FF->PP: Post 22: FIC: Stars, Marvelverse, genderflip AU, gen
THOOOOOOOOOOOR.
*****
Norway, Børgefjell National Park, summer of 1969
There are clouds rolling up along the horizon as Monsieur Delacroix pulls the Jeep up along the low riverbed. Insects humming from the bushes, hungry for blood. Cold mountains stab up along the horizon, jagged granite heights where the trees give out, sheeted with snow higher up, and Donna Blake leans back in the passenger's seat as the jostling slows and takes a deep, deep breath.
She'd fallen in with Monsieur Delacroix in Bergen. Another traveller from the south, like her, only he isn't up here tracking distant cousins. Not even pretending to--she'd given up on it herself a few weeks ago. He is French, and an utter gentleman, though taciturn in most things beyond his distaste for Norwegian alcohol. He helps her up steps when the day is long and her knee is tired, and little, little more.
She doesn't even know his given name. Only that he's wandering up to the ends of the earth because somebody has died, and she only knows that because he murmured something in French when he was hammered on cheap wine he'd hated, and she doesn't particularly know the language, but she thinks the pronouns involved weren't female. Still, she feels perfectly safe around him. They each are here for their own reasons.
She looks up at the dimming sky as he pulls the top up over the Jeep, and ponders that they might well be the only human beings for miles.
"Will you be parking?" she asks politely.
"Oui. There looks to be rain coming." His accent's thick; his face shows little.
"I don't mind." She helps herself out of the Jeep, unfolds her walking cane with the bundle of ribbons tied to the top. It isn't the first time she's wandered in the woods. Ties them around branches as she goes like a golden thread.
"If there's lightning."
"I know what trees to sit under." Beware of an oak, it draws the stroke. Avoid an ash, it courts the flash. Creep under the thorn, it can save you from harm. The one relative she had found--little old lady by the fireplace, said just that.
He hands her a rain hat; she tugs it on over her thick hair and limps up the riverbank.
When she boils it down, perhaps, she feels safe around him because he's out here for the same reasons he is, or so she's fairly sure.
She doesn't sit until she's out of sight of the Jeep, despite the building ache in her bad leg. Eases herself onto a boulder. Deep in the woods at the end of the world, nobody to see. Pulls out the picture in her pocket. Her in her doctor's coat and headlamp, baby Anne pulling goo-goo faces on her knee. Benny, four, trying not to squirm, with his father's hands on his shoulders.
His father. Her husband. Herb Watson, funny and quick with a pun, maker of cracking waffles, loosing a little hair up top but tender as anything in the evening, two months dead. Stroke. He'd been thirty-seven. Pure, stupid chance.
It was both yesterday and years ago. She has a vague memory of not even crying for a week. Too cold. Too busy holding tight to her children. Anne's starting to walk, but she barely put her down and barely slept for, well, longer than she could remember. It's all been longer than she could remember.
Benny and Anne with their Uncle Bobby, Herb's brother, because after too months, it had all become too much. The days were gray and tight around the edges. Patient and patient through her office, and when a fourteen-year-old boy died on the table in a surgery she'd referred him to, she--hadn't cared.
She hadn't even known she was capable of not caring.
Cold wind buffets her, nearly tugs the hat off, and she shrugs deeper into her coat and puts the picture back in her pocket. Fat drops of rain spatter on the rocky ground. She closes her eyes and listens to the rhythm of it and the vast empty silence beyond it. Hum of mosquitos. Roll of thunder in the distance.
Two months, she's been carrying about a rock in her chest. Dead, tight weight. It's drawn her shoulders down; they ache constantly, worse than they ever did when she was carrying Anne. She's thirty-four with two little ones, and this thing is going to drag her down to her death. This thing she's gone to the far corners of the earth to escape.
The rain thickens.
She listens for the thunder.
Flash against her closed eyes, and she counts to herself. One tomato, two tomato. It's silly, she thinks, it's utterly childish. Like when she ran about in the rain when she was eight and soaked all her dresses, pitter-pat bare feet down the stones and concrete of London, splashing. She's always loved the storms. And the storms up here--rolling up over the fjords, like nothing she's ever seen.
The storm's almost a mile away, by the count, and she throws back her head and lets the rain pour down her face and for a moment, just a moment, it eases. The vise around her heart eases, and she breathes.
Stands with a shudder of her bad leg. Limps along with the wet grass soaking her hiking trousers, wet coat hanging heavy, ties a ribbon round the nearest tree and goes. Deeper in the woods with the bugs humming round her. Thunder's three tomatoes away by now, then two. She brushes aside wet oak trees, and now the rain's so thick she can barely see.
Stops as there's a strange, strange noise from above. Not thunder. Nothing like thunder. A voice in the distance which isn't Monsieur Delacroix, isn't anything like him, sounds like stone scraping over stone and forming words she can't hear.
She's felt safe as houses right 'til then.
There's a quiet moment, like the storm's taking a breath, and then it buckets. Just opens up until she feels like she'd drown standing up, and the lightning strikes too close to count. Crack of a branch falling.
"God help me," she whispers, between gasps.
She staggers to a stop under a great black tree. Puts her hand out and the branch stabs her. Creep under the thorn, it can save you from harm.
She hunkers down, and then her leg slips--her good leg, thank goodness--and she realizes there's a hole in the ground. A cave. Deep and dark and dry.
She has an electric torch deep in her pocket. Still dry, she can hope. She peers out through the storm, and there's a distant gray shape moving through the trees, hunched and tall as a man, and her heart knocks hard within her and she hesitates only a moment.
She tumbles into the cave, gives a silent scream of pain and clutches at her bad leg. It's deathly dark, and she fumbles for the torch and prays.
It's bigger than she'd thought, in the little circle of light. Bigger, and very dry and still. The thunder seems far away. She looks back up, and she's fallen ten feet, perhaps, further than she'd thought.
She looks around for a long, long while before she stops shaking. Nothing moving. No voices.
Her cane's broken.
The fear's like a chunk of ice in her belly. She can hear her heart pounding. Eases herself up along the cave wall, limps further in, because this goes back a while and, well, what else is there to do? Refuses to think that she'll die down here. Utterly refuses. Her children are waiting.
Even if--even if Herb's waiting too, on the other side.
Keeps moving, flattens herself through a crack in the stone, and then it suddenly opens out. A great low chamber, and she knows next to nothing about caves, true, but she knows what natural looks like. She knows the shapes it takes. This is round and flat-floored and not natural at all. There's faint, faint worn writing under her fingers as she moves along the wall, running the torchlight along, ancient letters like chicken tracks over the stone.
The place is empty except for a long bit of wood in the center. A stick, a staff, maybe. She ventures out from the wall, limping heavily. The thing looks ancient, but sturdy. Rich dark wood, more letters wound along it.
She staggers, drops to one knee. Pain stabs up her thigh. Goes to steady herself with the stick, and the crack of it against the floor of the cave is too loud, far too loud, like a gun had been set off in front of her, and there's a deafening crash of thunder--
Things get a bit blurry.
She's kneeling in the thinning rain by the Jeep. Her hand's wrapped round the head of the staff from the cave. Her blood's pounding in her ears and every hair on her arms is straight on end.
Monsieur Delacroix is staring at her with his hazel eyes wider than she's ever seen him. There's blood on his face; he's clutching one arm, red seeping slow between his fingers from the ragged sleeve. There's a pile of broken stones at his feet. Another a few yards away. The windshield of the Jeep has been wrenched clean off, as if with some great steely hand.
She clutches the staff, sways to her feet. She's unharmed. Her clothes are dry; they crackle with static as she moves.
Gray shapes in the rain, she remembers. Gray people, made of some grinding stone. Stone hand closing on the Monsieur's arm.
"I will not speak," he says slowly, "of what I've seen here today, Mrs. Blake."
What have you seen? she wants to ask, but her throat is very dry. She steadies herself with the staff. She'd been wreathed in lightning, she thinks; had she been struck?
He helps her to the Jeep.
She stares into space as he starts the engine. Breathes. Reaches into her pocket, clutches the photograph, puts her hand back into her lap. The staff's between her knees, the one from the cave. She looks at the ancient letters, and has the utterly mad thought that she knows exactly what they mean. Whoever may find this, if that one be worthy, shall wield the power of the mighty Thor.
"Thor," she whispers. Looks down again, and it's nonsense. Chickenscratch in ancient wood.
Monsieur Delacroix just looks at her for a moment, then pulls slowly out away from the broken stones.
*****
This post is part of the Fanfiction Frenzy for Planned Parenthood, which is wired_lizard's outing for Day of Blogs, and has raised $235 so far. Like what you see? Please consider donating!
*****
Norway, Børgefjell National Park, summer of 1969
There are clouds rolling up along the horizon as Monsieur Delacroix pulls the Jeep up along the low riverbed. Insects humming from the bushes, hungry for blood. Cold mountains stab up along the horizon, jagged granite heights where the trees give out, sheeted with snow higher up, and Donna Blake leans back in the passenger's seat as the jostling slows and takes a deep, deep breath.
She'd fallen in with Monsieur Delacroix in Bergen. Another traveller from the south, like her, only he isn't up here tracking distant cousins. Not even pretending to--she'd given up on it herself a few weeks ago. He is French, and an utter gentleman, though taciturn in most things beyond his distaste for Norwegian alcohol. He helps her up steps when the day is long and her knee is tired, and little, little more.
She doesn't even know his given name. Only that he's wandering up to the ends of the earth because somebody has died, and she only knows that because he murmured something in French when he was hammered on cheap wine he'd hated, and she doesn't particularly know the language, but she thinks the pronouns involved weren't female. Still, she feels perfectly safe around him. They each are here for their own reasons.
She looks up at the dimming sky as he pulls the top up over the Jeep, and ponders that they might well be the only human beings for miles.
"Will you be parking?" she asks politely.
"Oui. There looks to be rain coming." His accent's thick; his face shows little.
"I don't mind." She helps herself out of the Jeep, unfolds her walking cane with the bundle of ribbons tied to the top. It isn't the first time she's wandered in the woods. Ties them around branches as she goes like a golden thread.
"If there's lightning."
"I know what trees to sit under." Beware of an oak, it draws the stroke. Avoid an ash, it courts the flash. Creep under the thorn, it can save you from harm. The one relative she had found--little old lady by the fireplace, said just that.
He hands her a rain hat; she tugs it on over her thick hair and limps up the riverbank.
When she boils it down, perhaps, she feels safe around him because he's out here for the same reasons he is, or so she's fairly sure.
She doesn't sit until she's out of sight of the Jeep, despite the building ache in her bad leg. Eases herself onto a boulder. Deep in the woods at the end of the world, nobody to see. Pulls out the picture in her pocket. Her in her doctor's coat and headlamp, baby Anne pulling goo-goo faces on her knee. Benny, four, trying not to squirm, with his father's hands on his shoulders.
His father. Her husband. Herb Watson, funny and quick with a pun, maker of cracking waffles, loosing a little hair up top but tender as anything in the evening, two months dead. Stroke. He'd been thirty-seven. Pure, stupid chance.
It was both yesterday and years ago. She has a vague memory of not even crying for a week. Too cold. Too busy holding tight to her children. Anne's starting to walk, but she barely put her down and barely slept for, well, longer than she could remember. It's all been longer than she could remember.
Benny and Anne with their Uncle Bobby, Herb's brother, because after too months, it had all become too much. The days were gray and tight around the edges. Patient and patient through her office, and when a fourteen-year-old boy died on the table in a surgery she'd referred him to, she--hadn't cared.
She hadn't even known she was capable of not caring.
Cold wind buffets her, nearly tugs the hat off, and she shrugs deeper into her coat and puts the picture back in her pocket. Fat drops of rain spatter on the rocky ground. She closes her eyes and listens to the rhythm of it and the vast empty silence beyond it. Hum of mosquitos. Roll of thunder in the distance.
Two months, she's been carrying about a rock in her chest. Dead, tight weight. It's drawn her shoulders down; they ache constantly, worse than they ever did when she was carrying Anne. She's thirty-four with two little ones, and this thing is going to drag her down to her death. This thing she's gone to the far corners of the earth to escape.
The rain thickens.
She listens for the thunder.
Flash against her closed eyes, and she counts to herself. One tomato, two tomato. It's silly, she thinks, it's utterly childish. Like when she ran about in the rain when she was eight and soaked all her dresses, pitter-pat bare feet down the stones and concrete of London, splashing. She's always loved the storms. And the storms up here--rolling up over the fjords, like nothing she's ever seen.
The storm's almost a mile away, by the count, and she throws back her head and lets the rain pour down her face and for a moment, just a moment, it eases. The vise around her heart eases, and she breathes.
Stands with a shudder of her bad leg. Limps along with the wet grass soaking her hiking trousers, wet coat hanging heavy, ties a ribbon round the nearest tree and goes. Deeper in the woods with the bugs humming round her. Thunder's three tomatoes away by now, then two. She brushes aside wet oak trees, and now the rain's so thick she can barely see.
Stops as there's a strange, strange noise from above. Not thunder. Nothing like thunder. A voice in the distance which isn't Monsieur Delacroix, isn't anything like him, sounds like stone scraping over stone and forming words she can't hear.
She's felt safe as houses right 'til then.
There's a quiet moment, like the storm's taking a breath, and then it buckets. Just opens up until she feels like she'd drown standing up, and the lightning strikes too close to count. Crack of a branch falling.
"God help me," she whispers, between gasps.
She staggers to a stop under a great black tree. Puts her hand out and the branch stabs her. Creep under the thorn, it can save you from harm.
She hunkers down, and then her leg slips--her good leg, thank goodness--and she realizes there's a hole in the ground. A cave. Deep and dark and dry.
She has an electric torch deep in her pocket. Still dry, she can hope. She peers out through the storm, and there's a distant gray shape moving through the trees, hunched and tall as a man, and her heart knocks hard within her and she hesitates only a moment.
She tumbles into the cave, gives a silent scream of pain and clutches at her bad leg. It's deathly dark, and she fumbles for the torch and prays.
It's bigger than she'd thought, in the little circle of light. Bigger, and very dry and still. The thunder seems far away. She looks back up, and she's fallen ten feet, perhaps, further than she'd thought.
She looks around for a long, long while before she stops shaking. Nothing moving. No voices.
Her cane's broken.
The fear's like a chunk of ice in her belly. She can hear her heart pounding. Eases herself up along the cave wall, limps further in, because this goes back a while and, well, what else is there to do? Refuses to think that she'll die down here. Utterly refuses. Her children are waiting.
Even if--even if Herb's waiting too, on the other side.
Keeps moving, flattens herself through a crack in the stone, and then it suddenly opens out. A great low chamber, and she knows next to nothing about caves, true, but she knows what natural looks like. She knows the shapes it takes. This is round and flat-floored and not natural at all. There's faint, faint worn writing under her fingers as she moves along the wall, running the torchlight along, ancient letters like chicken tracks over the stone.
The place is empty except for a long bit of wood in the center. A stick, a staff, maybe. She ventures out from the wall, limping heavily. The thing looks ancient, but sturdy. Rich dark wood, more letters wound along it.
She staggers, drops to one knee. Pain stabs up her thigh. Goes to steady herself with the stick, and the crack of it against the floor of the cave is too loud, far too loud, like a gun had been set off in front of her, and there's a deafening crash of thunder--
Things get a bit blurry.
She's kneeling in the thinning rain by the Jeep. Her hand's wrapped round the head of the staff from the cave. Her blood's pounding in her ears and every hair on her arms is straight on end.
Monsieur Delacroix is staring at her with his hazel eyes wider than she's ever seen him. There's blood on his face; he's clutching one arm, red seeping slow between his fingers from the ragged sleeve. There's a pile of broken stones at his feet. Another a few yards away. The windshield of the Jeep has been wrenched clean off, as if with some great steely hand.
She clutches the staff, sways to her feet. She's unharmed. Her clothes are dry; they crackle with static as she moves.
Gray shapes in the rain, she remembers. Gray people, made of some grinding stone. Stone hand closing on the Monsieur's arm.
"I will not speak," he says slowly, "of what I've seen here today, Mrs. Blake."
What have you seen? she wants to ask, but her throat is very dry. She steadies herself with the staff. She'd been wreathed in lightning, she thinks; had she been struck?
He helps her to the Jeep.
She stares into space as he starts the engine. Breathes. Reaches into her pocket, clutches the photograph, puts her hand back into her lap. The staff's between her knees, the one from the cave. She looks at the ancient letters, and has the utterly mad thought that she knows exactly what they mean. Whoever may find this, if that one be worthy, shall wield the power of the mighty Thor.
"Thor," she whispers. Looks down again, and it's nonsense. Chickenscratch in ancient wood.
Monsieur Delacroix just looks at her for a moment, then pulls slowly out away from the broken stones.
*****
This post is part of the Fanfiction Frenzy for Planned Parenthood, which is wired_lizard's outing for Day of Blogs, and has raised $235 so far. Like what you see? Please consider donating!