Kratos x Reader

Two

The soft light of the fire was filling the cabin. The sound of cracking firewood filled the air. It was a silent night that day.

Almost too silent.

Kratos did not know why, but the sheer silence made his senses tingle. He was alive way too long for believing that this kind of silence was a good thing.

Over and over again, he looked around in the cabin. His own home seemed strange to him.

Was somebody around?

The feeling of something powerful was surrounding this cabin for quite a while now. It wasn't his power, not the one of Atreus. But, somehow, it also did not feel like the powers of a god.

At least not a Nordic god.

"Why are you so restless, lad?", Mimir asked.

The head had been hanging on a rag for quite some while now. Form his spot he was able to see everything that was going on in the cabin. Since he did not sleep, Kratos used him as kind of an alarm. In case someone tried to enter his home without permission.

"Nothing.", Kratos answered and turned the meat, that was roasting above the fire. "Do you feel something?"

Amused, Mimir laughed.

"I feel a lot, brother. Heat, cold, the wind that is blowing through my open neck. You need to be a little more specific."

A little bothered by the head, Kratos closed his eyes.

"I can't describe it properly. It feels like... godly powers around us. But they are different form the Nordic gods."

"Visitors from the past, perhaps? You have caused them quite some trouble. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody wanted to take revenge."

"The dead don't take revenge."

"Oh, they do, brother. I knew a man once who had a dead wife. He seduced her sister at her funeral. Do you know what then happened? The ghost of his wife returned and made his balls explode. Poor man had the pain of his life. And another time I met a-"

"Mimir! Your stories do not help me to find out what this strange feeling his. Tell me, do you feel this?", Kratos looked up.

He could have sworn that there was somebody up there.

He felt watched. But it couldn't have been Atreus. He had forbade him to climb on the roof again, ever since he had fallen through the hole that let the smoke escape and almost into the fireplace.

For a moment, Mimir pretended to be interested in Kratos worries. Then, he started telling his old stories again.

Sometimes, Kratos regretted that he had taken the head home. It would have been so much easier and quieter to leave him with the dwarfs. Together, the three would have made an excellent comedy trio that would have been worthy of the gods.

But Mimir had begged him to take him home since the dwarf brothers were fighting all the time. Even a man like Mimir grew tired of the fights pretty quickly.

"I don't know about you but I feel nothing. Are you getting paranoid, now that you have no godly being to kill anymore? Does the silence torture you? I always expected that you would like it when nobody is talking or trying to kill you. I mean, you are a silent man so you must like silence, eh?", the head tried to joke.

But Kratos was not in the mood for jokes. With a grim expression, he glared at the head. It was a warning. His talking was bothering him.

So Mimir did what a wise man like him would do and kept his mouth shut.

With one swift movement, Kratos got up. He called his axe to his side, secured it on his back and walked to the door.

"Watch the fire while I'm gone.", he said and left.

"How am I supposed to do that?! I'm just a goddamn head!", Mimir yelled after him.

But Kratos was already gone.

Outside, the cold wind hit his face.

Winter was starting to come to an end. But it seemed like it did not want to end and tried with all its might to remain cold and deadly.

But it did not really bother the god of war. He liked the cold a lot more than the heat. And since it was hard for his body to freeze, he couldn't be more unbothered by the eternal Nordic winter.

Testing, he let his eyes wander through the forest of white.

"Boy!", he called.

Atreus had played outside the cabin.

But as good as Kratos knew his son, he knew that he had wandered off and started to explore the forest a little more. In the beginning, he would have worried.

But now that Atreus had a few skills at hand, it just seemed like he only needed to find him and not worry for his life.

"Atreus!", Kratos called again.

His harsh and deep voice was cutting through the wind like a knife. Everyone could have heard his calls. Even the gods.

The snow cracked below the soles of his leather shoes. Snowflakes got caught in his brown beard.

A snowstorm was coming. He could feel it in the way the wind moved and how the snow got thicker.

"Boy! Where are you?", Kratos called again.

Finding foot prints in this weather was like finding a needle in a haystack. Not impossible but a waste of time to him. Calling for his son until his voice got sore was way easier.

"Atreus, where are you? Answer me!"

Suddenly, something moved inside the wall of snow and fog. A shadow emerged, first very small until it grew bigger.

Relieved, Kartos wanted to grab it, thinking he had found his son. But as his hands touched fur, a deep jumped towards him. Struck by surprise, he rushed aside and let the animal pass him.

It was the same deer that Atreus had wanted to kill.

Why was it still around?

Hastily, it jumped into the snow again and out of sight. Only its eyes remained burned onto Kratos' mind.

"Father?!", Atreus voice suddenly screamed. "I'm here! Help me, I'm stuck in the snow!"

Immediately, Kratos rushed into the direction from wich his sons voice came from.

He found the boy stuck in the snow. The white reached up to his chest, as if he had fallen into a hidden holde.

With one swift pull, he got him out.

"Why are you buried so deep?", Kratos asked, while his son was still hanging in his grip.

"The deer. It put a spell on me and I sunk.", the boy said and grinned. "That was so much fun!"