Chapter Text
Ivar’s hands ball into tight fists as the boat rocks back and forth. He’s doing much better than when he and his father had initially left Kattegat, but the storm rapidly approaching has his stomach unsettled. It’s a bit of deja vu, truly, considering their journey started with a terrible storm that had knocked him right out of the boat. This time, the Christians don’t even bother to tie him to anything. They have been nothing but cordial to him despite the language barrier, none of them particularly interested in hurting a cripple. However, they were also ignoring him as the water became choppy and the storm finally caught up to them.
Ivar stares, eyes wide as the waves shove them this way and that. He clings to the boat as tightly as he can, but he is but one crippled teen, watching the way the water rises as if it were trying to block out the sky itself. He watches as the Christians around him try their best to steer them through it, but there’s one in the back who has decided to pray to his god. Ivar would find it funny if he could, but he’s a bit too busy trying to keep himself from tumbling out of the boat when the wave finally comes down.
The rush of it hits him hard, and Ivar does his best to hold his breath until they break through. All around him, the Christians are coughing up water, some still doing their best to steer, others leaning over the boat to throw up the water that had just been forced down their throats. Above them, lightning streaks across the sky and thunder comes screaming right after it.
However, it is not the lightning or the thunder that has captured Ivar’s attention. No, it is the next wave that is rapidly approaching, this one even bigger than the one before. He hears the Christians cry out, but whatever it is they’ve said is lost to him as the wave comes falling down on them. Ivar’s grip on the boat means nothing against a wave of that size, and all of the air is knocked right out of his chest as he tumbles into the dark depths of the water.
Ivar does not know how to swim, cannot, considering his legs, but his arms are strong and so he does his best, fights against the tide that tries to take him. However, it is for naught, as he doesn’t even know which way is up and there is nothing but darkness all around him as the storm rages overhead. He doesn’t see the boat, doesn’t see any of the Christians, all he sees is the deep, dark depths. He still fights though, still slices his arms through the water in a vain attempt to survive. But it isn’t long before his arms tire and he can’t tell if he’s gotten further to the surface or sunk further down.
In despair, Ivar can’t help but wonder if this is truly it for him, truly the end. He didn’t want to die now, not when he hadn’t even proved himself to his father, to Odin. If he dies now, without a single conquest under his belt, Odin certainly wouldn’t welcome him into his Halls. He had wanted to make a name for himself, just like his father had said. His father’s last words to him had been about the future he saw for him, his victories, his conquests sung around the fires for centuries to come.
Angry, Ivar tries again, grits his teeth against the constant pain of his legs as he forces the useless things to work, to do something, anything, to survive. No one would remember Ivar the Boneless if he drowned before he could even pillage his first village. Be ruthless, his father had said, the whole world will know and fear Ivar the Boneless, he had promised, and yet Ivar was sinking to the depths as a nobody. His mother had said he would die in a storm, and he had thought she meant the one that hit on the way over, unaware that another was waiting for his return to succeed where the first had failed.
Despair and anger made for quite the cocktail but with his legs as they are, as they’ve always been, he knows he isn’t making any progress. His chest burns from the lack of oxygen and his eyes burn from the sea water, but he still tries, he has to keep trying, and when he looks up, he sees something. It's dark, whatever it is, and he’s surprised he’d noticed it at all, and he reaches for it, tries his best to grab it. He hopes that maybe it’s wood from the boat he’d been on. Surely he could use that to swim back to the surface.
He isn’t sure if he’s getting closer to the object or if it’s getting closer to him, but he reaches out for it anyway. His chest aches, his whole body aches, but he knows he won’t be able to hold on for much longer, is amazed he’s held on for this long anyway. When he reaches out to grab the thing, the first thing he feels is…hair? Confused, Ivar does his best to pull himself towards the thing, ends up pulling it towards him, but none of that matters when the thing turns and he realizes that he is holding a person. Their face is young, so very young, and Ivar knows for a fact everyone on the boat had been older than him. How had this stranger gotten here?
Ivar makes to let go of the body, to try and find another way to the surface, but before he can, the boy’s eyes snap open. Ivar is frozen in place when brown eyes meet his, brown on blue, before the boy is reaching for him. Ivar goes to bat his hand away, his first thought that this boy plans on taking him down with him, but the water makes his movements slow and before he knows it, a surprisingly hot hand is wrapping around his wrist. For a moment, all he can feel is confusion at the touch before, against his will, his eyes roll and he goes limp, the water taking the both of them down, down, down.
Ivar’s eyes snap open after what seems like seconds, and the first thing he notices is that it’s raining, hard. He is sitting on something, something big and it’s moving quickly. At first, he thinks he’s back on the boat, doomed to drown again, but a strike of lightning has him realizing that he’s in the sky, amongst the clouds. Before he can even consider freaking out, he hears something, the thing he’s sitting on, lets out a noise that his mind instinctively knows is out of fear. Finally looking down, Ivar sees that he is in, well, he assumes it’s a saddle of sorts, but much too big for a horse. Whatever he’s sitting on is much too big to be a horse, and he realizes that just right under the sound of the storm, he can hear the sounds of flapping, wings flapping.
When he sees the head of the thing he’s on, Ivar can only assume that he’s passed on, that the Valkyrie’s look nothing like the stories describe them. This one must be the one sent to take him to Valhalla, but Ivar realizes very quickly that that doesn’t make sense. He may be a warrior in name, has trained and trained with his brothers for the day he could go on his own pillage, but he hasn’t actually pillaged anything, has not earned his Seat at Odin’s table. Perhaps this one would take him to Freyja’s fields?
Before he could even decide which afterlife he was going to, he hears the cry of a much louder creature, and this one is definitely not afraid. Something like fear curdles in his gut and it takes a moment for Ivar to realize that it isn’t his fear. He is confused, lost, and he’s freezing cold despite the cloak he can see flapping about, but he isn’t afraid. He’s just died, what does he have to be afraid of? However, the fear remains, grows even, and against his will, his head turns upwards.
For a moment, he doesn’t understand what he’s looking for, not until lightning flashes again and he sees a hulking beast of a creature right above his head. The fear he feels increases and he can admit that some of it might be his, because what in the world is that?
Vhagar, a soft voice that Ivar has never heard before supplies. Then, after a moment, a dragon.
Ivar doesn’t even know what to address first, the fact that there’s a massive dragon right above his head, that he’s sitting on a dragon right now, or the fact that a voice that definitely isn’t his own just spoke to him in his own head. After a moment, he decides that the threat is definitely the most important. And it’s clearly a threat, Ivar decides, because the dragon he’s on is so small in comparison, is struggling in the very same storm that the monstrous dragon overhead is easily flying through.
It’s proven to definitely be a threat when the thing turns and lunges right for them, pulling up at the last moment as someone laughs and that’s when Ivar realizes that there is someone on the other dragon, someone is hunting them.
Aemond, that same voice supplies, my uncle.
He doesn’t even want to touch on that, can’t, when the dragon is suddenly behind them, snapping at their dragon’s tail. His body moves against his will and it’s only when he sees the hands grabbing the reins that he realizes it isn’t his body at all. His hands are larger, more calloused from dragging himself around everywhere and handling weapons every day, and just a bit tanner than the ones moving in front of him. A bit of dread slices through him, mingling in with the other emotions already strumming through this body.
There isn’t any time to think, not with the way they’re being hunted, and his mouth moves against his will, and he doesn’t understand the words at first. The words aren’t in English, definitely isn’t in Norse, but after a moment, his brain just…starts to understand.
“Quickly!” the mouth on the body he’s trapped in calls, “Turn!”
The dragon under them heeds the order and Ivar feels a mixture of adrenaline and fear shoot through him as they squeeze in between two cliffs. The adrenaline is definitely his, the fear belongs to the body he’s trapped in, and, he realizes after a moment, some of that fear belongs to the dragon. Dear Allfather, he can feel what the dragon is feeling.
Above them, Ivar can just barely hear the uncle’s laughter, and anger builds in his chest, this is certainly his anger, but the body begins to feel it too as the uncle speaks.
“You owe a debt!” the uncle says in that language he suddenly understands, and he doesn’t know how he knows this, but he knows the uncle is actually butchering the words, enunciating at the wrong parts, and he realizes that the body feels smug at the knowledge that the man hunting them is terrible at whatever language he’s speaking, “Boy!”
He can’t even say that right. The voice in his head says, something amused in his tone despite the current situation they were in. Ivar decides that he likes whoever this voice belongs to.
However, despite the body’s attempt to distract itself, the dragon beneath them isn’t soothed at all, is scared enough that it begins to heat up between his thighs. Ivar doesn’t understand what’s happening, but the body does, and it calls out much too late.
“No, Arrax!” The body calls as the dragon shoots out a spout of fire at the larger dragon as they fly past, “No, Arrax! Serve me!”
The bigger dragon behind them roars, and Ivar can only watch as the dragon he’s on flies up and up until they’re above the clouds. For a moment, just a moment, Ivar forgets all about the dragon chasing them, forgets that he is most likely in his own death throes as he sinks to the bottom of the sea. Instead, he can only stare at the beautiful sight in front of him. The body seems to agree, thrumming with relief as the sun greets them. It’s so peaceful above the storm, one wouldn’t even think there was a raging storm just beneath them at all. If this was the afterlife chosen for him, to fly above the clouds for eternity, he doesn’t think he’d mind it.
The body he’s in looks around and Ivar knows he’s looking for the other dragon, but he’s too busy admiring the scenery. This is a hallucination after all, or perhaps his afterlife, he had nothing to fear here. The body finally seems content, and angles the dragon to the left. Ivar has no idea what is in that direction, but he isn’t in control and can only watch as the clouds break and all he sees is teeth, all he smells is rot as death comes for him. Again.
But he doesn’t die. The pain he feels makes him wish he were dead, surely, but as he falls, he realizes that despite it all, he is still in one piece. It isn’t until he’s back under the clouds, rain pelting his body once more, that he realizes that the body is feeling the pain their dragon felt right before it died.
I’ve failed, the voice in his head thinks, and Ivar can only wonder who he failed that he would be thinking about them as they fall to their second death. As if the voice could hear him and wants him to understand, he suddenly finds himself seeing a woman. Not in front of him of course, but the memory of her floats before his eyes and he wonders for a second if Freyja has finally come to get him. As he looks closer though, he realizes that this woman’s hair is white, not the golden braid that Freyja is known for.
Instead, this woman has long white hair, two braids delicately tied around her head as if to imitate a circlet. She is wearing a red and black gown and she’s smiling at him, something soft and warm that has the body feeling comfort and happiness. As the feeling surges through him, he feels the body’s eyes water and he realizes that this woman is the body’s mother.
Suddenly, it makes a lot more sense why the body is thinking of her in its last moments. The body shares more visions with him, most of them containing the body’s mother, but others having other family that the soft voice supplies the names to easily enough, Jace, Rhaena, Baela, the body offers as memory after memory zooms by, Aegon, Viserys, Daemon, and then the memories change, where the previous memories were golden and warm and all things good, these memories are dark and dreary and reminiscent of the storm they’re falling through as the body shows him what had lead to this very chase, Lord Borros Baratheon, the body explains and Ivar will remember the anger there, the resentment.
Prince Aemond Targaryen, the body offers up the memories of him easily enough, showing a man with an eye patch but also a child, taller than him, that was always sad, no dragon, the body supplies, and the memory changes. He sees the conflict, the way this body, when it was much younger, had protected its brother the only way it knew how, understands now what the uncle had meant when he’d demanded the body cut out its eye in the earlier memory.
He said that it was a fair exchange, the soft voice insists, something petulant and bratty in its tone as it shows him that exact scene, a brutal cut on the uncle’s face, but a smile as he has finally gotten what he’s always wanted. The exact words too, a fair exchange, an eye for a dragon, and yet he had chased this body, this boy into the clouds and killed him.
It is then that the body hits the water. It hurts, and most of the pain comes from the body’s legs. It amuses Ivar, because even as they begin to sink, the pain only reminds him of his own legs, his bones that constantly ache and snap like twigs at any given chance. In comparison, this truly isn’t that bad, but the body begs to differ as it sinks.
It sinks faster than Ivar had, and before he knows it, he feels a hand curl into the body’s hair and tug. It’s odd, to see himself from someone else’s eyes. His body’s eyes are wide and bloodshot from the water, the blue so bright it would worry him if they weren’t already dying. His hair floats under the force of the tide and Ivar belatedly realizes that he isn’t the biggest fan of his own haircut, if he ever got the chance to, he would grow it out. Like Hvitserk.
Gods, he thinks belatedly, his brothers! He couldn’t even imagine what they would think when neither he or their father returns. Ivar hadn’t even been able to tell them who had gotten their father killed, their father wouldn’t be avenged. He doesn’t even want to think about what his mother would do, how she would feel, if she knew that her vision was right.
He isn’t able to think about it too deeply, not when the body he’s trapped in grabs his actual body. He sees the anger on his face, familiar and missed, as he tries to yank his hand back, but the water doesn’t allow him to move as fast as he’d like, doesn’t let him use all the strength he’s built up in his arms over the years.
Please, the boy in his head begs, leaning forward, refusing to let go of Ivar’s hand, please.
Ivar doesn’t understand what the boy is asking, doesn’t even know how he could possibly help considering he’s drowning too, but the boy insists. Shoves more memories at him, of his mother and family, of a crown, a throne. Ivar is thrown for a loop by that one because it was made of swords, but whatever he thinks about it is drowned out by dark, dreary images of a group of white haired, purple eyed individuals, one of them being the one that had killed them, with two brunettes beside them.
Usurpers! The voice insists, and Ivar realizes what’s happening as the boy shows him his mother again, then a crown, then the throne, over and over.
Name them, Ivar finally thinks back, and the boy, the prince apparently, immediately gives them.
Aegon Targaryen, Aemond Targaryen, Criston Cole, Otto Hightower, Tyland Lannister, Borros Baratheon, there’s a moment of silence and then, Larys Strong. Each name is followed by a memory of their faces.
Anything else? Ivar asks, feeling indulgent because he’s dying, he cannot help this child, but he can at least be nice enough to send him off thinking his wishes will be fulfilled. Maybe that will get him to Freyja’s fields considering Odin’s Halls are forever closed to him. Or perhaps she will shun him for lying to a child. Does it even count when he has only seen seventeen winters himself?
My mother is the rightful Queen of Westeros, the voice is young and almost bordering on fanatical, awed, everyone must bend the knee to her.
And those who refuse?
The voice is quiet for a moment, but all the more vicious when it returns.
Then they shall know fire and blood.
Ivar finds himself liking this boy, this prince who thinks only of his family as he dies, and so he finds himself smiling, even if the body he’s trapped in doesn’t copy it. Not even his actual body does anything besides stare, both seeming to wait for his choice.
What is your name, little prince?
I am Lucerys Velaryon, second son of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, and the heir to Driftmark.
What a title, Ivar can’t help but think, and doesn’t miss that through it all, the boy, Lucerys, is pleased in a bashful, shy sort of way. His lungs are also burning, and Ivar does not miss the feeling.
If I get the chance, Lucerys Velaryon, I, Ivar Ragnarsson, the youngest son of Ragnar Lothbrok and Aslaug Sigurdsdottir, promise that everyone you named will meet the worst fate possible. I will see that everyone bends the knee and recognizes your mother as the rightful Queen. If they refuse, I will see to it that their names will be lost to time, and I have never broken a promise.
Despite all of the pain, Lucerys’ relief overpowers it all. Something soft and sweet flows between them, and Ivar doesn’t understand what it is, and never gets the chance to find out as Lucerys closes their eyes and lets the tides take them.
Thank you, Ivar Ragnarsson, is all Ivar hears and then, finally, the tide sweeps him away.