The Times They Are A'Changin'

My son saved my life the day he was born.
I fought with Pan in the Gobi Desert. And I mean I fought next to him. Not against him. I lost my clothes in that fight. I stood stark naked in a sandstorm, just me, my axe and my scars. I tried to fight a moment. Well, The Moment. Kairos. Our dye-job, strudel zord of an angel. That's how I lost my clothes. The Moment stood before me, my clothes fell away. My skin might have too, if I were any softer.
And you know, normally I feel like I'm supposed to do these things in some sort of chronological order, but seriously, fuck time. It's fucking with me, and I'm going to fuck right back.

So. Here's what I remember.

I saw my dad at Delphi. Yeah, we went to Delphi from the Henge. Gunnar, Brendan and I. We figured that was as good a place as any to put Marie's spirit. I called her from wherever-the-fuck-she-was and Gunnar did some magical something-or-other and told her to stay fucking put. It's consecrated ground, which the guys tell me is a place where ghosts aren't supposed to be, so it was harder to call her to me but she didn't like... burst into flames or anything when she got around to showing up. So we decided to go ahead and bind her there anyway. I got to do a Scorpio impression. Scorpion. Something like that. That was kinda funny. Well, I don't remember if either of the guys laughed. I thought it was funny.
After that my dad showed up. Apparently he was slightly concerned about my death. The rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated. I told him I got better. He didn't seem as impressed as I would have hoped, instead he was just mad at Gunnar. I wanted to just tell my dad to shut up, that it was my fault and to lay off my husband but how do you yell at a god who looks all wrong? Well, point one, don't yell at gods. That's a good way to get yourself killed. More than that, though... The guys didn't see what I saw. My dad is coming apart. His ichor is tearing itself up, or something. It's one of the scariest things I've seen. He didn't look like he should even be standing. He said it had something to do with the way Terra was attacking Olympus.
So of course, first I ask him what he's doing in Midgar and shouldn't he be up on the hilltop fighting the good fight, then I made him hang around and answer some of my questions. I asked about the Tesla vision, but I mostly wanted to know if Zeus was going to kill me when I was finished bringing Marie back (because that shit is going to happen. Gunnar and I have put way too much work into getting her back).
Yeah. World is ending, overworlds are under assault and pretty-but-damaged-little-Laurel is still worried about her own skin. The best answer I got? Pretty much just, "Maybe." He did say he'd see what he could do. I wish him luck, I have become kind of attached to this whole "living and breathing" thing. I also think I'm actually, finally starting to get just a little bit good at it.
Oh and Dad said something is cutting scions in the mundane world off from the overworlds. The Tuatha and the Pesedjet have been cut off, he said. I mentioned the Amatsukami. Dad said the Dodekatheon might be next. Comforting. Tesla's tearing the world apart and we're pretty much on our own. Nah, it's cool. We got this. Obviously.

I checked in with Sibyl in the Henge. That was when I saw Kairos, fighting Pan. We thought maybe it was some god of conflicting concepts. We were wrong. How does it feel to be wrong all the time? Well, it's really fucking annoying.
I saw a lot of other shit, too. I saw motherfucking Pan, helping... doing something I couldn't. I got the feeling he was going to succeed where I might fail, and he might save my kids where I wasn't able to and that scared me more than having Erebus mindfuck me inside Tesla's device. Speaking of Tesla, he is the man who sold the world. Or something like that. I saw the universe, I think. It is, for the record, full of stars. There was one tiny blue sphere, that I was damn sure was my tiny blue sphere. The Earth. I saw those hands reaching for it, out of the blackness, and Tesla cloaked the earth with some... thing. And he was huge. That was the Tesla vision. Except it wasn't a vision, I don't know how I knew but I knew anyway that it was not something yet to be, it was something that already was. And he looked right fucking at me. I don't understand it still. I probably won't until it's too late to do anything about it and we are all already well and proper fucked, because apparently Fate just likes me that much right now.
I thought maybe Fate and I were on friendly terms, because I thought Fate was showing me when things were going to happen but Fate is a lying bitch because no-fucking-thing is happening the way it is supposed to. The last thing happened first and nowhere in that vision did it fucking tell me I would be giving birth to my twin sons after really only being pregnant for three months, in some collapsing shop in backwoods China. That is something I would have liked to have been warned about. Yeah, that happened.
Oh and apparently I had a seizure in the Henge. That's what Nate said. I don't know if I trust it. He's not quite right in the head since having his noggin tentacled by Mikaboshi. Yeah, it looked as gross as it sounds.

Being in the Henge was just a little fucked up. Kane, who carries a fucking Titan on his belt, was there, with all of his bitches. Ixion, Carmen, and Cordelia. She apparently killed her unicorn. She said she was with Kane because he respected her, unlike her daddy and I wanted to barf on the lawn of the Great Henge there because she sounded just fucking like Marie. I tried warning her of her future but the dumb hooker can't see ghosts and called me a crazy bitch. I have to wonder, will I get to a point where my looks can actually kill? Because it would have been satisfying. I tried staring daggers through her soul. She looked like maybe she only felt a little poke.
It wasn't all bad, though. Because a Titan broke the rules and it sounded like it hurt. Well, it made Nate kinda crazy, first and that legitimately sucks. But the Titans have to play by the rules, too. And that is giving me some ideas.

And now I'm a mom, and I'm buck-ass-naked, except for Gunnar's trench that he was nice enough to give me. Nate offered me his jacket too, he's still all gentlemanly like that, even with a few marbles gone missing. I'll admit it, I'd just rather wear Gunnar's clothes. It's like a security blanket thing, except I look like a flasher.
He was there, when our kids were born. Kinda. He was outside, fighting angels. Angels with lasers. Or so I was told. I didn't see them. I was a little distracted, with the whole labor thing. But with Gunnar's crazy ears he probably heard them crying, heard them draw their first breaths more clearly than I did, since I had screaming asian women and a building falling down around me. On the bright side, I think that was one of the quickest and least complicated deliveries ever (thank you Kass).
Gunnar said he saw our kids. Not the babies I'd just had, but like, our adult kids. Our twins, and another kid who he said was pretty obviously ours. A girl. And Jack was there with his griffin, and we think Brendan Gair was there, too. I didn't get to see any of them, I just saw Erik, when he did... something. Saved my life. And his life, and his brother's and Kassandra's. I think.
Gunnar said that our other boy, Alexander, saved him and Nate. And the someone who I think was Brendan Gair made an angel eating T-Rex. I figure it was Gair because I keep seeing four cribs, and I have been pregnant with twins, and I saw the two cribs in the middle in trouble. I'm guessing this wibbly-wobbly time business was the trouble, so it would be the twins who were the middle cribs. So there was a kid before the twins, and there will be a kid after... Gair's the only other kid I have. That I know of. I'm pretty sure I'd know if I had another kid. Or would I? Fuck, I'm just not sure about some things these days.

Oh and right after their birth, my infant sons aged ten years in my arms as the world fell down around us and we all appeared in some room with a Chinese guy who had a Russian accent and a Rufio haircut (bangarang) and I think now I'm going to take a moment and just freak right the hell out. Quietly and in my head, because I can't just fall apart in front of my kids. Sure, they're only like... fifteen minutes old, but I figure that would start a bad precedent for their first memory of their mother to be her naked and screaming on some random street in China.
None of this has happened the way it should have. I don't have time to figure it out now, we've got to solve some other mystery, like what the fuck is going on with Nate's shadow and why is this happening to us and... and I don't know. Time is changing, or something. I don't know why or how or when it started and I don't know how to fix it and all I do know is that I am tired and I am hungry and I need to feed my kids.
And if that's not good enough, then fuck time and fuck you too, because something's wrong with everything and that's the best you're going to get from me for now.
 


"Come gather 'round people wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide the chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside and it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'."
Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin'