Takes place in an AU that includes 'Daddy's Little Monster' but I don't know if it includes the more recent episodes because I haven't seen them yet.

I'm honestly not sure what the Nightosphere's culture is like, so I took a wild stab at applying the draconian laws of Cecelyne from Exalted to them, a sort of Darwinian survalism as law, with liberal splashes of the intense bereaucracy we saw in that episode. I deliberately made it at odds with Abadeer's personality just because I think he'd enjoy jackassing with people that way.

Odin's characterization is largely inspired by Neil Gaiman's portrayal of him as Mr. Wednesday in American Gods, with a slightly more aggressive touch of Anthony Hopkins' playing of him in Thor. Hugin and Munin' portrayals are mostly taken from the way they act in the fluff sections of the tabletop roleplaying game Scion, particularily when they appear in Eric Donner's introduction story in the very begining of the first book, Scion: Hero.

Disclaimer: I don't own Adventure Time or Marvel Comics version of the Norse gods. Pretty sure Norse mythology itself falls under public domain, though.

To the demons that lived under his rule and cruelly fickle whim, Hunson Abadeer was not a particularily subtle overlord; his sadistic moments were plain enough to give all a warning to flee from his path before the mad god of the Nightosphere came, reshaping all of this land of fire and hate into ever more monstrous and debased forms, and remaking all those unfortunate enough to catch his interest into the shapes that pleased his off-kilter aesthetics.

He was not, the general opinion went, a bad overlord. (They once had a visit of rival powers show up once, a rather nasty entity named Slaneesh, and from the horror story her minions said, the demons of the Nightosphere thought they rather had a decent deal going on.) It was not in the nature of those who inhabited the Nightosphere to be particularily displeased with having more powerful people screw around with them. The laws of the Nightosphere were cruel by design and largely arbitary to make the pain all the sweeter (and of them all 'the strong shall enslave the weak and the weak shall worship them for it' was the most sacred), each demon knew that he was doomed by nature and design, and it was taught that chaos, the total abandonment of all rationale and logic and order, was to be shunned and eradicated whenever it was found, and it pleased Hunson Abadeer that they should wail in despair that they knew how chaotic and random their master was, or indeed try to slay him as a betrayer of his own law; it was always fun to have a good fight, and he liked making sure that he had a steady supply of battles for him. In short, the demons did not really have a concept of 'bad' as such. At the very least, Hunson Abadeer made it quite plain what his horrible fate for you was.

That he did harbor thoughts and feelings that he did not share or make obvious would have been a startling thing for his demons, perhaps even unthinkable enough for them to dismiss such notions out of hand.

That he had friends or at least non-antagonistic comrades among the mightiest of Powers was well-known, and they always dreaded when they came by.

Things tended to get broken.

The Nightosphere had overgone a moment of turmoil and chaos greater than any that it had seen it in many aeons, the obession with bereaucracy and obedience to law engendered by countless ages of whim-forged but totally ironclad rules torn asunder by a human and a dog's political rap (and such raps were not uncommon in the depths of the Nightosphere; chaos existed even under the boot of false Law, and whimsy was one of the greater delights Hunson Abadeer bestowed to his demons alongside pain and paranoia) had been given over to complete chaos and anarchy.

Hunson Abadeer, enseated in the mountanous palace where Marceline's friends had discovered her during that badly done plan to have her take his own place, overlooked his realm with a smile and a sense of satisfaction, drnking in the total surrender of impulse and want to the creatures in his charge. To say that he cared for nothing was a misnomer; not unlike his daughter, Abadeer was a creature of impulse himself, with no real overriding goal apart from his whim of the moment...and yet always he was freed from base wantonness by the passions he held, the intimacies he kept close to his heart (and he did have a heart, dull and twisted and maddened though it was) and the people he cared about more than any other. Marceline and the Nightosphere were dearest to him more than anything else, and it was natural that he had tried to bind them closer together so that their respective futures might be assured. That he had failed didn't bother him so much; Marceline had dear friends indeed to go to such lengths to rescue her, and she had never been happier than ever he had seen her when she'd been around that boy.

For the moment, he was content, if quietly dissatisfied with his daughter's stance on her inheritance. Even so, there was much to distract him; the Nightosphere was going mad with violence and reaching pleasing levels of weirdness as the new anarchic standards were becoming the new state of normality for it, a state of affairs he found most pleasing even though it was calming down and he had no particular need to tend to anything.

And yet, he could not quite keep himself from musing about the boy that had gone to such insane lengths to save Marceline. Boy was not a pleasant word he really wanted associated with Marceline, being a rather old-fashioned fellow when it came to other men around his daughter (that Ash fellow had certainly not met with his approval, and perhaps Ash only continued to live because he had only become aware of his general suckitude after Marceline had broken from him), and yet he had a bit of a soft spot towards thoughts of Marceline claiming that boy as her own. He was younger, certainly, and that kept the issues of dominance nicely in his daughter's favor. And Good aligned romantic partners, while quite prone to upsetting all he was at his core, were...well, Good, they made the world actually seem worthy and more than just corruption and nihilism and the certain emptiness that lay at the root of Evil (and here he was able to memories both pleasant and sadly nostalgiac come, at the memory of his wife-that-was)...

And yet, all the same, there had been something strange about that boy. Something almost familiar. Something that tasted like thunder, and lightning, and snow on stone, and of Fate-

(Sometime, it's just stray little thoughts like that that let Fate sit back with a nasty grin, crack it's knuckle, and start making everyone miserable.)

A thunderous crash interrupted his thoughts and shattered his home, stopped them cold as the very rock around him trembled with the great weight that had smashed into it with the force of ten thousand thunderbolts.

His thoughts came crashing back, drowning in the flurry of maddened bewilderment rising from the minds of his demons into his own, a vast and terrible noise almost as loud as the physical sounds of panic rising up and briefly louder than the background noise of all the frightfulness of the Nightosphere. Then there was just the sound of thousands and thousands of demons screaming out in utter mortal fear, and then about a few million more of the same, nearly every denizen of his Nightosphere sharing a single moment of complete existential panic.

In a flash Hunson Abadeer was on his feet and marching forward, to the great pillars that opened onto his high view of the Nightosphere on his mountain, and in the great endless red sky over his realm were starlit clouds that should not have been there, there was a staggeringly brilliant rainbow glow radiating for all to see, a beauty that did not belong in this world, and so bright and resounding with power beyond any of his demons or even his own-

Like a hole to another realm, this rainbow gateway. Or as it's makers called it, the Bifrost Bridge.

Hunson Abadeer knew that glow, and a sinking feeling grew even as the glow faded and the clouds vanished, and he heard the loud yelling deeper in his own home. Long years of never ever swearing out loud in front of Marceline had left their mark. All he could saw was, "Aw, dang."

A small imp appeared next to Abadeer. "Sir!" It chattered. "What was that!"

"Nothing!" Abadeer said, a little too quickly. "Give me a heads-up. What are people doing?"

"People are panicking; there's a riot in the Moderately Unpleasant Quarter, a full-scale war is breaking out between prophets of oblivion who won't agree on what this means, someone stockpiled war machines and now they're rolling right over ten city blocks at a time even as we speak, and the shaking made your soda box all fizzy!"

"Oh, well, fizziness isn't so bad," Abadeer said reasonably. "And the rest, I say encourage it." He waved dismissively. "G'wan, I got some business to take care of. Tell everyone to get out of my house, I want me some privacy."

The imp blinked. "Er, what-"

"Go. NOW."

"Yes, sir." The imp vanished in a puff of fire moments before Abadeer could summon up the power to annhilate it from existence in spite of his previous order. He shrugged, and went on his way, passing out through the pillars and floating up-

Yep. As he'd expected, there was a massive crater right in the middle of his palace roof (if it qualified as a palace, he wasn't actually sure or really interested), still smouldering with arcs of light shining in all the colors refrected in a rainbow, and a few that weren't. The air was stained gold by some lingering power, and curiously the smell of old alcohol.

Abadeer landed on the roof, walking to the hole and rolling his eyes theatrically as he looked down. Layers on layers and even more layers of his own home, smashed right through on down to the very personal living quarters he had fashioned in the style of the time of humans before the bombs had fallen and it had all gone to hell (by his own estimation, too). His home, invaded and violated, so much damage and it would take forever to fix even with the royal mess Marceline's boy had made-

"Well, things are getting even less boring," Abadeer said encouragingly, with a faint suspicion brightening at the dawning certainty of who had done this, and who was here-

A suspicion confirmed when two oildrop-dark shapes flitted from the air, glowing with brightness against all the odds; two birds, far larger than any of their species ever could have been, flapping right around him and cuffing him on the face a few times and alighting smugly on two particularily large bits of rock cast up when the great force had smashed into his home.

The two birds, of a sort that had not been seen in Ooo nor the Nightosphere nor most any part of existence in over a thousand years (it took Abadeer a moment to recall - ornithology had never been an interest of his - and then the word raven came sliding into his mind as if whispered from other forces; yes, these bird were ravens) stared at Abadeer, preening for a bit, dark as the shadows cast by the brightest of lights and still brighter than anything in his realm for all of that. They were big, these ravens, and they looked at Abadeer with a largely indifferent expression not normally reserved for the being who fashioned himself the Lord of Evil.

"Hey," Abadeer said, trying to affect casual disdain for the fact that there was a Glob-damned giant hole in his house and now these birds were here and now everything was going to be annoying. "So. Come for a visit, huh? Y'know, most people call their drinking buddies to them they're dropping in."

"That's for people with time to waste," said the nearer of the two ravens in a croak of a voice as sharp and quick as thought itself, and while Abadeer had some trouble remembering their species, he certainly remembered that the name of this bird was Hugin quite well enough.

"Now now, old friend," the other raven replied to Hugin in a far more measured voice, perhaps a bit slow (for croaking, anyway) but extraordinarily clear; if memory had a voice, it might sound like this. Abadeer remembered liking this one a fair bit (as much as he liked anyone) and that this raven was named Munin came to his mind quickly enough. "Some prefer their lives a bit more sedate. Calling ahead has been appreciated in the past."

Hugin gave Munin a look. "'Sedate'? You call that living?"

Yep, Abadeer thought. Talking sarcastic ravens. That settled it. These two never went anywhere without their boss...Abadeer amended that thought to 'these two never went anywhere and made themselves obvious without their boss'. Most of the time anyway. Abadeer coughed meaningfully. Hungin and Munin glanced up at him, startled. "So, if it's you two...yeah, your boss has dropped in for a visit, hasn't he."

It was a statement, not a question, and the ravens seemed to understand. "Thought you of all things liked having your peers come around," Hugin said. "You hardly ever leave anymore, let alone give anyone the heads-up you're visiting."

"Family's important too," Abadeer said coolly. "I've been busy with that."

The ravens looked at each other, then at Abadeer. "Family, huh?" Said Hugin, and Munin said, "Curious that you should say such."

Abadeer frowned. "What do you mean?"

They hesitated. "The old man's come for a word or two," Hugin said, speaking very carefully, at least by his own standards. "You should listen. It's related to your own affair. But I'd take it careful, he's been in a real mood."

"What's that all about?"

"Not our place to say," Munin said. "But with your children knowing each other, it's well worth discussion."

Abadeer almost shouted, "Say what? The Abyss are you talking about! What's that all about, I don't..." He stopped. A few pernitent details came to him. "Is this why he's here? Something big has happened and it's to do with me?"

Munin shook his head after a moment of brief discussion with Hugin. "As I said. It is not our place to say."

Hugin said, "It's the old man's business, and yours' maybe. Not ours'."

Abadeer dispised crypticness (when it was being addressed at him); he cast his mind back for annoyances that would needle the ravens, and remembered an old poem and he grinned. He might have done this even if they hadn't annoyed him. He simply wouldn't be who he was if he resisted the urge to needle people. "Why don't you say 'Nevermore'," he said snidely.

Both birds bristled, old and quickly retrieved fury ripping it's way right up. "That wasn't funny the first eighty hundred thousand time you said it and it's stupid Norns-cursed STUPID!" Hugin yelled.

"Really! I don't know whatever came through the head of that poet, but after so much cultural mnesis, it is simply not clever!" Munin said.

Both ravens began bickering and arguing hotly over 'that damned poem, why did they never stop it' and Abadeer chuckled and walked past them, hopping lightly into the hole.

Past all the broken hole-stricken layers of his home he fell, amused for a moment by all the demon attendents in complete and utter panic, and then his fall was arrested by the ground of his suburban-styled living room, an enormous amount of dust choking the whole place, and he landed so softly and quietly that gravity seemed less of a physical law and more of a mild suggetion to him.

Dust-streaked carpet crunched under his shoes as he strode by past an ancient couch faced with a small dining table and a large TV placed on a desk before it (and he failed to notice that it was so much like his own daughter's living room, and perhaps she yearned for the family life with him more than he thought), moving through the splintered mess where he remembered a door being there and right into his kitchen-

The cupboards had been ransacked, dry food boxes mysteriously emptied of their contents. Busted soda cans had been drained and crushed into a neat pile arranged in a quite neat pyramid structure (bearing unusual degrees of complexity in it). His fridge was open, the half-eaten food he'd left earlier that had filled his fridge past capacity now all gone with only crumps and bones and containers left. Abadeer's head slowly turned from where many mangled boxes of beer littered the floor in a trail, their drained cans stomped flat in a scattering of detritus all around not unlike shrapnel loosed from a particularily nasty battle, down the long and somewhat narrow confine of his kitchen, his counters a mess and the cupboards ransacked and the dishes were all out of order, and the whole mess lead to the bachelor's dining table tuckered away into the corner of the kitchen.

A god in the shape of a massive Nordic man glanced at him as he took notice of the master of this realm entering his own kitchen, and gulped down the rest of the beer can he'd been drinking, crushing it flat with a practiced twist of his hand and tossing it backwards into another pyramid-shaped pile in the corner. (Right next to the trash can, a most insulting thing.) "Your door's broke," the god said, carelessly wiping off beer from his bearded lips with a furred glove, the supernal armor adorning his body clinking as he did, and with his free hand he clutched a matching helmet; oddly proportioned, with absurdly massive projections rising up, and spectacled opening for the eyes.

"Yeah, I noticed," Abadeer said flatly. "You broke it."

"Tacky door. Needed fixing. Now you can fix it. Oughta be thinking me," the god opined. He settled his helmet on the dining table, producing a distressing creak from the labored furniture as it struggled to deal with it's weight. The god took no notice and turned to face Abadeer; even sitting down he was nearly as tall as Abadeer (though perhaps he had shaped his body like that) and far broader, resembling the giants that he called kin and his children often called 'wife', and as he fixed Abadeer with a strangely distant expression, Abadeer got nothing less than a sense of total desolation come from every aspect of him; his graying beard and shoulder-length hair had only a few stubborn traces of auburn like the last dying fires in a snowstorm, his heavy jaw seemed set in a permanently fatalistic grimace, and the wrinkles in his face had set in such a way that it looked like he'd be in mourning for a very, very long time and wasn't going to stop anytime soon. And most notably of all, he had only one eye; the other was covered by a ornate eyepatch, and the skin was ragged and weathered and scarred, as if he'd torn it out with his own bare hands for mysterious purposes.

(This was, in fact, precisely the case.)

Practically radiating raw badassery, the god turned to Abadeer and his power rudely smashed Abadeer right in the consciousness, a open declaration of challenge on his own territory. Abadeer rallied, his face turning into a horror beyond mortal ability to withstand, and the god simply stared at him. His armor, of the same ridiculous and oddly alien (and yet so very Scandinavian) mode, glowed with ancient runes radiating with divine power that shone slightly more intense as he stared challengingly at his friend, if friend he was. "Hunson Abadeer," He finally said. "'Lord of Evil'," he added, making a 'quotes' gesture as he mocked the title.

Abadeer hesitated, and relented. "Odin, Allfather of the Aesir," he said, for it was customary among being such as them to out awesome them with their titles. He had to admit, he was losing just a bit.

Odin One-Eye. Odin Allfather. Odin Stormcrow. Odin 'That Norse god who was really the inspiration for Gandalf'. And, by coincidence and old habit, one of Abadeer's drinking buddies from all the places frequented by the great Powers of the multiverse.

Odin regarded him for a moment, and suddenly he stood up, the fur cape worn over his armor ruffled, and he laughed like a madman, clapping Abadeer around the shoulder with barely a touch that still nearly knocked Abadeer head-over-feet. As it was, he just barely managed to stay on his feet and bend nearly half over.

"It's been a long time, Abadeer," Odin said, calming a bit. "Long since we last spoke, anyway."

"Busy busy," Abadeer said, trying to ignore the horrendous pain in his back. They said Odin had killed the Titan of Cold, Ymir, with his bare hands, and Abadeer was inclined to believe it. "Haven't heard anything from you in a while."

"Well," said Odin, and quick as snow on a blizzard, silencing all hope, the Allfather's mood turned from cheerfully violent to depressive again, perhaps quirked by this reminder of laped communication. "I haven't seen you in any of the Overworld in a long time."

Abadeer didn't look at him for a long time. He was barely distracted from the fluttering of Hugin and Munin flying into the room and alighting on the counters, staring at him with great dislike. Eager to silence the growing feeling of badness going on, he said, "Those pets of yours' better be trained, it's messy enough in here."

Hugin and Munin croaked furiously. Odin's eye flashed at him warningly. "They are not my pets," He said flatly. "They work for me, and they are my friends." His words had an implicit threat: 'Don't insult my friends.'

Wounding the Loyalty of one of the Aesir was a very good way to get yourself dead; as a matter of fact, it was on the top ten list of Ways To Commit Suicide When Immortality Gets Boring. (Abadeer had been quite alarmed when Marceline had been delving into that list a couple of hundred years ago, but as it turned out she was just trying to get rid of a non-Nightosphere demon lord that didn't understand that she didn't want to date him.)

Abadeer winced. No matter what he did he couldn't understand the effect he was having on this man. "Sorry," he lied, not really caring if he heard the birds' feelings or not, and realizing a moment later that Hugin and Munin, being of the Aesir, were fairly likely to take revenge by drinking his eyes right out of his head, and in the proper mood Odin was likely to hold him down to let them.

Odin grunted, calming somewhat. It might have just been his imagination, but Abadeer thought that old Odin seemed a lot more volatile than he had been.

"What are you doing in my house?" Abadeer said, trying to muster some vestige of superiority. This was his domain after all. "Not just here to face me down, hmm?"

Odin looked at him. "No," he said. "I want to..." He gestured vaugely, Abadeer had no idea what that meant. Odin slumped slightly and just said,"...to...talk."

Abadeer stared at him. "...I'm not buying it. You never come around for a chat! Not with me, not with anyone! You always show up when something monumentally bad is about to happen! Like when you told me off about what you know before the humans let the bombs fall and nuked themselves into oblivion! I lost my daughter for a while, you could have told me sooner!" Abadeer stiffened, old wounds and slights welling up, and he hissed, "You coming around is always bad news."

Odin's myterious moods only brightened at these insults. He smirked, perversely pleased by old memories. "I only come when it's important." He frowned. "And this is something that concerns you, Abadeer."

Abadeer clicked his teeth, disdainfully. "And you say this why? What prompt of goodwill makes you say that, 'Allfather'?"

Odin glared at him. "I earned my title. You didn't earn yours. And this concerns you because it concerns your daughter, you thrice-damned soul-feasting half-blind dumbass."

"What about Marceline now? And hey, now you're just being rude."

"And you continue to be incredibly bad at PAYING ATTENTION!"

In the eight or so seconds it took for Odin to say that, Abadeer had somehow managed to find his toaster and start stuffing it full of ice cream for some reason. "Eh, what?"

Odin facepalmed. It probably hurt a lot because he was wearined gauntlets. Abadeer asked, "Sooo, why the full-scale armor? You're not exactly gonna fight anyone."

"Are you daft? I'M ODIN ALLFATHER! King of the Aesir! Lord of Asgard! I AM ALWAYS READY TO FIGHT AND YELL! Mostly yell, we're quite big on being large hams up there."

"You don't mean actual large hams, right? As in excessively sized pork products. Because that gives me an even strangers mental image of you than I already had-"

"No no no, of course not! What kind of- bah, that's not the point!" Odin took a mighty effort to stay the course and remain focused (a desperate effort, all things considered)...and he slumped back, angry and so tired it leaked out from him, entropic energies hissing away and turning the floortiles under him gray and cracking and so very ready to just break. "Bah. Sometimes I wonder why I bother."

Abadeer paused. He pushed the ice creamed toaster away and gave the Allfather of Asgard a long and uncertain look; he had seemed old before, but not he looked old, not just a man who had more than his fair share of winters but a warrior who had been fighting longer than there had been memories for them all, who had quietly resigned himself and his family to the certain doom awaiting them. The destiny written in stone, the fate of Ragnarok.

Not many who knew the Aesir personally liked to speak or even think of the Doom of the Aesir. That all their deaths had been foretold longer before Ooo had ever been forged from the broken remnants of the human's world that had come before; that the monstrous children of Odin's own son would break the world; Jormagund the world serpent, bound under the world and beneath the seas since his creation, battle Odin's most beloved son and the Aesir loved most by humans and that they would kill each other and break the world in the process. That the father of those monsters would die in personal battle against Heimdall and kill him in the process. That Odin himself would be devoured alive by Fenris the wolf, only to be avenged by his son Vidur god of vengeance, and above it it was the murderer of the world Surtr, lord of the Fire Giants, the living embodiment of fire in it's most destructive form, mightiest avatar of Muspelheim the Titan of Fire itself, and on his blazing blade the world would break, Freyr would die, and the world would burn.

And all things of the world would die too.

The stories went on. Some had changed in the telling, the truth hard to discern from exaggeration and the rumor of frightened people who thought that you could catch fated oblivion from the Aesir's kin, but the basic point of Ragnarok and those destined to die in it was, if not common knowledge, at least not particularly hard to hear about for the beings of magic and immortality.

"Oh look, it's all awkward now," Abadeer said. He coughed, meaningfully.

Odin looked at him, calculatingly. He seemed to think for a moment, putting his words together, and then he spoke carefully, and these words visibly hurt him to spoke, like they dragged iron hooks across his heart as he thought of them. The time had come to talk of the matters he wished to speak of. "You know of my lost sons. Thor and Loki."

Abadeer felt the awkwardness get even worse. "Of course I know," He said, finding it hard to speak. He had never met Thor or Loki, never met the mightiest hero of the Aesir or the insane trickster doomed and damned to be the single most unlucky bastard Abadeer had ever heard of; he'd seen people say that they were 'driven into villainy', but Abadeer thought that Loki had been shoved every step of the way.

He certainly knew that both of them were dead. The nuclear war of the humans had done it's cruel work; Thor had died stopping the worst of the bombs from destroying all life, and Loki had vanished a few hundred years afterwards with only his fledgeling children, crafted in the image of the fire giants Loki was descended from, had started to build what would one day become the Fire Kingdom. Loki had not merely disappeared, though; they said he had cut out his own grieving heart and burned himself to dust, turning the land around him into eternal flames with the heat his spiteful heart had burned with to give his children a place to live and be at peace. It was perhaps the one thing Loki had ever done right.

Abeer stared at Odin. The greatest virtue of his Aesir, and of the human cultures that had either made them or been made by them, was loyalty. Loyalty of father to children, among other things. Above only betrayal was total failure and abandonment of one's child and kin the most awful thing he could have done.

Odin said nothing for a moment. Likely, this all pressed on him. He waited for a moment and said, seemingly off-topic, "I hear your daughter is doing well."

"Oh, Marceline! Yes, certainly." Abadeer smiled, suddenly, and it was not the sort of smile most were accustomed to seeing from him. "She's actually happy. I haven't seen her like that in a long time. I haven't seen her in a long time at all, really but...oh, I'm sure you know. It does a man good to see his kid so happy." His smile faltered. "Kind of hurts, that she's only that happy when she's nowhere near me or has anything to do with me."

"Yes," Odin said quietly. "It does." He looked at Abadeer. "It never stops hurting. Sometimes, when you think about how good they're doing for themselves, even if they want nothing to do with you? It takes over the pain. Little bit, anyway. Maybe that's good enough, for some folk."

"...Yes," Abadeer said, quiet and sad. "I miss her. So much. It would have been good to have her here, but..." he shrugged, and it hurt even more admitting it. "She's happy now. She has friends. That's good enough for me."

Odin looked at him strangely. "You never worry that they might abandon her if they all found out whose child she was? What she really is? Not just a vampire, but half humanoid abomination? Or they might turn on her completely, because she never told them and all trust dies in that moment?"

"Always, Odin. It frightens me a lot." Abadeer tilted his head away, unable to look at another grieving father.

Odin just stared blankly into space, looking beyond these pale dimensions. The look in hi eyes was cold and bitter, and Abadeer did not want to know what he was thinking. "I know the feeling."

This seemed confusing. "But all your surviving family is there with you, or at work in Ooo." It was said, none of the gods loved by humans had left. There were those who whispered of the shadow of Baron Samedi still showing the grieving dead how to dance until they moved right onto the path of peace even as he found the mouldering bodies of his worshippers dead in the slave trade and taking them home to the remnants of ancient Africa; or of she who had been Aphrodite, walking the barren places of the world and sowing the power of green growing things by virtue of her presence. Or of Horus of the Pesedjet, flying in the shape of a hawk and holding on to the power of Law and bringing it to those people who would build new kingdoms and bring the world closer to civilization step by step... But the gods, largely, were accounted for, save for those who had left the world that had forgotten them behind, or who had died with humanity.

But then, it was also said, the legends of the gods never died. They just took new names and new faces, born again and their legends reshaped.

Odin stared at Abadeer, and Abadeer could feel the powers of Fate converge on this moment, a brief point in time where all things might change or break, final momentous words that would change all things. And Odin spake, "Thor and Loki are alive. And you have met Thor twice now."

For Abadeer, there were no words, not for several long moments of a silence as thick as the blood that had drowned the world and left humanity nearly dead.

"My sons are alive," Odin said, and almost in a whisper, a hope-maddened declaration.

Abadeer had a long moment to decide what to say. Several choices seemed apparent to him. He didn't say 'What, really?' It just sounded stupid. Nor did he say 'Are you certain?' because that would have probably just ticked Odin off. And he definitely did say any variations on 'that's not possible' because if Odin was saying it was so, than it was so. Careful and precise was Odin Allfather, he of plans so bright and mighty that they forestalled Ragnarok for aeons still. Finally Abadeer said, "How?"

"Loki never died," Odin said. "He simply...faded, I suppose. In time he forgot himself, made new lies to drape himself in and conned himself into thinking that he had never been anyone else. He calls himself the Magic Man now, playing cruel tricks to enlighten others when it does not merely make them suffer, and he does it to forget his own pain. He had completely forgotten everything he'd used to be; his brothers, his crimes, his children...me." He shook his head. "I don't blame him. Loki has been maddened too often by his pain for me to begrudge him this overmuch. I have reason to think that Loki has already begun to remember himself...and he has already suffered in his new life. I fear it is his doom to suffer until he goes mad and wretched with it."

"And what about your other son? What was his name...Thor?"

"How the hell did you forget Thor's name?" Hugin said.

"He's only the greatest and most famous of the Aesir," Munin said scornfully.

"Thor died," Abadeer said, ignoring them. "What's this all about?"

"He did die," Odin said. "He died like the hero he is, the legend he carved into the fate of all humanity. He saved the world from the worst of it's own madness, and died as he would have liked. And there is power in working with one's legend like that. I might have thought he'd returned sooner, but his death was so terrible and...after Sif had died..." Odin shook his head again, slowly and pained. "Thor went mad, I think. I had feared he had drifted away from his own legend to deny him the power to come back again, as he has before. And yet..." He breathed in, and out, and his breath trembled, and it was that he could hardly dare to believe what he was saying. "Thor lives again."

Abadeer waited. He knew not to push a father still in grief.

"Nearly fifteen years ago, I have learned, Thor was reborn as a human, to human parents. I know not how, or how they were lost, but he was abandoned by them. Left to rot in the forest, like a beast!" He trembled, fists clenched, and Abadeer remembered that Odin was the god of war, the god of death. He did not envy whoever these unlucky humans were, to have left Odin's reborn son to die.

The hands uncurled. "And then he was found, and adopted." Odin smiled, and there was no artifice or deception there, just simple joy. "By a family of dogs. And they named him Finn."

For a moment, Abadeer's mind drew a very intricate image of the immediate future. He felt he was obliged to say something. "Finn, you say."

"Yes."

"The human boy; blond hair, short and kinda chubby, likes the color blue, thinks his weird looking hat is stylish."

"Yes."

"Associates extensively with my daughter."

"Yes."

A long, long pause.

"I don't suppose you're mad about the whole 'trying to suck out his soul a few times' thing?" Abadeer said hopefully.

Odin stared at him. Abadeer was intensely grateful Odin had not brought his all-slaying spear Gungnir with him. "Yes," Odin snarled.

"Honest mistake!" Abadeer yelped. "Hey, you know, some people just have gut reactions, I hear a guy say he's super-good, I gotta do some THINGS, you know! Heh heh...you're going to rip my head off and do horrible invasive things to the stump, aren't you?"

"I'm still considering it," Odin warned him. He glowered several moments longer, eye narrowed and a vein pulsing in his head, and it was with a mighty effort of will that he restrained himself from action. "Hunson Abadeer. I stay my hand, because we are in the same boat."

"Oh, good. Uh, what boat?"

The two ravens made a indigant croak that was probably an insult at his expense.

Odin rolled his eye. "My son. Your daughter. They're extremely good friends. Do I really need to draw you a picture?"

"Preferably not mature-rated," Hugin joked. Munin scoffed at such crudity.

"Don't say crude things about my daughter," Hunson Abadeer said matter-of-factly, a picture perfect example of a calm exterior hiding an internal storm.

"Sorry," Hugin said. "Nah, not actually sorry."

"Stop heckling him," Odin said offhandedly. Hugin relented.

"I don't suppose this is an arranged marriage you have in mind?" Abadeer said hopefully. He could think of worse situations. "...What would the children look like?" Thor's mother was a giantess, he remembered, one of the Avatars of the Titan of Earth. That complicated things, maybe.

Odin half-smiled at the thought. "It's crossed my mind and it's certainly an avenue we ought to explore, but that's not why I'm here." Odin tapped his foot thoughtfully. "THe World must know that Thor has returned, and Loki restored to sanity. And Thor has forgotten himself, and I intend to see to it that he is made to remember."

"That's it?" Abadeer said. "Huh. From all your build-up I thought you had some big plan to be set up."

Odin stared at him. "I want my sons back," He said plainly. "I want them safe, I want them sane, and I want them happy. What more need any father ask?" He gave him a look. "Your thoughts, I imagine, are already present. Speak them."

Abadeer considered his next remarks for a moment. "Loki looks like he can handle his own issues. He's coming back on his own, but..., yeah, you've considered that Finn- er, Thor, might just be happier not knowing who he is? What's happened to him? What's going to happen?"

Odin said nothing for a brief time. "I have considered it," he whispered. "I worry, you know. He is young, and as headstrong as ever. I don't know that his friends might still accept him if they learn that he is a god of thunder in the flesh. Those women that care for him, particularily your daughter and that princess of the Candy Kingdom he cares for so much? I wonder what they shall do when they learn that he has never told them the truth, even if he never knew it himself." He shook his head. "It will happen. I cannot stop it, and I don't think it would help to try."

He whispered, a small quiet thing. "I miss them. But I don't think my direct intervention will do anything but make things worse for them both. Espicially Thor."

Abadeer blew out a largely unneeded breath, whistling on his inhuman teeth. "Have you...ah," He was hardly an expert on this, but he was father enough to know that it was too stupidly simple not to say it. "I don't know, tried talking to your kids? Just appearing like the god you are and telling them? Maybe breaking it easy to them?" More hopefully, he said, "You could be a family again. Take them home. Me and Marcy are doing pretty well, why not your kids?"

Odin stared at him from his eye, his mouth working underneath his thick manly beard. The ravens stared at Abadeer. Finally, Odin blew out a breath of his own - as cold and fierce as the winds of the countries that had made him, had loved him - and turned his eyes away towards an unattended beer can. His hands clutched the can, going white at the knuckles, and he looked again at Abadeer with a gaze as lost and forsaken as any of the gods forgotten by the World in this day and age. Perhaps moreso, for few suffered as badly as the Aesir had in that ancient cataclysm that had ringed in the end of the era of humanity.

"No," Odin said, his voice weary and quiet and old beyond measure. "I know my sons. Thor doesn't know me any more and Loki's too fate-damned stubborn to admit he misses me. And even if Thor remembered who he was and Loki got together some damned bits of sense together? No, they wouldn't want to see me. Thor has his own life to live and he will believe I left him alone because I didn't want him. I should have found him years ago, but I never knew until it was too late. And Loki's too damned close to his big masterplan to get distracted now."

"They don't want to see me," Odin said again. He laughed sourly, and added, "I wouldn't want to see me."

One of the ravens - Hugin, Abadeer thought - rolled it's eyes, a strangely human gesture to see and made bizarre by the raven's crazy rolling attempt. "Oh, Ymir's crotch, he's going maudlin on us."

"Shut it, beakface," Odin said, not bothering to turn around.

The other raven, Munin, clucked disapprovingly. "Now now, Hugin my friend, antagonizing our central comrade will not pull him out of this funk."

"Maybe, but sniping at him is it's own reward," Hugin retorted.

"Of that," Munin said grudgingly. "We are at an accord."

"You're an unkindness, the both of you," Odin said grumpily.

"Of course we are," They replied.

"The three of you are your own traveling comedy routine," Abadeer observed, trying to lighten the mood.

Odin grinned a bit at that. "You should have seen the fuss I raised when I popped down to the bottom of the ocean to see how the Baron Samedi was getting on with bringing his people back home. Put a smile on the old bone-man's face. Hard to tell, with his looks, but it puts a good feel on all the same."

"So," Abadeer said. "Is this why you came down here? To talk shop as fathers? Maybe give me a heads-up on Marcy having her friend wind up being Thor and her suitor? Or do you have some big plan in mind and you want me in on it?"

"I always have a plan," Odin said, with just a hint of his usual smugness. It faded quickly. "But...well, your child is involved. You have a right to know what she's getting involved in."

"And if I tell Marceline that her friend is a god reborn? One of the mightiest heroes of Earth in the flesh again?"

"...I would prefer you didn't," Odin said quietly. "But it's your choice. Do what's right by your child. And I will do what's right by mine."

This was said with just a hint of a threat. 'Don't you DARE turn my son's friend against him'.

Abadeer had no plans that way, even at the thought. Marceline'd had enough pain in her life.

He chuckled. "I know what you need. More beer!"

"Hrmm?" Odin said.

Abadeer gave him a light punch, brusing his hand a bit. "C'mon. I know this great club Erzulie has going in the Concordant Domain of The Outlands, and I know forty other places just as nice. Have a drink or two or six dozen, it'll do you some good. We can talk 'bout our kids a bit, let me know what Marcy's gotten herself into and maybe I'll return the favor for your boy Thor. Cook up some lifeplans for Loki while we're at it. It'll be fun!"

Odin seemed to consider, and Abadeer saw a man who was in desperate need of a drink heavy enough to kill a planet of oxen from forty paces. A ghost of a smile cracked his jaw from the stony countenence it seemed stuck in. "Are you challenging me to a drinking contest and a pub crawl?"

"Drinking contest, pub fights, a little light annihilation...it's all good."

Odin considered. "Well," said the Allfather, a god stricken between a father who had lost his sons only to find them again and the awful certainty that they would hate him. "I see no reason why not."

"A bargain, then."

The birds fluttered onto Odin's shoulders, and Odin and Hunson Abadeer left (after setting up a little light reconstruction effort), and on the way out to the local interdimensional portal network, Abadeer asked why Odin had seen it neccesary to blast his house open on the way in.

Odin said, "It seemed like fun."

And that, Abadeer would brood later on, said everything you needed to know about Odin and his sons.