Late evening, in a pub
He is already at the pub when she arrives, seated at a booth in the corner, in the back, as usual. He still looks good--strong, light hair untouched by grey, though she is none too fond of his new facial hair configuration. Still, he's the one who has to look at himself; she only sees him twice a year.
"Dag's not coming," he says as she slides into the booth, not apologetic, just matter-of-fact.
"He hasn't in twelve years," she says with a light shrug, brushing some stray crumbs off the table in front of her. "It's his woman, I imagine."
"'His woman,'" he repeats with a laugh. "She was your stepdaughter, and that's what you call her? No wonder your marriage didn't last."
"What does the summer know of winter? We had nothing in common. That's why it didn't last." She unbuttons her coat, and barely looks up at the barmaid as she orders herself a beer and a sandwich. "Anyway, blood-family should mean more to him than a wife. I'm not asking him to leave her, just to come visit now and then. We're all that's left."
"I wouldn't say that," he says, and takes a sip of his own beer. "Half of Scandinavia, at this point--at least half, probably more--and other parts of the world, too. You were a very busy woman for a while."
"I did what was expected of me. Got married, had children."
"Never with your husband, though."
She raises an eyebrow. "Since when are you such a follower of his? What I did or didn't do with my husband is no concern or business of yours."
"Skaði, people talk. It doesn't exactly look good for our family when you--" He stops, as the barmaid returns with the beer.
"When I what?"
He watches the barmaid walk away again, with more interest than necessary. "You know. Act the way you do."
"Look at our family," she says, picking up her mug of beer. "Our grandfather, a thief and a traitor. Our fathers, in open rebellion against the gods. You and Dag, leading armies against half of them--and my acting more like a man than a woman, that's the family scandal?"
"Our fathers were justified," he begins.
"You don't need to tell me that," she interrupts. "I took up my father's battle where he left off."
"I remember that," he says. "While Dag and I were off gathering our forces and laying siege to Asgard, you were valiantly spreading your legs for the All-father. Your own father would've been so proud--"
That wasn't how it had been, not at all. Lying in bed at night with all the wisdom of the world resting on her breast, the weight of the world keeping her grounded and focused--but more than that, she understood his moods. Men say he ranges from grim to angry to cruel, and they are right. And so does she.
"That was the other war," she says. "The second one. The first one, our war, I fought as long as anyone else. But in any case my father was a very patient man, something neither you nor Dag will ever be. He understood that not all battles are fought on the battlefield, that sometimes a long-term approach is what's needed."
"So you haven't abandoned the fight after all?" he asks quietly, setting his beer down. "I suspected as much."
"They made reparations, did they not?" she asks. "Paid me what they felt my father's life was worth. A husband I could not abide, and a laugh."
"In fairness, those were your terms," he says. "You can't claim they tricked you, when you went in with dishonest intentions."
"I don't know what you're talking about." She nods her thanks the barmaid as her sandwich is set before her.
"You never wanted to stop the fight. You didn't think they could make you laugh--obviously you didn't, or you wouldn't have chosen it. As for a husband... well, everyone knows who you really wanted. I doubt they know why."
"Tell me, then, Ull," she says, picking up the sandwich. "Why did I want to marry him?"
"To kill him." He watches her steadily.
She meets his gaze without expression. "And why would I want to kill my husband, the compensation given for my father's murder?"
"Because for the end to come, Balder had to be dead," he says. "And who better--who closer to kill him than a wife? You didn't expect they'd succeed in making you laugh. If they hadn't, you could've claimed that you'd taken his life as the rest of the compensation."
"You spend too much time in the mountains," she says with a small smile. "Too much time alone, too much time to come up with these ideas."
"There's more to it than that," he says, glancing around, almost warily. "When that failed, you changed your plan. And that proves it. Don't worry, I haven't told anyone--"
"If it were true," she says, around a bite of sandwich, "your grandfather would know it already, would he not? He sees everything that happens. And he, as you so delicately remembered tonight, was once my lover. We spent ten years together in exile, during the war. We had many children together. Do you think, if I were so dangerous as you say, so treacherous, he would have let me get that close?"
"You couldn't kill Balder," he continues, more quietly. "So you did the next best thing. You saw to it that your father's sword--the one weapon that could defeat the gods, the one that had already forced my adopted father to yield in battle, and broken his famed hammer--passed out of the safekeeping of the gods once more, and into the hands of the giants. The one thing you did as Njord's wife--the only thing you did, besides bicker with him--was to advise his son to trade that sword for the love of a giantess. And you know what that will mean in the battle at the end of days."
"I didn't come here for this," she says. "You're drunk, and I don't want to argue with you."
"You were horribly unfair to him." He takes a long swig of beer. "He didn't want to marry you either, but he tried his best. He tried, Skaði. You never did."
"Do you think I don't know that none of them wanted to marry me?" she asks softly. "I know they were all of them hoping not to be chosen. I know I was never considered a prize, not for all my father's gold."
In fairness, there were few of them she would ever have considered marrying, if given a free choice. No prizes either, most of them.
"If you tried, though," he says. "Made yourself a little less disagreeable, stayed home and tended the hearth instead of hunting so much--"
"It never bothered you, my time spent hunting."
"No, but I'd never marry you."
"No," she echoes, and sips her beer. "I'm just the one you go to for a hunting companion, just the one you turn to for comfort. Is that all I've ever been to you?"
"I wouldn't be here now if it were," he says. "Twice a year, every year, for how long?"
"Three hundred years, give or take." She finishes her sandwich, sweeps the crumbs off the edge of the table onto her hand, and returns them to the plate.
"Three hundred years. You see? You were always my favorite, and maybe if things had been different..."
"They could never have been. What was set in motion can never be changed. What's woven is woven. The pattern was laid out long before you or I were born."
"Come back to Asgard," he says softly, reaching across the table to rest his hand on hers. "Not full-time--but to visit now and then, at least. Your mother misses you. My grandfather misses you too, though he doesn't say it."
"My mother," she says. "It's a shame they'll never let her leave again. They need her, so she has to suffer for it. Your grandfather knows where to find me, and can visit whenever he likes. He knows I'll be at his side again when winter comes."
He nods, sighing, and reaches into his coat for a small paper bag, which he offers over to her. "When winter comes--do you bring the cold, or do you just take comfort in it?"
"No comfort, but peace." She opens the bag, and takes an apple out: fresh and unblemished, as always. "You know as well as I do how it feels, in the mountains--just you, your skis, your bow, your prey. One moment it's alive, perhaps looking for food, and the next it's dead, to roast over your fire. That's how the world is, but it's more pure there. More honest."
"I know it," he says. "I know the lure--but it's not healthy, not all the time. You should have company. Too long alone out there, and you get... strange."
"I never said I was alone." She polishes the apple on her shirt, and takes a bite.
"A new man?" he asks, surprised. "In Thrymheim, or just a hunting companion?"
"Her name is Sanngriðr," she says. "Sometimes we go hunting together, sometimes she stays indoors while I go out."
"A woman," he says.
"A giantess." She takes another bite.
"I suppose it's better than being alone," he shrugs.
"She keeps the bed warm. It won't last long--these things never do--but sometimes I get tired of having just the wind and the wolves for company."
"If you came back--"
"Does your grandmother want me to come back," she asks, "her husband's mistress, her brother's former wife? Does your father want me to come back, or my mother's husband? Am I not a living reminder of the war, of the end, in ways that you and Dag are not?"
"It's different now," he says. "Things have changed. With Loki imprisoned--"
One of the few she might have wanted to see in Asgard, if things had been different. He was fire to her ice, but their goal had been the same. And his hands were so warm, and his lips, and his--
And the songs never do him justice, how beautiful he had been. Not like the monster she had drowned at birth, and certainly not like the hideous creature he had become during his imprisonment. But he had boasted of killing her father, and her loyalty lies with her family first, last and always.
"May Laufey's whelp never see daylight again," she snaps, with emotion she hadn't intended to let slip.
"Hear, hear." He raises his mug in toast, and downs the rest of his beer. "But with him gone, we're more at peace."
"Even with the seeds he had sown?" she asks, looking down at the half-eaten apple in her hands. "Have they not grown, to cause suspicion, to drive us all apart? There will never be peace there again, not in this world."
"So he once said. But we have to carry on--we can't just stop and wait for the end."
"It's coming. Sooner than you think. Sooner than any of us thinks, probably, except your grandfather, and he won't tell anyone. As well he shouldn't."
"So you do bring the winter," he says, looking down into his empty mug. "I'd heard--there are stories--that where you go, death follows. And not just the animals you shoot with your bow."
Every human left without a proper burial, without proper care after death, brings the final battle that much nearer, the ship made of nails that much closer to completion. Many are never found, in the snow and the mountains.
"My father was called 'the Father of Swords,'" she says. "What would you expect of his daughter?"
"Skaði--"
"They're always warm again, just before the end," she says quietly, looking back up at him. "Is that not enough?"
He stares back at her in silence while she finishes the apple, seeds and all. "You're your father's daughter, there's no mistaking that," he says eventually.
"Was there ever any doubt?"
"I suppose not." He sighs, shaking his head. "We're family. You've always got my support, you know that. But I--I don't want to be on the opposite side again. Once was enough. Once was more than enough."
"I don't want it either," she says. "But neither you nor I can say what will happen then--and it's better that we don't think about it. Too grim for such a lovely evening."
He chuckles humorlessly, and tosses some money onto the table to pay for their orders. "You won't come back with me? Just for a few days..."
"You could come to Thrymheim instead. You know the halls there as you know your own, and you will always be welcome there."
"Not while you've got a woman there. The bed's not big enough for that."
She rolls up the empty bag and tucks it into her coat pocket, before buttoning up again. "Only if you're not on friendly terms. Or if you sleep like a dog sprawled out by the fire."
"I just might." He stands, slightly unsteadily, and offers her a hand up out of the booth. "You haven't seen me sleep in a long time--I could've developed habits you've got no idea about."
"You sleep curled up with your head under the blankets, with your dogs next to you. You always have, you always will." She heads back out of the pub, still holding his hand.
The night is cold, dark and clear. His breath makes wisps of steam, visible as he leans in closer to her; hers does not.
"Skaði," he murmurs. "Come visit me. Not in Asgard, but in my lands--my father's lands. You know them as well as I know yours. It's been so long. Please."
"I'll think about it." She looks into his eyes--she can't help it, at such close range--and is unsettled by what she sees there.
"Say you will. We'll hunt bears, and... and chase each other over the mountains and through the forests, like old times. You remember. And when you catch me..."
He kisses her. He tastes of beer and smoke, of cold winter nights and of loneliness. She knows it only too well, and isn't going to let herself sink into it again. Not tonight. She pulls away, taking a few steps backward, away from him and from the lights of the pub. Toward the fields, and the forest that lies beyond.
"And when you catch me..." he repeats, holding a hand out toward her, as though he can reach her now.
"I'll tear you apart," she whispers, fading into the shadows, willing herself to change--a trick an old lover had taught her, so long ago.
Ull stares after the retreating wolf for a long while--too long--before turning to go back inside.
But Skaði runs, bounding silently and gracefully through the snowy forest, enjoying the freedom, the cold air, and the feeling of being alive that she gets at times like this. The apples always make her feel this way. Onward she goes, for what could be hours or moments, following deer-tracks higher into the mountains--