Disclaimer: I do not own any intellectual properties represented in this story and make no profit from it.
The gray traveler, the sounds of snapping bones and the dead hanging from gallows ropes behind him like echoes of memories from times so ancient there weren't numbers for them, walked into the Fire Kingdom in his cloak of gray and his robes of wolf furs, and though none knew why, none dared to stay his way.
They also could not say why they dreaded his eye upon them, cool and wise and so old it hurt to look.
A single eye, bright and brilliant and intense as the sun, stared down anyone, and voices raised in anger wilted. Flames faded as he passed, and his cloak swept the ashes behind them, and they fell into the sharp angles of runes. The two ravens on his shoulders cawed as he went, and they watched everything, one as attentive as memory and the other as fast as thought.
No one could stand to look into his eye. It was look gazing into the night sky, and having all the universe stare back at you and call you out on your impertinence.
And behind him, the sky rumbled, and the storms called out their hunger to rage.
(And the kingdoms of Ooo told stories about this man, if man he was. He looked human, but he didn't feel human. He felt like something that humans followed, and oh, didn't Ooo just tell stories about what bloodthirsty ravaging monsters humans were. They lived to fight, to kill, and they drank war like the finest wine. So they said, 'Beware the Gray Wanderer. Beware the human with one eye; Thought and Memory on his shoulders, and war following behind him. Magic is in his hand, more magic than all the wizards combined, and whenever he arrives, disaster is soon to follow him. He is Stormcrow, he is the Hang-Man, he is the shadow of winter. Give your murderers a noose and drop them to do the dance for him, and anoint their corpses in the liquors he loves, and pray that it feeds him. Pray that the Gray Wanderer does not darken your kingdom.
And for his part, the Gray Wanderer only smiles, and he says one mysterious thing.)
The doors to the Fire Kingdom's castle opened, and he strode to them.
The doors slammed shut when they saw him coming.
He didn't stop walking; he kept moving, as though he was a landlord on business and had all the right to be wherever he wished.
He kept walking. The door trembled, shaking with sudden force from outside.
Three more steps, four more steps, and with each one the hinges bent, the metal creaked, the doors lifted-
And the doors broke apart, metal raining down as though molten, and the fires outside outshined the fires within, and illuminated now was the wanderer; gray like ash, gray like old snow, gray like a dead yew tree felled by lightning.
One eye glared at them. He said nothing, and the guards were still as he walked over still molten metal pooling into liquid at their feet. His boots waded through, and it seemed that they offered no more harm to him than mist on an autumn wind.
The whispers and the frightened talk reached the chamber of the Fire Queen, she who had been the Flame Princess, before he himself arrived with the mien of a mighty lord approaching serfs who had not known he was coming, and she knew not of him personally but she knew that he was dangerous, and a trickster.
She was not disposed to like the idea of a trickster. They turned dishonesty into a weapon, shaped the world as they liked without care for how it was, and they made people as tools. So she sat straight and fierce, hoping to appear fearsome, and she kept glaring as the doors to her throne room opened on her orders.
And in, he stepped. Gray in visage, gray in color, and gray in mien. He walked, taller than a man and broader, the ravens on his shoulders silent now and watching everyone with gazes suggesting they would remember every face and name until the stars went cold. One eye; he was not a cyclops, but one eye was simply gone and covered by an eye patch, and the other was blue as the burned air left after a lightning strike, and his proud broad face was shadowed by thick hair that might have been blonde (the color of wisdom, his people had thought) long ago. His hair was white now, with a few faded streaks of light through it as if painted by a fading artist's hand.
She met that eye, more than halfway across the room, and something in her wanted to run and hide under a bed and never look out again. It was old. So very old. Older than stars, older than the canyons and the legends in them, older than the ruins of dead humanity, older than the weapons that had burned the world, and older than humans. Older than the world.
He was human. But he was not human. There was a thought in his face, and she read in it 'Trifle not with me, child, I will blow you out like a candle in the storm and there shall be nothing to say you had ever lived'.
And he kept walked. All her people and guards cowered and shied away, though a few had the courage to return his steady gaze with weak smiles, and then he stood before her. His cape fluttered, though there was no wind here. His eye stared at her, and the ravens did the same.
She returned his gaze. It was good that she was sitting down and in armor; it supported her and her legs felt like liquid under that stare. It was a smiting stare.
Finally, he tilted his head back, and nodded his head once. "Kings and queens, princes and princesses aiming for the throne, the scores of those going for the top; those are my business. You do well enough, by those who came before."
She said, "I'm sorry, but what?"
And he laughed, long and hard and raucous, like an amused beast.
She returned his one-eyed gaze when it turned back to her, his sudden good mood leaving as fast as it had come. She sucked in a breath that flared her flames, and said, "Why are you here?"
He said, expression placid, "Must I be here for a reason?"
"I have been told that your arrival always means certain doom."
"Perhaps," he said. He gave her a look. "I only come when it's important."
"And this?" She felt that she was in the presence of a great dignitary, of one higher than kings and queens.
"Very important." he sat down, and suddenly there was a chair under him where there had not been before. He smiled, and it was genuine. "Family matters, important to me."
Her flames turned many shades more bright, nearly white in their heat. She looked at his face, and yes, but no, it could not be… but… yes, it mgiht be…
She knew the curve of his jaws; grim and craggy with age, but there was a beautiful roundness to them. His hair, it was so thick, and full, like almost no one she had seen. The shape of his eyes, the curves of his lips… his features were not unusual, though they were striking. Out of context, she wouldn't have noticed them, and they were not unusual, but put them all together and… yes.
He looked so much like Finn.
Her flames dimmed, and she whispered, "It can't be."
"Can't argue with what's in front of you." He smiled, grim and fierce like an unsheathed blade. "No matter how certain your doom if you choose wrongly."
"You… you're…"
"I am what?" he challenged. "I am many things. I am the king of worlds far beyond this one. I am the Gray Wanderer. I am the one who taught humans glorious war, I am the one who will ride out at the end of days. I am the All-Father, I am the lord of the enheirjar, master of magic and wisdom and art. I am death and glory and story, wisdom and thought ride on my shoulders, and I go to war on the back of the trickster's child. I am all these things, and I am more, and I know what you know I am."
She swallowed, thick embers in her throat, and finally she said, "You're Finn's father. His real dad."
And he grins. Odin All-Father grins.
"That I am," he says.
All is silent.
She dares, "Why?"
She means, 'why are you here?' she means, 'why are you looking at me like that?' and she means so much more.
Odin only says, "I'm caring for the future."
And he laughed, clapped her on the shoulder.
"You're a strong ruler. You make him a fine friend." He tilts his head. "Keep him humble. Keep him strong. In time, that'll probably save your neck from him being an idiot." A long pause. "The thunder comes soon, and he won't be Finn anymore, but he'll still be your friend."
Impossible for a fire elemental to feel cold, but she manages it. "I don't understand…!"
"You will. Oh yes, you will. All too soon." He smiles, and clasps her hand, as though she were his daughter. "I'll be watching. One eye, when I can spare the time. Good luck, my dear."
And then he was gone, as though he had not been.
In her dreams, she remembered rainbow light, like a hole opening into another, greater world.