#⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹ the goddess of the hearth & home . ooc ⊹⊱•••《 ✮ 》•••⊰⊹ | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pomegranates-and-blood · 4 years ago

Text

νοσταλγία (Chapter 38)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Word Count: 5.8k

Warnings: The usual, plus like a heap of angst (or my poor attempt at it), a lot of stuff around broken bones, and mentions of injuries. And holy shit a lot of Persephone/Hades talk. A lot of it.

A/N: I hope you like this, and I’m sorry if tis is ooc, everything I write for Ivar feels ooc lately for me, and tbh I don’t know how to get better lol. Thank you for reading!

You never really considered, when you decided to tell Ivar about the Greeks, that maybe your lies were never for the sake of others.

That maybe pretending to love Narses was not for him to be safe and comfortable enough to lay all he had at your feet, but for you to be able to pretend it was something purer, softer, gentler than revenge what drove you to start that hopeless war against the Christians and their God.

That maybe the reason why you would have wanted to hide from Ivar the survival of the Greeks was not for them to be safe from him, but for you to allow yourself to live in a fantasy where the borrowed time, the winter, could last a lifetime.

You never considered it, and now you live with a weight on you that for once is caused by you telling the truth. Sometimes you wonder about the irony of it all.

You insisted to Ivar that nothing changed, that nothing had to change, but we don’t change the past or the present by telling a different tale.

And so things have changed. In the few days that have gone by since Ivar learned of their survival, of your meeting with Galla, a lot has changed, but at the same time, enough remains the same for you to pretend otherwise.

Pretend you don’t notice Ivar falter and hesitate at the sight of your gentleness, pretend you don’t feel the sting of pain when he sometimes rejects your affection, pretend you don’t feel your chest pull tight in pain and something else -something like nostalgia- when his eyes gain this haunted look even in the middle of something as innocuous as having dinner together.

This morning, his eyes are bluer than you’ve ever seen them, and he’s very obviously struggling, much more so than the day you saw him snap a bone out of place.

You eye him carefully as he tightens the iron braces around his legs, following his movements from your place at the foot of the bed, sitting with your legs hidden from the cold under your body and under a fur you’ve draped over them. Your refusal to get up has been deliberate, if only an attempt to lure him into choosing to not over exert himself by pretending everything is as usual.

Carefully, you start, “I don’t think you should-…”

“Ah, but I didn’t ask what you think.” He interrupts, not looking at you.

He can be annoying and infuriating when he wants to be, you know that. Knowing it doesn’t make the swell of irritation within you any lesser, but it does help you push past it, and insist,

“Just…come back to bed. If not for your sake, for mine. I don’t want to see you in pain.”

“No,” He states, unflinching, unwavering. But there’s a raw edge to it, a tinge of desperation in his resolve. Ivar stabs the crutch on the ground with more strength than needed, squares his shoulders and lifts his head. “I don’t get to stop my wife from sneaking out of our kingdom while I’m gone, I don’t get to decide when she decides to leave me,” His nose furrows in anger, and yet all that overcomes him is determination, “But I get to control this.”

“So you’ll break your bones just to hold on to control?” You call out, but he doesn’t reply with anything other than a grunt, leaving you alone in your room.

____

After more than half a day spent working with the women at the apothecary, and pointedly ignoring Valdís’ glares when she questions just why her son insists on her dipping him on the river holding him by the ankle; your relative peace is interrupted by a familiar-looking thrall coming into the home asking for a solution for the pain.

You step out from near the hearth, and Freydis shares a glance with you and steps back from the man, who looks at you with wide eyes.

You almost feel sorry for the way he seems to either fear you or your husband’s wrath so much so that his words stumble over each other as he tells you Ivar fell while inspecting the walls and broke his leg, but your sympathy for him is quickly overshadowed by concern -and more than a bit of righteous anger, because you told him so- for the man you married.

You dismiss him with short orders, and when you turn around Freydis holds a batch of comfrey in her hands, not hesitating, not even needing your words, to help you gather what you need. Her blue eyes shine with warmth when you thank her.

You are in your room waiting for him -but pretending not to by busying your hands with a mixture of chickweed seeds and primrose- when you hear the familiar pattern if Ivar’s steps, though they sound slower and more faltering than usual, and are accompanied by sounds of pain that make you grit your teeth.

“What are you doing here?”

If you weren’t told he had injured himself, that…warm welcome would have certainly let you know something was wrong.

“Have you forgotten this is my room too, love?”

“You aren’t subtle.” Ivar says, unnaturally-blue eyes set on you, even as he steps further into the room.

You answer with a shrug, “Never pretended to be.”

“They’ve put a cast on it already,” He tells you, and you can’t help but notice him not directly acknowledging the fact that he broke a bone. You eye the lower part of his left leg for a moment before meeting his gaze again. Ivar insists, “I don’t need you here.”

“I want to be here,” You reply, before changing the subject and asking, “You’ve sent scouts to find out where my people are, haven’t you?”

Ivar straightens where he stands, making himself taller and bigger, even though it makes the pain he is in all the more apparent. You have half a mind to scold him, but you bite back the words.

“Want to know where they are?” He taunts, but your answer is instantaneous,

“No.”

You make him falter for a moment; you witness the faint trembling of the mask he so cruelly wears. And there’s an inkling of regret within you, a voice telling you to remember that all you have done -and continue to do- is take away certainties from Ivar. Even if it is defeated and painful certainties, for the man you love it is better to hold on to scalding iron than to have nothing to hold on to.

Then again, he took much more than certainties from you, you think, but your soft heart keeps you from following that line of thought too far down.

He doesn’t say anything else, choosing instead to move carefully to the bed. You hear him working on the heavy iron contraptions, and you try to keep your attention on your work, but your every sense is attuned to him.

“Your Goddess, and what Hades did to keep her,” He starts suddenly, startling you with the choice of topic. Still, you are grateful he no longer insists on trying to get rid of you. “You never thought it a trick, I know that.”

You never told him that. Granted, you never told anyone that, about how you always wondered if the temptation wasn’t really hunger, if the trick wasn’t one at all.

But it doesn’t surprise you anymore how Ivar seems to be capable of seeing you bare of all lies and pretenses. He has since that first time you met, since those first conversations.

You shrug your shoulders, and turn to him, still holding the mortar and pestle in your hands.

“We can be forced to do many things. Go somewhere, even if that is another realm; accept a title, even if it is one that implies binds of marriage. But we cannot be forced to be loyal to someone.”

“So you think she chose him.”

“Chose to love him, yes. For anything else, she didn’t have a choice.”

“Who did, then?” He asks, moving to settle better where he sits with a grunt of pain that you narrow your eyes at. “Your Hades certainly didn’t either, she still leaves him each spring. That isn’t a deal that sounds like a choice, hm?”

“You cannot change nature with a trick, Ivar.”

“Ah, but it wasn’t a trick,” He lifts a finger to point at you, annoyingly smug about his retort. “I think you insist on saying there wasn’t a choice to make because you don’t like accepting the choice made, wife.”

“Your mother worshiped the Goddess of death and you still insist she was good and pure?” The Viking woman sneers, fingers toying with the carved statue of your Goddess.

“My mother worshiped Despoina, there’s a difference. The God of death is Thanatos. Despoina, she is the Queen of the Underworld.” You reply cautiously, because you know she has to know the difference, and you have the strange feeling of walking into a trap. Eventually, eyeing Sieghild with a smirk when she purses her lips, you press, “What. You surely have something to say about that.”

She shrugs, reaching for her ale and drinking before replying, “Our queens are not usually married to their captors.”

“He gave her a crown in exchange for her hand. Would you refuse?” You scoff back, as if the answer should be as clear to her as it is to you. “Hades offered her himself and his kingdom, Sieghild. A king and his reign are no small bride price.”

She starts to show a smile that tells you that in her own language of runes and one-eyed Gods she sees a deeper meaning to your answer. When you were a child you would almost fear her tales of tortured Gods and strange creatures, but now you see in those tales of fall and triumph the same honor and the same glory that Sieghild sees in them, and you delight in talking with her about her Gods and your own.

“In your Godddess’ place, would you want a king or a kingdom, little one?” She teases, and you take a sip of your wine with a smile on your lips.

“Are we not talking of the Gods?”

“Humor me.”

After a moment of consideration, you offer, “A kingdom would limit me. A king would offer me countless kingdoms if I so wanted.”

The Viking laughs, in that way of hers that speaks of a life of freedoms women in your home could never dream of, green eyes piercing on yours when she asks darkly, “And you still believe Kore was stolen?”

Unable to hold back the anger born out of uncertainty, you snap, “Since when are you so certain of the stories of my Gods, Viking?”

Ivar offers a smile, surprisingly enough not a smug or a taunting one, and instead one that is almost tender.

He considers you, head titled to the side, before he states, “I wasn’t talking about any Gods.”

And you’re face to face with too many truths for you to breathe easy, so you clear your throat and return your eyes and attention to your work.

“Willow should help with the pain, as it did last time.” You tell him instead, gathering the small vial of dark liquid and almost cringing at what you remember to be the most bitter drink you ever tasted. You hand it to Ivar, who surprises you by not arguing and downing the awful-tasting tisane in one gulp.

As you return to your small table to gather rolls of thick linen and the mixture you’ve known by heart for a while, Ivar lays down on the bed, but he is far from willing to succumb to the pain or sleep, and watches you raptly as you move about.

His eyes narrow at the things you bring with you to the bed.

“And what is that for?”

“Salves and presses always work best, especially with injuries like these,” You explain simply, noting the way he immediately sets to argue and rushing to insist, “I want to help, and you have no reason not to let me,” You state, unwavering. For emphasis, you raise your chin and remind him, “I’m the best healer in Kattegat.”

“I didn’t marry you because you were a healer, I don’t need your help.”

“I could argue once again that there ought to be a reason why the woman you married is a gifted healer, but I know it would be pointless, since our marriage was fated by the Gods only when it’s convenient to you,” You point out, the slightest tone of tease in your voice, “Instead, consider this from my perspective.”

Ivar’s chest expands in a slow breath, but he bites, “Which is?”

“That the man I love is in pain, and I know how to help.”

“You already gave me the…the tisane that worked last. It is done with,” He offers, the tell of irritation and anger at being put on the spot like this clear in his tone as he speaks, “You don’t have to…touch them, or s-see them.”

“Ivar…”

I didn’t want you to…to see. Thought I could make you forget. He told you once, the mark of pain heavy on his stance and his expression, and an uncharacteristic resignation lacing his voice.

It surprises you, even though you know you should know him better than to expect any different, that a part of him, however quietened in these months of faint moments of pain and scarce episodes of what he perceives as weakness, still tries to keep his condition from you.

You know that rationally Ivar knows he can’t exactly hide it from you. From the way he walks, to the very clear tell of the blue hue of his eyes, there’s not much he could ever do to keep you from noticing.

But he admitted to it himself, to wanting to keep you from noticing the graver problems with his legs, to wanting to hide from you the way sometimes the pain gets to be too much to bear. In these last few days, it has become more and more apparent, with him adverting his gaze when you mention the blue tone of his eyes; refusing to let you see him bare even if he has seen you countless times since you’ve crossed that barrier days ago; and even now, after everything, not letting you do the one thing you’ve been taught to do all your life.

“You know you don’t have to,” He tells you, looking pointedly over your shoulder, refusing to meet your gaze but still too stubborn to lower his eyes. “J-Just leave it be, it will heal, everything will be n-normal soon, and I-…”

You interrupt him with a soft call of his name, silencing his protests and making his eyes finally meet yours. Your chest pulls tight at the apprehension and the uncertainty you see written in them, but you do not falter.

“Trust me?” Is all you ask, voice quiet and eyes set unwaveringly on him. Your stomach tightens as you watch the conflict in his expression, and pale blue eyes search yours looking for something you aren’t sure he finds because you don’t know what it is.

Eventually, Ivar takes a breath, a breath that you think was supposed to be a deep breath but sounds only shaky and sharp, and nods his head. You exhale slowly, knowing what it means that he allows you this, that he trusts you with this, and move further down on the bed so you sit on your side next to the length of his legs, your own folded underneath you.

You need only lift the left leg of the pants a little over his knee, but Ivar tenses and coils his body tight as if you are baring him of any armor. In a way, maybe you are.

Hands carefully folded over his stomach, you catch a glimpse of a tremble in them before he tightens his hold on his own fingers, knuckles white and the trembling once again under careful control. You spare only a glance, before completely focusing on his exposed leg.

It is frailly thin, though you didn’t really expect any different, and it looks knobby and bears many scars, some deeper than others.

You linger on the badly-set bone that has long since healed in a bad position, and wonder how long it has been since a proper healer has tended to a fracture like this. Still, the latest of the breaks has been properly set and the linen put around it seems strong enough.

You take it off trying to move Ivar’s leg as little as possible, and think what kind of cast the men and women that have taught you to be a healer would use for this, wondering what improvements or changes they would make to work around the braces Ivar wears, that you know are not made with comfort for a broken bone in mind.

“T-Talk,” Ivar orders gruffly, startling you from your work on the comfrey and the ganglong you are so lucky to have found all the way in Scandinavia. You lift your head to look at him, but Ivar doesn’t meet your eyes, looking intently at the ceiling. At your silence, he insists, “It is never good when you’re quiet. Talk.”

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“Are you in a lot of pain?”

“I said talk, not ask questions.” He replies shortly, clear tell of gritted teeth in his voice. You don’t know if because of annoyance or pain, but you are smart enough to figure that it is best not to ask.

“Well,” You mumble, blinking a couple of times before you find something to say, “I once was mentored by a man that could know where a bone had been merely splintered with but a touch. I am…not nearly as proficient yet,” You smile slightly at the memory. He was from so far East that the people that traveled with you used to whisper he was from another Empire, and he had strict ways but he was a good teacher. You continue, “I’m using a plant he taught me to work with. Helps with healing, and with swelling. Not so much with pain. Comfrey helps with that,” You recall another memory and chuckle to yourself as you press the salve onto Ivar’s cold skin, and continue, “I…I was taught comfrey is incredibly useful when healing broken bones when I just started working as a healer, and I was still young, and…careless. Once, my mother was badly hurt in a battle. She had some of her ribs badly bruised, and was also nicked by a spear. They wrapped her torso with treatment for her wound before her bones, of course,” You mention, wrapping the press of herbs with a linen around Ivar’s shin. You are careful not to jostle the leg too much in fear of causing him further pain, but he doesn’t complain, and you continue, “And I was, uh, I was really worried about her ribs, so I made her an infusion using comfrey. Turns out, comfrey isn’t very safe for people to…consume. Sieghild was awfully sick for more than a week, threatened to poison my food as retribution for almost a month,” You fasten the cast he had before once again around the thin calf, and your voice turns wistful when you finish, “And she never let me forget it. Every time I made her an infusion, she would make me list the ingredients I used for it.”

You finish your work and after rolling the leg of the pant back down, you move the warm blankets and furs to cover both his legs and yours.

You look back up at Ivar, moving up on the bed so you are almost level with his face, and for as long as he needs to, you lay there, eyes on his and comfortably close even if a part of you grows anxious and searches desperately for something to say to make him lose the cautious and almost afraid edge.

His hand first settles on your wrist, lingering for a few beats before it moves up to grasp at your fingers, and you squeeze back without hesitation, lifting your joined hands to press a kiss against his knuckles, smiling up at him.

The warm specks of a dying sun linger on the room and make it feel somehow warmer, and smaller, more yours.

“I won’t do anything to the Greeks,” He starts suddenly, startling you. You hadn’t considered he would, if you are honest. Whether that makes you incredibly naïve or it makes him something other than the man that chained you, you don’t know if you want to hear the answer. Ivar takes a breath, the only indication he intends to continue talking before silence reigns between you for a few heartbeats. His voice is quiet but unwavering when he promises, “I love you, and…I know I have to let you leave.”

For a moment, with his voice so strikingly alike what it sounded like the night you told him of the Greeks, where he repeated out loud certainties for you to reassure him of and him to hold on to; you wonder whether he is trying to give you a few certainties of your own.

You try offering a smile that speaks of jest, though you are certain something much more saddened than what you intend is the result.

“They are technically your people too, you know.”

He doesn’t acknowledge your words, looking intently ahead and taking a deep breath before offering,

“You insist it is easy, you insist that…that nothing changed. That I should accept whatever time is left and forget that I promised to allow you to leave me,” His voice grows angrier and angrier the longer he speaks, but when he takes a breath, the anger is overshadowed by something else, and Ivar continues, “It isn’t easy, but I-…sometimes I forget. Sometimes you look happy here, with me, and I…I forget you’re leaving me.”

Your throat feels tight at his words, and your heart beats quickly as if trying to outrun the pain that fills your chest.

At the pain you hear in his voice, a pain you put there, it feels like your heart, no-longer-yours and trying to leave your chest with each of its beats, asks you to admit the shame and the failure and the damnation of I wish I never had to leave.

But you can’t, you can only remain quiet and advert your eyes to the side even if Ivar isn’t even looking in your direction.

“I’m…I’m being torn apart,” He confesses in a breath that shakes past his lips, eyebrows slightly raised as his expression trembles, as his strength crumbles and breaks your heart along with it. “I want to-…Sometimes I forget you are leaving, and I can pretend you won’t have to make a choice, and I am…” You cling to the way his words hang in the air between you, not realizing you lean closer and stall your breathing as if to hear the confession, not realizing until that moment how desperate you are to hear that he feels happy. But he doesn’t say it, shaking his head and returning the hardness to his tone, “But at the same time I need to remind myself that you are going to make a choice, that you will leave, because if I don’t…”

The words hang between you, but you don’t have the courage to ask him to continue, and you also don’t have the words to reply with, so silence too hangs between you soon enough.

Ivar turns on his side with a grunt of pain, and you don’t hesitate to move closer and lift your arm, his head a comfortable weight against your chest and his breaths, though labored and still hinting at a pain you cannot even imagine, familiar and warm against you.

“You should sleep,” You tell him softly, your fingers running through his hair in what you hope is a calming manner. Judging by the way his eyes flutter closed, you dare believe it is. Without thinking, you promise, “I’ll stay with you.”

You intend it to be the promise to remain in this bed for as long as he does, to keep him company and do what you can with your voice and your touch to soothe away the pain; but the moment the words leave your lips it feels like a weight dropped on you, like the reminder of the choice you will have to make.

For a moment, a fragile moment that you barely give time to be before you smother the foolish fantasy away, you pretend this is a promise you can make, and that it can mean forever and not a night.

If Ivar notices your poor choice of words, he doesn’t give it away.

Still, at your silence he speaks out, voice rougher with the pull of sleep, his words a little drawled out.

“If it wasn’t…pomegranates, what is it that keeps her there?”

You know to him they are just tales, but his curiosity for the world that has made you who you are and the Gods you’ll always hold dear to you never ceases to be…endearing, in its own way.

“I don’t know,” You answer truthfully. “This isn’t what we discuss at the temple, this isn’t…this isn’t what we are taught.”

“Were you never curious?”

“I didn’t have time to be. I left Greece when I was still a child, and when I returned…it seemed fitting, that she was truly stolen of a choice.”

“You told me some say she walked into the Underworld.”

“Yet she was still trapped, that part never changes.” You smile sadly, and for a moment when you blink you see warm eyes and olive skin and a sad smile that speaks of a man fully aware of your lies and choosing to love you anyways, choosing to trap you anyways. In that moment, you understand why her story meant comfort to you all your life.

She was the maiden taken forcefully from her home, forced away from her mother and her land; you were a child clutching a wooden statuette of her and watching your birth mother burn, with Sieghild’s rough and unfamiliar hands guiding you on a path away from Greece.

She was the woman forced to marry a man she didn’t love, by deals of the Gods that ruled over her life and by her own mistakes; and you were a monster, a desperate one at that, whispering promises of love in Narses’ ear, earning what you wanted alongside heavy chains to be put on you.

She was queen of a world that was so unlike her, and a wife to a man many called a monster, alone and nostalgic; and you were dragged here by Ivar and told that by the will of his might alone he would make you wife and queen, no matter how much you fought against it.

And…and then she was a woman laughing under a red veil, lips stained with pomegranates and blood, and the winter meant home and love and belonging; and you learned to look into Ivar’s eyes and see a future even when you knew you couldn’t.

Chosen by Persephone, they always called you, since long before your birth. Child of the flower fields of Eleusis, they thought you to be destined to be yet another Hiereia under the warmth of Attica’s sun; they didn’t see the hunger, the heart that belonged elsewhere, they never imagined you to be one destined to delve into another realm to become its queen and never wish to return.

Lost in your thoughts, in your revelations, for so long that you don’t notice the passing of time, you only gauge how long you were lost by the way Ivar’s weight is a little heavier on you; by the way he is relaxed and pliant against you, even if shaken occasionally by a shiver or a tremble of the aftershocks of pain.

“Maybe they don’t tell us about whether or not she had a choice because she didn’t,” You whisper, voice so quiet you barely hear yourself. In the deep rise and fall of his chest, even if still interrupted by the quiet staggering in its pattern due to the pain, you are told he isn’t conscious anymore. Still, you continue your soft caress of the side of his face, and you continue speaking, “Or maybe it’s because she did, and she chose…chose love. Seems awfully selfish, though, doesn’t it?”

Your mother, the mother of sad smiles and a lost war, always told you that between love and duty one must always prevail. Between the earth under our feet and the sky over our heads, between what we must do and what we want to do, we must always choose.

Maybe she was never speaking of her plight, or in some prophetic way of yours, when she told you those things. Maybe she too wondered what temptation truly meant, whether there had been a trick at all; and she was whispering the truth about the Goddess of spring disguised as a warning.

You doze off, your fingers still carefully running through Ivar’s hair and your senses still attuned to him and his pain.

You wake up not because Ivar does, but because you hear something. For a moment, you think it to be him, but as the daze of sleep leaves you, you realize what it is.

The cry of a hawk.

Your blood runs cold, and with shaking hands and a heart that beats furiously in your ears you move your body from under Ivar and walk to the small balcony that overlooks Kattegat.

The sky is darkening, once again too late for a hawk to be hunting. Once again, it is too close, and its cry is too familiar for it to be anything other than Galla’s trusted beast.

You watch with wide eyes as the hawk flies above you, shrill cries piercing your head and your heart.

And a part of you that has been for too long too cowardly to face not the choice, but what the choice you’d make would say about you and who you are; that part of you begs and pleads in that moment.

You plead for more time, but the Gods have granted you time already.

And you once pleaded for a choice to make, and now the Gods demand you make it.

“His name will be Zephyr.”

“Why that name? He isn’t the fastest, or the strongest, out of the winds.” You mention casually, and Galla doesn’t take her eyes of her beast, smiling widely as it takes a piece of meat from her fingers.

“Because Zepyhr brings forth life, opportunity, change,” She chuckles, before knocking her shoulder with yours teasingly, “I may not be as versed as you in the worship of Demeter and Kore, Hiereia, but I know the gift that spring is.”

“And so you hold a special place for the one that brings forth the winds of the spring?”

She shrugs, fearless as she reaches under the hawk’s head and scritches at its feather’s, making it ruffle them and accept her affection. It never ceases to surprise you, how easily the beast has taken to her.

“Zephyr is the one that makes change happen. He is the one that time and time again guides Despoina home.”

You accept her words with a sigh, and reach for the piece of venison on the plate at her side, offering the raw meat to the animal, and smiling when it takes sit, though much more guardedly than when Galla offered the same.

“You hope it can guide us home?”

She chuckles, goes back to petting it, “I know he can.”

You stand there and watch Zephyr circle the longhouse, the cries louder once he sees you standing there. But all you can do is watch.

There was a girl, you don’t think you’ll ever forget her. You saw her first and last while working as a healer in some dusty city near Kufa. You were ambushed during the night, the cavalry of some enemy army broke past the defenses and were nearing the camp.

The hooves of their horses marched wildly over the dry earth, and Sieghild was cursing in her own tongue as she guided you both to the safety the soldiers provided.

But this girl, this thin and frail Arab girl, stood there, not moving, not breathing.

The ground trembled under the enemy’s might, the soldiers around you barked orders and prepared to defend, but she…she stood there, and watched them come.

Like she could keep time frozen in her small hands if she didn’t move, like she could hold on to life for as long as she held her breath.

You called for her. She still didn’t move. You screamed when the horses trampled her. She didn’t move again, and you didn’t even find her body in the aftermath.

And now you stand there in the small balcony, looking at the darkening sky like that wide-eyed girl looked at those incoming horses, frozen like she was.

You hear Zephyr’s call echo through the high skies of Kattegat and it sounds like the hooves of a hundred war horses wildly marching on cold ground.

You told Galla if she was ever to need you to send Zephyr to the skies, and you promised you’d be there. She needs you; they need you, and you promised you’d answer. You are their Anassa, their Hiereia; for the titles you bear and for your mother’s legacy it is your duty to answer their call.

Your hands tighten on the wooden railing, but still you turn your head to gaze into the dim light of your room, Ivar still resting on the bed you share. He trusts you; he loves you, and in another life you wouldn’t have hesitated to promise him forever. You are his wife, the woman he loves; for all the love you have for him you wish that you could be only that.

It was never Stithulf, it was never pomegranates; what forced a choice, what forced a change.

It was spring. From the first of its winds, it was spring what would force you to choose.

You just hoped winter would last.

____ ____ ____

....so yeah, s p r i n g.

What do you think will happen?

I might post 39 on tuesday just out of guilt for ending on a cliffhanger, but we’ll see.

Thank you so so much for reading, please let me 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

#ivar the boneless x reader #ivar x reader #ivar the boneless imagine #ivar the boneless #ivar #νοσταλγία masterlist

104 notes · View notes