The Lord of Misrule - spn_genbigbang fic Part 4a/4

[amberdreams]

The Lord of Misrule Part 4
Back to Part 3b

When Thor arrived at the Vinlanders’ settlement, he wasn’t surprised to find the village in uproar.  The agitation that was rising from within the wooden stockade was palpable even from a distance, and Thor could see people rushing to and fro as if the place were an ants’ nest that a careless child had stirred with a stick.

And when he strode into the midst of the turmoil, he immediately found the wielder of the stick.  As he had suspected from the moment that he heard Dean Winchester’s description, it was the ever-devious Loki who was at the root of all the chaos.

Focused on his little brother, he barely noticed the tall, shaggy haired man saying in the too loud tones of the truly shocked “Holy shit!  You look like Thor.”

“Well met, little brother.”  Thor said.

“That’s because he is Thor.” Loki snapped at the tall man, who Thor now recognised as man he had promised to find, Sam Winchester.  Loki sounded caught somewhere between impatience and fully blown anger as he turned from the still open mouthed mortals and faced the Thunder god. “And I am not your brother,” Loki spat out. He seemed to gain a certain amount of satisfaction from the hurt expression that flitted briefly over Thor’s face.

Thor ruthlessly quashed his emotions and grasped Loki by the shoulder.  .

“We need to talk.” Thor said. He locked gazes with Sam briefly and took the time to tell the young man ‘I’ll be back’ Terminator-style before the two gods vanished in less than the blink of an eye.  Karlsefni and the Viking settlers let out a collective gasp.  Sam merely gave a mental shrug. He was becoming almost blasé about the comings and goings of supernatural beings, and was more concerned at this stage about what on earth he was supposed to do next.  He just hoped that Loki’s babel-fish solution to the lack of a common language would continue to function in the absence of the god.

Loki pulled away and rounded on Thor as soon as they re-materialised at the foot of the rainbow bridge to Asgard.  Thor was already talking, but Loki didn’t want to hear anything his so-called brother might have to say.

“Brother, I need your help.  We must return the Winchester brothers to their own time so they can stop their Apocalypse…” Thor attempted to pre-empt his little brother who had his mouth open, ready to launch into a tirade, but the outraged Loki was having none of it.

“How dare you drag me here! I was enjoying myself for the first time in an unconscionably long time and you rip me away to talk? All those centuries I was chained up and suffering and never once did you seek me out to free me or even offer comfort, yet now you want to have a conversation about some pathetic mortals?”

Whatever else Thor had been going to say was lost between brain and tongue as he tried to absorb what Loki had said.

“What?” he blurted.

“What?  Is that all you can say?  More than one thousand years I was bound, poison eating into my skin and only Sigyn cared enough about me to bring her bowl and catch the acid drips to stop the pain and even she deserted me in the end…oof!”  Loki’s rant was brought to an abrupt stop by Thor grabbing his arm and shaking all the breath out of him.  Thor’s face was almost as red as his hair as he shouted at Loki.  Thunder grumbled in the background.

“What are you talking about?  I left you lounging around the gleaming halls of Asgard only ten days ago, when last I returned from seeking out Odin here on Midgard.  You were fine, no chains, no dripping poison – what nonsense is this?”

Loki staggered backwards as Thor released his grip. He took a steadying breath.

“I was in Asgard but ten days ago?” 

Thor opened his mouth but snapped it shut again as Loki’s hand went up. “Wait. Let me think.”  Loki commanded, but it was the note of bewilderment in his voice that made Thor acquiesce and remain silent.

“Of course I was there.  Because that must have been Gabriel, sitting in my place, eating my food, quaffing from my drinking horn…and I – I am even now bound and trapped in that cavern, being tormented and tortured…with only my faithful wife Sigyn to alleviate the agonies I was suffering…am suffering as we speak.”

“I don’t understand.” Thor said.  So Loki explained.  How the Archangel named Gabriel had come to him one day, all smiles and jollity, offering fun and friendship.  How similar he had thought this wayward angel was, a kindred spirit even, ready to join in his delightfully vicious pranks until one day Loki had confided in Gabriel his hatred of and plans for Odin’s favourite son, the beautiful Baldr.  That must have been when Gabriel had twisted reality and stolen Loki’s life from him, clearly intending to trap him forever.

Bewilderment was replaced by fury as realisation dawned on Loki of the true extent of Gabriel’s trickery.  Loki’s edges wavered as he prepared to shift his shape but he was forestalled when Thor grabbed the Trickster god’s arm again, arresting his attempted metamorphosis.

“What are you doing, brother?  You cannot rescue yourself from something that has already happened.”

“Take your hands off me!” Loki hissed, brown eyes glinting dark and his pale face flushed red.  Thor allowed his foster brother to wrench free, raising both hands placatingly.  Loki took two strides away from Thor, the tension visible in every line of his body.

“Think about it, Loki.  You have returned from a future that has already taken place, what would happen to you now if someone changes even one small detail in what is effectively your own past?”

Loki faltered at Thor’s words, and came to a halt.  The Thunder god might appear to be all brawn and no brain but Loki was well aware that many had come unstuck through underestimating Thor’s intelligence because of his appearance.  Loki stood stiffly to attention for a few seconds; and then his shoulders slumped.

“So what am I to do then?  Just leave myself there to suffer all over again?  The pain and the abandonment…”

Thor moved closer, until he was standing right close behind his smaller, slighter brother, forming a solid wall of warmth at Loki’s back.  He thought better of offering Loki a comforting touch, though, satisfying himself with words.

“Let it go, little brother.  I don’t want to see you disappear, or worse, through trying to right a wrong that cannot be righted.”

Loki drew himself up, turned around to face the Thunder god. 

“Calling me little brother doesn’t make it any more true, you know.”

“You are my brother in every way that matters.”

“Except for blood.  That matters, Thor.”

“Not to me.”

Thor wasn’t pleased to see the all too familiar sly expression back on Loki’s face and braced himself for the lies he knew were coming.

“You do know that in the future, those Winchesters are the cause of the death of your father? Why would you want to help them return to finish wreaking the havoc they started?  Perhaps you want to take the All Father’s place and are happy to have these mortal lapdogs do your dirty work for you.  Or mayhap you are just too stupid to understand how devious and dangerous these brothers can be.”

Thor clenched his fists around Mjolnir’s shaft and gritted his teeth.  He could see the glee in Loki’s eyes as the blue-white lightnings gathered around the hammer’s head, but he refused to be drawn into Loki’s petty games.  There was too much at stake here to allow his little brother’s maliciousness to distract him now.

Somehow, he had to persuade his embittered Trickster sibling that it was in both their interests to send these time-travelling mortals home.  Because Thor had smelled the changes in the air; he had felt the gradual weakening of Asgard’s influence on the Northmen and with it the chilling threat of an ignominious, lonely and above all dishonourable death for him and his fellow gods – and Thor thought that here, on this extraordinary and vast continent, he might have found a solution, thanks to the strange compulsion that had drawn him to answer the unconscious call of Dean Winchester’s dreaming.

Sam watched as Karlsefni stripped down to his breeches, which were held up by a broad band of linen strips cinched with a thick leather belt that would afford the soft vulnerable parts of his stomach with an extra layer of protection. Sam’s jeans and narrow belt looked miserably inadequate in comparison as he shucked off his layers of shirts, the goosebumps on his bare skin only partially due to the cool breeze.  This was not the kind of fighting Sam was used to, or the kind of opponent either.  Karlsefni was just a guy, not a monster, and he seemed like a good guy too, so trying in cold blood to kill or maim him went totally against the grain.  Although the thought had crossed Sam’s mind, he couldn't bring himself to pull an Indiana Jones move and simply shoot the man to get this over with quickly.  He had already hidden the Taurus in his jacket, and he now carefully placed his shirts on top of the pile at the edge of the roped off area, to remove the temptation to introduce a further anachronism to their situation by using the firearm.

Physically, the pair looked to be fairly evenly matched.  Sam was taller, but slimmer in the hips; Karlsefni was stockier, but his muscles equally well defined, corded hard from a lifetime of farming and fighting.  This would be no walk over for either man, but even so, Sam felt he had the edge.

Sam’s mouth set in a grim line as he stepped onto the traditional staked out cows hide that was to set the boundaries of their fight.  One thing his time with Ruby had taught him was how to be merciless.  With Dean gone, it had been simple vengeance that he had been seeking with single-minded intent.  Now he faced the responsibility of deciding his brother’s fate and maybe the fate of humankind, albeit hundreds of years in the future – the future that he intended denying the young Viking leader.  These stakes were too high for Sam to feel any compassion or compunction.  Sam predicted that this ability to be ruthless would be where he had the advantage over the Viking leader, who was clearly brave, but seemed too warm-hearted and generous to strike the kind of low blow necessary to finish this.  The rules of the hólmganga were unambiguous – only one opponent could walk off the hide – death or incapacitation was the aim.

He dropped into a fighting crouch, the long knife he had chosen from the offered weapons gripped loosely in his right hand. Karlsefni briefly whirled his long sword like a showman, making the steel glisten in the sunlight.  Sam thought the sword was a mistake in such a small, restricted space. Though he wasn’t going to underestimate the Viking’s skill with it, he was happy that the Viking had chosen the sword instead of the axe.  He was counting on Karlsefni’s confidence in the sword’s longer reach would discourage the Viking leader from contemplating the option of close and dirty hand to hand fighting that Sam had in mind until it was too late.

Neither man wasted any breath in posturing, and it was the êengill who made the first move.

Holy shit, but the man was fast.  Sam barely had time to side step the first sweep of the sword before Karlsefni was following it up with a second and third.  The long sword was made to be a slashing weapon, not for quick rapier thrusts, but the large Viking was even more skilful than Sam had anticipated, and had him breathing hard within minutes.  He needed to get in close, inside the sword’s reach, but the êengill was using every inch of that pattern-welded steel to frustrate Sam’s efforts.  There was a cheer from the crowd as their leader’s blade scored a red line in Sam’s upper arm, causing the young hunter to hiss with pain.

In his head was a running commentary that was a weird mixture of swearing from Dean and instruction from Dad and quotes from freaking Shakespeare…a hit, a palpable hit.  No way was Sam taking Laertes’ part here, though.  Hamlet neither.  He felt the warm blood running down his arm and bared his teeth in a manic grin.

Sam feinted, tried a move Dean had taught him a long time ago when he was still shorter and slighter than his big brother and it worked.  He was there, inside Karlsefni’s guard and chest to chest with the Viking who teetered, straining to keep his balance.  Now the advantage was with Sam and he could see from the glint in Karlsefni’s eye that he knew it too.  Two layers of naked sweat-slick skin slid together as Sam’s chest pressed against Karlsfeni’s. Sam could feel the thud of the Viking’s heart against his rib cage, melding with his own heartbeat.  It was strangely intimate.  Sam’s thigh pushed between Karlsefni’s legs as he sought to hook an ankle and bring the big man down.  Sam’s hand gripped Karlsefni’s wrist, twisting until the Viking had to release his sword or feel his bones crack.

Neither man heard the dull thud as the sword dropped to the ground, or the collective intake of breath from the onlookers.  Their world had narrowed to the flex and strain of muscle, the harsh sound of their own breathing and the blood pumping fierce in their heads, the desperate need to find that one chink, that weakness that would give one of them the upper hand.

Perhaps if Karlsefni had matched his strength against Sam when the êengill had been a younger man, without a woman and a young child to distract him, then he might have prevailed.

If Sam had lived through this fight before – before he’d died and killed a man in cold blood; before he’d had to watch helpless while his brother was torn apart in front of him; before he’d spent months drinking demon blood and forging himself into a weapon; before he’d stepped so far over the line that broke that last seal; before Lucifer had taken up semi-permanent residence in his dreams – perhaps compassion would have stayed his hand when the êengill’s wife screamed out her protest, and he would have hesitated to bring his knife round to press its sharp point against the Viking leader’s side where he had Karlsefni bent backwards over his knee.

Perhaps.

Nonosabawsut came out of the moonflower haze with a swiftness that was tribute to much practice and to the smaller amounts of the herb used by the guardian role, and immediately crawled across to where the stranger lay.  The old man swore quietly under his breath when he saw Dean’s condition.  He was always very careful when measuring out the doses of the potent medicine, but infrequently a brave would react badly, and it appeared that this was once of those occasions.

Dean’s open eyes were very dark, the unusual hazel of his irises nearly totally eclipsed by the black of the pupils, his unseeing gaze skittering around, never settling.  His face was flushed and though he glowed as hot as the still smouldering embers of the fire, his skin was dry to the touch. Nonosabawsut was happy to see that at least the blood that had covered the young man in his dreaming had not been real.   Even though he had known it was part of Dean’s dreaming, the image had been very vivid and hard to shake off.

“Young man, you have a very powerful mind.”  He muttered as he shuffled his body round in the cramped space of the spirit lodge in order to position himself at Dean’s head.  He spent a few fruitless moments trying to drag the large man closer to the lodge’s exit before giving up in frustration.  He was going to need help to shift the stranger where he could see to treat him properly.

He crawled out of the lodge, still pondering what he had seen in the stranger’s vision.  It had been no surprise to meet Dean’s spirit guide, that was to be expected, but the Beothuk holy man had never encountered a real live god when visiting the spirit realm, let alone the Thunder god in person.

The old man watched as the three young braves he’d commandeered struggled to manoeuvre the bulky stranger out into the daylight.  Kiim came and stood by his side.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I will have to tell you later.  First I need to wake him up, then try and get him to walk off the effects of the potion.  He has the moon fever and I am not sure yet how bad it is.”

Kiim’s little gasp of concern followed Nonosabawsut as he approached the lodge.  The three young men had managed to sit Dean up, though his head was lolling on his shoulders like a girl-child’s doll. Nonosabawsut slapped the stranger hard across the face, shocking him into confused wakefulness.

“Get him on his feet,” the old man ordered. He was still feeling the after effects of the drug himself, but years of use meant his body tolerated it much better, and he could shake it off much more quickly.  He still remembered his first few times though, so waited anxiously as Esiban and his two companions hauled the weakly protesting stranger to his feet.  Nonosabawsut had seen a few severe reactions before, and he knew several treatments they could try, but sometimes just getting them awake and walking around could work the toxins out of their system, so he’d rather try that first before resorting to sedation or the force-feeding of charcoal to purge the body.

Dean cried out in pain as sunlight struck his wide-open eyes like a blow. He aching head was suddenly exploding like a July 4^th firework display, and he sagged in the grasp of the two – no three – guys who seemed to be holding him upright just to torture him with light. He staggered forward, shoving away the helping hands.

“Fuck offa me, whatcha tryin’ to do? Fuck.”

He was burning up but with a dry heat, like he’d stepped into a blast furnace where the heat was so intense it had sucked all the moisture and oxygen out of the air.  Sucked it out of his body too, if the inside of his mouth was anything to go by.  He’d kill for just a sip of water right now, let alone a cool beer.  He felt like he’d swallowed a desert-full of dust.

He remembered some crazy shit about cartoon characters come to life, and a huge wolf and shit….Sammy.  He remembered the old (young?) Beothuk man telling him Sammy was here after all, realising that all this time his brother had been with the people Nonosabawsut had called pale strangers, and then some Norse god telling him some crap about going to find Sam; and all he knew was he needed to get out of here and get to his brother, stat.

So it fucking sucked that his legs didn’t seem to want to cooperate, fucking things were like over cooked spaghettios, and that he couldn’t focus his eyes for shit, and that his head was so jumbled up he couldn’t think straight.  Viking gods?  What the ever-loving fuck?

Blind and overheating until his brain was boiling, there was only one place Dean could be.

Hands were grabbing at him, trying to stop him and he knew what would come next.  It would be the freezing cold chains and the sharp teeth and the blades flashing dull red in the half light, and the torture that never ended except when Alastair gave the word and then it was a slow rebuilding of his shredded flesh and the soft caresses and the caring (lying) words that had him crying out and opening his legs for just a little love and a sliver of pleasure amidst all the pain and he couldn’t take that, not again, never again.

So he fought like a madman, wrenched himself free and ran, not caring where he was going, just desperate to get away.

continued (and concluded) in Part 4b