Faye was swallowed by darkness and a cacophony of shattering branches. Icy water tinged with rot poured into her mouth, her eyes, her lungs. Silt and darkness flooded her senses. Bubbles churned around her, sense of direction gone. Light flashed from the surface and cut through the water in a shaft. She clambered towards it, grappling with a maze of branches like the rungs of an endless and ladder. The arrow buried in her side flexed and bent, barbs digging a meandering path through her flesh.

A large trunk slammed into her, driving out the last of the air in her lungs, and pinned her against the spruce with all the crushing weight of the flood behind it. Faye squirmed in the tightening vice, all senses fading to blackness as the rest of the oxygen in her blood faded in the struggle. She braced her hands against the upstream trunk, shoved with all of her might, arms trembling, and bought a few inches of space. She curled up and wedged her feet into the gap, conjuring the ferocity and strength that had seen her through centuries of warfare against the gods. For a few precious seconds, she became Laufey once again; she did not evade obstacles like water, she was the force that held back the floods.

The dam of collapsed trees yielded to her as she shoved them back upstream, then clawed her way towards the surface and back onto the spruce trunk. She dove for the shelter of a bolder as the fury of the water and trees snapped back and roared around her.

The rush of water and trees subsided as the log jam settled back to a new formation. Faye peered out from the cover the boulder and summoned her axe, scanning the bushes and ready for a killing blow. Atreus peered out on the bank, his bow hanging slack in one hand, a red feather fletched arrow hanging in the other. His face was sallow, his eyes wide with horror as he scanned the water for her.

Faye lowered her axe, and heaved a sigh of relief that it was only a misfire, rather than some enemy that overpowered him.

"I am right here, Atreus," she said, hoisting herself to the top of the boulder where he could see her. "Stay there, I will come to you."

He turned to her, his face pale as his father's, the same expression of disbelief and horror on his face. Poor lad.

Faye slipped back behind the boulder to reach the bank in relative safety, and to compose herself. First she was so relieved Atreus was safe, she started to weep. Next, she grappled with a wave of irritation that Atreus had shot her. The arrow stung like a holy bastard in her side, and flashed with blood as she pulled it out. Two ribs crackled as she breathed, and the tip of her thumb was crushed. The nets were hopelessly lost. Worst of all, he had pointed his arrow in a direction very, very far away from the safety of the hillside as she had instructed.

As Faye crossed back along the bank, she steadied herself with deep breaths. She hummed a calming song to herself, letting the sacred tune and resonant notes steady her mind. The nets were lost thanks to an early flood, not to something anyone had done. She had misjudged how much she could entrust Atreus with deadly weapons, and that was more her fault that it was his. Fortunately, he had only shot her, which was better than some poor animal, or even worse, a Midgard settler. Her emotions were back and fully under control by the time she joined him where he stood frozen and slack-jawed on the bank.

"I shot you," he said, his voice raw with rising panic. "I shot you, you went under. You went under. The logs, the water, the rocks…" his breathing grew hard and fast. The precursor to the onset of one of his attacks.

"Yes, and now I am back out again," she said, eying his pale face. "I am fine. Come, rest with me."

She moved in to help him, but he sat down hard, hands slapped out to the side. She sat cross legged in front of him, keeping her face passive and steady as searing pain shot through her ribs. His breath was starting to whistle in his lungs. The hint of a cough came from his throat as his eyes rolled in his head, darting between her torn clothing, her crushed thumb, and the extensive bloodstains on the side of her dress.

"I shot you, and you went under," he repeated, eyes wild. "I shot you."

"It seems much worse than it is," she said, cupping his face and bringing her own close so he had nowhere to look other than in her eyes. Dealing with his attacks at home was bad enough. Dealing with them out here was… complicated.

"Do not look at that, just look at me," she whispered. "I am fine. Breathe. Slowly."

He erupted in a coughing fit, spasms wracking through his body. She pressed her forehead against his, and kneaded he fingers along the back of his neck. His skin was clammy against her hand, his pulse thready and weak. Cold sweat dripped from his face. Not good. Very not good.

Faye started the same calming song again, humming the sacred notes in her head rather than her chest, so the vibrations carried through the bones of her face pressed close against her son's as he convulsed and coughed. At the end of the song, she started it over again. He slackened against her, his breath steadying. She hummed it again. And then again.

The scene reminded her of the many hours she had spent holding and calming his father the same way, back in the earlier days of their relationship when his sleep was wrought with relentless nightmares. That tune in particular, called either "Memories of Mother" or "Fylg minni leið" depending on who you asked, had worked well with Kratos as a balm against the terrors that visited him in his dreams and sent him into a trashing rage in his sleep. Whenever she had tried to help, he savagely clawed and struck at her, attacking her like she was one of the visiting nightmares. The song had always eased her husband back to the safer waters of sleep, although often she had to take a few heavy hits to get close enough to him and hold him so it would have the full effect. Faye did not mind, and was grateful that it worked to help bring him some peace; those wild assaults were not his fault, and Faye was no stranger to getting punched in the face by combative gods. He never remembered the episodes at all, even when she told him of them.

It had been a long time since she had sung it as an antidote against terror. The violent fits had stopped decades ago, and the song had not seemed to have an effect on her husband at any other time, although Faye still occasionally experimented with it. It had not had a large effect on her son's other bouts of sickness, either. Until now.

Atreus straightened up and blinked at her. There was a little bit of color back in his face.

"There. Good. Now, what happened?" she asked.

"I was shooting into the hill like you said," he started, and then reluctantly admitted, "and then I wanted to see if could hit a knot if a tree a little bit off to side. I had my bow at full draw, and I heard a loud crack by the river. You, I guess. It startled me. I turned, and let go by accident."

He scuffed his heels along the ground.

"And then I almost killed you," he added, eyes drifting back to the streak of blood down her chest and flank. His gaze unfocused again, slipping back to another bout of his coughing attacks.

"Oh Atreus," she sighed, squeezing his shoulders. "If I died every time I was shot with an arrow and pushed into a river, I would have died a long time ago. I am much hard to kill than that. But I do need you to follow my rules. What if you had wounded an animal, and we could not recover it?"

Atreus stared at her, chewing his lower lip, trying to decide if she was being ironic or serious. She let him keep his seed of doubt that she was exaggerating, even though she was not. She probed the spot along her side where the arrow had struck, and was pleased to find the flesh had kneaded back together. The searing pain from her cracked rib and crushed thumb had eased to a dull aches.

"Come home with me," she said. "You still do not look well. We will speak of this much more. But we will speak of it later."

They walked back home along the path, Faye supporting Atreus by the elbow as he staggered alongside her. His strength steadily returned as they walked, and during the last mile back, he walked without any help at all. Jophie swooped back and forth low among the trees, twice low enough to rake through Atreus's hair with her talons.

"Enough, Jophie," Faye said on the second pass.

The gyrfalcon landed on her shoulder, and puffed out her feathers.

Little brother attacked you. I will fight him, Jophie declared, leering at Atreus.

"Pssht. Enough of you," Faye admonished the falcon. "If you think this one is mean," she said, turning to Atreus, "you should have seen her sister. Half again as large. Completely fearless."

And now she is off in Freya's lands, slaying the ravens of Odin, as I trained her, Faye thought.

"Mother," Atreus said somberly, as if he had not heard any of her earlier commentary, "you are going to die some day, aren't you?"

Oh, are we having this conversation now? I suppose we are having this conversation now, Faye mused.

"Yes," she said.

"But not for a long time, right?" he asked hopefully.

Faye took stock of her son's mood. He was a little bit shaken, a little bit melancholy, but also seemed calm and thoughtful. Rather than deflect the question, she told the truth.

"I have no idea. Hopefully, not for a long time, but it could also be tomorrow. No one ever knows for themselves, or for anyone else. But I definitely will, some day."

"While I am still alive?" he asked.

She looked him over again carefully, judging again whether he was stable enough to be having this conversation now, as opposed to revisiting it another day. He was still melancholy, but was also contemplative. So she told him.

"Almost certainly. I sure hope so, Atreus. If it were otherwise, it would break me."

"But you dying would break me," he protested.

"No, Atreus, it would not," she said. "You might feel like it will, and maybe for a while it would seem impassable, but eventually your life will go on without me. Old things die to make room for the new. My hope is that there can be enough peace for people to die within their turn, and not be taken early."

Atreus chewed his lower lip and nodded, not really believing her but still trying to understand or at least, to listen.

Every morning she awakened, Faye never knew what labyrinth of questions Atreus would want to explore next. Apparently, today they were going to talk about the existential implications of death. He had, of course, seen plenty of animals die, many by his own hands. There were many stories of death and dying. But he had never had never known death of anyone close to him, never seen his own family truly endangered, had never really worked through what it all meant for him.

"You are going to die," he said at last.

"Yes."

"Father is going to die. I am going to die."

Uh… well… Faye let her mind go blank to avoid betraying her thoughts. She had agreed to not go there without his father's consent. Fortunately for her, it was a statement, not a question, and Atreus moved on.

"So everyone will live long enough to see their family and friends die," he deduced, "or die soon enough that their family and friends have to see them die. And everyone knows that. And everyone has to live with that?"

All things considered, Atreus was handling the conversation remarkably well. At least, better than his father did.

"For all mortals, yes," Faye said, careful in her choice of words.

Atreus stopped for a moment, surveying a small waterfall cascading down the ravine to join with the river. The muscles in his jaw were working again, the gears in his head churning away on this new realization. Watching him pick apart new ideas, new puzzles, was one of the greatest joys of raising him. Watching him learn made Faye's own world feel so much larger and wonderful. Here he was, not quite nine years old, and contemplating the meaning of death in a way he never had before. Perhaps he was thinking about what it meant to be mortal, what it meant to know your death was inevitable, how you would -

His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he collapsed in a heap.

"Atreus? Atreus!"

She huddled over him, expecting him to revive quickly like he normally did, but he remained torpid even as she tried to shake him awake. Minutes stretched by.

The spring breeze turned bitter and cold. The forest around her began to fade, dissolving into shadows as the vision of a great hall materialized around her. The trees morphed into stone support columns, the pine needle floor morphed into rich carpets, and the boulders and river morphed into a long dining table and chairs. Fractals of repeating murals swallowed up the entirety of the sky. For a moment, she could still see Jophie launch into the air and take flight, keening in alarm.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck. The souls of the Jotnar slain in battle against the gods were summoning her to their halls, invoking a special power they held over her, thanks to a deal she had made with them almost nine years ago. They were always looking for ways to break her.

Faye unholstered her axe and quickly began the counter spell to prevent them from corrupting her soul: a series of improvised dance movements based on her fighting stances, alongside a simple mantra. Dawn stance, a basic fighting stance; Woodcutter, a series of short attacks with her axe; Ironwood, a crosswise guard, and Stormbringer, a wild charge. As Faye's mind slipped into the realm of prophesies, fate, and vengeful spirits, her body continued the improvised dance in the forest, keeping a vigilant and steady guard around her son's prone form.

As the halls of the Souls of the Slain solidified around her, Faye sat down at the long table and propped her chin on the palm of her hand. The shadow figures of slain Jotnar crowded around her table, their forms amorphous and dark against the stone pillars. Despite their vague forms, she easily recognized dozens of them by silhouette alone. They had been her friends, once. Now they sought to break her mind and use her as a puppet in a quest for vengeance against the gods.

A statuesque woman with trailing white robes emerged from the crowd, and sat down at the table across from Faye. The woman, Hyndla, had once been the keeper of the Tome of Knowledge, the curator of the murals of prophesy, and Faye's mentor. Now, she was a twisted version of her former self, and a bitchy one at that.

"Laufey, Laufey, Laufey, you should really visit here more often," Hyndla chided. "Stop being such a stranger. Remember how many feasts you have taken in these halls?"

The crowd of amorphous souls parted, and Geirrod, a Jotunn warrior who carried a flaming branding iron as his weapon, strode through. Laufey, the person Faye had once been, was riding on his shoulders. She was wearing her old set of gold embossed armor, and was swinging a massive stein of ale above her head as she laughed, cheered, and jeered at the crowd.

Faye recognized the memory at once, and felt a wave of longing and camaraderie, remembering how her friends had chanted her name and pressed around her. It was the feast held in her honor, celebrating how she had beaten Thor within an inch of his life, and routed him along with his entire honor guard from Vanaheim. As Faye studied the memory, she noted a corsage of plants and flowers pinned to her breast. Among them was the distinct black and orange leafy herb, the same type that Freya had given her. So that was where she recognized it from. Still no idea what it was.

"I do not answer to that name," Faye said, shaking herself out of the illusion. She leaned back and propped her leg up on the table. Dawn stance. Woodcutter. Ironwood. Stormbringer. "You must call me Faye."

The difference was important. Before Faye had ever met Kratos and bore Atreus, she had spent centuries promising that she would pick up the mantle and follow the threads of fate to bear Loki into the world, no matter the bitter cost to either him or his father. Laufey was a Jotunn warrior trying to lead her people to salvation, and would easily fall to the influence of the Souls of the Slain; Faye was a wife and mother living in Midgard, and their appeals would not work on her.

"Very well, Faye, if you insist," Hyndla sighed with a wave of her hand. "I will get straight to it. You seem to have run into a problem."

She waved her hand across the table, and Atreus's limp form materialized over the table. A low flame rolled back and forth across his body.

Dawn stance. Woodcutter. Ironwood. Stormbringer. Every instinct, every fiber of her being, screamed at Faye to reach for him and huddle over him. Instead, she poured herself a pitcher of ale, slurped it noisily, and belched. It was a ploy to upset her. They did not actually have any power over Atreus, unless he or Faye somehow gave it to them.

"Hyndla," Faye said flatly, "we have been over this. You send me horrific visions of the future to try and scare me. I ignore them. I must say your most recent ones of my husband are becoming self parodies. You will have to do better than this." She waved her hand vaguely at the form of her son as he was consumed by fire.

"There is no need to argue with me," Hyndla said. "We both want the same thing today. We both want Loki to survive the storm that is raging inside of him right now."

"This is nothing new," Faye said. "He has been sick his whole life. He has fainted before. We always see it through."

Her former mentor grinned at her, revealing a row of perfect teeth.

"Not like this, Faye. You will see. Loki carries within him the corrupting influence of his father, warnings of which, I must say, you have been blatantly ignoring for years. Something has just awakened within him. And if you do not turn him over to our power so we can drive it out of him, he will not survive the night."

The skin on the back of Faye's neck began to crawl. Dawn stance. Woodcutter. Ironwood. Storm bringer.

"You do not know nearly as much about either of them as you pretend to," Faye scoffed. "None of your lore or prophesies predicted that my healing elixir would act as a contraceptive or abortifacient; otherwise, you never would have instructed me to use it to prolong my life. It was not until Freya's blessing pendant inactivated the elixir that Loki, that Atreus, could even be born at all. You knew none of it."

"No," Hyndla agreed glumly, "we did not. But I do know what else happened once Freya's blessing inactivated your healing elixir. I know you came begging to us to save you, to save Loki, from the other consequences of that blessing."

She curled her hand into her first and blew a puff of dust into the air.

Faye's chest erupted in agony. An enchanted spear blade, driven deep into her body centuries ago as part of the endless war against the gods, became began to stir and thrash. The pain was sawing, agonizing, hot, relentless as the blade twitched back to life, awakening from almost nine years of sleep, and resuming its quest to slice through her heart.

"You cannot threaten me with my own pain or death, Hyndla," Faye snarled, doubled over on the table, her eyes bleary with tears. "I am well versed in both."

"Yes, yes, I know. I am just reminding you that, even though we are missing some knowledge about the exact nature of Loki, we are still the only ones who can save him from being ripped apart from the inside. The same way we saved you, so you could carry the hope of Loki along with you. To fulfill his role in Ragnorak."

Hyndla inhaled, recalling the dust back to her hand, and closed her fist again. The pain stopped immediately as the power from the Souls of the Slain brought shackled the enchanted blade back in place.

Dawn stance. Woodcutter. Ironwood. Storm bringer.

"His name is Atreus," Faye growled, "and your visions of his future can go fuck off. I will never give him to you. You will not save him, you will force him to act in accordance whatever version of fate you are most satisfied with."

"Fine, Atreus. And fine, forget about the prophecy, whatever," Hyndla said, waving a dismissive hand. "I suppose I can believe you do not care about your own people any more, that you do not care about the last of the Giants huddling in hiding any more, waiting for you to make the right choices."

She leaned over and hauled Faye across the table by the front of her dress. Faye struggled, but she had no strength in this realm.

"Forget everything about fate for a moment. Here is what is going to happen, Faye: Atreus is going to seem alright for a while, for hours, or days, or even weeks. And then once he is near his father, he will get worse. Much, much worse. Nothing you do will make him better. And then, unless you bring him to us the same way you visited us before, you are going to watch your son, your little one, die in agony. Are you really just going to watch it happen, when you know exactly how to stop it?"

Hyndla smiled at her one last time, and the dream abruptly vanished.

The forest snapped back, a chill deep in the air as if winter had decided it would not be cheated of its rightful stay. Faye came back to her senses crouching on the ground over Atreus, her axe held before them in the Ironwood guard. The sun hung low in the sky, betraying the hours she had spent lost in the trance. Her clothes were beginning to freeze, and a deep chill set in over her body.

Faye stumbled back to her cabin, clumsy and stupid with cold, her son hanging limp in her arms. She changed into dry clothes and kindled a fire in the hearth. The words of the Souls of the Slain echoed in her ears, warning her that Atreus would take a turn for the worse once Kratos returned. Fuck them, Faye scoffed. They knew nothing of her husband, had been wrong about him on every single turn. She tossed a handful of gold powder into the flume of the fire, a signal to Kratos that there was danger at home, but she had little hope of him seeing it any time soon; he was traveling east, and if he looked back west towards the cabin, the glare of the late afternoon sun would obscure the signal. Most likely he would not see it until dusk, and by then he would be nearly a full day of travel away. It could very well be dawn by the time he returned.

As the Souls of the Slain promised, Atreus was non responsive, but otherwise stable. Steady breathing and pulse, normal involuntary reflexes, normal temperature. As the Souls of the Slain promised, nothing Faye did over the next few hours made any difference. She tried every combination of medicinal herbs, tinctures, and powders that might have an effect. Humming the tune of "Memories of Mother" had no effect. She rotated through nearly her entire repertoire of healing songs, awakening spells, chants, and spiritual attunement songs without a response. Something preternatural was happening, and as much as Faye wanted to accuse the Souls of the Slain, she knew it was not them. They had leverage over her, but had no power over Atreus. At least, not yet.

Prophetic visions drifted in and out of her senses. In one moment, she was lying in bed with Atreus, her arm draped around him, and in the next, she was lying amid the stone pillars in the great halls of Jotunheim. Sometimes her cabin was a cabin, and other times, it dissolved into a lake surrounded by monuments. By nightfall, Faye's distinction between the world of her forest and the world of prophetic dreams had eroded down to the barest hint of a suggestion.

There was a rustle of grass from outside, then a cold wind as the door opened, and then a looming figure encircled in billows of black smoke and ash burst through the front door of her home, bringing with it the smell of sulfur. Faye startled, readying her axe, then blinked back to her senses. She forced the cabin back into focus, and saw Kratos standing before her, steaming with sweat.

"Faye? I saw the signal What is it?" His eyes darted between her and Atreus, searching for danger.

Faye had not worked out how to diplomatically tell Kratos that Atreus had shot her in the chest with an arrow, so she stalled with another question.

"I am glad you are here so soon. How did you see it so quickly, with the bad light?"

"Your turkey was bothering me."

"My… turkey?"

"The turkey that sometimes follows you. It dove at me, until I turned back and started here. Then later, when it was darker, I saw your signal."

"You mean Jophie? Jophie is not a… never mind," Faye said, making a note to bring the ornery gyrfalcon more offerings. "I need your help."

She told Kratos everything she could, omitting, of course, any mention of the Souls of the Slain. Revealing to her husband she had made a type of deal with vengeful spirits was a level of betrayal and shame she could not possibly face. Upon reaching the incident with the arrow, Kratos gave a long, displeased groan similar to a glacier sliding down a mountain. Upon describing her fall into the collapsing log jam, Kratos refused to let her continue the story until she stripped off her clothes, and showed him that all of her injuries were healed. Overall, Kratos kept his temper in check fairly well; it probably helped that he had once seen Faye pierced with as many non-magical arrows as a pin cushion without being critically injured.

"I have tried everything I know, but he will not wake up," she finished, moving aside and beckoning Kratos to examine Atreus.

Kratos sat on the edge of the bed and pulled back the covers. Even though Kratos wore a deep scowl, his hands were exceedingly gentle as he checked their son's pulse, breathing, and temperature.

"Have you ever seen or heard of anything like this, from your land, or from your travels?" Faye asked. "A childhood illness, perhaps?"

"No. Perhaps in other lands I would have, but from my home, a child with recurring illness such as this one would… not have received the proper care." His eyes softened and he pointedly covered Atreus back up with blankets, smoothing out the creases with his hand. It was unfortunate how all the gentleness seemed to flee from Kratos whenever Atreus was awake and sentient.

"He has fainted before. He has been much worse than this before," Kratos said, turning back towards her. "We have always stayed ahead of it, with treatment. No reason to think it will not be so again."

"He has never been unresponsive for six hours before," Faye countered, resting her upper lip against her mug of tea.

"He thought he was strong enough to kill you," Kratos said, a hint of amusement entering his voice. "It frightened him badly. This is a result of fear."

"At first, yes," Faye said slowly. She rested her lower lip against her mug, threshing all of her scattered knowledge of lore and medicine. "But then he recovered from that. He was calmer, before he collapsed. We were talking about death as a concept."

"Then he was afraid of that," Kratos said, grasping for any evidence that this time was like all of the other times before, where Atreus had recovered so long as they fought the symptoms. "Children are frightened of death."

"No, I do not think so," Faye said, grinding her forehead against the rim of her mug. "We were talking about… what it means to be mortal. How to live, when you know for certain you are going to die some day."

Kratos grunted and squirmed at the edge of the bed, dodging her gaze.

Faye stood up and paced the room, muddling her way through the puzzle. She swore she could sometimes read her son's mind like an open book, and she was certain that he had been contemplating his own death in that moment, which of course was erroneous, considering he was immortal. She paused by the doorway, resting her head against the frame.

Why the hell would that cause him to collapse? There are plenty of Demi-gods who think themselves mortal for a long time, and do not have this. Probably just a coincidence, Faye thought, disappointed she had turned onto a dead end.

"Faye!" Kratos barked.

Across the room, he was peeling blankets off Atreus and throwing them on the floor. He cupped their son's forehead, snarled in disgust, and began wrestling Atreus out of his clothes.

Faye rushed to his side. The blankets were soaked through with sweat. When she placed her hands on Atreus, he was burning. Not with fever, but with searing heat that was painful to the touch. She met her husband's eyes, and they stared at each other in bewilderment.

"Water," she said, trying to think. "Full basin. From the cistern. Now."

Author's notes: As mentioned earlier, this was originally posted to Ao3 as a series sequel, so a couple of paragraphs may seem out of place/a little bit redundant for those reading as a continuous, non interrupted story. I did not mean the chapter from before to be a dramatic cliff hanger, so much as a way to play around a little bit with expectations about consequences. Anyways as always I love any comments, reviews, finger-mashing notes, or messages with smiley faces - even if it has been a long time after this was posted! :)