milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Even the Norse need gentleness sometimes."

He nods, still covering her hand with his.

"As you wish. I'll not press anything on you, but the offer remains open."

"I don't know how to react to you."

She sets her cup down and takes his hand with hers, both gloved, to look at it as though she had never seen a hand before.

In some ways, she has never seen a hand like his before. One as large as her own, but not related to her. A male hand so big.

It allows her to not look at his face,

"You are different from what I expected. I don't understand you."

He looks down at their hands, expressionless for the moment.

"I don't understand you, either, and you're not at all what I expected, so perhaps we're even on that score."

After a pause, he asks softly, "is it bad, my being different?"

"I don't know."

Its honest, if not tactful. She lets go of his hand, putting her own in her lap and taking a deep breath to steady herself,

"Ragnarok will happen. We will do as we must do. How mad will I be by then, if I can love my enemy?"

She didn't say that. Not on purpose. And she doesn't even, really, know that she did.

"No more mad than I," he says, very quietly, drawing his hand back and looking at it as though it's something entirely new, and possibly dangerous.

Her eyes close again, and she takes a breath, because such things should happen now and again. For the sake of others, if not for her unbeating heart and stilled lung,

"I don't know."

His voice isn't as quiet as hers, but it's close.

She isn't sure what to do, or say, right now. Between her father and this, well, she's out of her ability to understand anything. The logical part of her mind wants to suggest that they stop talking to each other. That they stay apart, and away.

But there is peace near him, even when he is not giving her peace. And he is the right size. And he is from home. And she simply does not understand.

Softly, he says, "if you would have me stay away, I will. This is your place, not mine."

Unspoken: If you tell me to leave you, I will.

"I would... I would regret it, though, if I could never be here" -- see you -- "again."

She murmurs after a moment,

Sometimes having no tact means that you can't protect yourself, either.

"I don't know what to do."

He's looking down at his hands, biting his lip.

"I have a wife, in Breidablik. I care for her deeply. But she... this isn't like what I have with her. Nanna is lovely, she's -- gentle, they say we suit each other. And yet..."

A long pause.

"I do not love her, not like... not like this."

"I do not know how to love."

She says in her turn,

"I never have, not in the way of men and women. You are married. This is...it is impossible. It is foolish. I don't want to feel this for you. I do not want to love you."

And she looks over at him, from the center of her living eye with the dead half of her face exposed in a rare moment of deliberate vulnerability.

"And if we could make hearts listen to their bearers, a great many things could have been avoided," he says, almost to himself.

It is impossible. It is foolish, and it is wrong, and it is any number of other things.

But it feels right.

And he doesn't recoil from the dead side of her face.

Softly, so softly, he whispers, "I don't want to want to love you. But I do."

"But I do."

She echoes him, but does not reach out. Her hands, gloved, stay clasped in her lap and her instinct is to hide again. To pull her braid across her face, her cloak around her shoulders, and disappear out into the cold once more.

Instead she looks at him, solemn and sober.

"Fate is capricious, it would seem," he murmurs.

"Yes."

She agrees with him,

"They are. I do not want to hurt your wife."

She'll stay away from him, if he wishes her to.

"I have no wish to hurt her, but living a lie can bring nothing but pain, for ourselves and those we care for."

"Perhaps it is simply...simply a crush."

She's grasping at straws,

"You should return to her. See...see if being away from me makes it stop?"

Hel has a life full of hard things to do, hard things to say. This is the hardest, and her right hand creeps over toward him, stopping on the floor half-way.

He looks down, closing his eyes for a moment.

"If you think it best."

"It would let you know?"

She says it quietly, looking up at the rafters with an expression of abject pain,

"And...you would not have...done anything that you would regret."

Like touch her. The monster child of a traitor. Like love her. Not really.

He's silent, for a few moments.

Then, quietly: "you're right. I... I should find out, for certain."

His voice is far from steady, far from pain-free.

"I'll return, if I can, Hel. I swear."

"Return if you want to."

Her voice shakes as well, and she touches his elbow gently,

"Just be happy, whatever you choose."

He smiles at her, a little.

"I wish I could give you the same gift."

Her face is sober when she looks at him, and she says quietly,

"I have been loved by one such as you. Even if it does not last, it makes me happy."

Softly, he says, "even if it does not last, it was true while it was here."