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]

Jo had actually been expecting Merlin when she opened the door, given how audibly she could hear voices. Or what she'd thought was voices, given she opened the door to Thorfinn's room -- after pondering interrupting or not interrupting, and how she was fine, he was alive, she didn't have to keep coming back, and he was busy besides already -- to an empty room, with him turned to the wall.

"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.

[victoryorvalhalla]

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?"

[tobeclosetohim]

His expression was familiar by now. That glassy-eyed uncertainty that might have meant he was hardly conscious from sickened sleep, or might have meant he was questioning whether she was real, again. She was hoping it would pass, but it hadn't improved in the slightest yet, which did concern her some. "Yeah. 'Course."

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?"

[victoryorvalhalla]

It was close to the look he gave when the nightmares had taken him, when he comes up swinging and that split second before reality dawns. His eyes trained on her When she spoke back he offered a weak smile. "Yes... its to hot. I'm hungry to. I'm sorry." Its the most he's ever apologized since he reappeared in his bed but he's not used to asking people for things, for being a burden, but the first time he tried to walk across the room he ended up face first on the floor.

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.

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's not gone that long, before returning with the glass refilled with ice water and a bowl of soup. It had taken her longer earlier, but Amy, who was a mom of the utmost, and someone needed to be today, while Jo balanced this and the downstairs disaster area, had left a pot simmering with soup all day, so it could be ready at any needed notice.

"You still awake under there?" She asked, as she was depositing one and then the other on his bed table.

[victoryorvalhalla]

Each time she had brought him soup he had gobbled it up greddily to, like nothing was enough to keep the hunger away, even if his body would reject it not long after. He was constantly hungry and thirsty.

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.

[tobeclosetohim]

She set everything down, considering his flushed and sweating face, even if he looked marginally better than the first hours. It was a sour and sick thing to say or even think the joke, he looked like death. Common words enough and common taunt, and Jo was nothing if not made of her own sass, but instead of turning it on him, she turns it on herself.

"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.

[victoryorvalhalla]

His busted nose had oddly been healed when he came back. He lacked bruises from the fight as well. Like the world knew he would be suffering so they gave him a small favor. Those tired brown eyes looked her over... as if finally noticing it. "...How?" He asked quietly. "The gods must have blessed you." He spoke quietly, sitting back against the headboard, holding the soup bowl now between both hands for the warmth. He was half cold as ice, half burning up. The way sickness seemed to do.

"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.

[tobeclosetohim]

If he notices now, most of a day later, he's not the first person to notice or the first person to ask. Comment on it. Jo shook her head, taking a spot on the side of his bed, about a third of the way from the end, at his first words. She hasn't said much to most all day. It's normal. She blows it off. She's busy. The Bar. Thorfinn.

"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."

[victoryorvalhalla]

He arched a brow as he worked on the soup. Clearly his attention mostly on her. He didn't care if he spilled a little soup, which he didn't. That would have sucked on his bare chest but he was much better at multitasking than he would ever admit. He always downplayed everything about himself aside from the deadliness he speaks of. His intellgence, his feelings and his instincts, he plays them all down wanting people to underestimate him.

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."

[tobeclosetohim]

It's a single word, and a slight touch, and it shouldn't hit so deeply, but it does. While Jo stares in the middle of them at nothing and tries not to go to perfect, rock still, on one hand, or to shiver on the other. It's nothing something she's put on a platter. Not for any of the men or women she's pulled into her bed, since she rolled out of hell.

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.

[victoryorvalhalla]

Thorfinn started to feel dizzy again, shifting to lay back again as Sylvi pushed her way against his chest, her head laid on his ribs looking to Jo like he was. The pair both listening to her, though he was the one understanding. As scarred as he was he couldn't imagine life with perfect skin. His life was etched into his skin.

"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.