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.

Comments

[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.