Dedicated to Nico, who can safely associate herself with this fic without crying foul shame or dishonour on my family. Although I still expect a 'You disgust me, you weirdo!' It's only proper. u_u
He awoke like a volcano, sweat pouring down his face.
Pupils fully dilated in the darkness, trying to discern a source of light. Shadows rose from the fire and pooled across the floor, lapping against the walls until it seemed as though the entire room was taking on motion.
Vertigo seized him and he felt himself suddenly sinking downwards into a bottomless black ocean, his eyes falling upon the dark outlines of bodies; bodies lying everywhere, some moving but most deathly still. Groans of pain echoed throughout the great hall, the morbid chorus of the terrible plague still ravaging Kattegat. The great calamity of their age.
God's wrath.
Memories thought to have been lost slowly peeled back from his subconscious, one by one. They were sluggish and hazy but still there, hiding behind his eyes, just beneath the surface. Memories of childhood. Memories of his mother.
It was strange how memories always seemed to come to him in dreams. Things that his waking mind would never consider always had a way of dredging themselves up as he slept. His sickness had become much like being locked in a slumber he couldn't awaken from, allowing him to feel more conscious of his past than he had ever been while awake.
Most of all, he remembered his mother. He remembered her dark golden-brown hair and her quiet voice and soft smiles, but the rest was all myth. Objectively, he knew how she had died; the priest had told him. A sudden illness had taken hold of her and overnight her heart and lungs had simply given out from the strain. But not before she had given him away to the church, placed him on the steps of the monastery where he would eventually grow up. She had simply left him there—a young boy no more than three or four—all alone in the world with only God as his companion.
Yet somehow the truth of his meagre beginnings had never been enough for Athelstan, never been quite real enough. For a long time the truth had fought feebly against the shadowy myths and suspicions he had conjured over the years to convince himself that he wasn't abandoned, wasn't a forgotten child with a dead mother and absentee father. It wasn't exactly the stuff of legends.
But soon practicality had won out over the fantasy. God had become his father and mother, because the bits and pieces of his own past would always be shrouded in a measure of uncertainty. He had become God's child.
Still, in his dreams he was left to wonder, to question. How had his mother's death affected him? Had he howled or cried? Had he broken down into tears? Or was that the day his mouth set in a grim smile and decided that bereft of anything better to do that he would look at the bright side of death? That his mother was in heaven now and no longer suffering?
A soft sigh escaped next to his ear and he painfully turned his head to see Gyda asleep at his side. Her small hand was resting atop the dampened cloth that covered his forehead, still wet and warm to the touch. Her senses, honed much like a wild animal's, had long ago stopped regarding him as a threat to her own health as she selflessly tended to his needs. Her need to be near him and take care of him while he was most probably dying suggested an almost familial obligation, yet she owed him nothing.
He, on the other hand, owed her everything.
Sweet, shy Gyda, always offering him her soft smiles and quiet looks. Demure yet brave, she was filled with endless compassion and fortitude that he could only aspire to achieve. This little slip of a girl had become such a comfort to him, a blessing from the day he had first arrived on the shores of this foreign land to the moment he had fallen ill. A little angel of light sent from heaven or Valhalla to ease his pain.
With a Herculean effort, he feebly reached across to pull the blanket over top her small, shivering frame. He moved carefully, trying not to wake her, though his body protested the effort, still infirmed and useless. Eventually satisfied that he had covered her as best he could, he fell back onto his blanket, exhausted, brushing a hand across his face. His hair had stuck to his scalp in a way he didn't recall and didn't like. His entire body seemed to be covered in a thin film of sweat, the stench of sickness radiating from his pores.
He was dying.
He couldn't help but wonder if his death, too, would be trivialised and compartmentalised, brushed off and explained away as him escaping his pain and going to a better place. Was there a world after this one? A better one? A heaven or a hell or a Valhalla? Or was this truly the end? Was this all there was to be had?
He took in a deep breath and sighed. It was foolishness to drown himself in this mire. Not here and now with little Gyda lying next to him, selflessly caring for him even in her sleep. Bright Gyda with her golden hair and her soft smiles, so much like his mother yet meaning so much more to him.
Unlike his mother, Gyda had not abandoned him so he couldn't abandon her. There was an ugly black darkness in this new world he had been dragged into, but there was beauty here also, and blinds in the darkness, allowing little rays of light to escape through. There was heat here and breath, too, but they came from the little girl lying next to him. And he owed it to her not to go back into the black—to tumble into the void of which he could not return.
So Athelstan would leave the memories of his old life behind. His recollections would have to end here, for the lucidity his dreams brought him had already expired and only the gentle warmness of Gyda remained. She was his reason for returning to this world of harsh truths and even harsher men; men without a compassionate god.
Gyda was his compassion now, his light, his beacon in the dark, and he would survive this sickness for her. Because all hope was lost to the man who abandoned his light in the dark.
: : :
He awoke sharply the next morning, his mind alert and his body sore but cooling. His fever had broken in the night.
He was alive.
He turned his head, intent upon surprising the slumbering Gyda lying next to him, when he stopped. Her body lay unnaturally still, her eyes closed and her mouth opened in a faint O of shock. Her golden hair feathered across her damp face in wisps. Her fair skin even fairer, deathly pale.
Deathly pale.
She looked so young.
"Gyda?"
He immediately scrambled to his knees and knelt beside her, taking her hand in his. It was cold and clammy. He put his ear against her chest and listened for a heartbeat. There was barely any warmth left in her, no rise and fall of her chest. Nothing. She wasn't breathing.
"This can't be happening," he whispered, lifting her chin as he put two fingers to the pulse of her neck. There wasn't one—no pulse, no life.
Panic seized him all at once, first ice settling in his gut before the acid of fear swam through his veins as if being pumped by a hummingbird's wings hell-bent on destroying what was left of his fragile heart. His Gyda, his nurse, his saviour, his angel of light . . . dead?
Gathering his wits, Athelstan drew in a deep breath and placed his hands over Gyda's flat chest. He had once seen a Benedictine monk bring a man back to life by pushing on his chest and striking his heart. He could do this, he told himself. He just needed to restart her failing heart; no problem.
His hands trembled as he prayed to his god, the god he had tried to abandon but couldn't, the god who had so cruelly abandoned him. But he wouldn't allow his god to abandon Gyda, not when she needed him. So when he pressed down on her thin chest, he was sure he'd break her, but her body just bounced back up into his hands and stilled. He pressed down again, harder this time, quickening the successions.
He tried to remember what else the monk had shown him about healing a stopped heart, but his mind had gone blank. Lagertha had come out of nowhere, clutching her daughter's head in her hands and cradling her in her lap, but he could barely see her. All he could focus on was Gyda's pale, lifeless face staring up at him. The face of a sweet child, a child who deserved a longer life than this one.
"Breathe, Gyda!" He brought his fist down as tears stung his eyes. "Breathe!"
With the second strike Gyda's chest had risen on her own and a pulse jumped beneath his hands, beating erratically at first and then rhythmically. Her small body fell back onto her mother's lap and her throat wobbled as she began to cough hoarsely. Blue eyes widened in surprise and she managed another broken cough before shakily pressing a tiny hand to her throat.
"Priest?" she croaked weakly. "Priest, you're alive?"
He released a breath he hadn't known he had been holding and laughed, leaning down to touch his forehead against hers. "You're the one who's alive, my little angel of light."
When he pulled back, her small face had flushed a bright pink despite her pallidness, and she peeked out at him through long lashes.
"Angel?" she asked.
He would have to explain that to her later, but her gaze had already drifted from him to her mother.
"I died?"
Lagertha nodded, happy tears streaming down her cheeks, and she cradled her daughter closer. "Yes, but the gods weren't ready to receive you yet."
Gyda coughed hoarsely, struggling to even out her breathing, but smiled as she allowed herself to be engulfed by her mother's embrace. Still weak, she managed to seek out Athelstan's hand, her own tiny one weaving into his open palm and squeezing.
"I'm glad you're alive, Priest," she said sleepily.
Athelstan smiled. His little Gyda—always so caring, always putting others' needs before her own. He placed his other hand over top of hers and nodded.
"I'm glad too, because now I can take care of you."
He didn't know what god had guided his hands and allowed Gyda to live, but now he had a purpose in life and a little soul to look after. It was his turn to take care of her.
A/N: I might continue this. I might not. For now it remains a one-shot. If I do continue, it will obviously be AU and the rating with be much higher. In order to avoid condemnation, any romance between these two will take place when Gyda is older. I know I'm not the only one who wanted Gyda to grow up and become Athelstan's betrothed . . . or run away with him if Ragnar married her off to some rich jarl. ;)