Summary:
Eivor will be all that Havi could not.
Basim cannot see it until after the fact.
Notes;
Scenes aren't necessarily in chronological order - this is more of a dumping ground for basim-centric character studies than anything else.
something something trying to [poorly] deal with the unresolved trauma of your past life when you can't process grief well.
or, you know, at all.
Line-break text is taken from the Lokasenna, as the chapter title would imply.
lokasenna—loki flyts the aesir
"In shall I go | into Ægir's hall,
For the feast I fain would see;
Pyres and hatred | I bring to the gods,
And their mead with venom I mix."
Basim had looked upon Sigurd first, and then Eivor with something that was close of kin to hope - though each for vastly different reasons.
He saw his arrogance, his surety in what the world owed to him, petty lust for petty power; the thousandfold marks of royalty that curled over him like invisible shackles—and was compelled to follow after, burning-hot hatred setting his mind alight.
Hands clasped in false-friendship were still unseen-slick with the blood of his chosen kin—here, surely, he had found his prize at last?
He saw her light, her inner fire, and was transfixed, pinned like a butterfly under glass by hope. There was a siren song to her sheer potential—long ago gone were her sire-and-dam, and a wolf's mark gently clasps her throat—and like a wolf, he is pained to see, she leaps to the hunt at her master-once-brother's command.
Here, could he have at last found the Heir he sought—even in the mad-one-eyed-wretch's false-shadow?
Helpless, like a famine-crazed wolf he had followed after them, caught fast in fate's invisible golden [calculated non-zero probability] binding.
"A place and a seat | will the gods prepare
No more in their midst for thee;
For the gods know well | what men they wish
To find at their mighty feasts."
"There you go again. Frowning at me. Always you are frowning at me, Basim. Out of the corner of your eyes, you are frowning. Whether the sun shines or the rain storms or the moon rises, still you are frowning. Even when you are smiling, then you are also frowning."
Just to be contrary, he flashes the warrior a wide smile. It is all teeth.
He does not trust her. He cannot trust again.
"Agh," she says, with a grimace, waving her hands at him in mock disgust, every movement exaggerated in a playful show.
Eivor cuts her eyes towards where young Ceolbert sits, Hytham not far from his side.
Ah, so a show it is then. One intended for their young companions, no doubt.
"Quit that," she snorted. "See? Still, you are frowning. Sly-fox that you are, shouldn't you know well by now that it's the eyes that mark you? Bare your teeth all you want, but you'll still look more the part of a hunger-addled wolf, Brother."
The remark stings. "I am no beast to be whipped or tied at your leisure, Wolfsmal." he snaps in a low voice that does not carry.
"Well, prithee, Bragi, | his kinship weigh,
Since chosen as wish-kin he was;
And speak not to Loki | such words of spite
Here within Ægir's hall."
"Ba-sim." Eivor said, suddenly, leaning forward to poke at the fire, drawing out the sound of his name.
Now grown somewhat used to her strangeness, the Hidden One does little more than spare her a brief glance.
"'...One who smiles,'" she muttered with a small laugh. "Must've had a sense for irony, your namegivers, eh?"
"I…." He shifts slightly, oddly grateful, despite the prick of annoyance the words should summon forth, for the courtesy the Wolf-Kissed gives him in neatly sidestepping old wounds.
He cannot bring himself to feel much in the way of anger at the remark, strange and sudden and wholly out of nowhere that it is.
"I suppose so. I wouldn't know where it came from. Basim is the only name I have ever known."
The half-truth sits uneasily on his tongue.
Eivor hums, and he does his best to pretend the lullaby is not a familiar one.
After a moment of quiet reflection, he concedes that if any might know the sting of being an orphan well, then it would be this one.
Another bond of kinship they share.
The irony is not lost on him.
The Wolf-Kissed smiles, eerie and knowing in the firelight, her deep hood casting strange shadows across her face, and he wonders—not for the first time—if the irony is perhaps not lost on her either, after all.
"Why, ye gods twain, | with bitter tongues
Raise hate among us here?
Loki is famed | for his mockery foul,
And the dwellers in heaven he hates."
Eivor wore her hair in a braid today.
"They say that with spells | in Samsey once
Like witches with charms didst thou work;
And in witch's guise | among men didst thou go." he rumbled quietly, and shook his head.
Then stalled, frowning as he thought on the rest of the passage.
Absurd and alien concerns, trite and petty insults.
Her eyes lit up with surprise, mouth quirking upwards in a delighted grin.
"Ah, hey now. I'd not thought you one for knowing Norse," she tilted her head in a minute, avian way. "Or speaking verse. Hm. Not bad."
She leaned forward with a daring smile. "Flyt me, Brother?"
Contemplative, his eyes slipped closed. He would humor her.
Just the once.
Chanting, she'd recited the next verse, oblivious;
"Of the deeds ye two | of old have done
Ye should make no more speech among men;
Whate'er ye have done | in days gone by,
Old tales should ne'er be told."
Just the once.
And never again.
"Remember, Othinn, | in olden days
That we both our blood have mixed;
Then didst thou promise | no ale to pour,
Unless it were brought for us both."
"...This has mead in it." he announced sourly, glowering up at her.
"And so it does. It is a mead-horn, for holding mead, Basim."
He set the horn back down onto the table with a quiet clack, examining it with a vaguely resentful disinterest.
"...Despite myself, I like you, Eivor. Despite knowing who you are. What you are. What you were."
"I've not the patience for riddles, Basim. Speak plain, or else naught at all."
"Ah, and there it is. You see? Strange, is it not, Havi? The ways in which the node course-corrects. You fought so hard, struggled so bitterly- all that death and destruction and—and ruin... and in the end, you do not even get to enjoy the ill-gotten fruits of your labors. I would find it fitting if—if I had not sworn to—If I did not want to-" and then he fixed Eivor with a considering, puzzled stare. "...I want to kill you, I think."
He said it so casually, with such an air of genuine confusion that Eivor could not quite help the incredulous laughter that escaped from her lips.
"Well?" he bared his teeth in that wolf's snarl-grin of his. "What do you think of that, o' Havi?"
"I think, Brother, that perhaps you have had too much." she says, uneasily, disregarding the fact that he's repeatedly refused any and all offers of drink, both on this night and every other before. "...You are speaking nonsense."
"Drunk art thou, Loki, | and mad are thy deeds,
Why, Loki, leavst thou this not?
For drink beyond measure | will lead on all men
No thought of their tongues to take."
He shook his head in response, and she frowned at the way his hair fell to one side of his face, so different from the way he usually wore it.
Eivor decided after a moment that she didn't like it [unsettled by the sight for a reason she could not place] and never one to refrain from speaking her mind, said as much.
The Hidden One stared at her for a moment, face indecipherable, and then let out a bark of ash-bitter laughter. "Ah, see? That is what I like better about you now, Havi. You have no fear. No fear. I tell you I want to kill you and you laugh in my face and say I look like an idiot. You- when..."
A look of petulant frustration crossed his face, and he waved one hand in a vague gesture, frown deepening as the errant motion sent the rejected horn skidding unsteadily across the table.
"You had too much of it in the- in the- when-" He broke off, scowling at the horn for several moments before suddenly—in a motion that put her ridiculously in mind of [Freyja] …Svala? No …Valka's cats—he batted the horn away from him with a frustrated hiss, and watched with satisfaction as it went flying from the table with a clatter.
What a waste of good mead.
He slouched in his seat, head bowed as his interest returned once more to the grain of the wooden table, resolutely ignoring her in a manner she would be almost tempted to describe as sulking.
Eivor looked on in silent amusement as he abruptly reached up with a frustrated huff and ran both of his hands through his hair, dragging all of it to the right once more.
He caught her gaze with a look she generously supposed was probably meant to be serious and threatening, and perhaps might have worked better if he didn't look so utterly ridiculous.
"Before." he finished grimly.
"You were so afraid then." Dark eyes flashed gold with light and he paused, lapsing into silence for a heartbeat.
"You should be more so now."
"I have said to the gods | and the sons of the gods,
The things that long have whetted my thoughts."