A Faulty Camera

"In a place where we only say goodbye

It stung like a violent wind

That our memories depend

On a faulty camera in our minds..."

Death Cab for Cutie, What Sarah Said

I don't think it really would have made a difference to Gunnar if he'd known what was going to happen. He's that kind of guy, I think. From what I remember.

But there's a lot I don't remember because of the Well.

It's funny what just a few seconds in the Well of Mnemosyne will do to your head. It was the hardest on Gunnar, it looks like. I don't remember ever seeing him shake like that, not when his mom got kidnapped or when the giants had his dad so whatever is in his head must be pretty awful.

Um, so... Only four of us went into the Vault. Gunnar, Brendan, Harlan and I went through. Gunnar gave Hades the last four of the five golden apples we'd gotten so that we could go in.

Nate was still with ghost-hero and boat-woman. Kas just decided not to go into the Vault. She didn't like the idea that she'd have to do whatever Hades said when he called in a favor, and Hades made us swear some oath before he'd let us in the Vault.

I swore his oath knowing full well that I probably won't like what he tells me to do, and when I tell him just where he can shove his fucking orders it's probably going to hurt.

It's probably going to hurt, and it's probably also not going to stop me.

Harlan will probably just talk his way out of it, and I don't know yet what Gunnar's plan is.

If Gunnar has a plan. Probably, I mean, he usually has one these days.

Brendan probably has one too, since he also agreed to the oath Hades asked us to swear.

Shit, I hope they've got plans. Only one of us really needs to go running around without a plan.

So, yeah, Gunnar, Brendan, Harlan and I sauntered our bad selves into the Vault and went bobbing for memory apples. All of maybe three seconds later, I came back up with holes in my head, Gunnar came up looking shaky, Harlan decided not to do that again, and Brendan looked mildly confused.

Then Gunnar and I put our heads in a second time and I got even more holes in my head, replaced by memories that aren't mine and one that was Gunnar's which gives me a migraine because holy fuck he has so much going on in his head.

Brendan tried again too, but I don't think he came up with anything. He certainly didn't swish his hair back declaring that his intellect had saved the day.

He does that sometimes.

If Brendan or Harlan forgot anything, it doesn't seem to have been that important. I mean, they know their names and our names and they act like they remember what we were doing here.

Gunnar though... I think he's a little messed up. I didn't really know that while we were still in Hades. He hid it pretty well and it wasn't messing with him physically, just his head. I don't have any mental instability senses. And I don't have Gunnar senses so I didn't pick up on how messed up he was. Is. Will be for a while.

Gunnar waited to mention it until after we’d made it out, when we decided to compare notes and make sure nothing really, really, super important was missing.

Hey, guess what. We've both got super-important things missing. But hey, true to how we usually roll, I've got some of his missing stuff and he's got some of mine. He doesn’t seem to think I should want it back, though.

The only thing I really want back is my memory of our wedding. I feel like I should remember how this ring got on my finger. The one my dad gave us, I mean. I remember how the other one got there.

I put this ring on after the wedding. I gave Gunnar the ring I'd made for him, with the cheesy "Until Ragnarok, at Least" inscription on the inside of it, and he gave me the ring I wear now, with some cute quip about how most girls aren't so lucky to get two wedding rings from a guy.

And it's true. Hell, most girls aren't lucky enough to get one. I am lucky.

I didn't say it then. I probably should have. There's lots of things I haven't said but probably should. Um... I should work on that.

Anyway, I don't remember... Anything.

I don't remember planning it which leaves me with a lot of very large gaps during which I hope nothing too terribly important happened, and I don't remember anything that actually happened that day.

I want to be pissed about that, I feel like I should be pissed about that, but the way Gunnar described it, it sounded like a massive fucking headache, anyway.

Um, a massive headache that was totally worth it!

Shit I hope Gunnar never reads this, that sounded kinda bad.

Gunnar, if you're reading this, I'm sure I would say it was worth it if I could remember it.

Also, if you're reading this, stop it. I sound like a fucking nutcase in this thing.

I lost other stuff too. I don't remember my mom dying.

I don't remember how we got the ghost who's waiting for me in Greece.

I don't remember how I got my Purple Heart.

I don't remember half of what happened in Niflheim.

I don't remember a lot of what happened in Guinnee (though I do remember getting a small amount of satisfaction from telling Victor's ghost that he was a dick, repeatedly).

It's because of the well. The Well of Memory.

The Well of Memory, v. 2.0, is in the Vault of Hades. We didn't get to the Vault until after we stared into the abyss and met Perseus. Not in the abyss, he was in the Tower. And we saw where the Furies live. And talked to the Furies. And talked to one of Ixion's simulacra. And saved the woman stuck inside from suffocation and cut her out of the metal skeleton encasing her and freed her from the fate of being Hades' new ferryman and investigated the theft of Cerberus and apparently forgot several hours of our lives and in case I haven't said it lately since my memory's a little fuzzy: Fuck titans.

Fuck titans and fuck the Darkness and fuck gods who keep secrets and fuck this whole fucking mess.

Anyway, back to the Well.

I went in twice and came out with someone else's thoughts in my head, and they weren't even the thoughts I wanted. Except for Gunnar's memories they were all silly stuff that happens all the time. To humans, to mortals, I mean.

People die. People fall in debt, people fall in and out of love. These are all inherent to the human condition, but each one felt like it was the end of the world.

I guess, for these people, it was.

I remember having a failed marriage and deciding to drown my sorrows in cupcakes. I don't really like cupcakes, and I certainly don't have a failed marriage. But I did in this memory. I was someone who baked to kill the pain of watching my ex with his new wife.

I, Laurel Esparza, do not bake. It is part of the natural order of things. Something usually combusts when I go into the kitchen for anything besides a cup of tea. I set a microwave on fire once. Nevermore was impressed.

I remember that I lost my life savings to "some wily cutpurse," as I remembered it, and ended up taking to the bank a coinpurse filled with rocks. I kinda sympathize with that, except the wily cutpurse was Ixion and he was enough of a dick that I didn't even get a bag full of rocks. I got my astrolabe rolled into the fucking Bay. Dick.

I remember being young, having lost my mother and being afraid of my drunken father who was going to lose his job and then we'd be homeless.

Except I have lost all of my money. I did have an absentee father, I am homeless. I got over it.

Apparently that's what I do. Not so much the mere mortals.

I guess that kinda puts things in perspective, showing me exactly what's at stake if we fail to figure out what's happening with the Darkness. These people need some serious help if all it takes to make them fall apart is some wily cutpurse and a plate of cupcakes. The memories are petty and not terribly significant.

The people they used to belong to are, though. And that's why I need to puzzle out this Darkness bullshit. I need to know what Kane is up to. If we don't figure out how to stop it all of these petty mortal memories, and the precious mortals to whom they belong, will all just cease to be.

So now I feel even more like going to Duat is the right thing for me to do. Marie has to know something useful, and if I'm lucky (or unlucky) enough to meet any gods while I'm there, maybe they can help me make sense of what I've seen in Hades.

Maybe they can tell me how to stop it, where to look, what to do next.

Maybe.

The last memory I gained from the Well wasn't petty, and it wasn't from a mortal.

In the last memory that wasn't mine, I was seeing through Gunnar's eyes. I didn't realize it right away, then I actually bothered to recognize the people who were around in the memory. All of the Band, and me - and it's weird seeing myself through someone else's eyes.

I was smelling through Gunnar's nose, hearing with his ears and I had all of the thoughts in my head that belonged to him.

His mind is... dizzying. It's too full, it's too strong, it's... It's incredible, is what it is.

If I ever needed proof that Gunnar is way smarter than I am, I have it now. Just trying to focus on his memory makes me feel like I've got an afterburn on my retinas, like when you look at the sun.

His memory started in what I thought was just gibberish. Something he was reviewing, symbols and sounds that were rolling around in his head and it took me a long time just to sort them out so I could focus on them long enough to realize that it was Japanese. We were all walking towards the giants and he was drilling himself on Hiragana and Katakana. Both of them, simultaneously. At the same time he was taking in our surroundings, running through different "oh shit" scenarios in his head, and then there was something about numbers that I just couldn't understand. I hadn't yet realized what a genius Gunnar is turning into, but the strings of numbers and formulae reinforced it.

Math is so not my thing.

Trying to make sense of any of it was like trying to grab at one fish in an overstocked fish tank, there were too many of them and they were all slippery and I couldn't get a good grasp on anything. Just trying to take it all in made me feel like my brain was about to tell me to go fuck myself and take a nice leisurely walk out of my head through my ears.

It got a little better when I just focused the memory on the giants. He could smell them before I could even see them, and I am so ridiculously glad that I don't smell the way he does, because they did not smell good.

At all.

It's like... Okay, they're frost giants, so of course they smell cold.

Cold has a smell. It's the same smell as when you stick your head in an ice box.

I mean, if you do that.

Okay, I do that.

Well, I did, back when I had a house that had a freezer that I could open up and smell. I used to like the smell of ice, when it was more of a novelty, back before Niflheim and the Jotun Mountains.

But the giants, they didn't just smell like ice, they smelled like trees too. Aspen.

And body odor.

Oh my gods.

Massive, gargantuan amounts of body odor. It's like someone rubbed an old Christmas tree on a mound of rotten onions and covered it all in ice cubes made from gym-sock tea and spoiled curry.

I'm not sure why Gunnar doesn't throw up more often, I don't know how he was able to stomach the smell. He could smell everyone else, too. Aftershave, shampoo, skin. He probably could have told you which smell belonged to which person. I can't, the smells are all unfamiliar to me.

And then there was the way everything looked. Everything was so clear and so sharp. Like it was made out of perfect, pure crystal. The colors were brighter, the sounds were louder. He doesn't just hear footsteps in the crunching snow, but he hears each divet of each shoe sinking individually. He hears heartbeats and breaths and the whispering of hair against hair just in the movement created by a footstep. His memory isn't the same as my memories. Mine feel jumpy in comparison. Like, my head doesn't flow from second to second with clear transitions. My memories jump, like the transitions in dreams.

The editing sucks.

But Gunnar, he's amazing. He remembers everything. The tents outside the cave. The exact pitch of the Jotuns' voice. The shade of their skin, the texture of their hair. Every word they said, and the way they sounded when they said it. Every word we said.

It was a jumble, but I got a good sense of what he was feeling, too. He was angry, much moreso than I'd picked up on. Annoyed too, at that woman named Sedna. Angry that his father had been tricked, even if Utgard-Loki said that Heimdall shot first. Well, not shot.

Mostly he was relieved when it was all over, relieved that as far as we could tell, it wasn't a double-cross. Though, if it was a double-cross and neither Gunnar nor Heimdall could pick up on it, we were probably way too screwed for words.

I am not capable of seeing the world like that. My brain just will not hold that many details all at once.

It's weird having seen the proof of just how much stronger he is, how much more he can take in. How perfectly he remembers.

I can't hold onto it all. The sharpness of his memory has already started to diminish. It's like... my mind dulls it and it can't keep its edge. I wish I could remember it all the way it was the first time, just to know how the world looks when he's looking at it.

The things he notices, the thoughts he thinks. I love having the chance to see things from his perspective, migraines and all. I can't keep it all together, though. I keep losing bits of it.

When I first got his memory in my head I wanted to pull away from the Well. I wanted to come up whimpering and whining like I did as a kid when I got soap in my eyes - which actually does nothing for headaches.

It's just too much to take in all at once. Sensory overload.

Though, there is something to be said for the conspicuous lack of Nevermore.

Anyway, um… I think Gunnar got it worse.

He threw up right after he pulled his head out of the well. Violently.

There's not a lot you can do for someone who's on all fours puking up a lung.

I rubbed his back while he barfed.

"Oh, gods," He groaned. He looked like shit. There was... there is something wrong with his head and I don't know how to fix it.

Not yet. I'll think of something. I'll lose another limb, if I have to.

"I found it. I have it. I don't want it, but I have it." He sounded about like he looked. I can't imagine ever getting used to him sounding like that.

He's fucking Super-Gunnar. He's not supposed to get sick, he's not supposed to look so... shaken.

So sad and awful and hurt. He's really not supposed to get hurt cleaning up my messes.

He's just doing all sorts of things he isn't supposed to.

Gonna have to talk to him about that.

He was trembling a little when he asked me to stay back as the others left the Vault. He said we needed to talk when we got out of Hades. And right after he said that, he quirked his head like he was listening for something.

Then everyone else in the Vault heard what he heard; a screeching and a tearing and a I-don't-know-how-to-describe-it kind of sound. It sounds about like what you would expect an end of the world to sound like. Some of us (named Nevermore) were staring into the abyss again, trying to see what was happening, because I guess that sounds like a good idea to a bird.

There was something flying around out there, I couldn't see it but after Jormungandr went swimming by through Acheron I figured that was the sign that the time of dragons had begun.

Someone asked if this was the start of Ragnarok.

Hades said no, this was not the beginning of Gunnar's apocalypse. Like it's not going to affect Hades. Like the god was able to just completely ignore the fact that Jormungandir, the World-Fucking-Serpent, just went surfing through his river.

And Jormungandr was supposed to have been sleeping beneath the ocean, which might mean he was comatose beneath the Drowned Road which means it was in the Guinnee area. So a Norse monster sleeping under the Loa underworld goes surfing through the Greek river of the dead.

But yeah, Hades probably has it figured out. The Aesir's apocalypse can't possibly affect anyone else. Nothing is really connected and the Dodekatheon will probably just sail right through Ragnarok untouched.

And I'm the blue ribbon pig at the Podunk County Fair.

Anyways, Hades went running for his castle and some helmet showed up on his head. It kinda looked like the one Camila wore sometimes. Maybe they know the same smith.

Uh, and as Hades was running he apparently decided that being in his realm meant we were his to order around.

No, that's not quite right. I think he probably decided that the second we showed up. I just can't remember being right since I went staring off into the abyss. But it probably happened.

Anyway, so we go to deal with what he's yelling about and we find ants and shadow and end up climb-falling down this massive chain to that island he wouldn't tell us about and Nate flew a pterodactyl. Or something.

We found blood when we got to the bottom, lots of blood and dead shadow ants. The blood smelled like... nothing I've ever smelled before. Earthy. Old.

We followed the trail of blood to a stone dome that Gunnar just sort of stepped through, and then I got that feeling that Gunnar was about to get hurt by something big and stoney. I showed up next to him just in time to hear him hit the floor. I guess I overreacted.

But when I lit up like a light bulb so I could see in this darkness – I am starting to become less and less fond of the dark – we found another guy there. He was big, and he wasn’t wearing much and he was hurt really badly.

I did that thing where I'm all singleminded and focused on not letting someone die. I did everything I could do, and some things I didn't know I could do until that moment. Like the whole “lighting up” thing. That was new, for all the good it did.

The end result was a tired medical cliché: “I did everything I could, but...”

I don’t like watching people die. I like even less not being able to watch people die. I wasn’t able to stay with this guy. We had to turn and run.

But at least he waited to die until after he’d told us his story. First, he helped Gunnar and I get out of his house after a brief game of charades.

I had raised an axe tentatively, the injured guy raised his hands together to form a circle, telling me there was no way I could dig under it.

Then we realized Harlan could talk to him, and the guy told Harlan a story.

It's a long story, and I don't understand all of it. I don't remember all of it. It had a lot to do with dragons, which are not high on the list of things which interest me.

Basically, I think, things are about to get bad and we're supposed to protect humanity. Kind of. We aren't supposed to speak for them, at least not when it comes to negotiating with the dragons.

And war is coming (except for the part where war is here. But apparently this is a different one, or a different part of the same one. I don’t know, it’s kind of confusing). And dragons used to be bad, but then they made some deal with the humans and now the dragons and the humans are supposed to be friends, at least when it comes to standing against the Titans.

Except the dragons are cowards, and they withdrew from Midgar partially so that they didn't have to stand up to the titans. Or something like that.

Then he told us to run, so he could die. He said he knew he was going to, and that a group of scions would come find him and that he was supposed to tell us his story and give us something. Well, two somethings. One is a dagger that was supposed to have belonged to Marduk, and the other is... a thing. We don't know what it is, we don't know what it does so it's not a really great lead.

Well, it's supposed to be used to end the fighting and preserve the world so it can be born again. Which is... vague and not really all that helpful. Not yet.

Anyway, then the darkness started spreading and the ants kept coming, and on our way out Hades gave me a note from my dad and we had to haul ass out of there.

It was when we'd gotten out, and when the dragon went away that Gunnar and I got a chance to talk. I'd mentioned when Hades was done and we had Marie's memories that I was going to go to Duat, and now shit was hitting the fan and if Gunnar was going to run off talking to dragons I didn't just want to leave him alone, and I didn't want to just leave Nate and Harlan and Kas and Brendan, so I did what I do when I'm confused and a little scared. I turned to Gunnar.

"Okay, you’re smart, what the fuck do I do?" It really was supposed to be a compliment, I'm just bad at them.

"Uh-er-I…" He stopped and rubbed his temples with his fingers. “You go meet with the dragon in Saudi Arabi, then go to Duat, I guess.”

I didn't really like that answer. "What if going to Saudi Arabia makes me too late to take Azzeza to Duat? What if it’s closed then, and I never get the chance to take her there? I mean… are the dragons really our problem? You heard Harlan’s giant-guy and dragon translation. We aren’t allowed to speak for the humans."

“Yeah, but frankly humans don’t have anyone to speak for them either. I mean, there is no unified human government or other representative body, and even if we pretended the United Nations did fit that description, it still has its own problems. I mean, this whole crap about negotiating between two different species as though they are each, as a species, a single unified body is simply ridiculous. But then I guess this isn’t the time for that kind of nonsense. Look, if you think that the more urgent thing for you to do is to go to Duat, I certainly won’t fault you for it. All we really seem to need is enough people to get the word out that there’s going to be a meeting and all the Dragon princes need to show up before the whole world just ends up flooded with murderous territorial dragons. Not to mention someone or someones to get together some conglomeration of representatives - most of whom will probably vehemently hate each other - into a room to meet with beings they were probably unaware even existed prior to the very encounter in which they will meet nine of them." When he finally finished spouting that rather long, and swiftly-conveyed torrent of information he took in a very long breath. "But yeah, if you think you should go, honey, then go ahead to Duat. This is something you’ve been promising to do for a while - and on two accounts. I know how important your promises are to you, and I’d never ask you to risk breaking one of them."

I frowned. If anyone could convince me not to go just by asking, it would be Gunnar and the way he'd said the first thing made it sound like that was the more important. Like I should know that it was more important.

It just didn’t feel more important. I had made a promise to go to Duat, and I don’t want to be the type of woman who makes a promise and only plans to follow it until something else comes up. You know, like a wedding vow or something.

“Yeah… Fuck, I don’t know,” I scratched my head. “I mean, if the darkness is taking underworlds over, maybe it isn’t even safe to take her there, and maybe the darkness won’t touch Duat. We don’t know where it’s going, and we don’t know what happens once the darkness does take over, and it’s not like we can ask now… And I don’t know how good I’m going to be at helping negotiations or dealing with politics or any of that bullshit. I certainly am not a fan of the idea of negotiating with anything scaled, since they’ve all been kinda pissy so far.” I was doing a fantastic job of talking myself out of dealing with any dragons. Plus, I really believe that if I am not supposed to go to Duat, then I won’t be able to. Fate will put me where it wants me, no matter what direction I am trying to go.

Gunnar was trying to be reassuring, I think. “"Yeah, well the titan of light is supposed to be the major opponent of the Pesedjet right? So maybe Soku-no-kumi will avoid that one for a while for fear of encroaching on other titanic territory… But, I mean, I can’t really say."

"That’s the problem with this whole fucking thing," I groaned in frustration. "Nobody’s giving us enough information and now that we really need it, I can’t even go bitch at them for keeping us in the dark… Ugh. I just worry what might happen to you guys if I go.” I paused and gave him a very serious look and said in a very serious voice, “If you think you’ll need me, I’ll stay."

He gave me a sideways grin, the kind that makes me think of explosions and shrapnel. "We’ve managed to make it through a lot so far. You have something you need to do. I understand, and so do the others. I even think Kassandra has been thinking about trying to go with you."

I wasn't so sure about the others understanding, but I was glad to hear that Gunnar did. The thought of Kas coming worried me a little, though. Well, worried me and relieved me. The backup would be nice, and Kas could probably survive okay, but more than being backup she would probably be a reason for me to be brave. I’m always braver when I’m protecting someone. Brave or stupid, take your pick.

But it would divert some of my attention away from Azzeza.

"Right. I’m not sure… If she comes too, that’s three people I have to look out for and while the extra eyes might be nice I don’t know how good I’ll be at watching over another body." I bounced on the balls of my feet, feeling almost like there was a scream of frustration building up in me. "But I guess I’m gonna try, because I don’t really know how not to… And I guess that if you guys really do need me, I’ll find a way to get to you." And I would. If he needed me, if any of them needed me, I'd be there.

I sighed, more than a little tired. "I’ll just figure out how to be everywhere, and that should solve all our problems, right?"

"Right," He smiled at me, the kind of smile that makes his eyes look brighter, if you see him smile like that while he’s not wearing sunglasses. Then he looked thoughtful for a moment, and the smile slipped a little.

"There’s something else we need to talk about before anything else happens though. Mnemosyne really screwed with our heads. At least, with mine. I can tell that there are a lot of things I’ve forgotten, and I refuse to let that go by without rectification. I wa-" he paused. He shuddered and started over.

"I’m pretty sure that you are the strongest person I have ever known, and I think you needed to know that. One of the memories you left behind in the well ended up in my head, and… yeah. I don’t think I would have survived that if it happened to me."

"Hnh," I frowned, chewing on my lower lip. I’m not particularly fond of the idea of Gunnar not surviving something, and I really wasn’t fond of the idea of him carrying around a memory that belonged in my head of something he didn’t think he’d have survived.

"So that’s where that went,” I tried to lighten the mood, which is also something I am not good at. “I’m uh… I’m sorry."

I don't know if that was the right thing to say but I obviously needed to say something. Whatever was in his head kinda freaked him out, and it made me sad for him that it was my fault. I felt guilty, even though I had no idea what he was even talking about.

"What uh… what are you talking about? I mean, I’ve got a few things missing." I felt like I should have been angrier. Not at him, of course. Just… at everything that had happened to us. Instead I was just tired. It was just hard to be angry when I was this confused and conflicted.

"Uh, er, right. Do you remember, when you came back from Afghanistan?"

I had to think really hard, but I kinda remembered it. Or, I remembered stuff that referenced it. I remember the Purple Heart, and the sessions with Dr. Thrace who told me I was uncooperative, stubborn, evasive, and kind of a bitch. I remembered the wounds which turned into scars which made me self-conscious and weird. That was about it. I didn’t remember how I got them, or talking about how I got them, or really anything more specific than: I went to Afghanistan and I came back damaged.

I shrugged at him. "Um… I remember being in a hospital for a while before I came back to the States, and not really being all that happy about it." Being stuck in bed sucked. Having messed up ribs sucked. "And I remember meeting with some touchy feely quack lady who told me I wasn’t trying hard enough and I remember telling her to go fuck herself, and I remember that’s why I keep writing in that journal I have but now it seems a little silly." It does seem silly. And a little unnecessary. But I guess it might be helpful if I go staring into any more abysses, or fishing in any more memory wells.

Gunnar was quiet for a second. "Yeah, I remember why. I remember how you got the injuries you were in the hospital for - I remember why you had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - I… yeah. It was pretty nasty, and just the fact that you lived through it both mentally and physically is a lot more impressive than pretty much anything else I’ve experienced."

I blinked at him. Super Gunnar, my hero, probably the closest thing to a superhero I’ll ever know, was telling me that I was impressive and strong. That he knew what I’d been through because it was in his head, and that he didn’t think he could take it.

“Oh. Um… I’m sorry,” I repeated, a little softer. I winced a little, and I wished I knew how to make it better for him. That’s a wish I make kind of often. “It’s not really fair that I get that sorta weight lifted off of me, and then you get to be the one who carries it. That really sucks.” Laurel Esparza, the master of understatement.

“Are you… okay?” It was a dumb question. He had a memory in his head of an event which had fucked me up for the larger part of a decade on top of carrying around Marie’s memories. Of course he was not fucking okay.

He scratched his head. “Yeah. It’s not as bad as Marie’s memories.” He was lying to me, which made me feel like shit. I remember just the dreams of Marie’s existence. Well, the nightmares. I remember waking up and running to the bathroom, vomiting from the pain and the disgust. It was hard to imagine what was worse than that.

“Anyways,” Gunnar was merciful and changed the subject before I started getting queasy. “I want to make sure there’s nothing major that I don’t remember, and vice-versa. Especially about us. I mean, like… why did we have those golden apples again? I mean, we went and stole them from a dragon… because… because…”

My eyes got wide and as soon as I started talking I was almost shouting. I know better. I know he can hear me just fine. “Because you lost thirty years of your life when we got tricked by Pan into helping him stab Kairos! Holy shit, you don’t remember that? Do you remember the Garden? Cuz I can give you the cliff’s notes, if you want.”

He shook his head. “I remember the Garden,” which we later realized was halfway right. He remembered us talking about going to the Garden. He didn’t really remember us actually talking to the dragon. “I even remember Pan being a dick… and Kairos… I just don’t… don’t remember being old. I remember the boys… seeing that other one… with the blue and purple hair… and future Gair… I guess it happened during that. … We don’t have any kids I’ve forgotten have we?”

I answered him all out of sequence. I think I was still just a little ticked about the whole "making out with someone who wasn't me" thing. I nodded. “Good, cuz I would hate for you to have forgotten how fucking awesome I was playing fetch with Ladon, and how I totally kept my temper in check and didn’t even threaten to cut any of the Hesperides in half after that one…” I realized I was being a little petty, and jealous, and we didn’t have time for me to be either. “Um, sorry, I digress.”

I started over. “Yeah. You were in a real funk about it, which I get. I got older too, but not the way you did.” I got quieter, more serious. “You aged like… thirty years in the blink of an eye. It slowed you down, and it made you a little… I dunno. Different.” I shrugged and I fidgeted. I had been doing so well, I had been making sense and mostly staying on topic and then I started thinking about how I felt watching him get older and of course I started rambling because apparently I still remember how to do <em>that</em>.

“Not that you weren’t you, you just weren’t the same you… Is this making sense? I mean, I can show you, if you want. It was even freakier than holding our kids while they aged ten years a minute after they were born.” Kids, right. He had asked about kids. Stay on topic, Laurel. “And the only kids we have… that I know about, that are ours, rather than the ones we’ve taken it upon ourselves to protect, are Alex and Erik, and they’re with Jack. As far as I remember.”

I think he was a little relieved. Um, not that we didn’t have more kids, but that we didn’t have more kids that he had managed to forget about.

He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I remember too. Okay, let’s just go through everything important we remember, in order, since we met. That way between the two of us we should be able to fill all the holes in for each other. Also, I need to tell Harlan about the time he saved a Senator’s daughter from some crazed Spanish kidnappers - but that’s for after we’ve been able to straighten things out.”

I made a weird face at the idea of Harlan doing anything too heroic, but let it go. He probably has it in him, when he’s not making psychologically damaged young adults fall in love with him. “Okay,” I took a breath. “So we almost got married in Vegas and then you and Jack threw Canopus off a building, after you screamed for it to eat you. Which was really dumb.”

“Yeah, hind-sights’ 20/20,” he started, but then paused. And he made a face, and then told me about how he didn’t remember the fight with Canopus.

Not a great sign that he doesn't remember the first thing I start talking about.

So I explained the Canopus thing, and the stupid Jackson Donald name and the cult and the trash-frog, which was kind of a waste of breath because he remembered all of that. Then I reminded him about the show we went to see, Pangyrjklfdjsal-something, and the sacrifice onstage, and the lots of other stuff that he said he remembered until I got to the part with Kane.

The night Victor popped into Gunnar’s hotel room, where he remembered letting me crash, and Victor was expecting we'd surrender all of our relics and weapons and just let Kane become a god with the Black Feather Shroud. That part Gunnar had forgotten. The whole, “zombie viking uprising” thing was kind of memorable to me, even though I was really busy being arrested by Nate at the time.

The next thing he didn’t remember after that was when we got all the kids away from the Order, which we found because Horus and the Baron missed their kids.

So I fixed that with a minimal amount of rambling.

“Dude, that’s where we found my sister. And Carmen hit on Nate, and Camila was there, I guess that was before she went all murder-happy with the god-types.” That got a funny look from him, which elicited the explanation that Camila “killed” Mannanan Mac Lir. He was just as unsettled the second time.

“And you shot a priest holding a grenade,” I said very critically, going back to telling him about the Order. “Or maybe you shot the grenade. You walked away picking shrapnel out of your face, and probably would have died if I hadn’t done that Die-Hard thing on you before you shot the grenade. Which was also dumb.” I stuck my tongue out at him.

He didn't argue that it was dumb. He just grunted a little, and waited for me to keep going. “Hmph. Okay.”

“But,” I said in a placating fashion, “you stopped doing stuff that was kinda dumb after we went to Helheim, and I’m a little fuzzy on how some of it happened, but I remember you stuffing some c4 into the chest cavity of a dragon, and Harlan pulled me back, then you were smacking at me with your trenchcoat like I was on fire, then you were kinda mopey and you freaked and buried some explosives in the snows of Helheim. Niflheim. Too-fucking-cold-heim. Oh, and in case you forgot, Harlan walked around the second half of that trip carrying a giant’s testicle. I haven’t teased him about that lately…” I looked back over my shoulder to try to see Harlan, but turned back to Gunnar pretty quickly.

He looked kinda confused. “I… tried to put out fires on you with my trenchcoat? Weird.”

Yeah. Weird. Weird was the same fucking thing I thought when it happened. “Yeah. But I wasn’t on fire. And then you were mad at Harlan but you never told me why, so I can’t help you there,” I shrugged.

“Huh, okay,” spake Gunnar the verbose.

“Um... and then next was...” and I rambled for a bit, actually kind of enjoying the chance to tell him how awesome he had been, until I got to the next thing he didn't remember, which was under the water outside Jersey.

I helped him as much as I could, but bits of that were missing from my mind, too. “I remember we were in the water,” I squinted while I spoke. Squinting helps me remember. “And Brendan waved Harlan and I through, then I was on the floor of our sub and I think you hugged Kas? I don’t remember what for.”

He didn't look thrilled. "Yeah… I remember… the submarine… and one of the ghosts possessed one of the boys before they were even born, and I was able to sort of twist my own legend around to exorcise him. It was a little odd. But yeah, I don’t remember what happened after that before getting on the sub. I’ll have to ask one of the others."

Yeah, the whole possession thing had managed to slip my mind. Funny, I would expect to remember being fucking terrified while one of my babies was possessed in the womb, but I didn't.

And then, as I imagine it must look to someone who can't see ghosts, I looked like I was about to beat Gunnar within an inch of his life. I wasn’t failing terribly at abusing my husband. Really I was swatting at Nevermore, who was trying to squawk into Gunnar's ear about letting me die and not taking care of me and liking the Cubs.

“Uh…” I glared at the air by Gunnar. “Apparently I died. But I got better, obviously.”

Gunnar blinked. “Wow. I… would have been completely useless in that situation. I imagine Kassandra helped get you… better.” He could have said, “not dead anymore,” and it wouldn’t have bothered me. Though, I guess maybe it bothered him. “Explains the hugging you witnessed.”

I shrugged, kinda bewildered that I could forget about dying, and apparently getting my babies killed in the process. “Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, I’ll have to ask someone what exactly happened there. But at least there weren’t any snakes. That I remember. And really, I’m surprised you didn’t say anything in Hades when fucking Jormungandr showed up.”

“Huh? Why would I? I mean, it’s a big deal and all but…”

“Uh…” I just stared at him for a second. If I hadn't seen him put his head in the Well, if I didn't know what that place could do you your mind, I'd have thought he was just fucking with me or something. I knew better, though. “Okay…”

So I had to remind him that he fucking hates snakes. I told him about how so many of our encounters involved things with scales, like Canopus and company, and couldn't help but think how weird it was that something like that could just slip his mind.

“…Wow. I’m… that’s an odd trend to forget.” Great minds and such.

“Oh and there was the basilisk in the desert when we went to rescue Horace from those angel things. Forgot that one. That’s where you got those boots. And that cloak you almost never wore at first because you thought it would make people look at you funny.” Because a guy wearing sunglasses at two in the morning never gets any funny looks, I guess.

“Wait no,” I corrected myself, “That was a Lindwurm. Vegas.”

At this point he was just nodding, trying to take in as much information as he could, which I knew was a lot. He didn't have to focus all of his attention on me, but I couldn’t bring myself to mind.

“You practically jumped right on top of it,” I kept on with obvious disapproval in my voice, “and it tried to take a chunk out of you. It turned part of you to stone and…” I closed my eyes briefly. It was my turn to shudder a little. “I’ve never heard anyone scream like that. That time, it was my turn to be dumb, cuz then I ran right up to it so I could heal you, and I didn’t even close my eyes because I didn’t think of it.

And after getting past the basilisk, that’s where we found Horace Farrow, where Pan was keeping him hostage and using him to keep those angel things dormant or docile or something. We had to leave,” I looked at the ground and paused for a second. Almost a year later and it still pisses me off. “The only reason Horace got out was because I prayed to my dad about the army Pan was building, and a little after that Horace showed up at our doorstep. Well, it was still just my doorstep then, that was before we…”

I fingered the wedding band and engagement ring Gunnar had given me, making a face that was probably a little sad and a little sorry. “I don’t remember getting married.”

"What? Oh jeeze, okay.” He took a breath and just started talking. “So you had to spend days getting ready in the whole Greek tradition, and then because Aphrodite’s a bitch she refused to give you her blessing - not that you needed it, if you ask me - and then at the wedding my dad gave your dad a herd of golden yaks that were herded up I-35 by a pack of dwarves in broad daylight. One of the furies wrote “Murderer” on your forehead, some jealous boyfriend of Nate’s wife - then girlfriend - brought the press ‘round to harass everyone and I only narrowly avoided assaulting some mortals. Oh, and since Hera demanded to perform the ceremony she had us do a ritual where we let our blood out together and swore never to be unfaithful. Seemed a little unnecessary to me, but I’m pretty sure she used a power over us so that we’ll incur some number of years of bad luck if we break it - or something like that."

I blinked, and waited for part of that to sink in, sound normal, or otherwise make sense. Then I gave up on that and just started asking questions. “Wait, why did Aphrodite refuse to give me her blessing??” For a second I was scared that, being a goddess of love, maybe Aphrodite had determined I didn't really love Gunnar, or some equally implausible bullshit.

“Well Aphrodite’s a giant hypocrite and refused you her blessing because you weren’t a virgin.”

I made one of those “are you fucking kidding me” faces, and wondered if I'd looked as pissed the first time this all happened.

Whatever. Next question.

“Hera performed the ceremony??” It seems like meeting the Queen of the Gods (of my pantheon) should be something I would remember, especially if she had deigned to do me the honor of performing my wedding ceremony – and I was probably supposed to see it as an honor, rather than an inconvenience or her butting in. But that wasn't really what I cared about.

“Did my dad make it?” And then before Gunnar could answer either question, I remembered the part where he said something about mortals and assault. “Why were you going to assault mortals?”

He answered my questions in the order I'd asked them, because he's cool like that. “Yeah, Hera basically just walked in and had some of her people start re-decorating and told us she was doing the ceremony. And yeah, your father was there. Actually the guest list was kind of star-studded. Zeus, Hera, Artemis, Frigg, Odin, Heimdall, Apollo, and Dionysus - as The Situation.” He let me goggle for a moment over all the gods I could no longer remember meeting. And over Dionysus being The Situation.

“Oh, and I almost assaulted the news crews that Nate’s not-friend dragged along. I swear, those people don’t understand the meaning of ‘private’ and ‘go the fuck away.’”

I had to giggle a little at the last, because even if I couldn't remember it, I could imagine that much perfectly. “Yeah, you’ve uh… you’ve got a way with words. That’s awesome that your dad was there, too, and Odin. Did we get any cool gifts? I think I remember a blender, but…” I shrugged. It was a nice blender.

Gunnar nodded. “Yeah, Artemis gave us an astrolabe that’s pretty awesome, and enormous… Frigg gave you a prophetic vision of our future together,” and he described to me the plains of fire and the ice giants and the four cribs and Nate losing a hand and Gunnar himself standing in the mouth of what I guess was Jormungandr. Is. Will be. Whatever.

“… and… I think that was more-or-less it. The blender was from Ciara.”

I miss Ciara. She knows how to make something bleed.

I wanted to ask him a lot more about the wedding, I wanted him to tell me everything like who wore what and who said what and I wanted to hear everything from his point of view but even I realized we were running short on time and we had much more pressing shit to do. Pressing shit that was going to take me who-knew-how-far away for who-knew-how long, and if the pressing shit he needed to go do happened to go really, really wrong and I couldn't get there when they needed me...

I took a deep breath.

“So I planned a wedding I don’t remember and it doesn’t matter because my plans pretty much didn’t matter since you said Hera redecorated and I got married with the fucking word “murderer” on my forehead. I bet your mom loved that,” I rolled my eyes, wincing. I do remember being pissed at the Furies, but I get pissed at a lot of people. “Y’know… Maybe it’s for the best that I forgot that. It sounds really aggravating and like it probably made me a nervous wreck. And if that’s the case, I’m sorry for any bullshit I put you through that I don’t remember.” And anyway, the ceremony itself wasn’t really the part that was important. It didn't matter how the wedding happened, really. It matters that it happened.

But there was something important that I needed to say, something I'd wanted to make sure he understood for a while, now.

“Um… I feel like I’m a little bit better off, though.” The words I wanted to say were, I am going to be okay, but I’m glad you were so cool as to be with me when I was not okay. I almost got there, I think.

“Some of the stuff I don’t remember apparently made me a bit of a head case, enough so that I was always really worried you would take off running when you realized how damaged I was.” It was a really stupid worry, stupid on like… eight different counts.

“But you didn’t, and that was really awesome of you. So you talk about me being strong, and all this time I’ve been marveling at you being…” I had to pause to find the right word. There were a couple that would have worked. “Insane” was one of them, but I went for something just a little bit gentler. “I dunno, maybe just crazy, enough to stick with me.” There was a point there, and I was trying really hard to make sure I didn't just wander around it. I just wanted him to know how much it meant to me, how much he meant to me, and just how grateful I was for him having made me so much better off than I used to be and giving me a reason to keep getting better, honing my skills and whatever. I wanted him to know in case all of my plans went to shit and I didn’t make it out of Duat. Except I’m bad at this.

“So thanks,” I finally managed to get the words out. “In case I didn’t ever say it before, or I don’t get to say it later, thanks. I don’t think I’d be where I am now if it weren’t for you. You give me a million reasons to be better at everything, to be stronger and good at protecting people – and somehow you still manage to find all the trouble I can’t fix. Like old age. I mean, the apples were just a temporary fix for that and I’m still working on the more long-term fix. But I’ll figure it out, because it’s for you. Just like I learned how to fucking teleport because I thought you were in trouble.”

Shit. It wasn't quite coming out right.

I frowned but kept talking. I guess I needed to keep talking because if I stopped talking I would start thinking – and it is pretty obvious that I do not do both tasks simultaneously. I really didn't wanna do that right now, I didn't wanna think about just how long I might be gone and just how soon that was going to have to happen.

"There was a point in there somewhere… Oh. Um… We don’t have a whole lot of time right now. So while I want to keep trying to fill in all the holes in your memory, and mine - like I would love to remember whether I was actually there with my mom when she died - there’s other shit we have to be doing. And while I would love to just look you in the eyes and say, “Fuck dragons and Titans, let’s go get a room,” I realize I have no money and a metric fuck tonne of responsibilities to be taking care of. Like what Odin said to go do, and maybe figuring out how to stop what we saw happening in Hades, especially now that my mom is down there in the darkness and I don’t know if she’ll be okay, or any of the other souls, and I don’t have all the time in the world to spend figuring it out while everything else goes dark. And you’ve got dragons to go talk to, because for some reason I don’t really understand, you seem to want to go do that.

So the point is, when I get back - because I am fucking coming back, - I want a vacation.” I said a silent prayer to the gods that I didn’t just lie to my husband. “Hell, I’ll settle just for <em>a day</em> off. I don’t care how we manage it, but my request is you, me, and a room containing nothing but a big bed and a full size bar stocked with nothing but whiskey. Now I gotta go learn Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics."

Gunnar just smiled at me and said, “It’s not like it’s been a one-sided thing, if it weren’t for you I would still be a hot-headed dunce who was better at getting himself nearly killed than he was at really helping anyone out. I mean, without you a lot of what I’ve been through probably would have changed me for the worse, and in a fairly serious degree. So, if the point you lost was an ‘I love you,’ then let me just say ‘I love you too’ - despite the incredibly cheesy phrasing.”

That wasn't what I was trying to say, actually.

I was trying to say goodbye.

But yeah, “I love you” worked, too.

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?