The Trial

"Good morning, Worm, your honour
The Crown will plainly show
The prisoner who now stands before you
Was caught red-handed showing feelings
Showing feelings of an almost human nature -
This will not do."
Pink Floyd, The Trial

The Death Song

"we're on a bullet

and we're headed straight into god

even he'd like to end it too...

...we sing the death song kids

because we've got no future..."

Marilyn Manson, The Death Song

Show Me What You Got

"So let's fight it out
Let's take it to the ground
Let's turn it up and see who's going down."
Powerman 5000, Show Me What You Got

Rubber Duckie

"Rubber Duckie, you're the one
You make bathtime lots of fun

Rubber Duckie, joy of joys
When I squeeze you, you make noise!"
Jeff Moss and Jim Henson, Rubber Duckie

I'm on a Boat

“I'm on a boat motherfucker take a look at me

Straight flowin on a boat on the deep blue sea

Bustin five knots, wind whippin out my coat

You can't stop me motherfucker cause I'm on a boat.”

The Lonely Island ft. T-Pain, I’m on a Boat

The trip was long. And cold. And long. But at least there was food. Well, “food.”

Call me a snob, but Army rations aren’t really food. I guess the army decided that since Nestor had a boat and air travel is now a thing of the past because (surprise) dragons are still dicks, there’s no reason he wouldn’t want to help his country and sail some food to Africa or wherever, right?

Not so much. Crotchety old Cap’n Nestor told us to help ourselves to whatever we wanted, especially when Gunnar said, “We should at least feed the pregnant lady,” gesturing to me with a thumb.

I didn’t have time to frown at Gunnar (I’m not sure whether it’s endearing or annoying that he refers to me as “the pregnant lady”) before Nestor was congratulating me. So I tried to remember that I had manners, and even if I was angry this guy hadn’t done anything to me, and told him thanks.

On our way to accepting Malsum’s invitation we sailed into some weirdness. It was… it was the type of thing you’d expect to see on some show where the characters get stuck in the Bermuda Triangle. Or something. Then the weirdness parted, or abated, and there was an island ahead of us.

We got off the boat and used the Zodiac thingy to maneuver ourselves to this lonely island in the middle of fucking nowhere. Of course, before we departed, Captain Lucas  Nestor made it clear that this island was not on any of his maps. I’m not really sure why that bore mention, since I’m pretty sure we clued him in on the “this trip is going to be weird, and yes, you are probably going to die” front of things. This definitely fell under weird, so there’s no reason this island should be on any map a mortal knew of.

Besides “someplace weird,” I wasn’t completely sure where we were. Then we came upon this big buffet type spread, and some animals milling about. Well, lots of one type of animal. Pigs. Lots of pigs. Kind of, exactly like in that story with Odysseus where Circe derails him and turns half his crew into pigs and won’t turn them back into normal people until Odysseus has boned her for a year.

As soon as this hit me, I turned to the group. “Don’t eat the food.” Because the food was how Circe turned the men into pigs in the first place. Gunnar had figured it out, too, which was great because then I didn’t feel so much like I had to tell him not to get any fucking ideas about Circe. I had the thought that if she wanted to bone someone for a year, I would vote we give her Harlan. One, he’s the only guy in this Band not wearing a wedding ring, and two, he’s the prettiest guy here anyway.

And if she turned out to be a lesbian today… Well, then I would have to tell her to grow a dick and go fuck herself, because I’m not cheating on Gunnar.

And we heard a lion’s roar, and the kids were in trouble and it was just like Fate had told me. I don’t really wanna replay it. Short version is, their research had drawn them to Malsum too, and they’d gotten drawn into the weirdness storm and landed on this island just like us. We hauled ass to help them out, and everything ended up okay. For now. Until we get to the part of the “one of their number” type thing happens.

Yeah, there were some mild injuries. Basilisks suck, and I still remember the way Gunnar screamed in the deserts of Mutavilya when he jumped nearly on that nest.

But no one was seriously harmed, so we gathered the kids up and sent them to the Zodiac. And then it was time to talk to Circe. Yay.

So, what do you tell a topless witch-goddess when you show up unannounced in her sanctum sanctorum? Well you start with “Hi,” and continue with “Thanks for not killing us,” and from there it’s pretty much the same thing you’d tell a clothed goddess. You tell her the truth, as much of it as you can muster, that you’re chasing some asshole who’s trying to end existence and that somehow you ended up here.

Turns out that the truth shall set you free. Circe said she isn’t the one who drew us here, but she thought she knew who had. Circe was really unexpectedly helpful.

Now, I want to be clear here. I am not by any means penciling her in on my “people I think probably won’t fuck me over” list. I just don’t really think Circe’s on the up and up. I think she just wants to be on whatever side is going to win. She’s probably going to straddle both sides, and feel free to take that as literally as you please, until a victor emerges, and to the victors shall go the spoiled.

And I’m not just speculating wildly here because I have a thing against women who parade around topless in front of married men. I do have a thing against women who parade around topless in front of married men, but that’s not the point. I’m speculating on the basis that, somewhere back in her timeline of crazy, Circe fucked a titan.

Yeah. Curious as I was, I didn’t ask which one, or how that even worked, and I probably deserve a pat on the back for that. But one day Circe decided she wanted to have the child of a titan, because that seems like a good way to give herself an in with whomever comes out of this mess ahead.

It sounds to me like a great way to make sure that the kid has a messed up childhood and is ostracized by both factions for being a half-breed.

Anyway, I suppose I should thank both Fate and the gods that Circe has only been able to successfully bear one child. The child’s name is “Hope,” and Hope defies description. Hope is frail and weak. Hope is covered in sores. Hope is blind and looks to be in constant pain. Hope is, to put it very kindly, a thing that probably should not be.

Hope is also a pretty kickass prophet. See, Hope knew that we would be accepting Malsum’s invitation. Why? Well, because Fate had told me that we needed to, and we do make an effort to do some of the stuff that Fate says we should do. Sometimes.

Anyway, Hope intercepted both us and the kids, rerouting us to this island, Aeaea. She had something to give us. Something to give me, and I had something I was supposed to give to Hope. That scroll that Gunnar had gotten in Duat, the one from the girl who said I was supposed to be there, apparently Hope knew about it. Fate had told me that we would get to where we were going with a “map unlocked by blindness.” I wasn’t sure there was a map in that scroll case, but here was blindness standing in front of me, and I didn’t have any better ideas.

It wasn’t really a map in the truest sense, it was like one of those stamp rollers. Except it looked blank, and the map it produced changed depending on what you wanted.

Most of us didn’t really have anything to say to Hope. I wanted to ask about the things I’d seen at the hospital, when I consulted Sibyl. Some of it still didn’t make sense, and I wanted to know if there was something I was just missing. So I told Hope everything, even the stuff I hadn’t told the rest of the Band, or Gunnar. I told Hope why I’d started screaming and that someone was going to have to die, and that thankfully it wasn’t one of the kids – yet – but that this whole thing wasn’t over and I just don’t know what to do when every vision I see of the future is about the world falling apart.

Literally. I asked Hope, “What do you do when your whole world is about to fall apart?”

And I got this confused look, because apparently what you’re supposed to do is just not get so damn attached to everything so that it’s not such a big deal when everything goes to shit.

And from Nevermore, who’d taken a break from yelling at Gunnar for knocking me up to sit on my shoulder while I talked to Hope, I got silence. Complete and utter silence, like he just didn’t know what to do with me.

I guess I’m just getting tired of hearing the people I love scream. If that’s all the future’s got for me, then I think I’d just rather not know about it anymore.

Anyway, I was done with Hope, and done with looking at things I didn’t understand and couldn’t help anyway.

Then we got back to the boat and we got out of the weirdness and away from Aeaea. I told all the kids I was proud of them and I loved them, all that standard Mom stuff. And I told Alex that Jaime was alive and okay and back at Gunnar’s, and then we told them to head off to somewhere that wasn’t where we were going to be, somewhere that wasn’t near Kane and Ixion and Mikaboshi.

                Gunnar went back to driving the ship, Harlan and Nate went back to fraternizing, Kate went back to being Never’s best friend ever, and everyone else went back to… whatever else they had been doing before, I guess. I got to go back to not being terribly social.

               

                There’s not a lot to do on a boat trip to Antarctica, especially not when the only person you’d really want to have an extended conversation is occupied with the task of making sure we don’t actually go the way of the Titanic. So while Gunnar was busy driving the boat, I’d spent 14 hours drafting the plans for Nevermore Mk. 2 (he threw a fit that his former, corporeal self was the Mk. 1, “Just as the Lord Apollo, happy and healthy may he forever be” had made him). And for the other bajillion hours, I’d been spending my time staring at the water. My conclusion? It looked wet.

After a day and a half of watching me, Nevermore finally sauntered over and put his beak in my business. It showed amazing restraint on his part, waiting a whole 36 hours. Though, he was probably a little preoccupied breakdancing for the steampunk princess and occasionally trying to get some sort of reaction out of Gunnar. “Oh gods no! Not the iceberg! The ghost iceberg will kill us all! Gunnar can’t you see it?! We’re all going to die!”

                Gunnar still can’t talk to dead people, which I have given up on trying to make the bird understand. Or respect.

But I’m not always great at ignoring the bird, so I couldn’t help but look up when he edged his way down the railing toward me. After a minute he bobbed his head at me, asking, “Sup, luv?”

“I had some time to think about what happened at the hospital,” I told my dead bird. I went back to looking at the water – it gets more interesting when you’re talking to a nosy, belligerent ghost bird – but I watched him out of the corner of my eye.

He cocked his head at me, I guess trying to figure out what the hell I was talking about. “Oh, the prophecy bit and your resultant impression of the Incredibly Emo Hulk. Right.” He bobbed a bird version of a nod. “And?”

“And it fucking sucks,” I finally looked at him.

There was a long silence while the bird just looked at me. He didn’t blink much to begin with, and he doesn’t blink at all since he died. It’s a little unnerving. “Laur…” I got the impression he’d be pinching the bridge of his nose, if he had a nose. And could pinch.

He made a point of taking a deep breath that I knew he didn’t need, letting it out as a sigh, just to show me how exasperated he was with me. “Well. Deep thoughts, by Laurel Esparza. Move over, Nietzsche. You should publish that shit.”

“Fuck you.” Never has turned the act of annoying me into an art form. He manages to drive me from zero to pissed in less than a second.

“Oi, you kiss your kids with that mouth?”

“I haven’t kissed my kids in almost a month.” Not the ones I’d given birth to, anyway. “So, fuck you.”

He tilted his little bird head to the side. If I had higher expectations of him, I might have accused him of thinking. “Seriously, Laur… what’s wrong?”

“You know what’s wrong,” I stared at him. I know he’d heard me tell Circe’s daughter all about the prophecy; he was sitting on my fucking shoulder. And Never loves telling me how his memory is perfect, so he had to remember the part where I told Circe that my whole world was about to fall apart.

Someone is going to die. I know this to be an inevitable truth.

It’s not that I don’t think I can stop it. It’s worse than that.

It’s so much worse because I know I have to let it happen.

To move forward, to hold the line, to stop the darkness… someone is going to die. Fate told me. If I don’t let it happen, we don’t move forward, we don’t hold the line. We don’t stop the darkness. The world gets swallowed and then the world probably ends. Or maybe not, which would suck in an epic way, too. Either way, I don’t want to be around to see it, because it’s game over. No reset button.

So I have to stand here on this boat, sailing for Antarctica and pretending I’m okay and accept that I am going to let someone I care about die while everything in my heart, head and nature is screaming at me not to let it happen. But the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, right?

Right?

“This isn’t the best day I’ve ever had,” I said tersely, putting the railing of the boat in a death grip.

“You spent the day on a boat, Laurel. Some call this ‘vacation,’” he quipped.

“Normal people get to call days that period between one sleep and the next. I’m…” I trailed off as he started just shaking his beak at me. “Fine. Month. Whatever, however long it’s been since the Labyrinth. That period of time, I’m not having a great one of those.”

“So you were poisoned and kidnapped. So someone cut away that godawful tattoo of yours and was kind enough to put you to sleep for it – about which, love, we are going to have to talk because you owe that Iapyx fellow at the very least a fruit basket. So someone – named Iapyx, to be very clear – made sure that it wasn’t Ixion who put you under the knife because people and things tend to get bloody well mutilated to the point of fucking death on his operating table. One, Iapyx did you a fucking favor by carving up your back himself, love. And two, so fucking what?” Never stared at me for a second, maybe letting it sink in that he was actually, seriously, yelling at me. “The tattoo was a glorified tramp stamp, and you have had worse days, Laurel.”

I raised one eyebrow and stared at him. “Doubtful.”

“Love, you obviously don’t remember. I’ve been waiting for your Viking to tell you, but I don’t think he’s gonna. Maybe he’s trying to protect you, and it’s about bloody time, but he’s going about it a little wrong.”

He shuffled closer to me, dropping his little bird voice. “The worst day you have ever had was the day you watched two dozen people die. They weren’t people you knew well. Fuck, some of them were complete strangers, but sweet little damaged Laurel,” he paused to look at me pityingly. “It ripped your heart out all the same. There was not a fucking thing you could have done. Your father Apollo, bright may he shine and long may he live, even told me so himself. You were helpless and busy bleeding to death. And still you felt like you failed them all. Still you had years of nightmares to the point you just stopped bothering to sleep.”

I felt something squirmy in the pit of my stomach, this sick, sad feeling like maybe I should remember this. Like maybe,  if Never was right and Gunnar was keeping something from me, even though it ticked me off, Gunnar really was protecting me by not telling me the whole truth.

Two dozen people? Shit. I’m pretty sure I’d remember fucking up that badly. I didn’t remember, though, and that pissed me off, too. So who better to take it out on than Never? He’s contractually obligated to put up with my shit.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Afghanistan?” He edged closer again and made the word a question. If he’d had arms instead of wings, he probably would have tried to hug me. The fact that he was being so gentle made me way more nervous than the topic at hand.

“…No?”

“It’s the whole reason you started writing anything down, Laur. You wrote it all down. Your therapist made you. Everything that happened to you in that damned place, and all the incredible nonsense what’s happened since. You ain’t read none of it?”

“Nope,” I shook my head and shrugged nonchalantly. “Been kinda busy with this whole ‘preventing the apocalypse and raising the dead’ type stuff. Plus, I don’t read that shit anyway once I’m done with it. Some of it’s written really fucking poorly.”

“Well, yeah love. You’re the Doctor, not the Bard. And just cos all of you Greek types want to talk about your feelings don’t mean you’re any good at it.”

Well. I certainly wasn’t. Behold the wisdom of a dead bird.

“And I admit,” he continued low and what was probably supposed to be soothing, “some of your entries are absolute shit. They’re circuitous, they ramble, they belabor the point while you sort out that bloody mess you call a noodle.”

I am pretty much incapable of just keeping my mouth shut, so I argued with the only part of that statement I accurately could. “I don’t call it a noodle.”

Yeah. Not only was I arguing with a bird, I wasn’t even doing it well. He just rearranged his wings, stared at me, and made a show of ignoring my half-assed protestations. “My point is, love, well-written or uh… not,” and he put a special emphasis on the not, “you’ve written it all down. Comedy and tragedy, your life is pretty much all there.” He then made a small gagging sound. “Thank the gods you left out the sex scenes.”

I scoffed a little. “Yeah, all three of them.”

His gagging turned almost immediately into a squawk and he covered his head with his wings as he tried to drown out my voice. If he weren’t dead, the whole boat probably would have heard him screaming, “I don’t wanna hear it! I don’t wanna hear it! I don’t wanna hear it!”

When he was sure it was safe, he continued. “Look, love, you keep talking a big game about how you’re better than your parents, better than your friends ‘cos you don’t keep secrets. Especially not from your Viking.” He paused, and waited for me to realize that was exactly what I was doing, gods-fucking-dammit. “Does that mean except for now and whenever else it happens to suit you?”

I opened my mouth to bite his head off, but he raised a wing, put some feathers over my mouth and fucking shushed me.

He ignored me and kept talking. “I can tell that you’re pissed and this time it’s not even completely my fault. I can tell that you’re scared and there ain’t nothin’ I can do for it. Can’t even hug you. No arms,” he flapped his wings a little for emphasis.

“So go do somethin’ that will make you feel better. Talk to your Viking. Talk to your husband.” And I knew Never was worried about me, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard him use that word in reference to Gunnar.

“If you won’t tell him that you’re pissed – at him, at the world, at the whole of creation – then at least tell him you’re worried, and tell him why. But for fuck’s sake, tell him something because that look on your face, moping like someone just kicked your puppy, is fucking killing me.”

 “I’m not moping, I’m thinking.”

“Well, knock it the fuck off. You suck at it, and it’s bloody depressing.” And with that last bit of Nevermore-brand-encouragement, he fluttered off to leave me to my thoughts.

So yeah, Jiminy Cricket gave me a hell of a talking to. I took my bird-therapist’s advice, and finally broke down and told Gunnar everything. Everything everything.

I told him how I had known the kids were in trouble, and how I know that someone is going to die.

I don’t remember whether I let him in on the “I’m freaked out because I have to let it happen or the world’s gonna end” part of it. I think I just stuck to telling him that the Norns and the Fates we haven’t killed just told me one of our group is going to bite it. I left out explaining to him why I wanted to keep me away from the spindle. My husband is crazy smart; I’m pretty sure he figured it out that I don’t trust myself to keep my promise to pick the world over him. If there were a promise I’d break, it might be that one.

And Gunnar, who I firmly believe is a fair bit wiser than I am, didn’t pretend to have any of the answers. He didn’t tell me I was stupid for being so upset. He didn’t tell me much of anything, really.

He just listened to me trying not to cry while I told him what was supposed to happen and when I was done and still keeping it together, all he said was, “Right. Try not to die.”

It’s pretty much what I’d tell him, if our positions were reversed.

Well, okay. It’s the point I’d eventually make while I rambled about how I love him and I need him and I don’t really want to even think about doing any of this without him and how I’d really like to see him hold his daughter and how he isn’t supposed to die anyway because dammit we’re supposed to become gods together and save the world together and have lots of babies.

Unless this is how we save the world.

Fuck.

I looked at Gunnar for a heartbeat, trying to think of something reassuring to say. I wasn’t about to promise him that it wouldn’t be me, not when I wasn’t sure I could make that happen. Or not happen, as I was hoping the case would be.

Reassuring or not, I settled for, “Working on it.”

Death Is Certain

March 2012

I took a deep breath, which regrettably filled my nose with “hospital smell,” then I stood up tall and reached out with… I don’t know what. I don’t know what the fuck I did and I don’t know how the fuck it worked. It just did, and I was grateful.

I wanted answers. I wanted guidance. I wanted to fight back the darkness, get the gods back in touch with Midgar, and make my family safe. So I reached out and asked Fate. I even tried to say, “Please.” I think manners matter when you’re talking to Fate.

 Specificity and clarity do too. I was really hoping to see a vision of sunshine and puppies. I wanted to see healthy kids in fields of flowers making daisy chains and singing fucking Kumbaya. But that’s not what I asked for. I just opened myself up to Fate and wanted to know what was coming next. And the answer was death and darkness, the kind that could maybe render even Gunnar blind.

For the first time I had a “vision” where I didn’t see anything. Everything was darkness, which, I guess makes sense because, thanks to Mikaboshi’s influence, Everything is becoming Darkness.

I could still hear, though. I heard someone talking to me. A girl. Her voice was young and her words were ancient Greek:

“You are a child and you are not ready.

A Wolf-Age threatens and you are not ready.

Death can be a beginning but not when under the Star of Heaven.

To move forward you must accept that there will be pain.

To move forward you must accept that there will be blood.

To move forward you must accept that there will be death.

To move forward you must accept the offer you have been given."

A different voice spoke. Female. Young, younger than me again. She spoke Old Norse:

“A story begins.

Among the jungles of a forgotten land,

The king of beasts will lay dead at the feet of your dying children.

Their story is unwritten, their tale is untold.”

And then I heard the voices of kids – my kids.

Not my sons. Well, one of them, technically. But not one of the ones I’d given birth to. The ones who’d stayed at me and filled my house – and my life – with laughter and noise and life and energy and crazy awesome purpose. I heard Alex Vance, Amanda, Azzeza, Brendan Gair, Charlotte, Gunter, and Susan. I heard their voices, but there was no laughter this time. Instead it was one of the worst sounds imaginable. My kids were all crying out in pain.

The young norsewoman's voice continued.

“You will have a choice to make:

If they survive they will follow your story back to the start and you will one day find yourself in conflict. One of their number will die at the hands of one of your number.

If they perish there will be none who stand with you at the twilight. One of your number will die at the hands of one of your number.”

I heard a third woman's voice. She didn’t sound much older than me, if you can put an age on a voice. She spoke the All-Father’s tongue, too:

“A story continues.

Honeyed words hide blind truths behind unseen doors.

The honey will pour from an undying mouth.

The Zodiac will bear you upon its back,

With a map unlocked by blindness.”

Then someone put something in my hands. Someone who was a woman; her hands were small. They were gentle with me but they had a roughness to them, like they were work-worn. Whatever she gave me was cold, like ice, and pentagonal.

The third woman's voice continued, still in Old Norse.

“Beware the domain of the five-crowned kings.

It lies beneath the waves, but is where your quarry awaits.

Touch not the dead in their kingdom lest you become one of them."

Another woman spoke. A different woman, bringing the count up to four. This woman was old and brittle. She paused for breath after every line, her voice crackling over all the hard, guttural sounds of Old Norse:

                "A story will end, but not when you think it does.

                When you have won, you will nearly have lost.

                It is then that the struggle will truly begin.

                When the Wolf-Age is pushed back you must descend into Erebus.

                Fire and Ice will test you.

                Into the last bastion of death you must descend,

                For if it falls to the Star of Heaven darkness and death will become one."

A fifth female voice began. It felt and sounded as ancient as time itself, but she spoke Greek:

                "You are a corpse and you are not ready.

                Death is an ending that comes for us all, and it will not be stopped.

                To move forward you must accept that there will be death.

                To hold the line you must accept that there will be death.

                To stop the darkness you must accept that there will be death.

                To live again you must accept that there will be death.

                When the last light falters the face of the star will be the key."

I heard the sound of scissors sliding open.

                "The key spells death for one, but salvation for the rest."

                And the scissors slid shut.

I came out of the darkness with a shock. I could hear the normal world again, the beep and scurry sound that all hospitals are home to. It was there behind the sound of someone whimpering. That someone was me, because I suck at this “keeping my shit together” thing. I could see the normal world again; the bright sterile white-and-fluorescent was almost a shock after the complete blackness. It was just suddenly there, if a little blurry, behind the tears I felt like I’d been crying for a while. I felt stuffy and puffy and probably not terribly cute.

But I could think again, and there was only one thought:

Fate just told me, with no room for interpretation and in no uncertain terms, someone I care about is going to die.

                Step one was to stop crying and think to myself that I needed to fucking pull it together. That resolution I’d made not to be a mess? Wasn’t working so far. I looked for Gunnar immediately, maybe instinctively, since he’s been my “The sky is falling, fucking help me fix it” guy pretty much since we met. I don’t think I’m ready for that to be over, yet, so all I could think when I looked at him was, “Please gods, not him.”

I realized when I had to look up at him that I must have fallen to my knees. I stared up at him and it took me a couple of tries, but when I could handle that whole “speaking like a normal person” thing, I demanded that he make me a promise and that he’d better fucking keep this one. No, I didn’t explain to him what promise he’d broken because he might remember it better than I do and tell me that he never promised me anything.

                So I glossed over that bit and just told him whatever I said, whatever I promised, whatever I begged, not to let me near the spindle.

I wanted Gunnar to tell me it would be okay, because he wouldn't let me do anything stupid. I wanted him to say that it would be okay because I’m not the type of woman who does stupid things. I guess I wanted him to lie to me. But that’s not what Gunnar does, so for the first time since I met him, Gunnar failed, completely and utterly, to make me feel any fucking better. Instead he told me that wouldn't be a problem, because he didn’t have the spindle.

                He told me Nate had it. Nate had it because Nate was sure that Nate wasn’t going to use it. Nate, who’d made a deal with the darkness and doesn’t have a shadow anymore. Nate, who got mind-fucked by Mikaboshi and who we just either assume or pretend is okay now. Nate, who’d made a deal with Tesla to help get me back. Nate said he wasn’t going to use it. And when Nate told Gunnar this, Gunnar was pretty sure Nate wasn’t lying.

                Apparently Nate is convinced that he’s less prone to doing stupid shit than Gunnar is, and apparently Gunnar isn’t cured of the affliction of doing stupid shit like I thought he was, because he just handed over the Fate-Killer to the biggest hypocrite I know. The thing about Nate is that he doesn't lie – he just changes his mind. Because when Nate says, “This is the way it is,” he really means, “This is the way it is… For right now. Until something else comes along and I change my mind.”

Nate said he married Alli because he was more committed to humanity than to the divine, but I couldn’t tell you the last time he spent any time with his human wife. Nate said he’d always put humanity first, but he left Midgar wide open when he came to get me. Nate made a deal with Tesla when he came to get me, again proving that the life of one Scion was more important to him than the thousands of souls Tesla had burned in the Jersey underworld.

                And Gunnar gave him the spindle.

                I looked at Gunnar for a very long moment. My first instinct was to scream at him. Not because he really deserved it, mostly just because at this point I just wanted to scream at someone. That was just the sort of day I had been having and Gunnar’s the type of guy who would keep putting up with me after I got done screaming.

All sorts of “how could you”s and “what the fuck were you thinking”s were going through my head, but he doesn't need that shit from me. More than that, I just don’t want to fight with Gunnar, ever. I’ve got so many other people to fight, so many other people I just don’t fucking trust. I don’t want to put him on that list, especially if he doesn’t even deserve it.

I stared up at his face as I got off my knees. I tried really hard for it not to be like an evil-eye type of stare. I’m not sure how well I did, but he didn’t flinch and he didn’t give me any mean faces back, so I guess I did okay.

In the time it took for me to get up off my knees, here’s what went through my head:

Gunnar's a lot like me. We don't deal in bullshit when the truth works just fine. For that reason, I trust Gunnar. He doesn't tell me what I want to hear, he tells me what is true. That's why I've placed my faith and my hope for this world's future with him – not with the gods, and not really with Fate itself, but with Gunnar. Since I met Gunnar I have trusted him to do what is right, and while I may not remember a whole lot, I remember that that’s the whole reason I was willing to marry him right off the bat in Vegas. He’s the type of guy who doesn’t worry about what’s popular or what’s easy, or what’s going to keep him safe. He doesn’t even always worry about what will make me happy. Gunnar is the guy who does what’s right.

Maybe more than I do.

So I’d backed him when he killed the son of the devil. I’d backed him when he stole from a god. From Fate. And for my faith in him, he’d spent the last year of his life helping me pull my ass out of the fire with no real benefit to himself.

I’d pulled the trigger for Nate, but it was Gunnar who was with me in Guinnee when I got Marie’s soul back. I’ll be clear, that part’s not Nate’s fault. I didn’t want Nate going to Bikini Bottoms; it was too dangerous and I didn't think he'd survive it. So, commendably, Nate kept working on the “saving the world” problem by dealing with Nazi werewolves. Nate said he felt responsible, even though I’d told him not to, and then he sort of forgot about feeling responsible after freezing his ass off in Niflheim. I guess maybe he’s responsible when it’s convenient. I’m not mad because he did what I told him… it’s just that I’m mad because he did what I told him.

It makes sense, I swear. Like, he shouldn’t be the type of guy who lets some headcase like me with a great ass and a big mouth change his moral compass. Either you feel responsible because your friend shot someone in the face to protect you, or you don’t. That's not the sort of thing you should just let yourself be talked out of.

Anyway.

Nate kept working on other things, while it was Gunnar who was with me, drinking the waters of the Well of Mnemosyne. Nate wasn’t even in the Vault because he had other things to do. I’m not saying they weren’t important or that I blame him, just that he said he’d be there, something else came up, and then he wasn’t. But Gunnar was.

Every time I needed him Gunnar’s been there, and fuck it all, I’m pretty needy. He’s been loyal and faithful to me, and in return I’ve put his mind and body through the ringer. So with one knee off the ground, I told myself that I am not going to do the same to his heart. Not after the way he’s managed to take care of mine; not after being the one guy who didn’t take off running when he found out I was damaged.

And since his refusal to run for the hills, Gunnar has made my life better in every way possible. I don’t flinch when people touch me, anymore. I don’t even remember why I used to. When I sleep, I don’t wake up crying or screaming anymore. I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up because the pain and the guilt and the memories are so bad. Because of Gunnar I am stable, almost as normal as I was when I was a kid before my mom got sick. And even with the world falling down around our ears he’s given me the best reasons to soldier on: two sons more beautiful and perfect than I could have dreamt, and a daughter on the way.

With Gunnar around the future looks bright and shiny, and if I can’t trust him then maybe I should just save us both some time and go jump off the side of Mag Mell now.

I let out a small sigh. “Well I guess now would be a really shitty time to stop trusting you.”

And I let it go, both the thing with the spindle and what about vision made me freak out. Kas wanted to know what I’d seen, and didn’t seem all that satisfied when I said I needed time to figure out what it meant. She left it alone, but I could tell she wanted to poke at it. Gunnar didn’t push me, though. I don’t know if it was out of trust, or pity, or understanding, or he’s just gotten used to how I work. He just didn’t push, and I was grateful.

 So we went back to Gunnar’s place to meet back up with everyone else and we it was decided that we would accept Malsum’s invitation. I told the Band, after some thinking, about most of my prophecy. I told them about my kids screaming, and not to touch dead things, and the domain of the five-crowned kings, and the map of blindness, and I told them about pretty much everything except the part where one of us is going to have to die. I wasn’t ready to process that, yet.

But I was ready to get going. After all that time in the Labyrinth, standing still and doing nothing, I wanted to keep moving now. To keep working. I worried about how much time we’d all lost while the Band was saving me. That maybe it didn’t matter that Gunnar and I had gone to Duat because nothing was done with the intel we gathered, and maybe now whatever lead we’d had on them was lost. So I told Jamie I’d come back, told Dorthen to keep him safe, and I was ready to go meet with a wolf-god.

First we went to the White House. Something else had come up. Nate wanted to do something about Ixion hanging out there, and probably screwing with the President. Probably not literally.

So we headed to DC from Chicago. It’s still a little bit of a ghost town; not everything’s been repopulated since we gave the word to get everyone away from coastal and low lying areas when the earthquakes kept happening. So it was pretty easy to just waltz up Pennsylvania Avenue. Nate did some talking, we got past some guards and, no surprise, we ran into Ixion. He’s still a cocky sack of shit, with a douchebag smile on his face. I don’t even remember what he said that set me off, but really, does it matter? It doesn’t. No one who walked in there with me could reasonably have expected me to see Ixion and not go ballistic.

All that zen I’d been holding onto? Yeah, lost it. I blame Ixion. Seeing him standing there with that over-confident, over-zealous, conde-fucking-scending grin on his face, I couldn't hold back anymore. I made an executive decision. Fuck zen, fuck fear, and fuck moving on. I was perfectly okay with being angry, especially being angry with Ixion. Because that assclown fucking deserved it. So all that anger I’d been trying to put away and leave behind, I took it back out, balled it all up and I used it. I was tired of being good, of keeping my anger in check. So I took a swing at him.

See, I'd had a thought while I was in the Labyrinth. It was kind of brilliant if you ask me, and you probably won’t, but I don’t care and I’m going to tell you about this thought anyway.

Ixion is smart and fast and strong and clever so I'm going to do something he probably wouldn't expect: I'm going to be more like him. I'm going to study him and I'm going to mimic him and I’m going to beat him and I swear to the gods I will sheathe my hands in his blood and ichor before I let this be over.

I just needed him to show off, first. I needed him to show me how to be a better asshole. So yeah, I didn’t hit him. Not only did my blow not connect, it wasn't even coming in for a landing before Ixion had landed a blow on me. And then a minor manifestation of hell broke loose.

People started pointing their guns at Ixion, who was so fast and now, consequently, was so screwed. I mean, as far as the mortals could see, and as far as Harlan the Glib had convinced them, Ixion just punched a pregnant woman for no reason. What kind of asshole does that?

Well, Ixion’s the kind of asshole that does that. He also rigs his simulacra to explode, and thinks it will be more than a small inconvenience to us, now.

So the mortals were gotten the fuck out of dodge, a move probably orchestrated by Ciara who is kinda cool now that she’s back again. I had Nate toss me his book and I felt connected to some of my abilities again. I threw a shield up to contain the explosion, made it stronger so the blast wouldn't break it, waited for Ixion to blow his own brains out then immediately dropped the shield and saved the mortal inside.

How do you get rid of one of Ixion's simulacra? Get it to blow itself up, because Ixion is an arrogant fucking douchebag. I know that he didn't care about the life inside his shell, but I also know that, relics or no relics, I am one of the best fucking doctors on Midgar.

Every gun was trained on Ixion while he was inside the bubble. Kate, Kas, Gunnar… I probably would have had Sibyl out, too, if I thought she’d be worth a damn against this mecha-asshole. But instead I let him blow himself up before I dropped the shield. After that it was just a matter of saving the mortal at the gooey center and pulling off that creepy fucking exoskeleton. Like I said, best fucking doctor in Midgar.

So we averted that crisis, got Ixion out of the White House, and then the Band decided, for realsies, to accept Malsum’s invitation. It was Harlan logic. “We know it’s a trap, so let’s go spring it.”

I’m not sure if I make it clear enough when I write these things down, but Harlan logic is the type of logic you should use if you’re built a lot more like Hercules. Harlan is not built like my Uncle Herc. Harlan almost dies a lot.

Anyway. We found a boat, the Eurydice, and a captain, Nestor, and both were headed vaguely in the direction we wanted to go. There was a dinghy, or whatever you call those yellow floaty boats, aboard with the name “Zodiac.”

The Zodiac will bear you on its back…

Correct me if I’m wrong (or don’t, because I’m not wrong) but Eurydice is the woman who dragged my half-brother, Orpheus into hell. That’s um… not foreboding at all. Especially not in conjunction with the captain’s, “Welp, I’m probably gonna die,” attitude. But it will all be fine, right? Maybe we’ll get lucky and not get dragged into hell.

Who the fuck am I kidding? Almost every adventure I have had since I left my yoga pants in San Fran has involved me going to one hell or another. It’s like I’m on a self-guided tour of all the places I would never, ever, ever want to visit. Oh yeah, and there was that prophecy about how someone is going to die.

Yep, this can only possibly end well.

“Losses and wear and the texture of age
Adds a truth to the heart
And a light to the face
It's good when you don't give as
Much of a fuck
As you did when the threats mount
To make you suck

A burst of rage
A lively cry
Emotions wide
Your death is certain for sure…”

Iggy Pop, Death Is Certain

If I Seem Bleak...

"Maybe life is like a ride on a freeway
Dodging bullets while you're trying to find your way
Everyone's around but no one does a damn thing
It brings me down, but I won't let them

If I seem bleak, well you'd be correct
And if I don't speak, it's cuz I can't disconnect...

When I ran I didn't feel like a runaway
When I escaped I didn't feel like I got away
There's more to living than only surviving
Maybe I'm not there, but I'm still trying..."
The Offspring, Staring at the Sun

February 2012

                Right. Never has been pitching a bitch that this recovery shit doesn’t work if I don’t do it right. Correction: He maintains that I have never done it right, but that this cryptic brevity bullshit has especially got to stop, because the next time the Abyss stares back at me I may need to remember what the fuck just happened. So, because he's the closest thing to a therapist that I've got right now (and really, the closest thing I want), I'll give this a shot.

From the top, as I understand it:

The Labyrinth started falling apart, Mikaboshi started creepy-darkness-tentacle-fondling the doors-that-didn’t-open-until-my-dumbass-friends-came-to-save-me, and Harlan had his Valkyrie friend Bronwyn, the one who helped us way back in Niflheim, take me and Jaime out. Well, me, Jaime, and my daughter, if you’re being picky. I guess with the kind of power it takes to transport three souls from a terra incognita to some fucked up house in the middle of nowhere, it’s worth being a little bit picky.

                Aisling – Brendan’s fairy wife – was there at the fucked up house. It was kinda like a TARDIS; bigger on the inside and all that. The house, not the fairy. There were extra rooms and doors that did fuck all. I guess that was how everyone else got into the Labyrinth.

There was also a dragon.

I’m still not a fan of dragons, and while I could probably justify the running of my mouth by pointing to the way my month has been going – kidnapping, mutilation, and what Valentine's Day would be complete without an attempted rape? – I still think I might have overreacted just a smidgeon.

At first I thought maybe the dragon had been laying there in wait or something. Maybe this was another one of Kane’s friends, or Ixion’s, trying to finish what they’d started in the Labyrinth. Maybe they’d changed their minds about leaving me alive. Maybe they’d decided to go ahead and fuck me over and try to take my daughter from me, after all. The demigod was out of the bag – my friends obviously knew where I was – so there was no point in trying not to hurt me anymore. It’s not paranoia if they really are all out to get you, I hear.

Um, well, it turns out that this dragon – this one dragon, unique among all of the other dragons I’ve ever met – was not, in fact, out to get me. I immediately went on the defensive. I set Jaime down, who I’d been holding on my hip since the second I saw him in the Labyrinth and wouldn’t let anyone take him from me, I shielded him with my body and I asked the fairy what the fuck a dragon was doing here.

                Fairies, for the record, are not exactly a font of information.

                The dragon was, though. She actually started the conversation, speaking to me in the tongue of the Aesir.

I guess, if you’re in the business of being accurate and truthful (and I try to be, since my dad certainly is), I should point out that she was kind of nice. Alright, I should probably point out that she was actually a hell of a lot nicer  to me than I was to her. She just looked at me while I was freaking out and trying to keep Jaime out of sight. She wasn't even giving me like, a menacing “hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife,” look (Never tells me that’s a thing). She sniffed the air, then she congratulated me on being pregnant. I guess she could just smell that.

Anyway, the dragon didn’t try to attack me and she didn’t try to take anything from me. More importantly, she didn’t lay so much as a talon on Jamie. In fact, she gave me, Jaime and Aisling a ride to Chicago so we could meet back up with everyone else at Gunnar’s.

I’m not sure why Aisling came. She just kinda takes up space, and not just convenient fairy sized space, anymore. She takes up more space now that’s she’s human sized. She used to be kinda like Never and at least do aerial recon, but now… I don’t even know what she does anymore (besides Brendan).

Uh, yeah. I digress. Point is, the dragon was kinda cool. Apparently Kas found her while Gunnar and I were off in the wastes of Duat – doing shit besides taming dragons just for the fuck of it – and has decided this dragon is going to be “omgthebestfriendever.” Not sure what the dragon thinks of this. She called herself Hefnd. It means “Vengeance.”

             I think we might get along.

I also think I was probably a little bit of a jerk. Okay, I said, “Thanks” when she congratulated me, but since I’m in the habit of being honest I have to admit it was kinda delivered in a sort of “I wish you and all of your kind would just go somewhere else and die,” type of tone.

             Maybe I should apologize. If I live through this, and if I remember.

             So when I got to Gunnar’s I had mail.

             I haven’t gotten mail in more than a year. Never tells me that, as a consequence, I’ve apparently forgotten the rules of mail. I didn’t know there were rules. Never tells me I should have been worried about, and this is more or less exactly what he said, “Anthrax, or nano-bombs, or a quantum entanglement booby trap.”

…I don’t even know.

I read it without saying a word. It was a normal letter, from one of our normal nemeses, asking us to meet him somewhere normal and cold. Not like Niflheim cold. Like… Norway, or Sweden… Fuck, I don’t remember. Somewhere cold. Scandinavia covers that, right?

I crumpled it up, and then I threw it across the room. Which I guess is kinda rude of me, just throwing stuff onto Gunnar’s floor. And not very mature.

Um… he probably won’t hold it against me forever.

It probably would have been polite of me to actually let anyone in that room know what was in the letter, but on this particular day I was not very good at being polite. Honest, I can do. Quiet, no problem. Polite kinda conflicts with the other two. Besides, I’m pretty sure they are all themselves capable of reading.

I really just wanted out of that room. I didn’t want to keep standing around in Gunnar’s apartment with everyone staring at me. I hate being that girl, the one you don’t quite know how to handle because you’re pretty sure she’s on the verge of some sort of break down and the wrong word or gesture might set her off and when she does explode you’re not sure if it’s going to be into tears or violence.

Violence would probably have been a safe bet. Once I tossed the letter away, I realized Icarus and Iapyx were there, too.

I was… less than happy to see them, though by some miracle I managed to resist the urge to tear their faces off with my bare hands. It took effort, and probably only Never really appreciates how much. The only interaction with the two that I found appealing was the forcible extraction of their skulls from their skin.

They were just as culpable as Kane and Ixion for holding me captive.

They had taken me from my job.

They had taken me from my friends.

They had taken me from my husband.

They took me from the happiest day I can remember and they carved their cowardice and hypocrisy into my back.

They had wronged me and every time I looked at Iapyx, all I could think was that he was callow and duplicitous and stupid – like wax in his ears would really have saved him from me, if I’d really wanted to fuck with him (in the purely figurative, not-cheating-on-my-husband sense). He’d have had to put out his eyes, first, and even then I might have been able to get in his head like I have with Gunnar.

I had kinda hoped Iapyx and his brother had just died in the Labyrinth and solved that problem for me.

                But they weren’t dead. They were standing here in my husband’s living room, like someone had invited them in. Like guests. Nobody else had tied them down or put them in handcuffs or restrained them in any way, despite the part they’d had to play in my kidnapping and detention and (allegedly gentle) flaying. And, much more intolerable than anything they’d done to me, no one had punished them for the part they had played in keeping Jamie stuck in the Labyrinth. The kid had to have been somewhere since Ixion took him from his mom.

But I guess, like the intentional combustion of innumerable souls, kidnapping and child abuse just don’t count. I guess we don’t cuff anyone for anything less than a fucking headshot.

And I guess what I’m supposed to take away from this is that I’m just important enough for them to drop everything and leave Midgar unguarded while they came after me – when they should have been fucking following up on the intel Gunnar and I got from Marie – but not quite so important that any of them could be bothered to punish those who had helped mutilate and imprison me – not even Gunnar. Which, ultimately, is fine.

I can happily figure out how to do the punishing myself.

                I looked over all of that “company” stuffed into Gunnar’s living room and decided for the sake of everyone I have to deal with on a regular basis to just go and be somewhere else. I tended their wounds first – starting with Harlan, who always seems to be just this side of dying and beyond that I wasn’t in the mood to talk to any of them. Not the Band, not my darling husband, not the fucking sons of Daedalus. And at the time I couldn’t see or hear Nevermore, which was probably for the best, because when he gives advice he means to be like Jiminy Cricket but it comes off a whole lot more like Tyler Durden.

I thought maybe I should at least talk to Gunnar, whether I felt like it or not. That's kinda what marriage is, right? It’s doing shit you don't want to because it's what you should do and you care more about treating someone the way they deserve than just doing what you want. It’s doing your best to keep your shit together because your husband’s got way better things to do than worry about your impending breakdown.

In this instance, I decided that keeping my shit together meant keeping my mouth shut. Yeah, we needed to talk. We would still need to talk when I wasn’t so angry I could hardly see straight, though. And I was pretty sure that if I did start up a heart-to-heart to Gunnar I would totally mean to say, “Thanks for coming for me, I love you and I missed you and I’ve never been so happy to see you.” But that’s not how it would come out. That’s never how it comes out. I was pretty sure my unique brand of gratitude would start with a, “What the fuck were you thinking” and end with a, “You asshole.” Both sentiments are equally valid, but one of them is not really what Gunnar needs to hear right now.

I stuck to nonverbal communication of my gratitude. I left Gunnar’s living room, away from all of the people who’d been stupid enough to drop everything and come save my ass. Away from Icarus and Iapyx, the mere sight of whom made me itch for a scalpel to tear the skin off of their backs, like they had done to mine. It would be beautiful and just and poetic.

I had this persistent feeling that that – poetic justice – and a pint of green tea ice cream would make me feel all better.

                I didn’t have ice cream, and I didn’t wanna get cuffed again if I started meting out some justice on the Daedalus kids. It just wouldn't be worth the drama of slipping the cuffs, so I settled for knowing that, for now, one more kid was safe. I took Jamie out of the room with me and sat with him where it was quiet until the Band was done talking.

                Jamie didn’t have a lot to say, either. We sat in the dark, in the quiet and let the world forget about us both for a little while.

                I had calmed down a bit and I decided to do my very best to be okay, and Icarus and Iapyx had removed themselves from my immediate vicinity. I felt like maybe I could handle talking to Gunnar without figuratively exploding on him, so I asked Dorthen to keep an eye on Jamie, I got dressed in something that wasn’t a sticky, bloody sheet, and Gunnar and I decided we needed to take a walk. We were two steps out the door when Gunnar turned me around, told me that the Baron’s kid had told Nate I had been poisoned and Nate said I should come back, and we all started talking about how to fix me.            

Well, when I say “we” I mean, “I did a lot of arguing with myself out loud and everyone else kinda waited for me to make up my mind and Gunnar just kinda looked like he’d go with whatever. Including drinking my blood and using his stomach to scrub it clean of Ixion’s poison.”

And if that’s not love, I guess I just don’t know what is.

I did freak out for about twenty seconds after Gunnar said “poison.” I thought maybe the freaking out would last a little longer, that I would go into nervous-wreck mode and never come out of it again. But I freaked out long enough to share with the band that being poisoned was really bad, and oh yeah, I was pregnant again. I think they were too busy being worried that I was poisoned to hear that I was pregnant, though Nate did take a moment to ask me whether it was Gunnar’s. I deserve a medal for not going ballistic on him.

Then I stopped freaking out because I had shit to do, important shit like: stop being poisoned. And to that end I switched to best-fucking-doctor-in-Midgar mode, which makes my head get really quiet. It felt normal, and normal felt really, really good. I couldn't fix being angry at my bandmates, not quickly. I couldn't fix being upset with Gunnar. I didn't even know how damaged I was psychologically from my stay in the Labyrinth and I probably wouldn't know until I tried to do normal stuff like sleep and have a conversation that didn't involve who I wanted to kill next. Even once I did know, I wouldn't know how to fix me. I don't know how to fix Jamie, not yet. But being poisoned, I could fix.

I forgot all about revenge, which I wouldn’t have even thought possible, but I learned I can change my mind pretty quickly about what’s possible when my baby’s good health is in question. I managed to completely shut down all the rage and wrath-type bullshit, rather than just put it on mute, and just focused on the medicine. There was nothing besides the affliction, the treatment, and the safety of my daughter. Everything else – my hurt feelings, my stinging back, my own safety – was just not as important.

For treatment, I had options. Most of them weren’t even likely to kill me. Okay, yes, all of the options seemed to build on the foundation of completely exsanguinating me, which would in every possible variation hurt like a bitch, but still. I’m sturdy enough that in my professional, detached medical opinion, it didn’t seem like the exsanguination would be so much of a shock to my system that I’d be at risk of suffering a miscarriage, so at least the necessary first step was almost definitely not going to have catastrophic consequences. Probably.

Then, once all of my blood had been drained the treatment plans began to diverge.

I could, to put it crudely, refill my veins with normal mortal blood. But that might leave me completely powerless, and I’d had enough of feeling powerless while I was in the Labyrinth.

 What if all the cool shit I can do is dependent on the ichor that flows through me? If it’s all removed, how long will it take me to replace it? Can I replace it? Fuck if I know.

So I started considering different treatments that would not leave me ichor-less. I could get a transfusion from another Scion, or I could take what had just been removed from me, have it cleaned of poison but leave my ichor, and then put the cleaned blood with my ichor back into my body.

The option of getting a transfusion from someone with divine-ness running through them, was tricky on a metaphysical level. I mean, getting a blood donation from someone who actually had ichor sounded like a great idea… until I really thought about it.

I don’t know a whole lot about how divine physiology works – except that it does. It’s possible that ichor of different pantheons would interact much in the way differing blood types do. It could make me sick, it could make me insane. Or it could be worse, the worst thing I could think of. It could kill my baby.

So that eliminated the possibility of taking blood from someone from another pantheon. So I started going through the list of all of the members of the Dodekatheon I knew well enough to ask for help. It wouldn’t be weird at all getting a call from me: “Hey, this is Laurel. Just wondering, you don’t happen to be O negative, do you? Great. Can I have like… all of your blood? You’re not using it, right?”

I mean, I knew several people from my pantheon. Susan, Don, Angela, Jamie, Alex, Jack, plus there were the gods. But if I could get ahold of the gods to ask them for a transfusion, it just wouldn’t make sense to do so. And if I still had his phone number, I probably wouldn’t call Don because he has motherfucking Cyclopes for bodyguards and that’s just weird.

So the list of people who’d answer the phone when I called was pretty short, and the list of people who probably wouldn’t hang up on me was even shorter. There was Susie, Alex Vance, Jack Cook, and Jamie. Alex was off with Gunter, presumably doing very important things. I would expect that Susie was similarly occupied. Jack was in Mexico and busy taking care of Alexander and Erik, a job I certainly was not going to interrupt. Jamie was right next to me, but I wouldn’t put a needle near him for… anything. There isn’t any reason I can think of that’s good enough to put that kid through more hell than he’s already known.

         So I’d concluded that getting blood from another Scion was out of the question. The only other option that didn’t leave me ichor-less was getting my blood cleaned of whatever mess they’d put in me. We know since our encounter with Pan at Hotel California that poison-type stuff just doesn’t seem to bother Gunnar, so we (I) talked about using Gunnar’s stomach as kind of a scrubber. But I couldn’t think of a way to build a filtration system which would separate only the stomach acid but leave all of the components of the blood intact. And even that step would be contingent upon his body not treating my ichor as a toxin and deciding to filter that out, too.

Plus, we’d have to get him to ingest all of my blood (which, in my professional medical opinion, is super-gross), and hope that we got the timing just right before he regurgitated the “cleaned” substance so that my blood was cleaned of the unknown toxin but not completely broken down into the sub-components that would do me absolutely no good if I tried to put the mess back into my veins.

But anyway, in the unlikely event that he was able to ingest all of my blood without immediately becoming ill (Never tells me he learned from Fight Club that an ordinary human can swallow a pint of blood before he gets sick), and was able to keep it down for just the right amount of time so as to remove the toxin but not destroy the blood cells, I couldn’t figure a fucking way to build the post-regurgitation filtration device. Well, that’s not entirely true. I couldn’t figure how to do it in less than a day, which was about twice as much time as I was willing to let this shit keep creeping through my veins and possibly hurting my baby. I worked on the design for about an hour, swore a few times, and decided to just go to the hospital.

               

                So the best approach, for my daughter’s sake, would be one with the least possible complications and the fewest variables, divine and otherwise. Removing the tainted blood and replacing it with clean, mortal blood seemed to be the best and most straightforward solution.

This way I could ensure that I was getting the right blood type – there would be no conflict of antibodies, either with my blood or with my daughter’s. Right about now my girl’s heart is starting to beat, she’s got her own blood coursing through her veins, and if the gods have granted me any luck at all, she’s safe from whatever Ixion’s got coursing through my veins.

             Again, if I weren’t pregnant this wouldn’t be quite so complicated and I wouldn’t be quite so worried about fucking this up. I’d be more willing to just put a bandaid on it and carry on. But I am pregnant, and more than that, the evidence indicates that I’m pregnant with a future Fate. So I should probably take some extra care not to fuck this up.

           So the hospital seemed like a smartly unavoidable destination. Gunnar didn’t have any medical equipment at his place, which, now that I think about it, probably would have saved him a lot of time on his past jobs. Of course, he’d have to know how to use it and I’m not even sure he knows how to really put on a band-aid… Anyway.

                Gunnar offered to come with me, which is a point in his favor. It would have been a billion points against him if he didn’t think to accompany his (pregnant, poisoned, recently rescued from kidnapping and mutilation) wife to the hospital to have her blood scrubbed of gods-know-what. He would be sleeping on the couch for at least half of eternity. If he slept. And if I had a couch. Fuck it, you know what I mean.

                Kas offered to come too, which I was okay with since I’d seen her handiwork with Dorthen. So I had my husband for moral support and I had Kas for actual medical usefulness.

                As we were leaving, Nate tossed me one of the many swords in his collection. What does this one do? It does Death, apparently. As soon as my fingers touched the hilt, I could hear my dead bird talking to me again. Oh. Fucking. Joy.

                “And how the fuck did you even find the time to get knocked up again, anyway?! You were supposed to be saving the world, love, not playing “hide the relic” with Senor Libido! However, after some consideration I have decided that I will allow you to make it up to me. The least you can do is name her after me, and you should use your maiden name. Nevermore Kladakos sounds much more dignified than Nevermore Esparza,” he stated imperiously.

                So now I’m back to acting like I have Tourette’s.

               

                Aside from Nevermore being… himself, it was a quiet walk to the hospital. Too quiet. So of course I wanted to fill the silence. Unfortunately, the best way I know how to do that is with awkwardness and crazy. So I turned to Gunnar, while Kas was with us, because it never fucking occurred to me to restrict the awkward to just Gunnar and I.

                “So,” I said to Gunnar, “I just have two questions. Why the fuck would you leave Midgar unguarded and what the fuck was Tesla doing there?”

                He didn’t answer the first question because I’d already assaulted him with the second. Gunnar explained that he wasn’t the one who made the deal with Tesla. That was apparently Nate. Apparently that precludes Gunnar from taking any responsibility, because Gunnar didn’t make the deal. Gunnar just didn’t bother to stand up and do anything about it.

                After that, silence seemed like a pretty good idea. I didn't have anything nice or uplifting to say. All I could think of was just how wrong life always seems to go. And the worst part is that the next time life goes all wrong, it probably won't kill me. I'll do what I've always done: survive. Physically, anyway. Mentally? Emotionally? I don't know. Maybe I'll always be just a little bit broken on the inside. See? Not really the type of thing I figured Gunnar needed to hear. Shit. I hope Gunnar's a lot better at this if things go sideways and I end up being the one who dies. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I'm alive and around for my kids. But recent events have served as a powerful reminder that the odds... are not exactly in my favor.

                Anyway. So then three demigods walk into a hospital and one tells the doctor, “I need a dialysis machine, 15 pints of O Negative, and your three toughest medical cases.”

No punchline. That’s just how the rest of the day went.

                And Nevermore, who has resumed his self-appointed post as my proofreader, is pitching demanding that I acknowledge that it’s not funny if you tell it how it really happened.

Well… Fuck you, Mr. Dead Bird.

It wasn’t funny to begin with.

                The doctors, nurses, and orderlies seemed a little put off by a woman wandering in off the street and telling the staff that they’re going to give her fifteen pints of blood, a dialysis machine, access to lab equipment and fuck tons of privacy.

                So I offered the grand poobah a deal.

Well, no I didn’t. I told him he was going to give me all of those things and in return I would solve his three most difficult diagnoses. He wasn’t happy, but he was placated. Well, maybe he wasn’t even that, but he stopped arguing with me and started giving me what I wanted.

                He brought me the files, which I suppose makes sense when the patients are mortal and bedridden, as he explained to me. I’ve gotten used to being around people who take a grenade to face and fucking walk it off, like a real man should.

I had wanted to see the patients. It’s easier for me to heal a person than a piece of paper.

                So I started to get up and felt the tug of the IV needle hanging out in my arm.

Right. There was still that whole “blood-cleaning” thing going on. At least I had figured out how to overclock the machine and make it go faster. Um, but I don’t remember whether I put it back the way it was when I was done.

Probably not. Oh well. You’re welcome, Chicago General.

                I asked Gunnar to carry the super-efficient machine while I wandered around the hospital, visiting my new patients. They were hurting, and just wanted someone to make it stop hurting.  They made it easy to stop thinking about myself, because I could see their pain and I wanted it to stop.

The first case was cancer. Invasive, ugly. I knew it as soon as I looked at the patient. Her colors were all wrong. Sickly, splotchy bits all over the other colors around her. Second verse: same as the first, a little bit more virulent and a whole lot worse. I told the doctor which tests to run in case he needed more than “because I just fucking know, alright?” Turns out “because I fucking said so” does not really equate to “medical credentials.”

                The third case was different, though. I would almost say it was baffling.

               

                Well, alright. Baffling if you’re not me, and you don’t see weird godly-shit on a daily basis.

The guy was from Sweden, had been stuck here in the States since the arrival of the dragons, and had been brought into the hospital on account of chronic and violent crazy. It wasn’t really anything I had ever seen, but it sounded like something I’d heard about. So I took some blood, ran some tests, and most people who aren’t me or have never been around the Aesir probably wouldn’t have known what the fuck they were looking at.

                I was looking at a guy who was going to die, slowly and painfully, of Jotunblut poisoning. Maybe one of the Aesir could have fixed him, one who’d made use of their giant-bloody type abilities. Beowulf, though he’d been called back to the mountain in that vision with Odin. I’ve seen Harlan plenty bloody, but I’ve never seen him do anything really giant-bloody. And Gunnar was, as with most situations requiring medical analysis and treatment, not very helpful. The only other Aesir I could think of were Gunter, who was who-the-fuck-knows-where, Sly, who was who-the-fuck-cares-where and also probably not ever going to help me, and Ty, who screamed at me for being a racist before he puked all over my guest bedroom last summer.

                In my professional medical opinion, this Swedish dude was boned.

                I couldn’t help him get better, so I helped him die, instead.

                He didn’t really seem too torn up about it when I started talking to his ghost. He was kinda glad not to be in pain or stuck in bed anymore. I offered to try to take care of him, to take his soul to the afterlife when I had time. After a couple of questions he just kinda shrugged and said, with more enthusiasm than I would have expected, that he was going to go haunt his friends in Sweden.

                Ghosts, man. Whatever.

So I let the overclocked machine do its thing, and I was pretty much ready to leave, then.

Well, I wanted to get an idea of what to expect from the future, first. We talked about me just consulting the Fates on the way back, but I’ve never asked for guidance without Sibyl’s help, and without it I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if this might go bad, and figured it I started having seizures again it should probably not be in full view of the public. No, a private room in a hospital suited me just fine. At least I was already around all the doctors, if things went really wrong and one of my arms exploded or something.