"Damn it boys, I think I know what's going on." Bobby, providing prime proof that he was not cut out for small talk, wheeled his chair aside to make room for Sam and Dean as they entered the house. The elder brother slammed the door behind him, and the sound echoed in the darkness, surprisingly not startling the latest guard-dog. "What did you say on the phone about Lucifer killing the gods? What were their names?"

"There was Ganesh, Odin... some Chinese hearth dude I'd never heard of before..." Dean glanced at Sam and raised an eyebrow.

His brother took the hint, picking up where he had left. "That was Zao Shen. And then there were Mercury and Baldur, and a few others who didn't really say anything. A goddess; I think it might have been Aphrodite-"

"-Oh yeah, she looked like she did in Xena-"

"-and of course, Gabriel."

"Baldur and Odin? Damn it, that's what I thought." Bobby turned his chair around to face them. "Do you know what you've done this time? Or what Lucifer's done, if you wanna get technical?"

"Nope. That's why we're here, remember?" Dean knew that he wasn't exactly skating on a thick hockey rink here, given all that had transpired between him and Bobby over the past few weeks, but as far as he was concerned, his impatience was perfectly justified. Nobody sat around chatting when the sun and the moon disappeared from the sky without a trace, not even them, and they could take almost everything without breaking a sweat. It was a sad day indeed when Winchesters (and Singer) and scientists alike were baffled and had the hell scared out of them, although of course he hadn't actually heard any of them say that.

"It's the apocalypse. Lucifer's brought on the apocalypse."

Dean knew, without looking at him, that Sam had his head tilted slightly to the right, and that he was about to start speaking in the slow, soothing tone that he used on various victims of the fuglies that they'd hunted over the years.

It was nice to know that some things remained consistent over the years. "Bobby, no. That couldn't be right. Lucifer didn't start the apocalypse, remember? I did, when I killed Lilith and-"

"Stop talking to me like I'm a scared kid who just faced his first werewolf. I don't mean that apocalypse, boy! I'm talking about Ragnarök. Sound familiar at all?"

"Vaguely." Dean watched as his brother squirmed under Bobby's irritated look, caught-off guard. He smirked inwardly; it was always nice to see Sammy get a bit of humbling, especially after he'd been so darned right about the whole "not letting the angels joyride in you" thing.

That was before he realized that Bobby was looking at him as well. "Uh, Ragnarök? Isn't that... some sort of cough syrup? Or a grunge band?"

Bobby sighed and rolled over to his desk, and grabbed a thick, leather-bound book off of its cluttered top without even looking. "It's Norse, you fool. Something like "the final destiny of the gods," according to most translations." He handed the book to Sam. "Come on, now. Tell me you've at least heard of it, if you haven't read it."

Dean glanced over Sam's shoulder, trying to get a glimpse at the title. His brother, noticing, passed it over while nodding at Bobby. "The Poetic Edda. Yeah, I've heard of it. We talked about it a bit in one of my classes at Stanford, but I never actually read it."

"What's it about?" Dean flipped through the old copy, wrinkling his nose at the musty scent that rose from the yellowed pages. He stopped at an illustration of a giant wolf biting off some poor soul's hand. "Werewolves?"

"Nope. Norse mythology. It's poetry, old stuff that was passed around through mouth a lot before it finally got written down. Almost everything you even did or didn't want to know about the good old Norse god crew. And for everything else..." he grabbed another book from the desk and handed it to Sam. "...there's this. The Prose Edda."

"A lesson in the wonderful history of literature is great, but are you going to tell us what it has to do with the sun burning out of the sky? Because it doesn't exactly seem relevant right now, unless you're suggesting we burn them to get a bit of heat, in which case, yeah, I'm right up there with you."

Bobby sighed and shook his head, in an odd, long-suffering sort of way. "I was sort of hoping you'd be smart enough to put it all together... Ragnarök. It's the Norse apocalypse. And wouldn't ya know it, it starts sometime after Baldur bites the dust. And I'm going to give a wild guess and say that Odin dying probably didn't help. These old deities, they like things to be done the traditional way. Having a fallen angel interfere probably wasn't planned for."

"And the sun going out? I think I remember hearing about this now. Doesn't it have something to do with Fenrir?" Sam was thumbing through his book, probably not even aware he was doing it.

"His son. Sköll swallows the sun when Ragnarök kicks off. And the moon gets eaten by his other kid, although that's the least of our worries at the moment. Boys, I hate to have to put it like this, but we've got two apocalypses on our hands, angels on our asses, and no sun in the sky. I'm open to whatever ideas you've got."

"Fight club, angels versus gods? Wolf laxative?" Dean threw his hands in the air. "Have an angel blaze in glory above us for all to see?"

Sam looked mournful. "Dude, I don't want to be the one to say this, but... we're kind of in a screwed-up situation here. I think civilization's started to collapse, and we can't survive too long without a sun."

"It's Ragnarök and the damned apocalypse. Of course we're screwed." He rolled his eyes. "Time to go call a few archangels?"

"We aren't that screwed." Sam shook his head, long hair draping into his eyes.

"Sam, let me put it to you in as simple terms as I can manage: the sun is gone. How much longer until we're really screwed, if we're just faking it now? Till the whole gravity-thing where the sun used to be disappears and we crash into Mars?"

"Actually, if that happens, we probably won't have time to worry about the archangels." Sam shrugged, slightly defensive as Dean and Bobby turned to him. "Well, it's true."

Dean shook his head and accepted the glass filled with a clear, amber liquid that Bobby had just handed him. "To Ragnarök?"

Sam rolled his eyes and clinked his glass. "To Ragnarök."

a/n: this was inspired by a conversation with my sister after reading Baldur's Wikipedia page and seeing that his death precedes Ragnarök. We were joking about how awesome if would be if Sam and Dean had two apocalypses on their hands. This was the result.

Not to mention that Hammer of the Gods left me so depressed that I had to try writing something lighthearted.