It gets easier

Chapter 13 / Such a mess

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"What do I do?!" Gudrid cried into the night air. It was the middle of the night, just hours after Thorfinn had told her about his past. Though that was not what had her frustrated; rather, it was what Thorfinn had done afterwards, or rather, what he hadn't done.

When he had leaned forward toward her like that, she really thought he was going to kiss her, and she actually wanted him to. She had closed her eyes and angled her head, expecting the gentle press of his lips against hers. She was snapped out of it when all he did was press their foreheads together, and she couldn't say that she wasn't disappointed.

She had wanted him to kiss her.

She was sure she had hidden her disappointment well, however. Their hands stayed linked for the rest of the evening, and she had mindlessly begun tracing his scars as he answered whatever questions she had about his past, because of course she had questions.

She learned how it all had ended and how he had been broken down so badly that he gave up on that life. Askekadd had meant more to him than he thought, and that it was his death and his parting words that had been what he needed to move on and give a new life a chance.

Gudrid was also grateful for Leif now, much more than she had ever been, because it was him who saved Thorfinn.

He told her he was about to be sold into slavery when Leif saved him, paying much more than Thorfinn was worth just to buy him free.

If he hadn't, Thorfinn probably wouldn't be here. He wouldn't be in Iceland, and maybe he wouldn't even be alive.

The thought of a world where she might've never married him or even met him made Gudrid feel colder than the winds ever could.

She was such a mess.

"What do I do?" she asked the world again, quietly now, and listened as the only reply was howling winds, echoing the feeling within her chest and her head.

She turned to look back at the annex where she had left her husband sleeping on the floor.

Her hair blew around her face. It had gotten longer now.

Maybe she was an idiot for only realizing it now; looking back, it had been obvious for a while, but she had fallen in love with her husband.

She was in love with Thorfinn.

She raised a hand to touch her forehead, where Thorfinn's had been hours earlier. She wondered what would have happened if she had walked that small distance between them. If she had kissed him, what would he have done and said? She wasn't sure what he would have done, but she wanted to imagine that he wouldn't mind.

She wondered if Thorfinn really was just kind, or if it was possible that he also loved her.

Whatever the case was, she had no idea what to do about it.


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"What do you mean? What do you do? You kiss him!"

"Shh! Not so loud!" Gudrid panicked. She had gone to her sister-in-law early the next morning, though not early enough to be up and about before Thorfinn.

She had blushed furiously as he recounted the previous evening to her and what she thought had been about to happen. Ylva hadn't seemed surprised at all, calling her brother an idiot under her breath.

"Also, I can't just do that," Gudrid said, still blushing and feeling it flare up even more at the thought of just grabbing Thorfinn by the collar and kissing him. No, she absolutely couldn't do that!

"Then tell him how you feel."

"I can't do that either!"

"And why not?"

"B- because..." Gudrid stammered but struggled to find a better answer in less than a couple of seconds. "Because I don't know if he has any feelings towards me at all. He might just be kind, and then it sounds like I've completely misunderstood his intentions."

"Really?" Ylva folded her arms over her chest, and suddenly Gudrid felt like she was being given a scolding.

"Y- yes?"

"My brother can hardly talk to any of us about his time in that warrior band, but he told you."

Gudrid blinked. She understood why it had been hard telling her about that side of him, but really? He could hardly talk to his own family about it. He loved his family, so she would have thought they were the ones he turned to once the guilt got the best of him.

"Well, yes..."

"Don't think too little of that, Gudrid. That took a lot from him."

"I know, but how is that?"

"It means he couldn't bear to keep it from you, probably because he loves you but doesn't realize it yet because he's an idiot. He's got bad feelings; you have no idea how long it took before he started being a proper uncle to my kids."

"What? But he adores them!"

"Exactly; he just needed a nudge or a push, like he does right now." Ylva scoffed, remembering how Thorfinn had been.

The children had taken a liking to him almost immediately, but it had almost been like he had been afraid to even touch them. Ylva never asked why. She didn't want to know if Thorfinn had killed children their ages before.

It began to change when she forced Drifa, her youngest, who was just a year old, onto him one evening, quickly telling him how to hold her before she left to run an errand. When she returned, he was still holding her. She was asleep in his arms, and he was just staring down at her in awe. It was no wonder the two of them seemed to have an unbreakable bond.

It was a good memory. It was the first time since his homecoming that she had really been convinced that her sweet brother was still in there somewhere.

That was probably why she was so hard on him too, because that moment had taught her that sometimes she just needed to force Thorfinn to do things he didn't want to do. It had been good for him then, and this marriage, which he had not wanted either, seemed to be doing something good for him as well. She didn't regret what she had done in the least.

"Ylva?" Gudrid called out to her when Ylva got a far-off look in her eyes.

"Besides," Ylva cleared her throat, coming back to the conversation. "You should know him well enough to know that even if he doesn't have feelings for you, he wouldn't judge you. I think he would even still feel happy that someone could feel that way about him."

"That someone can... Wait, what? But Thorfinn is so kind and gentle and handso-."

"Stop it."

"Has no one else shown interest in him before?"

"Hah! Of course they have; he's just stupid." Ylva laughed loudly, quietly remembering a village girl a few years ago, back when Thorfinn had barely started getting used to life in the village again, following him around and giving him deserts. However, when he showed no interest, she moved on. She was married and has a baby on the way now. "And no one nowadays has the guts to confess their feelings to each other."

"Ouch," Gudrid muttered.

"It's just the truth."

Gudrid sighed, lowering her head and thinking over how she could, in the easiest way, tell her husband that she had fallen in love with him.

She stopped and raised her head when Ylva chuckled.

"What?"

"You do realize it sounds ridiculous, right? You're scared of confessing your love to your husband."

Gudrid blinked, thinking about the true ridiculousness of what she was saying, and she followed her sister-in-law suit in laughing about it.

"Yeah, yeah, it's stupid." She laughed and shook her head at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation she found herself in. "I've just never felt this way about someone before."

"Really? You've never had a silly little girl crush on a cute boy home in Greenland?"

Gudrid scoffed halfheartedly, still with a smile on her face. "There were only two boys the same age as me, and one of them was my younger brother, and the other was a jerk, and then when I grew up, I learned that every man is a jerk too," she ended, and she wasn't smiling anymore.

Ylva hummed and nodded, already knowing that there had been no love in Gudrid's previous marriage either.

She hadn't really had a crush on anyone either; actually, she had been the one every guy crushed on, hadn't she? She hadn't even really had a crush on Ari before she decided to marry him; he had just been the best pick. Now she's supposed to be pretty happy with him.

"So my brother is your first love." Ylva stated, mumbling it to herself before she turned back to Gudrid with an approving smile, "That's pretty cute."

Gudrid blushed, unable to look at Ylva after that confession. She was hunching her shoulders up, like she was shrugging and shuffling her feet. "Yes, I suppose."

He really was, wasn't he? He was her first love. Her first silly crush, but the thing was, it wasn't silly; this was real, and it was serious.

She suppressed a sigh, thinking about what a mess it all was. A beautiful and heart-stuttering mess, but a mess nonetheless.