Work Text:
Really, they find out by accident.
After Tuuri takes a noon break from driving, Sigrun marshals Lalli to scout work. He does it frowningly, but she doesn’t care. Little guy has been frowny since he’s woken up, it isn’t anything new. If she shared a language, she’d try getting to the bottom of it so that she could crush dissent, but she can only leave it up to Tuuri.
It’s Emil that surprises her. He’d been catching sunlight after each day, turning into someone halfway pleasant to know. But somehow, which she can’t pinpoint with deadly accuracy, he’s regressed into being a little pisspot. Never around her, but it’s hard to miss when he gets pompous. She can’t bring herself to be annoyed when Mikkel and Tuuri do their best to prick his ego. She pats the scabbard of her knife and jumps out of the tank, her boots making a solid whump.
“Come on!” Sigrun sings, enjoying how her voice rings in the clear air. “Emil, grab the bags!”
He sticks his head out of the door, already halfway out of his jacket, bless him. “What? I thought we were only stopping for a bit.”
“Nope!” Sigrun squints in the distance, and there’s her little mage, back after a quick reconnaissance. “The map says there’s a few abandoned houses out this way. In and out! Easy money.”
“But –” Emil nearly falls over himself getting his boots on. “All right.”
“And fetch Tuuri, pleaaase.” Sigrun puts her shoulders back, stretches her spine. “We’re taking Lalli.”
That tenses him up. She can’t tell which Hotakainen is giving him grief when he disappears into the tank, but that’s something to tackle later.
And after all, she tells herself, a little book hunting spree will be just the thing. It’ll tucker the grumpiness out of her little scout, and knock the piss out of her little Viking.
--
It’s not often that crappily made houses can make good troll nests, but boy howdy. Sigrun almost wants to congratulate the grosslings, for living in a glorified bundle of sticks.
It is with that in mind that she very, very softly closes a door on a knot of muscle and sickness, turns to Emil, and makes the sign for silence and fall back.
The kid looks at her fingers, back up at her, and shrugs.
Sigrun covers her face with one hand.
She – she likes Emil! Sigrun likes Emil very much. He’s an earnest, hardworking little guy. Maybe his training is shit, but all new Cleansers have shit training. It’s the Swedish air, or something. They just burn the crap out of everything because they can afford wasting fuel.
But this? This is ridiculous.
Sigrun makes another emphatic hand gesture (turn right follow 3 seconds after) and Emil just stares at her the same blankfaced way. God damn Swede. If she didn’t see all the troll sacs, pustules of fat and meat clustering around the skeleton of the houses like barnacles, she would have just yelled at him. If she can’t get Emil to understand, there’s no way Lalli will.
Speaking of, the twig has just loped back down the hallway. He points at it, then shakes his head. No go, then. Sigrun pinches the bridge of her nose so tight it feels like it’ll break. Then she tries again.
Turn right, follow three seconds after. She even emphasizes the three, walking with her fingers. Emil opens his mouth to ask what the hell she is on about when a thin hand snaps it shut.
Another thin hand makes the ok sign. Sigrun follows it up to Lalli’s face, his eyes blown wide in understanding. He repeats the sign, a little weirder, his elbows crooked. Sigrun nods, stupefied. Huh.
They make it out, anyway. They keep to the backroads, Lalli signing silence until it joins back up with a bramble-choked tarmac path, and then Sigrun just stares at Emil.
“You don’t know sign language?!” she half-yells, stupefied.
Emil flinches. “We – we didn’t need to learn it, we always made a lot of noise clearing out the forests. You only learn sign language if you’re one of the first wave.”
Sigrun almost clicks her tongue, but stops herself just in time. She isn’t mad at Emil, more his useless fancy Swedish government. Wouldn’t do to make the kid more depressed. She instead lets out a long whistle. “That’s a stupid system.”
“Well – ” Emil looks like he’s trying to fight training and his CO at the same time. Sigrun pats him on the head.
“Always time to learn. In the meanwhile, twiggy,” she addresses this to Lalli, “I finally have a way of talking to you!” She signs it while she says it. Lalli looks supremely bored, and then signs back a short O.K. He walks a little taller on the way to the tank, though.
--
It quickly becomes routine to sign to Lalli. She never gets much in return, but it makes morning reports easier. Lalli knows all the military shorthand save a few Finn-specific ones (and honestly, how can the Finns have so many words for forest), which Tuuri straightens out quickly.
It’s almost fun. Sigrun signs thank you, tiny forest man and Lalli very nearly looks offended before he signs back you’re welcome, giant red woman. She grins. He actually hisses back.
This is the most fun she’s had since Emil was scared of her.
So it occurs to her, suddenly, that she can ask what’s eating him. It occurs to her over dinner, when Lalli takes his bowl of food and lights out for the woods, and Emil makes a motion like he wants to follow. Then he shoves a spoon in his mouth. Huh.
“Thinking?” Mikkel asks. “Don’t strain yourself.”
“Ha-ha.” Sigrun says, digging an elbow into his side. To his credit, Mikkel only grunts. “Super funny. I was just strategizing! Dividing and conquering. Elevating.”
He raises a thick eyebrow. “Delegating?”
“Super fancy stuff.” Sigrun says. She lowers her voice, so that Tuuri, who’s elbow deep in the engine, doesn’t hear. “I think Blondie and Twig had a fight.”
“Hm.” Mikkel slides his mutineer eyes from Emil, who is so sad he’s finished his dinner without noticing, and then the gloom where Lalli disappeared. “Well. If it gets bad, we can always intercede.”
“Exactly my thinking, mutineer,” Sigrun says. “I’ll tackle skinny when he gets back. You get Emil.”
She jumps to her feet. Mikkel stays put, staring blankly at her. “Sigrun, I don’t think you should leave it to someone he can barely understand.”
“Hmmmmmmmmmmmm,” Sigrun wavers. On one hand, she wanted this done now. On the other, she wanted it done well. “Ffffiiiiiine.”
--
So she talks to Emil next morning, under the guise of shooting practice. She makes him stand in place with his gun while she corrects his form with a stick. “So, Emil. Noticed you and the little mage guy weren’t getting along so well.”
Emil slackens his grip and his shoulders, and Sigrun firmly, but gently, pokes the places with her stick.
“Ow. What? What made you – how did you know?” Emil asks, but he doesn’t try moving this time. Fast learner, her boy.
“Well.” Sigrun places a hand on her hip. “You guys used to be inseparable, and now I only see the two of you in the same place if I’m dragging you somewherre. I’m old, not blind.”
Emil makes a funny shape with his mouth. If Sigrun didn’t know better, it would look pig stubborn. “It’s fine. I’m just. I’m fine.”
“That is not-” Sigrun punctuates this with a slap on Emil’s back, sending him sprawling, “-correct posture, or the correct response! Tell me what’s wrong. For the team’s peace if nothing else.”
“Fine!” Emil spits, tossing his rifle away. The safety, she was relieved to see, was on. “I wanted to be friends with Lalli and he hates me!”
Sigrun stared blankly. “What.”
Emil sits cross legged, staring at the ground. “I tried! I brought him food, and I liked hanging around him, and fixing his hair, and making sure he had a jacket to sleep with since he seems to be most comfortable when he has heavy cloth to ground him – and,” he interrupted himself, going red, “and he threw soup in my face. He thinks I’m some dumb Swede. I’ve been bothering him.”
For a single, critical moment, Sigrun is afraid she’s going to laugh. Instead she coughs. “I think if he let you do all that other stuff you’re fine, buddy.”
“Then why did he throw soup in my face?” Emil picks at his beautiful, flowing hair. “It took me an hour to wash out!”
“That one’s a mystery.” Sigrun says, squatting down beside her right-hand warrior. “But you’re the one who gets Lalli the best, so you need to go do your magic communing-with-the-Finnish-guy thing. Seriously. I can’t read him at all.”
“You can do the hand thingy with him.” grumbles Emil. “I don’t even have that.”
“Come on, buddy.” Sigrun nudges his shoulder with hers. “You can learn languages and hand wiggling and garbage like that all you want. What’s important is if you actually have something to say.”
The birds cheep. Sigrun looks around. It’s all light and water for as far as she can see. There are very small drifts of snow in shadows of the trees, but. It sure doesn’t look like winter. She waits for Emil to turn over her words and figure out what he wants to do.
“Could –” she snaps her head towards him. Emil looked a little surer in his skin. “Could you show me something I could say to him?”
--
When they get back, Mikkel ropes Emil into some dumb laundry and cooking routine she’s far too important for. She, instead, follows the tracks of her light, skinny kid mage.
Lalli is sulking in the forest. He didn’t make any sign that he could hear her, but Sigrun would fire him if she could sneak up on him so easily. She marches past him and swings around, peering at his face. He looks resigned, mostly.
Hey. She signs.
Lalli places his untouched bowl of food to one side to sign what.
Why are you and Emil fighting?
Lalli grimaces. But he doesn’t deny it! Score for Sigrun.
Is it something about the mission?
None of your business. Lalli signs, like the grumpy little man he is.
Okay, cos Emil looks miserable. Let him know you care, buddy. Or at least, that’s what Sigrun means to say. There wasn’t a lot of nuance in military-sanctioned signing, but she picked up more conversational stuff when she had a deaf Cleanser on her team. Good ol Erik. He told people he got his eardrums out in an explosion instead of just being born with it, and Sigrun respected lies of that caliber.
There was a pause as Lalli took in her words. He went stiff with pride. He doesn’t like me. There’s a slight tremor to his hands, but they cut the air like he’s on the edge of a tantrum. Huh.
He likes you. Sigrun couldn’t stop herself shaking her head. He likes you so much, I think he’d propose if he got the idea in his head. Stop avoiding him.
You can’t tell me what to do. Oh my god, he’s really having a tantrum. This is precious. She can see the sudden realization freeze his movements, but she decides that sparing the rod, in this instance, would not nearly be hilarious enough.
She squares her shoulders. I’m your C.O, soldier. For the good of this mission, make up or I’ll have you dig latrines for the next five days.
Lalli widens his eyes. Sigrun bets that he was one of those kids who got so good at what they did they forgot they could be punished. We have a toilet in the tank.
Diiiiiiiiiiid I stutter, “Hotakainen?” she says aloud. She doesn’t know how to sign that without taking five whole minutes. It does the job; Lalli slinks off, but he knows she’s crazy enough to make him do it.
She waits, then makes her way back to camp in time to see Lalli tap Emil on the shoulder and lead him off into the cat-tank. She swings by Mikkel, who’s finished hanging up laundry.
“I am a miracle worker,” she says smugly.
Mikkel rolls his eyes. “I’m sure.”
“They’re gonna be best friends again.” Sigrun says. She knows she’s grinning like a wolf who’s spotted a three-legged deer, but she can’t help it. It’s just awful nice to clear something up so quickly. Discord that isn’t funny makes her itch.
So it’s with bemusement when she hands over most of her kroner that night when Tuuri screams that Emil and Lalli are making out on her bunk. The coins glint in the sunset as Emil rolls up his sweater to hide a frankly alarming amount of hickeys, and Lalli’s usual frown gives way to a slow, lazy cat’s smile. Mikkel chuckles.
“And you said that they’d last another week.” he says mildly, tucking the kroner into his pocket.
Lalli pauses, holding out his hand, and Mikkel distributes two cookies into his waiting palm. Sigrun gapes at him. Mikkel gives out a flurry of hand signs and watches as Lalli speeds off into the dark.
“You’re not the only one who can sign.” Mikkel bites into a cookie. “As it turns out, my sister’s mute.”