victoryorvalhalla | Closed to Jo: I'm waiting for this ice age to arrive

Closed to Jo: I'm waiting for this ice age to arrive

Ice Age - How to Destroy Angels

It 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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Sylvi went through bouts of seeming to understand, to not seeming to understand. Boundless energy then quiet whining. All the confusion one as young as her would have to the change in moods around the place she called home. To why her human was gone while the things he always carried were still around the room. She could tell, but at least in Jo's arms she seemed calmer and less on edge until she fell asleep.

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.

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."

Thorfinn was confused. He didn't move his arms yet. Just slowly catching up mentally as Jo's device does the translating. Its his turn to wait the second for everything to become clearer. Sylvi usually a ball of energy was just silently sitting on the floor watching. She knew something was happening, and it was best she wait.

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?"

As the first slam of the shock, like a punch, wears back, it's replaced with an anger and kind of fierceness everyone around here knows to stay on their toes and away from. Even the wizard and the archangel. It throbs almost violently through all of her as Jo pulls back suddenly and her hands find his shoulders, maybe just as hard as her chin had been and it's a miracle she doesn't hit upside of the head, and only shakes his shoulders. Hard.

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."

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.

Edited 2016-11-30 14:05 (UTC)

She lays the truth of Merlin's slander on him, the likes of which she never had, or ever can take back, and he makes it through one word, before a horror the multiverse had somehow graced her from ever experiences suddenly exploded onto her. Literally. Vomit coating her shirt, and her legs.

"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.

Edited 2016-12-02 04:23 (UTC)

AS soon as Jo pulled back he slumped back, thankfully not into the mess his body had rejected. He heard her words again. And one of those rare words, he says to her but few others...at least not with meaning.

"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."

The scent -- almost taste -- of bile is strong in her throat, up her nose, but the urge to vomit because of it is a reaction long lost in that palce. Where she was covered in blood and any number of things exploded from a body as par for the course in her weeks changed and racing forward under the red-black sky. It still doesn't change the race of shock, the newest reason for the flare of anger, or how both are better, easier, than a minute.

"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.

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.

She knows she's dripping onto he carpet crossing the hallway, through her shirt and off it, and everything on her splattered. It's fast movements, because she needs to get back, but she needs to get out of this shirt. It's hard to pull something like that off and manage to not get it anywhere else. It's revolting and she's sure it slimes her neck and a portion of her hair, before she's balling it up and dropped it in a trashcan.

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."

He was laying there on his back, watching the ceiling. Sometimes he wished he could see the stars instead of the white ceiling. Plaster or whatever he had been told it was. His mind was not connecting it. Before Jo returned his thoughts had shuffled wondering what he had missed. No thoughts of his missing device, his missing friends or the odd silence so clearly early in the night.

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.

Jo didn't look at him, and didn't really get through even half of the half-an-eye roll at the explanation.

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."

He stayed quiet a moment watching her. He never cared to really clean beyond the basics he does to the room itself, watching her scrub at the floor with the towels he felt bad, more than just physical but just bad all together.

"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.

She can't help listening. There's rage, but it's banked, and it's false. She knows that, too. Like a mask she can cloak herself in, it covers everything beneath it. A gaping crack that she cannot see to the bottom and does not want to. It will only serve to do worse to the future. Like all of this. And, still, she can't help listening. About his mother, and his sister, the past he rarely talked of, for whatever reason he felt compelled to tell her now.

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."

It took him a few moments, the feeling was worse than having bones broken if he had to decide which was worse. The burn, the smell, the everything of it all. Once he stopped and the shuttering calmed he shifted so he could move the bowl to the bedside table. His hair and the cover still hiding his face away.

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.

Fresh and acidic, it pulls at her guts, absently, like a hand fondling a cord, but nothing comes. Like a bucket on a dry wellspring. Jo stood watching him, as he set the bowl on on to the bed table, wondering less about his words and more about emptying it, or just waiting, coming back and emptying it in a little while, in case he still wasn't anywhere truly near done.

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."

He peered at her still from under the blanket. He didn't dare nod with the way his head was pounding. Listening to her, while once more trying to will his body to behave. He had a feeling he was a long way from done, which is why he had sat the bowl where he had.

"...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."

Those first two words shouldn't contract in her chest, but they do, and for a second she's there, again. The wrong side of the room. The middle of a fight still. Doing the thing she swore she wouldn't. Using Gabriel for everything he'd offered to the bar -- to her, her so much more than it, as Merlin's voice reminded her over and over, she'd slipped too far inside of him, his interest of, control over -- staring at that fallen body.

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."

He listened from under the blanket even as bad as he felt he still knew pretty much exactly where she was in the room. The sound of the door opening and her words hitting him. The cover over his head just so she wouldn't see the tears brimming his eyes. The pain was horrid and he was to proud. He was schooled well in holding his voice level. Betraying nothing when it came to himself. Pain he could usually walk through with no problem. BUt this sickness and pain was hell.

"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.

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Closed to Jo: I'm waiting for this ice age to arrive

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