Work Text:
Back in the private rooms, the ones just for family and those close to them, Athelstan adds more wood to the fire. These rooms are cavernous in comparison to Ragnar's house, and it seems no matter how big the fire is, it does nothing to chase away the chill.
Ragnar limps into the room, pitcher in hand, and smiles down at him.
"Will you drink with your new earl?"
Athelstan takes the offered cup and sits back on the floor, unimaginably relieved that for now, things have settled. The threat of Earl Haraldson is no longer hanging over their heads, they're out of Floki's small house after many long weeks of tripping over each other, and Ragnar is the most powerful man for miles. Athelstan is certain that this will bring a whole new set of worries, but for now it will be nice to have a night without worrying Ragnar won't live to see the other side of it.
Ragnar drags a chair over to the fire, just behind where Athelstan sits watching the flames, and drops heavily into it. He leans over and clinks his cup to Athelstan's.
"Hail Earl Ragnar," he says with a grin, and Athelstan smiles back at him.
The mead is sweet and strong. Probably a poor finish to a day spent indulging in too much ale, but the images of the day are still too fresh in his mind, too blood-red, too fire-hot, and he hopes a few drinks will blur them enough for him to sleep. For now, his mind continues to race with all he's seen today.
"Why did you not let Earl Haraldson's wife light the pyre?" he asks, looking back at Ragnar over his shoulder.
Ragnar sinks down in his chair, kicks his feet out closer to the fire. "I gave him a good death and a proper funeral. But he attacked my family and destroyed my home, and I did not owe him any more than what I gave."
Athelstan frowns at him. "It hardly seems right to punish his wife for his actions. I doubt she had much say in them."
"They both know the pain of losing a child," Ragnar says, looking into the fire. "They know how dangerous it can make a man, and they should have considered that before coming after mine."
"So what will happen to her and her daughter now?"
"Always so many questions," Ragnar says, nudging Athelstan with the toe of his boot. He's on the verge of apologizing when Ragnar adds, "I like that about you."
"There is so much here I don't understand, even now," Athelstan says. "And you ask just as many questions of me as I do of you."
Ragnar grins. "I know. That's why I like it. What I have wondered," he says, picking up the pitcher, "is why a man with so many questions would ever think himself content seeing nothing but the inside of a temple."
Ragnar leans over to top up Athelstan's cup, and suddenly Athelstan is reminded of that first night: Ragnar never letting his cup empty as Athelstan told him everything he needed to plan another successful raid, one that cost more lives. He's tried to be more careful with what he divulges to Ragnar since then, but Ragnar has a talent for getting exactly what he wants by asking the most innocent questions.
"Would you go back? To England?"
Ragnar has never asked him directly before. Athelstan has told him that he won't run, though it's largely because he has nowhere to run to. But if he were able to get back to England somehow...
"As I cannot, it hardly bears considering," he says.
Ragnar shrugs. "Next summer. As soon as the weather warms, I will take you. Will you go?"
"I would imagine you'd rather another raider on your ship."
"For you, I'll make an exception."
"My monastery is gone."
"There must be others."
"I don't--"
"You have many excuses why you can't go for someone who does not wish to stay," Ragnar says, sliding out of his seat to sit beside him on the floor.
Athelstan has never said that he wishes to leave--not in words, at least--but he should. He should want to get back to England at all costs. Yet here he is, sharing a drink with the man who took him captive, learning all he can about his way of life and doing his best to find an unobtrusive place for himself here, and never once considering that he ought to be looking for a way out, not a way in.
Ragnar downs the last of his drink and pours himself another. "Did you always wish to become a priest?"
Athelstan turns to him, his brow wrinkling as he tries to follow the change of subject. "I was brought to Lindisfarne when I was very young. I grew up there."
"So you did not decide for yourself."
"I was free to leave once I was of age," Athelstan explains. "I could have learned a trade, but I wished to stay and take my vows. I believe God brought me there for a reason, and he intended for me to stay and to serve him."
"And did your god also intend for me and my men to come and take you away?" He gestures around the room with his cup. "Is this, too, part of his plan?"
Athelstan looks into the fire again and is quiet for a long moment. It's a question he has asked himself, and God, for months. He has yet to find an answer. "I don't know."
Ragnar leans his arm on Athelstan's shoulder, and when he speaks, he is close enough for Athelstan to smell the mead on his breath. "What if your god has left you?" Ragnar asks, and despite his words, it does not sound berating, but like the same worry that has been growing in Athelstan since he arrived here. "What if you have to make the plan yourself? What are you going to do?"
"I'm a slave. I don't have the luxury of a choice."
"I am earl now," Ragnar says, gesturing again to the large room, the fine furs, the grand furniture, all Earl Haraldson's riches that are now his. "I have many slaves. I don't need you anymore."
Athelstan looks down at the drink in his hands, his heart suddenly pounding wildly in his chest. Perhaps this is a farewell. He knew from the moment he arrived here, from the moment he saw Brother Wulfred and Brother Osric hanging in the square at Kattegat: they are all expendable, not even worth the silver they could fetch as slaves. What possible use could he be to Ragnar now that there are plenty of others to serve him?
Beside him, Ragnar is laughing, leaning heavily on his shoulder again. "Athelstan. Athelstan, you misunderstand me. You are here not because you are my slave, but because you are my friend. Because I think we are not so different, you and I."
"How so?" Athelstan asks. When he reaches for the pitcher, his hand is shaking, and he snatches it back and presses it hard against his cup.
Ragnar notices, but says nothing, only picks up the pitcher himself and fills Athelstan's cup for him. "There are other places on this earth. I want to see them before Odin takes me. And I think you do, too."
Athelstan drinks to avoid answering. Ragnar smirks at him like he knows it.
"Athelstan." He turns and pushes himself up onto one knee, taking hold of Athelstan's shoulders, teetering a bit either with drink or enthusiasm or perhaps because of his injuries, and Athelstan reaches out to steady him. "There is more to see and know out there than you or I can dream of. And you're allowed to want it. You're allowed to want more."
Athelstan shakes his head. "We believe we should be content with what we are given."
He stills says "we" even now. Even though there is no we, just him. And God. Possibly. He doubts more with each passing day. He has difficulty trusting a God that would allow such things as he's seen here.
Ragnar laughs, eyes wide, and shakes him a bit. "How can a man be happy with nothing?"
Athelstan looks back at him. "How can a man be happy if he's always searching for something more?"
"Perhaps he cannot," Ragnar says with a shrug. "But it is too strong to ignore for long. You can feel it, can you not? Here," he says, moving one hand to press against Athelstan's stomach. "There is a hunger. A hunger that is for more than food or drink or women."
Ragnar is watching him carefully, eyes bright from the fire, and Athelstan barely dares to breathe.
"The life you lived before this was so very small. Too small for a man like you, with your questions. You must have felt it. It's why you traveled when the other priests stayed behind. And maybe, before, at your temple, that would have been enough. But now, you are here, and you begin to see how much more there is for you to know. You can never forget that. And that is why you don't wish to return to your home. You have felt it, and you can't ignore it anymore."
Athelstan swallows and then nods, ever so slightly. It feels such an enormous, dangerous thing to admit. Especially here. Especially to Ragnar, who has a habit of finding a way of using every word Athelstan says to his advantage.
But Ragnar simply grabs Athelstan's face, grinning, and presses a mead-sticky kiss to his forehead, and Athelstan somehow finds himself laughing with him.
"I knew you understood," he says. "I knew as soon as we first spoke. These idiots," he says, waving a hand at nothing in particular, "cannot think for themselves. Cannot dream beyond what they can already see with their own eyes. But you! Next summer, when we go west again, you must come with me. We will go beyond even your England."
Athelstan's smile fades as he tries to imagine himself sailing off on one of Ragnar's raids. "Ragnar, I could never do as you do."
"Because you cannot fight? I will teach you!"
Athelstan can't help laughing at the idea. "No, no, I would not fight. I won't kill people."
And yet, still fresh in his mind is the moment Lagertha handed him an axe when Haraldson's men attacked and a mere heartbeat later when he knew he could use it if it came to that. Only a few weeks previous, he would have refused outright, horrified by the idea of it. And it seems with every passing day, he finds it easier to accept that which he would have condemned.
(Like the invitation to Ragnar and Lagertha's bed. He's heard them night after night and feared them asking again, no longer certain of his answer. Another axe thrust in his hand, and what will he do with it? What does it mean if he doesn't even hesitate? If God already seems to be looking the other way, what is there to stop him?)
"Ragnar, I will help you farm, I will watch your children, I will do almost anything else you ask of me, but I cannot do this. I will stay, here, if you let me. I'd like to stay."
"With all your questions."
Athelstan nods. It will be enough, just as Lindisfarne was enough and the spring he spent stumbling over foreign words and reveling in the shared laughter when he finally knew enough to make himself understood. God's word came second to those from young sons exaggerating tales of their bravery, gleefully eager to become men, and from grandmothers sharing three generations' worth of gossip about the neighbors.
Here, the stories are different, but the delight in sharing them is the same.
"You're wrong," Athelstan tells him. "I am not like you. I don't get to have more because I'm not willing to take it."
Ragnar looks at him for a long moment, looks him up and down and then stares right into his eyes, a little smile curling his lips. "You will be. Not yet, but soon."
He's seen that look before, and he can't help feeling once again that he's put all the tools for destruction in Ragnar's hands, only this time it won't be churches and villages crumbling, but himself.
"Until then," Ragnar says, dropping beside Athelstan once more and slinging an arm around his shoulders, "I'll take it for you. Bring you back a small piece." He holds up his thumb and finger a small distance apart to show just how small. "No one will miss it. And it will be yours, my friend."
Athelstan smiles and looks back into the fire. Even that small piece, he cannot accept without a surge of guilt coursing through him. But as he sits with Ragnar's arm around him, drinking his mead, sharing his home, Athelstan knows he already has. He's no longer following God's plan, but Ragnar's.
And as terrifying as it often is, he enjoys it.
Some day, he will have to make peace with that. He prays he has a long time to work out how.