How To Be a Viking: Part 1 (Sunny)

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To Sunny, Beowulf was suddenly such a necessity in her life that it was fairly well impossible for her to consider that he might be expendable somewhere else. His broodiness made her feel less insecure about her own inability to converse like a normal person.

And when Beowulf told her that she was brave, she believed him. Even if she didn't feel brave. Even if him having his hand on her face, even for a little second, made her feel like she might run and hide in the corner herself because she wasn't quite sure what it was doing to her heart. It felt almost like that feeling she got whenever she'd almost died and just barely survived, where her heart was beating faster than her brain could function and all she could think of was how did I survive that?

"Giving up is silly," she said. Who would give up when giving up meant dying? Why would anybody want to die? "Giving up is easy when it means you don't do some homework. It isn't easy when it means you die."

Fate. That was comforting. Because it meant that he was here, and he believed he ought to be here, and maybe he wouldn't be leaving. Unless Fate directed him somewhere else, but she wouldn't think about that at the moment. Actually, she couldn't seem to think about much at all because he was looking her in the eyes like he was going to see something there, something maybe even she didn't know was there. That was a frightening thought, that somebody could see something in you that you never even knew was there yourself.

She had let the axe down onto the ground, but she tried to pick it back up again, fumbling with it as she tried to hide her awkwardness, and it nearly fell backwards over her shoulder before she managed to steady it.

"Oh," she squeaked, trying to balance it and herself, which, it seemed, weighed about the same.

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Beowulf may have been expendable to the Geats and his people, but here he was one of few warriors. He was hardly expandable here and for that he was glad. He would gladly fight for his people and if he died in battle then he would perhaps be chosen to serve Odin in the afterlife. But life here was alright, as long as the absurd heathens kept their distance. Sunny, though, was the exception to that rule. She was the exception to most of his rules. But he refused to dwell on that because that would mean something like acknowledging that he was not the emotionless Viking he tried to be.

“Sometimes,” he explained to Sunny quietly, “death is a better alternative.” He knew that sometimes when a people were conquered back in his time times were uncertain. Many people were sold into slavery. Many more were killed for petty things. Sometimes death was a better friend. “Sometimes surviving is worse than giving up.”

He withdrew his hand. He didn’t want to speak of death with Sunny. They were very much alive and he would at least make very sure that Sunny remained so. It was his Fate as her self-appointed guardian. He grabbed the axe quickly as she tried to pick it back up. He didn’t want her to hurt himself. He held onto her arm to help support her. “Steady.”

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Death was a better alternative? Sunny wondered what could possibly be so bad that death would be more appealing than whatever you were living through. She thought back on all the things she and Violet and Klaus had been through when she was a baby - which most babies wouldn't remember past their third birthdays, but Sunny was no ordinary baby and she and her siblings had lived no ordinary lives. Sunny herself almost had died. She had been infected with spores and she had almost died, but she had come through it in the end. Her sister Violet had almost been forced to marry Count Olaf, which would have been a grim fate indeed...but Sunny still couldn't imagine anything she would rather die than suffer through.

But then, Sunny was still a very young girl and she still had a lot to learn about the world that didn't involve running for her life from fortune-hungry sociopaths. She was curious about it, too. As Beowulf helped her support the axe, she tried to focus on holding it, but found her mind wandering back to what he'd just said. How personal was it for him, this issue of dying rather than surviving?

"Did you ever think that?" she wondered aloud. "That you would rather...that death would be better than something that happened to you?"

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Beowulf had seen plenty of death. He was a warrior. He had been in skirmishes and battles alongside his father and the king. He had battled because it was his duty to his king and his father. He had sent men to their afterlives. He had seen life leave the body. He had been wounded plenty of times, but nothing serious. He kept on fighting because he had to. He was saving his people from an enemy, be it man or monster. He had never once thought that giving up would be better. His people had never been conquered and even if they had, he would rather be fighting. He would rather fall fighting to save his people than to live to see what the Geats would become when they had been conquered and destroyed. Plus it was the hope of every warrior to fall in battle. Then they were guaranteed a spot in either Freya’s hall or Odin’s, though Odin’s hall was preferable.

“Never,” he answered her. Dying just to die would be dishonorable for him. He would much rather put up a fight than to give up and die. He would hate to spend an afterlife with Hel. She was not a pleasant mistress to serve.

“Come, let us speak of this no more.” He hated to speak of death with Sunny, his kettlingr. It was not pleasant, plus there were both very much alive. “We live. And we will fight.”

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The questions Sunny asked might seem rather morbid to someone who didn't know the kinds of things she and her siblings had been through when they were younger. For Sunny, asking about death wasn't some morose, distant topic that little girls only just sixteen shouldn't even be worried about, it was something that had been a very real possibility for most of her life, from the time she was just a little baby. And even though Beowulf changed the topic, she had a feeling that was something they shared. He was familiar with death too.

But she was glad he didn't intend on dying anytime soon. And she was almost as glad that he was going to help her learn how to not die too.

"And fight," she echoed solemnly, tightening her grip on the axe. "If you teach me how to fight," she went on, finding the words surprisingly easily. "I will always fight. I promise." For some reason, she felt like she ought to assure him of that, that he was teaching someone who would be a fighter, not somebody who would always run away from trouble. She'd spent a long time running, but that was just because she had never realistically been able to defend herself. Things would be different now.

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On some level they shared a deep connection with death because Sunny was constantly running from it and Beowulf was always walking out to meet it head on. Death was nothing new to them, but it was still unpleasant. Beowulf did not fear death, and when he died he would welcome death with open arms and hopefully be laying on some battlefield somewhere waiting to be admitted into Odin’s hall for his afterlife. And then he would wait there until Ragnarok until he would be no more.

It was encouraging to hear that Sunny would fight long after he was done teaching her, though if he did his job right she wouldn’t have to fight. But if he wasn’t around for whatever reason, though that was not likely to happen, Sunny would be able to defend herself. And if he trained her well, like he would, she would never have any problems due to her size. “I believe you,” he told her simply. He would make a warrior out of her yet.