Wyrd bið ful aræd / Fate is inexorable

Doug rubs at his belly where Ev’s pinched at his skin. His shirts still rucked up a little, his belt undone. He’s managed to tuck himself away with the modicum of self-preservation that’s been none too apparent in the last half hour. There’s still a little dirt in his mouth from Ev jamming his fingers inside, trying to get him to hush up, idiot, like he’s any better when he’s the one getting screwed in a cow field.

When he looks up from the poor red skin of his belly, Ev’s looking at him. The thing about standing shoulder to shoulder with someone, is that a lot of time is spent together, looking in the same direction, at the same thing. Doug’s probably not looked at Ev as much as he would have liked, but he’s committing it to memory now. All of it. Every insignificant detail, and he won’t tell a soul. 

“Valhalla,” Ev says. 

Doug frowns. 

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he continues, and now he’s not looking at Doug, but at his own fingers, crawling up the front of his shirt buttons. There’s dirt beneath his fingernails that he’ll scrub off but Doug won’t forget the taste. “How it’s forever, you know?” 

Doug hasn’t thought about it. He’s thought about those goblins once or twice, but he’s never thought about the road beyond them. Dying, sure. What it might feel like, who he’ll leave behind, what’ll happen to his shit when he’s gone. But not what becomes of his soul. Maybe if he’s struck down now, those flames of hell’ll singe the mudprints from his knees. As long as no one tells his mom. 

“Is this about those goblins?” 

Ev shakes his head, like Doug’s the one that sounds like an idiot. 

“What? No. I mean, not really. It’s more—I wanna see you on the other side of this,” Ev says. He pats over the skin he pinched. “I just don’t wanna have to die in some tin can to get there.”

It sounds ludicrous. It is ludicrous. Doug laughs because he can’t help it, beginning to pat himself down for his cigarettes. Ev plucks a packet from his coat pocket for him, and his lighter. Doug remembers it now, losing his own in a bet over some local girls. Playing a part, the charming bombardier. It’s much easier when you’re a pilot. For all the lighters Doug’s lost to them, Ev comes back smelling like their perfume. That’s why he can sit there and say shit like—

“You think it’s crazy.”

“It is crazy,” he says. “Do you hear yourself?” 

“No crazier than stepping on that plane.”

“No better odds of living either,” Doug says, lighting up a smoke. “Come on, Captain? That’s the big plan, is it? Survive this thing and fuck off merrily into the sunset. Off to Valhalla forever, yeah?”