Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mikkel Madsen is a smart man. And he knows.

Sometimes, the symptoms don’t even need to appear for him to be certain. Sometimes, it seems to hang around them like a shroud, cling to their skin and sink into their bones. But nothing like this. Before, it was broken bones, lacerations, infections, torn muscles. And now, he can see the taint of monstrosity seeping from Tuuri. Logically he knows he might be wrong. That she might have a chance. But he knows. There’s nothing he can do about it, so he might as well not worry the others.

No, now he’s got to worry about Sigrun, who he can save. The infection in her arm is far enough along that he knows she must feel it. Either that or she just doesn’t have any nerve endings, which might explain some of her behavior. He gently dabs at it with a rag soaked in alcohol, and she clenches and unclenches her fist. Some alcohol isn’t going to fix this and he knows it. Not that he wouldn’t give an arm for some right now, but a different kind.

“Sigrun,” he says. She won’t look him in the eye. While he doesn’t want her to be ashamed of herself, if it stops her from ignoring something like this in the future, he’ll take it. “You realize that this is going to take time to fix.”

“Hmm,” she replies, still not looking him in the eye. The area around the wounds is red and swollen, almost angry-looking.

He lets her arm go and she begins to shrug back into her coat. He can’t quite keep the anger out of his next words, even though he does his best to keep calm. “When something is wrong, you need to tell me.” Managing to get himself back into only briskness, he asks, “When did the wounds start bothering you in that fashion?”

Sigrun still won’t look at him when she speaks. The shame he’s certain she’s feeling turns into annoyance in her voice. “I don’t know, a couple of days ago or something. I don’t keep a journal.”

Of course. Sigrun wouldn’t keep a journal, and she certainly let a little thing like an infection bother her. Not until there had been consequences. If Tuuri hadn’t been bitten, he rather doubted she would have told him about it in time, instead letting it build up long enough that it killed her. “An infection has clearly built up,” he states. “We should still be able to combat it with medication, better late than never. But sooner would have been better.”

“Hrmph,” she says.

Did she think this was a matter of her pride? He wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Another flash of anger. “Are you taking this seriously?” he asked. She bristles visibly, but he continues anyhow, knowing that it will only be salt in the wound but also knowing she needs to hear it. He tries to be a bit gentler though, because even though she doesn’t need it, heaven knows he doesn’t need reasons to be soft on her. “You’re not alone on this mission. When you neglect your own well-being, you also risk the safety of everyone else involved.”

Her frustration and annoyance breaks, turns into anger. “I got it!” Even now she doesn’t look him full in the face. “I’m not an idiot! I understand when something is my fault! But it won’t change what happened!”

And she’s off, into the charred and troll-strewn waste. He has turned her mood from bad to worse, and now she would likely go and harass someone else. No, he had wanted this all to go much better. “Sigrun…” he sighs, though she’s long out of earshot by now. It doesn’t matter. She wouldn’t come back anyway.

But he has other things to worry about. Like organizing his medical supplies, and helping Tuuri fix the cattank, and not thinking about Sigrun, or her infected arm, and not thinking about the contagion he knows is building up inside of Tuuri. And not thinking about Sigrun. Especially not the way she decapitates trolls.

He shut his bag. There was a gaping hole in the floor that needed attending to, and a tank that needed to get running.

-

They do not get the tank running that day. But it is shelter, so they hunker down inside of it like they normally do. Mikkel sits up front, looking at the darkness on the other side of the windshield. He can see trees, faintly, and not much more. He stirs his bowl of soup (though that description is generous, he knows), pausing. Thinking.

There had never been a cure. Or not one that worked. Mikkel would not admit it, but he had wanted that cure to be there more than anything he had ever wanted. Aside from what kind of a profit it would turn, it was a practical source of hope, one that didn’t involve so much fire or weaponry or bodily peril or death. But the books and the binders he had selected hadn’t been anything but failed attempts and dud formulas. No real cure, and attempts at vaccines had gone horribly wrong. Though that particular approach had had immense precedent, measles and polio and the like weren’t the rash.

Frowning, a new thought struck him. Come to think of it, none of the papers he had found had said for sure what kind of pathogen it was, had they…? That seemed important to note, and yet he hadn’t seen anything about it. Perhaps-

Mikkel jerks as Sigrun slings herself over the seat to crash down next to him. She still isn’t in the greatest mood, but it is better, just looking at her expression. It has gone from cranky to grumpy, and her next words confirm it. “Even when we’re at the end of the line, you still can’t make a decent meal for us, can you?”

“No,” he answers. “And this isn’t the end of the line yet.”

She shoots a look at him. “How’d you know what the end of the line looks like?”

Oh, he knows. A medic in the army sees a lot by way of that. He’s seen the pictures from outside Kastrup. He’s heard the rumors. They were shipping bodies back to his hometown. He remembers all too clearly the grief of his parents and siblings. That’s what the end of the line looks like. This isn’t the end of the line yet. “You cover some ground as a medic,” he says, and leaves it at that. “And you’d best eat that,” he adds. “Make sure you have some energy.”

“I think this takes more to digest than it gives,” Sigrun says, but keeps eating despite herself. Mikkel watches her. She is focused on what’s outside of the cattank as well, but she’s watching for any sign of danger, any sign that she’ll need to get up and kill something. Her sharp profile looks like an eagle’s, like a wolf’s, all the way down to the look in her violet eyes. He’s convinced, seeing that look, that she could absolutely kill anything she put her mind to. When she leans forward, he can see how her muscles shift, see the outline of them under her sweater. And there is a lot of muscle there. He shifts his gaze down to her forearm, then back up to her face.

“You did take your antibiotics, right?”

“Of course,” she says. Irritable. Time to defuse the situation a little.

“This is in no way meant to encourage you,” he begins, “but you did well, even with that arm of yours slowing you up.”

“Hmmph,” she answers, but it sounds a bit more like the Sigrun he’s gotten to know: confident and smug, sure of herself. “That’s just what we’re supposed to do. Fight good even under pressure.”

“You certainly did that.”

They both go quiet. Mikkel is still thinking about those books and papers they found in the hospital, and then of Tuuri. When Sigrun speaks, it takes him a moment to realize it.

“I never thanked you for saving me from that troll. And that was good, I guess. So thanks.”

Is she embarrassed? Certainly, no one’s idea of battle prowess is being saved by Mikkel. “It was nothing,” he says. “I hit it with a stick.”

“Well, you’ve gotten better. Kind of. It’d be hard not to, seeing where you start out.”

It was meant to be a dig at him, but she’s right. So far, his most distinguished battle moments have been chopping a supposedly dead tentacle, throwing rocks at a sea monster, force-feeding a troll some books, and hitting another troll with a stick. “That’s true.”

“Were you actually going to jump in after me? With the water troll?” Sigrun asks.

He was. It was only seconds she was underwater, maybe half a minute, but remembering it is like remembering hours. Chucking rocks at the troll’s lump back, not having any other options. Imagining the feeling of drowning, of being battered around by the troll underneath the water. Shouting uselessly at it. Hands shaking as he hefted up another rock. Watching it vanish under the surface. He had been ready to dive in after her, do something, not sure what exactly, but something to make sure she made it up to the surface. Fear of losing his captain, of watching Sigrun die and being helpless to stop it had made him desperate, and desperation had led to being willing to leap into ice-cold water with an angry troll. Perhaps not his best plan.

“Yes,” he admits.

Sigrun grins and stretches. She looks smug. “Mikkel Madsen jumping in with a sea monster to save my neck. Who would have believed it?”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference if I had,” he says. “It would have only made things worse.”

“Hey, hey, hey… it’s the thought that counts,” she says, and then slaps him on the back a couple of times. That hurts, like many of Sigrun’s displays of affection, but she also doesn’t take her hand away, and he can feel the warmth of her through his sweater. She has a very powerful hand, and she digs her fingertips into his shoulder as she shifts around to face him. “It’s an admirable show of courage, being willing to do stupid things for the sake of others,” she proclaims.

Mikkel digests this wisdom. “Perhaps.”

She smiles, looks back out the window. It’s nice to see her not quite so stressed, not quite so worried, even for just a minute or two. She had not moved her hand yet. The feeling of another human being is nice. It’d be nicer if she put her arm around him. But no, that won’t happen.

And then the smile is sliding from Sigrun’s face, and she’s back to looking tense and frustrated. “How do you not worry?” she asks.

“Pardon?”

“You never look scared. Or like you think this might go wrong.”

“You rarely look scared,” he points out. This is true, but what makes it to Sigrun’s face instead of fear is generally rage, or bloodthirsty elation, or determination. Something. He’s aware he’s wooden.

“I’m serious.” Sigrun turns to face him, and (sadly) takes her hand off of him, but now she focuses entirely on him. “You always look like nothing rattles you. How do you do it? I’d like to pick that up.”

He smiles at her, dry. “I don’t run around killing things… how did you phrase it? Killing things dead.” She punches him in the shoulder, but there was at least a trace of a return smile. Then he gives it serious thought, and continues, lying just a bit. “Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Though effort might change the end outcome, no one knows for sure whether that outcome will make everything alright, or whether it will just get people killed farther down the line. And fretting about it doesn’t do anything except cause ulcers, which only makes my job harder. So fear about the future does nothing. All we can do is try our best in the moment. And I find I work better when I’m not bogged down with worry.”

Sigrun doesn’t look comforted by this. Of course she doesn’t. Sigrun does not just takes things as they come. In more ways than just one, she’s a fighter, and the thought of her accepting the possibility of the future going badly like he does is wrong. It’s one of the things he likes best about her. It does have the unfortunate side effect of leading to situations like this.

“You make it sound easy when you put it like that,” she grumbles, leaning her chin into a hand and propping her elbow on her knee. Pouty Sigrun makes him want to smile, but surely she wouldn’t like that. Not stressed like she is.

Mikkel sighs through his nose, throws caution to the wind, and takes her free hand in both of his. Larger than hers, his hands swallow hers whole. Sigrun looks up at him, surprised, but doesn’t try and pull away. “All of this will turn out fine,” he tells her. “We’re close to being back to safety. We will make it.”

“How are you so sure?” she asks him, eyes fixed on his face.

“I’m not,” he says. “But it wouldn’t do any good to say so.”

Her fingers curl, almost managing to get around his. He’s pleasantly surprised. If he could have, he would have enjoyed the moment.

But he hears something. It’s barely audible, but it seems to rasp on the inside of his skull. Sigrun’s fingers slip, slide all but away from his hands. She senses something wrong, but he doesn’t register it. He’s only focused on the whisper of a voice, only catching some of the words.

“…youuuu… protect you…? We will… forever… everyone around you…nowhere to go…”

“Mikkel?” She’s come to her knees on the seat, tensed, hand tight around his, almost crushing his fingers.

But then, much louder, bundled into a torrent, “I have nowhere to go - I want to leave… I want to go home - who are you? Won’t… It is so cold, so empty… don’t know… it’s so dark… so scary so lonely…where I am - so many - always… it will never stop-”

And then it’s gone and he is much more aware of Sigrun and her iron grip on his hand. “Ouch,” he says, attempting to extricate his fingers. She lets them go, but it takes her a moment, and he massages them, looks out into the darkness again. This time, he can see things moving, but he doesn’t think it’s the branches of trees in the wind.

“Mikkel!” He turns back to Sigrun, letting his face go bland.

“It’s fine. Thought I heard something, but it was just the wind.”

“Are you sure?” She looks ready to go and kill something. The thought of Sigrun taking care of the problem by stabbing it is comforting, but dangerous. She can’t go out there, not at night. And telling her he’s heard voices is laughable.

“I’m sure,” he tells her. “I’ll admit I’ve been feeling a bit jumpy since that attack. But it was nothing.”

Sigrun doesn’t look comforted. She sits back, arms folded across her chest. “…Alright.”

It’s time to make an escape, before Sigrun and her suspicion overwhelm his better judgment. He picks up his empty bowl and stands. “I’m going to go collect up dishes,” he says. “Are you done with that?”

She glances at her soup. The bowl is still half-full. “I don’t think I can stomach any more of your rat poison,” she tells him, and hands him the bowl. He stacks them.

“Make sure to get good sleep tonight. I’d prefer to have our captain recovered as quickly as possible.”

“Like I’m going to get any sleep in this tin can of death,” Sigrun says, leaning back in her seat. She’s right, but Mikkel doesn’t see any reason to respond, so he shrugs and heads off towards the back of the cattank.

-

After everyone else is asleep, or at least pretending to be, Mikkel lights a lamp, sits down in front of the radio, and turns the tuning knobs slowly back and forth. He isn’t trying to get hold of main base. In fact, he tries to skip past any frequency with other people on it. He finds the static and listens to it, eyes shut.

Yes, there’s definitely something there. Everyone who’s ever used a radio knows that you can hear things in the white noise, but until now, he’s never listened to it. Until now, he had shut the radio off, or given it a good tuning. But now is different. Face ghostly in the lamplight, his eyebrows knit in concentration. It’s warped, and sometimes almost lost in the static, but he can make out words. Danish, most of them, which makes it easier. Easier to understand. Not easier to listen too.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Who is-? Who are-?”

“Beware! Beware…”

“Please-”

“Sorry sorry sorry sorry…”

“Go away!”

And then, over and over again, “Help me! Help me, help me. Help me. Help me…”

He shuts it off when he’s had enough, snuffs the lamp, and leans back in the chair. “Hmm,” he noises. So far into the Silent World, and with what he’s seen, he’s not sure if that’s trolls or ghosts or something else entirely. Whatever they are, they’re trapped. Trapped and beyond reaching. He takes the earphones off and sets them down, watching the flicker and blinking of the little lights on the panel, then cranes his neck to look out the windshield.

Oh yes. There are definitely things moving outside. Without the lights on in the cattank, the reflections on the glass, it is much easier to see. Mikkel makes the informed decision to shut the door to the driving compartment. If, every time he rolls over, he catches glimpses of those things, it will make for very bad sleeping. And it is time to go to sleep. He has to hold the watch close to one of the brighter lights on the radio to see it, but it’s past one in the morning.

Picking his way back, he makes sure Tuuri, curled up near the door, kept away from Reynir, is soundly asleep, and as safe as she can be. She’s asleep. If anyone could sleep through this, it’s her. Since it’s his duty to watch her, he settles himself carefully against the floor, leans against the wall, and shuts his eyes.

It’s surprisingly easy to fall asleep. Mikkel thought he would have to struggle for it, but it only takes a few minutes before he drifts off.

-

And then he’s somewhere different.

There are birds singing. The air smells different: drier, dustier. And more like cow pies. He opened his eyes.

It was a farmhouse. Not his farmhouse - this one was slightly different than the one he grew up in. But the cows lowing in the fields, the house with its grass-thatched roof, the chickens in the yard, the fields in the middle distance, even the farm dogs scuffing in the dirt - it all feels familiar, but not quite.

What isn’t familiar is the Saint Bernard that comes trotting towards him, waving its enormous bushy tail. It’s a welcome addition, however, and Mikkel kneels down to pet it. “Handsome fellow, you are,” Mikkel tells it. It pants, grinning an enthusiastic doggy grin, then licks his chin. Mikkel leans back. “Not quite that handsome, though.” He considers his surroundings with a little frown on his face. “I certainly don’t remember dreaming in this much color,” he tells the dog.

And he also doesn’t remember any farmhouse he’s been to having that many trees right next to it. He stands, and plods off to investigate. The dog follows, swishing its tail.

The hairs on the back of his neck are standing up by the time he passes through the farmyard. It’s familiar, and it feels safe enough, but despite the boot prints in the dirt, there are no other people. If he didn’t know any better, he would say that the dream people in this dream house were hiding from him. When he looks in a window, there’s nothing - an empty table with two chairs, no lights, and once again, no people.

He keeps on going. Sometimes, you don’t question these things.

The trees create a deep area of shade. He steps into it, and the farm seems to recede behind him. It’s still visible, but almost distant, like these trees and the farmhouse are very different places. The trees form some sort of hall, and at the end of it is a strange, shifting patch that moves almost like a heat haze. When he approaches, he moves with caution. Something doesn’t feel quite right here.

He stops a few feet short. If he squints, he can almost see something behind the heat haze. If he wanted to, he could push through, keep investigating.

But no. That’s far enough for now. The dog leans into his side, and he makes up his mind for good and turns back.

Until he wakes up, he spends the dream leaned against a fence post, the dog napping halfway in his lap, eyes shut and head back, taking in the sun.

Chapter Text

Even though it doesn’t seem to get much worse, he can feel the situation deteriorating.

Everyone is tense. Sigrun is back to being easily annoyed and snappish with everyone, either avoiding looking at the others or glaring at them, shoulders raised. Lalli is distant and unreachable, Reynir twitchy and too chatty, even for him. Emil at least seems to be holding up well - Mikkel is surprised, but pleased.

Tuuri is who really worries him. She’s doing her best, but he can see that she’s strained. She didn’t eat as much lunch as she would normally do, and talked less. Now, she sits in front of the cattank, gazing hopelessly at the mess of wires and components and other things Mikkel doesn’t know the names of. She picks through them, winds two wires together, and then tightens a screw. The cattank wheezes, clunks, then falls silent.

“F - oh, sorry,” Tuuri adds, as Mikkel looks up from his book, eyebrows raised. “Fudge.”

“That’s better. We wouldn’t want any foul language on this expedition, now would we?” He gets up and saunters over, arms crossed over his chest.

“No,” she says. Then, she adds, cheekily, “We wouldn’t, dad.”

He ignores her comment and leans over the hood. It doesn’t look promising. While she managed to fix the issues caused by the gaping hole in the floor, the smashed muzzle of the cattank poses other problems. It isn’t so different from a tractor, actually, now that he looks at it, though he doesn’t like the prospects of him being able to help much. “Tell me what the problem is,” he says.

She obliges, pointing at parts as she speaks. “So that should connect up with that, but it doesn’t and I’m not sure that I can fix it with what we have here, and that over there is connecting up with this board here, but it still doesn’t look like it’s working properly. The coolant I patched up as best as I could, but that might be the problem, and if it is, I don’t know how to fix it, because if the pipes are damaged, I might not have enough spares to get it up again. Oh,” she adds, wringing her hands.

Mikkel leans farther over. “Those pipes?” he asks.

“Yeah, those pipes. You can see where they connect to that tank there - the kind of whitish one, and the coolant level is way down, and it isn’t leaking, I checked, but-” Tuuri stopped talking, then smacked her head. “Oooooooh! I forgot to fill it back up with coolant! Stupid! I’ll go run and grab it, see if that helps!” She dashes off, Mikkel turning his head to get a better look into the deeper parts of the hood. That’s one problem down - hopefully - and he can see a couple of wires sticking out where they shouldn’t be, from a panel that had had its plastic cover crushed. Well, that couldn’t be too hard to fix. He swings it open - several pieces of plastic fall down into the depths of the cattank - and surveys the damage.

Several wires have been forcibly unplugged, and more have been ripped in half, only their rubber skins holding them together. Well, he could fix some of that right now. He threads the unplugged wires back into their proper places, then surveys the broken wires, rubbing his chin. Electrical tape can do wonders - surely it would be something useful to have around-

“What are you doing?”

Mikkel straightens up too quickly and hits his head on the bottom of the hood. Rubbing the twinging spot on the back of his head, he turns to face Sigrun, who has her arms crossed, scowl on her face. “Fixing the tank.”

“And you know how to do that?”

“The overall principle is similar to a tractor,” Mikkel informs her. She’s still scowling, which means he isn’t out of the danger zone yet. “Just a few wires.”

Sigrun considers this, wrinkling her nose. “Alright then, tractor-man. Be careful digging around in there. I don’t want my medic electrocuted.”

“Mmm-hmm,” he says. The electrical tape is leaned against a tread and he bends down to get it.

“I’m serious,” Sigrun says. “We need you around.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Mikkel says, moving to a better spot to access the panel. “But I do know about electrical safety.” If it were a situation with more levity, perhaps he would pretend that he was being shocked. Sigrun might have normally appreciated it, unlike Emil and his raging case of face cancer. But he represses the urge and bends over, trying to thread the wires back together.

“How long do you plan to give the tank?” Sigrun asks. “Before we go to plan B?”

Mikkel shrugs, keeping his eyes on his work. With a couple of the wires taped up, the panel looks much more promising. “Two days, maybe three. While we cannot afford to miss that ship, like you said, the tank is shelter, and has disinfectant systems that I would like to hang onto for a bit.”

Sigrun is quiet. Mikkel glances over. She’s fidgeting, thinking it through. “Two days,” she says. “Please.”

“I won’t let us miss that ship, Sigrun,” he says. Then, thinking it through, “Would it make you feel better?”

“Yes.”

“Alright,” he says, closing what’s left of the panel door. Another piece of plastic falls down into the tank. “I can work with two days.” He straightens up more slowly this time - he thinks there’s a lump forming on the back of his head - and makes to adjust again, but Sigrun catches his arm, stopping him.

“Yes?” Mikkel asks.

“Just…” She pauses, tries to form words, but fails. The stress is getting to her again. He doesn’t think that those lines were under her eyes before like that. “Don’t…” He reaches up to grip her arm back, and she goes silent.

“Anything you say captain.” He hesitates, then adds, “Remember to take your antibiotics. We need our captain around”

“Don’t electrocute yourself, big guy,” she replies, with a ghost of that old Sigrun smile. She sets off, probably to check their perimeter for the fifth time that day. Turri passes her, a jug of coolant in hand.

“What did she want?” Tuuri asks. She glances at the innards of the tank, starts. “Oh, you got those wires! Thank you.”

Mikkel shrugs. “Just checking in, as she should. And it was no problem.”

Tuuri cracks her knuckles, then dives back into the tank, mouth puckered into concentration. It’s right about then that Mikkel gets another swell of awareness of how little time she has left, how sick she will soon be, and backs away a few steps.

She is sick. He knows it. He’s sure. While he might be the medic, there isn’t a thing he can do about it.

-

Dinner is quiet. This time, Mikkel is on duty watching Reynir, who is getting his daily outside time. His face is turned towards the sun, catching its light. He hasn’t eaten much, and Mikkel nudges him. “You need to eat that,” he tells Reynir. “It’s all you’ll be getting.”

“I really shouldn’t be eating this,” Reynir says. “I should be sparing food for you all.”

“Nonsense,” Mikkel says. “If you don’t eat, then you won’t be fat enough for the rest of us to eat when we have to.”

“Um. Okay. I suppose.” It at least gets Reynir to eat a few more bites and Mikkel smiles to himself. He’s already finished up his own bowl full of slop. Compared to what he’s eaten as an army medic, it’s not too bad. Chunky in weird places, bland, but not too bad. Not vomit-inducing, like Sigrun seems to believe.

Mikkel is about to get up, stretch a bit, when Reynir asks him, “I’m sorry if you don’t want to talk about this, but… why did you get fired so many times? You’ve been really good here and all, and I just thought no one would want to fire someone like that. Since you’re good at what you do. Mostly.”

He has to raise an eyebrow at the ‘mostly’ that Reynir tacks on. But he answers. “Different things each time. Bad decisions.”

Reynir can tell that’s all the answer he’s going to get, and nods. “Okay. You’re just good to have around and all. You’re so calm. And it just didn’t make sense to me.”

Mikkel snorts. Oh, if Reynir knew, he wouldn’t think that it didn’t make sense. His dismissal from Kastrup that had ended up saving his life had been a particularly garish case of insubordination. Insubordination with reason, true, but it had been nothing short of spectacular. The only reason he’d been let anywhere near the Danish army after that was the sheer number of casualties suffered shortly afterward, and that was another story entirely. It hadn’t stopped him from getting jumped from base to base as superior after superior had found him too irksome to keep dealing with, but it was better than being completely out of a job.

Quiet again, Reynir looks at the scenery around him. His breath mists the inside of the mask a little as he lets out a long sigh. “I wish I’d never left home, but it’s pretty out here,” he says. “I’ve never seen anything like it.

He’s right. The fields, the lovely, dark woods, the fresh air sweeping the smell of the forest up with it - he had never experienced it in Denmark. If this part of the world wasn’t swarming with nasties, he might enjoy it. Might as well enjoy it while he can. He takes a deep breath, smells the pine, the dust, the faint trace of rain.

“You’re quite right. It is.”

-

When he comes to the dream this time, the dog pulls at his pants, trying to get him to follow. Mikkel pushes it off.

“I know where I’m going, thank you,” he tells it.

The dog lashes its fluffy tail, snorting through its nose. A booger flies off somewhere. “You’re wasting time,” the dog informs him.

A talking dog might be cause for surprise normally, but it’s a dream, and Mikkel has seen many strange things in the past few months, let alone his whole life. “I’m dreaming,” he tells it. “I have time. I’ll be back.”

“There is not much time,” the dog says, more insistent. Mikkel ignores it, and marches off towards those trees. He’s going to investigate. The dog follows him, snorting in annoyance. In general, Mikkel does his best to not annoy dogs, but dream dogs are different.

The trees and the strange way they lead towards the heat haze underneath them is the same. Mikkel waves a hand through the haze. It feels chilly. It doesn’t burn him or peel his skin from his bones or do something equally unpleasant, which is good. He glances back. The St. Bernard has stopped and sat down, whuffing indignantly.

“Stay there if you want, but I’m leaving,” he tells it. It snorts again but rises up and trots to stand at his side. “Good dog,” Mikkel says. Then he pushes through the barrier and into another world.

There’s water, stretching as far as the eye can see. There’s the night sky, rising above him, strewn with stars he’s unfamiliar with. He is standing on a tiny spit of land, with the entrance to his farm behind him, safe and reassuring, and there are blurs on the horizon that look promising, but it’s even flatter than the dead-horizon land. It makes him uneasy. Sigrun was right, he supposed. Too flat. Nothing to block something unfriendly from seeing you, all out in the open. Though everything looks to be clear. He hopes. The incident concerning the water troll is too fresh in his mind for him to discount things lurking underneath the surface of the water. He’s come this far, so he figures he might as well try and push on. Towards that first blurry area. He thinks he can just see the outline of trees in it.

He’s expecting to wade in, then swim the rest of the way, but when his feet touch the water, he’s almost able to walk on top of it. Almost. He is still sinking, so he speeds up, going quickly to avoid going under. Even in dreams, he does not particularly like getting wet. Even going quickly, his boots and the lower half of his pants are soaked by the time he reaches the hazy place, which has resolved itself into an entrance of sorts. Those are definitely trees. And possibly a pond too, or maybe just a very slow-moving river. Granted, they do look like rather crispy trees. Like a forest fire has moved through recently, a forest fire or a drought. Something smells burnt. But there are bits of greenery regrowing, here and there.

There’s also a very ruffled owl with one ear chopped short resting on a lower branch of one of the trees.

Mikkel does not know much about owls, but what he does know tells him to steer clear. He knows they have nasty talons, and he knows they aren’t generally friendly. This one appears to be sleeping, which is good. He steps lightly, just wanting to leave it be and continue his exploration of this strange place.

But the owl hear, bristles, and speaks, not opening its eyes. “Didn’t I tell you to not come here and to let me rest?”

Mikkel considers this. “…No,” he answers.

The owl actually looks at him, eyes sharp with surprise. “What? There’s another one of you? Where do you all keep coming from?”

Mikkel shrugs. “May I sit?” he asks, pointing to a patch of dried moss in front of the owl.

“I suppose it won’t be any more dangerous - or tiring - than you’ve been already.” Mikkel takes this as a yes and settles. His St. Bernard grunts at him, still wanting to move on, but sits a short distance away, eying the owl.

“You’re Onni Hotakainen,” he guesses.

“Yes. How did you know?”

He shrugs again. “Good guess.”

“And? You are?”

“Mikkel Madsen. Medic.”

“Another one with that lousy expedition?”

“That would be correct.”

If an owl could snort, Onni would have. The noise he makes instead is a sort of breathy hoot. “Good job on not being dead I suppose.”

“You seem terse. Should I come calling later?”

He does not answer the question immediately. “You help the others, no?”

“We all help each other. So yes, I suppose, but I don’t think I deserve all the credit.” The dog edges closer, but Mikkel ignores it for the time being.

Onni ruffles his feathers. “No,” he decides. “No, you can stay. Come to think of it…” He looks at Mikkel. “Hold still,” he says. There’s a soft rush of wings, and Mikkel braces himself as Onni lands in his hair and settles himself. His heavy claws grip Mikkel’s hair uncomfortably, and Mikkel leans his head on his arm, trying to balance the new weight.

“You know, most people would ask before sitting on someone else’s head,” Mikkel said.

“It’s the price you’ve got to pay for stopping here,” Onni tells him. “The body heat will do me good. And your hair is softer than that branch. And you don’t yap like the other one does.”

“The other one?” Mikkel asks.

“Reynir.”

“Hmm. I didn’t know Reynir had been here.”

Onni shifts, opens his wings to balance. “You wouldn’t. Since you’re not a mage. Or you’re a poor one. Or a weak one.”

“I’m not really a mage. This was an accident.”

Onni fluffs his feathers, buries himself deeper in his own plumage. “I believe you are now.”

“No. Just lucky.”

He doesn’t expect a response, and he doesn’t get one. Onni is silent.

Once he gets past the shock of having an owl sitting on his head, it’s not entirely unpleasant. Onni’s claws still pull his hair, but the weight is pleasant, and so is the light heat of the bird. He’s likely trying to go back to sleep, and Mikkel doesn’t want to deny him that. If that fiery bird was Onni’s, then heaven knows he needs the rest. So instead, Mikkel watches the scenery, turning his head slowly are carefully. It’s nice in a wild way, even though it is still a bit charred. The rock overhang, bathed in shade, dipping down to the water’s edge, looks particularly pleasant. It all feels so real, even though it can’t possibly. Even Onni and the weight of him can’t actually be.

It stays silent and still and quiet for a long time. Mikkel is used to waiting. He doesn’t mind it anymore.

Then the dog loses patience and buts Mikkel’s shoulder with its head. This wakes Onni up, and he shifts irritably before saying, “Your… your whatever-it-is wants you to follow.”

“I know. It’s been bugging me. I didn’t want to move.”

“If you’re Icelandic mage - or something like it - then it’ll be a vision, and it’ll be important,” Onni tells him. “Perhaps critical.”

The dog buts him again. “Important,” it repeats.

“Are you going to move off my head when I go?” Mikkel asks.

Onni considers it. “No,” he answers. “Too soft.”

With a grunt and a sigh, Mikkel gets to his feet. Onni flares his wings to keep his balance, but once Mikkel starts walking, he falls into the rhythm and folds his wings again. The dog plods towards the edge of the forest, and leads Mikkel straight out. He feels Onni tense his talons, but he doesn’t fly off, which is a good sign. He moves across the water as quickly as he can, the dog leading him back towards the farm.

Except, when he emerges into it, it isn’t the farm anymore.

Now, it’s a dark stairwell. The walls are falling to pieces, the steps crumbling away, wiring creeping out of the walls. There’s the heavy smell of mildew and mold and damp in the air, light breaking through at the top of the stairwell. Mikkel feels like he knows this place, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. There’s something about it though, something he remembers.

Onni shifts. “I don’t like this,” he warns Mikkel.

“Yes, I don’t imagine many people would.” The dog has moved up the stairs and has taken a seat, watching him with intent dark eyes. Mikkel cautiously takes a step. The stairs don’t break underneath him, which is good. He should go up, towards the light. He starts off again-

And then something flies at him from down in the darkness, down from the gaps between the flights of stairs. It’s warped and bloated and twisted beyond recognition, much worse half-concealed in darkness. It claws up the railing, and Mikkel has only just started to back off when the tail comes down and the barb on the end slices deep into his leg, above his left knee.

Onni takes flight with a terrified screech, and wings out of the vision without leaving a trace. Mikkel hits the floor. Judging by the spurt of blood coming from his leg, that’s the femoral artery that’s making such a mess. It’s splattered everywhere. He’s going to bleed out in seconds, and he doesn’t need to be a doctor to know all of that.

But he’s calm, despite the fact that he’s going to die in this vision, and despite the fact that a troll is going to eat him. There’s nothing he can do. He can just sit back, let the blood loss wake him up, and try and figure out what this means when he has more command of his facilities.

The dog pokes its head between the railing of the stairs. “You’re running out of time,” it tells him again. “What would Sigrun do?”

That’s baffling. Especially as his head is spinning, and he’s going to black out - because that’s going to help-

-

And he’s awake and staring at the underside of a bunk bed. The others are breathing around him, settled, unaware of anything being wrong. Sigrun is curled on the floor. Emil is taking his turn staying with Tuuri, so he’s not there, but everyone else is.

He’s figured it out. The decrepit building was the hospital. He knows what - or who, rather - is running out of time. That’s Tuuri. Simple. Which leaves that final message the dog gave him: what would Sigrun do?

That’s also simple. Sigrun wouldn’t accept defeat. She would do the opposite of what he was doing now.

He knew what Sigrun Eide would do. And doing it will cement his place on her mutineer’s list, if not her beat-up list.

‘Mikkel Madsen, the mutinous medic,’ does have a ring to it though.

Chapter Text

This requires more forethought than his previous mutiny did. For one, he’s running on limited time. If Tuuri fixes the cattank before he plans everything, then they’ll be off and his idea will be for nothing. If the cattank isn’t fixed and it takes him too long to plan everything out, then the company will leave and it will be much harder to get away from the others. At best, he has two days. At worst-

The cattank chugs and he looks up. Tuuri whoops in delight. Then the sound of a small explosion from the tank, and the chugging cuts off. Tuuri swears, and he leans around the cattank just in time to see her kick the from tread, then yelp and hold her foot.

“Please don’t do that,” Mikkel says. “I don’t want you breaking a toe on top of everything else.”

“What would you have to do if I did?” Tuuri asks.

“Amputate,” Mikkel replies, straight-faced. Tuuri gawks at him before catching on.

“No you would not.”

“No I wouldn’t,” he confirms, smiling slightly. Tuuri at least can appreciate that brand of humor right now. “You don’t do much, to be truthful. Bind the broken toe to an unbroken toe, hope that it heals well. How is the tank coming?” he adds, leaning over the hood. Something is still smoking, and he waves to disperse the smell.

Tuuri slumps back into disappointment. “I thought that would be it, but then something blew. I don’t know - it looks pretty toasted.”

“Hmm,” Mikkel noises. He should not be helping her, but he does anyway. “Maybe the spark fluid is the problem. Refill it, clean it up if there’s any of it dribbling about under the hood, try again then.

Tuuri nods slowly. “Yeah… yeah! That might work! Thank you!” she throws over one shoulder as she scoots off toward the door into the cattank.

It’s a good thing that Tuuri is still alive, he thinks. He wouldn’t be able to fix any of this mess himself. Smart girl. And there’s the sinking feeling when he realizes that she won’t be alive much longer, unless there’s a miracle, and that he needs to get going.

-

The first thing he does is write up instructions for everything in his medic’s bag.

Some of it, he’s sure that the others have figured out - things like splints and bandages and nausea pills. Painkillers, antibiotics, and local anesthesia, not so much. The painkillers in particular have been known to see abuse in at least the army, so he makes his instructions on that front very clear - no more than one every eight hours.

He finishes labeling the bottles of pills, then starts on the various injections. He’s careful to make a point about not re-using needles. When he’s done, he packs everything back into the bag, and then on second thought, shuffles it around so some of the bandages are on top. He might need those. That vision of the troll is still fresh in his mind.

He can’t imagine who will take over his duty if this plan goes badly. Emil, maybe. He can’t imagine Sigrun doing it and Lalli - Lalli trying to tend to someone’s wounds is so far out of the realm of possibility as to be laughable. Tuuri and Reynir would be limited by their lack of immunity. He’s sure they’ll figure it out, he thinks, as he stows his medic bag. They’ll have to if he isn’t around.

-

It’s Lalli’s turn to watch Reynir. And he takes his job literally: sitting with his knees drawn into his chest, he stares at Reynir with those intent blue eyes, not wavering. Reynir is uncomfortable. Mikkel would have been too.

“Lalli,” he greets. Lalli looks at him and blinks slowly. Mikkel has learned to take this as a good sign. The cats back on his farm would do something similar when they liked and trusted you. “Reynir,” he adds. It’s Reynir he’s here to talk to. For the first time, he’s glad that Lalli isn’t able to understand them. Lalli is sharp - he might guess what Mikkel is about to do if he could hear the conversation. Reynir, on the other hand, won’t. Forethought isn’t Reynir’s strong suit, bless his heart.

“Hi,” Reynir says. “Did you want me to help with something?” he adds, perking up.

“Not at the moment. Thank you. It simply occurred to me that I hadn’t properly thanked you yet.”

The surprise on Reynir’s face is real. “What for?”

“Those runes you were drawing. If you hadn’t put those up, we might be in worse shape. And I didn’t get much of a chance to thank you in the direct aftermath. I thought you should know you did well.” Reynir goes a little bit pink and sputters.

“Um - I - well, thank you,” Reynir says.

“Is the one you and Lalli painted on the tank for similar purposes?” he asks.

“Oh! Yes, it is. That one is without the fire, though. Just a ward. I wouldn’t want to set the cattank on fire. That wouldn’t help anything.” He laughs. It’s nervous

“No, it wouldn’t,” Mikkel says. “That was a good idea.”

Reynir shakes his head. “Oh no! It was Lalli’s idea to put the ward up on the tank. I just figured out what would be needed for the rune. It took a while, but it looks like it’s working so far. No ghosts in the tank. Which is good.”

“It is,” he says. “Smart of him. Good idea, Lalli,” he adds. Lalli might not understand the actual words, but he gets the gist of the message, and looks smug. Mikkel turns his attention back to Reynir. “You just figured it out by guesswork?”

“Kind of. Trial and error. Though I did have the fire rune to work off of.”

Mikkel turns this over in his head. “Would it be possible to make something similar for trolls?”

Reynir wrinkles his nose. It’s not a particularly good sign. “Maybe? I don’t think so. Just because trolls aren’t really… magical. I could give it a shot I guess, but I don’t think it’ll do much.”

“It would be good if you could try. Just in case. Though if it doesn’t turn anything up, the ghost repelling ones are helpful enough. I was under the impression you didn’t know you were a mage before this.”

“Nope!” Reynir answers cheerily. “No clue.”

“How did you learn about runes then?”

Reynir shrugs. “Oh, there were a couple of mages in the surrounding area, and they used them. And my siblings would tell me about the mages they worked with, and I asked questions about them, and it just kind of went from there! I’m not really all that good, though,” he adds, drooping a bit.

“You’re good enough for what we need, and that’s all anyone can ask. What kind of stories did your siblings tell?”

“All sorts! Bjarni fights pirates, and my other siblings go to Norway to fight trolls! And do whatever else they need to do. One time, Hildur blew up an old munitions facility and killed all of the trolls within three blocks! It was glorious,” he says, eyes turned to the sky, likely imaging the awe-inspiring malestrom of shrapnel, fire, and bullets that had ensued.

At that point, the conversation drifts away from runes, and it also attracts Emil, who’s more than happy to hear about the fiery adventures of Reynir’s siblings, translated through Mikkel. Lalli can’t understand any of it, but he’s not attempting to flee, which is a good sign. That’s just fine. It’s good to let the boys enjoy what levity they can have. Emil certainly looks lighter than he has in a few days. He know what he needs to now anyway. After the conversation winds down, he excuses himself, and goes to copy down the rune on the back of the cattank.

Perhaps he isn’t a mage, but it might do him some good.

-

There’s one more thing to do before he leaves. He isn’t sure if he’ll be able to do it, but he takes a nap. It’s better he tries.

It works, fortunately for him. The farm resolves into being, as does the St. Bernard, which is no longer bugging him to go anywhere. Mikkel sets off immediately. Now is not the time to dwaddle. He goes through the trees, across the much thinner strip of sea separating him from the forest, and then peers among them.

At first, he’s afraid that Onni is awake and won’t be available. But then he spots the shape of a large bird resting on the lower branches of a tree and makes his way towards it.

Onni swivels his head around, then turns away. If it were possible for an owl to look guilty, he did. “You really shouldn’t have come.”

Mikkel doesn’t bother refuting this statement. It’s a risky move and he knows it. “Are you alright?” he asks.

“Still in a coma.”

“Yes, that much I had figured. I meant from the vision.”

He shifts again, looking guiltier. “I’m fine. I was concerned that you wouldn’t be quite as fine, as a matter of fact.”

Mikkel spreads his arms. “Hearty and hale. You departed very quickly.”

“I’m not a troll-fighting mage, alright? I am a ‘make-sure-no-one-dies’ mage.”

“You misunderstand me. I wasn’t blaming you. It was wise to flee.” Mikkel takes a seat on the forest floor. “I was still wondering if you were alright, however.”

“Yes, I’m okay.”

“I’m glad to hear that. You’ve done enough already without getting more injured in the process.” He lets that sink in, then continues. “But I need your help again.”

Onni gives him a look. “I can’t help you. All of my reserves are depleted. If it were possible, then I would gladly do so, but until that time comes, you’re on your own.” He ruffles his feathers, and he both looks and sounds genuine when he says, “I’m sorry.”

Mikkel adjusts himself to lean against a tree. “I know you can’t work magic right now. That’s not what I meant, however. What I need is to know all that you know about spirits. Ghosts in particular, but anything else too.”

It isn’t exactly true, that he had only come hoping for Onni’s knowledge. He had hoped that he would be recovered enough to use his skills as a mage, since having someone as powerful as Onni waiting in the wings would be a good idea. The destruction he’d rained down on those trolls was an excellent example. But upon seeing him still an owl, he’d discarded that hope. He’d be alone in this.

Onni tilts his head, his tufts of feathers going back. “Spirits? Why?”

“Given our current situation, it seems practical to have knowledge of them,” Mikkel tells him. That’s true enough.

“Hmmph.” He considers this. “Let me sit on your head again, and we have a deal.”

Mikkel raises his eyebrows. Onni realizes the awkward phrasing seconds too late, and scrambles to correct himself. “Nest in your hair. Whatever.” It’s hardly better phrased like that, and Mikkel pretends to cough, to cover the fact that he’s smiling, and also that he wants to laugh.

“Go ahead. Be careful with those talons.”

He is. It’s easy to tell he’s doing better to be more gentle as he lifts off from his branch and settles onto Mikkel’s head. He puffs himself up into a warm ball of feathers, and grows still. “What did you need to know?”

“I was under the impression that ghosts only lingered as long as their physical bodies would have lived otherwise, if they died a violent or unnatural death. While there might still be lingering spirits from year zero, it would be unlikely. Do you know why they’re still here?”

“No. Not really.”

“Hmm.” Mikkel thinks it over. “What about brain death? What would that do to a person’s soul?”

“If their body was still alive, they’d be trapped nearby. If they died, I don’t know what kind of effect it would have. It might have a similar effect as a violent or unnatural death. It might not. Why brain death?”

“Because we found documents that indicated a proposed treatment for the rash caused brain death.”

“Oh,” Onni lets the word out on a breath, and he tightens his talons in Mikkel’s hair, without noticing it. Mikkel winces.

“Careful please.”

Onni relaxes his grip. “Sorry. But that could cause it. The rash does things to a human spirit that have no precedent, so if that’s the case… yes, that could cause these types of ghosts. Trapping them for indefinite periods of time, with no escape visible. That’s bad.”

“I agree,” Mikkel says. “Very bad. Could they be persuaded to move on?”

“It seems unlikely,” Onni answers. “With no memories of who they were, there’s not much to guide them along. There’s probably not much left of them. Oblivion might be most merciful at this point.”

Mikkel stares off into the trees. That complicates things. “Troll spirits I know about. And then there’s more natural ones - trees and rocks and similar?”

“Correct.”

“You’ll have to forgive me for gaps in my knowledge,” Mikkel says. “Most of what I learned of spirits and magic has been recent.”

“Better start somewhere,” Onni says.

This is true. Mikkel goes quiet, looking between the trees. Onni is silent as well, probably taking the chance for some well-earned rest. His weight is pleasant, and his feathers are soft, but Mikkel would like to see him as a human. The most he’s seen of Onni is Tuuri’s picture, and some details are bound to have changed, or not been captured. He’ll have to be patient, he supposes.

The burnt look is fading from Onni’s dream refuge. Before, the charred look was everywhere, but now it is going. The moss is greener, the trees are growing needles again, and there are wildflowers that wouldn’t be there otherwise. The pond and the stream have lost their ashy look, and the water lillies are back, though not blooming like the wildflowers. Mikkel’s St. Bernard has waded partially into the stream to take a drink from it. If he strains his ears, he can hear birdsong.

“Is this somewhere real?”

“Uuuh?” Onni asks sleepily.

“Is this somewhere real?” Mikkel repeats.

Onni stretches his wings, then settles back down. “Yes. Or it was. Saaima, just a little ways outside of town, on a lake system. Where we used to live.”

“Used to?”

“Used to,” Onni says, and there’s an edge in his voice that Mikkel picks up on. It’s time to leave the topic be.

“It’s nice,” he rumbles, and then goes quiet again.Onni relaxes.

They sit there for a while longer, until Mikkel notices that he’s beginning to fade out. He lifts his hand, looks at the trees through it. That must mean he’s about to wake up. It’s about time - he needs to get going. “Onni,” he says.

“Eh?”

“I’m about to wake up. You should move.”

With a sleepy grumble, Onni takes off, then alights back to his branch. “I hope what I said helps you,” he tells Mikkel.

“It will,” Mikkel promises him. “You can trust in that much.” With that, he winks completely out of existence, leaving Onni alone in the rejuvenating forest.

-

He intended to go with no fuss, no attempts at meaningful last words, none of that foolishness. For one, the crew is just friends - not anyone critical to him. For another, that would be impractical, and like to warn them of what he was planning.

But he does make an attempt at a goodbye with Sigrun.

She sits in the front, as has become a habit over the past day or so, staring out of the windshield. Her expression is grim. He hovers in the doorway, gathering nerves that had strangely fled him, and then approaches.

“You’ve done well, you know,” he says.

Sigrun tenses at the noise, but relaxes after realizing it’s just him. “Of course I’ve done well,” she says. “I’m the best.” She turns around. Instead of her work uniform, she wears that black and white sweater he’s rarely seen her wear. “You should come and sit down, not hover in the doorway like a bear making plans on a bees’ nest.”

That comparison makes him smile. It’s not the first time he’s been likened to a bear. It might well be the last, now that he thinks about it, but he doesn’t allow himself to linger on that thought. He doesn’t sit down, and he continues. “I’m serious. Even if you’re reckless at times, you’ve done the best anyone could have hoped for, getting the crew this far.”

“Sure. Just gotta keep punching whatever comes at everyone. Kill it dead. Simple.” She shrugs. “But I don’t think that always works, and I’m not eager to try it out when we’re the troll equivalent of meals on wheels out there.”

“You’re very good at killing things dead. I think that Emil, at least, would have been dead without your skill and sense. And we’ll make it to the ship.” He pauses, then adds, “You’re a good captain. I can’t imagine anyone better. Except for the infection.”

Sigrun sits up straighter, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. “You alright? You’re acting kind of weird.”

“The rest of you have been carrying the weight of acting weird. I feel it’s time I pick up my slack.” This doesn’t seem to reassure her. Her eyebrows are still drawn in concern, and he sighs, then lies through his teeth. “No, everything’s fine. It was just that with how tense you’ve been lately, I felt you should hear someone say you’d done a good job.”

She still looks concerned. He’s trying to dig up something he could say to her to set her at when she she says, “You sure you didn’t take a hit to the head or something? Not like you there. Looks like maybe you need a relaxer as well.”

“No, I’m feeling fine,” he answers. Then he adds, “Just remember to take your antibiotics.”

“Ha-! Funny. I haven’t forgotten, since you’ve reminded me seven times today.”

“Better safe than sorry,” he tells her. Even if she looks a little annoyed, her mood seems to have improved, which was exactly what he had wanted. He turns and leaves her alone again. Unseen to him, Sigrun’s eyebrows come together in concern again, still looking at the place in the doorway he just was.

-

When everyone is asleep, he eases up, and slides out the door. The last traces of light are fading from the west. Out in the wilderness, there’ll be less to worry about, but he doesn’t want to hang around for long anywhere. He left a bag packed with the essentials by the door outside, and he swings it onto his shoulder, then digs a slip of paper and a safety pin from it’s depths. Pinning the slip of paper to the shoulder of one coat, he takes a last, cautionary look around the campsite, then sets off into the darkness.

Irrelevant though it might be, he thinks, as the cattank is lost from sight around a bend, the others can see just how adept of a cook he really is when he’s gone.

Chapter Text

Sigrun starts off the day in a bad mood, and it only gets worse.

She had not slept well - too wound up to feel like going back to the bunks, she had stayed up front and slept in the driver’s seat. Waking with a crick in her neck and a few hours less of sleep than she normally functioned on, Sigrun slouches out of the cattank, rubbing her back. To sour her mood further, there’s no breakfast, no sign that breakfast is on the way, and no Mikkel. Even if the breakfast is hard to stomach, it’s the only food she can expect. And the absence of their cook is worse. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t grown to like the big guy during the expedition.

She plants her hands on her hips, looks around, then hollers, “EMIL!”

She hears him jump, and then comes scrambling around the front of the cattank. “What?!” he asks, looking panicked. It would be funny in another situation, but Sigrun is hungry and missing her daily dose of snark from Mikkel, so all it does is annoy her. More.

“Do you know where the big guy wandered off to?” she demands.

“I - uh, I do not. I think he got up early. He was gone when I woke up. Might have taken a walk.”

“Hmmph,” Sigrun says. She crosses her arms. “Alright then, blondie, do me a favor and do a quick perimeter check. Make sure he didn’t become troll kibble.”

Emil nods. “Yes, ma’am.” He goes to snag his gun from where he left it leaned against the cattank and starts off into the charred waste around the cattank. That leaves Sigrun to stand outside and think, sticking out her lower lip as she does.

She doesn’t notice Tuuri creeping up behind her, but she does notice when Tuuri taps her elbow, and jumps. “Sorry!” Tuuri squeaks, jumping back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just wondering why everyone was looking worried.”

It’s the one person she’ll do this for, since if anyone needs her to keep up appearances, it’s Tuuri. Sigrun hitches a smile onto her face and turns to face Tuuri. “I’m not worried, fuzzy-head. Don’t you get your pants up in a twist about that. It’s just that the big guy has gone off somewhere and I want my breakfast.”

“Oh,” Tuuri says. “I thought you hated his breakfasts.”

“Well, he doesn’t have much to work with, now does he?” Sigrun says. “I’m sure he’d be much better if he had actual food to use, instead of this slop. And it’s also the only breakfast I get. I don’t want to have to hunt this morning.”

“I’m sure I could figure out how to-” Tuuri begins, but Sigrun claps her hard on the back, and she’s startled into silence.

“Don’t you worry about that. You worry about getting that tank fixed, and I’ll worry about making us something edible if the big guy doesn’t show up soon!”

“Okay. Okay!” she adds, trying to sound more chipper. “I’ll do that!”

“And I’ll bring you something to eat, don’t you worry,” Sigrun says, hitching her grin up higher. Her face feels like it’s about to crack in two. “Good luck with that mess of machinery.”

Tuuri smiles at that. “Thank you,” she replies, before turning to march off towards the tank, a new spring in her step. Sigrun watches her go, then allows her face to sag back into it’s previous cranky expression.

Great. Time to find the strange… cook-y thing that Mikkel had used to make their breakfast. And then learn how to use it. With a snort, she straightens and starts off towards the cattank as well.

-

Nothing is stirring.

That should make him feel better, but it doesn’t. It only makes him feel like he’s being crept on. Like something is waiting for him up ahead. He has no need to worry about infection, but the thought still creeps into his mind. His immunity is his only protection against the poison of this place, and it doesn’t feel like much. While the empty horizon was worse, the tall buildings loom too high. It’s only too easy to imagine things coming down from the upper stories, springing from above, even the buildings themselves leaning down and swallowing him whole-

But there’s no time to think like that. He has medical records to retrieve, cure samples to retrieve. There must be something else there, some hint of an answer. He’ll find it, make things right this time.

It has started to snow. He’s leaving light footprints in the accumulating powder. He wishes there was a way to avoid that kind of trail, but he can’t think of a good solution, or not one that wouldn’t take a dangerous amount of time. The tracks left by the cattank are fading, but he doesn’t need them to find his way back. He didn’t enter the city until daylight, when the trolls and hopefully the beasts would be in hiding. The chill in the air is enough to keep the trolls away, and even better, the sun is still shining weakly through the cloud cover. He’s been lucky so far. He can only hope that luck holds up.

The hospital vision is still in his mind, however.

Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps this was all meant as a warning and not as encouragement to do something dangerous. Perhaps he’s blundering his way towards certain death.

No. This time, he knows what’s coming. He’ll just have to be careful. He presses on.

The wind has picked up. It’s a good thing that his work uniform is heavily insulated, and about as warm as he could ask for. At night, it will be a problem. The hospital will have extra blankets, but retrieving them could be difficult. If it requires him to not sleep for a while, then so be it, but that sounds like a bad idea. He’ll need to figure out a solution to that problem quick. Dealing with trolls while sleep-deprived will accomplish nothing but getting him closer to dying.

The wind has picked up, but this time, Mikkel thinks he can hear something - like a person whispering. He turns to look, but there’s nothing there. Or there doesn’t look like there’s anything there. Cities are treacherous places - playing tricks on your mind, filled with trolls and beats and ghosts. He doesn’t stick around to try and figure out what it is. Instead, he keeps on going. The sooner he gets back to the hospital, the faster he can find those records, and the faster he can find those records, the sooner he can return to the cattank.

He wonders if anyone has noticed his absence by now.

-

Sigrun all but ruined breakfast - she didn’t know it could be that difficult - and the cattank still isn’t fixed, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care because Mikkel has not just wandered off. He is properly missing. The sun has climbed high in the sky, but has been obscured by clouds. Snow drifts down from above, and Sigrun is frantic.

“Are you absolutely certain you didn’t see anything?” she demands of Emil. It’s not fair to be so terse with him, but she can’t help it. Throughout the course of the day, she’s gone from annoyed to worried to anxious to fearful, and now, with no sign of Mikkel or what happened to him, she’s outright terrified, though she does her best to turn it into something useful. It’s energy of a kind, and she can’t afford to give up that motivation. Not now.

Emil takes a moment to find his words. It’s likely he’s also scared, and shaken up by Sigrun’s demands. “I - no. No, I didn’t see anything. I might have missed something. But no.”

Sigrun growls in frustration and rakes her hair back. “I swear! If the enormous lug has gotten himself eaten by a troll, I will haul him out of whatever afterlife he’s gone to by the ear! We don’t have time for this!”

“Do you want me to look over the perimeter again?” Emil asks. “I very well might have missed something, since it’s a mess.”

“No,” Sigrun says. “We need a fresh pair of eyes on this. Give me your gun, and I’ll check it myself.”

Emil hands it over obediently, and Sigrun marches off to pace around the edge of the fiery destruction that that… that whatever-it-had-been had rained down on the trolls. Not enough destruction, apparently. Since Tuuri is bitten, and Mikkel Madsen, curse him, has been eaten by a-

“No,” she says aloud. “Absolutely not.” She keeps her eyes on the ground, looking for anything. Tracks is what she has her mind on, but the thought that it might be blood that she finds hovers at the back of her mind. If that’s what she discovers, she doesn’t know what she’ll do. Well, track down whatever split that blood and kill it, for one. But if something’s happened to her medic, then the whole expedition gets much more dangerous. One injury - like Sigrun’s infected arm - could kill any one of them, and his cool head and breadth of information are handy to have in a pinch. He’s also effectively her second command, and was who she had planned on making haul their supplies if the cattank can’t be fixed.

And while she really hates to admit, she’s grown soft on the big guy.

She snorts, and kicks a troll corpse aside in a show of temper. The woods stand in front of her, and the shadows cast by the trees make everything under them into a weird twilight. She hovers, then cups her hands around her mouth and bellows, “MADSEN! MAAAAADSEEEEN!”

There’s no response. She paces in a circle, gives the troll corpse another kick, then sets off again. “Dritt,” she swears. “If you’ve gotten yourself killed by a troll, Madsen, I’ll…”

And she doesn’t know what she’ll do. She has no idea. She has no plan.

Her perimeter check is cut short when someone pulls on her sleeve. She turns, mouth set in annoyance. “What?” she demands, before she even gets a look at who’s bugging her now.

It’s Lalli. Those pretty eyes of his are wide and intent on her, and he’s still tugging on her sleeve, trying to get her to follow him. “What?” she asks again, even though she knows he won’t understand her. He tugs on her sleeve one last time, then turns and trots off. Sigrun grunts, and follows.

Perhaps it should have been her first move to send the scout to look for clues. He moves around the back of the cattank and then keeps on going, Sigrun trailing after him. Emil sees, and gets up to follow. They proceed in a trail to whatever Lalli has found. It’s a back beyond the perimeter, between the tank tracks, and Lalli is pointing at it, like a hunting dog that’s found something in a bush. She comes to a stop and kneels down to look. They’re large, and the tread of the boot looks familiar, and they point back along the imprints of the tank treads, almost as if…

“…No,” Sigrun says. “No, no, no. Absolutely not.”

“What?” Emil asks.

Sigrun doesn’t reply right away. Instead, she gets up and jogs along the line of tracks, Emil following behind. Lalli stays. Good. He’s done all he needs to. Sigrun stops when she rounds a corner, and narrows her eyes. Even though it’s vanishing under the thin layer of snow, she can see those boot prints heading along the tracks, as far as she can trace them with her eyes.

“You know, if I ever implied he was smart, I take that back now. He’s a moron. A moron with a death wish.”

“Sigrun,” Emil says, insistent. “What did he do?”

“He’s retracing our steps, and if he’s doing what I think he’s doing, then I am going to strangle him! Or I’ll make HIM the troll decoy instead of Reynir!” Her voice rises to something a cross between a shriek and a snarl, and Emil takes a step back. She stands, every muscle tense, the sinew in her arms and neck standing out. “I should have known! Mutineer through and through! From the second he went missing-!”

She sees something out of the corner of her eye, and whips around, making Emil take another step back. It’s Reynir, Lalli accompanying him. He looks fidgety and uncomfortable, and there’s a piece of paper in one hand. “What? Sigrun demands, yet again. “Why aren’t you sticking close to the cattank? I don’t need another one of you untrained squishies to get eaten! Or bitten!”

Reynir says something in Icelandic. It’s almost all meaningless babble, but she catches the word ‘find’ in it somewhere. He’s holding out the sheet of paper to her, and she snatches it from him, scans it. Her mouth, already a thin line, grows thinner and thinner as she reads Mikkel’s tidy print. Well, that confirms it. Mutinist.

Emil has stood on his toes to read over her shoulder. “Oh come on,” he says quietly, but with feeling. Sigrun crumples up the note and throws it on the ground, crossing her arms tightly across her chest. Emil makes the good decision to pick it up off the ground and smooth it back out. “Sigrun?” he asks.

Sigrun is silent.

“Sigrun-?”

“Be quiet, Emil, I’m trying to think!” She doesn’t mean to snap like she does, but it comes out harsh and all wrong, and she’s sorry for it, but it’s too late to take back, because that would be weakness.

What she’s going to do, she knows well, even before she’s thought out. She’ll go back for Mikkel all by herself, no matter what kind of stupidity he’s gotten himself into. It isn’t just that he’s a valuable team member, and steadier than most of the rest of them put together, she actually likes him, and in a way that makes her want to physically recoil, run, and vomit all at once. This had happened to some of the other troll hunters, back in Norway, and she’d thought they were so stupid, to go for anything more than fun. And now she’s caught it, and wild notions are running through her head, all because of one stupid medic she should, in all rights, leave behind for being a mutinist. She is only realizing what this is now.

What has he done? What is wrong with her?

“Alright,” she says, making up her mind. “Emil, you need to go get food, weapons, ammunition, whatever. Plan for a day, maybe a day and a half. When you get there, tell Tuuri that her cousin will be staying with her and braidy, and that they are under no circumstances to go anywhere or do anything. Tell them I will either be back with our missing medic, or back with enough troll heads to make a new cemetery. Tell them to keep that cat as well,” she adds, as an afterthought. “Now! Go!”

Emil scoots off, which leaves Reynir standing and waiting awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot. Lalli is watching her again, and while it shouldn’t bug her, it does this time. “What are you looking at?” she demands. He must understand the gist of her words, because he shrugs. “Just get back to the tank,” she tells him, waving him away. “You as well,” she adds to Reynir, waving him away. “Stay safe, and don’t die, don’t get infected - just make it back,” she finishes. Reynir understood very little of that, and Lalli even less, but they do grasp one concept: return to the cattank. Lalli turns and pulls Reynir along behind him.

Sigrun turns back to the tank tracks and pinches her nose between her fingers. This trip has been interesting for sure, but the ulcer she’s going to have after it’s all done is legendary. What she really wants to do now is hit something. Or stab something. Or shoot something. With any luck, she’ll have the chance to do all three soon.

To vent her feelings until then, she kicks a stray rock as hard and far as she possibly can. It soars into the woods and bounces off of a tree with a satisfying ‘thunk.’ This is stupid. This is all stupid. She’s stupid.

What’s wrong with her?

-

They do not make the city before dusk.

Sigrun has to make them camp. She watches the lines of the building against the sky fade, the stars coming out one by one. Emil has lit a fire so they can cook some of Lalli's catches. He isn't talking, and when Sigrun glances back, he's looking towards the city too.

She returns her gaze to the buildings. They're coming, and that's what matters. If it's not too late.

-

It’s dark, but not so dark that he can’t see what he’s doing. That’s good. He doesn’t want to use the lantern just yet, since it will surely attract attention. Because he’s alone, he’s barricaded the doors, and blocked the vents as best as he can. If something comes through the one long window looking into the hall, he’ll hear them break, and whatever it is will be flinging itself straight into the range of the handy rebar that Mikkel found on his way in. The blinds are up so that he also has better lines of vision. This is about as safe of a place as he could have hoped to find. It’s on an upper floor, which is likely what spared it from being infested by trolls like some of the building has been. There might not be any of the papers he’s looking for up here, but medical records from around the time of the outbreak will be helpful, even if they’re not what he’s here for.

He wishes Sigrun was here with him. Without her banter - and the knowledge that her and her knife are close by, ready to stab hostiles - this building feels much colder and emptier. Comfort and safety were never things he expected to associate with her, Sigrun and her sharp edges and her ferocity, but when she directs outward and not at him, it does. It feels familiar and warm and good. But he does not have her, so he will make do.

The filing cabinet makes a quiet ‘shhhuuunk’ as he slides a drawer out. Rust cracks. It’s been protected from water for the most part, thank god. His fingers skim the records, searching for dates. There. Year zero. The medical records don’t go any further than about a month or two in, which aligns about with how quickly he knew the rash overtook the general population. He slides them out and blows dust off of them, then slides a record out to scan it. When he realizes it’s nothing more than a broken arm, he puts it back, and starts sorting through them.

It takes him a while. There’s a good amount of them to go through, since it’s a sizable hospital, even though it only takes him a second or two to know if it will useful. When he’s done, he has a good-sized stack of them, and it doesn’t take him long to realize that he needs to weed out the less useful ones. So he does that, and he’s left with a stack of files maybe three inches thick. Like before, he replaces the rest, and weighs the papers. Not too heavy. He definitely has room for more. He considers the stack, then sighs and sets it down on top of the filing cabinet.

He knows well that this won’t make any difference. If he wants any material that will make a significant difference, it will be down in the labs. Possibly the archives, though he was thorough there, and sees less hope. But the labs might have old attempts at cures, serums that could be used as a jumping-off point. Brain death they might cause, but it’s a start.

Unless there is a miracle, it will still be too late for Tuuri.

Mikkel glances toward the windows. The light outside is fading - probably approaching sunset - and he considers trying to make for the labs, then discards the idea. It will be better to wait until morning, when he has the full force of the daylight on his side. While in the depths of the building it won’t reach the trolls, the sunlight coming in the windows will discourage them if he takes a good route. Which he plans to.

There’s been no trouble so far.

That will change.

That does change.

He’s just settled the files in his bag and heaved up the filing cabinet to use it to block a vent when he hears something. It sounds like a sigh, but it trails off on a sharp hiss. Mikkel settles the filing cabinet, quiet as he can, then slowly and carefully picks his way towards the windows. If there’s something in the hallway, he’d like to know about it sooner rather than later.

And it’s there. Waiting for him in the dark. The Horse-Ghost. He’ll admit that his stomach lurches a bit. Something injured the Horse-Ghost in the battle, and the long tear in its neck is oozing something black. It has lost its customary glow, and seems to have lost power, fading into a shadow, not quite as real anymore. He knew that this would happen, but it was only a question of when. In profile like this, the Horse is magnificent, its mane hanging suspended in the air. It turns to look at Mikkel, those dark eye sockets seeing without eyes.

“Doooo you belieeeve… that you will be any better… this time aroooouuund?” The Horse-Ghost tosses its head, paws at the ground. “Any better in thiiisssss hospital, any better than Kastruppp?” It approaches the glass, face inches away. Mikkel watches, not moving, aware that his only protection now is the sheet of paper he still has pinned to his coat. “You have faaaiiilled… before you even begun. You and your expedition. Yooouuu… will die here. Just like your brother… you will die jussssst like Michael.”

Mikkel considers this, nodding in thought. That skull glares through the glass at him, all too ready to tear him to pieces if he gives it the chance. “That’s enough of that,” Mikkel tells it, then closes the blinds. It hisses, and he can hear it still. He’s not shaken by the Horse-Ghost, but he’s also not stupid enough to turn his back on the window, so he backs up until he hits the wall, then slides down to sit on the floor.

The Horse-Ghost again, audible even though it can’t be seen. “Yooouuuu will not sleep tonight. No sleep. I can’t sleep…. I cannot sleeeeeep…”

The voice trails away into nothingness. Mikkel doesn’t believe the Horse has given up though. It will be waiting in the wings for him, ready for any opportunity. He has to wonder what it wants. The deaths of the crew seem like a shallow goal - not solving much except perhaps some lust for vengeance.

It's wrong. Mikkel will not be dying like Michael. First, because he won’t die, and second, because this situation and the disaster at Kastrup are nothing alike. There is no strafing friendly fire here, no dying men, no explosives. It’s dark and alone and quiet.

The Horse-Ghost is right about one thing though. He won’t be sleeping tonight.

Chapter Text

When the sun rises the next morning, he gets to work quickly. Moving while the light is still on his side is essential, and he doesn’t want to waste time.

He descends down to the labs, making sure to keep his footsteps silent, and to move quickly, keeping an eye on his surroundings. Surely if Lalli can do it, he can too. Though Lalli is probably helped by his lesser weight, now that Mikkel comes to think about it. Better to keep that thought off of his mind.

He’s unsure whether to be worried or relieved that nothing tries to attack him. He has his rebar with him, so he’s as ready as he can be. But the silence in the dusty, crumbling building isn’t reassuring. Something had probably seen him. Seen him and is trying to figure out the best way to make a meal out of him. There might well be Vätte in the hospital, and he doesn’t like the thought of them following him around, even if they’re just watching. He doubts they are.

Going down the elevator shaft all the way isn’t feasible, which leaves the stairwell. He’s taken it up already. Nothing bad happened then. He’d still rather not. The door is rusted and grown over, and he has to force it with a tremendous scraping noise that sets his teeth on edge. Mikkel is expecting the dim to come alive with things that have sharp teeth and parts in the wrong places.

For the first time, he’s right.

Something off to his left makes a noise like a tea kettle left on too long, and he whirls to face it, the rebar coming up. It has clawed through a wall and there’s plaster everywhere, and he can count at least three limbs. It’s making a tremendous amount of noise. He levels the rebar and drives it in through what looks to be the skull. Or he tries to. He misses, and stabs it partially through the neck. There’s blood and now a flap of skin is hanging off, but there’s no time to worry about that, since it’s finally gotten free of the wall and is regaining its bearings. Mikkel reels back, and when it comes for him, he slams it in the door leading to the stairwell. It’s fortunate that he’s both large and strong - otherwise the maneuver wouldn’t have worked. Trapped, wriggling like a worm on a hook, half-in and half-out - it’s more perfect than he could have asked for.

The rebar doesn’t have enough weight for his purposes, so he heaves a heavy chunk of concrete off the floor and then slams it down on the troll’s head. The shrieking cuts off abruptly, and the smashed troll twitches on the ground, more black blood oozing out. “There’s one of you,” he says to it. But quietly. He’s made enough noise already, and needs to start moving on, before more come to investigate the source of the commotion. Trolls aren’t known to have good smell, or good reasoning powers, so hopefully any coming across this little scene will assume that it was the fault of the now-dead troll.

Time to go.

He hoists his bag back up onto his shoulder and starts down the stairs. Dim, like everywhere else in this building, he has to cling to the railing to not slip. There are dried and dead pieces of an old nest clinging to the walls and ceilings, but anyone could see that they’re dead. He doesn’t need to investigate to see that it’s true. From how the very lowest portions of the stairwell were blocked, something must have crawled in here and then died with no food, no air, perhaps even in the collapse itself. Imagining the crushing weight of the rocks above him, the suffocating blackness, the dust crushing his lungs into flat pieces of jerky-

Best not to think about that. He continues down and down and down, until he finds what he’s looking for: level 3. Medical papers, and then the actual labs next door. It might be time to try and find some samples. He knows they had made significant strides in finding a cure, so perhaps a couple of samples, a vial or two, would work wonders that the papers alone hadn’t. He knows it’s a long shot, but everything about this is a long shot. He’s in over his head and he knows it. The only thing he bargained for on this trip was cooking, mending other people’s injuries, and perhaps sightseeing in some ruins. Not this.

He wishes Sigrun was here. Sigrun could kill whatever came out of the dark.

-

And then he’s not in the hospital but a makeshift medical bay that’s nothing but cold iron and bloody sheets, and there are things screaming from down below like they are trapped in a fire with no hope of escape-

-

And then he’s back and he keeps on going, a trickle of sweat working its way down his forehead. He will not be going like that. He will not. Not like Michael. He pushes through the door into the records room, and he’s focused again.

He’s focused on doing it right this time, finding the proper records, the ones he can use.

He’s focused on doing it in a timely manner.

And he’s so focused that he doesn’t notice the thing on the bookshelf until a second too late.

It lunges and sinks its tiny teeth into his hand, and he jerks back, and it clings on, flying through the air. Knowing well it will hurt, he smashes it against the wall. It loosens its grip for a second but then bites down deeper, and he can feel blood filling the fingertips of his glove. Completely forgetting he’s supposed to be quiet, he snarls and hits it against the wall against the wall again, and then losing all subtly, grabs its fleshy body and yanks.

It tears in half - trolls aren’t the most durable - stops biting, but its teeth are still in the meaty part of his hand, and the head and part of the neck are still attached. Of course it doesn’t let go in death. Why would it, since everything here is already dead?

“For heaven’s sake,” he grunts. He works his fingertips between the jaws, feels the sharp little teeth against his glove and then pulls it away. It hurts. It hurt enough already. But now he no longer has troll teeth in his hand. And also nothing to block the bloodflow. Blood is dripping out of the glove and onto the floor. It’s a mess, and he’s not sure if trolls can smell it. But he’s made enough noise already. He stuffs the records he has into the bag and then makes for the labs temselves. Hopefully there are still samples left to look through.

It’s dark. It’s so dark he can hardly see but for the light coming from the next room. It smells like boot funk and something meaty in here. Not a good sign. He needs to get moving. Partially because he thinks he can hear something stirring on the other side of the lab. With any luck, it’s half-dead from being shut up so long, and not just freshly woken. He keeps going. How Sigrun does this day in and day out, he has no idea. The constant need to be on his toes would kill him just are sure as any troll would. This was all a bad idea. Not like he can go back now though. There are some cabinets that look promising so he heads for those and opens them, making sure to glance behind him every time as he does so.

Vials. Vials, bottles of pills. They’re dusty from years of sitting in lockup with no one to touch them. A couple have grown impressive algae colonies. He’s not a doctor, so the drug names are meaningless to him. No, what he’s looking for are the dates. The first cabinet is too early - about a year before the outbreak - so he shuts it and moves on. Speed is of the essence, but he needs to be careful.

The next cabinet is just as useless, but it’s closer to the time period he’s looking for. He moves on. There’s definitely something there, and he looks behind him, holds his breath.

Silence. Then a faint scrape. He can’t see. It won’t matter - it’s too dark. So he goes and looks in the next cabinet.

There - the dates are right. Year zero, year zero, year zero. They stop about two months in. Vials - lots of them. Some bottles of pills too, but those peter out after a couple of months to leave only serums. Mikkel doesn’t have the time to pick and choose. Everything he can fit from one month before the dates stop he lumps into his medic’s bag, praying that they won’t all be broken by the time that he gets out of here. If he does get out of here. Some of the vials almost slip because of the blood on his glove. It’s now run down his sleeve and congealed, sticky and cold. Finished packing the vials into his bag, he turns and scans the darkness for whatever is making those quiet, furtive little noises.

He sees it almost immediately. A monstrosity like a lizard, if lizards were spiders and also the spawn of nightmares, clinging to the ceiling.

Nothing happens for a split second. Then the troll drops down on him.

-

Alone in his dreamspace, Onni hears something, from near the borders. He opens his eyes and swivels his head. At this time of day, mist hangs heavy among the trees, making it hard to see clearly. He knows what he’s hoping for: Mikkel. Soft head full of hair, sensible calm, not so bouncy that he makes Onni feel like an old man. And so steady. Yes, Mikkel he likes. Though even Reynir would be welcome.

Another noise, like a footfall, but not. That’s not the sound of Mikkel’s footfalls. And there’s too long of a pause before the next one comes. Onni has gone pole-straight on his branch, eyes narrowed to pierce through the mist.

There’s something there. But it’s tall and slim and the edges are distorted. Something as close to terror as he’s ever felt in this dreamspace drops into his hollow chest.

That’s not Mikkel. He doesn’t even think it’s human.

-

It might be too late, but Sigrun refuses to give up. She forces her way through the fresh foot of snow that’s fallen recently, squinting through the flakes. Her sword is in hand - there will be no surprises waiting for her, or none that she won’t disembowel. Looking at her, it was apparent: teeth bared, eyes narrowed down, ready and eager to fight, blood pounding hot and heavy through her head.

Emil lags behind, struggling to keep up with Sigrun’s breakneck pace. His hair gets in his mouth and he spits it out, only for it to flop right back into his mouth again. “Sigrun,” he pants, breaking into a run to cover lost ground. “Sigrun - you’ve got to slow down - don’t leave me behind-”

“No,” she snarls. “Keep up! We can’t waste time! We’re almost there!”

But with the buildings nothing but grey imprints in the falling snow, she can’t be sure of that. She can’t be sure they’re even on the right trail, though that would be harder to mistake. Of course she’s afraid that she’s taken the wrong path, and that both her and Emil will either freeze or be eaten by trolls, and that Mikkel will be eaten by trolls, and that without them, Lalli, Tuuri, and Reynir will all die in other ways. There’s no way she can tell Emil that, though. Not this far. Stupid, she thinks again. Angrily. Stupid, all this for one person. She should have cut her losses when she could.

Not that she thought there was ever an option for her except to go after the medic’s dumb ass. Of course it would be in the middle of a blizzard. And in a city. She doesn’t even want to think about what all could be watching her right now. But it doesn’t matter.

She lashes at the snow with her feet, leans into the wind and presses onward. Emil forges on behind her.

And then - there it is. The distinctive silhouette of the hospital, a grey blur against the white sky. But it’s there, and so close to being reachable. She breaks into a jog, even though the snow slows her down.

“There!” she pants over her shoulder to Emil. “Come on! So close! So close,” she repeats, under her breath. Even as fast as she’s going, she might be too late. She might be hours too late. The only thing left might be a cooling body, dried blood streaks, a ripped up uniform. “I’m coming for you,” she hisses. No one hears. No one needs to.

-

The only thing that saves him is his bulk.

Three hundred pounds of troll crashing down on top of him is nothing to be sneezed at, certainly. But when it flattens him, he has enough mass to throw around to push himself off the dirty floor and on top of the squirming mass of legs and flesh. Some sharp part of the troll - a tail, a claw, a spine, something - cuts through the back of his jacket. He won’t feel the pain until much later, which is good, since he needs to concentrate on getting out alive. The piece of rebar he was using as a weapon has been knocked out out of his hands, and he lunges for it, grabs it, and stabs the troll through a sufficiently meaty-looking part of it’s body. There’s troll blood everywhere in seconds. He must have hit something important, but he stabs it another couple of times to make sure, and then a couple more because it’s awful, and then he’s upright, and covered in blood and other things, but alive, and still with his bag.

"Incredibly impolite to sneak up on someone," he tells it.

The thing on the floor is twitching, trying to get away but losing steam along with any lifeblood it has left. It’s not his greatest concern right now. Surely the grunting, shrieking, thumping racket he has just made will have woken up every nasty creature in the entire building. Time to go. He makes for the door, quick as he can without running, because running is loud. He has to make it down three levels and out, and then he’ll at least be in the light. Safer.

He makes it to the hallway, and about halfway down before he is located again. A squishing noise, and he looks behind him. This one is not much more than a blob, a blob with menacing appendages that scoots toward him.

He keeps going. It’s catching up, but not fast enough by his mark. Not if he’s made correct judgments. He makes it through the door leading to the stairwell and back away from the door. The blob reaches it, tries to get through, but then stops. Stuck. Perfect. He can’t help but gloat a little bit, even if it wastes time.

“See now, sir, I recommend that if you want to catch and eat others, that you lose some weight. I would start out with light exercise such as walking, and keep up with your doctor’s visits, as you are likely to have other health problems. Such as high blood pressure. And whatever the cause of that ungainly complexion is.”

The troll grunts, manages to force itself through the door a bit farther, then squorks in discomfort. That won’t be following him. Even better, it’s blocked the path behind him. He turns and starts down the stairs.

He’s made it one flight before he recognizes where he is. The stairwell. The very same one, with the same cut wires and the same lighting. The same chill in the air. Which means-

The second time around, he isn’t quick enough, just like the first time. He gets back farther, but the troll still comes clawing its way up from the darkness below, and the tail still comes and slices into his leg, so painful it feels like fire. But this time, it misses the artery. He stays on his feet - at least, until the troll’s tail comes back and knocks down. It is almost on him before he hits it with the rebar, and it stumbles. The bag has fallen from his shoulder, flap open to spill papers and one or two vials across the ragged concrete. He goes for it, realizes his mistake too late. There will be no making it back with the bag, not now. The troll is too large, and he made a wrong move. So, as the troll recovers, reels upright, makes an indescribable noise, he uses his bloody glove and slaps out a sloppy arrow on the wall over the bag.

Hopefully it will lead someone right.

Even though he’s hosed, he still tries. He jabs his rebar into the fleshy wattle at its throat with a yell and scrambles back, trying to get back up the stairs. His injured leg can hardly be walked on, and he’s slow - too slow. The tail whips out of nowhere again and smashes his makeshift weapon away. It clatters down into the stairs into the darkness. He keeps on trying to get away, but he slips on something in the dark - likely more of his own blood - and crashes to the ground. His head hits the wall painfully and he slides down into the corner. The stars clear after a second or two, but it leaves him with a raging troll feet away, pinned in a corner, holding his bleeding knee like it’ll help.

Strangely, he feels no panic. Only disappointment and calm. There is nothing to do. Fighting will only make more of a mess, and damage the precious papers and vials he worked so hard to get. And if anyone is coming, he doesn’t want them to discover him in bits. Not Lalli - though Mikkel doesn’t think he’d be upset, exactly. Not Emil, because even if he thinks he’s the cream of the crop, he’s a kid, and it’s too early for him to experience stray body parts. Not Sigrun. She’s probably seen things like it before, but finding bits of a companion can’t be fun. He doesn’t want her last memories of him to be a bloody pulp.

Sigrun. She’ll know what to do. She’ll lead the others to safety.

It’s a thought that gives him peace, and he needs the peace like nothing else.

Because he is going to die here, in this miserable, troll-infested hell of a hospital. He is going to die.

Just like Michael.

Chapter Text

Gods, as far as Mikkel Madsen is concerned, don’t exist. Or they are malevolent or apathetic enough to not deserve worship. Not one god had stopped the world from descending into hell. Not one had appeared to assist mortals. When Kastrup had been strewn in dead bodies, not one of them came to provide relief. With the blood and the pain such powerful beings were allowing into the world, he would be less reassured if they were real than if they did not exist. He knew that more than once it had felt like they were having a good laugh at him - him and thousands of others. Never would he want his life to be held to the standards of those beings, or be subject to their judgment.

But for a few seconds, he believes they do. He thinks it’s an angel, from Judeo-Christian mythology, or perhaps a Valkyrie, or even Freyja herself, hanging in midair, shortsword drawn back. There’s fire, and the ice-bright flash of steel, and white, and then the troll is screaming loud and long, and there’s more blood. Why is there more troll blood? There’s enough of it already. He staggers up and stares as angel-Valkyrie-Freyja pulls her sword out of the troll’s head with a jerk. It makes a slurping noise as it emerges. The fire that swam around her had dissipated, and he can hear someone else coming down the stairs as fast as they can without tripping.

Then his brain kicks into high gear and he realizes it’s not a goddess standing in front of him. Even better - it’s Sigrun. She’s now splattered in blood, her sword held out to her side, and there’s Emil too, carting his flamethrower, but right now he’s paying the most attention to Sigrun.

She’s furious. Shaking with it, actually. Mikkel wishes he looked less like some dog huddling in the rain to face her wrath, but it can’t be helped. Her hands have gone up, sword waving through the air, as she makes choking motions with her hands, sputtering as she does so. “Never - never in my life - I am going to STRANGLE you - stupid Dane - mutineering ba-”

There’s no stopping her anger. He braces himself, gets ready to take it. “I’m sorry,” he says. And he does regret coming here. It might have helped, but more than likely it won’t change a thing. He’s tired and battered and he’s let her down, and he regrets it.

Sigrun has a wild look in her eyes and she’s still waving her hands around in agitation like she might choke him.

But she doesn’t. Instead she almost tackles him with a hug. Mikkel nearly slips again, especially with his hurt leg, but he keeps his balance. The flat of the sword is pressed against his back. She’s solid and warm and smells like a combination of singed hair and sweat. He’s afraid to hug her back, afraid she’ll snap back to her senses and smack him, like she should.

But he does - reaches up and folds his arms around her, smooths a hand gently across the top of her back. Sigrun mutters something about stupid Danes again and shoves her face into his shoulder. She’s gripping the back of his coat with some force. “Sorry,” Mikkel repeats, quiet. “Sorry - poor decision - should have thought…”

-

And then Sigrun lets him go and steps back.

Mikkel is a mess. All on his own, he’s managed to become filthy with dust and other kinds of grime. His white coat is dark red with drying blood (troll) and so are his pants (human) and his sleeve and glove (more human.) He stands mostly on his left leg, the one that isn’t bleeding from that troll. But his expression is worse. The calm apathy is flavored with bleakness, and the bags under his eyes could haul Emil’s cleansing equipment no problem.

Speaking of Emil.

Sigrun turns, sees Emil loading another canister of fuel into the weapon.

“Emil!” she barks at him. “We’re leaving! You watch our backs, make sure that nothing sneaks up behind us! Understand? I’ll clear the path up front!”

“Yes ma’am!” he answered, straightening up. Good little solider. With any luck, they’ll get out of here alive and in possession of all of their limbs. Sigrun turns again to check down the dark stairwell. There doesn’t look like there’s anything more lurking in the darkness, but she can’t be sure. Shortsword extended, she moves forward to check. It’s clear as far as she can see. Even if there is something waiting up ahead, they don’t have many options but to keep going forward. “Alright,” she says. “Follow me. Mikkel, you stay in the middle. Don’t wander off anywhere, because if you do, I will leave you for the trolls! Alright? Come on-”

“Wait,” he manages, and limps over towards the bag he tossed aside and heaves it up over one shoulder. Sigrun stares at him, flummoxed.

“Mikkel - there are more important things than the dumb bag - come on,” she repeats, but he doesn’t leave it, and instead hobbles on over with a mulish expression on his face.

“No,” he says. “It’s what I came here for. I’m not leaving without it, Sigrun.”

Sigrun grumbles in frustration, but there’s nothing to be done. It’s not like she’s going to make him drop the bag, and she’ll admit that if Mikkel thinks its worth hauling out of a troll-infested hellhole, with special attention and all, that she’s curious what’s inside of it. Probably some kind of starched nerd stuff. It had better be important starched nerd stuff, for all the trouble they’ve gone to getting him back, and for all the trouble he went to to get it in the first place. “Fine,” she says. “Don’t let it slow you down, or we’re all toast here, understand?”

Mikkel gives her that look: the look like he’s just barely holding onto what patience he has, under that thin veneer of apathy. “I understand.”

“Good,” she says. She turns and marches down into the stairwell, breath fogging white against the darkness.

The steps down here had deteriorated more. She can feel the edges crumbling under her boots when she puts her full weight too close to the edge of them, like a sandbank. If she has to fight on these stairs, it doesn’t bode well. From somewhere, there’s also the noise of dripping water. Also not good. Sigrun wouldn’t trust the footing down here for anything. It makes her nervous, and in addition to the slick, crumbling floor, the dimness down here blurs out the edges of everything, erases the details. She thinks that some of Emil’s fire would be well-placed now.

“Keeping up, Madsen?” Sigrun asks. It’s really a rhetorical question, since she can hear him close behind her. He answers anyway.

“Yes, thank you for your concern about my wellbeing,” he drawls. Bastard. She’d give him a punch in the shoulder for that, except that might knock him over, and he’s in no fit state to be knocked over right now.

The second of conversation almost distracts her, but she sees the motion out of the corner of her eye and strikes. After years and years of training, it’s more muscle memory than anything else: swift and assured, her arms, her body moving just like it needs to, just like she knows it will. The resistance of the sword going through corrupted flesh took a bit longer to get used to, but it’s one hell of a rush. Emil shrieks from somewhere behind her as Sigrun flings the dead troll behind her and stomps on it a couple of times to subdue it, then stabs it again. The troll’s shriek echoes Emil’s, and then it dies. She’s panting, more from the scare of something leaping at her from the dark than anything else.

“Something will have heard that,” she says. “Can you pick up the pace any, Madsen?”

“Hmmph,” he noises. “Yes. Will it be easier to go more slowly outside of the hospital?”

“Yes. In theory.”

“I believe it should be just fine, then,” he says, but Sigrun isn’t so sure about that. His voice sounds too strained, and when he starts walking again, his gait sounds off. She notices it now because she’s just asked him to go faster. Guilt wells in her stomach, but then she remembers he was the one who got them into this mess in the first place, and pushes it aside.

Sigrun keeps going. The stairwell is silent again, but she bristles with suspicion. Too much could go wrong, away from the light. Down and down they go, and Sigrun is starting to worry that they’ve gotten trapped somehow, and that they won’t reach the ground floor.

“There,” Mikkel says, pointing through the darkness. “That’s the first floor. The ground floor was blocked by debris, we won’t be able to get through. There should be a pile of rubble a short distance from here that leads up to one of the windows that we can escape down. It’s a bit of a jump, but not much.”

“You noticed that?” Sigrun asked him, taken by surprise.

Mikkel Madsen shrugs, a slight smile on his mouth. “What can I say, I’ve learned some good strategies from you.”

The compliment takes Sigrun even more by surprise, and she fumbles with her words for a moment for finally coming up with something to say. “Well, that’s good. It’ll be harder to kill you like that. I’m going to kick this door down,” she continues, squaring up, “and then Emil, you get ready with the flamethrower. Roast anything unfriendly on the other side. But please don’t roast me.”

“I won’t,” Emil promises. He looks fidgety, but Sigrun isn’t worried. He’ll do just fine. He always does.

“Good. Ready, set-” She slams her heel against the door and it smashes back into the wall. Caught off guard, Emil whips his flamethrower up, but there is nothing to burn on the other side. Sigrun leads the way out into the light and Mikkel follows. In the light, he looks even filthier and more exhausted. As he stumps down the hallway, he leaves tiny drops of blood on the dirt linoleum.

“It’s close,” he tells them. “Just keep going - then take a left. You’ll see it. Plain as day.”

Sigrun is only partly paying attention to his words. Her eyes dart from one place to the next, twitchy, unable to calm herself enough to trust anything, really trust it. Between injured Mikkel Madsen, the amount of noise they’ve made, and his payload, she can feel her stress levels rising, starting a pounding feeling somewhere around her left temple.

Hopefully Mikkel will have some kind of medicine for headaches, because after this, she’ll need it. Mikkel will probably need it, after the scolding he’ll get. She needs to focus, needs to get them all out safety, needs to-

There’s the crunching noise of dissolving ceiling tiles, and she turns just in time to see a troll crash down from above. Emil, however, is ready for it, and coats it in flames. The screaming it makes puts her teeth on edge. It’s also attracted everything in the building, if she’s right. “Run!” she cries, grabs Mikkel, and pulls him along behind her. He makes a grunt of pain, but keeps on coming. Through the pounding of their footsteps, she can hear something skittering a hallway over. Not good. Emil, unencumbered and uninjured, reaches the collapsed part of the wall first and clambers up, then turns back to help Sigrun get Mikkel over the rubble. Sigrun lifts him, passes his arms to Emil, who supports his weight and gets him up. He’s grown stronger, she notes.

The skittering suddenly grows much louder, and she turns, ducks out of the way of the next troll - something long and skinny with sharp claws. She dodges the next swipe, and then the next, and then brings her shortsword down on its fragile arm. It comes clean off, but its remaining arm comes down and slices clean through he coat and down into the skin of her torso. Mikkel was yelling, and so was Emil, but Sigrun could barely hear them through the rush of blood in her ears. She stabbed it, again and again, until it stopped moving.

Sigrun brought the shortsword down once more, then pulled it out with a sucking noise. Her arm hurt again. Her chest hurt now too. She turned, saw Emil clambering back down the rubble to help her. “I’m fine,” she said, waving him off gruffly. “We need to go - we need to get Madsen out of here - come on.” She climbed up over the rubble and towards them, wincing, wishing she didn’t hurt so much all over.

-

The journey back takes a lifetime.

Emil is young and uninjured and strong, but he has not done this before, pushed himself for so long while so miserable. Sigrun has, but she’s also hurt, and the wind cuts through her ripped jacket.

Mikkel is the worst of all.

She can’t imagine that he’s ever done much in the way of physical exertion in this manner. He lags behind them unless Sigrun goes back and helps him to catch up, and even then it takes him too long to respond. His face is a bad and ashen shade like unflavored porridge, and his limp grows more and more pronounced the farther they travel. The heavy snow slows them up, making every step a battle.

“Come on,” Sigrun says over and over again. “Come on, keep going, just a little bit farther, just a bit farther.”

And he does. He slogs on, painfully. When he puts too much weight on his injured leg for too long, blood drips onto the snow and freezes, before being lost in the heavy banks.

“Keep going, please,” she tells him. “Just a little bit farther.” He nods, pushes through more snow. Throughout the entire ordeal, he doesn’t drop his medical bag. Sigrun has to resist the urge to slam it out of his arms, if it means he’ll move that much faster, that much easier.

The sun sets before they reach the tank, but Sigrun can see the glow of its lamps through the trees, so she pushes on, urging Emil and Mikkel forward. Emil goes faster, but Mikkel doesn’t. He staggered on like a zombie, eyes fixed ahead, hugging the medical bag to his chest.

Finally, they cleared the trees and emerged into the clearing. Lalli was first to see them, and emerged from the cat tank, poised and tense. Tuuri followed, and then Reynir, both staring with open mouths.

“Mikkel!” Tuuri cries, and dashes through the snow towards him. “Oh my gosh-! Oh my gosh-!”

Mikkel grunts, grins painfully, then he tipped forward, light as a feather until he hit the snow with a ground-shaking crash.

Chapter Text

He doesn't wake up - not really - for at least three days.

What happens, instead, is that he drifts, in and out, in and out, like a man laying face-up while the waves of the ocean wash over him. One moment, he's back - Katstrup, the metal, the noises from the lower decks, the sounds of despair from a hundred, a thousand men - and then he's somewhere else, back on his farm, with the cattle, with a pair of saggy old farm dogs and two of his younger siblings trailing along after him - and then he is back somewhere where his leg hurts like someone pressed a white-hot poker to it, and back somewhere where his hand hurts, where is back hurts, where his head hurts - it all hurts - and then he's gone again to his glassblowing job somewhere south.

In the middle of his drifting, he catches Sigrun hovering over him. He would almost say that she looks worried if he didn't know better. As the waves of his sickness - or his injury - or whatever he wants to call it at this point - wash over him again and again, he wonders whether her hair was always that bright, whether she maybe really is a Valkyrie, if this is going to be it, if this would count as an honorable battle death. He hopes not, he thinks, as the dip between the waves hits him and he comes back a little to himself. He worked so very hard for that bag, and if he loses it now - well, then, he will be in trouble. And Sigrun isn't actually a Valkyrie - he asks to confirm as the wave dips him down deeper into his haze, and she says she is not, and promptly begins to look more worried, that isn't good - so if he dies he won't get to look at those intent violet eyes of hers - in all of his time, he has never seen eyes like that and the color of them swamps him, smears out his vision, and he's somewhere else again-

He's in the hospital -

He's nowhere at all, or, he's in the mist, and there's nothing around him but mist -

And the troll in the stairway is slicing into his leg again - he makes some kind of noise this time, only realizes that it's himself when he feels his mouth shut after he hears it -

And he's nowhere again, but a softer nowhere, without any kind of detail - no mist, just soft darkness like an old velvet dress his mother owned for special occasions -

And then he's on the bunk and Emil is kneeling down by his leg and he has a bowl and looks like he's about to vomit, and Sigrun is holding down his shoulders and telling him, "If you die, I swear I will dive right into the afterlife, pull you out by the nose and then kill you again myself, you bear-bastard - dritt - make sure you get it all Emil - you are NOT leaving us, I CANNOT deal with Emil's cooking another day-"

And then he's gone again, into nothing at all-

And then the waves are gone and he's in a cleaner mind than he has been for - how long now? He doesn't know. Days? Weeks? He assumes he's still alive because there's the farm that's not his but is so familiar. There's the wind over the fields and the warm sun on his head and the noise of the cattle lowing softly in the fields and there's the Saint Bernard, weaving around his legs in concern. He bends down and gives it a reassuring pat.

"Yes, yes," he tells it, "It appears I have survived a foul attempt on my life. For now at least, this appears much less feverish." He stands fully upright to survey his surroundings. "Well now, do you have anything to show me today?" he asks it.

In response, the Saint Bernard tilts its head.

"I will take that as a no," he says. "Well, in that case, it is time to find our friend again. Come along," he says, and pats his legs as he sets off. The dog doesn't hurry after him, but it does follow.

Mikkel proceeds out of his own space and quickly across the waters between the spaces. Today, underneath the surface, he thinks that he can see something long and sinuous stirring - something that he could swear fixes him with a single intent, glowing red eye - but he just speeds up to leave it behind. He is not intent on finding out what it is. Surely something bad. There is no way that this striking, beautiful dream world is any less dangerous than the troll-wastes he left behind.

It is farther than normal, maybe because of his infirm state, but he does see it - the trees, the river, the smell of burnt trees - and he makes tracks for it. The ground crunches reassuringly under his feet as he leaves the great expanse of the waters. Without the gentle lapping noise, the forest is so quiet, except for his Saint Bernard shuffling and snuffling through the trees. He takes a quick look down at his coat, not sure why it is so important, all of a sudden, that he look presentable. He has almost died, and he is concerned about his coat... why? He decided that is a mystery to puzzle over later as his coast is perfectly clean-looking, and compartmentalizes the thought.

"Onni," he calls into the trees. Silence. He crunches forward across the leaf litter. "Onni?" he asks again.

The forest is still quiet. Mikkel wrinkles his nose and forges deeper into the trees, looking for the overhang, or Onni's preferred perch. Nothing. No Onni, owl or otherwise, anywhere, or anywhere that he can-

Mikkel feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in a great wave. A great wave of trees springs up around him like a dark wall. He stiffens, and just as well, because there are talons pressed into the back of his neck. He can feel a couple of them draw blood, and had never realized how sharp owl talons were before this. Onni - hopefully this is Onni - doesn't hurt him.

"Please don't cut my neck open," Mikkel says with a calm that isn't entirely reflected in his mind.

"You," Onni hisses. That's definitely a beak clicking. "You shouldn't have barged in."

"I'm dreadfully sorry," Mikkel says. "However, I missed several days and needed to - ow - make sure that you were still present."

"I thought you would be dead by now."

"Comforting. Now, will you please get your talons out of my neck? I do very much like my neck and would prefer to keep it intact."

A moment of silence and then Onni unclenches his talons and lifts off from his shoulders to settle on a branch. Mikkel turns to get his first good look at him since he came. If it were possible for it to look like an owl is having a breakdown, that is how it looks. Onni's feathers are ruffled up, and there's a wild look in his too-human eyes.

"I take it Reynir updated you on the situation?"

"Yes," Onni rasps. "Yes he did. I thought that it would be my blasted cousin doing foolish things, but you've really outdone him there."

"I did what needed to be done," Mikkel said.

"And nearly died! I swear-!"

"Well, I am not dead, I am here now, and I would be most grateful if you could tell me what all that was about. Please," he adds.

A long silence. Then Onni ruffles his feathers. "There was an attack on my defenses a while ago. I hardly managed to repel it," he admits, and there's something worn so ragged in his voice and Mikkel feels pity twinge deep in his chest. "It hasn't come back but I'm afraid it will, and I am hardly in any state to repel it again."

"Do you know what it might have been?"

"Yes," Onni says without elaboration. "And then you're busy making a fool of yourself - aren't you the medic? Aren't you supposed to stay alive to keep everyone else alive?" He bristles a little at this. "Pardon me, but I just feel like I am cleaning up everyone else's messes here."

"I'm sorry," Mikkel says.

This seems to take him aback. "What?"

"I said that I'm sorry. You're under a great deal of stress right now, what with the uncertain fates of your sister and cousin, and whatever unknown threat is pursuing you. You've obviously stretched yourself thin helping us in the past and I'm aware that helplessness in the face of the danger of yourself or others is instrumental in forming trauma. I would be remiss if I didn't say something."

Onni stares. There's something so sad in it. That sadness is confirmed a moment later. "People don't think of me like that often," he says.

"Well, that is why I am here. Medics are supposed to look after others, and that does include mental wellbeing as well as physical. And, you'll have to forgive me for saying so, but I feel you've earned your place on this expedition, even if you have done so from a hundred miles away."

Onni stares more. It would be almost funny if Mikkel wasn't afraid he has overstepped his boundaries. Poor Onni looks like someone just broke a plate over his head.

"My apologies," Mikkel says, and dusts off his pant legs a little self-consciously. "That was perhaps more insight into your mental state than you are comfortable with. I will see myself out now, if you so want, I've confirmed what I was here for anyw-"

"Please don't."

"Hmm?"

"It's dangerous on those waters," Onni rushes to say, like a man doing his best to cover his ass. "And I would find company comforting," he admits after a moment, bristling up a little with pride. "So it would be best. If you just. Stayed. Until you're up again."

The man did not cover his ass successfully. But Mikkel plays along anyway, because why not let him try? "I will stay," he says. "Because I did see something with a great red eye in the water, and I do not, perhaps, fancy going back that way just tonight." He settles down into the moss, leaned back against his tree, and without asking this time, Onni takes off and then alights on his shoulder. He's a very warm feathery weight, even if Mikkel would be loathe to admit he actually enjoyed it. He leans his head against the rough bark and closes his eyes, listens to the noise of the forest around hi, listening to the noise of the birds coming back into the burned trees.

"Didn't know birds like heat this much," he says, without opening his eyes.

"Well, they do. Don't think it means anything."

Mikkel snorts, but he doesn't press the matter. He just drifts, this time on calm waters.