Summary: Bruised and bloodied, you end up with the last person you thought you'd turn to, and the kudzu is speaking.
Word Count: 5.5k
Warnings: Car crash, mentions of broken limbs
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The wolf’s yellow eyes scrutinized her mistress before turning her gaze back to the water. “What will happen to them?”
Circe shook her head. “Would that I knew. I can only hope they get there in the end. We will need them for what’s to come.”
The journey from Circe’s island was even more oppressively silent than the trip there. In fact, the first time you or Sweeney spoke was nearly six hours after you’d left Florida and had passed into South Carolina.
Eventually, you couldn’t take it anymore.
“Why did you kiss me?” you blurted. “On the way to Circe’s.”
Sweeney, who was taking his turn in the driver’s seat, stayed quiet, but you saw his grip on the steering wheel tighten and watched a muscle in his jaw tick.
Your mind reeled as you considered his possible answers. What if—
“I heard somewhere that kissin’ someone, while they’re panicking, can help ‘em catch their breath.”
You stared at him. “You heard that? Where, Teen Wolf? What the hell is wrong with you?”
He glanced sidelong at you. “It worked, didn’t it?”
You wanted to backhand the smug expression from his face.
“If you don’t shut the hell up…”
Sweeney scoffed. “You’re just pissed because I’m right. An’ I didn’t see you complaining, besides.”
At that moment, you dearly longed to wrap your hands around his throat and squeeze, but, unfortunately, you were quiet for just a beat too long.
“You liked it, didn't you?” he said, a cheeky smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth.
You could feel the heat in your cheeks and knew your face had to be beet red. Maybe, for once, the old man would turn up when you actually wanted him to and end this moment.
If only the Norns would bestow that luck upon you.
A hundred witty remarks and jabs raced through your head, but all that came out of your mouth was: “Fuck you, you old cunt.”
Sweeney cackled and slammed his foot on the accelerator and your beloved car screamed down the freeway.
Passing through Boone in North Carolina, you finally felt like you could breathe a little more easily. The first fourteen hours of your journey had gone by mercifully without any incident. You knew better than to let your guard down, of course, but it seemed like Circe’s wards were holding.
The peace didn’t last. It never did. You were about two hours north of Boone when your luck finally ran out. You were driving, the needle on the speedometer hovering just around the 80mph mark, when something slammed into your car, sending it careening into a ditch and pitching you hard against your seatbelt. The material bit into your chest angrily and your skull slammed back against the headrest. You blinked stars from your eyes in time to see Sweeney’s head crash into the dashboard and hear the nauseating sound of bone snapping when he tried to brace himself.
“I told you to wear a seatbelt,” you managed to wheeze.
A groan was all you got in response.
Black was creeping around the edges of your vision, but you knew you both needed to stay awake. One or both of you having a concussion was not unlikely, and while dying would most certainly solve most of the problems you were currently facing, you knew that even death wouldn’t bring you peace.
You untangled yourself from your seatbelt and dragged yourself to the other side of the car, bracing yourself as you dragged Sweeney out onto the blacktop. He moaned pitifully, crying as you jostled his broken arm.
“Shit, shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you mumbled, your mind racing as you tried to sort through your options. First and foremost, you needed to splint Sweeney’s arm and check him for a concussion. You patted his cheek.
“How’s your head, chief? C’mere, follow my finger.”
His gaze managed to follow your finger steadily as you moved it back and forth across his field of vision. You braced a thumb against his eyebrow and peered into his eyes with the penlight in your pocket.
He flinched away, rubbing his eye with his good hand and shaking his head to clear it. “What, are you trying to blind me?” The red mark on his forehead where he’d smacked the dash was already fading.
You snorted. “There are better ways to do that. But the good news is it doesn’t seem like you have a concussion. Looks like your luck’s holding.”
He looked past you. “Yours is too,” he said. “Look at your car.”
You whirled around and saw her sitting on a mess of tangled kudzu vines and greenery. Her front bumper was dented, but other than that, there wasn’t a scratch on her. Or on yourself, for that matter. By rights, you and Sweeney should have been grease spots on the road, especially Mr. Seatbelts-Are-For-Pussies, and your car should have been a twisted hunk of steaming metal. And yet, here you were. Granted, a little worse for wear, but you were alive and present nonetheless.
You stared, bewildered, at your companion. “I’m fine?”
He cocked an eyebrow but remained silent. You chewed on the inside of your cheek trying to come up with a workable hypothesis, but before a thought could form, the mass of leaves and vines under your car began to snake towards you.
You tried to haul Sweeney to his feet but only succeeded in falling into his lap. The two of you scrambled backward, Sweeney’s face turning a sickly green with the pain of his arm.
“What the fuck is that?” you demanded. At this point, you didn’t even have it in you to be properly afraid of whatever the hell was happening now. Mostly, you were just annoyed.
“Ah, for fuck’s sake.” Sweeney’s good hand reached out and took hold of your bicep. Even with his broken arm, you could feel his muscles coil, readying for a fight.
As you watched, the kudzu surrounded you and began to take a humanoid shape. As it did so, vines shot out and wrapped around you tightly, effectively freezing you in place. Before either of you could react, Sweeney was bound and gagged. He looked at you with wide, bewildered eyes. This was certainly a new one for you both.
“Mad Sweeney and his witch.” The seething mass of plant matter spoke with a voice that resonated through the concrete and up into your body through the soles of your feet. “My lucky day.”
“You’re lucky, he’s lucky, I’m lucky, we’re all lucky!” you muttered.
A kudzu vine crawled across your cheek, the pale green tip of the tendril hovering just above your cornea. It darted forward and you flinched, hard, but it only brushed your hair away from your face.
“You don’t know who I am,” the kudzu said, disappointed.
The vine wrapped itself around the shell of your ear and began to probe at your ear canal. Desperately, you wracked your brain for anything that might help. There was a name and it danced on the tip of your tongue, just out of reach.
“Please, Elder,” you gasped. “Forgive me. I know not your name, but I know you. I know you in the creeping dark, I know you on lands abandoned. You are the kudzu, what remains when all else is gone.”
The vine uncoiled from your ear. You took a deep breath.
“Please, hear us—“
A green shoot stabbed into Sweeney’s shoulder and he roared against the mess of plant matter crammed into his mouth.
“I care not. What could you have to say that would be of any import to me? No, I think I will consume your dear friend here.” The kudzu gag unfurled from Sweeney’s mouth and was replaced by a tendril snaking down his throat. You could hear him gag and choke and it made your palms sweat.
You opened your mouth to scream for your leprechaun when a name finally surfaced in your memory. You remembered lying on the parlor floor of Ibis and Jacquel with Bast curled against you, purring like an engine. You were reading a book on ancient East Asian deities. If you could just…
“Baku.”
The amalgamation of vegetation stilled. You pressed on, praying you were right.
“My lord Baku,” you said breathlessly, “forgive me. We meant no disrespect.”
The old god peered at you. Or at least, you thought it did. “You ought to be more careful,” it hummed. “The Black Druid has promised a great reward for the one to deliver you into his custody.”
Your mouth went dry. After everything else, now there was a bounty on your head? Was an asteroid going to strike you next?
“My lord, please, listen to me. The Dark Man will not deliver on his promises.”
The concrete vibrated with Baku’s voice. “Even if that were true, I could still consume you. Between you and your leprechaun, you would more than satiate the emptiness of being forgotten. Although, I suppose it would be a tragedy to lose such a legacy.”
You blinked. “Legacy?”
Baku raised an eyebrow. “Your legacy. You’re ——— “ His next words disappeared under the sound of cracking static.
Never in your life had you been more confused. “Excuse me? How did you make that sound? What the hell are you talking about?”
Baku came closer. “Oh, now this is interesting,” it mused. “You can’t understand it, can you?”
“I can’t understand when I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Baku chuckled. “I think you will find out. Sooner rather than later, I should think.”
You stared at him and then shook your head, trying to clear your mind like an Etch-A-Sketch.
“I grow bored of this,” Baku announced. The vines around Sweeney began to squeeze and the vine in his throat twitched, making him gag again. You felt ill. Baku squeezed even harder and Sweeney’s face began to turn a sick shade of purple, his eyes rolling back in his head. If he hadn’t lost consciousness yet, he would soon.
“Wait!” you screamed. “My lord, please.” You had no earthly idea what you were going to say next, but the god’s attention was on you and the vines around Sweeney had stopped squeezing. You scrambled to find your words.
“Lord Baku, what if I told you I could give you something that the Dark Man never could?”
The vines around you yanked you forward until your face was inches from the silhouette that was Baku.
“What would that be?”
You swallowed. The next words from your mouth were going to be insane, possibly one of the stupidest things you could say, but you didn’t know what else to do.
“I can give you belief.”
A stillness swept over that stretch of highway. The god was listening. You could barely hear yourself think over the blood pounding in your ears. You had promised the one thing old gods like Baku craved. Power. Sustenance. Belief.
“How would a thing like you manage to keep such a promise?”
At this point, the inside of your cheek felt like it had been through a paper shredder, but you kept chewing on it.
“The people here, they don’t see the kudzu for what it could be,” you began slowly, grabbing the words one at a time, “only as something that consumes and suffocates. They don’t see the life it brings, the sustenance it provides. Please, give me a chance to show them what the kudzu could be.”
The old god tilted its head, considering you carefully. After a few moments, the kudzu around you loosened and set you down gently on the pavement.
“You promise me believers?
You swallowed. “Yes.”
“How many?”
You shifted your weight from one foot to the other. “I can’t promise an exact number. I can’t even promise that the number will be significant. But I can promise that I will find them.”
Kudzu snaked up your neck and around your ears again, probing gently at your temples and cheeks and lips as though searching for any ill intent.
“You have a deal,” Baku said eventually. “But do not tarry. The kudzu will give protection as far as my borders. When you pass Massachusetts in the north or out of east Texas, towards the west, there will be nothing more I can do for you.”
You knelt before the kudzu, bowing and touching your forehead to the ground.
“Thank you, my lord,” you said as you clambered to your feet.
The kudzu retreated from Sweeney and he collapsed on the concrete, retching and moaning.
You bowed again to the old god and then dashed to your car, pulling Sweeney’s bottle of Jameson from the glove compartment and sprinting back.
“An offering, my lord,” you intoned as you let the whiskey spill onto the road and into the soil.
Baku hummed approvingly. “Do not forget our deal, witch,” its voice reverberated in your skull. And then the old god of the kudzu was gone, disappearing into itself in the brush on the side of the highway.
As soon as you were sure it was gone, you let out a breath you didn’t realize you had been holding and ran to Sweeney, who was barely clinging to consciousness as he lay in the dirt.
“Fuck, dude,” you hissed.
“I can’t believe you poured out my Jamo.” His voice was hoarse like he’d been gargling gravel.
“We were already pushing it, we needed an offering,” you told him.
“Can you just get me patched up please?” he rasped.
“Right, right.” You darted back to the car, digging through your duffel until you unearthed your first aid kit.
“Okay, let me just—“
“Splint my fucking arm first, I’m about to black out.” His voice was muddy and his words weren’t as clear as they should have been. You groaned and chucked a roll of gauze at his head.
“I should just let you bleed out,” you snapped.
“Hm.”
You rolled your eyes and went hunting for a stick that was the right size to splint his arm. When you found it, you first held it out to him. He looked at you with an expression that said What the hell am I supposed to do with this?
“Bite down,” you instructed. “I have to set the bone and it’s going to hurt like a bitch.”
He sighed and did as you said, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Okay, ready?”
He nodded.
“On three. One—“
Crack!
Sweeney snarled against the stick, his body jerking away from you. “You bitch,” he hissed, spitting the wood from his mouth. “That wasn’t on three.”
“You’re welcome. Now stay still, shitass,” you murmured as you set about placing the splint.
“Fuckin’ hurts,” he mumbled.
“Well, if someone had worn their seatbelt like I told him to—“
“Enough about the goddamn seatbelt!”
You glared at him. “Fine. Maybe next time I’ll get lucky and you’ll go flying through the windshield.”
He glowered right back. “Just fix my shoulder so we can go.”
“Ungrateful,” you muttered, but you still cleaned the jagged hole in his shoulder, gingerly picking out the leaves and plant matter that had been left in his flesh. You carefully taped a square of gauze over the wound on his front and his back and sat back, assessing your work. “Honestly, it probably needs stitches, but this was the best I could do. It’s gonna leave a nasty scar.”
He shrugged. “What’s one more?”
You snorted and hauled him up by his good arm, helping him into the car.
Back in the driver’s seat, you white-knuckled the steering wheel, wringing it nervously. The silence in the car was tense. He was mad at you.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Sweeney demanded eventually, his brash voice shattering the silence like a bowling ball thrown into a china cabinet. “Have you lost your mind? Where do you get off promising him believers?”
You slammed your palm against the wheel and pointed at him, anger and annoyance flooding your veins like lava. You’d had it.
“How about a thank you for keeping the kudzu from fucking consuming us?” you snarled. “What the fuck was I supposed to do? The Dark Man has a bounty on my head now, I had to do something.”
The leprechaun groaned in disbelief. “So you promised him believers? Are there worms in your head?”
You snapped your teeth at him before stomping on the accelerator, relishing the thwack of his head hitting the headrest as the car leaped forward. “I didn’t want to watch you become a shriveled husk on the side of the road or watch you get ripped apart from the inside, although I cannot for the life of me remember why,” you bit out. “Why are you picking a fight with me, anyway? Did you decide it had been too long since you got on my fucking nerves?”
“Because I’m worried about you!” he shouted. “You’ve got this thing in your head that no one seems to be able to figure out, you’re making deals that you can’t possibly hope to keep with beings that could obliterate you with a snap of their fingers. You’re wound tighter than a nun’s bunghole—“
“I’m wound up?” you shrieked. “You’re the one that’s about to snap like a goddamn rubber band!”
“You’re watching my back,” he snapped. “I need you to pull it together. I know all of this is shit and it’s scary, but if you get me killed, I’m—“
“You’re taking me with you,” you mocked. “I’ve heard that one before. Can you please just be quiet until we stop for the night in D.C.? I’ve got a connect there, we can crash with them.”
“Who? Charles Entertainment Cheese?”
“No, fucknut. Hester’s there.”
He blinked. “Now how in the hell did you make that connection? No one’s seen her in forever.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” You smirked.
He glared at you and pulled a clove cigarette from his shirt pocket, tucking it behind his ear. Then, he paused and stared at you with a petulant and mulish look on his face. You knew that look.
“Don’t you dare,” you growled.
Moving slowly and deliberately, he brought the cigarette to his lips and then put a lighter to the cigarette. The cloying odor of cloves and tobacco filled your car as he blew a thick cloud into your face.
You coughed and slammed the brakes, the stink of burning rubber mingling with the miasma of the cigarette.
“Get out,” you snapped.
He stared at you. “What?”
“Did I stutter? Get. Out.”
His head kicked back. “You’re not serious.”
You reached across him and opened the car door. “Don’t make me repeat myself again. I’m sick of being disrespected. I’ll see you in D.C.”
Sweeney’s jaw hung open. “What, I’m s’posed to walk the three hundred miles?”
You shrugged. “Or take a bus. Might be faster.”
He spread his hands. “After everything I’ve done for you, this is what I get? You’re the most ungrateful—“
“Ungrateful?” you snarled. You climbed out of the car and circled to the other side so you were standing over him and stabbed a finger at his chest. “I barely wanted you to come in the first place!”
The two of you stared each other down, glares matching in ferocity and anger.
“And you’d be dead without me,” he spat. “Aside from everything else, haven’t you noticed your luck? You think that’s a coincidence? You think that doesn’t have anything to do with me?”
You didn’t answer and he scoffed, standing so he towered over you. “You know, you’re more like the old man than you want to admit.”
You shoved his chest with both hands, not caring about his arm or the kudzu wound. You’d absolutely had it. He stumbled backward and when he regained his footing, surprise was written all over his face. The two of you had fought and argued before, but you’d never actually laid hands on him.
“I thought something had changed after Circe,” you seethed. “I thought maybe you’d finally pulled your head out of your ass, but good to know you’re just as obnoxious and disrespectful as ever.”
“You’re the one that came to me for help in the first place!”
Your laugh was verging on hysterical. You’d been awake for far too long and you were dying to take a swing at him. “I wouldn’t have asked for your help if I’d known you would keep throwing it in my face.”
He loomed over you, but you refused to be intimidated. You’d had enough of his bullshit, friends or not.
“Get to D.C. on your own,” you said as you got back in the car. “Or don’t,” you added. “Fuck if I care.” And you sped off, leaving him alone on the side of the highway like an abandoned dog.
As soon as he was in your rearview, you let yourself burst into tears. You cranked your stereo, rolled your window down, and screamed into the night, all the fear, anger, and frustration you’d been feeling tearing from your throat.
Why was he like that? Why did he have to pick fights and antagonize you and argue with you like that? Although, come to think of it, why did you? You were no better than he was, the way you’d kicked him out of the car, an action that you were already regretting. He just had a way of burrowing under your skin and playing your nerves like a goddamn fiddle. It was infuriating that he’d gone and made himself important to you and it disgusted you, how much you relied on him. Because he’d been right. You would be dead without him, and you’d gone and left him and his luck on the side of a highway in the middle of the night.
You groaned. “Ah, fuck.”
You yanked the steering wheel, executing a U-turn that almost flipped your car, and sped back the way you’d come.
He was going to be insufferable. You’d kicked him out, only to immediately come back. You were never going to hear the end of it.
But he wasn’t there. You were where you’d left him, but your ginger giant was gone.
You cursed loudly, beating your palm against the steering wheel. That asshole.
Throwing yourself from the car, you walked in circles calling his name, but no answer came. You swallowed your growing panic and focused instead on your anger. Granted, you’d told him to walk, but you should’ve known that he actually would. Jackass. Fine. If he wanted to disappear, you weren’t going to look for him.
That didn’t stop you from sitting in your car for an hour and a half, hoping that he’d come stumbling through the trees.
“Fuck this,” you muttered. You turned the key and your car’s engine roared to life. You’d either see him in D.C. or you wouldn’t. No skin off your ass.
And yet…and yet. You couldn’t shake the regret, nor the expression of genuine hurt on his face beneath the surprise and outrage.
You flicked through the radio stations, but everything you landed on felt like nails on a chalkboard. Eventually, you gave up and spent the next few hours in silence.
Halfway between Mt. Airy and D.C., somewhere in Virginia, you stopped for gas. You leaned against your driver’s side as the tank filled. Two pumps down, a guy was filling his truck's tank. You could feel his eyes on you, but you didn’t look up. Regardless of who or what he was, you didn’t feel like dealing with it. You just wanted to get to Hester’s. If she’d even let you stay with her. Your relationship was…tenuous at best.
From the corner of your eye, you saw the guy moving towards you. You swore under your breath and fingered the cool metal of the knife in your pocket. You really needed to get a proper weapon for situations like this so you could defend yourself with more than just a dinky utility knife.
Especially now that you’ve chased off your bodyguard, said a voice in the back of your head.
You shoved the thought from your mind and turned to the stranger. “May I help you?” Your tone was polite but icy.
He held up his hands and stopped ten feet from you. “Actually, I was thinkin' I might be able to help you.” You arched an eyebrow. “You’re Wednesday’s gofer, right?”
You bristled. “I am not his gofer. What’s it to you, anyway?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and leaned against the gas pump. He looked you up and down, his gaze appraising. You hated it.
“I’m sure you know by now that everyone and they mama is out to get you for the Dark Man’s bounty.” His voice was smooth and rich, like butter tea, and he had a thick Appalachian accent.
“And you aren’t?”
He shrugged. “The guy hasn’t actually specified what the reward is. I don’t trust like that. And I don’t work for Wednesday either,” he added, seeing your mouth open.
You studied his face carefully. The guy was huge, easily several inches over six feet, with broad shoulders to match. His strawberry blond hair was carefully braided away from his face and his beard was also tidily plaited and finished with a silver bead. His gray eyes were sharp, taking in every tiny detail. He was beautiful, but he set your teeth on edge. Something about him, his eyes in particular, felt familiar in a way that made your skin crawl.
Sensing your unease, he inclined his head. “An unfortunate family resemblance,” he said mildly and doffed his Appalachian State baseball cap. “Miley O’Danson.”
That couldn’t be right. “So…son of the son of Daniel? What kind of name is that?”
He just looked at you.
Miley O’Danson. Miley O’Danson.
Meili Odinson.
The pieces clicked and you groaned. “God. Dammit.” You wanted to tear your hair out. “When will you people leave me alone?” you asked tightly.
Miley chuckled. “You know, you’re lucky my father didn’t find you first.”
The growing lump of unease in your throat was threatening to choke you. “What do you want?” You were proud that your voice came out sharp and certain.
“You’re traveling, aren’t you?”
"In a warded car.”
Miley tilted his head. “Doesn’t seem to be doing a very good job,” he pointed out.
For a split second, you wondered how he knew about the drive to Florida, but then you saw him looking pointedly at the kudzu vines still trailing from your car’s undercarriage.
“I’ve already got protection,” you said firmly.
He pointed to the kudzu. “A dying god and magic that’s spotty at best. And I notice your attack dog is conspicuously absent. Where is that thumpin’ gizzard anyway?”
You flushed a dull red. “I’m not his goddamn babysitter.”
He smirked. “Right, of course not. Look, Baku’s protection will only get you so far. What about when you’re outside of his boundaries? What then?”
“How do you know—“
He tapped his nose. “The roads are mine, kiddo.”
You grit your teeth. “What do you want?” you asked again. “I already promised the kudzu believers, am I doing that for you too now? Am I some kind of proselytizer?”
“I don’t need believers,” he said. “I have plenty. Everyone that prays for safety on their journey is praying to me, whether they realize it or not.”
You snorted. “So you’re what, the god of car insurance?”
His eyes narrowed. “Do you want my help or not?”
“You still haven’t told me what you want,” you pointed out.
He pouted. “I can’t want to help from the goodness of my own heart?”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
He sighed. “I s’pose that’s fair.” He paused. “Nothing, for now.”
Your eyes narrowed. “But later?”
His expression was inscrutable. “If you ever get your memory back, give me a call. We’ll talk then.”
His words made no sense. Gods always wanted something and you knew better than to accept a vague deal.
“Nothing about this feels like it’s going to end well for me.”
Miley scuffed at the ground with his heavy work boots. “Think whatever you want. I’m just a guy with daddy issues trying to throw a wrench in his father’s plans.”
You snorted. “See, now that I believe.”
He spread his hands in front of you in what you assumed was meant to be a pleading gesture. Not that Odin or any of his sons would ever plead with anyone.
“Look, I’ll give you whatever protection I can. All I ask is that when I call, you answer.”
You still weren’t convinced. “Sounds like the job I already have with your dad.”
Miley’s jaw clenched and he flexed his hands like he was fighting the urge to swing on you.
“Christ, you’re spending too much time with that leprechaun,” he muttered.
“Watch it.”
Miley scrubbed his hands over his face. “This is getting us nowhere. Look, I’m not asking you to be at my beck and call, all right? This is a one-and-done deal.”
“So I’ll owe you a favor.”
He groaned. “Call it what you like. You can take my offer or you can spend your days constantly looking over your shoulder waiting for the Black Druid to break into your head.”
He was right, you both knew it. You needed all the help you could get.
You considered the man in front of you carefully. “You promise he won’t be able to find me?”
Miley shook his head. “As long as you’re traveling, he’ll have a hell of a hard time of it, but I can’t promise he won’t find you at all. Your magic will still act as a beacon, so use it sparingly.”
You said nothing.
“Do we have a deal or not?” he asked.
This was a bad idea, you knew it was, but what was the alternative? You held out your hand.
He grinned wolfishly and shook it. “And that’s the deal.” As he spoke, electricity raced up your arm from where his hand clasped yours. Whatever reservations you may have had, there was no backing out now.
Miley handed you a small amulet with a spoked symbol carved into it. “Wear this.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a protection sigil. You need as much help as you can get.”
You hung it around your neck. The amulet lay on your sternum right below the pendant Sweeney had given you, which laid snugly in the hollow of your throat. Your chest tightened.
“Take this, too,” he said, handing you a business card. It was a sleek matte black with three figures sitting cross-legged side by side, each holding a slender needle and what appeared to be an ink pot. Each figure was dressed in elaborate costume and their skin was decorated with ornate ink. The words Tatū Maya were embossed in metallic gold across the top.
“You’re not afraid of needles, are you?”
“Oh, I hate this. No, I’m not afraid of needles.”
He tapped the card. “How do you feel about getting some ink?”
“Excuse me?”
He spoke to you like you were an idiot. “Swing by this place and ask to speak with the owners. They owe me a favor, so just tell them I sent you and I’m cashing in.”
You stared at him. “You’re cashing in a favor for me? Why?”
“Same reason I offered to help in the first place,” came the response.
You clenched your jaw. You hated these stupid games, but once again, you found yourself backed into a corner. He may have been presenting it as a choice, but he wasn’t asking.
You ran your thumb over the raised letters on the card. “How will I…” Your voice trailed off as you looked up and realized Miley was gone. You hissed and kicked one of your tires. “I have got to start thinking this shit through better,” you mumbled to yourself.
You examined the card, searching for an address that would give you your next location, but there was only a phone number. Of course. It was nearing four o’clock in the morning, there was no way anyone would pick up. You briefly considered ignoring Melli’s request, but something told you that choice would not be well received.
Annoyed, you approached the payphone tucked near the air compressors and dialed the number on the card, cringing at the stickiness of the plastic receiver.
As you predicted, your call went unanswered, but the soothing voice on the recorded message, after thanking you for calling Tatū Maya, read off an address in Richmond, Virginia. Two hours south, when you needed to go north. It would throw off your timing to meet Sweeney in D.C., but you supposed it wouldn’t be by much.
You let your forehead rest against the casing of the payphone as you tried to steady your breathing.
“Well girl,” you said to your car, “I guess we’re headed to Richmond.” You threw yourself into the driver’s seat and revved her engine. “This should be interesting.”
Summary: Mad Sweeney could not recall the last true believer he had. Sure, he’d been brought over as one of the Fair Folk, but it was different. A sliver of the truth, a dim shadow of what he was really owed. The belief of someone who followed traditions, not him.
That changed when he arrived in Cairo.
That changed when he laid eyes on you and he found that one didn’t have to believe in the myth to believe in the man.
A/N: I’M GONN CRY GUYS THIS CHAPTER IS FINALLY DONE!!! AND ITS A DOOZY (especially if you’ve seen the preview!!)
I hope that you guys enjoy this!! And that you have fun!! PLEASE let me know what you think of this chapter. I worked VERY hare on it and its??? Honestly, some of the scenes and such are some of my FAVORITES so far.
ENJOY!!!
Chapters: Chapter One || Chapter Two || Chapter Three || Chapter Four || Chapter Five || Chapter Six || Chapter Seven || Chapter Eight || Chapter Nine || Chapter Ten || Chapter Eleven || Chapter Twelve || Chapter Thirteen || Chapter Fourteen || Chapter Fourteen-ish || Chapter Fifteen || Chapter Sixteen || Chapter Seventeen || Chapter Eighteen || Chapter Nineteen || Chapter Twenty || Chapter Twenty-One || Chapter Twenty-Two
Requests: Mad Sweeney and The Holidays || The Invasion and the Stressful Blows
One Shots: The Invasion and That One Thankful Holiday || The Invasion and the Weight of Change || Eyes On You
The Invasion and the Rose-Colored Glasses
You leaned against the wall, blinking absently at the floor. Where were you?
Ostara’s mansion. Fucking Ostara, goddess of the spring. Her bunnies had greeted you and Sweeney and Laura upon arriving and herded you up a set of stairs to the second floor, avoiding the active party in another room. You frowned.
What were you doing?
You were there for Laura, to make her alive again, yeah, but what were you doing?
You tapped your finger against the sleek plastic of an old styled phone. It was ringing. Who were you calling? You rubbed your fingers over your forehead.
The line clicked. “Thank you for calling Lemnos. How may I direct your call?” asked a woman. Her voice was low and melodious, snapping you out of your dissociating scramble. You gave her your sister’s name. The woman hesitated. “May I ask whose calling?” You sighed and gave her your name. You really didn’t have time for this. But what did you have time for? “Oh!” said the woman, “One moment please.”
You slumped against the wall. The vintage rotary phone sat on a small table next to you. It had a cord long enough to let you sit on the floor, which you did with a sigh. A gentle quartet danced in your ear. What lovely waiting music. You closed your eyes. You could fall asleep to it.
The line clicked. “You know,” drawled a man’s voice – a voice that was certainly not your sister, which made you scowl and open your eyes, “Rose is very envious that you’re at Ostara’s party. She doesn’t even get an invite to that, and Rose gets an invitation to everything.”
Your mind scrambled again. “Ignius?” you whispered after a moment. Your eyes darted around the room; Laura was busy staring at a wall of books; Sweeney was flopped on a sofa almost too small for him, glaring at the ceiling, his head turning just a bit at the lowering of your voice. You cleared your throat. “How--?”
“We were tracking your phone since you last turned it on,” he answered, “And by we, I mean my new head of security. Your sister.”
You sat up. “I called to talk to her,” you said.
Sweeney’s head turned fully towards you, his eyes searching your face.
“Yes, I know,” replied Ignius.
Your scowl turned into a frustrated bunch. “Lemme talk to her,” you demanded.
“Now, just a moment,” said the god with an obvious pout, “Maybe I want to talk to you. Make sure you’re alright.” Make sure you hadn’t fallen into a pit you couldn’t escape, said the stretch of silence afterwards.
“It’s not fair to you to be stuck in the middle of this bullshit when you don’t even have the slightest idea of what’s going on.”
“Thank you,” you whispered.
“Of course,” said Ignius, “We know where the mansion is. Someone can come get you if you stay there.”
Sweeney rose from the sofa.
“No,” you said, looking up at him. The leprechaun grunted as he fell to the floor next to you. You cleared your throat, then rubbed it. “No, I’m okay.”
Ignius hesitated. You wondered if he had ever hesitated before. “Alright.” Then, he sighed. “Alright,” he repeated. “Do you need another phone? I can have one sent to you by tonight.”
You twirled the cord of phone around your finger. “I probably shouldn’t have one,” you said with a silent acknowledgment of your job, “But I wouldn’t mind it. Security blanket.”
“Safety net,” said the god in agreement, “It’ll be there by sundown,” then, curtly, “I’ll transfer you.”
“Ignius?” you whispered. The hold music didn’t play. “Thank you.” For the help, for the advice, for listening, for caring, for telling you that someone cared.
He hesitated again. “Anytime.” Then, the quartet met your ear again.
(Something bloomed in your chest. It brought thoughts of a star cutting through the sky and a silent wish.)
You sagged in relief. Sweeney cleared his throat, then looped his arm over your shoulders and pulled you to him. You turned your head into his chest just as your chin started to tremble. His fingers combed through your hair.
(If you listened, you would have heard him humming.)
Your sister answered after a minute. Sweeney held you as you spoke to her, spilled everything that swirled around in your head from the moment you stepped into the truck to when she picked up her phone – the anxiety, the fear, the spiral down into your own thoughts.
“Do I need to come get you?” she asked when you could no longer talk, having dissolved into hiccups and soft sniffles. “I can. I have access to a jet now. A fuckin’ jet. I could bet there in an hour.”
You felt the fingers in your hair, smelled the wilderness that surrounded you – petrichor and rot, metal and sap, dirt, and grass, and death beneath the soil – and the peaceful quiet of your friends, and rubbed your fingers into your eyes. “No,” you answered, “I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, “Like, really sure?”
“Yes, nes.”
“Positive?”
Sweeney’s arm around your neck kept you from throwing your head back in exasperation. “Oh? My god.”
(A few of the Jesuses on the first floor looked up. They weren’t offended, only curious as to why you brought them up at all.)
“I’m worried,” your sister argued.
Sweeney started to snicker. You craned your neck to look at him – could he hear her?
“Yeah, I know you are,” you griped.
“I’m allowed to be worried!”
You groaned and pushed your way out of Sweeney’s grip. He thumped his head back against the wall and laughed. “I’m gonna hang up on you,” you said as you stood, making sure to kick his leg for good measure.
“Okay, but are you actually okay?” she asked. You paced across the floor, swinging the phone base in one hand, flinging the cord around on the floor. Laura jumped over it to examine the other side of the room. Sweeney kicked a foot out to trip her. She kicked him instead, eliciting a swear. “Hey, you there?” your sister asked.
“Sorry, sorry,” you said as you watched the two people in front of you, shaking your head. “I’m okay.”
“More than okay!” Laura shouted. She stepped towards you to loudly say, “You know about Ginger Minge, right?”
“Who?” asked your sister, “Who is that?”
“Would you fuck off?” you said, lightly swinging your leg in Laura’s direction. She gently batted it away. “That’s Laura. She’s a friend.”
“She’s a cunt!” Sweeney shouted.
“What is going on right now?” your sister asked.
You laughed. It felt good to laugh. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you soon, though, okay?” you said.
“Alright...” She cleared her throat. “I’m glad you’re okay.” Okay physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally.
“Me too,” you said physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, “Love you.”
“Love you.”
“Love you!” both Laura and Sweeney shouted. You hung up the phone and swung it violently, arching the phone cord through the air to smack them both. Sweeney held his hands out to take the phone cradle, which you handed over with a huff.
“Why are we here?” you asked after a moment. You hugged yourself, fingers twisting into the many layers you wore. You shrugged Sweeney’s shirt off, then your sweatshirt, and cringed at the wafting odor that hit your nose. For a moment, you honestly believed that you smelt worse than Laura.
“Uh, for me?” said the Dead Wife with a wave of her hand. She tucked her arms tight around her chest. You flung the clothes onto your flaccid bag as she said, “So I can live? Because there’s literally an army of Jesuses downstairs that we can walk up to and get this over with.”
Sweeney straightened. You very much noticed.
“What’s the plural of Jesus, anyway?” you asked instead of pointing out the change in your leprechaun. Your fingers traced the chain of your necklace and twirled the charm between your fingers. The coin. Your coin. Fuck, you felt like Laura, too.
“Jesuses,” said Laura with a wave of her hand, “It’s a ‘s’ word.”
“God--”
(The Jesuses looked at the ceiling again.)
“--English is such a stupid language,” you muttered.
“Least you didn’t have to learn it,” grumbled Sweeney.
You snorted. “Yeah.” Scrubbing your face, you sighed and looked around. “Where do you think the bathroom is?” you murmured, “I’d kill for a shower.”
A bunny – fluffy and white – appeared in the door as soon as your sentence disappeared into the air. It sat back on its haunches, nose wiggling, eyes on you. Its ears popped up, then down. You moved towards it.
“Uh,” Laura’s voice cut through the silence. You turned around. “Is that smart?”
“’s fine,” Sweeney groaned as he adjusted himself against the wall, “One o’ Ostara’s.”
“Who?” Laura asked as you spun back to the bunny.
It dropped down onto its front legs and hopped down the hall. You followed. Something dragged behind you, drawing your attention, and you glanced back to see two more bunnies pulling your duffle after you. You waited until they caught up, then scooped the thing onto your shoulder and followed your leaders to the bathroom.
It was massive, with marble floors that stretched away from you in all directions, and a shower that had no door, but allowed you to walk around a corner into instead. You kicked off your shoes before you peeked into it and felt the floor warm beneath your feet. You sighed in bliss.
You took your time in the bathroom, which seemed to be the intention of the rabbits: they appeared when you had fished out the last pair of clean clothes you had and took your duffle away, leaving you alone and naked. There were an array of soaps and conditioners and washes and lotions all through the bathroom, and you partook in all of them with glee. You hadn’t felt so clean in your life!
You hummed as you dried yourself with a large, fluffy towel, glancing out the high window to see the beautifully maintained garden outside. You wished you could take a picture – your sister would love it. You wrapped the towel around yourself and wandered to the sink. A plethora of skincare products awaited you, and you smiled, your skin already thanking you for the tender love and care. When had you last done something so kind to yourself?
Muffled voices floated in from the hall. You immediately recognized them both, then heard a solid thump and a painful yelp. You tucked the towel together and yanked open the door to a sight you hadn’t expected but weren’t terribly surprised by: Laura, holding Sweeney up against the wall at shoulder height, his balls in a vice grip. A woman you didn’t recognize stood right by the door. She clapped her hands, drawing your attention away from your leprechaun’s pained cries for help, and the brightness of her took your breath away.
“Oh, I know you,” she said as she moved closer, cupping your cheeks. You felt more plush bunnies hop past you into the room. “The esteemed godsend,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry?” you asked.
“You’re Wednesday’s little helper, right?” she asked. She brushed a piece of your hair back. She smelled like fresh flowers. “The one who grants the favors?”
A literal godsend. You couldn’t help but scoff at the realization.
“I’m Ostara,” she whispered. Her fingers trailed over the curved of your skull. “My little ones told me about your medicine. You’ll have more tonight, if you stay,” she said. Her hands moved from your cheeks to gently hold your head, and she sighed. “I wish I could help you, dear. Take it all away. You’ve done far too much for that old man to suffer anything at all.”
“I’m sorry, you’re kinda going over my head,” you stuttered. She knew about your meds? And about your mental illness? And then there was the fact that Ostara – the literal goddess Ostara, after whom the name Easter was born – was holding you like a loved one and apologizing to you? What was happening? Had your luck changed?
“What god killed me?!” shouted Laura over your thoughts. She squeezed Sweeney’s balls tighter, and he choked.
“Wednesday!” he shouted. Laura dropped him like a rock. You blinked. “It was Wednesday,” Sweeney croaked. He held himself and drew his knees up, thumping his head against the wall. “You were killed fer Wednesday.”
“I mean, you gotta go now, so? What’s in Indiana? What don’t you wanna tell me?”
“You don’t wanna know.”
“I did something. I didn’t want to, but he told me it needed to be done, that I had to do it, ‘else he wouldn’t hold up his end of our deal.”
“Why you comin’ to Eagle Point?”
“Not too many reasons a pretty wife gets in a car with another man.”
It was too much, your mind said, it was all too much.
Ostara felt you pulling away from the world, disconnecting the thread that held you to the present, and smoothed her thumbs over your cheeks with a faint, “Oh, my dear.”
You squeezed her wrist, dislodged yourself, and turned back to the bathroom, letting the door shut with a soft click. You floated somewhere between awake and aware as you stared at the bunnies. They had brought you the last of your clean clothes – a nice pair of pants, which were wrinkled in every place – and a plain tee shirt. You changed, towel dried your hair, and stared at yourself in the mirror.
Who was it that stared back? The fullness of your cheeks had faded, shaping around the bones beneath. Your pants were a little looser and threatened to fall off your hips. Even your shirt fit oddly. All the walking, all the stress, all the small meals and possibly the closeness with divinity had physically changed you. The door squeaked a bit as the bunnies left and squeaked again when they returned with a pair of suspenders from somewhere. You took them and donned them and stared again at your reflection.
The coin hung in the hollow of your throat. Your hair hung in damp waves. Your clothes hung at awkward angles.
You traced the lighter patch of skin on your temple, remembering Bast’s rough tongue over a gash you had never seen.
Who were you looking at? Your name almost didn’t feel right anymore, having belonged to a person that lived in Cairo, that worked to live to the next day, that struggled to know why they were there. The person that stared at you didn’t live in Cairo. They still tried to live to the next day, but the road was smoother, the potholes filled in by gods and goddesses and wandering believers and undead women and a leprechaun that really was a fae beneath the gold in his beard and the blood on his knuckles.
You tucked your hair behind one ear and the names that had been given to you filled your mind one by one.
Who were you?
(Maybe the name your mother gave you would return someday.)
You didn’t know.
You laced up your well-worn sneakers, brushed a thumb over one of the patches and thought of Hody, then left the bathroom.
“You and that little informant,” said Ostara as she watched you walk away. Sweeney didn’t look up, too busy still squeezing his eyes shut and trying to wish the pain away. “You’re--”
“Fuck off,” Sweeney grunted. He thumped his head back against the wall and sighed, opening his eyes to stare at the wall across from him. Laura had wandered away when she dropped him, and you had walked down to the party. He thumped his head back again. How was he going to explain himself to you? His hands lifted from his crotch to hold his necklace with both hands.
The goddess tsked as she turned to him. “You know I’m right,” she hummed. She offered him a hand. She did have manners, after all.
Sweeney eyed her delicate palm and slapped his hands against the wall, shuffling up it with a barely contained groan. “Dunno what yer talkin’ about,” he grumbled.
Ostara arched an eyebrow, but shrugged, and looked down the stairs you had descended, knowing just where you stood, and who you spoke to. She patted the leprechaun’s chest and sniffed. “You know,” she mused, “Spring is the perfect time for new beginnings.”
Sweeney only shrugged, trying to disappear into his jean coat. He wasn’t fond of being so seen, read so thoroughly, especially when he wasn’t too sure of the things that were being read. “Fuck off with that hippie shit,” he whispered.
She balled up her hand and punched him square in the shoulder, her nose wrinkling. “Yer in love,” she said, “Deal with it. And take a shower.” Her shoes clicked as she took off down the hall and went down the stairs.
Ostara’s mansion really was beautiful. You paused as you descended the stairs, gripping the rail with both hands and leaning on it. Even without the literal power that rippled through the air, you would have thought it was magical. You couldn’t remember any of the details from your walk into the manor, but you made sure to take your time in examining it all the second time around. You counted several iterations of Jesus in your first sweep, then a Virgin Mary. A man lounged on one of the many sofas, absently stroking one of the two long and vibrant green feathers that hung from a single earring in his right ear. He glanced up, grinned, and was at your side in an instant, buttoning his coat as he leaned on the rail.
“When I heard the old man from the north had gotten himself a new lacky, I never thought I’d get to meet ‘em,” he mused.
Your eyes wandered over him, took in his thick brown hair that had a sheen of red in the sun, the feathers that rested on his shoulder, the bright skulls that covered his lapels in beautiful and colorful beadwork. His chest was bare beneath the suit coat, which let him show off the stamped metal plate he wore as a necklace, something thick and worn, not unlike what you’d imagine a piece of breastplate would look like. When you wandered up to his face, you were met by brilliant clay brown eyes with narrow pupils that took in your every detail. The man grinned. He had fangs.
A name whispered through your mind, bringing images of step pyramids and small birds and celebrations as a shadow formed on stone.
“Quetzalcoatl,” you said.
“Oh, please, my name is Teoxihuitl now. Please,” he said, holding out his hand. You took it. “You really know how to identify a god, huh?”
“It’s become a talent,” you said, then introduced yourself. If felt wrong. You said it anyway.
Teoxihuitl tilted his head towards you. “You came in with that leprechaun?” he asked. He let his hands dangle over the rail. You nodded. There was something in his voice – no, something under it – that made you listen. “Word of advice?” he said.
Your eyes narrowed as two familiar faces walked into the living room, and something rang like a sharp bell in your head – Shadow Moon, the fucking familiar name, you finally knew where you had remembered it from, why you had thought of your sister when you first met him. You thought about calling her after the party, to let her know who you had run into.
“Sure,” you finally said to the god at your shoulder.
“Be careful.” You met his gaze again. It was the steely brown of frozen earth in the dead of winter. “He’s more than what he knows,” he mused.
“And what does that mean?” you asked.
His fingers stroked the feathers that hung at his ear. He plucked one. It changed in his hand, split apart into two feathers, with a single earring hook that he painless slid into your ear lobe. When he pulled his hand back, you saw that the earring he had removed the feather from was intact – two feathers, each shining in the spring sun from the windows. You touched your new gift. They just brushed your shoulder, long, but not cumbersome, and were silky smooth.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he mused. He pressed a soft kiss to the scar on your temple, and was gone, wandering back down into the party, meeting a small woman in a gown covered in embroidered flowers, who stood with a man that lingered at her elbow. They made that feeling in the back of your head tingle, especially when Teoxihuitl pulled the woman outside and the man stared longingly after her.
You touched the coin at your throat as you made your way down to the floor.
Shadow stood awkwardly by a couch, holding a drink, watching one of the many Jesuses wander past. You shoulder checked the broad man with a smile. “Hey, stranger,” you said.
Shadow jumped. He held the glass in his hand out away from him, making sure that he didn’t stain the gorgeous suit that he wore.
You plucked a piece of lint off his lapel. “This looks familiar,” you mused. You could have sworn that you heard the hum of the machine as you rubbed the stitching between your fingers. You wondered when you would see Mr. Nancy again. You kinda missed him.
“Got it from Mr. Nancy,” replied Shadow with an air of confusion, “You were with Sweeney.” He tilted his head. “You look different.”
“Do I?” you asked. You smoothed your hands over your pants. “Hey, so, I’ve been trying to figure out where I know you, and I finally placed it.”
“You know me?” His voice lilted with hilarity and he smiled. It looked good on him. He stepped closer to you, declining his head towards yours. “I’m so glad you’re here, you know,” he whispered, “I think we’re the only normal people here.”
“Normal is relative,” you mused.
“You sound like Laura,” he sighed. He took a drink.
You snorted, then cleared your throat. “I’ve been around her a lot,” you said. He arched an eyebrow, his eyes scanning the room with a faint panic in them. You poked his chest to regain his attention. “No, I know you from somewhere else. Not this shit. My sister knows you.”
“I know your sister?” he said. He took another drink.
You hummed. “You met her at a flower shop in Chicago fifteen years ago.” He choked on his drink, his eyes widening. You smiled. There was recognition there. “You guys have been sharing letters for years?” you added. You shrugged. “I thought I recognized your name the first time I heard it, but I didn’t make the connection until now.”
Shadow dragged his hand over his chin while the tension in his shoulders ebbed away. “Holy shit,” he whispered. His hand covered his mouth, and his eyes darted around the room. No one seemed to have heard him. “I didn’t recognize you,” he said. He squeezed your arm. “Fifteen years? Really?”
You nodded. Your fingers found the ring on your thumb. You’d forgotten it was there, but you twisted it around once you touched it. “Sure has been,” you said. You bumped your shoulder against his as the two of you wandered between gods of then and gods of now. “Why are you here?” you asked.
“Wednesday wanted to talk to that Ostara,” he said. He stuttered a bit. Whatever he drank must have loosened his tongue. “Did you see her? She’s like a walking breath of fresh air.”
Out on the patio, where the goddess was – when she had slipped past you, you had no idea – a breeze kicked up and ruffled her dress, carrying with it a vibrant butterfly that perched on her hair. She gently laughed.
You shrugged. “Do you know who she is?” you asked.
“I’m afraid to ask,” answered Shadow. He took another long look at a pale skinned Jesus whose stigmata was not bleeding and polished off his drink. “Is this real?”
You squeezed your hands together in front of you. “Yeah.”
“Are you one of them?”
You snorted, “Fuck, no,” and it felt like a lie. Mr. Wednesday headed out to the patio. You nudged Shadow, then wandered towards the door.
There was Ostara. She stood with a woman you didn’t recognize, who danced across the stones with a faceless man in a tuxedo, who you absolutely did recognize: you’d seen him at Syne’s, and at the bus stop, and at the gas station. And then there were two of him, and four, and eight. You swallowed and stepped back. Beneath the fresh cut grass and flower perfume was the smell of burning dust and electrical heat that you would have been able to pick out anywhere, that reminded you of days home sick watching television, sacrificing hours to it while you prayed to be well again.
“We’ve seen you.”
You took another step back. One of the faceless men vibrated, and split, and from the split came a blonde boy in a modified suit and he spoke but all you heard was his voice saying, “We hear you.”
Your blood pulsed in your ears.
(Remember, fear is based on the belief that something is real.)
You were breathing hard, so hard that Shadow placed a hand on your back. You thought he said something – someone said something – either Shadow, or Ostara, or Wednesday who had appeared on your other side. The woman’s eyes scanned your face and she smiled and her mouth moved but you couldn’t hear her.
The kid you could hear, though, when he snorted and rubbed his ear and said, “I think there’s a short circuit in that brain there.”
Another faceless man shivered and changed, but into another person, a man in a fitted tux, who smiled and clasped the top of a cane as he talked.
Your face tingled. Your head hurt. Your vision was starting to tunnel. Shadow’s arm slid around your back and his fingers dug into your ribs as he held you up.
Thunder rumbled in your ears and voice rolled beneath it, old and weathered, carried on the winds of dark storms and hurricanes, saying names, listing names, giving dozens of introductions until the voice rang clear and Mr. Wednesday said, “I am Odin!”
You had known since you had met him but the statement shocked you like some misguided lightning bolt and made you numb. He waved his hand. The faceless men were struck by white hot tridents of electricity from a suddenly cloudy sky and collapsed.
You remembered the temperature dropping, and the feeling of petals on your cheeks, but the rest of the afternoon was blank.
You slowly blinked at Shadow, who knelt in front of you, in front of a bed that you were sitting on. He shook your hands gently. His thumbs rubbed circles over the backs of them. He smiled a smile that illuminated the room more than any light you had seen when your glazed eyes finally met his.
“Hey, you’re back,” he said. He was missing his coat – no, it was on you, a few sizes too big, and warm but not the warmest thing you’d worn. Shadow stood and smoothed your hair back. “You went away for a bit,” he murmured, “Where’d you go?”
“Um,” you said. Your voice cracked. You licked your lips and swallowed the smallest amount of saliva you could muster. “Could I have some water?” you asked in reply.
Shadow looked around the room and stuttered out a yes. You pulled the coat closer around you. You were in a bedroom, probably still in the mansion from the looks of the hand carved furniture and the distant walls. The bed was comfortable, and you tucked your feet under your knees on the corner of it. The door to the room was open and in the frame was Laura, her arms crossed, her eyes following Shadow as he slipped past her with a whispered, “’scuse me,” and disappeared from view.
“He knows my sister,” you rasped.
“The pen pal,” said Laura. She pushed away from the door. “Yeah, I heard.” She sat next to you. Her coat rattled. She removed a bottle and held it out to you. “These came for you while you were,” she shrugged and shook the bottle, “Whatever.”
The bottle was heavy when you finally took it from her. It felt like it would fall from your hands and shatter on the wood floor. You clutched it between both hands.
“A phone came for you, too,” she murmured. You nodded. “Sweeney put it in your backpack.”
“Backpack?” you asked.
She shrugged. “I guess the rabbits didn’t think your duffle cut it anymore,” she replied.
Shadow returned with a pitcher in one hand and a glass in the other. Someone lingered in the door frame. He didn’t enter. You didn’t look over. You took the glass with a gentle, “Thank you,” drained it, watched Shadow fill it again, then took one of the pills in the bottle. You finished the second glass.
“We’re staying the night,” Shadow said as he put the pitcher down on the side table. He cleared his throat. “Heading to the Rock tomorrow.”
“Okay,” you said.
Laura nudged your shoulder and stood. She left, followed by Shadow, but the other man stayed. You shrugged the coat off.
He said your name in a voice so small and fragile that you expected it to be broken when spoken but it didn’t. You did. Your shoulders hunched around your ears and you wrapped your arms as tight as you could around your legs, squeezing them tight, digging your blunt nails into your bare arms. The floor creaked as he moved into the room and shut the door.
“Why do you work for him?” you whispered.
Sweeney cleared his throat. “Offered me a deal,” he said, “I work for him, he gives me the war that I was meant to die in.” The truth poured out. It felt good. He sat next to you and the new dip in the bed made you lean towards him. You didn’t move your arms from around your knees and he didn’t move to touch you any more than he already was.
“You’re gonna leave me,” you whispered. He flinched. “After everything, you’re gonna just leave me?”
He rasped, “No,” and it came out scratching his throat, struggling to stay behind his teeth so that he wouldn’t lie to you.
(But it wasn’t a lie, said a voice in his ear, he didn’t know if he wanted that war where he’d die in the end anymore. He would miss your voice if he left you alone.)
“You’re a liar,” you hiccupped. You unfolded yourself and pushed away from the bed. A manic laugh bubbled up between your lips. “See? You’re not a leprechaun. Leprechaun are faeries, and faeries can’t lie, and you just lied to me!” You paced across the room, turned around, and paced back. Sweeney intercepted your path and enveloped you in his arms, squeezed you tight as the bubbling giggles dissolved into wavering sobs.
(Every inch of you decided you were safe the moment his arms wrapped around you. It meant you could let go of everything that had happened, everything that scared you, and worried you, and ate away at what you once believed in to try and get at the new belief that hid under it.)
You balled the back of his shirt between both hands and muffled your cries against his chest. He folded around you, buried his face in the top of your head, and took it all in silence. “You killed her,” you wailed, “You killed for him. You killed Laura, how could you? How?”
He didn’t answer you. He just held you: he held you until the words disappeared and the crying subsided; he held you until his fingers ached; he held you until you were falling asleep against him. He scooped you up and placed you gently on the bed, then peeled your clothes off as gingerly as he could until you were only clad in your shirt and underwear. Sweeney’s eyes lingered, and he memorized how your skin felt when he tugged your pants down your thighs.
There were so many things that he wanted to do as he stared down at your exhausted, slumbering form and every single one of them drove home the fact that Ostara was right.
He folded your clothes and shoved them into the backpack by the bed. Then, he pulled the heavy comforter over you, tucked it around your shoulders, and left the room.
Sweeney leaned back against the door when he shut it, scrubbing a hand over his hair, your tiny voice echoing in his ears until it was all that he could hear. He slapped his hand against the wood and shoved himself away from it, stalking down the hall towards his own room, then turning around and ducking into the bathroom. He stripped. He showered. He swore when he tried to get out and found that his clothes were missing, and the door was open.
Sweeney stole a towel before he wandered to his room, using it to dry his hair and his nude body instead of covering himself up. A bunny hopped between his feet and led him through the door. There were a handful inside, dragging his cleaned clothes over furniture and curled up in small white balls on the bed. But one sat on its hind legs and pawed at the air for his attention. This bunny stood on a table against the wall. A small bouquet of flowers sat neatly bound by its feet.
“Yer in love. Deal with it.”
“Fuck,” he growled. The coin on his chest was hot. He twisted it between his fingers and glared at the floor. When did it happen? How? He scrambled through his thoughts to find the exact moment that he fell in love. Was it the crash? No, it was before that. It had to be. Was it when he watched you star gaze? He’d felt it then – he knew he did, because his heart tried to escape his chest with every one of your excited movements. Was it when you gave him the coin? Was it when he killed the Dead Wife? Was it before?
Was it before?
He thought of the first time he saw you, curled up on your threadbare couch, fast asleep in the middle of the day. He thought of the weeks that followed, and his continuous visits, with the last night movies and the gentle conversations and the feel of you leaning on his arm as you started to drift away. He thought of the many times that he had held you while you slept so that you’d stay warm and wouldn’t have to move, thought of all the judgmental looks Bast gave him as he continued to watch the terrible movies you had picked out, thought of all the times you thought of him and his heart gave a traitorous flip behind his ribs.
He’d fallen in love with you so, so long ago, and it was only now that he realized it, and he cursed so loud and sharp and violently that the bunnies around him jumped and scurried away.
He’d fallen in love with you and now you were stuck in Wednesday’s carefully spun plot, watched by the gods of old and the gods of new and the gods between them both, and you had no way of getting out.
He’d fallen in love with you and brought you into a mess that he desperately wanted to save you from.
Sweeney dropped his head back. His fingers found the soft petals of the flowers. An idea formed and spurred him across the room to grab his pants. He’d take you away – steal you off into the night like the fae did centuries ago – and the two of you could live and he could love you and it would be fine.
It would be fine.
(It wouldn’t be fine said the hole in the Hoard where a king’s treasure once sat.)
You slept fitfully.
The sun glared into your eyes, and you rolled to try to and avoid it. However, a pair of callused hands rolled you back, and shook your shoulders. You opened your eyes to a dark room and a man leaning over you, his familiar blue eyes so wide that the whites of them glowed.
“Apollo?” you mumbled.
He hauled you to your feet. “They’re coming for you,” he whispered. He dragged you from the room and across the hall, to the familiar bathroom. You stumbled after him, swearing as you smacked against the door frame. The man pulled you in front of the sink and looped his arms around you. In one hand was the Book, which he shoved into your palm, and the other held a match that burst into flame when he placed it between your fingers. He pushed the two together.
“Hey, what are you doing?” you slurred. It was hard to focus, hard to resist – like your limbs were still lifeless. The Book caught fire – Apollo made sure that it did. “Stop…!”
“They want what you know,” he whispered in your ear. His hands left yours. A bowl appeared beneath them. The ashes from the Book floated down as it was destroyed. “They want this. They know you have it, and they want it but they can’t have it if it doesn’t exist,” he continued. The smell of the pages coated your nose and throat. You coughed. It continued to burn. “They can’t hurt you if the Book only exists in your mind,” he said.
You lowered what remained of the Book to the bowl, where it smoldered and crackled.
“I like you, Starlight,” said Apollo as the match burned down to your fingers, “I don’t want you to di—”
“Ow.” Your eyes snapped open at the pain of the flame on your fingers. You dropped the match into the bowl, blinking hard as its small flame engulfed what was left of all your hard work. You looked up at the mirror and found only yourself. There was no Apollo standing behind you, guiding your hands, telling you things. Only you and the wisps of your hard work going up in smoke.
You shoved your burnt finger into your mouth as you search the bathroom for something to hold the ashes. Maybe someone could fix it for you? There was magic! They were gods! They could do it, right? You found a small box of plastic baggies in one draw and shook one free, carefully pouring every last bit of warm ash into the bag and sealing it tight. You stared at it and sighed. All your hard work, literally just…gone. Up in smoke. You laughed a little, then wandered back to your room and pushed the bag into your backpack, staring at all of the clothes that were folded up neatly inside. You zipped it closed.
“Well, well, well,” said a voice that crawled up your spine. You whipped around, breath catching, eyes growing wide at the sight of the young blonde man that stood in your door. He arched an eyebrow, then bowed. “It’s an honor,” he said sarcastically.
“Who are you?” you asked. You backed against the side table. Your hands wandered the front of the bag in search of a place that your pocketknife could be, or something you could use to bludgeon.
The young man straightened and sighed loudly. “I’m the Technical Boy,” he drawled. He wandered towards you. “And we’re taking a walk.”
“I don’t think so,” you snarled. Your fingers trembled. You couldn’t even find the zippers! And what did Sweeney teach you? He’d taught you to fight, but you couldn’t recall a single thing as the Technical Boy moved closer to you, his nostrils flaring as he snorted.
“I don’t recall giving you the option,” he stated.
Two hands slapped over your mouth, others over your arms, and you were hauled off the ground and backwards, back through a window, carried out by faceless men who handled you like a doll. Another followed you with your bag in their hands. The Technical Boy ducked through last, and pulled the window shut.
“We have a lot to talk about,” you heard him muse.
You kicked, and thrashed, and tried to scream, but nothing mattered – you were carried straight into a limo, where another pair of hands wrapped a long gag over your mouth, and yet another shoved a sack over your head. You shouted, squirmed, kicked out with your unbound legs.
The Technical Boy grunted when your foot connected with something. “Don’t just sit there!” he snapped, “Deal with this!”
Something hard bashed into your temple a single time, and the world just stopped.
Sweeney stared at the bed you had once occupied, at the space where the covers were thrown back and the pillow was shoved aside, like whoever had once been there had been in a rush to escape. He blinked once, twice, and his heart did something he hadn’t expected: it stopped.
And it hurt.
(Something left you while you slumbered, something that made you feel empty, hollow, even in the recesses of the deepest of sleeps. Something that a piece of you thought might be belief, and the rest of you thought to be safety.)
Sweeney let the flowers he had been clutching in a white knuckled grip fall to the floor. He lit a cigarette. He sat on the bed that was no longer warm.
Summary: Bruised and bloodied, you end up with the last person you thought you'd turn to, and you're taking him to see an old friend.
Word Count: 12.3k
Warnings: Vomiting
Next Chapter
“What did you do before you worked for Wednesday?” he barked.
“I-I dunno. I don’t remember what I did, I don’t remember what my life was.” You were crying now. “Before Wednesday, everything is blank.”
He knew this. You had told him this before, that Wednesday had found you wandering through northern Minnesota, half-frozen and with no memory to speak of. But now…he had to wonder. Did Wednesday happen upon you by chance? Or had he lied? Knowing the old man, the latter was far from impossible or even unlikely.
He wrapped his arms around you and pulled you against his chest, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head. “I think we need to get some answers,” he murmured against your hair. “But first, let’s get you to bed.”
The next day, you woke to find yourself crammed into the backseat of your car with Sweeney’s gangly form sprawled beneath you, his chest rising and falling as his snores rattled the windows. You yelped and untangled yourself from him, opening the door and falling out backward in your haste to extricate yourself from the situation. Your face burned and a piercing headache threatened to cleave your skull in two as your vision swam. Groaning, you lay back on the cool asphalt of the bar’s parking lot and desperately wished that the world would stop spinning.
Sweeney sat up, peering blearily at his surroundings. “Sure, was I not comfortable enough for you?” he called down to you.
“Don’t fuck with me right now,” you begged. “All my energy is going to trying not to yak in this parking lot.”
He chuckled and flopped back on the seats. “Better out than in.”
“Fuck you.” Your head was stuffed with cotton and your mouth was all but glued shut, every word a struggle. You smacked your lips and rubbed the heels of your palms into your eyes in an attempt to rid them of the wretched sandpaper feeling and groaned again. “I think I’m dying. Is this what dying feels like?”
Sweeney unfolded himself from your car and stood over you, nudging you with the toe of his boot. “You’re not dying, mo chara, you’re hungover.”
You flung a dramatic arm over your face. “I’ve never had a hangover, I don’t think. I think I’d rather I was dead.”
Sweeney snorted and reached out to clasp your forearm with a massive hand and hauled you to your feet with a grunt, steadying you when you swayed slightly. He was watching you closely and you shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.
“What’re you looking at me like that for?”
He remained silent for a moment. “You’ve never been hungover?” he eventually asked.
You shook your head.
The look on his face told you he didn’t believe you.
“I’ve seen you drink, you must’ve had at least one.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” you said. Your patience was wearing thin and you were beginning to get annoyed.
“You’ve never been hungover?”
“No. Do you want it in sign language?” You made a rude gesture.
He cocked his head to the side like an animal appraising something it didn’t understand. “D’you think it’s the healing thing?”
You pulled your lower lip between your teeth and chewed it thoughtfully. “I mean maybe? But then why do I have one now? What’s different?”
His eyes darted across your face as though searching for something. “What do you remember about last night?”
You shrugged, releasing your gnawed-on lip. “Dunno. I guess falling off the bar? I remember you yelling at me for some reason.”
Sweeney forced himself to look away from your mouth with a shake of his head. “D’you remember why?”
You shook your head and he sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. “You said something about a battle that I was in.”
You raised an eyebrow. “So? We talk about that stuff all the time, why was that enough for you to go off on me?”
Sweeney looked like he wanted to shake you. “You’re not understanding me. You spoke about it like you were there.”
You blinked. “What, like a memory?”
“Sure, that’s what they’re usually called.”
You glared at him. “So…I remembered something I wasn’t supposed to and now I have a memory hangover? Or something?”
“Or something,” he muttered. You couldn’t put your finger on why, but you got the distinct feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling you.
“Anything else?” you prodded.
He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels. “Nope.”
You opened your mouth to push further, but he curt you off. “We need answers,” he said firmly, “and I might know where we can find some.”
You rolled your eyes and gestured for him to continue.
“Portland.”
You looked at him blankly. “Oregon?"
He shook his head. “Maine. East coast.”
“What the hell and fuck is all the way up there?” you demanded.
“The Morrigan.”
A rat scrambled across your sneaker and you jerked your foot away, grimacing. The cool morning air was starting to warm with the inevitable heat of the day. There was a wad of what had once been bright blue bubble gum stuck forlornly to the concrete, specked with debris, the vivid color chewed to a muddy grey-blue, and a hypodermic needle lay some yards away with a used condom. “Come visit picturesque Kentucky,” you muttered to yourself as you scuffed your shoe over the ground, thinking of the poster you had seen at a bus station with the phrase. “I want to go to Circe,” you said.
Sweeney’s mouth gaped. “In Florida?”
You scoffed. “Like Maine is any closer. If someone’s going to dig around in my head, I’d rather it be someone I know.” you said.
If his mouth opens any wider, his jaw is going to dislocate, you thought mildly.
Sweeney snapped his mouth shut like he could read your mind. “Don’t tell me you trust her.”
“I’m not a moron,” you snapped. “I’d just rather not have a stranger rummaging around in there. Plus, she’s a millennia-old witch and we have questions about magic. And it’s my car,” you added.
The two of you stared each other down in that dingy parking lot for what felt like an eternity before he relented. You had dug your heels in and he knew better than to try to argue.
He pointed at you. “Fine. But if she can’t help us, we’re going to the Morrigan.”
You rolled your eyes. “Fine.”
“I’m driving.”
“Like fuck you are,” you told him. “Let’s get the lead out, my beautiful passenger princess.”
He glared at you before he slung himself into the empty seat and slammed the door with more force than was strictly necessary.
The nearly twenty hours to Florida dragged by impossibly slowly. You and Sweeney traded for the driver’s seat every few hours and your time in the passenger seat was passed either sleeping or poring over your journals and books in a futile search for answers. The two of you spoke little, save for your occasional questions about certain customs or rituals. Sweeney was uncharacteristically quiet, deep in thought and his brow furrowed so deeply that you could have put a pencil between them and it would have held there.
“You’re gonna give yourself a headache,” you murmured, reaching over from the driver’s seat and running a thumb over the wrinkles in an effort to smooth his forehead without taking your eyes off the road.
He grunted and swatted your hand away from his face. “I don’t like this,” he grumbled.
“Which part?”
“Any of it!” he exclaimed, gesticulating wildly. “All of this feels wrong. It feels like we’re missing something. Something isn’t right.”
You snorted. “When is it ever? Our job is secrets and lies, this isn’t anything new.”
Sweeney leaned back in his seat, flipping his coin across his knuckles and in the back of your mind you were painfully aware of how smoothly it rolled across the breadth of his strong hands. You forced yourself to think of something other than the freckles and the fine orange hairs that traveled from the back of his hand and up his wrist. Christ, you scolded yourself. Get a grip. The muscles of his shoulders flexed involuntarily under the fabric of his blue button-down and everything in his body language screamed anxiety and discomfort, from his constant fidgeting to the tension that arced through him, and you worried that he would snap like a rubber band wound too tightly.
You sighed. “Look, we’ll be at Circe’s in a couple of hours. Maybe we can start to get some answers.”
“Or maybe we’ll just be more confused and a three days’ drive from where we should be.”
You glanced over to snap back at him and your heart froze in your chest.
He blinked. “Y’alright there?”
The grass green eyes were gone. In their place were sightless black pits that wept a black viscous ooze.
“S-Sweeney?”
The black pits narrowed and the figure that had been Mad Sweeney leaned closer. You pressed back against the passenger door, seized in that moment with an absolute certainty that this man, this thing, was going to kill you.
His mouth moved, but no words came out. Instead, a heinous and inhuman keening issued from his lips and burrowed into your skull. You clutched at your head as if you could block it out and curled up against the door, making yourself as small as you could. You were in a speeding car with a demon changeling that had taken your leprechaun and wanted you dead. You were going to die.
The monster in the driver’s seat pulled the car to the shoulder of the highway and shut off the engine. You flattened yourself against the door, your eyes screwed shut as you willed this creature to disappear.
After a few minutes of silence, you cracked an eye open. Not-Sweeney was standing outside the car and watching you closely with those hideous eyes and you could feel your heart climbing up your throat.
You wondered if it really was possible to die of fright.
It opened its mouth, its jaw making a nauseating popping sound before dislocating, and again that horrible keening pierced your skull and it didn’t stop. It came closer to you and you scrabbled for the door handle, desperate for escape.
He came around to your side of the car and opened the door slowly. Someone was screaming and it was only after a moment or two that you realized the sound was coming from your own mouth. Not-Sweeney crouched in front of you, keeping a few feet of space between you.
You were aware that he was speaking, but your terrified mind refused to comprehend it. He reached out to touch you gently and you flinched so violently you nearly bit a hole through your tongue, but he didn’t remove his hand. Instead, his thumb began to rub the skin of your arm and he kept talking to you. After a few minutes of this, the blood roaring in your ears quieted enough that you could hear what he was saying. You kept your eyes glued to the ground, too scared to look into those horrible eyes, but you could hear his words now.
“— and I don’t know what you’re seeing right now, but it’s still me. I promise you, it is still me, and I will never hurt you.”
His voice was so soft and gentle and it instantly made your eyes well. You blinked, letting the tears roll down your cheeks, and looked up at him. That horrible face yawned before you and you cringed away from him, but in the blink of an eye, it was gone. The black pits had returned to their shining green and his jaw was back in one piece and covered with four-day-old ginger scruff.
Your relief at the sight of his face was so immediate and overwhelming that you threw yourself against his chest and buried your face in his shirt, your shoulders heaving with sobs.
His enormous hands rubbed small circles between your shoulder blades and stroked the back of your head.
You fought to breathe through your hiccuping sobs but couldn’t quite get enough air into your lungs. He guided your face up to look at him. His palms were rough with calluses, but they were warm and they were so, so gentle.
Before you could say anything, before you could even try to take a breath, his head dipped towards yours and he was kissing you. He was kissing you and he was holding you so tightly, like he was afraid you would disappear if he let go, with one hand on your face and the other against the small of your back, pulling you as closely as possible.
You clutched at him and he just felt so real under your hands. Clove smoke and liquor filled your nose and his scruff scratched at your lips in a way that made you shiver. This was real, he was real. Not the monster. Never the monster.
He broke away from you, leaving you staring at him wide-eyed and thunderstruck.
The sadness you saw in his eyes punched the air from your lungs.
“You were scared of me,” he said quietly, the despondency in his voice nearly cracking your heart in two. “What did you see?”
“I — what the fuck?”
Sweeney’s face flushed scarlet. He wouldn’t meet your eyes.
“‘M sorry,” he murmured, ducking his head. “Dunno what that was.” He got up and strode back to the other side of the car and climbed behind the wheel, gripping it so tightly his knuckles were bone white.
“Sweeney —“
“Don’t,” he said softly.
You stared at him mutely, your mind reeling. You didn’t even know what you wanted to say.
“Can we just —“
He started the car and whatever you were about to say was drowned out by the roar of the engine. The conversation was over.
If there had been tension in the car before, it was smothering you now. You couldn’t bring yourself to speak, not trusting your voice, and Sweeney hadn’t even looked at you since you had gotten back in the car. The trees outside had long since changed from oaks and beeches to towering palm trees that waved in the breeze as though they were welcoming you.
Unease crept up your throat, settling in the back with the unpleasant oily feeling that comes with nausea. You remembered that Circe had told you how Florida had been formed from the grit and dirt that had sloughed off the Appalachian Mountains and settled in the Gulf. You figured this was at least a partial explanation for all the weird and unsettling things you’d seen there. What else could you expect from somewhere that had been born from the blood and dirt of gods that were older than the Atlantic? Here, all bets were off, but whether or not that was a good thing remained to be seen.
The remainder of the drive passed in what felt like an eternity of that tense and anxious silence when, at last, you arrived at the ferry that would take you from Fort Myers to Key West. From there, you would take a small boat that would take you to Circe’s island, an uncharted islet that held the ancient witch’s home.
On the ferry, Sweeney seemed to come back to himself. He had disappeared the moment you stepped onto the deck and reappeared shortly with snacks and drinks clutched in his hands. He had gotten your favorite snacks from the vending machine along with two hot drinks from the small ferry cafe.
He held your snacks and one of the cups out to you. “Tea,” he grunted. “Help keeps y’from getting sick. Immune system boost or something.”
Whatever remaining anxiety you had from the drive melted away as you took his offerings. “Thank you,” you said, giving him a small smile.
He rubbed the back of his neck and wouldn’t meet your eyes. “Dunno if you can even get sick, but between the driving and the not sleeping I figure it can’t hurt.”
You inhaled the steam, letting it clear through your sinuses, and sighed contentedly. “Thank you,” you said again.
He nodded and sat down on the opposite bench facing you. “D’you have a plan for when we get there?” he asked.
You chewed on your lower lip. “Beyond just sort of showing up?”
Sweeney groaned and ran his hands through his hair. “Of course you don’t. S’pose you show up and she’s not there? Or s’pose she’s not willing to help?”
“I could ask the same of Maine,” you muttered.
He leaned forward and pointed a finger at you. “Sure, except I do have a plan for Portland.” He sat back. “Do you even have anything for her?” he asked. “You’re smart enough to know that she won’t give help for free.”
You patted your backpack. “I’ve got something I’ve been holding onto for her.”
Sweeney looked at you skeptically. “Like an offering something, or is this another. Gungnir situation?”
You glared at him. “It’s an offering, dickhead,” you snapped. The annoyance from earlier was suddenly back in full force. “Stop acting like I’m completely incompetent.”
“You’re the one that wants to drop in on her with no advance warning,” he pointed out. “I just wanted to make sure.”
“Sweeney,” you said, pinching the bridge of your nose and squeezing your eyes shut, “please, just shut up.” As you spoke, a shiver ran up your spine and the tip of your tongue tingled.
He moved to retort angrily, but it seemed that he couldn’t open his mouth. His green eyes bulged and your own widened as he clawed at his throat.
“Th-this isn’t funny,” you stammered.
Sweeney shook his head vigorously. He wasn’t messing with you.
“Fuck.” You tried not to panic. Clearly, this was your fault, but you had no idea how to undo it. Your hands fluttered as you tried to think of how to undo whatever it was that had been cast. “Um…Christ. Fuck, okay, um…speak,” you tried, like he was a dog that could be trained to bark on command. He looked at you in reproach and you winced. “Okay, yeah, sorry. I have no idea how to undo this.”
You tried again and again to no avail, succeeding only in further upsetting yourself. Your hands began to shake and your words stumbled over each other and you couldn’t quite catch your breath and oh god what had you done —
Warm hands covered yours and squeezed gently. He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.
You swallowed and took a shaky breath. He nodded and took another and you tried to breathe in tandem with him.
Your heart slowed and he nodded. He paused and thought for a moment and then he grabbed a pen and a notepad from your backpack.
“Hey!” you protested, but he paid you no mind as he scribbled something on the page in front of him and handed the notepad to you. You didn’t recognize the word he had written down.
“I have no idea how to pronounce this or what it means,” you told him.
He rolled his eyes and took the pad from you, once again scribbling something before handing it back to you.
You scanned his chicken-scratch writing. “’Just feel it’? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” you demanded.
He gave you a look that said try.
You stared at the page for a moment, not sure where to begin, and then took a deep breath and carefully sounded out the word. Nothing. “Did…did I say it wrong?” you asked cautiously.
He shrugged, which you took to mean It was good enough.
Eyes closed, you leaned back against the sticky brown vinyl of the seat. You knew this likely had to do with the tingling you’d felt when you accidentally cast whatever the hell this was, so you just had to get that back. Reaching forward, you tried again but still felt nothing. You cracked an eye open to see Sweeney staring at you expectantly. It hadn’t worked. Your shoulders sagged with frustration. “I’m sorry,” you said quietly. “Maybe it’s temporary?” You had been aiming for a light, joking tone, but your voice cracked and you had to press the heels of your trembling hands against your eyes in an effort to stop the dam from breaking. There was a pressure that had been building behind your eyes for several days, all the fear and anxiety and exhaustion piling up and threatening to spill over, but you couldn’t let it. You refused to cry in front of him.
The seat next to you dipped with new weight and you opened your eyes to see that Sweeney had moved to sit next to you. When his eyes met yours, they softened. He wasn’t mad at you, he knew this had been an accident.
Mortifyingly, your eyes began to brim with tears that quickly spilled down your cheeks. You realized that you wanted to hear his voice. You needed to hear him say that you would figure it out because that’s what you always did. You refused to meet his gaze, instead staring straight ahead and willing yourself to stop crying. Then, in a gesture that you had always understood to be unlike him, Sweeney put an arm across your shoulders and gently squeezed you against him.
The dam broke. You slumped against him and turned your face to bury it in his side, tears now flowing freely down your face and soaking into the fabric of his shirt. The feeling that you were overreacting to this comparatively small misstep in the grand scheme of everything else ate at you, but in the smaller scheme of right now, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Your body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds and your hands were trembling.
Sweeney’s thumb gently brushed back and forth over your arm. The callused skin on the pad of his thumb snagged at the looser fibers in the flannel you wore. His head rested on top of yours and his breathing was slow and even. You did your level best to focus on the rhythm of the rise and fall of his chest and tried to sync your breath with his. The two of you sat like that for several minutes while you worked to stem the tide flowing from your eyes. Sniffling, you sat upright and swiped at your eyes.
“Maybe Circe can fix it.” You didn’t even bother to hide the misery in your voice. You were exhausted and there was an odd smell in the air that you initially attributed to a general Florida-ferry-scent, but upon further inspection, you realized that the odor was wafting from your own self and Sweeney. Never in your life had you longed for a shower and clean clothes more than you did at that moment.
A second wave of tears overcame you and you folded in on yourself, desperately wishing you could disappear and hating how weak you felt in that moment. You couldn’t even fix your own mistakes, between running to Circe to save you and Sweeney being the reason you had stayed alive long enough to get Gungnir to the old man. Sweeney being the reason you hadn’t died after you escaped the Jötnar and Sweeney being the reason, Sweeney being the reason, Sweeney being the reason. Fuck.
Your shoulders hunched forward and you stared at the linoleum floor of the ferry as you chewed at the dead skin of your nail beds. You didn’t understand why Sweeney was still by your side even after you had dragged him across state lines and nearly killed him. He’d said you were his best friend, sure, but everyone had their limits. How many strikes until you found yourself alone?
Sweeney laid a hand on your shoulder and gave what you could only assume was meant to be a reassuring squeeze, but it only threatened another round of crying. Again, you found yourself surprised at how badly you wanted to hear his voice.
The remainder of the ferry ride was filled with suffocating silence, Sweeney unable to speak and you unwilling. There was nothing you could say that wouldn’t feel depressingly hollow, so you buried your nose in your journal and scribbled down everything that had led to the right now in excruciating detail. You didn’t know if Circe would find it helpful, but you figured it couldn’t hurt. At the very least, she might be able to help you figure out where to even begin to learn to control whatever was happening to you.
The moment you stepped off the ferry, you were submerged into the hot Florida air, which clung to you like a second skin. The palms waved at you merrily and you glared up at their dancing fronds. They were where they belonged and you, most assuredly, were not. You couldn’t help but feel like you were being mocked.
There was a small marina beside the ferry terminal and it was there that the two of you headed next. You led the ginger giant down to where the boats bobbed gently in the saltwater and towards the farthest end of the marina. As you walked past yachts that increased in size the farther you went, you could see Sweeney’s eyes darting excitedly from vessel to vessel. He thought you were leading him to what had to be a spectacular super-yacht, you could tell, and your misery lifted long enough for you to make the decision not to tell him otherwise.
Despite the everything about how you were feeling in that moment, you couldn’t help but snicker when a small and rather dingy sailboat came into view and a look of dawning horror came across his face when he realized that you weren’t going to stop at one of the enormous sleek monstrosities that stood sentry on either side of the walkway.
Approaching the vessel, it became clear that it was even shabbier than it had seemed on first glance. The deep blue paint of the hull, which must have been breathtaking when it was new, was flaked and peeling with bare wood visible in places. The glass of the aft porthole of the cabin was spiderwebbed with cracks and appeared to be held together with duct tape and there was splintered wood everywhere. The gold-painted letters across the stern that had once proudly spelled “Aeaea” now read “Ae e “ in script that was just as faded and peeling as the rest of the boat. You didn’t need to look at Sweeney to know how he felt about your ride and he didn’t need to speak for you to know exactly what he was thinking.
“I know,” you told him, “but she’s never sunk before.”
He gave you a look and you knew then that it wasn’t just the boat that was giving him pause. The witch had turned him into a pig the last time they had crossed paths and there was nothing to say she wouldn’t do it again. You couldn’t really blame him for his reticence.
“I won’t let her turn you into a little pig boy again,” you teased. Both of you knew that it was not within your power to stop Circe from doing anything.
Sweeney’s shoulders hunched with reluctance and you gave him a gentle shove in the direction of the boat, mentally preparing yourself for the possibility of having to body-check him over the rail, but you were pleasantly surprised when he climbed aboard with no complaint. Not that he could complain even if he wanted to, but it was nice that he didn’t try to fight you over it.
The two of you sat on the cracked and yellowed vinyl seats that circled the perimeter of the deck. You folded your hands and waited patiently and Sweeney looked at you, clearly confused as to how this was supposed to work.
“Give it a sec,” you told him.
Sure enough, after a moment the boat lurched forward, its engine coughing and spluttering and belching black smoke. Sweeney’s face told you that he did not think that this was a good idea and you could see his reluctance only increase as the little boat trudged down the jetty. As soon as you were out on open water, a thick, unseasonable fog descended around you, obscuring everything from view.
“This is the only way to the island,” you explained. “I mean, it’s the only one I know of, at any rate. I’m sure there are other ways to get there, but this is the easiest and also the least dangerous.”
He gestured for you to continue.
You huffed out a breath. “Okay, I don’t know how well I can actually explain this, but I’ll do my best. Basically, the island is shielded. You know how in The Magicians, how the school in that has wards on it to keep people from finding it?”
He nodded. You had plowed through those books and made him watch the bad TV adaptation with you, he remembered how it worked.
“It’s not the same shielding, obviously, but it’s the same concept. Circe has a shielding spell on the island that keeps it hidden. The only people that can get to it are people who have been there before. The boat has an enchantment on it that will guide it to the island with the right person.”
You could almost hear his voice demanding that you explain to him how you’d gotten to Aeaea before and you knew that if you didn’t tell him now he would only be annoying about it later.
“You know I spent time with Circe, yeah?”
Sweeney nodded.
“Wednesday sent me to her after he found me. I didn’t learn anything major or super helpful, but he had her teach me basic protection magic and some other small things here and there. She was the one who helped me get my feet back under me.”
There was more to the story, and he could tell that you were holding something back, but that was a can of worms for another day. You lapsed into silence and leaned back against the seats and gazed out over the water. Even having been to Aeaea before, your breath still hitched when the fog cleared and the small dot of Circe’s island came into view. Memory had dulled the beauty of this place, you could tell even from a distance. The water that lapped at the hull of the boat was a bright, seemingly impossible shade of cerulean that almost hurt to look at in its brilliance. The fish that swam beside you seemed like something from a dream, so beautiful were they with bright orange crests arcing down their backs and sunlight glinting off of their silvery scales.
You leaned over the side and let your fingers trail in the warm water. A sea turtle slid gracefully through the water, close enough that your fingers could skim its shell, and you couldn’t help but gasp. In doing the work that you did, you saw so much ugly without reprieve and it was easy to forget that there was still beauty and wonder in the world. In spite of it all, there was still beauty. Even the little boat looked new, whatever enchantment that had disguised it now lifted, its blue paint glossy and no longer peeling and the wood polished to a mirror shine. The cracked porthole was now in one piece and the vinyl on the seats was now a soft beige and looked brand new.
You closed your eyes and tilted your face skyward, taking a deep inhale of the clean salt air. The rays of the sun warmed your cheeks and seagulls wheeled through the sky at incredible heights and you opened your eyes to watch them. You envied their freedom. They didn’t have to do anything, no one ever asked anything of them. They were free to go where they wanted when they wanted and answered to no one. You’d have liked to be a bird. When you had asked him about it, Sweeney had said that he didn’t remember much of his time as one, but he remembered the freedom and the feeling of soaring through the air, weightless and free.
You looked to the island. Now that you were closer, you were able to see some of the animals that lived among everyone there and among the bustle of the witches on the beach. You’d have liked to be an animal. You’d have liked to be anything other than…whatever it was you were. It was a cruelty, in some ways, that you had been given this life and this form. You looked to Sweeney, curious what was on his mind as you approached the white beaches, and found that his gaze was already burning into you.
The moment your eyes met his shocking green ones, all thoughts of wishing you had been made differently evaporated.
Sweeney looked away from you quickly and scratched the back of his neck. That moment passed in the space of a heartbeat, but you didn’t think you were imagining the flush that was creeping up from under his collar.
Before you could dwell on it for too long, the small vessel glided neatly to its dock. Waiting to greet you were three gorgeous women with jet black hair and clear gray eyes. They smiled at you in unison and you could see rows of needle sharp teeth, stark white against pink mouths. These women had been at the docks when you had last arrived years ago. They’d made your skin crawl then and they made your skin crawl now.
“She’s been expecting you,” they said as one. Their voices made your frontal lobe buzz unpleasantly. Their mouths moved, but their words felt as though they were being beamed directly into your mind. Judging from Sweeney’s grimace, he felt it too.
You cleared your throat and regained your bearings. “She knew I was coming?”
Sweeney moved to stand behind you and once again you were grateful for the solidity of him in the face of the Gray Women.
The Gray Women said nothing more, only turned and began to walk down the dock towards the beach. A look passed between you and the leprechaun before you followed. The sisters (Were they sisters? You’d never been sure.) led you to a cobbled path that ended at an enormous manor. It was an elegant building that you could only imagine was what the home she had grown up in looked like. Its façade of soaring columns and well-polished stones supported snaking vines with fragrant blossoms that were as big as your fist and there were gas light fixtures on either side of the massive oak doors that were banded with iron and sported heavy brass door knockers that had been cast in the heads of lions, their jaws agape in mighty roars.
The tallest of the three women raised one of the lion heads and let it fall against the oak with a boom that echoed through the house.
After a moment, the doors swung open of their own accord and you were hit with a gust of incense-perfumed air and woodsmoke. The women gave you one more eerie smile before vanishing back the way you had come and you stepped inside.
Sweeney moved to follow you, but you turned and placed a hand on his chest. “Maybe you should wait here,” you told him. “You know how she can be.”
He looked as though he very much wanted to protest and shook his head vigorously. He was not going to let you talk to the witch alone.
You patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back,” you promised and walked down the hallway. You could feel Sweeney’s glare boring a hole in the back of your head.
Though it had been a while, you still remembered the layout of Circe’s home. It was approaching late afternoon and you knew she would be taking her tea in front of her hearth in the great-room as she attended to her rituals and the hearth would not be difficult to find.
You dodged the dryads that bustled around the halls, their hands full with rich fabrics, decadent dishes, and wine in jugs made from the most beautiful ceramic you’d ever seen. The walls were hung with vivd tapestries and patterned with intricate mosaics, both holding images that were so lifelike you half expected them to leap out at you. Treasures on pedestals lined the walls and glinted in the warm light of the sun. Carved chests were tucked into corners and soft rugs padded the cold stone floors. You ran your fingers along the cool marble of the windowsills and traced the intricate scrollwork of the wooden shutters. Undeniably, the home of the sorceress was breathtaking, but there was a cold, hard feeling that lurked beneath it all. You supposed centuries of forced exile would do that to a person.
Eventually, you got to where you wanted to be and, as expected, when you rounded the corner she was sat before the fire at her loom, her fingers deftly sending the shuttlecock back and forth with a glimmering thread. Another woman sat adjacent to her with her back to you. You couldn’t see her face but her auburn hair was intricately braided and threaded with silver beads. She waved her hand as if to illustrate a point and you saw silver rings adorning long slender fingers that were covered in inked symbols that were too small for you to make out.
From your backpack, you retrieved the bottle of 1869 Château Lafite that had been packed carefully at the bottom of your bag and set it on the long cypress table. You contemplated knocking on the table to make yourself known, but Circe spoke before you could.
“It’s rude to stare,” she said calmly without looking up from what she was doing. “Either speak or leave.” Her voice was cool and carried through the space so that it sounded like she was right next to you. You had never once heard the witch raise her voice, but she always made herself heard.
You picked up the bottle and made your way to the hearth, your cheeks burning. Like the rest of the house, the grand room was a thing of beauty: the high ceilings boasted intricate frescoes of what you knew to be scenes from The Odyssey. Columns stretched from floor to ceiling, the tops of which curled into delicate scrolls. Two stone lions bracketed the enormous fireplace and you couldn’t shake the feeling that they were watching you as you moved, and more rich tapestries hung on the walls. You could see threads of gold gleaming among the royal purples and bloody crimsons. Despite the oppressive heat of the day, there was a roaring fire blazing merrily before them.
“I apologize Teacher,” you said sheepishly.
She eyed the bottle of wine in your hands.
“Is that the 1869 Château?” she asked. Her eyes shone hungrily with the promise of an offering.
You nodded. “Yes.”
She snatched it from you. “Oh, well done indeed.”
You cleared your throat. “I know I come without invitation, but—“
“Dear one, have you met my friend?” She spoke as though you hadn’t said a word.
“I — no, ma’am.”
Circe indicated the woman beside her, who smiled at you kindly. Her ice blue eyes glinted and her smile actually reached her eyes. “This is Angrboda. She’s a dear friend and a fellow practitioner of the craft.”
At the woman’s name, your blood ran cold. The old man had told you stories about this witch. Mother of Fenrir and Jormungandr. Loki’s wife. A force to be reckoned with above all else, who had died at the hands of the Æsir more than once but now sat five feet from you. And yet, the woman before you didn’t seem as cold and wretched as Wednesday had made her out to be. Those sparkling eyes had crow’s feet and there were smile lines around her small mouth. This was a woman that smiled often, even with the aching sorrow you could see behind the twinkling in her eyes. You liked her immediately.
You gave Angrboda your name and she inclined her head.
“Pleased to meet you.” She was soft-spoken, her voice gentle and delicate, but like her Greek counter, she radiated power and authority.
“Likewise. Teacher, you —“
Circe held up a hand. “I know what you’re here to ask. Where’s that ginger giant of yours?”
You ground your teeth. “I left him in the front hall. I didn’t want to risk offense and, forgive me, but he’s still a little skittish after last time.”
She scoffed and tossed her head. “He ran his mouth, I set him right. The man has nothing to fear as long as he minds his manners. He’ll be brought in shortly, I should think.”
“Thank you,” you mumbled.
At that moment, the doors at the end of the hall banged open and Sweeney strode through, looking for all the world as if he owned the place. A harried dryad trailed after him but Circe waved her away and she made a quick retreat.
“Mad Sweeney!” Circe exclaimed in delight. She stood and spread her arms to hug him. “Lovely to see you,” she said, kissing him on both cheeks. It almost sounded like she meant it, but you didn’t miss the glimmer of disgust in her eyes.
Sweeney raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, and surprise flitted across her face. For a split second the witch was visibly annoyed, but she quickly wiped her face and plastered on a pleasant smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “No biting comment?” she teased. “Am I not worth your words, great king?”
You tensed but Circe waved her hand. “Sit down.”
An invisible force yanked you into one of the high-backed chairs like you were attached to a string.
Circe approached Sweeney, inspecting him like he was one of her cattle.
“Oh, now this is interesting,” she remarked. She prodded his jaw. “You can’t speak at all, can you?”
Sweeney’s face remained impassive. Circe waved Angrboda over. “Boda, come look at this.”
Angrboda rose from her seat and crossed the room with impossible grace. Her pale fingers delicately probed along Sweeney’s jawline and down his neck. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he gulped and you snorted derisively. Not that you could blame him though, Angrboda was otherworldly in her beauty.
“This is wonderful work,” she murmured, forcing Sweeney’s jaw open so Circe could stick her fingers in his mouth and poke around in his cheeks and under his tongue.
Circe removed her fingers and took a step back. “It’s rudimentary and a little crude, but it’s clean and to the point.”
Angrboda hummed. “It does feel unintentional, but it’s better work than some of your novitiates.”
The Greek witch turned to you. “Is this your doing?” You nodded. “I thought it felt familiar,” she said, more to herself than to you, “but if it is, it is stronger than it used to be.” She sniffed the air. “You smell different, too. Much more wild.”
You blinked at her.
“I don’t think they’ve come to be told they stink,” Angrboda said gently.
Circe cleared her throat. “Right. Why have you brought him to me? I know that this alone isn’t what brought you back to my shores.”
You swallowed. “I was hoping you could remove the enchantment. Please.”
She pretended to think hard. “I don’t see why I should. I like him better this way anyway. All of the strong and handsome brooding with none of the insufferable speaking.”
“I need him to help me find answers,” you said.
The witch looked at you in a way that made you feel naked and exposed. “It’s your spell, you should be able to do it yourself.”
Your eyes were glued to the floor and you let the sole of your boot scuff across the textured surface. She knew you well enough to know exactly why you hadn’t undone this, she just wanted to hear you say it.
“I haven’t…been able to,” you said reluctantly.
She scoffed. “You cast it, didn’t you? You can remove it.”
“The casting was unintentional,” you snapped. “I haven’t been able to figure out how to undo it. I don’t even know how it happened in the first place!”
“Did my teachings mean nothing?” Circe demanded. “Did nothing stick in that thick head of yours? I’ve seen you cast. You’re more than capable.”
“Only defenses and wards,” you protested. “It’s never been like this before.”
Angrboda regarded you carefully. “This unintentional magic, is it a recent development?” she asked. You nodded and she turned to Circe. “That could account for the wild smell, but why now?”
Circe scratched her chin and looked at you. “Have you had any particularly traumatic experiences lately?”
“Broad question,” you muttered.
“Let me rephrase. Have you had any experiences recently that go beyond what you would typically encounter?”
You looked to Sweeney, unsure it was safe, but he shrugged and nodded. Might as well, his body said. You reached around to hike up the back of your shirt to show the witches what the Jötnar had done. There were sharp intakes of breath as they took in the ruined flesh of your back, which was already beginning to scar over. Circe’s face hardened but Angrboda’s eyes went wide.
“Nine hells, it was you,” she realized.
Circe’s gaze snapped to Angrboda. “Explain,” she demanded.
Angrboda’s eyes didn’t leave your back. “I heard a rumor about a week back that one of the All-Father’s people had been taken by the Jötnar. They said they had trespassed and stolen something valuable.”
“Is it stealing if they stole it in the first place?” you muttered.
Angrboda ignored you. “I had no idea this is what they were doing.” Her voice was strained as she spoke. “Talk about traumatic. Child, I am so sorry.”
Circe bent to examine your wounds more closely. “I can heal the rest, but I can’t do anything about the scarring,” she said as she ran her fingers lightly over the angry intersecting cuts. “Boda, you said this was a week ago?”
Angrboda nodded and you piped up to confirm, “I broke out around then and found him.” You pointed to Sweeney.
Circe raised an eyebrow. “He was nearby?”
You nodded and she put you under that scrutinizing gaze. “Quite a stroke of luck, isn’t it?”
You shrugged. “I’d be dead if I hadn’t found him, so I’m choosing not to question it. We’ve got more pressing issues.”
Circe straightened. “I see. And I’m sure that you’ve figured out that you’re healing much faster than you should be?”
You nodded again and she turned to Angrboda. The two began conversing rapidly in a language you didn’t understand. When they had apparently reached a conclusion, Circe’s attention came back to you. “We have much to discuss and what remains of the day is passing us by. Let’s get started.”
She swept past you and Sweeney glared at you and coughed into his fist. Circe huffed in annoyance.
“Oh, right. Are you sure you want to undo this?” she asked you. “I really do prefer him this way.”
“Yes, please,” you said. “He’s…he’s my friend,” you finished lamely.
The knowing look on Angrboda’s face only served to add to the awkward anxiety that was railing against your mind.
Circe heaved a beleaguered sigh. “Fine. I’ll show you how so you can fix your own mess next time. You,” Circe pointed at you, “I need you to tell me exactly what happened in the moments that led up to the unintentional casting.”
Wordlessly, you reached into your backpack and handed her your journal. She took it from you with a raised eyebrow and flipped through the pages you had written on the ferry. When she finished she handed your journal back and looked between the two of you.
“You tried in English and Irish?”
You nodded.
“What did it feel like when you spoke the words?”
You didn’t understand and said as much.
“When you spoke the words that cast this and when you tried to undo it, how did it feel?” Circe asked, the way you would ask a small child a question with an obvious answer.
“Like…emotionally or physically?”
“Physically.” Her tone indicated a strained sense of patience.
You shook out your hand, remembering the pins and needles feeling that had danced across your tongue and the chill that had run through you. “It felt weird. Like, my tongue got kind of tingly and it felt like something was slithering up my spine.”
Angrboda nodded. “That’s the magic.”
“What about when you tried to undo it?” Circe asked.
You shook your head. “Nothing.”
She clicked her tongue and walked around you in a slow circle. “You were trying too hard,” she said as she came to a halt in front of you. “When you said it the first time, you did it without thinking. On instinct, no matter how endearingly misguided. The second time, though, you were trying too hard. You have to simply let yourself feel it.” Circe directed the two of you to stand before the fireplace and face each other. When you were arranged to her liking, you were staring into his green eyes. This close, you could see the faint ring of gold that circled his pupil between the black and the bright green and the freckles that were splashed across the bridge of his nose and scattered across his cheeks and his forehead.
You swallowed nervously.
“You also need to believe that this will work and that you can do it,” she said pointedly.
“I get it,” you muttered.
“Watch it,” the witch said sharply. Sweeney’s jaw flexed and you knew him well enough to know he was suppressing a smirk. Circe reached out and cuffed you both upside the head. “I can still send you both back where you came from,” she reminded you. You mumbled a sheepish apology. “The Irish word that he gave you, say that again, but this time chew on it. Feel the shape of the word and how your intentions mold it. Hold those intentions in your mind, look at him and hear his voice as you speak the word aloud.”
You closed your eyes and did as she said before speaking the word, but nothing happened and your shoulders sagged.
“See, it doesn’t work,” you told her, unable to keep the frustration from your voice. “If we keep going it’ll just piss me off.”
“You think if you don’t get it on the first go it won’t ever work? I never took you to be a quitter.” Circe’s voice was mocking and Angrboda glared at her sharply.
“It’s like anything else,” the Norsewoman told you, infinitely more patient than your hostess and teacher. “You need to practice.”
“Do it again,” Circe ordered.
You clenched your jaw and tamped down your growing frustration. Sweeney reached out and guided your eyes closed with the callused tips of his fingers and then took one of your hands in his and pressed the tips of your fingers against his chapped lips.
Your eyes flew open in surprise, but the sight of his face so close to yours was so disorienting that you quickly closed them again. Just feel it. You reached deep within yourself for the feeling from before and poured as much of your will into it as you could. You allowed yourself to feel its meaning beyond the literal translation. What it meant to you in that moment, and in that moment it meant his crude jokes, the obnoxious laughter, and his voice. Loathe though you were to admit it, it meant the feeling of safety that you had somehow come to find in that stupid brogue. You didn’t ever think you would miss it, but now that his voice was gone it was fucking untenable. He needed it back. You needed it back.
“Labhair.”
The word fell from your lips as naturally and as easily as breathing and you felt it. The tingle on your tongue and the chill down your spine, but this time it felt like it was twisting up and around your spinal cord and flooding your brain. The point of contact between your finger and Sweeney’s lips grew uncomfortably warm and you jerked away like you had been shocked, but as quickly as it arrived, the feeling dissipated. Green eyes met yours and your fingers tapped nervously against your thigh. You held your breath and you watched each other carefully. He was silent for what felt like an eternity and tears of frustration and disappointment pricked at the corners of your eyes. You covered your face with your hands.
“Sure you’re not after crying again, are you?”
Your head shot up so quickly you nearly broke your neck. Sweeney had an enormous shit-eating grin that nearly split his face in two plastered firmly in place.
“It worked?” you asked hoarsely.
“Unless I’m being puppeted,” he said easily, “I’d say looks like.”
Your knees jellied with relief. Part of you, a part that you had refused to fully acknowledge, had been afraid that it couldn’t be undone, but you had done it. You hugged him tightly, burying your face in his chest and gripping he fabric of his shirt so tightly that it was a wonder it didn’t tear in your fists.
Sweeney huffed out a laugh as his arms wrapped around you. He pressed a kiss to the crown of your head and you both missed the look that passed between Circe and the Norse witch.
“Jesus Christ,” you breathed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—“
He palmed your forehead and gave you a playful shove.
“No blood, no foul,” he said simply.
To your exasperation, your eyes began to well once again.
Circe waved her hands. “Enough of that. We’ve fixed one problem, but I know that wasn’t all you came here for. You want to know what’s happening to you.”
You nodded. “This keeps happening. Magic that I can’t explain, incantations that I never learned.” You told her about the Bocánaigh in Missouri and the incantations that pulled themselves from somewhere deep inside you. Circe listened, the crease between her brows growing more defined the longer you spoke.
When you finished, the witch remained silent, though her fingers tapped nervously along her staff. She regarded you carefully as she chewed on the inside of her cheek, seemingly deep in thought.
“I don’t know that I can give you all of the answers you need,” she said at length, “but I think I may be able to offer some assistance. Come.” She swept from the hall with Angrboda in step beside her and led you back outside to the path that had led you up from the beach. You followed it further inland, taking a fork in the packed earth that led you to a sizable pristine white tent. Circe held one of the flap doors aside and gestured for you to step through. Inside, you realized that you were in the island’s infirmary. Lanterns hung from the ceiling, impossibly bright, with thuribles hung between them and from those drifted rivers of smoke that were scented with lavender and frankincense. The stone floor had been polished to a gleam and there was a stream that cut through it, neatly separating the space into two sides. One had a row of beds that were neatly made with creamy linen sheets, while the other held what appeared to be exam tables.
Circe exchanged a few words with her sister witch and kissed her on both cheeks before following you inside as Angrboda went back the way you had come.
“She’s going to see if any of her sisters might know anything about this,” Circe told you, answering the unasked question in your eyes. “As for you—“ She grabbed your shoulders and sat you in a plush armchair, whose immense royal blue cushions threatened to swallow you. “You,” she pointed at Sweeney, “outside.”
He snorted. “Like hell.”
“I wasn’t asking,” she said icily.
You looked up at him and tugged gently on the hem of his jacket. “It’s okay,” you said quietly.
He knelt before you and put a massive hand over your knee. “I don’t like it, mo grá,” he murmured. “I don’t trust her.”
You let your forehead rest against his. “We don’t have a choice,” you said softly. “I’m a big kid, I’ll be okay.”
Sweeney sighed and stood. “I’ll be right outside. If anything happens—“
“You’ll come charging in, I’m sure,” Circe said in a tone that conveyed utter boredom.
He shot her a glare and stood and gave you a pat on the shoulder before taking his leave. You watched him disappear through the canvas. You’d been feeling different in his presence since he had stitched you up almost two weeks ago, and it had only gotten worse since he’d kissed you. No longer was he the obnoxious and barely tolerable coworker that you’d put up with out of necessity. After nearly two weeks of his constant presence, you should have wanted to claw his eyes out, but to your mild horror, you realized that the thought of being separated from him now nearly made you nauseous. Two weeks that had felt like a lifetime.
“I truly don’t understand why you keep that troglodyte around,” Circe huffed after he had gone.
“He saved my life,” you murmured as you toyed with a loose thread in the arm of the chair. “More than once.”
She clicked her tongue. “Be that as it may, he’s crass and indelicate and I find him grating. Here, drink.” She had busied herself preparing a tonic, which she presented to you in a steaming willow-pattered mug. You inhaled the vapor and nearly choked on the foul scent of it.
Poison, hissed a voice in the back of your mind. Your head snapped up and your gaze shot to Circe. The chill, ethereal beauty of the sorceress was gone. Her flashing golden eyes had become the same sightless, weeping black pits that you’d seen on Sweeney’s face the day before. It oozed down her cheeks, the skin there now pitted and scarred. The planes of her face seemed to be melting, her skin turning a livid red before settling into a foul necrotic black as it sloughed off of her bones. Her fiery hair hung lank and matted and you were able to make out lice and squirming maggots weaving in between the strands on her scalp.
You knew in your bones that this witch was trying to poison you. She would not let you leave Aeaea alive.
You screamed, a horrible and inhuman sound that tore from your throat.
Sweeney burst into the tent, green eyes wild and searching for you, but you were already up and scrambling away. Like Circe, his face was twisted and terrible. They both sneered at you as they approached you.
They’re going to kill you. The voice was wailing now. You gripped your hair as your heart hammered against your ribs so hard you feared it would burst from your chest. Sweeney made for you, but you dodged his outstretched hand and somersaulted away from them both. You came up on the other side of them white-knuckling the knife that had been in your boot and sobbing with fear.
Sweeney was trying to say something to you, but you screamed in his face, drowning out his voice. He tried again to approach you. You lashed out and kicked him square in the chest and his breath left him with an oof. But even with the wind knocked from his lungs, he still managed to catch the next kick you aimed at him and pull you towards him in the same movement. His other hand shot out and grabbed your wrist, twisting and forcing you to drop the knife to avoid your bones being snapped.
You flailed in his hold, but he was still bigger and stronger than you were. Circe pointed at one of the tables and Sweeney hauled you bodily onto its surface. He pinned your hands to your sides and sat astride your torso, effectively holding the rest of you in place even as you bucked your hips and thrashed beneath him in an effort to unseat his massive frame and free yourself.
Your face was slick with sweat and tears. Your hair was plastered to your forehead and you tasted blood. You must have bitten your tongue, but you didn’t feel it and you didn’t care. You had to escape. Fear forced your throat to constrict, threatening to choke you with it and swallow you whole. Every nerve in your body burned. Sweeney was shouting at you, something you didn’t understand, and Circe was barking orders to the dryad nurses, but you processed none of it. Fear, animalistic and primal, had consumed you and erased all else.
Scream after scream ripped from your throat and tears that weren’t yours dripped onto your cheeks from above. You were going to die here, pinned and cornered like a wounded animal. Eventually your voice gave out and the only sound you could make was a pathetic keening as you writhed in the leprechaun’s grasp.
Then Circe was there, her face hovering inches from yours, and she was wrenching your jaw open and pouring something warm and oily down your throat. You had a moment to register Sweeney’s stricken, tearstained face before you rolled over and voided the contents of your stomach. After that, everything went black.
You woke tucked into the white linen sheets of one of the infirmary beds. The sky outside had darkened to a deep purple and you wondered how long you’d been out.
What the hell had happened? You had been fine one moment and the next you were being choked by overwhelming terror that—
Oh. The Dark Man. He had found you here, somehow, and filled your mind with abject terror. It had been him in the car, turning your leprechaun into something straight from a nightmare.
You desperately wanted to cry, but you were too spent to do even that. Your whole body ached and you felt as though your bones were made of stone. A memory swam before you: Sweeney’s tearstained face, twisted and grotesque and…scared. He had been afraid of you. You squeezed your eyes shut and let your head fall back against the pillows, wanting badly to disappear where no one could ever find you again.
A dryad bustled into the room with fresh linens. When she saw that you were awake, she smiled pleasantly, but her stance was still guarded.
“You’re awake!” she said brightly. “You gave us all quite a fright. How do you feel?” Her voice was soft and musical and carried the clipped vowels that you had come to associate with the tree nymphs.
“Sore,” you said truthfully, “and a little freaked out.”
She moved to stand at your bedside and briskly began checking your pulse, your skin, your throat.
“But none of the terror from before?” she asked as she peeled back one of your eyelids and peered intently into your eye with a penlight. You noticed that her eyes were green, but not the same green that you were used to. Your green eyes were the color of lush, sprawling leas. The eyes of this nymph were the deep green of oak leaves. You could smell the forest on her.
“No ma’am.”
The dryad straightened and scribbled something on her notepad. “Well, physically you seem all right. Circe will be pleased you’re awake.”
“Is my friend okay?” you asked.
“You mean that beefy leprechaun?”
You flushed and nodded.
“He’s fine,” she said dismissively. “Worried himself sick over you and Circe had to bar him from the infirmary just so he would get out of our way.” She shook her head. “He refused to let you out of his sight.”
You chewed on your lip. “Can I see him?”
She shook her head. “Not until Circe has had a chance to speak with you.”
You stared down as your hands, folded together in your lap, and deflated a little. “Oh.” Your voice was small.
Your nurse looked at you pityingly. “We’ve been given instructions not to tell him you’re awake.”
Her gaze was sandpaper against your skin.
“Okay.” Even to your own ears, your voice was hollow. “Could you get her?”
“I’ll let her know you’re awake, but she’s busy on the other side of the island. It may be a little bit.”
You laid back and stared at the canvas ceiling. Your eyes traced the curls of smoke that drifted from the golden thuribles. Couldn’t catch a fucking break. You were beginning to get angry, but it was the sort of anger that had no outlet. Anger that could direct itself at no one and so reflected inwards.
No. That wasn’t right. There was someone. The old man.
Your life had never exactly been easier for him being in it, but the recent string of bullshit you’d had to survive was almost entirely his fault. That one-eyed cunt.
“Okay,” you said again.
She nodded and left the tent, leaving you feeling small and alone.
After what felt like an eternity but likely was no more than an hour or two, Circe appeared.
“Hello child,” she greeted you, calm and unbothered.
You swallowed. “Teacher.”
She sat at the edge of your bed and presented you with a cup of the same malodorous tonic she had tried to give you before.
“It’s not poison,” she said, sensing your trepidation. “It’s not a hallucinogenic, either. It’s only some herbs meant to help you relax.”
Still not entirely convinced, you knocked it back all the same, your eyes watering at the taste. You coughed. “Christ, that’s foul.” But the witch hadn’t lied. As soon as it passed your lips, a soothing warmth spread through your limbs to the ends of your fingers and toes. You could feel your muscles relax as all of the tension and stress you had been carrying melted away, leaving you feeling lighter than you had in ages. You sighed.
“Better?” Circe asked.
You nodded. “How long was I out?”
“Almost two days. Your leprechaun has been insufferable.
You managed a weak smile. “Sounds like him.”
“Mhm.” Circe regarded you carefully. “What happened?” Her voice was soft and it made you want to throw something.
“You don’t need to speak to me like I’m made of spun glass,” you snapped. “I’m not going to fall apart just because someone used the wrong tone.”
“You tried to kill me and your friend because I gave you a tonic that smelled bad,” she said cooly. “I apologize if I attempt to be cautious.”
You said nothing.
“What happened?” she asked again.
You spread your hands in front of you, palms up, helplessly. “Do you really need to ask?”
A shadow crossed her face. “I’d hoped we were wrong,” she said heavily. “He shouldn’t have been able to find you here. I’ll need to reinforce the wards and I’ll see if I can’t add something to your defenses.
A horrible thought occurred to you. “Did I hurt anyone?”
Circe sighed. “Your knife caught that boy in the arm and he needed stitches, but aside from that, no,” came the reply.
You pressed the heels of your palms into your eyes.
She placed a hand on your knee. “It’s all right, child. He’ll heal. As for yourself,” she stood and circled the bed so that she was standing behind you, “there’s some things that need to be figured out.” She took your head between her cool hands, her slender fingers at your temples and just beneath the place where your jaw met your ears. She applied the smallest amount of pressure and you could sense her magic reaching out, trying to connect with yours.
The witch made a noise of frustration. “There’s a wall,” she murmured, more to herself than you. “Someone’s put up powerful wards, but if I prod it just right, I may be able to—“ Her fingers flexed and you could feel her poke at a place in your mind that you hadn’t even known existed. The moment she touched it, you pitched forward and vomited over the side of the bed and all over the polished stone floor.
“Oh dear.” Circe gently patted your back as your body heaved like it was trying to expel your stomach. After a few moments it passed and you looked at her with bloodshot eyes. You had never seen her look so concerned.
Sweeney chose that moment to burst in, looking panicked. His eyes widened when he saw you, but before he could do anything stupid, one of the dryad nurses shoved him back outside.
Circe beckoned the nurse, who approached with a crystalline glass of water that smelled faintly of mint and soothed the burning in your throat and calmed your stomach as you sipped it carefully.
“What the hell was that?” you managed to rasp once the glass was empty.
Circe furrowed her dark brows, her bright golden eyes distant. “A memory spell,” she said slowly, as though she was testing how the idea sounded out loud. “A powerful one.”
You blinked. “Can you undo it?”
She prodded again at the same spot, more gently this time but still enough to make a wave of nausea sweep over you, making you groan.
“I think the only one that can is the one who cast it,” came the reply. “The failsafes on this…I’ve never seen work like this. Someone really didn’t want you to remember whatever it was that they shut away.” She stood to face you and took your face in her hands, her narrow golden gaze examining you intently. “You don’t remember anything from before Wednesday?”
You shook your head. “I was actually hoping you might. Somehow. He sent me here after he found me, I thought maybe…” you trailed off and your shoulders slumped, the weight of your exhaustion returning. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking.” This was never going to work. If Circe couldn’t give you what you needed, if an ancient sorceress like her didn’t know, what hope did you have?
Circe gave a quick command in Greek and the nurse that had brought you the mint water left, reappearing momentarily with Sweeney in tow. His right forearm was wrapped in crisp white linen, but you could already see he was beginning to bleed through it. Your chest constricted painfully. You had done that to him. He looked at Circe expectantly.
“Well?”
“You might want to try manners sometime,” she said drily. “You’d be amazed at what it can do for you.”
Sweeney made a face and you shot him a warning glance.
Circe pretended not to notice. “What is up in your mind is a barrier of sorts,” she told you. “It’s nothing like anything I’ve ever seen, but parts of the casting feel familiar.” You waited, but she did not elaborate. “There’s someone who may be able to help where I cannot.” Her eyes flicked too Sweeney and then back to you. “Do you know the Morrigan?”
You didn’t need to look at Sweeney to know that he was giving a good run for the world record for “most smug grin.”
“If you say anything, I swear I will let her turn you into a pig and I will leave you here,” you snapped.
Circe raised an eyebrow. “I see you’ve already discussed that option, then,” she observed. “May I ask why you chose my island instead?”
You looked at the floor. “I felt better about someone I knew digging around in my skull.”
Circe hummed. “Well, touching as that is, whatever is going on is much more akin to their particular branch of magic. They will be better equipped to give you what you need.”
Circe saw the two of you down to the docks and watched as you boarded the small boat that had brought you to the island.
“Remember,” she told you, “see the sisters in Maine. Use your magic as little as possible until you get to them, otherwise you’ll as good as tell him where you are.”
You nodded and she patted your cheek. “Sweeney,” she called over your shoulder. “Do try to get them there in one piece.”
He snorted but stayed silent, to your immense relief.
. . .
She watched from the shore as the boat disappeared beyond the horizon and the island’s wards. Her old wolf sat beside her in the sand.
“Why didn’t you tell them?” the wolf asked. Her voice was low and rumbling. Circe imagined she could see the grains of sand dance whenever the wolf spoke.
The witch buried her hand in the thick fur along the scruff of her friend’s neck. “I couldn’t,” she said softly. “It wouldn’t have helped even if I could. They wouldn’t understand.”
“You can’t know—“
“You misunderstand me,” Circe said sharply. “The wards in their mind…any attempt to tell them anything would have been distorted. I physically cannot.”
The wolf’s yellow eyes scrutinized her mistress before turning her gaze back to the water. “What will happen to them?”
Circe shook her head. “Would that I knew. I can only hope they get there in the end. We will need them for what’s to come.”
Summary: Bruised and bloodied, you end up with the last person you thought you'd turn to, and he wants answers.
Word Count: 6.7k
Warnings: alcohol use, drinking
Next Chapter
“Who was he?” you asked as he pulled back onto the freeway.
“Someone very powerful. And, like I said, someone you don’t want to fuck with. He gave up your keys too easily, I don’t like it.”
You shrugged. “Fine. Keep your secrets. I’m gonna try to get some sleep, but wake me up when we get to a motel.”
You balled up your sweatshirt between your head and the car window and fell asleep almost immediately.
Sweeney took that opportunity to scan your sleeping face, the fear from earlier a stone in his stomach. Why was Fear Doirich looking for you? He had said he wanted whatever it was that you had been sent to retrieve for Wednesday, but that was a lie. At least, it was a partial one. The Dark Man was plotting something, Sweeney just knew it, and it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Sweeney knew he couldn’t do anything about it now, but he could at the very least do his damnedest to make sure that you were protected.
A few hours later, Sweeney shook you awake. You peered up at him groggily and groaned. “Five more minutes,” you mumbled, turning away from him and pulling your sweatshirt-pillow closer.
He rolled his eyes. “We’re here so you can keep sleepin’. Besides, I already paid for the room so you are not sleeping in this car.”
You made a muffled sound that Sweeney was fairly confident was an impressive string of profanity.
He huffed. “We don’t have time for this. Up you get, let’s go.” He leaned down and pulled you from the car, slinging you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Now you were wide awake.
“Put me down!” you snarled, pounding on his back with your fists. “I’m not a child!”
He snorted. “Could’ve fooled me.”
You growled and aimed a kick at his stomach, feeling your foot sink into the soft flesh there. He doubled over, loosening his grip and nearly dropping you, but you managed to land neatly on your feet.
“You are a fuckin’ piece’a work, you know that?” he snapped.
“You’re one to talk,” you shot back. “Don’t manhandle me.”
“Then get your fuckin’ ass in gear next time!” He stood to his full height, massaging his stomach and sucking in a breath. “Every day you get on my nerves a little more.”
You glared at him. “No one’s forcing you to be here.”
He shot you a look as he unlocked the door of the motel room. You stepped in, wrinkling your nose at the faint odor.
“Would it kill us to get a halfway decent room every once in a while?” you muttered.
He pretended not to hear you and made his way into the bathroom, gesturing for you to follow.
“Up there,” he said, pointing to the counter. “Shirt off.”
You smirked at him. “If you wanted to get me naked you could’ve just said.”
He snorted. “Needta change your bandages.”
You moved to strip down but paused.
“You all right?” he asked. “I can get the scissors again, but at the rate you’ve been goin’ through clothes ‘m not sure—“
You cut him off. “It’s not that it hurts,” you murmured, twisting gently to your left and then to your right. “It’s that it…doesn’t?”
His red eyebrows shot up. “What?”
You hurried to correct yourself. “No, I mean it still hurts, obviously it still hurts, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it feels like it should.”
His brow furrowed. “Lemme take a look.”
You pulled your shirt over your shoulders and presented your back to him. Sweeney carefully peeled back the layers of bandages. He sucked in a startled breath and you could see his surprise in the mirror on the wall.
“What is it?” you demanded.
“This is…it shouldn’t look like this,” he said slowly. “I mean, it still doesn’t look good, but considering your flesh was ribbons two days ago?” His eyes met yours in the mirror. “It shouldn’t look like this.”
You twisted to see your back in the mirror and an uneasy feeling settled over you. Sweeney was right, it still didn’t look great, but the deep lacerations across your back looked as though they were at least a few weeks healed, not just a few days.
You turned to Sweeney with wide eyes and were met with an equally surprised stare. He reached out, bracing a hand against your cheek, and gently pulled away the bandage on your face. It was the same. Far more along in healing than it had any right to be.
“What the hell is this?” you demanded.
He held up his hands. “How in the fuck am I s’posed to know?”
“I don’t know! You’re the leprechaun that’s supposedly thousands of years old, I figured if one of us was gonna know what the fuck is going on, it would be you!” You were fairly shouting now, but Sweeney could see the fear that was beginning to creep into your expression.
He shook his head. “I’ve seen a lot of things, love, but nothing like this. You’re healing miles faster than you should be.”
You chewed on your lower lip. “There’s gotta be someone we can ask.”
Sweeney shrugged. “First person I can think of is Circe.”
You shook your head. “I dunno, I don’t know that she would be able to help us with this. I don’t know how much she can help with things that aren’t a direct result of magic.”
He looked at you incredulously. “Look at yer back an’ tell me magic isn’t involved somehow.”
Now it was your turn to shrug. “I don’t know, but honestly? As long as I’m not dying from blood loss or infection, this is not at the top of my list of priorities.”
“So what is?” Sweeney demanded.
You blinked. “Are you serious? The weird bitch that had my car? The one that had you about to shit your britches?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. Who was he?”
Sweeney squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose like he could will your questions away.
“Sweeney,” you demanded.
“He’s someone you don’t want to fuck with,” was his only response.
You stared at him in disbelief. “That cannot be your actual answer. Everyone we interact with is someone we don’t want to fuck with but none of them have ever had you acting like this.”
The ginger giant refused to meet your eyes. You sandwiched his face between your hands and made him look at you. “Sweeney. Who was he?”
His grass-green eyes looked at you pleadingly.
“Don’t make me smack you,” you threatened.
He sighed and pulled his face from your grasp. “You know how you won’t refer to Gr — to the old man by name? This is the same. Names have power, and that…that thing doesn’t need any more than he already has, just like the old man. We’ll call him the Dark Man. S’what his name translates to anyway.”
You looked at him expectantly and he took a deep breath.
Sweeney spoke haltingly. “F—the Dark Man, he…he’s fear itself, as it were. Or one of its iterations at least. He used to…take people. He was a servant of the Faerie Queen and he has…an ability, we’ll call it, to strip people of their will.”
“To make them do what he wants,” you said. It wasn’t a question.
Sweeney nodded. “Many have followed him, but few, if any, have ever come back. The Dark Man, the Black Druid, he’s gone by many different names. He feeds on fear and doubt.”
You scratched your chin thoughtfully. “So what could he want from us? Like…I’ve never actually heard of this guy, not in the way we’ve heard of the old man or Czernobog or anyone else. He can’t actually be that powerful, can he? There’s not that many stories about him, there’s no way—“
“Drop it,” Sweeney said sharply.
You blinked, startled at his tone. Usually, you would immediately be inclined to argue with him or to keep poking the bear, but something in his eyes, something that looked an awful lot like real fear, held you back.
“Fine. Whatever.” You turned your back to him. “I’m going to get food. Come with me or don’t.”
He put a warm hand on your shoulder. “You need rest. I’ll go get us some burgers.”
You looked up at him. “Can we get chicken?”
He chuckled. “Can those eyes get any bigger?”
You stuck out your lower lip for added effect and the corner of his mouth quirked up. “All right, we passed a KFC not too far from here. I’ll go, you rest. Don’t leave this room and don’t open the door for anyone but me.”
You saluted sarcastically. “Yessir.”
He rolled his eyes and left the room, grabbing your keys. The door shut behind him, the lock sliding into place, and you were alone in the dank room. You flipped through the channels on the grainy television until you landed on something that seemed even vaguely interesting.
Shucking off your grimy jeans, you dug through the duffel until you came up with a pair of relatively clean sweatpants and what looked like one of Sweeney’s shirts. You pulled on the sweats and tugged the shirt over your head, rolling up the sleeves until your hands were visible.
You flopped onto the bed, wincing when the wounds on your back twinged in protest, and sighed heavily. The bed wasn’t the most comfortable, but it was the best you’d had in a bit. At the very least, it was significantly better than being stuck in whatever shithole the Jotnar had you in. Sitting up, you pulled the pillows and blankets from their positions, building a nest around yourself, but it still didn’t feel like it was enough. Then, you spied the phone on the nightstand.
You dialed the front desk. “Hi!” you said brightly. “Yes, everything is fine. I was just wondering if it would be possible to have some extra pillows brought to room fifteen? Two or three, if you wouldn’t mind, and an extra blanket if you can. Great, thank you!”
A few minutes later, you had the extra pillows and blanket. You arranged everything into a nest on your bed, propping yourself up with a pillow so you could see the episode of Kitchen Nightmares that was playing on the old, staticky television. You were determined to stay awake until the Irishman returned with your chicken tenders in tow, but as the minutes ticked by you found it more and more difficult to keep your eyes open. You didn’t even notice yourself fall asleep.
Sweeney shouldered the door open, balancing the boxes in one hand. “Here’s yer damn chicken, you—“
He stopped short when he saw you curled up in a nest of blankets and pillows, fast asleep and breathing softly. Your hair was a mess, sticking out in all directions, and the circles under your eyes were dark as bruises, but you were asleep. Properly asleep, not passed out from pain or crammed into a car. He knew he should wake you and make you eat something, but you looked so small and fragile that he couldn’t bring himself to disturb you.
Sweeney turned off the TV and slid into the empty bed. Staring up at the blank ceiling, his mind ran a mile a minute. He still couldn’t wrap his head around why Fear Doirich would have taken an interest in you, and it made his skin crawl. The Dark Man had said that he’d wanted whatever it was that you had been sent to retrieve for Grimnir, but that wasn’t the truth. Or at least, it wasn’t the whole truth. He didn’t know how he knew, but he could feel in his gut that there was more to what the Dark Man wanted.
And then there was the matter of your wounds. How were you healing the way you were? There was no way this was occurring naturally, but Sweeney could think of no time between when you’d shown up at his door on the verge of death and now where you would have been able to see a healer. He’d been by your side the entire time and there was nothing and no one that could have done this, but there had to be some sort of external force. He wracked his brain, trying to recall anything that you might have said or done that would indicate that something about you was more than human, but he came up empty.
The leprechaun slept, although fitfully. He found himself waking almost every hour, sitting upright and sweating, eyes darting frantically around the room until they landed on you and he was sure that there was no immediate danger and you were still asleep. That you were still safe.
The next morning, you busied yourself with the coffeepot in the motel room’s dinky kitchenette. The events from the previous day swirled through your mind and you were so preoccupied that you hadn’t noticed Sweeney had woken and was watching you from the counter.
You started when you turned and saw him, almost dropping the coffeepot, and scowled. “You look like shit,” you told him, taking in his bloodshot eyes.
He snorted. “You should look in a mirror, fuck.”
“Did you sleep at all?” you asked.
He made a noncommittal sound. “Here and there.”
You hummed and pointed to a roadmap that you had laid out on the table. “Okay, so the old man’s trinket is in Kansas City, about two and a half hours away from where we are now in Joplin. If we hit the road in the next hour, we can get it and then we’ll be in Kentucky by late tomorrow morning or early afternoon at the latest.”
You set a mug of watery instant coffee down in front of him and he lifted it to his lips, taking a sip and wincing before sliding a flask from his pocket and emptying the contents into the mug. You rolled your eyes.
“I think we should give it a bit before we go get whatever it is that he sent you for,” Sweeney said, eyeing you like he knew you weren’t going to take to that idea at all.
Sure enough, you looked at him incredulously. “Absolutely not. I want to get this shit out of my hands and I want to get paid.”
He glared at you. “You have the Dark Man after you because supposedly he wants whatever it is that you have and the Jotnar are after you for the same reason and because you stole from them. It might be a good idea to lay low for a little.”
“Isn’t that all the more reason to get rid of it?” you asked. “If it gets returned to the old man, it’s not my problem anymore.”
He narrowed his eyes and grunted. “And if you get killed along the way?”
You set your jaw. “I won’t.”
“You’re so sure?”
“I’ve been pretty lucky the last couple of days,” you pointed out. “I’m willing to bet it’ll hold.”
“You’re putting a lot of faith in something that really just amounts to chance,” he muttered.
You grinned. “That’s what I’ve got you for, isn’t it? Don’t you do that every day?”
He chuckled darkly. “That’s not how it works.”
You shrugged. “Either way, I think between the two of us we’ve got enough luck to get us to the other side in one piece.”
He sighed heavily. “Fine, but if you get me killed, I’m haunting you.”
You smiled. “Seems like a fair trade.”
Within the next half hour, you were fed and on the road.
The drive, surprisingly, was relatively peaceful. You bickered about radio stations and music choices, argued about directions, and tried to play road games, which then devolved into a shouting match in which you almost swung on him over his interpretation of the rules for the alphabet game. But nothing came after you. You sighed and patted the dashboard of the car.
“Thanks, darlin’,” you murmured.
Sweeney looked at you. “Talking to the car? And they say I’m the one that’s lost it.”
“You’re just jealous,” you shot back.
“Of who? You or the car?”
“Open to interpretation.”
He swatted at you with a meaty paw and you leaned your seat back as far as it would go, laughing.
He mimicked your laugh in a high tone. “You’re not gonna be laughing when I run us off the road,” he sang.
You sat back up and pouted at him. “You wouldn’t do that to me, you’d be lost without me.”
His eyes flicked to you for a moment before his attention was back on the road. “Yeah,” he said softly, “I would.”
Taken aback by the change in his energy, your eyes darted around for something to change the subject. In the signs whipping past, you saw that you were about half an hour outside of Kansas City, where you had utilized a bus station locker as your storage. You’d lost the key when the Jotnar had caught up to you, throwing it as hard as you could into the Arkansas River, but you were confident that even though your knowledge of spells was limited, you had one to unlock things. And even if you didn’t, you knew how to pick a lock.
You turned to Sweeney. “If we don’t get something to eat soon, I’m going to do something to end up on national news,” you threatened.
“You’re the one that’s having us make this detour, you can wait a couple hours,” he replied.
You grumbled something under your breath about stupid rat bastards and he pretended not to hear.
When you arrived at the station in Kansas City, you shifted your body so you were facing Sweeney. “Can you please, for the love of all things sacred and holy, wait here?”
He shook his head. “Not a chance. I’m not letting you go in there by yourself.”
You groaned and pinched the bridge of your nose. “I can get in and out without anyone seeing me. Please, Sweeney. In and out, I promise.”
He shook his head again. “No. What if it’s a trap? What if they’re waiting for you?”
“Then I’ll scream.”
“I won’t be able to hear you from out here,” he countered.
You huffed. “If I’m not back in this seat in fifteen minutes, you can barge in and rescue me, okay?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Ten minutes.”
“Oh my god, fine. Ten minutes.”
He seemed slightly more satisfied with this, but still unhappy. “At least take this with you,” he said, taking a pendant from his neck and placing it over your head. His fingers brushed your collarbones and seemed to linger for a fraction of a second longer than they needed to, making your cheeks flush. You inspected it and found that it was a small clay pendant with knotwork molded into its face.
You looked at him questioningly but he wouldn’t meet your eyes.
“It’s the Dara knot,” he said quietly. “The shield knot. We…we used to use it for protection.”
You wanted to say something, but your tongue was leaden in your mouth. You were overwhelmed with a surge of affection or the giant idiot in the passenger seat of your car and, unable to speak, you settled for patting him on the knee. “I’ll be back soon,” you promised.
He looked at you with a look in his eyes that made your chest tighten. “Be safe,” he murmured.
You climbed out of the car and pulled up the hood of your sweatshirt as you made your way inside the station. Your eyes scanned the rows of steel storage lockers until the landed on the one you were looking for. You made a lap around the station before approaching, eyes bouncing from face to face and scanning every nook and cranny, every corner where someone might hide. Satisfied that it was safe, you approached the locker as casually as you could.
The initial aura that hung around it seemed undamaged and you breathed a sigh of relief. Running your fingers around the edges of the door, you felt for the wards you had set. These, too, remained unbroken.
You whispered a few words and the door popped open. The contents within remained undisturbed and your legs jellied with relief. The canvas backpack was crammed into the back, same as you had left it, and you snatched it from the locker, rummaging around and doing a mental inventory. All of your charms and amulets seemed to be present and accounted for, but you kept digging until your fingers closed around what you were looking for. The rough wooden rod was there at the bottom, its warmth seeping into your hand and the carved runes pressing against your skin. You released a breath you hadn’t known you were holding. Gungnir was safe. You wrapped it in a silk cloth that had been tucked into one of the outer compartments of the bag and placed it back inside alongside a small number of vials and herbs before quickly making your way back out to the parking lot, conscious of the fact that your ten minutes was almost up.
Sweeney saw you coming and unlocked the doors. Tossing the bag into the footwell, you slid into the passenger seat and he immediately reached for the bag to begin rummaging through until he produced the cloth bundle. He unwrapped it and his jaw fell open.
“Are you serious? The trinket you were talking about was Gungnir?”
You nodded and he scrubbed his hands over his face.
“Christ, no wonder they were after you! You had Gungnir.”
You looked at him reproachfully. “Don’t take that tone with me.”
“Tone? You had one of the most powerful weapons on the planet in a bus locker and you’re worried about my tone? There’s no way we make it to Jack’s without dying, this might as well be a beacon for everything within a hundred miles!”
You flashed him a grin. “Ah, but therein lies the beauty of this old girl!” you crowed, smacking the dashboard. “She’s warded! Nigh impossible to find.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And you’re sure about this? Even with something this powerful?”
You chewed your lip. “Like 87% sure.”
His eyes bulged and he made a disbelieving sound. You glared at him. “I’ll say it again, no one’s forcing you to stick around,” you snapped. “If you don’t like it, no one’s making you put your ass on the line. I can get there just fine by myself.”
Sweeney didn’t say a word, but tightened his grip on the wheel and stared straight ahead.
“That’s what I thought,” you muttered.
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” he shot back.
“No, but it does mean you have to stop bitching. If I was forcing you to come with me I’d let you complain all you wanted, but let me remind you that you were the one that attached himself to me. So let me do what I need to do and shut the hell and fuck up about it.” You were beginning to get angry.
He didn’t answer but sulked in the driver’s seat. You rolled your eyes and flipped through the radio stations, settling on one that was blaring Alanis Morissette.
Sweeney groaned. “For chrissakes, can’t we listen to something else?”
“No. I’m not listening to your bullshit for the next ten hours.”
He made a face. “So I have to listen to yours?”
“It’s my car!”
“What happened to your rule about the driver picking the music?” he whined.
“When I’m driving,” you said, jabbing a finger at your chest for emphasis. “Otherwise it’s passenger DJ rules.”
“That feels rigged,” he grumbled. He opened his mouth to make what you could only assume was another smartass comment, but his eyes locked on something in the rearview mirror and his face paled. His hand shot out and gripped your thigh.
The sudden shift in his energy made you nervous. “What? What is it?”
He didn’t answer, but pressed his foot against the gas and the car leapt forward. You twisted in your seat to get a glimpse of what might’ve been after you. Three massive goat-headed figures were charging up the road after you, and they were closing the gap.
“Sweeney, what the fuck are those?” you demanded, unable to keep the tremor from your voice.
He swore. “Bocánaigh. He must’ve sent them, but I don’t know how—“
His words were drowned out by an earsplitting wail that turned your blood to ice. Something landed on the roof of the car with a thud and Sweeney jerked the steering wheel in an effort to throw it off, spewing profanities.
“Bran, the last time I saw one of these was…fuck it was millennia ago. Where did he find them?” Sweeney was talking more to himself than to you, but you still shook your head.
“I don’t know! I’ve never seen—“
Before you could finish your thought, there was a tremendous bang as one of the front tires exploded. The car swerved dangerously, but Sweeney managed to wrestle it to the shoulder of the road, narrowly avoiding colliding with a telephone pole.
Your eyes were squeezed shut and you white-knuckled your seat as you chanted every protection spell you could remember, sifting through the recesses of your mind for even the smallest thing that Circe had taught you that might help. You didn’t know what else to do.
“Is there any iron in here?” Sweeney demanded.
Your chanting stuttered. “Do I have any what?”
“Iron!” he bellowed. “Iron, do you have iron anywhere in this car?”
You blinked. “Horseshoe in the glovebox. Everything that was in the trunk is gone.”
He clenched his jaw. “It’ll have to do. Stay here, stay in this car, and pray to whoever the fuck might be listening that the enchantments Circe put on this thing hold.” He yanked the horseshoe from the glovebox, gripping it like makeshift brass knuckles in his fist, and launched himself from the car with a howl.
You returned to your incantations, doing your best to block the awful sounds. Every time one of Sweeney’s blows landed and the iron made contact with the flesh of the goat-headed men, you could hear their flesh sizzle and their screams of rage. You heard a nasty thwack followed by Sweeney grunting in pain as they head-butted him and did their damnedest to gore him with the curved and cruelly pointed horns that arced out of their heads.
You wracked your brain for something, anything, that you could do aside from sitting on your ass and muttering spells that may or may not have been working.
Sweeney’s head hit the ground with a sickening thud and you swallowed. Fuck it, you thought. If I’m going down, I’m going down swinging. You kicked open the car door, armed only with Sweeney’s pocketknife and a snarl.
You howled at the top of your lungs, slinging every word of Greek protection that Circe had taught you. The beasts turned to you, yellow eyes narrowing. Your heart picked up in your chest but you held fast, reciting the verses over and over, but they had no effect.
You opened your mouth to try again, but what came out was not Greek. It wasn’t any language that you knew and it certainly was not part of the meager arsenal Circe had armed you with, but the words flowed from your lips as though you had known them for years.
"Ceathrar a leag an tsúil, fear agus bean, buachaill agus cailín, triúr gortach, an tAthair, an Mac, agus an Spiorad Naomh!”*
The Bocánaigh hissed and cringed at your words and you moved towards them, more of that familiar-yet-unfamiliar language rolling off your tongue like you had never known another.
You picked up the horseshoe and began smashing your way through the three of them, your words never faltering, never slowing, until eventually the beasts fled.
After a moment, when you were sure the danger had gone, you hauled yourself to Sweeney’s slumped form against the side of the car.
“Hey dummy,” you said, crouching in front of him. “You okay?”
He groaned and rose to his feet, swaying slightly before sitting back down heavily. “I might be concussed.”
You nodded. “Yeah, you took a few slams to the noggin there. You hit the ground pretty hard, too. Other’n that though it doesn’t look like they did too much damage. Looks like your luck is holding.” You flashed him a grin, but he wouldn’t meet your eyes. Instead, his eyes skated over your face, suspicion knitting his brow.
“Yeah, those things might as well just be specters that pack a punch, can’t do much damage to someone like me.” His voice was distant, he was distracted. “You, though…there’s barely a scratch on ya. And what the hell was that? Where’d you learn Gaeilge like that?”
You shrugged. “I didn’t even know that that’s what that was. I was trying to recite a Greek incantation, but that came out instead. I guess I got lucky.” You paused as you realized what you said. “Hey now, see? I told you you had enough luck for the both of us.”
Sweeney shook his head. “No, that wasn’t luck, love. That was…that was something else. I think we need to have words with Wednesday.”
You hummed. “Fine, but we need to get him his thing first. Get in the passenger seat, princess, I’m driving the rest of the way.”
He made a face but did as you said.
“C’mon, up you get,” you grunted, pulling one of his arms over your shoulders. He groaned as you pulled him to his feet and led him around the car, gingerly lowering him into the passenger seat. “Big baby,” you teased.
He glowered at you, but there was no heat behind it. “I did just get the living daylights beat out of me.”
You laughed. “My knight in shining armor. We’ll stop and get you some Advil on the way, yeah?”
“An’ a bottle of whiskey.”
You gave him a mock salute. “Yessir, a bottle of Jamo should get you right as rain.”
You managed to make it the rest of the way to Knott County without incident, the ride passing much smoother once Sweeney got his Jameson and his painkillers. You sent a silent prayer of thanks to whoever it was that seemed to be looking out for you. Helping the ginger giant out of the car, the two of you made your way into the bar.
Instantly, the hair on the back of your neck stood on end as you were assaulted with the sounds and smells of Jack’s Crocodile Bar. You hated this place. As often as it had been the site of many rowdy nights and raucous fun, it was also the place where you had functionally sold your soul to the Devil. A devil with one eye and no care for anyone but himself.
You had hoped that you would have some time before the old man saw you, desperately needing a pint before whatever was about to happen, but it seemed that your luck did not extend that far. A familiar voice called your name, and it made your skin crawl.
The old man beckoned you to where he sat with a wide grin. Sweeney took the seat on his left and you took the one on his right. Wednesday had already ordered for you, a pint of lager sitting beside his glass of what you could only assume was Jack Daniels. The man had few vices, but apparently Tennessee whiskey was one of them. You eyed the pint glass suspiciously, not trusting anything he put in front of you.
“I see we have one more joining us,” he said jovially, clapping Sweeney on the shoulder. “Mad Sweeney! I wasn’t expecting you for another two days. Oh, this is delightful.” The Irishman grunted and flagged down the bartender and a few moments later a rum and coke was on the bar in front of him. You could see a muscle in his jaw feather as he grit his teeth.
“I’m not particularly in the mood for pleasantries,” you said coldly, reaching into your pack and producing the cloth bundle that held Gungnir. Wednesday’s cold eyes brightened and he reached for it, but you snatched it from his reach. “Payment first.”
He sighed. “Always business, never pleasure. When was the last time you sat and enjoyed a drink with an old friend?”
“We are not friends,” you sneered. “You are my employer and I am your employee. This is a business relationship.”
He pouted and then gave you a knowing look that made you want to poke out his other eye. “We know you’re more than that now, don’t we?”
“They were held by the Jotnar for almost a week,” Sweeney cut in. “Where were you?”
The old man looked at him coldly before producing a fat envelope from inside his jacket. “Payment, as agreed.” He turned to Sweeney. “And you! Let me buy you another round. Consider it thanks for bringing my favorite employee back to me in one piece.” His words oozed sarcasm. It made you itch.
“Weren’t for lack of trying on their part,” Sweeney muttered.
You cocked your head. “Yeah, about that. Some guy’s after your stick.”
Wednesday chuckled. “You’ll have to be more specific than that. There’s plenty of people that would love to get their hands on this.”
“Tall, dark, radiates fear? Ring any bells?” You were losing what little patience you had.
He shook his head. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“The Dark Man,” Sweeney snapped, clearly no more in the mood for games than you were.
Wednesday’s face remained impassive, but his eyes widened. Just a fraction, but it was enough. It wasn’t fear, but at the very least he was unsettled hearing the name.
“The Black Druid?” His voice was careful, measured. He knew something that he wasn’t telling you.
Something new and different, you thought bitterly, but you nodded. “He stole my car and seemed pretty keen on finding this.”
Wednesday’s face pinched and he sighed. “The Dark Man isn’t after this, I’m afraid. He’s after you.”
Your face paled and Sweeney gripped the glass he was holding so tightly that it shattered.
“What? What in the hell could he want with me?” you asked.
He sipped at his whiskey. “I believe you have something that he wants.”
You stared at him, mouth agape. “What could I possibly, possibly fucking have that he would want? I didn’t even know who he was two days ago!”
The old man didn’t answer, merely gazed at you with an indecipherable expression. “I’d be very careful if I were you,” he said simply, before downing the rest of his drink and taking his leave before you could so much as blink.
The two of you stared after him, dumbfounded. “Great, we’ve got more questions than we had when he got here and he left us with the tab,” you said, scowling at your untouched pint.
Sweeney knocked back a shot. “Wish I could say I was surprised.” He clapped a hand on your shoulder and pulled you from your seat. “C’mon, let’s do what we do best.”
You looked up at him. “Get shithoused?”
He knocked back another shot and slammed the glass against the wooden surface of the bar. “Get shithoused,” he grinned.
That was how, several hours later, you ended up standing on top of the bar, belting “Mr. Brightside” at the top of your lungs. Sweeney watched you with a smile on his face as you led the entire bar through the chorus.
The song finished and you swept your arms wide, a huge grin plastered on your face. You moved to take a bow and pitched too far forward almost immediately. The world fell out from under you as you toppled from the bar, but you never hit the concrete floor. Warm arms encircled you and you found yourself gazing into a familiar pair of green eyes.
“I think it might be time for us to go, love,” Sweeney said.
You looked up at him and giggled. “Awh, we can’t stop now! The party’s just getting started!”
He chuckled and set you on your feet, steadying you as you swayed. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think we need to bow out. Before you split your skull.”
He pulled you out the door and you pouted. “Can’t believe my king is telling me the party’s over. Y’know, if you’d acted like this before Mag Rath we might not’ve lost.”
At your words, Sweeney’s blood turned to ice. “Wh-what did you just say?”
Something in your eyes had shifted. There was a wild and determined look in them now as you held up your hands. “Look, don’t get pissy with me. All’s I’m saying is if we’d been more careful, Donall wouldn’t’ve—“
“No. What do you mean ‘before Mag Rath’? How would you know anything about that battle?”
You flicked his nose. “I was there, dummy. I led your battalion like you aaaaasked and you still booked it. Not that I blame you, honestly. That shit was horrific.”
Sweeney stared at you like he had never seen you before. A memory flickered at the back of his mind.
“Go!” you bellowed. “Go, I’ll hold them off!” You raised your arms wide and a gust of wind ripped across the field, forcing Donall’s men back.
He blinked, his mind reeling. His lieutenant…
No. That wasn’t you. It couldn’t have been. That was almost two thousand years ago. That wasn’t you.
And yet…and yet. He couldn’t deny the magic that ran through you. The way the Irish incantations had pulled themselves from you like you had always known them. The way you were healing faster than you had any right to.
He grabbed you by the shoulders.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you?”
That wild look in your eyes cleared and you stared at him in confusion. “I’m me? Sweeney, what? You’ve known me for years, you know—“
“Who are you?” he bellowed. “How do you know about Mag Rath?”
You flinched and backed away from him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said, your voice shaking. “I don’t know what Mag Rath is. Sweeney, please, you’re scaring me.”
He stared at you, his expression frantic. “What about what you just said? About us losing and Donall…” he trailed off. You were looking at him with so much fear written on your face it made his chest ache. “Do you remember what you just said to me?” he asked slowly.
“I…I don’t…I fell off the bar and you caught me and then we were outside and then you were yelling at me.” You sounded like you were on the verge of tears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He gripped his hair in his fists. You didn’t remember. You didn’t remember what you had just said to him, you didn’t remember fighting at his side. And he didn’t remember you. Why didn’t he remember you?
“What did you do before you worked for Wednesday?” he barked.
“I-I dunno. I don’t remember what I did, I don’t remember what my life was.” You were crying now. “Before Wednesday, everything is blank.”
He knew this. You had told him this before, that Wednesday had found you wandering through northern Minnesota, half-frozen and with no memory to speak of. But now…he had to wonder. Did Wednesday happen upon you by chance? Or had he lied? Knowing the old man, the latter was far from impossible or even unlikely.
He wrapped his arms around you and pulled you against his chest, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head. “I think we need to get some answers,” he murmured against your hair. “But first, let’s get you to bed.”
*"Four who set the eye, man and woman, boy and girl, three sick, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!"
Summary: Bruised and bloodied, you end up with the last person you thought you'd turn to, and you've just made a new friend.
Word Count: 1.5k
Warnings: Cursing
A/N: After this, chapters are gonna start being a little longer! The People Have Spoken.
Next Chapter
“Fine. If the old man tries to string me up for it, I’m throwing you under the bus,” he said.
You cocked your head to the side and looked at him for a moment. He wasn’t looking at you, his eyes were on the road, but the tips of his ears had the barest hint of a blush.
“No, you’re not,” you said finally. “You won’t do that.”
His eyes stayed on the road. “Are you so sure of that?”
You turned your gaze to the road in front of you. “Your ears go pink when you lie.”
Neither of you spoke much on the drive to where your car supposedly was. You were too busy willing your car to be where the spell said it was and Sweeney was a million miles away. What exactly he was thinking about, you could never be sure.
After about an hour, you drove past the eighth Circle K you’d seen.
“Wait, go back!” you shrieked, slapping your hands down on the dashboard. “That was it!”
The car jolted as Sweeney slammed on the brakes. “What did I say about yelling like that when I’m driving? Anyway, how d’ye know it’s the right one?”
You pointed at the odometer. It was thirty miles higher than it had been forty-five minutes ago.
“Again,” he said in a tone that indicated he was really starting to get fed up with you, “how do you know it’s the right one?”
“Does it fucking matter? It’s a Circle K that’s thirty miles from where we were, we won’t die if we check it out and it’s not there.”
“Famous last words,” the Irishman muttered, but still he pulled a u-turn and guided the little Corolla towards the parking lot.
“Worst case scenario, she’s not here. We can still get snacks and stuff,” you said.
“Worst case scenario is that this is a trap somehow and we’re about to get killed.”
You rolled your eyes. “Always a pessimist.”
As Sweeney pulled the car up next to one of the gas pumps, you saw it. You knew that paint job and you knew that slight ding in the front bumper (if Sweeney had just listened to you, you wouldn’t have had to hit him with your car). The spell was right and the vision had been correct.
You let out a whoop and made to lunge out of the car, but Sweeney wrapped a hand around your bicep, arresting your movement.
“What the fuck?” you snapped. “Can we just—“
Something in his face made you fall short.
“What’s wrong?” you asked quietly, following his line of vision.
The guy that was in possession of your car was leaning against the side of it, a lit cigarette in his mouth and a wide brimmed hat was sitting at an angle on his head. He wore a long dark trench coat and he looked like he was waiting for someone.
“Why is he here?” Sweeney asked lowly, more to himself than you.
“Who is he?” you asked.
Sweeney shook his head. “Someone you don’t want to fuck with.”
You snorted. “Unless you can give me something more concrete to work with, I’m going to get my car back.”
Sweeney said nothing, but you felt his eyes on your back as you walked towards the man leaning against your car.
“Hey!” you said brightly as you approached him. “I think you might have my car? It got stolen a few days ago.”
The man looked up at you and you felt your stomach twist uncomfortably. His eyes were black pools that reflected no light and his lips twisted into an unpleasant smile. You instinctively took a step back as the cold fingers of fear began to wind their way through your chest.
“Yes, I believe I do. You’re one of Mr. Wednesday’s little errand boys aren’t you?” His accent was similar to Sweeney’s, except he formed his vowels a little differently.
You immediately played dumb. “I don’t know any Mr. Wednesday, man. I’ll pay you, but can I please have my car? It’s sentimental.”
“Interesting. You say you do not know any Mr. Wednesday, but I bought this car from the frost giants. What would they be doing with a ride like this?” His voice felt oily, like you could feel it dripping down your spine, and it made your shoulders tense. Your heart began to pick up as though you were a rabbit poised to run.
You feigned ignorance. “Frost giants?”
He nodded. “Nasty lot. Heard they cut you up something fierce,” he said, eyeing the bandage on your forehead and your blackened eye.
You edged backward. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He shrugged and you tried not to let your growing uneasiness show. You didn’t like this guy’s energy and you were starting to wish that you’d listened to Sweeney.
Speak of the devil and he shall appear. The weird man in possession of your car took a step towards you and you took another step back, but this time you bumped into the massive, solid form of Mad Sweeney. You instantly felt the nervous tension in your chest lessen.
“I think you’d better hand over those keys,” he said coolly.
The stranger’s lip twitched. “Ah, Mad Sweeney,” he said calmly, his eyes never leaving yours. You couldn’t seem to look away. You were rooted to the spot as terror squeezed your lungs. “You know, your story really isn’t holding water. Especially now that…this has shown up with you. Not to mention that bandage on your face. How’d that happen?”
You said nothing and Sweeney twitched slightly so that his body was now halfway in front of you. It wasn’t a direct threat, but it was clear that he was putting himself between you and the man.
“I said, hand over the keys.” His voice was tight with something you’d never heard in him before. Fear? No, but it was close.
The man pouted. “This one never wants to have any fun.” He turned to you. “Listen taibhseach.* You may have your car, but I want something in return.”
You looked at him warily. You had no idea who this man was, but you’d been in this game long enough to know not to make deals if you didn’t have to.
He took your silence as a cue to continue. “I will return your keys in exchange for the item you were sent to fetch for Grimnir.”
You opened your mouth to respond, but Sweeney cut you off. “Counteroffer,” he said, “you give us the keys and we don’t give you shit. This was their car to begin with. Give us the keys and I won’t make a scene.”
The man rolled his eyes. “Again, no fun. Here,” he produced your keychain from thin air. He dropped it into your outstretched hand and leaned in to whisper into your ear. “You will be hearing from me soon. And your attack dog won’t be around to protect you.”
You blinked and he was gone.
You slid into the driver’s seat of your car and inhaled as you ran your hands over the steering wheel. You wanted to revel in the feeling of having her back, but the feeling of uneasiness and fear that that man had left in his wake was weighing on you.
You turned to Sweeney, an obvious question on the tip of your tongue, but he held up a hand.
“Just drive. We should’ve left as soon as we saw him.” His voice was tight and the rattled look on his face wasn’t doing anything to assuage your fear.
After about an hour or two, your eyes began to get heavy and you started looking for motel signs.
“Pull over, switch with me,” Sweeney said. His voice sounded almost unbearably loud after riding in silence.
“Sweeney, can we please just find a motel? I’m exhausted, I have to sleep.”
His heart twinged at the tiredness in your voice. He knew that you needed rest, and badly, but he wanted to put that Circle K as far in the rearview as possible.
“I know you’re tired darlin’, but we have to keep going at least for another few hours.”
You sighed, but didn’t fight him on it. He chewed his bottom lip. You always complained or argued with him over this sort of thing, so the fact that you gave in so quickly gave away how spent you really were.
You pulled over onto the shoulder and swapped with Sweeney. As you settled into your seats, he looked around the interior of the car.
“You said this was warded?”
You nodded. “Against basically everything.”
He blew a puff of air out of his nose. “Good. It’ll make it harder for that cunt to find us.”
“Who was he?” you asked as he pulled back onto the freeway.
“Someone very powerful. And, like I said, someone you don’t want to fuck with. He gave up your keys too easily, I don’t like it.”
You shrugged. “Fine. Keep your secrets. I’m gonna try to get some sleep, but wake me up when we get to a motel.”
You balled up your sweatshirt between your head and the car window and fell asleep almost immediately.
Sweeney took that opportunity to scan your sleeping face, the fear from earlier a stone in his stomach. Why was Fear Doirich looking for you? He had said he wanted whatever it was that you had been sent to retrieve for Wednesday, but that was a lie. At least, it was a partial one. The Dark Man was plotting something, Sweeney just knew it, and it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Sweeney knew he couldn’t do anything about it now, but he could at the very least do his damndest to make sure that you were protected.
Summary: Bruised and bloodied, you end up with the last person you thought you'd turn to, and now you're on the road with him.
Word Count: 1.6k
Warnings: Cursing
Next Chapter
You opened your mouth to protest, but he had already hauled your duffel over his shoulder and was halfway out the door. When he realized you weren’t behind him, he turned back to face you.
“Well? I don’t have all day,” he drawled.
You gave him the dirtiest look you could manage, but he hadn’t left you much choice.
Making your way into the parking lot, you and Sweeney fell into the familiar rhythm of sniffing out cars that would be easy to steal and hopefully wouldn’t be missed. Your hand instinctively went to the pocket of the hoodie Sweeney had given you and you sighed when the familiar weight of your keys wasn’t there. Your car was missing in action after the Jötnar had done gods knew what to get rid of it. Fortunately, you had been smart enough to take it to Circe when you’d gotten it to have her help you ward it. She had cast the proper protection spells but had also shown you a nifty little locator spell that you could use if it was ever separated from you. If the car was somewhere it could be found, the locator spell would point you in the right direction. If the car was at the bottom of a lake or stripped for parts, the spell would simply wink out.
Gods, you hoped they’d only sold it. The idea of your beloved car sitting at the bottom of a lake or being completely taken apart made you nauseous.
Sweeney waved you over to a particularly shitty old Toyota Corolla that he had popped open. He slung your duffel into the trunk and folded himself into the driver’s seat.
“So where’d you stash the old man’s trinket?” He asked when you had settled into the passenger seat beside him.
You shook your head. “Before we do that, we need to find my car.”
Sweeney stared at you. “And how d’you plan to do that? Do you have any idea where it is?”
You gave him a look. “Do you seriously think I’d get a car like that and not have a locator spell on it?”
He huffed. “Well, excuse the shit outta me, I didn’t realize you were a witch now.”
You swallowed the urge to clock him, forcing yourself to remember that he was the reason you were alive right now and not dead in a ditch on a backroad.
“I was not the one that put the spells and wards on it, dickhead. I took it to Circe.”
“Oh.”
“She just taught me the locator spell and how to maintain the wards. Bet you feel like a dick now, huh.”
His mouth pressed into a thin line and he stayed silent.
“I can do the spell now before we hit the road, just give me like fifteen minutes.”
He grunted and pulled out a cigarette, stepping out and leaning against the car to smoke while you worked and the scent of cloves filled your nostrils.
Asshole, you thought. Yet, despite your annoyance, you found yourself replaying the feeling of his warm hands carefully caressing your face as he dressed your wounds. Replaying the fuzzy memory of his bright green eyes filled with worry and anger on your behalf and the way all pretense of not being able to stand each other fell away as he tried to keep you alive. Your cheeks grew warm at the memory and you snuck a glance at him as he leaned against the car, puffing lazily at his cigarette.
“Goddammit,” you muttered to yourself, shaking your head to clear your thoughts.
Pushing all thoughts of Mad Sweeney aside, you turned your focus to the task at hand. You weren’t sure entirely how the spell worked. Other locator spells you had seen used burned away a map until the only thing that was left was the place they were looking for or had used a pendulum to indicate the whereabouts of what was being looked for. The spell that Circe had used didn’t involve a map at all. She had explained to you that your end of the spell would connect with the magic in the car and would just sort of…deposit a vision of the vehicle into your head. You’d never tried it before and you were nervous that it wouldn’t work. There was warding magic on that car that even the old man couldn’t wrap his head around and it kept you protected from all sorts of nasty things. You didn’t know what you would do if you couldn’t get it back.
You took a deep breath and closed your eyes, letting yourself begin to drift into the space between sleep and wakefulness.
You had almost settled completely into your meditative state when Sweeney knocked on the window, jerking you out of your reverie.
“What’s takin’ you so long?” He asked. “We got places to go.”
You ground your teeth and stuck your head out the window. “If you would just shut up, I’ll be able to do this faster.”
He held his hands up and returned to brooding over his cigarette. You leaned back into the seat, once again letting your mind settle in the in-between space. You held an image of your car in your mind, focusing on the tiny details and the things that made it yours, like the protection sigils hanging from the rearview mirror or the small hole on the passenger seat that had been burned into the upholstery the first and only time Sweeney had broken your “no cigs in the car” rule. In his defense, you had slapped a lit cigarette out of his hand when you realized what he was doing, but if he hadn’t lit it in the first place, you wouldn’t have had to smack him.
With the image and the details in your mind, you began to repeat the make and model of the car, along with the name you had given it, and projected your intention to find it as much as you could, as per Circe’s instructions.
An image of your car flashed through your mind, beautiful and shining, with the skeeziest-looking dude you had ever seen sitting in the driver’s seat.
Thirty miles east in the parking lot of a Circle K, came a voice at the back of your mind.
Blinking out of your trance, you stuck your head out the window again. “Strange things afoot at the Circle K,” you said to him.
He stared at you blankly.
“Really?” You asked. “Bill and Ted? Most excellent?”
He shook his head and you sighed in exasperation. “Okay, there’s a movie night in our future.”
He looked at you in surprise. You were surprised at yourself, but you pressed on, ignoring the subtle shift in the energy between the two of you. “Car’s thirty miles east at a Circle K. The Jötnar sold her to the slimiest motherfucker I’ve seen in a while and I just know that asshole is stinking up my upholstery with cigarettes.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Thirty miles seems awfully close.”
You shrugged. “I dunno, but can we get a move on? He’s as like as any to be gone by the time we get there.”
Sweeney opened the door and folded his lanky form into the driver’s seat. “Do ye have any idea how many Circle Ks are along the next thirty miles? How will we know which one is the right one?”
You shrugged. “Go thirty miles and find a Circle K that’s got a gorgeous car and a scumbag in her driver’s seat. ”
He grunted and started the car, peeling out of the lot. “Dunno why I thought you’d have an actual plan.”
You glared at him. “I gave you our next steps, seems like a plan to me.”
“What if he’s gone? What if it’s the wrong Circle K?” He demanded.
“Then I do the fucking spell again,” you snapped.
“How much time are we going to waste looking for your damn car?”
You took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of your nose as you squeezed your eyes shut. “However long we need,” you said, your voice tight with annoyance. “The old man’s been alive for millennia, waiting on us for a little ain’t gonna kill him.”
“No, but it might kill us,” Sweeney grumbled.
You smiled smugly. “You, maybe. The old man loves me, as far as he’s concerned I can do no wrong.”
“Must be nice,” he said bitterly.
“It is.”
His lip curled in a sneer.
“Look,” you said, “I’m not doing anything until I find my fucking car. If you need to go to Eagle Point, no one is stopping you. I didn’t ask you to come with me, you did this to yourself. If you want to go, by all fucking means.” You refused to acknowledge the twinge in your chest at the idea of him leaving you.
He didn’t say anything, but pressed his foot to the gas a little harder. “I’m not leaving you by yourself,” he said quietly. “But if Grim—“
“Don’t say his fucking name,” you barked. “I don’t care if it’s not his true name or what the fuck ever. Names have power. You’re one of the Fair Folk, aren’t you? Why do I have to explain this to you?”
“Be serious. Are you really going to refer to him only as—“
“As the old man? Yeah. Names have power and he certainly does not need any more.”
“Fine. If the old man tries to string me up for it, I’m throwing you under the bus,” he said.
You cocked your head to the side and looked at him for a moment. He wasn’t looking at you, his eyes were on the road, but the tips of his ears had the barest hint of a blush.
“No, you’re not,” you said finally. “You won’t do that.”
His eyes stayed on the road. “Are you so sure of that?”
You turned your gaze to the road in front of you. “Your ears go pink when you lie.”
Summary: Bruised and bloodied, you end up with the last person you'd thought you'd turn to, and you’ve got a delivery to make.
Word Count: 1.7k
Warnings: stitches, brief mentions of torture
Next Chapter
Blinking awake, you were acutely aware of the searing pain that felt like a blanket over your body. As your eyes adjusted to the light, you realized you had no idea where you were or how you had gotten there. You remembered the frost giants and you remembered managing to escape, but you didn’t remember this shithole motel and why was Mad fucking Sweeney asleep on the floor next to the bed?
He stitched me up, you remembered. You’d shown up at his door, half dead, and Sweeney had sewn your ruined flesh back together, but you couldn’t remember how you’d found him. Lucky guess? He usually holed up in dingy places like this. It must have been some weird combination of fate and luck that you ended up where he was.
Sliding out of bed as gingerly as possible, you moved to step around the sleeping leprechaun but found yourself gripping the nightstand in an effort to stay standing as a wave of dizziness passed over you. When you finally managed to haul yourself to the bathroom, you looked at yourself in the mirror and winced. Unsurprisingly, you looked…well, to say you looked like shit would be putting it nicely. A bruise had bloomed across your cheekbone in garish hues of purple and black, already turning a sickly yellow-green at the edges. Your lower lip had been split clean down the middle and, looking at the stitched wound across your face, you were surprised you still had two eyes.
You gently prodded the dental floss stitches, regretting it instantly as pain shot through your head. To his credit, Sweeney’s stitches were much neater than you’d expected. There would still be a scar, that was for sure and certain, but you supposed it wouldn’t be as awful as it might have been.
Probing your ribs, you winced. Once again, it seemed that luck had been on your side in that none of them felt broken, but they were most definitely bruised as all hell.
You knew you needed to assess the extensive damage to your back. You knew you did. If anything, just to get an idea of how long it would take to heal, but the idea of being faced with exactly how badly the Jötnar had rocked your shit made you want to curl into yourself. It was one thing to see the bruises and the stitches on your face, that you could deal with. Hell, the scar would honestly look kind of cool, you figured. But your stomach churned imagining what the skin of your back might look like. It wouldn’t look cool, it wouldn’t look badass. All it would do would be to serve as a reminder that you just weren’t fast enough. You weren’t good enough and you’d let them catch up to you. Fuck.
Bracing yourself, you carefully, slowly attempted to angle yourself so you could see your back in the mirror and inched your shirt up. Nausea rolled through you, an awful oily feeling at the back of your throat at the sight of the shredded skin. These stitches were tighter and cleaner than the ones on your face, and a lump formed in your throat as you remembered how careful and gentle the Irishman had been as he’d worked. You remembered the feel of his calloused hands on your face and your eyes burned with tears.
You released the hem of your shirt and let your head fall forward. With the way the stitches were catching on the fabric, you knew you’d need a bandage. Honestly, you should’ve had one anyway and you needed one for your face too. The last thing you needed was an infection, but there was no way in hell you could clean and bandage it yourself. Your face, sure, but your back? You weren’t even going to bother trying.
You padded back into the room and kicked the ginger giant’s leg. He snuffled in his sleep and rolled away from you. You huffed in annoyance and aimed another kick at his ass, this one with a little more force behind it.
One green eye cracked open and he peered up at you blearily. He was annoyed that his first reaction to seeing you out of bed and standing was to check you for torn stitches and just generally fuss over you to make sure you were okay.
“If the next words out of yer mouth are to tell me how shite my stitches are, I will pull them out and make you do it yourself,” he grumbled, sitting up and scrubbing his hands over his face.
You refused to rise to his bait. “I need you to bandage the stitches on my back. I can’t reach them and they keep catching on my shirt.”
“A please would be nice,” he muttered, but still he rose to his feet and followed you into the bathroom.
You only scowled at him as you tried to lift your shirt enough so that he would have space to work, but your back screamed in protest and your stitches pulled. A hiss escaped through your teeth as you tried not to make a sound, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of showing weakness. Before you could say anything, he had hitched your shirt up himself and was applying antiseptic and gauze, his enormous calloused hands once again displaying the impossible gentleness they had shown the night before.
The silence in the bathroom as he worked was tense and smothering, but stubbornness dictated that you absolutely could not be the one to speak first.
Eventually, he broke the silence.
“Gave me a right scare, showing up at my door like that,” he said quietly as he taped down the gauze on your back and turned his attention to the stitches on your face. “How’d you even know I was here?”
You made a noncommittal noise. “Maybe your luck’s rubbing off on me.”
His eyes met yours. “Maybe.”
The intensity of his gaze began to make you itch and you looked down at the counter and began to toy with a roll of gauze.
“What did this to you, anyway?” he asked.
“None of your business.”
His hands stilled. “You made it my business when you came to me for help. Whatever did this could show up at my door.”
You glared at him in the mirror. “I stole something for the old man.”
He looked at you expectantly.
“I stole something for the old man, and it turns out that frost giants don’t love it when people take their shit, even was the old man’s to begin with.”
He blinked. “He sent you in there alone?”
You snorted. “Like he hasn’t done it before.”
Sweeney’s lip curled. The idea of Grimnir putting you in a position where this could happen to you made him more upset than he thought it would. “What’d you take?” he asked.
“Now that’s really none of your business.”
He rolled his eyes. “So they caught up with you but didn’t get what they were looking for?”
You shook your head. “I hid it until I could shake them and circle back for it. Worked out real well for me.”
“How long did they have you?”
You shrugged. “A couple days? Maybe a week.”
He stared at you incredulously. “And the old man didn’t send anyone to look for you?”
“Why do you care?” you snapped.
“Because if I go missing, I wanna know if anyone’s coming for me or not.” Now he looked away from you, suddenly very interested in the tiled floor. “Besides, you’re my friend. I don’t want you to turn up dead.”
That took you off guard and now it was your turn to stare incredulously. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t make me say it again.”
“Since when are we friends?” you demanded.
He looked at you like he wanted to hit you. “Dunno, maybe when you showed up covered in blood and half dead because you quote, ‘didn’t have anywhere else to go.’ Besides, at some point, I figured it would be easier to be friends if the old man was gonna keep pairin’ us up.”
At this, you laughed in his face. “Was that before or after you abandoned me in Tennessee? Or the time you literally almost let me get flattened by a steamroller? Or—“
“Enough!” he snapped. “You made yer point. I don’t know when it happened and trust me, I'm no happier about it than you are, but you…you’re my best friend.”
You pointed at him. “I’m your only friend. That’s not the same thing.”
He scowled. "It’s enough for you to ask me to save your life, apparently.”
“After everything, it’s the least you could do,” you said. “If I had anyone else, I would’ve saved you the trouble.”
Hurt flashed across his face before it was replaced with another scowl. “Fine. Next time I’ll just let you bleed out.”
“Good,” you snapped, “glad we got that sorted.” You shoved past him out of the bathroom but stumbled as a wave of dizziness almost drove you to your knees. On instinct, you grabbed for Sweeney, and his arms were already encircling you, keeping you upright.
“See,” you said weakly, “you can’t even let me fall and I'm supposed to believe you’d let me bleed out?”
“Shut up,” he muttered as he hauled your arm around his shoulders and half-carried you back to the bed.
Once you felt steadier on your feet, you snatched your arm back. “Look, thank you for fixing me up, but I have a delivery to make.”
He made a disbelieving sound. “You’re not serious.”
You raised an eyebrow and you had never seen a man look so exasperated.
“The Jötnar are after you and you can barely stand!” he argued.
“And I have an obscene amount of cash waiting for me once I get the old man his trinket,” you countered.
Sweeney looked at you, your jaw set and a mean glint in your eyes, and knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere trying to argue with you.
“I’m coming with you,” he said eventually.
You scoffed. “Like hell.”
He glared at you. “I'm s’posed ta meet the old man at Jack’s anyway. And like I said, you can barely stand by yourself. No way you make it there alone.”
You opened your mouth to protest, but he had already hauled your duffel over his shoulder and was halfway out the door. When he realized you weren’t behind him, he turned back to face you.
“Well? I don’t have all day,” he drawled.
You gave him the dirtiest look you could manage, but he hadn’t left you much choice.
