I forgot to post this here the other day… oops…
So, this has been in my wip folder since September and while I'm not totally satisfied with it, I want to post it anyways.
This fic does contain mild period-typical racism, just FYI. It's minor, but it's there.
This was such a pain in the butt to write. Not much is actually known about the settlement of Vinland and much of what we do know comes from two Sagas written much later. I've taken some historical liberties as such, but have tried to keep it as accurate as possible.
I introduce a new character who we might see later on, Atqitalik. Figuring out which Nation she is was a bit difficult. While we know the vikings encountered Indigenous peoples on the island, whether those people were the Dorset, the Thule, or the Beothuk is widely disputed. However, two of those cultures are now extinct, and the Thule evolved into the modern Inuit, so that is who I wrote Atqitalik as. Both her name and any words she speaks (that aren't written in English) are Inuktitut, as we don't know what language the Thule spoke, but since their direct descendants are the Inuit, it was likely a version of the dialect seen today.
I'm actually quite worried to post this fic, as it does include Indigenous characters as quite major characters seen from the pov of a European. I'm a Canadian of settler descent and while I do feel a bit more confident with two Indigenous studies courses under my belt, I would appreciate any CONSTRUCTIVE criticism if I made a faux-pas (keeping in mind that this fic is seen through the eyes of a Viking child) so please, be courteous, and if I offended you, I genuinely didn't mean to and I apologize in advance.
This fic is part of the larger I Have Loved the Stars too Fondly to be Fearful of the Night universe (seriously, who keeps letting me choose these titles?) and takes place before the first chapter (sort of) so while you don't necessarily have to read it to understand this fic, I highly recommend you check it out!
Emil Steinsson had sailor's blood in his veins.
He had it, his brothers had it. It was something they had gotten from their father, from growing up with the salty air blowing in off the frozen sea. The open expanse of the ocean called to him, sung hypnotic melodies that urged him deeper into the depths. It wasn't like the nykur of the bubbling brooks deep in the forests, didn't entice him to drown and forget the role he'd been born into. Rather, it was a rhythmic pulsing, echoing the one in his chest, calling to him, begging him to sail into the horizon.
Perhaps it was something all Nations felt; perhaps it wasn't.
He'd followed that call many times, had felt the spray of the open ocean crash against his face too often to count.
And he loved it.
From his very first voyage, he'd fallen in love with the ocean.
It had been so long ago, so many years since that it hurt to think about the passage of time, to think about what was and the things that could have been. He'd been just a child then, barely into his second century as a Nation and hardly older than a six-year-old human. Just a boy and yet ready to sail into the unknown with his father and their men, to make his mark on the world just as his older brothers were already doing across the sea, near the mainland.
It hadn't been quite three weeks when they made landfall.
They'd been tossed about in a storm that had raged for a week before finally, mercifully quieting overnight. Emil was soaked, his heavy fur vest and woollen trousers keeping the damp and chill against his skin, and the cold wind coming from the north didn't help either. He'd climbed to the top of the riggings, against his father's better wishes, hoping that the sun burning high in the sky would dry his clothes before the wind froze them solid, had hoped that Njǫror wouldn't see fit to take him too soon, to toss him off the riggings and drag him into the salty depths.
{His brothers said dying hurt. He didn't want to know what it felt like to drown.}
And that was when he saw it. The barest hint of green peeking out of the waves and the mist.
"Faðir!" Emil shrieked. The mast groaned beneath him as he leaned forward as far as his arms would let him. "Faðir! Land!"
The men hollered down below, rushing to the starboard side to get a glimpse of what Emil had seen. Those rowing stained against the current and the warrior manning the steerboard grunted as he hauled the paddle into position. Their warm breaths mingled and steamed in the frigid air, the wind whipping their long hair and beards around.
Emil watched with enraptured fascination as towering fjords came into view, all green and grey and blue like the world's most wonderful painting. The grey waves of the ocean crested and crashed against the rocky cliffs, hissing and spraying a shower of sea water into the air.
"Emil!" Father called, his hands cupped around his mouth. "Get down here!"
His father's voice strained in the wind, the tiniest glimpse of something akin to unease trembling in his words. Something stirred within Emil.
With one last wistful glance at the land growing steadily closer every second, Emil shimmied down the riggings and landed on the deck with a soft thunk.
Approaching with silent footsteps, his father clapped a hand on his shoulder and kneeled before him, his blue eyes uncharacteristically cold and stern. "Emil, listen to me." He gently pushed Emil's face back to look at him when his eyes wandered to their surroundings. "I'm serious."
His father's face was guarded, creases deepening in his forehead as he looked at Emil in a long moment of silence.
"I don't know what we're going into, okay?" Father said at last. His mouth turned down into a frown. "I don't know what we're going to find and I want you to be prepared. Do you have your seax?"
Emil nodded, pulling back his vest to show the long knife strapped to his belt. He paused for a moment, and turned to study the looming cliffs. "Faðir," he said hesitantly. Something within him was humming faintly. "What's goin' on?"
Father just stood up and patted Emil's head absentmindedly. "I don't know."
oO0Oo
Emil couldn't resist the urge to lean over the gunwale and let his hand trail in the cold water of the fjord. His fingers left ripples in their wake, deep blue ocean lapping at his skin. Waves crashed against the rocks behind him, the spray sparkling in the sunlight, but further in the inlet the water only splashed gently at the hull. Schools of fish scattered around them, big and fat and too numerous to count.
He leaned forward farther. The water sung to him, hypnotic and alluring. Surely if he stretched out a little more, he'd be able to just reach in and—
A strong arm yanked him back by the scruff of his fur vest, picking him up with ease and depositing him on a nearby bench. Emil huffed. "I wasn't gonna fall in. I just wanted to look."
His father hummed and raised an eyebrow. Emil flushed and looked away. He knew better than to listen to the songs of Ràn, who would try to add his immortal soul to her drowned kingdom.
Could he even come back if a goddess claimed his life as her own? Would his immortality hold in the inky depths of nothingness?
Before he could follow that train of thought too far, something tugged at his heart, whispering a persistent murmur in his mind. Something primal and otherworldly, like when he played among the huldufólk and the landvættir back home, but it wasn't quite the same.
Beside him, his father stiffened and Emil knew he'd felt it too. Like a quiet call welcoming them home, something familiar beckoning them forward.
They rounded a bend and a beautiful rocky beach came into view. The grey cliffs towered high above the fjord, mossy green grass clinging to the sides like earthen waterfalls. Emil closed his eyes and breathed in the wind that ruffled his hair, sharp with the smell of an impending storm. He could almost imagine the norðrljós flickering in a moonlit sky, high above the cliffs, reaching toward Asgard, familiar purples, greens and blues illuminating the darkness below, the snow sparkling in its light.
Did it even snow here?
Emil tugged on the sleeve of his father's tunic. "Faðir—"
"Hush, Emil," his father's snowy skin went ashen pale and he pushed Emil's head below the gunwale, hidden from sight.
Emil huffed, crossing his arms with a scowl. It wasn't like he was going to try to jump out of the boat again; that had been one time.
But then the murmurs of his men reached his ears and Emil glanced at the warrior nearest to him. The man was slowly unsheathing the axe strapped to his belt, careful not to make any sudden movements. His brows furrowed in concentration and concern, a muscle in his jaw jumping with tension.
The wood beneath him groaned and shuddered as it scraped against the sandy bed, coming to rest gently on the bank.
Emil tried again. "Faðir—"
But he didn't even have time to finish his question before an unfamiliar voice reached his ears.
"Who are you and why have you come?"
Emil's ears twitched towards the woman's voice. It rang with familiar harmony, accentless yet worldly. It was like a bubbling stream running its course, like the wind in his ears atop the riggings of the longship, like the quiet of the dusk, when nought were awake but those who thrived in the moonlight. It sang in tune with the beating of his heart and Emil longed to catch a glimpse of the woman it belonged to.
He gripped the hull and carefully peeked his eyes just above gunwale. The wind ruffled his platinum blond hair and cooed in his ears.
Watch, it seemed to say. Listen.
His father readjusted his stance, but made no move for the axe on his belt. He let his hands dangle limply at his sides, making sure to make no sudden movements. It was the first time Emil had seen his father hesitate.
Emil dared to rise a slight more and caught a glimpse of the people standing only feet from the longship. Two women, tan-skinned and dark-haired, waited for them on the beach, armed only with knives made of pearly ivory, but the way they held them gave Emil the impression they knew exactly how to use them.
Something in his heart cried I'm here! You're here! We're here! like it existed across time and space, a moment stretching through infinity. Both held a timeless sort of youthfulness, but it was clear that the woman who held his father's gaze was the elder of the two. He could see it in the ancient darkness of her eyes, bright as the midnight sky, in the crows feet that deepened when she frowned, and decided immediately it wouldn't be amiss if the woman had been there when the world was born.
"Again," the woman said, and there was a level of hostility that hadn't been there before. Her grip tightened around the knife she held. "I ask you why you're here and what you hope to gain from this."
The cadence behind her words warbled and echoed in his very bones and Emil realized with a start that it was because she was speaking Common, the language all Nations were born knowing, one that surpassed borders and cultures to be a single universal link between the World's children. Emil shifted on the balls of his feet, glancing between the two women. There were Nations here already, but Leif Erikson had assured them that it was a land rich with nature's bounty and ripe for the taking, the perfect ferrying point to ship much-needed supplies back home. Surely—surely that meant that they could own this place too.
"My name is Steinarr, the Personification of Skandia," his father said and gestured behind him. "This is my crew. We seek to make landfall here and gather resources before heading back out to sea."
The two women stepped back and exchanged a hushed conversation. The air around the longship was charged with tension as minutes passed without his father relaying the situation to the men. Emil fidgeted and looked longingly at the driftwood bank.
Finally, the older of the two women stepped forward again. "We'll let you stay long enough to resupply and wait out the summer storms, but you'll have to leave after that."
Beside her, the younger woman crossed her arms and scowled.
"But," the older woman continued as Steinarr translated the news. "I don't control the actions of my people, and neither does my daughter. We cannot guarantee that you will not be met with violence should anyone else find you here."
A few of the younger warriors elbowed each other and made boasts about their prowess in battle.
His father nodded his assent and turned to Emil. He lifted him up onto his hip and carefully exited the boat, making sure to never turn his back to the women. Emil squirmed in his father's arms and successfully managed to wiggle his way out of his grasp to land roughly on the rocky sand beach with a yelp of momentary surprise.
The older of the two women looked amused. The younger one was eyeing him with deep distrust.
"This is my youngest, Emil, the Nation of Ísland." His father said. "Care to introduce yourselves?"
"Atqitalik, my daughter," the woman said, gesturing to the younger Nation beside her.
Emil huffed and got to his feet, brushing the sand off his pants. He'd been at sea for so long and there was a whole world to explore right here but father was insisting on talking?
"And yourself?" Father's deep rumble held more warmth than it had only moments ago.
Emil didn't hear the woman's reply; he'd gone off looking for seashells.
oO0Oo
They stayed for longer than Steinarr had said they would. A longship or two left occasionally, ladened with furs and timber and smoked fish bound for the homeland, but for the most part, they had set up a permanent base on the peninsula near where they'd landed.
The small village, named Straumfjǫrð, offered endless entertainment for Emil. The wind battered the coast endlessly, but it only ruffled his hair and made the grasses dance around his calves as he ran along the cliffs. It rained often and the air was always damp, but his cloak kept him warm and he loved the way his breath frosted over in the cold air. During the day he might run into the forests a distance from Straumfjǫrð and play with the landvættir who called the woodland their home, or he could scramble across the rocky shores and try his hand at catching one of the fat fish in the shallow streams, or even, if his father wasn't looking, wrestle one of the shields from their ship and, armed only with his seax, go in search of jǫtnar to fight.
But he always returned home in time for the last of the sunlight to disappear from the horizon, where his father waited with a warm meal and a blazing hearth, a new story on the tip of his tongue. His father never asked what he got up to during the day, and in turn, Emil pretended not to see the warriors who returned to the village with blades dripping red and turned a blind eye to the construction of even more buildings on their little peninsula. They both had their secrets, and that suited father and son just fine.
It was on one such winter night that Emil returned to the village to see a fluffy grey and white dog lying outside the open door of his house. Its ears perked up when it saw him, a low warning growl emanating from the back of its throat. Emil stowed his stolen shield carefully behind the woodpile and approached the dog on light feet, tense and ready to jump out of the way at the slightest indication of hostility. He'd nearly lost a finger to one of Mathais' dogs years ago, after all, and he'd learned to appreciate them from a healthy distance since.
The dog rose to its feet and took a half-step to block the doorway fully, all predatory gait and defensive intent. He didn't want Emil in the house, that much was clear.
"Faðir?" Emil called out hesitantly. The dog wouldn't stop watching him with deep amber eyes.
His father's voice rumbled from inside the house. "Emil, come here. I have something to show you."
Emil hesitated again. "I can't. The dog won't let me in."
A high whistle and a woman's voice had the dog's ears twitching. "Tapeesa, qaigit."
The dog turned and happily trotted inside at what Emil could only guess was a command. After a brief moment of hesitation, Emil followed.
The one room of their turf house was bathed in the orange glow of the hearth beating at its center, illuminating its occupants. His father sat on a bench at their table, nursing a horn of mead, the two skraeling women sitting stiffly on a bench opposite him, holding small fur-wrapped bundles. The dog nudged his nose at the arm of the younger of the two - Atqitalik, Emil remembered her name was - then laid down at her feet.
Emil slowly undid the clasp on his cloak, letting it pool around his feet. "What's going on?" He could think of any number of reasons why he might be in trouble, and more than a few of them involved the skraelings.
His father was smiling, though, so he probably wasn't in too much trouble.
"Emil," his father said, crows feet wrinkling beside his eyes. "I'd like you to meet your brothers."
His vision tunneled. A weird buzzing noise filled his ears. Surely father had not meant—
But there they were, two fledgling stars pulsing in the night, bright and untamed in a way Emil had never seen a Nation before. So bright they were almost blinding, full of raw potential and uncharted destiny. Brothers, his father had said. As in more than one.
"Can I," Emil said, stepping further into the room. "Can I see them?"
The older woman unfolded her bundle to reveal a small, pale hand batting at empty air. Atqitalik followed suit, a tiny coo coming from its occupant. Emil stepped closer and slid into the seat beside his father. He didn't take his eyes off the babies swaddled in heavy furs.
They were clearly his father's sons, both blond-haired and fair-skinned in comparison to their mother and sister, their cheeks rounded with fat and tiny fingers curled in their blankets. The baby the woman held was blinking owlishly at the general room with bright blue eyes, but the baby in Atqitalik's arms just stared at him quietly with unnerving amethyst eyes. The fire snapped and popped as Emil stared at his new brothers in a stunned sort of silence.
"Their names are Thórarinn and Hávarðr," his father said, gesturing to blue-eyes and purple-eyes in turn, and the elder woman's left eye twitched. She curled her son closer to her body.
"Yes, well, it's past bedtime for Soaring Eagle and Silent Warrior," she ground out, putting emphasis on their not-names. It was the first time Emil had ever heard a Nation being named in Common. "The sun has set and we really ought to be getting home."
Atqitalik took that as her cue to slide off the bench and secure Thórarinn in a pouch sewn into her coat. Her dark eyes stared into father's, the corners of her mouth tightening into a frown.
The other woman stood up as well—Emil still didn't know her name, he should really get her name—accepting her daughter's hand to help pull her up after a slight hesitation. In the wavering light of the fire, Emil could see streaks of silver in her dark hair. She wrapped Hávarðr in a similar pouch and the two women and their dog made for the door, not looking back at them once.
"Wait!" Emil cried and dashed forward. He grabbed the furry hem of the woman's tunic. "Will I—Can I see them again? Please? I—I've never been a big brother before and I—"
To Emil's surprise, it was not the woman who spoke first, but Atqitalik, who up until this moment Emil had been absolutely certain hated him.
She studied him pensively. "Family is important," she said after a long moment of silence. "And they deserve to know you, for their own sake."
The way she phrased it made it clear to Emil that she was doing this for her brothers and them alone, but he couldn't help but sag in relief.
"Thank you," he whispered, and made an aborted move to hug her, before realizing that both her tone and body language made it likely that he wasn't welcome.
The women exchanged unreadable looks, then left the house and disappeared into the night.
oO0Oo
Months passed without any word from Atqitalik or her mother, and Emil despaired when he realized that it had never been made clear exactly how they'd contact him and his father. It was obvious they knew where Straumfjǫrð was, but with the increasing hostilities between their men and the skraelings, Emil wasn't sure they'd even have the desire to come near this end of the peninsula.
He wasn't supposed to know, Emil was sure, and his father had been doing a pretty good job at keeping the tension from becoming apparent to him, but the village was only so big, and Emil had stumbled upon enough council meetings and men washing their bloodied blades in the stream to not put the pieces together.
Emil didn't want to think about it, didn't want to know how many blissfully ignorant days he had left before he too was called to battle, armed only with a seax and his immortality. The summer sun blazed high in the sky and almost a year had passed since they'd first landed in Vinland. Now that winter and spring had passed, the weather was warmer and the grasses that tickled his calves were golden-tipped. The sky over the ocean was an endless expanse of brilliant blue, broken only by wispy white clouds that trailed off into nothingness.
Emil kicked a rock out of his path as he skipped down to the beach. With a net in his hand, he aimed to get some of the fish that had begun to quite literally roll into the sandy banks in the past few days, which, combined with some of the fresh green shoots he'd stumbled upon earlier that day, would hopefully surprise his father.
He was so caught up in whistling one of the shanty's the men had taught him that he nearly walked right by the two newcomers before freezing in his tracks and doing a double-take.
"You came!" he cried, dropping his woven net.
Atqitalik's mother smiled at him, though it was overshadowed by something dark and clearly pressing on her mind. But she let only a flicker of it flash through her eyes before her face softened. "Yes, we did, Emil."
"Faðir's going to be super happy!" Emil said. He ran to their side and bounced on the balls of his feet. "I was gonna make dinner but that can wait!"
The skip returned to his step as they walked up the hillside together. "There's lots of fish comin' to the shore right now and I know how to cook fish."
"I'm sure you do," the woman agreed, then stopped when the first smoke from the village chimney's became evident over the horizon. "Ah, Emil," she hesitated, looking for the right words. "Why don't you go get your father and bring him down to the beach. We'll meet you there."
Something didn't feel right to Emil, but he shrugged it off. "Okay. I'll see you in a few, yeah?"
At the womens' affirmative nod, he sprinted in the direction of home.
oO0Oo
"Why don't we see you more often?" Emil asked, scratching his name into the sand at the tide's edge with a piece of driftwood.
Atqitalik paused where she was sprinkling sand over the toes of a giggling Hávarðr. "I follow my people and we move with the seasons. Anaana doesn't usually stay with me - often, I go many years without seeing her - but she's staying now because…"
"Because of Thórarinn and Hávarðr," Emil finished.
Atqitalik pursed her lips but nodded. Hávarðr, tired of being ignored by his sister, let out a pitiful wail and smacked the wet sand. Emil only saw him and Thórarinn once a year - twice, if he was lucky. He could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen them in the past three years and they grew between every visit. When he'd first seen his baby brothers, they'd been so tiny his father could hold them in one hand. Now, they looked months older - probably nearing their first birthday developmentally, if Emil were to hazard a guess. His heart ached at the thought of all those precious moments he never got to see, of not being able to show them all the things a good big brother should.
Emil set down his stick and curled his knees to his chest. "What do you think they're talkin' about?"
Their gazes drifted over to his father and the woman, who stood at the other end of the inlet, merely small figures from where Emil sat. Whatever they were saying was lost to the wind, but Emil hadn't spent centuries alongside his father to not recognize his tells. The firm set of his father's shoulders and the tight way he clasped his hands behind his back meant it was likely nothing good.
"I don't know," Atqitalik sighed, and not for the first time, Emil wondered how old she was. She called the woman 'mother,' but she herself was a full-grown adult in her own right. Emil had never seen a grown-up Nation with parents before. Even Berwald, his oldest brother, who was a whole fifteen years old, was still a child by his culture's standards. But Atqitalik's eyes were not young; no, they were old in a way that made Emil feel insignificant, like his entire centuries of life was but a murmur in the vastness is the universe.
A shudder ran down Emil's spine. It seemed, at least, that Atqitalik was warming up to him ever so slightly. At the very least, she wasn't openly hostile like the rest of her people seemed to be. She clearly loved her brothers, and so did Emil, and in that they found common ground to play at peace, even if just for a little while.
"They might be discussing the expansion of your—"
She was interrupted by Thórarinn letting out a scream, hot, fat tears quickly filling those azure eyes. The wails rolled across the inlet like thunder, and Hávarðr startled, beginning to cry as well.
Atqitalik scooped up Thórarinn, the far more vocal of the two, and bounced him in her arms, cooing and whispering soothing words in his ear. Emil reached over to Hávarðr, holding him awkwardly in his spindly arms. He swayed back and forth to the breeze where he sat, mimicking what Atqitalik was doing. His arms trembled with the weight of his little brother cradled against his chest, but he wasn't actually as heavy as Emil would have expected a baby to be.
Buried against his shoulder, Hávarðr's face was wan and pale, the golden tan appearing sickly. Dark circles dragged beneath his eyes and small scratches scabbed over his tiny wrists. Hávarðr shuddered into his tunic and hiccupped, rubbing at his face with his fists.
Emil's heart plummeted. Had his brothers been hurt on his watch? What was wrong with them? "Why are they crying?" he asked Atqitalik over the snuffling whimpers of the two babies in their arms.
Atqitalik rocked Thórarinn in her arms, brushing a curl of straw-gold hair from his forehead, and sighed. With that breath, she looked older than her age would suggest, tired like she was carrying a world of secrets on her shoulders. Her shoulders bowed and something sad and blank flashed through her midnight eyes - infinite, beautiful, unfathomable. Then she breathed in again and the look was gone. "We should take them back to anaana and your father."
She never answered Emil's question.
oO0Oo
"We're leaving, aren't we? For good this time." Emil stood trembling in the doorframe of his bedroom, fists clenched into the fabric of his linen sleep-shirt.
His father, bent over his sea chest, stiffened at the words, and straightened slowly. The hard earth was cold on Emil's feet, but his father didn't meet his eyes as he approached.
"We're leaving, aren't we?" Emil repeated, coming to a stop in front of his father. "That's what everyone else is saying. We're gonna leave before the year is out and not come back."
Steinarr's throat bobbed, and Emil was drawn to the frown hidden behind his beard. Had father always had white flecked through the little braids that hung down from his chin?
"What have you heard, Emil?" Steinarr said quietly, letting the lid to the sea chest close with a quiet thump. He didn't deny it.
"T-that we're goin' 'cause the outpost is failing and the skraelings are drivin' us off," the words seemed to get caught in Emil's throat. "That we gotta leave everythin' behind."
A muscle in Steinarr's jaw jumped. "That's true."
"But not Thórarinn and Hávarðr, right?" Emil twisted his clenched hands farther into the hem of his sleep-shirt. "They're comin' with us, and we'll show 'em to Lukas and Berwald and—" the words died in his throat when Steinarr swallowed and averted his gaze to the night sky visible outside their little window. Something frozen poured through Emil's chest. "They are coming with us, right?"
Anxiety reared its head with every minute Steinarr stayed silent.
"Faðir?" Emil's lower lip trembled. "What about them?"
The cool autumn breeze blew in through the window, rustling the dying embers of their hearth back into living flame. At long last, Steinarr said, "They're not coming with us, Emil."
"But—but—" Emil couldn't breathe, a band squeezing tight around his chest. "They have to come, they're my brothers!"
Steinarr knelt before him. "You've only known them a handful of years, and you have other brothers back home. In a few decades, you'll have forgotten all about them."
Emil bristled. "No I won't've! They're my brothers!" Then, in a quieter voice. "What'll happen to them when we leave?"
The silence stretched between them again, charged and as heavy as any axe Emil had ever lifted.
Quietly, he said, "What happens when there's nothin' for a Nation to be?" A heartbeat passed before something pricked behind Emil's eyes as the truth set in. "... They're gonna die, aren't they? Permanently."
A sudden sob shook his body and he threw himself into his father's arms. Salty tears flowed like the ocean from his eyes and his nose ran into Steinarr's shirt, but his father didn't seem to mind. He just tightened his grip on Emil and cupped a hand to the back of his head, pulling him close.
"This outpost was never supposed to have a Nation anyway, let alone two," Steinarr said, voice thick.
That did nothing to comfort Emil, whose body shook against his father's chest. All the air left his lungs and he choked on the sobs forced past his lips. The thought of those tiny bodies, stilling in their cradles forever, gemstone eyes staring at nothingness, had all the fight leaving his body, and he sagged into Steinarr's hold. They were so little, not even walking yet, and they should be giggling at Emil and playing on the cliffs of Vinland, not slowly dying simply because of what they were. Emil didn't want to believe it, but he thought of the dark circles under Hávarðr's eyes, the little scraps and bruises dotted across their skin that should have healed long ago, the sharp angles and prominent bones where there should have been a healthy layer of baby fat.
They were dying because their colony was, and there was nothing Emil could do.
Emil shuddered and turned to bury his face in his father's collar bone. "They're gonna die," he sobbed wetly. "They're gonna die and go to Helheim and I'm never gonna see 'em again."
Something damp dropped on Emil's hair and he vaguely registered that his father was crying too. But it was numb, far away. Tremors shook Emil's body but he no longer felt them. It was as though he was removed from his body, staring at himself through the eyes of another, watching himself cry into his father's arms and feeling absolutely nothing.
After all the tears had been cried out and his body was no longer shaking, Emil slowly pulled away from his father's arms. He swiped at his runny nose, red-rimmed eyes stinging fiercely. "When're we leaving?"
Steinarr's voice was quiet, gentle, fearful of breaking this fragile thing Emil had become. "Within the week."
He sniffled again. "Can we see them before we go? One last time?"
Steinarr pulled him close and pressed a lingering kiss to his forehead. "I'll see what I can do."
oO0Oo
Emil watched the rocky fjords disappear from view and told himself the stinging in his eyes was from the wind.
He'd said goodbye to Thórarinn and Hávarðr for the last time. Atqitalik and her mother had met them at the beach where they'd had so many of their other visits, his brothers secured tightly in pouches against their backs.
They'd been so small when the women had brought them out. They looked sickly, their tiny chests barely rising and falling with each shallow breath. Their skin was almost translucent and Hávarðr had barely cracked his purple eyes open when Steinarr took hold of him. Thórarinn hadn't woken up at all.
They'd taken turns holding Thórarinn and Hávarðr, just cradling them close to their chests and committing the feel to their memory, until one of the men hollered at them that it was time to go.
Atqitalik and her mother had taken the children back and had made to leave, when Steinarr had called, "Wait!"
They'd paused, and turned back to them.
"Please," Steinarr had said, reaching into the pouch at his belt. "Let me give them these, at least."
He'd withdrawn two metal amulets, half-circles threaded through with a thin leather cord. Inlaid into the iron were the faces of gods and a series of runes. Gently, Steinarr had slipped the amulets over the sleeping forms of his youngest sons. Magni for Hávarðr, Modi for Thórarinn.
Emil had wanted to bite his lip and blink away the tears forming in the corners of his eyes. It seemed cruel, to give dead men strength and bravery as their final gifts.
Except they weren't men; they were just boys, children who'd never seen the wider world around them and now would never grow to.
Steinarr had let his hand linger on the cheeks of the two boys. "Made from my own seax," he'd murmured. "The sons of Thor, who were greater than their father ever was."
Emil let loose a shuddering breath and forced himself back to the present. The wind was behind them and they were making good time across the deep blue ocean. He'd be back home in no time, and soon Vinland would be nothing more than a distant memory.
But it couldn't be, because Emil had held his little brothers, had fallen in love with two immortal beings who weren't supposed to die but had done so anyways. He'd remember, long after the last voyagers had turned into dust and their children forgot the Sagas written about this journey. He'd remember because that was what his kind did best, their blessing and their curse.
His father stood at the bow, head held high, facing out to the open expanse of water before them. The sheath at his side was empty, the only sign anything of worth had ever passed on those cliffs. He barked orders to his crew and laughed with the rest of them, but the lines around his eyes were more pronounced, his golden hair greying at the temples. A weight had settled on his shoulders, and Emil wasn't sure this one would ever leave.
Emil turned away and let the biting winds rip the tears from his eyes before they could form.
oO0Oo
More than a thousand years later, Emil loosened the knot of his tie and stepped out of the office building into the colourful streets of downtown St. John's, Newfoundland. He breathed out a sigh of frustration, head pounding. World Meetings never seemed to accomplish anything, especially when Alfred and Arthur got at it.
It didn't help that they were in Newfoundland of all places. If Emil could have picked one place to avoid going ever again, it would have been Newfoundland.
Or Vinland, as he had called it back then.
He'd never wanted to return here, where the ghosts of his little brothers haunted his every step, singing his failures with the wind. It was the sight of perhaps his greatest regret, and he knew that it had broken his father in ways irreparable. He'd Faded only decades later, leaving Emil as the last person living to keep Thórarinn and Hávarðr's memory alive.
His brothers hadn't believed him for years, until the settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows had been discovered, and by then Emil had decided the memories of Thórarinn and Hávarðr too private, too precious, to be shared.
Perhaps he'd go to the top of Signal Hill, lay a bouquet of flowers at its highest point. It was on the other side of the island from where Straumfjǫrð laid in ruins, but he hadn't planned on travelling that far and his itinerary didn't really account for it…
"Hey, dude!"
Emil bit back a groan. "Hello, America."
A broad-shouldered blond Nation bounded over to him and laughed. "None of that, man. Just Alfred is fine."
Emil forced a smile on his face. "Very well, then, Alfred. Might I ask what you're doing?"
"Bruh, no need to be so formal!" Alfred flashed him a blinding smile that was all teeth. "Me and Mattie—"
"Matthew and I," his brother corrected. Emil jumped slightly. He hadn't noticed the quiet Nation slipping into step with them.
"—Were wondering if you were okay?"
Taken aback, Emil could only blink. He didn't think his bad mood had been that obvious. "I'm fine, just having an off day."
"Do you need to talk about it?" Matthew asked quietly. His voice was soft but firm, confident and warm. He slipped a red hoodie on over his dress shirt and pulled a necklace out of the pocket, clasping it around his neck. "Sometimes just venting helps. Or we could go to the top of Signal Hill and scream into the wind? It's very cathartic."
But Emil hardly heard him. His vision narrowed in on the necklace around Matthew's neck. "W-where did you get that?" his voice sounded so unlike himself, far away, distant. White hot rage flooded through his veins. How dare they desecrate the graves of his brothers.
He only realised he'd said that last part aloud when Alfred said, "The hell, dude? No!" He looked like he'd been slapped. "They're ours."
To demonstrate, he pulled out his own equally time-worn necklace from beneath his shirt.
"No, they're not," Emil whispered, and his knees buckled. "You took them from my brothers, you had to have."
Matthew and Alfred exchanged unreadable glances.
"Maybe you should sit down," Alfred began, but Emil cut him off.
"Not until you tell me where you got those!"
"Okay, okay," Matthew put his hands up, "We're drawing attention, though, so maybe keep your voice down?"
Sure enough, passerbys on the street were shooting them irritated looks as they bustled about. None had stopped yet to tell them off, but Emil took a deep breath anyways and forced his voice level. "My father gave those to my dying brothers centuries ago. They should be buried with them now."
Matthew and Alfred exchanged another glance. Emil gritted his teeth. "Fine," he snapped. "Don't believe me."
"It's not that we don't believe you," Matthew said slowly. "But I think there's been some miscommunication, I think, if you're talking about what we think you're talking about—We never actually died when Vinland fell."
Emil's brain short-circuited. "What?" he managed to croak.
"Your father was Skandia, right?" Matthew's violet eyes were so unbearably gentle, and oh, how could Emil have not seen it before. They were exactly the same shade as Hávarðr's. "He was our father too, but he left before we knew him."
"Yeah," Emil said in a daze. "He had twin boys, the Nations of Vinland, but they were never meant to last." The words sounded distant to him even as he said them. "They were so sickly at the end, there's no way they could have survived."
Now it was Matthew and Alfred who looked sad.
"We did," Alfred said. "We're So—"
"Thórarinn and Hávarðr," Emil interrupted, the names foreign on his tongue. He hadn't spoken them in centuries. "That's what father named you."
Matthew blinked. "Never heard those names before," he admitted. "But we got the amulets from Skandia—or at least, that's what our mother said. I don't really remember much from before François found me."
He shrugged casually, like Emil's world was shattering down around him and forging itself anew. "And they're really the same amulets?"
"Well, yeah," Alfred grinned. "We had to replace the cord over time because leather wears, y'know, and the runes might be a bit more worn down 'cause of fighting and stuff, but it's the same amulets we've always had."
"Huh." Emil put a hand to his head, the world spinning, but Matthew was at his side to steady his shaking knees.
"Why don't we grab a coffee?" he suggested. "There's a Tim's a block over, and we can catch up."
"Yeah," Emil found himself saying. The sun broke through the clouds, illuminating the harbour far below. He looked at his brothers, broad-shouldered and tan, taller and older than he'd ever thought he'd get to see them, and a small smile spread across his face. "Coffee sounds great."
Emil: *stricken* wait, I'm the older brother, how are you taller than me?
Matthew: *bites into donut* don't you know it's the job of little brothers to outgrow their older siblings?
Alfred: hey, wait, I'm shorter than you
Matthew, without missing a beat: well, you always were a disappointment
Emil: *chokes on coffee*