#chapter twenty-two

The perilous flight back to FentonWorks drove them away from Main and over the peripheral commercial district. Underneath their frantic retreat, buildings of glass and concrete blurred into a menagerie of white and gray. They usually loved their coloration, all ink and blood, but it made them easy to pick out for the suit firing lasers at them from above. Maybe they should consider a winter stealth mode after they defeated it. Their board mate was not making the process of dodging missile blasts and laser fire any easier, though.

The weight on the back of the board threw off her calculations every time they turned. His hands burned against their outer skin, the pressure and temperature felt through metal and carbonite. Every turn, she pulled him closer, drawing him as tightly as she could so they moved as one over the balance point. Every turn, he shifted himself farther away and made the next one that much harder. “Stop wiggling away, you’re making it hard to steer.” She tugged him farther forward again, and was met with creaking protest from their swollen knees.

“I don’t weigh that much, do I?”

“Mr. Fenton, this thing has focal points, and we each have a center of gravity. The farther away you are,” this turn slid him forward into her back, “the more things there are to balance. It’s easier to juggle one blob of weight instead of two.” He tried to move away again, and she wrapped a hand around his wrist and kept him there. “Stop making this difficult if you don’t wanna become road pizza.” Sometime in the last few minutes, her headache started clearing. With them so low on power, she was surprised, but grateful. One less thing to worry about. Everything still fuzzed at the edges, they kept falling out of sync, but it was easier. Everything else still burned like an inferno, though, even with the suit minimizing their pain levels. Something nagged about the topic of their pain, her nerves, but she put a pin in it.

“I’m—this is closer than I’ve danced with anyone at prom.”

Once the box was inside, it didn't take long for Elizabeth to get the box open and to spread the pieces of the tree out on the floor.

Langdon took a seat on the couch and watched as she and Michael put it together. The tree already had lights on it, so they didn't have to worry about that, at least.

"You could help, you know?" Elizabeth said. "You don't have to just sit there."

"Christmas isn't really my thing," Langdon said, raising an eyebrow in Michael's direction. "I don't really understand why it's yours."

"Memories, I told you."

Of course he had memories too. For all intents and purposes, he and Michael shared the same childhood up to the point of Michael being kicked out of his grandmother's house. Langdon remembered Constance and her decorating the inside of the house with Santa Clauses and a nativity scene here and there, even having one on the lawn.

The only piece of decoration in Elizabeth's house was the tree she and Michael were now putting together, but the atmosphere was a lot different from what he remembered from Constance's house. There was actually warmth in this house, but it had nothing to do with Christmas.

It was about the care that flowed between Michael and Elizabeth. He couldn't remember ever having such care directed at him, not even with Ms. Meade. Most of the attention he'd ever received, good or bad, had had to do with who and what he was. There had been adulation, of course, but it hadn't been genuine care, not like Elizabeth had for Michael.

Everyone who had ever taken him in had done so because he was the Anti-Christ, not because he'd been a kid who had needed help. They'd never taken him and expected nothing from him.

"When we get the tree up, you could help put the ornaments on," Michael said.

"Or you can sit there and be a Grinch," Elizabeth said.

"Just because I don't celebrate Christmas or get joy from it doesn't mean I'm a Grinch," Langdon said.

Elizabeth smiled a little bit and then shook her head before abandoning her job of putting the tree together. She got up and started rifling through one of the bags she'd brought in and Langdon raised an eyebrow when she handed him a box of hooks, basically just dropping it on his lap, and then put the bags of ornaments beside him on the couch.

"Here. You can start putting the hooks on these, so we can put them on the tree once it's up."

Langdon picked up the box from his lap and stared at it for a second.

"I'm not helping you decorate the tree," he said.

"You don't have to. Just put the hooks on."

It took a few minutes for Langdon to decide to actually do what Elizabeth had asked him to, but he realized helping get the ornaments ready to decorate the tree wouldn't really hurt anything. In fact, it would help move things along so they could get it done with more quickly.

So he helped. ---------- Once the tree was done Elizabeth went in the kitchen to prepare dinner – just a frozen lasagna they could all share. It would take a couple hours to heat all the way, but it wasn't like they were in a rush to be somewhere or do something.

When she went back in the living room, she found Michael getting ready to put a DVD in the player and she remembered he'd wanted to watch the third Harry Potter movie during dinner.

"We still have a couple hours, if you're wanting to watch it while we eat."

"Okay." He still went ahead and put the movie in, though he didn't start playing it.

"What are you going to watch?"

"The third Harry Potter movie," Michael said.

Langdon sighed. "You've already read the book. Why do you need to see the movie? You already know what's going to happen."

"It's still fun to watch."

"It is different watching it, rather than just reading it. But the books are better, especially if you like reading," Elizabeth added.

"Hm." Langdon leaned forward from his place on the couch. "What shall we do until dinner?"

"We found some games when we were going through some old stuff today. Michael set aside a few if you want to play."

Langdon actually seemed a little interested. "What kind of games?"

"Well, the ones we found are board games. But Michael has video games, if you'd rather do that."

"I haven't played a video game in a long time," Langdon admitted.

"Elizabeth always loses when she plays with me."

"I still think you cheat," Elizabeth teased.

"I do not. You're just not that good at it."

Elizabeth conceded the point. She really wasn't.

"Anyway, whatever you guys want to do is fine with me."

In the end, Michael and Langdon decided to play chess at the kitchen table. Or, Langdon decided he would try and teach Michael how to play because Michael showed an interest in learning.

Elizabeth was just fine with that. She had no clue how to play chess and had no patience for it anyway.

It was in the middle of the first game that Michael asked, "Where did you learn to play?"

"At the Murder House," Langdon answered. "Ben taught me. I was probably around your age."

Elizabeth knew from things Langdon had said before that Ben was the only spirit in the Murder House that would have anything to do with him when he'd moved in in his dimension – or time period, whichever – and even that hadn't lasted long. He'd only wanted anything to do with Langdon when he'd thought he could help him. When Langdon had proven more difficult than Ben was willing to work with, he'd stopped having anything to do with him as well.

The two boys played until the lasagna was done and then Michael put the board and pieces away.

"We can watch the movie now?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, smiling. "We can watch the movie now." ---------- Once everyone had a plate of food, they all settled in the living room and Michael started the movie. It began with Harry in his room trying to study his summer reading for school. He had to use a spell every few seconds to try and cast light over the book so that his aunt and uncle wouldn't know he was doing it. Everyone was supposed to be in bed, and he couldn't risk having his light on.

Langdon immediately had questions when he saw that the uncle kept coming in the room and Harry kept pretending to be asleep.

"Why is he trying to hide what he's doing?"

"His aunt and uncle don't like that he's a wizard," Michael said. "They probably wouldn't allow him to read his school books in the house, so . . ."

"Well, where are his mother and father?"

"They died when he was young," Michael answered carefully. "When he was a baby. His aunt and uncle were the only family he had."

"Hm."

Michael used the remote to pause the movie.

"In this one, Harry is thirteen, but he's been living with them since before he could even walk. There was this evil wizard guy who basically killed whoever wouldn't side with him and Harry's parents were definitely not on his side. His parents died to protect him and somehow it caused the evil guy to grow weaker, but he keeps trying to come back and get stronger."

Michael looked at Elizabeth then. "Right?"

"Pretty much. Without having to explain all of the other two movies."

"Right. Anyway, Harry didn't know he was a wizard until he was eleven and then he went to a magical school called Hogwarts where they started teaching him how to control his magic. He's starting year three in this one."

"And he's using a wand?" For some reason that seemed to amuse Langdon.

"Yes."

"Hm. I guess you should press play again if we are ever going to get through this."

"You don't have to make it sound like we're torturing you," Elizabeth teased. "This is a good movie."

A smirk pulled at the side of Langdon's mouth. "I'll be the judge of that."

There were things that Langdon did during the movie that let both Michael and Elizabeth know he was enjoying it even if he did think some of it was ridiculous.

It was when Harry kept hearing the death of his mother when the dementors were around that Langdon told them that his mother had tried to kill him in his sleep.

"What?" Elizabeth asked, grabbing the remote and pausing the movie again. "I'm sorry, but what?"

"She came in my room with a knife. She thought I was asleep, but I wasn't."

"Are you – are you joking? Please tell me you're joking."

"In all the time you've known me, have I ever been one to joke around?"

"Well, no, but . . . that's not okay. That's very not okay."

Langdon didn't say anything; he barely responded at all aside from raising one eyebrow and tilting his head to the side to show he agreed.

"Why did she do it?" Michael asked. "Why would your mother – or our mother – do that?

"I'm assuming it was just because I am who I am. I'd never spoken to her at all because she had never appeared to me before that night."

"That – that's horrible," Elizabeth said.

"It doesn't matter. I got her back by setting her on fire."

Langdon had said that so nonchalantly that Elizabeth's eyes widened with surprise.

"Well, that's not okay either."

"Should I have let her stab me?" Langdon questioned. "Besides, she was fine. She was already dead. If I had really wanted her gone, she would have been."

"Has she tried to appear to you since you've been here?" Michael asked.

"No, not as of yet."

"Good. If her first instinct is to stick a knife into you . . ." Elizabeth started.

"I assure you I can still set things on fire," Langdon said.

"Yeah, but you shouldn't have to. You shouldn't – you shouldn't have to feel unsafe around someone who should be a family member, who should be your mother. Did it never occur to them that if they had given you a chance, you might have turned out differently? Like, if you grew up with a family who loved you instead of casting you out because of something you were 'supposed' to become, that you might not have become the thing they feared you would. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. They made you what you are because they didn't give a chance to be anything else."

Both Michael and Langdon were looking at her and she realized her voice had become louder and more passion-filled the more she'd spoken.

"You're giving me a chance to be something else," Michael said softly.

Elizabeth took a deep breath even as her throat burned with emotion. When she exhaled, it came out in a shudder.

She scoffed and rolled her eyes when she saw the way the man gave up fighting easily, clearly offering his help to the leader of this army. The fighting had stopped now, but she refused to let up the soldier she had on his knees, her sword at his neck.

The army’s leader noticed the seat Ivar was in, the way the curtains were drawn, and gestured for one of his men to check it out. Her heart pounding, the Shieldmaiden moved to intercept him, but this proved to be a mistake. The officer she’d taken down snatched his sword out of the snow and jumped up just as a knife came flying from between the curtains, landing in the approaching soldier’s eye, and he ran it through her shoulder.

She cried out in pain, catching Ivar’s attention long enough to distract him. This gave the nearest soldier time to pull him from his seat, and throw him to the ground. Seeing him lying there like that, at the mercy of these men, sent a shock of panic through the wounded woman’s heart, and against all better judgement, she tried to fight to get to him.

But, she was weakened from the injury she had sustained, and it didn’t take much for a soldier to hit her in the head with the end of his sword and disorient her, disarming her and throwing her down at Ivar’s side.

He turned and tried to stabilize her, not relenting until her eyes focused on his face. “Are you with me?” he questioned, and though she nodded, he didn’t accept that answer. “Speak,” he said. “Are you with me?”

“I’m with you,” she managed, and groaned in pain as she tried to situate herself better.

Neither of them had been paying attention to the One-Eyed Man speaking to the leader of the attackers in some language neither could understand, not until one word stood out they did know. Or, rather, one name: Ivar.

The Shieldmaiden was the first to look, hearing her King’s name mentioned, but she could make nothing else out, nothing else which might have helped. The leader soon began to laugh as he looked back to Ivar, and her eyes narrowed. He turned and said something to the One-Eyed Man, and Ivar hauled himself up into a sitting position, moving to ensure his Prophet rested back against him, to take some pressure from her wounded shoulder.

“What is he saying?” he asked the One-Eyed Man then. The man didn’t answer, only conversing briefly more before the leader threw a coin to him, having mounted onto a horse. “Who are these people?” Ivar tried again.

“Rus,” the One-Eyed Man now said, and grumbled, “Cheap bastards.

“It seems they don’t pay very well,” Ivar commented. “Where are they taking us?”

“To their capital,” the One-Eyed Man replied. “A place called Kiev.”

“Who is their ruler?”

“Prince Oleg, the Prophet.”

Ivar frowned sharply. Another prophet? He had given the wounded Shieldmaiden in his arms that title before they left Kattegat, and she had travelled under that epithet all the way along the Silk Road. Now, they found some Prince in Rus had claimed the title for himself as well? Ivar didn’t think this Prince would be half the prophet his was.

“The Prophet?” he questioned anyway. “Why the Prophet?” After all, he figured the more information they knew going into this place, the better.

The Rus commander, for they now knew him to be that, interrupted them by calling out to the pair, and both looked up at him from their place on the ground. One of the soldiers came and collected the Shieldmaiden, pulling her away from Ivar. She could only grunt as she was forced to her feet, and then a small cry left her. The soldier wasn’t being particularly gentle with her, which caused more blood than was needed to leak from the wound.

Ivar grimaced as the blood left a small trail through the pure white snow. The Rus commander spoke again to the One-Eyed Man, asked him a question, and the Commander laughed. A barked command to another soldier, and Ivar was carried off just as the Shieldmaiden was, tossed up unto a horse near her like a potato sack, and the soldier on that horse rode away. She was placed in front of a Rus soldier, who rode behind the one who carried Ivar. The two wished for nothing more than the chance to speak.

Fortunately, the journey to Kiev wasn’t an overly long one. The pair of Vikings- for truthfully, she had become one now- were dragged into the palace at the center of the city, led to its interior, and pushed into a room which seemed to be the throne room. A servant was currently hauling a body from the room, and the two were shoved to the ground, falling right into the puddle of blood there.

Ivar winced at the cry that left the injured woman at his side, and once he pushed himself up, managed to turn to check on her. Her face was pale, likely from the pain of the fall, and his eyes narrowed slightly. She needed medical attention.

It didn’t seem that was likely to come soon, as the Commander and the man who stood by the throne, who Ivar could only assume was Prince Oleg himself, were busy communicating in their own tongue. Ivar had to bite his to keep himself from demanding help for his Shieldmaiden.

The man finally turned, looked down at the two on the ground before him, and he smirked a little. Apparently, the Commander had given him some important information, because he spoke in Ivar’s language when he finally addressed them.

“You cannot walk,” he said. “Are you both wounded?” He could see from the way the woman held her hand to her shoulder, the way the blood seeped through it, that she was, but the way the man laughed so bitterly at his question, he assumed that was not the case.

“No,” Ivar answered. “I’m a cripple. From birth. But she needs assistance.”

The Rus man nodded and spoke again to the Commander, who ducked out of the room. “She will have it,” he told Ivar.

Satisfied, Ivar nodded, and commented, “You speak our language.”

“It was once the language of my people, too,” the man replied. “We are Rus Vikings.” He was silent for a moment, before asking, “What do they call you two?”

“My name is Ivar,” he said, taking off his hat now they were inside. “They call me Ivar the Boneless. And she is-”

“Asta.”

Ivar’s eyes widened as he heard the name he called her just the night before be claimed, and he looked to her with that shock registered on his face.

“I am Asta the Prophet.”

He’d never imagined that she had heard him, and he realized with a sickening sort of dread that she must have heard all of what he said before then. His mind was taken from that by a medic entering the room, beginning to work on her shoulder, and the look of hostility in her eyes when the man carelessly pulled the sleeve of her shirt down, exposing her shoulder and much of the surrounding skin to everyone in the room.

“I’ve heard of you,” the man Ivar assumed was Oleg said. “Ivar… the Boneless.” He pointed the axe in his hand at Ivar, then swung it toward the newly named Asta. “And his Prophet.” He chuckled, lowering the axe and moving to sit down. “Your fame has travelled along the Silk Road. Like honey, beeswax, furs, and slaves… But why do you travel along it now? Without announcing yourselves, like thieves… Hm?”

“I lost my kingdom,” Ivar said. “To my brothers. I am nothing, and I have nothing to offer you, Prince Oleg.” The lack of correction confirmed the man’s identity for them both. “It was not my intention to trouble you with our presence.”

“Then where were you going?” Oleg asked.

“Nowhere,” Ivar replied plainly. “We have no plans. We are simply fleeing the retribution of my brothers.”

“Well,” Oleg began after a few moments of silence. “You are here, now. Who knows if your presence will trouble me?” Ivar looked up at him slowly as he came down from the dais. “Let us see.”

When the medic was done with her, Ivar and the Shieldmaiden were both hauled out of the room, taken up further into the castle, and shoved into one of the bedchambers there. They remained in silence once Ivar situated himself at a window, and she began to pace. Clearly, the medic had helped her quite a bit.

After a while, Ivar found it eating at him just a bit too much, and so he looked up at her, watched her pace for a moment, and then asked, “Asta?”

She paused in her pacing and turned to look at him, just as if he had called the name he’d called so many times before that day. “Hm?” she prompted.

“Where did you hear that name?” he questioned.

“From you,” she said with a small chuckle. “Don’t know if you meant me to or not, but… I needed something that wasn’t my given name. I don’t know if my brother knows yet I’ve left Kattegat, but if that news has travelled the Silk Road, and they learned who I really was…? I can’t imagine the ransom letter would find Alfred very pleased.” Ivar gave a hum of satisfaction, seemingly agreeing with what she said. Until, that was, she added, “That, and I sort of like it, actually. Feels… right.”

“Feels right?” he repeated. “Do you mean to keep it, then?”

She clearly weighed something in her mind, almost seeming to be tossing something around, before she looked back to him with a small smile, and nodded. “Think I will,” she said. “At least for now, unless I decide it doesn’t fit me any longer.”

Ivar nodded, and tested the name out again now he knew it was going to be hers for the considerable future, and she smiled at hearing him say it.

“Sounds just as good as when I heard it last night,” she teased.

Asta walked over to the window he was sitting in, not quite noticing the way he watched her move across the room, certainly not noticing the slight darkening in his cheeks at her quip, and she sat across from him, settling in and getting comfortable as she watched the people move around Kiev’s markets.

“It suits you,” Ivar confessed, and she turned to him curiously.

“Does it?” she questioned. “What’s it mean, anyway?”

Ivar shrugged, looking back out the window. “Just an old Viking name,” he lied.

How could he tell her what it meant, that the name had slipped out as he realized just what she meant to him? The word ást, from which the name was derived, was used to describe love as a thing, as something real, as a place, or perhaps a person. It was used to describe the thing one saw love reflected in, and so for him to have used that name in speaking to her…

The Bishop Heahmund had once mentioned the different forms of love, and the one called agape. He had described it as something unconditional, the sort of love that apparently, the Christian God felt for humanity. Ivar, of course, had his own thoughts about what sort of gods looked over this world, but that term had come to his mind just before he had uttered the name Asta. If anyone deserved the name, he figured now, it was someone who had proven to him the existence of such love.

But Ivar was, if nothing else, a very stubborn man, and so he kept those thoughts locked tightly within himself, drawn only from them when he heard Asta sigh quietly. He turned his eyes to look at her once more.

“If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine it’s Kattegat,” she confessed softly. He gave a quiet hum in response.

“We should speak your language here, when we can.” Asta looked at him confusedly, wondering what exactly had brought this on. “They can speak mine,” he clarified. “Wessex is over halfway across the world from here. I doubt they understand the Saxon language. We don’t need them to understand every word we say.”

She nodded then. “Right,” she agreed. “We mean to escape, then?”

“Unless Oleg has anything to offer us, yes,” he answered. It felt strange to her, to hear him speak in the Saxon tongue again after so many months- almost a year, now- of having heard him speak in his own. It made her giggle a little.

“Yours is a little… unused,” she said, and he gave a good-natured roll of his eyes, before rolling his body over to crawl to the ground. “Where are you going?”

“To see how free we are around here,” he answered her. He crawled over to the door, and threw it open, only to be met by a Rus guard standing on the other side. Asta smirked amusedly at the way Ivar grinned at him, and then jumped back as the door was slammed shut in his face. “Prisoners, then,” he surmised, and nodded. “That is most unfortunate.”

Asta gave a soft laugh, and he crawled back over to her. “I could think of worse people to be imprisoned here with,” she quipped. He cracked a small grin at her.

“As could I,” he agreed. As he pulled himself back up to sit across from her, he teased, “Tell me, great Prophet Asta, what do you see for us here, hm?”

Asta couldn’t help but giggle at his question, and she angled her body more toward him. “We’re entering a time of healing,” she joked, gesturing toward her shoulder. “This is our time to take life a little slower, to experience new things, to…” She looked out the window once again, and grew thoughtful. “Perhaps to build a new life.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Ivar tilt his head a little, not quite understanding her meaning, so she explained. “We have a chance to just… live here,” she said. “If we earn Oleg’s trust, we could have a life here, you know? Once he releases us.” Her eyes turned back to Ivar now, a small smile on her lips. “Wouldn’t be so bad, would it? Maybe the rest of the world would miss us, if we just settled down here, but I’d be alright with that if it meant we could be happy. You know what I mean?”

Ivar couldn’t help the small smile that played at the corners of his lips as he watched the sort of far off look in her eye. He could guess that she was imagining a simpler life, one where maybe they were just… normal people, whatever that meant. “I’m starting to,” he confessed. “My father always said there was no purpose in trying to be happy. Life wasn’t about that.” She looked at him a little sadly, though the smile didn’t leave her lips. “But we have both suffered enough, I think, to let us consider a way we could be happy here.”

The sadness left her then, and she looked down into the market. “We’d have to make money, somehow,” she said. “Not sure what I could do to earn a living. Don’t see many shieldmaiden types down there.” Ivar hummed his agreement. “My mother taught me to paint. I could paint portraits, perhaps, sell those?”

“You know how to paint?” Ivar asked, now looking at her curiously. “I thought that tended to be left to your priests.”

Asta laughed and nodded. “It usually is,” she confirmed. “Illumination, that is. But my mother wanted to learn, just before Alfred took his pilgrimage to Rome. My grandfather had a monk brought from Paris, if you can believe it, to teach her. He was the only one who would.” Ivar chuckled a little as she did, watching how she shook her head in disbelief. “Rather than going through that struggle for me again, when I decided I wanted to learn, as Father Prudentius was the one who took Alfred and my father to Rome, she taught me.”

She decided to take a risk, then, knowing there was a solid chance this wouldn’t go over well with Ivar. But, there was a chance they could have a new life there in Rus, if they decided to work toward the little fantasy they were indulging in. If this was going to happen, she wanted Ivar to know the truth.

“She used to tell me about my father, then,” she said softly. Ivar felt the shift in her voice, the way it just barely shook with a quiet anxiety. He sensed a confession coming, and he was right. “Aethelwulf wasn’t my birth father. He was a father in all other meaning to me, just not by blood.” She took a deep breath, but before he could ask, she said, “My birth father was Athelstan, the monk your father took from Lindisfarne.”

His eyes widened at the revelation. Even if he hadn’t ever known the man that well, he knew the story, knew everything Floki had told him about the Christian Priest. “I think I must find myself in the same place he once did,” she continued, before Ivar had much time to question what he was learning. And truthfully, it was good that it happened this way. The more he learned at once, the less he would have time to second guess.

“I hold to my Christian convictions,” she said. “The things I was taught as I grew up, the things I came to understand through the many discussions I had with the Bishop Heahmund, who I know you once knew as well. But just as that is true, it is just as true that I feel most at home with your people, that my home is no longer in England. I can no longer offer my loyalty to a Saxon king, as I find I have become fiercely loyal to a Viking one instead.”

Every promise she had ever made to him went through his mind in that moment as she smiled at him again, if it were possible, and he found himself almost unable to make the Athelstan she spoke of, and the one Floki had spoken of, the same man in his mind, though he knew they must have been. “My mother told me my father loved your father more than anyone. Each time the choice was given to him, he chose your father, and your people, over his ancestral home. He even left her to return to Kattegat, and so… I never met him.”

“Do you think things would be very different, had you known him? That… perhaps you would not have come with me?” Ivar asked her. From the look on his face, it might have been obvious to some who knew him well that he was almost worried. It also might have been obvious he was trying to hide this. So, she gave a small shrug.

“I’ll never know,” she said. “Life didn’t work out in the right way for me to know. And truthfully?”

They locked eyes again as she said, “I’ve finally come to make peace with that, I think. I’ll never know him, not until I have also passed from this world, and I’m in no rush to do so. Before, when I was dissatisfied with my life, I used to wish with all I had that he’d not left for Kattegat so soon, that I could have known him before he returned to your father’s side there. I used to wonder if I could have convinced him to let me join him there. But now?”

Ivar found himself shocked again when she leaned forward and reached for his hand, letting her fingers wrap gently around his. It pulled him from all the thoughts and concerns the revelation about her lineage had brought, and made him focus on her. “I’m too happy with where I am to wish things were different in my past. Perhaps I would have met you sooner,” she said. “I would have still come with you. In fact, as many times as my father left to be with yours, it would have only encouraged me in the decision I made.” She chuckled a little, biting her lip as she looked up at him. “Of course, there is also the possibility that if I had grown up with my father in Kattegat, you may have hated me as the daughter of the Christian priest, and only because of how we met and how we have come to know each other, is there no hatred between us.”

Ást. That word entered his mind again as he saw her smiling at him, felt her hand in his. He knew she was joking, but yet, something made him bring her hand up to his lips and kiss the back of it. “Hatred can never take the place of love,” he said sincerely, and the way she lit up...

He would have conquered the Nine Realms if it meant seeing her smile so brightly again.

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius, @wilhelmyna, @katfett, @fangirl-nonsense, @zuzus-sun, @heavenly1927, @pomegranates-and-blood

Still, she’s determined to find something. The Bellas are too important for her to give out meaningless trinkets or nothing at all.

“They didn’t have nothing,” Chloe says, “but they didn’t have anything that screamed ‘Bellas’ either, yeah.”

“Yeah, I don’t know, there’s nothing that seems right.”

“Well, what’re you thinking?” Chloe asks patiently, even though Beca knows if their positions were reversed and Chloe were dragging her all over the mall aimlessly, she’d be irritated. “Do you have a rough idea of what would be good?”

“I’m just not sure if we should do, like, individual things?” Beca answers as they walk past additional stores without any particular destination in mind. “Or eleven of the same thing.”

“Eleven? There are ten of us.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, I – I thought maybe, you know, maybe Aubrey would like something, since she really… helped bring… us togeth – uh...” Beca trails off at the megawatt smile growing on Chloe’s face.

As Beca stares, Chloe’s grin widens until she looks utterly delighted. Her mouth opens and Beca’s sure she’s about two seconds from having her eardrums ruptured by a very Chloe-esque gush of excitement, and all because she’s bothering to include Aubrey.

“Stop.” Beca cuts her off seriously. “Stop that right now. I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t make it weird.”

She watches as Chloe’s expression twitches and shifts as she struggles to reign in her enthusiasm. It takes her a moment, but finally, Chloe’s smile fades and she takes on the appearance more appropriate of someone at a serious business meeting.

“Better,” Beca says cautiously.

Instantly, Chloe’s beaming smile breaks free, almost blinding Beca with its intensity. “You are so CUTE! And SOFT!” Chloe squeals with a laugh, turning several heads in their direction.

“Whatever,” Beca rolls her eyes, feeling her own lips lift in spite of herself. If someone had told her three years ago she’d be looking for a Bellas gift to Aubrey, she’d have laughed, too.

Chloe’s shoulder bumps into hers playfully, and Beca glances over at her still-massive smile.

“Anyway…” she emphasizes, ignoring Chloe’s glee as they continue walking past store fronts. “What do you think about the gift thing?”

Chloe’s fingers lace with her own and she runs her thumb absentmindedly along the back of Chloe’s hand. By now, the action has become reflexive, though it never fails to make her heart stutter. Beca swings their hands between them gently as they navigate around the decent amount of other people in the mall.

“Individual might be nice,” Chloe says slowly, “but then there’s that whole thing where you have to keep everything the same price so it’s fair.”

“Oh, yeah,” Beca agrees, “that gets hard.” She grimaces and adds, “Plus, like – whenever I think of getting something for Stacie, all I can picture is a vibrator, and – no.”

“You’re picturing Stacie with a vibrator? Should I be jealous?” Chloe looks at her out of the corner of her eye.

“Not what I meant, and you know it.”

Chloe hums, grinning in satisfaction.

They keep moving through the mall, Beca checking out every store front they pass. They pass a shoe outlet, a video game store, and a kitchen store, none of which stand out. She gets distracted, then, when she looks across the main aisle and makes eye contact with a middle-aged woman, who quickly looks away. Beca looks away too, self-conscious and wondering if maybe her hair is an issue, but a glance in the reflective glass of another store front shows that she looks fine.

“I think the same gifts for everyone is a good idea, though,” Chloe continues thoughtfully. “That way it’s, like, a, you know, like a team gift, since we’re a team.”

Beca nods. “Yeah, okay, I just don’t know what would be good for…”

Her voice again trails off into nothingness as she catches another stranger’s eye, this time, an older man. He’s seated on a bench they’re walking past, glaring in their direction with a heavy frown on his face. As Beca watches, she notices his gaze is fixed low; with a jolt, Beca realizes he’s staring at their joined hands.

Oh. Right.

Beca’s neck warms and her eyes drop to scan the floor in front of them, though she knows that rationally, she has nothing to feel bad for.

“Hmm,” Chloe muses, apparently oblivious of the man’s hostility. “Team… maybe T-shirts? Sweaters… uh, some sort of, I don’t know, memory book?”

“Wh – oh, that could be cute…”

“Beca?”

Beca runs her tongue over her front teeth, looking around carefully. “Listen, Chlo, maybe we should – oh!”

Beca stops talking abruptly when her eyes land on a piercing and jewelry kiosk in the middle of the aisle. It’s like a lightbulb turns on in her mind, the sudden idea driving everything else away.

“Okay, wait,” she says, thinking rapidly. “This might be lame, and you have to tell me if it’s lame.” She glances over, waiting until Chloe nods before continuing, “...But how do you feel about matching necklaces?”

Chloe stops dead in her tracks, her mouth popping open in surprise.

Beca stops, too, dragged to a halt by Chloe’s hand still wound around her own. “Oh, god,” she groans. “It’s lame, isn’t it? Yeah, you’re right, it’s lame. We definitely don’t need to –”

“No, Bec – it’s – that’s a great idea!”

“Really?”

“Definitely,” Chloe says firmly, pulling Beca toward the jewelry kiosk so abruptly it makes her stumble the first few steps and squeak embarrassingly in surprise.

Chloe drags her right up to the counter, moving directly to the necklace section with an excited squeal. She grips Beca’s hand even more tightly, tugging her close and peering down and into the display case happily. Beca glances up at the woman running the stand, smiling a little to half-apologize for their abrupt approach, only for the woman to smile back tight-lipped, her eyes flicking around almost furtively.

A brick scrapes its way down Beca’s throat to drop into her stomach.

Beca mimics the woman and glances around, trying to remain inconspicuous. People around them are probably making assumptions; they’re holding hands, standing at a jewelry kiosk, and Chloe had been obviously excited over something. Her blood runs cold when she realizes there are more than a few people staring over at them now with judgment in their eyes.

Beca forces herself to take a deep breath through her nose. There are “Sheilas” everywhere.  

“What about that one?” Chloe asks, refocusing Beca’s attention on the display case.

She moves closer to Chloe under the pretext of peering down into the case, angling herself so as to block Chloe as best she can from the strangers’ views.

“Um,” Beca says, her eyes landing on the necklace Chloe’s pointing at. She doesn’t want to alarm Chloe by making her aware of the electric storm of hostility surrounding them. The best thing to do would be to find something quickly and get out of the mall before anything happens.

Thankfully, the necklace Chloe has pointed out is a simple one: a standard quarter note on a thin golden chain, with the word “Belle” inscribed along its stem in cursive. It’s small, elegant, and almost too perfect to be real.

“Does that say…?”

“Yes,” Chloe smiles at her, and Beca can’t help but grin back.

“It’s perfect,” she says, grateful it was an easy find.

Chloe beams and squeezes Beca’s hand, which she takes as agreement.

Beca looks to the woman running the kiosk. She has to clear her throat to regain her attention; the woman had been staring hard in the opposite direction. “Um, hi. We’ll take eleven of these ‘Belle’ ones, please, if you have them.”

***************

Beca’s watching Pretty Little Liars when she’s 16. She’s only been living with Warren and Sheila for a few months, and this show is overdramatic, but it’s a distraction.

“Change the channel. I don’t want to see that,” Sheila’s voice sounds from behind her. “I don’t like you watching this.”

“Why?” Beca asks sullenly, not bothering to twist around on the couch.

“I heard they had a lesbian on it. That’s not something you need to see,” Sheila says scornfully. “There never used to be so many gays on TV, and I don’t see why they have to have them on all the shows now.”

Beca knows which character Sheila is talking about. In truth, she doesn’t always like seeing that, either; It makes her feel weird, unexpected things that she doesn’t want to think about. She doesn’t really want to do anything Sheila tells her, though, so she ignores her and leaves the show on. With a huff of annoyance, Sheila comes around the couch, snatches away the remote control, and changes the channel herself.

***************

The kiosk manager raises her eyebrows, but whether at the quick necklace choice or at the sheer number requested, Beca doesn’t know. Still, the woman nods without further comment and kneels to open a cabinet within the kiosk and starts rifling through it, presumably to check her stock.

Even as Chloe leans over the counter in excited anticipation, the back of Beca’s neck prickles and dread floods her senses.

She turns automatically, pivoting so her body fully shields Chloe’s.

“Bec, what –”

Someone tall – she catches a glimpse of a beard and narrowed brown eyes – barrels into Beca’s shoulder, sending her stumbling backward and into Chloe.

***************

She’s 18 when Sheila, after graduation, tells her, “Just wait until college, you’ll meet your future husband there.”

Beca tries to feign interest, instead of acknowledging the vague disgust she feels at the thought. She wasn’t going to college to meet a husband; if she had her way, she wouldn’t even be going to college at all.

“What’s the male-to-female ratio of Barden, again?” Sheila asks Warren, who shrugs uncomfortably. Beca has to look away.

***************

Beca tenses and holds her breath, waiting for a fist to appear in her gut or a shove to send both her and Chloe flying, but it never comes.

Instead, a sharp male voice hisses directly into her ear, “It’s still a fucking disgusting sin, even if you fags are able to pick out rings.”

Chloe gasps in shock and a white-hot pain slices through Beca’s chest; she might as well have been punched, for what those words did to her. The next instant, the man moves on, plowing through them roughly and leaving them staggering. Instinctively, as soon as she and Chloe catch their balance, Beca stares after the him, but can only see the back of his head moving away rapidly.

***************

She’s sitting with the other Bellas, staring at Jessica’s (or Ashley’s) laptop in nervous anticipation. The livestream of the Marriage Equality decision plays as they all watch with bated breath. Chloe makes it to the sitting room just in time, the familiar butterflies stirring in Beca’s stomach at the thought of asking her out soon…

On the stream, the votes start to appear, each one sending a pang through Beca’s entire body. She watches, ensnared and terrified. It’s going to be close; her heart sinks as she realizes they probably won’t win.

But then, they do. It’s 5-4, a small margin. It’s amazing and it’s exhilarating and it’s mind-numbing.

It’s much, much too close for comfort.

***************

Beca’s body goes numb with shock and fear, even as the man’s head is lost in the crowd.

She looks around; almost everyone near them is staring, wide-eyed.

Beca tugs her hand from Chloe’s.

She does it because she’s not thinking. She does it because everyone is staring at them. She does it because she doesn’t know what else to do.

She regrets it the instant it happens.

Chloe makes a small noise of protest, a hurt little cry that rips Beca apart even more than the man’s words had. She instantly knows that sound is going to echo in her nightmares.

She can feel Chloe’s eyes on the side of her face, can feel the shame warming her neck and face, but all she can do is watch the woman behind the kiosk extract more versions of the music note necklace from her supplies.

Beca swallows.

Chloe’s staring at her, her hand still dangling in the air between them. Beca can’t do anything about it.

She shoves her own hands deep into her front pockets, balling them into fists and digging her nails into her palms so she can feel something besides the crushing weight of Chloe’s accusing eyes on her face.

She wants to reach out. More than anything, Beca wants to reach out to reconnect their hands.

But it’s not safe.

They can’t act like a couple in public. Not when there are people who say things like that. Not when there are people who might hurt them.

Beca forces herself to glance over to convey this to Chloe silently – I’m trying to protect you – but Chloe looks away, her eyes dropping to the display case. She shifts, putting a few inches of empty space between herself and Beca.

A heavy lump forming in her throat, Beca looks back behind the kiosk. She watches the saleswoman messily wrap the eleven identical necklaces in tissue paper, moving hurriedly and glancing around anxiously. Heart sinking, Beca wonders if they’d somehow put this woman at risk just for shopping there. She isn’t sure if she should apologize or make some suggestion about the mall security, but her voice lodges behind the growing mass in her throat.

Chloe hasn’t moved. Beca isn’t sure if she’s even breathed.

“Here,” the woman behind the kiosk says roughly, startling Beca. It’s the first word she’s spoken since they arrived. The necklaces, all wrapped, have been placed in gift bag on the counter, with the total price for them displayed on the computer. Beca nods her thanks and hands over her debit card with trembling fingers. The woman swipes and hands it back, Beca signs the receipt without recognizing her own signature, and the bag is shoved in her hand and they’re free to go.

Before Beca knows what’s happening, Chloe is stalking away, refusing to look back. Beca can only follow, jamming her debit card back into her bag haphazardly and half-jogging to keep up. Chloe sets a breakneck pace, her feet hitting the ground – right, left, right, left – more quickly than Beca can manage to keep up with. Red curls duck and weave through people – past a group of teenagers, past a middle-aged man and woman holding hands (why do they get to hold hands?) – as if she’s trying to lose Beca in the crowd.

“Chloe, wait!”

She doesn’t look back.

Beca’s ears are ringing.

She follows Chloe on autopilot, her mind whirling and body quaking.

Time moves in odd gallops.

They’re leaving the kiosk.

They’re walking past the stores they’d already tried – Chloe hasn’t looked back yet.

They’re exiting the mall – surely, Chloe’s about to stop and wait for her. (She doesn’t stop.)

They’re at Chloe’s car – Chloe’s steps, right, left, right, left.

She wonders for a moment, as Chloe climbs into the driver’s seat, if the passenger door will even open for her when she gets there. Chloe shuts her door and starts the car before Beca even touches the handle. When she does, the door does open for her, and she swings herself in and gets the door closed only an instant before Chloe pulls forward from her parking space. Beca scrabbles for her seatbelt, clicking it into place as Chloe drives out of the lot, cutting off another driver at the exit.

The radio is off; Chloe must have turned it off after climbing into the car, because it had been blasting on their way there. They’d sung along with it. That seems like days ago, rather than barely two hours.

Darkness has officially fallen outside, making the interior of the car small and suffocating. Beca glances over; Chloe’s knuckles are while on the wheel, her form rigid in the seat, and jaw clenched so tightly Beca isn’t sure if she’ll ever speak again. Her eyes never waver from the road. A hole opening in her chest, Beca turns to stare out the passenger window without seeing. She shifts in her seat, her movements loud in the otherwise silent car.

She has never felt so lonely in Chloe’s presence.

I was trying to protect you.

Time continues to move in strange, jerky dollops, and in what could be hours or seconds, Chloe pulls up to the Bella house. Beca sees many of the upstairs lights are on, but not the main living room, and relief washes over her at the thought of avoiding the Bellas tonight.

Chloe parks the car and turns it off. Beca half-expects her to just get out and walk away again, but she doesn’t. Instead, she sits and stares down at her lap, her fingers twisting together.

Somehow, this is even scarier than Chloe walking away from her.

Beca wants to reach out, to soothe the tension she senses between Chloe’s shoulders, but she knows her touch would be unwelcome.

So, she waits, and starts counting in order to keep hold of her sanity.

She gets to thirty-seven before Chloe sighs deeply and looks over at her, making eye contact for the first time since the kiosk. The dullness of her eyes is horrifying.

“Do you still want to be with me?” Chloe asks, looking more afraid than Beca has ever seen her.

Yes. Yes, more than anything.

It’s still a fucking disgusting sin, even if you fags are able to pick out rings.

“I…”

She hesitates just a second too long, lost in her own fear of the world.

Chloe’s face pales and, in one fluid motion, she unbuckles her seatbelt and opens her car door. She steps out and closes it, then jogs to the Bella house.

“No, I – wait!” Beca shouts, but Chloe doesn’t look back. She goes inside the house and slams the front door behind her.

Beca’s frozen to her seat, staring dumbly at the house in shock. Two seconds pass, then four, then six, then her brain screams at her to move.

She rips off the seatbelt, swearing when it gets caught on her hand, and shoulders open the car door. She throws herself out, leaving behind the bag of necklaces and slamming the door closed behind her, and then she’s running, actually full-out running for the front door. She flies up the porch steps, flings open the door, and launches herself inside.

A bedroom door slams upstairs, and she knows it can only be Chloe’s. Setting her jaw against the panic threatening to engulf her, Beca bounds up the steps, taking them two at a time. She reaches the second-floor landing and rushes to Chloe’s bedroom door, hand flying to the handle to push her way inside.

Her heart stops.