Work Text:
Gunilla fucking hated frost giants, the freezing fuckers. They didn’t respond to her lightning at all, able to shake it off like it was no effort. It was so annoying that she couldn’t use her most useful ability against these gargantuan monsters.
She knew that, but doing it did slow them down enough for Mallory to close the weak spot between Jotunheim and Midgard. A blast, enough to kill a human ten times over, only made them stumble but it was enough for her, as Mallory did her best with the magic bloody needle that Junior had promised would seal up the crack.
If he was lying, she’d go over there and fry him to a crisp. Also Ragnarok would happen too, which would be significantly worse.
Just a few more seconds . She grunted and threw her hammer right into the eye of one of the jotun and it shattered into little crystals raining down on top of her and instinctively she went to pull her cloak over herself to protect her skin but she was too slow and one went right through her armour, and straight into her stomach.
As an einherji, she was stronger and faster and healed better than a human did, and her being a demigod enhanced this too, but even a hit like that unbalanced her.
Her sight went dark and when she recovered, woozy and losing blood by the second, the other jotun was staring right at her, ready to strike, just taking its time. That was their mistake.
Stronger and faster meant some things worked though when it really shouldn’t and she did the same thing to it that she had done to it’s friend but this time, sheltered herself the entire time, crystals hitting against her cloak but thankfully never breaking though.
The adrenaline could carry her though until she was back in Valhalla. She covered the hole in her armour and the blood pouring out of it with her cloak, adjusting it just so. What Mallory didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Even if she was in excruciating pain and those black spots in her vision definitely weren’t meant to be there.
“You okay?” Her girlfriend in question joined her where she was crouched, sweaty and disgusting from closing the weak spot to stop the jotun from crossing over to Midgard.
Gunilla cracked her neck from side to side and stood up, towering over Mallory. “Yeah, I’m good. How far do you think we have to go to get to Yggdrasil?” Now that they’d closed that gap, they’d need to find another way to get to Valhalla, and soon. She did not want to go out like this, that was plain embarrassing.
And her stomach felt like it was on fire and she was going to sit down soon. Nope this was not good.
At least they only had to walk half a mile until they found a campsite and set themselves up for the night since it was getting dark and if there was one thing worse than fighting jotun, it was fighting jotun at night.
She thought she could hold in the pain through her body but when she sat down, she involuntarily groaned.
“What’s wrong?” Mallory was at her side in an instant, her usually long hair tied back in a bun to keep it out of the way of the fire that she had just built.
She didn’t see any point in pretending she was fine and let the cloak fall away from where it was hiding her wound. It looked a lot worse than it had before, but at least the blood was beginning to clot. From what she remembered, that was good. Now she just needed to get it all fixed and keep from infection. A small ask really.
“Gunilla?” She was nervously laughing, “Please tell this is a joke.”
“You know I’m a horrible actor. I got hit by the first one so…”
“Oh my god.” Mallory looked like she wanted to swear for hours in every language she knew and beat up Gunilla for not telling her about it when it happened. Instead she went into her pack and pulled out their limited medical supplies.
Some antiseptic, sterilised needle and thread and a piece of wood for her to bite on instead of biting off her tongue (she’d seen that happen when she was alive and people were getting amputations and amputated their tongues as well as their limbs. No painkillers though.
Mallory grimaced. “I think you’re just going to feel this, moron.”
“Why am I a moron?” The piece of frost giant - urgh - was still in her, skin slowly knitting around it. Was this the best idea? Of course not! Did she want to dig it out later? Fuck no, that was far worse. So this was happening.
“Because you didn’t tell me before and now this is going to be a lot worse than it could’ve been.”
It hurt a lot more than she was expecting when Mallory pulled it out of her. It was also a lot gooeyier and the noise made bile rush up her throat. She gave a shake and a groan, trying to shove it down because she didn’t want to deal with vomit and her wound at the same time. There would be time to throw up later.
If she survived this, of course.
Mallory got to work, thread and needle going through her flesh, binding it together. Her head felt hot and ears fuzzy and holding herself up was too much and she let her head loll backwards, even though it was even harder to breathe.
After what felt like an age and a half, she could sit up again. Mallory had put her shirt back even though it was torn through and her armour would cost her a good amount of red gold to get repaired or replaced, depending on the damage.
“No, you don’t.” A hand was on her forehead and another was on her shoulder, pushing her back down. Gunilla was too tired to disobey. Sleeping would make her feel better, right? Maybe it would make her nausea go away.
“Thank you for looking after me, Love.” That got her a kiss on her forehead and a blanket around her before she shut her eyes for the night.