Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tyelkormo hadn’t meant for Curvo to be stolen by a (possibly corrupted) Maia of Irmo. He hadn’t really wanted Curvo gone at all. He’d just gotten frustrated - he wasn’t as good a babysitter as Nelyo, no matter how much he’d had to do it since Nelyo joined the court and Kano went away to study - and he’d spoken without thinking like always.

Not like always, there was the strangest Maia he’d ever seen standing in front of him, offering him his dreams if he forgot about his little brother.

Tyelkormo knew better than to trust anything from one of Irmo’s Maiar, even if they weren’t possibly evil. “No. I want my brother back. I didn’t mean it before.”

The Maia tsked. “You should be more careful in what you say, then. Well, if you insist, you can try to find your way to my castle at the center of the Labyrinth to reclaim the child, but I don’t think much of your chances.”

Tyelkormo didn’t think much of his chances if Atar and Amme came home to find he’d let a Maia of Irmo have Curvo, either. He started walking.

- - -

Sarah had only just started trying to find the door into the Labyrinth when the strangest boy she’d ever seen came running past her.

He had long, silver-gold hair in braids and pointed ears and fairy-tale clothes, so her first thought was that he was related to the Goblin King - maybe his son? “Hey!” she called out, “do you know how to get in?”

He paused, examining the wall for a moment. “This way, I think,” he said, and scrambled up a vine-covered section of wall as easily as breathing. At the top of the wall, he paused, turning to reach down a hand to her. “Are you coming or not?”

Sarah did not have nearly as easy of a time getting up the wall as the boy did, but she did finally manage it in the end. He then leaped lightly to the ground on the other side, and Sarah did her best to follow suit, although she stumbled and fell on her hands and knees.

“You’re not an elf,” the boy observed.

“Of course not!” Sarah said, feeling a little snappish after the fall. “I’m human. I’m here to get my brother back from the Goblin King.”

“Goblin King?” the boy asked, sounding surprised. “I thought he was just a Maia.”

“What’s that?”

“What’s a human?”

Sarah folded her arms and glared. “A...person. A normal person.”

“I’m normal where I’m from,” the boy retorted. He tilted his head like he was thinking. “You said you were here to save your brother?”

Sarah nodded.

“So am I. We might as well work together.” The boy gave a little bow. “I’m Tyelkormo, well met.”

Sarah hesitated. She wasn’t at all sure about him. But she could probably use an ally, and he seemed like he might be a lot better at this than she was.

She nodded again. “Okay.”

- - -

This Sarah, Tyelkormo learned quickly, was very strange, and the world she claimed to come from sounded even stranger.

People died, in her world, and they didn’t come back, and no one knew what happened to them. Sarah’s father had apparently remarried as Grandfather Finwe had, and as many other people in her world did, and the brother she sought to retrieve was actually a half-brother. Sarah seemed no happier about this than Atar did about Indis and Uncle Nolofinwe and Uncle Arafinwe, but her discontent seemed to center around the character of her stepmother, not the remarriage itself as such.

There were no Valar or Maiar in Sarah’s world. She believed in things she called “fairies”, which she believed the “Goblin King” to be, but mentioned that most thought this belief was silly. She had never even heard of Eru Iluvatar, which Tyelkormo thought that surely everyone must have.

He wondered if the Aftercomers Atar occasionally muttered about were supposed to be like her. If so, he didn’t imagine they could ever supplant the Quendi. Sarah wasn’t nearly as strong or fast as he was, and her sense of direction wasn’t nearly as good. It was fortunate for her that they’d met, or he wasn’t sure how she would manage.

He made the mistake of mentioning this to her when her frustration was already at a high point, and she bristled. “Well, if you’re going to be like that about it!”

“It’s just the truth,” Tyelkormo argued. That was what Atar said when someone got offended at a remark he’d made.

“Fine,” Sarah snapped. “I’ll find my way on my own, then. I don’t need to hang around with someone who thinks I’m useless.”

So she wasn’t all that smart, either. To his dismay, Tyelkormo realized he’d said that out loud.

Sarah backed away, looking hurt and angry and like she was trying not to cry, but before she could go very far, a roar startled both of them out of their argument.

Tyelkormo wanted to run away. But Sarah, concerningly, was creeping towards the noise, and he wanted to be in the Hunt of Orome one day, after all, so there wasn’t much he could do besides follow her.

The roaring was coming from an enormous hairy monster, which somehow a quartet of goblins had managed to trap and were harassing with spears. Tyelkormo wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or concerned, but Sarah had apparently already made up her mind - she picked up a nearby rock and threw it at the closest goblin, spinning his helmet around and sending the lot of them into chaos.

When, five minutes later, she’d managed to send off the goblins without them ever knowing she was there, free the monster, and befriend it, she shot Tyelkormo an arch look. “Still think I’m useless?”

Tyelkormo grudgingly apologized, as he had to admit she was far from it.

- - -

Sarah wasn’t sure what to make of Tyelkormo.

He was definitely not human. He was just a little too fast, too strong, too graceful, too...intense. She could swear his eyes glowed a little bit, and the first time she saw him in the dark, she was sure of it. There was something...powerful about him, something that felt different from the Goblin King or anything else in the Labyrinth.

The world he described when he talked about his home sounded fantastical, idyllic, like the kind of place everyone had always told her couldn’t be real. She kind of wondered if she could go back there with him after she got Toby back, instead of going home. 

Tyelkormo himself was definitely the only reason she’d made it this far this fast - and he knew it, and made it clear that he knew it. He definitely respected her more after she rescued and made friends with Ludo, which kept him from being unbearable to be around. Sarah had decided that they made a decent team: she was good at logic puzzles and making friends with people/creatures, and Tyelkormo was good at running, and climbing, and fighting off creatures like the Fire Gang that wanted to take off their heads.

He was also very good with dogs - when they encountered a little fox knight patrolling the Labyrinth, Sarah wasn’t sure if this situation called for fighting or befriending, but as soon as Tyelkormo spotted the knight’s dog-steed, he immediately crouched down and started scritching and petting and praising and making dog-sounds, and the dog started licking his face as the knight scolded him to “get down, Ambrosius!” So from then on, it was pretty much inevitable that Sir Didymus and Ambrosius were going to join the two of them and Ludo.

This meant that they had a new conversation partner, and it turned out that Sir Didymus hadn’t ever heard of Tyelkormo’s home, either. “But, my lady,” he added, “there are many, many worlds out in the great beyond that are little known, and it is very likely that Sir Tyelkormo’s world is one of them.”

Tyelkormo, weirdly, didn’t seem to think that his world was as perfect as it sounded to her. “Adults still fight over stupid things there,” he said, “and you run out of space to explore eventually. And nothing ever really changes.”

At one point, when they were walking through a forest, a peach dropped from a tree right into Sarah’s hand. It smelled delicious, and she was hungry after hours of walking and running and scrambling, so she started to take a bite--

--only for Tyelkormo to knock it out of her hand.

“What was that for?” Sarah demanded.

“You don’t eat fruit from Irmo’s garden. Don’t you know anything?” Celegorm said. “Maybe this Goblin King is one of Irmo’s Maiar and maybe he’s not, but he feels similar enough, and he takes people, and that’s good enough for me.”

Irmo, Sarah remembered, was one of the Valar-gods Tyelkormo had mentioned. “What do you mean, takes people?” she asked after a moment.

Tyelkormo scowled. “Irmo took my grandmother. She was supposed to just rest and heal, after Father was born, but she never came back and her spirit left her body. Father brings us to visit her, but he always tells us to not wander off and not eat any fruit in Irmo’s garden, just in case we go to sleep and don’t wake up.”

“Why do you follow someone who would do things like that?” Sarah asked.

He just stared at her. “He’s a Vala. What else can we do?”

They walked in silence after that, a little closer than before.

- - -

Tyelkormo thought he was starting to like Sarah.

He didn’t like many people outside of his family - mostly because a lot of them didn’t like Atar, or liked him in a way that meant they treated him and the whole family with respect so intense you could never actually do anything fun with them. But Sarah didn’t care about any of the mess with his family, and she had no qualms about telling him when she thought he was wrong. There was a lot she physically couldn’t do, but she always pushed through and tried her best and never gave up.

She was weaker and slower and couldn’t hear or smell half the things he could, and she would (according to her) be an adult in a mere three years’ time, and would probably die an unthinkably short eighty or so years after that. She wasn’t a good person to like.

But she was brave, and her own kind of clever, and good at making friends. The two of them were a good team. Tyelkormo kept coming back to that, because he’d been curious and asked Atar not long ago why he’d married Amme. Atar had gotten that special smile he only had when he thought about Amme and said that it was because of the first time they collaborated. He’d known then, he said, that he wanted to be able to work with her on anything and everything, forever.

It hadn’t made sense to Tyelkormo at the time, but it almost sort of made sense now, except that it couldn’t, because there could be no forever with Sarah, and by the time he would be old enough to do anything about it anyway, she would have lost nearly a quarter of what life she had left.

Better to focus on getting Curvo and her Toby back.

They fought their way through the Goblin City and reached the castle, and went on ahead just the two of them, and confronted the Goblin King. Tyelkormo’s first priority was getting Curvo safely back in his arms, but as soon as he had, as Sarah spoke the last of her right words, he reached for her hand anyway, not sure what he expected or hoped for.

If it was for Sarah to stay at his side, he was doomed to disappointment. There was a flash, and the feeling of falling, and then he was in the house in Tirion with Curvo playing on the rug and no goblins in sight.

And no Sarah anywhere to be found, either.

- - -

Everyone else from the Labyrinth appeared in her room when she invited them - even the Fire Gang, even an owl she strangely suspected was the Goblin King outside her window. But no Tyelkormo.

He was the only part of the whole thing that didn’t fit. She could see clues to all the rest in her room, enough parallels that sometimes she wondered if it had all been a dream. But there was nothing that might have planted Tyelkormo or his brother or his stories of his home in her subconscious. If she’d been dreaming, he must have been dreaming it with her, from wherever he was.

She missed him, Sarah found. It was ridiculous to think so much about a boy she’d only known for about ten hours, but she did, and she found herself looking in books for anything that sounded like Tirion, and scanning crowds for him, and turning down dates without being able to explain why even to herself.

The other friends she’d made in the Labyrinth visited regularly, even when she moved away to college, even when she started working. But Tyelkormo never appeared once, and none of the others had any real explanation as to why it might be.

- - -

Celegorm had seen Middle-earth, and it had not been at all as Sarah had described so long ago. He had met the Aftercomers, and he was reasonably sure that Sarah had been of the same kind, even though almost none of their culture was anything like what she had spoken of.

He had kept Curvo safe through all of it - until now. He’d seen his little brother fall fighting Nimloth a short while ago, and not get up. Nimloth had collapsed herself a short while later, but that was small, cold comfort.

Much like Dior’s body sprawled out not far from where Celegorm himself was bleeding out.

He could feel the Everlasting Darkness closing in, and it wasn’t as though he could tell himself anymore that he didn’t deserve it. He let his eyes slip shut, and gave in to the sensation of falling, not unlike the fall that had once brought him home from the Labyrinth.

The sensation stopped abruptly. He could feel something underneath him. 

He had not thought the Everlasting Darkness would have carpets.

- - -

It had been a long time since Sarah had really believed that she would ever see Tyelkormo again. She had also just had the latest in a string of too-long days after too-short nights, fueled by too little caffeine. So she could not entirely be blamed for thinking, at first, that the tangle of pale blond braids she glimpsed strewn on her living room floor as she came into her apartment was a sleep-deprived hallucination.

She hung up her purse and her coat and shuffled into the living room - only to stop short, shocked fully awake by the discovery that she had not hallucinated the hair, and that it was attached to a large, fully-armored warrior sprawled out on her carpet, in the middle of a slowly spreading stain that was just slightly redder than human blood.

He evidently heard her approach, because he lifted his head, and all-too-familiar eyes locked onto hers.

“Sarah?” Tyelkormo slurred, before his head dropped again.

Somehow, that spurred her into action, moving to assess the situation and...she didn’t know if she could fix this. 

She was going to find a way to fix this.

She wanted answers, lots of them, and Tyelkormo wasn’t going to just go and die after years with no word without giving her those answers.

Chapter Text

Buffy had seen a lot of weird over the past several months. But this had to be the weirdest thing yet.

“Let me see if I understand this fully,” said the guy in the robes whom she’d rescued from a horde of nerds going bonkers. If he understood anything fully, it would be more than she did right now, but she let him continue. “In this world, I and all that I know are...fictional. Part of a story - an evidently quite popular one, I surmise. And enemies of yours have employed some uncanny power to make me...real.”

“I think they were just trying to summon the, um, droid thingies,” Buffy commented. “Probably for their supervillain army or whatever they’re doing now. They looked pretty surprised when you showed up too.”

It’d been supposed to be a nice, quiet afternoon. Xander had wanted to see the new Star Wars movie and take his mind off the upcoming wedding and Buffy’s mind off of last week’s Riley appearance and subsequent disappearance, so he’d talked her and Willow into going with him to the Tuesday afternoon matinee. Unfortunately, Warren and Andrew and Jonathan had also been there, with some kind of deeply wacky spell that brought movie characters to life.

Robots with laser guns were almost definitely not something a Slayer was supposed to have to deal with, but there were innocent people packing the movie theater and the robots were confused and starting to shoot (although their aim was not great), so someone had to do something.

Luckily (maybe), the spell had also brought along this guy and his very helpful laser sword, and he’d taken care of the robots pretty fast. Unluckily, he’d gotten mobbed afterward by people who thought he was either a superfan with a really good costume, or the actual actor from the movie. Buffy had barely gotten them out of there in one piece.

“But if I am fictional, and my world is,” the guy - he’d introduced himself as Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Buffy couldn’t call him that; Obi-Wan Kenobi was supposed to be old and ghostly and not almost hot enough for her to take notice, “how can I still feel the Force here?”

“What?”

“If my world is fictional, it stands to reason that the Force would be as well,” he explained. “But I still feel it - this place is very strong with the Dark Side.”

“That’s the first thing I’ve heard all day that’s made any sense,” Buffy muttered. “The town’s built on something called a Hellmouth - if there’s a Force, it’s on the dark side of it for sure.”

“Buffy,” Xander said slowly, “did he just imply that the Force is real, and if so, why are you being so unwigged about it?”

“I fought robots from a movie today. I’m all wigginsed out,” Buffy informed him. Not that she’d had a lot of emotional capacity to spare on freaking out to begin with.

“If we could take a look at the spell Warren and those guys did,” Willow began, “obviously I wouldn’t do any actual magic, but we could try and figure out if there was a dimensional summoning aspect to it. I mean, if we accept the possibility that in an infinite multiverse anything can happen, there could be a universe out there that’s the same as what’s in the Star Wars movies.”

“Why do you keep speaking of star wars?” their visitor asked, sounding perturbed. “The armies I have uncovered are disturbing, yes, but it is to be hoped that we can still prevent outright war.”

Xander looked pale. “We gotta get him back where he came from. If he’s from a world where that stuff really happened - is happening - a whole lotta things are gonna get messed up if we don’t put him back there.”

Buffy remembered enough about the older Star Wars movies to just about see Xander’s point. “Okay, tracking down Warren and co. ASAP it is. But how exactly?” It wasn’t like they hadn’t been trying to get these guys for the past months or anything.

“They may try their...spell again at the next performance of this ‘movie’, the guy - fine, Obi-Wan - suggested. “Or someone who works there may remember which direction they went when they left, which could help us narrow the search.”

Buffy wasn’t sure even the Trio would be that dumb, but “It’s a place to start. C’mon, let’s go. The next showtime starts in half an hour.”

- - -

It turned out that the Trio really were that dumb, and Buffy caught them just as they were about to sneak into the theater through the side door.

“You again,” Warren sneered.

“Funny, I was just about to say the same thing to you,” Buffy quipped flatly. “Summoning movie characters from another dimension? Really? That’s a whole new level of nerd, even for you.”

“We didn’t summon them!” Andrew retorted defensively. “No way would we mess up the coolest timeline ever like that. We generated them with the movies as a focus, which was actually way harder--”

“So,” Obi-Wan said, stepping forward, “the Anakin and the Jedi Order I knew are not real. And we do not need to negotiate with you to return me to them.”

Warren snorted. “Return you? You’re a construct, dude. If we banish you, you disappear.”

“Ah.” Obi-Wan’s expression flickered just a tiny bit before returning to smooth politeness. “In that case, given what Buffy has told me about your other recent activities, I shall have no qualms whatsoever about subduing you.”

Warren let out a derisive laugh. Jonathan nudged him. “Uh. Warren. That’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. With the Slayer.”

“Oh, please.” Warren rolled his eyes. “Even the real Obi-Wan was never that cool of a fighter. And this one doesn’t even have the Force.”

Obi-Wan just smirked and casually moved a dumpster to block the end of the alley. Andrew gulped. “I don’t think anybody told him that.”

- - -

As it turned out, Obi-Wan was just as good at kicking butt without the laser sword as with it. Fighting next to him was the closest thing Buffy had had to fun since she came out of the ground - maybe longer.

- - -

Obi-wan regarded the defeated, groaning young men sprawled prone on the ground with no small amount of satisfaction. Few things made sense in this strange new world, but delivering justice and protecting innocents remained the same, and it was refreshing to have it be so straightforward after a decade of shadows and mystery and corruption.

A decade that, like the rest of the life he remembered, had apparently never actually happened. He was still reeling from that a great deal internally. But perhaps now that the immediate problem was dealt with, he would have some time to process that revelation and come to terms with it.

“What happens now?” he inquired.

“We should be able to call the police on these guys - for once,” Buffy said. “Most of what I fight is supernatural stuff that normal law enforcement can’t handle. But these three are wanted for that diamond robbery a while back, and now they don’t have their toys anymore, they shouldn’t be much of a threat.”

The one called Warren huffed. “Just you wait, Slayer. We’ll be back. The nemesis always comes back.”

“Warren,” the smallest one, Jonathan, mumbled, “don’t make the Slayer an’ the Jedi mad again.”

This was all very helpfully informative, but, “What I meant was what is going to happen to me,” Obi-Wan clarified. 

“Oh.” Buffy frowned. “I dunno. What do you want to do?”

“I would prefer to go home,” he admitted, “but my home apparently does not exist, and I find that I would rather keep existing.” He looked around. “I suppose in that case the only thing left to do is stay here in...what did you call it?”

“Sunnydale,” Buffy said. “Huh. I guess there’s nowhere else in this world you could really go. We’d have to do something about that look so you don’t keep getting mobbed. What would you do, anyway?”

“What do you do?” Obi-Wan asked. “You mentioned dealing with supernatural threats?” Fighting was something he was good at, although it wasn’t necessarily his preferred way of dealing with a problem, and the brief tussle alongside Buffy had felt right somehow.

She didn’t seem to feel the Force, or at least to know it as such, but it moved strongly around and through her, almost as strongly as with Anakin - the light and the dark both. It, and she, were fascinating, and he found himself drawn to her, wanting to know more. Not to mention that she was quite lovely.

The Code does not permit attachments, a small voice reminded him.

The Code isn’t real here, another voice pointed out.

Something in Buffy’s eyes suggested it might be a moot point, as far as she was concerned, for some time to come, but that was probably for the best, considering the tightly controlled grief for the life he’d never had that was merely waiting for its opportune moment to pour out of him.

“I’m, um, I’m the Slayer. The Vampire Slayer,” Buffy explained, interrupting his train of thought. “The one girl in all the world chosen to fight the monsters and demons and things that go bump in the night. Having help...” She hesitated. “It hasn’t always worked out great before. But we can give it a shot.”

A wailing nose approached, and Buffy glanced in that direction. “Sounds like the cops are here. Better go get them to take these three and then we can go figure out with the gang where you’re gonna stay and stuff. Just as long as it’s not with me, ‘cause I’m broke trying to feed three people, let alone four.”

“You don’t receive a stipend for your work as the Slayer?” Obi-Wan asked, frowning.

Buffy’s laugh was short and bitter. “Ha. No. Tell you later.”

Obi-Wan filed that away as a pair of uniformed individuals approached, along with other tidbits he had follow-up questions about. He had the distinct sense that all was not completely well here, and, well. Fixing problems was a large part of what the Jedi were supposed to do. The least he could do, in thanks for help finding his feet, was to try and mitigate some of the troubles he found in this new place.

Chapter Text

There was a new boy in town.

Chrissy would’ve noticed him anyway, because there was hardly ever anything new in Hawkins, but she particularly noticed him because everyone had, and everyone was whispering about him. They said he was Russian, probably a Communist. They said he hung around those weird kids, who played around with magic and used to orbit around that no-good Eddie Munson before he got arrested for dealing drugs and shipped out of town. They said he’d outright admitted to killing someone as casually as you would say you’d gone to the store for milk. They said he was trouble, and dangerous, and that someone should get him out of town, too.

Chrissy had decided she wanted to be his friend.

It was less because of him, and more because she felt she needed to make up for something. She’d once wanted to be Eddie Munson’s friend, because he had a cool guitar and played cool music and wasn’t afraid of anything. but he’d gone into high school right after that talent show, while she’d had two more years at the middle school, and by the time she did make it to high school, Eddie was the King of the Freaks, and she’d had people crowding around her telling her to stay away from him. And she hadn’t been brave enough to contradict them until it was too late.

So she was going to be the new boy’s friend instead. Somehow. She’d decided.

It wasn’t going to be easy, because he didn’t actually go to school. Most people considered this another black mark against him, but no one actually tried to make him go, as far as Chrissy knew - maybe because no one actually wanted him around their children, maybe because no one could seem to find him if he didn’t want to be found. But Chrissy was good at watching out and noticing what people did - she’d had to learn to be - and she knew that the boy often came out of the little patch of woods with the picnic table to meet the Hellfire Club at the end of the school day. So that was a place to start.

She slipped away from Jason and her usual friends at lunchtime and quietly made her way to the trees. Back before Eddie Munson got arrested, there were rumors that kids would sneak out this way to buy drugs, but no one came this way anymore. Which meant she shouldn’t run into anyone, but if someone did see her, they would have a lot of questions about what she was doing.

Chrissy reminded herself that she was trying to care less about what other people thought, and ducked between the trees. 

There didn’t seem to be anyone there. Just the abandoned picnic table, and more shadows than she would’ve expected on such a sunny day.

“Hello?” she called out. “Anybody here?”

There was no response, but she hadn’t really expected one. For lack of a better plan, she crossed to the picnic table, sat down, and took out her lunch. Even if the boy wasn’t here or didn’t come out, this way she could eat her whole lunch without anyone knowing. Usually Jason took part of it, or he or one of her girl friends would tell her she shouldn’t eat so much, and she could never be sure it wouldn’t get back to her mom somehow. But out here, there was no one who would care.

It was surprisingly peaceful, actually. She should have tried this a long time ago.

She finished, confident now that she’d have the energy to make it through cheer, and slipped away back to school without ever seeing anyone else.

- - -

It took a week of eating her lunch in the woods, a week of increasing questions from everyone she knew, before the boy showed himself.

He was tall, and very skinny, and very pale, with longish shaggy dark hair, and he wore a black t-shirt and black jeans that seemed too big for him. He emerged from a patch of shadows where Chrissy could’ve sworn no one was standing, just as she was unwrapping her sandwich, and stalked towards her.

“What do you want?” he asked, glaring. His voice was deeper than she’d expected, and definitely had a Russian accent. “Why do you keep coming here?”

Chrissy did what she thought was an admirable job concealing her startlement. “I wanted to meet you. I thought I might be able to find you here.”

“What do you want with me?” he asked suspiciously.

“Just to be friends.”

The suspicion deepened. “Everyone who would want to be my friend already is. Don’t you have your own friends?”

“Yes,” Chrissy admitted. “But they’re...not very nice sometimes.” It was the first time she’d admitted it, even to herself. “Even though everyone thinks they are. And everybody thinks you’re...not nice, so I thought maybe you might be. Nice.”

The boy seemed to close in on himself. “I’m not,” he said flatly. “You should have listened to ‘everybody’ and stayed away. I don’t need another ot’kazatsya friend who isn’t even helpful.”

Chrissy didn’t know what that word meant, but suspected it wasn’t exactly polite. She wasn’t going to be deterred that easily, though. “Is that Russian?”

“No. Ravkan.”

“Where’s that from?”

“Ravka.” The darkness behind the boy seemed to intensify. “Now leave.”

Chrissy fled, and told herself it was because the lunch period was nearly over.

- - -

She came back again the next day, because “Ravka isn’t in any of the atlases, and the librarian had never heard of it. Where is it?”

The boy melted out of the shadows again. “If I had wanted you to know, I would have told you before. Not that you would have believed me anyway.”

Chrissy’s heart pounded. She had the inescapable feeling that she was on the edge of something much bigger than she’d bargained for, but she didn’t want to give up and back down now. “Try me,” she offered. 

He made a derisive noise. “Fine. Ravka is a country in another world. Some...scientists made a doorway between that world and this, by mistake, and I got lost and stumbled through from there to here. Okay?”

Chrissy frowned. “You don’t have to make fun of me. You can tell me the truth.”

“That was the truth,” the boy retorted. “Don’t blame me if you don’t believe it.”

Wait. That was impossible. But...looking at him, she could tell that he was completely serious.

“So...like the Narnia books,” she ventured. She’d gotten to read those in the seventh grade, in between her aunt giving her the set for her birthday and her mom finding out enough about them to decide they were sacrilegious and full of magic and taking them away.

“I don’t know what those are,” the boy said impatiently.

Chrissy did her best to explain from what she remembered. He listened with mild interest.

“Perhaps it is similar,” he said eventually. “But from what you have said, the children in those stories always return home at the end, and I do not yet know if I can do so.”

- - -

After that, whenever Chrissy came out to the picnic table, he would come out to greet her, and they would talk, some kind of unspoken truce having been reached by her acceptance of his story. He had, Chrissy learned, arrived in Hawkins the previous summer, right before the Starcourt Mall blew up. Apparnetly, that was where the portal had been located, and he hadn’t yet been able to find out whether there was still a way through to his world at that spot, or elsewhere in Hawkins. In the meantime, the Hellfire Club freshmen and some of their friends had been sheltering him and helping him lay low. They’d also taught him English before he figured out how to read it from books, so his speech was mostly formally stilted with the occasional bit of slang that sounded wrong in his voice.

He tried teaching Chrissy a little Ravkan when she expressed interest. It still sounded kind of like Russian to her, but somehow that just made it feel more forbidden and exciting. 

“What’s Ravka like?” Chrissy asked, and he told her, about a land that was harsh but beautiful, about tsars and peasants and beautiful people who wielded fire and water and air, who bent metal and bodies to their will.

“It sounds a lot better than here,” Chrissy admitted.

That, of course, prompted him to ask about her life. She tried to sound positive and not complain, she really did - she had always been told that complaining was wrong, when she had been so blessed and so many people around the world were so badly off. But the more they talked, over days and weeks, the more slipped out - the  way her girl friends could be so petty sometimes, the way Jason never really listened, her mom and the ever-ready measuring tape and scale and the consequences for having gained a pound now that she was getting to eat most or all of her lunch every day.

One day she couldn’t come to their spot at the usual time, and spotted him waiting for her after cheer practice. She hurried over to him; no one else was still around to comment on it. “What is it?”

“Why didn’t you come today?”

Chrissy felt her cheeks heat. “Jason told my mom that I’ve been disappearing during lunch period instead of eating with him and giving him some of my food like I used to. She told me I had to start spending lunch with him or...or I’d regret it.” She paused. “We’ll have to find some other way to spend time together. If you still want to.”

His dark eyes focused intensely on her. “Is there some reason why eating less and attaching yourself to this Jason or a similar mouthbreather is necessary for your survival, for your mother to insist on it so strongly?”

“Um. Not really?” Chrissy looked away. “She’d probably say it’s necessary for social survival - like, to be respected and stuff - but lots of people don’t and they’re fine. I mostly do it because...well, um...my mom doesn’t react well if I don’t.” His eyebrow raised in question, and they were safely in the shadows of their trees now, so she took a deep breath and let herself say it for the first time. “She...threatens to hurt me. If I don’t do what she says.”

His eyes flashed with anger. “Why has someone not stopped this?” he demanded. “No one cares what happens to Grisha, but your family is well-known, respected. If it were for something necessary - my mother has been harsh with me before, but it was so that I would learn what I needed to stay alive. She would never threaten to harm me.”

Chrissy sniffed. “It’s because we’re respected that no one does anything,” she managed. “No one would ever believe my mom could be like that.” Then, because she didn’t want to talk about it anymore, “What’s Grisha?”

He hesitated. “It’s...those who use the Small Science I told you of. Etherialki, Materialki, Corporalki. In my world, people fear them for their power. W - they can never be truly safe anywhere, without being hunted and killed if they’re found out.”

Well, that put Chrissy’s problems right in perspective - and also raised a question she hadn’t been able to put into words before. “Are you...Grisha?”

He hesitated even longer this time, clearly struggling, before letting out a single nod.

Barely breathing, she asked, “What kind?”

Another tense pause. Then, slowly, he held out his hands, and she saw shadows pooling and swirling in them. Darkness gathered thickly around them, and she suddenly understood why this little patch of woods had always seemed so dim.

“I’m a shadow summoner,” he said very quietly. “My name is Aleksander Morozova, and my mother and I are the only shadow summoners who have ever lived.”

- - -

Things shifted again after that day. This was partially because they had to, now that lunchtime meetings could no longer happen, at least for a while. But part of it was because of what they had shared, the secrets that had now been opened.

Aleksander introduced Chrissy to the other friends he had - Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair, Mike and Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington (!), Robin Buckley. They were confused, but welcomed her with open arms once it was clear she wasn’t going to make fun of them. Chrissy spent a lot of her evenings snuck out of the house, helping them scour Hawkins for a portal for Aleksander or just hanging out. When she could spare the time from that, homework, and the bare minimum of keeping up appearances, she tried to spend time just with Aleksander as well, missing the times it had been just the two of them at their table.

It didn’t escape her notice that none of the others seemed to be trying very hard to actually find the portal, and she mentioned this to Aleksander once. “Would it be so bad if you just stayed here?” she asked.

He frowned. “In some ways it would be easier. But...the Grisha in my world need someone to protect them. Someone to make a safe haven for them. And it has to be me - a shadow summoner is the strongest kind of Grisha, unless a sun summoner exists one day, and there are only me and my mother, and she prefers to hide.”

“Oh,” Chrissy said quietly.

Aleksander gave her another of those intent looks. “You’ll do all right after I leave, if you can get out of this town,” he said. “There are a lot of places in this world you can go, I think, and have a good life.”

Chrissy wondered if it was her imagination that he sounded like he was trying to convince himself at least as much as her.

- - -

The day she turned eighteen, Chrissy celebrated by publicly dumping Jason and running away to Steve’s house.

The gang threw an enthusiastic birthday party for her, and by the end of it, she felt so high on life (and sugar) that when she found herself alone with Aleksander for a moment, she kissed him just because it seemed like a good idea.

He pulled away, looking stricken. “We shouldn’t - I can’t stay - and Grisha live longer, I’d probably outlive you--”

“I don’t care if you don’t,” Chrissy said boldly.

He stared a long moment. “Saints help me, I don’t,” he admitted, and kissed her back.

- - -

For the next couple of months, Chrissy noticed that Aleksander wasn’t looking as hard for a portal, either.

- - -

Which, of course, meant that right before spring break, on a routine check of the Starcourt Mall site, they found it - a crack between two chunks of rubble, through which they could just barely see a forest that was definitely not in Indiana.

Everyone stared, gathered around it.

“So I guess this is it, then,” Dustin ventured.

“Yes,” Aleksander said quietly. He tore his eyes away from the crack to look at them all. “I have to go now - I can’t wait, or it might go away again.”

“Right. Yeah.” Steve sort of shook himself. “I’d kinda stopped thinking this’d ever actually happen, but. Um. Take care of yourself over there, dude.”

Everyone made some sort of goodbye, and then it was only Chrissy’s turn left. She braced herself, trying to figure out what to say and desperate not to cry, when Aleksander said all in a rush, “Do you want to come with me?”

“...What?” Chrissy breathed, even as several startled noises from the others confirmed that she wasn’t the only one who’d heard it.

“You can come with me. If you want,” Aleksander repeated. “You don’t have to. It will be dangerous, and I should not - but I want you by my side. For however long we can have.”

Chrissy knew she shouldn’t either, but somehow it was the easiest thing in the world to say, “Yes, of course I’ll come.”

That prompted more exclamations from everyone, and then Chrissy had to make all her own goodbyes and assurances that she knew what she was doing. But within moments, she had her hand tight around Aleksander’s, and looked up at him. “Let’s go.”

And together, they stepped through the crack into a new world.

Chapter Text

Basira did not have time to get stuck in another Spiral domain.

True, this wasn’t quite as mind-warping as the other Spiral domains she’d stumbled across on her long hunt trek, but. It was a maze. And it was in her way. And it wouldn’t let her out. And she had had enough.

“Actually,” said an individual just ahead of her who had definitely not been leaning against that patch of stone wall a moment ago, “it’s a labyrinth. The Labyrinth.”

Basira glared at him. He wasn’t the most inhuman-looking avatar she’d seen, but he definitely wasn’t just human, either. He had hair like an escaped ‘80s singer and clothes that wouldn’t be out of place at a slightly bawdy renfaire and eyes that were unnervingly ancient and seemed to see right through her. He looked vaguely like somebody famous, but she couldn’t place who.

“It is a maze,” she retorted. “It’s got branching pathways and dead ends and puzzles, and it’s clearly designed to get me lost. A labyrinth would have a single pathway that would take me to the center and then back out again.”

The avatar looked deeply offended. “I think I know what things are called within my own kingdom.”

“Huh,” Basira said. “You’re upgrading from ‘domains’ to ‘kingdoms’ now? A little pretentious, if you ask me.”

He blinked. “Ah, of course. You think I serve one of the Entities.”

“Everyone who isn’t being tormented with their own worst fear right now is,” Basira pointed out dryly.

“But not you.”

“I lost my best friend to the Hunt. My worst fear is already happening,” Basira said, because that had to be it, it couldn’t be that she was playing right into the Hunt’s hands herself... “You expect me to believe that you’re not an avatar of the Spiral?”

He snorted derisively. “That upstart wishes that I served it,” he said, gesturing dismissively. “No, my power is quite different - not madness, but dreams.” He bowed. “Jareth the Goblin King, at your service.”

“Charmed,” Basira said. She looked around. “I assume that you want something.”

“How perceptive.” Jareth pushed off the wall and approached slowly, oozing grace to an uncanny degree. “I am...unhappy about the Entities’ takeover. No one wishes or dreams anymore, at least not anything interesting, and there are no runners for my Labyrinth - the Spiral and the Web and the Buried have stolen them all. I want them gone.”

“So why haven’t you done anything, if they’re so beneath you?” Basira asked, half sarcastically and half out of genuine curiosity.

“I am bound by the rules of my particular magic,” Jareth explained. “I can do nothing that someone does not explicitly wish for. ‘Make it stop’, unfortunately, does not count, particularly when it is not remotely directed at me.”

“So you want me to make a wish for you,” Basira concluded. “Why me?”

Jareth shrugged elegantly. “You seem sensible, and determined, and decent. And you are conveniently available.”

Basira wondered how much weight each of those factors held with him, and whether in the end it was really just the last one.

“So...whatever I wish for,” she said, “you’ll grant. And that’s it?”

“Within reason,” Jareth amended. “If something is not within my power to do, I will say so. And if there is an aspect of the wish that does not benefit me - something less to do with setting the world right and more to do with, for instance, saving your friend - you may find that it does not go entirely as intended.”

Hope flared in Basira’s chest at the mention of Daisy, hope she hadn’t known she’d lost, mixed with irritation at his posturing. “Is saving Daisy one of those things you can’t do? Or just something you don’t care to do?”

“Oh, I certainly can,” he said carelessly. “If you want her back after that, though, you may have to solve the Labyrinth to retrieve her.”

Basira glared again. “Why would you want to mess with me after I’d done you a favor?”

“To be perfectly frank,” Jareth drawled, with a sharp smile, “because you fascinate me, Basira.” She was pretty sure she hadn’t told him her name, and hoped it wasn’t a bad thing that he knew it. “It would be such a shame if our time together only lasted a few more moments.”

Basira closed her eyes, took a deep breath. One wish to fix everything, and then just solving this...maze to get Daisy back. It had to be easier than slogging through an unknown number of domains without any real plan. She had gotten herself out of a Stranger ritual with sheer stubborn logic. She could do this.

“Fine,” she said, opening her eyes. “It’s a deal. When do I wish?”

The smile grew wider and sharper and more uncanny. “Any time you like.”

“All right.” Another deep breath. “I wish...that the Entities would be banished to where they can do no harm, that all the damage they have done to people and to the world be undone, and that those who served them would...be as they were before. And that Daisy Tonner would return to her old self and come here.”

“Excellent,” breathed the Goblin King, and the world fell away...

Chapter Text

Curufinwe knew that he was missing memories.

Everyone knew, or at least everyone in the family, but no one talked about it. He might almost have never known that he’d lost any time at all, since so little changed in Valinor, if it weren’t for Cousin Artanis having grown several inches without him knowing about it.

And if it weren’t for the baby, of course.

It had been one of the first things he asked about, when he woke up - why there was a baby sleeping on his chest. Then the parental bond had flared and he’d had even more questions. But all anyone would tell him was that the baby was indeed his, and that his wife was dead, and not likely to be reembodied for the foreseeable future.

That fit with the dull ache of a muted marriage bond in the back of his mind and soul, but Curufinwe couldn’t fathom what could happen in Valinor to kill someone so traumatically that they would never return from the Halls. Or why they wouldn’t tell him about it.

(That was a lie. He could imagine perfectly  well a scenario in which, if he somehow acquired a wife, she became as exhausted as Grandmother Miriel in giving birth to a child, and chose the same fate, and in which his mind attempted to block out the loss by simply forgetting it.)

(The theory haunted him, and the only  reason he hadn’t yet stormed the Gardens of Lorien or the Halls of Mandos demanding answers was because he had the strangest feeling that no one else in the family knew what had happened to his wife, and surely they wouldn’t have all blocked it out?)

He had hung on so far mainly because of little Tyelpe. Everyone else was doing their best to help with the myriad of things that needed to be done for a baby, but Curufinwe was his father, his only available parent. Nurturing Tyelpe’s fea was ultimately down to him, and that tiny spirit was already weaker than it should be. He could not fail at this.

He did, quite often, wonder what had possessed either him or his mysterious wife to name a tiny little baby “silver fist”, but there were already so many mysteries piled up that one more made no difference, and Tyelpe was used to it now, so it was too late to change it.

- - -

She is nineteen, and she is being taken somewhere. It is never a good sign to be taken somewhere unfamiliar, rather than being summoned or sent and going under your own power. Yelena has worked hard to be the best of her class of Widows, a top operative, to make sure she always remains someone who goes places instead of needing to be taken there. Especially being taken to places that people don’t come back from.

Supposedly, Dreykov has loaned her to these people, a top secret Russian government organization combining science and the military. But neither he nor they have told her what exactly she is here for, and they are bringing her to what looks suspiciously like a high-security detention area, and she should merely comply, but her mind is racing with possibilities, contingencies.

They reach a door at the end of a long hallway, all heavy steel, and one of the guards goes through about half a dozen unlocking procedures before hauling the door open. “Hey, zhar-ptitsa!” he calls. “Got company for you.”

Yelena has just enough time to wonder what sort of prisoner gets the nickname “firebird” before she’s shoved inside, and then she sees him.

He looks like an ordinary prisoner at first glance - thin, hunched in on himself, scarred and bruised from beatings, his black hair buzzed short. But then he looks up, and she sees a light, an actual light, in his eyes, burning fiercely with barely restrained power. There’s an alien beauty about him, and sharp intelligence in the glance that takes her in all at once and seems to see all of her.

His ears are distinctly pointed.

She’s so distracted that she doesn’t even remember the guards - stupid - until the one in charge says, “Maybe this will sweeten the deal for you,” and then they leave, locking the door again behind them.

Locking Yelena in with this...person.

“Hey!” she yells, but it doesn’t do any good, just as she knew it wouldn’t.

For lack of any better options, she slowly moves until she’s in the opposite corner of the cell from Zhar-ptitsa, and sits down with her back to the wall, conscious of him watching her unblinkingly.

“So,” she says, more casually than she feels, “what are you in for, eh?”

He stares at her a long, silent moment. “They want me to make weapons for them,” he finally says in careful Russian. “I will not. So they keep me here.”

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Yelena’s presence here is part of some kind of plan to get him to cooperate, but since she hasn’t been given any instructions and doesn’t know which of several methods they might intend to use, she might as well indulge her curiosity in the meantime. “So, uh,” she gestures at her own ears, then at him, “what’s with those? The ears.”

He looks at her like she’s something from under a log. “I am not human,” he says shortly.

“Ohh,” Yelena says. “So you’re an alien? Where from?” It’s almost certainly nowhere she’s heard of, but it’s something to talk about.

His face twists - she reads irritation, homesickness, anger, a buildup of loneliness. “My world is called Arda,” he says. “I am from a city called Tirion, in a country called Valinore, and there is no point in you asking about this because I did not know anybetter than to tell your masters when I first came here.”

“I don’t think they want me to interrogate you,” Yelena says contemplatively. “They didn’t give me any questions to ask you, or anything. They just stuck me in here. But we might as well talk, or it’s gonna be pretty boring in here soon.”

Silence falls. Yelena figures he’s not going to talk for a while, and settles in to run fight scenarios in her head - always good entertainment.

After what feels like a very long time, Zhar-ptitsa finally speaks. “What is your name?”

“Yelena,” she tells him. “You?”

“Curufinwe Feanarion,” he says, like it’s something precious. Then, “‘Well met’ is customary, but it does not seem right in this case.”

“Privet works,” Yelena offers.

That gets a faint smile. “Privet.”

- - -

He thought, sometimes, about trying to move on with his life, as everyone else seemed to be more or less doing. Perhaps he would have even been able to, were it not for the dreams.

He could never fully remember them after he woke, but there were occasional flashes that he clung to. Shining metal walls. Blonde hair in skilfully woven braids that framed odd, rounded ears. A blaring, wailing sound. The gleam of a scaled, silver hand.

That last one was the most clearly important, as he suspected the hand’s owner had inspired Tyelpe’s name for some reason or other. But he had the inescapable certainty that the person with the blonde braids was important as well.

He thought about going to Irmo, or one of his Maiar, to see if they could...perhaps unblock the dreams. Let them flow freely, and so perhaps provide clues to the time he had missed.

But something warned him not to. Maybe it was the paranoia regarding Irmo and all his domain that his father had semi-intentionally instilled in them all early on. But maybe, possibly, it was a small voice that whispered that if the Valar were likely to be helpful about this, someone would have approached them already, and the fact that no one had spoke volumes.

- - -

She doesn’t know how long they keep her in there with him. Long enough that she loses count of how many meals have been delivered through a mechanized slot at irregular intervals. Long enough for her to tell him what she does, for him to start teaching her a little of his language, Quenya, for him to open up and talk about his family, for her to tell him about Ohio - which she hasn’t talked about since Anya.

Long enough that, when they come back in and start torturing her, telling him that they’ll stop if he does what they want, he gives in.

Of course that was the plan. It’s one of the first and more frequently repeated lessons that the Red Room teaches - connections are a weakness, and either the person you dare to care about or a powerful third party will use that weakness against you.

Stupid of her to forget.

Curufinwe’s capitulation earns her some kind of position as his whipping boy - or rather, girl: she is no longer sent on missions, but kept in slightly nicer quarters than their original cell. If he cooperates with what they want him to do, they let him see her when he’s done working for the day. If he pushes the boundaries too far, they drag her in and hurt her until he apologizes and does what he’s supposed to.

At first, he’s cold and distant to her, and Yelena knows it’s because he’s belatedly trying to protect both of them. But she knows better, that there’s no getting out of this, and finally she tells him that they might as well make the best of it and be friends, or allies, or whatever.

“I do not want you to be hurt,” he tells her.

“Pff. It’s not even that bad. I had a lot worse, you know, during training. Mostly it’s annoying because it’s not even about me or anything I did, it could be anybody as long as you cared about them.” She shrugs and sighs. “But it’s too late to convince them that you don’t, so we might as well get something out of all this, right?”

Curufinwe looks skeptical. But after that, they slowly edge their way back to how they were.

And then he starts bargaining.

Yelena doesn’t know how he does it, because trying to make deals with people like Them never goes well, but somehow he negotiates for small, increasing privileges. A better room for the two of them. Permission for her to spend a large part of her time in the labs instead of locked away. Books. Music. Occasional treats.

Once, Yelena asks him how he does it, and he doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “Now that I understand more of the science here, I can think of improvements to the requests they make of me. Occasionally, I offer these, and...suggest a possible reward for what they believe to be my initiative and enthusiasm.” He says that last word in such a way that it’s perfectly clear that he has no such feeling.

“But why?” she asks. “I thought you didn’t want to do this stuff at all.”

“I don’t,” he says plainly. “But they are going to kill people no matter what I do. I am not responsible for those people, but I am responsible for you. I may as well make their killing more painless and use it to improve our lot a little.”

He speaks dismissively, but Yelena can see that it costs him to say it. She remembers the point when she decided that she would sacrifice strangers for the benefit of other Widows, and other Widows to keep herself alive. It hadn’t been easy or pleasant to reach that point.

So she doesn’t tell him that honestly being stuck with him in that first cell was already better than the constant cycle of missions and reports and brutal training. She doesn’t say that she hasn’t needed anyone to be responsible for her in a very long time. She just changes the subject and asks about what he’s working on, and he tells her.

Being in the labs while he’s working might be her favorite privilege. The more she watches him, the more clear it is that he’s some kind of genius. He’s learning as he goes with any technology more modern than a grandfather clock, but he learns incredibly fast, seeing connections in an instant that Yelena needs about five minutes of explaining to start to get. He can freehand things that a human would need precision equipment for. The fire in his eyes gets brighter when he’s intensely focused on something, or talking through a problem.

When he’s working directly on a weapon, he visibly shuts down, but when he’s working on anything else, a component or some other piece of technology, he’s...beautiful.

Yelena doesn’t think a lot about people, or anything, as beautiful. Hot, yes (and honestly, he’s that, too). Strong or weak, useful or useless, powerful or a tool - but not beautiful. Not till now.

She’s pretty sure that he doesn’t think of her that way at all, though - he’s never batted an eye at her casually changing or even using a cell toilet in front of him, and when They upgraded the pair of them from cots to a queen bed, he didn’t make a move or even seem to register the possibility. So when, one day during a quiet moment in the lab, he trails off what he’s talking about and asks to kiss her, it’s the first time in a very long time that anyone has surprised her.

(She tells him that yes of course he can, obviously. He’s not very good at it at first, but he is nothing if not quick at picking up skills.)

- - -

Curufinwe kept dreaming of blood.

He still couldn’t remember it beyond a few seconds after waking up, but he remembered remembering. After experiencing it every night for more than a week, he decided to trust his gut and headed straight for the workshop the moment he woke up suppressing a scream, and let his hands make what they wanted to make.

The results spoke volumes, although not always ones he could read. He couldn’t always find the materials his hands were looking for, or even name what was missing, but he was able to make enough, over successive nights turning into weeks. Twisted webs of copper wire, handheld contraptions that shot pellets of metal or trailing ropes with hooks on the end, tiny discs of metal that were supposed to stick to a target and...do something. He didn’t have the word for it.

Elektrichestvo. He thought that might be it. The word for what he was missing to complete so many of these half-finished projects.

But even unfinished, it was clear that these things did not originate in Valinor. They belonged to some other, much less peaceful place.

Had he perhaps gone to Endore somehow? Was that where he had learned to make these things, become so familiar with their use that his body knew what to do with them even when his mind no longer did?

That didn’t feel quite right, either.

When he worked, when he handled these things, he got impressions sometimes, flashes. A bigger, uglier workshop. The woman he thougth he dreamed about, perched on a counter and talking in a language he didn’t remember learning. Sparring, more ugly than the occasional wrestling he used to do with Tyelkormo. Standing beside the woman and pointing one of the pellet-shooting devices at someone’s chest, watching the gore spatter without flinching.

In the present day, that one made him retch until he was sure there was nothing left in him. He wanted to destroy every last one of those objects - pistoli - so that they no longer existed in the same world as his son, his family.

But he needed to know more. He needed to know if it was true that he was a killer, why he had done such a thing. And if it was true, then how could he be safe to be around Tyelpe and the others himself?

There was only one way to find answers without the weapons, little as he liked to admit it. He needed to go talk to a Vala.

- - -

She is twenty-one, and someone, Dreykov or somebody with similar authority, has decided that she is being wasted as a carrot and stick for Curufinwe, and that she needs to go on missions again.

Curufinwe tries to prevent it. He turns every bit of his silver tongue to letting the people in charge known just how much more efficient he is and will be if she stays put with him, and exactly what he can and will do if anything happens to her. It doesn’t work. Yelena could have told him it wouldn’t. When people like that give an order, they can’t change their minds even if it might benefit them because they’re afraid it would make them look weak.

At first, for quite a while, they just send her on assassinations, infiltrations, retrievals. Those aren’t fun, but they’re not a problem. Occasionally, it’s even nice to be out of the facility, seeing bits of the world. Only then, after a handful of months, she’s given a seduction op.

Which shouldn’t be a problem. She’s done more of those than she could count. For years, it’s just been one more way that she can use her body at the behest of whoever’s in charge, albeit one that could either be a lot more pleasant or a lot more unpleasant, depending. But now all she can think about it Curufinwe, who insists on checking her over every time she returns and knowing about everything that happened, Curufinwe, who she cares for more than she’s let herself care for anyone in over a decade, Curufinwe, who backed away slowly when she tried to take things beyond kissing and explained that his people only do that in marriage.

She doesn’t want to do this. She viscerally, absolutely does not want to do this. But she doesn’t have a choice.

When it’s over, they return her to the facility. It’s late, and Curufinwe is done for the day, pacing in their quarters. His attention snaps to her the moment she enters. “Yelena. Are you all right?”

She never told him about what this particular mission would entail. She’s not even sure she’s ever actually told Curufinwe in so many words that that’s something she does. She doesn’t really want to now.

“I’m fine,” she says. “No injuries this time.” Then, “Hey, how do your people get married? Is it just the...” She gestures.

Curufinwe’s cheekbones turn a shade of red that’s not quite human. “That, and...words. Oaths.” He coughs. “Why?”

Because she wants to erase the slimy feeling that her target’s touch left on her, and she doesn’t think anything except Curufinwe will do it, and she’s past caring about anything like the long-term future right now anyway. “Because,” she says instead, “I want...that, with you, and I’m probably not going to live long enough for us to get bored of each other, so if getting married is what we have to do, then sure, let’s go for it. And because...I think if I can still love, then I love you. Okay?” Which also happens to be true.

Curufinwe stares at her for a long moment, and then crosses the remaining distance to her in a blink, and kisses her like it’s to keep them both alive. “I knew as soon as I saw you what they had brought you for,” he says when they break apart, “and I didn’t want to love you, but I did anyway. If only because you were the only scrap of decency in this place.”

If she’s the standard for decency around here, then they’re in trouble, because she is so very far from a good person. But it’s still all she can do to breathe for a moment, trying to fold those words up to put somewhere deep inside her where she can’t lose them. When was the last time anyone said they loved her and really meant it? “So can we get married?”

“I never thought you would want to, but yes. Absolutely.”

He speaks a few sentences in Quenya, then carefully translates them into Russian so she can say them back. Yelena is only vaguely aware of who Manwe, Varda, and Eru Iluvatar are, but she finds that she does, in fact, mean all the rest.

Afterward is more clumsy and awkward than she had known it could be. But it does very effectively wipe away the lingering revulsion from what she’d been doing before.

No sooner does she think about that tahn Curufinwe sits bolt upright, and she can feel his confusion and horror and rage. “Yelenya, what--”

Ah yes. She’d forgotten about the mind-linking thing.

She explains, slowly and painfully. The only thing that enables her to keep going is that he does not stop holding her the entire time.

When she’s done, he runs his fingers slowly through her hair and promises, “They will never make you do that again, Yelena. Not ever.”

Yelena doesn’t ever find out what he says to the people in charge when he meets with them the next day, or what exactly he offers, but against all odds, he keeps his word. She never has to do a seduction assignment again.

Instead, not long afterwards, they start training him to accompany her on missions as her partner.

- - -

The Gardens of Lorien were the last place Curufinwe wanted to be. But they made the most sense as a place to start.

He was greeted by a Maia he thought he recognized, Olorin. “Ah. Curufinwe. I thought you might make a visit here sooner or later.”

“So you know about the dreams,” Curufinwe said flatly.

“Lord Irmo whom I serve knows of the dreams of all beings within Arda,” Olorin said. “But your dreams are of a particularly interesting nature.”

“I suspect they are memories. And if they are...” Curufinwe gritted his teeth. “I need to know. So that I know what to do about it.”

“Yes, indeed.” Olorin guided him to a bench. “Unfortunately, Lord Irmo is unable to assist you at this time, but he gave me detailed instructions on what to do when you arrived. How much have you already been able to work out for yourself, regarding your memories and that lost time?”

Curufinwe sat, and stared at the grass. “That I was somewhere...else. Somewhere entirely the opposite of Valinor. That I made and did terrible things there. That...I think I met my wife there. I get glimpses of a woman, but not a woman of the Eldar.”

It sounded a jumbled mess even to himself, but Olorin nodded as though he understood. “That is but a small part of the whole, and yet a great deal more than I had expected. Perhaps Lord Irmo was not as thorough in his work as he led the rest of the Valar to believe.”

The implications fell into place all too easily. “Are you saying that the Valar took my memories?” Curufinwe demanded. “I didn’t block them out myself?”

“You did not,” Olorin said carefully. “But you had been through a great deal, and there were some who thought it might have been better if you had.”

“Did my family think thus?” Curufinwe hissed, because if they had betrayed him in such a way...

“They were reluctant to agree,” Olorin said. “Your father most vocally, although your mother and brothers were far from silent on the matter themselves. But in the end a majority of the Valar deemed that for your own peace and that of those around you, you would need to either have your memories removed, or rest for an undetermined time in these gardens. When presented with that choice...well. And of course there was no way to know how young Tyelpe would cope with your prolonged absence.”

“Did I consent to this?” Curufinwe asked. He couldn’t imagine doing so, but if it had been for Tyelpe’s sake...

“You were...considered to not be in a state of mind to be able to speak for yourself,” Olorin said delicately.

Fury surged in Curufinwe like the molten rock that heated Aule’s forges. “I want the memories back,” he snarled. “Now.”

Olorin hesitated. “It may be wise to let yourself be prepared for what you will see...”

“I don’t care. If you can put them back, do it now.”

A pause. “Very well.” Olorin placed a hand on Curufinwe’s head. “Lord Irmo merely severed the pathways to the memories, rather than removing them entirely, so--”

The rest of the words were lost as a torrent of recollection slammed into Curufinwe’s brain.

Out on a hunt with Tyelkormo and seeing something glimmer in the crack of a rock, slipping through to find himself in a snow-covered wilderness...

Politeness that quickly turned to cruelty and being thrown into cell after cell until they found one from which he could not escape...

A woman with fair hair and a careless voice and eyes that had seen too much and a small, fiercely guarded heart - Yelena, his Yelena, how could he forget...

Yelena in pain, selling his mind to keep her safe and his soul to make sure she was treated welll...

The night they married and joy turned to horror as he realized the full extent of what had been done to her. A dreadful bargain that would make sure she never had to endure that again, at the low price of fully becoming a monster...

“We will get out, but we’ll get out together. All right?”

Looking into a lab not his own and not believing his eyes, bursting in to find that there was truly nothing at all these people held sacred, that they had taken the samples of his blood and flesh they collected and created children, infants with no mother and a father who did not know them, who perished for lack of support for their fea. Seizing the only one still alive and fighting his way out and running, running, he could find Yelena once he was out somehow but this was his son and he had to get him out...

A man with a silver arm, an arm Curufinwe had replaced just weeks ago, standing in his path and then deliberately stepping aside, leading searchers elsewhere...

Feeling something intangible snatch at him and tumbling back into the sweet-smelling grass of home and screaming as his marriage bond went dull...

He shook himself back into the present. “Is she dead? Yelena?”

“I do not know,” Olorin said slowly. “Even the Valar could not see her in that other world, since she belongs to it. They decided to tell you that she was dead, since it was considered that due to her mortal nature and...occupation, it would be true by the time you had any capacity to ask after her. But given how quickly you came here, I think it likely that she is still alive.” He paused. “You should know...”

But the most recent memories had seeped in. “I was trying to go back for her,” Curufinwe realized. “And that was why they decided I was mad and took my memory.”

“Quite so,” Olorin said, looking grim. “So, although of course I must advise against doing anything of the kind...should you decide to make another attempt, it would be prudent to not make your intentions widely known.”

Curufinwe stood, plans and ideas already forming in his mind. “Of course.” Then, as an afterthought, “And thank you.”

- - -

She is twenty-four, and her sister is an Avenger, and she is an assassin who has possibly killed more people than any other woman on Earth, and her husband is a genius who is also an assassin for reasons she suspects are because of her, and they are currently on a roof in Belgrade about to kill somebody else.

They should get a break soon. They’ve had a long string of missions over the past months, and pretty soon it’ll be time for Curufinwe to go back to the labs and her to go with him. They hardly ever send her out on her own anymore, now that the two of them together have proven to be a devastatingly effective team.

She’s still never sure if it’s worth it - having a mission partner and never again having to be touched by strangers, in exchange for the light inside Curufinwe dying a little each time he kills someone. She is getting by far the better end of the deal here, and she doesn’t know what to do with that.

“Why haven’t you tried to get out yet?” she asks, because right now there is almost definitely no one listening in on them. “I know you could, on your own.”

Curufinwe just gives her a look. “You know why not. They would kill you, or make you do what you were doing before until you died anyway. Besides, where would I go?”

“Um. Anywhere else?” Yelena gestures broadly. “You could defect, go be an Avenger.”

“There would be no point without you.” Curufinwe starts checking over his gear, so Yelena does too, knowing it’s getting close to time. Every piece of equipment on either of them was made by him, and although she’s watched him work enough to know that he sometimes deliberately builds flaws into his work for Them, there are no flaws in any of this. “If I can’t go home, the only other place that means anything is where you are.”

“But you could go home, is what I meant,” Yelena points out, because she’s been thinking about this a lot lately. “You said, yeah, that when you die you go to those Halls, and then eventually you come back all cleaned up and stuff. So if you die here, you would get to go home. You know, the long way, but still.” He’s brilliant; he has to have thought of this. “So why haven’t you?”

He finishes his gear check and shoots a glare at her. “Did you not hear what I just said about what would happen if I left you behind?”

Yelena shrugs. “So we both die. Problem solved.”

“No.” Curufinwe reaches out and grips her shoulders tight, panic leaking through his expression and their bond. “I don’t - there’s no way to know what would happen to you. If the bond would bring you to Mandos as well. Your kind don’t even agree on what happens to you after you die under normal circumstances. We would never see each other again. I will not lose you, Yelenya.”

“But this is killing you!” Yelena argued. “Doing this, it’s breaking you, I see it all the time, I can feel it.”

“It is,” Curufinwe says simply. “But leaving you behind is not the solution. We will get out, but we’ll get out together. All right?”

She should know better than to believe him, but...he’s done the impossible before. “Okay.”

“Neither of us is dying today,” Curufinwe affirms, and then their watches beep with the signal that it’s time to go.

Neither of them does die. Five other people do, though. Yelena and Curufinwe clean most of the blood off each other and cover the rest up before they make their escape.

- - -

Curufinwe had told his father everything.

He could not remember a time, at least before his disappearance, that he had not confided in Feanaro about anything and everything. More than that, he strongly suspected that Feanaro’s help would be crucial if he was actually going to succeed in finding Yelena’s world again and getting her back.

But Feanaro had been persuaded once to assent to Curufinwe’s memories being taken, and he did not know what he would do if his father decided the process needed to be repeated.

“I see,” Feanaro said. He looked deeply troubled. “You had spoken to me about some of this before, but not the whole. I...” He looked, momentarily, more awkward than Curufinwe had known his bold, confident father could look. “I am not sure how to help you with most of it, no matter how I feel that I should be able to. But! Retrieving your wife, I believe I can help with.”

“You can?” Curufinwe said, relieved, and “You will?”

“Of course,” Feanaro promised. “I am eager to meet my daughter-in-law. Fortunately, I have been experimenting lately with fea-resonance and gemstones, and I have some ideas for how to start. The Valar, you may recall, closed the crack between worlds you slipped through before, but they also mentioned that there were others, so it is all a matter of finding the right one.”

- - -

Yelena had known Curufinwe was dead before they ever got around to telling her and punishing her for it.

She had always been able to feel him in her mind since their marriage, no matter how far apart they were. She knew he’d been able to fele her too, and that he’d found it reassuring on the rare occasions when he was in the middle of an important project and they sent her out on her own.

She’d been on a solo mission the day he died, and so all she knew about how it had happened was what they told her: he’d snapped, stolen a laboratory asset, and tried to run, and been shot. They told her, with a certain amount of twisted glee, that they’d already dissected and then cremated his body before she returned from her mission.

The mental images had almost made her retch, but what was worse was that he’d left her. He’d said he wouldn’t, said they would get out together, but in the end he hadn’t even waited a year after that. He would be all right again someday, if what he’d told her about his people was true, but they would still be separated.

This was what she’d told him he should do, so why did it hurt so much?

They had put her back on regular Widow missions after that. She didn’t care. Nothing mattered now that Curufinwe was gone, had left her (just like everyone she’d dared love). When her group was chosen to have the new mind control tested on them, it was almost a relief. At least then she didn’t feel the sting of abandonment and the ache in her mind and soul where he used to be quite so much.

And then, one day in Odessa more than a year after he’d been gone, as she prepared for what should have been just another mission, something snapped back into place and her mind cleared and she looked around to see Curufinwe stepping out of thin air. His hair was long and glossy and braided, and his clothes were strange and expensive-looking, and he looked healthier than he ever did when she knew him before, although still very tired. But it was definitely him, and she could feel his relief buzz through her.

“Yelenya,” he said, and took two steps and pulled her into a bruising hug. “It worked. And you’re still alive.”

“Yeah,” she managed. Then she remembered to be upset. “What were you thinking? Why did you leave? You said we’d go together and then you went and got yourself killed--”

“I didn’t die,” he said, keeping hold of her and cupping her face so she’d have to look at him. “I promise, I didn’t want to leave you. I was going to meet up with you once we were out, but the Valar found me and pulled me back to my world.”

Yelena frowned. “Wait, ‘we’?”

He let out a long breath. “My son. They’d tried making...klony, infants from my cells, but only one was alive by the time I found out. Telperinquar.”

Silver fist. “You named your clone kid after the Winter Soldier?” Yelena said, eyebrows raised.

“He helped us escape,” Curufinwe said, looking sheepish and a little defensive. “It’s not a bad name, in Quenya - which I am glad to see you remember, since the plan is for you to speak it a great deal from now on.”

It took her a moment. “You want to take me back to your world?”

“If you want to go.” It didn’t look like it had occurred to him that she wouldn’t.

And. Well. Perhaps she should hesitate, for the other Widows who didn’t have this chance, for her sister somewhere out there and her long-lost parents, for the things in this world she hadn’t yet seen and the wrongs she could try to right.

But she couldn’t necessarily save anyone else, just herself, right now. She hadn’t seen any of her family in years, and they had left her, but her husband was right in front of her, offering her a new life.

Natasha could save the world. Yelena was going to find a new one.

She nodded. “Let’s go. Before someone starts looking for me.”

Curufinwe kissed her then, bleeding relief and joy, and pulled her forward a few steps until she fell right out of her dingy motel room and stumbled into a stone-paved courtyard.

There was a clamor of voices, all speaking in Quenya too fast for her to catch more than a couple of words, and when she looked around, she saw several people all talking at a tall man - Elda - in red robes who looked a great deal like Curufinwe. Four of the shouting people were redheaded, two had black hair like Curufinwe, and one had incongruous pale blond hair but looked enough like the others to definitely be related. She recognized them from Curufinwe’s stories - his father, his mother, his brothers.

And a wailing toddler being held by the blond man - Tyelkormo - who had to be Telperinquar.

For a moment, Yelena wasn’t so sure if this had been a good idea, but Curufinwe pulled her along with a reassuring squeeze of her hand. “It’s all right,” he said in Russian. “They’re upset that my father didn’t tell them we were working on this, not that you’re here.”

As he spoke, everyone’s attention swiveled to the two of them, and before she knew it she was surrounded by Curufinwe’s family, all of them talking at once while Curufinwe tried to tell them to slow down while translating at the same time. It was overwhelming - all of it was, the clean, sweet smell of the air, the soft golden light that didn’t come from the sky, the way that everything, even the stone, seemed to hum with life.

But she was alive, and she was free maybe for the first time ever, and she had Curufinwe with her again, and everything else could be figured out and coped with later.

Chapter Text

Jessica wasn’t sure how Malcolm had talked her into going along with this. She had no interest in meeting anyone from his NA group, and even less interest in playing some kind of fantasy game with him and his sponsor and a handful of other weirdos. Real life was complicated enough, thanks very much - especially since the recent Kilgrave incident had people thinking she was some kind of superhero vigilante person. She did not need that in her life. Not with all the drama about international regulations for super people starting to stir up.

And yet, somehow, despite all of that, here she was, ducking into a dingy little geek store in Queens because Malcolm wouldn’t shut up about this ever since he started going, and he’d said that they were starting a new “campaign” tonight and if she showed up and tried it just once, he would never talk about it in front of her again.

The group was in one of the back rooms of the shop, clustered around a big table that barely fit into the space. She spotted Malcolm, two teenage boys, a middle-aged couple, and Malcolm’s sponsor, whom she recognized from the research she’d done when Malcolm first connected with him. Eddie Munson, born 1966 in Hawkins, Indiana, which he left in 1985 to do prison time for drug-related charges, resisting arrest, and mouthing off to an officer. A couple of years later, everyone else had also left Hawkins after some weird supernatural nonsense went down there, which was likely why he hadn’t moved back to Indiana once he got out of prison. Why he’d come to New York City, she could only speculate. Present-day, he had been clean for nearly thirty years, was part-owner of this place, played guitar for an amateur metal band on the odd weekend, and evidently ran games like this several nights a week. No wife, no kids, but a wide network of friends.

Jessica didn’t have a problem with him as such, aside from questioning why he spent his time the way he did. She just knew that she didn’t belong here.

Munson spotted her and waved her in. “Hey! Jessica, right? Malcolm said you might show up.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just trying it out,” Jessica said warily, making her way over to the only free chair, between Malcolm and one of the teenagers, who looked like he might spontaneously combust from excitement. Great. A fanboy. At least he wasn’t barraging her with questions, yet.

“Well, we’re glad to have you regardless,” Munson gestured around. “This is Dustin, Susie, Ned, Peter, and of course you know Malcolm. I’m Eddie.”

“Yep. He’s mentioned you.” Jessica didn’t shake his hand, despite the clear opening for it. “So how does this work?”

Munson walked her through creating a character, with occasional interjections from Dustin, Peter, or Ned. For lack of any better ideas, Jessica picked a paladin because if she was going to do this, she might as well get to do magic, and because someone mentioned smiting things, which she could get behind. She wasn’t paying attention when they listed races, though, and ended up going for a human. Naming things was not her strong suit, so she settled on Dorothy, mostly because it would make Trish’s mom incredibly annoyed, and because this character was probably going to die pretty quickly and Jessica was nothing if not petty.

Unfortunately, once the game actually got going, she kind of forgot to keep rolling her eyes at the whole thing. 

Munson was good, was the thing. When he got into it, describing the crusty tavern they all met in and the colorful locals they got in a brawl with, she could really see it in her mind. She stayed hooked as they hit the road, as they started working on figuring out the mystery of what had happened to a destroyed caravan they found along the way.

Then they learned that the attack had been done by people enslaved to a vampire lord, and the rest of the party was talking about ways to kill them when they caught up to them, and that Jessica couldn’t take.

“We should try to save them,” she said, interrupting the discussion. “That’s a thing you can do in this game, right? Break mind control?” Everyone was staring at her, but she made herself go on. “It’s not like they wanted to kill people. Right? It wasn’t their fault. So we oughtta save them.”

There was silence for a long moment, and she almost thought about ditching this whole thing and walking out because it was getting too real. But then Malcolm said, “She’s right,” and Peter started nodding rapidly. Munson blinked, and she could see him rearranging things in his head.

“Okay,” he said. “So there are a few ways you could go about this, depending on how the vampire is controlling them.” He proceeded to list them. “So what do you want to do?”

In the end, everyone agreed to try and free the “thralls”, and they spent the next few hours doing just that. By the time they had to call it a night (Ned and Peter had school in the morning), they’d gotten it done, but they were nowhere close to dealing with the actual vampire.

“It’ll take a while,” Susie said as they all gathered their stuff. “We don’t have nearly enough XP to take on a vampire lord yet. You have to build up to it over a bunch of sessions.”

Hmm. Jessica hesitated, her slightly wrinkled character sheet in her hand. She wanted to make some excuse and cut and run. But she needed to take down this vampire.

Munson met her eyes and grinned. “You’re good at this,” he said. “I like when players throw me a curveball. I - we’d be glad to have you back.”

A guy pushing fifty should not have doe eyes like that, and they should not be aimed at her. She really hoped he wasn’t into her or something. That sounded like a terrible idea for all concerned. 

But he wasn’t trying to connect her game choices to her Kilgrave trauma, even if the connection was maybe pretty obvious. And no one in the group had bugged her about her dubious fame, Peter’s silent glee upon her arrival notwithstanding. And it had been nice to get to pretend to be a hero with lower stakes for a little bit.

She shrugged. “I might come back. If I don’t have anything else going on.”

The smile he gave her in response suggested that he knew exactly how much she was bluffing.

Chapter Text

Erik ground his teeth. He had been doing that a great deal lately, probably to detrimental effect, but he was far past caring.

How was it taking this long to drive off his Christine’s idiot suitor?

When the fool had become a patron of the Gotham Opera, Erik had thought little of it. When he had taken a distinctly unprofessional interest in Christine, that had been irritating, but Erik had been confident he could deal with the problem. The man was only a foolish rich fop, after all, a society darling constantly in the gossip rags. He should not have been difficult to dispose of, and while Christine might be upset for a time, Erik was confident that in time she would come to see that her true future was in music, and with him.

But the patron had been proving disturbingly hard to kill. He never walked into any of the death traps Erik left for him, and he was impossible to catch with a Punjab lasso. Erik had thought that he was just uncannily lucky, but then he’d caught him actually dismantling one of the deathtraps before continuing on his merry way.

More lately, an intruder had begun poking around in the upper sub-basements, someone who kept to the shadows and was even better at passing unseen than Erik was. It was entirely impossible for it to be Christine’s beau, and yet who else could it be? Who else would dare?

And now Christine was missing one of their voice lessons to go on a date with this nincompoop. Before she left, she’d at least done Erik the courtesy of letting him know, and assured him that her paramour had no objections whatsoever to her continuing to sing if the relationship progressed - although he had, she mentioned, expressed concern about her continuing to work at a place that seemed to suffer so many strange accidents.

It was a threat if Erik had ever heard one, little though Christine seemed to realize it.

He clenched his fists. He would find a way out of this. Somehow. Whatever strange abilities he might possess, Bruce Wayne could not hope to be a match for the Phantom of the Opera - and he would know it, before the end.

Chapter Text

Eve wasn’t sure how it had come to this.

It was supposed to be a simple mission, in and out, to check out this sketchy lab in Malaysia that was rumored to be connected to OXE Group. They were supposed to gather evidence for a packet for the CIA director’s impeachment trial, which was pretty big, but Eve had been confident in her and her team’s ability to get the job done. It had to be simpler and easier than tracking WMDs.

Except that they’d encountered Bob, and whatever else he might be, he was clearly a key witness to Valentina de Fontaine’s misbehavior, so Eve had taken personal responsibility for him. The plan had been to keep him at her place overnight - it wasn’t like she had anyone around to mind - and to bring him to Congressman Gary in the morning.

The plan had not included her apartment being attacked by three supersoldiers (two Russian, one American) and one whatever-Ava-was. The plan had also not included getting captured by said operatives and taken to de Fontaine, who took Bob away and promptly tried to kill Eve and the operatives who’d brought her in, or being rescued by Congressman Barnes aka the former Winter Soldier. The plan had really not included a road trip from DC to New York, fighting Bob (who also had powers), saving a bunch of civilians from collateral damage, saving Bob from his own terrible mental health, and getting announced without warning as one of the “New Avengers”.

Eve hadn’t wanted to be a New Avenger. She hadn’t even been that into the Old Avengers.

But it didn’t seem as though any of them had much choice in the matter, even though the others were about as enthusiastic about being superheroes as she was. Alexei Shostakov was the only one who was entirely on board with the whole thing, and he...wouldn’t have been her first pick to be on her team.

He was...fine. It was probably fine. He was strong, and tough, and a decent fighter, and he listened to her most of the time (unlike some people she could mention), and he was the only one who could get Antonia out of her shell. He just...wasn’t disciplined a lot of the time, he was messy and loud and Russian, and he was not remotely as subtle as he thought he was about checking her out.

“Colonel Baird.”

Ah, speak of the devil. Eve turned away from staring out over New York at night from the big bay windows of their new base, and saw Shostakov approaching, moving more quietly than she would have expected for someone of his size. He’d shaved off almost all the grizzly facial hair, and was wearing Captain America pajama pants and a Russian flag t-shirt that made her fight to not roll her eyes.

“Shostakov,” she said. “What do you want?”

He didn’t answer right away, crossing through the common space to join her at the windows. “They fixed this up nice, very nice,” he commented. “You cannot even see where Bob threw me through the glass.”

“Well, they weren’t gonna let the ‘New Avengers’ live in a skyscraper with broken windows,” Eve said.

Shostakov made a ‘tch’ noise. “I still say ‘the Thunderbolts’ was better team name.”

“Yeah, after...what was it, your daughter’s kiddie soccer team while you were stationed undercover in America?” Eve said dryly. “Might have to pass on that.” Then, “No offense, but you don’t exactly strike me as a stealth operative. Or the...dad type.”

He waved a hand. “Ah. It was the ‘90s, a different time. And you know, for being assigned a couple of kids for secret cover, we did not do so bad while it lasted.” He turned towards her, eyes bright. “My Natasha became the Black Widow, you know her? A superhero, my Natasha.”

It was such a big thing to lie about, even for him, that Eve figured it must be the truth, but that still raised the question, “The Black Widow played kiddie soccer?”

Shostakov’s face fell. “Ah, no. That was Yelena. She had so much fun, even though they never won one game.”

“What happened?” Eve felt compelled to ask, because clearly something had.

A long huff of breath. “The mission was done, and I had to give them back to Widow training program. Maybe could have escaped with my girls, maybe not, but I thought it was for the best, you know? To make them fighters. And then Natasha turned out so well. But when I get out of Russian prison - long story - and I get the chance to look for Yelena, she is gone. They say she disappeared on mission in Odessa, one, two years before. And Melina, my, un, partner, you know, she had died just after we got back together, destroying the Red Room. And Natasha, everyone knows what happened.” He signed. “Antonia was closest thing to family for long time after that.”

Eve wasn’t sure how to respond to any of that. She’d been around enough to know a thing or two about the Red Room, and someone who had given children back to those people...it was a lot to wrap her head around. Even if he did seem to get it now, to some extent, that that had been wrong.

“So what is the story with you?” Shostakov asked, cutting off her thoughts. “Colonel Eve Baird. You work for years in counterterrorism, and now you are superhero! Huh?”

“I’m not,” Eve snapped. “I’m not a super anything, okay? I don’t even know why they stuck me in this circus.”

“Because you are leader,” Shostakov said like it was obvious. “When this team began to come together, at first I think maybe me and the Winter Soldier, we co-lead. But no, it is you - you get everyone to listen, you tell Ava and Antonia to not fight and they stop, you tell the Winter Soldier plan of attack and he says ‘okay’, you tell Walker to go there and he goes. And you keep Bob in good place, so he does not become the Void again.”

“Okay, so they need me to babysit Bob,” Eve conceded, because that was a clear and present necessity that all of them were trying to fill, but that was mostly down to her - Bob seemed to have imprinted on her like a baby duck. “Still doesn’t explain the Avenger part when I’m not even a supersoldier.”

Shostakov waved a hand. “Being boss of powerful people is also superpower. Valentina knows this. So did Dreykov and other bosses back in Russia. But you, you use this power for good, not like them, da?”

That was true, and Eve knew it. That didn’t make it any more comfortable.

“This isn’t my world,” she said, looking back out the windows. “I’m a soldier, a normal soldier. I can’t do this.”

“Eh. Maybe, maybe not.” Shostakov shrugged one shoulder. “But we figure it out together, because we are team, we are family.”

She glanced over at him again. “Being on a team means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

He shrugged the other shoulder. “Best parts of my life were when I was with family, even if I did not see it right then,” he said. “One hero alone, they can do great things, be adored by the crowds - but with a team is how they truly rise to glory.”

Eve had never really wanted to rise to glory, just to do her job and keep people safe. But she wasn’t sure she would really be able to explain that to Alexei.

“Speaking of which,” he said abruptly, “what is policy on, ah, dating between teammates?”

Eve took an involuntary step back. “If that’s some weird way of coming on to me--”

“Ah, no, no.” Shostakov held up his hands. “No, you are very beautiful woman, but we work up to that. I am talking about Ava and Mr. Walker.”

“Oh. Ohh.” That was definitely all relief that she felt, with no disappointment at all, and no feelings whatsoever about being called a ‘very beautiful woman’ with total sincerity. “Right, yeah, I’d been thinking they had a thing going on. Honestly, so long as they don’t cause problems for the rest of us, it’s their business.” She’d been trying to give Bob privacy as well for whatever was going on with him and Antonia, although she had no clue whether they were into each other or just bonding over being former lab rats with horrible birth fathers.

“This is good,” Shostakov nodded. “They are better together, I think.”

Eve nodded agreement, then yawned, suddenly very tired. “I’m hitting the hay. You should too.”

“Yes! Big day tomorrow, lots of talking to reporters. It begins,” Shostakov said with glee.

Eve turned away and headed for the elevator, mind still running over how to handle tomorrow, but more calmly than she had been before. This was still way above her paygrade, and she still had no clue how to cope - but somehow, over the last handful of minutes, coping had started to seem like a possibility.

That was at least enough to let her sleep.

Chapter Text

Things had been going so well with Flynn’s fly-by-night visit until, just as they were wrapping things up, he looked straight over Eve’s shoulder at the stairs and said, “Emma, why is Moriarty in the Annex?”

Emma briefly closed her eyes and sighed. She’d been hoping to avoid this.

“He’s been useful,” she began, but it was immediately undermined by Moriarty coming up beside her and saying at the exact same time, “Miss Swan and I have an understanding,” in the exact kind of way that made it sound like he was talking about a secret engagement.

Flynn’s expression darkened and turned more confused and Emma hurried to clarify. “He got his book back from Prospero--” no need to mention any help she might have given with that “--and asked to join the team. He’s been very helpful with the last several cases.”

“What?” Flynn looked at her like she’d lost her mind, then started to laugh nervously. “No, ah ha ha, no no no, a Fictional can’t be a Librarian! That’s a complete oxymoron - an inherent--”

“I know what an oxymoron is,” Emma interrupted. Flynn’s habit of defining words he thought she might not know since she hadn’t finished high school had been mildly helpful at first, but now that she’d had more time to read and catch herself up on these things, it was just annoying that he kept doing it, and she’d told him so before.

“There’s no way Jenkins okayed this,” Flynn went on, oblivious. “I mean, it’s Moriarty, come on - Jenkins!” he called out.

“Jenkins is on a well-deserved vacation to go to some kind of literature conference,” Emma informed him. “Which he felt comfortable taking because, and I quote, there would be ‘someone of practical intelligence’ around to hold down the fort.”

Flynn looked betrayed, opening and closing his mouth silently a few times. Out of the corner of her eye, Emma saw the other Librarians starting to gather around, watching the drama. Flynn clearly saw them, too, because he gestured around at them all as if in appeal. “Seriously? None of you have a problem with this?”

“Professional world-class thief here, mate,” Ezekiel said, shrugging. “Don’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to someone else’s criminal history.”

“Especially if most of it only happened by implication in a book,” Jacob added as he leaned on the staircase railing. “If Emma’s ‘superpower’ says he’s tellin’ the truth about not wantin’ to do that anymore, that’t good ‘nuff for me.”

“Cassandra...” Flynn started, but he wasn’t going to find any help there.

“Mr. Moriarty’s actually been helping me refine some of my theories about the overlap of science and magic,” Cassandra said eagerly. “And I’ve finally had someone to talk to about math since he joined the team. So...”

Emma suppressed a smirk, maybe not very well. If Flynn didn’t want them to take her side, he shouldn’t have left her alone in charge of them for months on end while he went chasing around the world. She hadn’t really appreciated it at the time, still overwhelmed and finding her feet in this new world and dead certain that she had no leadership skills whatsoever. But she’d felt the same way about parenting and she’d figured that out, too, more or less, and just like with Henry, this had more than paid off in the end. They were a team, now, and they’d decided to let Moriarty into that team at least on a trial basis, and Flynn was never around enough to have really earned a say in the matter.

He seemed to realize it, too, visibly deflating. Then his eyes narrowed again, looking between Moriarty and her. “Wait. So. Just to clarify...are you with him? Is he with you? Are you two...”

And that was about Emma’s limit.

Moriarty hadn’t exactly kept it a secret that he was interested in her. He never said anything these days that could actually be pinned down as flirting, although his intent was clear underneath the way he said she was formidable and they made a good team and things like that. But he’d at least listened when she said that she wasn’t in a good place to be with anyone right now, that she needed to focus on Henry and on being a Guardian and that was already a lot. He’d largely backed off.

Flynn had not taken it quite so well, when she’d told him something similar after his massive crush made itself apparent the first time they worked together. It wasn’t a decision she planned to ever revisit - all else aside, Flynn was never, ever going to stay in one place with her, and after Killian’s navy-induced perpetual long-distance, Jefferson’s turning out to be a bit of a nutcase, Graham dying on her just when things were getting good, and of course the Thing with Neal, she wasn’t about to put herself - or Henry - through that. Flynn had acted fine with this at the time, but he retained a slightly-too-keen interest in her potential love life, and his declarations that he was just concerned as ‘her’ Librarian sent her superpower pinging.

Jenkins had told her once, offhandedly, that Flynn had been in a relationship with his previous Guardian, and that this was a relatively common practice for Librarians and Guardians through the centuries. But Flynn wasn’t her Librarian, really - he hadn’t been since he took off that first time and left her to watch the newbies.

All this ran through Emma’s head in about two seconds, and then with a huff of frustration she spun around, pulled Moriarty down to her level, and kissed him fervently.

It took him a second to catch on, because they hadn’t actually done anything like this before, but that genius brain was clearly good for something, as after that he kissed back like they’d been together for years.

Emma finally broke away, and turned to give Flynn a pointed look. “Does that answer your questions?”

Flynn sputtered for a moment, and then Jacob apparently decided to take pity on him. “C’mon, man,” he said, reaching the bottom of the stairs in a jog and catching hold of Flynn’s arm. “I’ll walk you out. You were sayin’ you had to go track down an artifact in Peru next? You ever seen...”

As they turned into the hallway and Jacob’s voice faded, an awkward silence descended. It was briefly broken by Ezekiel muttering to Cassandra “hey, were you going to show me the thing?” and Cassandra saying “what? Ohh. That thing. Right,” and the two of them making their exit, after which the silence returned even more awkwardly.

“So,” Moriarty said at last, “what am I intended to deduce from that turn of events, Princess?”

“That was a one-time thing,” Emma said shortly. A small part of her wanted to say something very different, but it was still too much, too big, and she couldn’t get it out. “Sorry if it threw you. I just wanted Flynn to back off and go away.”

“Eminently understandable,” Moriarty nodded. “If somewhat disappointing. But no more than I expected.”

“So...we’re good.” Emma glanced away and remembered the mess of scattered papers that the crisis of the day had wrought. “Um. Cleanup? I’ll take this half, you take that half, and we can try to get this taken care of before I have to go pick up Henry?”

“We can but try.” Moriarty looked around the room. “Although my rough estimate suggests you have taken the half with fewer papers for yourself.”

“No way - okay, maybe,” Emma conceded. “But my half has more broken stuff. It evens out.”

They kept on bickering companionably as they started to sort through the mess, neither of them noticing Ezekiel’s muffled curse and passing five dollars to Cassandra up on the balcony, and if Emma caught herself enjoying the whole thing more than a cleanup job strictly warranted...well, that was nobody’s business but her own.

Chapter Text

The cave hadn’t been easy to get into - the entrance had been partially blocked by large boulders - but Shuri wasn’t about to let that stop her. And she’d made it inside without injury and she was fairly certain she could get out again without having to summon help. If she did need to, she could, and would - she knew the two Dora Milaje who’d been trailing her were somewhere in Belgrade looking for her. But if she called them and let them find her, she would have to go home and admit defeat, and that just wasn’t an option.

She could see the temporal anomaly just ahead, but it didn’t look like what she’d expected. Honestly, she wasn’t sure what she had expected, but a slightly curved shimmer in the air with a hand sticking out of it definitely wasn’t it.

She approached, curious but cautious, and thought she heard a man’s voice yell as if from a very long way off, “Pull...me...free!”

From her upgraded kimoyo beads, Shuri summoned nanites to form a protective layer over her hand - no need to be too foolhardy - then got a firm grip on the floating hand and tugged hard.

A man, dark-haired and wearing an extremely old-fashioned suit, came stumbling out of the shimmer - which promptly disappeared, along with the temporal energy readings that had brought Shuri here in the first place.

She wanted to curse in frustration at the dead end, but the man spoke first, sort of shaking himself. “Ah. That’s better.” Then, “You’re not my assistant.”

“What was that?” Shuri asked, cutting past his confusion. “And why did it go away?”

The stranger took a second, more focused look at her and brightened. “Ah, vibranium - you’re Wakandan! Excellent. It has been far too long since I have been able to visit your remarkable country.”

Wait. That briefly distracted Shuri from her problems. “You can’t have been to Wakanda,” she said dismissively. “I know all of the outsiders who have been to Wakanda within your lifetime, and you’re not one of them. Now--”

“I most certainly have,” the man retorted. “In 1842. Visitors are indeed rare, but as the Librarian--”

“You’re a Librarian?” Shuri said, and then, “From 1842?”

“The year is 1847,” he corrected, then paused. “Or it ought to be. The time bubble created by the Scarab of Horus may have put me out of my time by a year or two.” He squinted at her. “If you didn’t know I had visited Wakanda, how do you know what a Librarian is?”

It took Shuri a moment to even know where to begin. “There was a Wakandan War Dog who was recruited to be a Librarian,” she finally said. “In 1941. Right now it is 2025.”

Shock rolled over the Librarian, making him stagger back slightly. “It can’t be,” he murmured. “I cannot have got it so wrong.”

Shuri surreptitiously checked her kimoyo beads, just in case she was the one involuntarily in the wrong time. Nope. “It is definitely 2025.”

He turned pale - or paler than before. “I have to go back,” he muttered agitatedly. “I have...people waiting for me, depending on me.”

“You can’t go back the same way you came here?” Shuri clarified.

“No, the time bubble was only meant to keep a particular enemy of mine frozen in time. I was unaware that ordinary time would flow so quickly outside it, or that there would be issues with my exit.”

Great. Shuri let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Okay, come on.”

He blinked. “What? To where?”

Shuri was already heading for the cave entrance, and talked over her shoulder. “I came here because I detected temporal energy readings, from your scarab probably. I need to find a way to go back in time and return. Since this doesn’t have anything helpful after all, I need to find something that does.”

“Ah.” The Librarian jogged a few steps and caught up with her. “You do realize that traveling in time is fraught with peril if you do not know exactly what you are doing?”

“You intend to do it,” Shuri pointed out.

“Yes, well, that’s - that’s different, I do know what I’m doing, and besides, I’d be returning to the time in which I ought to be.”

“And I would be saving my brother’s life,” Shuri said flatly, not breaking her stride. “He is dying, and the herb that should be able to cure him was destroyed three years ago. I have people working on synthesizing it, but if I could go back and get real samples, restore the species...but the Avengers will not help me, even though they traveled in time before. So I have been trying to find my own way.” She shot him a look. “I am the chief researcher and head of technological development in Wakanda. I also know what I am doing.” 

She paused. “The two of us want the same thing. If we work together and combine our knowledge and areas of expertise, we both have a better chance of getting what we want.”

The Librarian’s face traveled through argumentativeness, thoughtfulness, hesitation, and finally acceptance of the truth of what she had said. “Very well, then.” He held out his hand. “Vikram Chamberlain.”

She shook his hand briefly. “Shuri.” No need to get into it about her being a princess just at present, maybe ever.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Vikram turned his attention to the cave mouth ahead of them. “Now, once we are out of here, I suggest we make a start at my Annex. If it is still there, which it ought to be, then we should have access to any number of artifacts and books that might aid us. Unless you have another lead?”

Shuri did not; the Belgrade anomaly had been the last option on a list that hadn’t been very long to begin with. She shook her head. “Let’s try your Annex. How do you know it will still be there after almost two hundred years?”

Vikram gave a conspiratorial little grin that almost made Shuri forget about the stress of the past weeks. “You shall just have to see.”

Chapter Text

“Excuse me, miss,” the gift shop lady said, catching hold of Darcy’s shoulder. “I don’t believe you’re supposed to go that way.”

Darcy was pretty sure that she indeed wasn’t, but since that was what she was looking for, so much the better. She turned and gave the lady - middle-aged, hair in a perfectly tidy bun, sensible skirt suit - her best underestimate-me smile. “Oh, do you work here? Maybe you can help me. I think my boyfriend went missing somewhere around here - I haven’t heard from him in months, but I was able to track him as far as Belgrade, and the last word I had was that he wanted to look around here.”

Specifically, the livestream he’d been doing right before he vanished off the face of the earth had him poking around this exact castle and narrating, but Darcy had learned over the last several weeks to not announce right off the bat that her missing boyfriend was Connor Green, that Connor Green. She’d heard enough jokes about Connor getting abducted by Bigfoot, or aliens, or (especially from those who knew a little more of his history) vampires to last a lifetime. 

The gift shop lady pursed her lips. “That is concerning. Can you give me a name and description? I might be able to see if he’s in the guest book, ask around, that sort of thing.”

“Okay, yeah, sure.” Darcy fully intended to keep snooping around, but if she gave the information, it might distract this lady from keeping an eye on her, which could only help. “His name’s Connor, he’s about six feet, Black, wears his hair in short braids and pulled back. He usually wears this silver pendant, it’s a circle with kind of a honeycomb pattern inside.”

She wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the gift shop lady, so it was pure happenstance that she caught her tiny flinch when she mentioned Connor’s name. After that, she did pay attention, and the more she went on, the more this lady looked distinctly bothered, in a way that set Darcy’s alarm bells off even if she couldn’t tell exactly why.

“Connor Green,” the lady said. “Your...boyfriend is Connor Green.”

“Say what now?” a familiar voice cut in, coming closer. “Hey, Elaine, there you are, I was just coming to ask about--” And at that moment, Connor came around the corner and froze mid-stride. “Oh. Whoa.”

It wasn’t very often that Darcy was speechless, but this turned out to be one of those times. She’d been looking for him so long that she’d almost started to think that she wouldn’t ever actually find him, and now here he was.

He took a couple of steps closer. “Darcy? What are you doing here? How did you even find this place?”

“It’s on Google Maps, it wasn’t that hard.” Anger was starting to surface from under the relief. “And what do you mean, what am I doing here? What are you doing here and where have you been?”

“Um.” Connor shot a panicky look at the gift shop lady for some reason. “It’s...a really long story. That we should talk about maybe somewhere else?”

But Darcy was just getting warmed up. “Do you even know how worried I’ve been?” she went on, taking a step closer into his space. “I mean, the first few weeks it was fine, you’ve been off the grid that long before - although you’ve never dropped off the grid in the middle of a capital city before - and I was wrapped up in wrangling with some contacts in China to share data on some really weird energy surges over there, so I wasn’t too worried. But then that wrapped up and you still weren’t answering my calls, and nobody else had heard from you either. Whenever I tried to get any kind of official help, I got laughed out of there as soon as I mentioned your name. Pedro called a couple weeks ago and wasn’t making any sense, but I was at least able to confirm that you were still in this area, so I got the first flights I could and just had to hope that you’d keep staying put.”

She paused for a breath. “I have been freaking out,” she concluded. “So you had better have the best explanation ever for...whatever has been going on.”

“I do. I promise,” Connor said, and she was pretty sure he meant it. “I just can’t tell you in the middle of this hallway. Elaine, is there a place we can--”

“Connor?” a woman’s voice called, and a very pretty brunette with red streaks in her hair and a red leather jacket emerged from the same direction Connor had come from. “Something come up? ‘Cause we really need to get those artifacts stowed before Vikram and Shuri start messing...with...them.” She trailed off as she spotted Darcy.

“Ruby, hey,” Connor said awkwardly - but not, Darcy was positive, the awkwardness of someone watching his girlfriend and cheating partner meet. She’d seen that before, specifically on the ex she’d dumped not long before Jane had gone to give a lecture series at Stuttgart and she and Connor had met. This was more like the awkwardness of introducing two people from different sides of your life and not being sure they’d get along. “Darcy, this is Ruby, she’s part of the team I’ve been working with here. Ruby, this is Darcy, my girlfriend, who I was just about to explain...stuff...to. Like where I’ve been for the past few months.”

“Oh.” Ruby looked from one of them to the other. “Ohh. Yeah. Sorry.” She tilted her head. “Hey, uh, do you wanna just...bring her downstairs? Might be easier to explain that way.”

“You mean show her the Annex?” Connor asked, taken aback. “That’s allowed?”

Ruby shrugged. “We let Pedro in.”

“That was an emergency situation,” Elaine pointed out.

“Well, yeah, maybe, but - I’m the Guardian. For the time being. So I’m okaying it.”

“Okaying what exactly?” Darcy asked, not sure whether she ought to run for it or not. Probably not - her curiosity was never going to let her at this point.

“It’s...easier to show you.” Connor reached out and took her hand. “Come on. It’s just down a few flights of stairs.”

He pulled her along, with Ruby and Elaine trailing behind, down a straight flight of stairs, then down a much longer spiral staircase, and finally along a dimly lit hallway towards a large wooden set of double doors that looked much better maintained than anything else around them.

“Okay.” Connor halted. “Once you step through these doors...it’s gonna be a lot. But in the absolute most awesome way.”

“Con,” Darcy said slowly, “did you...by any chance...actually find the Library down here?”

“Not exactly. I mean, you can get there from here, but I don’t necessarily recommend it - the security is...interesting. But through here is already pretty cool.” He pushed on the doors. “Welcome to the Annex.”

The doors opened, and he led Darcy through into a large, warmly lit space. There were books everywhere, and a bunch of random-looking stuff that looked like it wouldn’t be out of place in a thrift store, but that Darcy suspected would make her lab equipment explode if she tried messing with them. It was that kind of place, humming with what a lot of people would call ‘magic’ and Darcy was still working on the exact scientific terminology for. 

“You’re forgiven,” she finally said, when she could speak again. “Mostly.”

Whatever Connor might have said in response was lost to a mighty bang coming from a room off to the side, followed by a plume of bluish smoke, some extremely out-of-date cussing, and a stream of Wakandan that Darcy couldn’t follow but would bet her return plane tickets also involved cussing.

“Oh, great, they’re at it again,” Ruby sighed, striding past them towards the commotion. “Con, c’mon, maybe introducing your girlfriend will distract them from whatever they’re trying to cook up this time.”

Connor shot Darcy an apologetic half-smile. “Vikram and Shuri keep trying to reinvent time travel. They’re not really supposed to. It can get...interesting when they start a new project.”

“Shuri,” Darcy said, trying to remember where she’d heard that name before. The penny dropped. “Please tell me you didn’t help kidnap the missing Wakandan princess that’s been all over the news.”

“She’s here voluntarily,” Connor said, which only raised a whole lot more questions. “Also, Vikram’s from 1847. Just...getting that out of the way.”

Darcy stared at him for a moment, trying to decide if he was joking, then concluded he wasn’t and started moving in the direction Ruby had gone. “Okay. This I’ve gotta see.”

Chapter Text

Usually, slipping between timelines was easy, once you had a TemPad and knew how. Not this time, though.

Sylvie could feel that something had gone wrong the moment she stepped into the doorway - it felt like a record scratch sounded, tearing through her whole body. But her momentum was carrying her forward, so she stumbled out the other side of the portal instead of back the way she had come, and fell twitching onto grass.

The TemPad fell out of her hand and burst into bits of smoking, twisted metal.

Guess that’s me stuck, then, Sylvie thought with the corner of her mind not consumed by the aftershocks of pain. It wasn’t as wrenching or terrifying a thought as it might once have been. She’d finished her mission. He Who Remains was dead. Anything that was left of the TVA didn’t seem to be hunting her anymore, for whatever reason. She’d lost the one...connection she’d made in forever, through her own fault entirely, and it was highly unlikely that she would ever see him again, or that he would want to see her.

This wasn’t such a bad place. The grass she was collapsed in smelled nice.

There were shouting voices somewhere nearby, coming closer. They weren’t speaking a language Sylvie was familiar with, but with a little concentration, Allspeak let her understand what they were saying.

“Where did she come from?”

“My lady? Are you all right?”

“We’d better get her to the healing wing.”

Healing. Huh. Usually Sylvie healed herself, with a combination of magic, whatever supplies she had on hand, and her body’s sheer stubbornness. But that sounded like a lot of work right now, so maybe just this once it would be okay to pass out and let someone else take care of it.

- - -

When she awoke, it was in by far the most peaceful environment she’d ever encountered, even more than the Asgard of her childhood. She was in a soft bed with clean white sheets, and there was warm sunlight streaming in from an open window nearby. She still felt tired, but she no longer ached all over, and had the strength to push herself up enough to look around the room - all pale stone, simply furnished but elegantly put together. The place smelled like soap and clean herbs and a remarkable absence of harsh chemicals. There was no technology more advanced than a pendulum clock anywhere in sight.

She was still wearing all her clothes, although her armor, weapons, and boots were missing. The former probably boded well; the latter might not.

There was a person standing by the window with a white robe over his clothes, probably a healer. His hair was long and black and pulled back into braids, and the one ear she could see was pointed. That was unusual. She’d met a lot of species, some with pointed ears, but none with that exact shape.

He turned, evidently having heard her moving. “Ah, you are awake.” He crossed to her bedside. “Carefully, now. I’m not sure what caused the condition my people found you in, but it was not easy to mend, and I would not want you to risk relapse.”

Sylvie wasn’t sure if he intended that to mean that she owed him or not. Best to err on the side of caution and get more information. “Who are you?” she said, a little hoarsely. “And where am I?”

“I am called Elrond, and you are in a room in the healing wing of my house, in Rivendell.” He said it like those names ought to mean something, but neither was ringing a bell.

He sat down in a carved wooden chair next to the bed. “My people who saw you arrive gave a curious description,” he went on. “A fiery door in the air, which disappeared as soon as you had passed through it. Can you tell me any more about this?”

Sylvie considered her surroundings, which could best be described as quasi-medieval in level of development, and the way this Elrond had spoken. “You probably wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”

“I would not be so sure about that.” Elrond’s gaze seemed to pierce through her. “I have heard many strange tales in my life, and seen many strange things. My foster fathers spoke of a kinswoman who had come from another world, and rumor has it that an ancestor within my own bloodline was such a person. But nothing I recall from either tale mentions a means of crossing between worlds such as what is reported of you.”

Sylvie gave in, just a little. If it went wrong, she could blame it on how tired she still was. “I did come from...somewhere else. Somewhere very different. I was trying to get away from people who were hunting me, and something went wrong, and I landed here. I don’t think I can leave the way I came.”

Elrond nodded. “We retrieved the broken object that was found with you, but I suspect even our most skilled smiths would not be able to repair it.”

“Don’t bother,” Sylvie shrugged. “Might as well destroy it. I’ve got to hide out someplace, and I don’t think they’ll come after me here.”

“Indeed not.” Elrond’s voice was firm. “Those of ill intent are not allowed here in Rivendell. This is a place of peace, and sanctuary, for all who need or desire it as long as they wish to stay.”

Sylvie relaxed just slightly at that. She could tell he meant it, and was nearly sure that there wasn’t some nasty secret hidden underneath it all, although if she was going to be here any length of time she’d want to do some digging just to make sure.

She would have to keep a lot of her past, particularly the killing, under wraps for as long as she was here, but that shouldn’t be a problem. She was a Loki; lies and secret-keeping were in her nature.

“Then I think I would like to stay,” she said at length. “At least for the time being. While I find my feet.”

“We will be happy to help you in doing so,” Elrond said, and paused. “Forgive me, in my curiosity I have been remiss in asking your name.”

“Sylvie.” She thought about including a patronym, then refrained. If she was starting over here, she could leave all those complications behind. “Just Sylvie.”

Elrond’s expression did something complicated that Sylvie couldn’t read. “It is a good name,” he said at last. “Although the meaning has some...ties to certain complex parts of this world’s history. You may find you wish to take an after-name during your residence here.”

That shouldn’t be a problem. ‘Sylvie’ wasn’t technically her real name anyway. “Will Loki suffice?”

Elrond winced. “That one is less controversial, but not in the best of ways. I am sure with time we can arrive at something.”

He rose from the chair. “In the meantime, I am sure you would appreciate food and a chance to clean up. I can guide you, if you wish.”

Sylvie was about to retort that she didn’t need anyone’s help, but the moment she tried getting up from the bed, she changed her mind. Her strength was still far from what it ought to be. “That would be...appreciated,” she admitted.

And at least Elrond neither pitied nor mocked her as he helped her along. And the corridors they passed through only reinforced the impression that this was one of the more beautiful places she’d ever seen, and Sylvie caught herself thinking that if she had to be stuck and dependent somewhere, this was very, very far from the worst way it could have gone.

Chapter Text

Charlie would never, ever have admitted it to anyone under any circumstances, but she’d read the fanfics, as a teenager, She knew the tropes - some pathetic, lonely girl from the real world goes back in time or to an alternate dimension or whatever, ends up in Camelot, usually has all kinds of improbably overpowered adventures, gets into a torrid romance with at least one knight, and finally gets married and appreciated for all her previously unrealized specialness.

(She had definitely never written any such material herself, and it had definitely not featured Galahad in any prominent role whatsoever, and she had definitely, absolutely not wanted desperately to crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after herself when she had learned that the Knights of the Round Table were real and a particular one of them was on the committee interviewing her for the dream job she hadn’t known she wanted.)

The point was, she knew exactly what kind of situation this was, and she refused to go along with it.

All right, so she wasn’t in Camelot. Celebrian, the lady of the place and the one person who spoke fluent English, had explained to her that it was called Rivendell or Imladris, that the land was called Endor and the world in general was called Arda. She’d spent a lot of time over the past several days explaining a bunch of different things to Charlie, and trying to persuade her to start learning at least one of the languages - Westron or Sindarin.

Charlie refused. Learning any languages, like anything else that smacked of settling in, would feel too much like giving up. She wasn’t going to be stuck here forever. She was going to find a way back home, to her real life, and she would get the chance to be a Guardian eventually instead of waiting the rest of her life for a call that would never come.

Speaking of which. She needed to keep up with her training regimen if she didn’t want to have to make up a lot of lost ground when (not if) she got home. Her understanding was that this world wasn’t entirely peaceful, and there were warriors living her ein Rivendell who trained and sparred regularly, so it shouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for her to do so as well.

The only problem, and the reason she’d been procrastinating, was that she knew if she did she would be walking right into the exact tropes she was trying to avoid. In all the Modern Girl in Camelot stories she’d read, the romance arc kicked off with the Mary Sue of the day training and sparring with the knights.

Don’t be ridiculous,” she scolded herself. Doing some basic workouts in the vicinity of some random elvish fighters isn’t going to automatically make you lose your brain and fall in love. Get over yourself.

Celebrian had shown her the training grounds during the tour she’d given her early on, and Charlie was able to find it easily. There were a number of people there already, and they all swiveled their attention to her as she crossed to a weapons rack, but Charlie determinedly ignored them all. She started running through some warm-up stretches and exercises, while considering her options with the blades a short distance away. The shapes weren’t entirely familiar, and several were much too large for her, but there were a few she thought might work.

Sufficiently warmed up, she headed over and picked up a likely-looking short sword, only to startle and nearly drop it when a deep voice sounded behind her. “Good choice.”

Charlie turned around slowly, and inwardly sighed when she saw who it was. The tall blond one, Glorfindel she thought he was called, who always seemed to wear a disarming grin that didn’t entirely cover up the distinct aura of power around him. He was exactly the kind of person who would be the love interest in those awful stories, and she’d been relying on the language barrier to keep him at bay.

Evidently not. “You speak English?” she ventured.

“A little.” He shrugged. “Lady Celebrian taught me.” With a gesture at the sword, he added, “That was made for Lady Idril, a friend, many years ago in Gondolin. She was Lord Elrond’s grandmother.”

“Oh.” Charlie moved to put it back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was an antique, I’ll use something...newer.”

Glorfindel frowned. “I do not know what ‘antique’ is. But you should use that one. The older swords are better. Our smiths these days do not know as much.”

Charlie wasn’t entirely sure about that, but then thought about Flynn Carsen and Excalibur chasing each other around right before her interview, and ended up resettling her grip on the sword. 

“You want to spar?” Glorfindel asked.

Charlie considered the glimpses she’d caught of him sparring with other elves - not that she’d been watching him particularly. “You’d beat me into the ground.”

He shook his head. “I have sparred with humans before. I can be careful.”

She considered arguing for a moment more, then let it go. This might as well happen. Sparring was probably less dangerous than anything involving more talking. “Okay. Just the one time.”

Nothing was going to happen, she told herself. It was just one fight that probably wouldn’t take very long, and then he would lose interest.

She had things under control.

Chapter Text

She was gone again. Mal wasn’t too worried. Makkari disappeared a lot, always had ever since she recovered from whatever stranded her here, but she always came back, too.

Nobody else knew when she would turn up out of nowhere again, but he almost always did, anymore, could get this sense anywhere from a few hours to a day before she actually arrived. He wasn’t sure why he could tell and nobody else could, but he liked it. It made him feel...special.

He’d never told anybody else about that feeling. The only person he would even consider telling something like that to was Alina, and Alina didn’t understand why he was so fascinated by Makkari. “She never stays put,” Alina would say when he talked about it. “We both know she’s looking for something, or someone, and when she finds it she won’t come back here anymore. I don’t know why she’s kept coming back here for this long; it’s not like there’s that much here.”

Mal didn’t know either. There was nothing special about their little village, tucked into the mountains where the border with the old kingdom of Shu Han used to be hundreds of years ago. The only reason you would ever know it was there was if you were from there, or if, like Makkari, some kind of accident brought you there.

Mal had been in the party that found her, a couple of winters ago. They’d been out on a hunting trip, and seen something glowing in the snow, and it had turned out to be a woman, sprawled out and twitching, wearing some kind of strange red and silver garment and with lines of golden light tracing over her body.

They’d taken her back to the village, but there hadn’t been much that anyone could do except wait for her to heal if she was going to. Some people had thought she was an Inferni, and some thought that maybe she was a Sun Summoner like Tsarina Kristina, but she had turned out to be neither of those things, and she didn’t have the same inhuman prettiness that Grisha had, anyway.

But she was beautiful, at least in Mal’s opinion. And she was definitely more than human - everybody had seen that when she first got better and started moving faster than the eye could track.

She’d left for the first time soon after that. But she came back; she always came back.

Mal had asked her why, one time, although he’d had to do it in writing since she didn’t seem able to hear and he hadn’t yet gotten the hang of the hand-signs she used at that point. She’d laughed and told him that of course she came back - all her treasures were here. Which was a decent point: Makkari usually brought back souvenirs from her trips, sometimes from as far away as Novyi Zem, and she kept them all squirreled away in a cave near the village. But that didn’t explain why she’d picked here to stash her stuff, and sometimes Mal was in a foolish enough mood to hope that she came back because he was her friend.

He understood her hand-signs better, now, but he didn’t always understand everything she said with them. According to her, she’d been on a ship of some kind, with her family, and then something had gone wrong and the ship had fallen apart and they’d all been separated. But there wasn’t a body of water big enough for anything like a ship anywhere near the village. Makkari said that it hadn’t been that kind of ship, or that kind of wreck, but what other kind could there be?

Well, all right, there were rumors that a mad inventor in West Ravka was trying to create a ship that could travel in the air, but even if that were possible, there hadn’t been any wreckage near where they’d found her.

As little as he understood that, though, he understood the way she talked about her family well enough. Enough to know in his bones that Alina was right about Makkari looking for someone and not coming back anymore if she found them. 

But there was no reason to think that this time would be the time that it happened, so there was no use worrying over it. This time, she would still come back. Mal had a good feeling about it.

Chapter Text

She hates him, this ridiculous man with his foolish grin and his overlong scarf.

She would detest him anyway, just on principle, for the sort of person he is, but how dare he call her savage! How dare he take away her weapons! How dare he claim that he’s going to teach her better ways!

Someone already tried that, and it didn’t end well for anyone, and no one is ever going to try again. She doesn’t want to be better, except as a better warrior, which is not a bad thing to be. 

She will get around his pathetic anti-aggression measures, and she will get her weapons back, and she will take great pleasure in stabbing him through his over-soft heart. Or hearts, if he really has two like he claims. She doesn’t care.

And then she will return to her Master, to the war, to her real life.

This Doctor claims that his ship travels in time as well as space, beyond the farthest reaches of her galaxy, but surely that is a lie to keep her obedient to him. No one can travel in time. Time happens, and then it is gone, and you can never, ever go back to time that is gone, no matter how you try.

Asajj realizes that she’s gritting her teeth, and deliberately makes herself relax, returning to her flow from one meditative pose to another. It cannot be long before she works out how to reach the Dark Side of the Force while on this paradoxical ship, and once she does, nothing will be able to hold her.

She will figure it out soon. 

She will.

Chapter Text

All beings generate variants, but some beings generate more variants than others.

This is one of the tenets that is printed in bold in the TVA Handbook, and like anyone who has worked for the TVA for any significant length of untime, Ravonna has seen for herself that it’s true. If she had a Xand dollar for every Loki, every Peter Jason Quill, every Erik Killmonger, every Tony Stark that she’s encountered first as a hunter, then as an agent, then as a judge, she’d have enough to fill her office.

It’s not always predictable which major players in history will generate the most variants. Thanos, for instance, has hardly had any in the time she’s been with the TVA. Something about his single-mindedness in his quest seems to keep him from deviating too much or too often from his path on the Sacred Timeline. 

But then there are ones like Namor. K’uk’ulkan. The Sub-Mariner. Whatever you want to call him - although the name “Sub-Mariner” is not supposed to appear on the Sacred Timeline, thank you very much, and is in Ravonna’s opinion completely ridiculous.

Namor produces variants like sunfish produce eggs. Some are from as far back as his childhood, starting with his first encounter with surface-dwellers. Once he reaches adulthood, there are so many variants that two agents and a whole squad of hunters have to be assigned to dealing with them - specifically, keeping him from finding some way to pick a fight with the land-dwelling Terrans before the proper time.

Ravonna works on that squad of hunters, for a while. Her excellent performance there gets her promoted to being the second agent in charge of the squad when one agent proves to be insufficient. (The other agent is one Mobius M. Mobius, and in between crises, they end up becoming great friends.)

She mostly doesn’t care about the people she watches on the Sacred Timeline. They’re all just parts of a greater whole, and the whole is what matters to her. But - maybe because she’s having to deal with him all day, every day - she finds herself growing increasingly interested in Namor. In addition to the number of his variants, there’s so much variety. He is truly trying everything imaginable, and some things she wouldn’t have thought imaginable, to achieve the cause he believes in.

Ravonna can respect that. She would do the same, for what she believes in, for the TVA and the Sacred Timeline, for all time, always.

She can’t allow him to do any of those things except for what the Sacred Timeline calls for, of course, but that doesn’t stop a part of her from admiring him.

A Namor takes to sinking all European ships, on track to completely disrupt the colonization of North America and Australia and India and the creation of the British Empire. A Namor who never kills Ramonda of Wakanda and marries the princess Shuri and goes to the United Nations to demand, with Wakanda’s backing, that they leave his realm alone. A Namor who fights in World War II. A Namor who becomes inexplicably enamored of some woman called Susan Storm who is of no discernible importance.

They all fight and shout and promise horrible vengeance when they’re brought in. They spit on Ravonna if she approaches them. She doesn’t take it personally. It’s only to be expected.

What is more concerning is the day when she supervises a Namor being pruned and feels...something akin to pity, maybe. The sensation is foreign enough that she isn’t exactly sure what to name it. It’s enough, though, to tell her that this can’t continue.

She immediately puts in a request for transfer, due to danger of emotional compromise. An agent with a lesser record might be demoted or even pruned. Her record, though, is otherwise flawless and exemplary, so she remains an agent and is moved to working on a wider variety of variants, with a commendation for her prompt action. The commendation is later a contributing factor in her promotion to judge.

Mobius also gets a lateral transfer, and after that Human Resources doesn’t keep agents or hunters assigned to the same type of variant for too long. Ravonna still sees the occasional Namor variant get dragged through, even judges cases for one or two, but she takes care to remain detached. No more unhealthy interests in variants. She’s learned her lesson.

It’s how she knows what to look for when Mobius starts getting a little too interested in Lokis, although he tells her it’s not the same.

- - -

Much later, when she’s on her own, searching from timeline to timeline, she finally gives in to her lingering curiosity and takes a peek at the Namor of the timeline she’s currently on. 

He’s turned out a little different from the Namor she kept working to preserve on the Sacred Timeline. He doesn’t have an uneasy treaty with and an unrequited passion for Shuri of Wakanda - he’s never even met her; Shuri is running around with a Librarian of all things. King T’Challa had lived in this one, and negotiated a much more stable treaty with Talokan. The Talokanil are safe, and recognized by the world, and they and the world are better for it.

It’s utterly wrong, and yet Ravonna finds herself thinking Good for him for a brief moment.

Then she gives herself a little shake and moves on, continuing her search.