oneiriad

Title: The Winchester Edda - a Tale Told in Fragments
Chapter title: The Messenger's Steed
Author: oneiriad

Disclaimer: Nope, not mine.
Spoilers: All of season 5 - goes AU after.
Link to first chapter

Consciousness is like the tide, ebbing and flowing, carrying Sam into the unknown.

The world has grown chill. His cage is warm and moist around him, but the cold sneaks in between the ivory bars in the time between one foul breath and the next. His left hand is dangling outside and he’s barely awake and aware enough to flex his fingers, vague thoughts of frostbite flittering through his mind.

From time to time a warm tongue slides over his fingers, licking off the rime. His own tongue glides over cracked lips. He dreams of water and hissing snakes and something soft, sliding against his skin.

He rises to the surface, opening his eyes to the sight of great, red squirrel balancing on the back of his hand, tilting its head and chittering inquisitively at him as it fearlessly climbs closer. His eyes slide closed at the brush of a tail, and it feels like far too much of an effort to open them again.

Sam sleeps.

Around him the world is cold.

***

He has already discarded the first bottle and is busily gulping down the contents of the second by the time his mind manages to catch up with the fact that he has woken up to the sight of two bottles of Evian strategically placed right in front of his face. Somehow he manages not to choke on the clear water, nor accidentally dropping the bottle as he lowers it, splashing water everywhere. He closes his eyes, swallows the last mouthful of liquid, and opens them again to take stock of his surroundings.

He’s lying on a sandy beach.

Judging by the light the sun must be setting.

He’s naked, but covered by a blanket.

In front of him is a fire that must have been burning for some time.

There are people sitting around the fire. At least – he thinks they’re people.

Immediately to his left sits the most formidable-looking woman he’s ever seen, her naked torso swelling with muscles and her only concession to modesty a small bundle of fur in her arms. Next to her sits a feral-looking man with distressingly familiar yellow eyes, and next to him an androgynous individual lounges like a cat. Then there’s a tall, young man who seems to have never quite managed to outgrow the all-arms-and-legs phase of adolescence. On his left sits what Sam thinks is a woman, covered from top to toe, her face hidden in the deep recesses of her hood. Finally, immediately to his right, sits a middle-aged woman, her dark-blond hair gathered in a single, long braid, and at her feet sits the amber-eyed wolf that he’s not certain how he ever dared to even think of as his.

They’re all staring at him.

So he stares right back at them.

They stare at him some more.

Eventually, the tall, young man is the first to turn away, making an exasperated this-is-ridiculous kind of noise and reaching behind him to grab a long stick and a covered plastic bowl. Removing the covering, he proceeds to carefully wrap a length of dough round one end of his stick before carefully positioning it over the glowing embers. Sam looks at the slowly turning stick and idly wonders whatever happened to just roasting marshmallows.

Then he wonders about other things.

“Why?”

“Because it is time and past time for my children to meet their grandfather.”

He turns his head to the left to look at the woman talking. The bundle of fur in her arms wriggles and rolls over, and the wolf cub looks at him with curious, baby blue eyes.

“I don’t understand.”

“No? Did he not die in your service? Was he not cut down as he covered your retreat?”

“Gabriel. You’re talking about Gabriel.”

“Do we look like the weakling kin of the White Christ to you?” the yellow-eyed man snarls, rising to his feet. “Do you think...”

“Which reminds me,” a voice interrupts, “I’ve been trying to think of some good kennings for him. Which do you think sounds better, the angel’s horse or the messenger’s steed?”

The snarl turns from a relieved Sam, acutely aware of being naked and unarmed among unknown and probably very dangerous strangers, towards the young man, not that he seems to be at all bothered by the fact.

“Oh, will you relax, brother. It’s not like there’s much point in getting Mom back if we can’t make fun of him. I mean, you know he’ll be disappointed if we don’t.”

Sam closes his eyes and rubs at his temples, trying to clear his mind, trying to dredge up bits of half-forgotten stories he read so very long ago it feels like another life, because he knows who these people are now, and there’ s no comfort to be found in that knowledge.

“Loki, then. Loki. But if Loki’s dead, shouldn’t he – shouldn’t he have gone – someplace?” he asks, because where do Jotun go when they die, anyway?

“Had my father died the death of straw,” the covered-up woman begins, “ he would have long since crossed the Gjallarbridge and I would have given him the seat of honour at my table, and it would have been well. Had he died at sea, our kinswoman Ran would have done likewise, and that too would have been well.

“But he died fighting Lucifer.”

“Except he died fighting,” Hel agrees, “and so he should have gone to stand before Hlidskjalf – only, we have every reason to suppose that he did not.”

Sam must have looked unusually confused, trying to fit the pieces of what he’s being told together inside his head, because the catlike lounger snorts unattractively and sits up straighter.

“What my sweet sister is too polite to say, is that if that bunch of nithings had gotten their filthy hands on Dad, they wouldn’t have wasted any time in putting him back in that fucking hole.”

“How do you know they haven’t?” He regrets speaking almost as soon as the words are out there – there’s something extremely unnerving about being the object of the intense scrutiny of a pair of unblinking eyes.

“Copenhagen and Stockholm and the rest of those places not having been reduced to rubble is kind of a clue, don’t you think?” and that makes it twice now that the tall man has distracted one of his companions – siblings?

“So, if Loki isn’t where he should be – then where is he? I mean...”

“When my husband died,” the woman on his right begins, “he was entwined with the Gabriel Elohim – encompassing him he was in his turn encompassed by him. And so, when he died, he went where we cannot follow, and from where we cannot bring him back.”

A single tear is sliding down her cheek. The amber-eyed wolf whines and licks at her chin, as if trying to comfort her. Everybody else seems to be embarrassed and is looking everywhere except at the weeping woman.

“That still doesn’t explain why you got me out of Hell,” he dares to point out after a little while.

“Loki is beyond our reach,” the woman on his left informs him,as she rearranges the wolf cub and offers it a breast. “The Gabriel Elohim is another matter, which is where you come in.”

Sam swallows, mouth suddenly dry again, because he’s beginning to suspect where this is going and he doesn’t like it, not one little bit.

“After all, we’ll need somewhere to put him, won’t we?” and he glares at the snake-eyed person as it smirks at him, because even if he suspected, then he really didn’t need to hear that sibilant voice be so off-hand about it.

“How do you even know that Gabriel will help you get Loki back?” he tries, clutching at the first straw that springs to mind.

“The Gabriel Elohim is a man of honour. He paid his debt once before, and so he will again,” the woman on his left finishes with a decisive nod.

“And – and if I refuse? If I won’t let you make me his vessel? Then what?” Because how can he let them? He’s only just gotten out, dammit, they can’t just expect him to...

“If you won’t honour the debt you owe us,” the snake-eyed man hisses at him, leaning forward, “well, I’m sure Fenrir won’t mind plonking you right back down where he found you. Would you, dearest brother?”

Judging from the growl, Sam has little doubt about that. He finds himself scrambling backwards as the yellow-eyed man – Fenrir – rises.

“Peace, brother.”

The tall, young man stands and walks over to Sam, the long stick still in his hand as if he’s forgotten it. As he kneels down in front of him, Sam looks up and into a pair of sad, brown eyes.

“It’s a terrible thing, is it not, when they tell you to stand still and bend your head as they put the bridle on you. A cruel thing, to be expected to just submit without a fight. It is a shameful thing to ask of anyone, I know.”

Sleipnir lowers his head, no longer meeting Sam’s eyes, fiddling with his stick instead.

There’s something warm pressing against Sam and he looks down to see the amber-eyed wolf leaning into his side. It feels safe. It shouldn’t, but it does.

Rising, Sleipnir pulls the bread off the stick and turns it over in his hand, as if considering it.

“Yet, sometimes – sometimes they do ask it of us. And shall I tell you the most terrible part of it? Even knowing this, even having lived this cruelty, a time may come where we in our turn will ask it of another. Even so.”

Sam catches the thrown bread and looks at Sleipnir’s back as he walks back to his seat. Then he takes a bite.

The crust is charcoal-crunchy and the middle is still unbaked dough and it’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever tasted.