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Athelstan dreams that his hands are bleeding.
One moment he is sharpening the blade of an axe, the next viscous red fluid is welling in his palms like the tide that refuses to recede. He watches it numbly, removed entirely from the proceedings. He is standing beside a dwindling fire, alone, and the harsh bite of winter air is making it so that he cannot feel his own body.
The blood catches in the light of the flame, brilliant and holy. It does not hurt even as it begins to slide down his fingers and form twin pools at his feet. He walks as they bleed, leaving a trail of dark liquid in his wake. Slowly, all evidence of his physical surroundings begins to dissolve before his eyes.
He is in the small old hut that Ragnar and Lagertha made their home in now. It smells like the thick stew that Gyda and Bjorn used to sneak second helpings of. There is no one else in the house, but the smell of Ragnar lingers in the air as well; it is a scent he has become familiar enough with that he would recognize it anywhere. He feels acutely that he does not want to leave.
But the scene soon shifts again, and he is suddenly standing in the small village where he was raised with the other monks, breathing in the sweet-smelling air of his country and watching the weeds sway with the gentle breeze. For a moment he lets himself remember the absolute tranquility he used to experience on days like this. Back then, everything was simpler. He would pray, he would translate, and he would eat and sleep only as much as his body demanded.
Then he blinks and he is on a battlefield, and the air now smells like the metallic of blood and sour odor of fear and rage and sweat. He is standing still, but the norsemen move around him in a frantic dance for their lives. There are many faces he recognizes in passing, and many that he does not. No one acknowledges his presence; they leave him perfectly undisturbed as they slash at the Anglo-Saxons and advance the front further inland.
He knows in that moment that he can walk away from this gore. The boats the Norsemen came in are tethered to the shoreline not very far away. If he wanted, he could get in one of them in and wait. Or he can drift through the throngs of fighting men and women and walk to one of the nearby villages. He does not knows the terrain from memory, but he recognizes enough of his land to know that he would be able to find his way.
He does not move in either direction. Instead he closes his eyes, and when he reopens them is wearing armor and holding the sharpened axe from before. His hands are bleeding still, staining the handle slippery with his life force, but there is nothing to be done for it. His body makes the decision to move before his mind does.
He swings the axe and it connects with flesh on the first try. An Anglo-Saxon, felled, dies clutching at the gaping wound in his side. He leaps over the body and rushes forward axe-first, swinging at anyone who stands in his way and does not have braids or a painted face, the characteristics of a Norseman.
Soon there is a vast field of corpses at his feet. The Norsemen have fallen back. The battle is done, and they are victorious. Though they are no longer advancing on the field, they do not move back towards the longships, either. They stand side-by-side, weapons lain at their feet, heads bowed. They are waiting for something, he realizes.
It does not take long to figure out what for.
There is a sound like the sky cracking open. He feels in his bones a shift in the air. When he finally looks up there is a man with a long white beard and eyes like Ragnar’s, bluer than the ocean in the heart of the summer. The man looms above them all. His arms and legs are like branches, his neck like the thick trunk of a tree.
He feels himself fall to his knees unconsciously. The ground is wet with blood and entrails, and it seeps into his pants. He does not register the discomfort because he is overcome with a sense of reverence. The washed-clean feel of holiness has been scoured from his skin like grime from a cooking pot. He is born anew beneath the shadow of this towering man.
“Stand,” the man bellows.
He stands.
The man cups his rough-hewn palms in front of Athelstan. They are full of something that looks silvery and formless. He is drawn to it like a moth to light. He cups his much smaller hands over the man’s and drinks the shape shifting liquid. It is cool and sweet and cloying on the back of his tongue, and he cannot get enough of it. He does not know how long he drinks for, but when the man pulls his hands back, he is not nearly sated. If anything, he is thirstier. Hungrier. He wants more.
The man nods at him and walks off into the misty battlefield without a single word. His steps make great rumbles across the land. It is only when the man is gone entirely from sight that Athelstan realizes he was not much of a man at all.
From behind him he hears a distinct voice, rising above the clamor that erupts all around them at once: “You have chosen.”
Yes, he has chosen. Athelstan has drunken out of Odin’s palm. When he looks at his own hands, they are no longer bleeding.
-
Athelstan wakes up to those same lurid blue eyes from before, and for a second he thinks he is back with Odin. But no, these eyes are more familiar. They are the eyes that he has looked at many times - at first in reluctant deference, then in quiet defiance, and finally in steadfast camaraderie.
“Ragnar?” His voice rasps against his throat. He feels like he has spent his last few hours gargling gravel and grain.
Ragnar nods once, firmly. Athelstan realizes that Ragnar is touching his face, thumb drawing concentric circles into his cheekbone.
“You are lucky to be alive,” Ragnar says. He is whispering, scarcely wasting breath. The hand on Athelstan’s cheekbone drifts to his wet forehead. At first Athelstan assumes the wetness is on account of his sweating, but when Ragnar’s fingers brush against his hairline he hisses in pain and jerks back immediately. The flesh is tender and raw where Ragnar touches, so the wetness is probably blood.
“What happened?”
“You were injured in battle.” Ragnar expels a breath and sits on the edge of the thin straw bed. “Struck by the blade of a Saxon. I saw you go down from afar.”
“Why was I not trampled?” Athelstan asks lightly, half-hoping that it will make Ragnar laugh. He looks so serious now; it is strange. But his words, if possible, only darken Ragnar’s expression more.
“I fought my way to you,” Ragnar says. “I slaughtered everyone in my path before anyone else could touch you.”
Athelstan’s saliva sticks in his throat when he swallows. He is surprised and unsurprised in equal measure; Ragnar has done many impossible things to protect his family. Is that what Athelstan is to him -- family?
“Did we win?” Athelstan thinks to ask, thoughts still swimming listlessly in his head.
“Of course,” Ragnar says, smiling grimly. “The Gods are on our side.”
“I think you are right.”
Ragnar cocks his head, wordlessly asking him to elaborate.
“About the Gods,” Athelstan clarifies. “I think they are with us.”
Ragnar looks like Athelstan has handed him all of the riches in the world on a golden platter. Though underneath the happiness, there is a hint of sorrow etched into the lines of Ragnar’s face. “You believe that?”
“Yes,” Athelstan answers firmly. “I do, truly.”
Ragnar’s smile is enough to convey the way this makes him feel. His hand resituates itself on Athelstan’s cheek. He strokes the soft skin of it slowly, like the way you would pet a spooked animal to calm it down. “I am glad you are okay.” Ragnar closes his eyes, collecting himself. “For a while I thought...”
“You thought I would die,” Athelstan finishes. Ragnar nods. “The Gods would not let that happen; they know you would be lost without me.”
It is meant be a joke, but Ragnar doesn’t take it as one. “They would be right.”
“You would find another translator in time,” Athelstan counters.
“Is that what you think of yourself?” Ragnar asks, brow pinching angrily in the middle. “That you are only of worth to me because you can speak in many tongues?” Athelstan remains silent and does not lift his gaze. Ragnar’s jaw clenches. “You infuriate me, Priest.”
The last part is said with a fair amount of venom. Athelstan flinches. “I’m not a priest. I never was. And besides, I am at the mercy of your gods now.” He takes a breath and waits for a protest that never comes. “I think Odin wanted me to live. I think he saved me for a purpose. And if that purpose is to make peace between our cultures--”
“That may be so,” Ragnar interrupts, “but I am selfish. I did not want you to live for the sake of peace. I wanted you to live because I want you by my side. Always.”
“Just like Lagertha is by your side?” Athelstan asks, a hard edge to his voice.
Ragnar’s eyes flash bright for a second before darkening, like storm clouds that have suddenly blocked out the sun. “I have done whatever I needed to do to get here. That is the price of becoming king.”
“You don’t have to give up everything you love to have power.”
“It’s not about power, it is about legacy.” Ragnar fixes steady eyes on him. Dark blue, unwavering, like still twin lakes. “And I have not given up everything I love. Not yet.”
Athelstan thinks of Aslaug in Kattegat, and of the two young blond haired boys that are likely becoming increasingly independent and capricious by the day, just like their father. And poor Ivar, who will need someone to tend to him all of his life. Athelstan knows that someone will be Aslaug or the maidservants - Ragnar is a king, and a king does not have time for a child who will not bring him glory.
“Do you love your wife?” he asks, already half-knowing the answer. Ragnar does not look at her the way he looked - looks - at Lagertha, but Athelstan would usually not be so forward in his speech; it must be the head wound affecting his judgement.
“Aslaug does not know me as Lagertha does,” Ragnar replies, evading straight answers as he is so prone to these days.
“You can love a person without understanding them,” says Athelstan quietly. He thinks of the pretty round face of Judith flushing underneath him as they made love, of the soft sounds she made when he moved inside her, and the feel of her unblemished hands caressing his cheeks and his shoulders, but never daring to move lower. She had loved him, but she never knew him - not the darkest parts of him.
He knows Ragnar is the polar opposite of Judith. He is abrasive where she is gentle; he is unrefined where she is courteous; he is mercurial where she is placid.
Athelstan himself is no longer the kind of man that could satisfy a woman like her. She wants full devotion of him, but he cannot give himself over to her in his entirety, because too much of him belongs to the all-father and to Ragnar and to all of the people he left behind in Kattegat. His people. He does not have the capacity to love her more than them.
“In fact, sometimes it is easier to love someone you do not understand,” Athelstan continues. He is not sure where the words are coming from, only that he knows intrinsically that they are true. To love someone and simultaneously understand them is rare and very difficult, but it is not impossible. Athelstan knows because he loves Ragnar, and Ragnar is a very complicated man.
“And what is your judgement of me?” Ragnar asks, smiling mirthlessly.
“How do you mean?”
“You know who I am. I conceal nothing from you,” Ragnar says. “Do you love me in spite of that?”
“You know my answer.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I love you.” Athelstan does not flush or avert his eyes once the words have left his mouth. One does not shy away from the truth; he has learned this lesson from the Norsemen.
“Then I love you,” Ragnar says, face lit from underneath by that elusive joy that the Gods sparingly afford mortals.
Athelstan wonders, looking at Ragnar, if he really is entirely mortal. His eyes lance through people the way a spear does flesh. Those eyes have the power to shake someone to their very core or to ignite within them a scorching fire that will burn until the recipient takes their last breath.
“Is it really so simple?”
Ragnar brushes blood-damp hair off of his forehead and leans in to kiss him. His lips taste of salt and blood. He smells of carnage. Obscurely, this makes Athelstan ache for him even more fervently.
“It is simple for us,” Ragnar breathes into his mouth. “The world is ours.”
Athelstan, caught by that damning gaze, can do nothing but believe him.