as possible. Hal remembered that day at the rocky shores again, but this Stig was alive and breathing, not the half-drowned boy carved from marble.

He gradually made out the dark bulk of the Heron silhouetted against the stars, and he and Stig struck out for it. Ingvar pulled them both from the lagoon by the collars. “Edvin,” he called. “Guess who showed up.” 

“I think like we’ve done this before,” the medic grumbled, peering at Stig and Hal. “Just a feeling.”

“Might’ve happened a couple times,” Hal agreed. 

As soon as Edvin declared they were whole and well, if lacking—in his words—common sense and a will to live, Hal moved closer to Stig. They made eye contact and grinned, sheer joy at the prospect of being alive.

The stars were out tonight, and they reflected off the water in Stig’s hair, a thousand pinpricks of light against the blackness of the lagoon. Hal remembered those heart-stopping moments on the way down from the cliff, and his heart swelled with sudden gratitude. Because in those moments, Stig had trusted him with everything. Placed his entire life into Hal’s hands. How many people in a lifetime, he wondered, would have done that?

“I’m lucky to have you,” he said quietly.

Stig looked at him in disbelief. “You just saved my life, and those are the first words that come out of your mouth?”

“We keep saving each other,” Hal pointed out. “I feel like we should be past the I owe you my life thing.”

Stig laughed. “It’s been eight years, and we just keep one-upping each other, huh?”

“The dagger in Limmat seems trivial compared to this,” he agreed. 

“Speak for yourself,” Stig grumbled. “I knelt by you for hours. My knees still aren’t the same.”

Hal grinned. “I can think of another time you were on your knees for me, and you certainly weren’t complaining then.” Stig gaped at him, his mouth moving soundlessly. 

Almost on impulse, Hal leaned forward and kissed him. 

They stumbled against the mast, Hal’s arms finding Stig’s waist, pulling him closer. His chin tilted upwards, Stig’s fingers cupping his face. Both of them were wet with lagoon water, starlight glimmering off it and streaking their faces and mouths like quicksilver. 

Maybe, Hal reflected, he should make this a tradition after every brush with death—kissing Stig onboard the Heron . Because all he could think about was how lucky he was, how truly lucky. To have someone like this and not lose them, no matter how determined life was to rip them away from you.

Chapter Text

Hal—Hallasholm, 658 C.E.

Hal spun and spun, twirling through the square so that torchlight streamed in ribbons around him, bright fire against a purple sky. To his left a group of musicians was performing, and they were dancing in time to the piece, a jaunty arrangement of a popular sea shanty.

“Thorn’s combat training sure comes in handy now,” Stig said close to his ear.

Hal grinned. “Who knew that net could be useful?” The hours of drilling Thorn’s footwork exercises were paying off as Stig and Hal spun effortlessly across the square, every movement smooth and graceful. Somewhere in the crowd, Stefan wolf-whistled, and everyone laughed.

Hal felt the world turn upside-down as Stig dipped him and then set him back on his feet, grinning, his fingers caught in the back of Hal’s suspenders. Hal’s breathing hitched a beat as Stig grinned mischievously at him. 

“Very smooth,” he said, and then surged forward and caught Stig up in a faster dance, the fiddler speeding up to keep pace with them. Hal reveled in the way they pressed up against one another, Stig’s lean form hard under his shirt, their pulses racing almost in unison. It was almost like a duel, he thought, remembering the times he and Stig had fought back-to-back on distant shores.

The crowd cheered as they spun to a stop. They bowed once, and then for the drama of it, Stig swept Hal into a searing kiss. Hal leaned into it, dizzy from the dance and the atmosphere of the day, adrenaline lighting his blood afire.

“You two, showing us up at our own wedding,” Thorn said, wagging a finger at Hal, and everyone laughed again.

“Not our fault you’re slowing down in your old age,” Hal shot back. He caught Lydia’s eye, and she smiled, mouthing old man at him.

“Come over here and I’ll show you how slow I really am,” Thorn muttered.

“There will be no brawling at my wedding,” Karina interrupted loudly. “Especially between the groom and best man.” Her tone was stern, but then she caught Hal’s eye and they both grinned.

“Sorry, mam,” Hal said, not looking sorry in the slightest.

Karina shook her head in mock exasperation before turning to the crowd. “Another dance!” she announced. Everyone cheered, streaming towards the center of the square as the musicians struck up a ballad. Skandians loved a good wedding, followed by good ale and good music, and this event had all three of them.

Stig moved to follow them, but then his stomach rumbled. “I think our best man duties have been fulfilled,” he said, looking at the tables set out for food. Hal laughed and let himself be pulled towards the feast.

All of Hallasholm had turned out for Karina and Thorn’s wedding, which Erak had officiated. Nearly every household had brought food, so the tables were laden with it, groaning under the weight—meat pies, racks of lamb, freshly picked greens, even a platter of beef bones for Kloof. Hal loaded his plate with a little of everything, bones excepted, and sat down at an empty table.

“They look so happy,” Stig said, nodding to where Karina and Thorn were dancing. Hal smiled at the sight.

“They deserve it. It’s a little weird,” he added. “But I’ll get used to it, I guess.”

“Yeah,” said Stig, and they sank into a comfortable silence as they ate. At times, they would point out old friends or crewmates in the crowd. Nina and Lotte were slowdancing, gazing at one another so tenderly that Hal looked away, feeling acutely as if he was intruding on something private. Rollond and Sigrid danced the way they fought, with a fierceness that was almost breathtaking. As he watched, Rollond swept Sigrid up and sent her spinning through the air like an acrobat, torchlight gleaming on her copper skin.

“Show-offs,” Hal grumbled, at the same time Stig said, “We could do that.”

An even odder sight was Ulf and Wulf, who matched each other move for move so well that to Hal it seemed like looking into a mirror. “We could do that too,” Stig said, grinning. “If you grew six inches and dyed your hair blond.”

Hal ran a hand through his hair. “I like this color the way it is, thank you very much.” 

“You may be right,” Stig said absently, examining a lock of his own hair. “Maybe I should color my hair brown.” Something about his demeanor and the rest of their idle banter made Hal’s heart swell. He leaned over and sloppily kissed his boyfriend on the cheek. Stig turned his head so he met the corner of his mouth, and they both grinned like boys as they broke apart.

“This is good,” Hal said, leaning against Stig. He was pleasantly full, a little tipsy from all the ale, warm and content with the feeling of home.

Stig shifted, wrapping an arm around Hal’s shoulders like a blanket. “Yeah.”

“There they are, the lovebirds!” Frey hollered above the crowd. He, Stefan, and Vali threaded their way over, each holding a tankard of ale. Stefan grinned at his skirl and first mate. Hal and Stig were beloved by the crew of the Heron , who had already assigned themselves roles at their hypothetical wedding. Thorn would officiate; Karina and Hannah would walk their sons down the aisle; Lydia and Kloof were to be best-women, a role Stig had created especially for them; Edvin, Stefan, and Jesper, groomsmen; Ulf and Wulf, flower boys; Ingvar, ring-bearer.

Hal pretended to pooh-pooh any mention of a wedding, but he couldn’t deny that he was thinking about it. Thinking about it a lot, in fact.

His hand strayed briefly to the ring nestled in his pocket. He’d bought it with part of his share from Byzantos, but the time had never seemed right to ask.

“Mind if I have some of that?” Stig was asking Frey. They’d become fast friends ever since the incident during brotherband training, when the Wolves had rescued the Herons from Tursgud.

Frey rolled his eyes but handed over the tankard. Vali reached up and ruffled his hair. “You’re too nice, idiot.”

Frey shook them off. “Please. I’ve seen you around Lan. It’s the sweetest thing ever.” Lan was a warrior from the Middle Kingdoms, a former jeweler by trade until the Temujai had come calling. Then she’d jumped aboard Rollond’s ship and never looked back, probably because she only had eyes for Vali.

Vali flushed red under their braided hair. “Lan—Lan is–” they spluttered.

“We could have a double wedding,” Stig crowed. “Rollond can officiate for you two, and Frey would make a delightful flower boy.”

“Shut up, Olafson.”

“Are we talking about weddings?” Sigrid appeared suddenly from the dancing, dragging Rollond on her arm. Her eyes were shining, black hair escaping from her braid crown. “I love weddings,” she said, pointedly looking between Stig and Hal. 

Hal felt his face heat up. “You’re at a wedding right now,” he noted, trying to steer the conversation in another direction.

“Yes, and I love it. Dance with us?” she asked as the musicians struck up another song.

“Sure.” Stig half rose to his feet and looked back at Hal.

Hal waved a hand. “You go on. I’m a little tired from earlier,” he said, so Stig kissed the top of his forehead and swept away with Sigrid and Rollond.

“They’d be a power trio if you two weren’t already dating,” Vali said thoughtfully. “A bastard can dream.” 

Hal laughed, leaning back and propping his elbows against the table behind him. “Sure can,” he agreed.

A little while later, Thorn emerged from the crowd, wiping a hand across his brow. Hal raised a tankard in greeting.

“Thanks.” Thorn grabbed it and downed half of it in one gulp, sitting next to Hal on the bench.

“Tired of dancing?” Hal asked.

“Karina wanted a break,” Thorn said. He nodded to where his wife, resplendent in her white gown, was talking with Hannah and Stig. His gaze softened fractionally.

Hal felt a smile break over his face. “You two are great for each other,” he said. “I’m happy for you.”

Thorn nodded. “Thank you,” he said simply. He lifted his left hand so that his new ring reflected the firelight. “I never thought this day would come, but here we are.”

“Here we are,” Hal echoed, his eyes drifting back to Stig.

Thorn followed his gaze and grinned, nudging Hal with one arm. “So, when can I expect an invitation for yours?”

“I’m not sure,” Hal said honestly. “Marriage—it just seems… I don’t know, permanent?”

“You think you and Stig don’t have something permanent?”

“No!” Hal hurried to reassure him. “I guess it just scares me, the prospect of thinking about the rest of my life.” He felt his throat go dry and took another sip of ale. “It feels like I just pulled him out of the ocean last week and brotherband training was yesterday, but it’s been, what, nine years?”

“Nine years, in the blink of an eye,” Thorn agreed. He took another gulp of Hal’s ale, draining the whole tankard dry. “But, listen. Life is unpredictable,” he said, gesturing with his hook, and Hal knew he was thinking about the raid where he’d lost Mikkel and his hand in one stroke. “In case something happens to either of you, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life asking, What if? ” 

“I know,” Hal said somberly. “That’s why I have this.” He reached into his pocket and drew out the ring. It was simple, a plain silver band, but on the inside Hal had engraved the likeness of a heron.

Thorn stared at him for a moment before his face broke into a wide smile. “Look at you!” he said, clapping a hand to Hal’s shoulder. “All ready to propose, aren’t we?”

“I think so,” Hal said sheepishly. “But—and I was going to tell the crew after the wedding—Erak called me into a meeting last week. He’s got a mission for us—something about the Temujai coming back.”

“But… after the mission?” Thorn asked, still grinning like a maniac.

“After the mission,” Hal confirmed. “I’d like to get married in the summer.”

Thorn ruffled his hair.  It struck him suddenly that, somewhere in the previous years of chasing pirates and sailing to the ends of the known world, his boy had become a grown man. “I can’t wait,” he said happily. “I can’t wait.” 

Chapter Text

Hal—At Sea, 659 C.E

At least, Hal thinks, Edvin and the Temujai Sha’shan aren’t here to die with him. 

Four hours out from Ice River, they’d run into Rollond and Wolfrunner, who had taken the two aboard and sailed full-tilt for Hallasholm. Time was of the essence, and Rollond could get Pa’tong to Hallasholm and then reinforce the Herons at Ice River before Hal. 

“Come with us,” Edvin had urged him, looking up from the little skiff Rollond had lowered for them. “They’ll be happy to take you aboard too.”

Hal looked down at his friend, and then back at the ship. His ship, every inch of it crafted by his hands. He still remembered the trees he’d cut to form her planks, the tar for the ropes bubbling away in a small pot behind his mam’s house, the year of hope and back-breaking work he’d put into it when he was sixteen. Leaving her here to sink would be akin to carving away one of his limbs.

“No,” he said firmly. “I’ll bring her back to port. I can’t abandon her in the middle of the sea.”

Edvin looked as if he wanted to argue, but he must’ve known nothing would change Hal’s mind. “Alright, Hal,” he said. “Gods protect you.”

“Gods protect you,” Hal repeated, and then Edvin was gone, aboard Wolfrunner , Hallasholm-bound. 

Barely an hour later, a squall had appeared with no warning, and Hal had been unable to tack to avoid it. It’d hit the damaged Heron head-on. 

Now he stands at the tiller, soaked to the bone in sea spray, the wind a carving knife in his flesh. The ocean has been kind to Hal, on most days. This is not one of them.

He heaves the steering oar to port, and his ship responds sluggishly. Her keel is broken, one of her watertight compartments breached, and Hal feels her pain like it’s his own. “Come on,” he says aloud, sending a prayer to Thalga, goddess of safe sailing.

Maybe not even Thalga will be able to help him through this one.

With a howl, the wind intensifies. Hal’s sailed her on a reach all the way from Ice River, but now they’re going straight into the wind, and it’s too much for the Heron. With an awful crack , her port mast snaps from the force of sail, sky, and sea, and he feels it like a shudder in his heart. Like a divine hand has reached down and snapped his spine in two.

The ship rears out of the sea, water sloshing in her hold, and Hal knows that she isn’t long for the world. He leaves the tiller, raising the starboard sail himself, trying to catch what little of the wind he can. It was stupidity to try and sail to Hallasholm on his own. Stupidity and hubris. He’s beaten the odds again and again for ten years in a row, but maybe this time there are too many stacked against him.

Hal moves back to the stern, bent double from the force of the storm. He wishes more than anything that Stig was here, but they needed every last man at Ice River. He prays that Rollond and his crew get there in time.

There’s just the tiniest smudge of shoreline on the horizon, Hallasholm harbor, and Hal’s navigator blood knows exactly where they are. He’s sailed this same course a hundred times. But he’s never done it alone, on a ship crippled nearly to death, in the middle of a storm.

In that same instant, he knows in his heart that there will be no hundred-and-first time. 

Stig , Hal thinks. I’m so sorry. He reaches into his pocket and slips the silver ring onto his finger, remembers Thorn saying, You don’t want to spend the rest of your life asking, what if? 

Too late for that, Hal thinks. A wicked sense of irony strikes him, and he says aloud, “What if?”

As if in response, the Heron shudders, a violent check to her motion as her planks saw against one another, overcome by the force of the storm. Hal grips the hardwood of her tiller in one hand, remembering the tree he’d cut to make it, the whole day he’d spent sanding and polishing, sawdust and sweat in his eyes. In the other hand, he clutches the ring tight. It will mark a red circle on his skin, the unfulfilled promise etched in his palm. 

He has no weapon—nothing to tie him to the Skandian afterlife, nothing to stop his soul from wandering forever—but he doesn’t care. Hal wants to hold his two worlds one last time.

The Heron sinks, sea reclaiming seabird, and Hal goes down with her. As Zavac did, all those years ago. 

As a good captain should. 

Stig—Ice River, 659 C.E.

The front line of Temujai scatter in a flurry of hoofbeats as reinforcements from Wolfrunner stream ashore. Stig exhales, resting his shield on the ground and shaking the tension from his shoulders. Sigrid and Rollond and the rest of the crew charge up the bank, axes whirling, as the Temujai regroup fifty meters upriver. 

“You’re late to the party,” he says, grinning at them. “But how did you know–”

“Hal.” Rollond’s brow furrows, and a sense of foreboding shadows Stig’s chest. In his mind’s eye, he sees Hal over and over, sailing away on the broken Heron , dwarfed by the vast expanse of rolling ocean.

“What about him?” he asks. 

“We, uh, ran into him about two hours out from Hallasholm. He told me to take the Sha’shan and Edvin aboard,” says Rollond. “We brought the Sha’shan to Erak and left for Ice River immediately.”

“But Hal was okay?” Stig’s voice is sharp, brittle as an ice shard.

Rollond takes a deep breath. “There was a storm approaching,” he says. “We asked to take him aboard, but Hal was determined to save the Heron .” He puts a reassuring hand on Stig’s arm. “And if there’s anyone who can do that, it’s him.”

Stig’s knuckles are white against the haft of his axe, but he forces himself to relax. “Alright,” he says, forcing his mind away from his boyfriend. He looks down the shield wall, noting injuries, and says, “Thorn and I will stay on the line, but Rollond’s crew can spell the rest of you.”

“Alright,” Rollond says, grinning. “Let’s hold the line. For Hal.”

“For Hal,” Stig repeats. He locks shields with Rollond on his left, Dell on his right, and together they brace against the renewed Temujai charge. Horses scream as they’re impaled on the wood stakes, and Stig flinches. He’s never liked horses—no seafaring Skandian does—but the sound chills him to blood and bone.

The front rank of Temujai meet them, sabers flickering through gaps in the shields, but Stig is too quick for them. He knocks aside a series of strikes in quick succession— one-two-three —and whirls his axe in a deadly overhead arc, pushing riders back. The Temujai may have an expert military, but the Skandians are natural-born warriors, and therein lies all the difference.

Bjorn takes Dell’s place on the wall, and Sigrid spells Rollond, but Stig doesn’t want to step away. He doesn’t know if he could step away, because he’s fighting this for Hal. Hal, who’s battling like hell to get back to Hallasholm, too far away for Stig to help. Too far away for him to save, if anything goes wrong. So he fights here, slashing and hacking until the the faces of the people he’s killed smear together like blood. Hal, he thinks . Hal, Hal, Hal.  

“Stig!” Bjorn grabs his arm as he moves to pursue the retreating Temujai. 

Stig coughs, blinking the rage of battle from his eyes, forcing himself under control again. “Thanks,” he says breathlessly—they’ve come a long way since the bitter wrestling match of their brotherband days. 

Thorn appears from the line. “Take a break,” he urges Stig. “I know you’re worried, but–”

 “I’ll be fine.” Stig can’t not fight. His breath is coming hard, and he’s bleeding from half a dozen places, but he’s numb to it. He can’t step away from danger knowing Hal is risking his life at the same time. 

“Stig–”

“After the next charge,” he says, and there’s a desperate edge to his voice.

Thorn holds his gaze for a second before giving in. “And then you’ll come to the rear. Or I’ll drag you there myself.” 

“Alright.” Stig grins, but it’s half-hearted. He turns back to the front, wiping his hands on his jerkin and picking his axe back up. “Let’s get ‘em!”

This time, the attack starts with plunging arrow fire, but Thorn remembers the invasion of Skandia years ago and yells, “Every other shield!” Stig lifts his while Jesper covers his side, and the arrows skitter off it like rain.

The leading Temujai engage with the shield wall again, both sides locked for a moment in a seething, deadly standstill. Stig moves to deflect a saber blow, beginning a sideways twist with his shield to knock it away. 

Suddenly, his insides freeze over—marrow to cold snow, bone to blue ice.

The old saying: someone walking over his grave. Like something inside him has snapped, or his very heart has been cleaved in two. A cold hand clutches at his breath, and he knows with a terrible certainty what has happened. “Hal,” he croaks. Hal , the better half of his soul.

There’s a bright flash of pain, blazing like fire, and Stig looks down and realizes that the saber has taken him high in the side. He gasps, but no sound comes out. His axe falls from his hands as he stumbles backwards, his legs giving out beneath him. 

Thorn catches him, saying things that Stig can’t quite hear for all the turmoil in his brain.

Frey bandages his side, shaking his head, and this time Stig catches one phrase: need to get him home. 

He no longer has a home, he thinks wryly. No place is home without Hal.

Lydia presses her dagger into his hands, whispers, “Wander not”, her face drawn with fear and grief.

And all Stig can think is Hal, Hal, Hal. His boyfriend drifts through his mind in snapshots, the moments when Stig is lucid and awake. Hal, laughing as Stig spins him at his mam’s wedding. Hal, clutching him close as they plunge towards a black lagoon on a tiny island named Santorillos. Hal, saving his life, kissing him, diving into the waves to save a boy he barely knew. 

Karl arrives from Hallasholm on Stormwind, Pa’tong in tow and a treaty in place, but Stig does not see the aftermath as Frey scoops him up and deposits him on the deck of Wolfrunner . Sigrid yells to row like hell, and Rollond and Vali strike a course for Hallasholm.

Hallasholm, Stig thinks half-hysterically. Hal’s home. But not any more. Not really.

There’s a limp form on the beach when Wolfrunner rows into the harbor, bedraggled and washed up by the sea. In his heart of hearts, Stig knows. Before they’re even close enough to tell that the form is one of a young man, he knows.

“Get me to him,” he rasps, and before the rowers have even set down their oars, Thorn bodily lifts Stig on his own and jumps onto the docks, running up to the beach towards the boy he called a son.

Hal’s eyes are closed. Stig remembers the day they sank the Raven , remembers the animal terror in Hal’s face, the way he thought he was going to drown. I thought I would die alone, he remembers Hal saying. Sink into the sea, just like that .

He hopes to the gods that Hal wasn’t scared today as the ocean swept over his head.

Thorn sets Stig on the beach next to Hal, his head bowed over them both, shoulders wracked with silent sobs. Stig’s vision is fading. He doesn’t have long either, but he can’t leave yet. Not with Thorn like this.

With the last of his strength, he reaches over, touches Thorn’s knee. “You did the best by him,” he whispers. “By all of us.”

Thorn looks down at Stig, the grief in his eyes immeasurable. He has lived through Mikkel’s death, through losing his hand, through love and the loss of it again. And now he kneels over his sons, one dead, the other dying.

“Stay with the crew,” Stig pleads, his breath rasping in his throat. They will need each other if they are to survive this. “Promise… me.”

Thorn pauses for so long that Stig thinks he might go before extracting a promise from the old man. But then Thorn nods, a single jerky motion, and Stig feels his face stretch painfully into a smile.

He turns his head away to look at Hal one last time. The boy he could not save is a statue washed smooth by sea, his face still as if carved from marble. Blood flecks his lips as he chokes on a breath. Never again . This time, the promise has become terrible truth.

Lydia’s dagger falls from his grasp. Thorn moves to return it, but Stig looks at the blade, his soul’s anchor in the afterlife, and shakes his head. A final refusal.

Instead, he reaches over and links his fingers with Hal’s (key in lock; hand in glove; sun in sky), and they are two boys lying on the ground again, two boys on a rocky beach, two boys kissing over the sea.

Wandering forever will not be so bad, Stig thinks. Not if he’s with Hal. 

Together unto death, as they were in life.