Brother Against Brother

[runeskin]

July 14th

It's early when several hard knocks jerk Meja awake. She sleeps in small, uneven sections of time, this being one of them, and Honir gives a soft growl before he adjusts to their surroundings. From all of her time spent in the Observatory, or out on the icy wastes, her home is beginning to look a little unfamiliar.

"Coming!" she calls, locating her coat and slipping on her boots. There wasn't much point in pajamas if you weren't going to sleep for a long amount of time.

It's Gaupholm and two other men, when she opens the door. His face, lined from harsh weather, is grim. She knows the other two men by sight, but not by name — like Gaupholm and herself, they're natives of the town. "Urdahl," he greets her.

"...what's wrong?" she asks, skipping over the obvious greetings.

"It's probably nothing to do with your — specialty," Gaupholm manages, struggling slightly with the last word. There wasn't an official title or relationship for her, here. She was just the town weirdo who disappeared into the wastes to protect them from things they didn't want to understand. But Gaupholm knew better. He treated her like — well, like a consultant, if anything. "Still," he goes on, "I'd like to have you come take a look. See if... anything strikes you as... strange."

The two men behind him look suspicious of this exchange. Meja tries not to think about that.

"Uh, yes, of course. Anything."

She locks up her house, yawning, and he leads her directly to his office, next to the harbor master's. There isn't much, and it doubles as Gaupholm's home with his daughter, Ragna, who has grown at least a foot since the last time Meja saw her in person. Ragna looks curiously to the three visitors, but Gaupholm barks at her to go to her room. She complies, sulkily, as her father leads the rest of them to the cells in the back of the building.

"I got a call from Nina Forren two hours ago," Gaupholm explains, as they walk. "She said Reidar was having it out with his brother." This wasn't anything particularly new. Emil and Reidar Forren were often drunk and disorderly, and were often put in these cells to cool off. They had both served in the war, and it had changed them. "She was in hysterics, so I took it to mean that it was worse than usual. Didn't know how right I was until I walked up to where they were fighting."

Sitting in two separate cells were the Forren brothers, glaring murderously at each other. This wasn't new, either. But the bandages around Emil's neck were, and so were the bandages around Reidar's hands. They didn't react to the four new people in the cell block, as if there was a wall between them instead of bars.

Meja blinks. "What happened?"

"From what I hear, Emil tried to slash his brother's wrists with a broken bottle, and Reidar used his own bottle to try and slash Emil's neck." Gaupholm chuckles darkly. "I had to knock them both out to subdue them. What's more? This isn't a single incident. I've been hearing about others like this, all over Norway. Families trying to kill each other."

She turns to look at Gaupholm, searching for something resembling a joke, but the man's face is as grim as ever.

Honir glances up at her, his pale eyes filled with meaning, and Meja swallows.

Brothers will fight and kill each other...

It is harsh in the world... before the world goes headlong...

No man will have mercy on another...

"Urdahl?"

Meja blinks, startled out of her thoughts. Gaupholm looks at her intensely.

"Yes?"

"Mind having a look at them?"

She knows what he really means. Sometimes her runes tipped her off to the presence of magic, and Gaupholm wants to know if the two men are under some type of spell or curse. Something to explain their erratic behavior. Meja nods and steps closer to the bars, looking in on one of the two glowering brothers. He doesn't react to her in the slightest, and she can't sense anything unusual.

Maybe this wasn't what she thought? Maybe it was just two brothers who had finally had enough with one another?

Meja steps back to the three other men and shakes her head slowly. Gaupholm deflates.

"It was worth a shot," he sighs. "You can go, Urdahl. Thanks for coming in."

The walk back to her house is quiet and tense. Honir picks his way in front of her in the snow, alert, and is quick to slip inside once she gets the door open. Meja hides a yawn behind one hand and kicks off her boots again, once the door's been locked.

"This is too much," Honir growls. "This, along with the seasons? You know what this is."

Meja shrugs a little, collapsing into bed and pulling the blankets over her. "There's not much we can do about any of it." She yawns again. "Even if it is Fimbulvetr..."

But if it was, what would happen after? Where would she go? How did Odin's Rune Guardian fit into Fimbulvetr's immediate end — Ragnarök? It makes sleep hard to come by.

July 15th

She goes to see Gaupholm, when she convinces herself to stop trying to sleep — the restful variety just isn't coming. Mostly, she wants to check up on the brothers in their cell, and see if their glaring match has ended. But she's also concerned with what Gaupholm had said, about this sort of thing being seen all over Norway.

There's a small crowd of officials, though, when she approaches his office. They look uncomfortable in the biting cold, and give her evaluating looks when she pushes past them inside. Meja knows one thing: their presence is an ill omen.

"What happened?" she asks, when she finally finds Gaupholm. He's in some sort of meeting, but she doesn't care. This is all bureaucratic formality.

One of the officials here, in Gaupholm's office itself, looks vaguely familiar. She supposes that this should hush her, and that she should try to recall why she knows this individual, but no such concerns raise themselves. She doesn't care what these people think of her.

He opens his mouth, probably to shoo her out of the room (he can try), but Gaupholm waves him off politely.

"More attacks. They're calling it some kind of outbreak," he explains, with a long sigh. "Blaming it on the... long winter."

Meja knows that that's more accurate than they realize. She swallows. "What can we do?"

"Keep everyone inside, most of the time, and calm." Gaupholm looks at her expectantly. "Can you walk around with that message? I'm a little tied up. Tell them not to get angry at each other — that's the catalyst. Tell them to avoid touchy subjects. Anything."

"They won't listen to me," she murmurs.

He shakes his head. "They've heard the news on the radio. They will. If there's one thing this town can do, it's paranoia, Urdahl."

July 16th

Neither Gaupholm nor Meja sleeps very much, if at all, as they spread the word and confiscate weapons — just in case. Avoid topics that will make you angry. Take things easy. Other towns do the same, and they listen in his office — in between vigils on town streets — to their progress.

The townsfolk are confused and frightened, but they listen to Gaupholm and allow Meja to take what weaponry they have. A few old guns, most of them not having seen action since the War. It's not a complete assurance, especially given that the Forren brothers were armed with household objects. But it helps he and Meja to rest easier, knowing that the next person will have to try to hurt someone.

They're on the last house when things go awry, however. Henrik Myhre lives alone, his wife having succumbed to cancer, and on the edges of town. He was a military man and Gaupholm tells Meja that he has a veritable closet full of weapons. And, unfortunately, he has a habit of drinking himself into paranoid delusions. The fastest they can get his guns away from him, the better.

He's not thrilled to see them at his door, much less in his home. And he meets them armed and with bullets already loaded into the gun, breath heavy with the smell of beer.

Gaupholm gets two of his guns before the barrel of Myhre's gun is pointed at him. Meja is quick to shove him out of the way, but her hasty movement spooks the drunk, who shoots her in the shoulder instead.

Honir yowls unhappily as she clocks Myhre on the back of his head, just gently enough to knock him out flat. Gaupholm looks at her grimly.

"I'll remove the bullet in my office," he grunts. "You may want to put some pressure on it. How bad?"

Meja blinks at herself and shifts her shirt to look at the wound. It looks superficial, but it does hurt more than she's used to injuries doing. And now moving her right arm hurts, too. She sighs quietly — her first bullet wound, and at the worst possible time.

"I'll be fine," she notes. She almost shrugs, before she recalls how much that would currently sting.

"Let's get this drunken bastard's weaponry in my car. Then we'll see to it."

They do. But then she has a conversation with her best friend that makes her want to hide in her blankets until everything stops.

She only leaves because Honir more or less drags her out.

July 17th

Typing on the PHS with a stinging arm is annoying. It isn't even that the wound is grievous — really, she couldn't care less about it. Meja could probably take ten before she'd even begin to care. The unfamiliarity of the injury, though, makes using her right arm a learning process.

But as annoying as that is, making the rounds with the injury is far more irritating. She sees pity in the gazes of everyone that she and Gaupholm talk to. Some of them are even nice to her, which is a foreign thing that she has no idea how to deal with. It makes her home not seem like her home — she supposes that that should be depressing, but it's just reality.

The Urdahl family line were the weirdos that people shunned, the only exception being when her radiant mother had fallen in love with her father. (To this day, Meja isn't sure what she saw in him. Strength, perhaps. Not that she's complaining about existing — though, sometimes she does.)

Gaupholm mutters to her, after they break up an argument between a wife and husband that wanders into dangerous territory, "When this is over, I'm going on vacation with Ragna. And I'm dragging you with me."

Meja gives a quiet, disheartened chuckle. He thinks this is going to end? Well enough for them to take a vacation?

Sometimes, in bits and glimmers in the back of her mind, she considers cutting and running. Her world is approaching Ragnarök, after all, and everyone knows how that story ends. Humanity dies, Midgard is reborn, humanity repopulates. She even has a way, now, of leaving, whereas before she would be stuck with her duty to the town.

But she can't leave. She has to protect them — she made a promise. And if she couldn't save her father, then she'll just have to find some way of saving these people. These annoying people that, despite how they treat her and despite how much she says otherwise, she has nothing but affection for. She hasn't the foggiest idea how she's going to accomplish it, but if she can save them, maybe the hole in her heart will feel repaired. Maybe her promise can be fulfilled another way. Maybe she can still make her mother proud of her.

July 18th

An argument escalates. Mikkel Roisum slices his son's throat with a butter knife. There's no saving him, and the husband is unrepentant; he screams about how they all deserve death, while Sonja Roisum, his wife, sobs. Meja restrains him and forces him into a cell, the small row of which are rapidly becoming full.

When they go back and find that the wife has hung herself, Gaupholm pulls Meja aside.

"Don't go back to your home," he mutters. "Stay with Ragna and me at the office."

She blinks at him. "Why?"

"Urdahl, if I become like that..." His voice falters. He swallows. "Promise me that you'll look after Ragna. I couldn't — what if I—"

Meja wants to tell him that he'd never, that Ragna is the most important thing in his life and hurting her would be unthinkable, but they both know better. Good people have turned into murderers at the drop of a hat. Mikkel Roisum had been a pacifist, and now they can hear him yelling at the others affected like a madman.

"I'll protect her," Meja murmurs. "You have my word."

July 19th

There are no new cases, no new homicidal maniacs to lock away. It's a small victory, but one that makes them feel almost able to sleep again. Officials bug them at all hours. The Prime Minister makes a statement over the radio about a "virus outbreak," listing the symptoms of "temporary insanity."

Gaupholm and Meja exchange dark glances. Both know, now, that this has nothing to do with a viral infection. How could it? There's no way it could spread all the way out here — not that quickly.

It isn't easy to accept that this is Fimbulvetr, but all the signs are there and it isn't as though the lore has been wrong before. Meja drinks part of a large bottle of vodka in order to fall asleep, her restless thoughts keeping her awake otherwise. She and Gaupholm are the only reason the town hasn't wiped each other off of the map.

Ragna crawls onto the couch with her to sleep, the dark-haired girl curling up like a cat, while Gaupholm does a shift of patrolling. Patrols take up most of their time. They listen for loud noises, elevated voices. And they hope that when they hear them, they can get into the house in time to gently patch up the situation. Their success rate is still decent, but they're beginning to tire. How long can they keep this up?

Meja drapes one arm over the side of the couch, so that she can feel the brush of Honir's fur against it while she settles off to sleep. It's one of the few comforts she has, at the moment. Her dæmon nuzzles her arm, purring, though his feline frame is tense.

She has to keep this girl safe, at the very least.