How To Be a Viking: Part 1 (Sunny)

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Beowulf had yet to step foot in this Build-A-Sword place, whatever that meant. He didn’t even care how absurd the name was, he was just looking forward to the weaponry. The gleam of the metal as he held it in his hand, the weight of the weapon in his hand as he checked the balance of the blade. Everything about weapons was good, except for training. Beowulf really hated training. Especially in front of other people. They always seemed to belittle him anyways so there wasn’t any point in training in front of other people. It was stupid and people were absurd.

But getting Sunny, his little Kettlingr, an axe was business. Yes, it was business. No, he was not having fun. Beowulf didn’t have fun. No, not at all. He was just doing a favor for a…friend? he was just doing a favor for someone. There was nothing wrong with that. And besides, this was Sunny. He needed to help her protect herself. Granted, he would always be there to protect her if she ever needed it.

He stood there, looking at the shop from the sidewalk. Then he looked over at Sunny. “Ready?” he asked. He was ready, but then again he wasn’t the one getting a new axe. This was a big deal. A very big deal.

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Well, heck yes it was a big deal. Sunny probably wouldn't have come within fifty yards of a store like this by herself. She didn't know how to shop for weapons, and plus, people who sold weapons probably knew how to handle the weapons, so she was automatically a little uneasy around them.

Except for Beowulf, because he was a good guy. It was all right if the good guys knew how to handle weapons, but you could never tell with salesmen. Salesmen who could also handle an axe were a terrifying thing indeed, and there was no way she was going anywhere near them without some kind of protection.

Thus, there was Beowulf. She stood on the sidewalk beside him, and resisted the urge to grab his hand again, the way she seemed to do every time she got nervous around him. Then she nodded.

"Ready," she said, her voice surprisingly steady (and even more surprisingly, in English). Then she reached out and grabbed the door handle, just to prove how ready she was, and proceeded to pull violently on a push door for about ten seconds before she figured out what she was doing wrong.

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Beowulf was almost surprised that Sunny didn’t grab his hand. She had a tendency to do that it seemed, and he was finding that he didn’t seem to mind. It felt natural, which was extremely odd since he never liked touching. No, he was not going to think about it because then he’d probably end up feeling something and he did not want to feel things. Feeling things only caused trouble for him. Besides feelings made you weak.

Anyways, it seemed that Sunny was indeed ready, though she was pulling on the door when she was supposed to be pushing on it. There was something very…absurd innocent sweet about the way she was doing that and Beowulf found that he was amused by this. He was not generally amused and it probably didn’t show that he was amused, but he was. There was just something about Sunny.

No, that was absurd. He would not feel anything. No, instead he shoved his feelings down and reached around Sunny and pushed the door gently open, holding it for her, because that’s what a gentleman did for a lady. And then he followed her into the shop, not really knowing what to expect.

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Oh. Oh, this was horrible. They weren't even in the shop yet and she'd already embarrassed herself hopelessly. Sunny felt the momentary urge to crawl into a hole in the ground and hide there until the hot rush of blood into her cheeks had faded and she no longer felt like anything she said would just come out as a mortified squeak. She put her fingers to her face, trying to cool the hot scarlet of her skin, willing the blush away.

"Thank you," she managed, walking into the shop as he held the door open for her. As usual, he didn't make a big deal out of her...eccentricities, and she couldn't have appreciated him more for that.

As soon as they got inside, nearly all of her resolve to not grab onto his hand fled. There were so many things in here that could hurt her, so many things she wouldn't have the first idea how to avoid, and at that thought, her left hand came up next to his and she only just stopped herself in time, her fingers grasping the air centimeters from his before she remembered and stopped, her hand there in the air awkwardly as she took in the assortment of weapons.

"Where should we start?" she asked, her voice small...mostly because she felt very small all of a sudden.

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Beowulf didn’t make a big deal out of anything, so it was easy to let the door thing pass. Besides he thought it was cute…in as not romantic a way as possible of course. He found Sunny amusing at most. She wasn’t like most girls and he found that refreshing. She didn’t run from him in terror of how he looked. Instead she trusted him to protect her. And protect her he would. It was his Fate, made so by the gods.

Sunny seemed uneasy and it did not go unnoticed that she very nearly took his hand and then decided against it. He had half expected her to take his hand when they were standing in front of the shop and it seemed like she wanted to hold his hand, but couldn’t let herself. And she just looked so overwhelmed that Beowulf broke all of his own rules against touching. Instead of waiting for her to take his hand, Beowulf reached out and took her hand instead.

This was strangely not weird for him, this hand holding. How odd. Though he didn’t time to dwell because they needed to get down to business. They were here to piece together an axe. He tugged on Sunny’s hand and started moving toward where they needed to be. They needed to find the right size handle for the axe, not too long, but not too short. Too long would be too cumbersome and too short could mean that the enemy could hit you before you hit them. And they didn’t want anything too heavy or too light. Too heavy and she wouldn’t be able to lift it and too light it wouldn’t have the powerful swing it was supposed to have.

Coming to stand before a wall where different metal handles. A salesman tried to approach them, but Beowulf looked up at the man and glared, making the salesman leave them on their own. And that was just how Beowulf wanted it. Letting go of Sunny’s hand he studied the handles quickly then pulled one off the wall and held it out to her carefully. It was probably a little long for her, but she’d have to try it before he could be sure. And it was always a good starting point. “Try it. Hold it. Too heavy? Too light? Too long?”

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Sunny's heart pretty much stopped when Beowulf's hand closed around hers. He held it just long enough before he started walking that it gave her mind time to wonder whether he was holding her hand, like...actually holding her hand or if he was just leading her across the store, because those two were completely different things....she thought. Maybe. She wished for the zillionth time that her sister was here. Violet would know what to do. Not that they'd ever had like...normal sibling interactions that didn't involve running for their lives from whatever new foe was threatening them that week, but...things had settled down a little bit by the time Sunny was school age. Sunny liked to imagine that Violet would have talked her through such things as affections for Vikings and how to hold their hands with grace and poise.

She was almost disapp--...alright, she was disappointed, who was she trying to lie to - when Beowulf let go of her hand, but she was immediately distracted by the handle he gave her off of the wall. She held it out in front of her awkwardly, almost like a person would hold...

Okay, no one would hold anything like that unless it was an actual bomb with a lit fuse, because Sunny was a little terrified of the axe to be perfectly honest, and wasn't at all sure how to go about holding it and wielding it and stuff.

"It isn't too heavy," she said, uncertainly. She was pretty sure it wasn't. She was tiny, so if it had been too heavy, she would have known. Whether it was too light or not, that she couldn't determine. What was too light? "How much is too light?" she asked, worried. "What happens?"

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Sunny looked terrified. It didn’t even have a blade and she looked terrified. The way she was holding it in front of her she looked as if it might bite her. Which was perfectly absurd because it wouldn’t. But to be fair she had been uncomfortable since the moment they had walked in. So he moved over to stand behind her and adjusted her hands on the staff of the axe, pulling it closer to her. “It won’t bite,” he told her gently.

It wasn’t too heavy for her, but a bit too long he thought. Although she might be able to make it work. Too light was indeed a problem. She wouldn’t what too light felt like because she’d never held a weapon. She hadn’t been trained to use one like he had. “Too light and you will not be able to swing with force. Too light won’t be good to use against an enemy.” He needed a way to fix this. He needed to put a head on the axe.

“Right or left handed?” he asked, stepping away from her. And without waiting for an answer he went and plucked an axe head off the wall, which was conveniently right next to the handles. It was a heavy axe head so he put it back. Then he noticed one that looked lighter than the others, but just as strong. So he picked that off the wall and brought it back to Sunny and maneuvered it carefully to fit on one end of the staff. Then he looked back up at Sunny. “Right or left handed?”

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Well, Sunny looked terrified because Sunny was terrified. Beowulf was right, being around dangerous things made her tense. She had been in so much danger when she was little, that when she was presented with situations that might come close to replicating that danger, she went into...well, it was sort of like self-preservation mode. All her mental energy went towards surviving - which made conversation a little difficult for her, considering her shortcomings in that department to begin with.

She held out her hands in front of her, and focused on the question he'd been asking her. Beowulf. He was the safe thing her, the thing she could focus on and trust to get her through this without anything horrible happening. He had promised to take care of her, he wasn't going to let her lop her own foot off with an axe. She had to believe that.

"Right handed," she said. "I think." She was right handed at everything else, but she'd never really tried to swing an axe, so it was always possible that she could be wrong. She stared down at the head of the axe, and took a deep breath. "Magagawa," she said, which here means something like 'this is possible, I can do this, I can hold this axe without removing my own foot.'

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Beowulf was trying to make Sunny feel more comfortable, but it was clear that she had not grown up with weapons the way he had. He would, of course, never let her get hurt. A battle axe was not a toy and it was certainly intimidating. It seemed natural for someone to be nervous around one. They were very dangerous, but he would take care of his little Kettlingr.

She was right handed, which would pose a small problem. Beowulf was left handed, so this was going to be a minor issue, but for now all was well and good. He handed her the axe, the blade facing out towards him, the head on the right. If she was right handed then her right arm would most likely be the stronger arm and therefore capable of handling the weight of the blade.

Beowulf moved around to stand behind Sunny and then reached over to fix her hands again. Then he put his hands on the outside of hers and gently guided her through the motion of swinging the axe to test the weight and balance. “Too heavy?” he asked. It was important to get everything just right.

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Sunny was focused on the axe, on holding it and not dropping it and slicing her foot in half, which seemed like something that might realistically happen given her limited experience with axes, and she was nervous enough about that. When Beowulf moved around behind her and wrapped his hands over hers, she hardly even thought to be nervous about that until he started helping her swing the thing.

As soon as he moved the axe, she was suddenly completely aware of the fact that she was practically surrounded by him. When she realised that, she also realised that...maybe that should make her nervous. She'd never really been that close to..well, anyone besides her family, they did the hugging thing, but...this was one of those moments, she thought, when one's heart was supposed to start trying to fly out of her chest and do skittish things with butterflies or something.

Instead, she felt...safe. Sure, the blood all rushed to her face and she blushed embarrassingly and felt like she couldn't hear anything besides his voice and her own heartbeat pounding in her ears, but she didn't feel threatened by that. She felt like...well, it was okay to feel that way.

"I don't think so," she said, quieter than she'd meant to. "I can...get stronger."

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Beowulf had been entirely too focused on getting Sunny’s battle axe just right that he didn’t realize that this close proximity might be uncomfortable for her. He just did what he thought would be the right thing to do to get the axe right. And had he realized this, it would have made him entirely uncomfortable because he would have realized that Sunny smelled nice and that he didn’t mind. But more than that, he would have realized that he didn’t mind her being this close. He didn’t mind at all. And she was the only person the no touching rule did not apply to.

Had Beowulf been conscious of this, he would have been very uncomfortable because he did not like emotion. Emotions were not good. So it was better that he was concentrating on the axe and not the girl, because axes required no emotion. No emotion meant a happy Viking.

He leaned forward just a bit so he could hear what Sunny was telling him. She had spoken softly and he almost couldn’t hear her. But he did hear her and he almost smiled. “You will get stronger. I will teach you.”

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That was the thing about Beowulf. He had so quickly become something Sunny had lumped in with the safe things in her life, she didn't even think of him as a threat anymore. If she'd thought about it, that might have worried her. She might have been concerned that someone had managed to sneak past her paranoid exterior that easily. Instead, she knew, somehow, that he was on her side. The dangerous thing here was the axe, not Beowulf. Beowulf was the thing that was going to protect her from the dangerous things, and she trusted him to do that.

It was probably the first time she'd really felt protected since she'd come to this school, probably since long before that, too. Violet and Klaus had taken care of her, but there were dangers even they hadn't been able to keep her out of, mostly because there had been things that had threatened their safety as well. They couldn't keep her out of harm's way because they were all in harm's way, all the time.

But Beowulf...Sunny wondered what kind of dangers he had survived. What kinds of things he'd been through, that he had come through triumphant and unharmed.

"Beowulf," she said, seriously. "What is the most dangerous thing you've ever done?"

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There were only a very few people that Beowulf felt great responsibility for. And somehow Sunny had managed to quickly become one of these very few people. For some reason he felt that he had to protect her. It was vital to her being that he protect her. He had accepted that, for every Viking should protect those who were weaker than themselves. Sunny was young and vulnerable. She needed protecting. It was only right that a Viking protect her. Vikings were fierce. They could overcome anything in their path. They were determined warriors.

Beowulf had accepted that he must protect Sunny as his fate. Their fates. The day they had met in that coffee shop had been a day fated by the gods. It was the day that their fates would become intertwined. But how long their fates would be intertwined was only known to the gods. But if he thought about it, perhaps their fates would be intertwined forever. Perhaps the gods had meant for this because the one was good for the other. Beowulf did not want to think about that and what that meant in accordance to their relationship. No, he was just Sunny’s protector. He would defend her and teach her the Viking ways. And that would be it.

At her question, Beowulf moved around to face her. The most dangerous thing he had ever done? He had done many dangerous things, but it was for the good of his people and his village and he had the scars to prove it. It was just what a warrior must do.

Beowulf looked at Sunny, equally as serious. “I have fought men and monsters alike to keep my village safe.” And someday he would fight men and monsters to keep all of Geatland safe.

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Sunny felt guilty. It took her a minute to figure out why she was feeling guilty, but when she did, she realised it was because Beowulf sounded like he was terribly important to the people he'd left behind. People had been depending on him to fight men and monsters to keep their village safe, he'd just said so, but instead of doing that, he was here, teaching her how to keep herself from getting killed. She felt like...like maybe she was getting in the way of a whole village's safety or something.

Even though that was a little silly because Beowulf had already been here before he'd met her, so it could hardly be said that he came here just to protect her.

Even if that would have made her feel pretty special...even if it made her blush again thinking about it.

"I did dangerous things," she managed, trying to put the words together in her head. "But I didn't mean to." She waved her hands (not the best idea when you were holding an axe, but she steadied herself quickly), "when I was little. People chased us. And things were dangerous. But I wasn't brave. I just...lived."

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Beowulf, in the grand scheme of things, was not a complete loss to his beloved homeland. In a warrior culture like his, the loss of one warrior was nothing for there were plenty more warriors to defend their king, his hall and his people. So being here was not a loss for the Geats. Beowulf was even inclined to think that the Geats were happier without him. They did not have anyone brooding in the corners of their mead hall.

Sunny was so far removed from a warrior culture. Dangerous things happened around Beowulf all the time. It was normal. He fought the most dangerous things and the others just happened and there was nothing he could do. But Sunny’s life was filled with danger too. And even though she had never fought back she understood danger.

“You are brave,” he told her gently, reaching out and tipping her chin up so he could look in her eyes. He was quite serious. “Living through danger is bravery. It is easier to just give up than to keep trying.” Living in a world of dangers was hard work.

He searched her eyes. What he was looking for even he couldn’t say. “Fate brought us together for a reason.” This was meant to be, written by the gods. He was meant to protect Sunny, the girl who ran from harm, for he was the boy who fought against it.