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victoryorvalhallaIt was a split second, the loss of a footing with the added stength of a shove by two supernatural powerhouses. Thorfinn had pulled back to hit someone else and ended up losing his footing falling against one of the two women. Shoved out of the way before either could really pay mind to the small blonde he never regained his balance. These were not the type of shoes he was used to fighting in. Instinct called for him to grab his knife stab something to regain his footing but it was just to fast to much for his small frame.
A loud bang barely registered over the sound of the brawl. One of the nearby booths had cut his fall short in the worst way, the bang was his forehead hitting the edge of the booth. There was nothing he could do or think, it was instantaneous. It was to much for his neck, a clean break. He was gone before his body hit the ground at an awkward angle, his father's blade slid from his hands, sliding under the booth as the small body laid there. With only four minutes until it would vanish.
-----
Four hours didn't really register for him. No bright light, no heavenly voices, no Valkyries. Nothing like the boastful stories passed around camp fires.
He was back home, laying in a pile of hay, listening to the man raiding outside of the barn. It was strange but oddly welcomed after so much strangeness in his dreams.
'where did the little bastard go?'
'same place he always goes when the jobs done.'
It was Bjorn's voice, that same quiet command to leave him alone and let him sleep. Which meant in about twenty minutes he'd wake up to screams. But something wasn't right. He couldn't put his finger on it.
Wait no. They were all dead. He remembered it all suddenly. his blood running cold as he started to push himself up in time to see a wicked grin.
'Figured it out did you, boy?' No it couldn't be, not him. 'Time to get up, good things don't come to lazy layabouts.' Thorfinn could only stare in horror at the man making his way to him. 'THORFINN! IT'S TIME TO GET TO WORK!' His voice bellowed.
Thorfinn's eye's shot open with a strangled gasp.
Electric lights were almost to bright for his eyes as he flinched form them, closing his eyes to stop the sharp pain. Reality sinking back into him. He wasn't in Mercia, or England. He was on Mundus. He was still in that strange world that had taken him... Askeladd was still dead, Bjorn was still dead.... everyone was dead and yet here he laid flinching away from the bright lights in the ceiling.
It was about then that he started to feel sick to his stomach, and the realization dawned, he wasn't alone.
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Date: 2016-11-27 05:46 pm (UTC)She doesn't think about how she ended up here -- her head pillowed on her arms, cross on the side of his bed. This little sparse room, with touches of him everywhere, and Sylvi curled up in her lap, finally asleep, finally the reason Jo closed her eyes, even if she couldn't sleep. She had to know before she could sleep, before she could do anything again.
It didn't matter if everyone else on the island had. It mattered if he did. Would.
If she was going to cry, she might do it, now, finally. But she doesn't.
She just lays there, feeling the ache spider cracks widening in her.
Time passes too fast, too slow, before suddenly the bed moves, weight that wasn't there only a second ago, shifting and Jo has to look up. Almost a hiss for someone interrupting her in here, daring to touch the bed, after she told Merlin and Gabriel both no. That they couldn't be here. With her. Except not in those words. A single no that brooked no other question, no argument, while she ignored both their expressions. She was selfish. She'd been selfish. She was going go on being fucking selfish tonight, this morning, whatever.
Which is a piss poor thought to have left in her teeth, when she spring from the floor, upsetting Sylvi into a sharp yelp and nearly tumbling Thorfinn right back down on his bed, when she pulls him in close. Hard against her.
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Date: 2016-11-27 11:52 pm (UTC)His room was very basic, the only really lavish thing was the fact the bed had a headboard that had both drawers and space for books, which held no books but things he had collected along the way shiny bottle caps and rocks, little things that both showed how young he really was and how curious he could be in his own time. His desk had the book open that he had been abusing and a leather bound notebook filled with runic notes. But he left nothing really laying around besides the fur cloak from the tourney, clearly that was where Sylvi lays the most. She kept going back and forth to it. Knives were also hidden all around, just out of sight but for someone like Jo, they were likely perfectly in sight. His room spoke volumes, someone who didn't let themself own much because life had never allowed it before.
Thorfinn had barely gotten himself half sat up before the feel of his body revolting started to churn, but before he could really speak or let a thought process he felt her arms. His first thought was panic until he caught her scent, the sound of Sylvi's yelp and then the blonde came into sight.
"Hvað er í gangi, Jo?"
His voice sounded tired and almost raw even if he hadn't screamed. His device was either off or down on the floor downstairs. Either way, unless her's was on it was the Norse that flowed free.
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Date: 2016-11-28 12:12 am (UTC)He's solid. Seriously solid. Crashing into him is like slamming a wall, because it has no control, no grace, and not planning stop at any specific place. It jolts through her bones with a reliving repercussion of more pain than just the physical pain that is always low-grade stinging her skin, and she doesn't know if it's greater or lesser than the explosion that rocks the inside of her body.
Like her ribs might have actually exploded for a second there. Because he is. He's solid. Alive.
Rusty, raw, confused voice in her ears. The question that starts out Norse, and turns into English halfway through as her device vibrates slowly to life in her pocket, never needed for that before. But she doesn't care. She doesn't care if he's confused yet. She can't breathe, and her head is a clash of too many things. And he's solid, and he's alive, and his voice is right. He came back, and Jo shakes her chin against his shoulder. Hard. Harder than maybe makes sense, because hard is the only thing this is, will be.
It'll be worse. Letting it in, it'll be worse. Later. So much worse. But she doesn't care.
She's selfish, remember. Selfish, and selfish, and selfish. She doesn't care.
For right now, and right now is all she ever has, she has him back.
"Shut up. We're hugging right now."
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Date: 2016-11-28 01:56 am (UTC)he didn't flinch even if it hurt the way her chin dug into his shoulder, pain was good. Pain meant he was alive when he knew he shouldn't be. Everything was dawning as her words dawned to. Slowly he lifted his arms. Working hard to keep the war brewing within inside. The urge to run and throw up, the urge to lay back and shield his eyes... and the deep need to not look weak. All of it came through, in the hug. Well, all but the need to puke, that stayed deep inside for now.
"...Did I .... what happened?"
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Date: 2016-11-30 01:22 pm (UTC)It's hard to put it all together, and she doesn't want to, but she hasn't been able to get Merlin's words out of her head.
The futility of trying to ignore him when he's usually right. Capable of being very flawed and socially graceless, but right.
The futility of trying to ignore when he's usually right, when being right, if all of them weren't, would be like stabbing herself too deep.
It goes into her grip, and the words that fall out, so much more like daggers, than anything like the hushed order from a second ago. Like the truth has to be punishment, if this was answer before she even got there, and if she's alone, alone, alone in this, again. Like she has been since coming her. Since Anna, and then Dean arrived. And she had been for too many minutes of too many hours tonight.
"I've had exactly two people in my immediate family. Two." This is emphasized with a shake. "And one of them is very dead." For so long. "And one of them is very gone." She only nearly doesn't say mostly dead. She lives by the skin of her teeth against the hope that every person isn't right and her mother isn't dead, even if she is gone, has been, for so long, might be forever.
"I've never had siblings." Hunters. Family. So many uncles and aunts. But no siblings. No friends her age even, until she managed to reach near to the age of her aunt's and uncles, and they became friends and partners instead. Not. Not -- "Not a sister. Not a brother." She won't let herself hesitate on that word, even when her heart founders in her. With a real kind of fear she never feels anymore. Maybe never before this way.
"But I swear to God--" It's gritted and sharp, and shaken in "--if you do that, again, I will bring you back, myself, to kill you, myself."
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Date: 2016-11-30 01:47 pm (UTC)There were many times he had woken wrapped in a thread bare blanket off by himself in a barn or the back of the boat. When the worst injuries would put him on his ass and he'd hear the older men whispering about him being a tough little bastard, and muttering if he would live. He was to stubborn to give up. To stubborn to show weakness to those men, namely the balding blonde that would always be glaring at him, the silent order to get up, to get up and live.
Jo wasn't that army of dead men... though sometimes Thorfinn thought he heard the dead calling for him. A moment like this where he wanted to just curl into himself and shut the world out, her painful grip on his shoulders kept him grounded as the wide, almost to innocent for a killers, brown eyes peered at her from under messy longer bangs. Like a puppy kicked out into the rain, that same look he gave her from under the sunglasses when she first brought him upstairs, offered him a real home, a place to belong.
Her words hit him like a tone of bricks, he was trying so hard to hold it in. It was why he hadn't said anything despite the desire to open his mouth and speak the words he had felt for awhile, and promise never again. He couldn't afford to die, not when death could be forever here at the whim of whatever god governed. He had to figure out his father's words before he could go into the long night.
"Jo...Ugh."
A noise escaped him as he started to say something, but the shaking, the emotions and the overwhelming sickness all together pushed past his stubborn shield and everything within him started to come up he tried to shift away as soon as he realized he couldn't stop it, but her grip on his shoulders had kept him in place, to weak in the strange illness to rip away from her.
A moment of being told something he had searched for for so long.... and he gracelessly threw up on the person he cared for most.
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Date: 2016-12-02 04:23 am (UTC)"Fucking shit! Thorfinn," is sworn, as it's making her jump back, stumbling, trying to unfold her legs, and nearly slamming into a wolf pup also unexpecting her her start and jump, but nothing like fastest enough to beat gravity or an effect of the death that Merlin had never had and she'd never had cause to guess at.
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Date: 2016-12-02 05:00 am (UTC)"I'm... I'm sorry." He grumbled out trying to fight his bodies urge to go again. He was stubborn but the will is not as strong as a body used to fighting to survive.
His brown eyes for once looked pitiful as he laid there, some of the mess in his hair, but he's always dirty he doesn't care. Not when his head is ringing worse and he's looking at her like she's a life line. The way he looked at Ylfa when he was scared as a child or wanted her to help with something. "I..i didn't mean to."
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Date: 2016-12-02 12:44 pm (UTC)"Yeah, whatever. Like that's been helping anyone around here tonight." Is hard while she looking between the collapsed miserable pile of body on the bed, blonde hair everywhere, and her own now ruined clothes and spattered body. The floor around her. The stench only getting stronger for longer seconds of existing. "I need-" To get out of this. Clean herself. The floor. Him. Thorfinn, collapsed. Miserable. Face looking no better. Like he might just do it again.
"I'll be right back." Jo gives on shuddering or pausing or flinching. Her fingers gathering mess into her shirt, getting slick and acidic in her hands, for the most of it she can have in her shirt and not falling even more heartily on the floor around her when she stands. Her stomach is turning, but she shoves it down. Back. Gritted teeth and bones. "I'll get you something. Try not to do that again before I get back."
She makes it to the door, still marshaling her own body's reactions, and the spur of disgusted-annoyance before she looks back.
"Don't die, again, before then either." It's a sharp thing, with no note of the thing in her face, that uncertainty to walk away.
Like if she looks away this will all be the first of the worst dreams and he won't actually be there on that bed.
Just before she does. Slip from the door, the room. A roll of eyes and her stomach, needing a shirt and a bucket at least.
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Date: 2016-12-02 03:01 pm (UTC)For one raised on the idea that strength and looking strong were the most important things, throwing up on someone he considered so very important was utterly shameful. So many reasons for the misery brewing in his milk chocolate brown colored eyes. He nodded despite the pain pounding behind those eyes.
"I think that rides over." He grumbled, almost a tone between the misery of his nightmares and when he isn't quiet awake enough to be polite to anyone in the mornings before that first sip of coffee and stolen strip of bacon.
When the door shut he forced himself to sit up despite his stomach's heavy protests, moving had never been so hard short of heavy injuries and blood loss. Still his stubborn nature helped him tug the shirts over his head. At least he had been in more modern clothes that were easier to slip on and off. Pushing himself unsteadily to his feet he nearly fell before just sitting back down shirtless deciding the pants just weren't worth changing. A snap and a shove of the blanket towards the floor and Sylvi was right there tugging at the blanket with her teeth as Thorfinn shifted it off onto the floor. Laying back again the tiny wolf used the blanket and her hindlegs to push herself up on the mattress. It was a damn good thing he had been training her not to eat without the snapping order, or norse word given. She moved and nuzzled her snout against his neck as he stared at the ceiling.
"Shh." He hushed at her whining as he looked at the ceiling. Trying to figure out what he would say when Jo walked in. Before his body could react any worse again. He had to say something. He needed to speak those elegant words that his father, Leif and even Askeladd could pull from anywhere.
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Date: 2016-12-03 03:18 am (UTC)Reaching for anything nearby to wipe at her pants, and boots that she doesn't pull off, her arms, as well, before dropping that one with the first, and finding another shirt to pull over her head. Not caring she doesn't match in the slightest, or that the rest of her clothes are still beset (with blood, and pie cream, and now vomit). She grabs a hair tie, while headed back out of the room, tying it up, messy and hight, as she gets into the kitchen doorway with fast looks around.
She ends up with a large silver bowl, and two of the hand towels hanging from near the fridge, before she's dashing back. Hoping the best for the carpet, there not being another mess since she left, and, if she was being honest, the catch in her chest to release choking her tight returning because of his being gone so long already, even in so few hours. But he's still there. A solidity that still catches her, now, and again, a second time, like being punched in the face, lungs, stomach at once.
Even as she notes the differences. He's half dressed, under his blanket now, slender scarred shoulders and miserable expression. The blanket is up there, and Sylvi, and the shirts are over there. Jo strove to keep her voice something flatly neutral as the crossed the small space between the door and bed. "Well, at least we know you aren't entirely bedridden. I suppose, that's some kind of plus."
"This is for you." Jo set the bowl on the edge of the bed, towels still in hand, as she sat back down on the ground beside the bed with a hard sigh. "Try to aim. I know boys have a horrible time of it, but still." Jo started working at the mess on the floor, that was framed around where she'd been sitting when he suddenly lost it all. "It's the least you could do now."
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Date: 2016-12-03 04:07 am (UTC)When Jo returned he shifted carefully onto his side, those miserable eyes watching her, idly reaching up to scratch at one of the scars that ran down his chest. "Yes, but.... it's no good. I nearly did that again trying to get the shirt off. I'm sorry Jo. I tried not. I didnt expect it to happen."
Only then did she get a slight glare form him. "I can aim, whoevers pissing on the seat's not me." He felt it was a jab, he's heard people in the bar complain at night. But it's the closest to a light look she's gotten since he woke.
"Jo. Stop." He spoke as he edged closer to the end of the bed. Sylvi moving to take over his pillow snuggling into his back. "Wait. I need to say something." He spoke trying to make sure he could least his body try to reject him again.
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Date: 2016-12-03 04:47 am (UTC)It was fine. She was fine. She'd like more warning before having someone spray fountain her. But she was fine, and he would be, supposedly. He almost deserved this, except she couldn't get herself to feel any true emotion in her that believed that when she thought it. It was just a stab at the dark that dissipated fast like it was a drop of ink in water instead.
Her back stiffened a little at his words, and she shook her head. Not wanting to leave, again, quite yet and not able with the task under her hand, wiping up vomit from the floor on the towels, and not entirely wanting to be bereft of his voice. Even if she'd never taken any stock in it before now. "I can't. I'd really rather not need to replace your carpet, too."
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Date: 2016-12-03 05:13 am (UTC)"My mom was really sick when I was home, I never remember a time where she wasn't sick or weak. She always smiled though. Little bothered her, but Ylfa, she was fire in a human body. She had opinions and strength none could match. I adored her when I was a child... we fought constantly, but I loved her Jo. I dream of returning to her and Mother so often... and in those dreams I always see them die." He admitted shifting as a sharp pain shot through him he kept himself from puking and that much was clear He pulled the cover higher so just his hair was sticking out.
"Mother wanted more children...." He muttered through his pain. "I almost killed her when I was born, she could never bare children again after me... My point." He started, as that scarred arm shot out for the silver bowl. "I think of you like I think of her... your not Ylfa, you never could be, your more." He was glad he had pulled the cover up. He didn't want her seeing his face... but the noises that followed, the sound of it hitting the bowl. Least he was right that he could aim.
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Date: 2016-12-03 05:43 am (UTC)Except whatever isn't right, but she can't look at that, or him, or Merlin. Even if she knows she should.
She should tell him a lot of things. Maybe starting with the one where he picked wrong.
Where things do not go well with those who pick her. Because she shouldn't be.
Picked. The last one lay deep in the ocean, before burned to ashes.
Her head washed her this way and that, like the roll of the ocean under the boat she never stepped on, and the scent of once-upon-a-different-universe ocean salt on the rim of the hat she refused to clean. Or let anyone touch. Or had ever even explained to anyone. Nor spoken Jack's name once here yet. It did her no good to dwell, and she'd thought only Gabriel could rouse him to her thoughts.
But, this, too.
This, too.
Jo cringed a little as he threw up again, the blanket shuddering as he tried to hide, making her feel even less like she should be there, forcing him to handle more in his space than there had to be. She folded the worst into the middle of the towels, as she pushed up, "You should rest some more, Thorfinn. It looks like you're going to need it."
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Date: 2016-12-03 11:34 am (UTC)He was still not wanting to look weak and yet he was. For once so very weak.
The arm vanished back into the blanket as he shifted, those tired eyes peering back at her through it all, Sylvi pushing herself into the blanket with him as he shifted one of his arms to accommodate her.
"Jo," he started taking a breath watching her through his hair and cover. "I don't want you to worry." He added low. "what I mean... its the same. I cant put it in words."
Sylvi calmed mostly from the fear rolling from him. Thorfinn wasn't one to be fearful, but illness was a worse death sentence than being injured. He knew what had happened. He doubted there was anything anyone could do and yet he was more fearful of being ill, the idea of going again.
"...Where is everyone? It's to quiet for this time... whatever time it is." He was used to the sounds of the bar under his feet. A secret she knew, muttered in passing once or twice. He hates the noise, he loves the noise. Its normal, it grates his nerves. Always at war with himself. Tonight he was to sick. "Freya, I was supposed to have a drink with her when the fight stopped Jo. She has my phone." Something he had only ever handed off to Jo when he went to do something he thought would break his life line.
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Date: 2016-12-05 03:19 am (UTC)But, also, about the likelihood of it getting knocked over on the floor, or tipped on the bed in a too frantic rush.
"It's still early," Jo shook. "Not yet dawn even. It's only been four or five hours since--" You died, she doesn't say. She could make herself. She could, but she doesn't want to cut herself on it yet. It's already repeating over and over in her head. Suddenly blurring the boy in this bed with the boy on the floor, head lolled at it's incorrect angle. "I'll find Freya and get your phone back."
She turned for the door, the thing she could make herself do, if not the first yet. (Even when her mind reminded her, she never spoke of Merlin's dying and coming back either. Not to anyone who hadn't been in that room when it happened, ie Balthazar, or on the steps when he came back, ie, Amy. And not ever since.) Jo pressed her hands too hard on the towels, making when give wetly between them, and she grimaced. "Sleep for a little, and I'll bring it up to you."
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Date: 2016-12-06 02:54 am (UTC)"...I died." He said it softly. "She told me to tie my shoes and I didn't listen... when I knocked into that woman, I caught my show string to." He remembered it to. "I got in the way." He seemed to be just piecing things together.
When she lifted the towels he felt sorry, he hated putting thing kind of stuff on anyone much less someone he cared about. "...Once I'm better I'll do a better job this time, Jo." He spoke quietly pulling the cover more around him so he was fully hidden. "I wont be a terrible brother again. I'll do right by you."
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Date: 2016-12-09 12:56 pm (UTC)Not giving a damn what burned, broke, or was used for that second.
If you were you'd be sleeping now, Jo wants to grouse, but it's not quite annoyance.
She hasn't heard enough of his voice yet. Blood and vomit, and long nights, and even whatever this is, this his illness, and this what this change happening between them, or happened long before and unknown by her, doesn't change that. And she isn't sure she can look at it head on quite yet. Not and him.
"Worry about it later, Thorfinn," Jo said, generally enough, as she opened the door. "Tomorrow, since you still have one now."
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Date: 2016-12-09 02:44 pm (UTC)"Thank you, Jo. Goodnight." He spoke softly shifting despite the pain, he tended to always sleep on one side over the other. The tiny for of Sylvi could be seen moving under the blanket to try and get comfortable. He'd be asleep in minutes until Merlin's voice hit him.
Sniplet Sickness Day 1
Date: 2016-12-02 04:45 am (UTC)For the first time in weeks his bedroom window was closed, no soft breeze taking away the stuffiness of the room. He was laid in bed under the pile of blankets including his fur and cloak. His winter clothes vanished away covered in vomit to be cleaned eventually. He was laying under the blankets shirtless, he didn't care to ruin any more clothes. The jeans were expendable. The last time he had a fever like this he had heard the family fostering him for the winter whispering how they would have to summon Askeladd and tell him the boy would die.
He didn't die, hell Askeladd had demanded he get up and march out as sick as he was. It was the only winter he spent any time in Askeladd's winter home. Of course, the man himself was no where near him, just serving girls sent by Gorm to make sure the young warrior didn't die. Illness was a death sentence and yet he pushed through then with no ill effects.
But this.
This was worse.
He was so hungry and thirsty at the same time but the more he ate the more it came right back up. The fever and the chills combined had him absolutely miserable. He had had to send Sylvi away, not just for fear of getting her sick but because she was just to warm and energetic for him to deal with at the moment. He knew Jo was working, but that she would come back soon if Merlin didn't. One or the other constantly coming to see if he had improved through the day.
He had fished the old broken comb out of one of the drawers near his head earlier while he had been alone. His fingers curled around it under the pillow as he shuttered feeling another spasm of pain shoot through him. He rolled over quickly for the bucket near the bed. How the fuck did he still have anything left for his body to reject?
[ Wandering In and Out ]
Date: 2016-12-03 03:33 am (UTC)Almost at all after the bar is cleaned up to manageable.
She trades between the main floor and Thorfinn's room while he sleeps, wretches, groans, and curls up in a ball, sweating like he's trying to figure out how to rain from his own pores. She and Merlin exchange glances when they pass, not talking about what they said earlier, and he doesn't comment on if he knows what Jo said to Thorfinn either. Her and her worst timing. That was all that all of this was.
Always the wrong time, always the wrong place. With blood on her hands, and then vomit on her clothes.
She was clean. Most of the bar was a shattered semblance of remembering itself.
Syvli whines, and Jo usually stops to scratch her head, while they both watch him sleep, but Sylvi doesn't leave him now, even though mostly she's curled on the floor beside the bed or the foot of it, not near him anymore, and Jo was remiss to note that sometimes she almost missed the constant contact and pushiness of her now that it wasn't there, and she felt adrift, lost somewhere between the real world of things she was supposed to do and the grey that had set in around it all.
But she kept herself busy. There were messes up here and down there, and she could find things.
Reasons to keep coming back, while he slept on in this sick state she hadn't expected.
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Date: 2016-12-03 05:06 am (UTC)One of her trips around though, his hand shot out catching hers.
"Ylfa... I'm cold Ylfa. Mama doesn't feel good, father doesn't want me bothering her again. Keep me warm. Please, Ylfa." His voice softer, lacking the gruff somewhere between awake and asleep. The hair the body his tired ravished mind aligned the two fiery blondes again.
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Date: 2016-12-03 05:54 am (UTC)But it's the name, too. The ghost that she isn't certain she isn't for him.
And if she's bad at being herself? She's murder on being anyone else at all.
Jo settled on the slight edge of the bed, using her other hand to check his forehead. Clammy skin, and mostly closed eyes. He sounded like a child, like the child she'd been chiding herself on calling him when he was dead, and so she tried to be gentle. Even if it took a breath, given it was not the thing she was often, when not dealing with Jacob. "You need to sleep. I can get you another blanket if you need one."
She'd strip every bed if he needed it, but that would be overkill. Even she knew that.
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Date: 2016-12-03 11:38 am (UTC)He pulled at her arm once when she offered the blanket. Her settled close. So many memories of the rough sister he knew sitting on the edge of the bed trying to demand he sleep, stop being everywhere, in everything, stop being a pain, but to also keep her warm when she would return from feeding the sheep.
"Just lay with me, I'm tired." he spoke low shifting his head a bit looking to her.
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Date: 2016-12-03 03:03 pm (UTC)Even that was almost too much to consider with Merlin's newest judgment laying on top of it now. Krissy was.
He wasn't him, though, in a very alike way and she should put him off, but when had she ever lived by what she should actually do. It'd been a long, long morning, and her bar still bore all the signs of it, even if she bore not a one, from any of this again. No tracer of a tattoo to the like of what had happened except from that place is the palest sigils. She was tired. So damn tired. And too much hurt. In a way she couldn't explain, that had nothing to do with pain, and,
maybe too much to do with a kind of wounding she couldn't come back from, and still wasn't running from. Not exactly.
She shook his hand on her, lightly, with a simple--"Move over." -- as she turned, not pulling back the blankets or divesting her boots.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-04 12:13 am (UTC)He moved over, those tired brown eyes watching her. "I keep having bad dreams. It's been getting colder, I heard father saying he thinks the sheep wont make it the winter if we don't find a way to patch the barn." He rambled lightly. "I know you or Ari will fix it. Your both smart... when I'm bigger you wont have to work so much. I promise." He spoke half a smile ghosting his face. He started to close his eyes. "I'm sorry I'm such a jerk..."
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Date: 2016-12-05 03:38 am (UTC)Continuing to speak of things so casually and with so much concern. Apologizing, with such an ease, that did not come normally. To her as someone else, or maybe. Maybe, because to that someone else he would have. In another world, a lost life. His actual family. The ones who never even knew he was dead for those hours, and whom she didn't know if were frozen where he left him, or missing him, and not knowing of the few hours of the worst.
"Yeah, well," Jo said, reaching out, after a labored second of deliberation, and brushed back his hair from his eyes and his cheek. Fingers gentle against the illness and blanket piled warmed skin. "We can't all be perfect." Even if Jo would settle for anything, anything at all, right now, so long as it was still this. Warm under her fingertips, voice rusty and sleepy in her ears. Alive, alive, alive.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-06 02:08 am (UTC)"It's all my fault... I should have listened." The were the last words that he muttered as sleep won him back over. Once more pulled into the deep sleep that only illness can give. His dreams much kinder while he was out, one of those cruel ironies of life.
He breathed both light and heavy in his sleep, he didn't snore but the breathing though heavy didn't sound loud, his mouth slightly parted as his head laid against her shoulder, sending warm breath against her.
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Date: 2016-12-09 01:07 pm (UTC)But at the same time, that tears and cuts at something else in her. That it isn't seeing her, talking to her, wanting her here. Things she has no answer for, and things she doesn't think would have mattered as much twelve and twenty-four hours ago, but now hit her with a confused sharp sort of pain, amorphous and edgeless.
All the same and more when he curls up against her. Fever warm skin and warm breath against her shoulder, and she's glad, absently, that she showered, and that no one expected her to be downstairs, even when they did. She'd done cleaning, and she'd keep going back. They knew that. Which made it confusing why her throat dried too fast on the contact and the edges of her eyes burned, even when she blinked dried eyed and untempted, unmoved, by the strange urge for tears now.
So many hours later. Late. Too late. Not when he died. Not while he was dead. Not when he came back to life.
Now. When it was pointless and stupid and there were too many feelings and too many questions.
Jo breathed slowly, timing her own breaths to his, as she reached up to run her fingers through his hair lightly, studying the wall behind him, that the bed lay against. Tired as sin, and uncertain in a way she wasn't sure she'd ever been. What it meant, how she could fail this, too, given he had already died on her watch, and somehow somehow this one she got back, this chance she got a second time, if like a slap, still in her hands all the same.
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Date: 2016-12-09 02:57 pm (UTC)He slept hard, breathing slow. His arm draped over her, and Sylvi watching them both from up on Thorfinn's pillow he had rolled off of to curl into Jo. Her watchful eyes seeing them both, confused but seeming to understand all at once. Thorfinn had been so convinced that the growth of peach fuzz on his face had made him look older, but he still looked so young, more so curled against her deep in fever addled sleep, a small blessing for all while his fever raged, his nightmares didn't seem to come.
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Date: 2016-12-12 01:08 pm (UTC)For long seconds he reminds her, too small and too broad shouldered, even small, of Rachel. The blonde hair and the bright eyes. They are nothing alike, her ice-eyed model tag-along, and her viking boy one. Nicknames even in the silence of her mind and this room, as though, even the sanctity of that space cannot handle the true names and faces on them. She knows the first. She does. Even if she's only said Rachel's name twice, and she rarely thinks of her head on save with Amy now.
Jo watched him sleep, labored and heavy breaths against her shoulder, quiet in the still room.
Too many words, too many questions, too many nameless things too big to contain, and on top of too much else.
In the end, if Jo Harvelle would be the last thing to admit such a simple thing, even in the face of everyone around her who knew it, from child to Archangel, she is only human, and there is only so much one heart, one mind, and one world can take. Especially when it's calmed down from the explosions to stay on point and ever ready for. She falls asleep, somewhere between one breath in and the next out, one slow blink from exhaustedly, but unwaveringly, watching his fevered face, and the next second just darkness.
SNIPLET SICKNESS EVENING 1
Date: 2016-12-03 03:26 am (UTC)The sounds of the bar come to life again as it did every night. Drifting up to where he could have heard them. The nights he didn't sit down there he was usually sitting in the window reading but tonight he laid half in and half out of conscious thought. The sound of his voice had been drifting in and out for awhile now.
"What would you know… fuck you."
"I'm not going to die, go the fuck away you bald bastard."
"Don't make me get up."
Arguing with nothing but a mental image his sick mind had produced.
"Go the fuck away, I want to sleep I have work tomorrow."
It was the last thing he grumbled at the wall before he finally stopped speaking again.
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Date: 2016-12-03 03:46 am (UTC)"Thorfinn?" It was a light question. Not enough to wake him, if he was sleeping.
But the room was empty, and there had been voices.
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Date: 2016-12-03 04:38 am (UTC)He hadn't drifted to far down into sleep. Hearing Jo's voice his eyes fluttered open again. Sylvi lifted her heard the second Jo had stepped in and spoke. A wag of her tail for the woman. It was nearly time for her to venture outside again.
Thorfinn shifted so he could look towards her, his eyes were heavy, but his gaze connected.
"Jo?" He started looking at her a moment like he wasn't sure what was going on. Askeladd had just been there, talking to him leaning against the wall. And yet... no that wasn't right. "Can I have more to drink?"
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Date: 2016-12-03 05:06 am (UTC)Jo crossed the room, picking up a cup that was on the bed table closest to him and finding it empty. "I'll be right back." She almost turned, but she glanced back. "Ice, too? Or just water?"
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Date: 2016-12-03 05:25 am (UTC)He was constantly hungry and thirsty and then rejecting it as the fever burned hot. Shivering cold and complaining of headaches. It was all normal apparently, but he just seemed to have gotten it bad. He had already made his wishes known that he didn't want people seeing him, not in such a weakened state, it was shameful, but he also asked of certain people between the fever and the lucidness. Freya, Ragnar... his father. As if THors was there.... though it could easily be taken as the Thunderer. He didn't ask to see them just where they were, if they were alright did they get hurt in the fight.
But there were other questions.
What emotion does hair feel?
If wine is made of grape juice, can you get drunk eating grapes?
Does a soul have a taste?
Can a fish drown?
Every question asked as he stared at the ceiling.
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Date: 2016-12-05 03:51 am (UTC)"You still awake under there?" She asked, as she was depositing one and then the other on his bed table.
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Date: 2016-12-06 02:21 am (UTC)Hearing her voice he shifted the blanket down some having already forgotten he asked for food. Slowly pushing himself up to sit up he thought of his mother in that moment. The way Helga often looked weak when illness took her sitting up slowly in bed while Thorfinn sat at the end babbling at her and Ylfa would have her something to eat... he hoped he was not getting whatever she got after Ylfa's birth. He took after her in so many ways already he was too proud of his strength to be sickly. As if it would change who he was. BUt old world views of illness. He snapped out of his thoughs after a second.
"Yeah..." He was sweating again but he seemed to have moments of clarity when he was sweating. Like his body was fighting it off, but the sleep brought it back each time. "Thank you Jo." He reached up to push his hair from his face. turning so he could lift the water to drink it. He was dressed in just the busted up jeans he wore on Halloween, despite the fact his closet had new bags of clothes from a recent shopping trip he didn't want to get anything else dirty.
"Are you okay Jo?" He asked looking up before taking a long drink, he was worried he would give her whatever was wrong with him.
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Date: 2016-12-09 01:15 pm (UTC)"In one piece, and with nothing to show for it." Jo shrugged, without a hand movement toward her body, face, knuckles. There's the normal crook of a common enough expression for every bar and every day. "If anything I'm doing better than anyone else around here, and even those who are giving the whole place a wide berth after last night, in the hospital and the jail cells and sick beds."
It's a lot of details for a question she actually doesn't answer. He doesn't want that answer and she doesn't want to give it. It's not what he's asking anyway, and she knows it, but the question he asked only has one answer. It's only ever had one answer. The answer that keeps her moving forward no matter how bad, or horrifying, or terrible anything out here throws at her.
There is no other answer to those four words. She lost the right to them a very long time ago, at her own hands.
And dissembling from the truth, and that too deep truth, has always been just this side of far too easy for her.
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Date: 2016-12-09 03:07 pm (UTC)"Other people got sick?" he asked curiously, his eyes shifting to her as he lifted the spoon to start greedily gobbling it down. "Do you think I will be able to return to work tomorrow?" He asked despite the fact he was clearly still very unwell.
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Date: 2016-12-12 01:27 pm (UTC)"No, nothing like that. Gods had nothing to do with this." Jo looked down at her own, healed and unscabbed, unbruised, as would be normal after a fight like that, hands briefly. "Only myself and someone from very long ago."
There's a strange consternation, almost reluctant, not by choice but by habit. She never spoke of that place but once in The Apocalypse. Even when they all knew about it. "It's helpful, but it's not a blessing." And something she's admitted to no person ever, though she knows Merlin must know now. Merlin with her soul, her memories, the knowledge of whatever this was in his mind. "And I pay the price for it every minute of every day."
In the low pain that seared like a soft burn across all of her skin even now. A hum she could almost ignore.
The soft, steady heated lick of fire. The scratch like fiberglass rubbed at ever rawed and ready skin.
"See." It's an odd offering. But Jo Harvelle has so little to offer in these universes, that is hers.
She scooted up, pulling the collar of her thin longsleeve shirt over her tanktop aside to show her shoulder and clavicle close and clear. Marks that are her sins and triumph in one. Violent and brutal, pride and shame. There on her skin, the faintest of nearly skin-colored sigils everywhere, all over her skin. Making it easier to see where they continued even beyond there, across the whole of the skin above her chest. They didn't move right now, but they weren't doing anything that she knew of right now.
If she pretend sfor her own sake this doesn't feel stupidly dangerous and too much. Things she's never been willing. Like a wager placed on a betting table, or on wildly unbalancing and balancing scales, she speaks without moving her shirt back. Giving him leave, but distracting her nerves. "Yeah. There are several of them. People who are ill, people in the jail. Beat up. A number who showed to help with cleanup regardless."
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Date: 2016-12-14 01:54 pm (UTC)He stayed silent for most of her explaination, the only sign that he wasn't spaced or starting to be taken back by the fever was how sharp his eyes were at the moment. He was mentally fully aware at the moment one of the rare moments in hours of fevered delirium. He was pretty much convinced he had imagined Bull and Ragnar, at this point.
Thorfinn sat the bowl aside, by the bowl that everything else went in when his body rejected it. It was already nearly empty anyway. He moved closer as she scotted up. Still he had said nothing, that quiet way he had proved himself to have since moving in. His head tipped to the side a bit.
"...Fuck." one soft word escaped as he looked over the light colored sigils. Moving his scarred rough fingers up just barely brushing them over the exposed skin. "I have never seen such designs so light... how did they do it? Is this a spell?" He had questions but shifting as he had his body was already sending signs that the fever was building slowly again. He hated being sick. The brown eyes curiously tracing the marks. "It heals you... you have no scars at all do you?" He looked at her a bit confused.
"I will have much explaining to do when I am better."
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Date: 2016-12-19 03:58 am (UTC)She damned Jack for his lack of asking, when she never offered, and she covered it up more than not. She nodded, barely, just a tip back and forth, once, even as she sat back to straight up, pulling her shirt back right. "No tattoos or piercing either." She found herself annoyed as all get out about it for the first few years. Now it just was. "I had all three before." Scars, tattoos, and piercings. "None of them stay now."
It would be pointless to point out she never asked for that part. Not exactly. She asked to survive, and she hadn't cared about the consequences or the required details of the need at the time. A gift. A desperation. A gratitude. For something she couldn't even remember entirely. Just that it was important. It had been so important. She'd done something. Or he had.
Jo can't help but snort a little at the last part though. "You'll be fine. You aren't the reason any of them are where they are."
At least not any more than she was, or anyone else in the bar was. Or the 4/5ths of them were not part of why Thorfinn died.
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Date: 2016-12-28 06:50 pm (UTC)"That sounds like it would be terrible. No way to ever change... always stuck as you are. Do you not age either?" He asked softly. It was odd and yet as bad as he felt he wanted to hear more of it. To try and put more pieces into the puzzle that was Jo Harvelle. Everyday it became more clear, she was not Ylfa. She was so much more, someone he had chosen as his own family. Someone who had lived so much and gave so much. She was the kind of person he wanted to become. For himself, his father and even for Askeladd.
She was a warrior by her own rights.