milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Some days are better than others, and some are far, far worse. Wells knew from the moment he woke up this morning that today was going to be one of the bad ones. That's why he slipped away from Annie while she still slept, and why he came here. Oh, sure, he could pummel the heavy bag in his basement, he got one of those a while ago just in case- but he'd be stuck indoors with the knowledge that a city of fourteen million was waiting overhead somewhere. Better to head to Milliways. The bag's outside, for one thing, and the people are a whole lot fewer. He can take company, especially now that he's been working on the bag a good half hour or more. It's just that it goes down far, far better in small doses today.

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"I like Helgi..."

It is possible to hear her annoyance at herself,

"Archie, burn it. I like him better."

Wells chuckles. "All right, I know him too. He's a good sort to have at your back- reminds me of some of my lads from back home. Good fellow all 'round from what I've seen."

"I only had to hit him once."

Fact: whining about how much your love life sucks because you are not Superman when the only other person around is a nine foot tall half-dead teenager is a bad idea.

"Being stupid, was he?"

Wells is a soldier. Sometimes hitting the other bloke really is the right thing to do.

She turns, slowly, and pushes her hair back so that he can see the dead side of her face,

"Someone who has the love of a valkyrie really shouldn't complain about his love-life to someone who looks like this."

Wells flinches, but it's not in revulsion. Not exactly. It's more the sort of flinch that comes with a hiss of recognition.

He did, after all, serve in Iraq.

"Being bloody fucking stupid, then."

"So I hit him. When he stood up again he apologized. It didn't happen again."

Even if he had flinched in revulsion she would have taken it. Two Men, an almost-Man, a god, a dwarf back home, and the Valkyrie have accepted her. Its enough.

"And if a lesson is learned, it is worth the teaching."

"Suppose so," he says. "I'll tell you, though- I shouldn't like to be on the wrong end of one of your fists. You might actually do some lasting damage that way."

She looks down at her hands and says,

"You only have to worry about a hit from this one."

Holding up her right hand,

"With this one, a gentle touch is all it would take."

And she holds up the gloved left one, explaining,

"Everything dies."

Wells nods.

"Has it always been that way?"

She nods, and smiles,

"At my discretion, of course. I am a goddess. My rule is the dead, the damned, the forsaken. Illness and the unheroic death."

One day, he's going to let himself worry about that. One day. But not now.

"You must have quite the realm, then," Wells says. "Population-wise, anyways."

"They lose their minds after about a year in Niflheim."

Please imagine being trapped for geologic ages in a realm full of people too stupid to blink.

"Which is probably for the best, otherwise they'd go mad."

She pauses for a moment, because Men seem to like to know that,

"You wouldn't be one of mine."

"Fuck," Wells says, a wholeheartedly sympathetic sort of noise. Being stuck in London for twenty-four hours without escape is bad enough.

He's not going to lie or try to be diplomatic here, you understand. He's just going to let the relief roll across his face for a moment. "Good," he says. "No offense t'you, but I like having a mind that still works."

Her smile is wry, and she nods after a bit,

"I know. It...the worst thing ever is having to watch great sages and wizards who spent their time trying to make things better for everyone, Man and Elf and Dwarf and Giant and gods alike, dwindle into nothing and not be able to do anything about it.

Sometimes I think that I'm going to destroy the gods for that even more than for my family."

"Sounds like a good reason to me," Wells mutters; he knows what it is, to go to war over what others might become, or had already become.

"Thank you."

And because there really should be hope, she mentions,

"After it is all over? The Edda imply that all the souls will get another chance. It...some of the versions say that Hela won't be as bad as Niflheim was."

Wells nods. "That's something, at least. I'll hold out for that- it sounds a good bit better than most of Hades. I expect that's the other option, considering who my god is."

It's the first time he's ever put it like that openly.

"I dno't know that pantheaon."

She says after a couple of moments of thought,

"I'll put it on my reading list."

And then with a little bit of a blush on the living side of her face,

"I got distracted by trying to follow the continuity in one of the comic-book publishers from an Earth, last time. That killed a couple hundred years."

Hel has spreadsheets!

That gets a chuckle, if only because Wells has seen some of the comic book readers out there. They'd be tickled by the idea of a goddess who was out to sort through all the retcons. "They're the Greeks' gods," he says. "My bit of it's Hephaestos, the smith god. He's in here sometimes. Quiet fellow, but he likes olives."

"I don't tend to like gods."

For, um, understandable reasons!

"I'll stick with my Men and things. They're...safe."

"Fair enough," says Wells. "Never had much use for most of 'em myself, before I came here."

She's silent for a moment, then asks,

"So you did not get a fylgja, you became as you are some other way?"

"Sorry?" says Wells. "I don't speak Old Norse."

"Fylgja...doesn't translate well. Your spirit animal. I can see him sleeping inside, he's grumpy. Not really awake, but grumpy anyway."

He is eyed, with her single eye,

"You aren't much fun when he's out, are you?"