A/N: I want to thank everyone who has read, favorited, and reviewed the story. Special shout-outs to HappilyBlue, NightfuryFriend, and rachel . opperman . 7 for your thoughtful comments and/or demands for updates. It's nice to be missed when I don't update soon!
Speaking of which, I apologize for the delay in posting this chapter. These past two weeks has been terribly busy for me. Thank you to those who are hanging in there!
Chapter 3: Promises, Promises
Stoick the Vast had never felt more out of shape in his life.
He was by no means a weak man, but his massive frame favored brute strength over graceful speed. And strength was not going to help him keep up with the light elf who practically flew ahead of him, changing direction with otherworldly agility.
"You…" he panted, "must…come this way…a lot, huh?"
"You could say that," she called over her shoulder. "Come on! We haven't much time!"
Gods, why had he agreed to this?
When he had walked Valka home after she took out his stitches, he had been surprised when she stopped at the door of the Jorgenson lodge.
"You're Windburn and Valgard's daughter?" He knew of their son, but now he vaguely remembered them presenting a baby girl to officially be welcomed into the tribe. He'd only been ten at the time, though, far too young to understand just how vital every new life was to sustaining the village, and certainly too young to care about babies or girls.
"Yes," she said, reluctantly, "although they'd never own to it outright."
He couldn't help but laugh a bit at what he thought was a joke, but stopped when he saw the solemn look on her face. "Why not?"
It was her turn to laugh now. "C'mon, Stoick, I'm not exactly what you'd call the perfect child. I told you, they're constantly confining me to my room for some offense or other."
"But you don't always stay there," he said. "You mentioned that. Just what is so important that you can't stay put when your parents tell you to?"
Valka opened her mouth, and he could feel the scathing retort coming, but she stopped just short of it. Her face softened.
"Do you really want to know?"
"I do."
She arched her brow at him. "Are you serious?"
"Yes!" Now the suspense was killing him
A smile bloomed across her face like no smile he'd ever seen before. "Then meet me here tomorrow, right at dawn."
Stoick's brain immediately hummed with thoughts of everything he had to do tomorrow, and he knew that she could tell.
"It won't take too long," she added. "You'll be back in time to grab some breakfast in the Meade Hall. But you have to meet me just as day's breaking."
The sight of her holding her breath in anticipation tugged at his chest.
"I promise," he said solemnly.
"Alright!" she said, obviously unable to contain her delight. "I'll see you out here in the morning. And wear something you don't mind getting dirty." And with that, she retreated into the lodge.
Stoick was left there wondering just what he'd gotten himself into.
Despite his utter confusion, he could barely sleep for anticipation. This young woman was an absolute puzzle to him. He knew no one so brash and irresponsible, yet so caring and gentle. She didn't treat him with any of the distant respect the other villagers paid him as son of the chief, but it didn't upset him. Instead, it made him relax into her easy company. They had only spoken twice, but he thought of her like an old friend.
This thought made him sit bolt upright in his bed. She was most certainly not an old friend; she was a young friend - a very young friend. If his father knew that he was taking her out of the village alone, he'd tan his hide, then give him the lecture of his life. He wouldn't object to Stoick's taking an interest in a woman – on the contrary, he'd be thrilled - but he sure as Hel would object to his son's behavior. There were traditions to follow and boundaries to observe. He'd need to get Valka's approval, and talk to her father; then he would have to court her, and they would need chaperones wherever they went, and then there were all the contract negotiations -
Stoick shook his head to rid it of the thoughts. They had known each other for ten days, and that was surely too soon to know if they were…compatible. He wasn't ready to go to all that trouble yet. Yes, she was intelligent and beautiful and spirited, but this could all be a passing infatuation. The only way to know for sure was to spend more time with her…
And that was it - the justification he needed! He would go with her tomorrow morning. He would be a perfect, upright gentleman. He would not let his eyes wander. He would not touch her. He would not say anything that could be construed as romantic. They would spend time together, and he would decide after thorough deliberation whether this relationship was worth pursuing.
He lay back down, beaming at what a mature, trustworthy, smart adult he was, and tried to get some rest.
He barely slept, so afraid was he of breaking his promise to meet her. He had merely lain for hours with his head turned towards the open window. As soon as the horizon tinged pink he was up, throwing on an old tunic and leggings that had been mended too many times, and sliding his feet into a large, scuffed pair of boots. As subtly as possible, he left his house and crept down the hill into the quiet village.
When he arrived at the house, he was surprised that Valka wasn't already standing outside. He looked around to see if she was hiding, and started when a noise sounded from the roof.
"Psst!"
She was seated on the ledge of a upper window, and before he knew it, she had pushed herself out and slid almost noiselessly down the curved side of the building, landing with a dramatic curtsy and a comically pompous greeting.
"It is an honor to have you accompany me, m'lord." She looked up at him with an impish grin.
Odin, this was going to be more difficult than he thought.
"We need to hurry," she whispered. "Try to keep up!" And with that, she sprang into a run and bolted for the forest.
The run was difficult for Stoick, to say the least. Even more difficult, though, was trying to keep his mind on the path and off of the body in front of him: swinging braids bouncing against a lean back, long legs and muscled – No, that was exactly what he was not supposed to do! He tried to focus instead on the tree roots and fallen logs jutting into the path that, incidentally, seemed to be intent on tripping him up. His guide, however, had no trouble leaping over every obstacle, occasionally jumping for a tree branch and swinging over an obstruction when it suited her.
He soon realized that they were heading uphill - no wonder he was out of breath.
"Just how long," he huffed, "are we going to keep running?"
"It's just ahead!" she called.
He uttered a short prayer of thanks.
When Valka stopped, it was so sudden that Stoick collided with her. He quickly thrust out a hand and grabbed her arm to steady her.
"Whoa!" she exclaimed good-naturedly. "Good catch." She patted his hand that still gripped her bicep firmly, and he withdrew it like he had been burned.
So much for not touching her.
Valka didn't seem to notice his hasty reaction, though. She had turned eastward and was gazing out as though entranced. Stoick took in the rocky outcropping atop which they now stood. It jutted up and above the treeline, affording an unobstructed view of the nascent sunrise. As far as he could see, there was only pink, blue, and violet. The reflection of color in the water blurred sea and sky together so that the seastacks looked like floating mountains high in the clouds.
He allowed himself to get lost in the view for the gods knew how long, only coming back to himself at the sound of her voice.
"Do you like it?" she asked quietly, as if she were afraid to break the peaceful spell.
He turned to her. Her eyes were wide, full of a strange mix of hope and fear. She seemed to simultaneously reach for his answer and steel herself for disappointment. Stoick wondered how often she had sought approval, only to be met with indifference or worse.
"I love it."
Valka gasped, a mix of surprise and joy that she obviously tried to stifle, to no avail. A smile lit up her features, gripping his heart and pulling at it.
"You're the first person I've ever brought up here." She looked out at the bleeding colors again as yellow and orange began to tinge the horizon. "You're the first one to ask me where I go."
"You've shown me where," he said gently, "but can you tell me why?"
Valka sighed and ran her hand over her head and down a braid. This must be common for her when she was trying to explain something, he noted.
"Not to put too fine a point on it," she began, "but I'm pretty much a total screw-up." His impulse was to interrupt her, contradict her, but he restrained himself. He listened the way he did when his father sent him to settle minor disputes: attentively and withholding judgement at first.
"My parents had high hopes for me. You know, they're both great warriors, and my mother's fiercely domestic besides. They obviously expected me to be a skilled fighter, or at least a pleasant homemaker who could fetch a good bride price. And I've turned out to be neither. I'm not going to do them any honor in battle, for sure. They want me out of their hair, but I won't get any offers with my temperament, or so they tell me. I don't want to be some cheery little wife, stitching socks by the fire like it's all she was ever meant to do. I mean, I'll do it, given the right situation, but I need something more than that to make me happy."
"And do you know what it is you need?" Stoick prompted.
"I don't know what it is, but I come out here almost every day, watching and wandering and working, trying to figure it out."
"Well, you have Healing. And you've got a real gift for that."
"Oh, that..." she said, pulling hard on a braid now, looking at the ground like it was the most interesting thing in Midgard. "That was a total accident, my apprenticeship."
"What do you mean?" Stoick asked.
"I...I broke my arm the day before I was set to begin training." Her voice was low, and she looked ashamed. Her cheek was pale. "I was climbing a tree, and I...slipped. I stuck out my right arm to break my fall. It hurt like Hel, and I had to walk half a league back to my house. It wasn't too bad, but it was bad enough that I couldn't hold a weapon for two months. So in the meantime I started learning under Ragna. I had to find a way to make myself useful in a fight." She sighed. "Stupid, really."
This time, Stoick couldn't stop himself from laying a hand on her arm. "Not stupid. It was meant to be. The Norns put you where your talents were needed."
She still didn't look at him. He found himself longing for that honest grin that had graced her lips only a few minutes prior.
"I know I do good there, and I'm good at it," she said her voice beginning to strain, "but it's not where I feel like I belong. I want to help make things better, and if that's where I can do it right now, then I will do it as best I can. But there's this...emptiness I can't fill. And I can't explain - not to my family, not to you - but being out here just makes it better, at least for a little while."
As she took in a shaky breath, Stoick realized that he was no stranger to emptiness. In all his years of preparing to inherit the chiefdom, he had always considered marriage to be just another one of his duties. Of course, it was necessary that he take a bride who could run a good household and bear children. But if he sought a partner on those terms alone, he would have been married years ago to any of the young women on Berk, or even one of the many ladies he had met on voyages and at Things. Still he remained single, though, because it wasn't enough to just fulfill duty, to do his job. The two of them were more alike than he'd thought.
The difference between them, though, was that she was still searching for something that would fill the void, while he believed had found it.
"Valka." She looked up at her name. "You think more than anyone I know."
"Yeah, I know." She shrugged, noncommittally. "More trouble than it's worth."
"No!" he said quickly, and she cocked an eyebrow at him. "I mean, yes, it is a burden to be sure," he admitted, "but it makes you who you are. While everyone else is just blindly doing what they're told, you question everything. You ask why. You challenge me." He took a deep breath, knowing he was about to break his third and final promise to himself that day. "And I don't know if that's what you've been put on this earth to do, but I want you to keep challenging me. Please, Valka."
Her eyes were full of...something. It looked like surprise and terror grappling with gratitude and understanding. He wasn't sure what he'd call it, but he knew she caught his meaning completely. Her lips parted, but no sound escaped. Every nerve in his body was screaming at him to kiss her, but he needed her answer before he made another move.
And just as she inhaled to make her reply, a distant, inhuman cry echoed from the direction of the water and caught their attention. Both their heads snapped immediately toward the noise, and its source was clearly visible.
Dragons.
Two of them stood on a stack rising out of the water half a mile from the shore. Stoick's mind immediately entered battle mode, analyzing their distance from the beasts, their lack of weaponry, their surroundings and possible hiding places. They were safe for the time being, but if they were spotted, the devils could have them cornered in a minute or less.
Then Valka took his hand, and he was lost to everything but her.
"Look, Stoick."
He squinted out into the brightening sky to see what the Nadders were doing. They were absorbed in some kind of...dance. There was a great deal of crooning, flapping, and shifting from one foot to the other going on. One dragon would make a move, like extending a wing or flaring the darts on its tail, and the other would mirror it back. Then the mirroring dragon would make a different motion, which its partner would reciprocate. This went on for a few minutes, until they slowly approached each other and tentatively began to nuzzle snout-to-snout.
"Are they...is that..." Stoick couldn't find the words. The earnest contact between the two made him forget for a moment that the end product of this ritual would be more dragons trying to make off with their food stores.
"I've only seen a few dragons out here before, but...I've never seen that." She looked at him and then down at their hands. He thought for sure that she would pull away, but her delicate fingers only clutched him tighter. She looked up again as the sound of wingbeats signaled the pair's departure, but her gaze returned to him. "Seems so easy."
"Val - "
"Don't ask me to challenge you unless you mean it, Stoick," she said firmly. "Because I will challenge you to within an inch of your life. I've had a lot of practice. You think you want it now, but you'll be retreating before you know it."
He searched her eyes for some hint of humor. He found none.
"I mean it." He removed his hand from hers and extended it to shake. She grasped it firmly. "But," he added, his eyes gleaming, "I want you to promise me that you will be only as exasperating as you are. I know you won't go easy on me, but I need to know that you won't purposefully try to get rid of me by torturing me with petty arguments."
Her lips were fixed in a smirk. "Seems fair. And what will you promise me in return?"
A hundred answers tried to force their way out at once: home, freedom, acceptance, tenderness, protection, love. But all of these were too much, he knew, for a young woman so used to loneliness and solitude. They'd scare her off like a skittish bird and she'd be gone before he could blink.
"Friendship."
The smile made her heart-shaped face stretch in that funny way - strange and lovely.
"Deal." Her small but strong hand shook his with finality.
The sun hit her hair like rose gold and - Oh, gods, he though, the sun!
"I've got to go," Stoick said urgently, the morning light suddenly hitting his senses. He had left no note for his father, and he would surely wonder where he'd gone off too.
"Me too." If he wasn't mistaken, there was a tinge of regret in her tone. "Chores to get to. I can show you the way back."
"That works for me."
She nodded, and they headed back into the woods side-by-side. Before they made their way onto the worn trail, though, Stoick had something more to ask her.
"Val?"
"Hmm?"
"Can we walk this time?"
Thank you all for reading! Please leave a review if you enjoyed it (or if you didn't). I greatly appreciate constructive feedback. I will do my best to get the next chapter up in a week. Until then, best wishes!
