#freyja.

(Someone roughly tosses a padded basket (containing a newborn Baby Ariana) onto the sidewalk before quickly driving/running away. For Freyja).

‘ I'm taking you to my home now. ’

Lost in the city herself, Freyja didn't react immediately, conflicted. She hadn't spent long here in Midgard among humans, yet from what she knew, they had to be hospitable and kind like her and the other gods. They were, after all, made in their image. Weren't they? And still, whoever had just thrown this little child on the sidewalk just didn't care. What a bastard, the goddess thought and walked over to the baby.

‘ Shh... it's gonna be fine, little lady. ’ Though it was much harder to tell with children so little, to Freyja the child seemed to be a girl. A very, very young lady. She picked her up and hugged her close, throwing one last look around. No, whoever had left the baby was gone for good. And likely for the better for them. Had Freyja seen them, she'd give chase.

‘ I'm taking you to my home now. ’ Freyja turned on her heel and walked away... and, not too long later, her walk took her back to her home in Vanaheim.

“You deserve better, you deserve so much better.”

A beat passed. The rain continued to hammer down his back. The shadows cast from the trees spin and bend, morphing his expression into a million fleeting emotions. Their target sat a hundred meters away reading a newspaper by candlelight. But the target is the furthest thing from his mind. All he can focus on now is her. On her words. He lowers his sniper rifle to his side, his eyes burning on her.

How many versions of the same line would she feed him? How long would it take for her to understand he isn’t leaving her? He couldn’t imagine ever not following her into the abyss. He couldn’t imagine ever not loving her. He would love her through it all.

The silence persists. But, there is a change in the air around him. It’s charged. With that same burning look, he threw the gun he had in his hand, the gun that had been his savior for so long, very deliberately to the side. “Don’t care ‘bout whats deserved.” His jaw clenches as his voice breaks the silence. He moves closer to her. The scent of wood and musk. Drops of rain fall down his cheeks and hers, her hair sticking to her face in wet curls as well. It was just him and her in the woods. No targets. No Russia. Them. And its like the dam finally broke. “I love you.” Words quiet beneath the downpour of rain, yet strong. “And I will always, always, fight for you.” Then lips. His soft, tender lips settling upon hers. His palms coming to rest on both her cheeks as he steps completely into her space and lips start to tremble against hers, his eyes stinging, his heart exposed. A heart he didn’t even know still beat. When he pulls back, only slightly, his left thumb slowly slides back and forth across her cheek.

“You’re part of me.” A whisper in the space between them. His breath mingling with hers. He tilts her head up, though, to pin her eyes with his own. To let her see the sincerity pouring from not only his voice but his eyes, too. “I can’t lose you.” If he ever did… He doesn’t want to know the person he would become if he lost her. Especially if he lost her to Bratva. He pulls her to himself then, arms wrapping tightly around her smaller frame. Nobody, not Bratva, not death, would take another person he loved from him. He wouldn’t survive if they ever did.

“Aren’t you cold out here, dressed that way? It gets very chilly the more the darkness falls.” Freyja throws a glance in the other’s direction and adjusts her gloves with a tug, as if preparing for more shooting. That may not be needed, however. With this weather, she’s unsure any more prey would come out, and at this time... no, this was better left continued tomorrow. The morn is oft wiser than the night, she remembered a saying her friends had said not once or twice.

“Make me a promise that when the world ends, you’ll kiss me.”

His hands cup her cheeks.

“нет.“ He whispers. The time bleeding slow as they stood there, staring, crickets chirping in the dead of night. No: he wouldn’t make this promise. No: he wouldn’t let the world end. No: he wouldn’t wait until then. “нет.“ He says it again, unable to pull his gaze away from hers. He would never make this promise. He doesn’t know what will happen between now and then. What if his fight has ended with him six feet under by then? What if they’ve drifted so far apart he can’t even remember the color of her eyes or the sound of her laugh? There were too many what ifs. Too many maybes. He wants her to be one of his definites. He wants her to be his present.

“The world doesn’t have to end for me to kiss you,” he says, low, for their ears alone. A secret shared. Then he pulls her in for a kiss. Soft, gentle, everything his being has fought against being since he came back to Russia for her.

She takes his hand to place the palm of it flat against her cheek, and it quivers. Touching her burned hot and quick like whiskey on the back of your throat. It made him ache, made him feel as if she were slicing him open and squeezing his heart in a suffocating touch. He wrenches his hand away and takes twelve steps back. He needed distance, almost craved it. He needed to breathe as he took in what she was saying. He was loved. He was worthy. But, not by her. “Bullshit,” he says. A whisper of a word to himself. He didn’t believe her. Not after everything Nadiya said. Not after finding out what she sold her life for, or rather who she sold her life for. A person wouldn’t do that if they didn’t feel something. Nikolay takes a moment to look at her. Really look at her. She looks like Freyja, and yet at the same time like a dead person. The Bratva have already wrung out her girlhood and twisted her into this stony, less than human thing. He saw past the blank stares and dullness in her voice, though, because that used to be him. So, instead, he repeats himself, louder. “Bullshit.” The hand that was pressed to her skin balls up into a fist. “You are terrible liar, Volkova. Your actions say truth your mouth can’t.” 

‘this will only end in heartache’ — freyja

(x) continuation from here. 

It’s much later. The match had ended with another well predicted win for Nikolay and three hours later he found himself standing outside Freyja’s door. He had considered calling it quits for the night and going to Catalina’s room. Normally he would. Tonight was different, though. He had been on edge since the match ended. He couldn’t get her out of his head, or how she shrank away from him. Nikolay knew he was a monster, but he never thought Freyja would see him as one, too. But, the way she looked today, almost in a sweat and panicky, said otherwise. It was the mirror image of his own bleak gaze reflected back at him. She saw what he saw. The monster rather than the man.

These thoughts he had tucked under a rug were resurfacing as his hand tightened around her doorknob, Nikolay unable to turn it and walk in as was his habit. He understood that if he went in there he wouldn’t come out the same. Something would change. They would be different. Is that what he wants? 

He walks in and shuts the door behind him. She is sprawled out on the bed asleep and, for a minute, he considers leaving. She shifts in the bed, however, and turns to face him with tangled curls spaced out on the sheets behind her. He clicks the lock and, unsure of himself, he leans against the door instead of stepping any closer. 

“Get out.” She shouts and he narrowly dodges a tissue box aimed for his head. He can’t see that she’s been crying since the room was devoid of light except the moonlight pouring in from outside, but he could tell. He could hear it in her voice and see tissues sporadically tossed about the bed. Christ. Was this really because of him? He wants to say something but he ends up snapping his mouth shut as she rolled to face away from him. She mumbles so quietly into her bed sheets he almost doesn’t hear it. Almost. 

“Why can’t you understand? We’re dangerous. This will only end in heartache.” The words she spoke cut into him like broken glass; shattering every bone in his wasted body. Nikolay has to lean deeper into the door behind him for support while every instinct is telling him to just get out. Every instinct his old self would have followed in a heartbeat, but not now. Now he stands powerless at her door. Grinding his teeth, his hands land behind his neck as he buries his face between his arms. Frustration has him wound up tight like a knot as he feels trapped inside a twisted circle. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if there was anything to say. She sounded so hopeless, so broken. Like she had made the decision for them. 

For the second time tonight, he opens his mouth just to clamp it shut again. He can’t fix this — whatever this was. There was no bandaging it. Nikolay unclicks the lock and walks out in the direction of his own bedroom. 

When he least expected it. When he was least prepared. The terse ringing of his phone had him springing up from his deep red, overstuffed chair in his office that he’d been sat in for days filled with blinding fury. Filled with overwhelming sadness. But, mostly, struck with terror that he has lost her to the world; a world they both knew was filled with a brutality that changed a person into small fragments of who they are, or who they could be. He had pounced up from that chair and, clumsily, he threw and shoved stacks of papers being used to locate Freyja aside in attempt to find his phone somewhere buried beneath it all and, when he does finally find it in the mess, he doesn’t look at the caller ID before he speaks. A voice gruff from lack of use as he had lost himself in the search of her, yet hoarse from moments when he yelled at Midus for being so uncaring. “Hello. Freyja? Is that — ”

He is cut off by her voice. The sound of it causing his fingers to grip the edge of his desk so fiercely he swore a chunk of it would break beneath the weight of his rough hand while he sinks to the floor. His back is pressed to the desk then while one hand still grips the edge of it and the other shakily holds the phone to his ear. He tips his head back against the desk with a sigh of relief. Fuck. Fuck, he needed this. Needed the sound of her voice in his ear even if it is filled with a sadness that has him desperate to traverse the whole goddamn earth to find her and hold her. He’d do anything for that voice. He’d do anything just to hold her right now.

He has a million things to talk to her about. All he wants in this world is to talk to her. He wants to see her and talk. But, he doesn’t say that. Instead he finds himself telling her to shutup. “Shutup. Shut your goddamn mouth.” He wants to say fuck your soft words. Because they are not soft beings. Far from it. And he wants to say fuck your opinions. Because she has no idea how much he does need her. She has no idea that he has locked himself up in his office and poured over maps and letters for days for her. He hasn’t moved a goddamn inch from the room despite Catalina’s protests to eat, or Midus ill timed quips on how the room started to reek from his broodiness. He would not be moved until Freyja gave him an inch, and this was the inch. This was the moment he felt his breath finally returning to his lungs. This was the moment he could bring her back to them, to him, and realize what Nikolay had to realize: she had a home in them. She would always have him to lean against when she didn’t think she could stand anymore, even though he knew she was capable of taking on the world on her own. Capable as she was, he would always be right there with her when she needed him to be. Or when she protested that she didn’t need him but they both know she did.

He holds the phone closer to his mouth then and whispers in to the receiver. As if these words were sacred. As if these words were just for her. “I need you. God, I need you.” He takes in a shuddering breath and, fuck, there is so much he wants to say. He wants to spend every minute of every hour conveying to her the depths of his need for her. But, he can’t. There aren’t enough ways for him to say it, and he was never good at speaking like Midus was. Nikolay has only ever been sparse in speech and his words have never flown freely. So he can only struggle to get a semblance of his feelings out to her over the phone. This would be so much easier if she could just see how broken he had become without her here.  “You understand me in a way they never can.” And, despite himself, he laughs into the phone. A throaty, exasperated sound. The first laugh he has had in days. “кукла младенец.” The familiar pet name is spoken in the softest way its ever been said. So soft, yet still so guttural as it claws its way out of his throat. “Come home.” The two little words meant to say it all without saying it. Two little words saying this: I’ve always loved you, so please just come back to me.