(A/N): My second attempt at writing fanfiction. Loved the movie, of course, it left so much to the imagination! In fact, I'd say most of the real meat of the story is all for the watcher to fill in, and I think that's how it should be. Definitely fanfic material, whether or not I'm the gal for the job remains to be seen. I won't nag you to review, because I never do unless threatened with a discontinuation, which leaves me annoyed as a reader and makes me not want to review any more. So I'll spare you the trouble. Review if you'd like, because I'm updating on my own damn time. I'LL DO WHAT I WANT, THOR!

Disclaimer: Blah Blah, I don't own these characters except for when I do. Good? Good.

"Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of non-being. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of non-being upon itself by affirming itself ... in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation."

Paul Tillich

Prologue

Humanity has long been defined by forward movement; in fact, it could be said that the race of apes living tenuously upon the planet Earth is nothing more than a large metaphorical snowball, rolling down an infinite hill of progress. Much has stood in the way of said snowball, yet by and large all this succeeds in doing is adding to both its' weight and momentum as it gets caught in the spin.

If you were to stand at the bottom of the hill, and look up, up, and up- all the way to the very top (which would of course be impossible, because the hill is infinite... oh... well- go away! Get out of my analogy) you would see a lone figure standing there, giggling.

In all probability, that's the Man in the Moon.

Bastard.

Before he came along, humanity was a generally cowardly race- though a successful one. After all, enough of its' ancestors had survived long enough to mate until they evolved from scales, to fur, to ugly pink fleshy stuff. Which is pretty impressive if you ask me- and it was all because they were cowardly. Cowardice is a perfectly admirable trait, from an evolutionary standpoint. It keeps your furry arse alive so you can make more furry arses. Mr. MiM, though, as we mentioned, is a giggling maniac with a proclivity for snowball-rolling, and other such dangerous pastimes. Spaceman decided that what humanity needed was a touch of danger- freedom from fear, replaced by curiosity, joy, and ambition. In what was probably the only move you'll get me to verbally support, he pushed the little snow-clump of cavemen that would one day become the snow-planet of steamships down the aforementioned hill of progress- he's still a bastard, though; and I'll tell you why.

Do you remember the first time the first Neanderthal scorched his hands trying to harness a flame? No? I do.
How about that time a group of Egyptians used a riverboat made of nothing but papyrus reeds to try and cross the ocean? Did I mention the part that they had balls of steel because it was a flipping river boat? No? Well, that's funny, because I remember every time the boat lurched like a living thing beneath the feet of frightened men.
What about the first time a man stepped before a charging elk with nothing but a sharpened stick, simply because someone else was starving? The first time a man sacrificed his life for another? The first time someone used a club to beat his neighbor to death? I remember all those things with a burning clarity.
But I was not alive, then.

Because I am more than just Courage.

Part I

Courage is of the heart by derivation,
And great it is. But fear is of the soul

Robert Frost, A Masque of Mercy (1947)

My name was Avice and it was the Dark Ages. As far as things go these facts are rather unimportant, because I have, for the most part, forgotten the details. This is because the Dark Ages are a time I try to ignore. Forgetting is hard when you're gifted with supernatural memory, so ignoring is as good as you can get, and almost as effective.

If you are the discerning sort, you may have already noticed something about me; I am a coward.

But I am a coward who has lived for around six centuries, give or take. That says a bit for cowardice, in my mind!

Anyway, my name was Avice, it was the Dark Ages and what little I care to remember is this; I was plain, uninteresting, and rarely did a thought go through my mind.

This is because interesting and loud women were witches, and witches were burned.

I think, though, that I spent a suspicious amount of time not thinking about how normal these 'witches' looked, or how very human their faces were when they lined up to burn. I spent an even longer amount of time very carefully not thinking about where exactly the stars were placed, or what it could be that pushed them along the sky. Sometimes I spent time in the garden drawing pictures in the dirt and meticulously avoiding the very idea that maybe there was more to life than doing chores and wondering who my parents would want me to marry when I was older.

In fact, I spent so much time carefully avoiding these things, that I was labeled a stargazer, lazy, and worst of all a recluse. I reached the age of twenty without a man marrying me- but I had a place- as most things went those days, my mother had died after the birth of my third sibling. The only sibling to survive. So I made myself as busily useful as possible, fearing both abandonment and loneliness- I raised him. His name was Leofwin and I loved him above all other things. This isn't saying much, given that most other things had either a drinking problem, or were beasts of burden.

Leo was adorable- his hair was always crazy and everywhere, and he had big freckles across his cheek and button nose. He was vivacious, and smart, and from the get go was cursed to be as much of a dreamer as I was. I spent a good amount of time avoiding putting ideas in his head and never encouraging him to prank other children. That is to say, that's the only thing we did. Unfortunately, that didn't win me any points with anyone save for him, but I'd resigned myself to that fact by then. Leo was born when I was ten, and was ten when I kicked the bucket. Sad to think, in this day and age, when a gal lives to be eighty, but kind of okay if you put it in perspective (it was the freaking DARK AGES).

It's right about here that I'd like to remind the peanut gallery that I'm a coward. It is also these parentheses here where you can imagine me flicking off the Man in the Moon (! ! !). There, now that this is out of the way, I'll explain.

I died because of one single courageous act. You may have received the impression that because I raised my baby brother that I was a saint, but I most certainly was not.

I let other kids bully him for being a runt. Not because I agreed, but because if I throttled them like I itched to, I would be throttled in turn by their parents for stepping out of line (after all, it was only by the good graces of my father that I, an unmarried and unskilled lout, had not been turned out onto the street[well, path])

I let father belittle Leo, beat him, and blame him continuously for his mother's death. When people spat in my face, I bowed my head in shame. When people called me lazy, I nodded my head and said "yes'm".

When I felt imaginitive, I liked to imagine myself as not a coward, but air; punch and kick and scream at it all you like, but you'd never hit the essential aiy-ness of the air. Except even wind defends the children it loves, and I definitely don't think it eventually explodes into a single, blazing act of sheer stupidity.

But this isn't about that- this is about what came next.