there is love that doesn't have a place to rest — ch. 3
pairing: finan x fem!oc
word count: 3556
content warning: this fic deals explicitly with the trauma of sexual assault. while there are no drawn out, graphic scenes, it is made explicitly clear what is going on. for context: oc is uhtred's daughter and was captive in dunholm for all her childhood. proceed with caution. additionally, expect canon typical attitudes, behaviors, violence, etc.
“i wanna be the broken love song that feeds your misery
and i can wish that all i want, but it won't bring us together
plus, i know whatever happens to me, i know it's for the better"
–phoebe bridgers, waiting room
A week had passed since her father left at the behest of King Alfred, and Ravna spent each day with Osferth in the woods, allowing him to teach her all about the Christian religion. She was not sure she believed any of it— a pregnant virgin was just a bit too absurd for her— but they made for good stories. She thought of the Romans, and the Greeks before them. How many different gods had they believed in? How many gods before them had been worshiped? For this reason alone, Ravna could not count anything out. Or could she believe in anything at all?
“Monk! I had a thought,” Ravna said, finding Osferth in the alehouse.
He was sitting with Finan, but she chose to ignore the other man. Osferth’s brows shot up upon seeing her. She did not make a habit of entering the alehouse, often finding it too loud and the men too abrasive. Osferth put down his mug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You say your god is good, yes?”
“Uh, yes. He is all good, just as He is all powerful.”
“If He is both, then how can He allow evil to exist?”
This was what Ravna did not understand. She had long since accepted that her father’s gods, if they did exist, cared little for her. Her father’s gods never claimed to be all good. But Osferth’s god did. Osferth’s god positioned himself as a father who loved his children. If she was this all-good and all-powerful god’s child, she could not fathom why he allowed for her to be abused as she was.
“He did not create evil,” Osferth said.
She scrunched her face at him. “But you said evil and sin comes from Eve eating the apple because Satan told her to, and Satan was created by God, was he not?”
“But God also created free will. He does not control us, Ravna.”
“If God created free will and bestowed it upon people with the option and opportunity for evil, then He created evil!”
A few eyes were looking their way, certainly whispering about her outburst. Finan glanced around the alehouse and leaned across the table.
“Hey, just take a breath now, ceann bheag.”
She rounded on him, eyes narrowed. What gave him the right to tell her to do anything?
“I believe I was talking to Osferth, not you,” she hissed, relishing in the fact that he actually leaned back in shock from her ire being turned on him. Sniffing, she looked back at Osferth. “I do not find myself satisfied with your response. Think on it some more and find me in the morning with better answers.”
Osferth cracked a smile, despite the uncomfortable tension between her and Finan.
“Are you hoping to convert, Lady?” Osferth asked teasingly.
“Maybe if I find you convincing enough,” Ravna responded in the same tone. She stuck her tongue out briefly and smacked the tabletop. “Right, then. I’m getting myself a drink.”
Both men looked shocked, which she took some pride in. Still, it was rather annoying. But, if it took her sitting in the alehouse for hours on end and drinking until her vision blurred for them to see her as the grown woman she was, she would do it. She would show her father and Finan both. She had no need for a nursemaid.
Coin purse in hand, she sidled up to the counter and held her chin high. Men were crowded all around her, but she refused to waver. She had something to prove.
Ceolmund, the second son to the alehouse and tavern owners, stood behind the counter. His older brother, Alewulf, was somewhat of a warrior and had gone north with her father.
“Hello,” she said. “I would… like a pitcher of ale, please.”
Ceolmund’s smile was a bit crooked. “You drink with your father’s men, lady?”
She pursed her lips. “And what of it?”
“I am surprised,” he said.
Then, he looked around and leaned in, beckoning her closer. Confused, Ravna complied. Ceolmund’s lips brushed along her ear and she bit back a gasp in surprise.
“Tonight is the full moon, Lady. When the moon is at its peak, come to the mouth of the river so you need not drink with your father’s men.”
She pulled back and arched an eyebrow. “What happens tonight?”
He grinned ear to freckly ear. It would be a bitter lie to say she was not intrigued.
“Us young people get to live,” he said.
“Very well,” Ravna said. “I will join you.”
“Good!” He smacked the counter for good measure. “I’ll go get your ale now, Lady.”
When she returned, she must have been grinning as well. Osferth’s eyebrows shot up to his forehead and he turned to Finan, who was staring at Ravna with his mouth agape.
“What did he say to you?” Osferth asked.
“Nothing,” Ravna said simply, pouring herself a mug of ale.
She rolled her eyes. “Osferth, I am allowed to have friends other than you, no?”
He deflated a bit and took a deep sip from his mug. Smirking to herself, Ravna poured some ale from her pitcher into his now empty cup. With a grin, he knocked his mug against hers and they took large gulps in tandem. Finan looked decidedly put out. Good, she thought, not feeling guilty in the least.
The ale was strong, but she knew it would be. Her father encouraged Ceolmund’s father to brew it the way Danes did, as Saxon ale was often so weak. Ravna’s head was spinning a bit, but she found she did not mind it. She quite liked the feeling, actually. With Osferth’s aid, she drank the entire contents of the pitcher rather quickly. Delighting in the way the whole world around her seemed to tilt as she stood up, Ravna placed her palms on the table to steady herself as she giggled shrilly.
“I… am going to…” She trailed off, losing the thought. “Oh! Yes, I will get more ale.”
Finan grabbed the now empty pitcher and pulled it out of her reach. “Perhaps not, Lady.”
Annoyed but less angry than before— thanks to the ale, in all likelihood— Ravna turned on Finan. Feeling her lips curling into a grin, she snorted and lunged for the pitcher, but he was too quick for her and pulled it further away.
“Finan,” she said shortly, rolling her eyes, “I am grown. I am no child, and you are no nursemaid.”
He reared back as though she had struck him, and it granted her the opportunity to steal back the pitcher. Clutching it to her chest, she swiveled around to go back to the counter, but Ceolmund was already a few paces away.
“Lady Ravna,” he greeted, walking to meet her where she stood. “I’m off now. Would you like me to accompany you on your way?”
Blood rushed to her face, pooling in her cheeks. A bit carelessly, she tossed the pitcher aside and nodded.
“That would do,” she said.
He grinned quite charmingly and offered her his arm.
“Oi!” Finan interrupted. “What’s this about?”
“Ceolmund is accompanying me on my way so I do not need to walk alone in the dark,” Ravna said, cocking her head to the side. “Do you find that unacceptable, Finan?”
Osferth was hiding a grin behind his hands and very pointedly looking away from Finan. Finan, however, seemed downright perplexed and his face was turning a bit red; dark eyes obscured by the scrunch of his eyebrows. When he did not respond, Ravna turned back to Ceolmund, victorious, and took his arm.
“So, will you tell me now what it is that you’re bringing me to?”
“Revelry,” Ceolmund said simply.
And revelry indeed it was. With a large fire going and bodies milling about, Ravna thought back to the many festivities held over the years at Dunholm in honor of the gods. While these were Christians around her, they were not so different.
“We drink mead instead of ale here,” Ceolmund said. “Beatrice makes it with the honey from her father’s bees.”
Ravna nodded, amazed by the sight before her. In her years of living in Coccham, how had she been so vastly unaware of this happening every month? Since she mostly kept to herself, there were a great many people she realized she did not know as unfamiliar faces swam past her. Even Beatrice, who Ceolmund was still talking about, Ravna did not know. She felt bad for it, as clearly everyone knew who she was.
Sybil, the blacksmith’s daughter, ran over with a wild grin on her face, a crown of flowers askew on her head. Of the people in the village, Sybil was perhaps one of the only people outside of Ravna’s family that she would consider a friend. Even then, she was unsure.
“Sybil, I’ve said many times, you need not call me Lady,” Ravna said. She glanced at Ceolmund and bowed her head. “Nor do you, friend.”
Sybil reached out and grabbed both of Ravna’s hands. “Well, Ravna, you must come join me for a dance!”
Ravna did not even have the chance to respond before Sybil pulled her away from Ceolmund. Though there was no music, aside from three men who were hardly more than boys drunkenly singing, those who were dancing around the large bonfire seemed to have a tune in their minds. Giggling, Ravna twirled around Sybil as the two of them created their own tune.
“I’m quite pleased you’re here!” Sybil said, swiping a mug from a young man’s hand and taking a deep sip. “You must join us more often.”
She offered out the mug and Ravna took it. The mead was delightful, far superior to any ale she ever had. It tasted of honey and fruit and spices; it tasted of the gods.
“I would like that,” Ravna said, now used to the buzzing feeling the drink gave her. “It might be hard once my father returns.”
“It is the same for the rest of us,” Sybil said. “Many of our fathers joined yours, and we do this with our freedom!”
Sybil flung her arms out and spun around freely. It amazed Ravna. The looseness, the recklessness, the carelessness. It was all she ever wanted to be. She drank until she was stumbling over her own feet, but Ravna was unsure if she could say she ever had such fun.
Ceolmund found her some time later, just as drunk as she was.
“Lady!” he said, all too loudly. “Would you like to take a walk with me?”
On the very far depths of the horizon, Ravna could see the beginnings of sunrise, lightening the dark sky above.
“Perhaps you could walk me back to town,” she said.
She rolled her eyes. “Ceolmund, please, I wish for you to only call me Ravna.”
They walked hand-in-hand, tripping over one another, their own feet, and tree roots alike. The village center was deserted entirely by the time they finally found their way back. For some reason unknown to her, Ravna was giggling loudly and constantly. Ceolmund did not seem to mind, however, and instead grinned at her with that crooked smile of his. She stopped to stare at him, and perhaps count the freckles on his face. There were a great many, and she was fascinated by them.
“Ravna,” he whispered, “may I kiss you?”
It was perhaps because no one had ever asked her that question before that she did say yes. Ceolmund was not the most experienced or skilled of kissers, but him asking her permission made it the best kiss of her life. She curled a hand around the back of his neck and clutched him close, letting her bodily knowledge take over.
They stumbled back against a tree, his hands roaming all over her body and lips trailing down her neck. This, she thought, was what being young was for. She clutched his curls in hand while his fingers fumbled for the strings on her breeches. She giggled some more, but this time it came out as half a moan.
“Ceolmund,” she whispered, tugging at the root of his hair. “We’re too exposed.”
The mere fact that he paused and pulled away from her to look around almost made her want to drop to her knees and push all fears of being caught aside. But to do so, would be to act like a child. She wanted to be treated like the woman she was, so even in her drunken haze she knew she could not. Not right now, at least.
“Yes.” He sighed, chest heaving. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Anyone could stumble upon us,” she reasoned.
But, then, she kissed him again. She kissed him over and over and over again until the sky turned orange with sunrise. Drunkenness abating and replacing itself with a throbbing head, Ravna began to pull her hands from Ceolmund’s hair.
“I should return home,” she mumbled against his lips.
“That would be for the best,” he agreed, still kissing her.
She dragged her teeth along his bottom lip and forced herself away. She did not look back at him as she walked home. If she did, it was likely her self restraint would fall apart, and she really needed to be home before Gisela awoke to tend to Stiorra, who always rose with the sun.
Another week passed, and Ceolmund, who was not so interesting or smart as he seemed that night of the full moon, proved himself to be a kind young man who was undoubtedly fond of her and never tried to touch her more than she liked him to. (It was the kindest a man had ever treated her, so it surely meant something.) Unable to deny the fact that she liked it when he kissed her, even when she was not mind numbingly intoxicated, she found herself sneaking around to press her lips to his at any given opportunity— which naturally led to her pressed up against the back of the alehouse with his hands creeping up underneath her tunic. And that was when and how Finan found them.
The brogue was undeniable, forcing them to separate at the sound of his voice alone. Lips wet and swollen, Ravna cursed quietly. Ceolmund looked as though he were about to shit his breeches.
“What do ya’ think yer doing?” Finan barked, marching over to them and grabbing Ceolmund by the collar of his tunic.
“Nothing,” Ceolmund said loudly. “We were doing nothing!”
“That’s your lord’s daughter, boy,” Finan said.
Ravna groaned. She was well aware of her father’s orders to Finan to keep her safe and make sure she was well, but this was absurd.
“Finan,” she said, wrenching his hand away from Ceolmund, “let him go!”
When his fingers released the fabric, Ceolmund stumbled backwards and then began to run. She rolled her eyes and rounded on Finan.
“What is wrong with you?” she screamed, flinging her hands into the air. “He was doing nothing wrong!”
“Oh, he was doing plenty wrong, lady,” Finan said.
“How is what he was doing any different from what you do to the women in the tavern?”
He stared at her in shock, but she was not finished.
“And how is what I was doing any different from what those women do to you? I am a woman, Finan, not a girl! I know very well what that was. I am not stupid, nor am I the naive child everyone believes me to be!”
Seething, she stomped in the opposite direction Ceolmund ran. She needed to be far away from everyone, Finan especially. How dare he embarrass her like that? Who did he think he was? Her hands shook in her anger, vision blurring at the edges. She was unsure whether she wanted to scream or sob more, so she would go into the woods and do both. She would beat her knuckles bloody on the tree bark if she desired.
Her fury remained. She stood at the riverside, throwing rocks as far as she could to force it to leave her. A twig snapped behind her and then there was the telltale rustle of leaves. She gritted her teeth and let out a groaning shout as she threw another rock. She would not acknowledge him. She refused. He would have to come to her and force himself into her line of sight.
“I apologize, ceann bheag. I should not have grabbed the boy like that.”
How she hated that nickname now. Less than a month ago, she found it sweet. Little one. Now, she knew what it meant. She was a small child, and always would be. Tears of anger and resentment flooded her eyes, stinging in the wind as she tried to hold them back. She sniffed and sat down on the embankment, knees pulled to her chest. She closed her eyes as she heard Finan move closer and sit down beside her.
“You’ve barely spoken to me since your father left, ya’ know,” Finan said.
“And I don’ know why,” he continued. “Seems like ya’ will talk to anyone an’ everyone but me.”
Anger getting the best of her, she snapped, “I heard you, you idiot!”
Her cheeks were wet, the tears finally having spilled out. A deep crease appeared between Finan’s eyebrows.
“The day before my father left, I heard what you said to him,” Ravna elaborated. “And you were right, Finan. I do not take kindly to it.” She swiped at her face and sniffled loudly. “I do apologize for being such a burden when I was foolish enough to believe we were friends.”
He swore in a low voice, more a grumble than words, and ran a hand over his beard. She watched him from the corner of her eye, wanting to turn to him but wanting to be steadfast more.
“Ravna,” he said quietly, softly. “Ya’ never should’ve heard that.”
“And yet,” she muttered, a bitter and sour taste in her mouth.
“I do not think ya’ to be a burden.” His voice was gentle and slow, as though he were trying to find his footing.
“What do you think of me, then?” she asked, finally turning to look at him fully with blazing eyes. “Because I do not think you see a woman.”
“Well, I don’ see a man!”
She rolled her eyes, curbing the urge to kick him.
“You know quite well that is not what I meant!”
She shot up and moved to stomp away, but got up just as fast and grabbed her arm to stop her from walking away. His hand had a tight grip on her, just above the crook of her elbow.
“What ya’ need to understand is, on the ship all your father talked about was his little girl who had been taken from him.”
She was not proud of the manner in which she gasped— both at his touch and the subject of the slave ship being raised. Neither he nor her father ever spoke of their time enslaved, and she could not blame them. How often did she discuss her time at Dunholm, after all?
“And that’s what ya’ were when I met ya’!”
“But I am no longer a child!” she exclaimed.
“No,” he agreed solemnly. “Yer a woman, to be sure, and ya’ have been since the time ya’ stepped foot in Coccham.”
“Then why do you all continue to treat me as one?” She glared up at him, furious. “You likened yourself to a nursemaid and begged my father to change his mind. If you are so unhappy here, I grant you leave to join my father. Go! If you wish it, go, and I will hold no anger in my heart.”
“Lady,” he said, “I would not do that.”
“Why? Because my father asked you to?”
“Because I care about ya’!”
She watched as his eyes crinkled at the corners and his hand not holding her arm lifted, perhaps of its own accord judging by the shock in his eyes, to take hold of her face. The calluses on his palms, made from years of training with swords and pulling oars, were rough against her cheek, but she was too preoccupied by her surprise at the sudden touch to care.
“You’re not just Uhtred’s daughter. You’re far more than that.”
His hand slipped past her cheek to cradle the back of her head, and then he pulled her into a tight hug. Sniffling once more, she tucked her face into his chest and slipped her arms around his torso. After a moment, she pulled her arms away and took a large step backwards with a burning face. She really ought not to have allowed herself to step so close. It was inappropriate.
“I am glad you see me as I am,” she said quietly.
Above their heads, a cloud shifted and sent a bright beam of light directly upon Finan’s head. It illuminated him in a brilliant shade of gold, and she needed to look away from how bright he was, lest she do or say something absurd.
