It gets easier

Chapter 12 / Everything

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Thorfinn decided not to wait any longer. His mother was right, and he knew it; he knew what he needed to do for his own sake and for Gudrid's as well, because if their relationship kept progressing as it did, she needed to know what kind of person he was. What kind of person had he been?

Thorfinn thought about it all, sitting in the annex where he stared at Gudrid when she suddenly walked in.

She looked up, a little surprised to see him. He was normally the one coming home later than she was.

"Oh, hi"

"Hi," Thorfinn greeted her, finding it hard to smile towards her, but he tried anyway, and he could see that Gudrid saw straight through him.

Her brows furrowed at him as she took off her coat and boots, walking closer to him.

"Is everything alright?" She asked with genuine worry on her face and in her voice. Her hands seemed restless by her side, and she ended up holding onto the gem of her tunic. "You've been acting different these last couple of days."

Thorfinn swallowed a growing lump in his throat. He supposed that after spending months together, she would pick up on his normal behavior and be able to tell when something was wrong with him.

"I hope it isn't," she began, suddenly nervous. "Is it because of what I did the other day? Did it bother you, because—I mean, I would understand it?"

He blinked. What had she done?

His eyes widened when he realized what she was referring to, and he quickly stood up.

"No, not at all! It's not that," he told her earnestly, his voice louder than he had intended it to be.

What Gudrid was fearing was that the hug she had given him a few days earlier, before they went to sleep, had created an awkward tension between them. He felt terrible when he realized that she had good reason to think that. Because of his own guilt, he had not been speaking to her very much after that night.

"Then... what is it? I'm right, aren't I? There is something wrong."

Thorfinn opened his mouth, wanting to answer her, but the words he meant to say turned into a sigh.

His expression turned grimmer, and he could see Gudrid become more nervous. Everything he had planned to say escaped him, and he was nearly at a loss for words.

All he could do was motion for one of the small stools in the room, asking her to sit down.

He wondered what she thought he was about to say.

"Gudrid, I want to tell you everything about me." He started, and he saw her eyes widen a little. "The other day, you called me a kind man, but I can't let you continue to believe that. You need to know what kind of man you are married to. What kind of man have I been?"

He could tell that he was beginning to scare her, both with his vague words and the manner in which he was saying them.

He sat down on the stool in front of her, but pulled it further away from her in case she did not want to be too close to him when he finished telling her about his past.

"Gudrid, when I left Iceland, I was six years old, and I did not leave because I wanted to see the world."

"You were six?"She asked in horror; she knew he had been gone for a long time, but he was so young. "Wait," the words suddenly caught up to her. "Then why did you leave?"

Thorfinn nodded and took a deep breath before he continued. This would be the hard part. "My father was going to war, and I stowed away on his ship. The older boys in the village were going with him, and I thought I could help as well, though, looking back, it was so idiotic." He brushed a hand through his hair, feeling it begin to stick to his forehead. "I stowed away, and by the time they realized it was too late to turn back... I thought it was so great, but then my father died a few days after we left. He was killed on the Faroe Islands."

He didn't realize he had been staring at the floor, but at that part, he looked up to see her reaction. What he saw almost broke his heart because Gudrid looked heartbroken herself. Her eyes were wide, and she looked like she was on the verge of tears. He didn't know if it was for him or for his father, but if it was for him, he surely didn't deserve it.

"I had no idea. I mean... I know your father died a long time ago, but I had convinced myself he got sick." Gudrid told him and lowered her head, fiddling with her hands, ashamed of having made her own assumptions.

He could understand why Gudrid would think that. Maybe she had been told about how his mother was often ill and had mistaken them, thinking it was his father, and that illness eventually took his life. If only it had been that way. That would have been so much easier to deal with.

Thorfinn shook his head. "He was killed by Vikings. He won in a duel against their leader, but he was killed anyway, and I watched every second of it. I watched him get shot full of arrows, and I was held by him as he took his final breath.

Gudrid did it without thinking, reaching across the space that separated them and taking Thorfinn's hand until her own.

He looked down at them, her small hand with small scars—almost invisible—from hard and prober work against his rugged ones with scars from acts of violence he committed and experienced.

"Gudrid... these," he said, squeezing his eyes shut. "These are not hands that you want to hold."

Gudrid only tightened her hold on him, either believing him or not caring.

He meant what he had said, but deep within himself, he was truly happy that her hands stayed there despite what he told her.

"What are you trying to tell me, Thorfinn?"

He knew he had to continue.

"The man who killed my father... his name was Askeladd." Thorfinn continued. How long had it been since he had said that name out loud? "I hated him so much, enough to want to kill him for what he had done, and I spent eleven years trying to do that. I followed him; I disappeared, and for all those years, my family didn't even know if I was alive or not. Leif searched for me the entire time. I spent those years working for Askeladd. I wanted to duel him, and the only way to get him to agree was to... I did everything he asked. Nearly anything you can imagine, Gudrid, I did, all for my own selfish reasons."

Thorfinn was quiet, letting those facts seep in before he decided to continue.

What was Gudrid thinking right now, and why wasn't she letting go of his hand?

"I killed people. I've killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people with these hands. And not just other warriors; innocent people as well, people who could never deserve what I did to them... I was... a Viking, Gudrid."

It was not that Gudrid was not surprised, but she did not make a sound. Thorfinn's still had his eyes closed and his head low, and she stared at him with wide eyes.

If he did not look like he was on the verge of tears, she would not have believed him. This man, who had been nothing but kind to her, had done that?

But the thing that caused her not to let go and not to be horrified was the fact that he looked like that as he told his story to her.

She remembered her first husband, Thorvald, who enjoyed fighting and feeling strong, and other men she had met and heard about. She knew that many other men would tell her this story with pride in their eyes, telling her that they slayed thousands, but not Thorfinn. She could tell that he regretted it.

It dawned on her suddenly. "Is that what your nightmares are about?"

He finally looked up at her, surprise and confusion on his face as his eyes met hers.

"How... how is that the first question you ask after all of that?"

Gudrid was nearly unable to find an answer to his question.

"I-... I just- I don't know..."

Thorfinn sighed, not understanding the way this was going at all, but decided to answer Gudrid's question.

"I think so, but... what I said about not remembering my dreams. That's true"

Gudrid nodded, believing him, and then they became quiet. Gudrid stared at their hands, still holding his, while Thirfinnn stared at her.

She could feel him getting more confused with every second passing by, and maybe frustrated as well, but he didn't say anything for such a long time that she eventually felt like she had to be the one to do it.

"What kind of reaction were you expecting from me? To stand up and scream? Or to push you away and cry, calling you a monster?"

"I certainly wasn't expecting you to hold my hand." Thorfinn mumbled, looking down at their hands. "I don't understand, Gudrid; you should be afraid and upset. I let you believe I was."

"I'm not going to pretend like I'm not shocked, Thorfinn." She cut him off. "But not the way I can see that you expected. That's just not you anymore, is it? Thorfinn, you've done nothing but be kind to me. You talk to me like I'm your equal; you let me be myself; you even let me be on our wedding night. Knowing about your past doesn't change the fact the fact that I'm grateful for all of that. You've shown me who you are."

"Can you really say that after just a few months?"

"Yes, I can."

He stared at her again, wondering how such an amazing person had become a part of his life.

His hand moved on its own, finally gripping Gudrid's hand, which had held his throughout his entire story. It had been less than five minutes, but to him, it had felt like an eternity.

Suddenly, Gudrid laughed awkwardly and blushed, looking away from Thorfinn. It relieved some of the tension there had been in the room with them, but it confused Thorfinn.

"I really thought that you were going to tell me you were unhappy with our marriage or something."

"Would that have been worse?"

Gudrid's blush spread and turned darker, and Thorfinn felt his own face turn warmer as well, just looking at that reaction.

"I think so, because, like I said, I'm happy I married you, Thorfinn, and all of what you said is the past, right? I think it would be harder to deal with something that's in the present."

When she had said it the first time, he had been incredibly flattered, but he had thought she meant it as a way of saying that she was just happy to have married someone who would not abuse her and try to lock him away, but she really meant that she was happy to have married him personally.

He thought back to the months they had spent together, wondering what would make her feel that way. He thought back to the day after their wedding, the relief in her eyes when he told her she would have to do nothing she did not want to do, and the softness on her face after he had brushed her tears away. The quiet evening they had spent together after that, and the ones filled with talking as well, with Gudrid asking questions, or occasionally the other way around,.

It had all been better than he had dared hope, and that was how Gudrid felt as well.

"Me too," he told her, and she looked back at him shyly. "I'm also really glad I married you, Gudrid."

"Do you actually mean that?"

"I do"

Her smile reached her eyes, and in the previous conversation, the guilt and fear he had had in him washed away. What Gudrid said next didn't even bring it back. It was like his mother had said—a weight had really been lifted off his chest.

"I want you to be able to tell me things like this—to tell me everything, okay?"

Thorfinn felt so drawn to her in that moment. He wanted to be closer to her, much closer, but he wasn't sure what that meant that he should do, so he leaned forward across the space between them.

Gudrid's eyes widened, and then she slowly closed them.

He wasn't sure what she was thinking in that moment or what he was.

He kept leaning forward, but then he stopped, resting their foreheads against each other. If he focused, he could feel her breath on his face, and he could feel how hot her skin was against his own.

"I will..." he told her, his voice not more than a whisper now.

They sat like that, foreheads pressed together with their eyes closed in silence, for longer than they probably should have, with their hands still holding each other, and they had never felt closer to each other than they did in that moment.