eadwulf, reverse pov, the becoming
Mar. 13th, 2023 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iniquiticitythis pov begins at the end of end of the chp seven and through chp ten.
Eadwulf counted the seconds after he heard the door slam. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. He counted for a full five minutes - two hundred and ninety eight, two hunded and niney-nine, three hundred - before he allowed himself to move from where he lay prone on the floor. Only after did he allow himself to track the warm rivery feeling of where the blood trickled down his skin, over his armor, and onto the floor. He acknowledged his legs and got them under his body, rising slowly in the ruins of Astrid's kitchen.
His hand wrapped around the raven token at his throat. Before the Matron had found him he had worshipped another goddess of death and he was not unaware that one could come for him before the other.
None of the the damage Astrid had done to him had been bad, in comparison to all the ways he had been damaged in his life. He could feel the aches - the slice that had opened his arm, the bruise growing under his hair - though the bleeding had stopped. Oh, Astrid, he thought, miserably. What had unfolded when he had been away? Ludinus? Usurn? The king? Forces pulled at her in terrible ways. How the structures of the world could pull her taut until she snapped.
He ran one of her dishtowels in the basin water and mopped up the blood on his skin. A mage hand helped knot the towel over the stab she'd left in his forearm, empty in the absense of the conjure dagger. No, he thought, with a surge. Not snapped. If she had snapped, he would be much closer on his way to becoming one than he was now. If she had snapped, he would have been wrong. She was there. She was there and there remained enough of her to love and reassemble. It would not be the first time and it would not be the last time.
He righted the table and retrieved a broom from the closet and swept the dirt and shattered pottery into a corner, prestidigitating it away. He discarded the thrown fruit He pulled a knife from the wall, checked the edge, and replaced it in the knife block. He gathered his dispelled magic sword from the floor and replaced it in the sheath. Once the kitchen was in as passable condition as possible, he went up to her bedroom for some bandages to wrap his wounds properly.
There was no use in making guesses of where she'd gone, and even less use following her. She would come to her senses and come back to him, or she wouldn't. To think she might not was --
No. She would. He gathered himself and went home. Showered. Wrapped wounds again. It had hurt less, ten years ago, to hide in a barn roof for multiple hours and then explode out, sealing exits, trapping heretics between Truscan's milita - nearly as barbaric and uncivilized as Moonwatchers themselves, he thought, with a roll of his eyes - and the door. The captain of the militia had been mad at *him,* for not letting him slaughter some leader-looking captives.
To not understand death could be a privledge not everyone deserved, Eadwulf thought, derisively. He lit incense at his raven shrine, letting his thoughts dwell, one-by-one, on each death by his blade tonight. None of the Moonwatcher had gotten close to striking him down, and yet he'd been closer to death today than he had been in along, long time.
"Thank you, matron," he murmured, touching his raven feather again, "I am not afraid of your wings, but grateful that one day it will be a proper battlefield where I meet you."
He laid down in his bed. Sleep took him. Her hands teased his skin in dreams.
-
It was another cold, and sunny morning when he awoke. No messages from the king, Truscan or any of his irritating little servants, Astrid, or any other vollstrecker. He dressed his wounds and studied spells, drawing protections around himself in case she had tuned her house wards against him. No reactions. That was good. He knew all the old wards on the house, and Astrid could been creatieve when she wanted to punish someone.
He made his steps quiet with magic when he went inside. Took the steps two at a time and opened her bedroom door.
Oh, he thought, with an aching pit of relief. She was there. Battered and bloody-looking and still in her boots from yesterday but none of that mattered in the slighest. Her chest rose and fell with perfect regularity and the familiar furrow of her brow had eased in sleep. He closed the door again and went downstairs and started breakfast. He stocked her kitchen and so he new exactly what she had and where it was stored. Sasuage and eggs and he sliced some toast with the knife she had tried to filet him with. Set water to boil for tea. He made himself an impressive plate and consumed it, checking his own to-do list. Truscan might demand him do something, and it probably wasn't worth it to ignore him. He might have to interrogate those Moonwalkers, which was about as intruinging. Mostly the immediate to-do list would be reporting on the raid. But despite their lack of discussion of whether he was Astrid's annex or not, there was no denying she was almost certainly the main person who should have been giving him orders. He stood to make a plate for her as well, as heaping as his had been. She never ate all of it; he considered it a good day when he could convince her, one way or another, to eat half.
He pulled off his shirt and left it in his wristpocket, then pulled the sheath of the dancing sword from his waist and left it in corner of the kitchen. Unarmed and unarmored would be a good signal, although they both knew that if he hadn't laid a hand on her then, he wouldn't now.
While he was working through the list of vollstrecker they would have to cull, there was noise on the steps. He looked up from where he had been scrawling the imaginary rollcall and there she was.
Admittedly it was one of her poorer morning appearances. Neither powder nor magic disguised the hollows under her eyes. The low hang of her shoulders, the weakness of her hands at her sides, her gaze fighting asgainst being half-lidded. She had, at least, put on a new set of clothes, and had evidently washed.
Whatever had inspired her to believe that it was him that was undermining him had apparently passed. She stared at him, familiar anger and frustration and power and pain and love and suffering. A memory ran through his face - perhaps last night's battle. The kitchen, after all, did display plenty of scars from it. including a number of gashes in the table.
Astrid, he thought, his heart beating double-time. It was impossible to deny the cool wash of relief in his limbs, that not only had she come home, she had all her fingers and toes and eyes, had decided it was worth it for another day to come ot breakfast, and then after she had decided not to attack him again. She was not demanding that he flee or submit. It was familiar, their tension. It was familiar and she was always the same and he wanted more than absolutely anything to hold her.
A sudden twitch of her muscles but he had been daydreaming and wasn't fast enough to catch her before her knees hit the floor. When he kneeled down to help her up, she put her hands on his chest and shoved him away. Oh, Astrid, he thought, stuffing down the weep of relief. She was the same Astrid, his Astrid, and no matter what had happened last night she would not let him help her up. It was - he wanted to laugh and sob all at the same time. He would have cradled her in his arms all day if she'd let him, and she never would let him, and that was how it was supposed to me.
She staggered to the table in silence and ate, and he stood in the hallway. She would let him know, if he could come closer. He knew how to read every inch of her, every twitch, every breath. It had saved both of them last night. If she had killed him, he would go to meet the Matron. She would let him know, if he had served dutifully. If the things he did in the name of the King had been good - fair - true - just. He would accept her punishment or salvation.
Astrid would have had it worse off. She would have been alive and alone and a single empty half of a whole.
The noises of eating stopped. He knew he could pick up his plate from the table and take it to the sink. Her eyes were closed.
"Why are you here?" she asked, soft. What an explanation that would have been. What eons he would have needed, starting from when they had been children and he had never been much for Pelor like his family but, oh, he had seen Astrid and had understood radiance and divinity, and he had seen Bren and understood power. What they had taught him. How they had shaped him. What had been left in the forge-fires of their vollstrecker upringing, and how he had been crafted like a sheath around her. What else was there?
"Someone has to feed you," he said, instead, putting the plate away. He kept his steps a little loud and sat down across the table from her. She was beautiful. She was scarred and exhausted and unfolding at the seams and, oh, he would have taken her in his arms and cradled her until the end of time and she would never let him and that was how it should be. "Kelchek and Terrin would be furious. They already think it's my fault you're so thin. I suppose they're right."
"I could kill you," she said.
That was the thing about loving someone, he thought about saying. Sometimes you did kill what you loved. He felt blessed, that all he had to do was hurt her, sometimes. "No, you can't."
How the blow struck her. The energy departed her body like a spirit fleeing a posssed being. Her whole body went lax. Her arms like weights to her chest, which folded inward to concave like a lens. Her head lolled on her neck. The breath seemed to force itself into her body. He knew sometimes Astrid thought it a punishment to be alive. This was certainly one of those times.
He counted to ten and then he stood and picked up her limp body in her cradled arms. She did not resist. That was how it was, sometimes. There were lots of animals he admired and respected and loved that had to be handled in their stunned state and certainly if he ever met another goddess he would have liked to make sure it was a lot less harmless before having hat conversation. He put his face in her hair and breathed in the smell of her skin, some trace of somewhere foul she had been last night, the washing detergent the Assembly servants used. How terrible it was, she must have been, if she let him hold him. How wonderful it was to hold her and he took advantage of it for a while, before he took her back to her bed and put her there and picked out a piece of paper from her desk and started on his reports.
During the day Usurn sent him a nasty little Send he was very happy to say The archmage will attend to you when she is available, and imagine just how that must have made him pout. The sun set and finally she stirred and there was only a brief second before she was his Astrid, vollstrecker, archmage, and then she sat stright up in the dimmly-lit room, looking confused and frustrated and annoyed and he wanted to kiss her very much and he would not be allowed and that, somehow, made him want to kiss her more.
"What time is it?" he asked, and, yes, it was another recovery, still her.
"Nearly eleven o'clock," he said.
"Gods," she said, with disgust.
"Let me wrap your hands," he said, instead, which he would be permitted to do. He would relish it.
Eadwulf counted the seconds after he heard the door slam. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. He counted for a full five minutes - two hundred and ninety eight, two hunded and niney-nine, three hundred - before he allowed himself to move from where he lay prone on the floor. Only after did he allow himself to track the warm rivery feeling of where the blood trickled down his skin, over his armor, and onto the floor. He acknowledged his legs and got them under his body, rising slowly in the ruins of Astrid's kitchen.
His hand wrapped around the raven token at his throat. Before the Matron had found him he had worshipped another goddess of death and he was not unaware that one could come for him before the other.
None of the the damage Astrid had done to him had been bad, in comparison to all the ways he had been damaged in his life. He could feel the aches - the slice that had opened his arm, the bruise growing under his hair - though the bleeding had stopped. Oh, Astrid, he thought, miserably. What had unfolded when he had been away? Ludinus? Usurn? The king? Forces pulled at her in terrible ways. How the structures of the world could pull her taut until she snapped.
He ran one of her dishtowels in the basin water and mopped up the blood on his skin. A mage hand helped knot the towel over the stab she'd left in his forearm, empty in the absense of the conjure dagger. No, he thought, with a surge. Not snapped. If she had snapped, he would be much closer on his way to becoming one than he was now. If she had snapped, he would have been wrong. She was there. She was there and there remained enough of her to love and reassemble. It would not be the first time and it would not be the last time.
He righted the table and retrieved a broom from the closet and swept the dirt and shattered pottery into a corner, prestidigitating it away. He discarded the thrown fruit He pulled a knife from the wall, checked the edge, and replaced it in the knife block. He gathered his dispelled magic sword from the floor and replaced it in the sheath. Once the kitchen was in as passable condition as possible, he went up to her bedroom for some bandages to wrap his wounds properly.
There was no use in making guesses of where she'd gone, and even less use following her. She would come to her senses and come back to him, or she wouldn't. To think she might not was --
No. She would. He gathered himself and went home. Showered. Wrapped wounds again. It had hurt less, ten years ago, to hide in a barn roof for multiple hours and then explode out, sealing exits, trapping heretics between Truscan's milita - nearly as barbaric and uncivilized as Moonwatchers themselves, he thought, with a roll of his eyes - and the door. The captain of the militia had been mad at *him,* for not letting him slaughter some leader-looking captives.
To not understand death could be a privledge not everyone deserved, Eadwulf thought, derisively. He lit incense at his raven shrine, letting his thoughts dwell, one-by-one, on each death by his blade tonight. None of the Moonwatcher had gotten close to striking him down, and yet he'd been closer to death today than he had been in along, long time.
"Thank you, matron," he murmured, touching his raven feather again, "I am not afraid of your wings, but grateful that one day it will be a proper battlefield where I meet you."
He laid down in his bed. Sleep took him. Her hands teased his skin in dreams.
-
It was another cold, and sunny morning when he awoke. No messages from the king, Truscan or any of his irritating little servants, Astrid, or any other vollstrecker. He dressed his wounds and studied spells, drawing protections around himself in case she had tuned her house wards against him. No reactions. That was good. He knew all the old wards on the house, and Astrid could been creatieve when she wanted to punish someone.
He made his steps quiet with magic when he went inside. Took the steps two at a time and opened her bedroom door.
Oh, he thought, with an aching pit of relief. She was there. Battered and bloody-looking and still in her boots from yesterday but none of that mattered in the slighest. Her chest rose and fell with perfect regularity and the familiar furrow of her brow had eased in sleep. He closed the door again and went downstairs and started breakfast. He stocked her kitchen and so he new exactly what she had and where it was stored. Sasuage and eggs and he sliced some toast with the knife she had tried to filet him with. Set water to boil for tea. He made himself an impressive plate and consumed it, checking his own to-do list. Truscan might demand him do something, and it probably wasn't worth it to ignore him. He might have to interrogate those Moonwalkers, which was about as intruinging. Mostly the immediate to-do list would be reporting on the raid. But despite their lack of discussion of whether he was Astrid's annex or not, there was no denying she was almost certainly the main person who should have been giving him orders. He stood to make a plate for her as well, as heaping as his had been. She never ate all of it; he considered it a good day when he could convince her, one way or another, to eat half.
He pulled off his shirt and left it in his wristpocket, then pulled the sheath of the dancing sword from his waist and left it in corner of the kitchen. Unarmed and unarmored would be a good signal, although they both knew that if he hadn't laid a hand on her then, he wouldn't now.
While he was working through the list of vollstrecker they would have to cull, there was noise on the steps. He looked up from where he had been scrawling the imaginary rollcall and there she was.
Admittedly it was one of her poorer morning appearances. Neither powder nor magic disguised the hollows under her eyes. The low hang of her shoulders, the weakness of her hands at her sides, her gaze fighting asgainst being half-lidded. She had, at least, put on a new set of clothes, and had evidently washed.
Whatever had inspired her to believe that it was him that was undermining him had apparently passed. She stared at him, familiar anger and frustration and power and pain and love and suffering. A memory ran through his face - perhaps last night's battle. The kitchen, after all, did display plenty of scars from it. including a number of gashes in the table.
Astrid, he thought, his heart beating double-time. It was impossible to deny the cool wash of relief in his limbs, that not only had she come home, she had all her fingers and toes and eyes, had decided it was worth it for another day to come ot breakfast, and then after she had decided not to attack him again. She was not demanding that he flee or submit. It was familiar, their tension. It was familiar and she was always the same and he wanted more than absolutely anything to hold her.
A sudden twitch of her muscles but he had been daydreaming and wasn't fast enough to catch her before her knees hit the floor. When he kneeled down to help her up, she put her hands on his chest and shoved him away. Oh, Astrid, he thought, stuffing down the weep of relief. She was the same Astrid, his Astrid, and no matter what had happened last night she would not let him help her up. It was - he wanted to laugh and sob all at the same time. He would have cradled her in his arms all day if she'd let him, and she never would let him, and that was how it was supposed to me.
She staggered to the table in silence and ate, and he stood in the hallway. She would let him know, if he could come closer. He knew how to read every inch of her, every twitch, every breath. It had saved both of them last night. If she had killed him, he would go to meet the Matron. She would let him know, if he had served dutifully. If the things he did in the name of the King had been good - fair - true - just. He would accept her punishment or salvation.
Astrid would have had it worse off. She would have been alive and alone and a single empty half of a whole.
The noises of eating stopped. He knew he could pick up his plate from the table and take it to the sink. Her eyes were closed.
"Why are you here?" she asked, soft. What an explanation that would have been. What eons he would have needed, starting from when they had been children and he had never been much for Pelor like his family but, oh, he had seen Astrid and had understood radiance and divinity, and he had seen Bren and understood power. What they had taught him. How they had shaped him. What had been left in the forge-fires of their vollstrecker upringing, and how he had been crafted like a sheath around her. What else was there?
"Someone has to feed you," he said, instead, putting the plate away. He kept his steps a little loud and sat down across the table from her. She was beautiful. She was scarred and exhausted and unfolding at the seams and, oh, he would have taken her in his arms and cradled her until the end of time and she would never let him and that was how it should be. "Kelchek and Terrin would be furious. They already think it's my fault you're so thin. I suppose they're right."
"I could kill you," she said.
That was the thing about loving someone, he thought about saying. Sometimes you did kill what you loved. He felt blessed, that all he had to do was hurt her, sometimes. "No, you can't."
How the blow struck her. The energy departed her body like a spirit fleeing a posssed being. Her whole body went lax. Her arms like weights to her chest, which folded inward to concave like a lens. Her head lolled on her neck. The breath seemed to force itself into her body. He knew sometimes Astrid thought it a punishment to be alive. This was certainly one of those times.
He counted to ten and then he stood and picked up her limp body in her cradled arms. She did not resist. That was how it was, sometimes. There were lots of animals he admired and respected and loved that had to be handled in their stunned state and certainly if he ever met another goddess he would have liked to make sure it was a lot less harmless before having hat conversation. He put his face in her hair and breathed in the smell of her skin, some trace of somewhere foul she had been last night, the washing detergent the Assembly servants used. How terrible it was, she must have been, if she let him hold him. How wonderful it was to hold her and he took advantage of it for a while, before he took her back to her bed and put her there and picked out a piece of paper from her desk and started on his reports.
During the day Usurn sent him a nasty little Send he was very happy to say The archmage will attend to you when she is available, and imagine just how that must have made him pout. The sun set and finally she stirred and there was only a brief second before she was his Astrid, vollstrecker, archmage, and then she sat stright up in the dimmly-lit room, looking confused and frustrated and annoyed and he wanted to kiss her very much and he would not be allowed and that, somehow, made him want to kiss her more.
"What time is it?" he asked, and, yes, it was another recovery, still her.
"Nearly eleven o'clock," he said.
"Gods," she said, with disgust.
"Let me wrap your hands," he said, instead, which he would be permitted to do. He would relish it.