The Worst Day Since Yesterday

"Well I know I miss more than hit
With a face that was launched to sink
And I seldom feel the bright relief
It's been the Worst Day Since Yesterday

If there's one thing I have said
Is that the dreams I once had now lay in bed
As the four winds blow my wits through the door
It's been the Worst Day Since Yesterday

Fallin' down to you sweet ground
Where the flowers they bloom
It's there I'll be found

Hurry back to me, my wild calling,
It's been the Worst Day Since Yesterday

Though these wounds have seen no wars
Except for the scars I have ignored
And this endless crutch well it's never enough
It's been the Worst Day Since Yesterday
Hell says hello, well it's time to I should go
To pastures green, that I've yet to see

Hurry back to me, my wild calling,
It's been the Worst Day Since Yesterday."
Flogging Molly, The Worst Day Since Yesterday

Titans: Fuck 'em.

Shit. I guess I shouldn't just start with that, I should probably build up to it, the way a proper story would.
You know what? No. Fuck titans.
And fuck Joseph Conrad, the Heart of Darkness has nothing to do with Mr. Kurtz or slavery or the cruelty of man against man. That shit sucks, but that's not really the heart of darkness. I have seen it. I have stared at it. It spoke to me.
Also, I died.
Worst fucking day ever. Since yesterday.

I came out of the underworld, Helheim, and found out that the world is ending, I lost three months, I can't talk to my dad, then Gunnar's dad is in frost-giant-land, we've been played by someone pretending to be Loki, Fenrir is probably at large, Manannan Mac Lir is still alive, Ixion blew up my house, Kane stole my fucking ghost, the world is still ending, we still don't know how to fix it, I met a titan and oh hey. I DIED.

That last one was my fault. Kinda. I'm a fucking moron. Who in their right minds thinks while they're five months pregnant, "Sure, I will go waltzing through this mysterious soul killing apparatus, upon which is inscribed, 'to cage the darkness,' because that does not sound sinister or dangerous at all." Apparently I do.
And Never, if you're reading this, I do not wanna hear one single fucking quip about that "right mind" bit.

And I'm a moron because I was convinced at the time that the worst thing that could have happened to me was that I would lose some time. Nope, I was wrong about that too. There are worse things than losing time. A lot worse.
But that's what I was worried about, so I borrowed those casting stones from Gunnar and after I used them I was sure that time wouldn't be any different and I was also sure that there was something on the other side eating souls.
Yeah. A device powerful enough to draw souls in droves by the thousands from all over the nation and powerful enough to contain something that is consuming, in massive quantities, the souls of the dead, and what does crazy fucking Laurel do?
Well naturally, I traipse right in and give it my soul.
And my sons'.
Yeah.

I.
Died.

I am trying to convey the magnitude of this event. I have been through a lot of shit. Shit I just lived through. That's kinda what I do. It's like that's what Fate has been building me to do: survive. It didn't work. I went through this machine and I felt my soul get ripped away from my body and I died.
It stung a little.

Okay.
I guess now I should back up a little to how we even got there. Brendan found the gloves in Berkeley, but Marie was gone. I know why, now.
I was in Chicago, where we and the kids met up at Gunnar's. Kas and Ciara coptered in with the dwarf so I could work on him. Dorthen lost his left arm and his left eye but is gonna be okay, and while I was working on Dorthen and Brendan was in Berkeley, Nate went to talk to the president about forming a government funded divine black ops type team. He had said he wanted me on it. I told him I assumed he wanted Gunnar too, because I wasn't joining up without him and oh hey, he probably knew I was just gonna call and tell him about it once I hung up with Nate. Nate seems to be okay with that now, that's just kinda the way things work. Whatever I know, you can pretty much assume Gunnar's going to know it, too.

So those of us who were in Chicago decided that the next move was to go to the soul sink in the Atlantic. Before that we wanted to head to the Smithsonian and soak up some more power, like we figured out how to do back when we fought Caleb. I got to spend some time with the kids, which was pretty awesome. They're growing up fast. Charlotte's got this wicked looking scar on her face. After I gave her a huge hug, I asked her if it hurt. It didn't look like it should, and she said it didn't, and it looks like it was just supposed to be there.
Getting to the Smithsonian was kinda funny, the National Mall was supposed to be closed. Well, it was closed to normal people. I'm not normal people, and dammit, I was in the mood for a field trip.
I guess it bears mentioning, working on Dorthen kinda ruined the clothes I was wearing, and I had just had a pair of jeans with me in case I'd gotten cold wearing shorts in Norway. And a toothbrush, and my medical kit. Yeah, that's all I packed before I last left my now exploded house. Anyway, Gunnar and I didn't exactly date long enough - or stay in Chicago long enough - for me to do the standard girlfriend bullshit, and leave tons of stuff at his place, so I ended up stealing one of his button-ups. That ended up being helpful in getting past the guards who were supposed to be making sure that the National Mall was evacuated.

The guards started trying to give us static about evacuating and not being on the streets and some other shit I didn't have time to pay attention to.
I turned to Gunnar, grinning mischievously. "You trust me, right?" Gunnar didn't really seem like the jealous type, but I figured it didn't hurt to check. Basically I wanted to know that my husband wasn't going to fly into a rage when he saw me batting my eyes at another guy - though, if the situation called for it, I'd bat them at a girl, too. The world is ending, I haven't got time to be insecure about my sexuality.
"Yeah..."
So I grinned at him, undid one of the buttons on the shirt I'd taken from his place, sauntered over to the soldiers and flirted my way into the Smithsonian. Not just my way. I got Gunnar, Harlan, Brendan, Nate, Kassandra, Ciara, Dorthen, Susan, Gunter, Amanda, Charlotte, Brendan Gair, Wolf, Nevermore and Astrid all in as well. That's twelve Scions, one dwarf, and three animals who got into a closed museum in an evacuation zone in the middle of a global emergency, and I did it with my hands behind my back. No, really. That sort of posture makes it easier to push your chest forward, which I probably didn't need to do but after the day I'd been having I didn't mind having those mortals slackjawed and tripping over themselves to give me whatever I wanted.

After we were done with the museum, I also wanted to get into a medical lab. So I flirted my way into one of those, too. Kassandra wanted to come with me when she heard I wanted to get into a lab, saying she could probably help me with whatever I was doing, since she'd been able to save Dorthen. Yeah. She was the reason he lived. I owe her for that, like something huge. I'd offer her my firstborn if I were the joking type. After my first conversation with Erzulie, though, that's not something I'm ever going to say even if I'm just kidding.
Anyway, she helped me do the ultrasound. If she didn't know before, she knew now that I was pregnant. And worried. A little.
I mean, I was really only worried because yeah, growth spurts are normal. That's what gestation is, a nine month sequence of miraculous growth spurts, but three month's worth in the span of a second or two is borderline terrifying. With all of the other supernatural shit happening to us and all of the places I've had to take them, I needed to make sure they were okay. If they were born ...wrong, I would have already failed miserably as a mother. That sort of failure freaks me right the fuck out.
But we found the lab, I laid down on a squeaky gurney, unbuttoned my shirt and started telling Kas what to do... Except she didn't need any instructions. She knew exactly what she was doing. Didn't even get weird about the scars - which are going away soon, I'm thinking about doing it on national television as a stunt to get us some recognition.
On the screen I saw two healthy, normal, obviously male, perfect babies.
My babies. I felt a wave of relief and, cheesy as it sounds, sheer awe wash over me. Yeah, I cried a little (fuck you, Never. You would have cried too).
I've seen some pretty cool shit. I've stood in a wetsuit on the bottom of the ocean and changed a prophecy and fought a war to save a Terra Incognita and watched my friends gang-rape a dragon of Norse mythology. But the coolest thing I've ever heard is the sound of my sons' hearts beating.

Anyway.
Nate had arranged with the president - I guess the meeting went alright - to get us transportation to the spot in the ocean where it seemed like we needed to go, and we were all on the boat talking about who would be going (the kids weren't) and what we would do when we got there and then all of a sudden a submarine pulled up next to us. Well, by all of a sudden I mean it spent a couple of minutes surfacing and sat there for a minute. Someone popped up out of the top and started using semaphore.
They were asking something about who they were meeting. No one else piped up, so I passed along the question. Some of that military training stuck.
I was gonna respond with just, "Pritchert," but I didn't have any flags. I went to just use my shirt but I guess Gunnar didn't entirely approve. I glanced around and had gotten to the second button before he realized what I was doing and he stopped me.
I pretty vividly remember that he'd implied, back when he heard about me running through a burning house and standing around in my underwear, that it wouldn't have been a problem so long as he was there to see it. Oh well.
Anyway, he gave me his shirt, and Nate followed suit, and I let the sub know that, yes, these were the droids they were looking for.
We worked it out with the kids that they were all going to stay topside. They weren't happy about it, but if shit got out of hand in the water, I didn't want to have to worry about them. I was gonna worry anyway, but that's not the point.

After what happened, I'm really glad we left them up on the surface. They probably would have freaked.
We got ourselves changed into SCUBA gear and wetsuits and dove down in the sub - Gunnar, Nate, Harlan, Ciara, Kas, Brendan and I - and once down Gunnar opened the thing on the bottom of the sub and stuck his head down and checked to see what the coast looked like. Sparse.
Like, when he gave the all clear and we all got into the water and could take a look, it looked like the plant life and stuff was pretty normal. I couldn't really see any reason this should have been the epicenter for the earthquakes. No normal reason. Not surprising, since I hadn't really expected that the earthquakes were being caused by any normal phenomenon.
Brendan and I could see where the ghosts were disappearing into a pile of rocks. So we all unpiled the rocks and found - will wonders never cease - a machine. There was algae on it, so I brushed away the algae to get a better look. It was made of gold and had Greek carved into it:

To Cage the Darkness

Yeah.
Not quite ominous enough, so of course my first inclination is just to keep fucking with it. I tried digging down around it, ended up doing so for almost a minute before Gunnar spotted something I didn't (I'm actually a little surprised it took him that long, but maybe I was just digging kinda slowly), so he took over and we figured out it looked like it went way down into the earth. No telling how far down. At one point we turned the soul-sucking setting off, deactivating what Gunnar had said was a Spirit Beacon on the machine.
That just kinda pissed the ghosts off. One of them got mad, bitching about how it had walked all the way from Colorado.
Seriously? I'm trying to save your ethereal ass and you're bitching at me about the time you spent floating cross country? What the fuck else did you plan to be doing with your busy afterlife?
Maybe Gunnar's mannerisms are rubbing off on me a little. Or maybe I'm just getting tired enough to be a bitch, it's been like, a month and a half since I slept. Either way. I copped an attitude with the ghost, saying, "Well you shouldn't have. That was stupid." And it bitched at me some more about not being able to move on. So I shrugged and said that wasn't my problem. Because it's not. I've got ninety-nine problems, and that ghost ain't one. This machine, the fact that something is destroying these souls, the fact that Azezza was missing leaving me in danger of breaking a promise for the first time ever, that was my problem.
I guess that was the wrong answer and the ghosts got a little more pissed. They started swarming me, reaching at me and trying to rake at me with their ghosty little hands. It felt like they were trying to pull at something in my blood. It didn't really work, they couldn't hurt me. And then one of them seriously fucking dove into my stomach and I felt one of the boys start kicking like crazy. Not normal crazy, this was something going wrong. It wasn't hard enough to hurt me, but it was distracting and I was worried about both the one who was kicking and the other one who might be getting kicked, and that both of them might get hurt in the process.
Gunnar fixed it, though. Put a hand on my stomach, said, and I shit you not, "The power of Christ compels you," and the boys calmed down. There's kinda been this unspoken "low key" arrangement between us for the way we act in public and we tend not to make a big deal of being together (his preference more than mine really, but it works), but I couldn't help but kiss the man.
So whatever happened to that ghost managed to give the message to the rest of the ghosts to back the fuck off and they kinda left us alone while we fiddled with the machine. I tried to bend it, but it wouldn't give. Nate was about to hit it with his sword when we stopped him. If we could get some answers on the other side of this thing, maybe we shouldn't destroy it. Also, we had no idea how this one was connected to the other machines, and whether destroying this one would destabilize the whole world.
We talked for a bit about what to do. I got the idea that, with Gunnar's crazy ability to see things, maybe if I went through the machine he could keep an eye on me with that ring my dad gave him. I thought briefly about even letting someone else wear the ring, but maybe Dad would have been pissed off about that. Nevermind that it wasn't the ring I wear as my wedding ring. Yeah it was the one I put on at the wedding, but I wear the ring Gunnar gave me on my ring finger, along with my engagement ring.
Anyway, my jewelry is not the point. I don't wanna piss my dad off, and I knew Gunnar could watch me and I was probably one of the most capable of us when it came to surviving potentially weird environments. Ciara wasn't going to let me go alone, and for some reason Harlan wasn't either (not that I think he has any reason not to think I'm not awesome enough to follow into an underworld, he's just hard to read and surprises me when he actually wants to do something). So Brendan, having newly figured out how to talk to ghosts, and making me feel a little more sane in the process because holy fuck, someone else can see all of the weird shit I can, said he could push us through the machine and it would just be up to me to get us out. That way I would be more capable of dealing with shit on the other side and just had to worry about paying the ichor tithe to get our asses out.
Turns out, that part of the plan was unnecessary. I'm not the one who got us out of there.
The second we walked through the arch of the machine I heard Ciara grunt and Harlan screamed the most painful scream I've ever heard. And then they were blue. Translucent, blue, glowing a little. And I could see my sons.
No. That's not right.
I could see their souls because we were all dead.
I got my sons killed.

Everything in me was screaming that I wanted to turn around and walk back out, leave the arch, and run home crying to my mommy.
But I couldn't. I couldn't do a fucking thing, except move towards the deepest darkness I've ever seen. That shit in the shadows that scares kids and pets and old people? Yeah, this was probably its grandfather.
It was a Titan. Not a titan. Titan.
I've been -face- soul to ... whatever... with a Titan. Capital T. Fuck.
It was really quite civil, which was frustrating and unnerving.
You know, when you come face to face with your enemy you want to be able to hate it. You want to be able to look at it and think, "That is the bad guy. I am the good guy. The lines here are clear and I know which side of this conflict I am on. Clearly mine is the right side and everything is going to be fine. Once I figure out what the fuck it is that I'm doing here, I will know what to do next and it will be fine and I'm going to save the world and we're going to win."
Yeah, that didn't happen.
Erebus - the great and terrifying primordial darkness - was strangely polite. Aside from the part where he was ripping apart my soul.
He said they were building a new world, one that was supposed to coexist with the Old World. The world we know isn't supposed to change, and Erebus is supposed to have "dominion" over this New World. And it said it was serving the wishes of Nikola Tesla.
If Tesla has managed to convince the TITAN OF DARKNESS to serve his wishes... I'm scared. That's not really something that's ever happened before. Me being scared. I've been worried, I've been nervous, I've been on edge. But even with Scary Mary, I can't say I was really scared. I mean, I thought I was then but I didn't really know what being scared meant. I couldn't really say I'd been afraid. I said it anyway but I didn't know what it meant.
Now I do. I've been inside of and encompassed by the primordial darkness which mankind has feared since its birth. It spoke to me, and it made perfect sense and I am afraid.
Of Tesla, of this war, of what's happened before and what's coming after and for the fate of the world and the lives of my sons and the souls of my bandmates... I'm scared.
I don’t know how we can fight something like that. It’s pre-elemental and all encompassing and I wonder... I can imagine a scowl on Gunnar’s face if I say this to him, but I wonder if maybe we don’t have to fight. Maybe we can put the world back together peacefully.
Fuck, I just don't know anymore.

I came to with Kas over me, doing CPR until I came back to the land of the living. Yeah. All the divine shit we've witnessed, all of the powers we've gained, and it was CPR that brought the three of us back from inside the machine, from the grips of a Titan. Nate had successfully revived Ciara and Brendan had been working on Harlan and I was too busy coughing up water to really see what Gunnar had been doing.
As soon as my lungs were clear, I wanted to get back into the water. I had to get back in the water and I had to get back to the machine. I'd seen something in there, something that was worth dying again for.
Before I was surrounded by the darkness, right on the threshold, I had seen Azezza and gods-fucking-dammit, I was going to save her.
"Get her out. Get her out, get her out, get her out, get her out!" was pretty much all I was saying as I headed back into the water. Turns out the machine has a reverse setting, and I didn't have to die again to go get her. When she came out, I hugged her so tight I almost squeezed her out of my arms. She was crying. It's strange, and heartbreaking in ways I cannot even begin to describe, to see the ghost of a child - might as well be a baby, for fuck's sake - weeping. I kissed her forehead and held her tight and told her I was so proud of her and that she did good hanging on for so long.
Staring down the threshold of darkness.
Yeah, I started crying too.

I fucked up. I shouldn't have just assumed she was "around" when we didn't see her for a while. I should have started looking for her the second she went missing and I didn't and I almost lost her soul to the Titan of darkness and I fucked up.

We got her back up to the surface. Gair freaked out, but in a good and happy way. That made me feel a little better. Susan asked what happened, and like a dumbass I just blurted out, "I died."
I didn't even think about how that announcement would have freaked the kids out, and yeah, of course Susan got all wide eyed.
I raised my hands trying to reassure her and said, "Suzie, I'm fine. I'm fine." And then my eyes got wide when I realized she had her scalpel out - it works like my necklace, letting her do all the godly health stuff - and could see auras the way I could and I asked, with a whole lot of meaning, "I'm fine, right?" Of course she had known I was pregnant as soon as we all met up at Gunnar's, she knew the same way Dad did and the same way I would have if I'd been looking at me, and she took me aside almost bouncing up and down as she squealed quietly, "I'm gonna be an aunt?!" So I had told her yeah, she was gonna be an aunt, twice, in about four months. That weirded her out.
Now, on the boat, she looked me over and said, "Yeah, you and the kids are fine."
My face met my palm as every adolescent head on the boat swiveled toward me. Gunter looked like he wanted to say, "I told you so" but couldn't actually back it up.
Then I realized Gunnar wasn't around, he was on the other boat, and on that other boat was Kane Taoka. Except Gunnar said that wasn't the real Kane. It was a fake Kane. Gunnar had talked to him already, and said if the rest of us had questions now was the time. I had one for him, and when he got three words in, there was some bullshit about, "my dark lord and master" I decided I was done. I went back to the kids and got bitched at by Nevermore.
For dying. Cuz I totally had the choice there. He had the balls to tell me I can't go to any more underworlds while I'm pregnant and what was my dad going to say and he's going to die tragically and too young when I give him a heart attack and how dare I put myself in danger like that and what if my Band mates hadn't been there to save me and I need saving and I'm a lot of trouble and I'm going to be in a lot of trouble and blah blah blah.

We kinda parted ways with the kids, giving them instructions to head for one of the safer sites to check out that machine and remove the control rod after spitting out those ghosts. They want to help and I can't tell them to stand by the sidelines while the world is ending. I know they won't listen anyway, because they're a lot like us. They know they can help and some of them are willing to die trying.
Anyway. After that we headed back to DC. I met the President. He stared at my ass.
And Gunnar showed us some blood sample Sly gave him. Something to do with something bad, I wasn't really paying attention beyond the "oh look, something to do besides get stared at by the President." I kinda jumped the gun, but I grabbed the napkin from his hand and told the President, very sweetly, to get me into a medical lab so I could take a look at it. It's only been a couple of months so I'm still not completely used to the whole "Dr. Esparza" thing. I'm still expecting people to be stumbling over "Kladakos."
They took us to a lab and I went into doctor mode. For all the good it did. I could tell it wasn't normal. Big revelation. Why would Sly have had normal blood on a napkin? Well, besides just to fuck with Gunnar and waste his time on a wild goose chase. Anyways, Kas came with me and when she looked at it she was able to tell there was ichor in it.
So what do I do? Well, Gunnar's response in these types of situations is to taste everything. I smelled it instead. It smelled like burning amber and - I know this sounds crazy, but fuck you, you're reading a crazy woman's therapy journal anyway - it sounded like electricity. Yes. Blood has a sound. Shut up.
I wanted something to compare it to, so I decided to go start smelling other things. Well, people. I started with Gunnar, because he's the least likely to have me institutionalized (which does not mean he's the least likely to tell me I'm acting like a nutcase).
It smelled just like him.

Yeah. He looked at me like I was crazy. He couldn't smell anything. Which was weird that I could smell something he couldn't. Maybe it's all the hormones that have made my nose go all crazy. I can smell the divine, though, I swear it.

And now it's off to the Great Henge to see an asshole about a stolen ghost.
Fuck Kane.
I cannot stress this enough. FUCK THAT GUY.
Seriously. With something hard, sandpapery, and covered in chainsaws.
He stole my motherfucking ghost, after I and my husband got squid-slapped to get that bitch, and he didn't even love her, and is now trying to use her as leverage. I mean, I want to keep my promise to Erzulie. I have to. I don't break my promises. I want to give her daughter back to her, but not if it means making a deal with that motherfucker.

Shit Is Fucked Up

"Now I don’t know, and it’s hard to explain
But it seems like things are just kind of insane
Because the world is crying
But nobody’s listening
So please leave a message on my cell phone

I see bullets getting better
Biblical weather
And that guy on TV is like a total asshole

Who are you wearing tonight?
Celebrity fundraiser, tight!
Black ties making wrongs right
How’s your social Band-Aid?

I don’t know much
I don’t know too much
But I know this
Shit is fucked up!

I guess it’s all about the dream
The ends justify the means
I'm telling you, shit is fucked up!
You know it’s all about the dream
The ends justify the means

Now thank god for the media, for saving the day
Putting it all into perspective in a responsible way
With more celebrity news
Typical bullshit views
I think we’re losing this fight
Sponsored by Bud Light

And now we’re rockin’ the casbah
And taking the flak
The genie’s out of the bottle, and we can’t put it back
All this stuff
It’s overwhelming my brain
Can you see the storm comin’?
It’s coming this way

I don’t know much
I don’t know too much
But I know this
Shit is fucked up!"
The Offspring, Stuff Is Messed Up

So here's the past few hours of my day:
Harlan and Gunnar come back through the gate. My husband drops to his knees and utters a prayer to Odin that the king of the frost giants has his dad. Fuck.

We get the hell out of the mountains (after I tell him he's awesome, cuz after a trip like that I figured he might have needed it), for some reason the park ranger is coming with us, we're an hour down the road and Gunnar's phone rings.
He says hi to Brendan and then I don't even know how to describe the way he stopped the car on that icy fucking road, besides quickly. And scarily. I mean, he's the best driver I know, but for fuck's sake...
Anyway.
So he gets out of the car, drops to his knees again, and prays to Odin that LOKI IS IN MAG MELL. What the...

Boom.
Enter Odin.
Cue banter.
Exit Odin. With Gunnar.
What the fuck.

I get a text from Gunnar: "Loki isn't Loki, and we should talk about endorsement deals." Okay. I know I'm bad about the way I string sentences together, but those two phrases make no sense together.

At this point, I'm still doing alright. Odin just stole my husband and now Harlan and I are stuck with a Norwegian we can just barely talk to, and I'm confused which is irritating. I'm hungry, which is irritating, and I'm tired, which is also irritating. But I'm alright. I get back in the car, which is now Gunnar-less, and before I can even pull back on the road, I get a text from Ciara: "In case I die, here's what we asked the sphinx." Ixion is up to no good, on a massive scale (I paraphrased).
What the... Okay. Whatever.

And then my spider sense starts tingling. Ciara is about to get a knife in the gut and oh hey IXION IS IN MY FUCKING HOUSE.

I just got snippets through the brand after that, bits and pieces of Ixion being a motherfucker and Ciara being a badass. When it calmed down I called Kassandra, who said they were okay but my house was not.

So, after watching his little press release - with my house smoldering in the background, here are my conclusions:
I'm going to tear that motherfucker apart and beat him stupid with his own godsdamned appendages.
He burned my house down, after we poured all that fucking money into renovations. So now I'm severely lacking funds, without a house, and I have the clothes on my back and a pair of jeans. Fine. I sucked at living there anyway.
He tried killing one of my allies. I doubt Dorthen, the cantankerous bastard, would want me to waste any valuable ass-kicking time crying over it.
He threatened my life and called me names. Mean ones. Well, I'm rubber and he's glue. Seriously though, he can join the club on that one. Hell, he can start the fucking club for all I care. Be the president of the godsdamned thing. And frankly, I would love to see the army that's got the balls big enough and the brains small enough to think they can stop me.
But he threatened to fuck with my kids, and I don't mean the ones I'm pregnant with.
And that means WAR, motherfucker.

Let Me Be Your Armor

"Let me take the fall
Let me take the blame
Let me carry you from Hell
To home again.

Let me walk for you
When your legs are weak
Let me find the words for you
When you can't speak

Let me be your armor
Let me be your shield
Let me take away the pain you feel
Let me be the light
That guides your way through darkest night
Let me be your armor.

Let me take the blows
That were meant for you
Let me help you the trials
You're going through

Let me keep you safe
From the world outside
Let me wipe away the tears
That fill your eyes..."
Assemblage 23, Let Me Be Your Armor

So I figured out I needed to tell Gunnar what a badass husband he's been, and I figured out exactly what I was going to say, and I still had another eleven and a half hours before they came back through the gate.

So then I got to thinking, marveling I guess, about how much my life has changed since January.

When I rang in the New Year - alone, of course - I was the solitary daughter of a single mother who had died of cancer almost a decade ago. Nine years is a long time.
I was still clutching at her ghost, though. In a metaphorical sense, I mean. Not the way I could actually grab a ghost now.
I kept her house but I didn't live in it. I kept her things but I didn't use them. Instead I just let her haunt me. I treated her death like a personal failure and all the things I knew I'd wanted before she got sick... the story I used to tell her about how I'd be a kickass doctor and meet a guy at work and the whirlwind romance and lots of kids and saving the world... I gave up on it all.
Even after I got back from Afghanistan, and met my dad and started kinda pulling myself back together, I was a far fucking cry from being anything resembling "okay."
The best I managed was that I worked twenty hour days - at a job any mortal is capable of doing, if I'm being honest about it - and I talked to a bird and and I occupied one room of a seven bedroom house which, like my life at the time, was otherwise empty.
I was empty too. I was nothing special. I was eccentric, at most. There wasn't much else to damaged-but-pretty little Laurel Kladakos.

And then I met Gunnar, and the rest of the Band and, yeah, I was still damaged, but at least I felt something I hadn't felt since I was in junior high school.
The world, with its sudden influx of giant snakes and mythical monsters and evil rituals and shadow ninjas, made sense to me. I felt like I knew what I was doing again. I was supposed to take care of them all, and when I did so successfully, I started to see the pattern. From the first time I took care of their wounds, I knew what I would be doing with the rest of my existence (and even in the remote mountains of Norway, I swear I can almost hear Never's response to that: "Wot, stiching up yer viking?").
Anyway.
I told Gunnar before we got married about crazy Laurel's belief that there's a reason for everything. There's a plan, and all this crazy shit is part of it. But that belief, if I'm trying to take it seriously, means that I don't get to be picky. Either I believe in Fate and its designs, or I don't. I don't get to just point at the stuff that makes me happy and call that Fate and handwave the rest of it as bullshit bad luck. And everyone else can believe whatever the fuck they want, I don't really give a good goddamn if anyone else thinks the way I do. But I believe there's some sort of pattern, and I believe I'm not supposed to understand it all the time and I believe that we are all part of it.

I believe my mom was part of it, too.
See, when my mom got sick I think there was something I was supposed to learn from her, if I had bothered to pay attention. If I'd only looked.
But I didn't look. I fucked it up.
I looked away. Turned and ran, all the way to Afghanistan.
And I've danced around it for a very long time, but in front of that gate of ice with all that time and quiet (well, it was quiet once you got used to the rustling of the Tatzelwurms) and cold, I finally admitted the truth. I was trying to get myself killed. But I fucked that up, too.
I was lost then, really and truly. I had no other family to lean on, no friends to speak of and no desire for a future. I didn't know what else to do so I was trying to lay down and die.

The problem was that I didn't know how. I still don't think I know how, but I'm totally and completely okay with that. Even if I did know how, it's not a luxury I have anymore.
That's what my mother, in her illness, was trying to teach me. Or what Fate was trying to teach me through her illness. Anyway, she was meant to show me the strength I would need, and the grace I would need, to face an enemy that simply cannot be defeated. Because you can't beat Death (but if you can't beat 'em, join 'em? But I guess that's a thought for another time).
As a doctor I dealt with illness and death on a daily basis. As the team's doctor, I still deal with it pretty regularly.
Some days I deal with it better than others.

And like I've said to Gunnar, sometimes there is not a godsdamned thing you can do about it. Death happens. Sometimes people just die. That's what people do. Everybody knows that everybody dies. I know that people die. They've died on my table. They've died in my arms. And I did everything right, as far as I could tell. I did everything I could and it still wasn't good enough.
The point isn't just that I try to keep people from dying, though. That's not the name of the game I'm playing. The game, as I am playing it, is about taking care of their bodies while they're alive, and taking care of their souls when their bodies give up. And taking care of them in all the in-betweens. And yeah, I really think my mom was trying to teach me how to be a guardian. All of the shit that would entail.
Like, how being a guardian and a mother and a lover - a person who loves, and not just in the commonly understood sexual sense - are all pretty much the same thing. It all means having strength and patience and this insane, everlasting and unbreakable affection. It means admitting that your life doesn't belong to you anymore. It belongs to the people you love, the people you're supposed to be responsible for and even the people you don't really even fucking like but you know they need to be protected anyway. Sometimes from themselves.
It's hard choices and long nights, and a lot of rushing to other people's aid and when none of that's enough... Well, it's up to you how to handle it from there. But never in any of that do you have the option to do anything besides stay standing. Everything and every one around you can crumble and collapse, but you don't get to give up.
That was my mistake, when my mom died. I tried to be petty and childish and say that the world should suffer because my mom had to suffer. It doesn't work like that. It shouldn't work like that. I don't get to be that selfish.
I mean, part of me wants to say that one life isn't that important, but I know that's utter bullshit. One life is important, one life means everything. My mom was important and she was important because of what she taught me how to be.
She taught me how to be good, more than anything else. Even when she got sick, she didn't stop being my mom. She didn't stop caring, and she didn't stop loving me, and she didn't stop trying to keep me safe. Even after her last breath, she took care of me.

So yeah, I'm still damaged. Kinda. I probably always will be, even if I survive to be a god and live past the end of all creation. But all that damage, the scars - which I'm getting rid of soon, dammit - and the fire and even my mom's death isn't who I am anymore.
And maybe part of this revelation is because I'm pregnant and holy shit I have to be really fucking responsible now, but I don't have time to just be damaged and pretty little Laurel anymore; I have to be more. I have to be better.
I have to be a daughter and a sister and a wife and a mother and a guardian and a doctor.

Now I think I'm starting to understand what the world needs from me.

the bird's word

right, two things.
one, the asshole who thought up the word 'sphinx' is a terrorist.
two
HOLY FUCK IXION

Do You Know What I'm Seeing?

"I know it's sad that I never gave a damn about the weather,
And it never gave a damn about me.
I know it's sad that I never gave a damn about the weather,
And it never gave a damn about me.
No, it never gave a damn about me.
I know it's mad, but if I go to Hell
Will you come with me or just leave?
I know it's mad, but if the world were ending
Would you kiss me or just leave me?
Just leave me?"
Panic at the Disco, Do You Know What I'm Seeing?

11/18/2011

So after the ferry we headed north. We pretended like we were campers, in Norway, in November. I'm not sure how Gunnar pulled that off, since I was wearing flip-flops.
You know... I should have learned Norwegian. Gunnar learned Norwegian. That was really smart. He was the only one of us who took the time to be that smart. And the "park ranger" didn't speak English. That made it really difficult for me to be charming, because I'm only charming in so many languages. Norwegian is not one of them.

I don't really know what Gunnar told the guy about where we were going. But I saw him point at the map, and grin suggestively at me and I figured there was some sort of innuendo there and hoped that was my cue to bat my eyes and bite my lip.
I guess it worked, because Gunnar handed the guy his keys (if I understand correctly, this was as collateral to make sure the guy had some leverage in case Harlan and Gunnar... killed me and tried to dump my body in the mountains? I guess not everyone thinks I look as sturdy as Harlan said) and I put on a parka and we started hoofing it.

Then I gave Harlan a sixteen hour piggyback ride. In flip-flops. Dude would seriously not let go. He wasn't grabby (that I could tell through the parka) but the couple of times I tried to shrug him off and set him down he just fucking hung on like some demented spider-monkey/sloth type creature.

After a long stretch of walking, jogging, and sashaying (I sashayed. Gunnar doesn't sashay) Gunnar saw a guy sunbathing in the Jotunheimen Mountain Range. That part was kinda weird. He spotted him from 700 feet away. That part wasn't weird, that's just Gunnar. Said the guy called himself Jack Frost. I wondered where Rudolph was.

Apparently Jack Frost told Gunnar where we could find the frost giants. We kept walking.

Finally we got to some giants. Who ran away. Said we were Bullets, Axes and Pain and that they meant us no trouble but that Utgar-Loki was right over thattaway and by the way he was expecting us. Of course. It would be nice if we could be Bullets, Axes, Pain and Surprise. But that's probably not going to happen.

Then I finally convinced Harlan that, poor baby, his feet still worked and yes he had to use them. We got into this cave, where there wasn't a whole lot except for a chain and some ice, and Gunnar had the great idea for us to get some rope and use the buddy system. He didn't put it like that. I can't imagine Gunnar using the words "buddy system."

So we tethered ourselves together, and held onto the chain, and Harlan melted away part of the ice with his fiery fieriness, and then holy shit we suddenly had no ground under us. And part of the chain broke because I guess it hadn't been attached in a long time. Or was barely attached. Or was damaged and we didn't see it because oh hey it was buried in ice.

That burning away the ice thing wasn't really a great idea (and I'm officially starting to think that just maybe Harlan, while obviously smart and really good with people, is a terrible tactician and... um, we should... leave the planning to Gunnar? I might wait a while before voicing this theory to the rest of the Band). So we were just kinda stuck koala-hanging onto the chain, with a 150 foot drop beneath us. It was kinda far. My legs talked me out of just jumping from the chain with their strong desire not to get broken.
So one of the guys had the brilliant idea for us to swing over to the the ledge and climb down, and when we got to the bottom there were these massive icy gates... that I had completely, definitely seen before. I mentioned that to Gunnar. These were the gates from that vision.

We started walking towards them, and saw some big ass Tatzelwurms tethered to the walls. Guard dogs, probably. Harlan and Gunnar were in front, I was thinking about how to get around them and I started feeling the familiar pull on my blood, the kind that says there's a barrier here.
I stopped dead, not going through. Gunnar turned, he must have heard me stop.
I told him if I went through with them I wouldn't be able to come back out with them, not after that stunt with the ferry. In that weird, metaphysical sense I felt like I was just too tired and it had worn me out. I'd be stuck in Jotunheim if I went through, for who knows how long.
I wanted to go with them anyway and hope that on the other side I could pull off some trick that would allow me to come back. I almost did go anyway.
I took a tiny step forward and Gunnar started making this face like... it's hard to describe. He closed his eyes tightly and pursed his lips angrily and lowered his head while he shook it and... It was kind of like a face-palm and a wince and the inhalation right before an angry scream and one of those disappointed and heavy sighs, but none of it was audible and it was all just on his face. It was that look that made it sink in, I was about to strand our sons in Jotunheim, and strand myself too and all the while on the other side of the barrier the war would just carry on without me and there would probably be more lives lost on the other side, some of them probably my friends, because I refused to listen to Fate when it was just telling me to fucking "stay."
But I listen to Gunnar.

And more than that, I couldn't think of any reason, any threat big enough that I would want our sons born there, that's for damned sure.

I wanted to hand Gunnar my axe, but I couldn't reach through the barrier and he was already on the other side. He made a move of some sort, but he couldn't reach through the barrier either. I wanted to hand him my necklace, or one of my rings, or anything that would help the the two of them, but I couldn't reach through the barrier. I wanted to kiss him goodbye, but I couldn't reach through the fucking barrier.
Harlan heard what the problem was and kinda grinned at me. "I'll bring your husband back." I'm not sure if he meant that to be reassuring. It wasn't.
"Oh, you fucking better." My teeth were clenched. "Or I will find you."
"I'm sure you will," Harlan just kept grinning. I think. It was hard to tell, he was already breakdancing past the Tatzelwurms. I'm not sure if that was supposed to be a brushoff or what. I didn't, and still don't, really care. All I cared about was that if shit hit the fan and Harlan didn't do everything he could to bring Gunnar back to me, I was going to make him so fucking sorry.

Gunnar turned to go with Harlan, after basically telling me to take it easy and make sure I would be able to keep myself out of trouble. I watched his back moving farther away for as long as I could, which wasn't really all that long, and after a while I sat down.
And I thought.
Twelve hours. Just thinking.
I won't lie, somewhere in hour two I started talking to myself.

In the course of my thinking, here's what I came up with: I should have put on more than a parka, and Gunnar is awesome.
No, I didn't take all twelve hours to figure that out. It only took about thirty minutes for me to realize what a badass my husband is, and it's something I need to make sure he hears from me in case we get separated again and one of us can't make it back.

It sucked that I couldn't follow Gunnar into Jotunheim. It was frustrating as hell to encounter a challenge about which I could do exactly fuck and all. Then it occurred to me how lucky I am that Gunnar and Harlan went in anyway. They were willing to finish something I started. Because really, this whole fucking thing is my fault. I shot Marie, I said I'd get her back and as a result we all lost three months of our lives. It's my fault we had to go to Hel, and it's my fault they're going to find Utgar-Loki and I should have planned better and been able to go with them but I didn't and I couldn't and it didn't stop them.
I was really surprised that Harlan went, but it didn't surprise me that Gunnar was going, and that got me thinking about all of the other times I haven't been surprised by the awesome shit he's done.
It reminded me of when I first saw Erzulie through Sibyl. I'd had tears in my eyes that night, and Gunnar said something about how hell would be a vacation, volunteering right off the bat to go with me.
That was the part that put a smile back on my face.

See, a lot of guys will tell a woman they'll go through hell, either with her or for her, or whatever they think she wants to hear so they can get into her pants. Most guys, and this is the stuff I wanna make sure Gunnar knows I'm grateful for, never bother to prove it. Most guys never have to, so those bullshit promises are completely safe to make.
But it's not bullshit, not from him.
He's proved it twice.

Everybody Lives (or: We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat)

11/18/2011

Dear Diary:
Today we kicked ass. Gunnar and Harlan and I were like superheroes.
I'm really fucking tired because of it, but not physically or mentally. I'm tired in a metaphysical sense. It was worth it though, because for about half an hour I felt like I knew exactly what I needed to do and I knew exactly how to do it and I was perfectly capable of all the things that needed to be done.
I've really missed that feeling.
But, the best part: Everybody lived.

Gunnar, Harlan and I were on the ferry, going to look for giants because for some reason I can't really remember anymore that sounded like a good idea at the time. I was losing at cards against Gunnar, which brought back fond memories of our meeting in Vegas. After a few hands there was some commotion on the ferry. A guy who looked like Orlando Bloom showed up, saying he was Cupid.
Yeah. Cupid. At least I rate a messenger boy.
He said my dad was busy, and beyond that he was pretty much no help at all. To me, anyway. He gave Harlan two of the answers to his crossword puzzle. Titanic and werewolf. Um... now that I think about it... that's kinda ominous. But he smelled alright. I think.
And he played a hand of poker, and at least had a look on his face for a minute like he thought he was going to beat Gunnar.
He didn't.

I wished my dad hadn't been busy, there were a lot of things I wanted to ask him. I could have told Cupid to ask my dad to get back to me before March (if the world lasts that long), that probably would have given him the idea of what I wanted to talk to him about.
Unless I get surprised again by the time distortion of a Terra Incognita, I've got four months until these kids are born and like I told Gunnar, that's probably something I should plan for. That was one of the things I wanted to talk to my dad about, whether he knew any good doctors. I mean, he's the doctor-god. He's gotta know someone. Someone who's good with the divine. Someone who won't ask too many questions about how I don't look pregnant and why my blood isn't red and stuff like that.
I mean, it's not like I'll be able to deliver the kids myself.
There's a small possibility I might be too busy screaming, like some women do during childbirth. I mean, I'd be full of it if I tried to pretend I wasn't just a little nervous. Normal labor is supposed to be painful to normal people. I might get lucky, since I'm not a normal person and this might be a completely normal pregnancy. I don't know if this is going to be normal labor. I don't know if these are going to be normal kids. My mom never said anything about me being a particularly difficult delivery. But there was only one of me, and only one of my parents was epic.
Yeah. I'm nervous.
I wish I were selfish enough to spend the time asking Sibyl how much this is going to hurt. Fuck. I want my mommy.

Oh, and I also wanted to ask my dad if Zeus is going to kill me.
It's something that occurred to me a little after the Baron's answer, when I asked him about raising the dead. I've started to get the feeling that it's not something people are supposed to do. So I started thinking about the people who have done it.
I've come up with one name, so far.
Asclepius.
My brother.
It uh... it didn't end well.

So I told Cupid to make sure they name me something better than "The Snake Handler" (Why? Because fuck snakes, that's why), and he fluttered off to who-gives-a-fuck. Then I went back to playing poker with Gunnar. And by that I mean I went back to losing at poker to Gunnar. Somehow I didn't really mind.

It was almost like a mini-vacation, a ferry trip in Scandinavia. And then, reminding us that we were still on duty, there was an explosion sound that made the boat lurch. And Gunnar said there was a big shark in the water. I didn't see it, not at first, but I trust his eyes.

That's why, in a move that would have had Nevermore screaming bloody murder, I leapt without hesitation right into the frigid water. In front of a moving ferry, right in the path of an abnormally huge Great fucking White that I wasn't even able to see yet. Jotun Jaws.
It's not like I was being completely reckless though, I've learned this trick where my skin hardens a bit (and for some reason it turns gold and I look awesome) and I can take more hits. It wouldn't have stopped Never from screaming at me, though.
Once I got in the water I couldn't really see what Harlan was doing, but I heard him shouting at people for them to move and people usually listen to Harlan. I figured he had that handled, and then I saw everyone falling off the boat including two fucking kids. They weren't great swimmers, and one got sucked under the water before that big fucking shark decided the kid looked like a Happy Meal. Shit got bad pretty quickly.
So Gunnar grabbed my axe from me and shouted for me to deal with the people. I ran up the side of the boat so I could jump into the middle of the biggest crowd of people and...
I'm not sure how I did it. I didn't know I could do it. Well, until I did it.
I just... wanted. I wanted everybody safe, and I wanted not to lose the boat and I especially wanted that kid the hell out of that shark's throat. I bent the world to my will, is the only way I'm really sure to explain it. I bent the world, and it felt good.
There was... pressure around us. Under our feet, lifting the shark to the point where he was beached and keeping the boat from sinking anymore. Like a shield, except no one could see it. They felt it though. It didn't make any sense, but there it was. Something they couldn't see. Something the boat couldn't break. Something I put there, keeping them safe.
They applauded.
Gunnar hefted my axe, which he used a few seconds later to unleash utter hell on Jaws in a very sexy way, and I hopped over and tore the kid out of the shark.
With my bare hands, which were still gleaming like gold.
The guys got everyone out of the water, and I took my shield thing and started swimming for shore. It was either that or wait to be rescued. Fuck waiting, I was the rescue.

I swam and the shield moved with me. Half an hour later, ish, we found land.
There was a crowd at the port. And everybody was staring. And crowding around us. And wanting to talk to us and generally getting in the way. From that point, that feeling where I knew exactly what to do just kinda went away. I was clueless again. I had no idea how to handle this crowd, they were making me nervous and I couldn't think of anything to do besides smile. Probably like an idiot.

And then Gunnar stepped up and started handing out business cards. He told me he's got some ideas. And he told me that he'd told those people just to call me "The Doctor."


"Some days are special.
Some days are so, so blessed.
Some days nobody dies at all.
Now and then, every once in a very long while—every day in a million days when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call—everybody lives."
River Song from Doctor Who

Here It Goes Again

"I guess there's gotta be a break in the monotony
But Jesus, when it rains, how it pours..."
OK Go, Here It Goes Again

11/17/2011

So. Gunnar and I are headed for giant-land, and for some reason I can't remember, Harlan is coming with us.
Kassandra and Ciara are getting Nevermore and Astrid (Kassandra's cat, who should totally be in one piece), and heading for the house in Berkeley.
Nate and Brendan are... doing something. Nate's checking in on Alison, said something about moving her. I told him they would always have room in Berkeley but I don't know if that's going to pan out. After Nate takes care of that, they're heading to Mag Mell for... I can't remember what. I've been meaning to check in on the place after that vision about the Morrigan and the digging but a) not my parents and b) other shit to do.

Speaking of other shit to do, the world is ending. I'm pretty sure that's the official conclusion. There are earthquakes all over the world, mirroring one another around the globe. Antipodal something or other. They're getting worse, they're happening regularly, and they're causing tsunamis.

One of the places that keeps getting hit is in Chile. Normally... well, there is no normally. This shit isn't normal. Anyway, the reason most of us raised our eyebrows over this is because the last time Chile got hit with a big-ass earthquake was when some of the Titans broke out of Tartarus. So... more good news there.
Plus the earthquakes and the tsunamis are causing riots everywhere and some genius released a color coded map trying to tell people where they're safe. Where are people safe? Well, there's the South Pole... in theory... and that's pretty much it.

There's a new volcano forming near the Congo too, a mount... something or other. They named it something to do with Titans, or good and evil or... something. Adroa I think. Anyway, makes me think of the way the food spoiled in New Orleans and there was an outbreak of the plague when Crom Cruach was brushing up against the world and that maybe this is the work of the fire titan. Muspelheim? I'm not really sure what to call it, besides bad and apocalypsey. "Some say the world will end in fire..."
Anyway.

Oh, and while we were gone, in September, Kane officially bought Jack's "dad's" company, and there was supposed to be some big announcement from Jack's dad right before he conveniently kicked the bucket. Something to do with pharmaceuticals. That's probably bad, too.

Oh, and Pan, that motherfucker, is up to something. How do I know this? Well, for one thing, he's still breathing. But more than that, I'm pretty sure that he's the arrogant asshole whose calling himself William Blake (religious poet-nut, and illustrator of the work which proclaimed it was "better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven"), and proclaiming himself a negotiator for that clusterfuck over in Eurasia. And combining that with the angel-bombs Frigg showed me, and what we saw when we found Horace in the desert of Mutavilya... well, it looks bad.

Speaking of that clusterfuck, yeah. It seems like China and Russia are about to bomb each other back to the stone age, and take the rest of the globe with them. North Korea's got something to do with it too, but... well, I hate politics and wasn't paying as much attention as I probably should have been.

And there's a soul-sink in the middle of the Atlantic, tons of ghosts just making like the exodus and it probably has to do with that machine Loki stole from us, the one that burns souls. And in a similar vein, Azzeza's gone missing. Well, her ghost. I feel like shit about that. I promised her I'd figure out what happened to her and make it right. That might be the first promise I've ever broken.

And I lost three months, somewhere down in Helheim. So, there's three months of checkups and shit I probably should have been doing to make sure the boys are alright.

And all of the overworlds seem to be under attack again. It's serious enough that Hercules went back to Olympus, right at the end of September. He left the kids (except Gunter, who's back in Berkeley) on the East Coast, which irritates me a little, but I guess that's just me worrying too much. I know they're smart and resourceful and if I've managed to live this long they'll probably be fine.

On the bright side, Gunnar said, in one of the brief instances we've had to talk, that he's okay. Just thinking. I hope he lets me in on whatever he comes up with, cuz between the asking me for no reason I know of if I was screaming in Guinnee, some crack about divorce that he later said was supposed to be a joke (at least he admitted it wasn't funny), going all silent before he went to find Jack, and treating me like I was burning in Nifelheim, I've been a little worried that the man is about to crack. Maybe it's everything, maybe it's stress. I mean, from our perspective we had normal lives back in January which was seven months ago, not eleven like the rest of the world would tell you. Then we started fighting crazy scions and trash frogs and we fought a fomorian war and watched a god die and we just had the most frustrating wedding ever about two months ago. A day later I knew I was pregnant and a week after that we both went "back to work," traipsing through underworlds and getting slapped at by mega-squid, before he went to convince someone we hardly know to take care of our kids so we could traipse through more underworlds and freeze our asses off. But he says he's okay.
Or he will be.
Or something.

I think I missed part of the explanation, there's a disconnect between why he's mad at Harlan and why he thought I was on fire. Harlan's only really been pretty nice to me, but maybe I missed something. I zone out sometimes on accident since the boys had that growth spurt.
Oh, yeah. When I said lost three months I meant that I lost three months of pregnancy too, and suddenly when I came out of Helheim I got a strong, surprising kick to the bladder and was five months pregnant instead of two months pregnant and the boys, like I told Gunnar, seem to have started a mosh pit and are now bodychecking my internal organs with distracting frequency. I'm not sure if I make noise when it happens, or if he can just hear them moving, but Gunnar asked if it hurt. It feels pretty much like you would expect it to feel if some small someone (or two someones, in this case) were occasionally assaulting you from the inside. It's not comfortable, and it makes it hard to concentrate sometimes, but it doesn't really hurt. At least not yet, but there's still four months to go.

I guess also on the bright side, since we just skipped three months of real time in the overworld, when we got out we had an assload of messages from Dorthen. Basement's done. Lab is done. Workshop is done. Etc.
Gunnar said he's giving Dorthen a raise.
I didn't know we were paying him.

Queen Bitch

"She's an old-time ambassador
Of sweet talking, night walking games
And she's known in the darkest clubs
For pushing ahead of the dames
If she says she can do it
Then she can do it,
she don't make false claims
But she's a Queen,
and such are queens
That your laughter
is sucked in their brains..."
David Bowie, Queen Bitch

Hel is a bitch.
More than that, she's a scary bitch. A scary two-faced bitch.
And she lives in a scary place. A scary, two-faced place with goatshit and blood pools and lazy minions, but it did have some of the nicest bathrooms I have ever seen.
I don't want to go back. I have to, but oh I so do not want to.
I mean, I've got a really strong stomach and it's been a long time since I threw up, but that hall was just fucking gross.
Also, fuck frost giants. Especially fuck the ones who die dramatically on me before I get the chance to kill them myself.

I guess I probably should get out of the killing mindset though, since Queen Bitch wants me to go solve a mystery for her before she'll give me Marie's body.
Do I look like fucking Scooby Doo? I have to figure out why her father was trying to steal the Black Feather Shroud from her. My gut reaction? Fuck if I care, what do you want with a voodoo body anyway?
Also, why does Loki do anything? Shits and giggles, my friends. Shits and giggles.

At least I didn't have to walk anymore, Ciara brought out her boat and she and Nate had been taking turns carrying it while Harlan molested this glass thing that keeps him from freezing to death. I wish I hadn't told Ciara, she's been way too nice to me now. It was worth it to see her tear it up going against Modgud though, all decked out in borrowed relics. Reminds me, I've got some ideas for some new paintings. Exploding dragons and broken shields. Ugh, sounds like the title for some bad poetry.

Fuck.

No Man's Land

"Headin' in or headin' out
Standing on the shore
Pause a moment to reflect
Which trip costs you more

Between the ever restless crowds
And the silence of your room
Spend an hour in no man's land
You'll be leaving soon

Victims come and victims go
There's always lots to spare
One victim lives the tragedy
One victim stops to stare

And still another walks on by
Pretending not to see
They're all out there in no man's land
Cause it's the safest place to be

But sanctuary never comes
Without some kind of risk
Illusions without freedom
Never quite add up to bliss

The haunting and the haunted
Play a game no one can win
The spirits come at midnight
And by dawn they're gone again

And so it seems our destiny
To search and never rest
To ride that ever changing wave
That never seems to crest
To shiver in the darkest night
Afraid to make a stand
And then go back and do our time
Out there in no man's land..."
Bob Seger, No Man's Land

I want to go home. I want this to be over and I want Gunnar to be okay and to stop being so quiet.
And while I'm taking the time to want things that aren't going to happen in the near future, I want world peace and I want the titans to just decide to play nice or give up or both and I want a room full of puppies and I want an easy bake oven that dispenses brownies on command.
Brownies sound really good right now. Hell, any real food sounds good right now. As long as it is hot and not made of questionable beef.
I've spent the past nine days eating protein bars and drinking water so cold I'm surprised my lips don't freeze to the bottle. I want that to be done with, too.
The trip has just been tedious from the beginning, since I busted my ass falling onto one of the frozen roots of Yggdrasil.
At least I didn't fall into the water like some of the others. Like Gunnar, especially. It sucked watching him have to pretty much strip down to warm back up. I was wracking my brain about how I could help him, and all I could come up with was to treat him like a normal hypothermia victim and strip down with him to share my body heat. I just wasn't sure my body could handle the cold here if I were nearly naked too, and having recently been repurposed as an incubator, I figured he of all people would understand that I didn't really wanna find out.
And that was the fun part of the trip through this wasteland.

We warmed everyone up and we started walking. And we kept walking. There was darkness, and there was snow, and there was a road bordered by bones. Charming.
We fought giants who started things off on the wrong foot by calling us "meat." Long story short, we won. Gunnar actually let one - the only one who survived - surrender, telling it to spread the word not to fuck with us. We weren't meat, he told them. We were something else. Something about us being bullets and axes. I added that we were pain. Bullets and axes and pain. I like it.

We'd been walking for a while longer when Nate started freaking out, saying that he couldn't feel? his wife anymore. I dunno. I've heard weirder, sometimes from my own mouth, so I didn't really ask. I did sit my happy ass down in the middle of the road to Helheim - which, like everything else in that fucking place, was cold - and asked Sibyl to show me a thing or two about a thing or two.
What did I see?
Well, I finally got my vision of sunshine and puppies. Well, one puppy. Well, I didn't really see it. Fuck it, I'm counting it anyway. Before that though, I got a cold marble barrel against my temple - I remembered to unload it - and then I felt sunlight on my skin.
Twenty feet away from me was Alison. Blue dress, red and white picnic cloth. Blossoms on a cherry blossom tree. Must have been spring. The sound of little feet in the grass. A little boy, not any older than six, came around the tree trunk. He was wearing a leather sheriff's vest and Nate's Stetson. It had seen a lot of use, thing was all beat to Hell.
Alison asks if the boy caught something, a male something, but the boy explains that the dog ran too fast. He asks why Dad can't have a picnic with them. Alison gathers the boy into her arms, calling him Ethan and explaining that Nate has a very important job to do. Nate loves them and wishes he could be there. Like kids do, I hear the kid starting to ask, "But why?"
Then the feel of the sun faded away - I think I whimpered just a little as the cold settled back into my skin and my bones. I was back in Nifelheim and I told Nate that Alison was going to be fine. Six years, ish, saw her playing with their kid and having a picnic. I told him they missed him, but that they were fine. I'd have told him more, if he asked. He doesn't ask nearly as many questions as he should.
Oh and I started bawling like a little girl with a skinned knee because my kids won't get picnics with either of their parents. Instead they get Jack and because I'm being nice and trying to reassure a friend and help him decide whether to turn back and go home to his wife, I get reminded that my kids are going to grow up without me. Best day ever.
And after that, we walked some more. Harlan bitched a little. He had the right though, the cold was taking the hardest toll on him. It's really weird having someone around who is even squishier than Brendan. I tried keeping an eye on him, since he'd been nice enough to set my weapon on fire for me. He hadn't bothered to make sure I could handle it, and when I asked he gave a very Gunnaresque answer, saying that I looked like I'd have been fine. I guess it was a compliment?
Oh and after that we walked some more.
And then there was a snake. For once, it didn't immediately curl around Gunnar. It tried curling around me instead, and buried its fangs in my shoulder, and that hurt like a bitch. Nate tried pulling me free, and that didn't work. It just wiggled me around on the fangs and that hurt like a bitch suffering from PMS. Then Gunnar busted out some of those explosives.
"You've got five seconds," he'd grinned as he shoved a pound of C4 past me, down the serpent's throat.
A lot of wives would be upset.
Me? I'm a sucker for that grin, and I knew what I was getting into when I said my vows. Well, I thought I did. I knew that life married to Gunnar was going to include both snakes and explosions. I just mistakenly thought it was going to be one or the other at a single time.
I did manage to shimmy off of its fangs and get away, everybody else backed off too, and the explosion was kinda anticlimactic. I told Gunnar he should have used more.
And then there was more walking. And a blue kid. Not a smurf, a frost giant. When I saw my first frost giants earlier, I had realized that when Gunnar said his dad was in Scandinavia because of the frost giants (oh yeah, Gunnar's dad is in Scandinavia after the frost giants pulled something on him and now Gunnar has this gorgeous car), that's probably what I'd seen with those icy gates when Frigg gave me future-vision. Smurf kid and his creepy granny fed us, put us to sleep, and I woke up with Harlan slapping me in the face. He's lucky I didn't punch him. Harlan said she was up to no good. So we took her firewood and gtfo'd. We should have taken her food too. Protein bars suck.
Then we ran into a dragon. Well, it was a dragon we'd already run into before. It had wanted to chomp on us at the beginning, but Harlan's valkyrie - yeah, I know, we were too busy getting on with things to react with a proper "What the Fuck" - said we were under her protection. So the dragon was all like, "Rawr, they're only safe when you're with them," and then she told Harlan she was going to Hel's hall and we could have fun with the nine-day-walk. Bitch.
She should have told the dragon that distance from us would have been for its own good. We fucked him up pretty good, after he hit us with some "never should have existed" fire. I got the ball rolling, using that "Hey look over here fucker" trick that I do so well. It went a little too well. It was interested only in me, kept trying to claw at me. Once it tried to take off with me, which was funny when it failed really hard. Also, FIRE AXE!!
We gave it a gaping chest wound, thanks mostly to Brendan and Ciara. Then Gunnar almost blew it up. And he almost blew everyone else up. I don't think they took it well, maybe they'd forgotten what it was like working with him while we'd been working separately. Harlan, apparently deciding that I was not in fact as sturdy as I looked, saw what was going on and pulled me back before Gunnar hit the detonator. Then Gunnar freaked the hell out in mid-attack on the dragon and hasn't been talking much since. He just jumped off and started doing I don't know what. After I tore the dragon a new one with my axe I went to follow Gunnar to make sure he was okay, but Ciara and Kassandra were calling out to me along with the others. I guess they thought it was a bad idea to let this dragon die.
I slapped it. It made it better.
I also started trying to take some dragon scales from it, as souvenirs to leave with the boys when we handed them over to Jack, but I really sucked at it. I was either so cold or so shaky or so confused about Gunnar... I dunno. I was just tearing the scales up and about to make the whole "healing the dragon so Nidhogg and sons don't hold a grudge" thing utterly pointless. Oh. Yeah, this was one of Nidhogg's sons.
Then Ciara, I guess deciding she hadn't been enough of a badass when she was surfing on the thing in midair while the rest of us were busy being useless (and being the only one of us who was able to pull Brendan's spear out), offered to help me. She was able, after five minutes, to hand me one perfect dragon scale about the size of a piece of toast. Which reminded me again that I was hungry and that even toast sounded delicious. I didn't even need butter on it. Just bread sounded good. Or bread and tzatziki. Potatoes and tzatziki. Potatoes and guinness... I miss guinness.
Uh, anyway. Dragon scale. It was kinda ugly, actually. Greenish black and not pretty at all. I asked her to get me another. It would be hard to make something for two boys out of one scale.
Then we kept walking. And Gunnar, who had been kinda talkative before while he was teaching Ciara Old Norse, just clammed up. Didn't really even say anything when the blizzard got worse and he looked like he was about to freeze to death.
Though, I guess it's worth pointing out that Harlan didn't really say anything either, and he looked like he was about to fall over. There was something up between Gunnar and Harlan, and no one was saying what and it was almost a relief when we came up to a golden bridge, Gjallrbru (it means "golden bridge." The Aesir are not very creative). Gunnar spotted it first, and said the first thing he had since the dragon.
Altogether there were nine fucking days of not-exciting-at-all walking before we got to that bridge, and when we got to that bridge we were greeted by a giantess who wanted nothing more than for us to try to kill her.
I nominated Ciara as our resident badass.
Well, by nominated I mean, I asked her to participate in a one-on-one potential maiming since that didn't strike me as something a pregnant woman should do. And when I asked Ciara to do it, I pulled her away from the group so they wouldn't hear (though Gunnar probably heard anyway) and I told her why I couldn't. The whole, "being two and a half months pregnant with twins" thing gets in the way of honor battles. Part of me didn't want to let that stop me, but the other part that still has a few brain cells screamed at me that if that giantess hit me in the stomach with a good blow, I'd probably lose the boys.
Ciara said yes instantly. Then she asked to borrow my axe. I handed her that, and the ring Heimdall gave me and she used both like a boss. Modgud was happy to let us pass, and not quite so happy that she thought she was sending us to our deaths.
And that's how I spent my summer vacation.

No, seriously. I lost three months when I got out of there. That comes later, though.

Run with the Wolves

8/2011
Dear Diary:
Today I walked into Wolfsheim and took their statue.
Well, there was a little more to it than that. We gathered the troops together before deciding to just head over to Wolfsheim and get it over with.
I talked to Fenrir’s kids, to let them know what I was doing there. Well, they asked. They wanted us to hunt with them. I agreed, at first. Then I found out that when they say “hunt” they mean “set ourselves loose in an enclosed space where every member of the opposing faction is housed so we can slaughter them.” I backed out when I figured that part of it out. Anyway, they told me as long as the people didn’t mind I could take the machine. I guess those wolves really don’t like Heimdall though, they said they weren’t going to let Gunnar in. It didn’t stop him, of course. I mean, I saw him walk up the path towards the way out of the village, and then all of a sudden when I was up next to the mayor’s house, he was just next to me. Grinning. All nonchalant, with just a “Hey Laurel.”
Like we hadn’t just walked away from the wolves of Ragnarok, the ones who are supposed to eat the sun and moon. After a surprised doubletake, I couldn’t help but grin back. Kassandra and I found the mayor, with some translation help from Nevermore.
Something’s up with that bird. He wasn’t really talking to me or looking at me which means he’s done something he shouldn’t have, or he’s thinking about doing something he shouldn’t have, or he’s thinking about something he’s done that he shouldn’t have.
Anyway. Because the gods have a sense of humor and I didn’t think to learn German, the bird was my translator. The mayor said it was fine to take the statue – which, by the way, is fucking creepy. It’s like a roach motel for the dead, as far as I can tell. They check in, but they don’t check out. So Nate was carrying that, and Gunnar slipped away again because the wolves came back and asked their uncle, Harlan the Blondie, to hunt with them. He said he would, then he trapped them underground with the goblins. No love lost between family members, I guess.
Then we got beyond the boundaries of Wolfsheim and I prayed to Dionysus like I was supposed to and he showed up and took the machine. Then another Dionysus showed up with Zeus, and the first Dionysus became Loki and I called out for Odin who showed up with Thor and then there were leaves everywhere and Dionysus wasn't the Situation anymore, he was just a blonde Greek guy who'd fucked everything up.
I distinctly remember crossing my arms and looking at him with my jaw clenched, saying nothing except that he was late and he'd better still keep his end of the deal.
On the bright side, if there can possibly be one, now we know what Loki looks like... sometimes.
So now we’re spending some time getting ready for the trip into Helheim, laying in supplies and such. Gunnar’s buying some explosives.
It’s going to be interesting.