Chapter Text
1087 AD
A girl is born in Cionn Mhálanna. Her mother dies in childbirth, her father in a raid prior to her birth. She is alone.
1099 AD
The girl is twelve years old. She has mostly raised herself. She is quiet and reserved. She worked odd jobs wherever she could; stable hand, fuller, a blacksmith’s assistant. It was the last one that taught her to fight.
When she wasn’t working to survive, she took discarded and unusable weapons and taught herself to use them. Not out of fear, but desire. She liked the way it felt to move with a weapon. It calmed her nerves and kept her sane. It distracted her from the loneliness acquired from being an orphan in a village that didn’t want her. It made her feel as though she wasn’t as weak as she seemed. It gave her purpose. It kept her alive.
The day of the Viking raid was as normal as any other. The sky was grey and cloudy, the air humid and hot, the people going about their days.
They came midday and left around nightfall.
Her people were not warriors. They may have carried swords and axes, but they stood no chance against the mercenaries of the sea.
By nightfall the earth was muddy from blood. The bodies of the fallen scattered the land. Homes burned with no one left to care what was destroyed. The warriors took what they desired and left the land behind, nothing but destruction and death in their wake.
They didn’t know that not everyone was left behind.
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In case you were unaware, Vikings were not a harmonious people. Opposing clans would attack each other quite frequently actually.
So it was not a surprise when the Ognabrandur attacked another clan of Vikings. In the middle of the Norwegian Sea, their ship collided with another. Weapons were drawn. Fights broke out. Blood was spilled. A battle was fought.
The ship they boarded was called the Saeulfr , and it was home to a unique set of Vikings. No one would say they were a peaceful people, but they didn’t necessarily spend their days pillaging unsuspecting villages. They were less interested in conquering or slaying and more interested in acquiring. In short, they were thieves. Pirates if you will. Viking pirates who were not afraid to attack, but had better things to do than going around killing people all the time. There are better ways to steal than plundering poor villages. And the rich had far more interesting and valuable goods anyway.
But that did not mean they were not ready for a battle. The Vikings of the Saeulfr fought just as hard and dirty as those of the Ognabrandur . It was near the end of the battle that a surprise came to both clans.
No one had seen the girl hiding in the shadows. But they saw her leave them. They saw as she appeared, brandishing the bloody discarded sword of a fallen warrior. It was a member of the Saeulfr that witnessed her feat.
She had just killed a man of the opposing clan when she saw the young girl. The girl was fighting a member of the Ognabrandur . A curious fact considering she was not one of the Saeulfr , but it wasn’t uncommon for Vikings to turn on their own. Nonetheless, Ulfhild watched as the child fought valiantly against a man twice her size. She also watched as another man came to slay the child, only to be taken out by her. She watched as the child fought and killed two men all on her own. Ulfhild smiled.
When the battle was over and the members of the Saeulfr victorious, she saw the child standing over the bodies of several men. Ulfhild approached her.
“You have a warrior’s hand, young one.”
The girl looked at Ulfhild. She held her head high.
“I know how to fight.”
“You do indeed.” Ulfhild smiled. “My people could use a warrior like you.”
The girl tilted her head, but didn’t respond. She seemed to be sizing the woman up. It only made Ulfhild like her more.
Her response came. “My village was destroyed.”
Ulfhild nodded. “You are in need of a home.”
“I have never had a home.”
“You have one now.” She looked at the child. “What are you called?”
“Azalea.”
“Welcome to the Saeulfr , Azalea.”
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1105 AD
She sailed on the Saeulfr for six years. She lived and fought as a Viking. She sailed and theived as a pirate. She was happier than she had ever been.
And then the storm hit.
They were sailing along the Aegean sea when a cyclone began to tear apart their ship. She remembers watching her clan get sucked into the air and sea. She remembers being torn from the ship herself, being thrown through the air, being tossed into the sea. She remembers waking up on a beach. She remembers seeing a few bodies floating in the sea. If there were any other survivors, she never saw them again.
She wandered along the Cycladic bay and found a sword washed up on the beach. She recognized it immediately as Ulfhild’s sword. She took it and tucked it into the sheath that managed to stay on her body.
The island was small and uninhabited. As darkness fell, she took refuge in a system of caves. The night brought an overwhelming feeling of darkness. She heard inhuman sounds and whispers. She felt as though the night had covered the island with monsters. She ventured deeper into the caves as to try and escape what awaited outside. She had no light or torch to guide her way, but the urgent need to escape was strong enough that she ventured into the darkness regardless.
It wasn’t until she found herself in a large cavern that she stopped. The wall beside her ended and she could feel the change in airflow. The sounds had stopped as well and she was met with silence. The silence should have been a comfort compared to the noises of before, but this silence felt wrong.
She heard laughter from deeper inside the cavern. She turned to try and return the way she came, but was met with a sight that would haunt her for the rest of time.
It was a man, but also not. He was too tall, his limbs not quite right. His grin was sharp and menacing. His eyes bore black like the deepest pits of empty space. His presence made her feel empty and cold.
She didn’t get the chance to draw her sword before she was thrown deeper into the cavern. As fires began to blaze on torches circling the space, her eyes began to adjust to the sights around her.
There were two of them. Nearly identical in nature. The only difference being one's skin was an ashen grey and the other’s a deep red.
“Humans,” the red one spoke. “Always so easy to predict.”
She took a breath and slowly stood. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The red one cackled. The grey one smiled.
“Wrong question, my dear.”
She tilted her head. She thought. She narrowed her eyes.
“ What are you?”
The grey one looked to his companion. “I do so much enjoy the smart ones.”
The red one stepped forward. “Well, dear girl, care to take a guess?”
She had lived her life in both Celtic Ireland and as a Nordic Viking. Stories of the supernatural were commonplace, but most believed them to be just that, stories. She had always had her suspicions though. She had once seen her mentor tear apart a man with her bare hands and she could have sworn they were claws. She had also seen her eyes appear a vibrant red in the moonlight.
She thought of the stories she had heard throughout her life. She stared at the "men" before her. She felt the overall sense of dread that came from looking at the dead-on.
“Demons,” the grey one said, not caring for her to answer. “Demon kings to be precise.”
The red one grinned. “Allow us to introduce ourselves.” He gestured to himself. “I am Asmodeus, and this is my brother, Azazel.” His eyes drank her in. “And we are going to have so much fun with you .”
She didn’t wait to see what kind of "fun" the demon brothers had planned. She unsheathed her sword and dove for Asmodeus. He disappeared before she could reach him. She was quickly unarmed by Azazel and her arms were held to her sides. Talons pierced her skin and the areas around them felt as though they were being burned.
Asmodeus appeared before her again. “Is that any way to treat your hosts?” She wondered if the heinous grin ever left his face. “If you want a fight, you should have just asked.”
She tossed her head back and leveraged her feet forward, managing to use her momentum to apply enough force into Azazel’s neck to have him loosen his grip on her enough for her to escape.
He hissed at her and drew a blade of his own. His sword was entirely encased in flames. She looked for her sword and saw it being twirled in the hands of Asmodeus.
“Looking for this?” He tskd. “You’ll have to fight without it I’m afraid.”
She lunged out of the way as Azazel thrust his weapon toward her. Her only option was to dodge until she found something she could use as a weapon.
Dodging was hard though when your opponent can teleport. Nevertheless, she had been in battle many times and only sustained a few burns and scrapes. The menacing fury of Azazel was paired with the watchful stare of his brother.
The Demon King of Remorse didn’t join the fight. He simply watched, entertained by the fight, as fruitless as it might be. A human could never be a match for the Demon King of War himself. But her skills in battle at least made for a longer fight than most.
She was knocked against a wall at some point, causing debris to fall from above. She took the chunks of stone and threw them at her opponent. She then grabbed a fallen stalactite and brandished it as her weapon.
Azazel laughed heartily at her weapon of choice and sliced it in half with a single swipe of his talons.
She didn’t stand a chance to win this battle. She wondered if she would go to Valhalla when she died. She wondered if Valhalla was even real. No one truly knew what waited behind the doorway that was death. But she was about to find out.
And then she had a thought. A single conversation from soon after she’d first joined the Saeulfr .
----
She was training with Ulfhild, a few months after her admittance to the Saeulfr . Her sword was broken for the second time that day by a slice from her mentor’s own.
She frowned. “What is your sword made of? I’ve never seen one that can so deftly cut through stone.”
Ulfhild studied her sword for a moment before looking at the child. “This sword is called Gram. It has been in my family for generations.” She pointed the sword at the girl. “Legend says Sigurd used this sword to kill the dragon Fafnir.” She stuck the sword into the floor. “This sword can cut through anything. It can fight anything. It can kill anything.”
The girl looked at her mentor. “Anything?”
Ulfhild looked at the child. “Anything, Meyagisa.” She picked up the sword and held it hilt-first to the child “Only the bravest of warriors can wield it.”
The girl looked between the sword and her mentor. Her face was set in determination as she grabbed the hilt of the sword.
Later that day, a member of the clan lost a finger. It was not an accident.
----
That was the only day she had ever wielded Gram. Until now.
It was only a story, but her only chance of survival was if stories could be true.
She rammed herself into one of the cave walls and knocked more stones free. She threw them at Azazel and imagined them to be spears. She rounded the towering stalagmites and drew the demon in dizzying circles. Any spare debris was launched at the demon.
He began to predict how the stones would fly and laughed.
“Ever so predictable.”
She had created a pattern, a recognizable sequence of events that caused the demon to know exactly where she would be.
Or where he thought she would be.
She had rounded in front of Asmodeus several times without ever indicating she would go near him. But this time she did.
As Azazel disappeared and reappeared in the place she was supposed to be, she had vaulted herself up one of the walls and leapt down onto Asmodeus. The demon fell to the ground and dropped the sword. She took hold of it and plunged it into his back.
The Demon King of Remorse burst apart into a cloud of darkness. She was thrown back from the force of the explosion. Gram clattered to the ground.
“ NO! ”
The screech of the other demon felt like being speared through the head. She clamped her hands over her ears and pressed herself into the wall.
She was picked up by the front of her tunic and held up to meet his eyes.
“ HOW DARE YOU! ” He seethed. “ YOU ARE JUST A HUMAN. A WEAK AND PATHETIC HUMAN. MY BROTHER WAS A KING ! ”
She should have stayed quiet. Had she stayed quiet, he might have just killed her. Or maybe he would have tortured her endlessly. Or maybe things would have been exactly the same. She will never know.
“Sounds like your king brother wasn’t as strong and capable as he thought he was. After all, he was killed by a weak, pathetic human.”
They say that eyes are the windows to the soul because your emotions are often reflected there. Demons have no soul. The black pits that are their eyes show you just how little is inside of them.
If you were to only look at Azazel’s eyes, you would not know what he was thinking, how he was feeling. All you would see is darkness. But the rest of him showed uninhibited fury.
“You…” He sneered at her. “You will pay for what you’ve done.”
She thought he would kill her. Snap each individual bone in her body, tear out her organs, peel off her skin in strips. He didn’t do any of those things.
He pinned her to the wall by her throat. She kicked out, she tried everything she could imagine to escape his grip, but he was too strong.
“Humans…” He sneered again. “All of you miserable beings are disgusting in every way. You and your emotions .”
He spit out the last word. Even if she could speak, it probably would not have been best to tell him that he himself was exhibiting some pretty strong emotions right now.
“You all believe you are more than the carnage you cause. That you are somehow redeemable despite your detestable actions. Take it from someone who knows; you are not. ” A cruel smile began to form on his face. “My brother was the king of remorse. He would watch as you humans would take your last breaths and finally realise that there is no hope. There is no "better place". Only the darkness. He would watch as that emotion, that delicious emotion would ooze from your every pore as you realised there was no more time to make up for your actions.” He leaned in close to her ear. “ Guilt. ”
He leaned away. “The only bad part of human death is that those emotions end. Wherever their soul ends up is where their guilt goes too. But I’m wondering if there is something worse for humans than death. Worse than the impedable end.” The smile grew wider. “What if that guilt never had to stop?”
He dropped her to the ground and she gasped for air. He began whispering in a language she didn’t understand. She tried to reach for Gram but it was kicked out of her way.
Azazel finished his words and she began to feel cold. He then drew his sword and sliced across his own palm. He kneeled down beside her and gripped her jaw, forcing her to face him. She tried to move, to struggle, but she was completely paralyzed.
He raised his hand above her mouth and tipped it aside. Black blood ran down and dripped into her mouth. The taste wasn’t describable in human language. It burned like ice as it ran down her throat.
“All of those emotions, all of that pain… you will feel it forevermore.”
If he said anything else, she didn’t hear it as she slipped into the darkness.
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1107 - 1149 AD
She didn’t realise right away that she was cursed. How could she? Her previous life had felt like a dream.
When she awoke as a toddler, she wasn’t an eighteen year old girl in a two year old’s body; she was a two year old in a two year old’s body. But she had had to take care of herself from this age before and despite only vaguely remembering it, she did it again.
She lived a whole other life. Still on her own. Her memories of Vikings and demons were vague dreams.
Her second life was relatively unremarkable. She lived and worked in a small village on the southern tip of Greece. The crusades had yet to reach them and she lived in peace as a cottar and eventually a barkeep. She was quiet and talked to few.
Sometimes she wondered why she so often dreamed of the sea. Or why she knew Gaelic. Or why she was so good with a sword. But she didn’t question it. Not yet.
She spent her life alone and she died alone as well.
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1151 - 1179 AD
In her third life she began to grow suspicious.
She awoke this time in a different city in Greece. Her strong sense of deja vu was enough to propel her to travel. She headed for the Nordic region. Plenty of history happened on the way, but that’s not important.
She was killed by crusaders before she made it out of Germany.
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1181 - 1212 AD
It was in her fourth life that she learned the truth.
By this time, she knew that something was wrong. At three years old, she knew how to take care of herself in a way most didn’t learn how until they were adults. She could fluently speak Gaelic, Norse, Greek, and German. This time around, she didn’t even have to listen to try and understand, she already knew. She had somehow learned how to read .
By age six, she was traveling across Germany towards the Nordic lands. She ached for the truth. She would not stop until she found it.
A druid in Denmark revealed the truth to her.
Runa lived far from civilization along the coast of the North Sea. She was an expert in the supernatural and an advisor to those that sought her guidance. After years of searching, she found herself at Runa’s door.
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“Do you know what you are, Azalea?
She shook her head. “I know things. Things I shouldn’t know. Memories I never lived.” She looked up. “I don’t believe they are just dreams.”
Runa nodded. “There are many types of beings out there, Azalea. A whole world woven into the seams of our own. Few know about it. Those that do often wish they didn’t.”
She looked at the woman with determination. “I do not wish to know. I need to know.”
“Very well. Let us see.”
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It didn’t take nearly as long as Runa expected. She had been prepared to run hundreds of trials related to hundreds of creatures in order to find out what the girl was. All it took though, was a blood test.
Blood tests obviously were a very different practice in the 12th century than they are in modern times, but when the supernatural is involved, many things exist outside of time.
When her blood was spilled, it was far darker than human blood should be. She was overly familiar with what blood should look like, and hers was not quite it. Runa understood though.
“Tell me everything you can remember.”
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There wasn’t a name for people like her, because there were no other people like her. She wasn’t a species, she was simply a human who was cursed. A human cursed to live and die forever. Over and over again.
Her time with Runa was where she learned everything there was to learn about the supernatural world, and how she would take part in it. She learned how demons could move through the shadows, and how her blood made it so that she could too. Shadow travel was what she had witnessed Azazel and Asmodeus doing in the Cyclades, not teleporting. In the shadows, she could move at the speed of light, moving almost instantly from one place to another.
She had control over the shadows too. She learned to manipulate her own into a spear. Her spear could never be taken or broken. Only she could wield it. Humans became disoriented upon collison, supernatural creatures could be mortally wounded by it. She could summon and dispel it whenever she pleased.
But a curse was a curse, no matter how you tried to take advantage of it.
She learned quickly that traveling while injured was a bad idea. Unless it was her intent to be disoriented, confused, and even more injured than before. Relationships were difficult; people could sense the darkness and some chose to avoid her. Others thought she was a witch and avoided her on principle. Oh, to be a quiet woman in medieval times.
The other problem with being cursed took several more lifetimes for her to notice.
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Souls are real by the way. When you die, that life-force that makes you the person that you are leaves your body and fucks off to somewhere else. She wouldn’t know where that is, seeing as her soul never goes anywhere.
Except… it kind of does.
That’s the thing about living and dying over and over again. It fucks with your soul.
She can feel it. She can feel the change in every new life she lives. The way her soul either gets a little darker or a little bit smaller. She’s not entirely sure which. What she does know is there is a darkness inside her that grows a little bit with every new life. A darkness that makes it harder and harder to stay human.
She stopped counting how many lives she’s lived a long time ago. Several centuries will do that to a girl. All she’s ever done was try to stay human, to stay good.
People can both help and hinder that. Some people make it easier to remember how to stay human, some make it harder. She tries to surround herself with the former.
She’s still quiet- still prefers to listen rather than speak. But with several hundred years to practice her social skills, they’ve become marginally better. Somewhat. Enough to not be so alone anymore.
So that was her life. A girl who lived and who died. Each life had her start again from the beginning, with only scattered memories of her previous lives to help her remember how to live.
For the most part, she was a normal human teenager. You know, other than having lived in total for nearly a millennia and being able to travel through the shadows. Other than that, she’s just like everyone else.
And don’t judge her too harshly for not telling her friends the truth before. Most have reacted poorly. Some killed her. Some turned her into an international manhunt. Some simply just broke her heart. Don’t tell anyone, but she has a real soft spot for Scott and Stiles. She feels more at home with them than she’s been in a long time. Maybe ever.
All she’d ever wanted was to make the best of a bad situation. But when you wake up in a notoriously supernatural town and your best friend ends up turning into a werewolf, there’s only so long a girl can keep her secret. She just hoped that she won’t lose everything in the end.