Hi! First of all, thank you so much for all of the follows, favorites, and reviews. That means so much to me. Thank you! But to get on with it. So I've kind of tweaked the timeline a bit. I hope you don't mind! And again, I didn't have much happen because again, I felt like I was longwinded. But thank you for reading. I only own Dagny.
At one time, Ivar did not like Dagny. Sometimes he tried not to like her now. He did not find her stupid, condescending smile charming or her muddy hazel eyes attractive. He did not like her long dark hair and he especially did not like it at the feasts, when she'd wear a crown of flowers and thistles. And he hated when she touched him, when she'd take an agonizingly long time to wrap an injury or accidentally brush his hand when she poured him a drink. Everything about her was specifically cultivated to annoy him. And the worst part about it was that he wasn't annoyed at all.
She also struck him as genuine. What originally came across as the same haughty and better-than-a-cripple attitude as most others had been revealed as just the girl's quiet temperament. She used to never speak unless asked a direct question and where most slaves averted eye contact, she would just stare. She's just like everyone else, Ivar thought. Even a slave girl thought she was better than him. But then she'd become an excellent healer and he'd been forced into her company. It was going to be awful, to spend time with someone who thought herself his better. But Dagny, though quiet, never treated him lesser or as if she was scared. He figured out that her voice was small and she was shy. She wasn't an arrogant girl and nor did she seem particularly soft.
Still, Dagny smiled too often and she laughed at most anything Hvitserk said. And what did she have to laugh or smile about? She was a slave. She belonged to Ivar's family. He chose to ignore that perhaps her happiness irritated him because it was often spurred by Hvitserk. Hvitserk, who was frequently in the company of Ivar's brothers' favorite, the slave Margrethe. Either Dagny had not noticed or she simply didn't care.
For someone who struck him as intelligent, Ivar assumed she must not know.
He sat on the shore bank while Hvitserk, Ubbe, and Sigurd fished. Dagny was collecting their catches in a basket. Hvitserk had managed to lure her knee-deep in the water. She didn't seem to care that her shoes and dress were soaked. She laughed when Hvitserk splashed her and chased her about with the fish he'd just caught. She tripped and Hvitserk grabbed her before she could hit the water. Even from this distance, Ivar noticed how his fingers curled around her arm and how his hand snaked around her back.
Dagny dropped her basket on the sand beside him not long after. Ivar glanced up at her and he saw that look on her face, the expression people sometimes wore when they saw him. It was pity. He grimaced at her but she sat down with him anyway. She always did that whenever Ubbe, Hvitserk, and Sigurd were doing something he couldn't. He hated her for it. But he clenched his jaw because he liked her for it too.
"Tie my legs," he said, so that she'd stop watching him with her hawkish eyes. Tying his legs together made it easier to get around and move them.
Dagny pushed her basket away and crouched on her knees in the sand. She slid a strap of leather beneath his knees and started to knot it tightly. He watched her fingers. She had nice hands.
"Hvitserk is bedding Margrethe," Ivar said. Dagny cut her eyes and paled. Ivar's hand balled into a fist in the sand.
"He can do as he wishes," she responded. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Don't you like him?"
"Yes, I like him. We are… friends."
Ivar scoffed and he saw her stiffen. "You can never be friends."
"I know," she murmured. "I just have no other word for it."
He wasn't going to apologize to her, even if he liked how casually she rested her hand on his leg or the naïve hurt on her face. "He'll make a fool of you, Dagny."
"Do you care?" she whispered. He pursed his lips because he most certainly did not care and he didn't know why he'd bothered to tell her. Her gaze flicked to his mouth.
"You're always staring at me," Ivar muttered, changing the subject. Dagny froze. She heard the accusation in his voice. "Why?" he demanded, as if she hadn't just recently admitted it in his hearing. She shook her head and his hand caught her chin. She didn't flinch and he admired her for it. "I asked you a question. Why?"
"I think you know it is because I find you handsome," she replied. He already knew it but still. Handsome. Ivar let himself savor the word. She thought him handsome. It was a foolish word with no meaning and yet it burned through him all the same.
When he dropped his hand, his thumb grazed her bottom lip and he tried to ignore that it made his skin prickle. Color crept up her neck and she stood just in time to narrowly miss being hit by Sigurd's fish. He chuckled and picked it up so that Dagny didn't have to. Sigurd patted her on the shoulder before she left with her basket and Ivar wondered if people had always casually touched her that way or if he'd only begun noticing it recently.
No, he knew he'd always taken notice of it and just ignored it because she was a slave and he didn't much like her anyway. But he liked her now. He had to admit that he'd liked her even when he thought she was proud. Before she'd grown tall and lovely. Before she'd admitted she found him handsomer than his brothers.
And from the way Sigurd smirked, he knew that Ivar liked her too.
Dagny walked farther into the forest, avoiding roots in the path and carefully observing. She was there to gather a few much-needed herbs and other plants. She was running low on so many items and had a feeling, a strange and fierce feeling, that she'd need these things soon. But that gut instinct paled in comparison to her immense folly with Ivar earlier.
She belonged to his family and what she said had been so massively inappropriate that she couldn't believe she'd come out with it. And what was worse had been the look on his face. The wide-eyed sort of shock that came from hearing something you never thought you would. It was like swallowing glass, to see that sort of disbelief. It was a shame, such a shame, that that was his reaction. So Dagny couldn't bring herself to feel that badly about it, despite how tactless it felt and how embarrassed she was.
The way he'd warned her away from Hvitserk had also seemed to hinge on that overheard conversation between her and the other slaves. Would he have cared enough to say anything if he didn't know that she admired him? Or were they the tentative friends she hoped they were? Though she doubted Ivar was lying, she just didn't think that Hvitserk and Margrethe were anything to one another, not even a tryst. She seemed to favor the other brothers, like Sigurd and Ubbe, and Hvitserk had always seemed to favor Dagny. Not that that meant anything, she supposed. She told herself to stop thinking about any of Aslaug's sons and complete her work for the day.
Dagny bent to pluck a few pieces of aloe and heard the rustle of leaves in the clearing beyond. It was concern that made her follow the sound, though she was certain it was just Ubbe or the others training. When she reached the hooded edge of the clearing, Dagny froze. It felt as if someone had dumped snow down the back of her dress.
Hvitserk wound his fingers through Margrethe's silver hair and covered her mouth with his own. It was so stark and hungry that she wondered how Margrethe could catch her breath. Dagny made herself move back into the line of trees but couldn't keep her eyes off the way Margrethe gathered her skirt or how her sleeve fell off her shoulder just in time for Hvitserk to kiss it. It was so like the dream she'd had that Dagny almost thought herself similar to Aslaug; prophetic. Margrethe giggled and slid down into the tall grasses, Hvitserk following closely. Dagny didn't realize she was out of breath or that her heart was pounding until she was walking back down the path to Kattegat.
Perhaps, she cared a bit more for Hvitserk than she originally thought because something snarled in the depths of her stomach and made her cold as ice. Jealousy. The feeling that tore through Asdis and Dotta as they were pushed aside in favor of the newer and prettier Margrethe. At least Asdis and Dotta had had their time but Dagny could not help feeling dejected that she'd never even had the opportunity. She was owed nothing, she was a slave, but being with Hvitserk had been one of the few things in life she was certain of. Maybe she didn't love him but he was pleasant and affable and he had always been so kind to her. She thought of his hands on her waist this morning, of how he'd grinned at her, of how he had trailed kisses down her neck that day a few weeks ago. Why hadn't he asked her? What had changed, if anything?
They were close to friends, weren't they? But Dagny's heart sank at how Ivar had cocked his head to the side, as if she were the most naïve person he'd ever met, when she suggested that she was friends with Hvitserk. "You can never be friends." Even though he was right and she knew it, it had hurt all the same. She shouldn't like any of them. They owned her. But they'd never been truly cruel and she had been the favorite of them all at one point. Dagny liked Aslaug and every single one of her sons. Even Sigurd, who was sometimes unkind to Ivar. Even Ivar, especially Ivar, who was mean to everyone.
In the next instant, Dagny was on the ground and pulled into the undergrowth of the forest. She struggled and kicked until she realized that Ivar was the one who tripped her. His hand covered her mouth. "It's all right. Calm down," he murmured. She did, even when he pulled her closer and out of sight of the path. Her back hit his chest and his mouth was so close to her throat. Too close. She wanted to demand what he thought he was doing, even if she could be punished for it. But then she saw Hvitserk and Margrethe walk down the path back to Kattegat and realized that Ivar had just spared her from a conversation she certainly did not want to have.
Even when they must have been already back in town, Dagny couldn't bring herself to move and she supposed Ivar could not either, as his breath was still hot on the back of her neck and an arm was still around her waist. Finally, Dagny shifted and Ivar released her. It was like shedding a warm and safe cloak and stepping back into the real world. So she stayed lying on the ground beside him and said, "Thank you." She could not see him but from the rustle of leaves beside her, she assumed he shrugged.
They laid prostrate alongside each other, on their backs and Dagny fought every instinct in her body that told her to look at him. She kept her gaze on the dark branches of trees above her and tried not to think of Margrethe and Hvitserk or her dream about them or how she'd said to Ivar's face that she found him handsome just hours ago. But Ivar shifted and the back of his hand brushed her knuckles so she turned her head.
"Are you jealous, Dagny?" he murmured.
"No." But the word was said through her teeth and she saw Ivar's full mouth curve into a smirk. It was lovely, unspeakably lovely, and gods, was she grateful that he hadn't been the one in Margrethe's thrall. "Why aren't you laughing at me? Why aren't you gloating? After all that you've heard, after what I told you? After-" she asked and gestured with a hand at the path, which seemed so far away, "this?"
There was a long pause, where Dagny could only hear the pounding of her heart and the song of the birds above them. "I don't know," he admitted. Ivar turned and propped himself up to look down at her. She didn't move because he so rarely got to look down at anyone. "I must feel for you the way you do for me." She froze, so like a rabbit in front of a fox. The smile dropped from his handsome face. "Pity."
"I do not pity you!" she said, even as she knew it was sometimes a lie. He rolled his eyes. "I don't."
"You sat with me on the bank today. Why did you do that? Because I could not fish like the others."
"I did that because I like you," she muttered. He stared at her, blue eyes wide, and for a moment, she feared he'd kiss her. And if he kissed her, Dagny wasn't sure what she would do. She imagined it for just a moment and how her story would easily parallel Sigurd and Dotta's. But instead of wildflowers and greenery, Dagny was surrounded by dead leaves and darkness. Dirt was beneath her nails from digging for roots and herbs. Her hair was filled with foliage and grime smeared across Ivar's damnably perfect features. It would not be a kiss of the stories but a kiss of shadows and hunger and want.
"Well, I don't like you." She gave a wry smile because he looked away from her and because the slightest pink tinged his cheeks.
"That is all right." Ivar reached across her and Dagny again feared that he might touch her but he only pulled a leaf from the dark folds of her hair. She knew that she would look ragged and wild when she served dinner that evening. Dinner!
Dagny sat up, so abruptly that Ivar's eyes widened. "I have to go. I'll be late. I'm serving dinner tonight," she said, taking a hand and brushing the sleeves of her tattered dress.
"There is no rush," he replied. "I will tell them you were with me." Dagny cut her eyes at him and he had put on that cocky grin he was so fond of. It would lure people into thinking that he could have whatever and whoever he wanted and most likely, he already had.
"What will your mother think?" She meant that sometimes Margrethe fumbled serving, particularly on her own. But Ivar took it differently.
"You are my mother's favorite," he replied, as if that was explanation enough. "She will be pleased." Dagny must have appeared again as that rabbit before a fox because his eyes softened. She wasn't sure that she'd ever seen him do that. "But Margrethe often makes mistakes when Ubbe is around." He shifted back and gazed away from her. Maybe he was angry with her.
"I will be here tomorrow," she said before she could think better of it. "I have to collect flowers if I want to make a crown in time for the feast." He stiffened, as if making a flower crown personally offended him.
"And does that take you long?"
"Yes," she responded. "It is a long process and it may take me days."
He smiled and Dagny cursed herself for how her skin pricked in response. "Then I will see you tomorrow."