When the fire dies
She tries to look out for anything that might warn her off (screams, projectiles, a fire), but when she reaches the hut, it seems as peaceful as it had when she had first arrived.
When she steps inside the air is tense. Clearly in the middle of an argument, Ivar barely acknowledges her.
"Make a fire." He just demands and when she looks in confusion at the firepit Ubbe takes pity on her and gestures for her to follow him.
He retrieves a few small branches, as well as two bigger pieces of firewood and kneels down by the pit.
Ivar and Sigurd start arguing behind them.
"Father gave me this knife." Sigurd says when Ivar demands he give it to him.
"I want it." His brother responds and Mary exchanges an annoyed look with Ubbe, who is clearly as tired of the childish bickering as she is.
Something hits the ground behind them and Mary turns to see Ivar, having moved from the chair to the floor as he crawls towards his brother. "I will kill Lagertha with it."
Ubbe brushes her shoulder with his, drawing her attention back to the fire.
He puts the wood around a small piece of something, she cannot quite tell, and positions the smallest sticks right around the embers. Then he leans forwards and blows on it softly, igniting a flame that quickly jumps over to the small branches.
The argument between Sigurd and Ivar escalated when the young one pulls the chair from under his brother and it clatters past Mary. The two starts wrestling on the ground with Sigurd holding up the knife to keep it out of reach from Ivar's clawing hands. It's only when Ivar pulls back and slams his head into Sigurds nose that Ubbe intervenes.
He steps in between the two fighting idiots and grabs a hold of Sigurds collar, yanking him to his feet and shouting that they have more important things to do right now. The brothers glare at each other, Sigurd with blood dripping down his nose, before he spits "A always, you want to tell us how to behave, brother."
Ubbe lets go of him "Someone has to."
Mary stays quiet, sitting on her knees by the fire. The brothers seem to have forgotten about her, and she would rather not be part of this.
First, they speak about their brother and then their father, before touching upon their plans of revenge. As expected, Ivar's anger demands more violence than their brothers and when he tells them his intentions of killing King Ecbert, Mary lowers her gaze to the floor. While King Ecbert had thrown her into a prison cell, he had seemed like a good man, worn down by a lifetime of wars and intrigue.
When the arguments get to heated, they finally turn towards her.
"Mary. Tell us what strategy to engage if we want to avenge our father." The question comes from Ubbe, sitting closest to her. Ivar, having pulled himself back onto a chair, is sitting across the table and in his hands is a piece of wood that Sigurd had been working on. He is twirling it between his fingers as he stares at her angrily.
Mary shrinks away at the question.
"I only know one timeline." She says "I don't know all the different outcomes for all decisions. I can only tell you one of them."
Ubbe motions for her to continue and she feels a drop of sweat fall from her neck and onto her back.
"I don't know everything. Some truths are mixed with legends and it can be hard to distinguish what will really happen and what is only made up." She warns them.
The cabin is quiet, the cackling of the fire the only sound, and Mary swallows.
"The future I know has Ivar the Boneless as the leader of the Great Heathen Army, ravaging the coastline and taking parts of East-Anglia."
Ivar smiles triumphantly at that, but his face quickly falls when Mary continues talking. "But he is defeated by Aella's forces and forced to retreat."
Ivar's face contorts in fury at that. In a moment of uncontrolled rage he throws the piece of wood against the wall, causing it to splinter and Ubbe throws him a warning glance. But Ivar's eyes are trained on Mary and she can see both anger and betrayal.
"But he tricks the king." She quickly adds, hoping to salvage the situation "Legends say that he promised to only require a piece of land as big as an oxe's hide. But then he cuts it so finely that he covers entire fields with it and the king, bound by his oath does as promised. Ivar builds a castle on the land, and the next time they clash, it's Ivar who carves the blood eagle into Aella's back."
The silence stays, thick and heavy, and while Ivar clams down at the words of his final success, he still doesn't seem happy. His eyes are trained on the table, his head moving in barely supressed rage.
They don't talk much more after that, deep in thought and when night comes, its time for Sigurd and Ubbe to leave.
They seem unsure about leaving Mary behind, worried about their brother's moods, but Ivar hurries them out of the door.
"I will not kill her, brothers." He promises, but the look her throws her says that there are a lot of things he can do that would not, technically, kill her.
Then they are alone, for the first time since they arrived in Kattegat, and Mary is not sure what to do or say.
"Come join me. You haven't eaten anything yet." He says, his voice overly friendly. Mary doesn't want to stand up, doesn't want to put even less distance between them, but she knows she has no choice. Throughout dinner, he seems pleasant enough, even if there is barely any conversation. She loads her plate with bread, fruits, and fish, the last two a true godsend, and even though the bread is dry and the fish too salty, she feels much better afterwards.
Ivar picks at his own food, and when she is done, he asks her if she is full.
"Very." She answers happily, trying to relax in his presence.
"I do not want you speaking to Margarete." He says then.
Mary looks at him in confusion and Ivar elaborates "She betrayed our family when she tricked my brothers and helped Lagertha murder our mother."
She stays silent. While what he is saying might be true, she suspects that there is more to it.
"My brothers are idiots and all she has to do is let them put their cocks in her, but I am not willing to look past her betrayal." His words are cruel and crude, but Maty nods nonetheless, because she doesn't want to cause any more bad blood between them.
"One more thing." He says and then the next thing she knows is his hand in her hair, yanking it down until her head hits the table and the impact makes her see stars. The change in his beahaviour is as instantaneous as it is frightening and Mary claws at the table, trying to get out of his grasp, but he is stronger than her. She can almost feel her hair being ripped from her scalp.
"You lied to me, Seer." He spats and Mary whimpers in pain.
"I didn't lie." She defends herself and he laughs sadistically.
"Yes, you did, even if you do not want to admit it. Now, I suggest that you keep your pretty little mouth shut and do as you are told, or I will sell you to the highest bidding men on the market. You will tell my brothers that I am the greatest warrior of all times, you will tell them that my army will succeed, and you will make them elect me as leader"
With one last pull at her long hair, he lets go and drags himself across the cabin and into the large bed. There are tears in Mary's eyes and she holds her head, feeling her cheek swelling already and when she looks at Ivar, watches him lay back against the pillows as if nothing had happened, she makes a decision.
There is no bed for her, not even a piece of fur on the ground, so she curls up in a corner and drapes her coat over her shoulders. But she doesn't sleep.
The fire burns out and the hut falls silent while she listens to Ivar's breathing turn deep and even. She waits for almost two hours, making sure that he is fast asleep, before she moves. She is thankful that she insisted on the trousers, because the heavy skirts would have surely woken him up as they drag across the floor. She takes a line which she assumes is used for fishing and ties two constrictor knots into it, leaving them wide open for now.
She sneaks barefoot across the floorboards, praying that she won't make a sound and when she reaches the bed Ivar has his face turned away from her, the blanket thrown off in the heat of the cabin.
She coaxes his arms up, bit by bit with gentle pushes and touches and when both of his hands are by his head, she knows she has to act fast or she will pay for it dearly.
Slipping the rope over his wrists she watches him stir awake, but by the time he realizes what is happening she has already drawn his arms up over his head and away, binding him to the headboard. The rope is thin and cutting and the more he moves his hands, the tighter they get and Mary swing a leg over his hip to hold him down.
Its an unfair position. Without his legs he cannot thrash or buckle to throw her off, and without his arms he is defenceless, unable to do much more than glare at her. His nostrils flare and spit flies from his lips as he heaves, trying to find a way out of her trap but when Mary leans down and presses the sharp blade of a knife against his throat he stills.
"Now, you and I are going to have a little conversation." She tells him.
"Gett off of me." He snarls, but she just presses the knife even harder against him, until the blade actually draws blood, and Ivar growls but shuts up. Mary's heart is beating in her throat and her breath hitches when she sees the drop of blood she drew, but she has no choice. Her face is bruised and swollen, pulsing in pain. She has promised herself, after the first time a boy threatened her, that she would never let a man lay a hand on her without defending herself.
She would never be able to take Ivar in a fight, even without his legs, and she is, for now, dependent on him, but she would not let him treat her like that.
"Hush, little boy." She warns "or I will slit your throat and the name Ivar the boneless will be forgotten before the century ends."
If Mary has learned something about the men in this time, its that they all yearn for greatness.
"Let me make something clear to you. You will not hurt me again. You will not hit me, you will not pull my hair, push me, or cut me. I am not your slave and, no matter what the people out there think, I am not your whore." She says, her voice clear and forceful.
"If you cannot treat me with respect I will be gone. You may have played the role of the scared prince well, well enough to fool even me, but this ends right here."
He laughs at that, actually laughs, ignoring the pressure against his neck and the blood, flowing much more freely now. Mary flinches when she feels the cut deepen, and when she sees the dark red drops running down his neck and into the mattress.
"You call me a liar?" he asks, a sardonic smile on his face. "Me? Even though you are the one who played with me, who pretended to be a friend only to leave me as soon as we got to Kattegat?"
Mary leans back in confusion, lifting the knife from his throat and looking down at the half naked boy in confusion. She has expected threats and insults, not this.
"What are you talking about?"
"I know women like you, I have met women like you. You try to get into my good graces to get closer to my brothers." He says it with a condescending smile, as if explaining it to a child that does not want to understand.
She stares down at him, her face barely visible in the dark, but he can feel the anger in her, feels her fingers curl into the skin of his abdomen. Good. He wants her anger, wants to feel it feed him, wants to feel the rage that starts deep in your stomach and crawls into your throat. But Mary has other plans.
Ivar has been laughed at often, behind his back and to his face, about many things, but something no one has ever laughed at was his mind. They might ridicule him for his legs, but they fear him for his mind. Even his brothers. No one doubts his intelligence. But when Mary laughs, loudly and sarcastically, shaking her head in exasperation, she is doing exactly that.
"God, you are stupid." She breathes.
"I am not stupid." Ivar grunts, trying to break free once again, but he can feel the line cutting into his wrists and cutting off his circulation.
"I never wanted your brothers, you idiot. I wanted you." Mary whispers into the darkness, not even looking at him.
The admission is silent and for a second Ivar thinks that he must have misheard, but then she repeats herself, looking straight at him "I wanted you."
"Liar." He accuses her.
Mary just shakes her head.
"No lies." She says "I wanted you when we were in Wessex in that cell, and when we were on the boat, when you asked for my favourite story, and when you told me about your home. I wanted you then." She says, and then her face changes, deep lines of dislike marring her pretty face. "But now?" her voice a laced with disgust "Now I look at you and I loathe you. You make me nauseous." The words are cutting and so honest that Ivar flinches. His eyes shoot down to her hips, where she is still sitting on top of what he knows is nothing more than bone and skin. She must feel it. She must have felt it when she laid her head in his lap on the boat. The undeniable evidence of his deformity.
"Not because of you are a cripple." she says, knowing exactly when he thinks when he lowers his gaze." You may be unwilling to looks past that, but I never cared about it." She says.
He wants to argue, wants to call her out on the obvious lie, but she just continues. "But the hate? The rage? I could never want a man like that. A few days ago, I would have followed you to the end of the world. Now, I can barely stand touching you."
As if to emphasize her point, she lifts herself off of him, ready to cut him free and curl back into the corner. The thought alone makes Ivar's heart constrict. Not in hate, or anger, but in fear. Fear that she will leave and never come back. Fear that she will go off and never look at him again, never smile, never tell her stories. Once again, his rage has been his downfall.
When she stands, her face listless and tired, he cannot stop the sound from escaping his mouth. It's weak and shallow, escaping his throat in a ragged breath, but it makes her stop, and that is all he need.
"Don't." he whispers, staring up at her with pleading eyes. No traces of the angry boy she has learned to fear, no violence in his eyes. This is Ivar Ragnarsson, not Ivar the boneless, and it's the only thing that makes her turn back to him.
"Don't leave," he says and his face turns from pleading to heartbroken. It takes a great deal of effort for him to speak the words, his mind screaming that she should go, should take her false principles and leave him to be who he should be. Ivar the boneless. Ivar the Hated. Ivar the Mad prince of Kattegat. But he can't.
"Please." He asks again, the word sounding almost like a sob and Mary watches his face crumble as tears fill his eyes "Don't leave. Please, don't leave me."
In that moment Mary knows that even if she wanted to, she couldn't. She cuts the fishing line, cringing when she sees that it has cut deep into the flesh of his wrists. Ivar curls up on his side as heavy sobs run though his body and Mari silently climbs into bed with him. A part of her is telling her to go. Get away from the boy and his violent moods. It's telling her that he might kill her the next time he gets angry. But she could have died the day she appeared at the shore, she could have died in that cell in Wessex, and if she dies now, then so be it. She is tired of constantly being afraid.
She holds his head against her shoulder when he wraps around her, and she gently strokes his back as his fists hold onto her tunic for dear life.
And Ivar cries. He cries because his mother is dead, because his father is dead, and because the people in his home hate him. He cries because his brothers look down on him, even when they don't mean to. He cries because he can't is a cripple, and he cries out of fear that others might find out what happened with Margarethe.
But the thing that finally makes the sobs subside, makes the tears dry, is Mary. Stubborn Mary, Loving Mary, Dangerous Mary.
When she had first appeared in his cell, he had wanted to torment her. Let his helplessness out on someone weak and small, wanted to torture her with his words and his actions. But she had made him curious. She had been brash and confident, something unlikely for a person so weak. And then she had made him laugh, she had sat beside him, had trusted him with her secrets.
When he finally pulls back, the dark mark on her face almost makes him hide in shame. See how he had repaid her trust. He lifts one hand and she flinches when he presses against the skin, purple and hot under his touch.
"I'm sorry." He whispers.
She doesn't say 'It's okay' and she doesn't say 'I forgive you'. She just nods, accepting his apology but offering no absolution and Ivar hopes that, should he ever lay a hand on her again, his brothers will break his fingers.
They stay like that, on their sides and looking at each other in the dim light of the cabin, until Ivar breaks the silence once more.
"I don't know how to not be angry." He confesses, the words of his father ringing in his ears. Be ruthless. Be angry. But he doesn't want to, the same way he didn't want to when he was in Wessex, even if his father had been right. As a Viking he has to be angry, he has to earn the respect of the other fighters and as a cripple, he has to be twice as vicious than the others. But he doesn't want to lose her. His one friend.
Her words surprise him "You should be angry."
He stares in confusion and Mary continues. "You should be angry about what happened to your mother, and about what happened to your father. You can hate the people who did it, the people who deserve it. But don't hate your brothers, even when they are idiots. Don't hate yourself." She says "Don't hate me." The last part is barely more than a whisper and Ivar shakes his head.
"I could never hate you."
Mary's lips quirk up into a small smile "Liar."
He wants to protest, but doesn't know how. The bruise on her cheek is enough prove that once he looses his temper he can hate everyone.
Mary put a hand on his cheek, soft and tender and she leans in. Her intentions are clear, his heart flutters and then it dies. Because another part, driven by the sudden and intense feeling of pure fear, recoils and he flinches away. She looks at him, first confused, then embarrassed. But Ivar can barely register the look of dread at his apparent rejection. He is plagued by memories, Margarete looking down at him, her eyes lingering on his legs as she stands naked in front of him. Her body underneath him, and the shame and frustration that follows. And worst of all, the feeling of complete and utter failure. The realization that he really has nothing to offer to a woman. He cannot fight, he cannot provide, he cannot love.
"I'm sorry." Mary says quickly, oblivious to the reason for his sudden withdrawal. She leans up one elbow, trying to put the space between them he so clearly wants. "I just thought-"
"No." he interrupts her. "I- It's not that. I-"
He doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know how to explain the irrational fear that grows in his stomach at the thought of kissing her and touching her.
"I can't." he just says, and he feels foolish and young at the admission, but Mary settles back into bed, one elbow pillowed underneath her head and she smiles relieved.
"Don't worry." She says, dismissing the issue as if it were nothing. "I'm not going anywhere."
The promise implied in her words floors him and when she turns around and takes his arm, wrapping it around her waist, Ivar pulls her close against him and breathes in the smell of her hair, her clothes, her skin. Salt, Wool, Mary.