#νοσταλγία masterlist

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Nátt (Vοσταλγία Winter Blurb)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Nátt: night (Old Norse)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: Winter Blurb #9. A little bit of insight into Ivar’s perspective of sharing a bed.

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: the usual, soft!Ivar, I suppose?

A/N: This topic wouldn’t leave my head, so I wrote a little piece about it. I apologize in advance if it is too ooc, hope it’s alright!

The sound of chains rattling brings Ivar’s attention to the bed where you are waiting for him, only to see your leg sticking up in the air as you try hooking your foot in the chains that he had set up there to move better in and out of bed.

“What are you doing?”

You continue playing with the chains, making them sway with a hit of your foot. Not that he expected you to stop whatever it is you are doing, he knows you better than that.

“I am thinking.” You say, and simply leave it at that. Ivar holds back a sigh, decides he will not bite and do exactly what you want him to by asking, and instead focuses on getting out of the layers of clothing and taking off the braces of his legs.

Halfway through the process he notices you stopped playing with the chains, and watches with a smile as you skip your way over cold ground to go revive the fire of the hearth, before scurrying back to bed and under the covers.

“Hurry, I’m freezing.” You pout. You wouldn’t call it that, and Ivar knows that, you would insist that you are dignified enough to never pout; but he knows better and he knows you’re pouting.

“You wouldn’t be freezing if you hadn’t walked barefoot all over the room.” He argues with a shrug. He can feel you glaring at him, and it only amuses him further.

“I wouldn’t be freezing either if my husband had joined me in bed.”

Sometimes it catches him off guard, how easily you call him your husband, how natural it seems that you share his bed. It is stupid to still be struck with the realization that he truly has you after all this time, he knows this, but he cannot help it.

It was more difficult for him than he thought it would be, facing the reality of having to share the more intimate aspects of his life with you. Not that he didn’t want to, he did, more than anything, but Ivar rarely thought things through when it came to you, he will admit that. He hadn’t actually considered that, when he married you, in turn you had married him.

Getting to have you sleeping in his bed meant that the way your accent clung tighter to your voice in the morning would be the first thing he heard each day, meant that maddening scent -that only months later he could pinpoint as lavender and something else, something softer- he identified with nothing but you would cling to the bedroom you shared as it did to the room you slept in before becoming his wife; yes, but it also meant there was no way he could keep up with whatever image of himself he wanted to show you, meant you would be a witness to his pain and his struggles and see all the ways he was lacking and deficient.

If nothing else, getting to have you sharing his bed meant he could at least hold on to the illusion that he truly had you, meant in stolen moments that were barely anything more than images he could have a part of you; but facing the reality of it meant each night he was only sharing a life with you that was built upon borrowed time and foolish hopes, meant realizing he had nothing.

That first night it was nothing other than your words -if you had asked, I would have said yes, it haunts him even now and he cannot help but almost resent you for it- and the memory of the torturously soft press of your lips on his that still lingered in his mind -it had to, it had to linger, he had to replay it in his mind, lest the memory disappeared and left him bereft- that kept him from sleep, that kept him tethered to that seat and the mead he tried drowning his thoughts in, caught in a struggle between telling himself there was nothing he could have done differently and admitting he could have had everything if he had just accepted the possibility of having nothing.

But every night after that, for almost two weeks, Ivar couldn’t stand going to bed with you. The wound of having surrendered control to you by agreeing to your demands that he would let you choose once Stithulf was defeated was still too fresh for him to accept settling in this limbo that for too long was all he knew. Each night, knowing you would be there past that door, that you would be encased in that softness and that lure that made him accept not being able to fight against you in the first place, it was almost enough to make him cave and seize what he had then even if it was a lie he was telling himself to believe he had any semblance of you, but he couldn’t shake off the reminder that it was all built on sand, that it was all borrowed time, and so he let you go without him each night.

And so he would wait, sometimes with Hvitserk while ignoring the knowing glances his brother would send his way, sometimes with his trusted men speaking of war or the defenses of Kattegat, until he was certain you had already fallen asleep, before he dared set foot on the bedroom you shared; and he would try his best to leave or get dressed before you even woke up.

But even then he knew he was delaying the inevitable, and he was avoiding facing a situation that, if he had his way -and he did, after all-, wouldn’t ever change; so he started making himself fall into a routine with you, retiring for your rooms together and going to bed together.

And it drove him mad, even though he is almost certain you barely felt the change of it.

It makes sense, he gathers. He took you from your people, brought you to some unfamiliar kingdom and forced you to become his wife, sharing his bed was the least concerning of the changes you had gone through.

But to Ivar…to Ivar it was every change given form. Seeing you softened by tiredness as he walked into the room, hearing your voice slightly roughened by sleep as you spoke quietly with him as the fires dimmed, feeling the distant and ghost-like caress of your skin as you lay so far away from him on your side of the bed.

And that distance was always there, and Ivar was almost grateful for it, he is certain even now that he wouldn’t have known what to do if you had been closer, if you had been warmer. It was true then and it continues to be true now that you disarm Ivar with but a touch.

That distance slowly eroded away, and even looking back now he can’t exactly pinpoint when or how it was that things changed.

He still remembers the time Harald came to Kattegat, that week or so that he spent in his home. He remembers it for many things, but most of all because those nights were the first since he had forced himself to face his new reality that he had gone to bed when you were already asleep and gotten up before you had woken up.

And he remembers how after a few days he started to find you still awake in your bed when he came into the room. He remembers wondering against his better judgement if you had been missing him in those passing days, he remembers the flutter of emotion in his chest before he could remind himself that such things were not possible for him.

He remembers one night in specific, and he remembers it because it was the night he realized that, even if it was his downfall, even if it would lead to nothing but pain, even if you would never be his; he was yours.

The drawl of your accent was much more pronounced as you dozed off, the sound of your voice threatening to send a shiver down his spine as it lowered to that breathy little tone; and for the life of him he cannot remember what you two were talking about, all he remembers is how you didn’t hesitate to move closer to him, intertwining your arm with his, your delicate fingers teasing at the inside of his wrist, and resting your head on his shoulder, breaths trailing torturously close to the skin of his neck.

It is pathetic, he knows it is, but for a very long time nights like that one were all he thought he would have of you, and he kept them closer to his heart than he would like to admit.

You drifting off to sleep with your head on his shoulder, trusting him to keep you safe from King Harald and any other. Your kiss over the corner of his mouth, mead sweetening your breath as you whisper I am happy before slipping under the furs. Your body lying next to his, helping him keep his head above water and focus on something other than the pain by listing ingredients and mumbling remedy recipes under your breath.

The memories leave a strange taste in his mouth, the ghost of a longing that he sometimes thinks will never truly leave him, and so once he is settled in bed, instead of being content laying on his side of it, he turns and moves towards you.

Ivar presses slow kisses over your thigh, angling towards your hip as he moves to rest between your legs, his arms under the small of your back and his head resting against your stomach.

It doesn’t take even a breath for him to feel your soft touch on him, one hand trailing delicate fingers over the ink traces on his back, another carding lovingly through his hair. That sharp edge of need and longing that lingered in his mind after revisiting such memories steadily ebbs away into the comfortable haze that having you in his arms lets him sink into.

Being able to have you, truly have you, since that night before he departed for Strepshire, has changed what sharing a bed with you is like. It was impossible that it didn’t, it was impossible that since that first kiss Ivar would somehow find it in him to stay away from you, it was impossible that you wouldn’t gravitate towards one another once you both caved into what was bringing you closer since before either could admit it.

Ivar won’t pretend getting used to how close you insist on sleeping was easy. It was difficult -still is, on the bad days- not to flinch away from your touch, because no matter how thoughtless it seems to be for you to drape yourself over his body, head on his chest and leg thrown over one of his; how natural it seems to come to you to mold your body against his, on your sides with one of your legs between his and your arm thrown over his waist; it isn’t the same for him.

He wouldn’t change it for the world either way. Waking up to you demanding he moves to the slightly colder side of the bed, drifting off to sleep to the rhythmic sound of your breaths, he cannot fathom how he slept well without you.

Ivar’s thoughts, as they seem to do often lately, drift to the group of Greeks near Eldham, to the promise that isn’t a promise anymore, to the deal that never really mattered because the people you were intending to avenge were never truly dead.

The night you told him about your people’s survival he didn’t sleep. You were warm and safe in his arms, and the promise you loved him was still echoing in his mind, but all he could focus on was on how that warmth was temporary, on how love was not even close to enough to keep you with him.

Many nights after that one Ivar spent awake, holding you close, closer than he ever thought he would have a chance to, and yet painfully aware that you were already lost to him, that there was nothing he could do to make you stay.

He remembers many nights spent looking at you, your features relaxed in sleep; spent calming his heart to the soft cadence of your breathing; spent with his hands tracing over your skin, holding you closer to him; and he remembers what it felt like to realize he would be missing that, this, for the rest of his life.

“Ivar, return to me.” You mumble, and he hears the soft smile in your voice before he even lifts his head to find it curving at your lips.

“Hmm?”

“You’re lost in your own head,” Your fingers tap the side of his head. “I can tell. What are you thinking about?”

Ivar shakes his head, “Nothing important.”

And it isn’t, not really. You are staying with him, and so it doesn’t matter, it is of no importance what fears plagued him or what thoughts linger stubbornly in his mind still, because you are staying.

It is still strange to believe it, it is still difficult to let go of old fears that remind him he will lose it all, to quieten old voices that demand he savor this moment, to ignore urges that promise having hate is better than having nothing, to push past instincts that tell him to fight.

But you are, and that is what matters. You are staying with him and the way you look in the dim lights of your bedroom, the gentle rise and fall of your chest, the soothing feeling of you safe and solid under his hands; none of those things will be missed by him for the rest of his life, they will be there for the rest of his life.

So, he rests his chin on your stomach to properly look up at you, and decides to get such thoughts and memories out of his head, asking you instead,

“What were you thinking about? Earlier?”

Your eyes search his for a breath or two, that insufferable little narrowing of your eyes that tells him you are studying him attentively; but eventually you shrug, fingers returning to the soothing motions through his hair.

“The night of our wedding, that’s the first time I saw these,” You tell him, looking back up at the chains that dangle over the both of you, dragging your teeth over your bottom lip with a short laugh. “I was very curious, even if slightly afraid, to find out what you used them for.”

He lifts his eyebrows, presses, “Disappointed?”

“You had already had me in shackles once, what makes you think I wanted to be in chains again?”

“Well, you are thinking about using them now.”

The glint in your eyes is familiar, and he sees the words you are about to say written in the grin that curves at your lips. Even your touch feels different, it feels like it speaks to some other part of him, when you rake your nails gently over the shaved side of his head, and Ivar cannot help but lean into the caress.

“I am. On you, my love.”

____ ____ ____

His anxieties there are important though, he’s an idiot and those are sometihng they need to talk about. But that’s a topic for another winter blurb lol

Thank you for reading! I hope you liked this!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax​ @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214 @fae-sedai @crazybunnyladysworld   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside @aprilivar @msrawog @kaitieskidmore1 @berryonasummerevening​  

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Άσπίς (Vοσταλγία Winter Blurb)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Άσπίς: shield (Ancient Greek)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: Winter Blurb #8. A wonderful nonnie requested to see Ivar on protective mode, so I tried my best to deliver.

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: nope, PDA, lil bit of suggestive themes, and the usual I suppose.

A/N: Hope this is okay, thank you for requesting this! And I’m sorry for getting them out of order (I’ll get to all the remaining winter blurbs as quickly as I can).

Of all the things you could expect of a winter in this kingdom, being followed around Kattegat, much like you were when you were first brought here, was not one of them.

It has been half a day now, and you are slowly driving yourself mad trying to figure out if these women are trying to be discreet about their lumbering steps trailing after you or not.

“So, you’ve noticed them too.” Freydis quips, a smile that you can hear in her voice.

“It is hard not to.”

The blonde giggles under her breath, knocks her shoulder with yours as she whispers, “You still shouldn’t stare, you know.”

It is at her words that you blink out of your daze and realize you’ve been sitting there and staring at them for a while now. When the green eyes of one of the shieldmaidens meet yours, the woman only bows her head in greeting.

Eyes narrowed, you stand up and walk up to them, uncomfortably aware of their eyes on you from where they sit together, a table away.

You have no words when you reach them, though, and all you can offer is a flimsy, “Hello.”

She bows her head, again.

You hate that.

“My Queen.”

You hate that too.

“You aren’t subtle.” You blurt out, eyes switching between the one that spoke and the other three.

“We weren’t trying to be.”

You tilt your head to the side, and press,

“Why?” One of them, a woman of grave features and a scar over her lip, offers the beginning of a smile, and a helpless little shrug, as if to tell you she really shouldn’t give you an answer. That is an answer though, and you sigh, “Of course.”

When you turn around to go find your husband, the sound of chairs rustling as the shieldmaidens stand to follow you makes you grit your teeth. Freydis’ clear blue eyes watch you go, and with a secret smile she teasingly mouths good luck.

Luckily, you find Ivar quickly enough, and the little gaggle of shieldmaidens following you -in a manner that really shouldn’t remind you of little ducklings as much as it does- manages to become background noise for you as you walk to the courtyard where Ivar and Hvitserk are talking animatedly and eating, still amazingly unbothered by the biting cold of the winter.

As you approach you note that the shieldmaidens disperse through the crowd, as if they understand they are no longer needed. You know they will be once again on you the moment you walk away from your husband though.

Ivar is sitting by that table with his back turned to you, and it is Hvitserk who sees you approaching. He groans, an exaggerated roll of his eyes accompanying his words.

“In Odin’s name, no. Go away, you saw each other this morning.”

At his brother’s words, Ivar turns around, eyes already seeking you. You lose a bit of your anger when you witness the way his expression softens when he sees you.

“My love, come here.” He calls, extending a hand that you take without thinking twice about it.

You walk towards him until you are standing in between his legs, his hands moving to your hips and tightening as you lean down to greet him. He sighs into the soft and slow kiss, and your heart skips a beat in response.

Ivar maneuvers you until you hop onto the table in front of him, his hands moving down to your thighs and his smile widening as you lean back for another kiss.

“You last saw her this morning,” Hvitserk repeats, the clanking of a knife being dropped onto his plate as he sighs, “Could you not?”

Ivar pulls back, leaning to the side to look past you at his brother, “You could choose not to watch.”

“I’m eating here,” Hvitserk retorts without missing a beat. A moment, and you hear, “So unless you also plan to, please get your wife off the table.”

Eyebrows lifted, Ivar taunts, “And what makes you think would I let you watch, hm?”

“Well, there’s not much difference between seeing and hearing, and I have heard you two already, so th-…”

“Stop it.” You order past gritted teeth, and though you cannot see Hvitserk, you can hear his smile when he retorts,

“That’s actually the exact opposite of what I’ve heard you say.”

You put your hand on Ivar’s mouth to stop him from laughing, but the glint in his eyes and the silent shake of his shoulders still make your foolish heart grow warm, and a reluctant smile pulls at your lips.

Moving your hands to his shoulders, not bothering to hide how you are seeking the warmth of his fur cloak to cover your freezing hands, you start,

“Why are there shieldmaidens following me?”

“I want you to get used to them,” He says with ease, offering a shrug at your silence. “They will protect you when I leave for the spring.”

“Won’t Hvitserk stay with me?”

“Of course I will,” He quips, sounding almost offended that you would imply otherwise. “But my brother is right, you should have warriors to guard you.”

The choice of words irks you more than you would like to admit.

“I don’t ne-…”

Ivar’s hands tighten on you, calling for your attention, “We’ve talked about this.”

“No, you’ve talked.”

“And you’ve just quietly let me talk?” Ivar taunts, a smirk pulling at his lips, “Why do I find that hard to believe?”

You open your mouth to respond, but interrupt your words to turn your head to offer a glare at Hvitserk when he snorts a laugh.

“Something to say?”

He doesn’t look at you, and instead brings his cup to his smiling lips, standing up and shaking his head as he gulps the remaining mead.

“Not a thing,” Hvitserk replies easily, passing you by and pressing a kiss on your head as goodbye. “Good luck.”

What is it with everyone wishing you luck in regard to this?

You watch him go, and Ivar’s hands trailing up and down your thighs, leaving warmth chasing after the touch, bring your attention back to him.

“I told you a long time ago to find some warriors and shieldmaidens you can trust to protect you.”

“And I promptly ignored you.”

Ivar tilts his head to the side, annoyingly smug.

“How did that work out for you, hm?”

You sigh, following the trail of your fingers through the fur cloak over his shoulders, and quietly insist, “I don’t need guards.”

“Yes, you do.” He retorts, not missing a beat.

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do,” He insists stubbornly, though a small smile starts to curve at Ivar’s lips at your glare. “This is not up for discussion.”

Your eyes narrow as you say, “With you, most things aren’t.”

“And yet you love me.”

You furrow your lips at the smug expression on his face, and shake your head.

Having those warriors following you around, it feels like those first weeks in Kattegat, with Whitehair’s looming presence behind you, with watchful eyes set on you at all times. Eyes and ears follow the witch, the elder had told Freydis, but you had known for a while that Ivar was keeping a tight hold on the invisible chains he had set upon you.

“Ivar, I won’t be followed around as if I am a prisoner, th-…”

His expression hardens almost immediately as the word leaves your lips. Even after everything, you even implying that you are a prisoner to him still irks him.

“No, you will be followed around as if you are my wife, because you are.”

You take a deep breath, and start again, “I’m safe here.”

He doesn’t miss a beat, voice more guarded, stance more defensive, as he argues, “Not as safe as you think.”

“There is no safer place than Kattegat. If any army prepares to go beyond our walls, we will know, and prepare.”

“It doesn’t take an army to kill one woman,” He argues, a fleeting smile as he adds, “Even if that woman is you.”

“If someone gets close enough to try to kill me, we’ve already lost, Ivar.”

A twitch of irritation that furrows at his nose, that curls at his lip, and Ivar looks away with an angry breath. You realize you might have been a tad blunter than you intended to be with your words, but it is true.

“They will force you to surrender if they have to, the shieldmaidens. That is why I want them with you,” He states after a few breaths, the words quiet, as if speaking any louder will make it a reality. Given how much thought he has already put behind this possibility, you gather he should worry more about his thoughts making it true rather than his words. “They will drag you to safety if they have to. They aren’t there to save your pride; they are there to save you.”

“I wouldn’t give up our home.” You argue without hesitation, a furrow between your brows that you feel lessen when the faintest of smiles curves at Ivar’s lips absently at your words.

“If someone comes and takes Kattegat from us, I can fight for it, reclaim it. I have before,” He insists, and it is at that last sentence that it dawns on you. Why Hvitserk stays behind with you each time, why Ivar insists on leaving people he trusts to protect you, why leaving you behind in Kattegat seems to weigh on them as much as it does. They have left their home unprotected before, and they have returned to find their kingdom was not their own anymore and their mother had been killed while neither of them were there to protect her. You realize, for the first time maybe, that leaving behind their family in Kattegat is more daunting than either of them dare admit, maybe because they don’t realize it either. “But I can’t-…if they take you from me, what…what is there for me to do, hm?”

He searches your gaze as if you can offer any certainty regarding that, as if you can promise not even death can keep you from his side. You wish you could, but you cannot. You can promise that you will not let death claim you for as long as you can.

A Hiereia of the Dread Gods doesn’t fear death, and you never have. But you have prayed and threatened and you would fight and kill to keep Ivar from it.

And so you understand, even if you do so with less painful clarity than he experiences it, why he needs to do whatever it is in his power to keep you safe.

You concede with a dazed nod of your head, one of your hands trailing from his shoulder up to the side of his face, fingers tracing absently at the cold skin of his cheek.

“If you trust them, then so will I,” You promise, before taking a breath and leaning closer, brow pressed against his as you insist, as softly as you can, “But I don’t need them following me, not while you are here. No one is enough of a fool to try and take me from your side.”

He had to have known you wouldn’t give in without making him give in as well, you wouldn’t retreat without making him lose some ground of his own as well.

Ivar watches you in silence, pale blue eyes set on you, but you have feeling in his mind he is considering the cost of agreeing to keeping those guards with you only once the army leaves with him.

“If you choose a few more, that you know and trust, then mine will only guard you once I’m gone,” His eyes search yours, and, seemingly placated at whatever he sees in your gaze, Ivar leans back. After a breath or two, with a rueful, self-depreciating smile he adds, “Not that I don’t think you still put too much trust in a cripple being able to protect you, bu-…”

“You do,” You interrupt, a small furrow between your brows. “You have. You protect me, you keep me safe, in…in more ways than my pride lets me admit.”

You had heard the fearful whispers of how Ivar the Boneless was crazy, and once you might have agreed, looked upon him and seen nothing but madness; but as time has gone by, and as the cold of the winter settles in your bones, you cannot help but think it is him the one thing that has kept you from going mad yourself.

In a different life that you dread to even think of or imagine, Fate has pulled you apart and you have left a piece of your heart with him, and no kingdoms and no wars could ever fill the space it left behind.

Not that you would ever tell him, though you think he already knows, but he has saved you from a life without him, a life of being a title before a name, a life of power and the madness that comes with holding it alone. If what you have to do to promise him to do your best to save him from a life without you is accepting a little gaggle of shieldmaidens to follow you around, you can do so.

Ivar offers a small smile at your words, a softening of his features that still pulls tight at your heart.

“You came all this way because of this?”

“It’s not that far, I was bored, and…” You stop listing out your reasonings at the look on his face. “Shut up. It was unsettling.”

He hums as if considering your words, but there’s clear intent as his hands on your thighs make your legs part, and he moves himself closer to the edge of the chair.

“I was eating, you interrupted me.”

“You let me interrupt you,” You argue, but if he hears you he makes no comment. Instead, his hands on your thighs move further back, settling on the curve of your ass and moving you closer to the edge of the table, closer to Ivar’s mouth. He trails a path of kisses over your dress, a path down your stomach towards the side of your hip, stopping only when you call out quietly, “Ivar.”

“No one is looking,” He reassures you, but the dark smile that curves at his lip tells you he is lying and happily. “And if they do, let them.”

Your thoughts linger on his words, your eyes linger on the darkness of his gaze, for what seems to be a few moments too long; surprising yourself at what the thought of being caught with him does to you, and seeming to give Ivar enough time to go on.

He sets to continue the trail of kisses, one rough hand reaching under your skirts to lift up your dress just enough that he can press his cold lips to the skin of your knee.

You huff a laugh, and pull softly at the ends of his braids on the back of his neck, “Ivar!” You complain, smiling foolishly as you offer, “It’s too cold out here.”

A breath, then two, and Ivar drops his head on your leg, silent laughter making his shoulders move slightly. Laughter still clinging to his voice, he presses a kiss over your thigh and offers, “Good to know the cold is your reason for saying no, my love. I’ll remember that.”

____ ____ ____

Yes, the Reader’s introspections at the end there were about Alatheia, I made myself sad with that AU and you have to suffer with me.

Thank you for reading, hope you liked it!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius​ @heavenly1927​ @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax​ @angelofthorr​ @samsationalwilson​ @peachyboneless​ @1950schick​ @punkrocknpearls @ietss​ @itsmysticalmystery​ @revolution-starter​ @the-a-word-2214​ @fae-sedai​  @crazybunnyladysworld​   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside​ @aprilivar​ @msrawog @kaitieskidmore1​  

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Μῦθος (Vοσταλγία Winter Blurb)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Μῦθος (mûthos): tale, legend, myth (Ancient Greek)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: Winter Blurb #10. A little fluff with Aghi (Valdís’ son) and the Reader facing that she really wants some babies of her own.

Word Count: 2282

Warnings: I don’t think so, just the usual and my writing.

A/N: I’m sorry for my absence, I just don’t have the energy anymore, idk. I’ll try my best to get stuff done more consistently, but I can’t make any promises. Thank you for your patience 😘

You walk into the main hall quickly, hurrying to get rid of the cold that seems to cling to your body even past all the layers of clothing, your eyes already searching for Ivar.

You find Aghi first, sitting in front of your husband with his back straight, attention on whatever Ivar is telling him. You notice with a tug of emotion in your chest that the boy is sitting straight, elbows resting on the table just like Ivar’s, as if to imitate him.

“But Sigrún knew that he was not worthy of her hand, so she rode to find Helgi so he could…” Ivar’s eyes lift to you as you approach, and you motion for him to continue on as you get closer to Aghi, who has his back turned to you. Ivar returns his attention to the boy, gesturing with his arm as he continues, expressively relaying an old story, “Could fight against Granmarr and his sons for h-…”

You interrupt the story by reaching for the boy, lifting him up and laughing at his startled little shrieks.

“What are you doing here, eh?” You ask, dodging a sharp movement of the boy’s head before pressing a kiss over his tousled blond hair. His shriek quickly turns to laughter, and you find yourself squeezing him in a quick embrace, before you move to sit down. Perching him on your lap as you sit on the bench he was in, you meet Ivar’s gaze and prompt, “I was told you were looking for me.”

He takes a moment longer than you expected to reply, long enough that you pay attention to his expression, to the soft smile that curves at his lips even if he hides his mouth behind the hand he casually holds up to it.

There’s something in his eyes, a strange intensity, an edge you know to be longing but you cannot understand what for.

“Yes, I was. You certainly took your time,” He replies finally, gaze seemingly reluctant to leave your own, but finally it does, looking at the boy. Ivar’s smile widens, brightens in a way that makes him all the more…approachable, human. You had never seen him smile like that. “But I found someone that kept me company. Isn’t that right, little man?”

Aghi answers with a toothy smile, nods his head with a proud jut of his head that makes your heart warm.

“Lord Ivar was telling me about Helgi,” Aghi tells you, big eyes with the same color as Valdis’ but lacking the burden the cruelty of the years and of men have done to the shine of that pale grey. “Do you know him?”

“I know of him, yes,” You lift your gaze to Ivar, prompting, “All the battles he fought. You know, Aghi, even in my homeland we hear of his battles for the maiden Sigrún.”

That is a lie, you only know of such tales, and vaguely at that, because of Sieghild and her insistence on raising you as familiar to her home as to yours. You have always wondered if it was not a means for her to keep her home alive and with her, if that insistence was born out of a need to have someone to see the world as she did, even if partly.

And so you listen as you did when your mother sat before you and spoke of her land and her legends, as you will again, when it is your children he tells these stories to; as Ivar relays the tale of Helgi and his Sigrún.

Your heart grows light with joy at the sound of Aghi’s laughter when Ivar tells him of the trading of insults between the brother of the hero and his enemy’s own brother, but it grows heavy with something else, a welcome weight, as you watch Ivar chuckle alongside the boy, breathed and young laugh that seems to startle him as it makes its way past his lips.

You find your lips curved into a foolish, lovesick smile as he gestures with his hands, his already expressive nature all the greater as he tells Aghi of how Sigrún’s brother was given a spear by Odin himself, and who was slain with it.

His pale blue eyes lift to you, and he gestures with his head.

“You know this part,” He prompts, “You like stories of love and tragic endings, after all.”

You meet Aghi’s big eyes and take a breath, telling him of how one night a girl saw a man riding into Helgi’s barrow, and the night of their reunion and all the time of their separation that came after.

“But they met again, when the Gods bid them to return to live another life,” You turn to your husband, finding him looking at you with that strange look again. “Isn’t that right?”

Ivar nods, leaning back on his seat, and says nothing.

Aghi keeps his attention on you, and with an adorably confused expression, he prompts, “Why do you like sad stories?”

“Huh? I don’t, I…I like love stories, they just happen to often have sad endings.”

“Why?”

“It makes them easier to tell, easier to remember.”

“Don’t you want the endings to be happy?”

“That is not the way they usually are, and we must accept that.”

“Mama says you haven’t accepted anything in your l-…”

“No, no, Aghi,” You interrupt, furrowing your lips to hide the smile that threatens to break past your resolve at the sound of Ivar’s muttered and how right she is. “You must never repeat the things your mother says about me.”

“She says that about the things you say about her,” He shrugs, seemingly frustrated with adults and their confusing ways. You chuckle to yourself, pressing another kiss to his hair. “Can I ask you something? About your Gods?”

“Of course, little one.” You reply, a hand smoothing over his ruffled hair. Too late you realize you’ve used the term of endearment your mother has always used on you.

“What are Keres?” He asks, and you turn your gaze to your husband for a moment, suspicion starting to take a hold of you. Ivar only smiles, motioning with his hand as to signal you better answer.

You settle Aghi better on your lap, and explain,

“They are daughters of Nyx, sisters to the Fates. They take the souls of the slain in battle to Hades,” Without turning your head, you lift a hand towards Ivar, “Don’t say it.”

“They sound like Valkyries.” It is Aghi who argues instead, a little hurriedly, uttering the words you tried keeping your husband from saying. Your eyes narrow, and you hesitate before saying anything.

The boy looks at you with big eyes, but they betray a mischievous edge to them, and his expression quickly crumbles into delighted glee at whatever he finds in your expression.

With an innocent giggle that makes you smile against your will, Aghi gives away the intention behind his question, and who told him about Keres in the first place.

“He is right, is he not?” Ivar presses, an equally mischievous small laugh leaving his lips, and you watch him offer the boy a wink when Aghi turns to look at him.

“Why do I have a feeling someone has already told you about Keres before me?” You ask Aghi, pressing your finger to the tip of his nose when he smiles, “What has he told you of them, little one?”

“That they go to battlefields, to choose from the slain to take with them, like Valkyries.”

“He asked if you tell me stories too, I told him one you’ve told me before,” Ivar supplies, and though something tugs at your heart about that, you haven’t forgotten he has set up Aghi against you.

One of the first tales of your homeland that you shared with Ivar, back in that hut in Aneridge, when he was just a Viking and you just a Priestess, was of the Keres, ruthless and avenging spirits of violent death. And, just as he does now, with the support of Aghi apparently, he insisted they were just Valkyries of a different name.

Furrowing your mouth to hide a smile, you insist,

“They are not the same.”

“But they have the same task.” The boy insists.

You reach again to smoothen his hair, but it is just like Valdís’, and for the life of you there is no way you can easily tame it.

“Mhm. Just like the Norns and the Moirai.”

“So they are the same too?”

You shake your head with a chuckle, “No.”

But at the same time Ivar insists,

“Yes,” Your husband’s smile widens when Aghi turns to him, clearly more interested in his perspective. With a gesture of his hand, he states, “The Greeks just like changing the name of things.”

Pressing your lips together at the sound of Aghi’s laughter, you turn to your husband, “Ivar.”

“Yes, my love?”

“Stop it,” You roll your eyes at his answering chuckle, but keep your attention on the young boy, explaining, “They have many things in common, but they are not the same.”

There’s the smallest of furrows between his brows that make him so strikingly similar to his mother in that moment.

“But if they’re not the same, who will come for you when you get killed?”

“When?” Ivar repeats, a chuckle choking his attempt to drink from his goblet.

“I will not die anytime soon, much less in battle,” You assure the boy, lifting your brows expectantly as you continue, “You promised you would one day go fight across the sea, and you would put white sails on your boats so I would know you are safe, remember?”

“Like Theseus.”

“Like Theseus,” You confirm, nodding your head. “That is still many years ahead, but I plan to live to see it. You have nothing to worry about, little one.”

You know you haven’t answered his question, and to be honest the reason is that you do not have an answer.

Perhaps you do, and you just do not like that answer. Many times you have had to wonder what will happen to all the people you have loved and the people that have loved you when the Underworld summons you home, people of different Gods and different ways, different Fates.

Many of the people you have come to love are meant to go somewhere you cannot wish to follow when the time comes for death to claim them, and that is not something that is easy for you to accept, or even think about.

“We will meet again, I know this,” Galla tells you, and you can hear the marching feet of the Byzantine soldiers that approach Eleusis in the tremble of her warm voice. “I shall spend my life seeking to impress the Gods so I can join you in the Elysian Fields, my friend.”

As Hiereia of the Dread Gods, there is nothing you ought to want more than to join them in the Underworld and claim your place in the Fortunate Isles. As Daughter of Athens and Sparta, as a Greek by the blood that runs through your veins, you know you will join your ancestors in the afterlife when the time comes and there’s a part of you older than yourself that longs for that day to come.

“I have many people I wish to see again. My sister, my father and mother, and many friends the years took from me,” Sieghild tells you, green eyes focused on the flickering flames. “Yet I-…your Gods and mine cannot be friends, little one, and I must fight to earn Valhalla knowing my only daughter won’t ever join me in it.”

As daughter to a Viking shieldmaiden, you have heard of this place she speaks of, this afterlife of drinking and fighting and celebrating, and a part of you has always been intrigued by it. As wife to a Viking man, by the ring on your finger and the promises you have made, you cannot help but wish you will be joined by your descendants and his, and if it has to be in the afterlife of strange Gods the sacrifice seems worth it.

You bring yourself back to the present, turning your attention back to the man you married as he tells Aghi of an adventurer far greater than Theseus could ever be, and you feel warmth in your chest at the challenge in the curve of Ivar’s smile when he relays a story trying to overshadow the one you have told before of Theseus and his journey. And you wonder if it is wrong to hope, even if you cannot yet believe, that it is all the same albeit with a different name, that your Gods and his are one and the same and whatever differences there are between them are just something lost in translation.

Because it doesn’t seem fitting, to think of these two words so far apart from one another.

Not when you have Greek blood in your veins and yet have had a Viking ring dipped in blood placed on your finger, not when the heart that was given life in Greece belongs to someone that has never even stepped foot in it.

Not when your children will one day inherit a space between two worlds, between his and yours, for both in blood and in belief your children will be as Greek as they will be Viking.

It doesn’t seem fitting to think of those two worlds as apart from one another any longer, not any more fitting that it is for you to think of your future apart from Kattegat and your past from Eleusis.

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading! I’m sorry if this isn’t very good, it just wouldn’t leave my head so I figured I’d post it, hope it was alright

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius​ @heavenly1927​ @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax​ @angelofthorr​ @samsationalwilson​ @peachyboneless​ @1950schick​ @punkrocknpearls @ietss​ @itsmysticalmystery​ @revolution-starter​​ @the-a-word-2214​ @fae-sedai​ @crazybunnyladysworld​   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside​​ @aprilivar​​ @msrawog @kaitieskidmore1​​​ @berryonasummerevening​​  

[pomegranates-and-blood]

νοσταλγία (Chapter 44)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: The usual.

A/N: Hi, hope you like this! Ik I still have a winter blurb request to get to, I’ll probably post it sometime during the week. Thank you!

Btw, ‘mḗtēr’ is Ancient Greek for mother, and barley is a symbol of Demeter. :)

You are sitting on your bed, already dressed for the night, when Ivar comes into your bedroom.

You lift your gaze from your failed attempts at embroidery patterns that Thora makes look so damn easy, and watch Ivar walk closer, his free hand reaching to tug off the cloak over his shoulders.

You don’t miss the angry way he takes it off, or the stronger-than-needed stabs of his crutch against the ground.

He sits down before you on the bed, and you do not hesitate to move close, your legs on either side of him as you rest your brow between his shoulder blades, enjoying the familiar movements of his back as he starts to work on the braces of his legs.

Your arm wrapped around his torso, you let your hand travel up and down his stomach, smiling when he reaches back to put a heavy hand on your leg.

“Will you tell me what is wrong?” You prompt.

“Jarl Olavson was defeated.” He tells you curtly. Your hand stills, and so does your breath.

“Defeated?”

“Yes, defeated,” Ivar bites out, a movement of his head as his shoulders rise and fall with an angry breath. “Considering how we met, you should be very familiar with defeat.”

“Hey,” You chastise, tugging on his hair as reprimand. After a moment, he breathes out through his nose, and his hand tightens on your leg. You take it as an apology, certain none will actually leave his lips. “By whom?

Ivar doesn’t answer.

He should know by now that he says as much with his silences as he does with his words.

If it were King Alfred’s army, he would tell you. If it were any other Vikings that were somehow stupid enough to battle Ivar’s lieutenant in York and lucky enough to defeat him, he would tell you.

He wouldn’t tell you if it were the man he admitted to having in chains and on a moment of irrational impulsiveness, he let go free.

“How did he win? I would think he didn’t have the numbers after Strepshire.”

“He didn’t, not then,” He accepts, finishing taking off the braces of his legs. “But he does now.”

“Do you think his King aids him now?”

“No, it wasn’t Alfred’s army. We would have known if it were.”

You swallow down the pit of worry in your stomach, and move back on the bed, settling under the covers and waiting for your husband to join you.

He does soon after, discarding his shirt without a care for the cold that still bites, and -for reasons beyond the obvious ones- you keep your eyes on him.

You watch as he grabs a fistful of the pants’ fabric to move his legs, and you cannot help but notice the furrow between his brows, you watch his wrist expertly trapped in the chains that dangle above the bed as he settles for bed and you cannot help but linger on the tension that strains his shoulders.

If Stithulf managed to grow in power in such a way during the winter, enough to defeat the commander of York’s forces, most likely forcing him to retreat to the formerly Saxon city, then…even if neither of you would like to admit it, it is Ivar’s fault, and maybe yours.

Ivar let Stithulf go because of the deal you have made, because he wanted more time. Before he left you had to bite your tongue to keep yourself from requesting that of him, and you didn’t bite it when it came time to ask the Gods for the same thing.

And now, warm under the covers and laying on your side as your Ivar lays by your side on his back, pale eyes searching the nothingness of the space above him, you feel the tinge of worry, of regret.

You ran from Fate once, when you decided to go to Eleusis even while aware that the Gods -your own or others, you aren’t yet sure which- summoned you to Scandinavia; and you burned for it. You fought, and you lost, and you died.

You dread to think maybe you ran, maybe Ivar ran.

“Their movements, their…formations,” He stops himself, a twitch of irritation in his nose as he debates with himself whether to speak or not. “They don’t fight like Saxons.”

“They never did,” You offer, quietly. “And if you are right, and most of the Arabs survived…”

He shakes his head, sitting up on the bed once again. You take a moment to watch the outline of him bathed in the low and warm light of the dim fires, before you sit up as well, shuffling closer and bending your legs underneath you.

“It is more than that, it isn’t just the foreigners,” His words die with a frustrated sigh, his left hand closing into a fist before it releases when it doesn’t find the familiar handle of the crutch he can grab tightly onto. Past the clear tell of gritted teeth, he admits, “When we sail back to England, we will be going in blind.”

“You still have time.” You say, but it seems it goes unheard.

“How can I prepare if I can’t…predict him?” He asks, and it isn’t really a question you think he wants an answer to. If he did, all you could offer would be that he would have to fight like the others do, the ones that don’t have his mind that seems to let him get ahead of his enemy’s moves, his eyes that seem to let him foresee his enemy’s plans. But, you don’t say anything, instead resting your chin on his shoulder and letting one of your hands trail down his back. Ivar grits his teeth, and stays silent for a long time. After a while, he turns his head slightly to you, “What would you do?”

“You’re asking me?”

A shrug of the shoulder you’re not resting on, and Ivar offers simply, “Why not?”

“I have never led an army.”

“Your commander did, and he obeyed you.”

You lift your eyebrows, and insist, “He died because of it.”

“I am not planning on doing that,” He clarifies, the beginning of a smile on his lips, “Obeying you, or dying.”

Your eyes narrow at his taunt, and you retort, “Why are you asking me, then?”

“I’m curious.”

“I don’t have any answers. I am not…” You take a breath, and mull over your words before you start again, “One of the things I admired Narses the most far was how he…” A small smile curves at your lips, and you look at the nothingness ahead, somehow able to see clearly in your mind’s eye the cocky smile of the young Strategus as he hooked the spear under his arm and bowed mockingly at you. “He was never caught off guard. He was foolish, and he refused to stick to a plan most of the time, but…with the passing of time I started to think he counted on that, on the lack of a plan. Back in Greece, the battles we won were because of his adaptability, as much as any strategy I could…suggest to him. I insisted on a plan, and he was smart enough to not defy me, s-…”

“I wouldn’t say smart.”

Your lips curve into a smile, and you lift your head off his shoulder to meet his gaze directly. Ivar leans back, falling back on the bed, and you follow, leaning over him as your hand travels up and down his chest.

“What would you say then, love?” You ask, a challenge and something else. You bring yourself closer, “Would you say bewitched?”

You remember being in that small hut in Aneridge, able and willing to forget either of you had names and stories, and daring ask him, are you one to believe Stithulf’s tales that I can bewitch men to their deaths? Blind them and have them follow my every whim?

And, more importantly than that, you remember the way his eyes remained on you, a slow blink as he considered his answer. You remember the tone of his voice that made a shiver run down his spine when he replied, not through magic.

His smile is challenging, mocking, but Ivar shakes his head instead of answering.

“You were speaking of how you won, back in your homeland.”

“He…adapted, a lot. Too often for my liking,” You furrow your nose, and your husband chuckles, his hand warm as it travels up and down the arm you’ve draped over his chest. “My pride kept me from accepting we had to change our tactics, I will admit that. Maybe that arrogance was my downfall.”

Your eyes fall from his, and you almost want to ask, order, don’t let your arrogance be yours.

The words are at the tip of your tongue when the voice of one of Ivar’s guards on the other side of the door startles you.

“Someone is requesting the…the Queen to, uh, meet with them.”

“Is it Rúna’s husband? Is it the baby?” You ask, already scrambling to get out of bed at the mere thought that she is to give birth now. It has been a difficult pregnancy for her, and you’ve given stern orders to her husband to come to you when the time comes for her to deliver.

“No, uh…your mother, my Queen.”

The air is knocked out of you with those words, and you stand unmoving for a few breaths too long. You feel the cold of the floor seeping into your very bones through your bare feet, but you feel rooted to the ground.

A quiet call of your name, and you turn wide eyes to Ivar. He searches your gaze, a strange sort of hesitation in his expression that is probably born out of whatever he sees in yours, and he says your name again.

You blink, swallowing hard.

“Go to her.”

You nod your head, but don’t move for a couple of heartbeats, until you have the cold startle you into movement. Wrapping the robe over your nightdress, you slip into your shoes and step out.

Letting the two guards lead the way to one of the back rooms of the -now deserted- longhouse, you try deciphering if what runs through your veins right now is thrill or dread.

Sieghild stands tall by one of the stone pit fires near that are lined up near the walls, surrounded by seats; her shield not at her back but, as always, close to her. At the sound of your steps, she turns around, the same almost-crooked smile on her face, the familiar face with traces of ink in the shape of the roots of Yggdrasil, the same green eyes of your childhood.

You stumble over your own feet as you run to her, and never before have you felt as time disappeared and you were suddenly a child again as you do then.

“Mḗtēr!”

Sieghild embraces you tightly, with the desperation of having thought you lost forever, the relief at having you back, the anger at your disappearance; strong arms wrapped around you and lifting you a bit off the ground. You breathe a relieved laugh that sounds like a sob, your own arms wrapped as strongly as you can around your mother.

“Little one, you are alright, you are alright.” She whispers, and even if she talks to her own fears and not you, you still nod against her shoulder.

“I thought you were-…”

“I am here, child. The Gods wouldn’t call me to Valhalla while you still need me.”

You look into familiar green eyes and offer a helpless shrug, “I’ll always need you.”

“Then I shall always be here.” She promises, pressing a kiss against your forehead like she did when you were a child.

But you weren’t, your heart bitterly wants to say, words you keep at bay by biting your own tongue.

For now, you close your eyes at the rough touch of Sieghild’s battle-worn hands on the sides of your face, you let her brow press against yours and the familiar scent of iron and the always underlying scent of those fields of barley you would run through with her as a child.

When you step back, you feel the months-old anger come back, you feel the uncertainty and resentment settle over you like a warm cloak, and you meet Sieghild’s eyes, unwavering.

“I would like a word with my mother.” You state, keeping your gaze on her. You watch as our mother watches the people leave the room, watching out of the corner of her eye as the last of the men closes the door behind him.

She turns to you with a smile that is in part mocking and in part proud.

“I always did say you were Fated to rule, did I not?”

Many times she told you that, usually angrily, when what she stubbornly calls your ‘Athenian nobility’ shines through.

Galla spares you a glance out of the corner of her eye, the faintest quirk of a smile on her lips, her words a tease and something else as she quips, “Born with a crown on her head, this one.”

Many others have implied the same, sometimes in praise and often in reprimand.

Ivar meets your eyes, an unwavering edge to his madness, a darkness to the curve of his smile, as he promises, “Don’t lie to me, Priestess. You were made to rule, to command. Don’t pretend otherwise with me.”

You shake your head, “Fate has nothing to do with it.”

“Doesn’t it?” She retorts, but it isn’t a question she expects an answer to. Instead, the shieldmaiden strides to the seats by the dimmest hearth in the room. She always has done that, ever since Eleusis, making sure you aren’t near open flames that make your skin crawl.

You walk to her, hands folded in front of you, and take a seat before her.

“You gave me up. You arranged for me to marry Ivar, and you never told me.”

A deep breath, like she was expecting this, and Sieghild leans back, a hard nod of her head.

“I did,” She offers no other explanation for a few moments, before adding, “I had my reasons.”

“Which are?”

Her eyes narrow as she looks you over, a quirk in her mouth that speaks not of a smile but of something wilder, and Sieghild’s voice is icy when she asks,

“Who do you think you are, to demand anything from me?”

Your answer is unwavering, and you don’t even think twice about the words that are to leave your lips, “Your daughter.”

Sieghild holds your gaze for a few breaths, before looking away with a grunt and the clear tell of gritted teeth. She was expecting something else out of your answer, the years alongside her let you see that in that small gesture.

A twitch in her nose, furrowed for only a moment, and Sieghild offers, voice unusually quiet,

“I told you since you were a child about the path the Gods, yours or maybe mine, had woven for you,” Green eyes pierce into yours, and for a moment you are saying goodbye again, in the outskirts of Aneridge and by the gates of Eleusis. She swallows, and continues, “You ran once, and I lost you, I had to leave you behind and let those damned Christians burn you alive. I couldn’t let you run again.”

“That is why you asked me,” You state, not even a question. The night she left you behind on the edge of that forest plays behind your closed lids with striking vibrance. “You took me there and told me we were at a crossroads, the…the world between worlds. I chose to stay.”

“It was Fate you did so.” She retorts with a sigh.

And that word grates at your ears. It always has, ever since you have had memory.

Your eyes fall shut, and you take a deep breath to remain calm.

“You know, with time passing I had forgotten how much I hate that word leaving your lips,” You grumble, mostly to yourself. Sieghild still chuckles, but it is dimmer than usual. The errant thought that maybe you don’t know what the usual is for your mother anymore crosses your head, but you dismiss it easily enough. Finding your strength, your anger, you meet her gaze and with your head held high you insist, “You cannot hide behind Fate, mother.”

For all the times she has accused you of your own fair share of arrogance, few times she has admitted you take after her in that regard. Now, more than any other time, her own arrogance, her own pride, are apparent in the way she bristles at your words, suddenly sitting straighter.

“I don’t hide, little one. You know that.”

You shake your head, at her resolve, at her unwavering certainties, at her abandonment. Your eyes wide, you lift a hand and point a finger at her, too late realizing that is a gesture you have seen often in the man you married.

“Fate didn’t chain me to Ivar’s side until you made a deal with him!” Your voice thunders at the same time it breaks and you do not care. Your lip curls into a snarl, or maybe something more fragile, something more broken. “You fulfilled what you were told was Fate, because you believed it was inescapable.”

“And you stayed behind to die in Eleusis because you wanted to fight Fate,” She retorts, green eyes blazing. “How is that any different?”

“It was my choice.”

“And it was my choice to send you to Kattegat.”

You hate the way your lower lip trembles, the way sorrow wants to overpower pride, and succeeds.

You furrow your lips, raising your chin as you insist, “You abandoned me.”

“I did what I should have when you were younger. I saved you.”

Your nails dig into your palms, and you stand up. The chair makes a horrible sound against the wooden floor, and you pace away from the table, shaking your head to yourself.

Your mother follows you with a challenge shining in her green gaze.

“You didn’t save me.”

“You are alive, you are safe. I wouldn’t ask for anything more.” She crosses broad arms over her chest, head titled to the side.

You feel your lip curling into a snarl, your hands trembling at your sides as the anger that burns in your blood demands you do something.

Voice thundering, you demand, “I would have!”

“And you would have died for it!” Sieghild barks back, voice rising as well. “You think you would have survived Stithulf if it weren’t for that boy, huh? You think that damn Christian would have kept you alive for much longer?”

You shake your head, feeling like a chastised child under her burning green gaze.

“Ivar isn’t the reason I survived.”

“He kept you safer than I ever could, even if he didn’t realize it, even if you don’t like accepting it, little one,” She retorts, standing and walking closer. “You are arrogant, but you are also smart. You know it is true.”

You shake your head, stepping back.

“You didn’t tell me, you just left me behind in that place, and I-I was alone, and…” Your eyes fall shut and you find yourself almost compulsively twirling your wedding ring as you try finding resolve again. Without opening your eyes, you take a deep breath and ask, “Why come back now?”

“I told you to survive until spring came, I knew we’d be together again after the winter,” She tells you, quietly, almost mournfully. “Even if you hated me, even if you hate me now…what I did, I did for you. To keep you alive, to let you have a future.”

“All my life, I-…” You furrow your lips, consider your words and start again, “You more than anyone knows how important it is for me to be…free. Free to choose, free to…be. You took that from me, you let Ivar take that from me.”

But Sieghild doesn’t falter, even if her eyes give away more than she would like to admit.

“It is a privilege to be able to live life in the way you have, little one. To never have your beating heart be the only thing that you can count on, that you can call your own. The truth is that there is no reason for freedom without life, not the other way around,” Strong arms crossed over her chest, your mother insists, “Between seeing you in chains and seeing you on a grave, I know which I prefer.”

“Does it matter which I prefer?”

Her silence is enough of an answer, and you sit back down on your chair, twirling your wedding ring on your finger. You notice the way your mother’s eyes travel to the movement, but if she has anything to say about it, she keeps it to herself for now.

“When you love someone, someone that you know will go where you cannot follow once death touches them…” She starts, slowly, deliberately. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do to keep them alive? Keep them with you?”

“I never tried keeping you, or anyone, from your dear Valhalla.”

A quirk of her mouth, humorless and challenging, as she sits back down as well, “I taught you to lie, don’t try it with me.”

“I’m not-…”

“Four years ago, on the outskirts of Circe, you did what you had promised you wouldn’t do. Do you remember, little one?”

You bite your lip to keep it from trembling, as you take in your mother’s pale features, “You could have died.”

“And what glorious death it would have been,” Sieghild retorts, not missing a beat. Her smile is wry, tired, but still irrevocably hers. “Better than whatever awaits me in this bed, that’s for sure.”

“You won’t die here either.”

“I better not,” She warns, closing her eyes. You are worried about the sunken look on her face. Your leg bobs up and down anxiously and you feel your fingers fidgeting as you itch to get to work on making something, anything, that will make it better. “To be robbed of a chance to enter Valhalla because my child is too stubborn t-…”

“Valhalla cannot have you yet!” You snap, blinking past the burning in your eyes when Sieghild opens her eyes to meet your gaze. “Your Gods cannot have you yet, I-I need you with me.”

“Of course I remember.” You retort, gritting your teeth. She has always had this infuriating way of hers of deliberately and obviously guiding you with questions to say what she wants you to, to admit what you refuse to.

“What I did was no different. You dragged me from the battlefield and insisted on delaying the inevitable by tending to my wounds, because you didn’t want to lose me. Even if it cost me what I live and fight for, you want-…”

“You Varangians and your glorious deaths,” You groan, rolling your eyes, “You lived. You lived to fight in another battle and die another day.”

“And you lived to see yourself free once more.”

“It is not the same.”

“Explain why, then.”

That gesture, it is the same as the life that once was all you had known, of her routinely throwing a stick your way, smoothing the ground with her boot and demanding an explanation for the newest battle you had witnessed, or the latest historical one that you had been drawn to.

You sigh, tired beyond what you think you could express with words, “Mother.”

Sieghild considers you for a moment, gaze travelling over your features, taking you in as if a stranger. Maybe you are, in some ways.

She softens after a breath, shoulders lowering as she takes a deep breath.

“I…I had a dream, the Gods showed me that when the ground was softened, when the earth thawed, you’d be returned to me. So, I was certain I would find you once spring came.”

There’s a part of you that tries thinking of it all and tries making all the pieces make something that makes sense, and that part whispers that the Gods let Sieghild see that spring would see you returned to her because it was when spring came that you would make your choice, that you would be free to leave Ivar. That part of you has a heart that beats along the cadence of all the prophecies and half-coherent visions that have plagued you and others, that part of you feels like blind eyes looking directly into yours and bloodstained lips whispering you will not find your belonging amongst flowers.

But that part of you is trying to accept a world where somehow what has happened, what you have lost and what you have suffered, has a reason. It cannot have a reason, it cannot be inevitable.

So, you search your mother’s gaze and ask,

“Why spring?”

“We can set sail away from here now that the season allows it,” She replies easily, and you lean back in your seat, irrationally stunned. Sieghild raises her brows, “Have you already forgotten all that was keeping you here was the harshness of winter?” Your eyes lower from hers, and Sieghild takes a breath, “Ah, but it isn’t the season what keeps you here now.”

You shrug, reaching for the bread and picking out a piece with your fingers as you mumble, “You were the one to tell me all my life that my Fate lied in Kattegat.”

“Many would say your Fate is to fight for Greece.”

You lift your gaze to hers, head tilted to the side.

“My Fate would be to rule over it,” You correct her, and the lines on your mother’s face deepen when she smiles. “But I have no interest in doing so.”

Sieghild looks you over, green eyes shining with something you could swear looks like pride. Eventually she leans back, an arm stretched over the back of her seat and her head tilted to the side.

“You will be staying in Kattegat then?”

You bring the piece of bread to your mouth, offering another shrug, “It is my home.”

“Kattegat is?” She drawls out the words, lifting her brows. Your eyes narrow as you are put on the spot, and there is no hiding the bite in your tone when you ask,

“Why do you ask questions you know the answer to?”

Your mother shrugs, “It entertains me.”

There’s a sigh making its way past your lips before you can stop it, an exasperated but fond one. In the look you and Sieghild share there are more words than either of you would ever dare to say aloud, and you lean back in your seat, picking another piece of the bread.

“Where were you all this time?”

“With King Angantyr of the Black Danes, mostly,” She chuckles to herself, “All the way in England they speak of Ivar the Boneless’ witch, you know.”

“As long as men have tongues to speak, they will speak lies,” You offer around a shrug, words that were of someone you met along the Silk Roads, and though you do not remember their face, you remember their wisdom, and you know your mother does too. Still, she narrows her eyes, almost suspicious, and you clarify, “I am no witch, mother.”

“But you are his.” She sentences.

“Only because he is mine as well.”

Her eyes shine with a glint you haven’t seen in years when she smiles, and you find yourself smiling back, heart lighter.

After a breath, your mother leans forward and quietly asks, “Do you trust him?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Of course I do.”

The shieldmaiden nods once, and takes a deep breath, “We have matters of war to discuss then, you and I. Your husband too.”

You frown, and when she stands up you do the same. Your mother simply starts walking, long strides towards the front of the longhouse. You scramble to catch up, asking questions as you go,

“What? Why?”

“I had a plan, you see. I didn’t come to Kattegat now on a whim.”

“You are hiding something.”

“Not for long. I had counted on using this…information to our advantage if you were to decide to leave, but…” She looks at you out of the corner of her eye, “Plans change, little one.”

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading, hope you liked it!

I have a lot of fun writing Sieghild, she’s like the Priestess without the snobbiness lol. Main example of how much fun I have writing her being the length of this chapter lol, sorry. But yeah, they had (have) a lot of things to work through, though they are, much like the Reader and Freydis, on very different world perceptions when it comes to the issues they’ve discussed, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927​ @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax​ @angelofthorr​ @samsationalwilson​ @peachyboneless @1950schick​ @punkrocknpearls @ietss​ @itsmysticalmystery​ @revolution-starter​ @the-a-word-2214​  @fae-sedai​  @crazybunnyladysworld​    @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside​ @aprilivar​ @msrawog  

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Φθόνος (Vοσταλγία Winter Blurb)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Φθόνος (phthónos): jealousy, cause of indignation, grudge (Ancient Greek)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: Winter Blurb #5. She gets territorial and he’s into it. That’s it.

Word Count: 3.1k (aaahh, I’m sorryyy, I can’t write drabbles)

Warnings: nope, just fluff, a lil bit of suggestive themes (you already know that means D/s dynamics and sub!Ivar, right?), and my writing lol. Also, knife kink and the tiniest mention of bondage 🤷‍♀️

A/N: A wonderful anon put this idea in my head, and omfg I love it so much. Thank you so much for requesting this! Hope you like it, nonnie!

This feast seems to drag on and on, and in between the looks this Jarl is sparing you and the looks the girl he introduced as his daughter is directing towards your husband, you really cannot wait for it to be over.

Which is why you have been trying to lure Ivar to follow you to privacy. If not for the rest of the night, for enough fun to make the night interesting before you are to return to this damn throne.

You lean closer, letting your eyes roam over the side of his face, lingering on his lips, furrowed in annoyance or to hide amusement.

“They won’t miss us.” You insist lowly, your hand trailing down his chest.

Your brow furrows when Ivar reaches with a hand to grasp your own and stop you.

He turns his head slightly to you, and in the darkness of his blue eyes you know you have almost won. Still, he retorts, “They’ve come here for us.”

“But I want you to come for m-…”

A chuckle that rumbles in his chest stops your words, and lifting his eyebrows as he meets your gaze, he orders,

“Behave.”

You lean closer, voice breathy and hoarse as you dare him,

“Make me.”

His eyes drop to your mouth, barely a moment before Ivar surges forward, capturing his mouth in his, tongue slipping into your mouth without preamble, leaving you to hang on to the fabric over his chest to find any balance as he hungrily claims your mouth.

Pulling away with teeth biting playfully at your bottom lip, he opens his mouth to respond, but ins interrupted by heavy footsteps and a call of,

“King Ivar!” Jarl Leifrson steps forward towards the thrones where you sit, a horn of mead in his hand and an alertness in his gaze that you wouldn’t expect from him this far into the feast. He raises his horn, and speaks again, “I must thank you for honoring me in such a way with this feast. Honoring my family, and our new alliance, of course.”

Ivar nods his head once. You don’t pull away, still leaning to be pressed against him, and his hand is rough but familiar when it settles in the curve of your waist.

“Of course.”

Your eyes linger in the streaks of grey in the Jarl’s beard, in the mark of age wrinkling the corners of his eyes, and you remember your mother’s words.

An old man in power is never a good thing, little one. They are either ruthless enough to overpower their enemies strength, or cunning enough to persevere past their enemies intelligence.

So you aren’t surprised when he speaks again, another step in whatever game he is trying his hand at, but you are cautious.

“I am looking forward to joining you when the time comes to raid from York,” The man continues, and the smile Ivar offers is an empty pleasantry that doesn’t hide his distaste for whatever it is the man is trying to play at. Still, your husband raises a cup in false thanks. The man keeps talking though. “But I am…wary, I confess. You do not have a reputation of following through on your promises.”

He speaks loudly, and he does it purposely, drawing the attention of the people in attendance.

Based on the sharp breath Ivar draws in, in the way tension seems to coil around his shoulders as he straightens in his seat, smile and any attempt at pleasantry dropped; he succeeds in whatever he is playing at.

For the way the man’s words conjure a stillness in the room that speaks of countless people holding their breath, movement draws your attention. You catch Hvitserk’s eyes as he leans back on his chair, crossing his arms over his chest with a smile that you know well by now.

He wants a fight.

They all do, judging by the way Ubbe lifts his head slightly where he stands by a pillar, seemingly measuring the Jarl and his men that now also seem to have forgotten the food and entertainment.

“What promises do you speak of, hm?” Ivar taunts, and you do not hesitate to, making use of the way you were already pressed against him, hook your fingers in the collar of his shirt, a futile attempt to draw any calm you can from him.

“King Harald Finehair speaks of vows you made to leave Kattegat to him when you die, but now you have taken a wife.” He eyes you up and down, making you feel strangely exposed.

“He is still entitled to these lands. And he is welcome to take Kattegat, rightfully so, when I die,” Ivar retorts, not missing a beat. A downwards curve of his mouth, a shrug of his shoulder not pressed against you, to show a nonchalance that is written in none of the truths about him right now. He gestures with his hand as he finishes, “He is welcome to fight my sons for it.”

The man knows it didn’t go his way, you can see it in his posture that suddenly isn’t so confident and open, you can hear it in his voice going back to a normal volume when he speaks next.

“But you understand my concern now that I am to ally myself with you, I’m sure.”

Ivar only smiles, the side of his mouth curving into a humorless smirk. A dare, a trap.

“Do you fear a cripple will outsmart you, Jarl Leifrson?”

You learn then that old men in power also know when they are beat, and have none of the arrogance of younger men to keep fighting. Past the slight narrowing of his eyes, there is no tell in the man that he resents the taunt.

Still, he is nothing if not relentless, and he seemingly has an objective he is unwilling to leave unaccomplished. Later that night, as you sit on the table by Ivar’s side, he returns to the topic.

You share a look with Hvitserk, and in his warm eyes you see he is as done with this man as you are.

“King Ivar, I still have my concerns, and…I think we would benefit from forging a…stronger alliance.”

Ivar lifts his eyes to him, gesturing with his hands as he insists, “Such as?”

The Jarl leans forward, elbows resting on the table, and bluntly blurts, “Have you considered taking a second wife? A concubine perhaps?

You feel the familiar anger settling in the center of your chest, making you straighten in your seat. He doesn’t wait for an answer, making a broad gesture with his arm to the girl he introduced as his daughter earlier tonight.

“This is my daughter, Dagný. The most beautiful of my daughters,” He admits around a falsely humble chuckle. He turns his gaze to Ivar, “Fit for a king.”

He smiles, and as he gestures with his hand you turn wide eyes from him to the girl of strawberry blonde hair and piercing green eyes. Her smile is coy as she stands up from her chair, smoothing down of her dress.

“Sit down, girl.” You order before you can stop yourself, too late realizing what you have said. You refuse to take back your words, and instead lean forward in your chair, daring her. Her smile drops as she meets your gaze with wide eyes, blinking owlishly for a moment.

“I’d do as she says if I were you,” Ivar urges mockingly. The girl startles, but sits back down with lowered eyes. When you spare a glance to Ivar, you find his amused smile to be more honest, more real, even as he turns towards the Jarl. “I have no interest in your daughter. I am already married.”

“Even if a foreigner, surely she unders-…”

“I understand.” You interrupt, refusing to give anything other than those words away, offering a small smile when the man meets your gaze as if expecting you to continue.

“But you take issue with it?”

You shrug.

“Greeks don’t share.”

“You aren’t in Greece.”

“And you aren’t in your domain,” You offer instead, rising your eyebrows, “So I suggest you thread carefully.”

“Ah, viper’s tongue on this one,” He chuckles, but it is false, purposely so. “I wonder what else you have of a sn-…”

The faintest twitch in Ivar’s expression is all the warning any of you have before a knife is deeply embedded in the wood of the table, startling you all into silence. You don’t fail to notice the way Hvitserk lowers his hand from the table and reaches for his thigh, most likely his axe.

Piercing blue eyes meet the Jarl’s, and there is something eerie about Ivar’s stillness in his anger that unsettles even you.

“It is not a smart thing to attempt to insult my wife.”

The man takes a deep breath, and after a moment bows his head once, accepting Ivar’s words. Old men in power continue to surprise you.

____

That night, as you finally leave behind the chaos and the noise of the feast behind you, you find yourself thinking back on Jarl Leifrson’s words, on his unwavering confidence that his daughter, not even a firstborn to some Jarl, was supposed to be a good fit for Ivar, a good fit above you.

You are distracted from your thoughts, lured away from the anger -anger and something else, something hungrier that wants to leave its mark, something prouder that wants to stake its claim- when Ivar extends a hand in a silent command that you go to him where he sits on a chair by the dimmest of fires in your bedroom.

Walking the distance between you and sitting on the armrest of the chair, you welcome greedily the warmth of his body as it presses against yours, the safety of his arm as it is secured around your waist.

With the hand not holding you to him, Ivar touches the silk of your dress with a dark sort of fascination.

“This dress, it’s…” His thoughts seem to wander way from him, and his hand previously travelling up and down your side moves to your front, the back of his fingers tracing the familiar outline of a knife handle in the dip of the dress between your breasts. “Is that…?”

You confirm that it is indeed the knife he gifted you a long time ago with a quiet hum, reaching to mindlessly run your fingers over the paths his braids take.

After a few heartbeats, repeating incessantly in your head the arrogant confidence of a man that claimed he had something better than you to offer Ivar, you feel Ivar mouth your name against your collarbone, a question even if it is just a few syllables on a voice that still sounds accented and foreign and his whenever he says it.

“What’s with you, hm?” He asks, and you feel his piercing gaze set intently on you even as you look ahead. With one last kiss to the curve of your shoulder, he reluctantly parts from your skin.

“What Jarl Leifrson said. My people don’t-…” You stop yourself, licking your lips as you consider your words. After a deep breath, you turn your head to face him. “I don’t share such customs.”

Ivar shrugs.

Shrugs.

You have half a mind to put that knife he gifted you to use when he finally speaks,

“I knew that when I married you.”

“Hmph.”

He offers a smile that is still slightly mocking, and your eyes narrow.

“You know I am true to you,” He tells you, voice lower, a tad more serious. You furrow your lips, but say nothing. Ivar leans closer again, breaths by your neck making a trail of goosebumps chase after the phantom touch. “When have I ever even looked at another woman since you, hm?”

He seals his words with a press of his lips under the curve of your jaw, and after a moment, you concede, tilting your head back to allow him access to your neck.

“I still don’t like them speaking of it. Of you taking another woman.”

“It won’t happen.” He retorts easily, as if it truly is that simple.

“They speak of it regardless,” You insist, drawing in a sharp breath at the light scrape of Ivar’s teeth on the skin of your neck, threatening but not quite. Your hand travels to the back of his neck, and past the quick beating of your heart you aren’t sure if it is to stop him or encourage him. Biting back an angry sigh, you continue, “They think that because I am not Viking any of their women can…replace me. That is not…the way of my people.”

“How do you Greeks claim what is yours then, hm?”

The easy admission that he is yours sends a pang of heat through you, sparks in you a hunger you are familiar with and you know so is he. He doesn’t quite say it, has taken a liking for defying you and refusing to say what you want him to until you make him; but it is enough for a small smile to curve at your lips.

“Attic women don’t claim, I’m afraid. They are the ones claimed.”

“You aren’t just Attic.”

You lick your lips, and lean back enough to face him. Ivar still leans closer, breaths almost one with yours, gaze defying, daring.

“If we were to…claim each other under Spartan custom…well, we have done part of it already,” Your lips pull into a smile at the raised eyebrow he offers, but you breathe a chuckle and shake your head. “Not that. Women are to be taken, abducted, when they are to be wed.”

“Truly?”

“Mhm,” You can’t resist leaning a tad closer, not with the maddening trail of Ivar’s rough fingers down the curve of your neck towards the top of your breasts, leaving a trail of this striking blend of ice and fire on your skin. And so you lean closer, press a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, and then another slightly more to the center of his mouth, and just that is enough to have him leaning after your touch. After all this time, you still cannot help thinking that the Gods shouldn’t have let you taste power like the one you hold now, as his gaze -wanting, enthralled, open gaze- darkens, as you feel the slightest hitch in his breath knowing you are the cause. “Women of Spartan blood are fought for, my love.”

His hand that was maddeningly trailing close enough to your breasts to make you shiver but not still not close enough stills when your own hand, previously resting at the back of his neck, moves to settle at the curve of his throat.

Lightly, of course. You like making him ask for the press of your small, delicate fingers on his throat, controlling his breaths.

Still, it is enough, with barely a touch, to make his breath hitch. Your eyes travel to his mouth when his tongue darts out to draw his lower lip into the trap of his teeth. You want to be the one biting that lip.

Voice roughened, he presses, “H-How?”

Your hand drops from his neck to reach for your own chest, but you don’t grasp his hand, not even his wrist where your pendant proudly stakes a claim of its own.

No. You reach for the knife that lies adorning the dress, right between your breasts.

Dragging the edge of the blade up his own chest, you delight yourself in the way his breaths immediately lose any pretense of being controlled. Desire curls in your stomach like a snake when you hear the slightly gasping breaths that leave Ivar’s lips as you continue a slow trail of the edge of the knife he gifted you up his torso.

His eyes follow the movement of it, wide eyes darkened by want; so you don’t hesitate to let the edge of the blade travel up his throat to the underside of his jaw, guiding him to look up at you again.

His parted lips, wide eyes that speak of nothing but need, make you lose whatever is left of your mind, whatever is left of your own pretense of wanting anything other than this, than Ivar. Ivar, yours, at your mercy.

Swallowing past a dry throat, you force yourself to answer his question.

“Quite different from any other fight,” Your voice lowers, and you lean closer once again. This time he remains pliant, unmoving, letting you press against him with barely any movement, letting you trace a path up the underside of his jaw towards his ear with lips and tongue with barely a shiver. Letting go of any pretense that you were speaking of anything other than making him yours, you continue, “Trying to overpower me is just delaying your defeat. In this fight, your strength is measured with how beautifully you surrender.

Your lips make a slow trail from his ear to the corner of his mouth at the same time the blade of the knife traces the same path on the other side of his face, and with each light press of your lips on his skin as you reach your destination, you feel his breaths quicken even further, his hand now grasping at your waist grow tighter.

When your lips are finally a hair’s breadth away from his, you let the knife press more firmly against his cheek, not enough to break the skin yet, but enough to make him draw in a sharp breath.

With the slight drawl of humor to your voice, you promise, “It usually leaves a scar either way.”

A mark. And you find yourself wanting to leave your marks on him. Leave marks that fade, the quickened breaths that make his chest heave under your hands as the most perfect sing to the pleasure you draw out of him, the wide blue eyes that voice please a prideful tongue keeps at bay until you manage to make him surrender; leave marks that remain, the evidence of your sharpness in the bite marks that litter his skin after you take your fill of what is yours, the evidence of your softness in the rope marks striking against arms that fight the binds when soft touches grant him any and all the pleasure you wish to.

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading, hope it was alright!

So that bit at the end of how Spartans lay their claim is a very horny and very inaccurate representation of Ancient Spartan wedding traditions. Sorry.

There’s obviously a smutty second part, Dróttning, right here.

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214 @fae-sedai​ @crazybunnyladysworld    @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside​ @aprilivar​ @msrawog @kaitieskidmore1​

[pomegranates-and-blood]

νοσταλγία (Chapter 41)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Word Count: 3.8k

Warnings: The usual

A/N: This was difficult to write, burnout hit me hard. But I like the result, and I hope you like it too. Ik I said I was going to stray from Saturday updates, but here we are, I am apparently once again/still on Saturday updates

Also, remember Persephone is depicted as a woman almost-always wearing a red veil to cover her face, since it is symbolic of the veil brides wore in Ancient Greece.

You open your eyes, but all you can see is red. No, that isn’t right. Everything you see is tainted red, like you’re looking through a piece of stained glass.

Somewhere at your back there’s a laugh, melodic but cold, but you don’t bother turning, you know she isn’t there. Instead, you step forward, and the ground under your feet trembles, as if the earth is split in two.

There’s the faintest of touches on your face, the uncertain caress of hands not used to gentleness; and there’s the most familiar call of your name, even if it will forever sound foreign.

You see him past the red, you make out the shape of his lips, and the curve of his nose. But you miss the blue of his eyes.

And you lift the veil.

When you open your eyes you almost expect to have the world be tainted red, but you shake off those thoughts before you are fully awake.

You settle better in your place, feeling your hair uncharacteristically restrained. It is then that you remember the loose and half-done braid Ivar wove into your hair last night, that has surprisingly held through the night. These people and their damn braids.

When you turn around in your place you find your husband still asleep, turned on his side towards you, one arm stretched towards you.

Eyelids heavy, you find how easy it would be to just drift off again. But you don’t want to fall asleep yet, you want to linger in this world between worlds, between awake and asleep, for a while longer. For the first time, though, you realize that there is no reason to wish to live in that world between worlds.

For the first time, your dreams do not haunt you with the uncertain future that hangs by a choice that as time went on seemed less and less like a choice you could stand to make, and the world you wake up to isn’t stained with the ever-persistent reminder of the borrowed time you lived in.

For the first time, the dreams speak of a choice made, and the world around you -unchanged, even if it is so different from before- is the result of that choice.

Blinking past the daze that threatens to pull you back under, you focus on the man sleeping by your side, and you feel your lips pulling into a lazy smile.

You remember those first mornings you spent in the same bed as him, how you’d linger hopelessly on Ivar’s features, relaxed in sleep, eyes guiltily taking in what your pride didn’t let you while he was awake, categorizing each faint scar and angle.

From the slope of his brow, to the straight line of his nose, down to his lips -lips that on that first night spent as husband and wife you kissed, lips that you longed to kiss again each night since-.

You truly don’t want to wake him, but you cannot remain idle, and restless fingers trail over his own, tracing the back of his hand, up to his forearm and the arm-ring he wears.

Your eyes follow the wanderings of your hand, and your attention is drawn to the glint of your wedding ring in the low light. It has been quite a while you have worn it, and yet, strangely, it almost feels like the first time.

Maybe that is what it should have been, maybe this is what your first morning as husband and wife should have been. Quiet, and love, and peace. Even if Ivar always disturbs the first one and claims to detest the last one.

Your fingers continue trailing up, and you are done pretending you don’t intend to wake him when you reach his head, and let your fingers trail aimlessly through Ivar’s hair, down to his face, the ghost of a caress over his cheek.

With a low hum from somewhere in his chest, Ivar turns his face towards your caress, the hand previously stretched between you reach up to softly grasp at your wrist.

It’s the blind acceptance of your affection, the subtle seeking of it, that makes your chest pull tight. It’s the blue of his eyes when he blinks past the draw of sleep to focus on you that robs you of breath.

And, as usual, it is your name leaving his lips in a sigh that makes you want to thank the Gods for this, for him.

“Stop waking me up when you’re bored.” He grumbles, making a foolish smile pull at your lips.

“I am not,” You argue, “I missed you.”

His eyebrows raise, and the face he makes tells you he doesn’t believe you, but there’s still lingering softness in him when he moves the hand he trapped with his won against the side of his face and places it before his mouth, breathing a kiss over your knuckles.

“Missed me, hm?”

“I was bored of missing you, perhaps.” You concede finally.

You have missed him, if you are honest. Missed what it was like before you told him about the Greeks, when he didn’t stop himself from reaching for you, when those barriers you were once so interested in studying and crossing had become dust, when the fear of the choice you’d make was a distant one.

Even if it has been a couple of weeks since you told him, you have already found a certain routine, even in the wavering certainties, and you know that you never have to miss him for long.

Still, that is over. Once the words are able to leave your lips, once you are able to find a way to prove that your choice is him; then you won’t have to miss him for long, at least not like that.

“I didn’t tell you, last night. I tried to.”

Pulled away from your musings, you hum in question, “Tell me what?”

“You make me happy,” He tells you, a flickering smile that is so unusual, so young, that your heart skips a beat. Ivar’s eyes are unusually soft when he gazes at you, “Happier than I ever thought I could be.”

His father one told him happiness is nothing, and when Ivar told you of those words, he also told you he hasn’t really known what happiness feels like. It broke your heart then, and it still does, even if now it soars to hear these words.

“Is it nothing, then?”

His eyebrows raise, the smile is a tad more playful now, and tone light even if the words aren’t, “It is still terrifying.”

“Doesn’t that mean it is a good thing? Something worth keeping?”

“Weaknesses aren’t good things.”

“Not everything is about war.”

“Who said anything about war?” He retorts just as easily as you, the beginning of a smug smile on his lips, that you only roll your eyes at.

Ivar clears his throat, and when he speaks again his voice is quiet once again.

“It…keeps me awake, sometimes. Losing this. Kattegat, my brothers, the army,” A pause, and then, “You.

Your heart squeezes in your chest, because in all the things he did, he never made you doubt you had him. I am yours he told you last night, but you have known for a long time, since before he put a ring on your finger, that there were few things that could make you lose him.

“You already know that,” He states, voice soft, strangely muted. “I have told you so much already, sometimes I wonder if you really did bewitch me.

Your lips pull into a lazy smile, and you offer a non-committal shrug. Ivar’s mouth curves on one side, and he reaches for you, his hand rough but warm on the side of his face.

His thumb brushes gently -with a gentleness that is particular to him, you dare think, one that belongs to someone that isn’t used to much gentleness at all- under your eye when you lean into his touch, and you sigh.

“I…I never thought I’d have this, not really. Even if I had, I couldn’t have known it would feel like this,” For such a vague use of the word ‘this’, you find yourself understanding what he means, and yet you offer nothing but silence, expectant. “All my life, I would…I would watch them. My brothers, the other men. I had no choice but to watch. I knew I could never be like them, so I watched,” Ivar’s eyes fall from yours, and his gaze and his mind are lost in a place you weren’t fast enough to meet him at, in a life you were too late to be a part of. “And I would watch them with…with their wives, and how they would wait for them at the docks when they returned from a raid, and how they wouldn’t hesitate to touch or…” His brow furrows slightly, as if he is searching for the words, “-love them, and…it would feel like seeing a fire from afar. I knew it had to feel warm, I knew it had to feel…safe, and-…but I couldn’t know, not really. I couldn’t feel the warmth, I didn’t feel-…”

When his eyes focus on you again, you cannot help but hope the words he doesn’t say speak of how somehow you have been able to give the same he has you, and the warmth isn’t so distant just like the cold of Kattegat isn’t so biting for you.

You remember that first night as husband and wife, the faintest of trembles in his voice when he voiced a plea and tried making it sound like a command. Kiss me, he had asked you. You did, and now with distance your pride lets you admit you never quite forgot how he stilled under your gentle touch and how even then he leant towards the affection.

It would have been easier to hate him if the hunger would have been something he had no qualms about demanding be satiated. It would have been easier to forget he is human if out of all the things he could have asked for he hadn’t asked for softness.

Ivar continues,

“I would imagine it, sometimes. What it would be like, what it would feel like, to have a woman that would l-love me,” You don’t fail to notice the way his voice changes at those words, as if even saying it means something you could never truly understand. Your left hand reaches between you, fingers carefully tracing the side of his face. Ivar answers to your caress with a soft smile, but it turns rueful after a breath, “Pathetic, isn’t it? Poor Ivar, begging the Gods for someone to love him.”

Your chest pulls tight at his words, and you frown, affronted.

“There’s nothing pathetic about being human, you know,” You chastise, and Ivar meets your eyes, an anger that you know well, that you are familiar with by now, shining in his gaze. The anger of having shown more than what your pride wants you to, the anger of being more human than you would like to be. One of the first things you noticed about him was how he shared pieces of him as if he couldn’t do anything but, as if secrets and pain escaped his grip like sand, and left his lips as if you truly were what they say you are, and had bewitched him. That never changed, and you hope it never does. But the anger, the anger that looks a lot like apprehension, like pain; you hope that leaves. For now, you can do nothing but offer the beginning of a smile, “And I won’t let you speak of my husband like that.”

This time when his smile widens and softens, it remains that way. Ivar’s eyebrows raise slightly as he looks at you, defiance shining in his eyes in a way that makes a small chuckle leave your lips.

Gods, you love him.

His hand, rough and always warmer, grasps the one that cups the side of his face, and brings your fingers to his lips, kissing your knuckle right over your wedding ring. You have worn it for so long, and so many things have changed since he first put it on your finger, but you honestly can’t remember what it was like not wearing the gold band of engraved flowers you can trace with your fingers and engraved promises that aren’t so apparent.

“When I first saw you, in that field near Dublin, you…” His eyes lift to meet yours, before his gaze returns to your hand, and the gold ring that adorns it. “I saw you with that Greek, you were being so gentle towards him, so loving, so…warm. And then…” A short chuckle leaves his lips, still lost in the memory, “Then you took down a Viking with a shield that weighed more than you do, and one arrow.”

You chuckle, “I was lucky.”

“You were…” His eyes return to yours and the words die on his lips. When your smile widens as you wait for him to continue, his attention is diverted to your lips. You wonder if he is seeing in you the memory of that day. A little lost, a little dazed, he finishes, “A vision.”

Your heart does a strange thing on your chest, as if it were shocked off a regular rhythm by his words, and now stutters and stumbles to return to normalcy.

You offer a smile, and the faint squeeze of your hand on his as you tease softly,

“I am very much real, Ivar.”

A slow blink, and you wonder if he even heard you.

“You-…that day, you seemed like everything I ever wanted. Not just seemed like it, you were,” He confesses, a movement on his jaw to indicate he doubts whether he should continue. A few breaths go by until finally, his voice quiet, Ivar says, “You still are.”

“And you are everything I want.” You confess quietly, your heart suddenly beating a tad quicker, because the words you have known you have to say for a day now are at the tip of your tongue.

If we name things, we make them real, you told him once, the same words he reminded you of last night, when he jested you should remind him of your love more often.

But it is true, what you told him. The stories of your Gods, they were made real because someone spoke them, shared them. The vows you made, to take revenge against Stithulf, to accept Ivar as your husband; they made a promise real because they asked it to be spoken aloud.

And there is one more promise you must make real now.

You reach for the clasp at the back of your neck, taking off the pendant that has hung from your neck since you were old enough to remember. The twelve Olympians and the chthonic Gods in a small circle metal, with an inscription at the back, bend to the Fates, but don’t let them break you.

You lean up on one elbow, and hold the pendant between you, offering it to Ivar who only watches with curious eyes.

“When my father gave this to my mother, it was…a promise. They taught me that whatever promises are made before the Gods mean nothing if we aren’t willing to make promises of our own, on our own. This always meant a promise,” Your eyes linger on the engraving depicting the twelve Olympians and the chthonic Gods. When you speak next, your words are a promise of your own, even if under the fickle and transparent veil of speaking of the promises your parents made. “A promise to spend a lifetime side by side, and, if the Gods are merciful, an eternity after. I can’t…I can’t promise to find you in the life after this one, but I can promise to be with you for the rest of this life.

And now that you voice it, it is something so close to being true, to being real, that you think you may understand what he meant about that distant warmth.

Only this is different, this is a fire you can -and will, not Fate itself can stop you- get close enough to so you can truly feel its warmth.

“I-I want you to have this. My promise to you, my promise that…my choice will always be you.”

Ivar remains frozen, eyes on you as piercing as they were across a battlefield, yet as vulnerable as they were when you first told him you loved him.

Swallowing tightly, caught between assuming he doesn’t believe you or something worse, you take his hand.

Once, you stood next to him overlooking Kattegat, breathed past your hesitation and reached to put your hand over his, hoping and dreading the return of the hold. And now, just like then, he turns his hand to meet your own, pliant at your touch.

You place the pendant on the palm of his hand.

“Yo-You-…I don’t…” A breath that sounds somewhere between a gasp and choked inhale, “Y-You don’t have to choose yet.”

I am living on borrowed time as much as you are, you told him once. This is the first time you realize how true that was.

For as much as you usually babble on about things, now words seem to fail you, and with your heart beating wildly in your chest all you can offer is the smallest quirk of your mouth. One of the few times you are able to render him speechless, and you’re not allowed to enjoy it.

“I have made my choice. If Stithulf died today, nothing would change,” You tell him, as simply as you can put the choice that changes both your lives. “I want to spend the rest of my days with you.”

His eyes are wide, wider than you have ever seen them, and yet he remains deadly still. You dare think he isn’t even breathing.

Eventually, when Ivar speaks, it sounds rough and ragged, like he hasn’t spoken in a hundred years.

“They want you with them, they will come find you.”

“Again. They will come find me again,” You remind him slowly, “And just like I did before, I will say no.”

His eyes harden, “Why?”

“I love you, more than…more than anything,” At his silence, your heart stops and your brow furrows, “Do you not believe me?”

His eyes search yours, none of the franticness that coated his words gone from his eyes, where it only seems to simmer and heighten, where more than the search for truth you dare think he desperately looks for a lie.

Maybe believing you are lying would be easier, maybe believing what you say isn’t going to hold would be easier. Real things can be taken from you.

Past the clear tell of gritted teeth, Ivar insists, not answering your question,

“They will return to Greece when winter passes.”

“And I will still be here.” You reply, easily.

A breath, and the faintest of questions,

“You’re staying with me?”

“For as long as you’ll have me.”

“No matter what?”

“I would think I’ve proved I’m stubborn already.” You whisper, the jest a little lost in the way your voice swells with emotion.

Ivar holds your gaze, determined even if searching your eyes desperate for certainty, unwavering even if his brow trembles and so do his hands.

“Promise me.” He says. A dare, a command, a plea.

With your own left hand lifted to your lips, you press a kiss against your wedding ring, the closest you would ever have to a piece of jewelry where you are to vow something before the Gods themselves.

“I promise.”

His breath leaves him in something between a sigh and a gasp, a small, incredulous little smile curving his lips before it too falls.

You don’t have time to take in the way his expression falls, falls with something like relief, something like joy, something like love; because he leans forward, capturing your mouth with his in a kiss that makes everything but him disappear.

Your mouth moves against his with ease, not missing a beat in surrendering to the feel of him, your hands holding on to his shoulders with feather-light softness, while his grip tightly at whatever part of you he can find, a muffled sound that sounds a lot like a whimper when he presses closer, not accepting even an inch of space between you.

Before long you are on your back, and his arms cage you against the bed. His weight is a comfortable one over you, especially when your tongue teases at his and you make his strength falter, make Ivar pull away with something shaped like your name but that sounds like a prayer leaving his lips.

The shine in his eyes when he pulls back just a bit speaks of love, of gratitude, of relief; and it makes tears clog at your throat. How could there exist a world where you leave this, leave him, behind?

Ivar takes a breath, his chest expanding under your hands, reaching up with one hand to put your hair behind your ear, making your eyes flutter shut and the soft caress.

You barely have to tilt your head towards him when he is obeying the silent command, leaning down to kiss you again, this time letting you control the kiss, surrendering to the feel of you with a sigh that makes your stomach tighten.

His lips part from yours when the smile that curves at his mouth refuses to give way, and you breathe a little laugh at the still shocked joy written in his expression, from the faint red tint in his cheeks and ears to the way his eyes glisten and shine a tad more vibrant.

Ivar leans closer and kisses you again, a short press of his lips on yours before he whispers quietly, a secret even if it never was one,

“I love you,” You return the same, the words never more freeing as they leave your lips, and something in between a shaky sigh and a delighted chuckle leaves his lips. Holding your face gently in between shaking hands, he presses his brow against yours, “I-I’ll make you happy, I’ll-…anything you want, you’ll have it.”

The promises that leave his lips in between frantic kisses feel like vows that you won’t regret this, like reassurances that he will make sure the choice is worthwhile.

But it always was, just for this alone. For the feel of his arms around you, for the intoxicating taste of his lips, for the way your name sounds in his voice.

“All I want is you.”

“You have me.” There’s not a moment of hesitation, but the words -the certainty, the truth, the slight tremble in his voice and in his hands- make your heart pull tight in your chest.

Your eyes meet his and you promise, “And you have me.”

____ ____ ____

I hope you like this, and that I’m not too rusty after my little hiatus lol. Would love to know what you think!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @pieces-by-me @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss   @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @chibisgotovalhalla @the-a-word-2214 @fae-sedai @crazybunnyladysworld @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside @aprilivar @msrawog

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Hríð (Vοσταλγία Winter Blurb)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Hríð: storm, especially a snowstorm (Old Norse)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: Winter Blurb #1. The first big snowstorm in Kattegat.

Word Count: 926

Warnings: nope, just fluff and my writing lol

A/N: Alternate title: Ivar melts when his wife is happy, that’s about it.

“I’d never seen so much sn-…oh!” You stumble forward when the sure step you took turned out to be a lie since there’s at least a foot of snow on the ground, but after a moment of hesitation you still walk forward.

Ivar watches you carefully, keeping a few feet behind you on the wooden floor where his crutch will keep him upright and his legs won’t be harder to move under heavy snow. He watches as you still walk forward, steps wobbly as you try making your way through the snow.

Slowly, almost as if you don’t realize it, as if you don’t allow it, a smile curves at your lips, eyes big with awe at something as simple as snowfall.

Starkly warm against the deserted landscape of nothing but white snow, Ivar loses whatever was left of his mind when you turn to him, eyes big and shining with excitement, and smile wide and carefree.

It is often that he thinks of you and thinks of spring, he won’t deny it. In between the countless plants and flowers you’ve slowly but stubbornly found a place for in your bedroom, and the tales and memories you share of your homeland of fields of flowers and warm summers; he finds himself looking at you and finding that in your own way you keep the spring of your homeland with you.

Kept with you through the lavender and flax flowers you braid into your hair on the slow days; through the way you breeze your way through conversations with him in Greek; through the way you remain, in your own way, unbearably warm, unbearably soft.

So it is no surprise to him that even now, surrounded by nothing but snow that covers it all -the ground, the distant buildings, the trees- you are somehow able to bring life to it all, to make even this desolate landscape look warm, inviting, familiar.

He notices too late that you’ve said something, asked something, while he was a little lost -not that he’d ever admit it- in all the times before this one that he has found you inadvertently made everything look unbearably alive even while surrounded by iron and death.

Bringing himself back to the question you asked, he takes a small step forward, already feeling the cold seeping into his bones.

“Hm?”

“Are all winters like this here?”

No, no winter was ever like this one.

But he doesn’t voice that, instead leaning against a pillar and shrugging the shoulder of the arm not holding the crutch.

“Snowstorms are common, yes.”

You accept his words with a nod, lifting one delicate hand to catch a few snowflakes on the back of your hand, seemingly enthralled by the way they melt against your skin.

After a while, though Ivar couldn’t for the life of him say how much time passes, noticing the wind becomes a tad more biting and yet you remain out in the open, he calls your name.

He frowns, “Aren’t you cold?”

Your smile is blinding as you turn to face him. Loud enough that he can hear you, you reply, nodding your head, “I am! I hate this!

Still you laugh, head tilted to the skies that let the snowflakes fall all around you.

He can’t help but think that your laugh sounds a little mad, and for some reason his mind ties it to the morning where you found out about Sparta was free from the Christian God.

You have told him in the time that has passed that it was the first time you felt you could step away from Greece, to know that without you they could still fight and overcome.

Maybe freedom leaves you a tad mad, maybe that is why for so long so many -even yourself- didn’t allow you such freedom. He can’t say that he minds, if this bubbling happiness is what freedom draws from you, if this warm joy is what madness sparks in you.

He can stand the cold that is already making his legs ache if that means you keep that blinding smile that makes him think of spring, he can accept the uncertainty of having to let you be free if that means you keep looking at him like that.

Meeting his gaze across the small distance that separates you, smile still wide you confess, “I am freezing!”

Ivar cannot hold the laugh that grows somewhere warm in his chest and makes it past his lips before he can stop it. Shaking his head, he extends a hand between you,

“Get back here then, you mad woman.”

“You are one to speak,” You fire back, petulant even if you do as he tells you and walk back to him, hand stretched long before you make it back to the porch of the longhouse so your cold fingers brush against his before you press your body against his. Burrowing close, you mumble your next words against his chest, “Can we go back to bed?”

“It’s the middle of the day.”

“Ivar,” You complain, drawling out the letters of his name, the accent that he hopes you never lose a little stronger as you do so. “I’m cold.”

Wrapping his free arm around you, he has to bite back words about how you don’t feel cold at all. Even now, with your trembling form in his arms and your freezing fingers reaching for his neck in retaliation when he takes too long in letting you both move back inside, all he can think of is warmth.

____ ____ ____

Hope you liked it! Thank you for requesting this!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214 @fae-sedai @crazybunnyladysworld   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside @aprilivar @msrawog

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Hrygð (Ivar’s PoV)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Hrygð: affliction, grief, sorrow (Old Norse)  

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: A night post Chapter 45. I told ya Ivar was under a lot of pressure from the Greeks being around, and he does stupid shit under pressure.

Word Count: 4.9k

Warnings: The usual for the story, plus mentions/descriptions of dead bodies, allusions to murder, hallucinations. My best attempt at writing a downward spiral. And oh, THE ANGST. Yes, bold, italic, capital letters angst. It warrants it, believe me.

A/N: So, I promise this makes sense when you get to the end. Trust me.

You wait for him in your bedroom, he knows you do.

He wishes he could walk inside and tell you he regrets it, he wishes the Greek blood staining his hands were something he wanted to wash off.

But he doesn’t.

They didn’t leave him any choice, they forced his hand. He couldn’t let them take you from him, he couldn’t let anyone take you from him.

If he has to deal with your rage, then so be it. You will be angry, and you will grieve, but you will understand, Ivar knows you will.

When he walks in, there is no rage, and that does unbalance him. It makes grow in his chest what a weaker man would call fear, to see you so deadly still.

You don’t turn around, leaving him to look at the straight line of your back, leaving him with nothing to read in you except your voice when slowly, expectantly even though you know the answer, you ask, “What did you do to them, Ivar?”

“They were a threat and you kn-…”

“What did you do to them?” You interrupt. When you turn around, the first thing he notices is the stains the dirt left on your dress. He tells himself that is the first thing he notices, because he refuses to admit he notices the redness in your eyes, the tremble in your lip. “What did you do to my people?”

“They aren’t your people. The people of Kattegat are your people.”

You shake your head, resolute, unwavering. It grips tight at his heart, the way you seem to be unmovable, the way you feel locked away from him somewhere he can’t reach.

Anger burns at him from the inside, bubbling under his skin and making his grip on the crutch tighten until he fears it will break. You made him do this, he did this for you, and now you will turn your back to him?

“I will always be their daughter before I am your wife, you know that. You know before there was a ring on my finger there was Greek blood running through my veins,” Your voice starts to rise, your anger breaking past the cold distance of your disdain; and he almost feels relief at the sight of your rage. “The same blood you have spilled.”

“You made me do it!” He yells, uncaring with how your eyes widen in affront. He wants you to be angry, he wants you to fight. He cannot stand the thought of doing something that makes you surrender. “You let them get close, you-…I know you will choose them over me, over everything I have given you!”

You walk closer, deliberately slowly.

“Everything you have given me!?” You repeat, disbelieving. “You have given me chains, Varangian, nothing more than that!”

His breath stutters and gets stuck on his throat, and Ivar can only look at you with wide eyes.

Varangian.

The fight leaves him, the fire leaves him. He remembers what that feels like, the useless struggling as air is unavailable and useless lungs slowly suffocate him no matter how much he fights against it, he remembers what it is like to be tied to a mast and dragged down to the depths in the inescapable grasp of Rán’s net. It feels exactly like this.

You continue attempting to ignore him, but he won’t be overlooked, he refuses. It is maddening, because he…he believed that was over. He has lived with the uncaring glances, the irrelevance, all his life; and now things are supposed to be different. They have to be, he is better now, he is King, he…

“I must tend to the wounded, Varangian.” You tell him, returning your gaze, your attention, to your work.

Grabbing onto that knife feels like relief, feels like control. When the drops of blood hit the floor, he feels his lips tremble into a mad smile he has to bite back.

By force if you make it so, by fear if he has to, but he won’t be ignored.

Ivar feels like his head is filled with noise, and he stumbles back, catching himself on a wooden post. Dazedly, he thinks he remembers sitting on the ground before that pillar, with you sitting between his legs, your back against his chest, as he taught you to throw knives and watched you fail miserably.

Varangian.

He shakes his head, or he thinks he does. He isn’t sure of that. He isn’t sure of anything, really.

He isn’t even sure that memory of you in his arms is real.

You lift your hands between you, the rattling of chains making him grit his teeth.

“I refuse to die a Varangian’s prisoner.”

Your eyes are burning with a disgust he is familiar with, though not when it comes to you, and that is what makes him want to make you pay for looking at him that way.

So, he chuckles, mocking you and your anger, and your pride. He’d rather have you hate him, if that is all he will have.

“You think you have a choice.”

Voice rough, he orders, “Do not call me that.”

Varangian, Varangian, Varangian, it rattles inside his head. Taunting him, mocking him.

“That is what you are to me,” You retort coldly, cruelly, “That is all you will ever be. The Varangian that took me from my people, that slaughtered them!”

Ivar stops by the door, gripping tightly onto the crutch by his side. Slowly, he asks you to repeat yourself, dares you to.

But he should know the kind of woman you are by now, he should know you are too stubborn to keep your mouth shut. He wishes he could hate that about you.

“You need my consent for us to be married, Varangian,” You state proudly, standing up. He turns to face you, gritting his teeth, and you continue, “I am a free woman, you can’t force me. You won’t break a promise, so you won’t make me a slave.”

Ivar feels the familiar burn of anger and resentment, a pointless and pathetic hope dying somewhere, and he steps forward. He refused to tell you about your mother’s deal with him, but now you’ve forced his hand.

If you ask, he will tell you he hid it for this long because you wouldn’t believe him, but if he’s honest with himself, he knows he did it because he held the stupid hope that marrying him could somehow be your choice.

“I am your husband.” He corrects you. When your eyes are drawn to it, he notices his hand not on the crutch clenched into a fist.

You slowly lift your gaze to him, and demand, “I want you to tell me what you did to them. I want to hear it.”

You don’t, but he was never one to refuse a challenge.

Ivar steps forward, a deep thrust of the crutch against the wooden floor that he didn’t intend to make you flinch, but finds himself almost satisfied that it does. If nothing else, he will take fear.

He will take fear, he will take hatred. Anything but indifference, anything but that distance, that coldness.

“Our men attacked while they were sleeping, lit their homes aflame. Most died screaming, burned alive,” It is a lie, it was just iron and arrows that ended the Greeks, but he knows what will make it more painful. “The ones that ran out were struck down, forced to watch. Happy?

You stay silent, eerily silent. Tears run down your face when you close your eyes, but there’s a jarring kind of peace to your expression as you accept his words that makes Ivar feel like the ground isn’t solid under his feet.

“Answer me!”

“You betrayed me.” You tell him, and he hates it, he hates the way your voice has no tone to it, even the accent seems gone for a moment. He hates the way he made you sound dead.

But no, no, this isn’t his fault. You forced his hand, you and those Greeks.

You have to understand that it isn’t his fault.

“And what are you going to do, hm?” He dares, and he isn’t sure what he wants to hear as an answer. He isn’t sure if it is the part of him that wants more than anything to hear that this is something he can fix that makes him ask you that, or if it is the part of him that has always known you would turn your back to him at the end that does.

Whatever the answer is, it is better than this silence.

You shake your head, though he isn’t sure if it is at his question or at your own thoughts.

“I don’t want to fight anymore, Ivar,” You confess breathily. When your hands join together in front of you, he can’t help but notice you aren’t twirling your wedding ring on your finger as you usually, do, but clawing at the edges of it, as if trying desperately to take it off, though you don’t attempt to. “I do not want to fight you.”

He does. Still, he walks closer, his free hand reaching for you.

Ivar cups the back of your head, noting the way you lean tiredly into the caress and finding his breathing gets a little easier at that simple gesture.

“Can you forgive me?” He asks, though he knows he shouldn’t. He still doesn’t regret it.

Your lips pull into a trembling smile, “I have no choice, do I?”

Instead of giving you an answer, Ivar brings you to him and kisses you deeply, letting himself believe when your breaths are one that everything is as it was, or that it will be, somehow.

Brow pressed against yours, he studies your features carefully, noting the strain in your expression even as your eyes remain closed.

“I love you.” He whispers, and he knows you are aware it is a pathetic and desperate request to hear it back, but he doesn’t much mind anymore.

Your eyes search his, bloodshot and tired and defeated, and he knows he is the reason why. He knows, and it tears at whatever is left of his heart, but he still cannot regret what he did.

The silence deafens him, and he grits his teeth to keep at bay desperation made words.

Say it back, even if you don’t mean it. Lie to me if you have to.

A few quick blinks as if to dispel any tears, and you offer the faintest of smiles. Your hand lifting to cup the side of his face lets him breathe easy, and Ivar doesn’t bother stopping himself from leaning into the caress, the softness.

He hasn’t lost that yet, he hasn’t lost you.

“And I love you,” You tell him. He can pretend your voice doesn’t break halfway through; he can do that, and he can pretend everything is as it was, especially when you press a gentle kiss against his lips and whisper, as if nothing had changed, “More than anyone, more than anything.”

____

When Ivar first wakes up with his arm stretched over the empty space where you should be, he keeps his eyes closed, knowing he will soon hear your soft footsteps as you go about the room, hear you cursing to yourself in your native tongue as you skip over the cold wood, hear you poutingly asking that he move to the colder side of the bed to leave room for you.

He tells himself to wait, and he does, for so long he can no longer pretend the empty side of the bed is still warm in your absence.

Ivar opens his eyes half-expecting to see you there, sitting silently by the dim fires, lost in your own thoughts. When you see he is awake, you will return to bed with him, with your always slightly-cold skin pressed against his, and it will stave off the bubble of fear that is growing in his chest, leaving no room for his lungs to breathe or his heart to beat.

You aren’t there, you are nowhere he can see, even as he sits up on the bed and looks around the darkened room.

But you wouldn’t leave, you wouldn’t leave him. He knows that.

He asked you once, demanded out of you maybe, that you promised to never turn your back to him, to never lie to him; and you gave it, you gave him your word and your trust and your heart and…and he still has them, all of those.

You wouldn’t leave him, you love him. You told him you did, and you don’t lie to him.

So, he calls your name. You’re probably on the other part of the room, moving the weakest of plants you continue to insist on taking care of towards the windows so they can soak up the sunlight.

You will hear him call for you, and you will return, muttering about how it was a mistake to try planting those seeds from the East this far into winter. You will burrow close to his chest, seeking his warmth, and he will wrap his arm around you and everything will be as it was, everything will be as it should be.

But it isn’t, it won’t be.

You are nowhere to be found.

He finds you, eventually. The old bedroom you used to occupy before you were married to him, the one that you still lose yourself in sometimes, with the tougher plants that need less frequent care from you.

One of the thralls told him you had gone there sometime during the night, and hadn’t come out yet. Ivar knows what he did is wrong, and he knows…he knows it will be difficult for you to forgive him, but he will convince you to return to the bedroom you share. He hates the idea of sleeping without you by his side.

He opens the door with his free hand, walking in and immediately recognizing the familiar scent of lavender. It is comforting, more than he would like to admit.

Until he sees you.

There lays the bloodied and lifeless body, blade embedded deep in the chest, round handle of the knife almost hidden in the bloodied folds of the dress. The knife he gifted you, so long ago.

I do not fear death, no Hiereia of the Dread Gods fears death, you told him once.

He has always known you’d prefer death before chains, he has always known above anything else you would choose your freedom.

“N-No, no, no,” Shaking hands drag him to you -he doens’t know when he fell to the floor-, and the way your body lolls lifelessly when he holds you to him makes him feel like vomiting. All that leaves him are choked gasps, he isn’t sure if the ragged and roughened sound that he hears is his voice, but it seems like it. “No, p-please, I-…”

He doesn’t know what he is talking to, he surely cannot talk to you since you are…

No, it isn’t you.

The shape of her nose is wrong, and the color of her eyes, even past the veil of death, is wrong. Everything, once he can actually think clearly, looks wrong about her.

She isn’t you.

He is going to lose his mind, he is sure of it.

Ivar moves away from her, from…it, but the way she still resembles you so strikingly makes him sick, and the sound the body makes as it stiffly falls from his lap to the cold wood rattles inside his head.

He closes his eyes, focuses on breathing. She smells like lavender, like you, and…yes, he is sure he will lose his mind here.

Ivar doesn’t know how much time it passes, how long he stays there in that room with a dead woman. He knows at some points he forgets it isn’t you, and at he knows when he remembers it isn’t that he realizes this is your last message to him.

By the end of the day, Ivar stumbles back into an empty bedroom after standing for so long as they celebrated a funeral for a woman that lives and breathes, but even as darkness presses ruthlessly against the dim lights of the room, he refuses to get in the bed to sleep.

He will not lay alone in that damn bed again. Not until you return to him.

And you will.

____

He knows you went to them. He knew that, long before they received word from their scouts that you had reunited with the surviving Greeks.

It took them four days to find where you had been, and three days of travelling. Ivar wants to find those responsible for taking this long and punish them for their slowness.

If he could focus on the anger for long enough, he would, but he can’t seem to focus on anything.

“Our faster men can reach that town in a day and a half, let m-…”

“She will come back, brother,” Ivar interrupts, eyes focused on the shape of the snake in the bracelet you left behind. Since he gifted it to you, you haven’t parted it from it, wearing it as often as you can. He knows you wouldn’t leave it behind if you didn’t intend to come back, he knows you left it as a sign to him, a promise that it is only a matter of time. Like the knife he gifted you, it was all a message, he knows it. Ivar swallows thickly at Hvitserk’s silence -it sounds so much like pity, he hates it-, and insists, “She didn’t leave me, didn’t b-betray me.”

“You betrayed me.” You tell him, voice by his ear, a defeated sort of numbness in your voice that he remembers from that last night. Sharply, he turns to you with a gasp that dies on his throat.

But, of course, all that he finds is nothingness.

“Ivar,” Hvitserk calls out, an edge to his voice. He turns to his brother, finds a frown marrying his features. “I can go myself. Let m-…”

“She will come back!” He interrupts again, though it sounds manic even to his own ears. He tries making his body let go of the stillness that makes even breathing difficult, but he can’t. Still, he offers a smile that his brother almost flinches at, and insists, more calmly, “I know my wife better than you, hm? I know…I know her, just-…you’ll see.”

Offering only a sigh, his brother stands up, “At least get some sleep. You haven’t slept in…what, three days?”

Seven.

____

Days continue passing, and almost as a punishment for refusing to accept you are gone, for insisting on not even looking at that damn bed until you are back by his side, Ivar hears your voice more and more often.

Today, you are talkative, and you sound as if you were sitting by his left side in the emptiness of your bedroom. He wishes with your voice also returned the familiar scent of lavender that seemed to accompany you everywhere. He misses that.

“Find a way or make one, but you will always have a choice.”

You told him that before, when you were sanding by his side, and your hand was solid and comforting in his grasp. He wishes he could pretend he still feels the press of your lips on his shoulder from that day, he wishes he could pretend he still feels you next to him.

Still, because it is just him and your absence now, no one left to see he has lost it, he asks the nothingness, “What choice did you leave me with, hm?”

He hears a delicate laugh somewhere at his left, and that is all the answer he gets.

Ivar knows what the people would whisper when he first brought you here, those tales of a half-mad king that lost what was left of his mind to a foreign witch.

He realizes with a laugh that bubbles in his chest but sounds choked when it stutters past his lips, that maybe they were all right. Maybe you did bewitch him, or curse him. Maybe he did lose his mind because of a foreign witch.

Your voice breezes past his ear, this time startling him less, “With all the ways we drive each other mad, you still think the Gods fated this?”

It isn’t the teasing edge of that day, the smile he can hear in your voice isn’t the soft and disbelieving one. There is no warmth to any of it.

It is mocking, it is the disdain he made you queen to avoid facing, it is the coldness of the woman he never wanted to see you lose yourself as.

Your words from that day, the words your ghost -his mind?- spits back at him seem fitting, in a way. A twisted, ironic way, but still.

Because you did drive him mad after all, just not with your presence. With your absence.

Regardless, after nearly two weeks, he realizes you aren’t coming back.

He supposes it shouldn’t have taken that long, but then again there’s a part of him that still dares think this is all some twisted nightmare.

They tell him most of the Greeks, including you, have left with merchant vessels near Eldham towards the Mediterranean, they tell him there is no way to track you down now.

They don’t tell him, but he hears it regardless, that you are lost to him.

Ivar’s eyes are trained on this small and pitiful plant you kept potted near the table where you’d rest against at night as you took off the earrings and jewelry you wore that day.

He cannot take his eyes off this insignificant, withered thing. It almost seems impossible, that it looks like that. You’d spend half a day if you had to looking after these things, making sure they were as vibrant and lively as you could keep them.

It dawns on him that it died in your absence, in the absence he had convinced himself was a passing thing, temporary, inconsequential.

You told him things said aloud are made real, you told him that by will alone he could achieve anything he wanted, and he believed you.

He believed you when you told him those things, just as he believed you when you told him you were staying. Just as he believed you when you told him you loved him.

With a yell that sounds like a roar to his own ears, he puts all his strength behind the movement of his arm as his hand grips the edge of that table, flipping it and throwing the things on it, even that damn plant, across the room.

Almost two weeks without sleep have left him weaker than he would like to admit, and it isn’t easy to move his limbs to stop himself from falling painfully to the ground, the movements too uncoordinated, too sluggish.

Resigned to the cold and hard ground, Ivar turns to lay on his back.

With the silence ringing in his ears, he finds himself asking, “Will you stay?”

If all he has is a ghost, he might as well be on good terms with it.

“Of course I will stay. I wanted to, you know,” You reply somewhere at his right. This is the first time you’ve spoken something you haven’t said before, this is the first time your ghost seems to answer coherently. That is, until you whisper, “If you had asked, I would have said yes.”

The words sound more mocking and crueler than they ever did, though perhaps he was foolish to think they were ever anything other than a reminder of what following his father’s last advice cost him.

Be ruthless, be ruthless, be ruthless.

It echoes in his head, louder and louder each time. At some point he realizes that even if the voice of a ghost gets loud enough that he has to resist the urge to uselessly cover his ears with his hands, it at least drowns out his thoughts, and it silences you.

On the floor by the bed he refuses to even touch since it still doesn’t have you in it, he lets himself sleep for the first time in so long.

____

He wakes suddenly, sitting up on the bed and taking gasping breaths to fill his lungs, eyes wide as he searches the nothingness in front of him.

“Ivar?” You ask, and the bed dips when you move to sit up as well. “Ivar, what’s wrong?”

The plant is alive.

And he cannot take his eyes off it.

It is still a small, pitiful thing, but he cannot look away from it. His breaths quicken as he blinks rapidly, trying desperately to get used to the darkness of the room, needing to see clearly that the damn plant truly is alive.

The more time it passes the more he starts to see it withered and dead, and even as through gasping and frantic breaths he somehow smells the comforting scent of lavender and you, it somehow isn’t enough.

It terrifies him, that he doesn’t know what is real and what isn’t.

He knows what he wants to be real, and it is the bed soft and warm underneath him, the sound of your voice being more than an illusion, the damn plant being alive still. But somehow wanting it to be real makes him think that is the one it isn’t.

“Ivar!” You insist, voice more anxious. Your hand on the side of his face almost makes him flinch, but when you turn his face to you, he can see you there beside him. He lifts a hand desperately to hold your own against his face, lest you stop touching him and disappear. Or he does. He isn’t sure. Your eyes search his, and your thumb runs back and forth over his skin. It’s soothing, more than you could ever know. “It was just a nightmare, love.”

Was it?

You are straddling him, arms wrapped tightly around him, hands running up and down his back. He doesn’t know when you moved, but he is grateful for it.

His hand reaches tentatively for you, still irrationally afraid you will vanish, and when he finds soft skin under his grasp, Ivar feels a breath leaves his lips in something too close to a sob.

“Shh, it is alright,” You whisper, soothingly, though he notices the tremble in your voice. “Just a nightmare. I’m here, it’s alright.”

Yes, of course it was a nightmare. He never attacked the Greeks, you never left him.

He knows that now. It felt so real, though.

He buries his face in the crook of your neck, surrounded by the feel of you and the maddening scent of lavender, and matches his breaths to the cadence of your own, trying to hold on to the calm you so easily offer.

Ivar isn’t sure how much time it passes, it is more than enough for the sweat on his chest and back to have been bitingly cold and now be gone, it is more than enough for his breaths to be back under his own control. It isn’t enough for his hold on you to loosen, but not enough time can pass for that to happen anytime soon.

Laying back down on the bed with you, keeping an arm safely secured around you as you two lay on your sides, Ivar keeps his eyes roaming over your features, uncaring that you do the same -though you are most likely studying for any tell that he still isn’t well, which he isn’t-, taking in the way your eyes soften to accompany the small smile you offer and the familiarly unpredictable way your hair is tussled by sleep.

“Will you tell me about it?”

His answer is immediate, “No.”

Your lips furrow, and he knows you will insist by that alone. Stubborn, insufferable woman.

“Was it about me?”

“I said I don’t want to tell you.” He snaps, but you don’t seem to mind the brashness.

“Whatever it was, it wasn’t real.” You reassure him. He hates the fact that he clings to those words, he hates how they fill him with a relief none of his assurances to himself couldn’t match.

“I know. Stop coddling me, woman.” He grumbles past gritted teeth, prompting only a smile from you.

“You secretly love it,” You tease, leaning close to press a kiss over the scar on his cheek. “What would you do without me pestering you, hm?”

He swallows thickly, and doesn’t answer. Settling a little closer, you meet his eyes again, a tranquility to your gaze he wishes he could find again, and he gathers he can, as long as that adoration and that softness that shine in your gaze don’t go anywhere just yet.

“You should sleep some more. I promise, Melinöe won’t claim you while I’m here,” You offer with a glint in your eye, managing to make his lips pull into a smile. Closing the distance between you, you rub your nose against his before kissing him sweetly, so softly it almost makes Ivar feel he will shatter at the gentleness of it. Breaths one, you promise, “I love you.”

He exchanges seeing you for feeling you, and closes the distance again, claiming your mouth in a short kiss.

Pulling away, Ivar finds himself asking, “Tell me again.”

Without hesitation, you whisper, “I love you, Ivar. More than anyone, more than anything.”

It doesn’t sound like a lie. Even if it is, he doesn’t care.

____ ____ ____

First of all, I’m sorry. Second of all, I hope it made sense. Those of you that read ἀλήθεια know what Ivar was living through, since this was brought to life by @youbloodymadgenius‘ request of an Ivar PoV of the night she left him in Alatheia and the times that came after that. But, because I am one soft bitch, I couldn’t bring myself to write all that hurt without at least some comfort, so...here ya go!

I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Btw, technically hallucinations as a result of sleep deprivation go from visual to auditory, but fuck it, y’know? I do research to confidently write down useless stuff, yes, but I also do research to stubbornly go against said research for the sake of plot. This time it was the second.

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax​ @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214 @fae-sedai @crazybunnyladysworld   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside @aprilivar @msrawog @kaitieskidmore1  

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Dróttning (Vοσταλγία Winter Blurb)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Dróttning: queen, mistress 😏 (Old Norse)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: Winter Blurb #6. Smut w/knife kink and sub!Ivar

Word Count: 9.5k

Warnings: 18+. Smut, D/s dynamics, sub!Ivar (brat!Ivar), knife kink (& fear play associated with it I suppose), masochism/sadism, blood play (that implies, of course, passing mentions of injuries/cuts and blood), some choking and biting/marking sprinkled about, a lil bit of sensation play, teeny tiny allusions to breeding kink, edging/orgasm control (mentions of past ruined orgasms), fluff,  praise, and I think that’s it, lemme know if I missed anything.

A/N: Assume they have discussed this before hand, okay? Also I have no idea if this is any good, but I had so much fun writing it, even if it took me a century to finish the damn thing. Hope you like it 😉

This is a continuation of Φθόνος, but you don’t have to read it to know what’s going on.

Also, a slightly changed version of this was posted as “Taken, starved, conquered.” a one shot on my general masterlist. Just in case you see two works, it’s one and the same.

The sharp sting of the knife pressing against his cheek and the intoxicating closeness of your lips to his keep Ivar tethered, immobile, baited breath as he waits for your voice to reach him.

“You have taken me, you have made me your wife. You have fought,” You promise, a dark mischief lilting your voice and making a shiver run down his spine. You search his eyes, not weak or satisfied enough to cross the distance between your lips just yet, and press, “But I told you, this is a fight that leads, inevitably, to your surrender. Will you, my love?”

“To you?” Ivar asks, raised brows as he leans back to meet your eyes. He finds himself missing the sharp edge of the blade against his skin, the way it made his heart quicken like a rabbit’s. Lips pulling into a smile, he cannot help but defy you, even if the smile is tremulous and he knows his arousal is evident, “Why would I?”

There’s a sudden change to your demeanor, written somewhere in the quirk of your eyebrow, etched in the faint curve of the corner of your mouth, but most of all visible in the darkness of your gaze as you look at him; and Ivar finds he could never regret defying you if that change is his reward. There’s gentleness still, hidden in the reluctant fondness of your gaze, but there’s more coldness to it, more thrilling cruelty, and it takes every ounce of his control for Ivar not to reach down and touch himself over his clothes to relieve the maddening ache of his hard cock as you look at him like that. He almost wants to just to see how you’d stop him, because he knows you would.

A thoughtful hum is all the answer you give to his taunt, leaving him chasing the thrill of having finally started to get through to you, leaving him hanging on to the realization of what it is that lets him drive you as mad as you do with but a touch.

Standing up from the armrest of his chair, you pull away from him. As you do, the knife you were dragging leisurely over the skin of his throat is now slowly, torturously, trailed down his arm. Ivar feels the sharpness of it, the threat of it, even over his shirt, and though his muscles tense and some instinctual part of him begs to pull away, he remains still, defying eyes set on you, smile still on his lips.

You are the one pulling away, and yet he feels like he is being chased, hunted. Still, he finds himself leaning forward, more tethered to your touch, to you, than he would like to admit.

Ivar watches raptly as you walk away, a slight sway to your hips that he knows you are doing on purpose. Still, your expression betrays nothing as you turn back around to face him while settling on the bed, sitting up against the headboard.

“Will you not join your wife?” You ask, false innocence in your tone. Not that you try keeping any façade of meekness, not with the way you toy with the edge of the knife by your lips, not with the hungry way you keep looking at him.

Ivar isn’t sure of you make an emphasis on your title as his wife because of that lingering jealousy, because you decide to use it as a way to lay a claim of your own; or because you are aware of what it does to him to hear you speak of yourself as something his, because you know it only makes the desire burning away at his control heighten when he is reminded you are his as much as he is yours.

He keeps his eyes on you, studying that annoyingly smug expression that quirks at your lips and darkens your gaze, and…Ivar knows he is playing your game by now.

Still he refuses to give you victory in the terms you demand it, but regardless he stands up, adjusting his grip on the crutch and walking towards the bed. Once again, his heart races at the predatory look in your eyes, at how even as he is the one standing and approaching you, it feels as if he were the one being hunted down, the one cornered.

He sits on the end of the bed, his back turned to you, and starts making quick work of the buckles and strappings at the braces around his legs.

Ivar feels your eyes on him as he does, and though for a moment there’s the impulse to tell you to look away -he doesn’t think it will ever leave him, that irrational need to try and make you forget, to try and make it so that you don’t notice-, the longer the silence stretches the heavier the feeling that your attention on him evokes gets. He feels exposed, he feels vulnerable, and there’s a thrill that comes with it now, a safety, because he knows he is desired, because he knows even if he were stripped to nothing you would want him.

Finishing with the braces of his legs and tugging off the boots, Ivar straightens his back, moving to take off his shirt, but you finally move from where you were waiting -watching- behind him on the bed, drawing closer, and he stops.

Kneeling behind him, your small hand reaches in front of him, but it settles nowhere near his chest, instead grasping at the base of his neck, forcing his head back.

His breath stutters past his lips, and all he can focus on is the feeling of your soft touch pressing tighter and tighter on his throat. A thrill runs through him, a restlessness that feels like a fever under his skin, but still he surrenders, leaning his weight against you.

The pleased hum you seal with a kiss right behind his ear is his reward, it seems. But your hold on his throat doesn’t loosen, and…by all the Gods, he never wants it to.

There’s something overwhelming, something that overcomes him, at the thought of surrendering to you, at the feel of your hands on him demanding that surrender; something that makes his breaths quicken and his hear thrash madly in his chest.

Your free hand reaches in front of him as well, but in this one you proudly hold the knife he once gifted you. He won’t lie and pretend he never imagined you wielding it against him when he offered it to you so long ago, but to experience it is something else entirely.

Ivar realizes he was saying your name only when you tighten your hold on his throat further, a hiss of a warning by his ear that he stay quiet.

Of course, he wants to bite back with words of how you ought to try harder if you mean to make him obey, but the sharp end of the knife being dragged down over the edge of his collarbone stops whatever words are to leave his lips, and he grits his teeth to keep any sound from leaving him.

You continue the knife’s path down, pressing hard enough that he almost wants to writhe in his place at the sharp sting of it, though he isn’t certain if he wants to escape that maddening feeling by pressing closer or further away from the blade.

The knife catches on the collar of his shirt, and at Ivar’s sharp breath you lean down and press a kiss over the column of his neck. He shivers, and this time not even through gritted teeth he can hold back the gasping moan that leaves him.

“Be still, my love,” You advise, voice maddeningly arrogant, the words and the drawl of your accent making his heart race in his chest. “Lest I do something you wouldn’t want me to with this. Though…I am not so sure you wouldn’t want me to, if I’m honest.”

Licking his lips, Ivar tightens his hold on your leg, tight enough to make you gasp softly. A smile pulls at his lips, and he dares,

“Give me the knife and I’ll show you what I’d like to do with it.”

He can’t see what you’re doing, your hand on his throat forcing his head back until he’s almost resting his head on your shoulder, but he feels the movement as you adjust your grip on the knife, and it evokes in him a special kind of thrill, something instinctual awakening a wildfire-like fear to run through his veins.

“Where’s the fun in that?” You tease, a drag of your teeth over his ear before your voice grows colder, and you order, “Stay still.

He trusts you, with his life and his heart, but still his breaths quicken as a few heartbeats go by and you don’t yet cut the offending garment, enjoying this delay of the inevitable that puts Ivar all the more on edge. Payback for his insistence on delaying the inevitable as well, he supposes, and he can’t say he minds.

Swallowing thickly, he grits his teeth to keep himself from saying anything, but feeling the hold of your hand on his throat tighten slightly as he does makes not voicing his need for you to do something all the more difficult.

Sensing his tension, you breathe a laugh, dark and intoxicating, that dances over his skin leaving a trail of goosebumps chasing after the caress of your breath on the skin of his neck.

“Trust me,” You advise, your voice a breath by his ear, roughened by desire and something else, and Ivar closes his eyes through a ragged breath of his own. “Give in to me, Ivar.

Without a warning you move your hand, a twist of your wrist as you move the blade downwards to tear at the fabric. Ivar startles at the sudden movement, chest rising sharply with a quick breath, and the drag of the knife against his skin this time is strong enough, painful enough, to make him gasp, a helpless call of your name.

At his sudden movement, your hold on his throat tightens, and that only drags him further down into the chaos of this rip current, overwhelming him in the tiny aftershocks of the pain that make pleasure dance in the edges of his thoughts.

You smile against the curve of his neck, but your tone is of displeasure when you speak,

“I warned you not to move, my love.”

Even if Ivar knows the reprimand is part of the game, even if he knows he hasn’t actually disappointed you; he feels a strange cold settle in his chest, a foolish knot of emotion tightening his throat.

Determined to prove he can be good, Ivar forces his body under his control once again and remains still, not betraying a single movement past the irregular rising and falling of his chest, as he obeys your command.

A soft kiss from your smiling lips on his shoulder is his reward.

This time he is almost expecting the sudden movement as you continue cutting open the shirt, and still Ivar cannot help the gasped breaths and the instinctual movements of his body as the edge of the blade drags over his skin.

He is convinced you press harder than you need to against his skin, he is convinced the faint scratches off the knife down his chest are not an accident at all; but he doesn’t have the voice or the presence to actually say anything right now.

Eyes squeezed shut, he tries breathing past the hold of your small hand on his throat, and finds himself stilling his body so that he doesn’t tremble in your arms, giving away too much. He refuses to voice a thing, he refuses to admit you’ve won, even if you both know it is inevitable that you make him do so.

But with each sharp drag of the knife over his skin, sometimes rough enough to sting as if blood was drawn and sometimes barely a tease of the blade over his heated skin; with each soft kiss you press wherever you can reach over the column of his neck, silent praise you breathe over his skin with each of those kisses; he feels himself slipping further and further somewhere where there’s nothing he doesn’t give away, where there’s no power he doesn’t’ rescind to you.

You have finished cutting the front of the shirt, and slowly you trail the knife upwards, hand on his throat adjusting and forcing Ivar’s head further back.

He has no choice but to linger like that, exposed, vulnerable, throat bared to you and the biting kiss you press under the curve of his jaw, body pliant and yielding to you as you make him lean his back against your chest.

Your hand leaves his throat, and still he remains tethered, unmoving, waiting for your next move. Ivar knows, because he knows you, that you wouldn’t surrender a proof of your victory if you weren’t already sure of having another one, and so he waits.

A sharp sting as you drag the tip of the knife over his cheek startles his body into tension, a tension you mockingly soothe with quiet assurances he can’t hear over the rush of his own heartbeat on his ears.

The hand previously on his throat travels down his chest, maddeningly slowly, torturously soft and gentle. For a moment, a breath, Ivar can lean into that familiar gentleness, quieten his heart to the cadence of those soft touches; and finds his muscles relaxing just slightly.

But it seems you take notice of it, and the piercing drag of nails over his chest makes him gasp, the sting somehow too much and not enough at the same time.

In between that softness that threatens to shatter him and that roughness that reminds him he isn’t so easily broken, you continue the trail of your hand down his chest.

Ivar is so hard he aches, so when your hand cups gently at his cock over his pants, he cannot keep the gasping breath that leaves his lips.

His eyes open and remain focused on the ceiling above him, yet unseeing, as you slowly move your hand, causing a maddeningly light amount of pressure that is nowhere near enough to offer any reprieve.

With a grunt, he tries moving in tandem with the teasing touches of your hand, desperately seeking more, and for a moment, you let him. Each drag of your hand over his cock sends pleasure like lightning down his spine, a touch that in any other situation might be not enough now threatens him to send him over the edge in a matter of seconds.

Without warning, without reason, you pull your hand away, leaving him chasing after any kind of friction, involuntary movements of his body as it tries searching fruitlessly for your touch.

“You moved.” The tone of your voice is mocking, smug, infuriating; the slight drawl of your accent a little stronger as your short words dissolve into a breathed chuckle.

With one last kiss behind his ear that doesn’t fail to make a shiver run down his spine, you move from behind Ivar, stepping down from the bed and standing in front of him.

He doesn’t fail to notice that while he is almost naked before you, tattered shirt and heaving breaths; you remain an image of perfect temptation. Your hair is still stubbornly styled, your dress still hugging your curves, even the crown of gold flowers is still on your head.

It seems…fitting, somehow.

One of your legs lifts to make his part, and you step closer, your left hand reaching to settle over his shoulder. His eyes catch on how you’ve hooked the round handle of the knife over your ring finger, and the sight makes Ivar’s stomach tighten.

His eyes remain focused on your hand, lingering on how the handle of the knife hooked on your finger contrasts against the wedding ring you wear on that same finger. His eyes follow your hand as you trail your touch over his shoulders and down his arms, making him take off the tattered undershirt.

With the realization that dawns on him just now that he hasn’t been able to touch you since you pulled away from him on that chair, the hunger gnaws at him all the more, and he reaches for you, one hand settling on your hip while the others travels up the back of your thigh, hating the dress for daring keep him from feeling your skin under his hands.

Finding himself starved for the feel of your skin, Ivar tugs you towards him and leans forward, trailing hungry lips over the low cut of the dress over the center of your breasts, trailing as far up towards your neck as the position allows him to.

Your hand grasping at the back of his neck is a clear tell and he smirks against your skin, not bothering to hide how much it pleases him to know he has on you at least a portion of your effect on him.

The sharp push of the tip of the knife on his bare shoulder is expected, and yet Ivar doesn’t pull away, hand grasping more tightly at your ass and bringing you as close as he can. He isn’t sure if he is defying you because of the thrill of angering you or because he doesn’t really want to pull away from the now-painful pressure as you hold the blade to his skin. Maybe a bit of both.

You are nothing if not relentless, and though you do not warn him again, the piercing pain spreads over his shoulder and he is sure you won’t stop even after drawing blood if he doesn’t obey; so he is forced to pull away.

Your eyes linger on his upper chest, somewhere near his heart, where the first of the cuts reached the deepest.

He makes himself stay still even as you reach for him with your free hand, trailing over the fresh cut with the tip of one finger. Ivar cannot for the life of him feel the sting of pain, not when you’re looking at him like that.

Heat coils within him when you bring your fingers to your mouth to lick off the drops of his blood, your eyes meeting his and in them shining a challenge he will always rise to meet, your head held high with a might he will always surrender to.

Ivar feels he will lose his mind when your lips curve into a smile he saw only once before.

You had a knife in your hand, one of his, just like you do now; and your smile was a little wild, a little mad, just like it is now.

You had marked your claim on that Saxon’s soul with the cut you made, and you promised to become his ruination with that smile on your lips.

And Ivar’s lips part, his breath stuttering and thoughts clouding; because he knows he would let you lay your claim over whatever you want from him, he would let you become his ruination if that is what it takes to never lose the way you’re looking at him now.

When your hand on his shoulder pushes him, Ivar falls back on the bed without hesitation, but he doesn’t loosen his hold on you as he does, making you move onto the bed until you are astride him, your knees on either side of his hips and your hands on either side of his head holding you up.

You don’t hesitate to lean your weight against him, lowering yourself to lean on your elbows so your chest is pressed against his. He is convinced the grind of your center against his cock, still confined in his pants, is nothing short of purposeful.

Focus still drawn to his chest, you settle better against him until you can lift one arm, and so lightly he almost shivers at the faint touch, you retrace some of the cuts with the blade. Your eyes darken further when you look up at him, and when you smile he could swear there’s still a faint stain of red on your lips.

“Does it hurt?”

Lifting his brows, he taunts, “You cannot hurt me.”

“Is that a challenge?” You ask, not waiting for a response when you press harder over one of the lines you were retracing, making Ivar hiss underneath you, unwillingly moving as if to get away from the pain you so gently draw on his skin. He realizes his eyes have fallen closed when he feels your lips pressing gently over that new cut you traced under his collarbone, when he feels the air stinging at the sensitive skin when you breathe a chuckle, “Of course it isn’t. You know I can.”

Laughing past quickened breaths, Ivar says, “Arrogant.”

“Honest,” You correct without missing a beat, a kiss between the dip of his collarbones to seal your words. He opens his eyes to find you still focused on the marks you left on his chest, from feint cuts to welts to the faintest of lines. Quietly, you confess, “I…I like seeing these marks on you. My marks on you.”

“Why?” Ivar presses, surprised at the hoarseness of his own voice, annoyed at how his tone betrays his need.

You make no note of it, returning your gaze to the few cuts and welts over his chest.

“I hate how they think anyone can take you from me,” You bite out, slowly trailing your eyes upward until you meet his gaze again. “I hate the idea of someone taking what is mine.

It will never truly leave him, at least he doesn’t think so, that rush of warmth and something else, something darker, whenever you lay your claim upon him. To know you want him enough to be possessive over him, to be jealous of whoever it is that tries getting his attention, it is something still new, still thrilling, for Ivar.

He searches your darkened gaze, a surge of tenderness somewhere in his chest that he doesn’t bother fighting against, instead trailing his hands up and down your sides as you rest your weight against him.

“And you are mine, aren’t you?” You press, leaning closer only to pull back when Ivar leans up to capture your mouth. You have been teasing him for too long, making him play this game of yours and not letting him kiss you even as he plays -mostly- by your rules. “Say it.”

Ivar challenges your gaze with his own, hand leaving your hip to grasp at the side of your neck, thumb teasing at the base of your throat. He could swear you press into the grasp of his hand, and he isn’t sure if you are daring him to close his hand around your throat or asking him to. It makes his next move all the more difficult to decide on because, from experience, it usually backfires if you are daring him to do something and he does it anyways, or if you are asking him to do something and he refuses.

He tugs you closer, making your lips be once again a breath away from his own.

Eyes dropping to your mouth, he demands, “Kiss me.”

But Ivar should know better than to expect the arrogant, infuriating woman he married to agree to something before getting what she wants. You remain unmoving, breaths quickened and one with his own, but still too far away.

With a growl rumbling from his chest, Ivar surges forward, wounded pride at having to accept not being able to overpower you, and captures your mouth in his.

Hand moving back to tangle in your hair, he loses himself in your kiss, the satisfaction of having you so intimately close after all this teasing, the shiver that it sends down his spine to feel in your kiss the faint coppery taste of his own blood.

He licks into your mouth, demanding you part your lips for him, demanding more.

Your hand on his throat is rough and stronger than he would have expected, and you force him to part from your lips, holding him against the bed as you sit up again. Ivar doesn’t particularly mind the view, and he feels his lips curving into a smile at having almost gotten through to you.

Defying you always proves so fun.

With a twitch of anger on your nose -though he notices the way you lick you lips, as if chasing the taste of him, and he feels his cock twitch in his pants at the sight, demanding any sort of relief-, you press hard enough that you cut Ivar of breath.

His heart is beating madly in his ears, but he can still hear you demand,

“Say it, Ivar.”

Ivar knows he could push you off him easily, he knows he could overpower your strength with his own, but at the same time he knows he doesn’t want to win, he knows he will lose if he tries claiming his victory through force.

Maybe because victory isn’t his to claim, not here, not with you.

And it thrills him -it overwhelms him, it intoxicates him, it consumes him- to have your small hand press tighter his throat, your smaller body pinning his down, you demanding control over his own body and succeeding.

Still, even if more than anything he wants to lose himself in the ecstasy of being claimed by you, in the weightlessness of admitting he is yours and yours alone; he wants to defy you.

With a smile that he knows gets on your nerves, Ivar speaks past the pressure on his throat, words biting, challenging.

“Make me.”

A breath goes by, then two.

With a muttered word in your native tongue, you surge forward, capturing Ivar’s mouth and capturing his breath and what is left of his mind as well.

Your kiss is hungry, devouring, leaving him with no choice but to give in and follow your lead, part his lips when your tongue demands entrance into his mouth and muffling a moan against your lips when you deepen the kiss.

Iva cannot help the whine that leaves him when you pull away, especially when you stop leaning your weight against him, moving to get off the bed.

Leaning up on his elbows, heart racing at whatever it is you are going to do, he watches you stand between his legs again. For a moment the possibility of you leaving him untouched, responding with nothing to his defiance, flashes through his mind, and shamelessly there are words at the tip of his tongue to take back his challenge, to let you know he can be good.

You have made him watch and left him unable to touch -you or himself-, you have left him so close to the edge before pulling back and reminding him of a broken rule, you have proven time and time again that any insubordination by him is something you know how to punish as thoroughly and efficiently as you reward any time he surrenders.

But you don’t pull away, instead you hook your fingers on the waistband of the already undone pants, and tug them down his legs, eyes holding his in a silent command that he doesn’t look away. Not that he could, entrapped in the spell of your darkened gaze.

As always, there’s the tinge of cold that tries making its way past the comfortable and safe haze that takes over his thoughts when he is alone with you, the intrusive thoughts - an instinct more than anything by now- that tell him to hide his legs from you, that warn him to pull away before you have a chance to.

Your eyes on him as hungry as ever, your touch on him as soft as ever, it keeps him tethered, it makes letting go of those thoughts easier; and there’s nothing but concern for the now, for the way you’re looking at him and the way you’re touching him.

“I think that you don’t really want to win. I think,” You drawl out, an absent press of your lips on his chest as you move upwards followed by a teasing drag of your teeth over his nipple, leaving Ivar gasping underneath you. “That you fight against me just so you can be reminded that I will always defeat you.

As if to prove your point, you dart forward, a barely-there touch of your lips over his, a graze of your mouth against his, and still Ivar tilts his head towards the ghost of a kiss. Satisfied, you reward him with a kiss, brushing the tip of your tongue across the seam of his mouth, a teasing flick of it over his bottom lip.

Ivar’s lips part, welcoming, seeking, but you keep the kiss almost painfully shallow, teasing and almost mocking, pretending you are merciful enough to be offering what he so clearly wants.

His breaths are quickened and shallow when you pull back, and when you lick your lips his gaze is drawn to your mouth. Still tantalizingly close, and he could cross the distance and kiss you, but he mustn’t, and he doesn’t. Few things are as simple as this, as accepting the reach he has given you over himself, body and soul; few things are as safe as this, as surrendering to you and finally giving up the control he so desperately needs.

You smile and continue, voice honey-sweet, but he knows better than to think that sweetness doesn’t have its poison hidden underneath,

“All those times you have tried to make me surrender. To your might, to your wishes, to you,” Your words are slow, deliberately poised as you adjust yourself above him, straddling him more comfortably. “You do that because you know I will fight back.”

Wordlessly, you reach in between your bodies and grasp his hard cock in your hand, running your thumb over the tip to gather any moisture that collected there before starting purposeful, precise strokes of your hand over him.

After starving for such a touch for so long, Ivar can do nothing but surrender to it, head falling back against the mattress, lips parted and eyes tightly shut.

You lean forward, claiming his lips in a biting kiss that he can only return sluggishly, too lost on the feel of your small hand over him, overwhelmed by the pleasure you so easily draw out of him.

Ivar’s eyes open with a wordless gasp as the sharp sting of a cut spreads from his shoulder.

He cannot keep the whine leaves his lips when he feels the teasing drag of a knife over his arm, realizing only now that the sharp blade against his skin startles him into attention that the reason you leaned forward was to reclaim the knife.

“Did you ever really want that, my love?” You ask, a quirk of your mouth that tells him you already know the answer. Ivar has no idea what he is supposed to say, because he isn’t frankly understanding most of what you are saying past the rush of his own heartbeat on his own ears, and the ache of his cock, so hard he feels he might lose his mind if your touches continue to be so maddeningly teasing. “Did you ever hope I would one day surrender to you?”

A breath of silence, and he swallows past a dry throat, trying to find the words.

“Haven’t you, though?” He asks, sharing your smile as you let the masks lip for a moment, and nothing but the kind of exasperation that makes your eyes shine with adoration looks back at him.

You shake your head, “One day I’ll muzzle you, I swear.”

“You are the one that insists you want to hear me.”

“I don’t need to hear your words. I don’t need no coherent sound leaving your lips,” You trace the bottom edge of his mouth with the tip of the knife, once again putting all of Ivar’s focus on that simple but dangerous movement. This time your smile is once again wolfish, and you taunt, “If I have my way, and I always do, none do by the time I’m through with you.”

Free hand tightening on his shoulder until he feels the sharpness of your nails digging into his skin, you finally take him inside you, not giving him or yourself a moment before you start moving.

The movements of your body above his, the rough grip of your hands on him, the cadence of your breathing as pleasure starts building within you; it is not for him, it has nothing to do with him. You are using his body in whatever way you see fit to give yourself pleasure, you are demanding the surrender of his body to yours, and Ivar’s feels weightless, breathless, mindless.

You are always a sight to behold as you hold yourself above him, a slow dance of your hips as you grind and move on him; head tilted back, neck bared to him, shameless view that makes Ivar not bother resisting the urge to sit up.

Hungry lips mouth at the curve of your throat, his hands settling on the curve of your ass and bringing you closer every time you sink back down against him.

But you do not miss a beat, the knife you still held hooked on your finger grasped on your hand, pressed against the center of his chest, right over his heart -fitting, he thinks dazedly- as you force him to lay back down on the bed.

“Do not move,” You order, voice cold, ruthless. “Last warning.”

He scoffs, because war has taught him victory is all the better when it is hard won and you have taught him defeat is all the better when he makes you fight for it. Even now, when you hold a knife dangerously close to his throat, he raises his brows and taunts,

“You cannot truly believe you can threaten me.” The words are not fully past his lips when his voice is cut short, gasping breaths and a hoarse call of your name as you open yet another cut over his shoulder.

The pain seems to heighten and spread in every hurried breath that goes by, until there’s nothing he can focus on but the sensations you draw out of him, pleasure and pain alike.

His heartbeat rushing in his ears, he doesn’t know if the noise he is hearing is his own voice, but with the way your tight heat wrapped around him sends sparks of pleasure down his spine and the way the sharp sting of the cut spreads pain through his body and leaves his every nerve alight, Ivar doesn’t have it in him to try and restrain himself from voicing your effect on him.

“Want to know what I believe?” You ask, words breathed past his ear, your hand on his neck tightening as your movements above him become more frenzied, more desperate. He’s caught in the riptide of your voice, your touch, you; and he can offer no words other than a silent call of your name as you use his body to bring yourself closer and closer. Dragging your teeth over his earlobe, you send a spark of pleasure like lightning down his spine, and, voice rough, you finish, “I believe that you like being reminded of your place. Underneath me, at my mercy. You know you belong nowhere else.”

A need that goes beyond anything his body might be trying to tell him burns in Ivar’s veins, and hearing you this close to the edge, feeling you tightening around him, feeling your thighs tremble slightly as you move above him, demanding your pleasure from him; it drives him to move one hand to where you are joined, skilled movements of his fingers against you that makes your body tighten further and further, your voice grow more and more breathless.

When you move back up so that your chest isn’t pressed against his anymore and Ivar is lost in the sight of it, in the arch of your back and in the way the low light casts a warm glow over your skin, in the sound of his name on your lips as your head tilts back and in the breathless praise that the breathed word means.

With every movement of your hips you demand your pleasure from his body, and he finds himself freely giving whatever you demand and anything else he has left to give.

Past the noise that fills his head, past his quickened breaths as he watches you bring yourself closer and closer to the edge, he thinks there are words leaving his lips, encouragements that you let go for him, pleas disguised as praise.

Desperate to see you coming apart for him, because of him, he doesn’t care what repercussions may come for speaking out of line.

You lean down, pressed against him as your cries and the tightening of your walls around him tell him you’re getting closer and closer; and where you are going you are dragging Ivar with you, each rhythmic movement of your bodies together driving him closer and closer to the edge.

Your whole body tightens and trembles as you fall apart, a call of Ivar’s name by his ear that draws an answering call of your name in between Ivar’s gasping breaths.

He feels his body coiling around an unseen tension, but before he can let go and follow you, without warning you bite down on his shoulder -roughly, and behind his closed lids he sees you as he did that first day, blood dripping down your lips as you bit down on that man’s skin- and the sharp pain makes his body unable to focus on any pleasure but the one that ebbs weakly alongside the pain you draw out of him.

Too long he lingers tethered to that easily-lost pleasure that comes with the pain, to that all-encompassing and overwhelming pleasure of having had you moving above him; but finds himself unable to hold on to either, left so, so close, but unable to fall past the edge.

He is left unable to finish, but all the sudden pain did was make him impossibly harder. He tries breathing past gasping, desperate breaths, feeling his body shaking against his will and wondering absently if you can feel him about to shatter.

Maybe you do, because as you pull your mouth away from his sensitive skin, your soft hands run up and down his chest, bracing you and holding you above him and also offering a soothing caress that somehow manages to pull him further under.

Ivar is of half a mind to beg that you sink your teeth into him again, that you draw that maddening and overwhelming kind of pain from him again, that you push him over the edge with nothing but that roughness, that ruthlessness, he so loves about you; but your mocking laughter interrupts whatever words his lips were silently forming around.

“Do you want to finish, Ivar?” You tease, he previously-soft touch of your free hand turning rougher as you dig your nails into his skin, making him hiss and yet still arch into the touch. “I want you to, I want you to fill me up. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to fill me with your seed, make me swell up with your child, so everyone knows how good you fuck me?”

His head falls back, and gritting his teeth Ivar looks up at the ceiling.

Through gritted teeth, a hand grasping desperately at your thigh when you repeat that maddening little movement of your hips, he bites,

“You’re wicked lit-…”

You interrupt him swiftly, “Not a word. Unless you’re saying what I want to hear.”

He tries blinking past heavy lids, tries focusing on you.

Feeling the thrill quickening his heart, knowing he is playing with fire, he dares, “Why should I, hm?”

Your smile is a little power-mad, and you bite your lip, lowering your gaze to the movement of the knife down his chest as you ask again,

“Do you want to finish, Ivar?” The meaning behind the question is completely different now, and his throat dries. At his silence, you simply request, “Say you’re mine, and I’ll let you.”

But a part of him wants you to demand his surrender the same way you demand your pleasure from him, a part of him wants you to overpower him, wants you to force him to submit. And so he stays silent, thrill running down his spine like lightning, a kind of fear he finds himself starved for running through his veins.

Even at his defiant silence you don’t stop moving, continue moving on him, around him, above him. The tight drag of your wet heat around him drives him steadily towards the edge, each roll of your hips sending jolts of pleasure down his spine, each drag of your breasts against his chest as you press closer stealing his breath and whatever is left of his heart that isn’t yours already.

“You may choose not to say it, but you’re mine,” You state, reaching over his head to grab the knife again. Voice rough but certain, as if you aren’t speaking to the darker and more desperate parts of him with each promise of conquest, of ownership. “Your body is mine, mine to do as I please with. All you have to do for me to have mercy, is surrender, Ivar.”

This time you don’t wait for an answer, you don’t offer him an opportunity to defy you, though he isn’t so certain he would have the breath or the strength to do so right now.

Ivar hisses at the pain that spreads through him at the cut you slowly open over his shoulder, tracing the shape of one of the ink traces on his skin. That pain is almost enough to send him tumbling over the edge, to let him think of nothing but it, to finally pull him under and drown out anything other than the pain that blossoms on his skin with your name on it and the pleasure it brings with it. A hoarse and ragged call of your name, and as the knife continues the trail of fire over his skin.

Ivar is so close he can feel all of him tightening, twisting as he falls deeper and deeper into a riptide where all he can make out is you, warm and tight wrapped around him, and the piercing pain dancing over his skin; he is so close that it borders on painful, and drags him further down.

But you aren’t yet that merciful, and the soft press of your kiss over the thin cut tethers him to the present, makes him whine at the loving touch, because it would be so easy to fall apart at the feel of that gentleness that always makes him feel like he will shatter, it would be as easy as breathing to give in if it weren’t for the sharp sting of the knife against his skin, for the thrilling fear that lights his nerves on fire when you draw the blade over his skin.

Ivar isn’t sure how long you torture him for, for how long you keep him tethered only to you and aware only of what you’re doing to him; but it feels like an eternity, it feels he has been so close to the edge so many times that there’s tightness in his throat, stinging in his eyes, breathless pleas at the tip of his tongue that he refuses to voice lest his surrender is made real.

His hands tighten on the sheets underneath him, as if that is what can keep him from flying away, as if that is what can let him hold on to even the slightest bit if control.

But even that you take from him, the rough and dark laugh you breathe by his ear sending a shiver down his spine and prompting his hands to reach desperately for you, one grasping at the side of your hip while the other tangles in your hair, though he isn’t sure if he does it to draw you closer or push you away.

He cannot take it anymore, he will lose his mind. Tethered between this softness and this roughness, between pain and pleasure, between defiance and surrender; he will lose his mind, he is sure of it.

He cannot take it, he cannot stand another moment.

The word is ragged, hoarse, desperate as it leaves his lips, “Please.”

“Hmm, please what, my love?” You tease, a rotation of your hips that makes a ragged half-shout leave his lips as he desperately grasps at your hips, trying to keep you still until he can catch his breath.

Ivar’s breathing is out of his control, and past gasping breaths he tries speaking, silently mouthing the words a couple of times before they can leave his lips, broken and shaking,

“Please, a-anything.”

You lean forward to capture his mouth, your kiss sweet and surprisingly soothing. Still, as you pull away Ivar bites back a whine as he cranes his head towards you, chasing after your lips. It is not enough, it would never be enough, and he…he feels like shattering.

Searching his gaze, grounding him with your eyes on his, you command,

“Say it.”

The words -a vow, a truth, a plea- leave his lips with ease in a haggard gasp,

“I’m yours,” And the words keep stumbling past his lips, rushed, “I’m yours, only-…hah, only y-yours. Please, let…let me…”

“No.”

His eyes widen, and words keep stumbling past his lips, hurried, “Wh-…no, no, I…p-please, you can’t-…”

“I can, I have,” You intone, a mad little smile teasing at your lips. Lifting yourself off him, Ivar knows he mustn’t do anything except grit his teeth and clench his hands into fists as you pull away. After a breath, you run one hand up the inside of his thigh, stopping just shy of touching him, and offer, “I can go on, if you ask nicely. But you know how that will end.”

He does. A few times he has pushed beyond a point you’re willing to forgive, and you’ve set out to tease him, but instead of stopping and pulling away when he is just close enough, you have pulled away and left him bereft of your touch as he is coming undone, leaving him with no control over his own body as it trembles and convulses, helpless moans leaving his lips, the release far from his reach and yet somehow already past him.

He shakes his head wordlessly, gritting his teeth as a strange but thrilling embarrassment makes his cheeks feel hot when you chuckle quietly.

But he needs to finish, he cannot be left like this. This is torture, and he knows you well enough to know when you are just teasing him until he breaks.

Turning his head to meet your gaze, Ivar offers quietly, “I…I can be good.”

“Why weren’t you, then?” You ask, not missing a beat.

You keep pulling away, and an urgency fills him. He…he has to prove to you that he can, that he is, he has to…he has to earn it, he knows he does.

“I’ll prove it, I’ll be good.” He promises, the haze that softens his thoughts whenever it is just the two of you making it possible that the words leave his lips and the cruel voice in his head that whispers he has failed you already is easily quietened.

When you move to rest once again over the top of the bed, Ivar turns on his spot, holding himself up on his arms and crawling towards you.

“Will you?” You taunt, a small smile curving at your lips. Ivar moves even closer, one of your legs falls to the side, an invitation even if you don’t voice it, and once he is close enough, he doesn’t hesitate to reach for you.

Dragging rough hands over the soft skin of your leg, Ivar dares lean forward, pressing a reverent trail of kisses up the inside of your thigh, an edge to his thoughts that he hadn’t realized was there softening when you lift a hand to caress his hair.

“Mhm, yes. For you.” He confirms against your skin.

He bears your mark, his chest littered in raised lines of the knife having scratched at the skin, red drops of blood staining his skin and thin red lines where you dared cut deeper, bite marks -new ones and older ones that have yet to fade- spread over his neck and shoulders; and Ivar gathers it is only fair he is allowed a few marks of his own.

Just as his teeth sink into the soft skin of the inside of your thigh, your hold on his hair tightens, a sharp tug that speaks of the warning you don’t voice.

Obediently, though he is smiling slightly at the sting of pain in his scalp -he does try most things because he knows you will fight back, you were right, of course-, he continues the harmless trail of kisses up the inside of your thigh towards your center.

But, once again, you stop him, a silent command that he continue past the inviting wetness between your legs, until he is face to face with you.

“My pleasure is yours,” You say, smiling up at him when Ivar holds himself up over you, realizing only now truly how easily he could overpower you. Maybe he could, if you were anything other than who you are. The teasing, cruel, glint in your eye makes his heart skip a beat, and your hands on his hips bring him closer to you, demanding a choked moan to make it past his lips as his arousal is brought to the forefront of his mind again. You tilt your head, lips brushing against his as you order, “So you will prove you can please me, by bringing the both of us pleasure,” There’s a challenge in your tone, and lifting the knife one last time you use it to guide Ivar to your lips, the edge of the blade retracing the scar on his cheekbone as you kiss him slowly. Pulling away, you remind him, this time the meaning behind words so similar to the ones you’ve said before, “But your pleasure, just as you, just as your body, is mine, my love. Don’t forget that.”

He searches your gaze, before leaning forward, capturing your lips in a soft kiss. You let him kiss you, but before long you take control of the kiss, your hand at the back of his neck guiding the angle of his head and your tongue insistent as you deepen the kiss.

Even though he doesn’t need to, because you both knew the truth long before he accepted surrender in this game of yours, Ivar pulls back just enough to whisper, breaths quickened and voice roughened, “I’m yours.”

You smile, wolfish, and dart forward to bite teasingly at his bottom lip, “Mine.”

He doesn’t need to say it, he doesn’t need to hear you say it. But he wants to, because it will never leave him, this thrill of having been torn to pieces, bared of any armor, and still having been chosen, claimed.

Sometimes, at his lowest, at his most hurting, he wonders how. How, of all the people that have wanted you and offered you worlds in exchange for your love, of all the lives you could have lived with any other, you could choose him. Sometimes, at his weakest, at his most uncertain, he wonders why. Why, after seeing all what makes him who he is, after being witness to what he has let no other see, you want him regardless.

“Do you want me?” He asks against your lips, not really sure why the words stumble past his lips, but once that they are hanging in the air between you he finds himself waiting for your answer with a knot of emotion in his chest.

He feels vulnerable, exposed, as he always does when he is with you, when he is like this, when the two of you are like this; and though he wouldn’t change a thing he sometimes still feels easily shattered.

Your hand on the side of his face is soft, and warm, and soothing, and you bring his mouth to yours, a soft kiss that makes him shiver before you promise, “Always.”

That is all the encouragement he needs, and he grasps himself in his hand -almost flinching at the borderline painful desire that runs through his veins, that makes his every nerve feel set alight- and enters you.

And in between the familiar movement of your bodies, the sounds of pleasure you let out that echo in his mind like wordless praise, the sudden sharpness of your teeth making him somewhere new or your nails dragging over his skin; Ivar is unable to focus on anything that isn’t you.

Your voice washes over him, makes him feel warm and weightless, tethered even as his head fills with noise and his body threatens to betray him; the words echoing in his head and managing to pull him further into this space you always drag him to, this rip current, this whirlwind.

You feel so good inside me, you gasp, a breath by his ear, and though he is so hard he aches, more than anything he wants to hear that voice call his name in ecstasy again. Ivar mouths hungrily at the soft skin of your neck, bringing you both closer and closer to the edge. After having been denied for so long, he’s desperate for relief, but he’s more desperate to earn such relief, such pleasure, by giving all of himself to you.

My sweet, beautiful Ivar, you croon, wrenching a choked sob from his chest as he moves with more vigor, thrusting harder and deeper inside you. Only you could render him so defenseless with but a touch, make him feel so cherished with but a word; only you could breathe loving words past his ear and leave him so easily shattered while holding him in one piece in your embrace.

You are so good for me, you praise, and a shudder wrecks at his body at the warm feeling the simple words evoke in him, breaths erratic as his heart thrashes in his chest. You tighten around him, quiet trembles of your body as you fall apart, and the drag of your nails up his back draws on his skin a pain much sweeter than any knife ever could.

Let go, let go for me, you demand, and he hadn’t realized how much he was craving your direction, your permission, until the words wash over him and he finds himself dragged under a rip current, unable to breathe or think, left to chase desperately for the blend of pleasure and pain that your tight heat and your teeth on his skin drown him in.

Ivar falls apart in between gasping breaths, ragged calls of your name until his voice gives in, trembling body that you hold tightly against yours; the painful relief, the weakening ecstasy, leaving him with your arms around him as the only thing keeping him from drifting away.

He trembles in the aftershocks, cannot help it, even as he tries holding his body back under his control; almost aching at each shiver of his body where it still rests over yours.

You bring him back to himself in between gentle touches, soft words in your own tongue and his -though no matter the language he cannot understand them, cannot hear them over the rush of noise in his head-, and with that uncanny sense of understanding him that still surprises him, once you are certain he can hear you, you tease,

“You could have surrendered much earlier, and suffered less.”

Ivar smiles lazily against your skin, moving slightly to the side only so that his whole weight isn’t resting on you, but refuses to part from your embrace, arms wrapped around you in kind and bringing you closer as he buries his face in the curve of your neck.

“Where’s the fun in that, hm?”

Your answering giggle is tired but happy, and with a kiss on the top of his head you mutter,

“I love you.”

The edge of what just transpired ebbs away, and as the thrilling fear of having you holding a blade against him fades, as the urgency of proving to you that he can be good quietens; he is drained, weightless, tethered to nothing but you.

Your hands are soft and soothing up and down his back, your voice a rumble under his ear and a breath over his heated skin; and Ivar has never felt safer.

“And I love you.”

Victory has nothing on surrender, when it is you he can surrender to.

____ ____ ____

I’m still not very confident on my ability to write smut, much less from a male’s (or a submissive’s) perspective, but I hope it was alright. Thank you for reading!

Btw, I’m sorry for missing Nostalgia updates these past weeks, I just haven’t been very motivated lately. I’m also a very slow writer, as you know. After the 10th I’m mostly done with this semester, so I’ll try to get closer to a regular schedule of updates (Nostalgia and otherwise) then. Thank you for your support, and your patience!

Taglist (I’m excluding those on my All Taglist since I already tagged you on the one shot): @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @punkrocknpearls @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214 @funmadnessandbadassvikings @msrawog @kaitieskidmore1​

[pomegranates-and-blood]

νοσταλγία (Chapter 45)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Word Count: 5.7k

Warnings: The usual.

A/N: Hi, hope you like this! I’m sorry it’s a day later than promised, I just had to go over it a few more times than usual because I wasn’t happy with it. I’m still not very happy with this chapter, but I hate it less and that counts lol

You don’t have to look far for Ivar. When Sieghild and you walk through the doors towards the main hall, you find him sitting by one of the tables near the thrones, absently spinning one of his knives in his finger, once again dressed and with the braces once again around his legs.

Sieghild’s arrival wasn’t the first time either of you was summoned to leave your bed late at night or early in the morning, and, especially as the days have grown warmer, Ivar rarely bothers with the hassle of putting the iron braces back on, instead crawling without them.

And the first thing you notice is the fact that he is wearing them now. The second thing you notice is the repeated patterns of his toying with the knife.

The third thing you notice, and the one that makes you realize what is going on, is that as soon as he sees your mother, Ivar stands up, head held high and shoulders squared as he faces the shieldmaiden.

You aren’t certain if he is trying to impress or intimidate her. Maybe they are one and the same when it comes to him.

“King Ivar.” Your mother says, a bow of her head even if you notice that she also stands taller. She never bothered much with kindness or pleasantries, so at least you rest assured she doesn’t have much to say to Ivar regarding something other than war. She isn’t known for biting her tongue.

Sieghild strides the distance between her and Narses, almost towering over him when she stands to her full height. Severe features tightened in a frown that seems deepened by the ink traces on her cheeks and forehead, when she tilts her head to the side you realize what it has made her people as feared as they are.

When she speaks, you could swear she purposely makes the accent in her Greek stronger, making her all the more foreign, all the more…Viking.

“I am not trusting my daughter to some fool that would sell his sword and his loyalty to Byzantine priests.”

“I did n-…”

Sieghild carries on, ignoring his words, “Because not only are you a traitor, you are a stupid one at that, turning your back to them as you did.”

“Mother…”

“You shut your mouth,” She orders without turning around, and you bite back a sigh. She returns her attention to Narses, “The only reason I’ve let you live is because you saved her in Eleusis. The one thing you’ve done right. Try taking my daughter from my side, and I’ll cut your head off. You don’t do much thinking with it anyways, eh, boy?”

“Sieghild,” Ivar replies, and the look in his eye tells you he is trying to read your mother. If you were a tad less entertained by this, you’d try to let him know there is no point to it. “It has been quite a while.”

“Yes, it has,” Your mother agrees. You are almost relieved at the strange civility, until she blurts, “Last time I saw you, you were dragging my daughter off in chains.”

You sigh, closing your eyes, and try, “Mother.”

She ignores you, stepping forward. Ivar’s expression darkens as she approaches, something more severe, something more guarded takign voer his features.

“I gave you my blessing to marry her, you didn’t have to make her a prisoner.”

“She was never my prisoner,” He retorts. You don’t bother concealing the scoff you let out at his words, and Ivar’s pale eyes focus on you for a moment, a reprimand that he doesn’t voice shining in them. “She has been free since we arrived in Kattegat.”

“Yes, I know. More than free,” She says, almost reluctantly. Ivar seems confused by the sudden change, and you almost want to laugh, especially when Hvitserk catches your eye and makes a face at the expense of his brother’s uncertainty. Pressing your lips together, you look back at your mother, who lifts a hand and pats Ivar’s chest absently. “I knew my daughter would marry a great man. You make her happy, and for that I am thankful.

Ivar adjusts in his place, a nervous movement masked as the need to adjust his grip on the crutch, and you do not bother hiding your smile when he clears his throat, and nods, saying nothing more.

Sieghild turns her attention to Hvitserk, who was watching with his arms crossed and leaning by one of the wooden pillars, and tilts her head to the side.

“You are a son of Ragnar, aren’t you?”

“Or so they tell me,” He retorts with a shrug, and a smile that your mother returns. “I’m Hvitserk.”

“Ah, I remember you,” She smiles, looking him over, “You took down the Thebesian,” At his confused frown she states, “Narses, the fool that thought meeting Ivar the Boneless’ army in an open field was survivable.”

“The commander, yes, he was…”

“An idiot. The one thing he did right was obeying my daughter, but even that he did wrong, the poor ba-…”

“Do not speak ill of the dead.” You chastise absently, passing by Ivar on the way to your seat and offering a faint nod to the question written in his eyes.

Your mother doesn’t hesitate to refute, “I spoke ill of him when he was alive, this is no different.”

Finally taking a seat, unusually tired after your night of rest was stolen from you, and dragging a hand over your face you motion for the chair across from Ivar and you.

“Just…sit, Sieghild.”

“Given a crown and you think you can order me around, eh?” She teases, but still concedes. Voice low, she speaks in your own tongue, “Are you well, little one?”

You nod, but your head feels strangely clouded, making you uncomfortably dizzy.

Still, you offer, “Just tired. Someone decided to announce their arrival in the dead of night.”

Her eyes linger on you for a breath too long, making a strange kind of dread grow on the pit of your stomach, because you truly cannot understand what it is she is trying to say, if anything; but soon enough she turns her attention to Ivar and Hvitserk.

“I spent spring with the Black Danes. Close enough to hear of your defeat, and your victories, against Stithulf. He has moved south, as I’m sure you know now.”

“Near York, according to our scouts.”

“This winter was kind to him, your Jarl across the sea is no threat to him.” She answers, making Ivar grit his teeth.

You aren’t sure she intended to strike a nerve by reminding him of how strong Stithulf has grown, but you are sure she has noticed she has.

“King Angantyr has fought against him before. One of his outposts was taken over a couple of months into the winter,” She starts, tracing the edge of her goblet with an inked finger. A deep breath, and she states, “The Black Danes should have no reason to know, or to suspect, but…I know the ways of your people, little one.”

Green eyes meet yours, unwavering, and you cannot look away.

No.

No, they would never.

At your silence it is Ivar who leans forward and asks, even though he knows the answer, “Greeks?”

You find yourself shaking your head, eyes almost pleading as they search Sieghild’s.

“No, it’s impossible. They wouldn’t…they wouldn’t join Christians, not willingly,” You reply without hesitation, though something cold and terrifying spreads through your chest. You keep your eyes on Sieghild, “You know Galla would never, mother.”

“What I know is that what we faced was the formations of your people, the…discipline of your people,” She sentences, leaning forward, “They slaughtered our army, I wasn’t killed because the Gods watched over me.”

You always knew if Narses had fought and led like a Byzantine instead of like a Saxon, he would have survived. You always knew that if the Greeks had fought as they had in your homeland, not bound to the commands of the Saxons and their formations and ways of war, that there would be few things that Vikings, unaccustomed to fighting in such a fashion, could do against them.

Few times in your life you have regretted being right like this.

“You were injured?” You ask, noting the way your voice trembles.

“I am alright, little one,” She promises instead of giving a direct answer. All you can think of is how you weren’t there, she was injured and you weren’t there to help her, she needed you and you weren’t even aware of it. “Just a few more scars,” You press your lips together, but say nothing else. Your mother continues, “If what Galla told you is true, and most of the Greeks sailed with her across the sea…”

“They did,” Ivar tells her, ignoring your eyes on him. “A couple thousand Greeks, they settled near Eldham.”

“They couldn’t cross many of them across the sea in the winter. Stithulf doesn’t have the Greeks,” You reason, forcing yourself to take a deep breath. Your fingers tighten their hold on the warm cloak around you, as if to remind you of what warmth feels like, as if to demand warmth from you. But the words are still cold when they leave your lips, “The rest will die. They will die alongside the Christians they have chosen to fight alongside of.”

“They have their reasons to wish to fight Vikings, little one,” Green eyes linger on Ivar for a moment before your mother looks at you again, and insists, “You were taken from them.”

There’s a twitch in your mouth that speaks of a smile you have to bite down, a smile too alike that of the woman it is still shameful to be when it comes to them.

Instead, you explain, “I’d rather see them dead than under a Christian’s boot, they should know that.”

She lifts one shoulder and drops it nonchalantly, “You do not want Greek blood spilled, that I know.”

They aren’t Greeks if they ally themselves with our enemies.

You bite your tongue to keep the words from leaving your lips.

“We’ll send for your…spy. Galla. She has been leading them, has she not?” Ivar asks, to which you mumble an affirmation. He shrugs, “We’ll send for her. She has made the trip here many times already, what is one more?”

You make note of that bitterness, of that resentment, but say nothing, instead nodding your head.

____

The wait for them to arrive drives you half mad, but the moment the scouts announce there Greeks, escorted by Ivar’s warriors, are a short trek away from Kattegat, you

Seeing the familiar faces, the familiar clothing, hearing the familiar voices, the familiar accents; it should make nostalgia tug at your heart and make the past all the sweeter, now that you are allowed a taste of it. You know it should.

The Greeks move orderly, they always have, until they come to a stand before you. A hand over their hearts, a few murmurs of your name and even more of the title you never earned or wanted.

You bow your head, but stay silent.

Galla steps forward, head held high and silent steps carrying her closer to you. She offers the beginning of a smile, but you don’t fail to notice the way her calculating gaze looks over you and all that surrounds you before extending a hand to you.

Instead of grabbing at her hand or her forearm, you cross the distance and embrace her tightly. Past a breathed chuckle, Galla does the same, a murmur of your name in an accent that more than any temple or city makes you think of home.

Pulling away and stepping back to stand alongside Ivar again, you state,

“Thank you for agreeing to come here.”

Before speaking, she dismisses the Greeks that stand at her side, armor uncannily pristine even after all this time and hardship. Leaving her in relative privacy with you and Ivar as the Greeks disperse through the main hall, you almost would feel more at ease, if it weren’t for the glint in her eyes when she turns back to you.

“Winter has been kind to you, old friend,” Galla says in easy Attic Greek, a slight drawl in her voice, the clear shine of a tease in her dark eyes. She meets your gaze with familiar -and this time much missed- warmth, before she turns to Ivar and speaks in his tongue, “King Ivar. I am pleased we meet again in…different circumstances.”

You look at him, your eyes lingering on the faintest of smiles that curves at his lips, and hold your breath.

“So am I. I hope winter was kind to you too.”

Of course.

It would have been smarter to keep his mouth shut about knowing how to speak your tongue, but then again, you have a feeling he’d do anything to prove she doesn’t have the upper hand.

Galla’s eyes turn to you in question -in surprise- but she bows her head adjusts in her place.

“To one such as me no winter here will be kind.” There’s a stillness to Galla whenever she deems someone a threat, your mother once compared her to a rapacious bird on the hunt. And as she meets Ivar’s pale eyes with her own dark gaze, she is so carefully still she seems to not be breathing.

Ivar offers a smug smile as false as it is threatening, and you know he enjoys every moment of intimidating her.

“There are Greeks in Wessex, fighting alongside Stithulf,” You interrupt, making her turn to you. Standing next to your husband with Galla before the two of you, you feel strangely like you are pretending to stand taller than her, so you step closer to her, lower your voice, “Galla, I need to know why.”

Her eyes go back to Ivar, a silent question of whether you expect her to speak of this in front of him, or maybe a silent threat that she hasn’t forgotten he is here and he will forever be an outsider to her. But they soften when they return to you, and she sighs.

“Tell me, are you…bound to Kattegat?” You asks bluntly, startling you, though you try not giving it away. Ivar doesn’t bother hiding the effect of her words -of her dare-, and you hear his grip on the crutch tightening until it makes it creak.

“I am no prisoner, if that is what you are asking.”

“Prisoner,” She repeats, this time in your native language, “It means different things in different tongues, it seems.”

“Galla.”

“Ah, I know that tone,” She admits, full lips curved into a smile. “You don’t need to scold me; I plan on behaving.”

“Act like it, then.”

She accepts your words with a nonchalant shrug. Crossing her arms over her chest, she blurts, “Would you leave this place if I asked?”

“Wh-…”

“No,” Ivar answers for you, voice thundering even if he doesn’t raise it much. You turn to him with an argument at the tip of your tongue, but he isn’t even looking at you. Standing tall, raising his head higher, he tells Galla, “You won’t be taking her with you anywhere, Greek.”

Galla doesn’t reply, and past gritted teeth you force yourself to stay quiet as well, waiting for either of them to move.

Your friend’s lips pull into a smile, slowly but surely. You know that smile.

“We have high walls, we can defend fr-…”

“You can defend Athens that way. Not Eleusis, the Saracens won’t care for our ports. If you’d just listen to me, Narses…” You argue, keeping your gaze on the map of the city.

Narses sighs your name, and you grit your teeth because he does that before he reminds you of his renown victory over them years ago.

“I am the one that drove them away the first time.”

“And I a-…”

“And you are to be my wife. You will not speak over me.”

But I will speak, you want to tell him.

You meet his warm gaze stubbornly, raising your chin to meet his eyes. But you bite your tongue, even if it tastes like blood and like shame to do so.

Narses seems to soften at your silence, as if his resolve falters, and you almost resent him more for that; but eventually nods his head once, as if to signal it is done with, and leaves the room.

“He is right,” Galla states when the door closes behind him. You turn wide eyes to the Carthaginian, who only shrugs. “You are only a Hiereia, as Strat-…”

“As Strategus of Attica he will be hung from the walls he so desperately wants to use if he dares silence me,” You snarl before you can stop yourself, slamming a closed fist on the table. You take a deep breath, and turn your head to the side to speak to one of the girls you trust, the one that wishes to become a Hiereia for better reasons you did. “Send word to Lysander of what my strategy is, he will prepare his men to defend the spots between he hills. It is decided, and Narses will fold or break.”

She murmurs a goodbye and darts away, leaving you and Galla alone. You stand straight, meeting her dark gaze.

Her lips start curving into a smile, slowly but surely. A satisfied, dark smile, that of who caught someone in a ruse.

“Just enough anger and you dare command troops against your betrothed’s orders?” She raises her brows, and her smile grows warmer, “You might survive this war yet, Hiereia.”

She walks silently past you, agile movements as she makes her way out of the room and leaves you alone and dumbfounded.

But when her eyes turn from Ivar to look at you, you realize she wasn’t testing him, she wasn’t daring him to drop the mask, no, her objective was always you.

“Silent, hm?” Her lips curve downwards as she nods her head, “I once believed there wasn’t a man on this earth you’d let tether you anywhere.”

“You needn’t play games to see that things have changed.”

“Tis more fun that way.” She retorts with a shrug of slim shoulders.

“Why would you need me to come with you?”

She lifts her eyebrows, expectant, “Are you?”

“No. My home is here.” You state in your native tongue, forcing your eyes to remain focused on her and not search the faces of those Greeks that accompanied her here.

She nods, once, and you could swear she fights the impulse to lower her gaze, making your chest pull tight in something like regret but not quite.

“Over a quarter of our people left us before winter was through. I know where they are, if they haven’t yet crossed the sea,” She confesses, before swallowing thickly and lifting her head high, “Even if they fight with Christians, those are our people. You cannot expect me to send warriors across the sea to face them.”

“We have no need of Gr-…” Ivar starts retorting arrogantly, but you clear your throat and offer, a tad kindlier.

“I am not asking that. I just-…they are a threat. I need to know why they are joining Stithulf.”

Big eyes meet yours but she stays silent, mulling over her words. After a few breaths, pressing her lips together with a gesture of irritation you know well, she turns to Ivar.

“Give me two dozen warriors that will obey me, and a few guards to watch over the people I leave behind in Eldham, and I’ll…bring the answer to you.”

You step closer, shaking your head, “No, I want you to tell me, wh-…”

“By Zeus, I don’t know. I just have my suspicions,” She interrupts, eyes falling closed. After a deep breath, she quips, “And you know I never share those, not even with you.”

“You’ll have the warriors you want.” Ivar promises, looking at you out of the corner of his eye when you turn to face him. You pointedly look at the warriors and men that came with Galla, but say nothing and step closer, hoping he understands.

He does, wasting no time once the details of their arrangement are settled in asking her what she intends to do with her own men. Unsurprisingly, since you know the faces of the best fighters amongst the Greeks and you haven’t seen a single one today, Galla requests that you give asylum to these Greeks that come with her, and a few dozen more that wish to make a home out of Scandinavia.

You are surprised, and you hate the part of you that is a little reluctant, but ultimately whether they choose to fight or farm or trade, they are maybe a piece of a world that has long since disappeared that you can keep with you here; and you know you should be grateful.

____

Standing by Galla’s side as she and the warriors and shieldmaidens that will accompany her ready their horses for the journey, you twirl your wedding ring on your finger, trying to pretend you don’t feel Greeks watching you amongst the people, you try to pretend their gazes don’t stand out because they burn away at you.

Quietly, you offer, “Take with you something of mine, or take my mother to tell them I am here out of my free will. If the Greeks that left Eldham know I’m here because I want to, then maybe some may stay instead of fighting uselessly against Ivar’s army.”

Galla’s smile is sad when she asks, “Do you think our people care what you want?”

There is no need for you to answer when you both know the truth, so instead you reach to embrace her tightly, murmuring a prayer of protection as you close your eyes and breathe in the familiar scent of leather and smoke.

“Stay safe, yes?”

“Of course. I will live to see the day Stithulf pays, that I promise you,” Stepping back, Galla stands straight and puts a hand over her heart, the greeting to the Anassa you no longer are. Hesitating only for a moment, she says, voice almost nostalgic, “Death will not dare claim me yet, my friend. It fears your wrath.”

You two share a smile that for a moment makes you feel as if it is Eleusis’ soft and warm earth that lies under your feet, and that in the distance you can hear the rustling leaves of the trees that litter its hills.

“I don’t know much of fighting, but I would think walking into an enemy’s spear is not recommended.” You grumble, unable to stop yourself, as you work on the stitching of the deep wound.

Narses shrugs his shoulders, ignoring your hissed warning that he must stay still, “It was the most direct way to kill him.”

Galla scoffs from her place on one of the crates, “And killing yourself.”

“Still a victory.” He grunts, pain more apparent in his voice now that you’ve laid the press of herbs against his skin.

There’s a smile on your lips, you cannot help it, but still you argue, “You’re a fool.”

Narses’ warm eyes lift to you, and he smiles in a way that is a tad more bloodthirsty than usual, in a way that manages to make your heart skip a beat like no other.

Voice low, he promises, “Death will not dare claim me yet, my love. It fears your wrath.”

As Galla walks away, you order in jest, “Don’t kill any of my husband’s warriors, alright? No matter how much they irritate you!”

She makes a gesture as if to say she doesn’t make any promises, and with one last smile over her shoulder, she jogs towards the awaiting horses.

____

Late at night, you find yourself lulled to sleep by the cadence of Ivar’s deep breaths and the feeling of his rough fingers trailing over your soft skin.

“The way the Greeks look at you,” He starts quietly, the words hanging in the air between you. “I’m starting to think they don’t see a mortal woman when they see you.”

“The Greeks know I am just a woman. They saw me stay in Eleusis to die.”

“They saw you survive,” He corrects, and when the trace of his fingers up and down your arm stops, you open your eyes to find Ivar already looking at you, taking in your features as if anew. “It makes me wonder…”

“Are you going to say you think you married a goddess? My love, I am flattered b-…”

“That is not what I’m saying, you arrogant woman.”

You chuckle tiredly, but concede, “What is it you’re saying then?”

“How…how does it feel? To be…loved like they love you?”

Your chest pulls tight, and you feel the teasing smile drop from your lips. Leaning up on one elbow, you offer,

“Your peop-…” At his look you are quick to amend, “Our people love you, Ivar. They admire you; you know that. They wouldn’t follow you if they didn’t.”

Ivar shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, as the words leave your lips. With a faraway look in his eyes, he insists,

“But the Greeks…they worship you. That is how our people looked at father, before Paris, you know? The way they speak of you, is how our people speak of him.”

Hunger for power is a dangerous thing, and your heart is gripped tightly when you see that hunger in Ivar’s eyes.

For a moment that isn’t a moment at all, you see a world where that hunger drives him, when that need to be in control of their love, of their devotion, guides him to a place you can’t imagine anyone would love him enough to follow. Not even you.

You clear your throat, and offer truth, “It is lonely, and full of uncertainties, to be loved in such a way,” He frowns at your words, as if it is impossible, and you move closer and explain, “If they think you something divine, they forget you are human.”

To Narses all you ever were was that meek priestess from Eleusis that you had never actually been, and he loved her with all that he was, loved her enough, with enough desperation and just enough cruelty, to see her in you even if you tried showing him that it was a lie. He thought you something divine, used to speak in the quiet of night of how you were his dream made flesh, uncaring that you were mortal and scared just as he was, ignoring that you were -if anything- ambition made flesh and those ambitions were only your own.

To the Greeks all you ever will be is the perfect maiden chosen by the Gods themselves, and they would fight and die for her without a second thought, but they would fight and kill you if you ever tried taking that image of ambrosia-touched perfection from them. Child of Persephone, Maiden of Eleusis, Hiereia of the Old Gods, Anassa of the free Attics; countless titles that rattle in your head like chains whenever you think of them, crowns and cloaks and burdens given to you to bury underneath them a woman on her own right, a woman that may choose to become something else entirely.

“Can’t say I would mind,” He admits easily, turning to lay on his back, one of his arms folded behind his head. “There’s worse ways for them to forget you are human.”

Of course, you know what he means when he says that. He speaks of a pain you will never truly be able to understand, of a resentment that isn’t like one you or any other could feel brewing in the darker parts of the soul, he speaks of a life of hardship that no kingdoms or loves or victories will erase the mark of.

It is familiar by now to you, the blend of pain and anger that fills you whenever you see the parts of him he thinks a weakness to possess; whenever his words and actions echo what he has admitted to before, in the way his smile almost trembles and the mask almost cracks whenever he is surrounded by his people letting you hear they will never see me as normal, they won’t see anything other than the useless cripple, in the way the almost desperate need to display his pride and his strength becomes an admission once again of nothing has come easy in my life, and since I was a child I would always ask the Gods why; and like many times before you are struck with two parts of you wanting different things, one to give him certainty in his chaos and try offering happiness against the foolish thought that it is nothing, one to wish to see him and help him if he lets you wreak havoc on it all as long as it grants him any sort of peace. They are one and the same, maybe, those parts of you; they want the same, they are driven by the same.

Draping one arm over his chest, you trail your fingers over the traces of ink on his chest, endlessly fascinated with them.

“There is no glory in divinity,” You tell him instead, resolute. Ivar turns to look at you, a look in his eyes that tells you he clings to the words that are to leave your lips, “If you were a God, it was the ichor in your veins and not your strength that let you accomplish all you have accomplished. If they were to see a God in you, to them it would be your nature and not what you made out of yourself that made you fit to rule over them.

You shake your head slightly, drawing closer to him,

“To be a man capable of the deeds of a legend, of a God, while remaining a mortal man, is a much more glorious destiny than to be chosen for greatness by virtue of the blood in your veins alone.”

He takes your words in silently, offering only a choked little ‘hm’ in response, eyes trailing over your features as if he can find any truth, any certainty, written in your expression.

Ivar blinks a couple of times, lips curving in the faintest and most fragile of smiles, still striking in its softness, before he turns his head back at the ceiling.

Taking a deep breath, he commands you with his expression and his posture alone that you let this topic die here and now, and insists playfully, “But since I stole you from them, to your people I ought to be a God, right?”

You frown, “Why?”

“You said it yourself, no man can steal from a God. So, that means no man can steal a Goddess, hm?”

You roll your eyes, “It wouldn’t be a merciful or venerable God, one that steals a Goddess from her home.”

“Maybe that is why almost half of them are willing to fight against me.” He states, lifting his eyebrows.

You sigh, “God or man, they have to know fighting against you is not what I would want.”

Do you think our people care what you want?

You find the same coldness and shameful darkness that has been lurking at the edges of your heart like a predator stalking its prey to fill you now, when you think of the foolishness behind their choice to fight a lost war, when you think of the resentment of years bubbling under your skin as they once again ignore what your choice would be.

“Your mother is right; I took you from them,” He offers, reasoning when you truly do not want to hear any reasonings. You truly hate it when he offers certainties and calm when you feel like you are losing your mind, and you have the errant question if this is how he feels when you do it. Ivar continues, “Of course they want to avenge you.”

“By doing the unforgivable? I am not worth such a…price.”

Trailing a cold nose down the curve of your neck, he mumbles a question against your skin, “They love you. Are you truly surprised they are willing to die for you?”

“I am just one woman. Granted, there are no women like me, that is why I had the mighty Ivar the Boneless stop a war in my name,” You retort smugly, your words dying on your lips when he bites down on the skin over your collarbone to make you stop talking. Tangling your fingers in his hair to make him pull back, you explain, “It doesn’t make sense to me that they would do such a thing. To ally themselves with Christians, with Stithulf no less, it…defies reason.”

He offers only a hum, laying back on his side and pulling you closer. Comfortably held against his chest, you close your eyes and let yourself doze off, planning on letting these past days be forgotten for a while.

Voice quiet, and fingers once again trailing up and down the bare skin of your back -you are starting to think of such caresses as no different from the maddening twirling of his knife on his finger, from the mechanic patterns that let out the anxious energy he refuses to admit aloud-, Ivar says,

“When my father was killed we assembled the greatest army ever known to our lands and stormed England.”

“No Greek Great Army will storm Kattegat to take me back.” You breathe past a tired laugh. He doesn’t say anything, prompting to open one eye to look at him.

You notice the barely-there twitch of irritation in his lip, and you find your fingers reaching to smoothen the furrow between his brows before it even appears.

“They wouldn’t need to,” He bites out, “We didn’t have Vikings taken in as allies inside York, living amongst their people.”

“They are not a threat, my love. You know this, yes?”

He doesn’t answer.

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading, hope you liked this chapter!

This week I’ll try my best to post two Ivar PoVs, one that I should have posted between 44 and 45 or between 43 and 44, but I couldn’t get it on time, called Dagblik; and another one that takes place directly after the end of this chapter, called Hrygð. Stay tuned for those!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214​ @fae-sedai @crazybunnyladysworld   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside @aprilivar @msrawog @kaitieskidmore1  

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Arinn (Vοσταλγία Winter Blurb)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Arinn: fireplace, hearth (Old Norse)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: Winter Blurb #4. Pillowtalk and annoying priestess soft Ivar, that’s about it.

Word Count: 1312

Warnings: nope, just fluff and my writing lol. Teeny tiny bit of suggestive whatevers towards the end.

A/N: Yeah, idk what this is, but I’m Marie Kondo-ing the shit out of Nostalgia atm, so, since it sparked joy, I wrote it, and now imma share it cause why not, hopefully it sparks joy in you!

“Ivar?”

There’s few things Ivar likes more than his name on your lips, the way your voice forms around the short word, the still notable accent present even then. But, right now, it is not something he wants to hear.

But you are nothing if not insufferably stubborn. Determined, you’d call it, but Ivar prefers to call it by what it is.

“Ivar?” You move closer, and though he keeps his eyes closed you pay no mind. Your hand on the side of his face is soft and slightly cold. Again, waking up to your soft touches and your body pressed against his is something he’d kill for…but on the morning, not the middle of the night. You insist, voice breathy by his ear, “My love?”

“What.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“I can,” He retorts, still refusing to open his eyes. “Let me.”

“Do you still believe it?” You ask him, and Ivar bites back words of how it is the middle of the night and you both should really be sleeping, and instead turns to lay on his side with a sigh. He opens his eyes to find you wide awake, a slight furrow in your lips that tries and fails at hiding a smug smile. By all the Gods, the things he puts up with for you.

“Believe what?” He questions, not caring about stopping himself from reaching for you, trailing up and down your arm with the back of his fingers. You are always slightly cold to the touch, and at his weakest he thinks it fitting that you feel like relief from burning flames under his touch.

“That it was Fated, that…that the Gods somehow intervened for us to meet.”

“Do you?” He asks instead of giving an answer. You notice, of course you do, that he is deliberately choosing not to answer your question, but past a look that tells him he hasn’t fooled anyone, you don’t mention it.

He wants it to be true, if he is honest. On nights like these, especially now that these nights are not promised to one day be remembered as a relic of the past that has long since left him amongst those flames your cold skin saves him from; he almost believes it to be true. It seems impossible otherwise, that you are here now, that you love him and you chose him, if it wasn’t somehow mandated by the Gods that heard him too many times curse his weakness while pleading for reprieve.

If somehow the Gods sent you to him, as a reward or something else -a punishment, his sleep-addled mind complains-; then it is easier to accept it is something he can keep. The idea that it was something he did that made you stay, that made you choose him, is strangely terrifying, even if the alternative leaves him powerless, because it means there is something he can do to make you leave, to make you choose a life without him in it.

You reach with your hand for the amulet of Thor that hangs from your neck, a habit you haven’t let go of even if it is no longer your Gods that are represented in your pendant, as you consider his question.

“I don’t know,” You muse, voice quiet. Ivar lets his eyes fall closed as he offers a quiet hm of his own, a prompt for you to continue. Your voice, warm and comforting, washes over him as you say, “I was taught that the Gods may choose what happens to us, but we decide if or how we let it change us. That is something the Fates cannot decide for us.”

“Your Fates…Moirai?”

“You remember.” You whisper, almost to yourself. He hears the smile in your voice, and it fills him with pride to be the reason behind that softness in your tone, behind that openness in your smile.

“Mhm. The three women.”

“They are three women for you too, aren’t they?” He replies with another sound, something that he thinks sounds vaguely affirmative, and lets you continue talking. “Bend to the Fates, but don’t let them break you. My mother and father told me that, one of the only lessons I remember from them.”

“What is it supposed to mean?”

“I have no idea.” You reply honestly. Ivar chuckles tiredly, and you offer a breathed laugh to accompany it.

“Since there aren’t lessons to answer it…what do you believe, hm?”

He almost wants to ask himself at which point he decided he was the one after answers instead of you, but he doesn’t much care for it. He does care for your answer, though.

“If the Gods, if…if Freyja or Despoina are the reason I am here…it doesn’t matter,” You find your resolve halfway through your words, and Ivar can feel his lips pulling into a faint smile. You adjust in your place, quickly regretting it when you let a cold breeze under the warm furs, and so move closer to him. He likes it when you do that, when you burrow close to him and seek his warmth. It makes him feel…powerful, in some roundabout way. Like you need him as much as he needs you, like you can trust him to take care of you. You pull back slightly to look at him, and he blinks past the lure of sleep and forces his eyes to focus on you. You offer a small smile, “They are not the reason I stay.”

He finds himself smiling back, like the lovesick fool that you’ve made out of him; but after a breath narrows his eyes and points out,

“We could talk about this come morning.”

“We are already talking about it,” You retort, shrugging one shoulder. “We ought to finish the things we start, my love.”

He takes a deep breath. He knows that just by retorting with something he will be doing exactly what you want him to, which is staying awake and keeping you company, but he is too tired to think of a strategy around it now.

So, he insists, “Not really.”

“You were the one telling me to finish what I start a couple of nights ago, if I remember correctly.”

Ivar knows what you are talking about, mostly because he can identify that smug little tone in your voice. In the dim light of the morning, he had your legs wrapped around him and you were moaning quietly against his lips as you tasted yourself on his tongue, but you were interrupted and you just…left. Ivar grew increasingly frustrated during the rest of the day, and he is certain -even if you deny it- that at some point near the afternoon you noticed, and you started making it worse by lingering more than usual on your touches, putting a bit more force in your kisses. He knows at some point during the night, when he finally had you to himself, half-mad with lust he grunted by your ear how you better finish what you start. He still remembers the way the dark and hoarse laugh you let out made a shiver run down his spine.

He grits his teeth, and insists, “Not the same.”

You remain silent for a couple of breaths, and it is enough to intrigue him into opening his eyes again. He finds you smiling a little wickedly, and can’t help the thrill that look sends down his spine.

Another little shrug, and you offer, “It could be.”

Ivar rolls his eyes, “Go to sleep.”

“Sex would help me sleep.”

“Would it help you stay quiet?”

“I don’t know if you want that. You always say you want to hear me m-…”

Ivar interrupts you, leaning forward to capture your mouth in his, cupping the back of your head and bringing you closer to him. He pretends not to feel you smiling smugly against his lips.

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading, hope you liked it!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius​ @heavenly1927​ @toe-vind-ek-jou​ @xbellaxcarolinax​ @angelofthorr​ @samsationalwilson​ @peachyboneless​ @1950schick​ @punkrocknpearls @ietss​ @itsmysticalmystery​ @revolution-starter​ @the-a-word-2214​​ @fae-sedai​​ @crazybunnyladysworld​​    @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside​​ @aprilivar​​ @msrawog  

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Μαντεία (Vοσταλγία Winter Blurb)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Μαντεία (manteíā): prophecy, divination, oracle (Ancient Greek)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: Winter Blurb #7. A wonderful nonnie requested to see the priestess having a nightmare and Ivar comforting her, I’m here to deliver and also foreshadow 😈

Word Count: 2.2k

Warnings: nope, just ✨dreams✨, fluff, light hurt/comfort, and my writing.

A/N: For setting: this takes place around two months before Chapter 44, or the beginning of spring; and the Reader has been having this feeling like something is changing, like there’s something she cannot see, like something’s wrong, and Ivar has been stubbornly insisting on the stance of ‘nah’.

The waters are clear, clearer than you have seen in your entire life, and you know if you focus enough you could see your own reflection, but…for some reason you know you mustn’t, you know what lies beyond these waters is not a world you want to belong to just yet.

That doesn’t stop you from bending down and skimming your fingers over the calm waters that lap gently at your calves, making the sheer white dress move with the cadence of that calmness.

It startles you, but it doesn’t scare you, when you start to make out blurry figures under the waters, lights of fires and deafened sounds of laughter and voices in that world you cannot reach.

A call of your name pulls you away from the hypnotizing movements under the waters, and you realize only now that there’s a woman standing before you, a distance away.

But she steps forward, a kind even if restrained smile curving at her lips. You do not move, and she advances as calmly as the waters move around you.

She is tall, almost as tall as your mother, and the resemblance of this woman to her doesn’t end there, even if they are nothing alike. The warmth in her kohl-lined eyes, the motherly curve of her smile, they make you feel safe like no other.

She finally stands before you, lifting a hand to you and grasping gently at the pendant that hangs low on your neck, the amulet Ivar gifted you.

There is no word said, but the blend of love and longing that makes her eyes shine in the low light makes your chest tighten. There’s something strikingly familiar about her, about her fair skin dotted in faint freckles, about the waves of her honey-blond hair; something that makes you think you have seen her before.

Her thumb runs over the pendant of Mjölnir, and her pale eyes lift to you again.

You know those eyes.

Ivar has her eyes.

Before you can say anything, she drops her hold on the pendant and moves a soft hand to the side of your face, leaning forward to press a kiss over your hair, right under the edge of the gold flowers of the crown you hadn’t realized you wore.

There’s laughter even if there’s tears, joy even if there’s sorrow, in her voice when she whispers, “Go.”

You wake up to a call of your name in a voice you know well, in an accent that dances over the letters of your name in a way you also know by heart.

Ivar leans over you, a furrow between his brows and eyes wide as he shakes you out of the dream. But you aren’t so sure it was him who let you wake up, you aren’t so sure he could have brought you back if she hadn’t intended to let you return to him.

Your eyes meet your husband’s, and there’s words leaving his lips, you know that, and you know…you know he is real, you know that he is Ivar.

But it’s her eyes.

Sitting up with a gasp that dies on your lips, you have to squeeze your eyes shut, lowering your head through gasping breaths so you don’t have to look into those eyes.

Ivar’s strong arms wrap around you and bring you closer as he sits up as well, letting you burrow against his chest as he rests his chin on the top of your head.

You feel his chest rumbling with his voice, what you are sure are reassurances leaving his lips, but you can’t make out anything he is saying past the rush of your heartbeat in your ears.

Through gasping breaths, you try erasing the image of her motherly smile, her eyes, that seems to be seared into your mind. You lose track of time, but you figure out enough has passed when you feel yourself almost doze off again, wrapped in warmth and safety and able to ignore anything but the feeling of Ivar’s skin against yours, his voice low and soothing, his hands on your hair.

You make out the familiar movement of his hands as he lazily braids your hair, and you stifle a laugh against his neck. It sounds jittery to your own ears, but still your heart is beating more at ease.

“What are you doing?” You ask, to which he shrugs, continuing the motions. You aren’t sure if they are meant for you or for him -you should wear braids all the time, he has told you, they make you look like you belong here, like you’re mine- but they still bring you a comfort you didn’t know they could.

“Are you alright?”

You nod, “Just a dream.”

“Mhm. What did you see?” He asks.

See, not dream. You grit your teeth at the mere idea that it was anything more than a nightmare.

It didn’t feel like a nightmare though. Nor like a dream.

“It wasn’t a vision,” You repeat for what feels like the thousandth time, even though you have never had this conversation with him. All those years with Sieghild as she told you it is not smart to renounce the gift of sight, little one; all those conversations with Galla as she prodded I wonder sometimes if you have seen the end already and just refuse to tell me. All those people insisting you are something you are not, all those dreams trying to remind you that out of stubbornness alone you cannot change the Gods’ will. “I am no seeress.”

“You don’t have to be a seeress for the Gods to tell you something,” Ivar argues without missing a beat. But as the words finish leaving his lips he makes a little sound on the back of his throat and points out, “I have seen you use your…gift, don’t forget that.”

“Knowing when someone has the mark of death on them isn’t prophecy, Ivar.” You argue, pulling back from the crook of his neck. If he notices you refuse to look him in the eye, he doesn’t mention it.

“So it was just a dream, that is what you believe?”

It isn’t like him to bend so quickly, and you are almost reluctant to reply, but eventually you do.

“It was just a dream, yes.”

“Then tell me about it.” He smugly demands, all-too-pleased at having led the conversation right where he wanted it to.

“No.”

“Why not, hm?”

“Because it doesn’t matter.”

“You tell me many things that don’t matter,” He quips, a small laugh leaving his lips as he catches the hand you lifted to swat at his shoulder. Lifting the trapped hand to his lips and kissing the back of it, Ivar presses, “Tell me.”

With the bubble of anger making its way past your lips, turning your voice sharper, you meet his gaze and taunt, “Oh, now you believe th-…”

“I have always believed you,” He interrupts, eyes piercing on yours. The glint of the pale blue of his eyes is unlike hers in its ruthlessness, and that somehow lets you breathe easier. “And you know that.”

“I told you…something is different, I can…I can feel it,” You move to press closer to him, seeking his warmth, as you turn your gaze to the dying embers in a corner of the room. “Maybe if this is more than a dream, it is just…confirmation of how things will change.”

And there it is, that same coldness from before, that irrational stubbornness of earlier through this week as you insisted there was something wrong, something you weren’t seeing; as Ivar insists, “Nothing is going to change.”

Shrugging, you offer, “Everything changes. Spring will come, and change will come with it.”

“No.” Is all Ivar bites out through gritted teeth. Though you wait for him to say anything else, he doesn’t.

“Eloquent,” You quip, a smile pulling at your lips when out of the corner of your eye you catch Ivar rolling his eyes at you. “You do not yet rule over the seasons, my love.”

“But I rule over this place,” He retorts, not missing a beat. You lift your head to look at him, and Ivar leans forward, arm wrapped around you tightening slightly, bringing you closer still, “Nothing will change here in Kattegat.

Something in the edge of his tone makes you stop and think before you retort anything. Eyes searching his -and they are his, that fear of losing what you hold dear is his, that stubborn drive is his, that intensity in the pale blue is his- you find dawning on you like a stone was dropped on your stomach the reason Ivar refused to even listen to you when you told him for this past week or so, that something feels different, that you feel as if something is awaiting at the corner and you can’t quite make up what.

To your people, spring means change, rebirth and the return of Kore to her home. To his people spring means change as well, but it also means war, battle.

You know to Ivar most things, if not everything, is a battle. Against himself, against the world, against Fate, against you.

To him things are permanent if they are earned, and they are only earned through fighting; but when it comes to you, he has told you himself, he cannot fight. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because fighting when it comes to you is an already lost battle.

You realize now that some part of him, maybe a part of him he isn’t even aware of, thinks that when spring comes battle and war will return, and those battles will be already-lost if it is you he faces; change will come, and the thousand or more souls that await in some city nearby call for that change to summon you home. If he accepts things will change, he is accepting the possibility of this, the two of you, the life you’re finally allowing yourself to build with him, being something to be lost.

At your silence, Ivar leans back, brow furrowed and eyes searching yours with an irate sort of fragility that still pulls tight at your heart.

“You also rule over his place,” He starts, somewhere between accusing and pleading, “Do you want things to change?”

Immediately, you shake your head, at the tip of your tongue words -promises, reassurances, truths if you have any say in it- about how nothing will change; but you know you cannot say that without lying to him.

You do not know what she was trying to tell you, you do not know what the feeling that plagued you until tonight was, and you cannot know that things will remain as they are.

“It will take more than the change of the seasons to take me from your side, you know that, yes?” You ask instead, leaning forward to lose the distance he put between you when you stayed silent and he was left to hear only his own worst thoughts. “No matter what spring brings, I am with you.”

As always, there’s a soft smile that curves at his lips at the reminder, a smile that seems to even surprise him, that makes his breath leaves him with a fond -lovesick, you’d argue- huff, that makes his eyes fall closed momentarily as if he’s committing them to memory.

Ivar brings you closer again, a kiss on your forehead that makes your throat tighten for some reason, and promises, “And I am with you. Whatever it is you have seen, I...I wll keep you safe.”

“The dream, it didn’t…it didn’t scare me in the way you think. It wasn’t…disaster, or distress, what sh-…it was trying to warn me about, or it didn’t feel like it at least.”

He takes in your words in silence, offering only a thoughtful hum when he seems to find nothing to say. Laying back on the bed, Ivar tugs you to lay beside him again.

You settle with ease, your head on his chest with his arm wrapped around you and lazily tracing the curve of your spine, your leg thrown over one of his and your arm over his stomach.

Voice rumbling on his chest, Ivar asks, “Will you tell me?”

“I don’t think I should.”

It makes a smile blossom on your lips how he immediately huffs petulantly at your words.

“Why? What did you see?”

“It wasn’t about what, but…who.”

Ivar lifts his free hand to cup the side of your face, making you turn to look at him. Thumb running back and forth over your cheek, he presses,

“Tell me.”

Searching his gaze, you battle with yourself on what to say. With distance, with time to think, time to breathe, you know it wasn’t anything looming or catastrophic that she -the Gods, though you aren’t sure who’s- was warning you of. It still makes a knot of anxiety tighten in your belly to think back on what she did, what you saw, what she said.

But you have no intention to keep anything from Ivar, so with a deep breath you lean your head back on his chest so you can avoid seeing his reaction, his eyes, and whisper,

“Your eyes are just like your mother’s, you know.”

It might be a little cruel to seek sleep now of all times, but it is now that you can rest assured, judging by the way his chest stops moving with the cadence of his breathing and his heart races under your ear, that if any more dreams come for you, he will be wide awake to notice quite quickly.

____ ____ ____

I’m holding back so much from just spouting what that dream was supposed to mean, but I’m keeping my trap shut, I promise. Just one thing: Mjölnir. Okay, that’s it, I’m shutting up.

Thank you for reading, I hope this was okay! And thank you for requesting nonnie, hope you liked it!

Btw, I’ll post another winter blurb, Dróttning, the smutty second part to the jealous Reader winter blurb of a while ago, in a day or two. Sorry for keeping you waiting so long!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius​ @heavenly1927​ @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax​ @angelofthorr​ @samsationalwilson​ @peachyboneless​ @1950schick​ @punkrocknpearls @ietss​ @itsmysticalmystery​ @revolution-starter​ @the-a-word-2214​  @fae-sedai​ @crazybunnyladysworld​​   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside�� @aprilivar​​ @msrawog @kaitieskidmore1​​

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Gǫfga (Ivar’s PoV)*

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Gǫfga: to worship, to honour (Old Norse)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: A continuation of the events of Chapter 42.

Word Count: 3.8k

Warnings: 18+, once again, smut, plus the usual and a focus on Ivar’s past experiences, and his issues with his body. A bit of angst. And, once again, there’s a top and it definitely isn’t Ivar.

A/N: So, this is my first time writing smut on a male’s PoV, so this was a challenge but a fun one! I don’t know if this is any good, but I hope you like it!

This goes alongside Chapter 42, that I also uploaded today. You can find it here :)

If Ivar could choose to linger somewhere for the rest of the time he has on this earth, it would be here, it would be in this.

In any moment with you, really, but this moment more than any other.

Your fingers tangle in his hair, pulling slightly to make him crane his head back. Ivar almost wants to resist if only for the thrilling sting of pain to be felt when you pull on his hair, but the pleased sound you hum against the skin of his throat at how easily he complies renders him mindless, and there is not a world where he would resist you.

Over the beating of his own heart in his ears he makes out that you are talking, and he almost wants to ask how, how are you managing to disarm him with but a touch and yet remain able to whisper all this gentle praise by his ear, making his chest pull tight and the cock he thought useless for too long twitch at every word that leaves your lips.

“I gather I should tell you more often,” You are musing to yourself, or maybe to him. “How much I love everything about you,” The smile he offers at your words is overwhelmed and pitiful, he knows it is, and is almost grateful the only witness to it is the ceiling above him. You continue, dragging your nails against his scalp and making him shiver, “I love your mind, you are so sharp, so clever. And I love your hair, more than anything because of how you react when I do this,” To prove your point, you tug forcefully on his hair, your grip tight, and even through gritted teeth Ivar cannot help the groan he lets out at the sharp sting of pain that he feels all the way though his body. You chuckle, darkly pleased, but pull back and meet his eyes, expression softening, “I love your eyes, they give a lot away,” The tip of your finger traces the shape of his upper lip and, lovesick fool that he is, he finds himself pressing a kiss to the delicate digit. “I love your mouth. Mostly for selfish reasons.”

The glint in your eye makes him chuckle, and he drawls, “Is that so?”

“Mhm,” You promise, a blinding smile that you softly press against his own. “But I also love it for what you say, and for each kiss,” Pulling back, you let your hands grasp his, and you lift one between you, pressing a kiss against the back of it. Ivar only looks at you, letting you have your fill and pretending not to be filled with warmth at such a simple gesture. “I love your hands. I love how they feel against mine, or my body,” You drop his hand, continuing your path up his arms, leaving behind a trail of goosebumps to chase after your touch. “I love your shoulders, your arms,” You continue, your small hands squeezing lightly at the muscles of his shoulder-blades and upper arms, before you continue, determined, on the path you’ve decided. You trace familiar designs on his back, before you move to his chest, tracing the ink shapes there as well. “I love these, even if I don’t understand them. I love your chest, and I love how I can tell when I make you want me because it starts moving with your breathing, quicker and quicker.”

“You always make me want you.” He confesses, but only half his mind is on the words leaving his lips, the rest is focused on the determined path your hands are taking, and how you move your body down to follow that trail with your lips, pressing a kiss over his heart that after everything still makes his chest pull tight with emotion.

“I know,” You tease, side of your mouth quirked into a smile. “It is only fair, love.”

“If you say so.”

“I know so,” You argue, not missing a beat. Still, you drag your teeth lightly over his nipple and chastise, “Stop distracting me.

He says nothing, reluctant to speak and his voice give away how such a simple gesture made arousal cloud everything else for a few moments too long.

Any thought of arousal leaves his head when he feels you press a kiss on each side of his hips, your hands trailing down his sides and not even slowing down as they reach his upper thighs.

You have touched his legs before, but it was distant -or so he told himself- and he distracted himself with the story you told him of your time learning how to heal. But now…

He never really knew what to do against your softness, and the gentleness you so easily offer disarms him more than coldness and distance ever could. Affection threatens to break him more than anything else could, and he knows how pitiful that is, he knows how that speaks of a weakness he could never eradicate no matter how much he tried, and it shames him, but he cannot help it. He cannot help but shudder at each of your soft touches, he cannot help but let his eyes flutter shut when you kiss him gently, he cannot help but want nothing but to press closer when you whisper his name in the mornings.

And now, as your hands trail softly over his legs -thin, cursed legs- Ivar feels more than ever that you might just break him with a touch.

He cannot look at you, and he cannot do anything but try and fight that part of him that just pleads with him to get away, to hide himself, to keep you from seeing how abnormal he is, how broken.

“I love your legs,” You say, voice quieter, more restrained. Your words drop on his chest like a weight and he wonders absently if he is still breathing. “They are a part of you, and I love them as much as I love the rest of you.

You continue leisurely exploring, not appearing disgusted or put off, simply tracing gentle fingers over his thighs, his knobby knees, his scarred calves, as easily as you did over the rest of his body.

And Ivar is pulled between giving in and accepting your touch, basking in the affection you so easily offer to every part of him; or bracing himself for the eventual fall, refusing to accept the softness at the certainty that he will lose it and it will all prove to be a lie.

And so he remains frozen in between, hands clenched into fists so tightly he feels the sharp press of blunt fingernails on his palms as he tells himself you are pitying him, that you are disgusted; yet tears filling his eyes that he squeezes shut as he finds himself relishing in the gentle caresses.

You trace with a tad more dedication over the worse of some of the scars, the agile fingers of a healer trailing over a badly healed broken bone from years ago. You press a kiss against his thigh, and that is all the warning he has before you wrench your touch -your softness, your warmth- away from him.

The loss of your touch unbalances him more than he would like to admit, and with his eyes closed the lack of the warmth of your skin against his makes him lose his hold on his control -on his mind- for a moment.

It is barely a moment where your warmth is gone, and your voice is gone, and parted lips try bringing air to frantic lungs and the smell of lavender is gone too, and you are not there, you are gone. Gone, gone, gone.

Ivar doesn’t realize his breaths are as labored and quick as they are until you put one hand on his chest, doesn’t realize the sound of his own panicked breaths that sound more like sobs than anything else is clouding everything else until your voice reaches him as if from underwater.

“Ivar,” You say, the same love intertwined with iron that your voice has always had. You’re here, you haven’t left. Your hand is on the side of his face and he can’t keep himself from leaning into the touch, still keeping his eyes tightly closed. Of course you wouldn’t leave, he knows you wouldn’t leave him. He knows, because you understand and your voice is quiet as you soothe him, “I’m here, love.”

He nods to tell you he knows, to promise he trusts you, but says nothing. He isn’t sure he can.

You are straddling him again, and when he sits up to be closer you don’t hesitate to hold him, your hands soft and warm as they settle on his back, your voice low and soothing as you say something he cannot understand.

It suddenly is all too much, and he cannot stop trembling.

You promised him forever and still tied to his wrist is the proof you chose him, and not even when he was convinced Freyja had sent you to him had he believed you would willingly choose to stay with him, willingly choose to love him. You looked into his eyes and promised him he had you and your heart and your everything and a part of him still refuses to believe it isn’t a trick, a vision, a mirage.

Because it cannot be real, he knows it can’t. You love him, and you chose him, and you somehow want him enough to make his useless cock work, and you bring him pleasure and you leave your mark with nothing but gentleness all over his body, even his cursed legs, that you don’t hesitate to caress and promise to love as much as the rest of him. One of those things alone would have been enough to believe he was somehow living in a vision.

And it overwhelms him, it throws him under a rip current where he cannot make up from down, he cannot know if he has to force himself to see it isn’t real before he can lose himself in the fantasy or if he has to make haste and seize how everything he’s ever wanted is being offered to him in the shape of one stubborn woman he would give the world to if she asked.

Ivar wants to grunt out a curse at his own weakness, but his voice refuses to be heard, and he wants to get his body under his control, but for some stupid reason he can’t stop trembling.

You pay no mind to his weakness, you make no mention of the pathetic display, choosing instead to hold him tightly to you, letting his face be hidden against the curve of your throat, and only run your hand up and down his back as his breaths waver between somewhat normal to gasping and panicked.

He has never felt so much of your bare body pressed against his, or maybe he has, but it has never felt like this. This, all-encompassing, overwhelming, maddening, soothing.

He truly doesn’t know how much time passes, how long he lingers in the safety you offer, how much of your affection he basks in. Time has proven to be pointless to him lately, with the coming of spring being one cold morning of winter and the borrowed time he thought would mean the end of it all marking only the beginning, so he doesn’t care much for time anymore.

But he knows enough time passes that his heart returns to a normal pace and no longer trashes in his ribcage, he knows he lingers in the safety of your embrace for long enough that his hand start aimlessly exploring your body again, he knows he basks in enough of your affection to put him back together, though he knows there really won’t ever be enough if you ask him.

Eyes still closed, his mouth seeks yours, and he kisses you deeply, realizing only once he is begging entrance into your mouth of the urgency that had overcome him, of the desperation to have you as close as he can, to feel nothing but you.

Soon enough you are quivering at the dance of his fingers against you, tightening your walls around him, and crying out his name in a way that will never cease to fill him with pride and warmth. He takes in the sight of you as he always does, awed and reverent and desperate for you, for what you sound like when you come because of him, for the praise of your moans and cries of pleasure.

Relentless, ruthless, Ivar chases after your pleasure as if it were his own, and feels the daze of arousal set upon him as he watches you unravel for him.

When your hand reaches down for his cock it takes everything in him not to stop you, not to jump with the by now familiar words of how he cannot do this at the tip of his tongue. Instead, he hears your voice as clearly as if you were speaking those words again, give in to me, Ivar.

And he does, helplessly yours.

And he focuses on nothing but you, nothing but the feel of your body against his, of your wet center around his fingers, of your delicate hand around him, of your mouth on his. He gives in, he willingly follows you to the edge of that abyss and trusts you will be there when he falls, to pull him back to safety or fall with him.

He hardens even further at your touch, and soon enough you have him robbed of breath and of sanity, muffling frenzied moans against your lips and unable to help the way his body presses harder against you, against your touch.

He has never felt this before, this painful desperation, this urgent need, this want.

“I need you,” He tells you, a choked whisper. The look in your eyes tells him you very much want to delay this, want to truly test how far you can take that need. His heart trashes madly in his chest, and he finds himself insisting, “I need you, my love.”

It is then that your expression softens, and you look as overwhelmed as he feels, naked want and this particular kind of longing reflected in your eyes as much as Ivar knows is reflected in his own.

Your hand lifts to caress the side of his face -your left hand, he feels the cold of your ring, and his throat tightens- and you look into his eyes with a sigh of his name.

His chest hurts. It pulls tight at the open adoration in your face and the soft touch you grant him, and he can’t say anything, only look at you with wide eyes with nothing to hide.

The dainty fingers of your free hand circle his length, and Ivar tries not to whimper at the touch.

You meet his eyes, draw him into your gaze and keep him trapped. Bewitched, some might say.

“I love you, Ivar.”

“I-…”

His words die in a choked groan when you finally take him inside you, guiding him in until he fills you completely.

Ivar knows he is gripping your legs tight enough to leave imprints but he cannot release the tension from his body, he cannot…Gods.

Nothing could have prepared him for this, feeling your mouth on him was nothing compared to how your walls feel tightening around him, stealing from him whatever breath he had left.

“Gods, love,” You breathe, voice almost a whine, “You look…”

You don’t’ finish your sentence, instead rocking back and forth in your place, sending jolts of pleasure so jolting they are almost painful down Ivar’s spine.

His grip on you tightens, and he breathlessly pleads, “Don’t move.”

He is certain if you do he will peak then and there, and he cannot have that. He wants to feel you tightening around him like you do around his fingers when he makes you come, he wants to be inside you when you draw your pleasure from him until you are calling his name breathlessly.

But the woman he married wouldn’t let him off easy, of course. You don’t move, but he is certain the way you tighten around him and make him gasp helplessly is very much on purpose.

“Does it feel good to be inside me, Ivar?” You ask, accented voice sultry and rough. And he opens his mouth to tell you to have mercy, but no sound leaves his lips, only a choked gasp that once could have been your name.

He is used to feeling like his body is betraying him. Incapable of walking as he wishes to, fragile bones keeping him from motion. He has learned to live with that, has learned to endure.

But now, now the way his body threatens to betray him is entirely new, and Ivar finds himself robbed of breath and of control and of his own body. It all is yours, just as he is.

There is only you, you and the maddening scent of lavender and something else, you and the feeling of you around him, you and the quickened breaths that taunt and tease him.

Ivar wills his body to settle, to adjust to the feeling, and eventually he relinquishes the tight hold on your thighs. He doesn’t have to say a word, but you understand and you begin to move.

It is a sight to behold, to have you above him, a slow dance of your hips as you lift yourself up and come back down, a sensual grind that makes you gasp with every movement.

He finds himself dangerously close to letting pleas leave his mouth, throat tightening in tandem with his lower stomach.

“Gods…” Is what leaves his lips instead in a helpless whisper, though it feels like a prayer to you and you alone.

Restless, he reaches with his hands to cup the underside of your breasts, thumbs trailing over your nipples and making your back arch in pleasure, sending a rush all the way down his spine at the sight.

A stuttering moan leaves your lips and you grind as you come back down upon him, and you brace yourself against him, one of your hands gripping at his shoulder.

Your hand comes to rest dangerously close to his throat, close enough that he once again almost finds himself pleading. Ivar feels himself quiver, and lets his head fall back with a clenched jaw, heat lacing his entire body.

He feels weightless, overwhelmed. He feels owned, and finds he doesn’t mind one bit.

You are pressed against him, and your moans and whines are gentle praise that breezes by his ear and makes him tremble. He tries telling you, hopes he does in a way that isn’t as broken and undone as it sounds to his own ears, of how much he wants you, of how beautiful you are, of how he loves everything you are doing.

Reaching between you, he lets his fingers trace a familiar dance as they draw more pleasure from you, and you begin to tighten almost painfully around him.

Gentle hands turn into talons that desperately claw at his back and Ivar finds himself losing a bit of his mind with each scratch and each sting of pain that you draw on his back.

Breathing becomes harder and harder, now that you are coming undone around him, because of him, clinging to him and moaning out praise and need. He feels it building in his spine, depriving his lungs of even breaths, stealing the steadiness of his hands as he grips at you tighter, guiding your motions with growing desperation.

With a sharp cry that leaves your lips, the maddening movement of your hips stutters out of rhythm, and your thighs clench tight around Ivar.

His eyes want to fall shut but he refuses to miss a moment of this, and opens them to watch you, head tilted back and lost in your pleasure, still moving above him. More than ever, he thinks he sees a goddess in human form.

“I-Ivar…” You call, repeated pleas of his name that make his heart stutter

He cannot say anything, he cannot find the words to articulate what you are making him feel, and so he brings your lips to his. His mouth urges yours open, biting down on your lip and dipping his tongue without hesitation, trying to convey without words how he feels so tethered and yet at the edge of an abyss.

But he cannot find it in him to make you move faster above him. If anything, he uses his grip on you to urge you to slow down.

He feels his release is close, and while everything about him is screaming urgency and need, he keeps the motions painstakingly complete, wanting to feel everything about this moment.

Your eyes meet his and he is tethered there, kept anchored to this world by your gaze alone, as you move above him, thorough motions that make the pressure build more and more.

His breaths are ragged, and he cannot focus on anything at all, he cannot fight it anymore.

Ivar succumbs to his release with a sharp cry, a stutter of your name that becomes drawled moans that he breathes against your throat, burying himself as deep inside you as he can as he spills himself.

Your arms are tight around him, and he finds his breaths are in tandem with the trail of your hand up and down his back.

“I love you.” He tells you, words not enough but somehow all-encompassing. You both ignore the way his breath hitches, the way his voice is thick with emotion.

“And I love you.” You promise quietly, lowering your face to press a kiss against the sweaty skin of his shoulder.

Ivar buries his nose in your hair, breathes in the smell of lavender and something else, remaining in that quiet afterglow with only your breaths and his own permeating the silence.

It felt strange, to be held like this, to be held as he gave you everything he had to give. It made his heart feel raw and exposed, it made the familiar prickle of tension, of the instinct to push back against the weakness that you drew from him; but the feeling of peace, the safety of having fallen and having had you there to catch him -or to fall with him-, the warmth that surrounds him and lulls him into closing his eyes, it trumps any fear.

____ ____ ____

I hope this was okay, thank you for reading!

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[pomegranates-and-blood]

νοσταλγία (Chapter 43)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Word Count: 4.9k

Warnings: The usual, mentions of sexual acts but nothing explicit, and very minor descriptions of injury. Also, sort of descriptions/recollection of a panic attack? It’s Ivar breaking down on Gǫfga on the Reader’s PoV, basically.

A/N: I’m so sorry for being so irregular with updates lately, I’m trying to get better with that. Thank you so much for being patient with me.

This is a bit of a filler chapter, a breather made up of fluff (and a tad of foreshadowing, if you can call it that). Hope you enjoy!

Friendly reminder that in between the beginning of this chapter and the end of Chapter 40 only a night + half a morning went by.

The ground is bitingly cold against your bare feet as you make your way back to bed, but you still linger standing by it as you reach it, eyeing your husband with what you are certain are pleading eyes.

It is with a resigned sigh that Ivar, already used to your…particularities, moves from his side of the bed into the vacant spot left behind by you. Not missing a moment, you slip back into the bed, soaking up the warmth he left behind on what was his side of it.

“Your side wasn’t even cold.” He grumbles, complaining even as he lifts one arm for you to settle against him.

“Colder than this one.” You retort without hesitation, burrowing closer to the warmth of his body. A part of you is still thrilled at truly being able to feel his skin against yours without any barrier, a part of you still feels tentative at the new normalcy after everything that has happened, that has changed.

Still, it is a movement as usual and familiar as holding his hand on yours during a feast to drape one of your legs over his as you burrow against his chest; and to you there is no difference between feeling his skin against yours or feeling the fabric of his trousers. Too late, perhaps, you realize the same may not apply to your husband.

But Ivar makes no point of it. As always, there’s the barely-there moment where his body tenses up before he makes himself release that tension, and on a good day brings you a tad closer, or puts a heavy hand on the thigh that lays thrown over his.

And it is yet another small thing that you will never cease to revel on, to be in awe of, the fact that he trusts you enough to trust not only his heart but his body to you.

There’s responsibility in having a claim on someone’s heart, you have known that all your life. Yet you’ve recently learned there’s a responsibility in having a claim on someone’s body as well, especially when that someone is Ivar.

Earlier this morning, when you had time and freedom to do what you have wanted to do for so long -what you intend to do often- and traced with hands and lips every inch of him that you wished to; when you kept in mind his words you should say you love me more often, and reminded him of all the things you love about him; you witnessed a side of Ivar you hadn’t, in all these months, truly seen before.

There were glimpses, here and there, usually quickly overshadowed by explosive anger, or hidden behind biting words, or simple kept from you by stubbornness and pride alone.

Your heart still lingers on it, with a blend of a protectiveness you know well and a guilt you are sadly familiar with as well, on how he grew more and more agitated, holding himself more tightly under his control yet to you seeming more and more fragile, as the trail of worship that in your eyes would never be enough travelled down his body, leaving behind the parts he took pride in and reaching the ones he is usually intent on hiding, on making you forget about.

His eyes left you by the time you pressed twin kisses to the prominent juts of his hipbones, and they didn’t return to you for a while after that. You didn’t mind, though maybe you should have, maybe you should have made him look at you and kept him tethered then.

And his hands left you too, left you by the time the tips of your fingers had reached his knees, stayed instead by his sides where he clenched them into fists. Something you have learned about Ivar is that he finds solace in touch as much as he does in the sound of your voice, and with the useless benefit of hindsight you realize you shouldn’t have left him without your touch.

Because that is what it was, even while being everything else at the same time: the absence of you.

It was your touch leaving him so suddenly when you had done nothing but trail lips and hands over every part of him you wished to for as long as you had been awake; but it also was the promise that you would stay tied to his wrist when for so long he had believed you would leave him, had convinced himself of it, had resigned himself to it.

At the moment you didn’t think twice about it, and when you had had your fill, you lifted your hands off him and moved up on the bed to kiss him, maybe to start the trail again, and do so over and over again if he so let you, if that is what it took for him to believe you; but it was then that Ivar crumbled.

The until then carefully controlled breaths stuttered out of rhythm, rushed and frantic and uneven; and in between gasping breaths a whisper of your name, or what once could have been it.

The sharp tinge of the fear, the pain, the helplessness that ran through your veins in that moment is still lingering through you; because it was barely an instant, but Ivar’s breaths were choked and almost-sobs, and his eyes wouldn’t open and you weren’t even certain he was hearing you as you tried bringing him back to himself.

You pressed yourself closer to him, offered touch and words, and the Gods know in that moment -in all moments, if you are honest- there is nothing you wouldn’t offer.

It seemed impossible for a man his size, a man of his temper and his ruthlessness, to feel so fragile in your arms; but as he sat up on the bed, accepting the embrace you so willingly -desperately, if you are honestly- offered, wrapping strong arms around you and bringing you as close as he could, his face buried in the crook of your neck; all you could think was of drowning.

Unbidden to your mind had come the image of a man drowning, and you weren’t certain if the uneven breaths that trailed down the column of your throat were the relieved gasps of having reached the coast or if he was still lost to you amongst the waves.

He wasn’t, you remind yourself. He wasn’t lost to you, and in between shaking breaths and hands that maybe gripped you too tightly he came back to you.

The soft press of Ivar’s lips on the crown of head dissipates whatever hold your thoughts had on you, and you find your lips pulling into a smile at the small gesture, heart warmer.

Your fingers are still playing absently with the amulet of Thor that hangs from his neck. Your head resting on his warm chest, you find yourself enveloped in the strange peace that comes from the repetitive motions of your fingers on the amulet and the soothing cadence of Ivar’s breathing under you.

“Do you miss it already?” He muses. As always, presuming you know what is going on inside his head by asking such a vague question.

“Miss what?”

“Your pendant,” He explains, a subtle movement of his hand on the small of your back -or maybe it isn’t subtle, and the scars don’t let you fully feel the change- as he moves the hand you adorned with your pendant earlier this morning. “You always play with it, with that or your wedding ring. Do you miss it already?”

He isn’t asking about a pendant. You know him well enough to know that by now.

“I still have my wedding ring.” You remind him, but somewhere deep in your chest you find those words, that reassurance, ring truer for your foolish heart than you would have expected it to. You’d rather miss the pendant and the world it promised you for the rest of your days, than having to part from the ring engraved with flowers that adorns your finger and the promise that came with it.

Ivar’s eyes narrow, just slightly, and he presses, “That isn’t an answer.”

Chin resting on his chest, you sigh as you look up at him. Stubborn.

Tightening your hold on the amulet of Thor just enough to make Ivar feel the pull and obediently lean forward a bit, you rise and kiss him softly. When you part, you don’t resist the urge to give in, lingering for a few heartbeats on the closeness of an almost-kiss, of brows pressed together, of noses slightly touching, of shared breaths, of his eyes that even as you keep your own closed can feel upon you.

Finally opening your eyes, a knot of something on your chest making speaking somehow harder for a moment, you promise,

“No, I don’t miss it.”

But all the answer he offers is thoughtful hum, and with one last press of his lips on yours he pulls back slightly.

His eyes search yours for a moment, before his hand leaves your back to reach for the amulet hanging from his neck, taking it off.

It really is foolish that after everything your heart still does this strange jump in your chest, it really is hopeless that after everything your lips curve into a smile as lost as it is lovesick.

Ivar slides the amulet of Thor over your head, following with his eyes and the barest touch of his fingers the trail of the small iron Mjölnir makes until it sits low between your breasts, on the center of your chest.

A shiver runs down your spine at the faint touch of his fingers on your skin. Or perhaps it is at the way he is looking at you, as if you are somehow a dream.

His eyes travel from the amulet to your gaze, and he says, “It will do for now.”

Your eyebrows raise, “For now?”

“Mhm,” He hums, before offering a nonchalant curve of his mouth downwards, “I enjoy gifting you things. I plan on getting you more beautiful ones than that.”

You know there’s thoughts you can’t quite understand, words he isn’t quite saying, hidden somewhere in there, but you still choose not to argue or prod, and rest your head against Ivar’s chest once again.

With one hand reaching up for the amulet that now hangs from your neck, you question quietly, “And if I want this one?”

“It is yours.” He promises, and you seal your smile in a kiss over the ink on his chest.

It proves easy to lure Ivar into staying in bed with you. Too easy, and you have a feeling he will come to regret letting you know of how you can make him cave with your body pressed against his, your voice just a tad rougher.

You have switched places and dozed off at some point, Ivar’s head a comfortable weight against your chest and his arms secured around you lulling you into lingering in that place between awake and asleep for so long you lose track of time; but you are woken up by Hvitserk’s voice on the other side of your door.

“Get up already, we need you.”

“What is it?” Ivar asks, more alert even if his fingers continue to trail lazily up and down your sides.

“Not you.” Hvitserk huffs.

Sharing a look with your husband, you get up from the warm bed and quickly get dressed, Ivar staying behind to take the time to set the splint over his broken leg and put on the iron braces.

The blood staining Ubbe’s shoulder is the first thing you notice as you walk out, and quick strides take you to the almost deserted room where he and Hvitserk stand.

“It is too early for you to be injured.” You sigh, turning to one of the thralls and ordering her to bring some stuff from the apothecary, before your eyes return to Ubbe.

He shrugs with a wince, “A scratch.”

“It’s also the middle of the day.” Hvitserk points out.

You concede with a gesture of your head, and signal for Ubbe to sit by one of the hearths of burning coals.

“What happened?”

Hvitserk takes a seat on one of the chairs across from his brother, a handful of berries making their way to his mouth before he chooses to speak.

At this point you are starting to think he makes sure to have food in his mouth when he talks to you so he can annoy you.

“He dared an Abbasid to spar with him.” He tells you, ignoring his older brother’s glare.

You shake your head with a scoff, “By all the Gods, why didn’t you use wooden weapons?”

Ubbe shrugs again, which makes him wince in pain. Again.

“He had a curved sword, I was…curious.”

You gesture with your hand and he takes off the bloodied shirt, and the thrall was luckily quick, and you have the bay laurel and horsetail salve and the utensils needed to clean and close the wound.

You rest your weight against the table as you get to work on the worse of the injury, thankfully not to deep, just the press of a scimitar too close when eh tried parrying it like a normal sword.

You always were methodical -slow, Galla would accuse you- when it comes to stitching up wounds. A blend of the patience teachers like Aamir instilled on you and the care for scarring that years in the Eastern Roads left you with. So, in the time that you are working on the stitches, Hvitserk mutters a goodbye and leaves you and Ubbe in the room where men usually speak of battle.

“So, now that we are alone,” You start, gathering some of the strong-smelling salve and beginning to apply it to the edges of the cut. Ubbe hisses away from the sting of it, but you make him stay still with your hand on his opposite shoulder. “Will you tell me why you wanted to see me?”

“I needed your help, as you can see.”

You shake your head with a scoff.

“You are a terrible liar,” Ubbe adjusts in his seat, a gesture you’d write off to nervousness more than pain. You still click your tongue with a quiet order of, “Stay still.”

He ignores your words, but obeys anyways.

“Ivar told me your people came to find you, to take you back with them.”

Your hands still momentarily at his words.

You are certain he will deny it until his Gods call him to Valhalla, but Ivar trusts and counts on Ubbe more than you would have thought when you first came to Kattegat. And this is more than proof of that.

Ubbe is -as far as you know- the only person aside from Freydis that knows about the deal you made with Ivar on the morning after your wedding, now you know Ivar told him about what it meant that the Greeks are alive; and you know he went to Ubbe with those secrets, with those problems, because despite everything he still relies on his older brother.

There is much of what goes on between them -between all the sons of Ragnar- that is still much of a mystery to you, both because you have no experience with siblings to compare them with, and because they are all…particular, to say the least. But you know Ivar relies on Ubbe, trusts him; and you know Ubbe is protective over Ivar, exceedingly so maybe.

From the very first moment he saw you in Kattegat Ubbe distrusted you, most likely thinking you had gotten to his brother’s side by whispering lies and promises; and he has kept a subtle but watchful eye on you, you know this.

So now you take a deep breath, and continuing the motions of your hands over the wound, you offer, “Is that what you wanted to see for yourself? Whether I had stayed?”

Ubbe holds your gaze, headstrong and unwavering. You have to bite back a smile.

It is once again standing before a Viking holding on to an axe who yet holds more dangerous threats in the blue of his eyes, and him warning you, despite all the differences I may have with Ivar, I will never stand by and allow someone to stab him in the back; he is many things, but he is still my brother.

He presses, “But have you? Stayed?”

“I am here, am I not?” You offer, but of course it isn’t enough. You sigh, “I won’t leave your brother, you needn’t worry.”

A flickering narrowing of his eyes, and he huffs, “I wasn’t worried.”

“Once again: you are a terrible liar,” You tease, and Ubbe huffs a laugh. Grabbing the linen for the bandage, you start, “If he hears…”

Ubbe rolls his eyes, interrupting you, “I know. He would call it pity; say I still treat him like my poor crippled brother.”

“Well…aren’t you?” You ask quietly, hands folded on your lap now that you are through with healing him. “You don’t try to protect Hvitserk the way you do Ivar.”

“Hvitty didn’t bring home a woman in chains and claimed he would marry her,” He retorts, and you concede with a quiet chuckle. He adjusts in his seat, again. “I have underestimated Ivar before, I know this. But…I know my brother, and I know he is more…vulnerable than he lets on. You can call it pity if you want, but it isn’t, I just-…he is my little brother.”

At the end of the string of jumbled thoughts leaving his lips you find the only reason that matters, the only justification that anyone ought to care for. You nod your head once, your eyes on his and what you hope is a comforting smile curving at your lips.

“You intend to protect his heart, that is something I can understand. But like I said, you needn’t worry.”

Ubbe leans back on his seat, studying you for a few breaths before he says, “So you have chosen to stay.”

“I have.”

“Why?”

Eyebrows lifted, you make a face at his words, “I’m afraid some secrets are between my husband and me.”

“It is no secret that you love him.”

You offer a smile that the Prince returns, and after a breath you cross your arms and gesture with your head for the door.

“Then there is no reason you should be still sitting here covered in blood.”

____

When you first walk into the room where you are to have dinner together, you don’t pay much attention to the presence of the three men sitting by the table already, finding yourself too engrossed in studying -and marveling at- the embroidery work on Thora’s sleeve.

“I’d say you have to teach me your ways, but…”

“It isn’t something you have talent for, no,” She retorts, sweet even in her brutal honesty, and you chuckle. “I can make something for you. For a price, of course.”

Your smile widens, “Of course.”

Your attention is diverted to the sons of Ragnar when Ubbe calls your name in greeting, and though you turn your gaze to the table you are focused only on the bandages over his shoulder.

“A woman from Kufa told me she wants to speak with you, her na-…” Ubbe starts, but you dismiss those words with a gesture of your hand.

“How is your shoulder?” You ask, striding forward towards him to press your hand lightly over the bandages, checking for fever. Ubbe shares a glance with Ivar over your shoulder, but you still press, “Ubbe? Are you in much pain? If you are I can m-…”

“No, I’m not,” He retorts, somewhat hesitantly. Satisfied, you pull back, and start walking back to you. Clearing his throat behind you, he questions, “Is she…always like this?”

“She is,” Ivar answers dryly, “Try making her stop, brother. I dare you.”

You reach his side and tug lightly at the braids at the back of his head, chastising, “Don’t talk ill about your wife.”

He doesn’t miss a beat, one hand grasping at yours where it was childishly tugging at his hair, and the other grasping firmly at your waist. Ivar brings you closer, raised eyebrows and mocking smile.

“I wasn’t,” He promises, his head following his words and accentuating his taunt. “You just know you are difficult, so you assumed I was.”

You shake your head with a laugh, but answer the call and lean to let him capture your mouth in his, a sigh leaving your nose as you give in to his kiss.

You settle on the seat by his side before long, and in quiet, almost intimate ease, you start having dinner.

Ubbe leans forward and starts, “Your betrothed.”

“Late betrothed,” You correct, at the same time Ivar quips, not anymore. “What of him?”

“You said he was once of the best in your homeland,” He starts, and you nod your head once with a hum, in your mind seeing the countless times you saw Narses in a battlefield. It was a dance for him to be in the midst of battle, it was an old song that he knew by heart the sound of war. The world needn’t know of all the times he came back bloodied and bruised, they only need to remember his courage, his strength. Ubbe presses, “Why was he of the best? How?”

“He had me,” You retort around a smile. Hvitserk scoffs, and your smile widens as you turn your attention to him. “You doubt it?”

“I’d never discredit what you can do to a man, no.” He says, a taunt hidden somewhere in his words. Looking out of the corner of your eye to Ivar, you watch him narrow his eyes as he raises a cup to his brother with a purposely false smile, a poisoned acceptance of his words.

You offer Ubbe a more truthful answer, “He was raised to be the best from birth. Trained in battle like a Spartan, in war like a Macedonian.”

“There’s a difference for you Greeks?”

“Between war and battle? Of course,” You reply, taking a sip from the cup of rose wine before you continue, “Narses won the battle for Dublin, but because he refused to lose another battle when Ivar and the army joined yours, he lost the war.”

Your mind lingers on thoughts of those last few days with Narses, thoughts of the arguments as you demanded he listened to you and retreated before Kattegat’s army joined Dublin’s, thoughts of the rage and desperation and helplessness.

You wonder if him doing as you told him to and retreating, even if he had to defy Stithulf and the Arabs, would have been the better outcome.

Because you will never be able to shake off the memory of the stench of blood and iron as you tried feebly to hold death at bay with shaking hands and hastily-made concoctions, the memory of the bodies of familiar armor and familiar faces that littered the battlefield, the memory of Narses’ gasping breaths as he choked around the syllables of your name; and so you have to believe that there was something you could have done differently.

Believing a better choice could have prevented it hurts you, of course it does; but resigning yourself to the massacre of the last free Greeks being inevitable, being somehow mandated by the Fates themselves, is something you simply cannot do.

The dinner progresses, and Ubbe doesn’t let go of the topic of Narses. Holding a piece of lamb by his mouth, Ubbe lifts clear eyes to you and insists,

“How did he fight against these Abbasids?”

“Firstly, he did not spar with real weapons,” You try with a tilt of your head. He narrows his eyes at your mocking, but there’s insistence in his silence. “Get close so their spears are of little use, in close quarters try to be…quicker than them.”

“Easier said than done.”

“I am not a shieldmaiden, Ubbe. I’m just telling you what Narses taught me.”

“Hm. Did all your Greeks fight like him?”

You shrug one shoulder, taking a sip from your drink before you reply, “If they had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Hvitserk leans forward, injecting himself in the conversation while a moment ago he was entirely focused on the quiet giggles and easy smiles he coaxed out of Thora.

His smile is mocking, taunting, so alike Ivar’s when he asks, “So certain that you Greeks would have won, sister?”

“Stop calling me that, but yes, of course. Greeks were never something you knew how to fight, while we knew of Varangians and their ways. Imagine if…” You stop, and hesitate, eyeing the couple of bowls of different dried fruits on the table. Reaching for them, you clear a spot on the table with your free hand, and put the pieces as units. Ivar leans closer, almost leaning against you, to pay attention to what you’re doing. Lifting a piece, you tell Hvitserk, “This is something the army back home did very often. We make sure our disadvantage in a direct confrontation is certain, and we retreat, taunting your army into chasing us by using our archers. It is a matter of winding your warriors, but also of giving ours time to get into position, and keeping your attention on the archers. When we stop, we face you almost a direct line, a thin shield wall that isn’t a shield wall at all, with our archers on the left wing. So, what do you do?”

Ubbe huffs a breath, leaning back on his chair as he takes in the rudimentary formations you display on the table. He understands, he remembers.

You share a smile with him, but return your eyes to Hvitserk.

“Why would w-…”

“Try to remember what happened in Dublin before you arrived, brother.” You taunt, a tilt of your head that you know is annoying. But you are right, and there’s no harm in letting him know.

Hvitserk’s warm eyes travel from the pieces you set on the board to the small piece of dried fruit you hold between your fingers, and he sighs his response,

“They split and went for your archers. They went left.”

Smiling proudly, maybe a little arrogantly, you drive a wedge in between the pieces that symbolize their army.

“And so Ubbe allowed us an opening for our cavalry. We split his forces in two, our spear wall folded over his warriors; and…he lost,” You lift your eyes from the pieces on the rudimentary board to the Prince, “We knew how you Vikings fought, we knew you lacked formations, and it cost you.”

“But you Greeks rely too much on them.” Ivar offers, diverting your eyes and your attention to him. He smiles, his hand circling your wrist and bringing your fingers and the small piece of dried date you hold to his mouth.

Even if it should be an innocuous sight, it sends a pang of heat through you to watch Ivar bite the piece of fruit from your fingers, eyes on yours.

Swallowing past a dry throat, you still insist, “Alright, Varangian,” His smile widens and so does yours, but you continue, “How would you win?”

“I already did,” He retorts easily, a small shrug of his shoulders that you know is meant to irritate you, and you hate the fact that it succeeds. Ivar’s smile is smug and infuriating, but he leans closer and you find your gaze lifting from his lips to his eyes with your heart doing a strange thing in your chest that it has no business doing after all this time. “Because you thought I’d do things how you wanted me to. You tried your phalanx when you faced me. It didn’t work, did it?”

“It wasn’t me.”

“That is not the point, my love,” He taunts, annoyingly arrogant, before shrugging with a downward curve of his mouth, “When our armies clashed before Aneridge, you held that formation. You shouldn’t have.”

You turn on the seat to face him directly, noting the maddening trail of his hand up and down your thigh but saying nothing, instead insisting,

“Narses led with the Arabs at his right wing, and you accommodated to it, Ivar. You followed, just like Ubbe.”

“He kept the mercenaries at his right flank because the tree line was on the other side. Unlike you, he expected our tricks, and he knew we had an ambush waiting. His mercenaries would have been at the left, like they were before, but I didn’t let him,” He corrects, annoyingly smug. His hand on your leg tightens, moves slightly up. “And because you Greeks rely so much on those formations, you were out of balance. And I won.”

There’s this thrill that runs down your spine, this flickered beat of your heart, as you hear him speak so surely, as you have him challenge you; that makes you think this time by his side has turned you a bit mad, because there is no reason why your lips should part, why your thoughts should daze.

Still, because the Titans may walk the earth when you keep your mouth shut, you insist arrogantly, “You didn’t win.”

Ivar smiles regardless, “What?”

You lean closer, “The Greeks retreated, so you didn’t win against Greeks, you won against Christians; and what you fought were my people following someone else’s command. You didn’t win against me, Ivar.”

You know the look in his eyes by now, you know hunger when you see it shining in pale blue eyes. And it just makes the thrill all the more exciting.

____ ____ ____

Hope you liked this, whatever it was lol

This was originally supposed to continue, but I ended up with a 7k+ words chapter on my hands that had a very clear break down the middle, so I split in two. So, next saturday’s update is a given at least, since it’s already written and edited lol

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214  @fae-sedai  @crazybunnyladysworld   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside @aprilivar​ @msrawog

[pomegranates-and-blood]

νοσταλγία (Chapter 42)*

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Word Count: 4.2k

Warnings: 18+, this is smut folks. Plus, the usual warnings, and a focus on Ivar’s past experiences/trauma regarding sex, and related issues. Also, idk if I still need to let you know, but I write Ivar as a sub/bottom, always will.

A/N: Hi, thank you so much for being patient with me for taking an extra week to post this update after my return from the hiatus, I think I can get back to a more regular writing/uploading schedule from now on. Hope you like this chapter!

Alongside this chapter I posted an Ivar’s PoV. I very much encourage you to read it. You can find it here :)

Your fingers are quick making the knot, and you find yourself chuckling.

“What is it?” Ivar prompts, but the trail of kisses he leaves down your neck distracts you for a few breaths.

“I married you in red. It means nothing to your people, but does to mine,” You explain, before lifting the wrist that now bears your pendant like a bracelet between you, and tracing the inside of his wrist right under the leather knot. “And now our fates are tied as one, just as they would have in my homeland.”

“What do you mean?”

“When two people get married, amongst the things we do is tie their hands together. Like this,” You demonstrate, putting your palm against Ivar’s, fingers still greedily tracing the inside of his wrist that now bears the mark of your promise. “And a Hiereia would tie a knot to symbolize the union,” Your smile is a little dazed, more than a little lovesick, but you can’t find it in you to care. “Similar to how I did just now.”

“So we are married now?” He teases, and you chuckle, rolling your eyes. Ivar persists, though, a tad more serious, “Before your Gods, are we…are we husband and wife?”

“Of course we are,” You reply, almost affronted. Your brow presses against his, and you turn your hand to intertwine your fingers. “I swore before your Gods and mine to become your wife, did I not?”

He searches your gaze, or is lost in it, for a few breaths before he gives any answer.

The answer, it seems, is a soft smile and a slow blink of his eyes.

“I love you.” He tells you, an answer as well.

He lays his body over yours, and your senses are overwhelmed by his warmth, his scent, him. His hands settle comfortably on your waist as he explores your mouth, tongue seeking entrance you willingly give, but he doesn’t waste a moment to grip surely on the curve of your ass when you bend one leg to bring him closer.

“I want you, I want…” He doesn’t finish his train of thought, choosing instead to trail open mouthed kisses down your throat, nuzzling at the dip between your collarbones, before his kisses grow more heated, gentle sucks and scattered bites over the tops of your breasts.

He is stopped by the nightdress you still wear, and resting his chin in the valley between you breasts, Ivar looks up at you, big eyes dark and plump lips bearing the reddish mark of your kiss. The sight shouldn’t be as distracting as it is, but you still lose yourself in it, and you think he speaks but you cannot hear it, too focused on reaching with one hand and trailing your fingers in through his loose hair.

Ivar says your name, a question, and all you can reply with is an inquisitive, hm?

“Can I…?” His hands bunch up the sides of your nightdress, the intent obvious.

It makes warmth and something else, something darker and made of iron more than silk, blossom in your chest, to hear him ask, to have him await your permission, to have him…surrender.

You nod your head, barely having to put any strength in lifting your body off the mattress to get the dress of since Ivar lifts most of your weight. That will never cease to surprise you, and you don’t think it will ever cease to make you want him even more either.

Laid bare before him, as you have been many a time before, you look up into his eyes. He doesn’t bother hiding anything right now, maybe if he tried he couldn’t, and you are witness to everything that swims in those pale blue eyes. The desire, the awe, the lingering frenzy from when you first told him of your choice, that frenzy of not wanting to waste a moment, a breath.

You had never felt want like this, not until him. You hadn’t felt wanted like this, not until him.

Not until the wide blue eyes that gaze at you like something out of a dream, not until the voice roughened by desire breathing out your name, not until the reverent and frenzied hands exploring whatever part of you that they can reach.

Ivar continues his previous trail, sealing lightning against your skin with every press of his lips over your body, with every caress of rough hands on delicate skin.

Nestled between your legs, he looks up at you with a smile that speaks of arrogance but something sweeter too, something softer.

Hooking one of your legs over his shoulder with practiced ease, Ivar licks a stripe up your center, making you shiver.

One of your hands tangles in his hair as it always does, and as Ivar starts working his tongue against you, your fingers tighten and pull at his hair, only succeeding in making him redouble his efforts, drawing the occasional moan from him that reverberates through you.

He takes his time slowly making pleasure build inside you, tightening like knot in your lower stomach, to the point where your body is begging for release.

In between tight circles of his tongue against the bundle of nerves in your core, Ivar puts his fingers inside you, skillful curling of them making your legs tremble and your breaths stutter.

Praise is falling from your lips, you aren’t sure if in any language he knows but certain he understands regardless, judging by the bite followed by a reverent kiss that he presses to the inside of your thigh.

And you climb higher and higher, lost in him, lost in the pleasure he so willingly seeks to draw out of you as if it your moans were the most exquisite form of praise.

With one last cry of his name that sounds high and breathless, you reach your peak, feeling as if the waves of pleasure rolling over you are never to end.

As you come down, you blink past the daze of pleasure and draw him back up to you, bringing his lips to yours.

You never hesitate in kissing him, even when the evidence of what he has done to you is still on his tongue. If you are honest, tasting yourself on his mouth sends a pang of heat through you each and every time.

And you are hungry and desperate, hungry for pleasure that isn’t yours, desperate for giving him the pleasure you know you can.

Your hand trails down his chest as your mouth demands entrance into his, tongue exploring his mouth leisurely. Your free hand tightens on his hair, and you pull him closer, while you reach exactly where you wanted.

You barely are able to cup your hand around him when Ivar pulls back, breaths ragged.

His hand grips at your wrist, stopping you. You expected that, though.

Ivar takes a deep breath, and states, “It won’t work, you know that.”

Your free hand reaches for the side of his face, trailing down the side of his neck, and you search his eyes as you promise fervently,

“Even if it doesn’t work normally, you can feel pleasure, Ivar. I know you can, I h-…”

“I can’t,” He interrupts you, eyes wide. You remain silent after his words, and a shaking breath leaves his parted lips. Voice low and rough, he explains, “It feels…painful, and…do you think I didn’t try, after that first night with Margrethe? I-I couldn’t go to her again, o-or anyone else, but…I believed she had done something to me, I believed-…she had to be the reason why, it had to be her fault.

You think of how long it has taken him to feel comfortable around you, how much he still struggles with the soft intimacy of just the two of you, how aware he is of his own body and where and when you touch him; and you cannot help but think he most likely wasn’t ready at all to be with that girl. You know him well enough to assume it was probably something having to do with his pride, with that public image that seems to seep into how he sees himself all too often.

Ivar continues, “I tried using my hand to-…I tried, and it…and it was useless. It is of no use,” His expression tightens, a furrow in his nose of old anger, of resentment at the world and Fate itself. ���Being touched…it-…I can’t bear it.”

“Have you felt that way with me?” You ask quietly, suddenly sickened by all those times you felt him lean into your touch or almost surrender to the press of your body or your hand against him and believed you were offering pleasure. “Is it painful when I touch you?”

More than anything you wish you could be in his head right now, you wish you could know which are those thoughts that make for a few moments his breaths slightly more panicked, that make something like anguish cross his features before he can offer any words.

“No,” He tells you, letting you breathe easier, “I-It always felt…good with you. But I can’t, you know I can’t.”

Something in you steels at the way his eyes fall from yours. There is no reason he should ever feel he cannot hold your gaze, least of all for something like this.

Your hand on the side of his face is gentle, and he obeys the silent command and returns his eyes to yours. The sight of tears -this time not overwhelmed, happy, disbelieving tears at hearing you are to stay, but defeated, humiliated, helpless- makes you strengthen, offer certainty when he has none.

“It will feel good with me, Ivar,” You say, unwavering. You know it is true. Still, even if you ache to show him, you offer your words and your sincerity and nothing more. “It will feel good, because you are mine and I am yours. There’s no room for pain, for anything else, not when it’s us.

He starts shaking his head, words stuck in his throat but trembling lips trying to form them anyways. You lean closer, the hand on his cheek moving to grasp at the back of his neck.

“You can feel pleasure, my love,” You promise. His eyes -wide, uncertain eyes- jump in between yours, frantically searching your gaze as if truths can be found in you, as if he’s desperately hoping he can believe what you tell him. “Let me show you.”

“I…I’m-…”

You press your lips gently to the corner of his mouth, and even that simple and intimate touch makes him jump, makes the faint tremble of his body slightly worse.

“Shh,” You soothe, daring to put a hand on the center of his chest, the caress firm but soft as you try luring him to a normal breathing. “It is alright. I will stop if you want me to. Is that what you want?”

You lean back just enough to meet his gaze, your heart suddenly picking up speed at the sight of him. Ivar’s eyes are wide and his breathing hasn’t slowed down, and it is after a few shaky breaths that he manages to give you an answer.

The barest movement as he shakes his head, and promises, “I want you.”

Simple words, but they make pure and raw hunger run through your veins like wildfire. A wilder part of you, a part of you that lingers in all the ways he has proved he is yours, wants nothing more than to satiate this hunger with starved touches, demanding kisses and hurried and desperate proof that you want him, however you can have him.

But more than anything you want to erase any memory of any hands on his body that aren’t yours, even if they are his own, when those memories bring forth pain. You want to show him there’s no pain to be felt when it comes pleasure, you want to show him there’s no humiliation to be dreaded when it comes to intimacy.

Pleased with the answer and unable to help yourself, you capture his lips on yours, a leisurely exploration of his mouth as you press as close as you can. Ivar moans against your lips at the first of presses of your mouth on his, leaning into your touch with barely any hesitation.

When you pull back his brow is furrowed and his breaths are fast, and a pang of heat goes through you at the way he licks his lips, already missing the taste of you.

“Then trust in me,” You ask softly, your mouth moving slowly through the curve of his jaw to reach his ear. Voice low, you demand, “Give in to me, Ivar.”

The effect of your words is immediate, and Ivar doesn’t bother containing the overwhelmed little sound, somewhere in between a whimper and a moan, that leaves his parted lips. Your hand on the back of his neck is the one thing that keeps his head from falling back, and the only thought that runs through your head at the sight of him is that he is yours, yours, yours.

Past the daze of hunger and desire, you remind yourself that there will be time for hurried, there will be time for desperate and hungry. There will be time for you to leave your mark on him, there will be time for his skin to bear the reminder that he is yours and yours alone.

But now, now you want to explore every part of him, with hands, with tongue and lips. You want him to feel safe with you, you want to get him drunk on nothing but you.

And so you do.

With aimless but gentle touches of your hands over his body, with presses of your mouth that linger between hungry and soothing, with whispered praises of how much you want him, of how no one compares to him in your eyes, of how good he is for you; you make the lingering tension in his body give way to something else, you make him give in to the lull of touch and the high of being just the two of you and the intimacy between you.

And this time when you reach down and palm him over the thin barrier of his pants he doesn’t even try to stop you, instead offering a haggard breath of your name and nothing else, surrendering to your touch.

He tenses underneath you when you move your hand to reach for him under his clothes, but you press quick and soothing kisses to the exposed skin of his neck and remind him quietly,

“It is just me, Ivar. All I want is to give you pleasure, nothing will change that.”

“Y-You know I-…”

“I know,” You tell him softly, “Just focus on me, focus on how it feels.

After lifting your hand back up to your face to spit on the palm of it and make things easier, you whisper your instructions as you circle your fingers around his cock.

“It feels good when I touch you, doesn’t it, love?” You ask, not expecting an answer, but you do get one, a choked hum of affirmation. You smile against his neck, “It feels so good to finally be able to touch you, to be able to make you feel good.”

Slowly but surely, you feel him hardening slightly under your touch. You still keep the pace of your hand steady, as well as the flow of praise that falls from your lips, certain that if you draw attention to it he will close up or revert to the defeated certainty of before.

When you get him hard enough that even he cannot ignore it anymore, Ivar gasps your name, a call to stop even if you don’t obey it.

“H-How-…? I don’t-…”

“Focus on how it feels, Ivar,” You reiterate, not wanting him to overthink things, not wanting the past to have any reach in this moment. “Focus on me.”

You make sure to keep talking. He has told you many times, and proven even more, that there’s something soothing to him about you talking, either because of the sound of your voice or what you have to say, you truly don’t know.

So with your fingers toying at the waist of his loose pants, you look up and ask,

“Can I see you, my love? All of you?”

Ivar licks his lips, but they still part helplessly as he looks down at you, barely daring make a sound past the gasping breaths that leave him.

And he nods his head. His eyes remain intently on you as you take off his pants, remain on you searching for something in your gaze as you take in all of him.

Bare before you, his skin baring the faintest shine of sweat and a few marks that may be the result of less-than-gentle exploring on your part, you feel your throat tighten, your mouth dry. You want him, you want to make him moan, you want to make him surrender, you want to make him yours.

But, teasing both him and yourself it seems, you take your time, slowly crawling up his body until you are face to face with him, straddling his hips but not close enough for you to be pressed together.

Ivar looks up at you, wide eyes asking -pleading- for something that he doesn’t yet dare voice, chest rising and falling rapidly with each expectant breath.

Your mouth slowly curves into a smile, and keeping your eyes on him in a silent command that he keep looking at you, you reach for his hardening cock.

At the first of your touches Ivar lets out a haggard moan, head craning back and leaving his throat exposed, tempting you to place a few more marks here and there. But you want to see him, you want to see the effect of your touch on him.

“Look at me,” You order, a pang of heat running through you at how quickly, how pliantly, he obeys the command, forcing heavy eyelids to remain open and dark eyes to remain on you. “I want your eyes on me, love.”

His cheeks are tinted red and his eyes are slightly moist as he looks up at you, his hair roughened my movement and the passing of your fingers, he looks like every desire you’ve ever had made man.

The strong body, open gaze, the moans and whimpers he tries and fails at keeping hidden. Perfect. Yours.

You run your thumb over the tip of his cock to gather the moisture that slowly starts forming there, turning your wrist slightly when you stroke upwards. Ivar gasps, almost sitting up, but you put your hand on his chest to stop him.

And…Gods, how easily he complies, leaning back and letting you continue to touch him, surrendering his pleasure to you. And still, in the daze that makes moans and whimpers fall from his lips so easily, he still remembers to keep his gaze on you, to keep endless blue eyes focused on you. The sight of his surrender is enough to make a woman mad.

His lips form helplessly around the words before he even utters them, but eventually Ivar gasps, “It…ah, it feels…”

“Good?” You ask, and he nods his head frantically.

“Y-Yes,” He promises, eyes wide, “Don’t…don’t stop.”

You don’t stop the movements of your hand, but you move down his body, and settle between his legs. Ivar’s eyes are wide, and he looks tortured when he looks down at you.

Licking a trail from the base of his cock to the tip, you delight yourself in the tremble you make take over his whole body, and after a few tentative licks that are there just to see if you can make him beg without having to tell him to, you take him in your mouth.

He moves as if to sit up again, unconscious movement of his body against the new feeling, but you still put one hand against his stomach, keeping him down even if it is not through brute strength that you do so.

Ivar cries out your name as you start moving your mouth over him, while your hand strokes the base of him. And you try keeping your eyes on him as much as you can, not wishing to lose a moment.

You don’t keep track of time, couldn’t even if you wanted to, but you do notice him climbing closer and closer to that edge. It is written in the tension of his arms and shoulders, in the red that starts spreading over his chest, in the way the sounds he makes are broken by whimpers, in the breaths that stutter over one another.

But he stops you again.

“S-Stop, pl-…ah, please stop,” He pleads, taking a few shallow breaths when you pull back. His hands grip tightly at the sheets underneath him, and breath by breath he starts to let go. Once his hold on them is almost loose, he speaks again. “Stop, or I will…I…don’t want this to end yet.”

Your heart does a strange thing in your chest, and you move back up to be face to face with him. Your eyes linger on the few details that make him look so utterly wretched, from the faint shine of sweat on his forehead to the bite marks on his lip.

You want to kiss him, but hesitate, wondering if he will be disgusted by his own taste. Ivar doesn’t even think about that, it seems, for when you are close enough he lifts a trembling hand and tangles it in your hair, bringing your lips to his, kissing you slowly and deeply.

You pull back, a hand on his chest, and promise, “It isn’t the end, love.”

“I want to be inside you.” He argues.

“And you will be,” Is the answer you give, before kissing a quick path down his chest. Grasping him in your hand once again, you look up at him. Unable to resist the temptation, you grant the faintest of licks to his tip, making a ragged groan leave his lips. “But before that, I want to make you come undone, using just my mouth.”

He doesn’t offer any resistance after that, but judging by the way his breaths get quicker and his eyes flutter shut before you even get to put your mouth around him again, your words had a deeper effect on him than you had anticipated.

Bracing yourself on his thighs, you take as much of him in your mouth as you can, ignoring the discomfort of your jaw as you move your mouth over him.

The litany of sounds that leaves his lips becomes more ragged and broken the longer you pleasure him, even if it isn’t that long until you notice the clear tells of him being close to the edge again.

This time you redouble your efforts, daring to moan slightly around him, making a string of curses leave Ivar’s lips. And when you reach with one of your hands to play with his balls, his hands grip desperately at the sheets underneath him once again.

As Ivar’s voice begins to give out, head turned to the side and nothing but broken moans leaving his lips as you get him closer and closer to the edge, you try your hardest to commit this moment to memory. This moment, of his voice sounding so beautifully wretched by the pleasure you give him, of his body pliant under your every touch and desperate in equal measure.

Ivar reaches his peak with a hoarse shout, his back arching off the bed, wide eyes looking at the nothingness above him. You are lost in the sight of him lost in the throes of pleasure, and you can almost ignore the bitter taste of his seed as you swallow.

He loses all strength and collapses against the bed, gasping breaths as he comes down from his high. You move back up against him, pressing a kiss against his chest and resting there, soaking up his warmth.

His hand settles on your waist, but it does so with such effort that pride surges through you. His chest still heaves under you, and as you lay your cheek against his heart, you hear it beating wildly under your ear.

“That was…” He lets out an incredulous laugh, a breath past parted lips. His eyes meet yours, “Thank you.”

“Hm, so polite,” You tease, pecking his smiling lips. “I’m still going to insist that I told you so.”

And for now you remain in this moment you wouldn’t change for anything, this moment of leisurely traces of hands on each other’s bodies, this moment of kisses exchanged like secrets, this moment of a beginning in more ways than one.

____ ____ ____

So that happened! Hope it was okay! Thank you for reading!

You can find Gǫfga, the Ivar PoV that continues from this chapter, here.

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[pomegranates-and-blood]

Στέργηθρον (Vοσταλγία Winter Blurb)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Στέργηθρον (stérgēthron): love, affection. Also paternal love. (Ancient Greek)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: Winter Blurb #3. They talk about the future, kinda.

Word Count: 1938 (again, you should have seen this coming)

Warnings: A lil of lingering issues from Πολεμέω, and allusions to/mentions of sex. Then, just fluff and my writing lol.

A/N: This is the continuation of Πολεμέω, which you can find right here. I think you can read it as a standalone though.

“I don’t want us to fight, I don’t want to fight you.” You offer, feeling strangely like this push for ceasefire is yet another step in a war he refuses to stop fighting on.

“And I have to agree, do I not?”

“What?”

“Because everything is about what you want.”

“What!?” You shriek. He cannot possibly have the audacity to say that. “I was put in chains because you wanted me to come with you to Kattegat, I was made your wife because you wanted me to be! Tell me, how is everything about what I want?”

He lifts himself up on one elbow, facing you.

“I couldn’t have you as my wife until you wanted to be, there was nothing I could do to make you-…” He furrows his lips petulantly, looking to the side as his words die. A deep, angry breath through his nose, and then, “I had to accept that deal you offered, because it was what you wanted.”

“That is how things work, Ivar! You cannot have things just because you wish it so!”

“But you can! You do!” He retorts, not missing a beat, “If you wanted the Greeks, you could have them, and there is nothing I could do to stop you! If you wanted Kattegat, even if you didn’t, you have it! Even when you didn’t want me, you had me!”

You don’t have to fight, is what he doesn’t say. He has to fight, he has had to fight, but you haven’t; at least how he sees it.

There’s nothing you can say to change that, because he is right. To you not everything is a battle, but to Ivar it is. You may rage against the world that made it so that he lives in such way, you may ache for a peace he may never know, but there’s nothing you can do to change that.

Instead, you offer something else. If anything, you can promise that for you, for this, he doesn’t have to fight anymore.

“And you had me. You have me.

You lean closer, searching gaze and feeling your chest a little lighter when his expression softens when you get close enough. You cannot help but think of that morning in the main hall, where you started to see these barriers that he puts around himself, and what happens when you cross them.

“For as long as they are within my reach, I will want to protect them, that won’t change,” You confess, before taking a deep breath. “But when spring comes, and they set sail back to their home, they will do so with nothing more than my blessing. You know this, yes?”

Pale eyes search yours, and though you do find the answer to your question written in them, you know him well enough to know he won’t voice it.

Instead, Ivar asks, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

You take a deep breath, and offer the best truth you can, “I still think I ought to keep…keep you and them apart. For too long I believed that as long as they existed, I wouldn’t be able to…” Your voice dies as you try finding the words. You find yourself having to resist the impulse to twirl your wedding ring on your finger, now that your hand is trapped in your husband’s. Choosing instead to look at your joined hands, and finding it offers much more comfort than that repetitive motion of your fingers on the ring ever would, you continue, “I will always look at them and think of losing you. I want to keep them safe, I want to protect them, but not at the cost of…this.”

He remains silent after your words, for enough breaths that you have to lift your eyes to try and read something in him. Of course, you find him already looking at you, the smallest of furrows between his brows that you itch to reach up and trace with your fingers.

“Don’t hide things from me.” He reminds you, an order and a request all in one.

“I didn’t,” You retort, and when he immediately opens his mouth to argue, you find yourself chuckling and leaning forward to press your free hand over his mouth. “Listen to me.”

Ivar lifts his eyebrows, but obediently stays quiet. Slowly, you move your hand from over his mouth, allowing yourself instead a caress of the side of his face, fingers trialing over the scar over his cheekbone.

“I’m listening.” He prompts you, and you both ignore the way he leans into your touch.

“The scouts never had orders from me to keep quiet about my questions about the Greeks. I didn’t try to hide it, I just didn’t tell you.”

Your husband furrows his brow again, though there’s playfulness in his pale gaze, and your heart beats a little easier now.

“That is your defense?”

“It’s the truth,” You offer with a shrug. Searching his eyes, you press, “And I do trust you. More than anyone.”

Your words prompt a smile to curve his lips. Small, subtle, and softer than you deserve.

Ivar leans the distance that separates you, claims your mouth in a demanding kiss that for once you surrender to, letting him and the hungry way his teeth bite down over your lower lip take whatever it is you have left to give, letting him and the hand that tightens its hold on yours ground him as much as it does you.

When you part you refuse to move away, lips barely touching, breaths one.

Your eyes are closed, but you can feel Ivar’s piercing gaze on you.

“I love you, Ivar,” You tell him, because you may need to say as much as he needs to hear it. “More than anyone, more than anything.”

It is almost imperceptible, the way he nods faintly, as if accepting your words, as if promising he knows that; before he crosses the distance between you again, kissing you and promising the same words back with nothing but reverent touches of his hands, and the surrendering of his body and heart to you.

When his hands grip at your body a little tighter, a little more hungrily, more desperately as you lose yourselves in each other; you say nothing. And when you leave with nails and teeth more marks than you usually do, he doesn’t say anything either.

Later that night, with the cold air of this land over your bare skin, though you will admit you do not much mind the cold when Ivar’s warm body is laying against yours, you find yourself going back to his words of before.

“What is it you want, then?” You ask, and it is after a few breaths that Ivar lifts his head from your stomach to look up at you. Pale eyes blink away the lure of sleep as he considers your words.

A furrow between his brows that this time you do reach to trail with the tips of your fingers until it disappears, he rests his chin on your stomach and asks,

“What are you talking about?”

“You said I get everything I want. Well…I want to know what it is you want.”

“Why?”

“So we can fight for it.” You promise, a smile that trembles a little on your lips.

“I want you.” He confesses, quietly. You reply with a shrug, because it is an easy answer.

“You have me,” You promise as you let your fingers run through his loose hair. “What else?”

He hesitates before speaking, which puts you on edge more than you would have thought it would.

“You told me once that…that we could have children,” His words make your breath get stuck in your throat, and the foolish prick of tears in your eyes makes you blink a few times as you look at him. Ivar searches your gaze, before asking, “Did you mean that?”

It is hopes you haven’t dared think of, a future you aren’t sure what you’ve done to be allowed to have, dreams Hiereia of Persephone shouldn’t have.

But you nod your head, because you aren’t sure you can voice it. Your smile is tremulous, more fragile than you’d like for it to be.

Ivar says nothing, but there’s a smile on his lips as well, and his hands are warm and soothing as they go up and down your sides.

He nods his head once, as if to say it is set in stone then.

“That is what I want, then. I want you, I want…I want us to have children,” He promises. If we name things, we make them real. “I want them to speak your tongue and mine, I want…daughters that are like you, and…and sons that will protect you. I want them to tell my story, I want…” He stops himself, and you are startled out of a daze when his words stop. With each hurried promise, with each stumbling admission of hopes you don’t dare imagine how long he’s kept to himself; you were losing more and more of your heart, even if it isn’t yours anymore. Ivar searches your gaze, and insists, “We will fight for it.”

A dare, a command, a plea.

“You have my word. We might have already started fighting for it,” You quip with a side smile. At his silence, you ask, “Haven’t you thought about it? We’ve had sex, Ivar. I might be with child soon.

For a moment it is as if he has just considered the possibility, and Ivar’s eyes widen, lips parted as he lifts himself up on his elbows, looking down at your stomach before meeting your gaze again.

The unbridled hope, so unguardedly left to shine in pale blue eyes that almost seems like desperation, makes your chest pull tight, and the chuckle you are able to answer with is watery and trembling at best.

“It takes a little bit of time, usually.” You remind him, nails trailing slightly on the shaved side of his head.

“Do…do you think I can?” He asks. The question doesn’t make much sense to you, and at your frown Ivar swallows thickly, and presses, “Do you think I can have you carry m-my child?”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“The Gods have a cruel sense of humor?” He tries around a chuckle that is entirely too bitter for you to consider it honest.

“Of course you can, my love. We’ll fight for it, yes?”

His answering smile is a little lost, a little disbelieving; but your words are enough of a prompt for him to move himself back up your body, a few scattered kisses up your stomach and between your breasts before he is face to face with you again.

His gaze drops to your lips for a breath before he dares kiss you, fingers trembling slightly where they grasp gently at your chin.

Your hand at the back of his neck demands more from his kiss, while the pliant movement of your lips against his keeps its sweetness.

When you part there’s familiar hunger in his gaze, a familiar darkening of the blue of his eyes. Ivar licks his lips, voice slightly rougher when he promises,

“I love you,” His breaths quicken, and he presses closer to you, letting you feel him hardening against your core. With familiar hunger tightening low in your belly, coiling like a serpent, you tilt your head up, claiming his mouth again. You bite down softly on his lower lip, soothing the bite with a lick that makes him shudder, and that reaction only makes you want him more. Ivar rasps against your lips, “I want you.”

____ ____ ____

Thank you for requesting this! Hope you liked it! If there’s anything you wanna see come to my inbox! I’m having a lot of fun with these!

Also, I took a little longer than I intended to post this, so as an apology I’ll post another one of these blurbs. It will be up hopefully before the end of the day 😊

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