#aaaaand had the remaining few killed to save his own life

[cowboys-tshot]

"Ah, the things I do for you..."

She may not have been the real Penelope, but Odysseus certainly wasn't kidding here. The things he will do to return to his wife and son...

[natashasbanner]

Endgame should have been Natasha’s movie. Period. 

And if there was at least one woman on the creative team (screenwriters/directors) I think the narrative of the entire movie would be different. 

*Spoilers ahead*

You have been warned. 

Now I will admit that I am a huge Natasha fan and would like to see her live at any cost but that doesn’t take away from the fact that her death feels empty and purely for shock value alone. Newsflash, if you have to kill off someone to get a reaction out of your audience you need to reassess your script. 

Natasha has never really be given the treatment she deserved. Her character was the second Avenger introduced in the MCU and she’s the first female hero we get to see. She is IMPORTANT. She’s just as much a part of the team as the guys, if not more so because if you all remember correctly, Fury sent her to assess Tony’s ability to fit on the team. They have this rich background to play with and explore but more often than not she’s used as eye candy or Cap’s sidekick. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Russos don’t care about Natasha, or anyone who isn’t Steve for that matter. 

Endgame should have been her time to shine, but of course she gets the ax right before the final showdown. And the writers had the audacity to say that a big funeral would have been a disservice to the character. FUCK YOU!! Yes, she might have started in the shadows, but our girl has come a long way since IM2 and was the only one trying to keep the team together even when everyone else had moved on. 

And you wanna know the worst part, is they’ve been setting her up to take Steve’s place for years. Since the end of Age of Ultron. (Sidenote: Remember when everyone said that was the worst Avengers. Y’all can kiss my ass on that one because Endgame takes that title.) She was his right hand and the voice of reason in Civil War, but no one wanted to listen to her. She wanted to do good and if that meant compromising with the governments of the world, so be it. As long as they were together and kicking ass she was fine. But no. 

If you watch closely in Endgame, she’s not even the focus of her own death scene. When Red Skull appears, she’s shadowed and slightly out of focus, while Clint is crystal clear. God, men are frustrating. If you’re gonna kill her, do it right. But it wasn’t necessary or treated with the respect the character deserved. Which is why everyone is so pissed. 

They could have very easily have centered the movie around her and still have the emotional wrap up they were almost trying too hard to achieve. I watched Endgame for the fifth time tonight and cleaned up the whole plot in my head. 

Here’s how:

The first act remains virtually unchanged. Nat’s still the only one at the compound, doing her best to keep it together and be the leader of what’s left of the team. (What really pisses me off is that once Scott shows up Steve just takes charge again like he hadn’t spent the last five years lying to civilians while she was doing all the work alone. Ridiculous.) 

When it comes time to figure out when and who should go after the stones that’s when shit starts shifting. You’ve gotta be shitting me if you think Nebula didn’t put two and two together or that some of the smartest people in the world in one room couldn’t figure out that maybe there’s an exchange factor for the stone. And she would not keep that info to herself. Yes, she’s new here, but she also spent the last five years helping Nat make sure everything was going smoothly. You expect me to believe she let them go in blind. Horse SHIT!

No, instead of Scott’s “not it”, joke, you have the team have a real talk about the stone. They need it to bring everyone back, but are they willing to lose one of the few they have left for a plan that might not work. Natasha volunteers of course because that’s who she is. She’s put in the work for the last five years, but if her life means bringing back everyone else, she’d do it in a heartbeat. It’s who she is, giving it her all for the greater good. 

But it’s Steve who says it’ll be him. It has to be. The team argues of course, because they can’t lose Captain America, but Steve silences their protests. He always talked about making the sacrifice play and now it’s his turn to step up. He missed his chance at the life he wanted, with Peggy. She’s gone. But everyone else still had a chance at that if they pulled this off. Tony had his family, Nat had the team to lead, etc. He was always the man out of time and it was him who would do this for the team. Nat is the one who goes with him. She still tries to go instead but he won’t have it. They share a heartfelt goodbye and Steve passes the torch so to speak, but she was always the one in charge. And then he goes over the cliff. No gratuitous scene of his brain matter on the rocks. Just his shield in Nat’s hands as the sky goes white. Natasha wakes up with the stone, heartbroken, but determined to see this through. For Steve. 

They rest of the team mourns when Nat returns alone with the shield, but they all agree that Steve would have wanted them to keep moving forward. 

BOOM. The entire theater is in tears. Emotional pay off complete, let’s get to the action. 

They get the stones into the new gauntlet and Bruce still is the one to do the snap and bring everyone back. But it drains the gamma radiation from him leaving him as just Banner once more. (Because me and everyone I’ve talked to irl fucking hates Hulk/Banner and I want that shit reversed). 

Back on track. Clint gets the call from Laura and then Thanos bombs the place. Nat ends up in Steve’s place facing off with Thanos alongside Thor and Tony. She has the shield and is ready for this to be over. Whatever it takes. The fighting is the same and when it comes time to lift the hammer it’s Natasha who does it. The theater still gets that awed silence because literally no one saw that coming. 

But Macenzie, how is Nat worthy, she was an assassin you ask. She was, but ever since Clint brought her in, she’s tried to be better. She’s fought on the good side and been willing to lay down her life to save others. She encompasses what it means to be a hero even if she doesn’t believe so herself. Natasha Romanoff can lift the hammer and we finally get an answer to the question they left hanging in AoU. (I’d really like to see Nat get some lightning armor, but that might be pushing it since it didn’t happen for Cap). 

Boom the plot thickens. And just when you think she can’t take any more, Sam’s voice crackles in her ear. 

“Widow? It’s Sam. Did you miss me?” 

AAAAAND PORTALS!!!! Avengers freaking Assemble around the best Avenger, Natasha and whop some alien ass. And my all female scene is complete it the OG. 

Natasha lives to see Tony die and the audience again gets that emotional character ending. 

The funeral at the end is for both Tony and Steve, they send off a piece of his shield with the arc reactor. AND THE THEATER IS SOBBING!

Nat is the one to take the stones back, because duh and she makes a detour to the moment after Steve decided to give his life for the stone. She tells him they won and that she loves him and they hug. She offers to bring him to the future, but he can’t do that to the current reality. Natasha returns to the future and is seen at the sight of the old compound, looking over blueprints. She’s in charge and the rest of the team rallies around her.

The camera pans to the sky and fades to black. Before the credits role, the music changes to the song they had Peggy and Steve dance to and we see Steve and Peggy finally getting their dance together. 

Credits role. The theater is wrecked. Goodnight. 

But in all seriousness, there are so many better ways to do this movie that actually do the characters justice. 

[ravenwritesstuff]

Wandering Hearts (18/?)

Fandom: Frozen AU. Set after shipwreck but before coronation day. 17th Century. Pairing: Kristanna (Kristoff/Anna) Rating: M (backwards medical practices. weird tension. angsty angst. anna is a badass.) A/N: This chapter is about twice as long as I thought it would be and I have fallen in love with a new TV show (Timeless) so I have been writing garbage smut for that since ain’t nobody getting laid over here aaaaand bye.

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED

[ part one ] [ part two ] [ part three ] [ part four ] [ part five ] [ part six ] [ part seven ] [ part eight ] [ part nine ] [ part ten ] [ part eleven ] [ part twelve ] [ part thirteen ] [ part fourteen ] [ part fifteen ] [ part sixteen ] [ part seventeen ] [ part eighteen ] [ part nineteen ]

The world slows to a stop.

She thinks of the paintings in the palace, all moments of time frozen in one place, and she understands them now. She understands them completely because she cannot move.

She cannot call it panic or terror because it is something deeper than that, something man has not yet named.

For being such a mountain of a man, he makes little sound upon impact. The powdered snow cushions him, embraces him into her cold, stark comfort, but it does little to muffle the cry ripped from her throat.

She needs him to get up. She needs him to get up now, but he does not - so she falls. She will fall for him, she will always fall if it means bringing him to his feet.

Her hands go to his face, leather mittens patting his cheeks. “Bjarg,” she hears the distinct note of panic in her voice. “Bjarg!” It doubles when he does not respond.

It is then that true terror floods her system like a long dry creek in a downpour, quickly filling and escaping over the edges. She blinks back against the excess, tries to focus past the hysteria, to choke back the growing urge to shake him.

Her hands flit over him as if she presses in just the right place, brushes the proper spot on his shoulder, his arm, he would spring up like the jack-in-the-box she had as a child. The only motion he makes however is the shallow, rapid rise and fall of his chest. He is still breathing, a sign of life, but for how long?  

Beads of perspiration dot the pale skin of his face despite the freezing temperature mixing with his blood and smearing it further. It catches in the near week of scruff that has grown along his jaw and cakes itself. Her frantic caresses do nothing to help this. Her mittens are soaking with it and this is not helping. She is not helping. She needs to be helping.

She pulls her eyes away from his face long enough to look around their surroundings. The forest is unfamiliar - deep and wild - but she had noticed the sun on the march into the hollow. She knows now that if she reverses that then perhaps she would manage to find her way home. She also knows that finding the way back is perhaps the very least of her concerns.

She thinks of Bjarg’s reindeer, his sleigh, and she is fairly confident she could figure out how to hook it together, or at least rig together something in a way that could be used to pull him along. She could, but that means leaving him alone and helpless in the woods in the daft hope that she can find her way home - find her way back to him and she knows better than that. She will not offer him as a defenseless sacrifice to the creatures that roam between these trees, man and beast alike.

No.

She will have to move him herself, but first she will attend the cause of the halo of red blooming through the snow beneath his calf. She scrambles, awkward in her thick skirts and heavy cloak, down the length of his body and yanks the scarf from her neck. It is difficult to bend his leg in a way where she can negotiate her scarf around his wound, but she manages. With each pass she pulls it as tightly as she is able. Three times around as she fastens the ends with the best knot she can pull and she hopes it is good enough to slow the life flowing out of him.

That effort alone exhausts her. She is not recovered from her sleeping sickness, from her fever, entirely and she can feel her energy draining with each strain she puts on her body. She does not pay it heed, however. She cannot. Not when the worst of it is about to come.

She returns to the upper half of his body, his face, and cups his cheeks once more. She leans in and presses her forehead to his.

“Wake up.” She whispers. “Please. I need this of you. I need you to wake.”

A moment ago he had been kissing her. She can still taste the metal of his blood and perspiration on her mouth. So how did they end up here?

She feels his rapid breath against her skin, the slickness of his sweat against her face, but he remains unaltered. She squeezes her eyes against the hopelessness that she feels. He had carried her when she had needed him to, but she knows inside that she will struggle to return the favor. Fortunately she does not remember a day that had not been fraught with struggle, but this is a struggle unique indeed. She knows she is not strong enough, but she also knows she will try to be.

She will not fail him.

She cannot.

She stands behind his shoulders and bends. Her hands wriggle through the snow to hook beneath his armpits. She stretches and strains until she manages to lift his broad shoulders off the ground. His head curves back against her abdomen and - gods - he is heavy but she holds strong. She will not drop him.

She staggers back a step, two, and uses the her own slight weight to lever him through the snow. Each inch is a mile, and it is not long before she is winded and trembling. The muscles in her arms and the back scream for relief, but she does not stop because she does not know how to. She does not know how to do anything but survive.

That is how they find her.

She does not hear the crunch of snow beneath their feet. Her breathing is too heavy, her heart beat too thunderous, so when she strains back her neck to pull Bjarg another inch - she startles at the sight of them. Her hands slip and Bjarg slumps down her legs to her feet in an unglorified heap.

“Leave us be. You’ve taken enough already.” She hates how breathless she sounds, how small, but knows there is venom in her voice yet.

Large Leader’s face is grim beneath his thick, graying whiskers. “You will no make it home with him in that state.” His eyes are dark as they shift to where Eerie Blonde stands beside him. “He bleeds still?”

His question stabs, the answer obvious as the red trail that no doubt led the unwanted duo straight to them. Anger, hot enough to sting her eyes, boils up inside of her and she bends to pick Bjarg back up instead of clawing Large Leader’s eyes from their sockets. This is his fault, his fault and the fault of all the other blood-thirsty devils that were in the hollow. She will not tolerate his questions.

“Thank to you.” She grunts as she lifts, every muscle on fire, but still her anger burns hotter and scorches away any fear that may have clipped her tongue.

Large Leader’s mouth presses a grim line. “It was no my blade that did this, meyla.”

“But you did naught to stay the damage. Nadir may have delivered the blow, but it was your silence that made way for it.” Her voice quakes at the memory of stinging injustice. “There is no honor in you.”

Anger flashes hot and glaring in Large Leader’s eyes, but it only makes her glad. She cannot best this man physically, so she uses her words as weapons. The energy of his disgust at her insolence only feeds her strength. She is not afraid of him. She is only afraid for Bjarg.

“Ya speak on what ya canna understand.”

“I speak on blood - your mother tongue and currency.” Her arms tremble and she finished giving them the energy she needs to save for Bjarg’s care. “I am done with your weightless words. Your actions show me plainly the breed of men you are.”

With that she gives a tremendous heave and moves Bjarg an inch, two. She heaves again, increasing her gains. She will do this till she collapses, till her arms rip off at the roots. She will carry him home and she will waste no time or energy on men who have a taste for death.

Her efforts are so concentrated that when an immense mittened hand clamps her bicep it catches her by surprise. Her gaze shoots up and sees Large Leader glaring down at her. For the first moment since he appeared a shiver of fear runs down her spine, but not for herself. If she is to come to consequence for her hard words - what will become of Bjarg?

“What now?” She tries to hold onto her bravado, but her voice trembles. “Have you not done enough already?”

Sadness sinks into Large Leader’s eyes at that, but she does not understand it. Her eyes trace the deep rivers and valleys carved into his weathered skin, searching for meaning, but finds nothing.

“No.” He says then, a foreign softness creeping into the edges of his words. “I have no done enough.”

He releases her arm and she flinches, expecting retribution, but it does not come. Instead Large Leader stoops to one knee and takes Bjarg’s wrist in hand. He hooks one massive shoulder down low to the ground and with a concerted grunt he pulls. Bjarg’s frame lurches from her grip as he is dragged up over the broad shoulders of the older man. Large Leader wraps Bjarg around his neck like a prize kill and with a growl of breath rises to his feet. Despite his age and Bjarg’s size - the action does not seem to strain him and Anna is too stunned at the display to speak for a moment.

“Trygve and I will see ya both delivered home.” He nods to Eerie Blonde where he stands silently watching the whole of the proceedings unfold and Anna assigns the name to him. Trygve. She realizes then that she knows so few names, never asks for them, in hopes that no one will become curious for hers.

Anna looks back to where Bjarg is draped, heavy and seemingly without life, and remembers his charge and request in the hollow: A life to form and shape as he saw fit with no interference. She does not understand the wholeness of his request, but she wonders what he would say if he were awake. Is this interference? It may be, but it is clear that she has little room to argue. She can not so easily divest Large Leader of Bjarg as he did with her.

Instead she squares sore shoulders and summons any bit of royal authority she can muster. “You know the way.”

Large Leader grunts and turns on a step. Anna falls into step behind him. She can sense Trygve behind her, but she does not hear his steps. She does not dwell on that idea. Instead she keeps her eyes on the drops of blood littering the path in front of her, she watches for blood. His blood. Hers.

What if he never wakes?

She knows the answer.

She will run.

She will have no promises to stop her, but somehow the idea brings her breath up short. Her promises to him die only if he does and that is not something she is prepared to face. Whenever she had pictured running, she had always left him to a brighter path. To live in a world where he does not exist, to leave and know that she alone will mourn him, had never crossed her mind.

Until now.

Until this path where she follows his blood.

Large Leader’s steps are solid and sure. His pace is steady, and before the hour is out they break into the clearing that holds their home. She has not cried yet, not one tear, but sight of the humble cabin with its sod roof floods her eyes with emotion.

This is home. She knows it now, feels it, can almost laugh at the idea that she is just now realizing this when it could be stripped away from her at any moment.

The men stop in front of the door. She opens it. They all step inside. It is unchanged from the way they had left it only a few short hours before, the fire still burning, but somehow everything is different.

Large Leader takes Bjarg to the bed and deposits him there. Anna thinks it strange to see him laying on the bed that had become hers, stranger still with the company. She does not have time to linger on the strangeness because in that moment for Trygve draws his sword.

She freezes in horror. How had she been so foolish? They would not murder them in the woods, not in the open where others could see, but they would do so now. She backs away, hand going to her pocket where her dagger dwells and grasps the handle. She yanks it forth, tearing her skirt, the same moment as Trygve strides past her and plunges the end of his blade into the hot coals of her hearth.

She blinks, breath coming in hard pants, and meets Trygve’s small, dark eyes in disbelief. If his sword was not meant for attack, then…?

“He bleeds, still.” Trygve says, and she still does not understand. “What have ya as far as spirits?”

She keeps her dagger in hand, not moving from her place. “Ale. Akvavit.”

“Akvavit will do.” Trygve says and she sees Large Leader nod out of the corner of her eye.

“For what purpose?”

Trygve brows crease as he looks at her as though she is the one who is difficult to understand, as if she were the one demanding things from his home without explanation.

“To balance the scales.” His sharp, dark eyes narrow - examining her. “Do ya no believe in restitution where yer from?”

She does not appreciate his scrutiny, the way he looks at her like something to be figured out. She much prefers dismissal and scorn to curiosity. She wants Ketil’s blustering, Alva’s amusement, Bjarg’s silence - not Trygve’s interest.

“Where I’m from we believe in solving problems without blows.” She raises her chin to hide her apprehension. She had once read that predators can smell fear and she is fairly certain the concept applies here as well.

Trygve almost smiles at her show, the corners of his mouth tightening. “Where yer from - do they let men die in their beds to spite the ones who carried them?”

She looks to where Bjarg lies. Even with the warm light of the half dead fire his skin is sallow and while she does not trust these men, cannot imagine what it would mean to trust these men, she will do anything to save Bjarg. Anything. Even trust the untrustable.

She looks from Trygve to Large Leader to Bjarg and she hopes against all hope that this is the right thing.

“The akvavit is in the jugs on the top shelf there.” She points with her blade to the pantry shelves in the corner at the foot of the bed. She knows her weapon brings no fear to these men, but it brings comfort to her and that is enough.

Trygve follows her direction. She watches his white blonde hair as he pulls down the specified pottery and thinks of Elsa. What would she say if she could see her sister now? What would she do if she knew that her sister had chosen this life instead of one of comfort and confinement? What would she say if she knew that Anna had not chosen her?

The thought alone is enough to bring Anna to her knees, but she remains standing. This choice, this life, will not break her. She will not allow it.

Trygve nods to the shelves on the opposing wall and Large Leader seems to know what he is indicating. Seeing the grizzled man, the lithe blonde linger in spaces that had only ever been hers and Bjarg’s gives her pause. It feels wrong and perhaps there is a benefit to Bjarg being unconscious as she grows more and more certain that he would not approve of any of this.

Large Leader takes a large shallow bowl from the shelf, one that she has used for cleaning vegetables fresh from the garden, and the stack of dish rags she kept there and meets Trygve by the bed. She watches, uncertain, from her place across the room. They twist and turn Bjarg’s head as he lays at an awkward angle, unable to aid or resist them.

She watches as Large Leader maneuvers Bjarg’s head over the bowl off the side of the bed in such a way that Trygve is able to pour the akvavit over the place that Nadir’s stone had broken. The bloody runoff catches in the bowl where Large Leader had placed it on the ground. Trygve’s hands are slim and strangely elegant as they move around Bjarg’s wound, cleaning it with both rag and akvavit, as Large Leader holds Bjarg in a way that benefits his partner.

She watches as the two rough men work in tandem in a way that bespeaks tradition, partnership. They have done this before, but she is not certain that is a comfort. For all she has grown accustomed to this hard world there are a dozen things she does not understand.

When they have poured what seems to be the entire contents of the jug over Bjarg’s head, they replace him on the bed. Large Leader takes the bowl of ruined akvavit to the door and tosses it to the snow as Trygve wraps Bjarg’s wet head in cloth. When Large Leader rejoins him, they turn Bjarg so that he lays on his back down the length of the bed instead of being skewed off the side. When she sees him this way, she can almost pretend that he is just sleeping.

Trygve is already fumbling with the binding around the wound on Bjarg’s calf, her scarf and bandages, and she wants to stop him. She wants to tell them to leave and not return. She wants to scream at them forever for subscribing to whatever idiocy that had allowed this to come to pass.

“For this we will require yer hands.” It is Large Leader who speaks something not quite a request, not quite a demand, but she still feels a deep sense of unease at crossing the distance between them.

Instead she curls back her top lip, shows her teeth, and asks: “Why?”

She feels power in the question, in the ability to ask it, because while she would do anything to come to Bjarg’s aid she will not simply jump because these men ask her to.

“His bleeding will finish him.” Large Leader says, expression contracting. “I nary want that more than ya do.”

She wants to tell him that he has no right telling her what she wants. She wants to tell him exactly what she does want, how she wishes things could be different, how she is so sick of secrets that she could vomit - but instead she thinks of Alva and what she would do. She considers the steadfast duty she has been shown in relation to this world. To refuse will give him an advantage - would give him reason to question the legitimacy of her binding to Bjarg more than she senses he already does. She will not give him that pleasure. She will not allow him a single reason to laud over her, over them. She will bite and claw and fight against this man with every breath in her lungs, but not if it cost Bjarg a single one of his.

“I care not what you want.” She says with every trembling muscle in her body. “But I will help where I am needed to save him.”

Trygve works while they speak. She sees him push up the leg of Bjarg’s pants to his knee. A deep, seeping wound cut through the thick of his calf, and the sight of it chokes her. Anna realizes then that she has never seen any part of Bjarg’s legs, had never imagined she would, had never thought it would be in this circumstance -

“What would you have me do?” She fixates on the wound, the deep, welling gash that he took for fighting fair, and she can do that too. She can fight fair against the wolves in their home no matter how it cuts at her.

“Hold down his shoulders.” Trygve says.

“If he wakes he will prefer your face to mine.” Large Leader says as he assumes his position at the foot of the bed and takes Bjarg’s ankles in hand.

“And you,” she address Trygve, his strange eyes seeing everything. “What are you to do?”

Trygve looks to where his sword sits in the fire, and Anna understands.

“Oh,” is all she can muster.

Her legs move before her mind bids them, compelled by duty, her brain shutting down as she is unable to consider what comes next. When she reaches them she climbs up on the bed and sits on her knees behind Bjarg’s head. She lays her dagger on one side of him, unable to be bothered to replace it in her torn pocket, and she sees both men track it with their eyes.

“Where did you get that?” Large Leader demands, brow furrowed as he meets her gaze over the length of Bjarg’s body. She is taken aback by the black intensity of his stare.

“It was given to me.” Her hand goes back to the handle instinctively, taking it back in her grip. “He gave it to me.”

Large Leader’s eyes took a dangerous glint. “Did he tell ya from where he received that blade?”

She can feel the energy around them tingle and spark with the weight of his question. She can feel how he is pushing, leaning, but that is not his place.

“What does it matter? It is mine now.” She returns with a question as she maneuvers as she takes the extra effort to replace it in her pocket.

The vehemence in Large Leader’s expression makes her wish she had just done that in the first place.

“Tread lightly, meyla.” He says. “You stand on thin ice.”

She realizes in that moment that she hate him, this Large Leader. She hates him for what she has suffered at his hand, what Bjarg has suffered, and his imperious nature. She hates him for not balancing the scales the moment Nadir produced a knife. She hates him because she knows Bjarg hates him, and that alone is enough reason to hate him in her own stead. So she pulls a deep breath to steady her rattling heart, squares her shoulders, and draws on as much of her royal pedigree as she can.

“I tread where I will. I stand where I want.” She feels her voice try to waver, but she holds it steady. “And where I go I go with honor.”

Large Leader’s face turns a vicious shade of red at her defiance but somewhere inside she accepts it. If Bjarg is to die this day, she may as well go too. It is then that she realizes she fears a life without him more than she fears having no life at all and that revelation alone sends ice and fire through her entire body.

Someone clears a throat and she remembers Trygve in that moment. She blinks, expanding her world again past the narrow spectrum of Bjarg and Large Leader to the reality in which the live in that moment.

“It is time.” Trygve says, and Large Leader jerks a nod. His glower does not lessen, does not move its focus from her face, but his thick hands grab Bjarg’s ankles and she understands her role.

She presses the flats of her hands against Bjarg’s shoulders where he lies. His head stays nestled in her skirts between her thighs and she cradles it there with the slightest of pressure. His soaked hair has seeped through the towels, dampening her skirts, but she does not mind. All that matters is that he is here, and close, and alive. All that matters is that he stays that way.

She sees Trygve take his sword from the fire, wrapping his hand in cloth before he grips the handle, and come to the bedside. She sucks in a breath, unprepared for this.

The flat of his blade smokes from the heat and the idea of it touching Bjarg is unthinkable. She turns her gaze to his pale face instead. It is still smeared with blood and grime. The scruff along his jawline takes on strange shades of blush and coral. If she had a free hand, a spare moment, she would clean it away. No man deserved to battle death with a dirty face, and yet he is doing just that.

Fight. She thinks, willing him to hear her silent plea. Fight your way back to me.

“Hold tight.” Trygve warns in his own tight voiced way, like it costs him something each time he speaks a word, and Anna presses down harder.

She does not watch. Cannot. She hears Trygve move, hears a disgusting sizzle, smells the sickening sweet char of burning flesh and her stomach turns. She has smelled this before coming from her own body. These men had laid upon her the same curse only days before and she cannot bear the smell without her own body recoiling.

Beneath her palms, she feels him shift. A choked groan gurgles out of his throat. His eyelids flutter and her heart leaps in mingled joy and panic at the sight.

“He wakes!” She looks up frantically at Large Leader, doing her best to avoid watching Trygve work. “He wakes.”

“Hold steady.” Large Leader says, his broad shoulders locking and she knows what she must do but does not know how she will do it.

She looks down at Bjarg’s face and pushes down hard on his shoulders. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Trygve shift, the smell of burning intensifying, and Bjarg’s eyes fly open. His pupils are black holes, blown out and wild, sucking her in - swallowing her whole - and she can feel his pain. She can taste it in her mouth as she feels every muscle beneath her hands turn to iron and agony.

“Hold him!” Large Leader’s voice sounds far away, and she does her best, but she is falling headfirst into his gaze.

She has never seen this before - the fullness of his suffering - and it weakens her. Her presence in his world caused this, and her arms shake. There is a clang of metal against stone and she thinks it may be over, that she perhaps this trial has passed, but she is wrong. She looks up in time to see Large Leader pull Bjarg’s leg to the side, for Trygve take the akvavit, and pour it over the seared wound.

A thick, guttural cry rips from Bjarg’s chest as his spine snaps tight, neck whipping back, his body bowed against the pain. Each line of his face is pulled hard under unrelenting torment. She wants to smooth those lines, to push back the hair matted to his forehead, but she doesn’t dare because he begins to thrash. She knows that if he had been at full strength there would be no hope of restraining him, but in his weakened, pain-riddled state, they manage to keep him still enough for Trygve to finish.

“Easy.” She finds herself whispering, pleading. “Lay easy, now,” but she can see the panic in his eyes - the confusion - and there is no use.

It is not until Trygve binds one of her dish cloths around his work and he is released that his struggles lessen. Bjarg lays still, chest rising and falling on rough, deep breaths, and she knows the pain is still there despite the treatment being finished. Her hands shake as they come off of his shoulders to touch his face. She ghosts the tips of her fingers across his brow, along his cheekbones, careful to not press into and bruise or cut.

“It’s over now.” She whispers, cradling his face in her hands, between her knees. “They have finished.”

His eyes come open again as she speaks, and the darkness there is different this time. It is not from pain - but from anger. The anger, however, is not directed at her. Her eyes go up to where Trygve and Large Leader stay at the foot of the bed setting right the items they’d implemented.

Bjarg struggles up to sit, hissing breath in through his teeth, before she can stop him - help him. The cloth that had wrapped his head falls away onto her lap. She grasps it and tucks it into her waistband.

She cannot see his face, but she knows what she would see if she could.

“Get out.” Bjarg rasps, voice besotted with strain and confusion, body wavering a bit with the effort to stay sitting up. “You are not welcome here.”

“There was a demand for balance.” Large Leader’s voice takes a hard edge. “The demand has been met.”

Bjarg snorts. “This balances nothing.”

“Trygve is witness. We righted the wrongs done to ya in the sacred woods and hollow.”

“Better to have let me die.” Bjarg shakes, his body exhausted and taxed beyond itself. “Better to die than to owe you a single breath.”

“Ya owe me every breath, mǫgr.”

“I owe you nothing.”

“If I hadn’t come - ya two would still be in the woods. Ya frozen to death. Her - lost, alone.” Large Leader points a finger towards her and she looks away, uncomfortable. “Think of yer wife.”

“As you thought of yours?” Bjarg’s words are strong and scathing even as she can see him struggle to remain sitting upright. “Do not come into my home and speak of wives, hrafnasueltir.”

She’d read that word before in her studies of the old tongue. Hrafnasueltir - a raven starver, but she never could have understood the weight of it until she sees it thrown. Large Leader practically staggers at the curse - face turning near purple with rage - and Anna thinks he may kill them both.

Large Leader’s voice is low and dark. “The hollow demands justice - balance.”

“It demands suffering and blood and you bow to it as the coward you are.” She can hear the strain in Bjarg’s words, his exhaustion and resolve to fight against it. “But I will not.”

“Kristoff -” Large Leader starts and she thinks how strange it is to hear his given name, how peculiar when she has come to think of him by another name.

“Out.” He stops the older man. “Whatever you have to say I will not hear it. My weregild is my honor, my right, to charge you now to leave my home without another word.”

Large Leader looks as if he has more to say, but Trygve places a hand on his arm as if to warn him against continuing. They all hold for a moment, vehemency potent in the air, and she can feel the poison of it burn her lungs. Then, on a giant inhale as if he needs to hold the hatred in the air inside of himself, Large Leader turns and leaves. Trygve follows without so much as a look behind.

Once they are gone, Bjarg nearly collapses back onto the bed. His entire frame shudders. She is up like a shot, fetching pelts and blankets to cover him. She goes to the door and closes, latches, and bars it - anything to keep the cold air at bay. She stokes the fire till it blazes hot enough to make her sweat. She takes a cup and fills it with water from the barrel and brings it to him to drink. He sits up just enough that she is able to help him take deep, thirsty swallows. He coughs a bit, but finishes it all before falling back on the bed with a sigh.

She sets aside the cup and takes the cloth that had been tied to his head from her waistband. It is damp still from akvavit and she raises it to his face. With slow, gentle drags she wipes his face. She cannot quite rid his beard from the stains of blood and grime, but by the time she is finished he is much improved.

With fingers as delicate as butterfly wings, she presses his hair back from his forehead. She has never touched his hair before, never felt the thickness of each strand against her fingers, and she wishes she could wash it for him as she had washed his face. If they were in the palace she would have them prepare a bath for him after the doctor had treated him. She would dismiss the servants after the water was delivered and help him herself. She’d use the soap her father had used in his washing - the spiced kind that left him smelling warm and exotic - and she would scrub every last dreg of effort and misery from his locks. She would use the finest linens to dry his hair and combed it through with balm, but they are not at the palace. They are in their home, and somehow despite its lack of resource she knows it is better.

He turns his face to look at her.

“Rest.” She strokes her hand along the side of his face. He leans into it. “You have done enough today.”

“I am cold.” His eyes are unfocused and glassy - the skin of his face clammy.

“Another pelt then. A blanket.” She turns to fetch them when his voice stops her.

“No.”

She looks back to him. “What then?”

“Come to me.” His voice is low and far away, already halfway returned to that place the mind goes in sleep, and though she does not understand the fullness of his comment she feels her body grow flustered.

“How? How would you have me?” She asks, heart in her throat.

“Here,” he sidles his body over with obvious effort, making room, turning so his cut leg is on top and opening his arms. “Here is how I will have you.”

His eyes are still closed. She knows he is delirious from his wounds, from the toll his body took on this day, but she remembers how he kissed her in the hollow - on the path - and she thinks perhaps this is more than the delirium. She thinks, perhaps, because of this she should not indulge him - that it will mean too much. She thinks, perhaps, to do so would be cruel and unfair to take advantage of his confusion but then his eyes open just a fraction and meet hers.

“Please.” Is all he says, and that is all it takes.

There are things to accomplish. She should check the animals, keep the fire, cook something warm and sustaining for them to eat, clean bandages, find a way to recreate the healing paste he had made to mend her hand, but all of that fades to nothing in the light of his request. Carefully, oh so carefully, she climbs into this bed, her bed that has always been his. It is not wide enough for the two of them to lay shoulder to shoulder so she hesitantly climbs beneath the blankets and curls her body on its side as he has done - facing away.

His arm loops her waist then and pulls her tight against his frame. In an instant she is reminded of the ride to Arendelle not two week before and how he’d held her while they slept though this is different. She gasps to feel his face press into the skin of her neck, to feel his breath tingle across her sensitive skin, but she does not resist. Instead she melts into it, allowing it - not knowing when it will be allowed again - and lets her heat melt into him this time.

She will warm him.

She will do what she can to keep him safe.

Because, she begins to realize as she feels the rhythm of his breath against her back, her neck that, she may love him and she does not know what else to do.

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