Valkyries (Will Guide You Home)
Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural or anything associated with it. I also didn't invent Norse mythology.
There were figures in the snow that was falling down.
Gabriel had actually been in Vermont when the call from Kali came. Mercury was just preparing the Elysian Fields Motel when he was trying to decide whether to go or stay.
His mind kept screaming at him to do the right thing for once.
There were figures in the snow around him, and their silhouettes became clearer every time he tried to look away.
He knew what that meant.
"Screw you," he muttered and shoved his hands in his pockets. The cold usually didn't affect him, and that it could now was just another sign: one that he most certainly would try to ignore.
The snow had turned from snow to white dresses. Women were standing around him.
"Leave me alone."
The woman in front of him smiled at his words. She was beautiful, hauntingly so, with white hair that didn't so much fall over her shoulders as flow free from gravity around her head. Her face was pale, if not translucent, but her features were those of a warrior: she had a determined look to her face, and her jaw was set in a way that indicated definitiveness.
"Why fight us now?"
Their voices weren't human. He'd heard them before, several millennia ago, hiding as the Trickster at Odin's court.
Those were the Valkyries, Odin's most loyal servants. Graceful, gorgeous and fierce. Every warrior's dream of a woman, and yet nothing but doom for those who decided to commit to them.
"I can't leave now," he said weakly, and a sad smile appeared on the lips of the Valkyrie in front of him. She patted his cheek with a hand that was colder than ice on a lake.
"You asked us," she reminded him, "All those years ago you asked us what it would be like."
He wasn't crying, not much. The tears were freezing on his face anyway. "I asked you why they always followed you. The warriors, those who are brave enough to be chosen by you."
"And we said have patience." Her smile felt like a knife in his stomach, twisting and turning with the knowledge that there was no escape from this. You couldn't outrun fate.
The snow was coming down so heavily now that he could barely see his own feet, but the Valkyrie before him was still clear as day, and so were her sisters around them. The whiteness seemed to drain all colour from the world.
"Curiosity killed the cat," Gabriel muttered and tried a playful sigh, but choked on it. This wasn't funny anymore, not even for him. He couldn't find it in his heart to laugh about this.
"I remember the day," the Valkyrie said with a voice as clear and crisp as the frozen ground on a winter's day. "On the day you and Odin exchanged blood, he took you to Valhalla. He showed you the glorious hall with its five hundred and forty gates, the golden roof made out of shields and javelins. And he told you the story of how the world would come to an end, and how all those brave warriors assembled in Valhalla would rise to fight again. For the last time."
He'd felt nauseous that day, he remembered, until a girl in white had stepped up to him, a knowing smile on her face.
"They're happy," she'd said, and Gabriel had scoffed. "How would you know? You're not like them, and neither am I."
The Valkyrie had bowed her head, and Gabriel had known it had been to hide an amused smile on her face. Odin's face was stern, it didn't betray anything.
"We lead them home," she had answered simply. Gabriel hadn't believed her. To him, it was just another decision that some higher power took for mortals. He had been sick of higher powers then, and he still was. It had become Loki's trademark that he cared more about mortals than the quarrels the gods had with another.
"I still won't follow you," he replied to the Valkyrie in front of him. He had never thought it would come this far, but his decision was clear now.
"You're right," the Valkyrie said, "Your cause is worth dying for."
The feeling of a knife being twisted in his stomach flared up again and he winced. "I never said I'd die for them."
"But you were thinking about it." The wind around them picked up on intensity. Gabriel shivered, but the Valkyrie didn't seem the least affected by the cold. "You were thinking that if we couldn't take you, we would take them."
"Don't you dare."
He had been around pagans for a long time now: he'd seen Kali's unfathomable power, he'd seen everything every pantheon on earth and beyond had to offer. And he still couldn't do anything against the fact that his time was up now.
Time. That was what had fascinated him about Kali. She was time, the sheer destructive force of patience, of waiting for an end that would most certainly come.
Except now that the end was here, he didn't want it anymore. He'd craved it, courted it, even tried to bring it about. And now he wanted more time.
"We won't hurt them," the Valkyrie promised, "We won't hurt you."
Gabriel tried to swallow but couldn't. His voice was hoarse when he spoke up. "When we first met, I asked you why any of them would follow you. I told you that every man I'd seen on the battlefield had people that were worth dying for, families he would probably never see again because the rest of the lot is damned to Hel for all you care. So why would they give up their families, was what I said. For a bit of mead and merrymaking before the end comes around? I couldn't believe it."
The Valkyrie smiled, except it didn't look like a smile. It looked like the patch of ice on a lake that you step on before the ground caves in under your feet.
"You've found someone to care for, haven't you?"
He couldn't answer; the face of that giant man suddenly all-too-clear in his mind. He would be damned, but all he could really think of was that Lucifer didn't really deserve to take that gorgeous a body out for a joyride. Trying to be playful he shrugged and blamed it on his time with the pagans that he had become this possessive with what he considered his.
The Valkyrie nodded. "I thought so."
When Gabriel didn't respond, the wind softened and the Valkyrie stepped closer. "You never really got away from your family, you know?" She sighed, and it sounded like the wind in trees. "You tried to be different, but in fact you were just as spiteful in the face of Odin and his court as Lucifer had been in the face of his father or Michael."
"I didn't..."
Gabriel's protest was silenced as the Valkyrie raised a finger. Actually he was afraid – really, properly afraid because it felt as if he'd already lost himself. He was way too earnest and solemn, and he seemed to have run out of witty answers.
"They still call you the Norse Devil."