Archive of Our Own

There was a lake, outside of Oakhurst. Like much of Oakhurst public property, it wasn't particularly well maintained — more like all but forgotten, really. A weathered wooden dock, a couple sad, algae-covered buoys, and a lifeguard chair that was always empty was the sum total of infrastructure invested in making the dark water and pebbly beach inviting to town residents.

Viking was ecstatic when he found out. He spent every day that July badgering Apo, insisting that "We should have a beach day!" and bribing her with new beach towels — one blue and yellow, one bordered in adorable dancing apples — and the promise of beach snacks that he would only share if she came with him. And either the bribes or the persistence eventually paid off, and they set off for the lake, Viking gleefully decked out in a bucket hat and floral shirt over his board shorts, and Apo stubbornly covering every inch of skin in what could only be called an act of spite to the very concept of summer.

The lake was deserted, except for a couple teenagers on the far shore throwing rocks in the water. Viking took to the water with abandon, shirt and hat and flip flops left carelessly in his wake, and used their solitude to shout to Apo on the shore without worrying for once about being too loud. Apo, for her part, parked herself on her towel, munching on the promised gummy worms and attempting to skip rocks. Every one of them hit with a plunk and was swallowed up by the water immediately.

As the sun reached its peak, Viking splashed out of the water to join her for a picnic of sandwiches and gummy worms, and more importantly prod her into having fun.

"C'mon," he wheedled through a mouthful of ham and cheese. "You've just been sitting here all day. At least stick your toes in."

"No," she said flatly. "I said I'd come and eat gummy worms. I came, and I'm gonna eat gummy worms."

"At least come sit on the dock with me," he said, hastily grabbing a handful of gummy worms at the reminder lest she eat them all before he got any. "C'mon, I'm gonna do a backflip. You can watch me."

"I can watch you from here," Apo countered. "You'll probably hit your head on the edge and die, anyway."

"Then come with me so you can rescue me!" Viking swallowed the last of his sandwich and shoved his candy spoils in his mouth before grabbing Apo by both hands and saying, muffled by the worms, "I promise I won't even make you go in the water."

Apo rolled her eyes and scrunched up her face and groaned and complained the whole time, but she let Viking drag her to her feet and over to the dock. She eyed the rickety wood and dark water sloshing at the pilings with trepidation. "Are you sure this is safe?" she asked.

"Yeah, totally!" Viking said cheerfully. "They wouldn't just leave this here if it wasn't safe, right?" He hopped the last step onto the dock to prove he wasn't afraid. The wood created ominously, but held. He turned a triumphant grin on Apo, who frowned but allowed herself to be tugged forward onto the planks and led out to the very end of the dock, where Viking finally released her.

He took a deep breath and bent his knees, bouncing on the balls of his feet a few times. It had been a while since he'd tried this, but he was full of ham and candy and sunshine and Apo's presence and feeling untouchable. When he felt ready, he rubbed his hands together and grinned at her. "Backflip time," he said. "You ready for this?"

Apo huffed, but he saw the corner of her lips tick up despite herself. "Ready to watch you

brain yourself, you mean."

"You'll see," he said, undeterred. "Okay! Three. Two —"

Hands on his chest, shoving him backwards off the dock.

Viking had just enough time to hear Apo's cackle of laughter before he hit the water and went floundering under. He fought his way back up to the surface, shaking wet hair out of his eyes and spluttering while Apo kept laughing at him.

Until she took a step back, and her laugh turned to a shriek as the plank underneath her feet gave way and sent her plunging into the lake.

Viking's first instinct was to laugh. "Instant karma!" he crowed, treading water. "That's what you get, Apo!"

He waited in the open water just past the dock, expecting to see her head pop up out of the water, soggy bangs in her eyes, yelling at him to cover her injured dignity, but she didn't immediately reappear. The first tendrils of fear crept in when he waited a second — two — five — and still no Apo.

"Apo?" he called out, starting to move towards where she fell, when a hand broke the surface, slapping fruitlessly at the water in a panic. Apo's face briefly came into view, pale and twisted in terror, before slipping back under the water.

"Apo!" Viking was properly terrified now, and he surged forward the few short strokes to take him under the broken dock where she was flailing, turning dark water white with her panicked thrashing. He reached out to grab her, getting an arm in one hand and a handful of sodden shirt in the other and hauled her up, desperately kicking his feet to keep them both above water.

Apo was hard to keep hold of, too scared to cooperate, but with adrenaline lending his cold muscles strength, Viking managed to get her head above water, where she promptly seized hold of him, clinging to his shoulders with trembling limbs while she hacked and coughed up lungfuls of lake water.

"I got you, I got you," Viking gasped through numb lips, clutching her with one hand and with the other striking out for shore. It wasn't long before he could dig his toes into the bottom and get enough purchase to drag the both of them, sopping wet and shivering from the cold water and the scare both, and collapsed onto the sand.

Apo rolled over onto all fours and coughed up more water. Viking's mind spun, trying to remember high school first aid classes and wishing he'd paid attention to them in the first place, wanting to go get their towels to dry her off and too afraid to leave Apo alone for a second. He settled for kneeling at her side and rubbing a firm hand between her shoulder blades.

"Please tell me you don't need mouth to mouth," he said helplessly. "I don't remember how to do it right, and also it sounds pretty gross, but I'll try if you really need me to. Please don't die."

Apo spat out a mouthful of water and bile and croaked, "Don't you dare."

Viking went weak with relief. He collapsed back on his heels, shoving wet hair back out of his face. "Oh, thank god. Apo. Do you not know how to swim?"

Apo scowled and mustered the strength to slug him in the shoulder. She was weak as a kitten, but he took it as a good sign. "No, you jerk," she said, and wrapped her arms around herself. "Next time I'm staying home. You can keep your stupid gummy worms."

He wheezed a laugh, strained and pathetic. "You can have all the gummy worms you want," he said. "As long as you don't die in a lake."

Apo tipped over sideways to lean against his shoulder, and he wrapped both arms around her to keep her upright. They were both still shivering. Her voice was raw and painful as she rasped, "Deal."

—

Viking was cold even in his dreams.

The little house he and Drift had put together was relatively cozy — warmer than Avid and Marm's AirBnB, even, the only place he really felt like he wasn't actively freezing to death. But the winter still found its way in, and ever since he'd died — he'd died! — it was like it'd crawled into his very bones. It didn't matter how warm the house was, or how cozy it was under the spider silk blankets: Viking was still cold.

So it should've been the first sign that something was wrong, when he felt warm.

But it was quickly forgotten, because he opened his eyes and Apo was there. Crouched by the head of his bed, and she was Apo, shaggy red hair and warm brown eyes and new Christmas sweater, and not the twisted dark reflection who'd spoken to them at the tower.

He had so much to say to her — Thank god, it was just a dream, you're okay, you're back, I missed you, Apo, Apo, Apo — but she smiled and put a finger to her lips and he swallowed the words and just beamed back at her. That about summed it up, he thought.

Apo rose to her feet and held out a hand, and Viking didn't hesitate to take it and let her pull him out of bed, past the slumbering form of Drift, down the ladder, and out the front door. It should've been cold; it was the middle of the night, and he didn't have so much as a torch to warm him up. He should've been freezing. But even though the wind off the ice tugged at his clothes, he didn't feel it. Like the cold couldn't touch him.

He paused at the edge of the ice, marveling at the feeling. There was something so beautiful about this place, when he wasn't so cold, he thought. Apo took his other hand and tugged again, stepping backwards onto the frozen lake.

Viking looked back at her, squeezing her hands. They were warm and solid in his. She was real. She was here. "Where did you go?" he asked, forgetting her request to stay quiet. "I looked for you — Everyone thought I was crazy, but I knew you were out there — where were you?"

Apo just kept smiling, and drew him a step further out onto the ice. "I'll show you," she said. "Just come with me, Viking."

"Okay," he said, because it was Apo, she was here, and all the questions bubbling up — how far was it? Did they need supplies to get there? What about monsters? Should they wake the others? Why weren't they cold? — seemed so distant, like all the stress and fear and worry of the past few weeks was a half-forgotten dream, and he had finally woken up. Everything was fine. He just had to follow Apo.

The ice cracking sounded like a gunshot, but even that was muffled, not worth a second thought when Apo was still smiling at him and holding his hands. She wasn't worried; she stepped backwards, into the water, pulling him after.

"It's okay," she said, as his foot hit the water. "It's okay."

The water wasn't cold. Viking let it close over his head, his eyes still locked on Apo. Silvery moonlight filtered down through the water, casting her face in grays, making something twist in the pit of his stomach, but it was Apo. He had to stay with Apo.

"VIKING!"

Drift's scream pierced the air and the illusion shattered. One second Apo was there, warm and alive, the next her face was pale and frozen in terror and then it was her again, inky black hair and weeping voids where her eyes should be, gray claws digging into his wrists. And down below, beyond the twisted shadow of his best friend, he thought he could see a flicker of red.

The cold hit him like a brick wall. He opened his mouth in a gasp and water flooded in.

Hands grabbed at him from above, trying to pull him up, and he fought them on instinct, fixated on that speck of red at the bottom of the lake, on Apo clinging to him, her voice in his head, crooning, I'm down here, Viking. I'm all alone down here.

"Help! Linda, help me!"

More hands on him, stronger this time, and between the two of them he was ripped away, Apo's claws leaving red trails on his wrists and hands before she sank away, down into the depths of the lake as he was dragged up and out into the freezing air.

He tried to scream but there was no air in his lungs; his body heaved as he hacked and coughed and threw up water and bile and the remains of the carrots he ate before bed.

Hands grabbed at him, clinging to his sleeve and thumping between his shoulders and rubbing his back while Drift's panicked voice babbled, "Viking, what the hell, dude, what were you thinking —"

"Apo," he sobbed, when he could breathe enough to speak. The icy cold air stabbed at his raw and battered throat, a thousand needles all the way down into his sodden lungs. All he could think about was what he'd seen, down at the bottom of the lake. "She's down there — I have to go get her, I have to — I can't leave her there —"

He made a lunge for the water, clumsy and awkward because his limbs weren't responding and he couldn't really feel them, anyways, how was it so cold, hadn't he been warm just a moment ago?

"Hey!" Arms wrapped around his chest, hauling back away from the edge, away from Apo, pinning him against Drift's chest while she balled her shaking fists into the soaking wool of his sweater. "No, no, no! Don't you dare!"

"Apo!" He cried, and it came out half sob, half retch, desperate coughs still racking his freezing, trembling body.

Come back, her voice curled through his mind. Don't leave me!

"Don't leave me," Drift begged in stereo, her warm breath on his ear, voice thick with tears. She sounded so scared. Apo had looked scared, too. "You can't leave me alone out here, okay? Please don't do that to me, I can't handle that."

"I don't want to," he said, high and pathetic, he didn't know to who. To either of them. To both. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

He turned his head and pushed his face, wet with water and tears and worse, into the stained, bedraggled collar of Drift's sweater and sobbed. Apo was gone. Apo was at the bottom of the lake. Apo was here, but she wasn't Apo anymore. Drift dropped her cheek onto the top of his head, where he could feel icicles forming in his wet hair and cried with him.

Footsteps crunched in the snow, and then Legundo's voice: "She's gone. For now, at least." A pause, where neither of them acknowledged him, too wrapped up in each other and their own fear and grief, and then he added, more sternly, "You two need to get inside before you freeze to death."

Viking shuddered at the idea of moving further from the water, further from Apo, and Drift clutched him tighter. "We're having a moment here, Margaret," she snapped, the edge in her voice undercut by her sniffling and the way her teeth chattered.

"Well, can we have the moment inside, where it's warm?"

Movement in the corner of his eye, as Legundo knelt down beside them. A broad hand closed around Viking's arm, and Legs grunted, "C'mon, let's go," and a wave of anger swept through him, overwhelming the grief for one hot, blazing moment. How could Legs just be fine, standing there and bossing them around when Apo was — when Apo was — and it was all his fault, his stupid movie or game or whatever this nightmare was.

He turned from Drift and beat his fist into Legundo's chest. And then again, and a third time, because as weak with cold and fear as he was, he needed a target, and the Philosopher or Krampus or whoever He was wasn't here to be mad at, so Legs would do. Legs, who'd laughed as they descended the tower together.

"Are you still having fun, Legs?" he snarled, twisting a handful of his thick woolen parka in his fist. He wanted to shake him, but he was too weak, and Legs too immovable. "Is this still a good time for you?"

Legs sighed, looking at Viking with eyes so sad and weary the bottom dropped out of his anger. His hand slid up from Viking's arm to his shoulder, and he squeezed. "No," he said. "No, definitely not. But I'm still really glad you're here." His lips twitched, an anemic smile. "So let's not go jumping into any more frozen lakes in the middle of the night, huh?"

Viking wanted to laugh, but it came out as another sob. He hung there, one hand holding onto Legs and the other still clinging to Drift, and shook his head.

"Legs," he croaked. It hurt to talk, but he needed to say this. He needed to hear the answer, even though he was pretty sure he knew what it was. "If we — if we do what the book says. And we kill Santa, or Krampus, or whatever the hell it wants us to kill. Will we save Apo?"

For as inscrutable as Legs usually was, he had a terrible poker face. He grimaced, his expression twisting into a mask of anguish and pity, and said reluctantly, the words dragging out of him, "I don't know."

Viking scoffed. Figures.

Legs shrugged, as helpless as the rest of them. "But what else is there to do?"

"C'mon." Drift staggered to her feet, dragging Viking up with her. Legs rose with them. Viking couldn't make his frozen fingers to uncurl and release either of them. "I'm freezing. Let's get off the ice and go inside, okay? It's cold and dark and scary out here."

"Yeah." Viking sniffed. "Yeah, okay."

Drift wrapped an arm around his waist and he let go of her just long enough to get his around her shoulder. Legs trailed along with them, drawn by Viking's unrelenting grip on his sweater, and together they stumbled back towards the house, where the doors — flung wide and left open in Drift's panic — cast a warm yellow light out onto the snow.

Behind them, the hole in the ice yawned, a hungry void in the snow still waiting to swallow them, and at the bottom —

Viking put his head down and didn't let himself look back.