Come Back To Us - 28. Chapter 28

"Lille Havfrue means Little Mermaid in Danish. And you make me think of her."

"Could you teach me Danish?"

"I will when I go back."

Rosy made a face.

"Do you really have to leave?"

"Yeah."

She looked like she was about to cry.

"But why?"

Karl remained silent for a long moment, his heart clenching in his chest.

"Because I gave word I would help end this madness, for my family and people who are prisoners of the foreign invaders." he paused. "I don't know how long it will take, but I'll come back for you, I promise."

She hugged him out of the blue after a while, small sniffs accompanying her trembling.

"Don't worry. You're not alone."

"Be careful."

Tears rolled down his face as he was lying down in his quarters's bed while staring at the ceiling, the moonlight dim.

***

He felt so empty that when he had to go back to work the following day all the men avoided the merest contact with him.

Once the day was over, Kristian came to find him and grabbed his arm to take him to his quarters. Karl just followed him without protest.

Before seeing him, he probably thought he could have a nice talk with him, but now he had to forget about that.

“What’s up? You’re looking as pale as a ghost,” he looked worried about him, but Karl didn’t react.

“Just talk to me! You can’t remain as hard as a stone. Humans are made to feel and to express their feelings. Repressing your feelings won’t help.”

The scene was replaying over and over again in his head as he was staring straight into his eyes. The pain in his heart was nothing like what he had known before. Yet, it felt strangely familiar. Could there be anything more normal than that?

He heard the man sigh as he looked away. As nothing better came to his mind, he sat on the edge of the bed.

“It didn’t go well, did it?”

Karl stared at the wall in front of him as he heard the way he shouted at him, the way he tried to hold him back as if it was happening again. His jaw and his fists were clenched, and his breathing was loud. He needed to calm down and act normally as if nothing had happened. He didn’t want anyone to comfort him, let alone to worry about him. If he had chosen to come back there, he should act as demanded.

“Yes, it did go well…”

He glanced at the man who didn’t look convinced at all by his words. But this wasn’t a lie.

“Well, you don’t give the impression that it went well.”

He couldn’t help wondering about this whole thing between George and him as he looked back down to stare at his curled fingers. He thought back about the first time they ever kissed, that burning sensation he had left on his lips, then when they had sex, that time at the farm, that time when he had met that girl in Emma’s pub, that time when they had gone to the cinema and then had found a shelter underground to hide from the bombs. And that time when he had broken Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins’ mirror and George had tended to his hand.

“I saw him again…”

“And it didn’t go well.”

That time when he had pushed him away as he had wanted to kiss him before telling him they shouldn’t this kind of thing going on between them any longer.

“Yes, it went well. It’s just…when I had to leave he became mad…”

He didn’t hear the man speak again afterwards. He thought about the moments they had had during these last few days before he had to leave. The way they had kissed, held each other, caressed each other’s bodies as if nothing had happened the last time since the last time they has seen each other. It hadn’t meant anything, right?

His hands were trembling. He bit his lower lip as he was having trouble wording the thought that was now haunting him.

Could George really love him the way he thought he loved him?

“I’ve ruined everything…” he spoke in a low voice.

His fingers dug into the skin of his palm. How could have he been so oblivious? George cared about him and he was sure he had stopped their love affair for fear of losing him, to protect himself from the pain. It may have been selfish, but could he really blame him?

“What do you mean you’ve ruined everything?”

Karl was feeling like breaking down now, but he didn’t want to cry right in front of Kristian. He knew how George must have felt now.

“He begged me to stay…” Yes, he did, he hadn’t imagined that. “But I left him…He didn’t want me to die like his friend. He wanted to protect me.”

He licked his dry lips and then chewed on the lower part of them. What a fool he was, he should have guessed earlier. He heard Kristian sigh again.

“Love and duty can never get along. You can’t choose one of the two without suffering the consequences of your choice. What I mean is that both are a noble cause, but love is the death of duty, and duty is the death of love, quite simply. In both cases they require sacrifices.”

Karl could only stare at the man in wonder as his words were making their way from his ears to his brain.

So this meant this was the lovers’ death?

He was sure George would never forgive him for that. It would be a miracle if he did. And even if he did, would their love be able to stand the taste of time?
He was under the strong impression that his thoughts made no sense.

“Well, I should let you have some time on your own. But if you need me, call me. Don’t keep everything to yourself, or else you’re going to blow.”

Karl’s vision was stuck into nothingness; he couldn’t look at the man anymore. He just heard him close the door behind him after a short while, meaning he was alone to face his thoughts. His vision became blurry but not because of tears. He eventually let his back fall on the mattress and just had enough strength to shift his position and lay on his side.

The tears started to gather in his eyes and he didn’t even try to wipe them.

*

That night he had another vision, and it was necessarily linked to the small talk he had had with Kristian the previous evening. The words that had been spoken hadn’t left his mind since he had woken up. They were haunting, disturbing, and painful…

“I sacrificed everything for you; I gave you everything I could, and look where I am now. I’ve lost everything, and I have no one left. I trusted you. I thought you loved me the way I loved you, but you only used me to take the throne back and eliminate my people. All you wanted was to get your revenge after what we did to your family; I should have known. I shouldn’t have let my guard down. I was foolish enough to let you deceive me into thinking that you had got over it. But I guess I can only blame myself for it.”

Mímir was in a small jail. He understood this happened before they ran away…

“I should have killed you when I could.”

This mere sentence made his blood run cold.

So this meant Mímir ended up in jail because of the King’s son…But then he had him run away with him and he chose to die for him, so he must have loved him fiercely.

Love and duty were definitely not meant to go together…

So this meant whatever they had was dead for real, even if they were still alive.

He followed his training without much conviction or envy throughout the whole day, his feet dragging and his mid slow, but he forced himself to try and stay focused, because if he did something wrong again, Arthur would fire him before he even had the time to protest about it. He chose to come back there, he wasn’t forced to. He had to always keep that in mind.

In the evening, Kristian came to see him again to check on him. He was lying on his side on his bed once again. He heard the man sigh and his weight added on the bed.

“I don’t know if it’s going to help, but…” he paused for a long while as if the words were having trouble leaving his mouth. And the emotion in this “but” said this could only be something that caused him pain that could be compared to his own.

This sparked the slightest hint of interest in him, enough to make him turn his head to glance at him.

“But what?”

A long moment of silence followed his question. He knew the man was reluctant to talk about whatever was torturing his mind. And of course, he wouldn’t force him to talk if he didn’t feel like doing so. But at the same time, he wished he could help and knowing he couldn’t just made his pain worse. He heard another sigh after a while.

“I once met a girl and sacrificed my love for her for duty. But not to go to war. Circumstances were different at the time. There was no war going on.”

He waited for him to proceed. But he must have got lost in his memories because he didn’t speak another word in a long while.

“What kind of girl was she?” He asked to make sure he wanted to continue.

The silence went on for some more time but was eventually broken.

“She wasn’t a city girl. She was a country girl, but she was a real beauty.”

So she was just like him, a farm girl… This revelation sparked his interest much further.

“What happened?”

The silence lasted for a few moments.

“I met her by chance and fell for her beyond my control, but I left her by choice. The hardest decision I had to make in my whole life. She had come into the city to sell her farm’s products to people coming from higher classes, thinking this new concept could help her family afford a better life. But she had come a long way just for that. I could have given her all my wealth so her family could lead a happy life, but she wouldn’t let me. Her sweet smile was worth all the money in the world.”

His own family had never thought about coming to Copenhagen to sell their products to rich people. Even if it was far away from his hometown, it wasn’t such a stupid idea. And it probably demanded a lot of determination and courage.

“But life just wasn’t on our side. The whole world seemed to be against our love. She was promised to a man whom she had known since her earliest moments during childhood. She did like him but didn’t love him. And I was already married; was already the father of three daughters.”

Karl rolled on his back to face him. The man hadn’t been looking at him, he could say so for sure. He was staring down at his feet in concern and sorrow. The breath he let out was loud and shaky, full of regret and remorse.

“I wish I could have had the guts to leave everything I had just to be with her, divorced my wife to marry her. I wish I would have never been afraid of the consequences and of the scandal it could have created, and of the judgment of other people, especially my own family. Every day, every night, every minute, every second, I regret the choice I made. But now it’s too late. I once had my chance, and I blew it. And regret does not change anything. It just makes the pain even more intense.”

Karl slowly sat up as his eyes remained glued to the man’s figure. He could tell he was trying his best not to break down, how he was fidgeting while trying to hide it. The pain in his heart and stomach were both becoming unbearable, and the guilt eating him up wasn’t any better.

He was feeling a bit stupid. This was so selfish of him. People before him have gone through the same kind of pain, but they lived with it and still moved on. And that was what he should do too. No matter whether his decision was good or bad, he should stick to it.

“I’m sorry. I should have never talked about that. It was really selfish of me. I did not mean to sap your spirits in any way. You’re already going through enough pain.”

He should find something to say, anything to distract him from his painful past. And soon he found.

“Tell me, Vikings didn’t speak Danish, right?”

Kristian looked surprised that he should ask that as his dull blue eyes met his own.

“No, they didn’t. They spoke a language that was called Old Norse, but I guess there are some similitudes with Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian due to its being the common ancestor to those three languages.”

“So this meant English people didn’t speak English at that time, right?”

“Well, English went through a lot of change across the ages, that’s why it may have seemed to be a completely different language during the Middle Ages. But all the languages have known major changes as the centuries passed by.”

“Enough changes so we couldn’t understand the oldest versions of said languages?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“So…if neither Mímir nor the King’s son could understand Danish and modern English since they didn’t exist back then, they could only speak in Old Norse and Old English. And only in Old English together I guess.”

If it was just like with him who had been the effort to learn English to communicate with the Hopkins family, then he couldn’t be mistaken.

“Yes, and so what?”

It seemed that he couldn’t understand what his point was.

“In some of my dreams, I heard Mímir speak. But I could understand what he said… So if he didn’t speak the Danish we know now…”

There was no emotion other than shock written on the man’s face.

Now he couldn’t say that this reincarnation thing didn’t exist. All those visions he had had until now said otherwise…

“This means Mímir and I are one person…”

Suddenly there was a deafening crash that made the whole building shake. Karl's shoulders tensed as shivers went through his body.

"What was that?"

Before Kristian had the time to react, there was another loud bang that came closer to them, making Karl tumble on the floor.

"Karl! Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

The man helped him up and they exchanged a silent look, their eyes widening.

"Come on, let's run for backup!"

They hurried to leave the room and ran towards the gathering point for cases of emergency that was on the east side of the building.

Karl had some trouble running as knots were forming eveywhere in his stomach.

No, not that again.

However, there was another loud bang on their way that threw them in the air.

Karl couldn't already stand up on his own any longer.

"Karl!" Kristian managed to reach him and before he could help him up, hearing the noise of another coming bomb, he threw himself over Karl in a protective manner.

The explosion was powerful.

Everything came to a still for a long while, but Karl's breathing was erratic, just like the beating of his heart.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you with everything I've got."

Karl was trembling uncontrollably. This was reminding him of that time in the hospital. This was too horrible a memory for him. He couldn't be reliving it again. he had hardly got back there...

"Don't worry. I won't let us die tonight, "he sounded so weak and tired.

He had never been so scared in his life.

Hello everybody!
I hope you're all doing well since the last time The weather is so depressing here...
Sorry to end on a cliffhanger, but oh my... It's horrible to read... :5
Have a good day/evening/night and a good week!
Take care ❤️