Don't ever let them tell you that girls are made for glass boxes and princes and apple pies when girls are made for swords and shields and anything else they damn well want to be.
― Nikita Gill, Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty
Nine: To Become What It Laid Upon
Noise.
A dragon's flight is all noise.
Before they breach the clouds above, where land and people are but specks below, the wind screams in Ubbe's ears, insects shred around them to a cacophony of whistling, those unlucky few caught in the gust, the rendering of the world below holding its breath as the sky above roars its power. The hair on the back of Ubbe's arms and neck stand on end from the very first beat of wings, prickling in fear and anticipation of equal measure, and as tight as he holds on, for however long it takes them before the colossal knock and sudden jerk of landing comes, the spines Ubbe clings to threaten to grind his palms and thighs to scraps of futile flesh.
Nonetheless, nothing in all this madness was perhaps as loud as Ubbe's ungainly tumble from the dragon's neck, as loud as his retching on the grass as he keeled over, knocking-knees and heaved from the very bottom of his bowels. There's a tentative hand upon his back not long after, patting at him as if he were an ill ram, temperamental with his horns and headbutts, and a chuckle, dry as the dragon's wind had been.
"Perhaps two loop-de-loops for a first flyer was a bit much."
Ubbe does not know what a loop-de-loop was, but if it was anything to do with whatever that flight had been, then he wanted nothing more to do with it. Forcing himself up from the ground with unsteady hands and trembling legs, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve and wincing at the sour taste of sickness now in his mouth, Ubbe regarded the land they now stood upon. Bees hummed in and out of the rolling fields, something minty hanging in the air, and the trees lashed and crashed against each other like reeds caught in a river.
Wherever they were, it was damp, windy, and the sky was a heavy, almost solid, grey, and the earth bled green.
So much of it, as far as the eye could see, from shore to horizon.
"Where do we stand?"
Ubbe thinks he already knows the answer, however. He had once sat on his father's knee in the Great Hall and listened to tales of Wessex and Northumbria and the land west that was flush with plants, perfect for farming. Ragnar had said he would take him there once-
Ragnar had left not a season later.
Hel, nevertheless, does not give him a direct answer as she rings a hand at her belt, fingers pinching into the pouch of ashes, and flings them into the air once more, watching as, this time, they sail steadily forward and not up or down.
"Looks like England but where in England exactly, I have no clue. Doesn't matter. Ivar's here somewhere."
England.
Loop-de-loops.
Clues.
His niece, seemingly, spoke in riddles and questions and things Ubbe had no hope in understanding. Neither did she appear to be one to stand still for very long as she patted at the dragon at her side with a soft up.
The wind from the wings nearly sent Ubbe back to his knees as the beast took to the sky, into the heavy clouds, nothing but a dark shadow passing unseen.
"We'll have to make the rest of the way on foot. Ivar can't be too far from here. If we start now we should get there by nightfall-"
Ubbe snagged her own sleeve as she went to limp passed him, tugging not harshly but confidently. Her face snapped around, and as Ubbe thought he had seen from the corner of his eye as he threw his morn' stew to the grass, the whites of her eyes were bluer than the sky above their head.
"We must rest first."
Hel snatched her arm back with a sharp, almost shocking, yank.
"No. What we need to do is get moving-"
Ubbe cannot quite suppress the smile threatening to take shape on his face because, truly, it is like having his brother there before him. Ivar too never quite knew when to step back, step down, would rail and protest against any perceived notion he was being pitied or made exceptions for, that other's might think he could not keep up.
Fortunately, Ubbe knew how to handle Ivar in his moods, Ivar with his whites as blues, the ones that made him particularly prickly, as good as anyone could that is, and stole back his own limb to press against his stomach with a grimace Ubbe hoped seemed woeful.
The way to get Ivar to do something was to make him think it was not for himself, but for another's benefit. Hel seemed to be cut from the same cloth.
"My stomach is churning still. I must rest or I might be sick once more and then we truly will get nowhere."
Hel regarded him slickly, up and down and over again, hunting for the sincerity of his words in his face, before she gave a stilted nod, passing three steps right to prop herself onto a large rock with a dragged groan of satisfaction at having the weight on her legs taken from her.
Even through the breeches and the braces, Ubbe could see her right knee was rather swollen.
"Alright… Alright. Dark's coming in an hour or two anyway, so we make camp here and rest for the night and make tracks first light."
Ubbe's hand fell from his stomach to his hip, swinging by the joint where his belt held a dagger.
"Good. For you owe me a lost meal."
Their camp was not anything special. Ubbe caught a hare not far into the treeline, and Hel, with the magic she possessed, had conjured a pit for the coals, a copper spit for the meat, and two bed rolls Ubbe had seen had once been pebbles in her hand. By the time the animal was skinned and roasted over the small kindling, light kept low to keep any passers-by from missing their camp on the hillside, the stars above were hanging bright atop their heads as the clouds cleared to blackened sky.
Ubbe dug into his half of the hare, sucking the meat from the bone and then snapping said bone to draw the marrow from the hollow. Hel, he noticed, was more… painstakingly precise in her actions. She ate with her fingers, gloves off and resting over her bloated knee, shredding small bites to nibble into even smaller slithers on the little wooden bowls she had conjured for them both, careful of the grease and fat on the very tip of her fingers.
"What's he like?"
Hel asked as she began the laborious task of mincing a hind flank. Ubbe, himself, roiled over his own thigh bone, dragging it out his mouth with a messy pop.
"Who?"
Hel did not look to him, but kept her focus on her hands.
"Ivar."
Ubbe threw the chewed bone into the fire at his feet, watching the flames spit and hiss around it as it settled in the soot to become what it laid upon.
"My brother is-"
Ubbe began and then suddenly stopped. It was not that he had no words to describe his youngest brother, but that, perhaps, Ubbe had too many. Some of them were not so good words, even more not so good to say to his daughter. Yet, Ubbe found, silence could be just as revealing.
"That bad, huh?"
Hel was looking at him now, looking through the fire to him, and this time Ubbe found his own gaze preoccupied with the food in his hands.
"Ivar is-"
He tried again.
"Complicated. As we all are in our own ways. He has not had an easy life, and so he is not an easy man to define."
Lapping the last drop of juice from the pad of her thumb, Hel moved the bowl of food away from herself, down to the grass at her hip, and slipped her gloves back on, flexing her fingers in what Ubbe thought was some kind of scaled leather.
"I'm not asking for an exact definition. I am asking what he is like. The fact that you can't give a single answer to that is… telling on its own."
Sighing, Ubbe slopped his own food down to the grass at his hip, quicker yet to bat back.
"Much like you I suspect, Ivar's favourite pastime is to play verbal warfare if only to see how uncomfortable he can make his opponents. The swifter he accomplishes his goal, the happier he is."
Hel does not take the insult deeply. Instead she smiles over the flames, toothy and so much like her father it was a little dizzying.
"That was a long-winded way of saying both you and your father go around being argumentative arseholes. Where I'm from, we call that antagonistic."
Ubbe can't help it, he laughs, loudly, hard, long enough to scare a fleet of birds from the nearest nest in the nearest tree.
"Antagonistic… yes, I like it. Ivar is antagonistic, ambitious, strenuously belligerent, and on most days, as you said, an arsehole."
Hel's face turned from the fire, over to the trees, watching the birds fly in the air, settling back down for rest in a nest, and again Ubbe was reminded of her namesake. Face half bathed in shadows, other half in fire, a goddess of between places but never truly of any.
The smile on his face fell, his voice rolling soft.
"And he is also my brother. He is… steadfast. Loyal to those he deems fit. Clever in a way that scares me some days, and so swift of foot despite his legs that he is always ten steps ahead. He also-"
Ubbe glanced up, caught Hel's eye over the flames, over the spit, green to blue in the black sky.
"Loved you more than I could say. When you and you mother died-"
Ubbe shook his head, for Hel was not dead, was she? She was here, and though Ubbe still did not quite understand how that was possible, it clearly was, and not the point he was trying to breach.
"When what happened happened, Ivar was… he was not the same. It was like… like-"
"Like?"
Hel pushed softly. This time, Ubbe's smile was a sad, pathetic thing. A bird that tried to leave the nest too soon, as he is sure one or two from those above had done and paid the price for.
"Like he had become the boy he had once been before your mother and you. As if he took those years he had with Lilje and locked them away in a box no one could reach, least of all himself. I think half the reason he went on this foolish pursuit with our father to begin with was because he could no longer stand seeing his old home with Lilje and seeing it-"
"Empty."
Hel finished, and perhaps she understood something profoundly about grief and loss by the cadence in her low-slung voice, the way her gaze fell to the burning hare bones in the fire pit, watching them crackle and etch to ash and smoke.
"He keeps your fur."
Ubbe broke in the ensuing silence, and Hel's bright eye snapped towards him in confusion.
"I do not know if he knows I know, but I've seen it. The fur you were first wrapped in after your birth… he keeps it along with a shred of Lilje's cloak beneath his pillow on his bed. I saw him holding it once, when I came back from Margarethe-"
Ubbe cut himself off with a huff and, anew, a head shake. Though he looked most like their father, it seemed this night Ubbe had inherited none of Ragnar's slick tongue.
"What I am trying to say is my brother is… hard to love. He is thorned and prickly, and spits venom as easy as Jormungandr, but you wanted to know what Ivar is like? He loves you, and he loved your mother, and I think… I think that is the most important thing for you to know of him. The rest?"
Ubbe grinned with more than a shade of a taunt.
"Well, the rest you can learn for yourself when we catch up to him. You both have a chance to do so now."
It was more than a placation, but a promise. We'll catch up to Ivar, and you will see him for himself for yourself, and he will see you for you. Because that was the real question here, was it not? Hel did not want to know what Ivar's favourite meal was, whether he preferred sea or land, if he was good at dancing or catching fish, and perhaps that was why Ubbe had found it so hard to define his brother before.
Hel was trying to discern what was waiting for her on the end of this journey. A warm welcome, a hollow farewell. What was Ivar like really meant, here, now, what will he imagine of me?
Ubbe cannot answer that one, and he will not try to. He does not know how, exactly, his unpredictable brother will take this news, this face across the fire from him, this change in fate.
He does know Ivar loves the babe this woman had once been, nevertheless. He knows that means something beyond his own grasp. He knows, to his own bones that would one day become what they laid upon, that now there was a chance to salvage that love and let it be what it will be, come what may.
Ivar will be Ivar, Hel will be Hel, and what comes will come, but there is love there already. From a fur under a pillow, to a great dragon flight, the two had gone in their own extremes to keep it close to their dreams.
Will it be smooth sailing? Ubbe would bet not. He knows Ivar well, too well, and he suspects, through Ivar, he knows Hel better than most others. It will be rough seas, perhaps storm clouds, possibly even earthquakes, but it will be life, it will be love, and Ubbe will not, would never, take that chance from his brother.
What happens in the middle of an unknown is half the fun.
"Get some rest."
Hel eventually said.
"I'll take first watch."
Ubbe went to argue on principle, and perhaps he was a little like Ivar too. Conceivably it was the Lothbrok blood in their bodies, the willingness to pick up a sword at any given opportunity, whether the blade was metaphorical or not.
"I can-"
"Rest."
Hel butted in with the gracefulness of a goat readying to ram him off a mountain top.
"We have a long journey come dawn, and I need you in tip-top shape. Get some sleep. I'll wake you later to keep watch. I need to oil my leg brace, anyway."
And maybe Ubbe was more like his siblings and niece then he was comfortable in admitting, for he was more likely to do something if it was for the benefit of someone else too.
The ash in the pouch drifted down the hill, towards the strange, curious structure Ubbe and Hel stood before, shrouded in the treeline and the shadows they offered, safely out of sight from the carts coming and going along the dirt track.
The construct itself was unalike anything Ubbe had ever seen before, wrought from pale stone and mud, it rose from the ground in great pistons and parapets, iron gates around a sizable wall, narrow windows in towers like slips of mouths yawning to the outside world.
"He's here."
Hel nodded down, flicking up the hood of the cloak she'd summoned from grass, alike the one around Ubbe's shoulders. Drab in colour but warm and thick, and easy to blend into a crowd with.
"Ivar's in that castle."
She reached over and unceremoniously yanked up Ubbe's own hood over his head, chuckling starkly at his bewildered face.
"Saxons don't typically shave their head like you have yours. No offence, but you look like an extra from a history channel documentary about Vikings. One glance at you and they're slamming that gate shut in our faces, and while I can apparate us in there I'd rather not stoke the Christians into a lynching frenzy by showing them real life witchcraft if I can just as easily get in and out by walking."
Soon, Ubbe thought, he would need to begin inscribing Hel's strange words upon a tablet the size of the… castle before them, down with comparative meanings beside them, if only to understand in Odin's grace what she was talking about half the time.
He did, however, understand the word walking.
"Your plan is to just… walk in there?"
From under her hood, Hel cocked a dark, sardonic brow.
"Do you have a better proposal?"
Ubbe spluttered on the unexpected spit that lodged in his throat.
"And you think they will merely let us pass? The-"
"They'll have no reason not to."
Hell interjected as she began a sluggish amble towards the iron gate facing the pair in the trees, forcing Ubbe to gallop in his step to keep up, casting cursory glances around himself to make sure they weren't spotted as they edged towards the gate.
Hel didn't seem to care if she was saw or not at all.
"They'll have plenty of reason not to!"
Ubbe hissed from Hel's side when he caught up.
"If what you believe is true, and Ivar is captive in this castle, perhaps along with my father, a man known far and wide by name alone, the King, which by the banner on the wall I see and what my father has told me of his exploits in this land, is King Ecbert, who has betrayed our family on more than one occasion, they'll be expecting men to come and retrieve them. They are going to be expecting us to come marching-"
Hel huffed and swivelled on her heel faster than her leg braces should have let her, spinning to face Ubbe and pressing in as close as her voice became.
"Exactly."
She beseeched with a one fingered prod to his chest.
"You said Ragnar was a King, yes?"
Begrudgingly, Ubbe nodded.
"And you said he is known far and wide by name alone, yes?"
Another begrudging shake, though how well Hel saw it was hard to tell with the hoods over their heads.
"Then they'll be expecting an army. They'll be looking at the hills for horses and garrisons, not two cloaked dipshits walking into their gate without a care in the world."
Sighing deeply, Hel finally clasped Ubbe by his arms, gentle in her hold but resolute in her tone.
"Look, Ubbe, you have to trust me. I know war, and the way you win a war is not often with more men, more weapons, or more fire power. Not always. It's about learning the others weakness. A man with a castle will think he's safe inside it, behind its walls, through its stone. They grow arrogant behind a gate, thinking nothing and no one can reach over and grab them. It's that arrogance that is their weakness and our strength."
The hands kept him steady, green eyes finding his through the hooded gloom.
"Ivar is in that castle, and the last thing those people inside will be expecting is only two Norsemen to come trailing in through their front door. Even less will they expect those Norsemen to be requesting Mass. They'll never suspect us."
Mass?, Ubbe thought. Was that not Christian? What did Christian customs have to do with-
Hel, plainly, saw the growing confusion flowering on his face and already had an answer for him.
"My aunt and uncle were Catholic, I know Christian holidays well, and if I'm right about the date, the season, it's currently Easter, and there will be a chapel in that castle holding Mass every day of the week. Easter is also when Christians try to live as charitably as possible, and they won't turn away two roving merchants, one clearly a cripple, requesting attendance at Mass."
Hel clapped him around the shoulder as if she had just told a grand joke.
"We go through the gate, request Mass, I play up my limp, and before entering the chapel we break off from any guard or man leading us there, and search for Ivar and Ragnar. If it comes down to it, I'll apparate us out if we're noticed, or at a very push, call in Nid to fly us out in a hail of fire. Come on Ubbe-"
She grinned that damned grin, a flash of Ivar in the canopy of wool and fur.
"What's the worst that can happen?"
Many things, Ubbe thought. Many, many things, and they had not even considered the depth of the fjord yet. However, Hel appeared confident in her assessment that this was the easiest, fastest, and less bloody path to go, she had saved his mother not two sunrises ago, and-
And what other choice did they have?
Ivar was in that castle, possibly Ragnar too, and yet, there was one difficulty that Ubbe could almost taste.
"You forget I do not speak the Saxon tongue, Hel."
His niece pulled back and glibly waved him off.
"And you think I speak old Norse?"
She scoffed indignantly.
"I'm speaking English right now, which is a language that doesn't properly exist yet, but I have a translation spell running that allows you to hear the language you understand. I'll slip the same magic over you before we cross the gate, and the Saxons inside will hear what they need to hear. Now-"
She turned for the castle, peering over her shoulder towards Ubbe.
"Are you coming with me? Because I am going in there and I'm going to get my father and grandfather out whether you follow or stay. It's your pick, Goober."
Ubbe snorted, huffed, and marched for the gate to the sound of Hel's laughter.
"Good choice."
Both soon found, by noonday sun, it was not a good choice.
A.N: Guess who's back again? Me bitch, and I'm serving up piping hot Hel, aka God-has-let-me-live-another-day-and-I'm-going-to-make-it-everyone's-problem favourite girl, soup. So pull up a chair, get your napkins out, and have some messy but delicious drama.
VERY IMPORTANT PLEASE READ: Some readers have been asking about a possible romantic pairing. I will say I didn't set out with this fic having one, but, and it's a big BUT, I'm currently about five/six chapters ahead of writing from here, and a bit of a spoiler, but Kalf is alive. I won't say how, why, or what it means because of ~plot~, but I will say I seemingly can't write Kalf and Hel in the same room without a bare arsed cupid floating about their heads with his arrows knocked. It's something that's sort of cropped up organically while I've been writing this fic, and seen as it's coming naturally, I'm going with my gut on it and not try to force the characters in a direction they seemingly don't wont to go in. Plus Ben Robson is a beautiful bastard. Sue me. So as you can tell, the pairing up top has likely changed to reflect this, and I'm sort of really happy and proud of the chemistry Kalf and Hel have, and I'm really looking forward to you guys reading what I have coming up. I will add that the pairing doesn't take centre focus, this is still predominantly about Ivar and Hel's relationship as father and daughter, but it is what it is kiddo.
TLDR; The pairings have changed to include a Kalf/Hel romance, it's an eventual thing, and I hope you guys don't mind too much, but it was what was coming naturally while I've been writing and I'm rolling with it.
THANK YOU all for the followers, favourites and the lovely reviews! I hope you all liked this chapter, and if you have a spare moment or two, please drop a review, and I will hopefully see you all soon!