King Ivar spends much of his time with his infertile first wife: neglecting his second wife, the mother of his children, a Freyjasdottir. Eventually, it catches up to him when a foreign King Sverri invades his lands.
tw: abuse, character death, etc.
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Uxi nurses a fat welt on his cheek and blood that spills down his cracked nose. Blood down his lip as he sat on a rock brooding with Veifnr at his side. He had been in another fight and Kitta had yet become aware to it. Once his second mother was, he was sure that she would come lecture him about picking fights if he could not end them. He had to train... for you, for his mother. The public may have put on a good face when you were around, but he knew what they really thought about you. They were a bunch of fucking rats.
"Fuck, look at her ass!"
That fight resulted in a punch to the cheek.
"Your mother gave birth to a monster HAHAHA!"
That fight resulted in a punch to his stomach.
"Your father can do whatever he wants to her."
That fight resulted in the swelling under his eye, purple and hot.
"She's just there to brew babies, you know."
And that fight? It resulted in his broken nose.
His mother wasn't a womb. Rape was unacceptable here. So why was it acceptable if women married? He spat off to the side, meddled with blood and clear fluid while Veifnr walks back and forth in front of him. He was mute. He wouldn't speak to him but in his eyes, he knew that he was asking: Are you okay?
But he wasn't. He really wasn't. He felt hopeless like a pathetic son. He heard his mother in physical anguish the past year— and overheard his other mother Kitta and mother speaking. Father had forced himself on his beautiful mother. He was old enough to know what it meant. He forced her to have another baby. It sickened him.
But overwhelmingly? He was just angry. So blindingly angry that he didn't know what to do with it. His mother was in pain– and he could do nothing for her. What kind of man would he grow to be if he couldn't take care of his own mother!
Now he hadn't seen her in a week. He knew she was okay but he heard her sobbing... and his brother shrilling so loud that it buckled the Great Hall. No one was drinking in there lately. He strolls back to his home when he hears it— and sees it. Veifnr and he sneak behind the dividing wall of their mother's room where father and mother were. He clutches his little brother close against his bloody brown tunic.
"He can't breathe. He can't sleep. He can't even eat without you holding him upright!" His mother is sobbing again, the tails of her skirts drifting side to side. She was walking like she did when she was scared or didn't want to talk to him. He saw his father's legs dangling in a chair as he bent low as to not be detected.
"But I love him." She sobs. "I can't... I can't."
"He will die painfully. He will smother to death." His father says. "We have to do it."
"Your mother wouldn't let Ragnar kill you. Now you want me to do the same?" Mother supplies, finding that Ivar is momentarily silent. Uxi realizes what father means quickly. The village people set babies out for the animals, chopped off their heads or dealt with them in other ways. His father wanted to do the same to his innocent little brother.
