GBB: Birds of Passage: Part One

[neotoma]

Title: Birds of Passage
Author: neotoma
Artist:cashay
Genre/Pairing: (slash & drama)
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ~61,000
Warnings/Spoilers: gore/animal sacrifice, gore, implied past abuse, gore/torture, homophobia/transphobia, set post-S5 SPN/ S1 Jericho

Summary: Lucifer is back in his Cage, but one averted Apocalypse doesn't mean much in the face of another, more human one. Sam Winchester, the Archangel Gabriel, and a man millennia out of his own time have wandered into a small Kansas town, where they get to deal with tree thieves, suspicious sheriffs, shady characters, political in-fighting, looming starvation, and the occasional pagan deity passing through. It's just one damn thing on top of another after The End of the World. [Crossover with JERICHO (tv series)]




Part One – every highway leads you prodigal

Jake was on patrol on the northern edge of town when they spotted the archer. Horses and riders were pretty common nowadays, what with all the gas being saved for the generator and the emergency vehicles, so at first he thought it was just someone from an outlying farm coming into town for business.

But then the horse came close enough that Jake and the guys could make out its color and markings, and the neat coat and cap of its rider, and Jake realized he had no idea who that was.

A varnished bay horse, with an appaloosa blanket marking its rump, it was very compactly put together, with solid legs and iron-hard hooves and probably a lot of speed. It was too flashy to be forgettable, and he could tell that no one else on patrol recognized it from the nervous hand signals and worried mutters.

The rider was bundled, not in a down parka that had seen better (cleaner) days, or layers of sweaters and sweatshirts, but in a long coat that looked like it might be sheepskin, with the wool turned in and the suede side out. The duster was functional – long and split up the back so to drape over the man's legs as he rode – and the rider was definitely a man, because Jake could make out a beard as well as shaggy hair pulled back at the nape, all tucked under a blue knit cap.

One of the guys raised his eyebrows and pointed at the man as he rode across the open field.

Jake nodded. He'd seen. The man was pulling a bow – an honest to god recurve bow – from a scabbard on his saddle, and fitting an arrow to it. Jake couldn't see what the man had spotted, even after he'd kicked his horse into a canter. But the man let fly, and let out a whoop of triumph as the arrow thunked into the ground. He grabbed the reins from where he'd dropped them around his saddle-horn, and dismounted, walking his flashy horse over to his arrow.

"Damn, you see that?" came the awed whisper from where the other Rangers hunkered in the long grass and brush.

Jake nodded. "Rabbit?"

"Mink. Or weasel?"

Jake peered into the distance. He could just make out the floppy shape the archer was pulling off his arrow – it might be a weasel, or a mink, instead of a skinny cottontail. Whichever, that had been a hell of a shot – shooting small game with a bow wasn't at all easy, and doing it from a running horse... Jake was impressed.

But he still didn't know who the guy was. He did, to Jake's far-away eyes, look a lot more put together than a road refugee. He had a warm coat, a sensible warm hat, a hunter's weapon that he knew how to use – and his horse, if not exactly fat, was shaggy instead of starving, and so well trained to tolerate bowhunting off its back.

The man got back in the saddle, and turned back the way he'd come. Jake could see a long dark shape on the other side of the horse – a long gun holster, tied forward so that the rider could pull his gun out as he rode – and two dangling shapes, one that might be a rabbit, one that was definitely a bird of some sort – a small pheasant, or prairie chicken.

"Three kills?" Jake asked.

"Three," one of the guys said.

"He's not alone, then." Jake murmured. "And he's got a long gun in that holster."

"But he's hunting with a bow..?"

Jake thought about it, then frowned. "He's saving the gun ammo. Miss with the bow, you can usually get the arrow back. You can't reuse a cartridge." Saving the ammo for things that wouldn't run away from an archer – like road gangs.

"Follow him?"

Jake sighed. That archer hadn't done anything suspicious, except shooting a bow with impressive skill, but they had to keep track of any stranger nearing Jericho. The road gangs were still haunting the area, outside of the Rangers' patrol reach. This guy could be a scout for one that was making its way south. He was too put together for a refugee.

"Yeah, follow him."


Sam stamped his feet again, and hoped Hrafn would come back soon. They were making slow progress south as they tried to reach Texas. Sam knew partly it was his fault – he was the one who insisted on trying to get to the Republic, now that the way east was blocked, and he was the one who was trying to navigate around the damned Allied States troops and their mercenary auxiliaries, and he was the one who picked up strays – well, Hrafn was unlikely to leave kids to die either, but he'd been all for hunkering down on any of the abandoned farms they'd come across. But Sam wanted to get away from the ASA before winter truly broke.

If he waited until spring, they would solidify their foothold, and Sam didn't know that he'd even be able to get the news out about Sioux Falls if that happened. And he owed Bobby, and Sheriff Mills that much. He and Hrafn were probably the only ones who escaped, because he wasn't a normal easy-to-kill civilian and neither was Hrafn, not with an archangel lying wounded in his head.

"Sam..." Kat said, her voice full of dread all of the sudden.

Sam turned his head to find Hrafn riding up on his spotted mare Skalm. The Norseman's sharp face was hard, and his right hand hovered over his gun scabbard.

Sam grimaced, and swung himself into his horse's saddle. He was better than he had been, but if they had to run, he was going to be clinging to the saddle-horn and hoping Spot followed Skalm and Snookums without much direction from him. Which she would, actually.

"'Senna, Eric, on Slipper, now," Hrafn ordered as he drew alongside the wagon. He swung his legs over his saddle and leapt from horse to wagon-bed. The kids watched him with wide eyes, but hurried to climb out of the wagon and around to the slate-grey dun who was tied to the back.

"Road crew?" Sam asked, looking the way Hrafn had come. He couldn't see anything, but there were wind-row trees screening each side of the road. Anyone could be crouched among the hackberries and cottonwoods, just waiting for them to come this way.

"I don't know," Hrafn said, and pulled Ríkvé from her nest of blankets.

"I've got her," Kat said as Hrafn handed the toddler up. Kat hooked the toddler to her in a sling-snuggie – a motion that was practiced and smooth, much to Sam's regret. No sixteen year old girl should be prepared to ride for her life with a toddler wrapped to her chest.

Hrafn nodded, then looked once over the wagon before snorting in disgruntlement and hopping off. He caught Skalm easily, because she'd kept pacing the wagon, and frowned at Sam.

"We stampede them again?" Sam asked. As hideous as the tactic was, it had worked before.

"Nobody's done anything yet," Kat snapped from her horse. Snookums flicked his ears, on edge because of their nervousness. Sam winced. If the gelding was picking up on their worry, they might wind up spooking all the horses and having a stampede whether they wanted to or not.

Hrafn frowned, and tossed his catch – a pheasant, a rabbit, and a skinny snaky thing that was maybe a mink, if Sam recalled correctly – into the wagon bed. The Norseman looked back the way he came, and rolled his shoulders, as if limbering up for a fight.

"Hrafn..."

"I felt someone watching me, Sam," he said, his eyes scanning the weedy trees and the sere winter grass.

"Were they hostile?" Sam asked. He knew that Hrafn in his own self had a little bit of psychic talent, enough to have snap-to reflexes for danger and just an extra bit of luck.

Hrafn shrugged. Which meant he couldn't tell, but was going to go with suspicion anyway.

Sam gulped, and then ventured silently, 'Gabriel?'

'?' came the reply, not sound but sensation. The ability to speak to Gabriel silently – Gabriel kept calling it 'communing', and Sam really didn't like the implications of that – was one of the thing he'd be surprised by after his abrupt and confusing release from the Pit. He tried to not to wonder just how much being in Hell and being inhabited by Lucifer had changed him; thinking about it was like spinning his wheels, like a hamster in a cage, so he tried not to.

'What did you feel?'

'Curiosity And awe. Hrafn impressed them with his bowshot.'

'No danger?'

The archangel pulsed languidly in Sam's perception, almost like he was shifting to get comfortable. 'Don't think so. Just curiosity Worry, but no malevolence. No panic.'

'Okay then,' Sam responded, and let the archangel go back to resting, or whatever it was that he was doing. Inhabiting his Vessel so minimally that Hrafn was walking and talking in his own body for the first time in what Sam suspected was centuries, if not millennia.

"Kat, Hrafn," Sam said, catching their eyes so that they could see he was firm about this. Kat was a teenager, and inclined to panic, after all. And Hrafn was completely off the wall in what he thought was a proper response to any situation – Sam might have lived a violent hunter's life, but Hrafn tended to think homicide was a solution to many ills. Sometimes he was even right.

"We're going to do this slow and easy. Let them approach us. We can probably get past these people just be being calm and keeping moving, okay?"

Kat nodded, and Hrafn rolled his eyes but nodded too once Sam gave him a hard look.

Hrafn stepped back and grabbed at Gjálp and Greip's reins. He walked beside the wagon-team, leading them and his own riding horse Skalm; if they had to run, Hrafn would abandon the wagon horses and mount to run. The Norseman nodded when Sam looked at him, and whistled out a piercing set of notes.

Sam looked back, to see their mixed herd shape up into something a little tighter, a little more dangerous if they had to panic the cattle deliberately. Fenja and Menja, the Rottweilers he and Hrafn had had since South Dakota, were pushing the cows around from the back, making them more cohesive.

"We'll be good," Kat said nervously. She had a hand protectively over Ríkvé 's back – that little girl could sleep through anything – and she was looking down the road anxiously.

Sam glanced sideways at her, and then back at the wagon. Hrafn he had no worries about, since the likelihood of anyone managing to hurt him with conventional weapons was small, even without figuring in his passenger Gabriel. The likelihood of anyone surviving to make a second attempt at shooting Hrafn was non-existent, and Sam had seen proof of that, back in Sioux Falls. The kids though, if they had to run for it – well, Kat's sister actually knew how to ride, but he hoped Eric would make it just by holding on tight.

"Yeah," Sam lied, "we'll be fine," and turned to face the road again, and whoever might be lurking in the ditches and windbreaks along their path.



Jake got to the road and saw the herd tramping down the asphalt. For a moment he was dumbstruck, and then he saw the standoff, and he had to pick it up.

"Martin! Back off!" he called as he jogged forward, his hunting rifle slung over his back.

Martin and the other Rangers pulled back a little, stopped blocking the wagon from moving forward. The archer was hand leading them, a matched pair of dappled drafts, big and beautiful, and peering at all the Rangers with a weather-eye.

The big guy on the pinto, he didn't look like he quite knew what he was doing on horseback – bad posture and clumsy hands – but he had a rifle scabbard hanging off his saddle, and a handgun holstered at his hip. The girl had great posture – toes up, knees in – and looked like she knew what she was doing on her horse, even with her arm tucked protectively around a bundle slung down from her shoulder.

The two little kids on the fabulous grey pony, Jake looked at for a moment and worried. One looked like she knew how to ride, the other looked like he knew how to cling, and if things played out how they often did with road refugees, focusing too much attention on those kids would get the entire family of them to run off in all directions trying to evade Jake.

Jake didn't like to think what that meant for the world outside, if people passing by Jericho got suspicious when he took an interest in their kids.

"Jake, I was just–"

"I said, 'back off'." Jake said. Then he turned looking at the tall man on his horse, and the archer – a guy on the short side of average, now that Jake could see him up close – as he tried to talk to them. "You've wandered into our patrols, friend."

"We can wander right out again, if you just point us in the right direction," the tall man said. His eyes never stopped moving, not nervous, just assessing Jake and the other Rangers. He was waiting for a fight.

"We're not a road gang," Jake said, a little bit annoyed with the suspicion. They hadn't demanded anything, tried to take the wagon or anything else.

"You haven't tried to take the wagon yet," the archer said from his place leading the wagon team, "It is to your favor, but that is a low mark to shoot for."

At least, that's what Jake parsed his words as, after several moments blinking at thick and entirely unrecognizable accent.

"We just want news," Jake said. "What have you heard?"

The tall man blinked. "I-70 is crawling with road gangs, I-80 with militias, and I-90 had army tanks attack the Black Hills."

Jake blinked at that last one. "What?"

"Hadn't you heard? The Pine Ridge Reservation was attacked by the 7th Cavalry. Again. Except this time, the army had tanks."

"But why?!" Jake said. The only rationale he could think of for the army attacking a Sioux reservation would be for some resident or another to have worked with the terrorists. And the likelihood of American Indians working with Al-Qaeda or North Korea or whoever had used nuclear weapons on US soil was practically nil.

"It was a question of authority," the archer said. "One side claimed it, the other refuted their claims."

"Maybe we had better sit down somewhere," Jake said faintly. "I think I can get you a beer – alcohol of some sort, anyway. Then you can tell me everything..."

"I'd rather have water for my cattle," the girl said, butting in to Jake's befuddlement.

He looked at the girl, then the cattle that were still making their way down the road, and nodded. "I can do that. There's a farm down this way – they should have water. Their water pump is still working – it's an old Sears and Roebuck–"

"A wind-powered pump?" the girl asked. At Jake's nod, she smiled. "That'd be great. Sam?" she asked, catching the tall man's eyes.

"I'm willing to risk it," Sam said. His eyes flickered to the archer. "Hrafn, how about you?"

The archer stared at Jake with eyes so pale a brown they were almost yellow. Combined with his beard and drooping mustaches, he looked like a particularly fierce terrier, or a very strange and wise owl.

"Life is a risk. My angel does not think he means us harm, so yes," the archer said.

Jake goggled at the man, and then dismissed his words. Lots of people had turned to religion these days. It didn't mean anything, except that the man's command of English was shakier than Jake had first thought, if was translating his own idioms with no care about how weird they sounded.

"Well, if you'll follow me gentlemen," Jake said, and then hastily added at the girl's sour look, "– miss, we'll get you your water, and then I'll get my news."



"So, I'm Jake Green," their host said as he lead them down the road a bit, nearer to the city Hrafn could feel just on the edge of his mind, now that he was aware that there was something to look for. Hrafn consoled himself with the thought that he would have felt the concentration of people in another mile or so even if they hadn't run into this patrol. He still had his knowing, and a city of thousands – maybe even 4000 or 5000 souls, from the dull buzzing on the outskirts of perception – would have made itself known, sooner or later. He might have felt it sooner, but his angel was a constant distracting thrum even as Gabriel drowsed and drifted where he was moored up under Hrafn's soul.

The captain Jake Green seemed respectable, Hrafn thought. His name was another difficult one, like Senna's, and his slightly pop-eyed features were less than intimidating, but there was a mind under that short curly scalp. He reminded Hrafn of some of the Hellenes he had traded with in his youth – clever and sly under their silly hairstyles and effeminate manners.

The man offered them hot water steeped with herbs and sweetened with honey – the bitter tisane the best anyone could offer, in this season of disaster. Three of his men stayed to watch Hrafn and Sam and the children, but the rest of the men went back on their patrol. So, willing to talk, but not above displaying caution even when it might be perceived as rude – after all, Sam and Katla and Hrafn had all taken his tisane, and the stale and awful crackers he offered as well. Hrafn, at least, only swallowed enough of the dry food to show that he accepted the hospitality.

"Sam Winchester," Sam said, pointing around, "Kat and Jennifer Brubaker, Eric Sharpnack, Ríkvé, and Hrafn Friththjófsson."

"Ríkvé ?" Jake Green asked, darting around.

"Ríkvé," Katla repeated, and patted the sling on her shoulder. "She's still asleep, miracle of miracles."

The man's eyes widened in surprise, a truly unfortunate expression because of how foolish it made him look, Hrafn thought. He stepped close, and looked down at Ríkvé when Katla shifted the cloth around the child.

"You've got a baby..." the man whispered, "Your daughter?"

Katla said, "I'm sixteen!" in outrage, as if that wasn't old enough to have a child, then softened herself, "No, Sam and Hrafn found her."

"On the road," Sam explained when Jake looked to him.

"'On the road'... that's no place for a baby, or little kids."

"I'm nine!" Senna yelped. Eric said nothing, being younger and quite scared of strangers now. He was hiding almost, in Sam's shadow.

"Jenny!" Katla hushed her sister.

"Well, I am! I'm not little."

"Later, Jenny."

"Senna," Hrafn said, "come here."

The child frowned and flounced over to him. "I'm not little."

"I know, Senna, but you need to be quiet."

She frowned, and looked to argue, but Eric edged over to them, and Hrafn found himself holding one child by the hand in reassurance and one child by the shoulder to repress her boisterousness while he listened to Sam and Katla negotiate their entrance into the town of Jericho.



Sam didn't mind the intake interview; he didn't even bother to lie (much) in response to Jake's questions. Yes, his name was Winchester, yes, like the rifle. He'd been born in Lawrence – that got him a sympathetic look – but had been living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota when the bombs hit. No, he and Hrafn were trying to get Kat and Jenny to their aunt outside of Lubbock, that was why they were traveling so late in the year. No, he and Hrafn hadn't been going south because of the winter – there was plenty of food in South Dakota, and even more fuel, considering the oil-fields – it was the fighting that had driven them south. Yes, he was willing to do any work required of him, yes even ditch-digging and logging – though they were in Kansas, so it wasn't like logging would last very long, and he was comfortable with guns and hunting.

He just avoided telling much about his past, because his life before the bombs had been straight out of a horror novel, and really 'I was possessed by the Devil' and 'No, my friend really does have angel in his head' were surefire ways to get himself pitied as a lunatic at best and driven out of town at worst. Especially since Hrafn would not refrain from referring to Gabriel – Sam would rather people think he was taking care of the Norseman instead of them thinking they were both cracked in the head. He'd escaped from a mental institution before, but he had had a getaway car then. Trying to blow town on horseback would be absolutely miserable now.

Jake was almost finished when Sam heard Hrafn's voice rising up across the office, and he motioned to the other man that he wanted to go see what the trouble was. Jake nodded, and got up himself to trail Sam across the sheriff's office to the glassed in room where one of the uniformed deputies was trying to interview the Norseman.

What's the problem?" Sam asked, leaning into the room.

"He wants to name her Friththjófsson!" Hrafn complained.

"Uhm," the deputy – Taylor, that was his name – hesitated, "That's the name you gave."

"That's my name," Hrafn said in outrage. "She's not my sister, and she's a girl."

Sam smothered a chuckle. "Oh, that's it, is it?"

Taylor looked confused. "What is it?"

Sam smiled. "'Friththjófsson'. It's Hrafn's patronymic, not a family name."

The deputy looked puzzled. "It's not a family name?"

"No," Hrafn said, in tone that said he disapproved of the whole idea of the thing. Then, in an attitude of great concession, he gestured at Sam, "Use his, if you needs must have one."

"Hey!" Sam protested.

The deputy was giving Sam a slow considering look. "I just want her name, for our records."

Sam sighed, and slumped against the door frame. It was time for honesty – cops were generally hard to lie to anyway, and there really wasn't any point to it, not for Ríkvé or Eric or Kat and Jenny. The kids might have fallen into Sam's orbit, but if he and Hrafn told the truth now, maybe those kids would find their families – some bit of their families anyway – again.

Kat and Jenny had their aunt, after all, even if they weren't going to get to her in Texas this winter. Eric knew his last name, his parents' given names, and his street address – once contact was re-established, the Red Cross might be able to track down his family.

But Ríkvé ... Sam didn't even know her real name. Hrafn had given it to her, just to have something to call her; they weren't even sure if her parents had been victims of that road gang, or members.

"I don't know it."

The deputy raised his eyebrows. "You don't know it?"

"Not her real one. Hrafn calls her Ríkvé because he names everything. But we picked her up from a road gang. They were using her as bait – most people will stop for a lost toddler..." Sam sighed, and closed his eyes. That had been a hard day – Ríkvé they had saved, but Sam had wound up salting and burning too many bodies that day.

'It was the right thing to do,' Gabriel whispered, soft and unexpected. Sam opened his eyes, and glanced sideways at Hrafn. He only nodded once.

"She's an orphan..?" Taylor mumbled, almost to himself. "That changes things. We have social services for that. Sort of."

"She stays with us," Hrafn said, his arms tightening around the sleeping toddler.

"Well, for now," Taylor said. "But we've got a list of people to help with road kids –"

Sam frowned. "She'll stay with us. unless you can get a family court judge to order her detention..."

"We're not doing that," Taylor said, his voice turning soothing. "We just want to help, get her into a better home than the refugee center.

Sam frowned. "She's okay with us."


"… so you should be all right, even though there's not a lot of space," Bill heard Jake Green saying as he came in the door of the town hall. Bill stamped his feet, knocking off slush from the weak snowfall coming down outside, and looked down the foyer to see the Ranger leader come out of the sheriff's department.

There were strangers with him, two men – white, 6'3" to 6'5", dark brown hair, brown eyes, late 20's to early 30's, muscular, dressed in flannels, jeans, beaten parka and watch cap; white, 5'7' to 5'8", brown hair, long and braided, heavy beard and drooping mustache, hazel eyes, late 30's to early 40's, dressed in sheepskin coat, denim jacket, jeans, watch cap; a woman – no, make that a teenage girl – white, 5'8" to 5'9", definitely taller than the older man, dark blond hair, brown eyes, dressed in jeans, duffle coat, watch cap. There were two kids and a toddler with them – the girl looked nine or so, and the shape of her face made her probably related to the teenager. The boy was seven or even younger, bright carrot-top hair cropped short to control what were likely wild curls, freckles on his face even in winter. Both kids had down parkas, streaked with road wear. The toddler was in the arms of the older man – white, 10 to 14 months, black hair in baby wisps, bundled in a layers topped with a coat that looked both handmade and fur.

"Hey, Jake."

"Bill," Jake nodded. The people with him stopped, peering around Jake to look at Bill. He didn't think he looked that scary, dressed in his uniform and a heavier coat. But the men each drew back a little, hands dropping down as if reassuring themselves they had weapons, which they did not. Bill could almost see the 'oh shit' that crossed their faces, and smiled just a little at it. The strange sense of familiarity he dismissed as soon as it brushed his mind.

"Mrs. Henderson lost another three trees from the windbreak along the back of her property. I followed see the drag marks, but when they reached the road..." Bill shrugged, annoyed. Asphalt didn't exactly take tracks, and Mrs. Henderson wasn't the sort to investigate noises during the night, even if it was sounds of someone chainsawing down her trees. Bill didn't exactly blame her, living alone on her farm, but she seemed to think it was his fault her trees were being cut down.

"Crap," Jake said. "We don't need this – someone is going to get shot over this, Bill."

The tall man made a coughing sound, and glanced at Jake, and then at Bill. Bill didn't like the tall man's raised eyebrows and vaguely appalled expression, like Bill was something unpleasant and confusing.

"Oh, right. Bill, this is Sam Winchester and his folk," that made the older man roll his eyes, and Bill could almost hear 'his folk?!' in the man's annoyed gesture, "Kat and Jenny Brubaker, Eric Sharpnack, Raf Frith– Frithd-"

"Hrafn Friththjófsson," the older man corrected, in an accent that would have sounded alright on a Muppet, but was really weird on a person.

"Yeah, sorry, and Ríkvé ... what is her last name, anyway?" Jake said.

"Winchester," Friththjófsson said as Winchester said, "Hrafnsson."

The two men glared at each other, and then Friththjófsson said, "Sveinsdottir, if you must. She is a girl, Sam."

Winchester frowned, and then went back to eyeballing Bill in a manner that was distinctly suspicious.

"Bill's one of our sheriff's deputies," Jake said in a desperate attempt to fill up the silence.

Winchester stopped eyeballing Bill long enough to give Jake a confused look, "I thought you said your county sheriff died after the attacks...?"

Bill snapped, "Sheriff Dawes was killed by some escapees from a prison bus." He'd been a good man, a good boss, and this stranger didn't know any of it.

"I'm sorry, Deputy..." Winchester paused to read Bill's nametag, "Koehler? I just want to know who the sheriff is. I mean, you're a deputy, so who are you a deputy for?"

"Thomas County Sheriff's Department," Bill said.

"But—"

"Sam," Friththjófsson said, "Stop pestering him. It is unbecoming."

Winchester blinked, staring at the older man, then glanced sideways at Jake, and then at the teenager Kat, and finally at Bill.

"Sorry."

Jake shifted awkwardly on his feet, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "No problem. Let me get you over to the church; the refugee shelter is in the basement. Bill, I'll be back just as soon as I get these folks settled."

Bill watched them go, Jake and the refugees, and wondered why he felt like he was missing something.



Hrafn couldn't see why Jake had apologized for the room. The church – a temple of the White Christ – was as large as any Hrafn had seen in his life before his angel. Fifty people could sleep in its undercroft, and it was snug against the winter winds.

'It's not that big by their standards. Heck, I've made bigger places for a trick.'

'That's because you're showy and ostentatious, eagle-chieftain. Like a peacock from the land of the Hellenes.'

Gabriel congealed at that, turning cold and thick in Hrafn's mind. It was just like the angel, to pout when pricked in his pride. He wasn't strong enough to set Hrafn to sleeping away the years anymore, so Hrafn just smiled, and walked the corridor towards the kitchen area.

"Hello?" he said, peering into the room. A woman with the dark features of distant Africa looked up at him. She was beautiful, in the manner of fire-giants, smoky and strong, though she affected the short hair of a matron, at least the way these people seemed to array themselves. Hrafn wondered briefly what she'd look like with her hair wound long in braids, and then shook off the fancy. Just because he found her attractive was no reason to be rude or foolish. She was probably already married, for one – she was too lovely not to have been wooed by some enterprising man for his household.

"Can I help you?"

"I am Hrafn Friththjófsson. Jake Green said I should ask at the kitchen for help with the milk for my Ríkvé?" Hrafn said, lifting Ríkvé from his shoulder.

"Oh! Hi, baby," the woman approached, cooing at Ríkvé . She looked up at Hrafn, and smiled, "How old is she? I'm Darcy Hawkins, by the way."

"She is just over a year," Hrafn said.

'Using the baby as an icebreaker? Isn't that beneath the dignity of a chieftain of the Fox Clan?'

'I will go with whatever works among these people, Asvald. And I haven't been a chieftain since before you and I met.'

"Jake sent you here for milk? We've been keeping it outside – none of the refrigerators work anyway, and it's cold enough... but there isn't much left..."

"You misunderstand, Darcy Hawkins. We have cows," Hrafn said, "I just need–" he shrugged, patting Ríkvé's back as she gabbled and tried to pull on his collar.

"You have cows..?"

"Several. They are Katla's inheritance." And the ones still in milk were corralled outside of the school building a few streets away, as Katla had come to a fast agreement to trade most of the milk to the school for the pasturage. Hrafn didn't think it was a strong contract as these people considered things, but it would do for now.

"You have milking cows?"

"I have said. If you have a pail..?"

"I have..." the woman opened several doors, rooting through the shelves, "… bowls. Will this one work?"

Hrafn frowned at the plastic bowl she offered, and looked past her to the shelf. He had spied something better.

"I would like that," he said, pointing.

"The stockpot?"

"It's quite large."

"Take it."

Hrafn smiled and thanked her before leaving to find Sam and Katla. He'd leave Ríkvé with Sam, and get Katla to milk the cows with him. Even with the two of them, it would take hours.



Bill walked home, after his shift, bundled against the cold. He'd put in a full shift on patrol, on top of his training with the Rangers. They were getting better, he thought, but sliding back and forth between the paramilitary mindset and the law enforcement one was draining him; he didn't like how easily the idea of patrols and killing enemies came, not when he had sworn himself to the law and peacekeeping.

At least today the intake of refugees was small. Better it would be to be non-existent, but they were still taking people in on sufferance, if Jake thought they could be useful or they were kids with them. The group today had been both.

Two grown men, one almost grown girl, and a handful of little kids who should be in school like Linh, all looking like they'd rolled in dust and debris before they ran into the Rangers... well, Gray Anderson the mayor had perked up with at the cattle they'd had with them, and the horses. They'd brought enough meat, more than enough to cover themselves in the rationing – and the one guy was a competent hunter, if the pheasant and rabbits hanging off his saddle had been any indication. Bill hadn't liked the way the tall guy had looked at him, confused and a little suspicious, but the rest of the group had seemed all right.

He tramped up the steps to his house, and slipped inside. It was cold inside too, but at least out of the wind. He took off his uniform jacket and his holster, putting his gun away safely.

"Hey..." Kim said from the living room. She was wrapped in a comforter, Linh snuggled down beside her on the couch. The jerry-rigged candle-lamp sputtered on an end table.

"Hi, Daddy! Do you know that Jupiter has moons that go backwards?!" Linh asked, popping over the back of the couch to ask.

"Uh... yeah?" Bill said.

"Mrs. Tenczar said that it's 'retrograde'! That's a neat word, 'retrograde'. It means 'going backwards'," Linh went on.

"That's neat, honey. What else did you learn in school today?"

Kim got up and got him a slice of bread with a smear of chicken fat, which Bill ate in the weak lamplight as Linh told him all about her school day, until she ran down into yawns and burbling about candle-making.

It was easy enough to carrying Linh up to bed when she fell asleep. She didn't even protest much about it being early – it was impossible for her to tell without a working clock in her room. Bill was able to get her into her pajamas – thank god she was still small enough for footy pajamas, with their added warmth – and tuck her in with just one storybook. Their dogs Mugsy and Boo hopped under the covers, as her own personal living space heaters, and Bill left after he blew out the candle.

Kim was in bed already, under the piled covers. Bill stripped off his sweaters and uniform pants and kicked his shoes into a heap by the door.

"Any bets whether she'll sleep through the night?" Kim said.

"She hasn't yet." Bill sighed, and contemplated his own pajamas. Fuzzy flannel was probably the practical choice, but he felt as attractive as a dose of castor oil in those things. On the other hand, Kim would probably be annoyed if he managed to get his parts frozen off. She liked his parts, as well as the rest of him, for some reason.

"Well, maybe we can take advantage of her sleeping while she is," Kim smiled at him, and tugged him underneath the massive heap of blankets. Of course, just when things were getting good and giggly, they were interrupted by a cry of "Mommy? Daddy?"



They were bedded down that night in the Presbyterian church basement, sharing a meeting room with seventeen other people – road refugees who'd come off downed planes and escaped the FEMA camps before fetching up here.

The kids – Eric, Jennifer and little Ríkvé – were asleep all together in one cot, with Kat sleeping beside them. Sam was glad to see the teenager finally let go enough to sleep. She had been wound too tight all the weeks since they had picked her and her sister up in Orchard, and maybe this wasn't the end of the road for any of them, but it was certainly a place to rest.

If it hadn't been for the utterly eerie and oblivious appearance of that deputy, Sam would be glad that they hadfetched up in this town. Jericho was the first town that he felt was safe. Every other place they'd been through made him skin crawl – as if the townsfolk were just waiting until he fell asleep to rob him blind, or worse, bake him into pies.

Sam couldn't help thinking that life after the Apocalypse should have been different – for one, it shouldn't have included demons and nuclear bombs. That was just overkill on someone's part.

"Sleep, Sam," Hrafn murmured, where he sat curled in a corner. The Norseman slept sitting up by habit, which was both freaky and useful, considering he also slept with a weapon at hand. More than once, Sam had seen him explode from asleep to upright in an instant – to the regret of quite a few road bandits.

'Not that sleepy...' Sam pushed, even as he rolled over and tugged his weathered blanket over him. 'I want answers.'

Hrafn looked down at him with tawny eyes, but it was Gabriel who answered, 'Of course you do.'

'Explain, Gabriel. That deputy – Koehler– '

'Bill,' Hrafn said, his mental voice clear.

'Yeah, him. What the fuck? Why does he look like–'

'Vali.' Gabriel said. 'His name was Vali.'

'You know him.'

Hrafn laughed, and slumped over until he could look Sam in the eyes. 'Of course we do. We're his father, sort of.'

"What?!" Sam yelped, confused enough to speak aloud.

'You didn't think I figured out how to be a god on my own, did you?' Gabriel said, his tone laced with evil amusement and just a hint of regret. 'Being Loki was a joint effort – at least, I leaned on Hrafn a lot, until I figured out how to be a Jotun on my own.'

Hrafn chuckled aloud softly, and added silently, 'You thought he was just pretending to be Loki, didn't you? Ha. No. It was all there, in song and story. But people forgot after the White Christ came, and all that's left are the stones and the sorrow...'

'And Vali, for my sins,' Gabriel said, so faint that Sam could barely perceive the thoughts.

Sam swallowed his spit. He'd read the Eddas and other surviving stories, when he had wanted to and had time. Vali...Vali was...

'The one who was turned into a wolf?' he asked, and felt Gabriel turn his attention away.

Hrafn just blinked at Sam with his cool hazel eyes. "Hrafn?"

The other man nodded. 'He's mad, Sam. You must understand this.'

'Well, I'm sorry if bringing up makes you unhappy, Gabriel, but–'

'Not me, idiot. Vali.' Gabriel snapped. 'Vali is mad.'

Sam's almost bit his tongue in shock. 'Explain?'

'The boy was forced into the shape of a rabid wolf, and made to kill his brother.' Hrafn explained. 'Guilty of kinslaying–'

'They bound me with the guts of my son, my Narfi,' Gabriel said, bitter ashes in his tone, 'They forced Vali to murder his brother so they wouldn't have blood on their hands, and they let him go into the night because they didn't care what happened to him after.'

Hrafn cut in, 'It was wrong, and evil, and only by loophole was it not kinslaying for them all. And the boy was mad afterward.'

'I found him,' Gabriel explained. 'Later. After I escaped. After Sigyn left me. Mad and foaming, Sam. No one should have to go through centuries of that, so I... I tried to fix him. But I'm not a healer. I never was.'

'He doesn't last, forced into a human body. He doesn't seem to have the knack for it.' Hrafn shook his head. 'This time round, he's lasted much longer than he normally does. Perhaps he's healing, finally.'

'Or maybe we just put so many wards and protective blessings on him that he's managed to skate by. There's certainly enough that no one is going to notice the resemblance, if that's what you're worried about,' Gabriel said.

Sam digested this. It seemed – 'You're telling me that that deputy I met today – the weaselly suspicious one – is your son, a Norse god?'

'Yeah...' Gabriel sighed.

'A minor god, Sam,' Hrafn added. 'Like a land-spirit or a ghost. He's hardly a threat.'

Sam rolled his eyes, and glared at them both. 'You are impossible. Both of you.'



Coming into town that morning was kind of a desperation move for Mimi. The trip was both long and miserable, since it had to be done on horseback. Mimi was no kind of rider – she'd lived in DC, which was only horse country once you hit the suburbs of Maryland and northern Virginia, and only if you were willing to be an hour outside the city and pay exorbitantly for a hobby that Mimi had never found that interesting, even as an excitable pre-teen.

But a three and a half mile trip on foot would have taken more than an hour in the cold and the wind, and while Mimi was a champion walker – she lived in DC, after all, driving was something you did when you needed to go outside of the city – the farms outside of Jericho weren't exactly set up for it.

So there she was, sitting on the slowest, gentlest horse that Gail Green could lend, and plodding along. The only good part of it was that the horse was warm. The wind was fierce, and Mimi wished they could have stayed at the farm.

But Bonnie had arranged to meet with the banker today, and Mimi was coming along. Not that Bonnie didn't know more about what needed to be done with the farm now that winter was advanced, but Mimi did know finances, and Bonnie wasn't an adult yet. Somebody had to be around to protect her interests.

Who'd trust someone named 'Sparky' with their money, anyway?

Kansans, apparently.

An hour later, Mimi was listening with ferocious attention as Sparky Dumont, head of the Jericho First Federal, went over Bonnie's options in keeping the farm going through into the new year.

"Well," the banker was saying, "I can lease you one of my diesel tractors..."

Bonnie nodded vigorously, and signed "How much?"

"... but I think you're really going to need hands."

Bonnie frowned, and then said, "What?"

Mimi frowned. The man had turned his head away, just enough that Bonnie hadn't caught that. She turned to Bonnie, and said, "We need help on the farm. More people. Right?" she glanced at the banker, but didn't move her face from Bonnie. It was one of the hardest things to remember when speaking to Bonnie – hearing people tended to glance away, finding staring at someone too uncomfortable after just a bit, but doing it to Bonnie meant she couldn't read your lips.

"More people? For the farm?" Bonnie asked.

"Yes."

"Okay," Bonnie said. "Where do we get them?"

Mimi stared helplessly at Bonnie. She had no idea where or how one might go about hiring farm workers – it wasn't something that usually came up in the IRS. Tax accounts and file clerks, yes, but not farm workers. Unless it involved proving your employees had a legal right to work in the country and you were actually paying their payroll taxes, Mimi hadn't been involved in it.

"Well, normally..." the banker drawled.

"This isn't normal," Mimi cut him off. "What do we do, today?"

"I'd suggest you go to town hall. The office ladies have been keeping a skills list – so many people without work, right now, someone might be able or at least willing to give farm work a try."

Which was how Mimi wound up following Bonnie across the road to the town hall, and then to Catholic church to meet Kim Koehler, who had been the office manager for the state branch office (for just about everything, it turned out, from agricultural extension to social services).

To Mimi's surprise (and her chagrin at her own surprise) Kim Koehler turned out to be a slim woman with shiny black hair and tilted eyes. It wasn't that Mimi hadn't seen Asians and multiracial people in Jericho, though a lot less of them than had been in DC, but that she didn't think Bill Koehler, from what she'd seen of the guy, would be married to someone not lily-white. He was, after all, loudly suspicious of anyone and everyone the least bit foreign, and by 'foreign', he seemed to mean anyone not from western Kansas.

She was in the process of overseeing cooking in the church's basement kitchen, using the biggest pots Mimi had ever seen not in an industrial brewery. It seemed to involve references to binder full of yellowed mimeographs and the most unappetizing smell possible.

"Farm workers?" Kim asked, as she turned down the heat. "Most of the reliable people have already been hired. With the fuel shortage, everything has to be done by hand..."

"I know," Bonnie said. "Is there anyone?"

Kim frowned, and offered "There's a set of refugees, came in three days ago with a herd of cattle. They're looking for land for their herd, and a place to live other than the shelter. Maybe you could trade – pasture for work?"

"Can't hurt to ask," Mimi decided. "What are their names?"

"Just a sec..." Kim ducked out of the kitchen and came back with some handwritten index cards. "Right, names are Katherine Brubaker – she's actually owns the cattle – and her ranch hands: Sam Winchester and Raf– Hra– I don't know how to say this? Raf Frith–Fridolf–?–son?"

"Let me see, please?" Bonnie asked, and carefully read the names and brief descriptions off the cards, before nodding her head.

"Katherine Brubaker, gotcha. Think they're over at the shelter?"

"At the Presbyterian church, yes."

Mimi nodded and followed Bonnie upstairs and out.

The shelter was crowded enough, at least twenty people sitting or lying around not doing anything. Mimi understood that these were the refugees who weren't able-bodied enough to help with whatever unskilled but needed work the mayor had come up with, but it looked like a lot of people not doing anything.

"I'm looking for Katherine Brubaker," Bonnie announced. It got her a lot of sideways looks, for the foghorn slurring of her voice.

A teenage girl raised her hand – a teenager probably younger than Bonnie, to boot. "I'm Katherine Brubaker."

A tall, very tall, taller than Stanley, guy with dark hair and smooth, stony face looked up from the cot where he'd been reading to a toddler, and said, "Kat?"

"It's all right, Sam..."'

"You're Sam Winchester?" Mimi asked.

"Yes..." the man said, and then patted the little girl sitting beside him.

"I'm Bonnie Richmond," Bonnie said to Katherine – Kat, apparently – "I have a farm. Kim Koehler had your name. You're looking for land."

"Pasture, I'm looking for pasture for the winter. I've got cattle."

"And horses," the man added.

"And Sam and Hrafn's horses. And my yaks."

"Yaks?" Mimi barked.

The tall man nodded. "Yaks."

"My mom liked them," Kat said, and there was a world of sadness in her eyes.

Mimi winced, and Bonnie looked sympathetic, though her staring at Kat to read her lips probably didn't come off that way. So Mimi said, "Okay, yaks. We can handle yaks..."

"I've been trading the milk for pasture at the elementary school," Kat said, "but their grass is almost gone. If I put my stock on your land..."

"Milk for the school?" Bonnie repeated, and nodded. "That's good. We keep selling it."

"Hold on," Winchester said. "That milk is from Kat's cows. She needs the pasture, but that doesn't mean you get to sell the milk and keep all the profit for yourself..."

Mimi frowned. She thought that was a pretty good idea, actually – she and Bonnie would keep the cows on the Richmond farm, milk them (there was a milking machine someplace – Stanley had a milk cow for their own use but the animal had already run dry), sell the milk, and Kat would get her cows back at the end of the winter when she moved on, or bought land.

"Perhaps," came a man's voice from behind her, thickly accented with creaky vowels straight out of an Elmer Fudd cartoon, "we could come to a better agreement?"

Mimi turned to look to see a man who was a bit shorter than her – not too unusual, she was pretty tall – and tried to recall how Kim Koehler had said his name. "Ravn Frithson?"

"Hrafn Friththjófsson. And you are...?"

"Mimi Clark." She caught Bonnie's eye and said, "I'm helping Bonnie run her and her brother's farm while he's away. We might have room for your cattle and horses."

Friththjófsson looked confused for a moment, but when Bonnie said, "We can talk about renting pasture," his face cleared with understanding, and he walked around to sit next to Winchester. He took the little girl from the other man in a practiced gesture that had Mimi raising an eyebrow – that was a surprise. Gay couples were not exactly thick on the ground in back-end-of-nowhere Kansas.

"I will not sell my horses," Friththjófsson said. "But I will trade work for pasturage and a room to live in."

Bonnie frowned, frustration on her face, and she only looked marginally happier when Winchester looked right at her and said, "That's a good idea. Kat, Miss Richmond, could we come to an agreement? We work on the farm, and keep our horses and Kat's cattle there, and everyone shares the profits?"

Kat looked thoughtful before nodding, which made Bonnie look happier.

"Sounds good," Mimi interjected, before they all agreed themselves into a corner. "Maybe we should talk to a lawyer, though?"

From the raised eyebrows none of them had even thought of that – which meant they weren't thinking things through at all. She'd get them to a lawyer who knew farming contracts, and get something air-tight, even if she and Bonnie had to concede more than she'd like. One stipulation she was going to try for was to get Friththjófsson to shave off that rat's nest on his face – Bonnie couldn't read his lips if she couldn’t see them – or at least start learning ASL immediately.



Hrafn found the negotiations more complicated than he could easily understand, but Sam's insistence they got to an advocate very reasonable. He certainly didn't know the laws and customs of this place in any detail, nor did Katla. Sam knew some of the laws, but he admitted ignorance of the technicalities of contracting, so they all went, Hrafn and Sam and Katla, and their soon to be employers Bonnie and her kinswoman Mimi (and Hrafn would never get used to masculine-sounding names on women – it was one of the strangest customs of these late days) to an advocate's place of business, for a contract to be drawn up and written down.

Settling Senna and Eric and Ríkvé with foster-parents was harder. Hrafn found he did not quite want to let go of the children, even though a man his age playing nursemaid was ridiculous, and they really couldn't bring the little ones with them to the farm. They would be too busy to tend them, and while the school was open and cost nothing, it was also in the heart of Jericho. Better to leave the children in the care of others – especially when the other who volunteered for them was Kim, wife of the deputy Bill . That negotiation involved an advocate as well, which Hrafn thoroughly approved of – the laws here were numerous and complicated, but seemed well structured to protect the children orphaned or abandoned, or in Senna's case, just put aside by circumstances for a little time.

Gabriel whined all the way through, though. Hrafn's angel never had patience for merely human laws. He argued they could not be applied to him, only his Father's words were binding on him, so why should he care. Hrafn ignored the angel. Gabriel was just discomfited, and wanted to go spy on Vali, even though the fosterage agreement meant they would have plenty of excuses to visit the Koehler home. Hrafn thought the boy had done fine for three decades of Gabriel's absence, and the wards the archangel had laid on him at birth were enough. He remembered being awakened for that – drawing runes over the squalling newborn in the empty Christian temple, using the blessed water to protect Gabriel's child against enemies and danger and death, and then falling back into slumber as the archangel left his son for humans to find and raise. Fortunately for Vali, Christians were tender-hearted in these days, and would adopt a foundling, instead of exposing one. The boy had done well enough for himself, with a wife and a child and a respectable position in the town.

'He's a cop. Why is he a cop?'

'It's an honorable profession as people count things in these days, eagle-chieftain.'

'But he was always a soldier before...'

'You are whining. And ridiculous. Take joy in Vali's success – he's a respected man here.'

'Bullshit. He's a cop. A lot of the people here loath cops on principle.'

'You are never satisfied, are you, eagle-chieftain?'



Jake stopped by the Richmond farm a few days after Bonnie hired the refugees, just to check. He knew it was something Stanley would have wanted to him to do, if he'd known about it. But Stanley was over in New Bern, helping build wind turbines (being a hostage, whispered an angry part of Jake's mind, still furious at Constantino, and at Mayor Andersen for ceding to that demand.)

"So, how's things working out, with the new farmhands?" he asked Bonnie.

Bonnie rolled her eyes at him, signing and speaking at once, "Good. You didn't have to come, Jake. I'm fine, Mimi's fine. Sean is fine. Kat and Hrafn and Sam," that was three new signs, 'K' at the shoulder, 'S' at the temple, 'H' along the jaw – indicating his beard, Jake realized, and wouldn't that be an odd name-sign if he ever shaved it, "we're all fine."

"I had to ask," Jake said.

Bonnie gave him a flat stare, and then turned away, walking off and not looking at him.

"Crap..." Jake sighed.

Mimi walked up on the porch, with a basket of eggs just as Jake was about to bang his head into the post in frustration.

"Bad day already, Jake?"

"I have no idea how to talk to teenagers."

Mimi blinked, and then her face pulled up into a puckish grin. "No one does, because no one can. Everything you can possibly say to them is wrong."

"Now you tell me... Seriously, Mimi, how are the refugees working out?"

"Pretty well. Adding another teenager to the farm, I wasn't so sure would work out, but Kat seems like a good kid. She keeps busy with her cattle, and reads Bonnie's old textbooks. I think she misses school – do you have any idea when the high school will re-open?"

"Not for another month at least," Jake said. He'd casually asked Emily about that, and gotten a furious lecture on the inadequacies of the town government and why none of the high school students would be coming back until their families didn't need their labor, and why it was all his fault, and Mayor Andersen's fault, and his dad's fault. When he'd pointed out that his dad wasn't mayor anymore, and he'd hadn't been back in town a week when the bombs fell, he'd gotten a withering look and a cold shoulder.

"Hmm," Mimi said, and flipped open a battered spiral bound notebook, like the kind Bonnie might carry to school, and began making notes.

"What are you doing?" he asked, looking over her shoulder to see a grid with names and numbers.

"Tracking the egg production."

"Oh..."

Mimi looked up at him with cool knowing eyes. "Anything else, Jake?"

"How are those men working out... they've been behaving themselves?" Jake was a little worried – they had road into town with kids they could have left anywhere in tow, so they couldn't be all bad, but you never knew.

Mimi laughed at him, flat out laughed at him. "Jake, if you're worried that Sam and Hrafn are going to do anything, you are barking up the wrong three."

"What?"

Mimi smirked and pointed a finger at him. "They're gay, Jake."

"...what?!" Jake sputtered.

"Do you know any straight guys who would voluntarily share a bed?"

"Normally no, but we're heading into winter..."

"They didn't even ask for separate rooms, just took the guest room with the double bed."

"Oh."

"And they're really hard workers. I don't think Sam did much farm work before, but he's a decent mechanic, and Hrafn knows almost as much as Bonnie, and a lot more about using hand tools. If it wasn't for that goofy accent, I'd think he was raised Mennonite or something..."

"His accent isn't that weird..."

"He sounds like the bastard love-child of Elmer Fudd and the Swedish Chef, Jake, and you know it."

Jake had to concede that Mimi had a point. "So everything is okay?"

Mimi smiled, and it was such a breathtakingly pretty smile that Jake found himself envious of Stanley's good fortune, that Mimi had dropped into his lap even in such a horrible time as the aftermath of the September Attacks. "We're fine, Jake. Go home."



Mimi was dreaming of home – her condo in DC, right near Barracks Row – and of Stanley with his adorable smile and his aw-shucks attitude when suddenly she wasn't. She was on a beach, her picnic blanket underneath her on a bluff, looking down at a cold gray sea.

"This isn't the Chesapeake," Mimi said. She took regular trips down to the Eastern shore to enjoy the weekend on the beaches.

"Nope, but that is the Atlantic. Well, Baltic, actually," a cheerful voice corrected itself.

Mimi turned to look, but the person beside her remained formless and indistinct, which told her she was still dreaming.

"The Baltic?"

"Yup."

"Why am I dreaming about Europe? I mean, I like Europe, but the shopping, not the beaches. If I wanted beaches, I can find nice ones closer to home."

"What, you never wanted to go to the Riviera?" the person beside her asked.

"Not when I can hit haute couture houses of Paris – what are they DOING down there?!" Mimi asked, peering down the bluff. There were people wading in the surf, throwing and pulling nets.

"I think we were fishing for cod," the voice said. "I remember this day... definitely, fishing for cod."

And suddenly Mimi was down on the beach, among people who were dressed in clothes that were shapeless and ugly and probably homemade, and a dark-haired woman was handing her a loaf of bread and a mug of pungent beer.

"Eat, eat, my dear," the woman said. "You're too thin." She pressed Mimi's hands around the bread and patted her cheek before moving off and yelling at twin boys who were running around causing mischief as women around them cooked and preserved fish that the men out in the surf were netting.

"Sorry about that. Sigyn mothered everyone," Mimi's companion said.

"What?" Mimi said. She looked down at the food, which really, she hated dreaming about food, though she did it almost every night now. It was just a horrible tease, food that she could eat in dreams but not in reality. She'd wake up, and instead of cheesecake and tiramisu and wonderfully perfect tenderloin, she'd have a meals of bean sprouts and sorghum groats and if she was really fortunate, an egg or two. She was beginning to hate sprouts – everyone already hated sorghum, and grits, and all the other ways they'd found to make corn and sorghum and even soybeans into semi-palatable food.

Even apples were beginning to pale – Stanley's farm had a home orchard, and Mimi was allowed an apple a day, for the vitamin C, but the sameness of her diet was driving her mad.

"Sigyn. She mothered everyone, our boys, my son –" Mimi's companion nodded to the twin boys and an older teen with darker skin., reddish hair, and the same unfortunate nose "– me, even Tyr. I loved her more than I thought I would, after Angrboda. It surprised me. I didn't think I'd love anyone like her, and I loved Sigyn like I loved my brothers."

"I don't know what you're talking about?" Mimi said, and suddenly they were at her favorite garden in DC, the little one that meandered between the Hirshorn and the Arts and Industries Museum. She was sitting on the swan bench, and instead of bread and fish, she was holding a half-smoke in her hand.

That was just not fair. She hadn't had a sausage, not even a horrible gas station hot dog, in weeks, let alone a half-smoke.

"Thanks for letting us stay, that's what I'm saying."

Mimi looked around at the narrow garden with its annuals and perennials, and sighed. She looked sideways at her companion, with the white flowers tucked behind his ears, and said, "Are you doing this?"

"I'm trying to talk to you. You're the one who keeps pulling up memories. I'd prefer it if you stayed out of mine. They make it harder to talk to you."

"You're really bored, aren't you?"

"You have no idea," her companion sighed. "You have no idea how boring farm chores are to watch. It's been less than a week, but if I have to watch another hour of haying..."

"Do you have any idea how boring it is to hay? Why are you complaining?" Mimi snapped back.

"Hey, at least you get to work! It's mind-numbing but distracting. Just watching, that's boring.

Mimi pointed her finger and snapped, "Well, you could help! It's not like we don't have more than enough work to do."

Her companion laughed. "You think I'm not helping? You are totally wrong. I am so helping!"

"Prove it! Until you prove it, you're just a freeloader!"

The angel lifted his eyebrows in surprise, lifted his wings in surprise, and Mimi, shocked to realize he was an angel, watched everything dissolve into colored confetti.

She awoke with a gasp, and the disgruntled realization that she hadn't even tried the half-smoke. If she was going to dream about food, she should have at least been able to taste it.



Sunday morning Bill followed Jimmy and Jake towards Gracie Leigh's store, and frowned at the firewood stacked just inside the doors. It smelled like sawdust, and wet, green sawdust at that.

"Anything I can do for you, Mr. Green, Deputy Taylor, Deputy Koehler?" chirped the girl behind the counter. Bill sighed – Skylar wasn't the kind of girl who got in trouble, but that was because it didn't do for sheriff's deputies to notice too much the shenanigans of the family of the man who owned half of the town's largest employer, especially his only daughter.

"Skylar," Jake began, then stopped. He glanced at Jimmy – Bill saw it clearly – but not to Bill and sighed heavily. "Skylar, where are you getting the firewood?"

"We buy it from people willing to sell," she said. That was true, Bill didn't doubt that the store was buying any fuel people were willing to sell. The mark-up, even on gasoline gone stale from bad storage, was considerable.

"Where are they getting it from?"

Skylar shrugged, "Extra from their wood piles, I guess..."

Bill poked at one of the stacks. Those weren't hackberry branches bundled up for burning, or cottonwood. The grain looked dense and the wood smelled of fresh cutting.

"Not from their trees?" Bill asked, not actually looking at the girl.

"Well, from their trees originally, but from their woodpiles now," Skylar explained.

Bill turned to look at her directly, frowning. "Who's got oak trees to cut down?"

"What?" Skylar asked, distracted from her tale to Jimmy and Bill.

"This is hardwood, and fresh. We don't have a lot of hardwoods, locally. Just a few oaks, planted in the town park at the turn of the century, and farmers' fruit trees."

"I guess someone had an old oak, maybe a dying one?"

Jimmy signed, and explained, "The problem is, Skylar, there's been a rash of tree thefts."

"Tree thefts? How do you steal a tree?" she bleated.

"A group of people come onto a farm in the evening when the owners aren't paying attention, and cut down a tree, maybe two or three."

"How does that involve me?

:"if you and Dale are involved in this," Jake warned.

"We're not cutting down trees," Skylar whined again.

"Someone is, and that got someone dead last night," Bill snapped, finally losing his temper with her obvious lying.

The gasp she squeaked out was genuine, so maybe her lies weren't all spite and bullshitting.

Jimmy stepped up, "Someone killed Jeff Hendricks along the edge of his property, Skylar. There were a bunch of trees fresh-cut from the windbreak where we found him. No one has offered you any new timber for firewood, have they?"

Skylar shook her head.

"You'll tell us if anyone does? We have to stop this before someone else gets hurt, Skylar."

The girl nodded frantically.

After a bit more assurances from the girl that she'd contact them if anyone tried to sell her suspicious fire-wood, they left.

"That hardwood she an Dale are selling was stolen," Bill growled.

"Probably, but we can't prove it."

Jake just sighed and said, "Hopefully we cut off the thieves' main buyer, and there won't be – what, why are you looking at me like that?"

"You really don't have any clue about crime in Jericho, do you Jake?" Bill asked.

Jake shuffled his feet, and glanced away.

Jimmy sighed. "They'll keep buying stolen wood, but we know that is where it is going now. We just have to see who is selling when they don't have trees to cut."

"Oh..."

"We'll make a cop out of you yet, Jake." Bill laughed at Jake's wide-eyed stare at that.


Church the first Sunday after they were hired was interesting. Bonnie attended the town's Presbyterian church, and thus Mimi did too. Sam was quite willing to follow along. He'd never been attached to any one denomination, having moved around too much as a child, and it hardly mattered to him where he went as long as he was seen to attend.

Blending in was important. The fact that his faith in God had been shattered in the last two years – actually meeting angels was really detrimental to believing in an omnibenevolent deity – meant Sam felt a little guilty for using other people's faith to manipulate them into thinking he was a normal guy.

Hrafn trailed along quietly and fumbled through the service worse than Sam did. He didn't have any idea of the sequence of kneeling, standing and prayer, and he couldn't follow along in the hymnal either. Gabriel was obviously either not awake or not able to help him, since Hrafn's accent had thickened the way it did when he was tired.

Sam felt bad for the Norseman; the act of churchgoing was supposed to bring one into a community – that's certainly what Sam used it for – but Hrafn was even more of an outsider than usual. The meet and greet after the service just emphasized it, because Hrafn got that 'bristling cat' look that meant danger, just before he disappeared out the door.

Sam founded him later, in the church's side yard, looking contemplatively at a statue of Mary.

"Hrafn?"

The Norseman turned to look at him, his eyes deep and eerie.

"Ah, we're finished here?"

"I was talking to the Lady," Hrafn said, gesturing to the statute.

Sam noted the prick marks on Hrafn's fingers, and the bloodstains at the statute's base. Gabriel alone knew what gods Hrafn had prayed to, still prayed to for all Sam knew, but Sam hadn't ever gotten a coherent answer from the other man.

'Gabriel?' Sam nudged out with his mind, trying to see how the archangel was.

'What?' came the response, tinted with cranky exhaustion.

'Just checking.'

'Go away, Sam. I'm basking. It's holy ground...'

'Lazy archangel.'

'I'm tired...' Gabriel's mental voice colored with petulance. Sam got the impression that the archangel was pulling a metaphorical pillow over his metaphorical head.

Sam smiled, and realized Hrafn was looking at him with those disconcertingly sharp eyes.

"Gabriel's whining."

"Yes," Hrafn said. "More to me than you, I think. He is like a child, is Asvald."

"Oh," Sam said. "Right." Sam only talked to the archangel. Hrafn had him as running commentary in his head night and day.

They met up with Mimi and Bonnie on the church steps, and walked over to Bailey's for news. Not that there was much of it, with the radio spotty at best. But someone generally was there to take notes, and Mary pinned up the latest news on the wall for everyone to see.

Sam's skin crawled to see more from Cheyenne. He hadn't talked much about what happened in Sioux Falls with anyone, and hearing that those usurpers were succeeding in their grab for power just made him angry and tired.

It was his utter failure to stop things that ate at him. He had tried, desperately, futilely – every man and woman that Sheriff Millls had mustered had tried, because they had been getting the broadcasts relayed from Columbus, and were actually law-abiding citizens. Well, most of them – Sam couldn't rightly call himself law-abiding or Bobby, but they tried not to hurt people, and Adam had been a normal civilian kid, before their father's deeds had come to roost on him. The Allied States, or whatever they were calling themselves, were just grabbing power in the wake of disaster, and killing anyone who resisted too well. All the morality of angels, really – obey or be destroyed. Bastards.

"Here. Drink," Hrafn said, and slid a mason jar of clear liquid across the booth at him.

"What is it?" Sam said, sniffing at the liquor.

"Terrible," Hrafn said, and sipped at his own jarful.

Sam couldn't agree with Hrafn's assessment more when he tried the moonshine himself. "Ugh. That's... awful."

'Really awful,' Gabriel added voicelessly, 'I want Sambuca. Or mead. Mead would be nice...'

"Mead would be nice," Hrafn agreed aloud. "Hmmm. Sam, do you think we could find enough hives?"

"You want to make mead?" Sam blinked. "Wait, you know how to make mead? Oh, of course you do."

"Beehives, Sam."

"I don't know. You'd have to ask around. This is wheat and corn country – I don't know if people keep bees here. They're for fruits, aren't they?"

Hrafn shrugged, and winced as he ventured another sip of the moonshine. "I think ... this is better as fuel than food."

"Diesel," Sam muttered.

"Lamp fuel," Hrafn agreed.

Sam sighed, and watched Mimi converse with more townsfolk. Bonnie had disappeared into a knot of teenagers in a corner. He should get up and mix, meet people, figure out the lay of the land. But he was tired as anything. The road had ground him down, and even a week of relatively ease, working the long hours on Bonnie's farm, hadn't been enough of a rest.

He looked vaguely out the window, sighing. The bar served them horrible paint-stripper moonshine, and bland fried polenta for a small amount of the cash they had earned in the week. This was his life now, for the foreseeable future... he missed Dean like he would miss his arm, and he rued that he hadn't had the courage to contact his brother before September, and the bombs.



Bill had already decided that he was going to have to turn Zap back over to Gail Green. He'd been riding the mare on patrol, but she hadn't been in the best of condition to start with, being one of Gail's rescues from the livestock auction. After escaping from the meat buyer by virtue of her shiny bay coat (Gail loved her bays) and nice trot but she had pulled up lame. Zap hadn't done to bad, all in all, but the fact was no one had time to pamper a horse that came up lame now. There was going to be no bute injections, no special feed or carefully stepped up exercise for conditioning.

Bill needed a horse that could ride on Ranger patrol, and ride around town, now that the gasoline was either used up, under strict rationing for the emergency vehicles, or outright (and awfully) stale. A horse, or a motorbike, and no one who had either wanted to sell, and even if you could get a price, it was for way too much money for either.

A new horse would still need feeding and water, but hopefully it could take Zap's place at the newly put-up community stables. Bill would have liked a motorbike, but those were too hard to come by, and you had to make your own alcohol for use in the diesel engines now. Gasoline was impossible to get – making your own fuel from anything that would possibly ferment was the only way to go.

Gail had taken one look at Zap when he'd walked the mare over to the Green house one day before his shift, and hung her head. The vet had agreed – pasture rest might let Zap recover, but she'd be lame for a while and unrideable. Gail suggested seeing if Winchester and Friththjófsson had any remaining horses for lease, and thus he planned to ride to the Richmond farm the next day after the milk delivery.

Linh thought it was great that he walked with her to school in the morning, and tried monopolizing his attention – she had seemed to be coping with Jenny and Eric living these past three weeks, but that didn't mean she wasn't a little jealous, especially of Ríkvé who took up a lot of his and Kim's attention, what with being a baby and all.

Going back to the farm with Mimi Clark and Sam Winchester, he learned several things – Mimi talked too much, she missed Washington (several million people in 70 square miles, sounded like Hell to Bill), and she subtly disapproved of Sean Henthorn but didn't want to do it openly because she was afraid Bonnie would do something stupid and teenagerish if she did. Bill approved of that reasoning; he'd know Bonnie since she was a baby, and had learned ASL along with most of Stanley's school friends so that she would have people to talk to growing up. No one wanted her to run off with Sean Henthorn, especially now. Sam Winchester, he didn't talk too much, and he seemed very focused on his work, but something about him just niggled at Bill, even when the tall man had nodded and agreed that Bill could probably lease one of his horses – except that he'd have to talk to Hrafn Friththjófsson, because he was the one who knew horses, not Sam.



Sam explained that the deputy wanted to lease one of their horses. He'd already arranged with Mimi to pasture his lamed mare – a beautiful bay with a lightning bolt blaze down her nose, that Hrafn would have bought and sacrificed to Thor in the days before his angel – and needed a horse that could withstand patrol and use. Hrafn sighed – two horses would be best, to rotate days of rest and work, but they only have enough remounts themselves, really.

'He really doesn't see, does he?' Gabriel murmured. 'I do good work.'

'Stop preening, angel. You didn't do the runes. I did the runes.' Hrafn remembered the way the infant had stared at him, in that temple of the White Christ, wet with blessed water, the protective runes fading into his skin. He'd been so small this time round, and so vulnerable, and his eyes so ageless and sad.

'Potato, puh-tato'

Hrafn escorted Bill (who Hrafn remembered as a Vali, a dark boy with green eyes, inseparable from his brother, like two peas in a pod, and so many other children, born and reborn in the angel's continuing attempts to save one thing from the ruins of his life with Sigyn) to the paddocks where the horses were turned out, mares on one, geldings and Slipper on the other. There were Bonnie's tall, beautiful, spoiled bays, the piebald giants Spot and Socks that Sam rode, Hrafn's spotted Skalm, Jarpstjarni with his star on his brown head, and yellow Fífilla, Katla's bays Snookums and Chance, and grey Kolfaxi with his dark mane, dappled Gjálp and Greip resting to take their turn tomorrow drawing the farm wagon, and Slipper, more handsome than all the rest and as the only stallion quite proud of his beauty and his balls.

Of course, it was Slipper who saw Bill first, and Slipper who pushed his way forward to prance and dance for the deputy. He might have been the best of all horses, but he could be obnoxious as a child.

"Hey, boy," Bill said, and rubbed Slipper's velvet nose.

'Mama! It's one of the BABIES!' rang through Hrafn's head. He winced at the force of it.

'Oh for the love of – yes, it's one of the babies. Calm down, you loon!' Gabriel grumbled.

'Hi, Baby!' Slipper sang, and presented his neck for Bill to scratch.

Hrafn just sighed, and tried to ignore the stallion's excitement.

"Who is this?" Bill asked, even as he scratched Slipper's neck, much to the horse's delight.

"Slipper."

"Can I have him?" Bill asked, obviously already entranced by Slipper's perfection and enthusiasm, and tolerating the horse's attempts to lick him.

'Baby, Mama, baby!'

"He's my stallion... but he seems to like you."

Bill frowned, and then examined Slipper with his eyes. "Huh... he's not acting like a stallion."

"He has manners. Enough not to try the fences no matter how pretty the mares are."

"I can't take him into town..."

"He's my best horse – strongest, most enduring. You need the best for patrolling, Gail Green had said."

"I suppose we could get him gelded..."

'Fuck no!' his angel howled.

"No. He is best of horses. No one here has better."

Bill frowned, and looked at Slipper, with his strong sturdy hooves, his powerful, compact body, his broad flat head and soft eyes. He was gorgeous, slate grey with his mane roached up to show the dark stripe in the center, and his tail full, both pale and dark. How could Bill not want him to ride? Hrafn waited, as Bill thought and considered.

"How much will it cost? To lease him, since Sam said you won't sell?"

Hrafn grinned. "We will negotiate. And then go to an advocate for a contract. Nice and legal."

"You don't trust a cop?" Bill cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Of course I do. But I want a written contract."

Bill gave him a look, one that reminded him of Gabriel so much that it made him laugh.

'I never looked like that!'

'Yes, you did. I saw you doing that all the time, looking in reflections, you vain thing.'

'Hmmmf!' Gabriel sniffed, and turned silvery and small in Hrafn's mind, curling up like an insulted cat.

"Would you like to go up to the house to talk? There will be tea."

Bill nodded and followed him up to the farmhouse and the warm kitchen.

Previous / Next