#and the movie stands incredibly firmly on the side of religion which is fucking fascinating for a scifi action blockbuster

[fis-paprikas]

i woke up and i have a several thousand word meta post on avatar (2009) in my head.

[robininthelabyrinth]

Victory in Anticipation (Coldwave) - Chapter 3

Fic: Victory in Anticipation (Ao3 Link) - Chapter 3/3 Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Norse Mythology Pairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart Sequel to Victory in Waiting - read first

Summary: Leonard Snart is dead and his soul has gone to Valhalla, the home of heroes, and that’s the end of the story.

Well.

Not quite.

Warnings:  references to genocide, torture, animal cruelty; Norse mythology appropriate torture shown on-screen

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Len’s so cold he can feel it in his bones.

He’s lost feeling in his fingers long ago. He used every minute of the head start he got, walking the crooked ways in the shadows where even Heimdall has trouble seeing him, but cat-fur-cloak or no, he can’t hide forever and eventually the alarm was raised. The hounds caught his trail some while ago – he’s not sure how long, time doesn’t seem to work right here in the place between the worlds, the mountain stream that drizzles down the gigantic tree roots that Ed called Ygg-something – but they only found the clothing he took with him in the pack. He left it half in a frozen lake, the one with the strange moving shapes under the water. Dead shapes.

Draugr, if such a term can be applied to creatures that weren’t human to begin with.

Jötunheim is –

It’s a graveyard.

There had been some glorious years in Len’s youth when his father had been in jail and his mother still alive; she’d enrolled him in the Hebrew school down the way at the local Reform temple to keep him busy in the afternoons until she finished work. He’d picked up what smatterings of religion he knew about there.

They’d covered the Holocaust, the Shoah, because of course they did – they watched the movies, heard the stories from people’s families, saw the pictures. Every year on remembrance day.

That experience is the only reason he can look upon the ruins of a world murdered in whole and keep moving.

There are bones lying unburied in the fields. Buildings torn open like crabshells to get at the people hiding within. An entire capital city razed to the ground.

Some of the bones are very small.

Others are gigantic.

Not all look human.

It doesn’t matter. They were people, and they are dead, and from what Ed says, it was all to prevent some sort of stupid prophecy. Disgust doesn't even begin to describe Len's feelings on the subject, but he can't think about that now. He has to focus on surviving.

It’s very cold.

Ed says that the coldest place in the universe – the Norse universe, anyway; Len thinks the deepest, darkest parts of space spotted by the Hubble might beg to differ – is called Niflheim, and that before, it was confined into its own realm. He said there was a chance it might be bleeding over into Jötunheim.

Bleeding is the wrong word.

Flooding might be a better one.

The icy water is seeping in everywhere he looks, turning every low point into mud that he has to trudge through, a roiling mist creeping in at the edges of his vision that freezes everything it touches to the point of shattering, and it’s so cold. It’s so incredibly cold.

There’s ice on his fingertips.

Len tries not to look at them. He knows very well what the penalties of frostbite are, and his hands –

He gave up one hand for Mick before.

He’ll give up both to get back to him if he has to.

The apples Iðunn gave him are helping; he’s spacing out the bites. They warm him up inside and let him keep going, but even with the strict rationing he’s been imposing on himself, he’s running out.

The crooked paths are long and twisted, and he’s so very cold. He’s walking along the stream – it keeps trying to lose him, quick turns and dips through ditches, doubling back at odd points that definitely weren’t doing that when he was looking ahead earlier – and he has to keep his eyes firmly fixed to the ground lest he run into an ice-trap, which is like a pothole but with a Venus flytrap’s teeth made of sharp icicles.

He’s pretty sure he heard one of the hounds fall into one, pained whimpers and yips as the ice spread over the dog’s legs, inching up his body toward his heart in veins of ice.

The one-handed war-god hadn’t cared.

There’d been a loud crack of sound, and then there hadn’t been any more wounded noises.

Len wishes he had his gun with him. He’d show the bastard what it means to be cold.

There’s a cave in sight; the stream leads straight there, almost grudgingly, like it’s annoyed that Len’s gotten this far.

At this point, Len just hopes the cave is warmer than where he is now. He can’t hear the dogs anymore – though he’s not sure if that’s because they’re no longer following him or because his ears have frozen over. It’s taking everything he has to keep moving.

He swallows the last piece of apple he has and forces his legs to move, one after the other.

The cave remains stubbornly far away, or maybe he’s just moving slow.

His hands have stopped shaking. He remembers that that’s a bad sign, but he’s not sure he remembers why.

He’s almost there.

He’s almost –

The cave entrance is right in front of him.

Len reaches out with frozen fingers and manages to wrap his hand around the stone.

He pulls himself forward –

Hands shoot out from within the cave and pull him in.

Len gasps in negation, both from the idea of being caught and from the terrible warm emanating from those hands, the warmth of cave, the burning warmth, the –

“Hey, Lenny,” a familiar voice says.

Len squints up at a blur that is coalescing into an even more familiar face.

“Mick?” he asks, scarcely daring to believe it.

“Yeah,” Mick says gruffly, his hands like brands on Len’s frozen shoulders. “It’s me. I came to get you, but it looks like you got most of the way out all by yourself.”

He pauses.

“What’s with all the cat hair?”

Len laughs till his eyes fill with tears.

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Mick was kind enough to bring Len’s parka with him, which – once the cat fur is brushed off, and it comes off so easily now, when before no mud or wind or branches could dislodge it – he wraps around Len’s shoulders and then slides his arms around him, helping him warm up. They sit at the entrance of the cavern and Len leans in, tucks his head under Mick’s chin the way he hasn’t in years.

Len watches the ice drip off his fingers with fascination.

His fingers still work. He has no idea how he got that lucky.

Mick very considerately blows on his fingers as they defrost.

Len permits it until his brain defrosts enough to realize what Mick’s doing, at which point he flips Mick off.

“How’d you survive Jötunheim?” Mick asks, leaning his chin against Len’s head.

“Cat fur to hide me from sight; clothing to distract the hounds,” Len says. “Golden apples to keep me going.”

Mick nods.

They sit in silence for a few minutes.

There’s a thought wiggling in the back of Len’s mind. He stays still, stays quiet, and lets it come forward until it’s loud enough for him to hear.

Then he asks, “How’d you know about Jötunheim? How’d you get here, anyway? Where is here?”

Mick hesitates, which is unlike him.

“I think,” he says slowly. “I think – it’s time for you to meet my family. My parents.”

And he takes Len by the hand, urging him to stand up, and Mick leads him, hand-in-hand, deeper into the great cavern, past the stalactites and the rock.

Igneous rock.

Almost like those videos he’d seen as a kid, educational ones. The inside of a volcano.

And inside –

There’s a man.

“Fuck,” Len says, because that’s just obscene. The man’s half naked, clothing in tatters; he’s splayed out on his back, his arms bound down, his legs bound down, all on three enormous stones, and above him there is a tree with a frankly enormous snake with glistening fangs fully extended, thick gobs of poison dripping off of them in a steady stream, like a leaky faucet. A woman sits by his side, her legs splayed out in exhaustion, and she holds out a mostly-filled bowl with scarred hands to catch the poison before it hits the man’s face. His face is scarred, too, but even as Len watches the scars are sinking back into his skin, little by little. His hair is red, and his face –

His face has Mick’s facile expressions, his sharp chin. Mick’s broad jawline Len sees in the woman, his eyes, his neck.

“Fuck,” Len says again, with even more feeling this time.

These are Mick’s parents.

These are -

Thereupon they took three flat stones, and set them on edge and drilled a hole in each stone –

Maybe Len should have stayed to listen to the end of that story, but whatever. He’s even more glad now that he punched that skald right in his smirking face.

“Mother,” Mick says. “Father.”

The woman looks up, and a smile crosses her weary face. “My little wildfire,” she says. “You have grown large and strong at last.”

Mick’s hand squeezes tightly on Len’s to the point of pain.

The man turns his head and slits his eyes open. “My boy,” he croaks, lips dry, throat echoing with the sound of screams through years uncounted. “My little bright one.”

“Father,” Mick says again, and his voice shakes.

“Come and embrace me, little one,” his mother says. “I would give my soul to embrace you, but I cannot spare my hands.”

Mick doesn’t move at first, so Len untangles their fingers – it takes some effort – and gives Mick a little push in her direction.

Mick looks at Len, eyes wide and lost.

“Go on,” Len urges, then looks at the whole set up. Dropping his voice, he adds, “Ain’t there anything that can be done for him?”

Mick shakes his head mutely, but definitively, and then goes to his mother’s side, dropping to his knees and wrapping his arms around her.

“And when you are done,” Mick’s father says, amusement threading through his voice despite his circumstances, “you really must introduce us to your companion. Though he will have to forgive our poor hospitality; I fear that I am a bit tied up at the moment.”

Len really could get to like this guy. He’s a dick. He’s chained to a rock with a poisonous snake perched a meter above his head, and he’s still a dick. And still making puns. Now that’s devotion to the art.

“My name’s Len,” he offers. Despite the association with his father, he tends to prefer to introduce himself by his last name in an attempt to keep some emotional distance. But, well – this is Mick’s family, and so it’s his family too, he guesses.

Admittedly, this was not what he was imagining, insofar as he ever imagined it. Which he hadn't.

But to be fair, when was Mick ever what he imagined, what he could have imagined? He’s always been so much more.

Besides, not like Len can really cast any stones. He’s an einherjar, now, and one that escaped; that’s not exactly normal either.

Len shoves his hands into his pockets, fingering the feather he used as a token to escape. Yeah. Definitely not normal.

“Len is my bride,” Mick says, and Len flushes. He’s never going to get used to Mick saying that, and it’s been – decades, now. Mick says it with such pride, though, that Len’s given up all attempts at suggesting alternatives. At least Mick’s usually content with saying ‘partner’.

“You have found a bride!” Mick’s mother says, smile lighting up her face, and Mick’s father grins happily, too. “And are you happy?”

“No one could make me as happy as Len does,” Mick says, and means it, and Len flushes even more.

“He seems very fine indeed,” Mick’s father offers, mischief dancing in his eyes. “You must tell us all of his good qualities – how you met, of course, and how you won him – we must judge ourselves how fine a bride you have won, for only the best is good enough for our boy –”

“You must release me, my son,” Mick’s mother says quietly.

Mick’s father’s smile fades and his eyes go wide, white all around. “Not yet,” he protests. “Not yet; surely it is not so soon –”

“If it were longer, I would have waited, my love,” Mick’s mother says. Her eyes are sad. Mick releases her, and his eyes are wide, too, fear and sadness and frustrated anger all. “I cannot delay further.”

Len looks from one to the other to Mick in bemusement. He’s not sure what they’re talking about. He should have listened to that story till the end, even if it was about Mick and his brother being brutalized by uncaring gods. What is it that she has to do that makes them so scared? So sad?

The snake shifts its great, shining coils, tensing like a spring about to pop, its dead-looking eyes glimmering in anticipation.

And then the woman pulls away the bowl, fuck, why?

The poison, without any barrier, falls down straight onto the guy’s face, and he screams – his flesh sizzles – the poison eats away at him like acid – his back arches in inhuman contortion – the ground shakes –

The woman walks as quickly as she can manage towards the cliff, going to pour away the poison; she has to walk, not run, because she’ll spill it otherwise, because it is acid, the poison, that’s why her fingers are so scarred –

Mick gives a cry of pain, like he, too, is being burned alive by acid poison just watching this happen to his father, and Len always knew that Mick loved his father, not like Len and his own, and then Mick – because Mick’s a self-sacrificing idiot, and Len’s always known that too – Mick sticks his own hands between the snake and his father.

And then Mick screams.

He screams and he screams and he screams, but he keeps his hands cupped together, trying to catch as much of the poison as he can even as it drips down to his father's face.

He screams.

No.

No.

Len did not come all this way, he did not survive the endless tedium of Valhalla, befriend the greatest and least of the creatures of the lands of the gods, did not capture Ratatoskr and learn his secrets, did not steal a feather from Muninn and evade the hounds of Tyr, walk the crooked paths and survive the dead wasteland of Jötunheim, only to find Mick and then watch him suffer.

Len dashes forward, desperate to find some way to help, something, anything to make it stop – it’s just chains, holding him down, surely, and Len knows chains, there must be some key, some lock, some way – he reaches for his pockets, his lockpicks, but he doesn’t have any lockpicks, they were all lost on his way to Valhalla and there weren’t any others there, but he does have Muninn’s feather, which tapers to a long point at the end, maybe he can use that –

His fingers close over the feather, and suddenly he sees it, the knot at the high left corner, the lock that binds the chains together.

Len uses the feather and his nail in combination, desperately prying the lock open, and it’s only years of experience being cool in the face of all provocation, years of practicing on every type of lock in existence no matter how loud or noisy, no matter if the police are shooting at him or Mick’s lit the whole place on fire again, that lets him keep his focus now, with Mick screaming and Mick’s father screaming, too, as the poison burns through Mick’s hands and falls upon his face, Mick’s mother sobbing as she hurries to the edge –

Len pops the lock.

He grabs Mick’s father and pulls him away from the stones, from the snake, throws the two of them into Mick to get them away, away from the snake and the rocks and everything - and suddenly, abruptly, everything is dead quiet.

The screams stop, the sobs stop, the hissing stop, even the damnable plop-plop-plop of the snake’s venom stops.

“What have you done?” Mick’s father asks blankly. His face is healing even as Len watches, much faster than before, zipping back up like a Hollywood special effect. Even Mick’s hands are healing impossible-fast, bubbling flesh calming, turning back from blistered red to his regular ruddy tone.

It’s only after a few moments of everybody staring at him – all of them, Mick and his mother and his father and even the snake are all staring at him – that Len realizes that it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“I…got you away from the snake?” he says hesitantly. He’s not sure why they’re all gaping at him.

“'None who wish to can release him',” Mick’s father quotes. “How did you get around that? No one who wants to let me out of my bindings can do so; that’s the spell and the curse that binds me.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Len says, blinking. “Not really. I mean. It wasn’t really my primary objective or anything.”

“What?”

“I didn’t particularly care one way or another about releasing you,” Len clarifies. “No offense, you seem cool and all, but I met you, like, five minutes ago and yes, your situation sucked and all, but I’m pretty used to ignoring terrible things.”

“Then what did you want?” Mick’s father demands.

“I wanted Mick to get his hands out from under that stupid snake,” Len says blankly. Isn’t it obvious? “And he wouldn’t do that if you were still there.”

They stare.

“It was hurting him,” Len emphasizes.

They all stare at him a few seconds longer, and then Mick’s father starts to laugh, high and clear and incredibly amused. “Oh, my son,” he laughs, bending over at the waist. “My son, my son! What a bride you have brought before us!”

“Do you know what you just did?” Mick asks Len, his eyes still wide with shock.

“Uh,” Len says. He’s getting the sinking feeling that more just happened than he thinks what he did really warrants.

“Do you know what happens when he is released?” Mick’s voice actually cracks in the middle of that sentence. He’s clearly under a lot of stress; Len has no idea why. It’s not like Mick doesn’t know about Len’s skill at picking locks.

“I may have left before hearing the end of that story,” Len confesses.

Mick’s father howls with laughter.

“Do you even know what Ragnarök is?” Mick shrieks. It's very unlike him.

“No one ever said!” Len says defensively. “All the other einherjar wouldn’t talk about it! And it’s not like I ever looked up Norse myths before, okay? Other than, like, that one Xena episode…technically it was a Hercules episode, but it came on at the same time as the regular Xena episode…and I only saw half of that, too…”

Mick puts his head into his hands that way he always does when Len does something beyond belief. Mick’s mother wraps her arms around her son and hides her smile in his shoulder.

“What gold is this,” Mick’s father says, utterly delighted. “I would not change it for the world; this is the finest joke I have ever heard.”

“Lenny,” Mick says, his voice slightly muffled by his fingers. “Ragnarök is the end of the world.”

“What,” Len says.

“The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea; the hot stars down from heaven are whirled; fierce grows the steam and the life-feeding flame, till fire leaps high about heaven itself,” Mick’s mother says, her voice lyrical. “Now Garm howls loud before Gnipahellir; the fetters will burst, and the wolf run free; much do I know, and more can see, of the fate of the gods…you didn’t know?”

Len opens his mouth, then closes it again when nothing seems to come out.

After a few seconds, he finds his voice. “So, uh,” he says. “Most awkward meet the parents ever, or most awkward meet the parents ever, am I right?”

And Loki’s laughter fills the room.