Re: Museum: Connor and Ragnar
"They can." If that was one thing he'd learned, it was that men -- and people could find inspiration anywhere. In faith, in God, in love, in family, in pride and arrogance. Sometimes they found it in another human, one as flawed and imperfect as themselves.
His gaze lifted to Ragnar's, his heart twisting at the tears he saw there. "We won't know," he said quietly. "I didn't think of my own marriage then," he had made vows. Twelve hundred years later, the promises he had made then had dulled somewhat. "I wasn't her competition." He had never desired that, and never would have asked for it to be either him or Lagertha, and he hoped they both knew that.
With that kiss to his knuckles, he guessed that at the very least, Ragnar knew. "They were Fae. Light Elves maybe, álfr. The woman I met was a huldrå and I stayed with her people. Their world was just like ours but not, and we could see things going on but they had little care for them. Time passed differently for me. It was fast and slow, and the human world kept going while they were busy with everything else."
He gave Ragnar's fingers a squeeze. "And that's where I was until I did something they didn't like. There was a Prince -- you would hate him," Athelstan said with a touch of fondness. "I angered him, and some other things happened -- so they returned me to my world as an infant. Swapped me for a human child. And made it so I couldn't talk about who I was -- so I was Connor Xander, and then it -- it lifted. I could say your name again. I could say my own. And that's how I have a brother -- Ronan. We had another brother, Muphy, but he died."