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Prologue
Long oars crashed in the water and the warriors chanted in time as they rowed, but the high front deck (the fo'c'sle? Clark was pretty sure he used to know that kind of thing once, but it was gone now with all the rest of that world past) was an island of silence, just him and Diana wrapped in the warm furry hide of some massive beast. She didn't get cold, but he'd started to, these past few decades, and the wind off the ocean cut his skin fiercely if he didn't cover up.
"I had a conversation with someone once," he said, quiet. "About being cold. With... Bruce, his name was Bruce."
"Yes. Bruce Wayne, who calls himself Batman. A dear comrade."
He sighed, leaned his head back against Diana's shoulder, and asked, plaintive, "Tell me about him?"
"Bruce is a stern man," said Diana, slipping into English. "Closed off, wounded, with a tremendous need to be in control. His eyes are like ice – just as blue, just as chill. But he is principled, honorable; deep down, immeasurably kind, though he hides it; and sometimes I think far braver than you or I, and sometimes I think merely stubbornly foolish, for he does not have the first fraction of our strength, but he has never flinched from our greatest foes. When he laughs, he makes no sound, but you can hear it in his heartbeat, see it in the curve of his shoulders."
"His hair is – black, like mine," said Clark, almost sure he was right, trying to catch the image Diana's words floated through his mind.
"Yes, though not as thick or wavy. He is leaner than you, his face narrower, and he bears many scars."
"And the three of us were..." He paused. The word was 'friends' but it wasn't the word he wanted. "You and Bruce... were you," he had to know, wasn't sure he wanted to, "lovers?"
"No," she said simply.
"I think – I'm sure he loved you, though." He felt melancholy, wistful, and he could hear it in his voice. "I think the whole League was a little in love with you. Even the women. But especially Bruce."
"You think so?" said Diana, with quiet amusement. "I'm quite sure Dinah at least had her attentions focused elsewhere."
"Dinah?"
"Dinah is the Black Canary. She is bright and fierce, and her passions show clearly on her face. She loves and fights and dreams openly, without shame or reservation. She builds families around her who share her sense of justice; she helped create the League, helped reawake the Society, creates a bridge between the Bats and Arrows and Titans. Her gift is a great scream that can fold metal with its vibrations, and when she's angry or frustrated, she hums a little, deep in her throat, though the pitch is so low that only you and J'onn and I can hear it."
"J'onn," said Clark, bit by a sudden spike of recognition, and he thought green and lonely and kin and tried to make sense of it. "Tell me about J'onn."
And she did; she told him about J'onn, and Hal, and Kyle, and Plastic Man and Huntress and Big Barda and a hundred others as the boat wound its way over the waters. It wasn't a new conversation between them they must have had it a thousand times before, Clark finding a fragment of his memory, a name or a smile or a superpower, and Diana describing it, explaining it, painting it in his mind until it was as real and vibrant and familiar as the endless red of Asgard's skies. She remembered everything, so easily, and once she'd told him, so did he, lost friends and faded birthdays and the sound of his father's voice, the smell of his mother's cooking, like it was yesterday, and it would be a decade or more before it all slipped away again.
But he never asked her about Lois, not once, and she never offered.
-)(-
Gods, Mortals, and the Blood Between
It took ten days for Clark to really begin to understand Valhalla. They'd spent that first week building slowly, with minor victories, to what he understood was a major one – to him, it just seemed like a piece of forest, but Thor had marked it as an important rallying point and Diana had agreed, and Clark had long ago learned implicit trust for her tactical judgement. The soldiers seemed to feel the same, given the mood at the feast that evening. Every night so far had been rowdy, but that dinner was beyond description – Diana, sitting across from him at Thor's right hand, was an island of proud calm in a sea of human chaos, and even with his superhuman senses (dampened though they were in this strange place), he could barely hear her speak above the cheering and singing and shouting.
And then there was a sudden change of mood, a shift of cadence and movement as the chaos broke apart and re-formed, two men spilling out of the crowd and slamming against the heavy wall of the feasting hall, shouting and snarling and crashing into the end of the low table where Clark and his friends sat. They were both big, scarred, furious warriors with flashing eyes, and Clark thought he recognized the one in the bearskin just before he went down hard under a punch by the bald one in chain armor.
They rolled on the floor, the bald one pressing on the windpipe of his opponent, and Clark looked at Thor and Diana, waiting for one of them to reach over and stop it, to call for an end. To his utter shock, they were both smiling, watching the battle with amusement and far too much fascination.
"It seems the wager falls my way, fair general," boomed Thor, clapping Diana on the shoulder graciously with a wide, toothy grin.
Diana just smiled back, that slight, knowing expression, and parried confidently, "A moment more, Lord."
Clark followed their gaze over to the fight again, where the bearskinned warrior had gained the upper hand. With a shove and a primal, wordless howl, he shoved the shoulders of the bald warrior hard against the cold dirt floor, and slammed his mouth down. A wave of laughter and raucous taunting and approval rolled through the watching crowd as the warriors kissed, wild and hard, a different field of battle more than any kind of affection, and the bald one slammed them around again, reaching down and pulling his partner's cock out of his breeches right there on the ground.
"Why, it seems I win after all," said Diana, just as Clark jerked his gaze away from the actual full-on sex happening ten feet away, face flaming red even in the dim, ruddy light of the hall. She caught his eyes, and her own danced as she laughed, loud and clear and joyous and teasing. "Welcome to Valhalla, Kal!"
-)(-
It was another five days after that, though, before he realized she wasn't really on his side at all. Another evening, another victory, another feast, and Diana was at Thor's right hand and Clark at hers, Diana mid-sentence in a story of a great amazon battle at Doom's Door. And then suddenly, two bodies fell across the middle of the table, right into the sauce – a male warrior with his pants half-down lying on a female wearing nothing but her helm, who both managed a moment between thrusts to turn at Thor and smile.
"Good morrow, m'Lord!" the male warrior saluted, and Thor laughed his loud, booming laugh and shot back an equally enthusiastic "Well met, Sorren, Brundar!"
And Diana, after frowning down at her food and then at the smashed gravy bowl now upside down on the table, reached out one-handed, flipped the two lovers neatly over, and swept her rib haunch through the sauce now smeared across the woman's back – and did so rather sensually at that, with a decidedly predatory smile. And as she leaned back and bit deep and satisfied into the meat, the female warrior rolled up, arched her back, and winked down, while Thor laughed even harder and the table shook with the approving fist-pounding and cheers and howls of the other warriors all around.
He asked her about it, later, in the room they shared, still so embarrassed he could barely get the words out.
She just smiled fondly. "Asgard is about celebration of the physical, Kal. Even in desperate war and endless battle. Perhaps especially then, for the Aesir, like amazons, take great pleasure in combat. It is a world for the joy of muscle and skin and sinew, for exultation in the body. Shame is a construct of the mind, and has no place here."
"It's not about shame, Diana, it's about decency! They were – right there on the table!"
"I admit you could make a case for hygiene," Diana mused, her voice laced with humor. "But then, everyone here is either inhumanly resistant to disease or already dead, so it's not much of an issue."
He stared at her in astonishment. "How can you be so nonchalant about this? Amazons aren't... amazons don't do that kind of thing either. Doesn't it make you even a little uncomfortable?"
"You've never been to Themyscira during Aphrodesia," she said, still smiling. "Or Dionysia, for that matter. You must remember, Kal, that when there is no concern for pregnancy or disease, a culture does not develop the same... restrictions to sexuality that yours has created."
It hit him slow, and not especially happily. "You think I'm wrong with this," he said, half in wonder, half in horror.
"I think you're American, Kal," she said gently. "You're the manticore's sister here. A fish out of water, as you would say it. You'll just have to learn to breathe air, while we're here."
-)(-
It was hard to learn the language even without the way the magic here seemed to slow his senses – Thor and Diana were really the only people who talked to him much, and both tended to use English – so by the second month or so of their exile Clark had still barely picked up a dozen words. It was, he had to admit, something of a self-perpetuating problem, since not understanding anybody meant he tended to get bored with feasts and social occasions and cut out early, further limiting his exposure. Diana often left with him, at least, as she had this evening, leading him toward whatever corner of the reclaimed village she'd reserved for them.
As they turned the corner around the building, though, she stopped short. Behind the hall, on the large bare patch of dirt between the woodpile and the well, was a little girl, darting wildly and swinging a broom like a clumsy sword against imaginary foes. She was maybe fourteen, thin, barefoot and dirty, but for all her size and dishevelment, she was fierce, and Diana laughed with delighted surprise.
The girl stopped dead at the sound and dropped the broom, turning beet red in embarrassment and a little wide-eyed with fear. She stammered something short and nervous, and Clark offered her his most disarming smile. "What's she saying?"
"She knows who we are, and she's afraid we'll punish her for neglecting her chores," said Diana fondly, and Clark could tell she'd already fallen in love. "What's your name?" she said, in English for Clark's benefit, before repeating the question in Norse.
"Herja," was the wary reply.
Diana offered their names in response, laying a warm hand on his arm when she said "Kal," and then kept talking as she walked over to the woodpile, picked up a long, narrow stick, and snapped it in half. Herja jumped a little at the sound, but thought fast enough to catch the smaller half when Diana tossed it at her.
Brandishing the larger half in a loose two-handed grip, Diana settled into a sword stance and tossed out a friendly but firm sentence that could only mean "Like this." The girl cocked her head, suspicious, but after a moment, mirrored Diana's position.
Diana beamed, a wide, happy smile of triumph, and after a brief verbal correction that had Herja shifting her weight, glanced at Clark. "I'm sorry, Kal. We may be a while. You should go on without me, one of the soldiers will show you the way."
He watched the hungry, disbelieving joy on Herja's face, and the eager delight of discovery on Diana's, and offered them a smile of his own, as he settled to a seat on the edge of the well. "No, that's fine. I'll watch."
-)(-
Clark found Diana at the forge, fixing her helm, smoothing the red-hot metal like clay between her naked fingers. It wasn't anything he couldn't do himself, and he knew it couldn't possibly hurt her, but it was deeply unnerving to watch all the same. He tried to ignore it; snatching the metal away out of irrational and misplaced protectiveness in the middle of her work was probably not the best way to start a conversation that already had too much potential for argument.
Instead, he just said, trying to sound calm and not suspicious. "Why don't they flirt with me?"
Diana looked up, mild incomprehension on her face.
"The soldiers. The valkyries. Anyone."
"You don't want them to," she said, still seeming confused.
"No, I don't, but why should that matter to them? Sorren and Brundar are married, Snorri's pledged to wait for his lover, Torhilde only wants Thrudr and beats anyone else who flirts with her to a pulp, but none of that stops anyone from trying with any of them. What makes me so different?"
She quenched the helm and watched him carefully for a moment, the way she usually did when she suspected he wouldn't like what she was going to say.
"They think you're my consort," she said finally, "and while it is one thing to seduce a fellow warrior, it is quite another to steal from one's master. I am their general and the right hand of their king and god. Not a one of them but Thor's own blood would dare approach you without asking my permission. And I fear you are not killer enough for Thrudr's taste, nor female enough for Magni's."
"And you've been telling them all to buzz off," said Clark tightly.
"You would rather be harassed?" Diana shot back.
"I would rather you not lead people to believe you own me."
She gave him a hard look.
He glared right back. "I'm a big boy, Diana. I can protect my own virtue. How and even if I keep my oath to Lois is my business, not yours. I don't care if this is your world or what you think the rules are or how anyone else here sees us, you don't own me and you don't have the right to make that decision for me."
"... No, I suppose I don't," she said, mostly dismissive but with a faint, half-buried note of dark anger, as she turned deliberately back to her armor. She was done with him, and she spoke curtly, attention on her breastplate as she began to press out the dents. "Very well. I leave the choice of how to manage your oath to you. From this moment, I will do everything in my power to avoid even the most incidental involvement with your sex life."
"Good," said Clark, and he turned sharply and left, and he'd been right and she'd admitted it and backed off and he'd gotten exactly what he came to her for, and it didn't make the least bit of sense that he felt such a sharp, echoing sense of loss.
-)(-
"How long have we been here?" Clark asked one night, as Diana settled their furs on the floor of the tent. He'd tried to keep track, at first. He counted when he could, marked the days on a scrap of loose parchment until he ran out of charcoal, made notches in his shield until it was split in half and lost on a battlefield. Not that their life here was conducive to timekeeping in the first place; the sun and moon were abstract concepts, the sky more a reflection of the mood of the land below than any stable metric of days or seasons, and often enough there was nothing above for weeks on end but a dim, oppressive blood-red ceiling marred by sulphur yellow clouds. And of course they didn't sleep or eat or march on any kind of schedule.
But even that wasn't really the problem. Something about Asgard just seemed to mangle his sense of time. The settlement they camped outside tonight was one they'd visited a decade before, according to Thor, but walking among the empty houses, Clark felt like barely a week had passed since he'd last stood on those cobblestone streets. Battles a generation gone felt like they'd happened just yesterday. And yet, somehow, the seconds seemed to stretch out forever, and he could feel the past, feel Earth, slipping away behind him, further and further with every heartbeat, fading with the swiftness of a dream he'd had but couldn't count how long ago.
Diana, though, always knew the answer, to the day.
"Eighty years," she said simply. The first time he'd asked, her voice had been laced with apology, with regret for having pulled him here, however unintentional the act had been. But it had been a long time since then, and now she spoke of their being here as just another fact of life. He couldn't decide which tone bothered him more.
"Eighty years," he repeated, with something like disbelief.
"Well, seventy-eight, and a little under six months," she said, and then with a quick grin, "if you're curious, it's a Saturday."
He smiled back, fleeting, then peeled off the last of his armor and flopped to the ground. "The last time I asked it was sixty. How does that happen?"
"For that I can go multiple choice. Do you want 'because the gods will it' or a quick primer on four-dimensional physics?"
He smiled again, but made a show of throwing his pillow at her anyway. "You know what I meant. How can I go two decades without even wondering what day it is?"
She propped herself up on his pillow – oh, he was going to regret throwing it at her, no way he was getting it back now without a fight – and stared at him thoughtfully. The light bounced red off the walls and tinted her eyes violet, and he blinked and looked away.
"Mortal minds are built for mortal time," she finally said. "For Oikoumene, Midgard, Earth, for change and entropy, decay and rebirth. But Asgard is timeless. You will never age here, perhaps never completely lose your Kryptonian gifts even if the sun never rises again. If your perception of time is... skewed... I imagine it's no more than your brain attempting to cope with something it was never designed to interpret."
"You're mortal, and it doesn't bother you," Clark said, almost petulantly.
"I'm an amazon, Kal," she said, and pulled his pillow out from under her, dropped it next to his head, and rolled until her back was to him. He knew better than to push her for more when she made that particular gesture, but then again, he didn't need to. He could finish her sentence just fine.
I'm an amazon, Kal. I was designed to live forever.
He stared up at the ceiling of the tent for a very long time before sleep claimed him.
-)(-
One of the privileges of Diana's rank was privacy; rather than dwelling in the main camp with the teeming, boisterous masses of the war host, they pitched their tent on the far side of the armory and mess, a good stone's throw from Thor and his children's tents and the handful of other generals' in a wide circle. When night fell, the whole huge gang of valkyries would pile into every empty space around them, sleeping under the open sky curled up against the massive wolves they rode into battle, but for now they were at revelry amidst the strange perpetual barfight of the soldiers' life, and there was no one in the officers' camp but Diana and Herja, the wooden clack of training swords and the fierce peal of Diana's laughter breaking the still afternoon air.
Clark stood there a moment and watched them, unwilling to announce himself just yet, as Diana, a wooden axe in each hand, flipped and twirled like a dervish, smacking out a wild rhythm against the round shield and weighted wooden sword that Herja parried with. He remained reluctant at best about learning any martial art more sophisticated or deadly than the simple sport wrestling he'd done in high school, but he'd been around more than enough battle by now to recognize that Herja was getting better, was holding her own through genuine skill and not any kind of coddling on Diana's part (at least beyond keeping her reactions at a human level).
Diana maneuvered their battle around in a tight circle until Clark was in Herja's field of vision, and in that first moment of surprise as Herja saw him, Diana lashed out a quick hooking kick at the girl's feet. Herja leapt over it easily and rolled away, keeping the shield between herself and Diana without missing a beat. Diana watched after, bright with pride, as Herja slung the shield easily onto her back and charged toward Clark.
"Kal, Kal! I hit my Lady, I scored a hit on her, Kal!" she yelped excitedly, leaping a good three feet into his arms with enough force to knock the wind clean out of any normal man. Clark, of course, was somewhat more than normal, so he just caught her and spun her around, lifting off the ground and leaving her laughing and kicking the air as they circled.
"Bravely done, Herja! You'll be a valkyrie in no time, at this rate," he said, setting her back down and looking her over. She seemed taller than when last he'd seen her, and ropy with muscle under her smock, the last vestiges of baby fat melted away out of his sight while he'd been spending his days in the camp learning smithing and moving rocks and trying to teach himself to like the taste of beer.
"Provided you keep up on your chores," added Diana as she came over to join them. "Do you not have wolves to feed, little one?"
Herja shot him a comically exaggerated look of panic, then doffed shield and sword, handed them to Diana with a bow and a gracious "many thanks for the lesson, my Lady," and dashed off.
Clark followed Diana to the equipment rack as she put away the gear and hung up her own axes, waiting patiently for him to speak.
"She's gotten older," he finally said. There wasn't any real point in framing it as a question.
She flattened her lips, a subtle sign of assent he'd learned to read as well as any nod. "About a year for every fifty or so, it seems. I make her for perhaps seventeen by now, though she tends to act somewhat younger."
"She's certainly a wellspring of youthful enthusiasm," he agreed. "She sort of reminds me of someone, actually, though as usual I've got no idea who."
Her eyes cut sideways, sharp indigo fire beneath their lids, and she didn't offer him the missing piece of his memory as she usually would, didn't even reply, just watched him. He looked away, dropped his shoulders, apology without explicit acknowledgment; Herja reminded her of someone too.
"How is her aging possible, Diana?" he asked, pulling the conversation away from the blinking mine of whatever bit of their past he was missing. "Better question – she's a child. Why is she here at all?"
"A cruelty meant to be a kindness," she said, silently thanking him for the shift in subject with the most muted of nods. "Her mother was called to be a valkyrie, an honor granted her for falling in valiant battle in an effort to protect her daughter. Herja was not four feet away from her when she died, and when the valkyries came to collect her mother's soul, she saw, and begged them to take her with them.
"To honor her mother's effort and to save Herja from the man who orphaned her, the valkyries agreed, and brought her here to Valhalla. But in becoming a valkyrie, her mother lost all feeling she had for her own past, and Herja has been a bereft vassal of the einherjar ever since. She's alive, Kal, flesh and blood just like us. That is why she ages – she wishes to, and there is life enough in her to answer that desire, however slowly, even in this timeless place."
Clark stared at her in shock. "Surely Thor..."
"Thor honors her request to stay here among his host," said Diana, a faint current of disapproval in her tone. "There is much to do in a war camp that soldiers are unwilling to accomplish. Having a girl around to do the scullery work that valkyries and fifth-century warriors disdain is motive enough to keep her here as long as she wishes, for a general with other things on his mind."
"But there must be something we can do, some way to get her away from this kind of –"
"We can train her," said Diana, cutting him off firmly, "for the life she has chosen. You cannot protect everyone, Kal. It is a far greater service to give those you love the means to protect themselves."
-)(-
It was usually impossible to tell, but there was actually a moon in the sky tonight, brightly visible through the half-open door flap, and Clark guessed from its motion that it was maybe five hours after nightfall when Diana slipped into the tent. His nose had never been even half as good as hers, but from this close it was almost overwhelming – the thin trace of sweat and sex on her skin, her own scent of fire and fertile earth and orchids, and something foreign, alien, like the smell of cold steel and ice-ridden rivers after a thaw.
"You're awake," she said, as she pulled off her boots.
"Yeah. Guess I'm just not used to sleeping without a roommate," he shrugged, rolling over onto his side to look at her. Her hair was unbraided, wild and loose and bright in the moonlight, spilling over her shoulders like a cascade of silver. He flopped back onto his spine. "How long have we been here?"
"Two and a quarter centuries, give or take."
"Two-hundred twenty-five years," he murmured in Khund. He and Diana spoke a strange mishmash of language with each other, a hundred different tongues – French and Mandarin, Kryptonian and Themysciran, Farsi and Interlac, and he'd thought he'd known a lot of languages, but Diana put him to shame, knew the three dialects of Dominator and the private language of the Saanti tribe, spoken only by a single group of a hundred natives in the Congo jungle – but they seldom used Khund. It was a painful language to try to speak, all growls and guttural coughs, and just about anything you said in it sounded like a curse.
"Two hundred thirty one, if you want to be precise," said Diana softly. "It's June, which goes some way toward justifying this oppressive heat."
"I didn't think you'd be back tonight."
"There was no reason for me to stay."
He turned to look at her again at that, puzzled. She was sitting up in her sleeping furs, braiding her hair, and giving him that level, ever-so-slightly maternal look that he'd learned to interpret as oh dear, Kal's got culture shock again, I wonder what's got him all twisted this time.
"So this is... what, a casual thing?"
She paused for a moment. "Not, I think, the way you mean it. But neither are we what you would term 'serious'." She pursed her lips slightly, and he could tell she was holding back a comment about the ridiculous, backward ignorance of Man's World. "Philiotes, not erostes or symvíai," she said, slipping into Themysicran; friends with benefits, not lovers or mates, though he knew that was a poor translation and he'd never really understood the subtleties.
"I don't understand," he said. "I thought you didn't... Reginleif's been flirting with you every single night since we got here. Bor's been only slightly less persistent, and there isn't a soldier in Thor's army who hasn't tried his luck with you at least once. If the... lack of anything deeper... isn't a problem for you, why wait until now?" He watched her in open confusion. The obvious answer, that she simply missed intimacy so much she'd finally given in, didn't make sense – not from her, not from Diana, who bent her body to her will as easily as she bent steel between her hands.
"I thought it would help put you at ease," she said simply, laying back in her furs and rolling to face him. "The culture here, the openness of the einherjar to pleasure, it makes you uncomfortable. Had I immediately behaved the same, it could only have worsened that discomfort. But you seem more at peace with Asgard's ways, now."
He stared at her in open astonishment. "You've held yourself back for two hundred and thirty one years, just so I would feel less weird about being here."
"Yes," she said, sounding a little puzzled, like it was the most obvious, natural thing in the world and she was astonished that he was astonished.
"For something that..." He shook his head. "Diana, why?"
"Because you're my friend," she said, simply. She rolled onto her back and closed her eyes. "You should sleep, Kal. We march again tomorrow."
-)(-
Clark had eventually gotten used to Thor and his children; for all that they were gods, they spoke, fought and argued like any human, and after a while, he'd started thinking of them basically as metas. It let him forget, sometimes, the stakes they were fighting for, and the players in the conflict. Certainly, he wasn't anything like prepared for Freya, glimmering majestically as she strode through the wreckage of the rout she'd caused when her army had rolled over the horizon to reinforce Thor's.
"Diana of Themyscira, child of the Olympians and Champion of Valhalla," she called, raising a hand to Diana. "Greetings and well met from the hosts of Sessrumnir."
She was tall, and proud, and every inch a god, and her armor fell far short of practical. Admittedly, Clark had seen more revealing swimsuits on high schoolers at the local Y in Metropolis... but despite that, he had seen Playboy spreads far less arousing. Something about it, the cut, the lay of the curves, the way she held herself, it was tantalizing, taunting, calculated. She smiled at him, and he couldn't decide if he wanted to shine his shoes and salute or strip naked and throw her across the nearest flat surface, both impulses equally overwhelming.
"And this must be the heroic mortal Kal."
And oh, that look, it was an invitation, a demand, and some part of him thought he should be saying no for some reason but he didn't even remember how. But Diana, God bless Diana, reached out and put her hand over the goddess's heart.
"No, my Lady, let him be," she said, and it was gentle, and respectful, but they were the words of an equal, and not for the first time since coming to Asgard, Clark felt like a child, confused and needy and ignored, half-hard and not sure why or what was happening to him, the adults around him murmuring secrets over his head, discussing arcane adult questions that he didn't understand.
"He is yours, then?" asked Freya, and she looked at Diana, and she turned off that smirk, and it was like a fog cleared and Clark could breathe again, could think, could remember Lois, Lois, like a calming zen mantra.
"Not mine," said Diana, and did Clark imagine the note of regret, the fleeting hint of sadness? "But someone's. And he has taken an oath to hold her always in his heart."
At that, Freya graced him with another smile, but this was warm approval, not demand, and it reminded him – reminded him of Diana, actually. There was safety in that smile.
"Come, then, Diana," she said, and she put her arm around the amazon's shoulders and turned them away. "I have a battle to fight for Vanheim, and you for Asgard, but here our paths cross and we have respite for a while. Let us sit and hone our strategies and taste of joy in honor of noble, fasting Kal."
-)(-
Thor's army and the host of Sessrumnir camped together for two full weeks, and Clark found the days astonishingly easy to keep track of. Every consecutive morning waking slowly, on his own time, too late for breakfast, every consecutive day of aimless wandering and bawdy jokes from Thor, and every consecutive night spent with only the sound of his own breathing echoing off the walls of his tent burned brighter than any calendar or hash-marked parchment in his merely mortal brain.
Surely, back home, in that other world, in his other life, he had gone much longer than fourteen days without seeing Diana. Surely glimpsing the flash of gold and crimson armor and the snap of that long obsidian braid across a muddy, war-trampled field hadn't felt like breathing again, in that place so far lost. Surely the catch in his throat had belonged to another woman. Lois, he thought, Lois, but it was the white of Diana's smile that made his chest ache.
"Kal," she said, laying her hand on his shoulder, warmth in her voice and her touch, a light in her eyes that he hadn't seen in decades. Anger flared low and dark in his belly.
"Are they leaving, then?" he asked sharply, stepping back away from her fingers, indicating Freya's milling army with a flick of his chin.
She cocked her head minutely, surprised at the rebuff. "Yes, and our host as well, hopefully by nightfall. Should night fall today," she added with a speculative glance upward. "I had thought to pack our tent."
He turned sharply, aware he was being unfair but unable to quite stop himself, and strode towards the site, boots squelching noisily in the mud. He could feel her following at his shoulder, though she did so silently. It struck him that she might be flying, just a few inches off the ground – a quietly playful form of locomotion that he'd seen her use maybe a dozen times in all the outstretched centuries of their exile. He felt his jaw ache from the clenching of his teeth at the thought.
"I apologize if I insulted you when I interceded with Freya," she finally said, as they stepped beneath the woolen walls where he'd spent fourteen nights with only his own heartbeat for company. "I promised that I would leave the choice of how you keep your oath to you, and I will continue to honor that promise. I only interfered with Freya because it would not have been your choice had I not done so."
Clark had only been half listening, but at that he paused, one hand still lifting the corner of his sleeping roll, and actually looked back at her. "And how do you figure that?"
"She is a god of passion," said Diana with careful diplomacy, even as she folded spare clothes and war trophies neatly into their proper trunks. "It is her power to stir the hearts and bodies of men with a smile, and to raise desire beyond the strength of reason to contain it."
He dropped the sleeping roll and stood. "So she's a walking roofie, is what you're telling me."
"That's... a little simplistic, but a fair enough parallel, I suppose."
"Which doesn't bother you, at all."
"As I said, your analogy is simplistic. There's a certain... you could call it 'cultural consent,' perhaps. And it is not entirely conscious on her part."
"And this works only on men?" he asked, eyes narrowed, arms crossed.
She shot him a sideways glance, her hands pausing on the lid of the clothes trunk, and there was no way she didn't know where he was going but she answered anyway, voice tightly and obviously reined back from the edge of dangerous anger. "'Human' might be a better word."
"Not 'amazon,' though, never that," spat Clark. "You spend fourteen days with your face in the woman's codpiece, but I'm the one who needs to be protected from her brain-melting sex pollen ways. Yes, that makes perfect sense. Thank you ever so much for looking out for me."
Diana slammed the trunk shut and turned, eyes cold. "Don't be crude, Kal," she said in a voice that could wither steel. "And while you're at it, don't be stupid. On Rann at high noon under a triple yellow sun, you're still a hundred times more human than I could ever be. I'm in no more danger of Freya's charms than a fish is of drowning, and if I choose to sport with her, it's no less fitting than your quite apt devotion to another mortal, is it."
Clark turned on his heel and walked out of the tent.
-)(-
"How long have we been here?" asked Clark quietly, easing cautiously up to Diana's side near the head of the train.
She didn't look at him, and her voice was stern, but he saw a smile twitch briefly at the corner of her mouth. "Five hundred sixty-six years, three months, eight days. It's Monday evening."
Head down, he took a half-pace forward and fell into step with her. "I'm sorry," he said.
"... as am I," she said. "I should not have abandoned you that way."
"Oh, God, no, Diana. Please don't think that," he said earnestly. "I'm not a child. ...Not that you'd know that from the way I've been acting," he grimaced, winning another twitching smile from Diana, "but I can survive two weeks without supervision. And I certainly have no right to dictate what you can and can't do or who you do it with. And I really do appreciate you protecting me from the love-god whammy. You're right, this isn't my world, and I'm honestly grateful you're here to keep my ignorance from getting me in trouble."
"Except when I spend two weeks with my face in Freya's codpiece," said Diana wryly.
Clark winced. "Did I say I'm sorry yet? Because I'm really, really, truly sorry. I just..."
Diana turned to look at him for the first time, her eyes brightly azure with curiosity and concern.
"You've never... when you... 'sport'... it's never seemed serious before. Ninety percent of the time you're even back in our tent by midnight, and I can't remember you ever being out two nights in a row. But... with Freya... I mean, you guys hit it off from the first second you saw each other, and you spend all this time talking strategy that goes way over my head, and she seems to really, I guess... get you, without that whole reverent 'you're the boss' thing that I know bugs you sometimes. And suddenly you were just gone and I guess I was jealous... best friend-girlfriend jealous, I mean," he clarified, and she didn't contradict him – "which is totally selfish and unfair of me and I'm really so, so sorry –"
"Kal," Diana said, a hint of mirth in her tone. "Stop apologizing. I'm hardly blameless myself. I was neglectful of our friendship and inconsiderate of your feelings, and I spoke inexcusably to you yesterday when we argued. I think it's fair to say at this point that we each caused hurt and we each regret it and it's best to move on, yes?"
Clark smiled wide, and felt his step lighten. "I think I can live with that."
"As for Freya," Diana said. "Yes, we had a deeper connection than I've known in a lover since we came here. She has a brilliant strategic mind and contributed greatly to our war plans which, I must tell you, is a lovely deviation from the norm, no insult to the Odinson meant."
Clark suppressed a chuckle, having spent many, many nights listening to Diana lay out, in explicit detail, the full and frustrating extent of Thor's lack of subtlety as a general.
"And she reminds me very much of home," continued Diana, and Clark knew exactly what she meant by that, and a part of him realized that this was how she felt, always, in his world, trapped in a place that was never quite familiar, where the rules didn't quite make sense, and it suffused him with a deep and heartfelt shame that he ever begrudged her whatever comfort she could find, even for a moment. But another part of him whispered bitterly that if asked, Diana could doubtless describe every stone and puddle and plant of Paradise Island without even closing her eyes against distraction, and he seethed with a sudden, vicious hate, jealous and hot however quickly smothered.
If Diana noticed, she didn't comment, merely finishing her thought with a simple "Still, she is only a friend, and a goddess at that. I am but a single chapter in her saga, though hopefully a memorable one. She is the story of passion itself, far too great for even another god to lay claim to, even if we were likely to meet again."
"Too bad," mused Clark. "She seemed to make you pretty happy."
"Did she," asked Diana, one eyebrow quirking up teasingly.
"You were flying," he grinned.
She smiled back smugly. "Well she is a god of love, and gods do tend to be masters of their own domains."
"Well, now I am hurt that you didn't let her have her way with me."
"No you're not. She's a fertility goddess, Kal, and you're the only fertile male on this plane."
A soldier slammed suddenly into Clark's back as he stopped dead, jaw hanging, and Diana looked back and laughed so hard she almost tripped and collapsed onto the ground herself.
"She wouldn't," he managed, as the column of warriors detoured around them, sniggering and rolling their eyes, and Diana slowly pulled herself together enough to breathe normally. "Would she?"
Diana flopped, with uncharacteristic gracelessness, to a standing position, still chuckling a little. "Oh, she absolutely would. Twins, even, if she could manage it."
"Twins."
"I can see it now."
"Twins."
"Snorri Kalson and Snotri Kalsdottir! Champions of Valhalla!"
"Really, I don't –"
"Drinkers of mead! Chasers of Valkyries! Able to change the course of mighty rivers, but don't ask how, they didn't get that one from their father!"
"You're a cruel woman, Diana."
-)(-
Diana had said the monster's name, but Clark had missed it in the chaos of battle, concerned only with the way the enormous three-headed beast crushed the einherjar beneath its feet like fallen leaves. Its hide thick and impenetrable, its breath a rolling gaseous poison, he and Diana and Thor together could barely contain it. His lungs burned from holding his breath, his knuckles ached from punching at its gaping maws and sinuous snake-quick necks, and he was half-blind from the mud and blood and spittle of the battle, and maybe that was why he didn't see it, couldn't get there in time, didn't realize until he heard the sickening crack and Diana's rage-filled howl what had happened to Thor.
The beast fell – lightning called from between its jaws more than even it could withstand – but the god fell beneath it.
"Is it dead?" he demanded, as they knelt beside him, Diana's hands peeling at his armor and probing his broken chest.
"It's dead," said Clark.
Thor laughed, hard and triumphant, ignoring the pain. "And it takes me with it. Ah well. A worthy end."
"They will sing of it, Lord," Diana said.
"Oh, they shall," said Thor, and with a wavering hand, lifted his hammer. "Mjolnir. It is Modi's birthright, and Magni's. Thou shalt see that they receive it, fair warrior?"
"Modi is with Freya's host, my Lord, and Magni is dead these thirty years," said Diana, dim and subdued.
Thor coughed, a wet rattling laugh that flecked blood from his lips to darken his crimson beard. "My son... I remember. To Thrudr, then, last flesh of my flesh... but no, she bears my father's spear already. And the Champion of Asgard and Pride of Themyscira is no hammer-maiden, to wield so crude an instrument when sword and lariat are to hand." He coughed again, lifting the hammer to hold it out for Clark. "Noble Kal, 'tis thine. Bear it with honor and a good will in my stead, and stand by thy mistress. 'Tis up to you now, friends... I return to the great slumber, awaiting your victory."
He fell back, tired and close to surrender, holding on only to see his weapon find a master. Reluctantly, Clark wrapped a hand around the short, blunt haft of the hammer, Thor's gauntlet cold between his fingers and the weapon heavy and prickling with magic.
Through slitted, milky eyes, Thor saw his frown, and laughed again, still wetly but not weakly, the booming resonant guffaw of ten thousand nights of bottomless mirth undaunted by the wheezing in his ribs. "In Valhalla, when the battles end," he said, curling his own left hand around Clark's, "great rewards await. Avenge me, that we might one day walk in Asgard's divine sun... together."
And with that, the god breathed his last, falling still in Clark's arms, his body no less heavy there than the terrible weight of his hammer between Clark's fingers. "Thor," he said. "Thor, I wi–"
"Make no promises you cannot keep," cut in Diana, sharp and cold. "Or would you break one oath with another? Guard his body, Kal, and hold the rear against incursion. I will see to the Odinson's vengeance."
Surrounded by the coils of the monster, Clark heard little of the battle and saw none, and in the end, the two hours he knelt there before Diana returned with Thrudr to bear away the body, both women battered and blood-soaked with burning eyes and faces of hard stone, were less guard duty and more a strange vigil of mourning. It wasn't until after the funeral, four slow days of ash and song until the last embers of the pyre flickered out, that he learned Thor had indeed had his vengeance; not a single demon had survived the battle of the whole attacking host, four-thousand strong.
-)(-
Herja made a beautiful valkyrie. High on the shoulders of a slavering armored wolf, twin axes hanging at her belt, a layered fur cape billowing around her shoulders, she could have walked out of a painting, but no painting could ever be so vibrant and alive. Decades on foot amongst the ranks of the einherjar, refusing the prestige she could have claimed as Diana's student, and she had finally made her mark, been reclaimed by the battle-sisters who first brought her to Valhalla so many centuries ago.
"Reporting for duty, my Lady," she said, sliding easily off her wolf and bowing low before Diana. "My axe is yours to aim, my blood is yours to spill, my body is yours to break on the spears of your enemies."
"Rise, valkyrie, your pledge is heard and your arm is welcome in my host," Diana said, formal and stern as the commander of the armies of the gods should be.
Then, smiling, warm and brilliant as a dozen suns, she threw her arms around Herja as she stood, and held her tightly. "Little one. Not so little anymore," she whispered.
"No, my Lady," agreed Herja, clinging tightly back.
"I am so proud of you, Herja."
"It is my only hope, my Lady, that I never fail to give you reason to be."
Diana pushed her away, mussing her hair. "Foolish creature, you never could."
She turned that megawatt smile on Clark, and he felt that if he could just bathe in it a moment longer, he could gain the strength to juggle planets. "Kal," she said. "She wears it well, doesn't she?"
"Of course she does," he said.
How could she not, learning from you?
-)(-
Clark made it a habit not to eavesdrop – an easy task here, where the centuries were slowly bleeding his power away – but certain things he was just keyed not to ignore, and the sound of displeased Diana was one of them.
"I know the cost, Feorn, I dare say I know it better than you. But he won't kill, and I won't ask him to. Push me on this again at your peril."
"My Lady, I respect your servant's oath. But this can't go on! Mjolnir is too great a fraction of our assets to be wasted on a man who will not use it!"
He waited for her to correct his use of "servant," and was hurt when she didn't – then wounded further when she sighed, the deep tired whoofing exhalation that meant 'I agree with you, but what can I do?'
"I've made an arrangement that may help, Feorn. We'll know if it worked by the end of tomorrow's battle. Either way, we will not have this discussion again."
"Yes, my Lady."
There was a time, he thought, when he would have spoken. When he would have marched across the camp, stood in her face and demanded an explanation, lambasted her for her lack of respect, insisted she stop whatever plan she had concocted to subvert his principles.
But Mjolnir was heavy on his hip, and the years were dry and cold against his skin, and Diana was a general, a queen, a god to these men, and her word was law. It would cost more than just her argument, if he did anything to undermine that. So he held his peace. His anger could wait until after the battle.
-)(-
It took him longer than he'd admit to notice Diana's "arrangement," the rotating escort of wounded valkyries and einherjar who followed behind him, taking sword and spear and hammer to the unconscious vrtgsmith warriors he left in his wake. A cleanup crew, too wounded for the front lines, too hale to leave the battle without making sure to pick up the slack of Clark's failure to contribute.
He seethed, but fought on – after all, there was little else he could do. And so the day wore ever later, Clark boring through the demons, leaving death at his feet and growing ever angrier with each demon he only technically failed to slay.
Until he heard the scream.
He would have thought, had he ever actually given it thought, that Diana would rage. That her eyes would flash hot with vengeance, her warrior blood would rise, and she would tear, limb from limb, whatever luckless creature had dared to raise a hand against her loved one, and any creature fool enough to be its ally. He would have thought the day of Thor's death would be made a picnic in comparison. He would have thought that there would be no safe place left on any plane to be a vrtgsmith.
But she just knelt there, in the mud and blood and filth of the battlefield, cradling Herja's lifeless body in her arms, shaking with sobs so silent even he was hard-pressed to hear them.
And all his anger suddenly seemed so insignificant and stupid that he couldn't believe he'd been so dumb, couldn't even remember it for another second, and in the blink of a Flash's eye he was next to her, holding her, curled around her ribs with force that could crush steel and convinced that he had never had another purpose in the universe than this moment, holding a broken Diana to his heart.
-)(-
After so many endless years of war, he'd believed that there were no new horrors. But there was always something to surprise him.
The beast lashed out and skewered Gforin right in front of him, slashing his belly open with a swift stroke and spilling his intestines out in a wild, flailing coil, spattering blood and bits of kidney over Clark as the warrior's corpse fell backward into his arms. Then it was on him, jumping and knocking him to the earth, and it took him a moment to register that it wasn't attacking him – it was savaging Gforin's body, digging and licking and chewing, devouring Gforin's lung and spattering viscera on Clark's face as it ate.
Clark stared up into its toothy maw, frozen, watching the open-mouthed mastication with nauseous horror, blinking against flying bone chips and the spatter of blood-soaked saliva and the warm wet slide of Gforin's intestines on his skin, the smell of half-digested food waste and carnivore breath burning in his nostrils.
And then the thing's head flew off right in front of him, a bit of Gforin's liver still hanging in its mouth, and the headless corpse slumped against him just in time for him to be pulled to his feet.
"Kal, there you are," came Diana's brisk greeting.
"He.... Gforin...." said Clark, biting hard on the leather of his glove to keep from retching.
"Kal," Diana said sharply, as his eyes lingered on the savaged mess that was a man thirty seconds before. "We don't have time for this. I need your sight."
"It... it ate him," Clark said.
"Kal-El," said Diana, in a voice like kryptonite, and the world snapped back into focus around her face, bloody and hard and beautiful.
"What, yes, sorry," he stammered, realizing from the corpses at their feet that she'd slain another two demons even as she tried to shake him from his shock.
Her eyes softened a little, and she pointed to the horizon. "There. That hillock. What do you see?"
He squinted and focused, staring out at the tiny, impossibly distant lump of earth, and with enough magnification he saw what had caught her eye – a moving black dot, half-buried in the burnt and blackened underbrush. He focused closer, closer, until he saw the creature, one of the spindly vrtgsmith scouts, in all its spiderlike horror. By now he'd done this for Diana enough to know what she wanted, so he strained his vision into the thing's footprints, found the minute traces of mud and discolored soil, and followed the trail. He was weaker here than he'd been back home, power siphoning away in an unnaturally slow but nevertheless very real loss without a yellow sun to recharge him, but he still had the strength to stare through dirt and rock, find the red-soiled riverbank miles behind the scout where the rest of its army waited, and pick out the leaders and their broad tactical assets the way Diana had taught him.
She listened impassively as he laid out the details of the ambush, and offered a simple, distracted "Thanks" when he was done, slipping into Themysciran, her mind clearly already on a new plan. "I'm taking a squad to the ambush. Find Thrudr and tell her this battle is hers now."
He nodded.
"Oh, and Kal." She reached out, plucked something yellow and bloody off his shoulder. "You've got some entrails there."
She tossed the piece of intestine carelessly and was gone, mowing her way through swarms of demons as she went, and Clark gave in to the returning swell of nausea, emptying his stomach onto the blood-soaked ground.
-)(-
They sailed again that evening, the port won, raided and discarded like a used rag, Diana's eyes ever onward as they strove toward the source of the invasion, the heart of the demons' power. He found her on the deck, chainmail spilling between her fingers as she closed the rents and tears left by the day's battle.
She looked up at him, and waited. It had been long decades since she needed to speak to ask him what was wrong.
"I just... I don't understand. You're the most gentle, caring person I've ever known. You don't even step on roaches. People, they come to you and it doesn't matter how petty or selfish or ridiculous their problems are, you show them all the same patience and compassion. You're even nice to Guy Gardner for goodness' sake! And yet... I had a demon eating a man's intestines off my face today, Diana, and you didn't even blink. You kill these things and half the time I swear you're having fun. How can you –"
He cut off, unsure, unable to decipher the look on her face but pretty positive he didn't like it.
"How long have we been here?" he said instead.
"A little shy of seven hundred forty-three years," she said, accepting his deflection gracefully and resuming the repair of her armor.
Seven and a half centuries. She was his best friend in the world, he loved her more than anything, and he trusted her more than he trusted himself. And after seven and a half centuries living in her world, sleeping at her side, spending nearly every waking minute within arm's reach of her, he still didn't understand her at all.
-)(-
"Zesti," she said.
"Zesti?"
"A drink. I would say sugary, but there actually isn't any sugar in it. It's a rich clear brown, something like the color of a bear pelt, and highly caffeinated, and extremely bad for both your teeth and your weight, which of course means that everyone in your country drinks it."
"Better than mead?"
"I imagine you think so."
He rolled sideways, shoving her with his shoulder. It didn't actually affect the wide grin on her face, and she merely shoved back.
"No, I've got this one," he said. "It comes in a red can, and you can get it out of vending machines. And actually I don't drink it much, because Ma never liked having anything that unhealthy around the house, and you know that."
She shot him an innocent look, which she wasn't all that good at to begin with and wouldn't actually have fooled him with even before they came here.
"I can't believe you're so mean," he protested. "Here I am just trying to remember something and you're feeding me bad information. You know how I rely on you. Have you no sense of responsibility? Have you no sense of shame?"
"Actually," she said, cheerfully, "you're just trying to get a drink you don't hate the taste of. Which is why I have this."
She reached under the table and pulled out a wineskin, the slosh of ice beneath the wood and the water dripping off the bottom promising that whatever was in it was cold. He raised an eyebrow at her and popped open the top, pouring a little into his flagon.
A steady stream of pure white liquid flowed out into the cup, and he almost dropped the wineskin in delighted shock.
"I cannot believe – Diana, where in the world did you find cold milk?"
"A cold goat, of course."
He jostled her again, laughing, and she threw an arm around him and laughed right back.
-)(-
He couldn't read her face. A thousand years, and he could practically read her thoughts across a cluttered battlefield, but now, four inches apart, in the still warmth of their tent, her hand wrapped around his and her slow strong pulse against his fingers, he couldn't even begin to guess what she was feeling.
If he broke his oath for her, would he be anything she would still want?
A thousand years, and he didn't know.
A thousand years, and he still knew Lois.
"I... I can't, Diana," he whispered. "Silly, right? Even if she is... gone... a thousand years and another world past... Lois is still the only one."
She kissed his forehead, softly. "No, it's not silly," she said. "It's perfect. It's right. Exactly right."
"Thank you, Diana." He pulled himself upright, curled around her in a hug that was warm and comfortable beyond any reason her armor should have allowed. "For always being my best friend."
He didn't need to say it. They hadn't needed to say it for centuries. "I love you," he told her, all the same.
"I love you too," she said, as she held him, "Clark."
He pulled back, stared at her face, and her smile was loving and real and completely, utterly inscrutable.
He let her go, and she stood. She wouldn't sleep tonight; she didn't need to, and she'd want to keep an eye on the troops, be sure they were confident and ready, and perhaps seek Strum or Reginleif for the last night of celebration he'd denied her. And he... he would try not to dream of orchids.
"Diana –"
She stopped in the door, turned an eye on him, waiting.
"Is it worth it? All that we've lost, all the deaths, all the suffering, the bloody waste these demons leave behind. Even if we win tomorrow... have we really won anything at all?"
Diana smiled, small and tired. "The Aesir are tied to Valhalla. They bleed with it, rise and fall with the very fabric of the realm. No einherjar or valkyrie is truly dead until Thor has died, and Thor is not truly dead until this very kingdom breathes its last. If we drive the demons back tomorrow, all the loss we have endured here will be undone."
"... all the loss...?" asked Clark, a strange hope, long silent, sparking to small but fierce life deep within his heart.
She nodded slowly, her voice a little distant. "For your service, you have earned a boon. Anything in Thor's power. You could be a king of Valhalla, and we could stay here undying, rebuilding and reveling in a paradise of the gods. You could have power, immortality, full restoration of your strength and relief from the tricks that time here has played on your mind. You could have an end to pain and longing, a divinely blessed soul to match the impossible power of your body. We could live forever, do unending good for Earth and Valhalla alike, healed of any hurts nine centuries past."
She closed her eyes. "Or we can go back, Clark. Back to the very moment we left, back to the world as it was, untouched by the centuries we've seen here. Back to friends we never hoped to see again. Back to Lois."
He looked at her then, tall and proud and shimmering in the dim light; sharp armor she'd built with her own hands and fur she'd hunted and skinned herself imparting her with a sombre, deadly beauty; a thousand years of wisdom in the faint curve of her smile, black flakes of demon blood darkening in the creases of her chain and the hilt of her sword. She was magnificent. Terrible and wonderful, godly and strange, his best friend and closest love and dearest hero and so, so perfectly at home here in a world that had never been, could never be his at all.
"Diana..." he said. "Diana, tell me about Lois."
FIN