The Fragile

Yeah, so we found Carmen and almost killed her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I don't.

I can't.

Maybe I just won't.

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

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

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

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

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

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

i won't let you fall apart

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

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

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

Most of the Time

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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know Your Rights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Wants to Live Forever?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We just dropped the boys off with Jack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Country for Old Men (or Birds)

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

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

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

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

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

No, I'm not bothered.

No, I'm not.

No, I'm not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I did?

Are you sure?

I don't remember that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aww... you mad?

Anyway. So what happened after that?

Wait, why were there cats in New York?

Why were they feeding them Jotun blood?

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

And Kas let them out?

Wait... Who the fuck is Aslan?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What's bollocks?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yep. Good looking babies.

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

Yeah, I'm done with you for now.

The Times They Are A'Changin'

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

So. Here's what I remember.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

The Worst Day Since Yesterday

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

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

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

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

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

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

Titans: Fuck 'em.

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

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

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

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

I.
Died.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Cage the Darkness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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