#ἀλήθεια masterlist

[pomegranates-and-blood]

ἀλήθεια (Epilogue, pt. 2, Vοσταλγία AU)

ἀλήθεια Masterlist

Pairing: Freydis/Reader, Ivar/Reader (past)

Word Count: 4.9k

Warnings: The usual, angst and not really healthy mindsets, plus mentions of people being burnt alive and nudity I suppose. I still don’t feel like I’ll do a good job writing femslash smut so just hints at smuttish themes for now. For some reason I feel like I should tag ‘mentions of Ivar’ as a warning lol. My endless swooning over Freydis.

A/N: This is it folks, the first part of the last piece of this AU! I have a short post-epilogue series written, but that goes by another name so it doesn’t count as Alatheia really. I’m not sure if I’ll even post it, but anyhow, I’ll talk about it more in the end notes.

Also, I always headcanoned (and I always will, even if it makes absolutely no sense) that Freydis and Margrethe met at some point, so yeah that unnamed woman is Margrethe (one of her lines in s5 is “I am not a slave now, and in my head I never was”) I have a little Daughters work on that, I might post it soon if I find the motivation to polish and edit it lol.

The last also: Yr, or ᛉ, is an Elder Futhark rune that means “shield” or “protection”, and if you wanna be sad you should know that it was the rune Sieghild traced on the Reader’s hand before leaving her in Chapter 4 🙃

Find the first part of the Epilogue, also posted today, right here!

Freydis isn’t exactly sure when it was that every moment with you stopped feeling so…coveted, so brittle. She can’t point out when it was that she stopped feeling like an thief each time she felt the taste of your kiss or let her hands roam over your skin; but she gathers that the change was so faint, so gradual, that even if she tried looking back she couldn’t figure out when it was that something -everything?- changed.

And because she no longer has to value each moment as if ghosts from a world long past both of you will come to take everything from her, she has been able to see the weight on your shoulders. Because now that not every moment feels like the last, now that the veil of instability has lifted, she can see the humanity others don’t, the vulnerability few in this world or any other have been privy to.

Which is why she has come to find you. A part of her feels as if you are hiding from her, or perhaps as if she is hiding from you, both uncertain and unwilling to breach the joy of victory and freedom with the bitterness of what such things cost to women like the both of you.

She isn’t surprised to find you sitting on the ground with your back to the door, your eyes and your attention belonging only to the stone throne before you. When the fires are lit and the flames dance absently over the white marble, and the people and the waves crashing against the rocks compose this strange music unique to this place alone; it looks to Freydis like something much larger than her, than you, than any of it.

When she first saw you sit on it, carefully-composed expression as your men dragged forward the Christian men and women of faith that had chosen to stay in Eleusis even as the bulk of Byzantine forces caved or escaped in the face of your army, she watched your hands curl into fists in such a way she imagined your nails would leave their dent on the stone; and she couldn’t help but think of that night she was taken to the emptied abbey and made to stand in front of Ivar as he sat on that simple wicker chair.

I did what you have done, once, you had started telling them, a tremor in your voice that she felt only she could hear, I stayed to protect my home, my Gods, even as our city fell into chaos.

Yet all she could hear in your words was the echo of something else, someone else, that told her, we must ask the Gods for help; would you be…willing to offer yourself as a sacrifice?

She had almost believed those Christians could hear him too, judging by the way they cowered and trembled at your simple words. Though, she gathers now that they knew, just as they knew who you were -just as she knew who he was-, what their countrymen had done to you.

Tell me, you had asked them, the beginning of a smile that was there only to distract from the brittle rage that lingered in your eyes, what do you think I ought to do with you? Ought I to do what your fellow brothers in Christ did to me?

Just as when he had asked her for her life once, you weren’t asking them for their opinion. Freydis had realized long ago, before Ivar freed her even, that her people and yours may talk of Fate being written and dictated by something larger than the Gods themselves, but there are men and women that hold the Fate of the unlucky ones in their hands.

Ivar held hers, and freed her, just after she spoke for the Gods and promised him respite after a lifetime of hardship. You held theirs, and freed them as well, asking only that they proved their God would intervene to save them before you signaled for your men to take them to the stakes.

Freydis only heard weeks after of what had transpired in York shortly after the night she was freed, and a part of her, however small, wondered if her words, if her meeting with Ivar, had anything to do with how he stood his ground against those Saxons, daring him to kill him as if he too believed they couldn’t. She wondered if realizing what a grasp he truly had on her Fate, on the Fate of so many others, made him realize that he was no ordinary man.

And she has wondered the same about you, from the moment that Thebes was first taken by you, even more so since Eleusis caved to your might. She has wondered if you feel more than human now that you hold the Fate of so many in your hands, now that you have proven to yourself and to others what you can choose to do with the power you wield.

What she hadn’t ever wondered about Ivar, and what she hadn’t wondered about you until now, was what the fall from such height implies; what happens when the fires dim and the victories stop singing in one’s blood; what happens when glory proves itself to be such a painful thing to live past achieving, when divinity decides to leave the taste of ashes on one’s tongue.

And now, finding you staring at the seat of your power with such a vacant stare, with such numb confusion, she only knows that just as a man’s ring on your finger once meant nothing until you decided it did, a throne’s grasp on your soul means nothing if you so choose it.

“They will always see what they wish to,” She starts, an old instinct asking her to bring her hand to her neck to toy with the amulet of Freyja she has had since before her name reflected her devotion to the Goddess, to run her thumb over the ridges of the metal that makes the figure of Lady Freyja and find the comfort and the certainty she owes to her. For once, Freydis doesn’t obey, and she isn’t sure why. Instead, she steps forward, and tries explaining, “They won’t see anything more, or anything less, than what they want to see in you.”

You turn your head to her, not offering a greeting just as she hasn’t, and instead giving away a small smile, tired but honest, “Is that supposed to comfort me?”

She blinks, looking away for a moment before she shakes her head, mirthless smile curving at her lips yet warmth growing in her chest at the equally humorless curve of your mouth.

“Not really, no.”

Your head drops forward with a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh, and Freydis stays silent, watches your shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath before you say,

“Your honesty does, at least.”

She comes to stand beside you, and kneels on the ground right next to you, reminded of the night she found you praying to whatever God heard you on that small hill overlooking Kattegat. Unlike then, now she doesn’t hesitate to hold your hand in hers, to intertwine her fingers and your own.

Freydis isn’t sure if it is to her shame or her pride, but many if not all of the certainties she has held during her life have been given to her by someone else, and right now she has no certainty, no clarity or promise to offer you, but she remembers someone who might.

“When I first made it to Kattegat, during those months before the sons of Ragnar return to take it from Lagertha…there was someone that used to come to the apothecary often.”

“Who?”

“She never told me her name.” She deflects, already aware even the subtle attempt at hiding the woman’s identity will just make you more curious.

Your eyes narrow, and you insist, “But you know who she was.”

Freydis holds your gaze, and instead of continuing this squabble simply goes on with her story, “She was a free woman, but I saw the mark of hunger on her, I saw the scars and…and her eyes were like mine. I knew what her Fate had been before she met us, and yet she always insisted she had never been a slave.”

“You have decided to tell me about a madwoman, then. While I appreciate the effort, Freydis, I wou-…”

“Would you just listen?” She interrupts, an exasperated chuckle leaving her lips at your affronted stare, before she continues, “She told me she had never been a slave in her head. No matter what they had called her, what they called her still when they wished to be cruel, they couldn’t make anything out of her.”

Realization dawns on you, she sees it in the way tension coils on your shoulders once again, in the way even at that cruel tension you sigh and drop your head to rest on her shoulder. Perhaps it is not the realization of what Freydis’ point was, but the realization of how inevitable it is that you speak of this, that you face this together.

She has promised, after all, that she would never leave you alone, and Freydis has become very much aware of how she can use such promise to her advantage when you insist on carrying the weight of it all on your own.

Resting her cheek on the top of your head, she squeezes your hand, prompting silently that you share what you’re thinking about.

“I cannot renounce the titles they give me, I cannot…I cannot refuse to be what they want me to be, not if I wish to hold on to what I have fought for.”

She knows your eyes are on that throne again, because so are hers.

“Then you call yourself by those names, as she once answered to the title of slave. You do not have to believe it, you have to only say it,” She answers simply, lifting her head just to shake you slightly as she adds, “You are a good liar, after all.”

You draw back at that, just a bit, and regard her with a sharp look that slowly gives away the truth as your lips curve into a sardonic smile.

“A little hypocritical of you to point that out, no?”

“Mhm. A liar and a hypocrite.”

Her quick acceptance of both titles startles you a bit, but surprise quickly gives way to a laugh that makes Freydis’ smile widen until it hurts.

The silence that follows doesn’t feel like a growing chasm as it has for a while now, and instead feels comfortable, like the quiet lull of a ship at sea, or the crackling of a dimming fire.

“They will see in me what they want, after all, right?” You ask after a while, not really expecting an answer as you stand and walk to the stone throne, running your hand over it. Freydis notices the way you trace with your finger the Yr rune etched on the right armrest of it, she notices because she has never stopped being aware of the small symbol, or where you placed it. You turn around with a familiar tilt of head, and she hears the smile before she sees it as you say, “My people have made Gods out of far more wretched creatures than me, I suppose.”

Freydis stands as well and starts walking towards you, and not even the reminder of how much things have changed or of how much time has gone by side by side can stall the quickening of her heart at your sharp smile, or the thrill that runs down her spine when your eyes and hers meet.

“Humility won’t work with me, I know you better than that.”

“Worship like this would humble anyone, Freydis.” You argue with a scoff.

She shakes her head, “But not you.”

“Are you sure of that?” You retort, eyebrows raised and smile dimming, darkening, as she leans closer. You trap your lower lip under your teeth for a moment before you speak again, a dare and a command all in one, “Prove me wrong.”

She is unable to resist the pull of you -unwilling to, she cannot dare imagine the day she would be able to resist the siren call of the promise of your kiss- and with an ease that her body has found only at the promise of the closeness of yours, Freydis leans forward, letting you capture her mouth with yours, sighing into the hungry kiss.

There’s always softness hidden in your hunger, it pairs with the longing hidden in hers, she feels it in the way your fingers trail gently over her waist as your hands come to rest on her sides, she gathers you can feel it in the tentative venture of her tongue into your mouth to deepen the kiss.

When you pull away you both find yourselves unable and unwilling to part just yet, breaths still one as you lean your brow against Freydis, touch still leaving traces of lightning on her skin as your hand trails down to once again grasp hers.

“I will be made anew, and I…I think only you will recognize me in whatever else I might become,” You admit, a request even if you don’t voice it as one -divinity asks for nothing from no one, she supposes-. “And if the day comes that I forget, I-…”

The promise comes easy to her, as easy as once lies did even if it is nothing but truth sweetening her voice, “I will remind you.”

Your eyes fall closed but Freydis refuses to let hers do the same, instead letting her gaze -hungry even with the taste of your kiss still on her lips and the warmth of your skin under her hands, proving once again one can remain starving in the face of a feast- roam over your features, drinking in the much-missed tranquility in your expression, basking in the comfort that comes from seeing you safe from both others and yourself.

You exchange a quiet goodbye and Freydis starts to pull away, as always letting her hand holding yours to be the last part of her to lose your touch, but before she can finish turning around you tug on her hand, bringing her close once again.

“Before spring ends, I want…I want to take you somewhere,” You tell her, eyes bright with something she hasn’t seen in a while. “I promise it is a shorter trip than the last one I took you on.”

Freydis nods without hesitation, “Tomorrow?”

You seem to hesitate for only a moment before you try, “Why not tonight?”

____

The small alcove of trees you guide her too isn’t anything special, even if now, bathed by the moonlight and accompanied by the soothing lull of the fresh stream, is a beautiful sight. The lingering warmth of one of spring’s last days seems to dim and lighten here at night, and the gentle breeze that dares pierce through the trees carries with it the calmness of the stream that laps gently at the nearby shore.

“Why this place?” She asks, certain you know her well enough -certain you accept she knows you well enough- to be aware she isn’t asking about the landscape.

You shrug, eyes shining with the same awe you once looked over Kattegat’s forests with, and answer simply, “Because it is far from Eleusis.”

“Why go back home?” Galla asks, passing the wine back to you. Her dark eyes are intent on you, so Freydis is certain that Galla is only pretending not to notice your almost-hidden flinch at hearing her refer to Greece as your home. “All of us here know that you wouldn’t have gone back willingly, my friend.”

“What I want does not matter. There is much I owe to these people, to those lands.” You answer instead, a half-truth but truth regardless.

Freydis presses her lips together, trying to keep trapped in such a gesture words of how since your return to the Greeks’ side you have deferred to the woman of cold eyes that Ivar brought to Kattegat, the woman of an almost frantic hold on her resolve that reminded Freydis of herself.

Instead, she extends a hand to request the bottle of sweet wine to be passed back to her, and after taking a sip to swallow the bitterness left behind by the cruelty of Fate, she starts,

“If there was no debt to be paid…”

“I’d still return to Greece.”

“Why?”

The smile you offer is wide and softened by wine, yet just shy of mocking, “Because it is far from Kattegat.”

“Familiar words.” She points out, stealing a glance out of the corner of her eye as she moves to sit in the warm grass.

“Yet not a familiar situation.” You retort, a reassurance hidden in your words, written in your smile.

“Then why come here?”

You shrug, looking ahead with a serenity in your eyes that she hasn’t seen in a long time.

“When I am with you, I can…forget what I am. Always could. I was never Ivar’s prisoner, or Queen of Kattegat, when it was just the two of us; I could just be…”

When your words die she offers a small smile, and attempts, “A witch?”

She manages to draw a breathy laugh from you with her words, and it fills her chest with warmth to find herself as a reason, even slightly, for your happiness. She wonders if you feel like that whenever you make her laugh, she wonders if you know she never really laughed with anyone like she does with you.

“I suppose,” You concede, offering a glance out of the corner of your eye that feels like a secret. “And now, here, I can be that again. Even for just a short while,” Your voice turns wistful, almost a sigh when you add, “Just a witch from the Silk Roads.”

The way a familiar tone laces your words when you speak of that place, of that window to a life long past you, makes a tinge of worry ebb into Freydis’ thoughts. Nostalgia is a familiar friend to you, she knows, and she never stopped seeing the glint in your eye that spoke of a longing for the past, but more than once she has seen hope win over that instinct to mourn the life past you.

She saw it when you looked at Ivar before everything fell apart, she saw it when Lysander embraced you as you first docked in Sparta, she saw it in the tears glistening in your eyes as the sunrise bathed in gold an Eleusis once again yours.

But now, now the hope is dim, nostalgia is stronger than anything else, and she is struck with the realization that she never truly realized when it was that hope died.

“Do you miss it? Any of it?”

You shrug, attention and gaze diverted to the blades of grass you’re distractedly plucking and toying with.

“I cannot scorn the Moirai for what they have made of my Fate.” You reply instead of offering a truer answer, and while it sounds rehearsed and unnatural and entirely for her benefit, Freydis cannot help but welcome it as truth, cannot help but force words back down a closed-up throat and accept the lie.

“Your people love you, worship you. And you are finally back home, ruling over it. You are the most powerful woman in the whole of Greece.” She tells you, and if awe slips through her tone, if her eyes shine with truths she has tried keeping hidden, then so be it.

“What more could I ask from the Gods, hm?” You ask, not really a question as much as it is a resigned statement, a quiet acceptance of the way the world is now. She doesn’t like seeing this in you, this tired defeat; but Freydis doesn’t know what to do against it. If something is strong enough to weaken you, what can she do against it? Either because her hesitation costs her the moment to speak up, or because you weren’t waiting for an answer, you sigh, and speak again, “Do you miss your home, Freydis?”

“Kattegat?” She asks, and you only shrug. “No, it wasn’t-…I don’t think I could go back.”

“Mhm. Who you are now wouldn’t call that place home, right?”

She knows what you are trying to say, and though she once was one to care for tricks and intentions hidden behind pretty words, she isn’t anymore, at least not with you.

So, she says, “But you belong here, you are…you are home now.”

“Perhaps I am home, but Eleusis isn’t it.” You say, a casual statement with the strength and unwaveringness of a verdict from the Gods themselves.

“What?”

You shrug one shoulder with a smile that is almost a taunt, and it dawns on her in that moment, how much the distance from Eleusis has changed you. How much it has turned you into the woman she knew once, into the one she was granted glimpses and secrets of back in another life.

“Swim with me, won’t you?” You prompt instead of delving further into your answer, instead of giving away any truths.

Freydis’ eyes narrow your way, and she is certain you know you aren’t fooling her by avoiding this topic, but still she concedes. She offers a smile that feels too girlish and too free to belong to her, toeing off her sandals as she takes careful steps towards you, closer to the riverbank.

She notices your moment of hesitation as you reach behind you for the laces of your dress, she meets your eye and gathers that the same thrilling anticipation is singing in your veins, judging by the smile you offer her.

But your hesitation is short lived, and so is hers, the silence expectant yet daunting as you both make quick work of the dresses hiding your bodies from each other.

Nakedness, even her own -especially her own- has always been someone else’s, has always been for their eyes, for their enjoyment, out of their demand. It has always left Freydis skittish, uncertain, it has always made her heart at the pace of a rabbit’s and her mind echo the transformation with the reminder of how in those moments she is nothing but prey.

But now her nudity is no one’s but her own, and stepping out of that dress to come to stand before you still makes her heart beat so quickly in her chest, and still her breath hitches, but it feels nothing like it once did.

The mark of her past is on her body, written in between the ragged scars and the marks of hungers that never quite left her, just as the mark of your own past is on yours, in the irregular design of the skin on your side left behind by the flames that once touched you; yet there is no shame, no regret.

And amidst the awe, the lust, the thrill, she finds a warmth she had never felt yet realizes now had always missed. Because heat coil at her stomach, and anticipation tightens at her throat, but her steps towards you are certain, decided, and she feels nothing but safety as your eyes take her in the same way hers do you.

As you extend a hand for her to take and walk with her into the calm waters, she is reminded once again of a spring storm, of warm earth under her feet and the baited breath as she waits for lightning dancing in the air, of rain that trails over her skin and makes her anew.

Your tentative and uncharacteristically shy laugh echoes in her chest, makes her heart beat quicker and quicker, reminding her in its flutter of a trapped bird; and she cannot help herself as she laughs alongside you, a lightness to her steps as she ventures further and further into the water with you that she was never allowed to have before this moment.

Once her feet and yours no longer touch the ground under your feet, it is that Freydis allows herself to swim closer, her chest a hair’s breadth away from yours and her eyes trapped in the spell of your gaze, hesitating only for a moment before she crosses the distance between you and presses her lips against yours.

Your laughter is muffled against her lips, and it is hard to kiss you with her own wide and lovesick smile threatening to curve at her lips, but your hand on the back of her head, tangling on the hair at her name, keeps her near, and her hands on your hips tightening their hold darken your joy to lust, prompting you to deepen the kiss.

Freydis loses track of time as she loses herself in the taste of your kiss, in the feel of your body, in you, she just knows that the water never loses its inviting coolness but the trail of fire your fingers leave on her skin is much preferable even if much more maddening.

As you pull away from her you venture under the water only to reappear after only a moment. Freydis loses her breath as she watches you catch yours, with your eyes closed, your head tilted up towards the moon, letting the daring droplets of water trail down your face down your neck, playing with the moonlight to make it so that they seem to glimmer like precious stones adorning your body as you smile up at the sky.

Turning to her with a smile that in all its brightness makes her heart stutter its beat, you swallow and take a breath before offering,

“I am home,” You confess, a waver of wonder in your voice that grips tightly at her heart. “Free, with you, I am home.”

Free.

It always seemed connected, freedom and loneliness, at least to Freydis. She was made free in York and was left to wander now unrecognizable streets with nothing and no one but herself and her own haunting thoughts, and in the madness of being alone in this world she believed freedom to be yet another type of suffering the Gods had deemed her fit to endure.

And then she met you, and you spoke of a man that had loved you enough to gift you his army and his strength and called his love a prison, and you stood next to a man that loved you enough to put himself and his kingdom at your feet and still you lingered on the invisible chains he had set upon you; Freydis understood what the old women of the apothecary had said when they said too many freedoms are lost to love.

It was a choice to be made, then, between loneliness and chains. Freydis has known chains, has known loneliness, and for a long time she knew what her choice would be between either.

But then a foreign witch breezed into her life with an accented voice and eyes that spoke of a mystery she wanted nothing but to see unravel, and the choice wasn’t so apparent. She refused to relinquish control even if her heart was no longer hers, refused the chains that seemed to encircle those who loved you; yet she refused to go back to the cold before you, refused to return to a world that didn’t have you and your warmth in it.

And now, with the refreshing water around her and the moon lingering on her pale skin, she cannot help but think maybe there is no need to make a choice. She promised once to never leave you alone, and without words you’ve promised the same, and while when her hand holds yours she feels tethered, it isn’t the bond of chains, it is the bond of something just as relentless, but freely chosen.

“My home has always been with you,” She tells you, pretending not to feel her stomach tighten when you easily move closer. “We are free together, witch.”

You shake your head, “No, not a witch. Not here. Not with you,” You move even closer and one hand lifts to move damp hair away from her face. Freydis feels the aftershocks of the touch as if it were pain and not something far sweeter that it draws in her skin. Your voice lowers, “With you, I am myself. I am myself and I am of one name alone. Say it.”

She says your name, pulled from her lips as if under a spell, and not for the first time, it feels like a secret, it feels like a weapon, it feels like a privilege.

Your eyes grow a tad darker as you look at her, and the smile you offer is proud and still carrying that well-guarded vulnerability the time in a colder land left you with.

If we name things, we make them real, you told her in another life, and in a conversation many moons later that yet felt like a continuation of that sentence, you promised, I will be made anew, and I think only you will recognize me in whatever else I might become.

Whispering your name, barely audible over the calm waters, feels like a summons, feels like a prayer, feels like uttering the name of a goddess in secret, in reverence, in the last intonation to break her chains and your own.

____ ____ ____

“How do you make a monster stop feeling so monstrous? You give her something she can hold in her palms without crushing. You wipe the blood from her hands. You say her name, over and over, like absolution.” (source)

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you liked it! The reason for the title of this AU was that final scene on the stream, based of how in the Lethe river (word that Alatheia derives from) souls swim to forget their past lives an begin anew, and after this swim of these two the Reader can reclaim her name (also a little recall to her significance as Persephone, and the importance of names for her throughout her story) and begin her new life with Freydis 😊

And of course, thank you so much for indulging me in this little adventure lol. I had so much fun writing this, giving my Nostalgia!Freydis time to shine on her own and having her as a love interest was a wild ride that I loved every second of. (Even tho towards the end there, especially Chapter 6 and the Epilogue, were a little more on the bittersweet side)

Anyhow, the post-epilogue news I promised: While struggling to polish the epilogue of Alatheia, I started writing a short series (or very long one-shot) called Phlégō, wherethings lean into the more bitter side of the bittersweetness of Alatheia. It’s kinda Reader-centric in a way, and things get a tad complicated and the figure of Ivar is very much to the forefront of it all, (it goes without saying that if a vacuum-sealed “happily” ever after for Freydis and the Reader is what you are after, Phlégō is going to dissapoint), so idk if it warrants posting it, since it’s the AU of an AU, and imho it really isn’t that interesting or good. But idk, if you really wanna read it lemme know, I’ll post the synopsis or first chapter or smth.

Sorry for the long A/N!

Vοσταλγία Taglist:  @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @angelofthorr​ @samsationalwilson​ @peachyboneless​ @1950schick​ @punkrocknpearls @ietss​ @itsmysticalmystery​ @revolution-starter​ @the-a-word-2214​  @fae-sedai​ @crazybunnyladysworld​   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside​ @aprilivar​ @msrawog @kaitieskidmore1​ @berryonasummerevening​  

#freydis vikings #freydis #freydis x reader #masterlist #ἀλήθεια masterlist

[pomegranates-and-blood]

ἀλήθεια (Epilogue, pt. 1, Vοσταλγία AU)

ἀλήθεια Masterlist

Pairing: Freydis/Reader, Ivar/Reader (past)

Word Count: 3k

Warnings: The usual, angst and not really healthy mindsets. For some reason I feel like I should tag ‘mentions of Ivar’ as a warning lol. My endless swooning over Freydis.

A/N: Hi, I’m back on my Nostalgia/Alatheia bullshit. I’m sorry this isn’t a more interesting update, instead just this self-indulgent AU. I have some other Nostalgia-related stuff partly written, that I hope to be able to post soon. I also hope at least some of you are still around lol, I’ve missed you all.

Also, when re-reading this I got smashed over the head with thoughts about the “there is no glory in divinity” conversation between the Reader and Ivar in Chapter 45. Just thought you should know 😉

And another also: Soteira is an epithet of Persephone (and other Goddesses) that means “Savior”, and Despoena is another epithet of Persephone which means “Ruling Goddess” or “the Mistress”. And Kván is Old Norse for “Wife”, while Dróttning is Old Norse for “Queen” or “Mistress” btw.

“Harald Finehair has turned on the sons of Ragnar, or so say the whispers that have reached me.” Galla starts, and Freydis lifts her gaze to find your friend’s dark eyes set intently on you.

The words are casual, but Freydis knows that if Galla is sharing something that she has heard, it might as well be etched in stone like the markings in your temple’s pillars.

You keep your gaze on your food, nonchalant in the way you turn to her after picking apart a piece of bread.

“It was only a matter of time. You knew that already, we all did,” You explain calmly, shrugging your shoulders as you add, “If Ivar has married again, if he has children now, King Finehair has every right to-…”

“He hasn’t. He doesn’t.” Galla blurts, and Freydis has the feeling that when your eyes meet those of your oldest friend you are asking something, to which Galla offers the slightest lift of one brow.

You are lifting your head slightly, a glint of pride, of…something in your gaze that isn’t lost on anyone here, but still make no point about Galla’s information, and instead insist,

“Harald still has reasons to turn against the sons of Ragnar.”

“He plans on overtaking Ivar, and war for the kingdom of Kattegat and any other land the Varangian might have conquered will soon reach him. Before next winter, or so I hear.”

The barely-there narrowing of your eyes is enough of a tell, but neither Freydis nor Galla say anything about it.

“And you tell me this because…”

“If word reaches the Mediterranean that Ivar the Boneless is no more, then your cl-…”

“Are you going to suggest I marry again, old friend?” You ask, even if you know the answer. Freydis wonders if you know about the look Galla and your commander, Pyrrhos, share at your question.

“I’m going to suggest you consider your options going forward. Knowing that your husband has been defeated would give those waiting a reason t-…”

“Harald cannot, and will not, defeat Ivar,” You state easily, eerily calm. That is a reaction even if it is the lack of one; Freydis knows you enough to know that. Galla starts to say something else, but your focus is sharp and so is your voice, “Enough of this.”

“How can you be so certain? Almost two years have gone by, th-…”

“I said enough.”

Your voice doesn’t raise, your demeanor doesn’t change in the slightest. But your eyes when they meet Galla’s, they betray something else.

Soteira, Despoena, the Greeks have come to call you, titles she understands not only because she knows what they mean in your tongue, but because she knows what your people see when they look at you. She has heard other names, spoken in secret, spoken where you cannot hear, names that speak of knowing the mysteries of life and death, names that speak of terror and fire.

Gods are made through fire, those who walk through the flames can claim their divinity, that is what my people believe, that is the reason they call her by the names they do, Galla had told her once, before lowering her head with a chuckle that was more bitter than anything else, they are fools for thinking walking through flames didn’t cost her more than they could imagine.

Regardless of Galla’s words, or perhaps because of them, there have been many times that Freydis has looked at you and thought that it isn’t possible you are a mortal woman just like her, fallible and ordinary as any other.

Seeing you and thinking that you are divinity made flesh is an echo of an old song she used to sing herself to sleep with, hoarse voice in the dead of night promising herself when no one was there to do so that there was a reason for all of it; she knows it is, and she knows her ideas of the Gods showing their favor through a life fated for pain was nothing but the desperate delusions she told herself to keep afloat.

She knows, and perhaps pain isn’t a mark of the Gods’ favor, perhaps misfortune isn’t their way to offer mortals a chance at proving themselves worthy; but Freydis cannot deny that there is truth to the stories the Greeks tell of you, she cannot deny that you have made out of yourself something that is more divine than human.

And now as you look at Galla, unwavering, commanding without saying a word, Freydis sees the same thing the Greeks do: divinity made flesh. Maybe it isn’t too outlandish to think you can decide the outcome of these battles to come, even if you aren’t there to intervene; maybe it isn’t impossible that your favor, like the Gods’ they so blindly trust in back in what once was her home, can turn the tide of a war.

But if that is true, Freydis cannot help but feel in her chest grow that hollow pressure, when she wonders why, after everything, would Ivar still be worthy of your favor.

“Harald can cut his passage to Kattegat,” Freydis blurts, meeting your wide eyes with her own, “He can keep him across the sea, weaken the army and th-…”

“And how do you speak so surely of this?”

“You told me,” She answers, not missing a beat. “You told me…before, that if Ivar spent the winter away from Kattegat, then that Saxon would be strong enough to defeat him.”

“That was a long time ago, Freydis. Many things have changed since then, in a manner we might not even be able to imagine,” You say, forcefully calm. A tilt of your head, and you insist, “Besides, we have our own wars, our own battles, to worry about. That world no longer concerns me.”

That’s a lie.

Before Freydis can decide if she wants to say anything, Galla leans forward on her seat, stealing your attention, “Word is you still plan on moving for another district in the spring.”

Sharing a look with Pyrrhos, a Spartan that has sworn his life and sword to you, and whom you have trusted to lead your men into battle; you take a sip from your goblet, lifting your hand to signal the number two.

“Both Decelea and Laurium will be mine,” At your friend’s look you only smile, lowering your cup and shrugging one shoulder, “I want Athens, and those cities are my path to it.”

“You do not have the men to move for both places at once.”

“Eleusis is stronger than you think,” You argue with proud glint in your eye, with a tilt of your chin upwards that Freydis smiles at. “We can hold, and we can divert some of the Byzantine forces here.”

“How?”

“A lure. We will be…undefended.”

“We?”

“You don’t expect me to leave Eleusis, do you?” Your nose furrows mockingly, “You know how I hate travelling.”

Galla stares in silence for a moment, before taking a deep breath and leaning back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest and an expectant lift of her eyebrows.

Instead of answering, you gesture with your hand to the man by your side, giving Pyrrhos the permission to explain. With his Greek denoting the accent of his homeland, an accent Freydis grew used to in the months she spent with you in Sparta, the warrior starts explaining your plan to prepare Eleusis for defense, while most of your numbers leave you for the neighboring districts to take control of them away from the Empire.

When pressed about it, your answer as to why you choose to lure the Empire to Eleusis is simple. So simple, that it makes a shiver run down Freydis’ spine. So simple, that it would make a lesser woman fear.

“They will underestimate me, and I want to punish them for it.”

“Eleusis will be weakened, even if it holds.”

“And we will rebuild again, stronger than before.”

“There are other ways.”

“I do not care for those. I want to burn them alive outside our walls, and let their ashes be an example for those that wish to follow in their footsteps.”

For a moment, barely an instant, but that still lingers in her mind for far too long, she is cowering near York’s walls during an attack and she hears of Ivar’s orders to his men to corner the attacking Saxons and make arrows rain on them from above.

And in her memories she hears him laugh as the helpless Saxons are slaughtered, but his laughter and yours are too alike for her to be able to make them apart.

____

Spring is leaving fast, the chill at night grows stronger with each passing day, the earth under her feet seemingly hardens with each passing moment.

Lord Hades demands his wife’s return, you told her one night, smile wide even though your trek to your home had been interrupted by a sudden storm, and laughter clinging to your words as you tilted your head back, welcoming the cold rain that soaked your clothes and chilled your skin; and each year he seems to stand her absence less and less, much to our misfortune.

Your people still work relentlessly well into the end of the warmer seasons, not so easily halted by the cold as her people were back home, not when winter is so much kinder here, not when, with the memory of a snow-covered Kattegat still fresh in her mind, to Freydis spring never ends in these lands.

You two are talking softly with each other about what is to come, quiet words that trade secrets and truths as they always have between you. With you telling her about your Commander’s plans for the weakening of Athens, and the certainty of the oracle you consulted about your upcoming victories.

“Sometimes I think they will just tell me what I want to hear.”

“The oracles?” You nod your head, and Freydis cannot bother hiding her frown. How could you imply women of the Gods would lie? “Why?”

“You have heard what the Attics call me,” You offer as an answer, gaze darkened, hardened, as you look at her out of the corner of your eye. Not that you’d realize, but it is that kind of expression, that darkness swimming in your gaze, that makes her agree with the Greeks sometimes, that makes her look at you and think Soteira. “The oracles call me by the same name.”

“They must have their reasons.”

You stop walking at her gentle argument, and Freydis refuses to let go of your hand, so she stops as well, turning to meet your gaze.

“Do you believe them?” You ask, bluntly. She can only return your wide gaze, not really certain of what she wants her answer to be, not really confident in which answer would be a lie, not really sure if she wants to offer truth at all.

“Should I?”

“You…you know me,” You tell her, shocked, almost affronted. It is barely a moment, but she dares think she sees a glimpse of desperation in your gaze, feels it in the tightening of your hold on her hand. “You, better than anyone here, know who I am. I-I am no Soteira, no Despoena.”

She sees it in your eyes, a desperation she saw few times, a vulnerability that flays at her heart each time she is witness to it; and she is aware of what you are asking from her, but…

“You must understand why they t-…”

She watches the humanness of a woman give in against the otherworldliness of a legend before her very eyes, before she is even done speaking.

“I understand,” You sentence, and at the tone in your voice a compulsion as old as the ground under her feet makes Freydis want to straighten her back, to stand to attention. “Hiereia, Anassa, Kván, Dróttning. I understand why they use those words, why…why they matter.”

Freydis steps forward, finding certainty in the chaos that swims in your gaze, finding stability somewhere in the ache in her chest at the sight of you faltering. And she will offer anything, lies if she has to, truth if she can, to make the lost look in your eyes fade to the comforting certainty she knows.

“They don’t matter more than you.”

“You can lie better than that.” You chuckle, but it is humorless, and Freydis doesn’t even smile. She could swear you almost shrink when you face her impassiveness, her unwaveringness.

She wishes she could find it in her to tell you that their words cannot change who you are, that something is not made real just by being spoke aloud. But they dragged her small form from her mother’s embrace, called her a slave and made her one; Ivar freed her and in the madness he left her as a burden she called herself Freydis, and that was what she became.

“I am not lying,” She tells you instead, finding your gaze and holding it without hesitation. “You have a name before any of those titles, you are yourself before anything they want to make out of you.”

“Not many remember my name anymore.” You tell her, the faintest tremble in the corners of your mouth.

Freydis looks at you and thinks of the foreign woman the Völva led to the healers’ hut, that refused to give anyone her name as if it were some invisible chain she insisted on holding in her own hands. That changed with time, and with time she also came to understand why exactly it changed, why you did.

When you met your name was a secret spoken by few, guarded and coveted, and each time you shared it you did so with the sacrifice of thousands of Greeks weakening your voice, baring your guilt. Now, what feels like a lifetime afterwards, your name is again spoken by few, muffled and restless, uttered as an afterthought, with your sacrifice helping the voice that utters it be quietened under the loud intonation of a legend, of the voices of worship.

She can’t quite understand why you’d choose to cling to the lingering humanity of your saga instead of embracing the glory of divinity, but she will offer whatever she can until you realize what you truly are.

“I do, I will. You will.”

You want to argue, you want to answer, but so easily you are silenced by uttered words in your mother tongue as two women pass you by.

Freydis knows enough of your language to understand some words she catches carried by the wind, she knows enough of devotion to understand they are muttering their prayer to something they refuse to see as human.

And as easily as that, your name that was sweet on her tongue is kept trapped behind her lips, your vulnerability trapped in the dignified bow of your head you offer to the passing Greeks.

Your smile is a lie, she knows it is.

Without another word on the topic, you continue your walk amongst the half-built walls that stand tall over Eleusis, reminiscing, “When my mother was alive, she would take me with her to walk these paths,” You’re telling her, smile a little rueful when you amend, “Not these exact paths, our walls weren’t this strong then. It took over twenty years for our people to realize that wood burns.”

“Stone is expansive.” She quips around a small chuckle, and you shrug.

“So is defeat,” Without another word, you tighten your hold of your hand in hers and tug Freydis towards one of the low towers so you are closer to overlooking the sea. Eyes strikingly bright as you overlook the workers lifting the heavy stones with their cranes and pulleys, you tell her, “You know, my father used to say strong walls are a dangerous thing for a city to pride itself in. What keeps the wolves out, if enough of an opening is breached for the beasts to come through, will become a trap to keep the sheep in.”

“Your enemies could invade, use Eleusis as the fortification you have made of it against you.” She clarifies, slightly irked at your intent of taking a scenic route towards your point. You only do that when you’re hiding something, or when you’re about to tell her something she doesn’t want to hear.

“But this city isn’t something I will accept to have taken from me,” You retort with ease. A deep breath, and you turn around, your back against the stone railing of the wall, and your gaze lowered to your hand in hers. Freydis holds her breath, and finally you say, “If anyone manages to breach our defenses, wolves and sheep alike will burn within the walls. You are neither, Freydis.”

“What are you saying?”

“Pyrrhos will show you the passageways he has secured for you and a few others. If we fall, you must escape through them.”

She shakes her head, stepping closer.

“Not without you.”

You don’t look at her, you only have eyes for the horizon ahead. An almost-serene smile starts curving at your lips, and Freydis’ chest pulls tight, a dull ache stalling her breaths.

“I’ll find you when it is over, if the Gods let me.”

There is something you aren’t telling her, some truth you are hiding. She is certain of it.

“Do you intend to die here?” She asks, her hand tightening its hold on your arm, not above demanding honesty if you are trying to refuse to offer it.

You turn your head to her and only smile, a barely-there quirk of the side of your mouth. It is humorless, mirthless.

Divinity shines dully in your eyes, and Freydis’ almost expects to see faint cracks in the corner of your mouth where you have dared smile bitterly, as if you had become one more of the unbreakable but lifeless marble statues that stand proudly in Eleusis.

“Haven’t you heard? I can’t die.”

Don’t you know who I am? You can’t kill me.

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading! I hope this was alright! 😘

Find the second part of the Epilogue right here!

Vοσταλγία Taglist:  @youbloodymadgenius @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @angelofthorr @samsationalwilson @peachyboneless​ @1950schick @punkrocknpearls @ietss @itsmysticalmystery @revolution-starter @the-a-word-2214  @fae-sedai @crazybunnyladysworld   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside @aprilivar @msrawog @kaitieskidmore1 @berryonasummerevening  

#freydis vikings #freydis x reader #freydis #ἀλήθεια masterlist #I haven't posted much lately #and even before when I posted regular updates posting something for Alatheia made me anxious in ways I cannot put into words #so now it's even worse #excuse me while I go hide

[pomegranates-and-blood]

ἀλήθεια (Chapter 6, Vοσταλγία AU)

ἀλήθεια Masterlist

Pairing: Freydis/Reader, Ivar/Reader (past)

Word Count: 3.6k

Warnings: The usual, plus mentions/descriptions of war/battle. My endless swooning over Freydis.

A/N: So yeah, another one of these. It’s on the shorter side, and it doesn’t have much Freydis/Reader; but it is the last setup for the epilogue, so I needed to get plot stuff out of the way before we get to the good part lol. Hope you like it!

She loses count of all the months that go by, of all the flavors and scents she discovers, of all the stories you share and hear, of the vibrant and new colors she sees, of the people she meets and names she now remembers.

And she learns to speak your language of strange consonants and odd verbs, and you learn to speak hers of silent glances and smiles that feel secret. You learn to say the name of the man that you left without pain, and she learns to say the name of the man that you loved without resentment.

Oddly enough, these months teach Freydis to be almost thankful for Ivar.

Doesn’t mean she doesn’t still feel the ridiculous envy for a phantom, and that each time you and her argue about something regarding the past, she feels his mocking glare on her, as if reminding her it wasn’t him the reason she lost; doesn’t mean she doesn’t see him in every man in power she meets, especially those that linger too close to you, those that lose themselves in the curve of your smile.

She doesn’t blame them, but she hates them all the same.

But the ones she hates the most are the softer ones, the ones that are so unlike him that they make you laugh freely and don’t make you think twice about the easy affection you give away, the ones that are so unlike her that they don’t make you think of secrets and can offer you the world in a way only a man can.

But once again, Freydis is thankful for Ivar. For many things, because he taught her many things, because he brought you to her, because he freed her once. Most of all, she is thankful for what he taught the both of you about men in power.

Because when a prince in some cold land -colder than Kattegat, though she isn’t sure if distance is clouding her memories- presses a reverent kiss to your knuckles and looks at you with hunger in dark eyes, you smile with the same thing written in your own gaze; she is able to understand that your hunger isn’t for him, nor for all the worlds he offers you.

Because when she meets the last remaining man of your blood and he greets Freydis roughly in her own tongue -unaware she speaks Greek, but it is better that way, it is better they don’t know she knows many things- with a smile warmer than yours but eyes just as calculating; she can smile back and accept the warmth for a truth instead of searching for a lie.

Almost a year goes by and she finds herself enthralled in the way you make Sparta your own, the same way you did Kattegat: by letting the world around you change you just enough that you can force it to bend to your will.

And now there’s more definition in your shoulders, the lines of your back stronger, more defined; from a year training with bows and arrows alongside Lysander and Galla.

And now your anger is more subdued, the chaos kept at bay with cruel and well-placed words, but the fire is the same that makes her think of spring storms; from a year a woman free of everything except your ambition.

Freydis has changed too, she knows this. She finds herself standing taller on ground not her own; she finds herself just as aware as she always was of how they look at her, only now able and willing to use it against them; she finds herself finding certainty not in the Gods but in herself; she finds herself accepting that pain was never a gift from the Gods, and it may have marked her, body and soul, but she made herself.

And now here she sits by your side, trying not to let her thoughts linger on how you both said goodbye to Galla knowing she would return to him, to the man she supposedly loves, but here he is greeting you with a Spartan woman by his arm, a wife that isn’t the strong-willed and secretive woman Freydis came to care for in those months travelling together.

Your cousin eyes you with a teasing smile, “You are itching to return home, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know where my home is,” You correct, a tilt of your head, “But I do want what is mine to be returned to me, yes.”

“Some still say lands in Scandinavia are yours. To think you left Greece promised to a Thebesian and now you have returned, the wife to a Varangian King.”

You shrug one shoulder.

“Twists of Fate.”

“I’m still expecting him to storm our coasts to get you back.”

“You put a lot of value on my hand, Lysander.”

“Humility doesn’t suit you,” The man shrugs broad shoulders, and in the way he offers a side glance Freydis sees so much of you. “Regardless, if they do, we will be ready.”

“Of course you will be. I would hope you would ready for another battle, though.” You state, tone growing serious.

“We will retake Eleusis when the time comes.” Lysander reassures you, but you shake your head, and in your gaze all Freydis can see is…hunger.

“I am not speaking of Eleusis,” You promise, and when you smile your cousin returns the same mad kind of smile. She remembers Ivar and Hvitserk talking and boasting over the table during a feast after a victory, she remembers the mad smiles they shared with one another, and she understands seeing you and Lysander now, that there truly is a special kind of song to be heard only by those who share blood. You raise your chin, and offer, “Thebes is weakened, Lysander. And you know better than I do that to retake Eleusis we need to strike through land.”

Realization dawns on the man, who leans back and studies you in silence for a few breaths. You never lose the confident stance, though, staring him down as he considers your words.

Finally, he says, “We take over Thebes, settle your army there, and we can attack Eleusis from the North with the brunt of Attic forces, while Spartans choke their coasts.”

“And in controlling Thebes we control most of the silk trade in the Empire,” You finish, proud as you straighten in your seat, “Those priests are sure to miss their Byzantine Silk, are they not?”

Freydis is aware, in some part of her mind, that she is probably staring at you like a lovesick fool. Wide and lost smile, the faint warmth she feels on the top of her cheeks, eyes giving away every secret, if there ever was one.

You have eyes for the man across from you, gaze defiant in a way she knows well, in a way that her heart knows well too, for each skipped beat that gaze is responsible for.

Lysander tilts his head to the side, much like you do, and presses, “And who would rule? You?”

“Who else?” You retort, shrugging one shoulder, “You were never the conquering type, the Gods know you are Anax because you have no choice.”

He ignores the jab you throw his way, instead insisting,

“But you are Anassa of Attica, and I don’t think Boetians would take kindly to an Athenian woman ruling over them.”

Your mouth curves downwards, a nonchalant gesture that speaks of anything but that.

“They will, because we will be saving them. Attic or not, I am still Greek. Tis better than the alternative.”

“The Empire is not the enemy you thi-…”

“I’m not talking of the Empire. I’m talking of the Kievan Rus.”

“Oleg.” You start, and she lifts her gaze with a frown.

“What of him?”

“Do you trust him?”

Freydis scoffs, “No. And neither do you.”

Pressing your lips together, you look away for a moment, considering your next words. Freydis watches in silence, though her hands still follow the familiar motions of picking apart the flowers, stems, and leaves from the dried batch of yarrow.

“I think I do,” You start, voice quiet. “I think…I think that if nothing else, he is…direct. Reliable, in his own way.”

“He is unpredictable.”

You reach forward to correct a mistake she made, picking off a dried flower she left alongside the leaves, and say, “So was Ivar.”

“Not the same, and you know that.” She argues, leaning forward. For all the times she argued that you should have manipulated Ivar into doing your bidding, she never expected you to find the one man that outshines your husband in volatility, in chaos; and try doing so to him instead.

“He is smart, and he has ambitions that…align themselves with mine,” You insist, and Freydis accepts your words with a sigh. She doesn’t like where this is going one bit, but she will concede that this prince is a piece in the board that you shouldn’t rule out as a useful. “Do you think…?”

The words hang in the air between you, and her gaze meets yours, her answer unspoken.

“We will see,” She promises, and the smile that slowly curves at her lips is mirrored in yours. “Lust loosens a man’s tongue much more than wine, after all.”

The moment the words leave your lips silence reigns in between the people in the room, but Freydis doesn’t fail to notice how Galla is undisturbed by the mention, continuing her craving of a wooden block to make a building to add to the detailed stereographic map Lysander keeps of Eleusis. She isn’t sure if it is an act, if it is part of her pretense that she knows everything, or if she truly does.

Lysander’s broad arms are crossed over his chest, and he frowns as he looks at you.

“What are you talking about?”

Your smile is a secret in itself, but it speaks of something she knows well. Arrogance.

“A Prince from Novgorod will send an army to Thebes soon, they will be razing through Macedonia when spring comes.”

“How exactly do you know that?”

“I am a witch, I know things?” You tease with a smile, before sharing a look with Freydis and explaining, “There’s a man, a powerful man, interested in Constantinople, much in the way I am interested in Greece. He has agreed to send weak enough forces that we can overtake them and conquer Thebes, as long as we weaken the Empire for him.”

“Impressive woman as you might be, you cannot give the Rus Constantinople.”

You don’t miss a beat, answering, “But I can weaken it by taking Thebes, Athens, and Eleusis from them; and I can give the Rus standing ground on Athens when the time comes for them to invade.”

A sigh, and Lysander tries, voice strangely calming, “How are you certain you are not setting up the invasion of your own land?”

“I have other…safeguards.”

“Marriage?”

You shake your head with a scoff, “Nothing as fickle as that, no.”

“What, then?”

“Fear, awe. There are many things you can call it,” You state. When you speak next, there is a purposely false tone of innocence in your voice, and you shrug your shoulders, “You ought to remember, Lysander, that I am married to a Viking. And a famous one at that.”

“You divorced him.”

“But that is not a tale people will tell. Not there, for they fear his wrath too much to imply his wife has left him; and not here, for they fear the indecency of a woman capable and willing of ruling alone. As far as anyone knows, Ivar the Boneless has his eye set on the Mediterranean, and it is just a matter of time before his army gets here.”

“You cannot-…” Lysander starts, only to be interrupted.

“We courtesans are good at sharing secrets, you know?” Galla pips from her seat, dark eyes still focused on her project. “I can make sure my people spread the right secrets.”

Lysander’s eyes go slowly from the former courtesan to you, and he takes a deep breath.

“How much time will that buy you?”

“Enough,” You promise, unfaltering. “One like me never outlives a lie.”

____

The war takes a toll even on you. She sees it in the tired eyes as you offer a smile across a war table before returning your attention to the movements of the troops your commanders speak of, feels it in the loose hold of your hand in hers as you promise your goodnight wordlessly and slip away in the quiet of the night, hears it in the quiet prayers that leave your lips as you cut off a piece of your hair and let it flow with the wind that carries the ashes of those who perish in the battles.

But war, war like this, it is invigorating as much as it is debilitating. Freydis feels it, feels it in every victory that makes her smile a little wilder, feels it in every successful trick that makes Galla’s dark eyes shine with pride, feels it in every piece of land you claim for yourself that makes you a little more goddess than woman.

And before winter is upon you, the mark of battle is slowly fading from Eleusis, and you stand before a throne made of stone that they all pretend not to see the Norse runes etched on, and with your head held high, you claim the title you were born to hold.

Anassa of free Greece.

____

It is the sight in the night you offer a feast to honor the first families that are joined in marriage under your rule that Freydis notices something off about you.

Granted, a celebration in your home is almost nothing like the celebrations she participated in while in Kattegat; the games are very different and so is the music, the food is fascinatingly strange and the people less so, but still as fascinating; but she is unable to stop herself from comparing it to a feast in Kattegat, to the nights of music and loud people all around you, to the breathed laughs you’d let out and all the different smiles you would offer in the course of one night.

And while the world around you is familiar once again, and the people are warmer and kinder, and the music is more refined and the food sweeter; you…you remain distant. And your breathed laughs are mere chuckles for the benefit of others, and the smiles you offer do not stray from two varieties she sadly knows well: the false smiles and the wistful ones.

So, she approaches you. Quietly, you both know by now there aren’t words that need to be exchanged, she takes a seat next to you.

As who awakens from a dream, you turn your gaze to Freydis and offer a smile. A warmer one, a truer one, and that fills her hollow chest with something indescribable.

But instead of saying anything, or accepting the impossible calm in the midst of the chaos of the celebrations as you sit side by side, you stand up and extend a hand.

“Walk with me?”

Freydis doesn’t hesitate to take your hand, and when you don’t let go as you start walking through the balconies of the temple, she dares to intertwine her fingers with yours.

“You seem…different tonight.”

“It is strange, sitting there alone,” You tell her, an explanation, an answer to the question she didn’t need voice. “I never knew how to handle power alone. I had Narses, I had Ivar. I was never alone with power, with the decisions, with the…weight.”

“You don’t have to lose yourself because of it.”

“I don’t plan to, I just…if any of them were here, I could…ask them, I could…”

“What would you ask?”

“If hunger like this is to be expected,” You reply instantly, holding her hand just a tad tighter. You stop walking turning to look out at the sea from the stone balcony, and Freydis cannot help but feel you see much further beyond the horizon when you do. “I am not content with Eleusis, I want…more.”

Freydis smiles, proud and maybe a little mad.

“No one ever expected you to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“What is it you truly want, Freydis?” Galla asks, too convoluted of a question for this early in the morning. Though, Freydis has learned in these passing months that to what her is a morning to Galla is the middle of an afternoon.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

The other woman shrugs, full lips almost in a pout, “Everyone has ambitions. I wonder about yours.”

“If you expect me to name kingdoms, you will be disappointed.”

“I don’t.”

She adverts her gaze, pressing her lips together as she tries to come up with an answer, with a truth that doesn’t have the claw marks of her instinct that begs her to lie.

“Control,” She offers, before scrunching her face at her own words. It sounds wrong. So, she tries explaining, “I want to…for too long my life has been dictated by the choices of others.”

“Yet you follow a foreign woman to a world so far from yours, you accept her as your leader even if you aren’t of her people.”

“I need only have myself to have something to control. I’ve...learned that.”

“Will you tell me you truly do not hunger for more?” Galla insists, before being interrupted by the door opening with what seems to be a kick.

“I will kill Lysander. Mark my words, I will kill that man one day.” You complain loudly as you enter the room, shrugging off the himation with a frustrated grunt that just makes the task much more complicated for you, resulting in a little angry dance as you fight the piece of clothing that Galla snickers at.

Freydis watches you with a small smile on her lips, unable to keep herself from it. Quietly, she answers,

“We all want more.”

She searches your gaze for a few moments, before finding her words.

“If they were here, what would they say?”

“Narses would tell me to hold my ground, to wait for them to attack but ward them off by showing my strength,” You say, eyes unable to leave the blue of the sea as you continue, “Ivar would tell me to raze it all, to attack before they have time to realize I am a threat.”

“Would you do what any of them would tell you to?” She questions, even though she knows the answer.

She sees it in the curve of your mouth, feels it in the chuckle you let out as your head drops to her shoulder, hears it in the breath that leaves you.

“No, I wouldn’t,” You voice finally, quietly. “I would…I will lure them into attacking. They won’t think me a threat, no sane man would think a witch that stumbled her way into being a conqueror can protect a kingdom. When they step too close, we will attack, we will…reclaim.”

It isn’t what that fool you tricked into loving you would have done, for you aren’t standing tall like a man would and daring the world to come and stop you, because the world won’t hesitate to strike down a woman that dares do such a thing.

It isn’t what the man that offered you a heart and a kingdom yet lost you when he couldn’t give you freedom would have done, for you aren’t biting anger and bloodthirst at the helm of an army wanting to bring the world to its knees, because the anger that burns away at you is not one you will let turn you to ashes as well.

It is what you would do, with all the lessons those men and many others have left you with, but, more importantly, what all the lessons the women you have met and loved have left you with.

With your mother’s faith, with Sieghild’s resolve, with Valdís resilience, with Galla’s cunning.

Freydis doesn’t know what lessons, if any, she might have left you with. Yet as time goes by, and you both return to this same place, to this same home that isn’t the stone walls of the temple but something more, something more permanent than that; she realizes she never need leave you with any lesson, much like she refuses to acknowledge any lesson you may leave her with.

Because that would imply that one day you won’t be side by side. If Freydis accepts she leaves you with her loyalty, or her perseverance, then that means she leaves you, and she never would. If you leave her with your pride, or your strength, then there is a world possible where you are lost to her, and that simply cannot be.

I never knew how to handle power alone, you told her. But you never were. Alone, that is.

Her fingers intertwined with yours, her presence at your side, her shoulder for you to lean your head on as you both look ahead at the place where the sky meets the sea; and Freydis hopes you know that, just as she prays quietly, to whatever Gods may here, that neither of you ever know what it is like to be alone again.

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading! Hope you liked it!

I’ll post the epilogue in a week or so, maybe earlier :)

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius​ @heavenly1927​ @toe-vind-ek-jou​ @xbellaxcarolinax​ @angelofthorr​ @samsationalwilson​ @peachyboneless​ @1950schick​ @punkrocknpearls @ietss​​ @itsmysticalmystery​​ @revolution-starter​​ @the-a-word-2214​​ @fae-sedai​​ @crazybunnyladysworld​​   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside​​ @aprilivar​​ @msrawog​

#freydis #freydis x reader #freydis vikings #ἀλήθεια masterlist

[pomegranates-and-blood]

ἀλήθεια Masterlist (Vοσταλγία AU)

νοσταλγία Masterlist

ἀλήθεια (alā́theia): truth, not a lie. Associated with λήθη (means forgetfulness, concealment) which is Lethe, one of the rivers of the Underworld, presumably where the souls go drink to forget their past life and begin the new one.

Pairing: Freydis x female!Reader, Ivar x female!Reader (past)

Summary:

They would tell you of a king who stole me helpless from my sunshine garden, not the woman who came to me sublime, lily eyes and lily lips. A king does not ask permission from his prize, but she- oh, she- she knelt, kissing my flower-crown fingertips, and laid a kingdom at my feet. Placed her dread heart in my palm, called it a key and me a queen. (C. Ruth)

AU of Nostalgia (diverts from Chapter 37 onwards, but if you just want to read this I can give you a recap of Nostalgia if you want, just send an ask) where the main ship/pairing is Freydis/Reader.

Chapters:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Epilogue, part 1

Epilogue, part 2

#freydis x reader #freydis #freydis vikings #ἀλήθεια masterlist #ἀλήθεια

[pomegranates-and-blood]

ἀλήθεια (Chapter 1, Vοσταλγία AU)

ἀλήθεια Masterlist

Pairing: Freydis/Reader, Ivar/Reader (past)

Word Count: 2.9k

Warnings: The usual, plus like a lot of angst, a lot of it. (Sort of, I’m not very good with death/violence) graphic descriptions of death.

A/N: The first part of the AU of Nostalgia for Freydis/Reader! This is a deviation from Chapter 37, so beware for spoilers, and also...prepare for pain. Anyhow, I hope you like this!

She finds you sitting on that same clearing from so long ago, sitting almost in the same place. Only this time, you are twirling your wedding ring on your finger.

It is still clear as day, the memory of that time she found you praying on that small clearing, the mark of tears on your face doing nothing to diminish the fire in your eyes. She remembers, because that is the night she realized there was something more to you, something more to the way she saw you, something more to the way she felt greedy and possessive over your attention, something more to the way she felt about you.

Fitting, she supposes, that it was that night when you told her Ivar was forcing you to marry him. She never doubted something back then she called love -now knows better, and calls obsession, calls need, calls selfishness- was what made him bring you to Kattegat, and so Freydis wasn’t really surprised to hear he intended to make you his wife.

It still hurt. If she is honest, it still does.

She remembers what you looked like that night, the defeated edge and the anger and the desperation. She remembers what your hand felt like in hers, warm and tethering and hers. She remembers the way you lived up to the name they give you when you pulled promises of helping you escape from her lips, as if she were under a spell -and maybe she was, maybe she still is-.

And just like that night she approaches silently even though she knows you are aware of her presence, and just like that night her heart pulls in her chest.

Freydis is used to your pain, she is used to your anger; she has been a witness to both many times before.

But this, this is nothing like pain, nothing like anger. This is devastation, and wrath.

She never saw devastation quite like the one that is written in the way your spine isn’t as straight anymore, in the way your voice cracks and breaks and you still talk, in the way you tell her the Greeks were attacked, and they will be attacked again.

There’s a strange air around you, like all that is alive and warm comes to die willingly at your feet, like through the cracks of your broken heart seeps in all the warmth of the earth as if to try to heal it.

Freydis still sits by your side, shoulder to shoulder.

She asks by whom.

And she can’t help but think she has never actually seen wrath before, not until now, not until she sees the gentleness in your eyes fade away in but a breath, not until your expression -always so honest, so alive- gives in to nothingness, not until she hears none of the usual warmth when you say Ivar.

And she realizes maybe it isn’t willingly that the warmth comes to die at your feet, but that your touch that has given so much is also capable -willing- to take it all, even life; and maybe it isn’t a soft heart needing the earth to tend and mend it, but it is the woman that had wars started and ended in her name -for a chance at her love- that demands the world pay for the mistake of trying to break her.

Many times she has looked at you and thought of the spring you always spoke so fondly of. She thought of warmth and gentle breezes and flower crowns.

She looks at you now and thinks of the rage of a storm clouding the skies and ravaging the warm earth with strikes of hail and lightning, she thinks of thorns and poison ivies and vines wrapped tightly around the throats of the undeserving, and yet in the devastation and the wrath there’s still you.

And she reaches for your hand.

You hold hers back so tightly she still feels the ghost of your touch when you’ve left her behind, your back straightened once again, but your eyes dead -so dead, so unlike yours- when you go to face the King.

____

She waits for the world to shake and tremble, she waits for Kattegat’s streets to be a swirl of madness as they did when you were made queen, she waits for word to spread of how the queen has died at the hands of her husband.

She waits, but nothing happens. The earth isn’t split in two, even though she knows you are.

A part of her, a part of her that grows stronger with each passing moment since you left that clearing, begs her to go to the longhouse. She knows she could never kill him -but she wants to-, she knows she couldn’t even try to fight him -but she needs to-.

She doesn’t want to leave you alone.

Night falls, and she tries sleeping, even if her body feels jittery and something in the back of her mind reminds her why she always found ways to hold on to small bits of control. Because there is men like him, and there’s monsters like him, that are willing and able to take everything from her, in ways that are worse than she ever imagined, in ways she can do nothing against.

She stands in front of you, watching you as you carefully finish braiding together a wreath of flowers. The distant door to the longhouse is forced open, and your hands still.

“My love, where are you?” He calls out, and Freydis watches, unable to move, as you close your eyes where you stand and take a deep breath. A cleansing breath. A last breath.

The wreath of flowers falls from your hand.

You start walking, and it feels as if thick vines trap her, but she still fights, she still tries reaching you, pleading with you not to go.

“I’m here.” You tell him, eerily calm.

“Come here,” Ivar calls, still slightly manic, still lost and erratic as big eyes look over you. Freydis takes steps twin to yours, but feels like she is watching from afar when he extends a hand, “I need you.”

Freydis cries and pleads, screams and rages, but neither of you listen. She wishes you could just listen, because…she knows how this tale goes, she knows how this ends.

He kisses you, and for the first time she wishes that kiss to never end. His hand caresses the side of your face, and for the first time she pleads he holds you close and you let him.

But he turns you around in his grip, your back to his chest, his nose buried in your hair as he whispers something Freydis can’t hear, but that she knows doesn’t matter. Won’t matter.

Because she knows what happens now. She doesn’t know how, but she knows.

And all she can do is watch.

The scream is caught in her throat as she watches pull tight at the metal cord, choking you. You both fall to the ground, but it is Freydis who breaks.

You fight, of course you do, and she claws and tears at herself trying to reach you, trying to save you. But she can’t, and your neck bruises and bleeds, your body loses its strength, and your gasps and whimpers fade to nothing.

You fade to nothing.

There’s a deafening moment of silence that follows the moment she realizes you are no longer in this world, a moment where she realizes there is a world without you and she is stuck living in it, a moment where at the fading of your voice and your laughter it feels like it is the rest of the world that has died instead.

She watches, frozen and trembling, as Ivar sits up. Her stomach churns at the way your head lolls lifelessly at the movement. She wants to scream, she wants to fight, she wants to…Gods, please, anything but this.

Shaking fingers move your hair away from your face, but Freydis cannot focus on how that makes her feel sick, and the king’s body is shaken by cries that sound more like a wounded animal’s than a man’s, but Freydis cannot find it in her to think it fitting for a monster.

No, all she can focus on is the metal around your neck. It looks so much like chains.

You died with chains around you. She remembers your voice, quiet and warm, telling her about the thing you feared the most about death; and she has to look at your dead body and remember she will never hear your voice again, and that she failed at keeping you from dying how you most feared: chained.

She wakes up screaming, and blindly stumbles out of the room, towards the entrance of the home. She has to find you, she has to-…

“She won’t die, child of Freyja,” A voice behind her says, and she turns around with a gasp, finding a woman sitting on one of the flimsy chairs with all the poise of who sits on a throne. Her blind eyes feel all-seeing as the woman tilts her head to the side, so reminiscent of…you. “Her death isn’t his to have.”

The woman smiles, and only then Freydis notices the way her full lips are stained with a shade of red that looks sweet.

She blinks, and the wooden roof of her bedroom greets her. She closes her eyes, clutching the pendant that hangs from her neck, and tells herself everything will be alright.

She was always a good liar, after all.

____

“Tomorrow, there will be-…I will be dead tomorrow,” You explain, and though Freydis feels her heart squeeze in her chest, you speak too calmly to be considering your own death. A deep breath, and, “A thrall, she…she looks like me, she will be dead in our-…in his bed come morning. Ivar will know it’s not me, of course, but…tis not something one survives, leaving Ivar the Boneless, everyone knows that.”

Freydis bites back words -accusations, really- that you are still protecting him, protecting his pride, his image, his reputation. That you are still trying to find a way to spare him the pain.

You breathe something that in a life before this could have been a chuckle, but now only sounds bitter and broken.

“Kattegat will see its queen die, I’m sure that surprises no one. Especially with a…a foreign witch on the throne of a realm she never belonged to.”

“You’re leaving.” The shieldmaiden states, instead of replying to your strange and manic words. Freydis is almost grateful she speaks, because she knows you would have kept on talking.

You meet Valdís’ gaze and in your eyes shines what in a weaker woman would be desperation. But all Freydis sees is determination, and relentlessness, and the stubbornness of something warm and alive trying to survive the winter.

“I have no choice. These are my people, he-…I need to return to those who are still alive. If I wait any longer…if I wait, I may not have life or freedom to make this choice, Valdís,” You raise your chin, but the tears clog your throat and make your voice break. Still, you push on, a rueful smile on your lips, “You know to me there isn’t a difference in losing either.”

The shieldmaiden nods, what Freydis would swear are tears shining in her pale eyes, and embraces you tightly. You barely move to return the embrace, and she has a feeling she understands why.

“I love you, witch. May we meet in the life after this one.”

You look up at Valdís broad frame, and your expression trembles, your breath trembles past your lips in a sob you mask in a pitiful and bittersweet laugh that whispers what you cannot, it won’t happen, not to us, Valhalla and the Underworld will never be one and the same.

“If my mother-…if you ever meet Sieghild, if she returns here,” You close your eyes as you step back, “Tell her I couldn’t survive till the spring. Tell her I love her, and that I hope her Gods and mine keep her.”

Valdís nods her head again, the clear tell of gritted teeth as she looks away from you.

You approach Freydis, and she sees some of your resolve crumble, as if the goodbye hurts you as much as it would hurt her.

“Freydis…”

“Don’t say goodbye,” She advises you, stepping forward. “I am not leaving you alone.”

Your lips part, something quite close to a sob leaving your throat. Still, you shake your head. Stubborn woman.

“N-No, Freydis, I can’t...I can’t ask this of you.”

It is foolish, since you remind her now more than ever of the skittish and distrusting woman that was first brought to Kattegat; but Freydis still reaches forward, grasps your hand in hers.

“Wherever your Gods or mine take you, I shall be at your side,” She vows, as quietly as she can, looking directly into your eyes. Her mind was made long before she even told you those words for the first time. “I swore by it. You aren’t alone.”

You return the hold of your hand on hers, and that is all the answer she needs. With nothing but the clothes at her back and an amulet of Freyja hanging from her neck, Freydis leaves it all behind.

____

She feels like you have been on the run for an eternity, it feels like her legs burn from days of walking, and her body is being pulled to the earth by unseen vines wrapped around her.

By the way you lean against a tree and take careful breaths, she would think you feel the same. But then she catches the faraway look in your eyes as you look back at the direction you came from, and even if you are so far now from Kattegat that this isn’t even considered its border anymore Freydis knows to you it feels like it is still behind you, breathing down your neck.

You meet her eyes, and she doesn’t hesitate to straighten her back and motion for you to continue walking. She doesn’t mind walking for as long as she has to, not for you.

You find a hunter’s camp near the city you say the Greeks had settled at, and you silently agree to spend the night there.

Before the dim fire you two are able to start, Freydis sits and watches the shadows battle the light of the flames, darkness and light, life and death, fighting for the bigger portion of your soul.

The tears make a silent trail down your cheeks as you twirl the golden ring in your hand. The engraved flowers seem to mock you, standing out even more now that the ring is dirtied and muddied from days on the run.

“Did I make a mistake?” You ask her, big eyes filled with a mix of nostalgia and hope she is so used to seeing in your gaze, but that now more than ever, maybe because so much has changed and so much remains the same, it breaks her heart all the more.

And she doesn’t have an answer to give you. She wishes she could tell you coming back would be the right choice, that there’s more waiting at your back than whatever you are facing now. She wishes she could tell you that it was the right choice to leave it all, that you belong to Greece and that there is hope to be found after all that has happened.

But she can’t do either of those things, because she doesn’t know.

And how she wishes she did, if only to make the lost look in your eyes disappear, if only to somehow protect you from the desperate and broken hope that makes your breaths shallow.

“Do you think you did?” Is what she asks instead.

You meet her eyes, unwavering. And shake your head.

Your answer breaks you further than any of hers could, and your face crumples in pain.

It isn’t just the fear of them finding you what keeps you quiet, it is grief cutting any sound from leaving your throat even as you bow your back and part your lips in a scream. The rage and the pain threaten to break you at the seams, and desperate hands clutch at your hair, your own arms wrapped around you as you fold in over yourself, as if to keep yourself together.

All Freydis can do is put her own arms around you, bring you close to her and let you shake and cry and break.

Your breaths never find a regular pattern, scattered and shaking, more labored and pained whenever your hands tighten and you feel the press of that damn ring against your skin. You never lose the tension in your frame, not once in the whole night does your pain leave you for long enough to let you rest, you hold yourself tightly and desperately under your own control.

You tell her it hurts, you tell her you have been torn apart, and the way your voice breaks and shakes around the shape of her name makes her wish she had anything other than quiet and warmth to give you.

When the first rays of the new day try piercing the darkness of the forest around you, there’s a defeated kind of resilience to the way you stand up and walk away.

She moves to follow, but you tell her to stay and rest, and that you will return soon.

When you do, there isn’t a ring in your finger anymore.

____ ____ ____

So, what do you think?

Ivar attacking the Greeks is something I considered a lot for the plot of Nostalgia, but it was something so unforgivable that I couldn’t put in the main story, so here goes. I hope you like this Freydis, and idk, that you like the pairing. Of course they won’t get there anytime soon cause Reader truly loved Ivar and is going to have to grieve that relationship, but I like these two together, a lot.

Enough rambling! Please let me know what you think! Also, if you don’t want to be tagged in this AU, lemme know! I know Freydis isn’t for everyone, so feel free to ask me to take you off the list for this one! Love ya!

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​ @aprilivar​ @msrawog​  

#freydis x reader #freydis vikings #freydis #ἀλήθεια masterlist

[pomegranates-and-blood]

ἀλήθεια (Chapter 5, Vοσταλγία AU)

ἀλήθεια Masterlist

Pairing: Freydis/Reader, Ivar/Reader (past)

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: The usual. My endless swooning over Freydis.

A/N: So yeah, I have two chapters of Alatheia done, because this one and Chapter 6 were one and the same until I decided to split them. Should I post the other one tomorrow, or wait a week? Idk, I’ll see lol. Hope you like this!

“Sparta.” You say with a whisper, and Freydis walks forward, standing next to you on the ship, overlooking the same city that rises in the horizon.

“Your father’s homeland, isn’t it?”

“Where my cousin is king,” You confirm, before turning your head to the side, looking back out of the corner of your eye, “Where Galla’s love awaits.”

“Oh, save it.” Galla grumbles from her place a few feet back.

“You did promise him your hand in marriage when the Fates brought you back together.”

“You promised a Viking to love him and yet here we are,” Galla retorts, more bite than Freydis had expected. Your expression tightens, a strange blend between the anger Freydis is familiar with -enthralled with, in awe of-, and the cold cruelty that has made kings falter. Galla doesn’t, instead pressing, more softly, “Women like us don’t keep promises well.”

“I keep my promises.”

And Freydis knows that tone, she knows it well.

Never before had she seen your might directed to her like this, and though she stands tall and strong -not the Gods themselves will make her waver-, Freydis finds something like awe growing inside her at the sight. Your voice is the snarl protecting what is hers as you promise, “You told me the night we met that you’d once escaped death by placing the right words in the right ears. Be careful not to find death by attempting something similar.”

“Just not when it comes to your heart?” Galla tries, baited breath as you consider her, as you debate between stubbornly holding on to anger or accepting the attempt at lightheartedness.

Eventually, your lips curve into a smile. It is dim, Freydis cannot help but notice that.

“Exactly. It seems we are after all very alike, you and I, hm?”

____

Sparta proves to be yet another wonder, of stone buildings and beautiful statues, of lively streets and warm skies. It proves to be familiar too, in the shouts of warriors training on the edges of the city, in the chatter and laughter of a city bustling with life.

After being introduced to Lysander, a tall man of broad shoulders and a grave face that is only accentuated by his missing eye, but of warm smiles and eyes like yours; Freydis allows herself to be lost in this city.

The people may look at her often, may whisper, may linger; but she doesn’t mind any longer. And, in moment of weakness, or maybe of bravery, she approaches some of them, with questions about the food they share with her and the animals they try to sell her.

When she retires for bed that night, the sight of you lingering close by to her door is a surprising one, but not unwelcome.

Her heart does a strange thing in her chest when she meets your gaze, when she takes you in, dressed in a soft green dress so unlike anything she has seen before, the smell of lavender once again sweetening the very air around her.

Freydis says nothing, but invites you in with a gesture of her head. You both sit on the low settee by the hearth, and with your eyes on the flames you take a deep breath that she isn’t sure if it is cleansing or bracing you.

“That night, the...the last night, I…” You stop yourself, lift your gaze to her even if your face is still turned to your hands. Voice low, you instead say, “You never asked me how…how I survived.”

“All that matters is you did,” She tells you without hesitation, but based on the sigh you let out as your head drops, that is exactly what you were expecting. Though she feels slighted at the way you seem to imply wanting to survive above anything else is somehow wrong, she will admit she admires the resilience of still believing the purpose of life is anything other than survival. “It is true.”

Silence reigns between you, and you bite the inside of your cheek as you gaze away into the nothingness. She doesn’t like that gesture, it is too alike you biting your tongue, and she dreads the day you do.

So, Freydis calls your name. Softly, quietly.

You take a moment, gathering your thoughts before you utter them.

“After Narses…after what I did to him, I promised myself that I would never-…” Your words end up choked, and you frown through a deep breath, trying to find your center again, “That I would never lie again, not about something like that; not about love.

Your smile is bitter, and the way your hands threaten to curl into fists tell her what you sacrificed that night, more than words ever could.

More than him, more than the life he gave you, more than the world you had known; you had to give up a part of you, if not the whole of you. Freydis understands that, understands what it is like to shed pieces of you like a snake its skin to try and survive, and she understands what it is like to look at a reflection and see a monster under a pretty face looking back.

“All I have known is to fight against anyone that tries taking something from me. My…my freedom, anything. It feels like I’ve been fighting ever since I first returned to Eleusis from the Silk Roads. Fighting Narses, fighting Stithulf, fighting…fighting Ivar,” You lick your lips, looking at the nothingness ahead when you continue, “That night, I wanted to fight him. I fought him, I yelled and cursed and…and I did it knowing that each word, each…each moment just got me closer to…”

“Death?”

You shrug, “No one survives leaving Ivar the Boneless.”

You haven’t said his name in such a long time. But even now, that isn’t his name you are saying, not really.

“You did.”

“I…I did. Because I thought of you.”

Her heart does a strange thing in her chest, a blend of dread -how could you be so stupid to follow her advice when the only reason Ivar hadn’t killed her was the fear of your wrath- and something else -something that feels like warmth, like pride, like thrill- filling her hollow chest.

“What?”

“That night, I…at the tip of my tongue was the promise that I was leaving him, were the words about how one way or another I wouldn’t be at his side anymore. I can be cruel sometimes, I know. And…I was cruel then, and for all the pain he had caused me I wanted to inflict the same, I wanted…I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to tell him,” You look at her, seeking something that Freydis isn’t sure you can find in her gaze. A breath, and you whisper, “He would have killed me,” You repeat, and though she knows it is true, she has a feeling you are reassuring yourself of it to hold back whatever guilt you carry. “And I remembered what you told me, about h-how surviving is what is most important, about how…whatever men like Ivar the Boneless need you to be, you become.

Your lip trembles, and the look in your eyes tells her that you are somewhere she cannot reach, trapped in a world that you left behind but that has never left you.

You are holding your hands together on your lap, squeezing your own hands so tight she almost expects to hear the bones breaking. Still, you continue. You have to.

“So I t-told him I could forget a-and forgive. It was a lie. I told him I loved him even then. That wasn’t a lie, but…it felt like one. I told him that I didn’t want to…to fight anymore, but I was…uh, s-staying. With him.

Your breath hitches, and your eyes are squeezed shut, as if you can keep memories at bay by refusing to see.

“He fell asleep, but I…I sometimes wonder if he knew I was lying, and just pretended. He had to have known,” Once again it sounds like you are trying to convince yourself, and this time she cannot give any certainty that what you say is true. He might have been, but she doubts he would have let you leave if he had known. Very alike, Ivar and her, and she knows she wouldn’t. You shrug your shoulders, almost defeated, “I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. While he slept, I fetched one of the thralls. Her name was Thyra, and sh-she looked a lot like me. I killed her with the knife he gifted me, and went to find you and Valdís to say goodbye.

If she is honest, she has tried not thinking about that night much. She has tried to forget the look in your face, the look she dreads ever seen again.

Because that day you were dead, or maybe death. She isn’t sure there is much of a difference, not when it comes to you.

“I lied to him, Freydis,” You confess, a dying breath on your lips. There’s tears shining in your eyes, but stubbornness keeps them at back, and you only raise your chin, gritting your teeth. You take a deep breath, gaze intently focused on the nothingness ahead, and muse aloud, “You know, as time passed I…I started telling myself that I wasn’t that much of a monster for what I did to Narses. I don’t think I can do that anymore.”

The words leave her lips in an instant, “You are not a monster.”

“I have betrayed and lied to everyone that has loved me,” You sentence, a rebuttal even if it sounds like a confession. “Because…I told myself Narses didn’t love me, but he did. He did, and I led him to his death. A-And maybe it was a different kind of love, the wrong kind maybe, but…Ivar loved me. He loved me, and I looked him in the eye and promised to love him too, even when I had already planned to leave him.”

“And you are responsible for what they feel for you?” Freydis pushes, meeting your wide gaze with her determined one. “If they chose to love you, that is their-…”

“Mistake?”

“Responsibility. You didn’t have to love them back, you didn’t have to be anything other than yourself, not because they loved you. That…that is not how it works.”

You search her gaze, so unbearably lost that she cannot help but reach for your hand, if only to keep you tethered, if only to keep you with her, if only to tell the ghosts that if they want you they will have to take her with you.

“How does it work, then?” You ask, a sad, helpless little smile curving your lips.

Freydis offers truth, truth that has been for too long her most precious secret.

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know I am not a monster for what I did? To Ivar, to Narses?” You insist, not waiting for an answer as your eyes fall shut, your breath leaving you in a shaky exhale. After a heartbeat, “I loved him,” You tell her, making cold run through her veins. But it isn’t the same kind of coldness that shines in your eyes. Your expression trembles, and Freydis pretends not to see the tears in your eyes, or hear the wobble in your voice, “I loved him, Freydis. And yet I…betrayed him.”

She knows where your thoughts are going. Hers went to the same place, many times before.

“I betrayed you,” She tells you, a confession in itself, even before she finds her resolve and with the same certainty, the same fearlessness, that she looked at death in the eye with; she offers her heart, “I love you, and I betrayed you.”

She has said it many times, but there is something different this time, something to do with comparing her love for you with your love for Ivar, something to do with the way she holds your hand in hers, something to do with the way her eyes search yours.

The smallest of hitches in your breath, but she notices. Of course she does, it seems her very heart stops its beat so she doesn’t miss an instant of your response.

“Freydis…”

“If you are a monster, then so am I.”

It isn’t an argument, it isn’t a whisper that maybe what you did wasn’t cruel, it isn’t a reassurance that you are not monstrous in your own way.

No. It is a promise.

If you are a monster, then she is one as well.

Wherever your Gods or mine take you, I shall be at your side.

But if you listen to her words, you do not give it away, your gaze still wide and lips still parted as you look at her, a blend of awe and something else, something more fragile, something more precious.

“I love you.” You breathe, tremulous smile curving your lips. Three words, and you steal her of breath, you steal her of her heart.

Except you cannot steal what was so freely given. And what a dangerous thing that is, is it not?

But it isn’t fear what courses through her veins, no.

A breath, or two, or a thousand, she has no way of knowing. All she knows is that it feels like she is smiling, like the joy and helpless hope that bubbles inside her chest is curving at her lips, and she knows your eyes -mesmerizing, endless eyes- are trained on the sight, and she knows you lean closer.

And she knows that to kiss you feels like a spring storm.

From the thrill that runs through her like lightning at the barest of touches of your lips on hers, a hesitant brush of your mouth against hers before one of you, she couldn’t for the life of her care who, finds the courage to press closer, more firmly; to the rush of her heart in her ears that reminds her of the unrelenting downpour of a storm, and the delicate touch of your hand on the side of her face that makes her think of witnessing the downpour from the safety of shelter.

As much as you are willing to give you are willing to demand, and Freydis is no different. Your lips part as her mouth moves over yours, open and soft, and there’s a wretched little sound leaving her lips as your tongue slips gently into her own mouth.

In between sharp breaths that still feel like too little, unwilling to part you press a few soft pecks against her smiling lips, before trailing to the corner of her mouth, where the too-many-times unsaid I love you lay waiting for you to claim it.

Brow pressed against hers, noses touching and eyes vibrant as they gaze into hers, Freydis still can only think of the breathtaking feeling of a spring storm to describe what it feels like, this moment.

You bite down on your trembling lip, before a sigh of her name leaves your lips.

She chose it, that name, and every day since she has demanded to be called by that name, too long having been at the mercy of whatever anyone else wanted to call her. It has never sounded so right before.

Still, because she knows you, she knows you like she knows herself, in between broken pieces and contradicting thoughts; Freydis nods her head.

“I know,” She tells you, licking her lip, a remnant of that spring storm still on them. “You also love him.”

“I want my heart to be my own, before I give it away,” You tell her, quiet. Your hand is still at the side of her face, and she soaks up that warmth before it slowly, almost reluctantly, falls down and settles on your own lap. “I love you, Freydis, but I…”

She shakes her head with a smile, though she closes her eyes.

It doesn’t sting of rejection, this isn’t the pain of something lost, but it is still pain, she won’t lie. It is a particular kind of pain, the kind of pain of being on a ship and having it approach a place dearly missed, the kind of pain of knowing on the land the ship so surely approaches there lies everything she ever wanted.

“I am with you,” She interrupts. When she opens her eyes, she finds the vibrant gaze of yours searching her expression, looking for a certainty she hopes you find. “Wherever the Gods take you, remember? I will be here when you have a heart to give, if you choose to give it.”

____ ____ ____

Me writing the Reader with characteristics (story-wise) of a goddess both in Nostalgia and Alatheia is a topic for another time, but as Alatheia comes to an end (and Freydis’ PoVs of Nostalgia are at an end too) I have to rant about this: when the Reader prays to Persephone in Chapter 13, and at the lack of an answer (that she can understand) breaks and prays to Freyja, she begs the goddess not to leave her alone there; and in the next moment Freydis walks up to her, finds her and tells her she is not alone, and then: “Her hand finds yours, and the simple gesture of comfort is enough to make you feel not so unbearably alone. Based on the sad smile she offers you, you think you are not the only one to feel alone in a realm of cold and shadow.” Now, I’m not saying Freydis is Freyja of course, but...maybe I am, and this is just a contrived way of writing the Freyja/Persephone slash no one wanted. Who knows. Point is, I wanted to bring that up. Useless trivia bit over for now.

Thank you for reading! One more part, and then it’s the epilogue!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius​ @heavenly1927​ @toe-vind-ek-jou​ @xbellaxcarolinax​ @angelofthorr​ @samsationalwilson​ @peachyboneless​ @1950schick​ @punkrocknpearls @ietss​ @itsmysticalmystery​ @revolution-starter​ @the-a-word-2214​ @fae-sedai​ @crazybunnyladysworld​   @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside​ @aprilivar​ @msrawog​

#freydis vikings #freydis x reader #freydis #ἀλήθεια masterlist

[pomegranates-and-blood]

ἀλήθεια (Chapter 4, Vοσταλγία AU)

ἀλήθεια Masterlist

Pairing: Freydis/Reader, Ivar/Reader (past)

Word Count: 2.4k

Warnings: The usual. My endless swooning over Freydis.

A/N: I’m posting Chapter 42 of Nostalgia today, don’t worry, I just really wanted to post this one too. I hope you don’t mind! The Nostalgia chapter will be out later tonight, and the extra chapter to accompany it will be out tomorrow. Thank you for your patience!

Freydis never dared dream the world was so big.

The merchant vessels stop a few times, and each time she finds herself stumbling over not-quick-enough feet to get away from the port and into whatever city they’ve docked in.

The smells, some so sweet and others so sharp that they make her nose itch -your laugh when you showed her some spice that made her sneeze for a while rattled in her chest, made her feel so warm-; the sounds, the music that the men perform for coin -you grabbed her hand and made her twirl, and it felt like the feast after your wedding, except this time there aren’t shackles that chain you to the throne-; the vibrant colors of their clothes and their jewels -your touch was so soft as you put a lively green scarf over her hair-.

You tell her there is so much more than this, and she resists the urge to believe you are lying to her. It seems so impossible, that there are more things to discover, things she cannot even imagine, things that will make her feel as fascinated and as alive as these do.

But when the night falls, when it is one of those nights when you wake up with a gasp stuck in your throat and wild eyes searching in the darkness for something -someone- that won’t ever be there again, or when it is one of those nights when the air is too filled with noise and she refuses to sleep -refuses to dream- lest she forget the scraps and pieces that make her who she is; you lay side by side and she asks questions of what lies beyond what she can imagine, and you weave a world for her to one day maybe know with only your words.

She never asked before, about the world past Kattegat. Maybe because she couldn’t even imagine something like this, maybe because she didn’t want to make you remember what you would leave behind if you chose to stay.

She wanted you to stay, if she is honest. She resents each time Fate decides to make her world a little less understandable, and she resents each time you unintentionally steal a bit of control over that world from her; so of course she wanted you to stay, she wanted things to remain as they were.

But no, Fate was woven so that Ivar did something unforgivable by trying to take your people from you -taking your choice from you, you’d correct her, but she’s seen the way you care for these people, she knows it was something more than a desire for freedom that made you walk away-, and you wrenched control from Freydis once again when you promised you’d be leaving.

She wanted you to stay, and she misses the way you would laugh -loudly, brashly- around Valdís when she made some obscene comment, even if she and the shieldmaiden never got along; and she misses the easy silences as you focused on grinding some herbs or preparing some poultice, even if she once resented your very presence in her home; and she misses the way you would smile softly -almost dreamlike, and maybe that is all it ever was: a dream- as you’d sit next to Ivar, even if it would hurt at some hidden part of her each time you’d look at him with love written in your eyes. She wanted you to stay, and she misses the way you were happy then.

But she doesn’t resent Fate for the way things have unfolded, and she doesn’t resent you for taking away whatever frail control she had over her life, because you gave her so much more.

She is thankful you left, and she is thankful for Galla and her smiles -that always seem too knowing- and the way she always finds something to talk about with Freydis as they have dinner, it makes her feel tethered, welcomed; and she is thankful for your quiet voice and warm eyes as you teach her to speak your tongue in the months that you voyage to the Mediterranean, it makes her feel powerful, like she knows a tad more of the world; and she is thankful for the way you slowly let go of who you were with him and still reject who they want you to be, it makes her feel like she is getting to know you all over again, it makes her hope. She doesn’t resent you leaving, and she is thankful to have made the choice to go with you.

And now she stands by a market stall of a busy city, purposely eyeing the man that walks by her with the look of meek interest she has had so much fun perfecting. He lingers on her for long enough that she is confident when she turns back around -with adverted eyes and a flustered smile that he is sure to believe true- that he will approach her.

He does, standing next to her and speaking in a tongue Freydis doesn’t know enough of to understand. She understands lust, though, and smiles at him.

When he leans towards her, entranced by nothing other than the image of her he wants to see and the heady feeling of Freydis’ gaze on him with something that looks like lust, Freydis trails her hand boldly down his arm, a caress that has nothing nonchalant about it.

She feels you before she hears you, and you grasp her arm as you mutter hurried words in Greek. An act, of course.

The man eyes you with the same hungry eyes he was looking at Freydis with, but the smile you offer in return is a lot more daring. There’s a cruel edge to the hunger in your gaze, but Freydis won’t pretend she doesn’t understand it.

You both excuse yourselves from the conversation -she makes sure to look at him over her shoulder as she walks away, if only because the game is always so fun-, walking away arm in arm.

The path to that alleyway is a familiar one, and by the time you get there you are sharing smiles that make Freydis’ heart speed up in her chest.

“She doesn’t even talk to them, how does she do that?” Galla grumbles as she approaches, a pouch of coin in her hand and a sly smile on her lips.

“Are you complaining? If she were bad at distracting them, you’d-…”

“Have one less hand?” Galla interrupts -Freydis has found out by now that yes, she interrupts you on purpose, and does it often-, offering a shrug after her words, “I’m just saying, she is…”

Galla’s dark eyes take Freydis in, the warmth to be expected now after months travelling together, and the meticulous edge something to be expected too since being calculating seems to be engrained in the woman’s every move.

Galla’s smile widens, a tad proud, but says nothing, instead choosing to tie the stolen pouch of coin back into her belt, and starts walking back to the main street.

“Oh, I couldn’t sell these,” She states, stopping to turn around and pass you something small and made of metal. Galla offers you a side smile as she does, teasing, “Next time you fool some mercenary into throwing gifts at your feet, make sure he has coin to buy good ones.”

 Your eyes linger on the trinkets on your hand, silence stretching for a few moments as Freydis and you are left alone in that small alleyway.

You seem to hesitate only for a moment, before you extend your hand.

“I want you to have them,” You say, before chuckling, “Not the jewels you deserve, but it’s a start.”

Freydis feels her expression fall at the passing comment, the strange bubble of hope and thrill starting in her chest and making her feel warm to the tips of her fingers. She thinks she offers a smile, but it feels wobbly.

Still, you step closer, eyes searching hers. She wishes you find what you are searching for.

Your fingers aren’t as cold as they used to be, but they still make a shiver run down her spine when you reach up to clasp one of the gifted earrings into her ear. Your smile is gentle, is serene, and she almost resents it, she resents your calm when her heart is hammering so loud in her chest that she is sure you can hear it.

Frozen, she remains until you’ve put the earrings on her, smiling a little wider at the result of your work.

“Beautiful.” You tell her, a quirk of your mouth, and for the first time in her life, the word doesn’t make her feel exposed, doesn’t make her feel like a lie, doesn’t make her want to scream she is just a monster under a pretty face.

Because if she is a monster you are one too, and maybe being a monster isn’t so bad after all.

You are close enough she can make out the specks of color in your eyes, and for the life of her Freydis couldn’t tell who it was that leant closer, what it was that pushed you two together.

Your hand still lingers by her ear where you last placed the earring, and it is the softest of touches of your fingertips over the side of her cheek that makes Freydis have to resist the urge to let her eyes flutter shut. She was right, you cannot be a mortal woman. No mortal woman could have such power, to render people powerless, defenseless, with but the faintest of touches.

Freydis reaches with her own hand, fingers tentatively tracing your wrist before enclosing around it as gently as the faint shaking of her hands lets her. Once in that same hand there was a snake bracelet, and it burned her skin with its cold as she tried desperately to make you understand the lies she had told were out of love.

Now there’s nothing but bare skin under her fingers, and it still burns, this time with the most encompassing warmth, and this time she would gladly burn.

A breath, and in that small breath she is willing to fall, unsure if you would be there to catch her or fall with her but unable to care. A breath, and your smile turns softer, and your eyes flicker to her lips, and…and it is only a breath.

You pull away, a shaky sigh and the by now familiar weight settling back over your shoulders. Freydis has never felt colder.

Freydis sees in her mind’s eye the image of a smiling Ivar bringing you closer to him, pressing unworthy lips to the crown of your head and meeting her eye, unflinching, reminding her of who would win between the two of them, reminding her of who had your heart first, who would have it always.

And there’s something that in a less proud woman would have been an apology swimming in your eyes, clinging to the almost sad curve of your mouth, and Freydis cannot bear to see either.

It never leaves you, does it? Galla had asked her when they spoke of their pasts as slaves, as courtesans, as women owned by another.

Whether you willingly accepted them at the end or not, Ivar put shackles on you, in more ways than one, stronger ones that the iron ones you bore the mark of for days after meeting her.

And though a part of her that she fears is too alike him wants to stand tall and fight back and demand she earns back each piece of your heart he keeps with him all the way in Kattegat, the greater part of her wants calm and peace, wants easy silences and time to pass the both of you by, wants to offer calm after a storm, wants to be to you the refuge you are to her.

Shakily, tentatively, she extends a hand. So many times before she has requested the touch of your hand in hers, it has become with the passing of time something as easy as breathing, something as familiar as the cadence of your foreign voice. Yet it remains thrilling, it remains a gift under the guise of a simple gesture.

You take a deep breath, shoulders falling and rising slowly, and slowly reach with your hand, fingers barely grazing over Freydis’ before your fingers intertwine together, a soft hold that feels unbreakable.

Once, when her world was small and predictable, long before a foreign witch barreled into a realm she didn’t belong to and made it hers; Freydis wanted for nothing other than to be able to control that contained piece of the world that she called her own. She liked how as spring began the king and the army would leave to fight their wars and how during the winter he would have the look of a caged animal. She liked how from the passing of the seasons to the passing of the day she could predict it all, and it let her pretend she could control it too.

Now, now the world is so much bigger, and not even the seasons seem to be the same as you leave behind the cold and hard earth of Scandinavia and delve into arid and dry sands. And Freydis finds she doesn’t mind, she doesn’t mind at all.

Now, she no longer needs to control it all, not even a part of it. Now, she is content with knowing, and with the languages she picks up, and the customs you explain to her, and the strange buildings and stranger clothing. Now, she finds herself wanting to know the world, even if the world doesn’t know her.

And it isn’t such a bad thing, that the world doesn’t know her, that here she doesn’t have a name and neither do you.

Because you take her hand as you walk through the streets, fingers intertwined with hers and no one lingers on the two of you, no one stops to wonder why Ivar the Boneless’ wife is so close with a former slave. Because the world is bigger, and the world doesn’t care what the people in a smaller, colder world tried making out of the both of you.

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading, I hope you liked this!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius​ @heavenly1927 @toe-vind-ek-jou @xbellaxcarolinax @pieces-by-me​ @angelofthorr​ @samsationalwilson​ @peachyboneless​ @1950schick​ @punkrocknpearls​ @ietss​   @itsmysticalmystery​  @revolution-starter​ @the-a-word-2214​ @fae-sedai​   @crazybunnyladysworld​ @funmadnessandbadassvikings @stupiddarkkside​@aprilivar​ @msrawog​  

#freydis x reader #freydis #freydis vikings #ἀλήθεια masterlist

[pomegranates-and-blood]

ἀλήθεια (Chapter 3, Vοσταλγία AU)

ἀλήθεια Masterlist

Pairing: Freydis/Reader, Ivar/Reader (past)

Word Count: 2.1k

Warnings: The usual. My endless swooning over Freydis.

A/N: So, writing the next chapter of Nostalgia is proving harder than I intended it to, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to post it this weekend. I’ll try my best, but I’m slowly getting back to writing, I’m not at my usual speed yet, so I’m still struggling. I’m also working on a few 500 Celebration thingies, so I hope to post those soon too. In the meantime, hope you like this!

Freydis is pondering on the why you insist on speaking Norse with Galla when she is around, asking herself whether it is because you don’t want her to feel like an outsider, or because you want to remind your lifelong friend of the outsider amongst you.

She sits by the fire, working on stitching together a torn cloak, as you pace around the room, arguing with Galla.

“I’m not letting you do this.”

“Letting me?” Your laugh is mocking, arrogance lacing your words when you taunt, “You’ve forgotten a lot, my friend, if you think you have any say in what I do.”

“That is not what I-…” A sigh, and Freydis hears Galla bite back her anger. “I speak their tongue. I can do the talking, and you stay safe.”

“Why does that sound like an excuse to-…”

“I’m not trying to chain you, you know that.”

Freydis knows how much you hate being interrupted when you’re talking, so she is sure the other woman does. She cannot help but wonder if she does it on purpose.

You scoff, “I’ve heard that before.”

“I am not some Varangian that tr-...”

“Tis better you don’t speak of what you don’t know. I never meant my husband,” You interrupt, eyes blazing. Galla’s eyes give away the recognition, and full lips form around a word that once was a name. Freydis remembers the way you spoke of the man you led to his death with promises of love, she remembers that you being able -being willing- to do something like that was the first moment she felt she could completely trust in you. You take a deep breath, “We need to get to that city, it is safer if I go.”

“Safer? What happens if you are found?”

“What happens if you are?”

“I get killed, you do not.” Galla states, an uncomfortable stillness falling over the room at her words.

A sigh, and then, “Kattegat had a funeral for me, Galla. They don’t know I’m alive, no one has any reason to think I’m…h-his wife.”

You haven’t said his name ever since you left Kattegat, and with each passing day the jarring manner in which you go out of your way not to say Ivar’s name becomes more and more apparent to Freydis.

“Yes, of course. A Greek trading and trying to buy passage to the Mediterranean, who would think it has anything to do with Kattegat’s queen?” The other woman teases, but there is a concern in her honeyed voice that Freydis cannot help but feel all the way through her body.

“I can do it,” Freydis interrupts, stepping forward and letting her gaze jump between you and Galla. “They will think nothing of me, just another…Varangian.”

“Hm,” Galla states before you can say anything, dark eyes surveying Freydis slowly before full lips pull into a smile, “You’re a brave one, Freydis.”

She tells herself she shouldn’t feel so emboldened by the slight praise, but it makes her feel stronger, it makes her feel like she is reclaiming a part of herself, by letting herself do this, be this.

____

“If they so much as whisper my name, you get out. Promise me, Freydis.”

She frowns, but acquiesces with a smile, “I promise.”

You swallow, hesitate for a moment before your hand reaches for hers. It is warm, it reminds her of that particular kind of fear of that first night she was a free woman, and yet it reminds her of that particular kind of warmth of the first time she had something to call her own. The touch is soft and light, but it tethers her more than she would like to admit.

“Don’t leave me alone.” You ask her quietly, big eyes boring into hers. She nods her head, but doesn’t say anything else.

Galla puts a hand on your arm and brings you to her side, murmuring something in your own tongue that makes you smile, even if it is still tinged by anxiety and more than a tad of fear.

Freydis finds herself wanting to know what she said to you, just as she usually finds herself wanting to know what the Greeks say that makes you grow a little colder, wanting to know what the soft songs they sing at night mean to you, what the tongue of your Gods and your people speaks of.

And as Freydis makes her way through the port, she starts thinking of what it would be like to speak your tongue, share something more with you, find something other than you speaking her language that makes her belong at your side.

In a few words, she manages to sell the few trinkets Galla had stolen, and with the coin heavy in the pouch hanging by her belt, Freydis sets of to speak with one of the boatbuilders.

The conversation is short and to the point, and the man doesn’t hesitate to tell her all she wants to know, judging by the purposely meek posture and adverted eyes that she is a thrall doing as she is told. It is remarkably easy, to pretend, to lie and make them do as she wants them too.

Freydis dares think she understands a bit better why you chose to chain yourself to that Greek. She also -much to her chagrin- understands why you refused to do the same to Ivar.

As she takes her leave she sees some unrecognizable faces carrying recognizable shields. A part of her almost wants -though she knows it is impossible, though she knows even if it weren’t it would end badly for her- to see Ivar with them, to have him see her.

For all the times he took you from her side without meaning to, for all the cruel smiles he granted her as you held his hand and left her barren, for all the ways he took things from her -and for all the things he could have taken, had the tale been other-; Freydis wants to face him one last time. To prove to him that a king, a famous man, a monster, wasn’t enough to keep you with him, but her, a liar, a former slave, a woman, was enough.

Before she can ask herself whether it was the years that made her cruel or she was always this way, she recalls every time she was left starving while others feasted, and finds she does not care.

____

It is only a fortnight later that she manages to return to the camp and announce there has been set up safe passage for you and most of the Greeks back to the Mediterranean -Crete, you tell her with a blinding smile, as if she is supposed to know what that is. She still smiles back-, alongside Arab merchant vessels.

Freydis does know how to lie and play pretend around her countrymen, and she still holds on to the warm and encompassing feeling of pride that being responsible for arranging for the ships with the builders at the docks brought; but she finds herself uncertain as to how to interact with these Arabs, with their strange garbs and their stranger customs.

You, though, you breeze through conversation with them, you laugh and smile as if you can forget what brought you here and that all that surrounds you still is death and cold. And Freydis doesn’t bother looking away.

They speak their own tongue, that you share in short bursts, but they also speak Greek with you, even if theirs is choppier than yours of course. They meet you somewhere in between worlds, and the women of painted skin and covered hair make your eyes shine with warmth; and you make their laughs delighted and fascinated; as if you share more than just words, as your language and theirs mix and match.

When the night starts to set and the people -Greeks, Arabs, Vikings- set of to sleep in every nook and cranny of the wooden ship they can find, you find your way back to Freydis’ side, sitting next to her and sharing the warmth of your cloak as you set it over both your legs as if you don’t even have to think twice about it.

“Did you ever think you’d one day part from this land, Freydis?”

“No,” She offers sincerely, looking at the distant and dark sea. “Being a slave didn’t leave much time to hope for traveling.”

“And after that?”

“Kattegat was safe, familiar,” Freydis takes a breath, closes her eyes for a moment. “It was just another set of chains, maybe.”

“Those are familiar too,” You state, saying the words she cannot. All the answer she offers is a nod. You sigh, and give away a confession of your own, “Neither did I.”

“All you wanted once was to leave these lands.”

“Yet I never believed I would leave alive, not truly,” A chuckle leaves your lips, but it is biter, “I am still not convinced I am not dead, but I always thought death would feel more like…home.”

“Your…Underworld?” She asks, and you nod your head mutely.

You once told her of the creatures and Gods that inhabited that realm that you Greeks go to once you die. You told her of a king with a crown that makes him invisible, you told her of a queen that trusted and thus was condemned.

You told her of those creatures half-monster and half-woman, that punish those deserving, that drive men insane, that topple kingdoms with a word, that end battles with their presence alone.

Erinyes, you’d told her they were. They had names, but you keep those secret too, just like you kept your own once.

When she turns to look at you, her gaze lingers on the faint shine of the moon that makes your eyes glimmer, and in all the anger and the grief they harbor, there’s warmth. Too alike the warmth of fickle embers, waiting for the right breeze to burn it all again, but it is warm, and it is familiar to Freydis.

She wonders if there was more than stubbornness keeping you from giving away your name then, she wonders if the otherworldliness of you is not because of who your people are. Because Freydis looks at you, and there’s that seed of awe and fear that tugs at her heart, there’s the faint quickening of her breaths and the urge to never look away and learn each and every quirk of your mouth and shade of color in your eyes; and she wonders if you are something more than human.

You have to be, she reasons. Something more than her, more than him, more than any other. The curve of your smile isn’t like any other’s, the sound of your voice is familiar and fascinating at the same time, the way you dance easily between cruelty and gentleness is both terrifying and fascinating; you cannot be just a mortal like her, like them.

“Lord Hades saw her in that field, and fell in love,” You tell her, eyes absently travelling over the crowded room. Your smile is nostalgic when you continue, “Love made out of a God nothing but a man.”

“Careful, witch. That means love can make out of a man a God.” Valdís says, hiding a smile behind the horn from which she takes a sip, keeping clear eyes on you and giving you both a warning and something else.

“I want you to teach me your tongue.” Freydis tells you quietly, heart thumping a little out of rhythm when you turn to her with barely-masked enthusiasm, and a spark that she feared you had lost.

“Very well.” You muse, a serene smile on your lips.

You start pointing at the sky, and teaching her how to repeat the words you say. A part of her knows this isn’t how one is supposed to start learning a new language, but she loses herself in the low cadence of your voice and the lull of the ship, and finds not wanting anything to be any different, even if this doesn’t help her understand Greek any better.

It is a start, and that is all she wants. To find a way to meet you halfway between the two worlds that want you even if you don’t belong fully to neither. Freydis can learn to live in between realms, that is how she has lived most of her life: a woman when they wanted and lusted after her body, but not a woman when they refused her the chance to tell them no; someone loved when you smiled at her, but not the one you loved when your eyes met his.

But you have learned to live there too, she knows. His wife and their ‘daughter’, Kattegat’s Queen and Attica’s Anassa, yourself and what they want you to be.

Maybe, she dares think, you can both live there, in between worlds, in between places to belong to. Because even if you both belong to nowhere, you belong together.

____ ____ ____

Thank you for reading! Hope you liked it!

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 @aprilivar @msrawog  

#freydis x reader #freydis vikings #freydis #ἀλήθεια masterlist

[pomegranates-and-blood]

ἀλήθεια (Chapter 2, Vοσταλγία AU)

ἀλήθεια Masterlist

Pairing: Freydis/Reader, Ivar/Reader (past)

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: The usual, plus like a lot of angst, mentions of slavery, mentions of prostitution and allusions to child abuse. My endless swooning over Freydis.

A/N: I know I promised to come back to Nostalgia this weekend, but Chapter 41 is kicking my ass atm, so I decided to scrap the self-imposed schedule of Saturday/weekend updates, and post as I go. I’ll still try my best to post once a week, and during this week I’ll have Chapter 41 ready. Hell, I might post it later tonight. In the meantime, hope you like this.

One of the first things Freydis learns since joining the Greeks on their camp by the river is that the woman that leads the Greeks is nothing like you. She has your face, and your voice, and your name, but she isn’t you.

She is straight back and determined eyes, she is stared at as if she is some myth come to life -a goddess in human form, anything other than flesh and bone-, she is made of a strange and cold distance -as if you told yourself you have to be what they see you as-, she is…a mask.

Freydis is familiar with those.

She is greeted and returns the same in a language Freydis doesn’t understand but with a stillness she knows by heart. She is embraced and remains stoic even if kind and falsely-warm, and stands tall and proud even as they cry her name and hug her tightly.

She catches a glimpse of you when a Greek man talks about her -Freydis is used to being talked of, or talked at, instead of talked with, a life as a slave taught her to pay attention to that. And that doesn’t change even if the language does- and you turn eyes that hint at fury, that hint at you to the man, and snarl something she doesn’t understand.

They step out of her way as if she were an outsider -she is, she knows, but still- but they don’t talk to her, and the few that are not pleased with her presence do not let her -let you- know.

She follows to the tent they signal for you to go to, and after you both get rid of the grim and tiredness of the days of endless walking, you lie side by side on the humble bed near the fire. She notices you choose to sleep furthest away from the open flame, even if you shiver at the cold.

Freydis closes her eyes, lets the exhaustion seep off her bones onto the stiff mattress underneath her, but isn’t allowed to drift off before your voice speaks softly.

“Do you think he’ll hurt them?”

“Them?”

“The women. Valdís, Hlíf, the others. Do you think…do you think they’ll suffer because of me?”

Freydis turns on her side, faces you, and offers the only words that come to mind, “It wouldn’t be your fault.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“I…I don’t know.” She offers finally, truth stinging at her tongue as she catches sight of the -by now familiar- blend of wrath and devastation in your expression.

____

The next morning there’s a loud rumble of movement, of people returning, loud greetings and orders in a language Freydis doesn’t understand.

And as you both get dressed, there’s a flurry of long dark hair -braids, she would realize later- and warm dark skin, a cry of your name in an accented voice all the greeting the woman gives.

The woman doesn’t hesitate to embrace you, and does so with a fierceness that doesn’t surprise Freydis, even if it startles her.

What surprises her is the way you melt into the woman’s embrace, no trace of the cold distance you had about yourself when you were around the rest of the Greeks.

Freydis stands there, unsure of where to look or where to go, unsure of what to do. Almost unsure of what to feel.

And she hates it. She hates the…uncertainty.

“I’m so glad you are alright.” The woman sighs as she parts from the embrace.

“You didn’t think I would die, did you?” You ask, smile a little crooked in a way Freydis knows by heart, and it makes her warm, it makes her feel a jarring relief from tension she didn’t know she held. That smile tells her you will be alright, and she has never been so grateful for such a simple gesture. “It takes more than a Varangian to defeat me, Galla.”

Varangian, that is what you would call her -call all of them- when you first arrived to Kattegat. She doesn’t know what to make of you calling them that again.

Galla chuckles, a twist of her eyebrow as she moves her head to the side.

“Doesn’t mean he won’t try.”

“Maybe. He’ll fail, just like all the others.”

A scoff, and, “By the Gods, I’ve missed you, you arrogant lit-…”

“I missed you too, Galla,” You interrupt, grinning at the woman, who returns the smile in kind. You take a breath, before you turn to gesture towards Freydis with one hand, “This is Freydis. She is…she is my friend.”

Galla eyes her with a methodic and piercing gaze, roaming over her as if gauging whether she is a threat. Freydis has the uncomfortable feeling the woman knows so much about her with only a look.

Still, the woman steps forward and introduces herself, and with a tad more warmth invites Freydis to sit with the both of you and chase away the cold before the fire.

She does, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder to you, and accepting gratefully the bowl of broth that Galla passes her way. She wonders if this is how you felt when the Völva brought you to the apothecary for the first time, so…out of place, so uncomfortably aware of your foreignness, but at the same time so strangely at home, so safe.

“I am surprised you left.”

“Surprised I left alive?” You tease, but Freydis notices the tension in your frame, the dullness in your eyes. She knows Galla notices too.

“Surprised you left him alive, if I’m honest.”

You swallow, and Freydis watches you carefully as she takes a sip from the hot broth. Your eyes stay focused on the fire as you speak.

“I wonder why I did, sometimes. I wonder if I should have…I held a knife to his throat, that last night. He was…sleeping, I could have…” Your nose curls in anger, and all Freydis can think about for a moment is the wrath of a spring storm. “I should have-…”

She interrupts you, she has to, the questions tumble from her lips.

“Are you-…you sound like…”

“Like I want revenge?” You finish for her, eyes unwavering for a few breaths while Freydis finds it in her to nod. You sigh, “I do. The Furies know I have cursed his name as much as I have-…I want revenge, I do. I will always wish to make those who hurt me pay, the Gods made me this way.”

That’s how the Gods made him, Freydis can’t help but think. And how they made her, too.

Galla sneers, “But you refuse to let us move against him.”

Your expression hardens, and you meet your friend’s gaze with something that is familiar to Freydis.

She grasps your arm, forgetting for a moment how you seem to hate being grabbed by the wrist, and promises, “Imagine what he would do if you pretended to love him and threatened to take it away.”

Your eyes are cold, and when she blinks she could swear there’s blood dripping down your lips.

“Get your hand off me.”

There’s a reason why the people of Kattegat think you a witch, and it has little to do with the gift you have with healing. It is the dangerous glint in the eye of a woman that stands tall on ground not her own, and promises herself willing and capable of standing up to Ivar the Boneless and surviving. It is the otherworldliness that has nothing to do with the accent in your voice, or your strange ways.

It isn’t fear what runs through Freydis’ veins then, it is something closer to warmth, something closer to thrill.

And lost in the familiar ire that shines in unfamiliar eyes, lost in the foreign cadence of a voice that rattles in her hollow chest, she finds herself unable to let go of you.

Your eyes lower to her hand, and back to her own, “I don’t like repeating myself.” You tell her, arrogant and insufferable and…Gods, she knows why Ivar can’t let go of you.

“He is my husband, Galla,” You sentence, suddenly sitting straighter, prouder. Freydis doesn’t miss the possessive edge in your voice. A few breaths go by, and eventually Galla betrays a hint of a smile that speaks of bitterness and sadness, but says nothing. You clear your throat, drop the stiff stance, “Besides, Kattegat’s army would crush us. There’s no…there’s no plan we can come up with that he doesn’t think ahead of. There’s nothing left here, for any of us,” Your shoulders drop, and you look at Freydis again, offering her sincerity, “I have to return to Greece.”

Freydis doesn’t fail to notice the way your right hand moves to cover your left, as if your body forgot you no longer bear his ring and careless fingers were reaching to play with it.

She knows you well enough to know you are offering her a choice, warning her of what Fate will bring for her at your side.

The answer, the choice, is still as frighteningly easy as it was the first time.

“I told you, wherever the Gods take you.” Freydis promises, sharing a smile with you when you reach to grab her hand. The hold is tight, and says so much more than either of you ever could.

“Wherever they take us, it seems.”

____

For as much as the Greeks depend on you -on your guidance, on your strength, on your life- and for as much as Galla takes a place at your side as if all those months apart never happened; Freydis still notices the way you clash with them, even if she doesn’t understand the language.

She cannot help but think maybe the change she sees in you is even more apparent to them, that now the Priestess that was brought to Kattegat in chains is dead and left you in her place; and that none of the people that knew you before are willing to accept it.

She wonders if the woman you are now, this woman in between worlds, this woman with a wrath Freydis had never seen before; is someone that was left behind after the you that you were before Ivar betrayed you died.

Because there is still you in the way you smile a little crookedly, or in the way you seem to be as keen as ever to the pain of the people around you; but there’s something new, something…something Freydis understands quite well, in the way she finds you sitting alone on the edges of the camps looking ahead at the nothingness, or in the way there’s a change even in your body since you’ve started train ceaselessly with a bow and arrow.

“He’s hounding us,” Galla tells her one morning, standing at her side but not looking at Freydis. She takes a deep breath, and Freydis knows a part of her hesitates about sharing out of nothing other than the distrust she feels towards another Varangian. But she still does, “You know that King better than I do, do you think…?”

“You know he won’t let her go. Y/N likes to believe he will, because…it makes it easier, but he won’t, he can’t.”

Dark eyes meet Freydis’ and the woman considers her in silence for a few breaths, enough that Freydis feels the uncomfortable urge to look away. She isn’t the kind to lower her gaze, though, so she meets Galla’s eyes. She could swear the Greek’s mouth quirks in the beginning of a smile.

Finally, Galla says, “You would know, wouldn’t you? You couldn’t let her go either.”

“That is…”

“A secret?” Galla’s big eyes narrow, but there’s a tease in the curve of her lips, “If you are to stay with us, Varangian, you ought to learn there is no secret safe from me.”

“That just sounds like a lie.” Freydis quips back.

Galla only grins, head tilted to the side.

“Again, you would know.”

The Greek moves to enter the tent at her backs, and leaves the entrance open just enough for Freydis to understand the silent request to follow. Wondering why there’s a pit of dread at the base of her stomach, she does.

Galla sits by the fire, lays a bow over her lap and starts working on the bowstring, tightening it with nimble fingers. Dark eyes still watch Freydis, strikingly alike a falcon’s in their sharpness.

“I was told you were a slave.”

That was blunt. Still, Freydis nods her head.

“I was. Ivar freed me.”

Galla looks away, and takes a deep breath. Freydis cannot help but think the look in her eyes is the same as that of all the women she has met in the apothecary, when they first joined and lingered between believing they were safe and it all being a trap. Much like Freydis did, when she first was brought in by the Völva, and asked to give herself a name.

“I was a courtesan. A hetaira, they would have once called me. I am something else now, but…it never leaves you, does it?” Big eyes meet Freydis’, and Galla seems to look for an answer in them, but desists and continues, “I was…barely a child, when they first taught me to pretend to want them, to pretend to enjoy the way they’d-…”

The words stop abruptly, and with nothing else to say Freydis offers,

“You know how useful it is to know how to lie. It let you be-…”

“I don’t care what it let me be, I didn’t have to be anything other than a child,” Galla softens, and whispers, “And neither did you, Var-…Freydis.”

“I once believed the Gods show their favor by making us suffer, by making us struggle and hunger, so that if we endure their gift we can be rewarded.”

“Do you still believe that?”

“No,” Freydis sighs, looking down at her fingers fidgeting. “Like you said, i-it never leaves you, and if the Gods deeming us better was the reason for our suffering, it would.”

Galla takes a deep breath, and for a few moments the only sound between them is the crackling of the fire. Eventually, the Greek speaks,

“Pain doesn’t make you something better, you make yourself. Your suffering isn’t the reason you survived Ivar the Boneless, or all those years as a slave; you are,” Full lips curve into a smile that Freydis finds herself almost returning. Galla lifts her chin a bit, and her tone loses the softness in exchange for pride, “Just as I am the reason I survived those years as a courtesan. I made myself.”

“What did you make?”

“A spy, and a good one. There’s no secret to be kept from me, and no one, from farmer to King, that I am not capable of killing with but a whisper.”

She looks into endless dark eyes and whispers, confesses, “I…don’t know what I made.”

Galla offers a short-lived smile that for a moment Freydis feels speaks of pity. But the woman across from her doesn’t look at her with pity, with useless compassion, Galla offers something that shines like pride, like admiration.

Eventually, the woman speaks, “Did you know a courtesan was once made Empress of Byzantium? Sieghild told me about her, and she told me about women in your homeland, slaves that become warriors and queens. I have no such ambitions and it seems neither do you, but…that world you left behind? You could have ruled over it, Freydis.”

____ ____ ____

Again, sorry for not uploading Ivar stories, I promise I’ll get to writing for him again soon (this week), I’m just in a bit of a burnout when it comes to the character so writing for Freydis helps. Hope you can understand, and pinky promise there’s Ivar content coming this week!

Thank you so much for reading! Love ya!

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​  @aprilivar​ @msrawog​  

#freydis x reader #freydis vikings #freydis #ἀλήθεια masterlist