It took a lot of willpower to not trace her fingers over the tattoos she could see on Hallbjorn's flesh. She felt feverish just imagining what the wing tip like tattoo led to on his back. Kara's curiosity was peaked by the strange one over his heart as well. It should be illegal for him to be as stunningly attractive as he was, even when wounded.<br/><br/>Kara listened raptly as Hallbjorn began to speak. Learning that a berserker had to win two hundred battles to be granted immortality was not something she'd heard before. As she had witnessed tonight, Hallbjorn was very good at fighting. She would not be surprised to learn that he had fought in a number much higher then two hundred. If anyone deserved o be granted immortality for their battle prowess, it was definitely him.<br/><br/>As she finished cleaning up the blood that lingered on his chest, Kara took many opportunities to look into his stormy gray eyes. Perhaps it should have frightened her, because from what he told her, she knew the change in eye color meant heightened emotions, and his eyes had changed when he went into a berserker rage. But the fear of that change in him had passed. He had not harmed her at all. It made her think of how her fire had not hurt him, either. Kara was sure that it meant something, but she was not ready to touch what it could mean yet.<br/><br/>While Hallbjorn began to tell her about his brother, Kara took some more gauze and medical tape from the first aid kit and began to bandage his wounds. What Hallbjorn told her had Kara thinking that he must be a lot older then she had originally thought. She should not be surprised by how old she suspected him of being, since he was an immortal, but the realization of how long he'd been on earth still threatened to steal the breath from her.<br/><br/>She was drawn in to the story of his brother returning home, so much so that she paused in dressing his wounds and turned her eyes up to his. What those Berserkers did to his village was horrible, but Kara couldn't detect any rebuke in Hallbjorn for Helgi coming home for help. Rather, it seemed as if he was proud that his brother came back to him.<br/><br/>When he asked for forgiveness, she chuckled softly. “Nothing about you is boring, and my confusion will ease with time. There is a lot about my new world to learn, and I think I have a very good teacher.”<br/><br/>Kara was almost done bandaging his wounds when she spoke. “I never had any siblings, but I always wanted a brother or sister. I used to baby-sit a lot when I was younger, just to have that feeling like I wasn't an only child. My parents, I mean, the couple who adopted me, they were unable to have children. They are good parents. Both strove to make sure I wanted for nothing. They even moved to the desert for me, since when I was younger, they said I didn't handle the cold very well.”<br/><br/>She finished up with the bandages, then looked over his chest and gave a nod of satisfaction. As she began to put the bloodied and used items in a bag to throw away, she wondered aloud, “I suppose what I am came from my birth parents. I would have loved to have known them, but from what Natalie and Bruce, my adoptive parents, told me, they have no idea who my father was. They had met my birth mother, though. Both were in Syria, on an archaeological dig, and came across her.”<br/><br/>Kara finished stuffing the used items into a bag, then tied it up so she could toss it. Instead of moving over to where the trash was, she smiled fondly and said, “They tell me I take my looks from my mother. That she was a great beauty. Inessa was her name. She came from Russia, but was a US citizen. She loved to travel, and that is how they met her the first time. I guess my parents really made an impression on her, because a few years later, she found them and arranged for them to adopt me. They said that she was very ill, and wanted me taken care of when she passed.”<br/><br/>Her eyes focused, and she sought out Hallbjorn's stormy gray gaze. “I have a few memories of her. She smelled like warm vanilla, and her singing was beautiful. If she had lived, she would have been a very good mother.”