ge mig frid

The world fractures into a million shards of glass and they all lodge in the scarred woman’s aching heart. Viðarr reaches out, offering a tender embrace and the gesture is so simple, so… vulnerable that Tove almost yanks herself away from it. It doesn’t seem fair, this is all she had wanted after Bodin’s death and it had been denied. How can he think that this is okay now? She could be angry, lash out and strike at the big shadows throat and make him hurt as much as she had… like she still is. Muscles tense, her body becomes rigid as his strong arms wrap oh so tenderly around her broken form.

Anger bubbles in her chest but, underneath it all, she is just a hurting woman who needs to feel loved and… seen. Her body suddenly relaxes, muscles going slack and she sinks into him, pressing her scarred face into the hollow where his neck meets his body. Tove could strike the tender area and make him bleed but she does not. No, instead she coats the dark fur with her tears, allowing all the grief that she had tempered down for so long to come up and out. Her legs give out and she expects her knees to strike the ground in a painful jolt but… they don’t.

Strong arms hold onto her and she latches onto his apology, keeping it close to her heart as the grief rolls through her. Sobs wrack her frame, rubbing her throat raw aa Viðarr tenderly cradles her and Tove continues to press into him, allowing the sadness to carry her away as he rubs his nose along her face. She doesn’t know how long she cries at the injustices of the world or how long he holds her but, when the sobs slow, Tove hoarsely says, “I loved you Viðarr. And… I thought you felt the same. I wanted to die that day… and every day after that.”

Her words hang heavy in the air between them, the scarred and defeated woman finally admitting to him and herself what she had felt. Tove presses into Viðarr a little more as she admits, “I had no purpose until I met Kotori. I… I still don’t belong but at least I have a place to call home.” The band is gone and the woman feels no kinship to those that had abandoned her when she needed them the most. But not Viðarr. She has always felt and will always feel some form of love for the huge shadow. Maybe that is why his absence had hurt the most.


"Tove Baade"