#hey but women in the army aren't forced to have short hair so they're all hypocrites.

[kebriones]

The fact that you have to cut your hair in the army as a man is so stupid, like, my brother has waist length hair, it would be such a waste to shave it all off when his enlistment delay ends. Like, if he was in the army 200 years ago he would be rocking these locks in battle, why are we doing this?? Somehow this too is the fault of the west.

[imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl]

Unexpected Places (Pt. 03 of 11)

Pairing: Ivar the Boneless X Reader/Bjorn X Reader

Word count: 3 K

Summary: As a princess, you've lived in a golden cage all your life, always a piece on someone else's game. But everything changed when the Norsemen came crushing down on Wessex, like waves in a violent storm. Their king spared your life and decided to take you with him to his kingdom, in what felt more like a rescue than a kidnapping. There, you were not only confronted with a completely different culture and lifestyle, but also with two of his sons. The oldest one has his eyes set on you, but it's the youngest one, Ivar, who gets who claimed your attention since the first sight. And he seems to have an unnamed interest in you. Of course you hoped whatever that was would pass, but when unexpected feelings start to flow a different way, things begin to change.

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{Vikings Masterlist}

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Icy Blue Eyes

For the first time in your life, you're wearing pants. And you don't feel less of a woman because of it, as they used to say in Wessex. Your upperbody is protected by a leather vest, Aslaug's idea since she doesn't like the idea of you trying to learn how to fight. You feel a little badass though, dressed like this, with your hair all braided up, away from your face. Hvitserk is already waiting for you, laughing at something this guy said. When he sees you, he quickly dismisses him, making his way to the middle of the open area.

“You look good. Ready to have your ass kicked a couple of times?” He says, a bright smile on his lips. He's having too much fun, but you must cut that off before you get badly hurt.

“Hvitserk, you gotta go easy on me, alright?” Raising both your hands at him, you tilt your head at the small deck behind you, where Aslaug will be. “Aslaug told me to pass it on to you that if you hurt me today, she'll wipe the floor with your face.”

He squints his eyes at you, taking a quick look at the deck. “Did she really–”

“No.” You burst out, giggling. “But really, I'm not used to it and I'm nowhere as strong as the women here so...” A man comes and hands both you and Hvitserk a sword and a shield before moving away. “Don't beat me up.”

“First of all, I was joking.” He starts, suddenly taking your sword away and throwing it on the ground. “Let's begin with some basic defense. I'll attack you, and you'll have to block me with the shield. It'll help you understand the amount of strength you'll need and how to avoid being cut down to pieces, alright?”

“Alright.” Fixing the shield on your arm, you hold it with both hands, keeping it in front of your body.

“I'll attack you from different directions so pay attention.”

“Alright.” When he starts to pace around, you do the same. You're on full alert, your eyes on the arm he's holding the sword. It doesn't take much time until he moves, bring the metal down on you. Thankfully, you think fast enough to lift the shield to protect your head, and the impact isn't as strong as you were expecting, so you managed to stay your ground. Hvitserk is holding back, obviously, and you're grateful he's being gentle.

“Good. You're fast.” He exclaims, and you giggle when you pull the shield down, staring at him. “I'll strike harder on each blow, alright? So keep in mind the next one will be worse. Protect your head and sides.”

Nodding, you're soon attacked many times. And he wasn't joking about that. Every hit is harder than the last, and you have to alternate between your skull and torso since the blows come from different angles. It doesn't take much until you start being pushed backward, and for some reason it makes you laugh.

Never in your life, you thought you'd be doing something like this. In a place like this, with people like this. They aren't mindless monsters, they're just people. They laugh, and love, and care about others. And, God, they live. They yell, and run, and fight. They're not restricted by some stupid made up rules. For you, right now, this is what means to be a Viking. To be free to do what you want, go where you want, be with who you want.

This is paradise on Earth, it doesn't matter how weird things still look in your eyes. As Hvitserk hits again, making you stumble back, a laugh escapes your lips as you realize you won't ever go back. Not even if Aethelwulf sent an army to rescue you. You wouldn't even consider it.

“Everything alright over there?” Hvitserk asks, and, still laughing, you lower the shield so he can see your face. He looks very confused but smiles anyway.

“Yeah, it's just...” Gasping, you shrug your shoulders. “This is crazy, you know? This is freedom. I'm doing this because I want to and if I want to stop, I will. And nobody will come and say I should or shouldn't do it.” Running a hand through your hair, you push some loose strands away from your face. “I feel great. My arm already hurts, but I feel–” You're cut short by another blow, quickly raising the shield again to block it. And another laugh escapes. “Shit, that was tough.” Regaining your balance, you mutter.

“Your reflexes are very–”

“This is not how you do it, little brother.” Bjorn's voice cuts in, and both you and Hvitserk turn to look at him. “If you want to teach her, do it properly.” He quickly takes a sword, walking fast over you. “Focus on your legs. Stand your ground.” He's barely even done speaking when the sword comes crashing down.

The same moment you raise the shield, his sword connects with the wood. But it's way too strong, and you're caught by surprise. You feel the shield slipping and hitting your head as you stumble down, falling on your ass. Using one arm to sustain the seated position, you close your eyes tight when you feel like the whole world is spinning insanely fast, and you feel what can only be blood flowing out. Throwing the shield away, you feel arms around you, and a voice slowly breaking into your head.

“(Y/N), talk to me. Hey.” A snap makes you open your eyes again, finding Hvitserk crouching before you. “There you are. Can you stand up?”

“Yeah.” You notice some people gathering around, so, despite the headache and the dizziness, you push yourself up, holding onto his arm for support.

“(Y/N), I didn't mean to–”

“To crack my head open? Yeah, I bet.” Cutting him off, you give Bjorn a look, raising a hand at him when he tries to approach, making him stop.

“Let's get you some water.” Hvitserk guides you away from the crowd, to a half construction near the deck. Lucky for Bjorn Aslaug isn't here yet, or else you're sure she'd lash out at him.

“That was certainly a show.” The voice makes you roll your eyes, and it shoots a sharp pain through your skull. Ivar's giggle makes you even angrier, but you can deal with it later.

He's seated on a piece of wood right beside the table with some buckets filled with water. “Here.” Hvitserk gives you a cup and you take a few sips from it. “I'll get something to clean the blood. Are you alright standing on your own?”

“I'm fine.” Nodding, you watch as he quickly disappears behind a corner, putting the cup down, and closing your eyes when you feel dizzy again. Using the table as a support, you feel your body falling, unable to sustain its weight.

You're ready to collapse on the floor when you feel hands grabbing you, tightly holding your waist. It takes a while until you notice it's Ivar, and when you use his shoulders to support yourself, your face ends up too close to his, close enough to feel his breath. His eyes, ice blue, in a shade you didn't even know existed, burn right through you, and... It takes you by surprise how Ivar doesn't push you away, violently, as you were expecting. Instead, it feels like everything slows down, and you stay there, balance regained, but his hands still holding you.

“Everything alright?” Hvitserk's voice snaps you out of it, and you awkwardly step away from Ivar, moving towards the table.

“Yeah, I'm alright.” Nodding you watch as he damps the small piece of fabric on one of the buckets before starting to clean up the blood. But when he starts to get closer to the wound, you start moving away. “Ouch!”

“Stop flinching.” He tells you.

“Yeah, stop flinching,” Ivar repeats, and you feel his hand on the small of your back, forcing you to stand still.

Roling your eyes before closing them, you decide to ignore it for now. But what you just can't ignore is how his touch burns, making itself known, felt, it doesn't matter how hard you try to pretend he's not there. It takes way too much time until Hvitserk is done, putting the fabric down and giving a better look at the wound.

“Well, it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but–”

“What happened?” Aslaug comes out of nowhere, pushing Hvitserk away and cupping your face, angry eyes scanning through the injury.

“Bjorn showed up.” He answers as you use the table to balance yourself when you feel dizzy once more. “He hit her so hard that the shield went right to her head.”

“He will listen to me. Come. You need to lie down.”

You were going to just walk, but the moment you move away from the table you feel yourself falling again, so you grab Hvitserk's arm, and you don't even have to ask him, he puts an arm around your waist to help you get moving again.

It still takes you by surprise to know Aslaug actually likes you. She makes her slaves have this patch made with some herbs to help the healing process and forces you to stay in bed for a while. The headache makes it easy to just do as she says.

The bad part is that there's pretty much only one thing in your head, and it's not how pissed you are at Bjorn. It's Ivar. Maybe the hit on your head is driving you crazy after all, but you swear he was... Different. Not anger as he usually seems. It takes two days until the headache starts to surrender, and you decide to spend another one in the calmness of your bedroom with no company other than Aslaug, who's often talking about her husband and their issues, or Hvtiserk, who comes to check on you at least once a day. He started to teach you to play Hnefatafl, and you soon learned your way around the game, even beating him a couple of times. The only reason why Bjorn hasn't come is that the Queen forbade him, and you don't mind that at all. He's the last person you want to see right now.

But then, it's time to finally leave the bedroom, only the ghost of the pain hovers over. It's almost time for dinner, and you're already hungry. Walking through the place, you find Hvitserk and Ubbe chatting, and they both look up from their drinks when they see you.

“Look who decided to show up,” Ubbe exclaims. “Feeling better?”

“Very much. I really enjoy walking without feeling dizzy.” Moving to the table, one that hangs from the ceiling by four sets of chains, you take a cup and the jar, pouring some drink for yourself before passing it to the guys. “Actually, I kinda need to steal your brother for a while, Ubbe. I need to talk about something.” Carefully not to make anything fall, you push yourself up, seating on the table and feeling as it softly swings.

“It's alright. Gotta get some stuff done before supper anyways.” Ubbe sighs and gets up, taking long sips straight from the jar. Then, he gives the now empty thing to his brother and leaves.

“So.” You start, taking a deep breath. “Take a chair and sit here.” Moving further to the center of the table, you tap the space on the wood on your left. “The last thing I need is anyone else listening.”

Hvitserk makes a face at you, squinting his eyes before getting to his feet and grabbing a chair, placing it on the place you gestured. “Is it some plan to kill Bjorn?”

“What? No.” Shaking your head, you suddenly realize what you're about to say. And for a moment you reconsider. But if you don't get this out, it'll keep annoying you. And Hvitserk will probably say you're getting everything wrong, so you'll let it go. “It's not about Ragnar's oldest son... It's about the youngest.” Lowering your voice, you stare at him, taking in the low giggle as he looks down at his hands.

“I knew it.”

“No, you didn't. Now shut up and listen.” Moving to playfully punch his arm, the table swings. Hvitserk nods with a dramatic eye-roll, holding the piece of wood to make it stop. “I... May be going crazy, but when you left me with Ivar that day, I felt dizzy and almost fell.” Looking down at your cup, you drum your fingers on the top of it. “And, I don't know, it felt... Weird.” The memory comes back, and for a moment you can feel his hands again, around your waist.

“Define weird.”

“A good kind of weird.” You mutter, drinking what's left and putting it down beside you. “He looked at me, and damn it, Hvitserk, it didn't felt like he hated me or something.” Whispering, you lean closer to him. “I've been trying not to think about it, but I that's everything I think about. Am I crazy?”

Hvitserk seems thoughtful for a while, and when you're just about to ask him to say something, he looks up at you. “Ivar's normal behavior would be to let you fall. Then he'd laugh.”

“Well, I didn't fall and he didn't laugh. So.”

“I don't know.” He shrugs his shoulders. “He hasn't mentioned you to me yet, which is a surprise by itself. I was expecting him to give me a hard time since we're kinda like friends now.”

Good. Neither of you can understand Ivar. “Great. Nobody knows what the hell is going on.”

“Am I getting this wrong or do you like Ivar?” Hvitserk leans backward, crossing his arms and resting his back on the chair.

“No...?” It sounds like a question as you mirror his position, arms crossed. “I mean, he's... Handsome...” Blushing, you look away. “I noticed that I'm not blind. But it doesn't mean I like him.”

“Who is it you like?” The other voice makes you turn to the hall immediately, watching as Bjorn comes from the main hall, pushing the leather curtains away.

Taking a deep breath, you jump to the floor, holding the chains to make the table stop swinging and then fixing everything that you dropped. “What do you want? Try to crack my skull open again?” Hvitserk hands you two cups that fell on his lap.

“I hope you can forgive me.” Bjorn comes over you, standing only a foot away, a hand grabbing one of the chains sustaining the table. “I thought you wanted to learn and–”

“I wanted to know how to defend myself and I was having a good time until you showed up.” Eager to put some distance between you two, you walk around Hvitserk, who's looking down, pretending as if he's not here. “I don't enjoy being hurt.”

“But in a real situation, you'd–”

“It wasn't a real situation, alright?” Running a hand through your hair, you feel your head getting a little worse.

“I'll leave you two to talk,” Hvitserk mutters as he stands up, giving Bjorn a look before disappearing somewhere behind you.

“That was the first time in my life that I got to hold a shield. You can't possibly think I had the strength or ability to deal with a stroke like that.” With both hands on your hip, something gets your attention. Entering the main hall, you see Ivar, standing this time, walking with the aid of a clutch. You don't know why you're biting the inside on your cheek to suppress a smile. Why do you want to smile in the first place?

“It's just that you look like one of us now and I forget that you're a Christian princess.” Bjorn's voice makes you look at him again, but it takes a while for you to bring sense to his words.

There are a lot of things you could say. That it's not about being a princess, or that you're not trying to look like them. But you don't feel like extending this argument. “Alright, Bjorn. I forgive you. Just leave the training to Hvitserk.”

“That's fine by me.” He nods, a small smile on his lips. The truth is that Bjorn didn't do that on purpose, this is just their way, and you're the one who's not used to it yet. So you feel good forgiving him after all.

“Alright.”

“But now, who were you talking about with Hvitserk?”

“Oh, that was just–”

“You two,” Ragnar calls from the main hall. “Come eat.”

You want to hug him for interrupting this conversation, so you immediately follow him, settling down next to the fire. Today it's just Ragnar's family, and at first, you do feel like an intruder. But with time, as they include you in the conversations, you feel better. You even tell a little about yourself, about your life in Wessex. It doesn't take much for you to feel Ivar's eyes on you. You try hard not to look too much, but it's like a freaking battle. Those blue eyes have some kind of power, and it's difficult to resist.

“And so it'll be until the twilight of the gods,” Ubbe says and everyone laughs, but you don't, unable to remember what they were talking about.

“Ragnarok,” Bjorn exclaims.

“Until Ragnarok. That asshole won't be coming back here.” By the tone of his voice, it sounds like there was a fight. Aslaug told you about a man that came into town, stealing and destroying things. Ubbe must have taught him a lesson.

“Ragnarok.” You mutter to yourself, playing with your empty cup.

“As if you knew anything about it.” Ivar sounds a little pissed, and you honestly don't understand why. “Don't speak as if you do.”

Chuckling, you stretch your arm, hand hovering above the flames. “There will be three severe winters.” You start, and for some reason, probably given the nature of the subject, a silence falls on. “And summers of black sun.” Retrieving your hand when it gets too hot, you fix your eyes on Ivar. You already had enough of him teasing you, and it happens that you know exactly what Ragnarok is. “Those will certainly be terrible times, and Jörmungandr, the world serpent will come lurching from the ocean, bringing up the tides until they flood the entire world.” Smiling, you lean forward, elbows on the table. Slowly, Ivar does the same, those powerful eyes not leaving yours. It feels like there's nobody else here, just you and him. “Fenrir will break loose of his invisible chains and the sky will open, so Surt, the fire giant can come, blazing through the bridge to face and crush the gods. Odin will come to battle one last time against the wolf Fenrir, and Thor will fight the serpent. He will kill it but die from its venom. And at last... The giant wolf Fenrir will swallow the sun, and the world will be forever in darkness.” Your lips break into a smile, and, at the same time, Ivar's lips do the same. He looks at you the same way he did a few days ago, only more intense. It's like he sees you now. “This is Ragnarok.” You add, voice barely a whisper.

“Perfect,” Ivar mutters, and everyone finally starts moving again.

“How did you learn all that?” Aslaug asks as Ragnar fills her cup once again.

“I was allowed to learn about your culture. Language, traditions.” Shrugging your shoulders, you feel when Hvitserk kicks your leg under the table, so you glance at him. Discreetly, he tilts his head towards Ivar, and you can't help but look straight at him. He's staring.

“That's interesting. But it feels like you're not really paying much attention to what we're saying, are you, Princess (Y/N)?” Aslaug holds back a smile, and by the look on her face, she knows exactly what's going on. And that's good, perhaps she can explain it to you later.

“Uhm...” Your eyes fall on one of the jars, which you know it's empty. “I'll get some more.” Moving quickly, before Aslaug can send one of her slaves, you grab the jar and walks to the kitchen. The girls there help you out, refilling the jar. But it happens way too fast, so you decide to go outside for a while, breathing in the cold night air.

Raising your head to look at the night sky, you take a deep breath, closing your eyes. But when you do, it's Ivar you see, his ice blue eyes shining against the darkness. Something is going on with you, and you wish you could understand. If you were as sure as you were before that Ivar absolutely hates you, I'd be easier. But now... You don't know anymore.

×

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