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

[victoryorvalhalla]

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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[victoryorvalhalla]

Those dark eyes stayed on her too in their tired delirium. She matched up pretty close, the only difference was eye color and in his unwell state he didn't even notice it. He didn't care that she was cold, he moved an arm out and around her scooting closer, resting his head against her shoulder, luckily any sickness covered strands were not close to her. He closed his eyes.

"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.

[tobeclosetohim]

He can't focus, and maybe that makes it better. That it isn't her he's seeing, her that he's talking to, apologizing to.

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.

[victoryorvalhalla]

He had already let sleep drag him down far, his stubborn body fighting the illness, zapping all of his strength in the process. Uncovering things he buried deep inside of himself of himself. The child who had been so happy at a time, a time before the runaway slave showed up at their home. Before that man with the square face came with a pack of warriors speaking war to his father. Secrets uncovered, lies known. A child to young to understand all the love and sacrifice done to bring him into a better world. Losses that broke him deep inside in a way he couldn't even explain.

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.

[tobeclosetohim]

If she's a coward to find this easier, in the wake the of the harder, she'll take that today. So few things ever are or were when they came knocking to deck down her doors. He sleeps with the heaviness of a child, curled into her, arm sprawled over her, in a manner no one has in the better part of a year. All the jokes about her headboard aside, she knows what she misses most from The Apocalypse in this same manner has nothing to do with sex, and that the sex doesn't touch it at all. These things she's broken herself most of. All over again.

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.