passages: sigtryggr/stiorra
Written for @tlkfanficfest round three - trope: stuck in a siege - read on ao3 here
No warnings, just some softness for these two, speculating on what may have happened during the siege at Winchester - feat. reading aloud, fresh bread, and hair braiding. Enjoy! (gif made by @jennasmarbles)
Twenty-nine days.
That's how long the siege at Winchester had lasted so far.
Twenty-nine days she'd spent inside the walls of the palace of the dead king Alfred, reading his chronicle aloud.
Twenty-nine days spent not keeping score, twenty-nine days eating the same crust of bread.
Twenty-nine days with Sigtryggr.
Stiorra felt a rush of heat to her cheeks as she caught herself thinking those words, laying on the floor of the room they’d been sitting in. Twenty-nine days with Sigtryggr. The number was not what caused the blush.
“I’ll be back,” Sigtryggr had said. That was hours ago, and no one had been in since.
Not that she expected visitors. The only other people who ever came in the room besides Sigtryggr and herself were messengers - Danes who would try to lean over Sigtryggyr’s broad shoulders while they played the game she’d taught him or while she read to him. And Eardwulf, that one time, but he’d never be back now.
“You do not need to lean,” she’d heard him say to the first messenger on day one. Sigtryggr had risen from the spot he was sitting and met Dane messenger eye to eye. “Say what you came to say.”
He did this with every person who came to speak to him - told them not to lean over him, not to speak in a whisper. He only had to say it once for them to obey. Sigtryggyr had a commanding presence like that.
It was not lost on her that Sigtryggr did not speak in secret tones with those who came to deliver news or ask advice. Everything related to the siege - how much food they had, where the defenses were being fortified, who was being held and where within the palace walls - he discussed all of these things openly in front of her at a regular volume. No hushes, no whispers. She heard every word.
After two days, she knew it was on purpose. He was showing her who he was.
He wanted her to know.
On day three, he asked her to read from Alfred’s chronicle to him.
“Why?” She kicked at the table leg, pretending not to notice the book he’d brought in.
Sigtryggr scooted toward her on the bench, placing his folded hands on top of the table they sat at, side by side. She felt his gaze on the side of her face as she pretended to look out the window. “Because I want to know about him. I want to understand.” He unfolded his hands and pushed the book toward her. “And because I can’t read English. You can.”
Stiorra quirked an eyebrow at him. She’d abhorred all those hours Hild and the other nuns had drilled at her to learn her words when she’d been a child, but now, she saw that perhaps this skill had a purpose. Made her valuable.
She reached for the book, opened it to the first page, and stole a quick look at Sigtryggr. He was smiling, and she mirrored a small smile back at him before clearing her throat. “Bring me water, and I’ll read all day.”
He’d done just that. Brought her water, and sat and listened to her quietly, attentively. She’d read to him until the sun dipped beneath the horizon and the candles burned their wicks down to their pans. She’d gone to bed that night smiling.
Sigtryggr’s attentiveness was the most disarming thing.
On day four, she read to him some more. He’d crossed to the other side of the room and found a more comfortable place to put his feet up. Stiorra wondered if he was really listening to her, to each and every single word she was reading, or if his mind was wandering elsewhere. She glanced up from the page and saw him looking out a window.
“And in the year 842, a great turd fell from the sky.” She deadpanned, using in the same tone she’d been reading in, making no show of the silly words she was choosing.
Immediately, Sigtryggr’s eyes snapped to meet hers, brows knitting together as he narrowed his gaze at her. She ducked her back head down, making as if she’d not looked up from the page at all, but it was too late. He’d caught her.
“A great turd from the sky?” She could hear the grin in his voice again, could picture what it looked like on his handsome face as he took a step from the window. Stiorra kept her eyes on the page but couldn’t help but snicker - as she’d often done when making an off-color joke to the other young women at the abbey.
She felt his eyes again, but hadn’t looked up to greet them. The bench shifted as he took a seat next to her and leaned back against the table. Hiding her face behind her hair, she heard the smile in Sigtryggr’s voice once again. He leaned toward her, close enough his breath caused her hair to move, but not so close as to touch her. “Tell me, Stiorra Uhtredsdottir. Tell me about this great turd from the sky.”
Stiorra couldn’t stop herself from giggling onto the page then, unable to contain herself. He really was listening to what she was saying.
The bench creaked as he reached across the table for the water jug.
“You have great wit,” Sigtryggr said, refilling her glass of water.
“I do,” she responded, lifting her eyes to meet his. When she took the cup from his hands, their fingers brushed. A spark. “Thank you.”
“Keep reading.” He stood back up and resumed his stance by the window. “I am listening.”
Days four through ten had passed much the same. She read. Sigtryggr listened.
She taught him to play a favorite game from her childhood and beat him so many times they stopped keeping score. They shared meals. He asked her questions about her father, her mother, her home. “What home?” she’d answered. It wasn’t Coccham, it wasn’t the abbey, it wasn’t Saltwic, and it certainly wasn’t Winchester. She had places she’d lived, but none of those places really felt like home.
She explained it all. And still, Sigtryggr listened.
Sigtryggr watched.
Sigtryggr learned.
On day eleven, they walked around the halls of the palace together. She’d told him she was tired of sitting, and he said he’d walk with her. Stiorra liked the way their elbows grazed each other when they rounded the first corner.
She wanted to go outside but did not ask. She was a hostage, but hadn’t thought of herself that way for a little while. Sigtryggr never called her that, never referred to her as one when he talked with other people who came into the room. No, the hostages were the nobles, Lord Aethelhelm and his daughter Aelfled, Alfred’s wife - the pious Lady Aelswith, and two children. The one she knew, Aethelstan - who she almost missed - and some other boy, who she did not give a rat’s arse about. Sigtryggr called them the hostages, his men called them the hostages. But not her. Sigtryggr just called her Stiorra.
She didn’t remember she was a hostage until day eighteen, when she caught Brida’s pointed glare when they passed by her on a walk in the hall. The harshness of the other woman’s stare was powerful, her ire tangible, like tiny knives poking into Stiorra’s face. No, she could not ask to go outside. Not yet.
More reading.
More games.
More walks inside.
More days.
More time with Sigtryggr.
That was days one through twenty-eight. Today was day twenty-nine, and he’d been gone for hours.
She’d dozed off in the room without meaning to. She was woken by voices in the hallway, some Dane saying that Sigtryggr had gone to the ramparts as another silly volley of Saxons were attempting to rush the gate. It happened so frequently, Stiorra had stopped caring or keeping count of how many times this made. She’d woken up with tangles in her hair, and decided to work new braids atop her head.
She thought about how she and Sigtryggr spent hours of each day together now. They’d fallen into a rhythm. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they played, sometimes she read from the chronicle and he asked her questions. Sometimes they just sat in the room, together but not. He’d puzzle over maps while she watched the Dane warriors sparring in the courtyard, idly carving runes into a piece of wood he’d brought her from outside.
But right now she was alone.
She wondered when he’d be back. She took her hair down and brushed it out, marking the silence. There weren’t even birds singing outside.
After tying a new knot on top of her head, she pulled up a smaller section of hair and began passing one section over another, steadily bringing each piece to find its place with the next. The braid began to take shape, and with each new pass, each minute that went by, she began to understand that she missed Sigtryggr.
The shade shifted across the window, marking the passage of time. Stiorra pulled another section of hair to the opposite side of her head and began to work it into a second small plait to match the first.
She thought for a fleeting moment, somewhere near the midpoint of the second braid, that perhaps she shouldn’t care about him or what he was doing, but the truth was that she did. By the end of the second braid, she resolved to feel no shame in that.
Too much time had gone by. He’d been gone for many hours now, she was sure. She needed something to do with her hands, couldn’t bear to sit and wonder any longer what was delaying him. Stiorra backtracked and began redoing the first braid she’d made after her nap.
Sigtryggr returned to the room while she worked on a third braid, a plate of apples and fresh bread in hand. She hadn’t heard him, her back to the door as she sat by the window, fingers flitting in and out of the new braid she was making.
He sat the plate on the table as quietly as he could. He didn’t want to interrupt her at her work. Sigtryggr knew how to remain quiet, how to wait until the right moment.
Stiorra felt a breeze pass through the room, and with it came the scent of fresh bread. She turned to see where the scent came from and was both surprised and relieved to see Sigtryggr there, one hand on his face, his head cocked to one side as he studied her.
“Sigtryggr.” She dropped her hands from her hair and made to stand, pausing her work. Startled. Happy to see him. “You brought bread.”
A small shake of his head. “Do not stop.”
Her eyes locked onto him, and he held her gaze as he crossed the room. How he could be so deft, so quiet, so graceful and so powerful at the same time - she wondered if she’d ever know. She swore her insides were melting with every step he took in her direction.
Stiorra sank back into the chair, disarmed by him as he moved toward her, catlike. She pieced together the remaining sections of her braid, her breath slow, not breaking his eye contact as he stepped to her. She searched for something to say, but no words came. Nothing but a lump in her throat and the slow cadence of her own breath, rising and falling.
He knelt to her eye level and held himself in a squat next to her. Sigtryggr faced her, but did not crowd her. He never crowded her. Not that first day, when she’d tried to cut herself and he’d disarmed her, both with his words and also with his hands - not when he’d stepped in to to protected her from Eardwulf, not when he sat next to her on the bench, and not now.
She felt the blood rush to her cheeks as he placed his left hand flat on the chair next to her leg, gentle but solid. She knew her ears would be turning crimson, knew he’d be able to see the effect he had on her from this close. She briefly thought to turn away from him, to move her hair to cover the flush, but the way the air had collapsed around them kept her from doing so. Too locked into him and his brown eyes and his handsome face, she met him with her own studied look.
Sigtryggr reached his right hand up, keeping the left flat on the chair to the side of her leg, chaste but firm. His fingers ghosted over the side of her face, his thumb lightly brushed over her cheekbone. She felt him reach up and take hold of the braid she’d just finished. Her breath caught in her throat.
Sigtryggr took the braid in his hand, running it between his thumb and forefinger, handling it like it was holy, the way she’d seen him touch Thor’s hammer around his neck. She could hear his own breathing, so close to her she thought she might burst into flame. She couldn’t stop from thinking about what it might be like to feel his even breath closer to her, over her cheek, on her neck, in the hollow of her collarbone, in her ear as he whispered her name.
She gulped, feeling a new rush of heat to her cheeks and a warm tingle deep inside her chest. He was so close. So close she could see the fan of his eyelashes, the ridges of the scar on his face, proud and regal, the scent of fresh bread still in the air.
“You must show me.”
“Show you?” she gulped.
“You must show me how you do this.”
Stiorra blinked. Without warning, she scooted back in the chair, which caused Sigtryggr to lose his balance a little and force him to brace his hand on the ground as he caught himself.
“Turn around, then,” she directed, her voice higher in pitch than usual but unwavering. “Sit.”
He laughed, eyes only briefly dropping to the floor with a sigh as he did as she asked.
Sigtryggr listened.
He sat on the ground in front of her, between her knees. He crossed his legs and straightened his spine.
“Can you see?” she asked as she reached for her brush.
“Yes,” he nodded, and his reflection in the window nodded back.
“Good. Now, this is called a braid,” Stiorra said, taking his hair into her hand, brushing it the way she’d done for herself, for Aelfwynn sometimes when she’d lived at Saltwic. She was surprised by the texture of his hair, of how much of it there was. It was softer than it looked like it would be, and it smelled like wood and wheat and outside.
“I know what a braid is.”
“This is not just any braid.” She began to thread her fingers through Sigtryggr’s hair, taking a small section from his temple into her hands. “This is the braid my mother would make for my father when he returned home from a long absence.”
Sigtryggr didn’t say anything. He sat still, but not stiff. She saw the rise and fall of his shoulders in the reflection of the window in front of them, marked the way his lips were parted while she separated the section of hair into three smaller pieces.
“Well, that’s what she told me it was when she taught me to do it.”
She began to move one piece over another, and saw Sigtryggyr’s shoulders sag just a little, to relax as she began.
“He’d come home after fighting some battle or settling some dispute somewhere, and she’d make him wash, and while his hair dried, she’d put this braid in his hair.” She worked steadily as she crossed the first few passes. A flock of birds passed by the window.
Sigtryggr said nothing. His breathing had fallen into an easy cadence, and she found herself mirroring it.
“To keep it out of his face,” she continued. “My mother couldn’t stand when his hair was in his face...”
She trailed off briefly, remembering Gisela telling her this very thing time and time again as she’d worked a braid into Stiorra’s hair. And do you know, Stiorra, with every pass I made in your father’s hair, I weaved in my care for him? My hope for his continued safety? My joy for his return?
Stiorra felt a lump of pride in her throat, a quick sting rising in her eyes. She didn’t want Sigtryggr to see that, though. It wasn’t for him - it was for Gisela, the mother she missed so much - for the life Stiorra and her family didn’t get to have, for the fear she secretly carried - the fear that she, too, would die young like her mother.
He was looking at her reflection in the window, eyes open and eager. Not wanting to pull him into her sadness, Stiorra made another pass of Sigtryggr’s hair and quietly quipped, “I can’t stand when your hair is in your face, either. It always is.”
At that, Sigtryggr laughed, shattering the unspoken tension, bright and warm and alive.
Stiorra smiled back at him into their reflections in the window. The warmth from the late afternoon sun shone on their faces, clear and bright in the window glass. She blinked back the sting at her eyes, happy to have made him laugh. She wanted to make him laugh like that more.
With every pass, every placement, every strand, Stiorra weaved her own hopes into the braid she made for Sigtryggr that twenty-ninth day. Hopes that he’d stay safe. Hopes that her father was still alive out there, hopes that one day, there would be a world where it didn’t matter - being a Saxon or a Dane - hopes that she could be both, that she could be more. Hopes that perhaps, she and Sigtryggr could be more, together.
Stiorra continued working, sweeping the plait to one side of his handsome brow. She checked her work in the reflection and rested her hands on his shoulders, relished the sight of his peaceful face.
“I am pleased,” he said.
“Good,” Stiorra replied, fastening the end with a silver bead from her own hair. “It suits you.”
“But you did not show me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You did this for me, but you did not show me how to do this for you.”
The sun began to slip behind the wall of the courtyard. It wasn’t night yet, but it would be shortly. Stiorra beamed.
“You want to braid my hair?”
“Yes,” Sigtryggr answered. He rose from the floor and stood before her. He lifted her chin with his finger. “Yes, I do.”
So passed the twenty-ninth day.
This work is largely inspired by a conversation I had with @jeynepoole about how much I can't stand Sigtryggr's wig in season four. I've started calling it his Hermione hair. It's poofy and ridiculous, and I can't be super sure, but I'm fairly certain he doesn't have a braid on the one side before the siege at Winchester begins, but I think he's got one by episode ten. I don't think it's out of the question that Stiorra could have braided his hair for him in that time.
Thank you for reading!