athelstanthescribe | (no subject)

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Athelstan can see Ragnar everywhere he looks in this room, and it tears at his heart at the same time as it comforts him.

He tries not to think of it, though, turning to take Sinric's hand again as they step inside.

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"You have no cause to be sorry", he says softly. "It would be unforgivably selfish if I were to think myself the only one who suffers."

Sinric shakes his head. "My troubles are so few and trivial," Competitively, "It is I who is being selfish."

Athelstan leans back to look at him.

"Few and trivial? Really?"

"A few nights without much sleep and without the comforts of my master's bed." He shrugs, berating himself for letting so little get so I'm top of him.

The big underlying issues are too much to think about when it is the small and trivial things that have broken him down.

"Being the final straw", Athelstan says gently. "We all have a breaking point."

"Thank you, for being here for me. For letting me-" he cuts himself off.

"You've been here for me", he says simply, "in my darkest hours, which may not yet have passed."

Sinric looks up at Athelstan, stroking his soft hair back. "And bar willing, I will be there for you again. And whenever I can be of use to you."

"I don't want you only for your use, though", Athelstan says softly, twining their fingers. "You know that."

Sinric frowns a little sadly, still feeling lost, separate, apart.

He tries to force a smile, for Athelstan. "How go the translations?"

"I spend most of my waking hours on them", Athelstan tells him. "Unless the king calls me to court or to eat with him."

"Have you learnt anything of interest to you from them?" He asks, encouraging Athelstan to talk.

"I find everything interesting", he says with the faintest smile. "But most of all, the details of everyday life as they lived it."

"Is it very different from the life we know?" Granted, his life is very different from Athelstan's.

"They organised things rather differently", he says with a nod. "I think the slave system might be familiar to you, though the children of slaves could gain the highest status."

"It is so on my Emperor's court too. Although not all of us are able to have children. The general of the northern army is the son of a slave and bears it with no shame. But is it not so in your own world? You were a slave and now you are a steward to an earl."

"There is no slavery in England as the Romans had it, though not all men are free. In the North, yes, slaves exist and can be freed and win high honour. As, through the fortune of meeting Ragnar, I have."

Sinric smiles tightly, rubbing his thumb over Athelstan's hand. "Fortunate in many ways. To have found love as well as honour."

"And real freedom." He strokes Sinric's cheek, seeing the strain in that smile. "The lord of my childhood was a good man, but I went from being the son of a serf to the strict life of the brotherhood. And then Ragnar came."

Sinric turns his head ever so slightly to kiss Athelstan's fingers. "As you have given me. In more ways than one."

"I'm glad I could pass on that gift", he says sincerely. "As Ragnar didn't need it to be given back."

Sinric smiles, not entirely forced. "It is a gift that doesn't diminish in the giving but increases."

"Indeed." He says with a nod. "And perhaps in time, you'll find some other poor soul just waiting for you to be gifted their own kind of freedom."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps it is my fate simply to send Ragnar to you." He bites his lip. "That would be enough."

"You were the hand on the trigger", he says with a nod. "You made - all of this possible."