Work Text:
Lagertha noticed it first when her men were away in Kattegat. Their home is too quiet without them, and she is left to her own devices. The children keep her busy for the most part, but at night she is left alone with her thoughts, memories racing through her head and lighting her body up with more feeling than she ever thought possible. Her feelings are foreign, as she so often has tried to suppress them, because emotions are weakness, and she is not weak.
Some nights when she is left she will do nothing but train. She will pick up her shield and a blade and take out her feelings on a straw dummy. It keeps her muscles firm and her body fresh, and she always ready to defend herself and her family. Because even though it is a man’s job to protect his family, it is also his job to leave them sometimes, and so the responsibility falls to her.
She is left to care for her own needs when she is alone in their bed, wrapped in extra furs to keep warm without the added body heat that comes from the Viking and the priest she shares her heart with. Thoughts of their time together came to the forefront of her mind, unbidden, before she fell asleep, and she smiled as the sounds of their lust echo in her mind. It is not quite enough, when all she has is her thoughts and her hands, there are no male groans, or the weight they offer her, but it will help her fall asleep, thinking of them and how good it will be when they come home.
They are expected home later that evening, so Lagertha went about her day as normal, despite the niggling sensation in the back of her mind that something was…not wrong, but different. Gyda and Bjorn stayed close, and helped her in the fields and with the cooking, and she told them stories as they worked. It was pleasant enough, but they all ached for Athelstan and Ragnar to return home. Even the children had come to see their slave as a secondary father figure. He cared for them as much as Ragnar did, and spent as much time looking after them as Lagertha. At night, he would tell them stories of his order, and of the gospel, and they listened with rapt attention. He would explain to Lagertha and Ragnar later how he came to the monks, orphaned as a child, lost his parents to sickness, and while they gathered him up and wrapped him in their arms, he told them that theirs was his first real family, and he was grateful.
It was funny to her, to think now of Athelstan as family. He had started out a prisoner, spoils of a raid, a slave. And now, he had a place in her heart that was reserved for those she loved, and she could not imagine him in any other spot. She went through her day in a daze, lost in thought about her husband, her priest. That is why it came as such a shock to her when she started to feel so ill around midday. She did not get ill. Ever. So to say that she felt like she was going to be sick, she knew something was different. She left Gyda and Bjorn to finish their chores, and went inside, to rest, of all things. She cursed her body, briefly, to be so weak that it needed to rest after forcing her to vomit. She groaned and curled in on herself, and tried to rest through the discomfort.
This is how Ragnar and Athelstan found her when they arrived home. They both went to her side, concerned. Ragnar more so, because he knew his wife, and he knew that she would never rest during the day if it was not serious. Athelstan was terrified, the memories of the illness that took his parents coming to frighten him. Lagertha laughed their concerns away. “I am feeling better now that you are home, and the nausea has passed.” They shared a look between them, but the woman sat up, reaching to cup their cheeks. “No more worry. I am well, my loves. I have missed you both.” And she kissed them both, and all concerns were forgotten in favor of showing her how much they had missed her as well.
But the next day she fell ill again. This time though, she hid it well. Athelstan was with her and the children today, and Ragnar in the fields. She had seen how frightened their priest was of illness, and she did not want to worry him further. So she worked through it, sitting at her loom, training Gyda for when she will be the woman of the house. The tapestry they make together will someday hang proudly above their hearth, and Gyda had been excited to share this with her mother. Athelstan stayed with Bjorn, teaching him his letters, and the sounds they made when they were written together. Occasionally he would slip into his old language to translate to himself, and Lagertha was proud to realize that she had started to understand some of his words.
As she fought down another wave of nausea, she tried to focus on the tapestry in front of her. It was meant to honor Odin ensure a blessed home. And suddenly, an idea struck her. She gasped silently as she began to count under her breath, so as to not to disturb Gyda’s count or Bjorn’s study. She closed her eyes and calculated; brows furrowed slightly when she came to her conclusion. Oh. She would have to talk with her lovers that night.
The children were in bed, and the three lovers sat in front of a warm fire, drinking and talking and laughing, their hands intertwined. Every so often, one man would lift Lagertha’s hand to his lips, still starved for the woman’s they had missed touch. And she responded in kind, pressing her lips to their palm and then keeping their hands against her cheek. Then a deep breath from her prompted raised eyebrows. “What is wrong, my love?” Ragnar asked, his mind immediately going back to the previous night when she had been laying on her side, pale with sickness. Athelstan squeezed her hand, still so tender with her after all this time.
She smiled warmly, the expression soft on her stone cold face. She said it quick, and soft, to lessen the blow. “I am not certain, but I think I may be with child.” A soft chuckle followed at the looks on their faces. Ragnar had a wide smile that reached his eyes and lit up his face, and he immediately went to cup her cheek and bring her in for a long, heated kiss. Athelstan, however, looked as if he had seen a ghost. His jaw had dropped and he sat there, gaping at her, his gaze flickering from her face to her stomach, imagining the child that now grew below her skin and muscle. And then a sudden thought struck him. “Who is the father?” he asked softly, his eyes dropping to his lap. He had never been around a pregnant woman, but in his studies, he had learned how one became a father, and now he had performed the act, so it was possible that he would be experiencing fatherhood.
She shrugged. “I only know that it must have happened after you came to us.” The exact timing was questionable, but she knew it was after they had come together. Her intuition told her that it would be his child, but she said nothing yet. Ragnar could not be bothered. “Whoever the father is, it will be our child, and it will be welcome and well loved.” He laughed and clapped Athelstan’s shoulder, snapping him out of his shocked expression. He shook his head, as if to clear it and started to laugh, and he reached over, and kissed his Viking woman. “Congratulations, Lagertha.” He murmured, brushing his hand against her abdomen.
That evening was the first in many evenings that he elected to sleep elsewhere. They do not question it, though he can read their disappointment in their expressions. Athelstan smiled warmly and kissed them both. “I simply need to be alone with my thoughts and with my God tonight. I will join you before you wake.” And that seemed to assuage them for the time being. As they lay together, nude and murmuring softly to one another, Athelstan went back to the mat he had been given his first day in their home. He moved it to rest in front of the fire, so his prayers would not disturb them.
“How can I be father?” he whispered in his native tongue as he kneeled on his mat. His thoughts raced, going back to his own childhood. He barely remembered his father, the one who gave him life, and his mother, someone soft and warm. They had been taken from him before he could learn what being a parent meant. Though she had told them that she was uncertain, he knew in his bones that she was, in fact, pregnant, and he had a very strong suspicion that the child was his. He had been inside her more often than Ragnar these moths past, and when they were only just beginning, that was all they allowed. His mind swirled with memories of those nights, the sweat coating his body as he arched into her and cried out the names of his lovers, and he felt the first stirrings of the shame as he swelled with those thoughts. He swallowed the shame down, as he had learned to once he joined with them, and would ignore the temptation to relieve himself until his mind cleared.
How could he be father? Even if the child was not his, he would feel responsible for it, just as he felt a responsibility toward Gyda and Bjorn. Those children were his joy, his miracles. He had found a new way to love God by loving those children, because after all, what is child but God’s own miraculous creation? The creation of life was a beautiful thing, and Athelstan was overjoyed that he was able to help nurture that life in Lagertha and Ragnar’s children. But to create life of his own? That terrified him. What if his child was damned, because he had joined this pagan world and forgotten his own rituals? Would this child be forced into damnation because of his transgressions? He wrung his hands and prayed forgiveness for what felt like hours. He prayed that his God heard him, and listened when he begged for the child to grow healthy, toward the light, and to bless the child with His divine grace. He prayed that his own sins not besmirch the innocent babe that now grew inside the woman he loved.
When his throat was raw, and his knees stiff he stood, crossing himself and moving the mat back to its unused space. Then, silently he slid under the furs to join his lovers, wrapping his arms around Lagertha’s waist, to join hands with Ragnar, forming a protective circle around the now ever more precious cargo. He slept, with dreams of a child with blue eyes and a strong back.