WARNING: This is a (somewhat) slowburn Bjorn x OC fanfiction. All chapters including graphic sex are marked with MA. Otherwise rated M for violence and some language. Please give it and my OC time to develop and reveal her growing character (the first few chapters of a fic are never my best tbh). Yes, I will focus mostly on Sassa's main view but this story will also contain a fair amount of Bjorn and other's perspectives. This isn't just a romance story so there will be some scenes that aren't exactly Bjorn or Sassa centric but are very important to the overall plot. And I'm very sorry for the first two chapters they aren't very interesting but they're very much needed. Bear with me, loves. Enjoy!

I take a boat all year long
And there's monsters that are chasing me all day long
But I ain't afraid of where the wild things are
I go to where the wild things are

Patrick Watson : Where the Wild Things Are

Glory & Gore

Rites of Passage

Prologue

"Where are we going?" Bjorn, a boy of twelve years, followed his father through the thick forest, in a direction he was sure was not their home.

"We have someone special to visit." His father had told him when he asked for the fifth time. The day Prior, they had gone to village of Kattegat, the center of their people's clan where a Thing had been gathered. There Bjorn had become a man with his sworn oath to Earl Haraldson, their chieftain, and received a an arm ring as a symbol of that oath. But on the return to their smaller farmlands outside the village, Ragnar had changed their course and led them deep into the forest. "His name is Floki." He informed as they trekked down a steep hill.

"Floki? Like Loki the god?"

"Yes, only different."

Bjorn tried not to slip on the slick moss-covered rocks as he asked, "How is he different?"

"He's not a god." Bjorn could hear the smirk in his father's voice. Stumbling the last few steps, he steadied himself on the flatter forest ground. Ragnar tapped his son with his walking stick, directing him to follow the path of the old riverbed they had entered.

"Why didn't he come to the thing?" Bjorn had assumed all of the Earl's men were eager to attend the meeting. But Floki was not most men. In fact, he cared little for the earl, and even less for the politics and inhabitants of Kattegat.

"Because..." Ragnar looked up to the trees above and found a flash of light brown cloth moving behind the branches. "Because he's shy." He limply replied.

At Ragnar's pause, Bjorn became distracted by his father and thus did not see the leaves shake and fall in warning. Suddenly a girl fell from a tree branch at the top of the hill before them. Sliding down the hill with surprising grace, she stopped to seemingly catch her breath. Her green eyes wide with fear, she looked around the woods frantically. Bjorn stepped back towards his father as the girl stepped closer. "Run!" She ordered "It will catch you!"

Seeing a larger figure crouch down at the top of the hill in wait, Ragnar remained silent as he observed his son. Bjorn's back straightened, possibly in an attempt to look more menacing, or perhaps just to lean away from the wild girl. "What?" There was a bit of worry to his voice as his brows furrowed.

"I can not speak its name." She whispered to them. "It is forbidden." She put on great theatrics. "Not even the gods dare speak it in fear of Odin's wrath. He hates the creature so much, that once it catches you, no matter how hard you fight, or how you die, you can never, ever, go to Valhalla!"

Bjorn swallowed his fear and looked to his father. In good spirits Ragnar straightened as if alarmed, his eyes widened to match the girl's.

"It's coming. It's coming!" She grabbed at his shirt and gently shook him before pushing away from him and quickly ascended the closest tree.

Bjorn looked upwards towards the girl when he should have been looking towards his left. Their plan had worked, and distracted, Bjorn did not notice the figure growing closer until it leapt from the woods and yodelled threateningly. Bjorn nearly fell in how quickly he stepped back. Behind him, his father smiled as the girl and man in the wooden mask began to give hearty laughs.

To his credit, Bjorn recovered quickly and though on guard, stepped up once more. His wide eyes were the only sign he was uncomfortable. The man took off his unsettling moss covered mask. And Bjorn, who was scared of very little, found himself unnerved by the dark streaks of coal he kept around his eyes and down his cheeks.

"Floki." Ragnar greeted. "Involving your sweet daughter in your foolery now?"

Floki's face flashed a cruel smile. "Don't be fooled by her pretty face, Ragnar. She is as sweet as a spoiled eel." He looked upwards toward his daughter with a fond glare. The girl glared back with a slightly more serious expression. It was not her that had concocted their prank...

"Hello, Sassa." Ragnar nodded courteously towards the girl. A kind smile was on his face, knowing that it was her father that made her partake in the trick. He had met the girl a handful of times. A good dutiful daughter, she was much more serious than her trickster father, often helping him in his work, reminding him to eat, hunting the forest for their meals.

At fifteen years she was still a flat young thing with little breasts and no hips for child bearing. Her face was a beautiful one, but with no signs of being able to have strong sons she was left void of marriage proposals. That was fine with her and her father. She was quick, in speed and wit, and though she may not have the strength of a shieldmaiden, Sassa held value above just baring children. Ragnar saw something rare in her. Lithe, fearless, and with steady aim, there was never a child, woman, or man, as fast and true with a bow than her. Ragnar saw great potential in her. But he was not her father, nor her husband, and thus he had little say in the girls upbringing. He could only hope that once she came of age to be her own free woman she would seek out a shieldmaiden such as his wife to train her. Until then, he could only pity the pretty girl, half blessed and half cursed by the gods.

"Hello, Ragnar." Though her face appeared passive, a mischievous smirk briefly graced her face as she caught the eyes of the boy glaring up at her from below.

"This is my son, Bjorn." Ragnar introduced him. Bjorn was a short boy a few years younger than herself. From where she stood she saw little of Ragnar in him. His hair was of a much lighter shade of blonde than his fathers, shaved close to the scalp past the crown of his head in the traditional way of young boys. Like his hair, his skin was also much lighter than his fathers, with no visible sign of scars from battle. And while he was not an ugly boy he did not seem to benefit from his father's charming looks. Sassa wondered what his mother looked like as she further glanced him over. His partially squat build had the possibility to grow tall and broad like his father, but it appear it would happen no time in the near future as the boy still retained childish features. Despite his harsh gaze, he held the round and thick face of a child. The roundness of such face seemed to only enhance the similarly round ears that protruded from either side of his head.

"He has funny ears." Sassa spoke up from above.

It was that moment Bjorn had firmly decided he did not enjoy the presence of the girl.

His father had sometimes made fun of his ears, in fact it was not more than two days ago that he had called him a handsome boy (sans his ears) in jest. But the girl above was not rewarded with the same smile he gave his father. Son of Ragnar glared the most intimidating glare he could at her. It did not affect her. So childishly, and without manners, Bjorn tried to even the score.

"You have funny eyes." He clumsily shot back. When she stared at him wide eyes, plotting her trick, he had noticed that one of her eyes was marred with a large brown spot. As if mud had been thrown in them. Sassa nearly sighed at the pathetic comeback as the fathers turned away to hide their amusement at the bickering children. Floki stared up at his daughter waiting, while Ragnar hid his grin in the crook of his arm.

"True..." Sassa seemed thoughtful. And for a moment Bjorn thought she was going to apologize. Instead a wide grin stretched her face. "But not as funny as your ears." Said ears, turned a bright pink at their rounded tops. She laughed at his expense. Ragnar smiled fondly up at her before putting his hand on his son's shoulder. Bjorn's glare burned brightly until he felt his father's hand gently clap him.

Sassa's father watched his daughter carefully, a glimmer of pride in his eyes before turning his attention back to the boy. "Hello. How are you?" Floki took a much kinder approach.

"Well. Thank you, sir." Though he did not much care for his daughter, Bjorn remained polite to the boat builder as his father and mother had taught him.

"Let me see." Floki called for the boy's attention as he shuffled closer. His coal blackened hand grabbed Bjorn's face, tilting his head to catch the light. Floki studied him for a moment his head tilting in thought. "You have your father's eyes...unfortunately." He seemed sympathetic. Bjorn's face tensed into a firm expression, his eyes slightly narrowing as he believed the man to be mocking him as his daughter had.

"Why unfortunately?" His father asked curiously.

The boat builder's lips curled in the lightest of teasing smiles. "It means he will be like you, and therefore he will want to do better than you, and you will hate him for it."

Ragnar waited a moment before raising his stick as if to hit him in jest. Floki backed away with a childlike giggle.

Having just recently seen his father request answers from the Seer, Bjorn was in slight disbelief that this man could see their fate, too. "How can you tell that by just looking at my face?"

"It's the same with trees. I can tell which trees will make the best planks just by looking at them. I can look inside the tree."

"Floki is a boat-builder." Ragnar simply explained to the still confused boy. He spared a withering look towards the other man, as for as long as he had known Floki he had always been an eccentric. "Among other things." Like a trickster. And a warrior. And a fool...

Floki's body seemed to relax, limply he stood, his back arched slightly, to stare up at the trees that surrounded him. Bjorn watched with bated breath as his body seemed to tense before he walked over to the tree across from the one his daughter was perched on.

"This is one. Inside this tree are two almost perfect planks. They will bend, then curve, like a woman's body from the thighs to the back." Floki caressed the wood, almost apologetically before he took out his axe and chopped low into its trunk. The merciless chops enough to do much damage, but just enough to mark it for when he came searching for it again. "When I split this tree I will find them."

"You can see that?" Bjorn's voice was disbelieving.

Sassa sighed through her nose and silently moved on. Bjorn was once more cornered under the boat builder's wild gaze. "Do you think I'm joking?" Floki stepped close to Bjorn, his voice a low and calm whisper that belied a possible wrath. Bjorn did not know how to answer, so he did not. Instead he held the mask Floki had worn close to his chest, his fingers digging into the mossy wood tightly. "I joke about many things, Son of Ragnar, but never about ship-building. Do you imagine ships are just dead things?" His face twisted up in disgust at the boy.

Bjorn wanted to look to his father for guidance but felt he was being tested. Slowly he shook his head no. Floki's face twisted up into one of slight amusement. It appeared he had passed.

"So…" Ragnar caught Floki's attention. It was time to get down to business. "What about our boat?"

"Yes. Yes. Come on." Floki hopped over a large fallen log and left into the thick trees. Ragnar looked to the tree above where Sassa had been only to find her gone. An amused smile touched his lips. Her father was right. She was a silent little mouse...

As Floki lead them to their remote home on the forest edge, Bjorn studied Sassa much in the way she had studied him. She was a very pretty girl, with skin lightly tanned from all her time outside that seemed to make her green eyes more pronounced. Green. Not blue. Bjorn hadn't seen green eyes often, and if he wasn't so angry at her he might have asked her if her mother had them too. Her brown hair caught the sun, revealing streaks and thin lines of gold between the small braids that kept her long hair from her face. When the trees began to thin and she could no longer jump from one to another she had finally joined them on the ground with a longbow not much smaller than herself and a sack wrapped over her shoulder, revealing that she was indeed slightly taller and probably older than him. His eyes briefly glanced over her body in a purely curious factual assessment. Her limbs were long and slender with light muscles in her arms but little roundness in her hips or breasts. Bjorn let himself fall behind to join his father, and quietly asked why, if older, she did not look like other women.

Ragnar informed him that she was indeed three years older than he, but that the gods had yet to bless her. That is all he needed to know, as it was not his business. But Bjorn wanted to know more. So he asked why she was not yet married if she was of age. Perplexed, Bjorn offered the only solution he could think of. "Do they think she is ugly?"

Ragnar looked at the girl that walked some hidden path with her father before them. "Do you think she is ugly?"

Bjorn's ears turned a bright pink. "No." His father graced him with a smile. Sassa was indeed a beautiful girl, taking mostly after her mother, thank the gods.

"Not yet grown enough a woman to bear a child. Not yet strong enough a warrior to fight a battle." Ragnar seemed sympathetic to the girl as he watched her father try to push her into a bush before she took off running ahead. She seemed to be happy here. But Ragnar saw sadness in her when they would cross paths in the village. Like him, and her father, she was destined for more things than tending to a house and father in the woods. He saw his own daughter in her. And some days he feared what would happen if her father was to die before she had found a husband or a purpose. "She is...stuck." Ragnar summarized. Bjorn looked saddened, having picked up on the somberness of Ragnar's new somber tone.

But Ragnar did not like his children to worry. Worry and sadness were not meant to mar a child's face. Quickly he corrected himself. "Why? Are you thinking of finding a wife already?" He teased. It had been just yesterday he had become a man under the Earl's order. The shining bracelet on his arm proved that.

"No." Bjorn's ears went ever redder. Ragnar was suspecting Sassa may have found the boy's weakness. Clapping him on the back, he pushed him ahead, into the small clearing that held in it, Floki and Sassa's home. Sassa deposited her bow and arrows and emptied the sack she carried to reveal various berries and a rabbit. Grabbing the rabbit she followed her father to his workshop by their dock. She paid no mind to either of the Lothbroks as her father chattered on. Her sole focus was sharpening a knife to begin skinning the rabbit and save the hide. Besides her, Bjorn explored the tools and tables of a carpenter.

Their fathers paid them no mind.

"It will be lighter and carry a bigger sail." Floki enthusiastically told Ragnar as the smaller man stroked the finely smoothed wood of the frame."The construction is different." He reassured at Ragnar's curious eyes. "It's built with a strong central plank. The two stakes above it are nailed directly onto the knees of the frame. But the ones below - look!" Floki pointed to the planks. "-are cleated and latched onto the frames, so they can move in relation to each other. This means the boat won't butt against the waves like a goat," he hit his hand with a closed fist. "-but move over them like a ripple." His hand evenly glided through the air steadily.

"The hull is deeper." Ragnar noted with some trepidation. "How will my men set their oars?"

"I will cut them into the sheerstrakes, and the ports can be closed when the boat is at sea."

Sassa glanced up at her father fondly as she ripped the rabbit of its pelt. He had worked tirelessly on the design and base construction of this boat. And she felt as if seeing Ragnar's pleased smiles were everything he could ask for. A hand came close into view, and her attention was redirected to the boy beside her that touched her father's small statue. If there was one thing her father took more seriously than boat building it was the gods themselves. She struck his hand without mercy. Bjorn pulled it back and glared at her chastising glower. "Do not touch things you don't know, stupid boy." Her father believed himself to be very close to the gods. He took his tributes seriosuly and Sassa would not have the boy fiddling with them like a toy. Bjorn was only curious as to the small statue. Made of clay it held small bones in it's eyes and mouths and seemed to be coated by a thick layer of dried blood. Like Floki's coal covered eyes and mask, he could not place why, but he was unnerved by it. He walked away from her then, keeping his narrowed stare as he went to his father.

"And you think it could handle long sea voyages?"

"That's why I'm building it." Floki gleefully chuckled.

But not all men could be as joyous as the boat builder. Ragnar crouched on top of the table in which the base rested and looked into his eyes with all seriousness. ""But will it be strong enough?"

Floki sobered as well. "We won't know that until we try."

Ragnar sighed and sat in the boat as he would if it were finished. Hands holding onto the finished plants, he looked out into the ocean. He could feel the waves showering them, the wind of the sea, and in his imagination, a vision of land appearing with untold treasures and new explorations.

They were so close.

A vigor of new excitement coursed through him. "When will it be ready?"

Now it was Floki's turn to dampen spirits. "Uh, as to that..." He looked sorrowfully at the ground.

"What?" Ragnar slapped his back, eager to listen.

"We're out of money." Floki looked up at him with a cringe. Ragnar was not amused, not that he should be, and looked over Floki in question to explain. Both Floki and he had but a grand amount into the building of this ship, Ragnar more than the carpenter. To hear it was all gone, so close to winter, and yet unable to complete the one vessel they needed to replenish their supplies... it filled him with annoyance and bitter rage. Floki saw the look of cold disbelief, a challenge to change his answer, on Ragnar's face. He explained, "We have to pay for the sail and the anchor... you know what those blacksmiths are like." Floki spit to the side. "Greedy bastards."

Ragnar looked into the wide expanse of the cove once more. With a heavy heart he reached into his wool over shirt and pulled out a small pouch. "For the anchor. It's all I have left from last summer's raids." It was all he had left to give. If it was not enough... he dared not to think what would happen to him and his family come winter.

"Don't worry. We'll soon be as rich as dwarves! Hehehe" Floki giggled.

"Come, Bjorn." Ragnar called for his son. The warrior patted Sassa's head fondly as he passed.

The girl and Bjorn shared one final look of contempt as they parted ways.

Please Review :) Im sorry for the questionable quality o this chapter. Who doesn't love a good old fashion "love starts with: who the fuck is this?" kinda otp? ALSO WHO IS READY FOR THE NEW SEASON THIS WEEK?! XD