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“A servant will come by later to change your bandages” Askeladd says as he carefully sits Bjorn down on the bed.
Despite everything, Askeladd's voice is light. Only Bjorn could pick up on that trace of skillfully concealed discomfort in it. Even at a time like this, he is still trying to keep up that incomprehensible charade of his. How useless.
No matter how hard he tries to hide it, nothing gets past his right hand man. He must still be in pain after getting attacked by the men. Bjorn feels for him, really.
“You should lie down until then” Askeladd says.
A gruff laugh, grunt more than anything, is the only response Bjorn can manage with this searing pain in his gut. It really is laughable. Lying down? What good would that do?
The bandages around his stomach are already moist, leaking through his shirt to greet his rough palm. The wound throbs and pulsates below his hand. He almost thinks Askeladd is messing with him.
A wound in the stomach; that's not something you just recover from.
Bjorn knows this, and Askeladd, who has always been so much smarter than him, knows it too. Why he is bothering with this pretense of ‘getting rest’ and ‘healing’ was beyond him. Still, he feels the need to remind him.
“This wound’s in a pretty bad spot”
Such a simple statement, but in his shaky voice it sounds like a plea. It sounds like a dog begging for a scrap of its master's attention. It sounds small, pathetic.
If he had any ounce of shame left in his body, he would curse himself for the way his eyes automatically dart up to scan over Askeladd's face, searching his features for something, anything —a twitch of his eyebrows, a slight drop in his smile. Just to let him know the man was affected by this too, that his indifference was just yet another part of his neverending charade.
He finds nothing of the sort, of course.
“I might be dead before the servant comes"
The words leave his lips with the light air of a joke, though they are entirely truthful.
It is something that they have built into them; living on the battlefield gives you a sort of sense of death. The air of a person nearing the end is a very distinct one; the closer one is to death the more vile it becomes, filling nostrils and mouth and fogging the brain up like a thick morning mist.
He has never felt it this closely before. And that can only really mean one thing.
If Bjorn feels it, Askeladd must feel it too, filling up the small room, forcing them to breathe it in, move in it. Even like this—actively inhaling the poisonous stench of Bjorn’s impending death, Askeladd doesn’t so much as stir.
Maybe his commander had decided to drop the act entirely. Maybe all those years together really had meant that little. I've always hated you. Damn him. Ever since he had spoken those words, they had not left Bjorn’s mind. They occupied every second of silence, bounced back and forth, around and around in his head like a trapped bird, even more oppressive than the reek of death.
He supposes he should be grateful then, when Askeladd finally interrupts the stillness.
“That reminds me,” The man begins, and Bjorn almost stops breathing, just to make sure he hears every last word of what he is about to say. “Atli said that he wants to apologize to you, Bjorn”
There it is—the response he had worked so hard to get. He can’t help but laugh. Some things really never change, do they? Just as always, Askeladd deflects any of his attempts at prodding, getting closer, digging deeper. Always keeping him at an arm's length.
Atli the damn softie, feeling guilty about keeping him out of Valhalla by condemning him to dying in bed. Truth is, Valhalla is the last thing on his mind right now. All he really wants is for Askeladd to stay with him a while longer.
“No fucking way, I ain’t gonna whine about someone tryin’ to kill me in battle. The only one who cares about shit like that is Thorfinn”
For the first time that night, Askeladd gives him a reaction. A small but genuine smile—not much, not nearly enough, but when is it ever—and Gods does Bjorn love that sight; in spite of the pain, he finds the corners of his lips curling up into a smile of his own.
He takes a short moment to simply stare, take in that crinkle of the skin around his eyes, the curve of his crooked, sly grin. Despite how the man is visibly aged, he is still as beautiful as when they first met, all those years ago. He takes all of it in, everything he will never get to touch. Everything, only an arm’s length away.
Askeladd stares back for only a short second, and maybe he knows what Bjorn is thinking. With all the blood leaking out of him, he is starting to feel transparent, and those eyes seem to stare right through what is left of him.
It is truly amazing; even after having watched everything they knew crumble and fall apart around them, those eyes still haven't lost their shine. They remain as vivid as ever—the color of the ice over every bottomless lake they’ve ever sailed. Bjorn would stare at them forever if he could, and wasn’t that just fucking tragic.
“I’m gonna go take a gander at king Sweyn”
Now the ice cracks under his feet. Now he is forced into the freezing depths below. The ice he had trusted enough to put his entire weight on hadn't held him, and now he is treading water, struggling to stay afloat, to keep breathing.
Just as quick as it had come, Bjorn's smile is gone, replaced by a deep frown. Though, with his back already to him, Askeladd would never see. Despite his wounded legs, the man is already at the door. Why is he always in such a hurry? Can’t he spare him a minute, just this once?
All his life, Bjorn has had to endure freezing storms and bitter climates, but he has never encountered anything that invoked such a terrifying, full body sense of cold as this man.
Like countless times before, a wish to speak up itches. Bjorn should really have learned to count his losses by now, but he opens his mouth—
And without turning around, Askeladd tells him, "See ya tomorrow"
All genuine like. As if he means it. As if he doesn’t know.
It's too much. Bjorn keeps his gaze downcast. Staring at the floor, at his own tattered boots, at the dirt. At anything other than Askeladd. He knows there will be no tomorrow. This is it, this is all they will ever get.
There will be no tomorrow, and Askeladd knows.
Bjorn keeps his head down because if he doesn't—if he looks up and has to watch Askeladd leave him again while knowing—he might just fall apart. He can’t let the man witness a pathetic display like that.
Luckily for him, he doesn't have to worry about it for long; before he can take another breath, Askeladd takes a step outside. And without looking back, he lets the door falls shut between them.