One year later:
Raven’s eyes dropped just in time to see the Seed vanish into the baby Akane’s chest. At that instant Belldandy and her angel added their own wordless thread to the music of Time, a ribbon of sound that seemed to wrap itself around Urd’s foundation of all that had gone before and lifted to mix with Skuld’s endless possibilities, binding the two together into a harmonious whole — and Raven found herself falling forward, settling downward, the baby looming larger and larger until it seemed to encompass all that was.
And everything went white.
Raven opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling of her bedroom. The long nightmare was finally over, with the end of Ranma’s life for the second time — sort of. She just wished she could feel the relief better. But that hadn’t been an option for months, not since the night that her mind had finally shattered under the strain of the constant fear of the assault that each night’s sleep might bring, and of the forced pleasure and humiliation from the all too frequent times that it did. That fracturing had left her disassociated from her emotional connections, barely able to feel her love for her family and the joy of happy memories, leaving her alone with the anger and hatred she’d inherited from her second “father” raging at her core.
Those emotional connections had been her shield from that anger and hatred. She’d tried to rebuild her fractured mind, but the best she had managed was to temporarily unite her broken emotions and lock away her inheritance — keeping that inheritance locked away took up too much of her ... focus, for lack of a better word, for any union to be permanent. And without a permanent unity any chance those bindings had of resisting Trigon when he finally called had vanished.
That night she had failed, and doomed the world. Saotome Ranma had finally lost when it really counted.
Enough, Raven, you know what Grandfather told you about that. It won’t be that bad, the souls of everyone on Midgard ... Earth ... that dies will return to Asgard or Niflheim for a time, and then to sleep until Trigon moves on and the Earth eventually recovers the ability to bear life. It isn’t even the first time something like that has happened, more or less.
That was what Kami-sama had told her, and it had helped — had made it somewhat easier to find the calm she needed to once more master her inheritance. But it hadn’t done much for the guilt that gnawed at her, and her Grandfather has flatly forbade her to even think about suicide. She’d considered ignoring him, but in the end had had decided he must know what he was doing.
Sighing, she dragged herself out of her bed and into the bathroom for a hasty, efficient shower before pulling on the uniform that Peorth had insisted on designing (not without several demands from the mothers that she make it less risqué). She looked herself over in the mirror — a black leotard with sleeves covering her arms and the back of her hands, a dark blue hooded cape with a circular gold-set garnet clasp, other gold-set garnets on the backs of her hands and making up the links of a belt, and dark blue ankle boots and wrist bracers. Peorth had said that if Raven was determined to be a fool, at least she could look the part.
Deciding that she looked well enough, Raven turned from the mirror to her personal com console, pushed a button for a preprogrammed message for Skuld, then picked up her spear-pointed, twin-engined racing ‘broom’ from where it rested against the wall. “Come on, Gluhende Herz, it’s time.” For a moment she half-expected the ‘broom’ to somehow wake up from its year-long ‘sleep’ to ask for one more ride, but however sentient it might be it still came with an ‘off’ switch it couldn’t override.
Her bleary-eyed mothers looked up from their seats around the table when she walked into the kitchen, and Mara lifted the cover off the stasis unit in the center of the table and slid a plate with Raven’s usual meat-heavy breakfast over to her seat, still hot.
Raven paused for a moment to shield herself as best she could from the onslaught of guilt-laden love and concern from the three women, then leaned Gluhende Herz against the wall and sat down, making sure the hood of her cape hid her face from view. “It’s over,” she said quietly, and began to eat. She ignored the spike of relief and concern mixed together, waiting for yet more protests to her plans, such as they were. But none came, so instead she ignored the growing tension and gave them a quick overview of what she had remembered that night — Ranma’s opportunity to slaughter those that had put her on the Wall, and her meeting with Akane and her sisters.
Just as she was finishing breakfast the visitor chime sounded — perfect timing, of course, only to be expected for the Norn of the Future. The four rose to their feet, and Raven hesitated as she considered just leaving. But her mothers deserved better than that, and she took a deep breath, stepped away from the table, pulled back her hood and spread her arms, and fought to keep from flinching and pulling away as her mothers pulled her into a group hug. She was wearing clothes, and her mothers weren’t Rothgan.
“Remember, you may be leaving but we aren’t going anywhere,” Mara whispered. “You can always come home again.” Raven didn’t respond, simply squeezing harder as Lind and Urd murmured their agreement.
The chime sounded again. The mothers reluctantly let go, and Raven gave them a faint smile — the best she could manage, as she fought to keep from shaking from the emotional overload she’d just been through even with the detachment her fractured mind gave her. “I’ll let you know where to send my stuff when I have a place,” she said, pulled her hood back up, picked up Gluhende Herz, and strode from the room.
Mara, Lind and Urd watched from the doorway until Skuld and their daughter vanished from sight into the light woods that surrounded their home, then went back inside and made their way back to the kitchen.
Once there, Mara opened the fridge while the other two sat back down to what was left of their breakfast. A moment later she joined them, handing out chilled cans before opening her own favorite beer.
“Uh, Mara, this isn’t my ambrosia,” Lind pointed out, looking askance at the can of Urd’s sake that the demon had placed in front of her.
“No, it isn’t,” Mara agreed. “For once, you’re drinking something stronger than that Asgardian Kool-Aid you favor.” She glared at her co-mother until Lind opened the can and hesitantly took a gulp and made a face. It’s a start, Mara thought, then gulped down her own can, rose to clear off the table, and grabbed more cans from the fridge.
Lind suspiciously eyed the additional cans — they were all beer and sake, somehow Mara had left out her bottles of ambrosia again. “You wouldn’t be trying to get me drunk, would you?” she demanded. She tried another gulp of the sake and grimaced again.
“Why would we be doing that,” Mara asked, putting on an air of innocence as she handed a can to Urd.
“Because you think I’ve been bottling everything up too long, that I need to ‘relax’,” Lind replied. She eyed the can in her hand and tried a sip this time.
Mara sighed as she opened another can of her beer. “Yes, I suppose I was rather blatant, wasn’t I? I usually try to be more subtle than that, but you were ignoring my hints. You do need to relax, Lind, or you’re going to break as ... as surely as our baby.” Her voice quavered at the last bit, and she hastily took several gulps of her beer.
Lind finally looked up at her co-mother. “You could be right,” she agreed, as two slow tears tracked down her cheeks.
Instantly Mara was up out of her chair and around the table, pulling Lind up into a tight hug, Urd right behind her embracing both co-mothers together.
Lind didn’t wail or break down sobbing, she simply tightened her own embrace around Mara and listened to her soft sympathetic murmuring as a steady stream of tears soaked the demon’s shoulder.
Finally the flow of tears slowed to a stop, and Lind let go of the Valkyrie as the huddle broke apart. “Thank you,” she whispered as Mara handed her a tissue with which to wipe her cheeks. “Thank you,” she repeated more loudly, including Urd this time. She dropped the tissue into the trash receptacle. Ignoring the tiny flash of light as the tissue disintegrated, she asked, “So, when are you to going to tell me what you two’ve been discussing when you didn’t think I would notice? Did you guess Kami-sama was going to order us to give Raven her head and set up a fallback?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Mara quickly asserted, then paused as she realized that Urd had gone stiff. She turned to her friend with benefits (not that there had been any ‘benefits’ over the past year, and emotionally they were shading over into ‘lover’ territory). “Urd, you didn’t!” she exclaimed.
Urd chuckled nervously. “Well ... maybe? I might have suggested to Skuld that we could use some way of tracking Raven....” Her voice trailed off as she glanced sideways out of the corner of her eye at the purple-haired Valkyrie.
Lind gazed sternly back for a long moment, then stunned the other two by breaking into a broad grin. “Wonderful! We’ll have to see if she managed to come up with anything. But if it wasn’t about Raven, what were you two were conspiring about?”
Urd and Mara exchanged glances, Mara cocking an eyebrow. Urd sighed. “You deserve better than to hear about this through gossip, and I suppose there’s no time like the present. Let’s go pay a visit to Kami-sama.”
“Kami-sama will see you now,” Hildir announced from where he sat behind his deck.
Urd rose to her feet and paused for a moment as she fought to steady herself enough to walk. Come on, it’s been a year since you made your decision! she berated herself. And if you’ve guessed right about Mother and Father, he’ll have already heard all about it, anyway. It was nothing she hadn’t told herself numerous times over the past year, but that didn’t help settle the butterflies in her stomach at all.
Mara laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Come on, this should be easy!” she said, tone deliberately light. “You told off Hild when you were the next thing to a kid, this can’t be harder than that!”
“Right, well, I was protected then by my invincible ignorance,” Urd retorted. She glanced sideways at an obviously worried Lind and took a deep breath. “Let’s do it,” she said, and strode through the door to her Father’s office with the other two on her heels.
Behind them, Hildir waited until the door closed, then brought up his desk com and typed in a code. As soon as the call was answered, he said, “Skuld, Kami-sama needs to see you immediately.” A few moments later he’d finished the call and typed in another code. “Belldandy, sorry to bother you, but your Father needs to see you right away.”
“You know, this is a really stupid idea, just heading for Earth and seeing what happens. It’s not much better than running away in the middle of the night.”
Raven glared up at the raven-haired young woman with hollow teardrop ‘tattoos’ on her forehead and cheeks, dressed in a T-shirt and oil-stained pocketed overalls. “Yes, Skuld, I am quite aware of your opinion, you’ve expressed it often enough,” she ground out before turning back to watch the tree-lined, tiled path they were walking along. The destruction Raven had wreaked when she’d lost control a year before was long since undone, and she’d decided to walk and take in the scenery rather than simply fly.
“So why are you doing it?” Skuld asked.
Raven tried to ignore the question, but paused when she realized that Skuld was no longer beside her. She looked back to find the youngest Norn standing several yards back, a stern expression on her face she had to have picked up from watching her older sister scold her children.
“Give me an answer if you want my help,” Skuld insisted.
Raven tensed at the determination the goddess was radiating. “You can’t stop me,” she growled, black light coruscating around her fists and along the racing ‘broom’ she held.
“Did I say I’d try? No, just that I wouldn’t help,” Skuld said tartly. More softly, she added, “I won’t tell anyone if you want, I promise, but I need to know.”
After a long moment Raven sighed and relaxed. “All right, but no spreading it around.” Waving for Skuld to catch up, she turned to resume walking. When Skuld was once again walking beside her, she asked, “Did you know that way back when my mothers realized that I was reacting to their emotions to the point it was interfering with learning to control my inheritance, they came up with ... buffers, I guess you could call them, talismans that muted the emotions they radiated?”
“They aren’t talismans, they’re devices,” Skuld replied. “I made them.”
“Oh. I should have known.” Raven considered the new information for a moment, then shrugged. “You never updated them. As I grew older the strength of my empathy increased, at this point they’re useless.”
“Stupid!” Skuld slapped her forehead. “Idiot! Why didn’t I think of that?” Glancing down at the shorter mortal, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell us?”
Raven barked a laugh. “Yeah, right, like any kid with brains is going to admit something like that. Can you imagine the edge knowing just what my mothers were feeling gave me when it came to getting what I wanted?”
A split-second’s thought had Skuld giggling. “Yeah, I could have used that,” she agreed. “But what does that have to do with you leaving?”
“For the past year, Momma Mara’s been crying every day and trying to hide it, Mama Lind’s been refusing to let herself cry, and Mama Urd’s been drowning her pain by getting as angry as I ever did on the Wall. What do you think it’s been like for me to live in the middle of all that? And Grandmother’s even worse. I’m just glad she’s restricted herself to vidcalls since her last visit; that was a nightmare.” Raven shuddered as she remembered the vortex of fear-fed self-loathing Hild’s calm exterior had hidden. It had taken everything she’d had not to add to it by bolting from the room. Still, she was glad she’d insisted on Hild coming to visit, the Daimakaicho had been in better shape when she’d left. She was just glad that Hild had agreed with her suggestion (or at least pretended to) that the mothers would be less than happy to see her around for awhile.
Skuld blanched as she tried to imagine what it had been like for Raven. “That’s terrible! But why didn’t you say anything? You —” She managed to choke back the rest of the thought: — might not have broke.
Raven waited for a moment for Skuld to continue, then quietly said, “I am not telling the women that raised me, the first adults to really love me, that their love is hurting me. And neither are you.”
Skuld hesitated, but finally shrugged. “I did promise, your secret is safe with me. But if you are determined to leave your mothers wondering where they went wrong, why didn’t you take up Belldandy on her offer of a place to stay? She’d be glad to have you, the emotional atmosphere would be a lot more congenial, and your mothers would be happier.”
“No!” Raven practically hissed. “No, you’re —” — better off without me. “No.”
Skuld suppressed a wince at the undertone to Raven’s voice and glanced sideways at her companion. She doubted Raven realized just how much she was revealing, at least to someone that had kinda-sorta grown up with her. She opened her mouth to argue the point, but finally said nothing. It wasn’t like she could say anything that hadn’t already been said, after all, and she had Kami-sama’s marching orders from the meeting he’d called several nights before, after Raven had fallen asleep, for her loved ones — except Hild, of course. His orders to let Raven have her way hadn’t sat well (Skuld had thought for a moment that Belldandy, of all people, was going to get into a shouting match with her Father). But everyone had finally agreed that Raven’s experiences for the last part of Ranma’s life and death wouldn’t lend themselves very well to acceptance of adults overriding her decisions. And they hadn’t had much leeway to disagree when he’d asked them to trust him. What were they supposed to say, no? No, Skuld’s ability to interfere had been pretty much eliminated by Raven’s intransigence and her Father’s orders.
Well, almost, she thought, as their destination came into view around a bend in the path — the tiled circle that marked the location of the gate to Earth. The gate’s reprogrammable nature made it more energy-intensive and easier for Niflheim to interfere with, but it was also much more convenient. Besides, its limited and unpredictable use was a fine protection from Niflheim playing with it. Raven had been planning on letting it pick an Earth destination at random, but — “Let me pick the destination,” the young goddess said as they approached the gate.
Raven glared up at her suspiciously. “Where?” she demanded.
“Jump City,” Skuld replied instantly as she stepped over to the control panel, unlocked it and brought up the virtual keyboard.
“Never heard of it, why there?”
Skuld shrugged. “It’s a city on the west coast of the United States, and I don’t know why there.” At Raven’s disbelieving look, she added, “Hey, I’m the Norn of the Future, I get hunches.”
Raven rolled her eyes, but finally nodded. “Fine,” she said. “Oh, wait, I almost forgot.” When Skuld glanced over at her, she held out her racing ‘broom’. “I remembered how envious you were when Hild gave me Gluhende Herz, and thought you’d be the best person for it to go to when ...” She left the thought unfinished, and added sternly, “But no taking it apart to see how it works, and no waking it up until it’s over.”
“Aw, you’re no fun.” Skuld pouted, grinning inside at the faint chuckle she’d managed to wring out of her companion. “Oh, all right, I’ll hold onto it for you until you’re ready to take it back.”
“Yeah, right,” Raven snorted. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Not yet, I’ve got something for you, too.” Skuld reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a tiny box, opening it to reveal a diamond-shaped blood-red gem sparkling in the morning light. “It’s called a bindi, you wear it on your forehead just above the bridge of your nose,” she said to Raven’s questioning look. “It’s an Indian tradition, symbolizing the union of male and female energies. It’s perfect for you. Don’t worry about it falling off, I’ve taken care of that.”
Raven hesitated for a moment, giving Skuld a long searching look — the young goddess felt entirely too ... well, predatory. But it was Skuld, and in the end Raven smiled faintly and swept back her hood. “Go ahead, put it on. And thank you,” she whispered.
“Hey, no problem, it completes your, ah ...” costume “... uniform,” Skuld said cheerily as she picked the gem up out of the box. She ignored the way Raven tensed up as she carefully centered the bindi before pressing it against the smaller girl’s forehead right below her widow’s peak, letting the tiniest spark of her power leap from the tip of her forefinger to the gem as she pulled her hand back. And thank you for accepting my little tracker.
She turned back to the virtual keyboard still floating above the gate’s control console and quickly typed away for a few seconds, until a glowing circle made up of variously shaded white fractals unfolded into existence twenty feet off the ground. “There you go, a one-way trip to Jump City, USA.”
Raven tensed for a moment, then relaxed when Skuld made no move to give her a farewell hug. She pulled her hood up and floated up level with the gate, hovered for a moment as she took a deep breath, then dove through the fractal-patterned plane and was gone.
For long minutes Skuld stared up at the glowing, shifting patterns of the gate before she pulled a palm-sized device out of another pocket, hit a button and waited impatiently as the virtual screen sprang into existence ... waited ... waited ... and grinned triumphantly as a line of text sprang scrolled across the screen. “Dimensional positioning system tracking ... Jump City coordinates right ... signal strong ... everything’s green.” Not that I can actually do anything except watch, whatever happens. Sobering, she finally turned back to the console with a sigh. “Father knows what he’s doing. He does,” she murmured. “He always has before, and he does now.” But for the first time, she was finding it really, really hard to take his direct instructions on simple faith. Especially since her expedited studies (thanks to her expedited maturation) had included a lot of history, and her Father’s chosen surrogates didn’t always succeed, or survive, sometimes neither — all of them freely chose to accept their roles, and she had no doubt that her Father cared for each and every one of them, but that didn’t stop him from using them up when the situation called for it. She’d eventually been able to accept the necessity on an intellectual level, but with Raven there was nothing ‘intellectual’ about it — it had gotten very, very personal.
A few quick seconds of typing and the gate slowly folded into itself and was gone. Skuld shut down the virtual keyboard and relocked the console (necessary to keep any children playing in the area from doing something spectacularly stupid), and was walking away when the console’s communicator chimed ... with the particular pattern than meant the call was for her. Turning around, Skuld checked the caller ID and her eyebrows rose as she recognized the name of Kami-sama’s personal secretary. Praying that he wasn’t going to tell her that her Father wanted her to stop Raven after all, she instantly hit the ‘accept’ button. “Hildir, what’s up?” she asked.
“Skuld, Kami-sama needs to see you immediately,” Hildir said.
Skuld’s eyebrows rose further at his formal tone. “I’ll be right there.”
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(Posted Sun, 10 Jun 2012 03:08)
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