Life before the Lobotomy

Alright. Lots going on. I don’t remember why I started writing these things. I don’t remember a lot of things right now, but I get the feeling that’s not going to change.
Also, fuck Titans. Don’t think I’ve said that in a while.
So, we got to Hades. The play worked, kind of. The highlights of the trip are as follows:
Ixion is still a fucking tool.
My mom is in the Elysian Fields.
Hades is kind of a jerk.
The Furies are dirty Underworld hookers.

Right. So, I'll start with the abyss. I understand that's how most things started.
From Norway we went to Germany. As soon as we got there I grabbed Gunnar, and told him that when we were done with Hades I felt like I needed to go to Duat.
I guess I had made it pretty clear that I thought he shouldn't go, that this part of the "Laurel fucked up and it needs to get fixed" show was going to be more or less a solo act. Not that I don't want him there, I think the idea of being away for an indeterminate (meaning months, years, or the darker side of an eternity) amount of time kinda sucks. But he's got way better shit to do than help me clean up my messes, especially since he's pretty much been on mop duty for the last three segments of this whole fucking circus and I'm not gonna drag him through another ring if I don't have to. Especially since this one will probably try to kill us.
I mean, Amanda made it sound like it was a really bad idea for anyone who's not Egyptian to head in. And he's not Egyptian. Neither am I, but of course I'm going, because I don't really have a choice. I have to give Erzulie her daughter back and I can't leave Azzeza hanging anymore if the gates are closing and if there's another option I haven't thought of it yet.
I told Amanda and Azzeza to start getting ready too, take care of any business they needed to while I worked on finishing the blueprints. Nevermore helped with that. And by helped I mean he was obnoxious and would tell you he helped with the blueprints. What he actually did was keep telling me to "put a bird on it." I kept telling him that Dionysus has no reason to want a bird on it.
Gunnar spent his time in Germany checking out how well Dionysus' efforts were helping the community, making costumes for our play, and making sure that Susan and Carmen were like, 5,000 feet from one another at all times. The kids aren't crazy about having her there. Well, I'm not crazy about traipsing through another underworld. Life's a bitch.

Nate helped out where he could, but it almost seemed like this was a little bit of downtime. Oh, and Nate called the U.S. Government and told them to plan for dragons. His advice amounted to, "well, try to talk to them and maybe they won't eat you and I'm not sure what language they will speak so you should have a team of linguists and a lot of guns ready, just in case."
Best advice ever. Nothing could possibly go wrong. It will probably be fine though. I've got faith in Nate and if he's not worried, I'm not worried.
Everyone else kinda chillaxed as well. I was hoping to get a start on learning whatever language Amanda's book is written in, but I am not nearly as talented as Gunnar and I can only do one thing at a time. So I finished the blueprints, since there's a worst-case-scenario that says I may not be coming back for a very, very long time.

So we put on the play. It was about Dionysus. The kids played it off as a Grand Opening ceremony, or something like that. That was actually really smart, since this is a temple to the Situation.
Story time: Dionysus used to be Zagreus, until Hera turned into mega-bitch displayed the full glory of her well-justified mega-bitchness, because her brother-husband can't fucking keep it in his pants and this was yet another kid that her husband had with someone who wasn't her.
So I guess I can't really blame her, except for the part where Zagreus got torn apart.
Oh. Uh... Spoilers: Zagreus gets torn apart.
So, Zeus throws a party for his cute little bastard baby, and Hera is not happy. She let the Titans into her home where baby Zagreus was sleeping after his super-mega-awesome birthday party. The Titans were pissed because they weren't invited to the party and they tore Zagreus to pieces.
So Athena went into the bloody room full of Zagreus bits and somehow found his heart, and gave the heart to Zeus, and Zeus sewed it into his thigh and drank this potion Athena had made that would let Zeus be a regenerative incubator type thing and that's the reason people call Dionysus "the twice born" and also why he is kinda effeminate, since he was born both of a man and of a woman.
I played Zeus and my beard was awesome.
We didn't cover the scene where I couldn't keep it in my pants. Apparently the play starts after that, and it is just understood by the audience that Zeus cannot, does not, will not keep it in his pants. Maybe if he actually had pants, instead of a toga... but anyway, Kas was Zagreus/Dionysus, and it was awesome when she jumped out of my thigh.

So we were midscene and everything faded, and then we were in the realm of Hades and there was a cliff and then...
"Alright, you've seen it. Does that mean you're going to leave now?" It was Hades talking. Hades has a voice made of pebbles. Sharp ones. It sounds like he ate a quarry. Or a mine field. That'd explain why he looks so unhappy, too. I mean, I could ask Gunnar for sure, since he can taste them at a range now without ever getting his tongue near them, but I'm fairly certain that rocks don't taste very good.
To answer the esteemed and honorable Lord Hades' question (which would have been really silly if he'd ever actually met us before, and he probably would have known better than to even bother asking it): No. Of course it didn't mean we were going to leave. Especially since we didn't remember ever even getting there.
So, here's the down side of staring into the abyss: It kinda does stare back, and it makes googly eyes and then you forget stuff. Hades had a more eloquent explanation, something about the primal chaos and forces too powerful for our ordered minds to comprehend, but - and I'm just being honest here - I like the googly eyes better and I wasn't really paying attention anyway.
The point is, we forget everything we saw and learned while we were testing Nietzsche's theory. So Gunnar, who will probably be the God of People Who Can't Leave Dangerous Things Alone, decides to try it again. He's got the best eyes, and he's pretty smart (but try telling that to the rest of the Band; I think they're still mad about the time he shot that priest who was holding a grenade).

We figured something out the second time around, though. While he was staring into the big crazy blackness where the realm of Hades ends and what used to be Tartarus begins, I was staring at him. He described to all of us everything he saw, and then when he started to mumble like a madman from Miskatonic U., I turned his head away and made him stare at me instead. I'm sure it was torture.
What he saw was a blue mechanical fiery thing which turned out to be a Promethean Star, and some island that was a fragment of where the Titans used to live, and oh yeah, the great swirling void from which everything and nothing originated and coexists.
Or something like that.
I am not an expert on abysses.

We asked Hades a billion questions about everything and learned pretty much nothing except that in order to even convince him to let us come stare at this big ball of fun, we had to promise him that we would find Cerberus.
And that's how we learned that Cerberus was even missing. Apparently we knew that as soon as we got here, because Hades told us, but then we forgot. Fuck abysses.
Eventually we got bored with the primal chaos. It's a lot less impressive than you would think.
So then we decide to go actually investigate that Cerberus thing. Apparently we had had this idea before, and we leave really obvious footprints. And of course, the second time we still didn't think to just go around the field of the Asphodels, where all the pissed off ghosts live, but it was fine because I just used one of those shield thingies and made them stay away.
We got into the cave and Nate went all crazy CSI. He should have used Gunnar's sunglasses to complete the look, that would have been funny. But yeah, he was all like "Ixion and Kane were here and they fought a ghost and the ghost went so many paces in this direction and from his gait I can tell that he was heavily wounded and by the end it looks like this... was one hushed puppy."
Okay, I made that last bit up, but the rest of it? All true. Kane and Ixion stole Cerberus for who-the-fuck-knows-why but it's probably going be really fucking inconvenient for us later. We decided to share that tidbit with Hades.
Oh, and we tracked down the ghost warrior, who turned out to be fucking Perseus!!!
I didn't get to meet him though. Not at first, because the Furies are still assholes.

Sequence. Right. Gotta try to stick to this sequence thing.
So we follow the tracks of the ghost - I don't know how that works, I'm a doctor not an astral physicist - up to this morbid looking tower. And by we I mean Nevermore helped track or scout it. Or something. The tower had three faces, and all of them looked kinda constipated. The tower stood on the edge of the realm of Hades, where there's a river of fire and a river of ice and there's probably a river of DOOM.
Nah, that was where the Furies lived.
When we figured that out, my first response was, "Fuck." I didn't say that part out loud.
My second, vocal response was, "I'll go first."

So there were three gates around the tower, one behind another, and I don't remember what they were made of but every time I opened a gate I had to talk to a Fury and answer a question.
I can't remember what the first question was, but I answered it well enough to get through the gate.
One of them asked me if I agreed to leave in the Tower anything I found there.
I tried to imagine the worst thing I possibly could find there, but figured that we knew where Gunnar's parents were, and I had an idea where my parents were, and I would have known if something had happened to any of the kids and anything else I could probably convince myself not to worry too much about. Hopefully.
So I said yeah. And then Alecto was like, "You know our sister's behind the last gate and she's still mad at you."
And I was like, "Yeah, I know."
And she was like, "You really wanna go back there?"
And in my head I was like, Fuck no, do I look stupid? but I have gotten smart enough to occasionally keep my mouth shut and I just said, "Yeah, kinda have a job to do. Need to see a ghost about a dog."

Kas was nice enough to warn the Fury about all of the others that would be coming through, and just to hang around. Nicer than I am. I would have let them all wear themselves out, bamf-ing back and forth.

So I get up to the third gate, and I finally got to meet the last little fury. She looked a lot like Medusa. Post-snakening.
As soon as she appeared, Tisiphone looked me in the eyes and then I couldn't move. Just like I'd done to Marie, before I shot her in the head. I wondered for a second if that would be the payback. I was pretty sure I could survive a shot to the head, now. Maybe.
But because of what she'd done to me, my body refused to go anywhere. I guess that was good, because if it could have moved I probably would have gone to a place called Ballistic and smashed her little Fury face in. Or tried to. I don't really know how well that would have gone. She probably would have called in the other two for backup. And that probably wouldn't have ended well. So it's probably a good thing that I kept my temper and didn't drag the rest of the Band down with me for that kind of a showdown.
So Tisiphone stared at me. And then she stared at me some more. I felt her digging around in my head, or trying to push something into my head, or something. She was canoodling my lobes, which was kind of invasive and really not cool. It's that kind of feeling you get when the weather is changing and you're about to get a headache, which... now that I think about it, is not a bad description for the Furies: the beginnings of a headache.
I don't know. Whatever she wanted to do, it didn't fucking work. I postulate that this is because I'm too awesome for that.
She looked angry. Well, okay, she looked pissed. I got to laugh at her. Yeah, that's right: I looked a Fury in the eyes, and laughed. I get a gold star. Where from? I gave it to myself. I think I've earned the right.

And with that business concluded, she asked what I figure was her normal question.
"Do you intend to break any of the laws?" She probably meant one of those twenty things that fucking nobody had told us about because they don't really matter to anyone, except these three hookers who live in the tower on Scary Hooker Island (it's not really its own island but this is neither the time nor the place for a Plutonian geography lesson).
"Nope." I even thought about it before I answered.
"You lie. You may not enter."
"You're a bitch. Whatever."
I don't even know what I was lying about. It didn't really matter that they didn't let me in, mostly because they didn't let Gunnar in, either. So all the cool kids were outside, anyway. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Plus, Super Gunnar was able to hear what was going on inside and turned to me at one point and was like, "They're talking to Perseus!" He seemed unhappy we were missing it. I'm guessing that's what the pantomimed gesture of shooting himself in the head was about.

Perseus. The guy with the Pegasus. Another one of my uncles. I have approximately a bajillion, since Zeus is the god of not-keeping-it-in-his-pants. Perseus is a ghost now, but I'm pretty happy to see that this has not slowed him down at all. Kinda lends credence to my "I can still kick some ass if I die" theory. Big "if," though. I don't plan on dying.
So Perseus talked to the others who went in, which was like, everyone, and then they all come out and Perseus leads us to the shores of the Styx where there is a boat and some water and a conspicuous lack of anyone who is named Charon.

Instead, sitting in the boat, was Ixion-with-two-life-aura-things. It looked like a Matryoskha doll, the way the life forces were stacked. Ixion was pretty chatty, and fairly keen on telling us that we were too late and that he was going to kill the person he'd turned into his meat puppet.
I don't know if it was a literal kill switch, but he did something to the simulacrum (like the one Uncle Hercules crushed) and I saw all the lights on the inside start to dim.
I decided a while back that this is a Caleb type situation. Whatever he wants, if I'm in a position to keep him from getting it, I will. So I saved the woman on the inside, and I cut her out of the metal skeleton and I kept her alive and then we as a Band worked on freeing her from the ferry.
Why did we have to free her from the ferry? Well, there's this old riddle that I can't remember how it goes, so I'll just tell you the answer to the riddle instead. It's from this poem by a guy named Gaiman who writes the weirdest and truest shit:

"The river can be crossed by the ferry.
The ferryman will take you.
(The answer to his question is this: If he hands the oar to his passenger, he will be free to leave the boat. Only tell him this from a safe distance.)"

So when I saw Ixion sitting there, and realized that he was sitting pretty in one of his simulacra, I figured out pretty quickly what had happened. And if I managed that, I'm betting everyone else did, too. I am not the thinker of the group.
Ixion stole a woman's body, put one of his meat-suits over it, used her mouth to volunteer to take Charon's place, and then literally planned to abandon ship. The plan, I guess, must have been either that the whole construct would die, and Hades would have no ferryman, or that she would live and be stuck there and Ixion wouldn't care because it wasn't his ass in the boat.

So we went to tell Hades. I figure something like this is what you would delicately call a Big Fucking Problem. Hades apparently agreed, and said that the only way the woman could get out would be to have somebody voluntarily replace her. His wife, Persephone (who is kinda scary), said that maybe someone in the Elysian Fields might be nice enough to help us. I should have looked closer to see if maybe she was sneering at us when she said it.
So we go to start talking to the friendly ghosts in the heavenly part of the realm of Hades, and we don't get very far at all because as soon as we walk into the fields there's some commotion and someone shouting my name and then holy shit there's my ghost-mom who I haven't seen in seven years and I'm trying not to cry as she hugs me and tells me how beautiful I've gotten and that I look just like my dad. I don't, for the record. I've got her hair and her cheekbones and I used to have her eyes until they started turning gold.
I don't remember anymore why I was so torn up about seeing her, but I remember aching on the inside at the thought of having to walk away, like I was having one of those moments where you're living in a song and this one was about a dead woman:
"When God took her with time
God made me quite alone
It's like the universe has left me
Without a place to go...
I saw your ghost tonight
It fucking hurt like hell."

Anyway.
With her being my mom, it occurred to me that if I didn't tell her about Gunnar and the boys, and she found out later, she'd be kinda mad. I'd be mad if my future-daughter just kinda forgot to mention babies and a husband during the first time we talked in seven years.
She seemed really happy to meet Gunnar, even though she had no idea who Heimdall was. And I showed her the picture of our kids, and my mom's pretty smart, so when I said, "We got married this summer, and these are our kids," and I showed her a picture of two (unbelievably adorable) nine-year-olds, she raised an eyebrow. Both eyebrows.
Here I was thinking that I would have to give her this long explanation about the gods and the divine war and what the hell was I doing here in the realm of Hades anyway, but it turns out my dad's been holding out on me.
Before my mom died, I mean almost right before she died, my dad went and visited her and explained everything and called in the type of favor with Hades that got her let into the Elysian Fields. The Elysian Fields, for the record, are every bit as bitching a place as the legends make them out to be. So I'm not sure why I made with all of the internal melodrama when I saw that's where my mom was. There are worse places to not-live, and she could have been in one of them if my dad hadn't talked to her and to Hades.

I kinda have to wonder how exactly that talk went. The one between my parents, I mean. I care less than I probably should what my dad had to say to Hades.
"Sorry I abandoned you and our kid, honey, and let you think I was dead for seventeen years. Had shit to do." Something like that. And they decided not to tell me, that I would find out when I needed to.
Whatever. I was just really happy to see my mom, and she didn't seem to have any trouble following the explanation. It pretty much went like, "Well in January I went to Vegas and that's where I met Gunnar and my other friends, and then we all started saving the world and here are the fights we had and we killed a Fomorian then Gunnar proposed and then we fought a war in a place where people can't die, and then Gunnar and I got married and that night I got pregnant and then we ran into an avatar of time - kinda literally - and now our twin sons, who shouldn't even be born yet, are nine years old. Mazel tov!"
She handled it well.

Gunnar stuck around and talked to her with me. He could have left and I totally would have understood, but I'm betting he felt like it would have been really poor manners to walk away from his mother-in-law the first time he met her. Plus, the others were busy being the responsible ones and talking to the Elysians and asking them if they'd like to be tied to a boat for the rest of existence.
Surprisingly, we had no takers.

Well... One taker. My mom volunteered. Guess where I get that "more loyalty than sense" thing from. Not really from my dad. Not that he's disloyal... well, okay, he kinda is in the sense that I have lots of half-siblings but I'm trying not to think about that because it's hard not to like my dad and I get the feeling that he comes from a family where adultery is just okay. Okay with everyone except Hera, I mean.
I told my mom I'd get back to her. I was thinking that if there was anyone else, literally any other person in the whole realm that we could get to do the job, there was no way I would let her take over.
I remember thinking that she had suffered enough, that it was time for her to just rest and enjoy being dead and to stop taking care of people, that that part was over and she was supposed to just relax. I don't remember what the suffering thing was about, but my attitude towards my mom's afterlife is the same: it should be time to kick back and relax. It should be a reward for a life well lived and a job well done.

But being a mom now too though, I get it. It's never really over. It never will be over. I'll be protecting my babies until the end of my existence. And their friends, and their friends' parents, and the bus they ride to school on. Or griffin, in the case of Alex and Erik.

It was hard saying goodbye to my mom, though I don't really remember why so much anymore. Just that she'd been gone a long time and there were eighty million things I wanted to tell her - like about Brendan Gair and his future T-Rex and the daughter I hadn't had yet but that Gunnar told me about and how I was going to turn Nevermore into Bubo from that old movie with the mechanical owl, and there were a bajillion things I wanted to ask her and I wanted to just sit down and spend forever there, just talking to my mom. And not talking about how she shouldn't be volunteering to be Hades' new ferryman. Ferrywoman. Ferryperson.
Whatever. We didn't have to take her up on it, but we had been told by Persephone that we couldn't trick anyone in the Fields into taking up the position.
So we didn't. Harlan the Glib convinced one of the guys who used to judge souls that it was his duty to the realm to free this woman, or something like that.

So we set someone up on the boat, and Nate stays with the woman who needs to eat in the next day or she's going to be in trouble but we can't let her because hey, that's how Persephone got suckered into being here so much. But I didn't come here to babysit a mortal and solve all of Hades' problems. I came here to investigate the Darkness and get Marie's memories. Which totally explains why they're in Gunnar's head. Only not really.
I wonder, if he had known how things would turn out, if he still would have done it.

Ain't No Grave (Gonna Hold This Body Down)

The Baron was in my head this time. I don't remember what all he told the others.
Go look into Tartarus. That was the gist of it. That big prison thing that used to hold all of the biggest, nastiest shit we godly types could stuff into it?
Yeah, go stare at it.

Great advice from the Baron, a guy who doesn't seem to mind the idea of being dead.
Well, okay, I don't mind it so much anymore, either. I have a theory that it's a side effect of crawling in and out of underworlds and graves like some sort of boomerang zombie. Good luck keeping me in a grave, if I ever actually do bite it. I could probably still get a lot accomplished if I were dead for a while. But there is some stuff I still want to do that I am kinda sure requires a pulse. Like that other kid of ours Gunnar said he saw in Wuhai. I'm in full support of the conventional wisdom which says that having a kid requires a pulse. I refuse to consider evidence to the contrary.
Oh fuck, tangent. Um... yeah. The whole reason we were talking to the Baron was we weren't sure where to go next. I think Nate and Harlan were itching to go after Ixion, who we found out from Gunnar's dad was on a submarine in the Pacific Ocean with a dead crew and that there were a lot of simulacra of him around the world, but the real one was the one in the Pacific.

Oh. Uh... before that, we did stuff. Well, before the Baron and after Carmen.
We got Gunnar's dad back. Yeah, big victory there. I guess. I don't know if it was the best thing to do, I know if I were Gunnar's dad I would have wanted to know for damn sure who the fuck was implicitly responsible for my captivity in the first place. Well, I don't know if that's right. The guy that the others heard about, Malsum, he may not have had anything to do with pop-in-law's (I hope he can't read this with his crazy good vision. Um... Heimdall, if you can read this... Hi! Sorry I called you pop-in-law. How's tricks?) imprisonment. I do know that I feel like shit for calling Odin in on a false alarm, saying that we had found Loki when it was actually this douche-nozzle pretending to be Loki. Calling Odin in meant he wanted to grab Thor the wonder-boy, when Thor was supposed to be backing up my father-in-law while they picked a fight with some frost giants. I think that's just a passtime for the Aesir, like baseball and drinking used to be for Gunnar. Except Thor wasn't there, and Heimdall got put on lockdown. I like to imagine that, in an unwittingly perfect impersonation of Schwarzenegger, Utgard-Loki told Heimdall to "chill out."
That seems like his kind of joke.

Oh, but about the guy who actually stole the device from me when I called Dionysus. Malsum. Malsum is a wolf god from an old Indian tribe that nobody seems to care much about anymore. I know I'd never heard of the guy, but then there are a lot of people I haven't heard of. Doesn't necessarily mean they aren't important, or they aren't powerful. Just that nobody's fucking heard of them in recent years. This Malsum guy was the reason they found Loki in Mag Mell. It's a little bit confusing.
The story is that Loki was working with Malsum because Loki wanted to get Fenrir freed from his bondage, Glaupnir. Yup, Loki wanted to free his kid who is supposed to start Ragnarok. Parents do crazy shit for their kids, even if the kid's a massive scary wolf who's supposed to eat the moon to kick off the apocalypse. Or something like that. I've slept since I read the Edda. But damn, if my kids ever start the apocalypse, they are so fucking grounded.

Uh... Anyway. So how did Loki end up underground? Elementary, my dear. Malsum tricked Loki.
Sur-fucking-prise. A trickster god, pulling tricks.
Nobody could have possibly fucking predicted that one. Oh wait, except for everyone. Well, okay, maybe it's a little surprising that anyone managed to pull anything over on Loki. I mean, we kinda expect him to be the troublemaker these days. At least I do. Maybe I'm a little bit prejudiced.

Uh, but yeah. I digress. I was talking about Utgard-Loki, and Heimdall and that hair the giant king had.
Utgard-Loki (probably) had that guy (Malsum)'s hair. At first I think we would have just used the hair to find out who the machine-stealing culprit was, but maybe since we already had that information (which came from Loki, who is apparently the most reliable source ever), nobody else thought it was all that important. Now, I'm not an expert on the subject, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that a body part, even if it's just a piece of hair, would probably be a pretty nifty thing for anyone who wanted to magically fuck over the plans of a trouble maker who keeps stealing godly devices. I am not capable of doing any of this magical-fucking-over type stuff, and like I said, I'm not an expert. My forte is shooting people, and hitting people, and keeping other people from getting shot at or hit, and failing that, making sure that people who do get shot at or hit survive it. So long as I want them to.
Magic is Gunnar's deal, plus it was his dad in captivity, so I felt like this was one of those rare moments where I should - and actually would - just keep my mouth shut.
But I hope that if Gunnar ever had the choice between freeing me from an icicle pincushion or literally getting a piece of the asshole responsible for a lot of mortal deaths, that he wouldn't pick me. We've had this talk before, and he said he wouldn't pick me. I hope he sticks to it. If it's between saving me or kicking Titan ass, or godly ass that's just acting Titanically dickish, I hope he'd pick to kick ass and let me find my own way out of the godsdamned ice.
Who knows, I might just get pissed off enough to evolve lasers in my eyes, and shoot my way out of the ice. Yeah, that's what I'm going to go with. Eye lasers.
Heimdall probably could too.

Anyway, that wasn't the choice that was made, and I didn't have any say in it because I wasn't even there when the choice was offered. I was pregnant then and wasn't sure if I went through that I could get back and I was going to do it anyway and then Gunnar gave me that look that reminded me how fucking stupid it would be to get myself stranded in giant country, so I got to sit outside Jotunheim playing a rousing game of "Watch the Tatzelwurm." It's right up there with watching a monkey pick its nose; only entertaining for about ten seconds.

I didn't stay outside this time. I got to go with them, and it was different from the moment we even got there. Like, there was pretty much an army of ice giants outside of where Jotunheim even began. That was new. Fortunately for us they weren't terribly bright.
Someone talked our way past them, and there was something important about it... I don't remember what it was, though. Something we convinced them to do, or say... I don't know. We got inside without too much trouble, and that's really the part I care about.
Utgard-Loki himself was alright. Not really rude, and he made good with his part of the deal without too much goading of the god he'd been holding captive. There was some other ice queen there, though. She smelled like frost and sounded like whales, the way Gunnar smells like amber and his heartbeat sounds like lightning. I don't know, I didn't pick the smells or the sounds. Her name was Sedna and she was kind of an unnecessary bitch.

So, yeah. We got Gunnar's dad, which was awesome. Yeah, I know, I said it wouldn't have been my call, and I'm glad it wasn't my call because it was what I wanted to do, just not what I would have done. It makes sense, just go with it.
Heimdall kinda freaked when he looked at me and realized I wasn't pregnant anymore. That was a little weird. At first I thought maybe he could just see it, the way my dad and I can, but now I figure that that's just where Gunnar gets his crazy hearing from, and Heimdall probably just noticed that the heartbeats weren't there like they were supposed to be.
I wanted to go on a bitchfest about what was probably one of the least fun pregnancies and craziest deliveries ever (yeah, Dad and my aunt probably have me beat on the last one; look up Leto's delivery of Artemis and Apollo), but I also did not want to waste the time of a god, especially not a god who'd been out of the loop for a while and probably had Really Important Shit to be getting back to. Yeah, more important than family. At least more demanding. I don't have to like it, but I get it.
Gunnar and I did manage to convince Heimdall that everything was okay, though. We asked him to think way, way back into the past (for him. For us it was last fucking Tuesday), when he and Kairos laid some major hurt on Pan, creating Cernunnos and... someone else. I don't remember, and I don't really care.
Anyway, we were like, "Hey Heimdall, you remember those random nine-year-olds you saw that time when you cut a god in half?"
And Heimdall was like, "Wait, which time? Oh, that time. Uh, yeah..."
And we were like, "Well those were your super-awesome grandsons."
I paraphrased.
Heimdall seemed pretty happy about the news, and just a little bit awe struck about having seen his grandkids before he ever even knew he would have children. I have to admit, it is kinda wicked. My kids are time-traveling badasses.
Seriously, other moms can brag about their kids' report cards and school plays. I get to stand up and tell the soccer moms to shove it, because my sons were born in a temporal anomaly, and that's way more badass than straight A's. The first time my sons saw snow it was in the drifts of Fimbulwinter. Years before it happened. They'd been to not one, not even two, but three different underworlds before they were ever born. My sons are fucking awesome.

So, after we had freed Heimdall we asked him if he would be willing to do us a really huge favor. Seriously, the kind of huge favor that gets most lowly demigods killed for being presumptuous enough to ask. I guess we get some leeway for helping him out and explaining everything we knew to him (which wasn't a lot, but when you're stuck in ice I guess you take what you can get). We told him about the Aesir being trapped here in Midgard, that Tyr and Loki and him were the only ones we knew about. The "Loki" part interested him.
But Heimdall used his super-awesome-mega-ultra-I-can-fucking-see-everything-and-your-underwear-doesn't-match vision to tell us where Ixion was hanging out. Some of the Band is kinda hot about going after him. I'm not, not really. I don't think we're ready for it just yet.
I really didn't think we were ready for it when Heimdall told us where the real Ixion was, that sub in the middle of the ocean, thousands of feet below the surface. There were all sorts of problems with going after him that I wasn't sure anyone had thought about. I mean, I had, because I've wandered my ass down to the bottom of the ocean before, and I distinctly remember that it wasn't fun. I remember arguing as hard as I could to keep Nate from coming with me because I was pretty sure that just the pressure of the water at that depth would pop him like an unfortunate grape. I remember being really, really glad that everyone else got the call to go deal with the Nazi werewolves and that Gunnar and I were able to Lone Ranger and Tonto that shit, since we only have the one Nommo eye and as far as I know no one else can breathe underwater. It's not like the extra firepower would have even helped us against the Flying Dutchman or whatever that ship was.
Plus, if I were a mythologically powered dick with a submarine armed with nukes, I would wait just long enough for the dumbasses coming after me to get up in my submarine's personal bubble, then I would detonate the nukes and at least knock my enemies unconscious so that they could then either drown, be crushed to death, or get eaten by sharks. I wouldn't particularly care which. And then I would cruise away in my stolen submarine full of dead bodies, cackling like the Joker because that's what bad guys do.
We good guys were trying to figure out what to do next, and seeing if Heimdall could help us with it when the world sort of shifted. It faded and moved, and there was like this room type thing and in it was Odin, looking like a really grumpy badass, and then there were lots of other people. Aesir, all of them. Ty - the Sway junkie who went through withdrawal at mine and Gunnar's house - was there, along his dad Tyr, and Gunnar and Heimdall were there, and some other viking I didn't recognize, and Harlan and Sly and Loki, and Gunter, then me and mine and Gunnar's boys, Alexander and Erik. Odin explained that he figured out a way to get the Aesir gods back where they belonged. You know, back in Asgard. That was kinda important, since as far as we had known Asgard and Helheim had been cut off from Midgard.
I don't know what Odin did, but it was impressive, and then poof! Heimdall has left the building. Loki and Tyr and the other viking, too.
Odin also said that whatever was happening to cut off the over- and under- worlds, it wasn't happening from their side of things. Whatever is doing it is doing it from Midgard and it's up to the other side to figure out what the fuck is going on. All the gods in Midgard were being called home to defend against threats to the homeland, of which there are many. So, Odin explained, the Aesir who were left in Midgard, those of us who he had included in this vision thing, were charged with the responsibility of solving the mystery and stopping the badness. I don't have a better name for it. Maybe I should just call it the Darkness. Except I like that band. The Happening? No, not enough pollen. The Stuff. Yeah, that works for now. Odin told us to stop the Stuff.
And... fuck, I guess that makes me an honorary viking. He didn't have to show me what was happening. I mean, I don't know how much trouble it was to include me in the vision, but I assume it was some small amount of effort, at least. I don't know what I could have done to get in the good graces of the All-Father. Maybe it was volunteering for the apocalypse party, telling Heimdall I'd be there when he sounds the Gjallrhorn to call all the kids to Ragnarok.
Well, whatever it was... Odin, even if just implicitly... called me one of the Aesir.
Fuck yeah.

So, despite having marching orders from the All-Father, the rest of the band still wasn't sure about what to do next. I guess that's understandable, it's not like they really have close ties to the Aesir, and it's not like I really expect them to take orders from Odin when they weren't even there to hear the orders he gave... but still, when a god says "jump," I don't think it's a great idea to say, "Why?" or "Sure, but lemme go get my face nuked off, first."
I wanted to get on figuring out the Darkness. I still have underworlds to go to, and I want to make sure I can get there. We had leads for this already, Bast had recommended we talk to a death god. They get to be all up close and personal with Tartarus, or something like that. I can't remember exactly what the explanation was, I wasn't even there for this conversation. But I think it was explained that the underworlds go dark just barely before the overworlds, so maybe the people who run the underworlds might be able to tell us something. I suggested maybe we should go to Hades since I had business there anyway, and we could talk to Hades while we were there. It's kinda self-serving, if you wanna look at it that way. Or you could look at it another way and just fucking agree with me when I say I'm multitasking.
I would have suggested Duat, but I'm not dragging anyone into that mess with me if I don't have to.
Either way, that idea was gently vetoed, and replaced with the seriously much better idea of bringing a death god to us instead of having to go to one of them.

Yeah, so, my husband is a badass, too. He remembered the spell that summoned the Baron from back when we were organizing the party for Brigitte's funeral. All we needed was the hottest peppers on the planet, a black rooster, some rum and a lazy Saturday.
Now, this may not be the kind of fact that actually needs to be pointed out, but black chickens are kinda hard to come by in the Jotunheimen Mountains. We managed, though. I was two steps shy of just finding a chicken and painting the fucker black. It probably still would have worked.
Gunnar did the ritual to call down... er... up... the Baron. We thought he was going to "ride" Gunnar (yeah, it still sounds weird and sexual, like I'm betting the Baron would say it's supposed to), like he did last time. So Gunnar handed me all of his relics.
I don't really know why, now that I think about it. Maybe he thought the Baron was going to go crazy and try to kill us all?
If that was the case, I really doubt he would need a demigod's relics to do it. I mean, he could probably just strike us all dead with a look, if he decided we were worth the trouble. Maybe he was worried the Baron would engage in lewd and lascivious conduct with his relics.
Anyway, um, there was no need for Gunnar to have handed me everything, because I started feeling something pushing at my mind.
"Oh, uh, here," I shoved everything back at Gunnar.
And then everything kinda changed and I heard someone speaking using my voice, felt him moving using my body. He apparently approved of his new accommodations, quite vocally and to Gunnar's pretty obvious disapproval. From the back of my head I remember thinking it was more than a little weird to be feeling myself up in front of everyone.
But that's just what it's like to have the Loa god of Death riding you. Well, riding me. The Baron was riding me... and when I put it that way, I guess it makes sense now why Gunnar looked kinda ticked for the whole thing. Like maybe no one else is supposed to "ride" his... yeah, I can't write that, it's too weird.

We asked the Baron a lot of questions. His answers were mostly "I don't know" and "you should go see for yourselves" and "You want to save the world, Ixion's not fucking with the world, but this other stuff is so maybe that should be the higher priority."
And then he told us to go look at Tartarus. Like, not go into it, because that would be dangerous and stupid, and not even necessary. But the prison was built in a weird space, and all of the death gods are supposed to know something about it. So we should actually go talk to one. We should go look over the edge of the abyss. So that's three different gods from three different pantheons encouraging us to go check out an underworld. Even if I didn't have to worry about putting Marie back together, or taking Azzeza to Duat, I was willing to listen to the first god. But I guess the rest of the band needs to hear it from three. Third time's the charm.
We picked Hades. It's not supposed to be as cold as Helheim, it's not supposed to be as underwater as Guinnee, it's not supposed to be as kill-your-face-with-desert as Duat. The only threats I know about in Hades' realm are Cerberus and the man himself. Well, god. Oh, and his wife. Anyone who can stay in the underworld as much as she does and not be out of her gourd makes me a little nervous.
Watch, we will get there and everything will be on fire. Then I'm going to pitch a bitch about how that wasn't in the brochure, and I'm going to fire my travel agent.
So yeah. That's the plan. Go to Hades. Look at Tartarus. Hopefully let Laurel get Marie's memories back so that she can then traipse off to Duat with two kids in tow and figure out how the fuck to put it all back together. Not just Marie. Everything. The world, the underworlds, the overworlds - everything back the way it fucking belongs.
I haven't told Gunnar yet, but I'm planning on going right after we get done with Hades. He has to know it's coming soon, though. Just gotta tell the kids before we head into the underworld. Make sure Azzeza's ready for it. Say goodbye to my kids. Have Amanda teach me Ancient Egyptian. Finish those blueprints for Dionysus' temple. Nah, it's not a huge to-do list at all.
It is, actually, and it doesn't get any smaller. I check something off, and replace it with eight other things that all have to get done ASAP.
At least I don't think I'll have to worry too much about Gunnar and the others while I'm gone. I told the Baron about wanting to go to Duat. I told him I was worried about everyone else, and that I wanted to stay with them in case they did decide to go do something stupid like bullrush a nuclear submarine, but that I couldn't keep ignoring this kid and I was in over my head with putting Marie back together and I didn't know what else to do and the doors were closing and I think he got tired of me rambling. He said, to me, in my head, that he would see what he could do.
It made me feel a lot better about everything. I like the Baron.

When we were all done, the Baron said something about hanging around for a bit, I guess just using my body to walk the world. Get a vacation, since I guess he's still Guinnee bound.
Yeah, Gunnar said "No" at the same time I said "Yes."
Nobody heard me, since I was only actually talking in my head. Well, the Baron heard me. He said he had to go anyway. I wonder why Gunnar didn't want him hanging around. The Baron's a pretty righteous dude. I mean, yeah he's a skeletal Spongebob who binge drinks and chain smokes and he has a way of dancing that makes a person's hips vibrate like a particularly agitated tuning fork, but still. As death gods go, he could be a lot worse. A Hel of a lot worse. Haha, get it?

The Fragile

Yeah, so we found Carmen and almost killed her.

I don't know how things went on the front end of the concert, but I was waiting by one of the back doors. Somehow she got convinced to come out that way, and I got a text from Gunnar that she was en route. So when she showed her little crazyface I hopped over and put a hand over her mouth. I wanted to subdue her, so I reached around in my head for the darker part of all that healing shit I do. Her body kinda blossomed into bruises.
Then Kas rifle butted her. Almost killed her. I should have just let Kas hotwire the van, like she seemed to want to do. I was just afraid that a delay would give Carmen some advantage over us. I didn't want her talking, or moving, until we were ready for her.

Anyway. I kept her from dying.
We stripped her of her relics and got her on our little plane. Oh yeah, we uh... we borrowed a plane. I think we plan to take it back.
Harlan did... something to her. Carmen thinks she's in love with him, now. It's kinda gross. I mean, he's not a bad looking guy, if you're into ridiculously pretty blondes with severe attitude problems. Harlan's technically better looking than Gunnar.
Okay, Harlan's the best looking guy in the Band. He also just happens to act like a jerk a lot of the time, and it's really fucking painfully obvious to everyone who isn't Carmen that he thinks she's got cooties or something. It's kinda cruel.
We got her into an interrogation room at the airport after that. Gunnar stayed with the plane. Nate and Brendan had gone in to talk to her. Brendan laid a geas on her, but made it really clear that the choice was hers whether or not to follow it. He was very... well, I guess "kind" is the word I want. Yeah. He was kind about it.

Then I wanted to talk to her. I thought maybe the Band might be a little uneasy about this prospect, considering how well the last intimate conversation I had with a Scion went. I left my relics outside, just to prove to Carmen that I didn't mean her any harm.
Well, no more harm than I could do with my bare hands. Seriously though, I didn't want to hurt her. It just kinda happened.
"Carmen," I started slowly and respectfully. I kept my voice soft. Didn't want her to think I was yelling at her. "I know what it's like to wanna watch the whole world burn." I poured a lot of myself into that sentence, and more of myself into the next. I wanted her to know that I understood.
"But more importantly, I know how fucking disappointing it is when you get what you want and it's not at all like you thought it would be." I leaned toward her a little, looking her in the eyes. "Here. I'll show you."

And then, that thing I can do where I'm in Gunnar's head, I did it to her. Only it wasn't my voice I wanted her to hear. It was my memories. The really painful ones, the ones I keep locked away and try not to think about too hard. I wanted her to feel the things I had felt.

I started with watching my mom die. All of those memories, from when I was thirteen and first learned what the word "cancer" meant, I distilled them. I focused on the times I visited my mom in the hospital, skeleton-thin and barely able to fucking move, let alone paint or laugh or talk like she used to. I distilled all of that, five years of watching someone die and sitting by their bedside as it happened, into something brief. I didn't need to drag that out, it was just the preface. I just wanted her to understand what came next.
I showed her the funeral, the coffin, the headstone. The empty house. Then the day I joined the army, the training I mastered just because I could, the pointless medals I earned for marksmanship and combat, and how little it helped. I kept that short too, it felt to me like the blink of an eye. Then I skipped to the important part: the night I tried to lay down and die. I fucked that up, too.

I started with the mission: my team and I, finding the civilians. Calling in for orders. We were told to guard them, women and children. Days of no sound but dirt beneath our boots and explosions and gunfire in the rapidly diminishing distance. The bombs and the guns kept getting closer. Nighttime, where one of the guys who spoke Arabic translated for us and we got to know our charges. They were sweet women and sweet kids, kids who said they wanted to be good guys like us and protect people.
And the last day, the crying child. Nightfall. The kid is still crying. He's getting sick. It's getting dark, and it's getting cold.
The guys relax, as much as anyone can in this situation. They're exhausted. Tomorrow this all ends. Some of the guys are going home. Spouses, kids and all of that waiting for them on the other side of the world.
And the quiet splinters. The door bursts. There are shouts, foreign. Angry. There are gunshots and grunts. I'm on the floor. I've got eight bullets in my side. I had never been shot before that day. It fucking hurts. It feels a little like burning from the inside out. Molten pain tearing through your insides.

I can still look around, and I see all nine of my comrades all dead. Men and women I loved. People I trusted. An officer named Alma gurgled next to me. I think she was reaching for me. I think it was quick for most of them, at least.

Then they lined up the kids. The littlest one isn't crying anymore.
He's screaming instead. His eyes are wide. Big brown pools, and they keep looking at me because I am the good guy. I'm the strong one. I'm the one who is supposed to save him.

But I don't.

I can't.

Maybe I just won't.

The mercenaries rifle butt him in the chest. Something cracks. His breath sounds wet. He keeps crying strangled cries before they shoot him in the head. He lands on the floor with a soft thump. All the force of a wet towel, and with the same type of schlooping sound.
The rest of the kids fall in pretty much the same way. Eight more gunshots, one for each little life I watch end. Each body lands with open, empty eyes. Looking at me. I can't help them.
I can't look away anymore, either. I can't lift my head far enough off the ground. I can feel something warm and wet, sticky and salty on my cheek. Tears, some of it. But not most of it. The rest is blood, pooling on the dirt under the side of my face. Mine.
The women are wailing now for their children. They get grabbed by their hair by the men, lined up next to their dead children. The men strip them.
Their bodies were beautiful. I remember thinking that. The men didn't care about that, though. They raped the women. They heard me whimper when the women stopped screaming. They thought it was funny, the way I cried. It amused them to see my tears. So they did it again.
Then they lined the women up. The women were quivering and their voices were wrecked.
Then the men fired their weapons. One shot for each body. Some in the back, some in the chest. Some in the head. Six more bodies on the dirty floor. At least some were looking away when they fell.
Those gunshots seemed so much louder. I jerked at each one. It made everything hurt.
There was another sound underneath the thunderclap of gunfire. It was tiny. It was a sobbing. It didn't sound human, even. It sounded pathetic. Like a small, terrified and wounded animal.
It was me. In that moment I wasn't even human anymore. I was something wrong and broken.
They heard me crying and they laughed. Then they kicked me in the ribs, hard. Something snapped. Two ribs.
They listened to the little strangled sound and the wet gurgling of my breath around the snot and blood I had clogging up my nose. They laughed again. One of them took out a lighter and flicked his thumb with a snapping sound. He ignited the clothing of some of the kids. They set the house on fire and they left me there to burn with it.
I kept praying that I would go unconscious. I prayed that I would bleed to death, or burn to death. I wanted it to stop. I wanted blackness to come, but it didn't. All through the night I could still hear. And smell. And feel. The bodies popped and cracked in the fire.
I still can't forget the sound of a child's eyeball popping from the heat of the flames. I still can't forget the way they smelled as they burned.

Carmen probably won't forget it either.
She was crying when it ended. Tears had been streaming down her face for a while, it looked like. When I let her mind go she started holding her head and sobbing.

Turns out I spent over an hour in there with her. I didn't mean for it to be that long, and I'm sorry I had to do that to her. I didn't even want those memories in my head, but it was all I could think of to help her, and it was so much better that she just watched it happening to someone else than having to live through it herself.
It was the kindest thing I could think of.

The nicest thing I could think to do was show her what it really looks like, what it really feels like, to really see people in pain. To know that you are completely broken and defeated and that all you want is to watch the world burn before you die.
So I showed her the tears sliding down my cheeks, my mangled and shaking body laying broken in the fire, and just how damned pitiful I looked.

I may not like the kid much, but I'll be damned if I wasn't going to help save her.
It's like my mom used to try to tell me: You watch over people, Laurel. You take care of them. You protect the people you love, but protect the people you hate, too. They tend to need it more.

"fragile
she doesn't see her beauty
she tries to get away
sometimes
it's just that nothing seems worth saving
i can't watch her slip away

i won't let you fall apart

she reads the minds of all the people as they pass her by
hoping someone can see
if i could fix myself i'd -
but it's too late for me

i won't let you fall apart
i won't let you fall apart
i won't let you fall apart
i won't let you fall apart...

...it's something i have to do
i was there, too
before everything else
i was like you"
Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile

Most of the Time

Alright, so we flew into DC and met up with the others. Bast had something to say to Kass. Don't really know what that was about. I should probably talk to the Cat Lady sometime, and see what Bast thinks about my idea to take Azzeza to Du'at, being Azzeza's mother and all.


Speaking of, I brought that up to Gunnar on the plane ride over. Du'at, the whole, "I might not come back if I go do this" part of it, I mean. He, uh... well, he's a good guy. Kinda the best, actually. I didn't even have to give him the spiel. The spiel in question is the one where I pour my little heart out about just how much like a piece of shit I feel about having failed this kid since before I ever met her.


Seriously. She was fucking dead when I met her. They'd killed her the day before. And since then I've been just a step behind taking care of her. I've been letting my job with the Band interfere with my job as a mother - and let's face it, the Order bunch are all pretty much my kids, now. Even Susan. But anyway... First we dealt with taking Brigitte to New Orleans and then we went and fought Caleb and defended Mag Mell, then I took the time to run off and get married, then I had to go and get pregnant, which meant then I had to start dealing with putting Marie back in working order and somewhere in the midst of all of that this little ghost of a child has been patiently waiting for it to be convenient for me to remember that I made her a promise.


I have been neglecting this little dead girl, and I almost lost her soul to Erebus because of it. And most of the time, it didn't bother me. I had gotten to where I didn't even think about the sweet little brown-haired ghost that was supposed to have been haunting my house. I didn't think anything of it when she disappeared, when I should have run after her as soon as I heard she hadn't been around. But most of the time, she's at the back of my mind.


I don't think I can keep putting this off, anymore. The underworlds are in danger of closing, which means I may never get the chance to take her where she belongs, where she deserves to be. Plus, I don't even know what to do with all of the bits to Humpty Dumpty once I get them all together. Isis may know, except I'd have to go to Du'at to talk to her. But that's really secondary. I feel like the place is pulling at me, telling me I need to go because if I don't go soon I may lose the chance forever. I feel like it's something I'm supposed to do, like maybe that's the whole reason she had to die in the first place because maybe there's something there I'm supposed to see.

Dammit. This faith shit is difficult. You have to be a little crazy to be someone who believes that everything happens for a reason. I guess I qualify. But then you start to go a little crazier trying to find the reasons behind everything. Why that bird sang. Why that flower bloomed when it did. Why that crazy bitch turned Nate's own gun on him, and why everyone was surprised when I took the shot. There's a reason I killed her. It's what I was supposed to do, and it's not just because I'm still a little bit messed up. I can't help but feel there is something I'm supposed to learn from all of this resurrection bullshit. Something I wouldn't have learned any other way. Something I have to work for, some lesson I have to earn. Something I have to go get lost in the desert to find.

I told Gunnar we could talk more about it later. Basically I just said that when I go, Amanda has warned me I may never come back.
I don't buy it, just for the record.
If there's a way out, any way out, any way I can get back to my husband and my babies and my friends, I will find it. Come Hel or the Drowned Road.

I guess I just didn't want to surprise Gunnar with the "oh and by the way, there's the smallest possibility that this place will consume my soul and I may never come back," or worse, not tell him at all and have him hear it from someone else. Besides that we didn't talk a whole lot on the plane ride. I've been working on the blueprints for the temple to give to the kids in Germany and he's been working on learning just about every fucking language in the world. Seriously. I can't keep track of what he speaks anymore. It's all Sanskrit to me, anyway. I've told myself not to be surprised if, just for fun, he picks up Klingon.

Anyway, back to DC. Oh, apparently there are rules. For being a god. Or the kid of gods. Something like that. Twenty of them. Apparently only some of the gods really care about them enough to share. I think the rest of the gods are pirates, in the sort of "these are more like guidelines" type of sense. Some of them make sense, I guess. Some of them are just kinda "Well, no shit," type of statements.

Don't make things go extinct.
Don't be a dick (well, all creatures have the right to light and darkness. Same difference).
Don't bring anyone back from the dead (unless her mommy says it's okay).
Humans don't need to know how to control the weather. That kind of thing.
As far as rules go, they're alright. So, yeah, Kas, or Nate, one of them learned about that from another godkid.

And here's the short version of what else happened to the others while Gunnar and I were busy in the Garden:
They discovered "Canopus" was being used to try to create supersoldiers. It wasn't really Canopus. It was Donald Jackson, somehow converted into some weird snake thing.
They fixed this by setting part of the CIA on fire.
Harlan almost died. Again. Guy is about as resilient as a slightly aged grape. Well, that and supernatural venom is a bitch. I vaguely remember seeing Gunnar get poisoned by the thing when we fought the real deal. The one he and Jack threw off the roof.

So, yeah, we hurried a little to join up with them. After we got there though they were pretty much alright. Kass does a pretty good job of taking care of them all, and I usually feel like I'm leaving them in good hands when she's around, these days. Most of the time. I mean, she can't do everything I do, and she can't do it as easily, but she's good with basic first aid and "Here, let's cut open your femoral artery to bleed some of that poison out of you, and holy fuck, stop dying, Harlan" type treatments.

We hung around long enough for Dorthen to get there and hand off to him Marie's body. He is still really cantankerous. I guess only having one arm will do that to you. I thought about trying to sympathize with him, telling him about how I lost my arm, except there's the part where I just grew it back and I don't have to try all that hard to imagine the scowly face he'd make, staring at my obviously-not-lost appendage.

Oh, the body. Nate was kind enough to bring Marie's body back to the States, since Gunnar and I were headed not-to-the-States. Oh yeah, Tyr brought the body to us in the airport when Brendan, Gunnar and I were heading off to check on the kids in Australia. Can't remember if I mentioned that anywhere. I guess Hel heard my prayer before the gate closed. Or whatever happened. Tyr made it sound like she would really have liked to have delivered the body to me. Either way, I'm just grateful Hel was actually really helpful. I never know what to expect from the god-types.

Anyway, I don't remember how we decided to go about it, but somehow we decided that we were going after Carmen in California. I don't even remember how we knew she was in California. Something about a performance? I don't know. Either way, we headed for Victorville, which was kind of a massive tent city, and I think someone talked the police into helping us find her. Kas and I pretended to be French movie stars for some reason. Then Gunnar and I fought crime, and I keep doing everything but keeping my promises, and what bothers me the most is that it hadn't even bothered me, most of the time.

"Most of the time
I’m clear focused all around
Most of the time
I can keep both feet on the ground
I can follow the path, I can read the signs
Stay right with it when the road unwinds
I can handle whatever I stumble upon
I don’t even notice she’s gone
Most of the time

Most of the time
It’s well understood
Most of the time
I wouldn’t change it if I could
I can make it all match up, I can hold my own
I can deal with the situation right down to the bone
I can survive, I can endure
And I don’t even think about her
Most of the time

Most of the time
My head is on straight
Most of the time
I’m strong enough not to hate
I don’t build up illusion ’til it makes me sick
I ain’t afraid of confusion no matter how thick
I can smile in the face of mankind
Don’t even remember what her lips felt like on mine
Most of the time

Most of the time
She ain’t even in my mind
I wouldn’t know her if I saw her
She’s that far behind
Most of the time
I can’t even be sure
If she was ever with me
Or if I was with her

Most of the time
I’m halfway content
Most of the time
I know exactly where it went
I don’t cheat on myself, I don’t run and hide
Hide from the feelings that are buried inside
I don’t compromise and I don’t pretend
I don’t even care if I ever see her again
Most of the time..."
Bob Dylan, Most of the Time

Know Your Rights

"Number 3
You have the right to free
Speech as long as you're not
Dumb enough to actually try it...

You have the right to remain silent
You are warned that anything you say
Can and will be taken down
And used as evidence against you..."
The Clash, Know Your Rights

Alright, so if I remember it correctly, we get out of the Garden and there are police everywhere. I guess it was suspicious when we just kinda disappeared after the ruckus Dad caused, and the local law enforcement decided now was the best possible time to come do their job.
They start asking questions and some of the people were a little concerned about me not having an arm anymore. I think someone said something about us having really great effects, and how it really looked like my arm was gone and it really looked like my skin was made of gold. I think that was when Gunnar and I kinda glanced at one another, deciding this was kind of a fortuitous setup for the type of thing we had talked about doing back in the Henge.
And hey, this way we didn't have to actually schedule anything and worry about not showing up if some Titan Avatar opted to screw with us. Looking like flakes to all of our potential adoring fans and future followers would kinda suck.
So I turned to the crowd and was like, "No, my skin is actually gold. Here, touch it." And, "Yeah, that arm is really gone. But I'll be fine. Um... Trust me, I'm the Doctor." And then I thought for a second, and figured now was the time to test my hypothesis. So I said, "I kinda need it back, now," or something like that. And then I had an arm again. It was rather straightforward, which was nice.

And then one of the officers started asking us to come to the station with him, and I was even nice enough to ride in the officer's car with him instead of being a jerk about it and insisting that I ride with Gunnar. Or not go at all. But no, I was trying to be a helpful and honest demigod, and it would have gotten me knocked unconscious if these guys had had a clue what they were dealing with.

We get to the station, they offer us drinks. Gunnar wants coffee, I want booze. I asked for vodka, repeatedly. Maybe I shouldn't have been so pushy about it, but fuck it, I did say please.
They decided to use it as an opportunity to drug me. I don't know exactly what was in it, but I drank a significant portion of the bottle before Gunnar took over, told me not to drink anymore, and finished it off himself. The officers seemed to think that Gunnar was going to need a medic. I guess they missed the part where I said "I'm the Doctor." Though, if I had been placed in this situation a year ago... well, there still wouldn't have been a problem because I've been seeing those aura things since med school and still would have known Gunnar was fine. Anyway, my point is that they were just trying to do their jobs. And their jobs were apparently to be jerks.
I also guess "Please get me some vodka, here's a really convincing look at my cleavage that you've been staring at anyway," translates to, "Yes I am completely agreeing to you trying to drug me, officer even though all I've done is agree to come to your station and answer your bullshit questions."

Those bullshit questions included stuff about who my dad was, which I told him: "No, that was really Apollo."
"Right... last name?"
Guess he wasn't impressed when I shrugged and said, "Pythias?"
And I tried to assure him that yes, we were the children of gods and yes, the gods were coming back to earth and no, he didn't believe any of it.
I showed him Sibyl. He thought I was crazy and about to start shooting the place up, so I set her down and told the guy that if he made a move for her, he would regret it. Hell, I even pulled Mercy out of thin air, showing him how the tattoo reappeared when I put her away. And I told him if I was crazy, so was he because at least he was having the same damn hallucinations.

He said something that sounded like an attempt to confiscate my fucking relics, which was met with a resounding "Hell no" from me. And I'm pretty sure that's when we got tired of this shit.
Gunnar lit up like a... I dunno, something bright. All glowy and adamant that we were leaving now.

Anyway, with all of that bullshit over, Gunnar finally took the time to eat one of those apples. It worked. Like, the years melted off of him and I had MY Gunnar back. Not that the other guy was by any means a total stranger, just... I dunno. It's hard to explain. It's like going off to college and you and your best friend from high school go to different states and then meet up four years later and you're still on the same page and you can still talk about the same stuff, you're just speaking different languages now. It was like that. Kinda.
He was Gunnar, but he was different. He got older, more mature but I... really didn't. He kinda left me behind. He spoke differently and he looked rougher (and I'm shallow for even mentioning it, but dammit, I'm shallow. I missed the way he looked before) and yeah he was a little sweeter and a bit more charming but... well, he wasn't my Gunnar. If I'd wanted someone who was sweeter and more charming, I would have married that guy instead.
But I wanted Gunnar. I wanted the guy with the crazy grin, the guy who shot the Devil's son and blew up dragons and while the guy who stole Tesla's spindle was still Gunnar and I love him no matter what... I just missed the guy I married. The guy who swears as much as I do and loves the Cubs.
I missed his black hair and bright eyes and energy and didn't even realize how much until he was standing in front of me again.
So yeah, police debacle and all, I'm calling this one a win.

I still can't believe they tried to roofie me. I'm pretty sure that's not technically legal.
Mortals are dicks.

Who Wants to Live Forever?

I love Gunnar. I would give my left arm to see him strong and healthy and happy and normal.
Literally.
Like, he wanted his youth back so I fed my arm to a hungry, hundred-headed dragon to help him get it. I would have given more. Well, technically the plan was for me to give the same arm, over and over for about a month, to make him immortal.
And I don't mean the standard "we're going to be gods and live forever" type of immortality. I mean the "not even fucking Ragnarok is going to kill him" type of immortal. I was kinda psyched about that idea, the more I thought about it. But Gunnar didn't think me being away from the World for a month was such a good idea.
Right. Um, beginnings time.

So, we parted ways with Brendan back at the airport in Australia. He was Ireland bound to do I'm-Not-Really-Going-To-Think-Too-Hard-About-What. Gunnar, Never and I continued on the Greece to get Gunnar the mother of all facelifts.
We went to one of the temples of Hera, and just in case this journal of mine ever gets hijacked I don't think I'm gonna spell out which one. If I ever forget I can just ask Gunnar. Or Nevermore, who consistently reminds me how much better his memory is than mine and become a snarky motherfucker since no one but me and Bruce Willis can see him.
Anyway, the temple is apparently a pretty big tourist attraction and there were a bunch of tourists there. I guess we counted toward that number, too, we were just doing a different type of sight-seeing.
I don't remember it perfectly cuz I don't remember anything perfectly, so fuck off if I'm wrong about it, but I'm pretty sure we attracted some attention. That kinda happens when I walk around anywhere. But then Gunnar and I got the idea that maybe this wasn't such a bad place to show off, just a little, so we chatted up some of the people around us about how we are both kind of awesome.
Somewhere in there it hit me that maybe Gunnar and I should have some idea what we were up against, so I pulled out Sibyl, sat my happy ass down and was going to make with the prophesying. There's a problem with doing things like that at a tourist attraction. The problem is that Sibyl is still a big-ass, solid marble six-shooter, and I was pointing it at my head while I was surrounded by tourists. I had some old woman telling me that I was so young and so pretty and that I shouldn't throw my life away. I guess that's what she calls "giving up pretty much everything to protect mankind." I kinda rolled my eyes at her, grinned, unloaded the gun and did the trance thing.
Gunnar looked a little disappointed when I came to. I guess that means I didn't have any seizures like last time, if Nate was right and not just talking crazy. I still think I would probably know about something like that.
I don't think I saw anything incredibly useful. There was Gunnar, talking to a dragon. I couldn't hear everything that they were talking about. Something that was coming. A date, an event, a really confusing metaphor that my brain needs to learn to represent in a more understandable symbolic fashion because seriously, fuck this interpretation shit.
Then I think it shifted and I was holding hands with Gunnar, and there were like... a bajillion dragons flying around in the air. Okay, maybe not that many. But a lot. Half a bajillion.
Then... okay, it's hard to describe. It's like I was busy looking at one thing and someone standing behind me grabbed my head and turned it and made me focus on something else. And I heard Atropos, one of the Fates, say to me, "It's still happening." And I saw six hands, instead of seven like there had been before, grabbing at the Earth. Darkness, and all that jazz. Nothing new and insightful there, aside from one less hand which might have been helpful if I could tell who the fuck any of the hands belonged to in the first place.
So, all in all, not very fucking helpful.
In hindsight, I probably should have paid attention to... well, everything. What the hands looked like - male, female or other. Nationalities, to see if maybe my weird brain was trying to tell me something about lineage. And everything about all of those dragons. Aside from holding hands, I couldn't really tell what Gunnar and I were doing, like where we were standing and whether we seemed to be bothered by the fact that there were so many creatures that sound just like our ancestral enemies just whizzing about. And I couldn't tell if Gunnar looked any younger, so I couldn't be sure our plan was going to work or that we were going to survive the encounter with this hundred-headed dragon. I guess on the bright side, if we were dead we were still with one another. So, there's that, I guess.
You know, I remember when the thought of dying used to piss me off and make me all emo. Frolicking through these underworlds I guess I've gotten used to dead people. Funny. Now I'm just not so worried about where being one of Apollo's kids is an automatic death sentence. There are worse things to be than dead.
Speaking of Apollo, he showed up. Like, I had just finished sharing all the details of my vague and unhelpful prophecy with Gunnar, and we were reaching through the portal thing into the Garden and then poof, there was my dad holding onto us for a second. Not like as Hal or any other skin he decided to wear that day. My dad. Fucking Apollo and his motherfucking Sun Chariot showed up. He hopped out and all the tourists started taking pictures and videos and Dad still looked all wrong and won't tell me what's up with that, but did tell me that the Aesir were cut off and, like there was a fucking echo in here, "It's still happening."
It would be... fucking phenomenal if someone could be bothered to tell me what "IT" is. I'm not gonna hold my breath.
I told him, yeah, I knew about the "still happening" bit, that Atropos had just told me. Dad said he figured Gunnar would want to know, and then with some weird emphasis he said that he figured I would want to know. It sounded weird, and intense and foreshadowy, but my dad is a god of prophecy and I guess I should just expect that kind of shit.
Prophecy, for the record, is turning out to be a far fucking cry from "here's a simple and straightforward clue about what you need to know about the shit you're about to face. Here is a map and a list of your enemy's weaknesses and here is where you will lose your car keys." Instead it's a hell of a lot more like, "here is a puzzle piece, and when you find the other 18 million pieces, you will put them all together, and the image it will make is your Aunt Esther's shoe."
And that was it. He rode off into the sunset, literally. People applauded, which I encouraged the hell out of. I told them they'd better fucking applaud, that guy was my dad and he was risking his ass on a daily fucking basis for the safety of humanity. I should probably work on swearing less when I'm being recorded, now that I think about it. That shit gets around the internet fast.

Anyway, we get our asses into the Garden. I think. It was dark, and there was something cold and damp and stony right in our way. There was a little crack, and I could hear some water. Gunnar stood up on my shoulders to look through the crack, which I don't remember being all that helpful, then Nevermore flew through things which wasn't all that helpful either. He said there was a lot of rock in the way, and a small cavern, and then some more rock, then finally I asked Gunnar for a draught of that viking brew he's got on him and got ready to move the world out of my fucking way. The viking mead, by the way, was de-fucking-licious. I have missed being able to drink, even if people are trying to poison me. I'll get there, that comes after the Garden.
So I push the stone thing out of the way and let Gunnar slip through. I held it there for a little bit before my arms started getting tired, but I could still hear Gunnar talking to me. I did some clambering around on the rock, seeing if maybe I could squeeze through up top. Not so much.
Then I heard Gunnar talking to someone else. Three someone elses. Female, about to jump my husband, and I don't mean for his lunch money. And I heard Nevermore, having a shit fit:
"GUNNAR!!! GunnarGunnar Gunnar Gunnar, Gunnar, Gunnar, it don't matter whether you mean to or not. You touch that trollop and Laurel will get angry. You won't like her when she's angry, mate."
"NO! No no no no nonononono! Why are you letting her kiss you?!"
"I got yer back, Laurel! Get away from 'im, you fucking harlot! I'll peck your eyes out! ...Bollocks, I can't touch her eyes."
"Viking, why the bloody fuck aren't you listening to me?? Oi, Laurel, he just kissed someone who wasn't you! I mean... You probably know it wasn't you, because you're not out here, but... Laurel!!"

I took Mercy to the rock in front of me, taking a minute or so to tunnel my way out from behind the... impediment. Nevermore wasn't even done squawking by the time I stood behind my husband, hefted the axe in my hands and cleared my throat.
Gunnar Jesus Alexander Miguel Esparza, I wanted to say, What the fuck are you doing?
But I didn't. I didn't say anything because it wasn't his fault. I kinda know the trick they were pulling on him. Thing is, I've got my own tricks and mine are better because I'm his fucking wife.
The three women looked at me and took a few steps back. Gunnar just looked at me, like I was the most beautiful and interesting thing he'd ever seen. This is, for the record, the only time I've ever done something like that to him or even in front of him. He'd missed every other show, somehow. I couldn't help but smile, satisfied, at the way he looked at me. I guess I'm a little bit the jealous type. Who knew? Meh, go talk to that siren about it.
Once I had Gunnar's attention the Garden Hookers started backing off, so I turned off the charm. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think really hard about introducing them to the sharper bits of my axe, but word is this is Hera's turf and we were probably going to piss her off enough by taking the apples in the first place. We headed over to the big apple tree Gunnar had spotted, traipsing through some flowers to get to the dragon with a hundred heads. It was kinda like a vacation, fruit picking and flower fields and the like. Well, except for the Garden Hookers and Ladon and the coughing fits.
The coughing fits were because oh fuck, the flowers were poppies. Divine poppies. Like that scene in The Wzard of Oz, but different. We were kinda breathing opium. It hit Gunnar kinda hard a time or two, like he was breathing poison. Well, I guess he kinda was. He bent over once, coughing like he was about to lose a lung until I patted him on the back and made it better. I guess I can cure poison, which is good to know. Probably only works on the low-grade stuff. Well, if you can call divine-poppy-pollen "low grade."
When we got up to the tree we apparently already had the dragon's attention. Gunnar asked it a riddle, something about a woodchuck, I tried not to think about it too hard. Some of the heads were interested in it. Some of them were not, and started talking to me. I think the plan was basically to get all the heads distracted so Gunnar could go apple-picking, so I worked on being distracting.
Cartwheels in a poppy field, that was my strategy. It worked... kinda.
And by kinda I mean it irritated the dragon. Some of its heads kept asking why I was moving and not staying still. I told it I was fidgety.
At least I was smart about annoying the dragon, and turned my skin to gold shortly after we started chatting it up. It riposted by attacking me with seven of its hundred heads. Of the seven attacks, one actually drew blood. Then it looked at me like I tasted kinda yummy so I decided we should play the Most Dangerous Game of Fetch.
I hefted my axe in my right arm, held my left arm out to my side and cut my left arm off. I then set my axe down and threw my left arm far enough away that the interested dragon had to run off after it. Gunnar then hopped up into the tree and I was about ready to play the "mission accomplished" music. Enter Garden Hookers who ruined fucking everything.
"Hey Ladon," one of the bitches named Whofuckingcares shouted. "They're stealing your apples..."
I guess Nevermore was worried about the look on my face - which he later described to me as "pure murderous rage" - and started talking about "anger management" and "Don't piss off your grandmother." And now he calls me "Little Miss Murderface." But seriously, the bitches would have deserved it. Trying to mess with my husband and then when I was nice enough to not plant an axe in their face - plant, get it? Cuz we were in a garden, haha - they go and screw everything up.
Anyway, Ladon was then kinda pissed. I guess Hera has said that no one is supposed to have all twelve of the apples - which is exactly the number that we wanted, and so Ladon's witty retort was to poke his head into the tree and gobble one of them up. I wondered very briefly if cutting him open to get it back would work. It wouldn't, for the record.
So the dragon with a hundred heads turns to us and ready to snack-on-a-bitch. We started playing different versions of "Let's Make a Deal," all of which seemed to involve me getting eaten, and I was okay with that. I was pretty sure - ninety-nine percent sure - I would be fine.
But yeah, Ladon was like, "You can leave with the other eleven apples if you leave her," to Gunnar.
And Gunnar was like, "Don't think so," to the dragon.
But I was like, "Well hang on a second... If I stay can I eat one of the apples? Cuz I'd get hungry but I'd totally be willing to stay for like, a month and let you keep eating my arm every couple of days because godsdamn apples have got to get old after like a millennium."
And Gunnar was like, "Fuck no."

His problem, as I understand it, was not so much that I would be feeding myself to the dragon, nor that I would be doing it just for him. It was more that I would gone for a month, and not so much that I would be away from him - which was the part that I thought would be particularly full of suckitude - but that he didn't seem confident that the world could hold itself together while I was away. Kinda sweet, even if I didn't quite think my absence would bring about the apocalypse.
Anyway, he had a point. Bad shit happens when we're away. Though, bad shit happens when we're looking, too, we just get more of a say in what to do about it. So we took option A, leave now and with the five apples we'd gotten and glare the fuck out of the Hesperides on the way out.

He's not immortal, but... Well, fuck it. Who wants to live forever, anyway?
Oh wait.
Me.

"There's no time for us
There's no place for us
What is this thing that builds our dreams yet slips away from us
Who wants to live forever
Who wants to live forever....?
There's no chance for us
It's all decided for us
This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us
Who wants to live forever
Who wants to live forever?
Who dares to love forever?
When love must die
But touch my tears with your lips
Touch my world with your fingertips
And we can have forever
And we can love forever 
Forever is our today
Who wants to live forever
Who wants to live forever? Forever is our today 
Who waits forever anyway?"
Queen, Who Wants to Live Forever?

And If Ever Fate Should Choose to Smite You...

We just dropped the boys off with Jack.

My other kids, Brendan, Susan, Gunter, Charlotte, Alex, Azzeza and Amanda are all fine. I'll know the next time they're in trouble again. Fuck, I'll know the next time the dog's in trouble.

We found them in a hotel and spent a little bit of time catching up. Susan is excited - and confused - to be an aunt.
After a bit of chit-chat, I took Gair aside - way aside. Like, I guessed how far away I'd have to get for Gunnar not to hear me if for some reason I ever wanted to keep something from him, so Gair and I ended up walking out on the street. I told him what I remembered of the time craziness, and you know... Maybe I should have let Gunnar tell him about that. I guess it makes sense that future Gair said he never got the whole story, because I probably forgot a lot of it in the retelling. Anyway, I told him where he met us and what he told us and that he looked like he was doing well and being important and that before any of that stuff ever happens, in the right here and right now that I am proud of him.
I'm proud of them all, really. But he has lost a lot and I remember being that lost and quiet kid so I made sure to tell him what I needed to hear back when my mom died.
He told me about what happened in the water, how a big whirlpool showed up and something attacked them but they couldn't see what it was. I had a hunch maybe Susan had seen it. I mean, Gunnar can see through the water because his dad's a righteous and sunny guy and while I can't see the same way I thought maybe Susan could. So we walked back to the hotel and I went up to talk to Susan. I asked her as subtly as I could what she saw and she said we should take a walk.
Gunnar and Brendan got back from looking at some dead whales at this point, and Susan said that the dead whales on the beach were fighting for them. Against something Ixion probably made. Some big chainsaw sea monster. She didn't wanna say anything in front of Alex. Herc's kid. Not my Alexander. I remember looking at Gunnar and saying something angry and stupid and vengeful, like, "He's going to get dealt with sometime soon."
And he will. I'm going to make Ixion very, very sorry for ever fucking with my kids. I'm making it a personal priority to rip that man several new orifices before perhaps handing him off to some starving Maenads.
The kids wanted to know what to do next, and I remembered that I promised a Greek party boy that I would get him a shrine built in the new Deustch wine country. I offered that as a task to the kids, and they seemed to go for it. Okay, maybe it was more of a, "Hey, I made this promise and could you guys go keep it for me" kinda thing but still, they could have said no. Any way, it should keep them safe while giving them a chance to relax and show off and help people.
That business concluded, we decided to stay the night in the hotel before parting ways again. It took a little bit of doing to get us newcomers some rooms, especially since I now am broke. Well, by "it took a little doing" I mean, I pretty much went down to the front desk andasked nicely and told the lady the truth. House burned down, trying to keep my kids safe, yadda yadda. I think Gunnar threw in something about an orphanage. She said we could stay there for one night, which was my plan.
I got the boys down for the night, singing them to sleep. Before too long I decided to get some sleep myself, I haven't really slept much since we went to Helheim, and even less since the boys were born. This being a mom thing is kind of exhausting.
I don't know how long I was out, but I woke up to a knock on the door. There were three women standing outside and at first I thought "Oh fuck Furies."
Nah. This was either better or worse, and I'm not sure which yet. I stepped outside the door and asked what they wanted. They were here to see the boys. I said something threatening because yes, I am the type of woman who makes threats against Fate itself, except they didn't really seem to notice. That was kind of annoying. And kind of a relief. But mostly annoying. They just walked through me and the door and stood over my kids like creepy hover-hags and I stood there wondering if I was about to have to do something that would get me killed.
The Fates just nodded and said they were done. Then they bamf'd away and I followed my first instinct whenever I'm freaked out and texted Gunnar. Some long and rambling something about how the Fates were here but everything was fine and now the Fates were gone.
I'm a little bit terrified of what Fate has in store for my sons. I want to know what those three saw and whether or not I'm going to be making an enemy of the most powerful force in the universe in the future. It would be a short-lived relationship, I'm sure.

Anyway.
Then we headed to Mexico, with Gunnar driving. He pointed to something he called Waffles, which I'm assuming was the griffin Jack was sitting on when I met him future-yesterday.

I told Jack about what was in store for him, kinda. I told him in my roundabout, rambling way about what was going to happen in China. Except... and this might cause him some difficulty, I forgot to use the words "China," or "future" or "time loop."
I just told him that I was going to try my very best to be back before then, but definitely in twenty years I would try to come back. Well, I would have to come back because I already did come back and if I didn't then how would I have already done it? But yeah, I told him that the boys were going to need him and that I would forget to tell him then so I was telling him now, Thank You. And I know they're great. They have to be, because they're my babies and I will not accept anything less.
As he was shutting the door I heard Jack say to them, "Alright, let's get some sugar in you." The mom in me wanted to throw a fit, and the rest of me thought that if he really wanted to give my unusually strong, not quite mentally developed sons with nine-year-old bodies a stomach full of sugar, that would be a big dose of "not my problem" being unleashed on Jack's ranch. Also, I'd really suck at this whole "letting someone else raise my kids" thing if I just turned around and barged into his house and started telling him how to raise my kids.

So now we're off to follow up on Herc's lead about the apples. I'll probably do some more work on the blueprints for Uncle Dio's shrine so I can send those off to the kids. Apparently I'm kinda good at this design stuff, which might come in useful when I start going to put Nevermore back together.

I miss my boys already. I have the lullaby I sang them stuck in my head.

"May you find solace in the gentle arms of sleep
Despite the wolves outside your door
In time you will see them all as harmless
And their idle threats easy to ignore

And if ever fate should choose to smite you
Stand your ground, never walk away
Please don't ever let the world defeat you
Don't get buried in its decay

As you drift into the gauzy realm of dreams
May you take comfort in the thought that you are safe
For it only takes a fraction of a second
For all of this to change

Return to me
When slumber's fog has lifted
Return to me
Stronger than before

As you sink beneath the soothing streams of time
May you be thankful that you had another day
For there comes a time when each of us will enter
A sleep from which we will never wake

And if ever fate should choose to smite you
Stand your ground, never walk away
Please don't ever let the world defeat you
Don't get buried in its decay

Close your eyes now, if only for a moment
For it's time you get some rest
The wolves are gone and nothing here can harm you
Let go of your fragile consciousness..."
Assemblage 23, Lullaby

No Country for Old Men (or Birds)

"Mother, it's cold here
Father, thy will be done
Thunder and lightning
Are crashing down
They've got me on the run
Direct me to the Sun..."
Brandon Flowers, Only the Young

I got caught in a storm, but I didn't get lost.
Nevermore did, though. And Nevermore is dead. Long live my friend, Nevermore.

You know Never, it would be a lot easier to write a touching memorial passage for you if you would stop fucking around on the wing of the airplane, pretending to be William Shatner.

"Laur... Laur... LAUREL!! There's.... Som'fin... on'na wing... innit!!!" That incorporeal shit is going to get old, fast.

Yeah, I know you're reading this over my shoulder, that's why I'm typing to you.

No, I'm not bothered.

No, I'm not.

No, I'm not.

I'm not gonna let you bother me. I'm not gonna fucking give you the satisfaction.

Stop squawking in my ear or I swear to the Gods I'm going to exorcise you.

You don't know that I can't do that.

No, I'm not going to turn around and talk to you, you can just read what I have to say over my shoulder.

Because no one else can see you, I'll look like a nutcase arguing and swearing at the open air.

Yeah, like I'm really going to get up in front of my husband and kids and tell off a bird that no one but O'Shea can see, and rely on the Irishman to convince the plane I'm not crazy.

You know what? Fuck you, too. I was going to write something nice about how you were a great companion and friend and that I felt like I'd failed you and I was going to promise to find a way to make it up to you but you can forget it. Your job's not over yet just because you kicked the bucket. You died, I'm sorry, get over it. I didn't fucking tell you to follow me into the desert.

I did?

Are you sure?

I don't remember that.

Pics or it didn't happen, bird. Oh wait. You can't hold a camera.

Yeah, Never, there's gonna be metric fuck tons of things you can't do anymore. Like touch anything. Ever. On the bright side, now you can't use my credit card to order 12 copies of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," ever again.
I don't care if your memory's perfect and you've got all of my credit card numbers in your head. But how are you going to hold a phone or surf the internet if you can't touch anything?
You won't be able to use a computer anymore to write your brilliant observations, either.

No, I'm not going to be your ghost writer.
Yes I get the joke.

Right. I'm ignoring the ghost bird reading over my shoulder, here's what happened in the order I experienced it.
Gunnar and Brendan and I left the Henge -

That was where we went to meet Kane, Never.
No, you were helping Kas and Harlan. How did that go, anyway?
YOU DIDN'T TELL ME THEY MET BEOWULF!!!!!!
He's real? Oh my fucking gods, how was I not there for that? I would have squealed like Jack did when he met Uncle Herc. Just like a tween girl.

You don't need to remind me I'm a married woman, my husband and sons are sitting right there.
Shut up. I do not have a crush on Beowulf.
Okay, maybe a little one.
Fuck you, you know I've always had a thing for vikings.
No, it means bee-wolf, which means bear. It's a kenning thing...
What, that he's cooler than Beowulf? Well, he should know that, really.
Oh, that. You know what? Go ahead, tell Gunnar. Lemme know how it works for you.

Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas... What do you mean you don't speak Latin? Well, look it up sometime. Oh wait. You can't. Haha. Well, ask Gunnar. Oh wait, he can't hear you. O'Shea could probably tell you, he seems bookish enough.

Aww... you mad?

Anyway. So what happened after that?

Wait, why were there cats in New York?

Why were they feeding them Jotun blood?

I don't know, you're supposed to just know these things.

And Kas let them out?

Wait... Who the fuck is Aslan?

So... all lions are named Aslan?
Ok, now you're making shit up. Why would a tiger be named Paco?

Well did you ask what his name was?
Yeah, to be honest, I kinda could see you flying up into the face of three giant cats and asking them how their day's been. Offering them tea or whatever it is you British types do.

Yes, I really think you drink tea. I especially think that if it annoys you. What? You drink everything else.

So she just let big, murderous and angry giant-cats loose on the streets of New York? Right. Yeah, we might need to have a talk about that.

Jack was there?
Are you sure Jack was there?
Wait, where was Harlan when that happened?
Harlan wasn't there but Jack was? Yeah I'm going to be giving our esteemed Mr. Cook a call soon, anyway.

Well for one thing, I don't know if he'd be ready for the kids, yet. I mean, I wasn't supposed to be a mom for another four months.
You think it's balls? You're not even the one who went into labor in the middle of an epic bout of angel-laser-tag.

You've heard all those watermelon analogies, Never, what do you think? Yeah, it kinda hurt.
No, I'm good at looking like I'm not hurt. Doesn't mean I don't feel it, just means I don't let it stop me.

Yeah, thanks for that. It's not like I have that as an option anymore.
Anyway.
So Arvid is going back to Utgard-Loki to let him know we did our job, right?
Yeah, I don't know about that. He didn't seem terribly bright. We're still probably gonna have to go check up on that.

I don't know, we'll fit it in somewhere when we're not busy saving the world from all the fuckers who've joined up with Kane. I swear, it's like the fucking hydra. I shoot one in the head, he recruits three more.

You remember Carmen from the Order? She was there.
Oh. Well now you tell me.
Well, yeah, Ixion was with her too, and we solved the case of the missing Mac Lir. Cordelia has apparently decided to puppy up, too.
No, I was pissed at her. She should fucking know better.
One, gross, even if you're right. I'd really rather not contemplate Carmen sucking on anything. Two... Why should I be freaking out? I have enough to freak out about, honestly.
If it were Gunnar, or Harlan, or Kas, or anyone else from the Band I would tear a titan apart to get them back and you fucking know it.
No, Nevermore. I don't really feel sorry for her. Like I would have said to Camila, it's her choice and her mess. I'm not responsible for the choices she makes.
She said something about being respected by Kane and some other bullshit I got too angry to hear.
Nope, you cannot divide by the number of fucks I give.
Sorry, I've been picking up the math jokes from Gunnar. The number is zero, you can't divide by it... nevermind. No, if I had the chance I would tell her to get over herself and get her ass back to the thankless job of saving the world. She can bitch about it while she's getting shit done.
Because we - Scions, heroes, demigods, gods in waiting, gods and everything in between - are supposed to be better than that. We're supposed to be the good examples for the people who believe in us. And she... She killed her fucking unicorn. Like, okay... I wasn't there and I don't know for sure, but I'm imagining she went a little Voldemort on it.
I mean, okay, I get being frustrated about your parent keeping you in the dark. I've been there. I get feeling unloved and unrespected and like a tiny pawn on a big fucking chessboard. Been there too. I get feeling like this war is stupid and there should be a better way. But Kane's way, Tesla's way, that's not the answer and the fact that she got pulled in by that asshole? Still not really my problem. Do I feel bad that Cordy's gotten herself into that mess? Yeah. Do I want to help her? Yeah, and I'm going to if I can but is it my first priority? No. And it can't be. My kids can't even by my first priority. I have to stop Kane first, which means taking my two day, nine year old sons to Mexico and leaving them with my cousin whom I've repeatedly called an asshole, then keeping on with putting Marie back together, and hoping that gives me a way to accomplish everything else. Maybe if I'm lucky, Marie can help Cordelia. Maybe if I'm lucky, Marie knows what Kane is up to.

You heard that, huh? Yeah, I told Gunnar I'm a mom, a wife and a soldier "in that order." Yes, being a mother comes first but it doesn't change that I have to take the boys to Mexico.
I can't stay with them.
Because the first thing I want is for them to be safe and normal, and that obviously won't happen for them if they're with me.
Yeah, they look like normal kids because they're asleep. Try just talking to them when they're conscious. It's not hard to see that something is more than a little off with them. Think about it, Never. They are two days old, walking around in nine-year old bodies. Kairos fucking stole my babies from me, stole their youth just because they were with me.
I don't really give a good goddamn if he apologized.
Yeah, I know shit's still gonna come after them. But Jack will be there, and I'm praying it will all be shit they can handle, and that the bigger stuff will be more worried about Gunnar and I. I mean, we are kinda actively painting targets on ourselves. So... the farther we stay away, the safer they should be.
No, I'm not crying. I've got something in my eye.
Yes. Something in my eye. I've got an annoying bird in my eye.

What's bollocks?

Fine, call me petty and selfish. That's your opinion.
Yep. Fuck Titans and their sympathizers.
You are not my Jiminy Cricket.
Well, I'm gonna bet he didn't smell like Jack and cheeseburgers all the time, for one thing.

Look, if I can help her in the midst of everything else then I will, but like I said that can't be the first thing I worry about. I've got people - real people, not Scions or Gods, but mortals - to protect. And maybe I have to protect them from her, now. If she's actively putting lives in danger, there's the chance I'll have to put her down. If it comes to that, I'll do it without blinking twice, let Mac Lir do to me what he wants.

Fine, call me a bitch. It's all sticks and stones, bird.

I don't know what Mom would say, she's been dead so long and she was sick so long before that, it's hard to guess. But you know what Dad and the Greeks would say? That Cordelia should simply have been better. She should have known and done better. She should be more virtuous. If she'd been more intellectual she would have seen reason and seen right through Kane's lies. If she had been more valiant she would be more protective of mortals and she would have seen that what Kane is doing is wrong. And maybe she should be holding a grudge against Kane for siding with the Titans who've been attacking her home since nigh on forever. And maybe if she'd talked to her father honestly she might have gotten over her Daddy issues.

Fuck you, fuck you, and seriously... fuck you. I know that's the pot calling the kettle black. At least I'm fucking dealing with it.
Well for one godsdamned thing, I'm not galavanting around Terrae Incognitae with some loopy motherfucker who considers a Titan of Darkness a viable fashion accessory, so yeah, I would say I'm doing just a little bit better at it.

Shut up, Never.
Shut the fuck up.
You have two fucking seconds to shut your godsdamned beak before I ask Gunnar to bind you to that old lady's muumuu for the rest of eternity.
One...
Thank you.

Hey, you still paying attention?
You know Never, Thanksgiving was like, last week. Sorry you missed out on a week of turkey.
No, I wouldn't have cooked it, I wouldn't try to poison you like that. I don't want you dead. I just sometimes want you quiet.
Me? I'm pretty sure you know the answer to that, Never.
Well, they're sitting next to me. I'm thankful for my family. They're all I was thinking about during that fight with Tesla, trudging through that storm, every time we did another quantum leap. First things I looked for were Gunnar and my boys.

Thanks, Never. They are seriously fucking adorable. I mean, damn we make good looking babies. Gunnar said we're supposed to have another, too.

That girl in China, with the angels. Remember her? I didn't see her but, she was ours too, Gunnar said.

Well, when I saw Erik I just... recognized him. Like... it's hard to describe but I knew he was mine. And Gunnar said that Erik had shown up with two other people, another boy and a girl who all looked like family, so... if one of them was ours, they were probably all three ours. Gair said her name was Atropos. I'm not sure yet why we'd name a kid after one of the Fates but... well it's obviously going to happen so there's gotta be some reason.

Yep. Good looking babies.

What Gunnar did was brilliant, and if you insinuate otherwise again, I'll wring your immaterial neck.
No, I knew exactly what he was up to, and I didn't plan on stopping him. I thought it would work. I didn't realize Fate is such a dick.
Yes. I just called a woman a dick. I'll do it again, I'm sure.
I told him to go ahead with it, actually.
Well yeah, you wouldn't have heard it. I can get in his head now.
Hey! He hasn't complained. But I've only done it like, twice. The first time was just to show him I could. You were there for the second time, it was just before he got Clotho's spindle.
I said, "If it's that important, I trust you."
No, I didn't try to stop him. Why do you keep asking that? What makes you think I should have?
Because that would be really selfish, Nevermore.
No, I don't want anything to happen to him but Gunnar and I talked about this already.
Yeah, because you weren't there. The world does not cease to exist when you aren't around.
Well we decided we need somewhere to hang out, so world-saving comes first.
Yeah, that was his line. Look, it came up because I wanted to make sure before we got married that he wasn't going to be foolish enough to ever put me before the fate of the world, the mortals in it, and all that stuff. There's no point protecting each other if there's nowhere left for us to go, and no one else left for us to protect. I had to know that if... Well, if some Titan or Titan-wielding dickhead, like Kane or Tesla, was going to make him choose between saving the world or saving his family, that he would pick the world. And he said he'd pick the world, which was the answer I was looking for.
If he'd given me a different answer I wouldn't have married him.

Yeah, I'm done with you for now.