Author's Note: Merry Christmas, kids. I come bearing gifts in the form of Fix-It Fic.

May Contain: me, ass-deep in denial.

Definitely Contains: spoilers for Battle Ground, duh. I don't know how faithful to Norse mythology the author is staying, but even Odin doesn't get first pick of those who fall on the battlefield — that honor belongs to another.


I. Midsommar

Don't you know, I ain't afraid

To shed a little blood

It was bound to happen, sooner or later.

I would have preferred later, to be honest, but when you're fighting a literal apocalyptic war, well.

Part of me had known, even as I shook the dust from the tarp covering the Harley, how the night would end. No law nor duty bade me fight, but I had gone anyway.

How could I not?

His voice broke as he reassured me that everything was going to be okay though we both knew it wasn't. Hands shook violently as he tried to staunch the bleeding, and if anyone could do it, it was him, but even Dresden's power had a limit.

The fierce tears on my cheeks were not my own. They were cold, falling fast as rain. Dark eyes fixed on mine and stayed, for the first time ever.

For the last time ever.

There was a gentle pull, like someone taking your hand as you cross a street, and I saw the same eyes in a face I recognized from a background check I had run a long time ago. A photo clipped to an old Child Protective Services report. A sad, terrified little boy pleading with me not to leave him, like so many others had.

The worst part, worse than dying, was that for a moment even after everything went black, I could still hear him screaming.

And then nothing.

And then, strangely... something.

I raised my hand to my eyes, against a bright light. I choked and sputtered and wiped the blood from my mouth, aware of three things:

One — a bullet in the carotid hurts like a bitch, apparently. Drowning in your own blood is no picnic, either.

Two, all of that pain was fading quickly, though not as quickly as the smoke-smudged night sky over Chicago had, the rubble and broken buildings, the faces of my friends.

Three. As I blinked against the light, I noticed I was sitting in the middle of a sofa, alone in an office, still absolutely covered in blood like the Last Girl in… pick any horror movie.

It was reflexive, a defense mechanism; the way I focused on the details instead of the whole. My subconscious knew that trying to understand what had just happened would leave me huddled in a corner, and it had put me on autopilot.

It was a nice office, almost more like a living room. A modest fire crackled in a white stone fireplace on the far wall, a pair of large, fluffy gray tabby cats napped on a rug. It smelled like leather and old books, faintly of wild roses, in a vase on a desk. Like drying blood, but that was me. I felt my fingers on my throat, searching unbidden for the wound that had ended me as a trembling uncertainty took up residence in the pit of my stomach.

I forced my thoughts back to my surroundings; the nice office, the leather sofa. Someone had made an attempt at that stoic, monotone Scandinavian minimalism, but enjoyed their houseplants and knick-knacks too much to pull it off. It was kind of cute. Comfortable and reassuring.

… Familiar.

"I think they call it hygge." A blonde woman sat down on the arm of the sofa, just to my left. She was about ten inches taller than me, and stunning in a way that laugh lines only accentuated, like a retired supermodel. She spoke with a charming Northern European accent. "You were wondering about the decor. It means—"

"Cozy, yeah." I peered around her, looking for the door she had entered through, but there wasn't one, just a series of large, rectangular windows along one wall; the only source of light in the room. "I've read a magazine."

Her laugh was like… a hot cup of tea on a wintery morning, or a champagne kiss at midnight on New Year's Eve, like a roll in freshly-laundered sheets with a man who knows what he's doing. Sweet and sensual, and satisfying.

"I've wanted to meet you for some time." She was smiling at me. "I would apologize for the circumstances, but this is how it typically happens."

Oh, right. That.

"Karrin, do you know where you are?"

"Dead?" I stood and crossed the room to the windows. "That's kind of what happens when you get shot by an idiot."

The woman followed, laughing again, golden and sparkling. Warm and lovely. I immediately wanted her to like me, would have done anything she asked of me, but I knew she already liked me, and wouldn't ask anything of me that I wouldn't freely give.

… It was kind of annoying.

Through the window I could see a windswept garden and beyond, an endless rolling gold-green field dotted with volcanic rock and wildflowers. Shaggy horses grazed between them. Clouds roiled low where a horizon should have been, dark and flickering with lightning like one of those massive supercell storms that happen in the Midwest. A living bruise on the cold blue sky, and that was the place I had left; the battleground, I knew.

And I knew the answer to her question.

"Fólkvangr."

"Yes," she nodded, pleased. "Yes, you are."

"So that makes you—" I studied her for a moment: not someone I'd ever expected to meet, much less dressed as she was for work, in a flannel shirt and a shearling vest, riding boots and jeans, gardening gloves tucked into a pocket. "Let's go with Val."

"Close enough." The sun outside the windows seemed a little brighter when she approached, the flower garden a little more colorful. The storm seemed a little closer, too, but maybe that was to be expected from a goddess of love and fertility, war and death. "You know who I am?"

I nodded. Every moment spent with the Einherjaren had been a lesson and it hadn't always been hand-to-hand combat. I knew who she was; Freyja, the Fallen Woman, who had first choice of half of those slain in battle, even before the Allfather himself.

How bad of a bitch do you have to be to pull that one off? The OG Valkyrie. I could almost hear Dresden say it, and then laugh at his own joke like he always did, and he was going to be so jealous when I told him I got to meet—

My hands left smears as I gripped the windowsill. I could see my own face in the glass, the tears that cut through the blood and dirt, and spattered red on whitewashed wood already stained faintly pink. I was not the first to stand here and cry, and I wasn't sure how long I did, wracked with sudden ugly, broken sobs. It could have been hours. It felt like a lifetime.

It took me a couple deep breaths, but eventually I got my shit together, and wiped at my eyes with the back of my grimy hands. My voice broke as I turned to her, resigned. "So this is kind of like Valhalla, or—"

"Same neighborhood, different address." She smiled a little. "You are surprised to be here."

"I… I don't know. I never gave much thought to what would happen when I—"

"Bought the farm, so to speak," she suggested. Her eyes were the same color as the field beyond the window, gleaming.

"But I'm a—"

"Christian?" The woman took my arm and ushered me towards the desk in the corner, sat me in a chair. She sat on the opposite side. "The gods will always smile on brave women, regardless of denomination. There are others here, you will meet them, I'm sure." She had been finishing my sentences but she wasn't reading my mind. I had felt the invasive pressure of mental manipulation before, this wasn't it. No, she just knew me, knew every last detail. "Unless you would like to go on to that place, simply say the word. No one will hinder you. If you wish to stay, my home is as yours—"

"No, no. This isn't happening." The reality, the finality of it seemed to all set in at once, and I struggled against the tears rising in my eyes. "No, I'm not staying here. Let me go back, I want to go back—"

"Someday, child, you will."

"No, I've got to go back now, Harry needs my help—"

"That battle is almost over." Her eyes drifted to the window, to the whorl of storm clouds, focused intently on something unseen. "Your friend is winning. He will prevail. He has already won—"

"I know that," I snapped. "Of course he's going to win. That's… that's not the kind of help I meant."

She met my eyes again, resolute but not without sympathy. "I know."

"He needs me."

"This is also true." Her fingers steepled on the desk and she considered the window again. "But many things are true that cannot be helped. All is in the hands of the Fates—"

"Fuck the fates. Send me back."

"You are not ready to return."

My hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. For the first time I noticed the mark on the back of my left hand; three faint, interlocking triangles, like an old scar. She answered my question before the words formed on my lips.

"You were chosen." One of her cats leapt onto her lap and she idly stroked its ears. "And Einherjar do not return until the memory of them has faded from Midgard."

I traced my thumb across the mark. That could be a very long time. Or not very long at all, depending on the recklessness of one gangly wizard. I wasn't sure how many of my family and friends had survived the night. But I knew Harry would. That he would blame himself for everything that had happened.

She reached across the desk and covered my hand with her own, gentle but calloused, battle-scarred. "Death is the ultimate trauma, the separation of soul from body. Of soul from soul. It is transformation, a rending of self that only time can mend—"

"Don't fucking Kübler-Ross me." I jerked my hand away and slammed my fist against the desk hard enough that it should have hurt. It didn't. "Send. Me. Back."

"You are not ready."

"I was just there and I was doing fine—"

One eyebrow lifted, the corner of her mouth quirked up. Her eyes glittered with amusement.

"Okay, doing fine before that dipshit shot me," I amended.

"You think you are ready," she said softly. "Prove it."

There was a brief rustling, like wind in feathers, and we were outside in the garden I had seen from the window. We stood in the shadow of a massive, ancient stave church that climbed to the icy sky, black walls and spires stretched above the cliff face of a rocky fjord. The sea rushed frantically at the bottom of the cliff, a thousand feet below, crashing onto sand the color and texture of crushed charcoal. The great, green-gold field stretched to oblivion in the opposite direction. It was beautiful past the point of appreciation, or at least it was to a city girl.

A sleepy village sprawled beyond the church, stone houses connected by little paths among the heather and wildflowers. Our presence did not go unnoticed. People began abandoning their tasks to gather nearby, and the wind carried their murmuring. A dark-haired young woman pushed through the crowd and climbed onto a stone fence for a better view.

The storm rumbled on the horizon, the sun was lost behind a cloud for a moment. Wind ripped at my bloodied clothes and made her golden hair dance loose from her braid. It felt cold on my skin, but there was no physiological reaction from my body to prove it. No goosebumps. No shivering.

What did you expect? I asked myself. You're dead!

Dead, and facing a pissed-off goddess for the second time in as many days. Hours?

… Minutes? Was time even real here? Was this even real, or was I just having one of those low blood volume-induced hallucinations as I died?

Freyja stood across from me, maybe ten yards away. She didn't look so kindly and welcoming now. The friendly green had faded from her eyes, the sclera flooded with black, the iris gleaming gold like the eye of a bird of prey.

"Take up your weapons," she commanded. I found myself unable to do anything but comply, reaching out before the gear had appeared at my feet — a battered round wooden shield that bore the faded image of the Valknut, and a short sword with a wire-wrapped hilt, sheathed in well-worn leather. I drew the sword and cast the belt and sheath aside before I picked up the shield.

It was heavier than it looked. The sword was chipped and rusted and etched with runes horizontally across the blade from hilt to point, almost like a list.

The Fallen Woman reached out into empty air and drew her weapons; a silver sword and a round shield of her own.

"Best me," she called in a honey-sweet voice that seemed to shake the ground. "And I will send you back to Midgard, with my blessing. Prove you are worthy and go where thou wilt."

If someone had told me fifteen years ago that I'd spend the inaugural hours of my afterlife with a Norse goddess, duking it out in a cute little garden, I would have had myself committed.

I swallowed hard. "And if I don't?"

Val smiled and shrugged, and beckoned me toward her with a tilt of her chin.

The first blow felt like being hit by a fucking meteor. I caught it on the flat of the chipped blade and to my surprise, managed to keep my footing. She met my eyes as I did, laughing delightedly at the shock on my face. I shoved back, and only succeeded in pushing myself away from her. I gave the sword an experimental flick as we paced a circle, flexing my hands.

"Good," she called, teeth bared in a feral grin. "Again."

Every time our blades met, it sounded like we were standing beneath a church bell. Metal sparked and sang. I don't consider myself a professional swordswoman by any means, but I felt stronger and faster now than I had with the Sword of Faith in my hands, more centered and coldly clear than under Mab's aura.

It felt incredible.

And still, she beat me back, a superior warrior in every respect. I kept my feet but couldn't seem to do anything but block and parry and dodge out of the way of her strikes, aware that she wasn't even trying to fight me.

"Again! Try harder, girl."

I knew better than to let frustration get the better of me in a fight, but I'd had a short fuse before I got merc'd by an incompetent shitheel. I feigned left and struck right, but I wasn't fast enough, and today was clearly not my day.

Her answer to my attempt was the back of her sword hand to my cheek. If I had been alive, it probably would have killed me. If she had really meant it, I'd be double-dead.

I lay on my back in the pale gravel for a moment, winded, before I climbed to my feet.

"Are you not weary of fighting, little one?" Freya taunted as I stood. She beat her sword against her shield, circling me. "Do your bones not ache for rest? Would you scorn the gift you have been granted and return to your broken body, your broken city, your broken man—"

I threw my shield down and launched myself in her direction, berserk. Literally. There was nothing left in me but rage and grief, and I wasn't unfamiliar with the hollow futility of mourning the things I never had.

But goddamn.

I flew at her, screaming wordlessly at the unfairness of just… everything. What blood was left in my veins felt as if it had boiled away, every nerve alight with unsated bloodlust.

And it was useless. I was fighting myself — she knew my every move and mirrored it perfectly, toying with me.

She drove me back to the ground with one solid knock of her shield. I took the hit in my shoulder, felt it tear in the same places Nicodemus had ruined it. She swept my feet from beneath me with a vicious kick as I tried to stand again and I dropped to my knees in the gravel, spent. The physical pain was less than a shadow of what it had been before, but I was too exhausted to even flinch when I saw the flash of her blade in my peripherals.

I shivered at the frigid metal as she gently rested the point of her sword where the bullet had torn through my throat.

"What now?" I whispered, dry-mouthed.

She pulled the sword away and drove the point of the blade into the dirt beside me.

"Our arrangement remains. Prove that you are worthy and I will gladly send you on." She leaned down to put a hand on my shoulder, smiling to herself like she knew something I didn't. "I will give you one year. Failing that, you must bide here in Sessrúmnir until your appointed time has come, however long that may be. Are these terms acceptable to you?"

I nodded numbly, with no other answer to give.

"Good." She grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet, and I was pulled into a bone-cracking bear hug, slapped soundly on the back. "Be welcome in my home, skjaldmær." Freyja picked her sword up again and rested it across her shoulders as she turned toward the crowd. "Svíða, I trust you will show her the ropes?"

"Bien entendu," replied the girl who jumped down from the fence. "It would be my pleasure."

She gave my shoulder another reassuring squeeze, turned and was gone, but I was hardly alone. The crowd who had gathered to watch now surrounded me; men and women, young and old, from every nationality beneath the sun, all shouting questions and cheers. The nearest, biggest man picked me up before I could protest, and put me on his shoulder like one would hold a child to watch a parade, as the crowd made its way into the stave church.

It was loud. There were a lot of blondes. If someone had started making snide remarks about my haircut or my outfit or my current boyfriend, I might have almost felt at home.

I should have expected the church to be bigger on the inside, but I wasn't sure what to expect anymore. The place was like Mac's tavern on steroids; huge beams and pillars carved with Urnes figures, comfy chairs in corners, trestle tables and fireplaces large enough to park a Volkswagen in. Delicious smells wafted from a kitchen, somewhere. For a second, I could have sworn I smelled steak sandwiches.

It was suddenly very important that I get drunk, which was funny, because they were carrying me towards the bar anyway. It seemed like it was a mile long — at least a thousand bottles lined the wall behind it, several large wooden casks, dozens of kegs.

"Whoa," I protested, as the huge guy deposited me on the polished wooden surface of the bar. "This isn't Coyote Ugly, put me down—"

"Tell us about the giant!" somebody yelled through the laughter as someone else pressed a shot glass of clear liquid into my hand. I downed it out of reflex. The flavor wasn't exactly pleasant, but at least it rinsed the taste of blood from my mouth. "Did you truly kill it with a rocket launcher?"

"I, uh… I guess so," I shrugged, the numbness that had set up shop in me slowly losing ground to the warmth of the alcohol, to a cheer that shook the rafters. Glasses clinked and beer sloshed and another drink was foisted upon me. "Yeah, I guess I did."

"I heard— I heard once you felled an ogre with a chainsaw—"

"Okay, technically that was a dismemberment, and mostly a Looney Tune," I heard myself say, which earned another round of whooping and hollering.

"What about the time you stormed Arctis Tor?" a young man demanded. "Or the time you faced the Emissaries of Summer?"

"Who, the goat guys?" I asked around the best bourbon I had ever tasted. "It was only the one, and we didn't even fight—"

"Tell us about how you slayed the Red King—"

I evaded the question, but accepted the next glass. "The vampires in Mexico? That wasn't really me, and—"

"Don't be modest! Tell us about how you brought down Lady Winter—"

"Well, I was only trying to... most of that wasn't me and — how the hell do you know about that?"

"Tell me," said the young woman called Svíða. She was barely more than a teenager, with dark, curly chin-length hair. Her threads were old-school menswear; a white shirt and khaki trousers, black suspenders, like one of the girls in the photos from my great-grandmother's suffragette days. She climbed onto the stool next to me and pushed an empty, frosty mug into my hands. "About how you fought Anduriel."

I blinked a few times.

"Goes by Nicodemus? About so high," she held a hand out, grinning. "Snazzy dresser. Evil incarnate."

"I — who are you?" I asked, bewildered.

"No one of consequence," said Svíða, to more riotous laughter.

"I must know," I replied automatically, as an echo of an ache settled in behind my ribs.

"Get used to disappointment." She grabbed a nearby pitcher and started pouring. "My story is old and everyone here has heard it a thousand times. Tell us yours."

So I did. And I did what I had been planning to do before I died in the Chicagopocalypse:

I got absolutely shitfaced.