beer_good_foamy

So it appears I'm fannish about something new. If writing fic for it is any indication.

What is it? A webcomic, recommended to me by

rahirah a while back, called Stand Still, Stay Silent.

What's it about? Post-apocalypse! 90 years after a plague all but wiped out humanity by transforming every victim into a ravenous mutated monster, the populated world consists of Iceland and a few small, heavily defended settlements in Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Danish island of Bornholm. The rest of the world is known as "The Silent World", and nobody's set foot on the continent in years. But for complicated reasons, a cross-national team consisting of a few clueless teenagers and two dispensible soldiers are sent to investigate the mainland in a small tank with a few guns. Oh, and also the old gods are back. Maybe. And there are spirit warriors in the dreamrealm and stuff.

Why should you read it? Apart from the gorgeous artwork and general post-apocalyptic doom, it's got a great sense of humour and some really neat character work going on. It's very Scandinavian in tone, meaning you get less of explosions and manly action and more of people being passive-aggressively ironic, being surprised every time someone attacks them, and going "What?" because they can't understand what the hell the Dane is saying (really, linguists should love this). The monster design and world-building is just astounding, and the author never lets the readers forget that as horrible as the monster they face are, they're still human somewhere underneath.

So what about this fic? Well, it's just a little triple drabble I had to throw together after the last dozen or so updates. It'll probably be jossed within a few hours, so I might as well post it. If you want to read it and don't have time to read from the beginning of the comic, you'll get basic context by reading from this installment, 20 pages back.

Title: Water of Life
Fandom: Stand Still, Stay Silent, set after page 503
Rating: PG13
Characters/Pairing: Sigrun, Mikkel, Emil. Halfway to Sigrun/Mikkel.
Word count: 3x100
Summary: Walking for hours in sopping wet clothes after a life-or-death fight in ice water is something Norwegian hunters do every day, no need to get worried. Or so Sigrun would like them to think.

Water of Life

All the way back to the Cat Tank, Sigrun keeps shaking off their concerns. So she took a beating from a huge troll, almost drowned in frigid water, her arm is bleeding right through Mikkel's jacket... Pffft. She does stuff like this all the time back in Dalsnes. All she needs is a few stitches, dry clothes and a double shot of aquavit, and she'll be right as rain.

Emil is duly impressed, but Mikkel doesn't like the way she keeps repeating it long after they've stopped asking, shivering, her voice flat and her feet barely lifting off the ground.

* * *

Modesty is a luxury for civilians, he tells a blushing Emil as the kid helps him get her out of her icy clothes and rub her dry with whatever reasonably clean towels they have. Everyone else is quarantined in the cockpit. Sigrun keeps mumbling about aquavit, and when he tells her no she doesn't even snark back at him. Alcohol makes you feel warm by releasing heat, and right now her system needs all the warmth it can keep.

Once her wounds are cleaned and she's wrapped in several blankets he gets the bottle out for himself. Courage, old boy.

* * *

"... fresh Hel is this?" Sigrun mutters when she wakes up in Mikkel's arms, bruised, itching and aching but warm. She gives him a weak shove in the ribs, but stays under the blanket.

"Nothing personal, Captain. Shared body heat helps against hypothermia, and it was either me or Emil. So unless you'd prefer…?"

She looks at him, then shrugs and is Sigrun again. "See, this is why you're on my mutineer list. Fine, whatever makes you feel useful. But you owe me a drink when this is over."

She curls up in his warmth. This time, she sleeps without shaking.