|
  |
Storm King Mountain state park honest to Odin exists just outside of New York City. Go up the Hudson River and there it is in spellbinding glory. Scarlett could just skim over on the clouds, but that might prove inimical if trouble sets in. Besides, the cooling evenings prove her hours of riding motorcycles will be limited as winter settles. So, without a word, James Barnes will find her perched on the balcony of Amora's old penthouse — how many hours she spent there, studying, she'll never say — with a helmet to toss to him.
He hasn't got his bike, assuredly. She has hers, and riding leathers in black and emerald that would do a number to anyone with a sense of wicked propriety. La belle dame is a walking, talking assault on propriety some days. "Have everything you need? We need to be moving before the sun sets. You drive, I'll perch. It's a fairly straight shot and we should have no trouble getting there if we cut up US 9. I'd say we stop through Valhalla first, but then you have to cross the bridge to West Point." That West Point. "Better not to run the risk you're recognized."
*
She's planning. He's going along. IT feels odd, but also good. Certainly she's a wrecking ball to the already firebombed ruins of Bucky's remaining sense of 40s' era propriety. Good boys go to heaven, bad boys go to all the nine realms first. He's got what he thinks he needs, anyway. "Fair enough," he says. "I didn't go to West Point," he adds, inconsequentially. And then it occurs to him - just how many versions of his and Steve's faces appear in the books there. "Right," he says, resigned.
*
"Regardless, they would probably have a running tally on the top threats to the US and the best way to handle a new breed of threat borne from supernatural or metahuman causes," Scarlett points out. If Bucky has ever held a doubt about her ability to be a terrifying spy if she bothered, it might be wise to consider what someone with her gifts walking through a military installation or a capital might do. And this bit of knowledge, and that bit of knowledge, and those nuclear codes…
She stands up, balanced on the cushion of air just above the ledge. "Stop looking so troubled, Sergeant. This is what the Avengers were made to do. Me, at least. Besides, you get to drive. See you at ground level in two shakes of a lamb's tail." She smartly salutes him. A breath later she's swandiving backwards for the concrete far below, plummeting without a care.
*
"I'm no Avenger," Buck notes, mildly. But the prospect of the bike does make him perk up, more than a little. Ooh, this will be fun, won't it? For the 'funny sense of fun' values of fun. A trip out of the city, a picnic, possible destruction, playing in the woods. For all that Bucky's a city kid through and through, Winter….not so much. Someone's been sitting and mourning the cool stillness of the taiga. He's astride the bike asap, letting her ride pillion, perhaps. If she chooses to. A helmet will obscure his face, and he's got his false IDs with him.
*
Advantages to not using the elevator or the stairs; immediate arrivals. Scarlett will be the one already there, helmet on, tucked on the back of the bike by the time he shows up. The mild amplitude of its lean indicates her participation in dispersing her weight by floating to keep the low-slung monster from toppling over on its side. Kickstand down, it calls to him. Ooh, look, it's even a matte gunmetal shade without a trace of a shimmer, absent all those little girly contraptions someone of the female persuasion might think to add. Not even a sticker anywhere to be found, unless he looks really damn hard to find a subtle protection rune inscribed here or there.
Next up, ride. The speed he takes is up to him, guided by a few pointed gestures to guide him up the right route out of the city. Congestion is a thing of existence all around New York but entering the Hudson River counties changes that. Smaller towns strung out along the river speak to their Revolutionary era origins, and the rolling hills cloaked in maples prove spectacular sights to those inclined. Not that someone hopeful for birch and aspen forests, lignite smoke rolling up from dirty factories, and the emptiness of a dacha owned by someone who can carve out a whole US state in their name can be met with such an American substitute. But still.
*
He's careful, in the city. No piquing the interest of cops. And even out of it, he's relatively sedate. He's a wanted man, still, in a way that the cleverer Winter never was. This territory….it's the oldest of old memories. There were childhood expeditions to the Catskills, the old boarding houses. He resists the temptation to open the throttle on the clearer parts of the route, maintaining that proper speed. As if they were just a couple out to view the leaves.
*
Leaves tumble in a copper and bronze patchwork interspersed by golds and fading greens. No wonder she feels so at home here; everything of course reflects Scarlett's chosen colours. In this world, even the white paper birches match her carefully concealed shock of frost bangs. What speeds they take the twisting and turning roads, not quite Alpine but close enough, will grate slightly, she doesn't complain. At times there's the desire to leap up into the air and perform acrobatic duets, practice for those other odd times of engagement in combat.
Storm King Mountain is, in fact, a rather high point around the surrounding lakes and riverways. There are trailheads well-marked by signs, though in the fading light, they're hard to make out short of the strobing beam flashing over them. The state park service doesn't apply metal posts to shut things down for access to the parking lots. It's up to Bucky whether to try for the quieter in-roads or the main gate.
*
The former. The fewer who see them, notice them, the better. He's even brought one of those rifles, not quite a true sniper rifle, not the standard battle rattle, a hybrid he'll have to assemble if he chooses. He's dressed in his homeless veteran finery - the canvas parka with its fake fur lining, faded fatigue pants, boots. Goggles and hat in the pack he's got, too. He stashes the bike at one of the remoter trailheads.
*
The lot holds a rather large Volkswagen bus in a hideous teal shade no one should bother with. Fat fuzzy dice hang in the front window. Whomever its campers are, they've not been by recently as a casual glance reveals. Too many leaves on the windshield and there's no hint of warmth fogging up the windows where equally ugly orange and yellow paisley curtains hang. The thing is truly an affront to every possible sensibility.
Otherwise, the trails meander out and about. A wooden board shows a map in painted and carved detail. It won't be necessary to reference more than once, at least as Scarlett goes. She unpeels the motorcycle jacket and pulls the sleeves inside out, revealing a far duller grey-black finish. The pants don't need so much help, nor the boots. Goodbye helmet, too, her hair tucked into her fitted shirt. "The last time I came through, the stone giants — least among them — were taking refuge in a small town they created. Many children hid there. Given the conflict at the time, the buildings became unstable. Many collapsed but not all. I'll warn you where I can, but the approach to the gate is really quite easy. We go underground, hope the tunnels aren't caved in, find the town and continue through the only tunnel until we smack into a wall or end up accidentally in Jotunheim. The trolls have no realm; those I saw there last, along with the Asgardian court, were mercenaries."
*
Once they're enough away from the parking lot, he uncases the rifle, puts it together, and then slings it over his shoulder. He's got a little pack with him, down to Winter's minimalism. Speed, rather than comfort. "A'right," he says. A flashlight, of course. Matches in a little case worn like a pendant. He's in his greatcoat, prepared against chill….almost comfortable, really. It reminds him of the war - long marches, forays into enemy territory, in the days before Captain Spangly And Conspicuous joined the party, or HYDRA had its fun with him.
*
Go bags are a thing of Scarlett's life, assembled for different purposes and reasons. She goes empty-handed in this case, carrying only gloves and whatever the reversible coat offers. "Ready, then?" A murmur holds a little too much enthusiasm. All the same, she breaks into a steady stride through one of the myriad paths that meanders this way and that. Nothing like mulch offers a good idea of when to follow this fork or that, the odd waymarker hammered into the ground mostly an indicator of distance traveled. Leaves lie heavy in muddy clumps, things to offer a kick in better times. The incline to the ground soon enough suggests why they have to keep switchbacking, though doubtful she means to reach the top of the mountain. Where she's going, however, occasionally requires a pause.
"Bearing check. Time to consult with the trees. Are you doing okay?"
*
He slants that look at her, the watermark of Winter's old deadpan sardonicism still there. "Doing all right," he notes, in that lazy drawl. But the grin that curls in like a twining vine is all James. "Even after the workout the other day." He's taking in their surroundings, gaze roving restlessly.
*
Scarlett shrugs, then gracefully flits into motion, finding a handhold on a tree branch. From there, Scarlett sets her boot to the crenellated trunk, and starts up, climbing with a much too nimble grace to be natural. Still, using her strength rather than simply flying might be somewhat less showoffy. Her destination is a higher branch, one that allows her to find the gaps in the foliage, the canopy's imperfect distinctions marking the sinkhole she's after. "Check, should be northwest of here. Maybe another quarter mile by dead reckoning. Want me to hop you over or walk it?"
*
"I'll walk it, if we've got the time." It's good to stretch his legs in the woods, even though this is far from a romantic outing. Buck settles into that long march, the almost-lope that covers distance with deceptive speed. The rifle's still slung, but he's got his pistol at his hip. And no doubt a cutlery drawer's assortment of knives about his person.
*
The wolf and the snow leopard; they make a rare and unusual pair at that. Scarlett moves quick on the ground, though she dispenses with the casual to leap out and land softly enough on the trail. Holding her bearing northwards helps, giving a good sense of the proper direction to go. Trails only serve so well, but she decides to veer off and take it overland, skirting the usual hazards from glacial erratics to scraggly long branches of Hallowe'en haunted forest trees. "Walk carefully, you'll not know but this entire area was mined out when they were searching for sanctuary."
Wise words spoken to soon, for sure enough in the passage of time, there's enough weakened karst ceilings over deep tunnels and air vents to speak of. How does Bucky learn? Well, there's the ground that collapses under his weight, for one, a thin sheet of stone buckling in the middle and giving way to a vertical drop of fifteen feet.
*
There's a canine yelp of surprise as the ground gives out beneath him. The metal fingers scrape parallel runnels in the stone as he skids down through the falling scree, and then he tucks and rolls to take the last of the fall, coming up knife in hand, standing in the beam of autumn light that comes down from above. "Speak of the devil," he calls up to her. "Fell right into one. I'm unhurt."
*
Scarlett hacks her way through the bushes, knocking aside a cane heavy with withered berries and planting her heel to scramble up a mossy rock outcropping when the deafening groan accompanies a rather hideous crack. Any rock climber knows the sound. On somewhat sloped inclines, it's a much odder thing to hear something give way. Her eyes widen and she spins, the instinctive raising of her hackles accompanied by going airborne. No curse, no accusations follow. Instinct says to spring forward and look over the edge immediately, short of bouncing down there herself and possibly sending them both tumbling into the abyss.
Darkness, there, is a still, sullen thing. No underground river rushes past and certainly no drumming in the deeps invites him to imagine a Moria under the mountain in lower New York. Rather the creeping death of daylight filters around her dark on dark silhouette, and the redhead orients herself. "Dropping down, try not to move too far. The crystals react badly to… things. Probably not you."
*
"Not going anywhere," he says, firmly. He retrieves a flashlight from his pack, flicks it on, turns it around himself. Truth be told, he doesn't like the underground. Blame the Russians. Again. For all of it. "Not touching anything," he adds, as if to said crystals.
*
What crystals? The walls are perfectly hewn, an unnaturally smooth shaft burrowed through the mountain's roots. New York would be envious to have such level, perfectly laid sewers and access tunnels. Whomever made them left no chisel marks, no hints how they accomplished the impossible. Darkness bleeds in all directions, but for up, and the beam of the flashlight shows nothing to indicate direction or marks.
Scarlett dusts herself off, grimacing as she looks around. "This is a fair bit better than the time I came through pursued by wolves, but still."
*
"YOu can see in the dark, can't you?" he asks her. Surely she's got that ability from someone, right? James checks his gear, making sure nothing vital got damaged or lost in the fall. He's even dustier than usual - become rather finicky about grooming, really. An idiosyncrasy of James's, re-emerging from under Winter's utter lack of give a damn.
*
The faintest of smiles touches Scarlett's lips. "You don't have to, as long as you adjust to night sight. Turn that off and we should see what I mean as long as we reach the right spot. I imagine the walls will react to you. Certainly they do to me." An act of faith on Bucky's part: would he walk in the dark uncertain of direction without any hint of the light to aid him? He's not forgotten, though, and she checks him over herself with gloved hands and care to assure all is the way it should be. "The tunnels never get to a pinch point, but they can get low. I'll try to warn you. Me without my marabou feather headdress."
*
The leap of faith. How many of those has he taken, recently? He clicks off the light, advances a pace or two into the dark, waiting to let his eyes adjust, once she's satisfied. Then he pauses and looks back, like nothing so much as a dog trying to urge its master on for a walk. "I'll keep a hand up," he adds, grinning a little.
*
"Good. I figure holding onto my belt is less desirable." In the smothering dark, Scarlett has a curiously disembodied voice. At once the tunnel enhances, smothers, and distorts sound as much as the eyes play tricks on themselves with the light fading. Cones and rods strive to distinguish colour, and oft find none. The slowly decreasing grade follows as the tunnel swings around on itself, cutting a curve that has another intersecting corridor of equal width and height. James' hand might skip along, feeling an opening twice the width of a door. She holds out her own hand to trace the inner rocky edge, her voice a hum sustained at a low volume.
The floor is even, without much debris to speak of. Not even shards, though they might occasionally kick along other things; discarded tools, for one, odd in their make. A stretch of hemp wrapped around a torn pack, perhaps, or a wizened leather shoe.
That matters less as they negotiate whatever path turns them down into the depths. Scarlett goes off memory more than anything but there are times when they reach dead ends.
Then there's the emergent cause for the trouble. Specks of citrine slowly emerge from the void of true cave black, tiny sparks flowering in the midnight void. Some are larger than other, radiating in every direction. Blue the shade of a cornflower is present in one quadrant, and others with a soapier blue-whiteness cast as so many tiny lanterns on a vastly distant shore. Distinguishing up from down, side from side, becomes a matter of relative madness for the mind cultivated to three dimensions when Bucky literally begins walking through a sea of stars, the galactic plane glittering around him in every spot he looks.
*
Vertiginous, to say the least. He reaches out a hand, feeling more blind now. Hesitant, shuffling, feeling with the soles of those heavy boots as much as he can. His metal hand seeks hers - Buck may need the touch for balance. "These're the crystals you mentioned?" he wonders, voice low, hoarse. There's an odd shudder from him, a twitch of the muscles of his chest.
*
The floor exists underfoot, but it might be far weirder walking where he seems suspended in space. So too the walls might waver, the texture smooth and not helpful in the least. Scarlett's footfalls won't be a comfort, usually quieted, because her ability to float guides her as a means to compensate for losing something of her internal compass.
"Alarm system for the jotnar," she murmurs softly, and the leather of her outstretched arm and hand provides a lifeline. The individual crystals aren't sufficiently bright to see much by, a collective shedding only a wavering of the shadows. Night vision remains despite the glittering fire points. "At one point, Hrimhari — the Wolf Prince — fell through the ground and he couldn't even smell the hole. It gets disorienting. No red, though, so no giants." A pause follows. "Not the kind to watch out for. Asgardians show up gold."
*
His grip is convulsive, his laugh a little shaky. "I see," he says, softly. His throat works, suppressing incipient nausea, courtesy of a growing vertigo. Of all the things to really get him.
His tread is careful, but not soundless. Surely he can't be afraid of the dark?
*
She floats as a guide in front of them, cursing when she knocks into wall or rotates above a rough patch or two. It's an eternity walking, floating, in space underground, where the ceiling is not the top of reality. But the ceiling is rising, and Bucky's hand does not find the wall four times out of five. He might taste the air disrupted by something foul, a subtle poison of ozone and crisped metal. More debris skids in a scree curtain, thin but adding to the chronic sense of slip-sliding.
"I think I know where we are," she admits slowly. "The fast way is a drop through a hole right into town. The slower way puts us down a tight spiral, and you may not like the footing. It comes out behind. Preference?"
*
"If you can drop us both safely down, let's do that. I feel pretty sure I might fall if I try to walk it." A somewhat shamefaced admission, but pride goeth, literally. "Not going to get us attacked, is it?"
*
"I can't guarantee we would not be attacked. Nothing is ever certain where these things go, but I have to determine whether the gate is active or not. No doubt the Doctor would know on his own, but he has physical limits I do not. Second opinions are always good with a doctor." Her smile is dispensible in the dark, tense and drawn too hard at the corners. Bucky showing any kind of weakness hardly bothers her. "Lots of lean-tos and crumbling walls to shore up. Imagine what Berlin looked like circa '44, and you might have the right of it. Try to avoid anything on the upper tiers, they aren't stable."
She holds her arms open, holding perfectly still for him to decide how he wants to approach the floating scion of Midgard; piggyback, haul her over his shoulder and let her fly that way, or something else.
*
Piggyback it is, tempted as he might be by the face to face embrace. Physically appealing, tactically unwise. "I remember," he reminds her, with that hint of bleakness. So does she, of course, memories nested within memories.
*
"Comparable threats, minus the Germans." At least she doesn't call them Jerries; too young, honestly, possibly not even alive at the time of the war. Her falsified documents would imply otherwise. Arabella Astor — yes, of that benighted line — doesn't have a birthday that Scarlett shares, but she acknowledges the necessity of paper anyways. Does James even know what her ID says?
With his weight settling onto her, Scarlett takes a moment to adjust and try not to shift too much. She has to stoop out of reflex rather than threat of banging his head, but they do move interestingly in tandem once she starts forward at a gliding step. It's like cross-country skiing, really, except the gentle corrections become a series of undulating movements rather than straight lines. There is good reason why: when the ground falls aside, debris hisses over the lip and she stiffens under Bucky, muscles trembling the moment before sound reaches the ears. Yet another indication of something amiss. He might chew on that before they're free falling upright in the void of stars. Those glimmering specks are blurring, swiftly shifting on an axis around them as the redhead follows the arc ahead and drifts in a deliberate spiral rather than zips headfirst with her hands out. She's not insane.
But try threading the ecliptic in the midnight zone, and chase after a biolumescent school of fish. Delirium bites hard until they rotate twice and come skidding out into a vast, open space awash in the dull pulsations like waves witnessed in a sea cave. Except…
No sea cave has a rank and file of stone buildings, most of them huts of a single room with sloping roofs. No sea cave faces what looks like the gaping maw of a dragon bisected by a pillar, forming a Y that shimmers as a furnace does, except the ominous bleed without is greyish-white rather than any other shade. Rocks pile through fissures in the high cliff face surrounding that gap. The ceiling is far too high to see easily, and when they enter it, Bucky might guess he could fall half the length of the typical skyscraper before hitting the floor in the amphitheatre. More concerning are slabs of rock at angles to the natural strata; they've just been forced through, inclusions that are snow-covered.
*
He manages to keep from monkey-clutching on that dizzying route down. She can hear his throat work a few times, but that's all the protest he makes.
AT that sight of the ruined town and the gate beyond, he stiffens. Shocks will come, as his horizons expand. Keep company with gods and angels, and you get sucked along in the slipstream of greater fates than your own, one of ten thousand spearcarriers who die for the hero to have that necessary moment.
He's silent in apparent awe, before some imp of the perverse has him muttering in her ear, unthinking, "Speak, friend, and enter."
*
"Unfortunately it doesn't work." Scarlett's tone is not quite bleak so much as it is dismayed. "We haven't our Gandalf with his bright staff, do we? Though he should be here."
Through the eye of the shaft they've fallen through, the route isn't quite dead center. They are towards the rank and file hovels in their tumbledown affair. Obvious that strife transpired here, for the fallen debris belongs not only to walls but bodies, hints that tools and meals were abandoned in a rush. There are children's toys among the wreckage, dolls and the small instruments wielded by parents. So few weapons: broken arrowheads, crushed spears, cudgels, so much without any real skill of making. They were not warriors who fought bravely here, not the Immortals of a distant king.
In the grey light, death is a sheen of morose pallor leaving no corner untouched with the gloom. The languid ripples banish the shadows on the front side, but the back of the buildings are lightless and they land within a shattered shell that probably hosted far too many giants for its modest size.
*
It's the toys that make his eyes glitter at the surge of memories, and he cuffs his eyes with an impatient swipe of a sleeve. War remains war, and Michael's feathers brush every race, nearly. He sets his feet down carefully, as if not trusting the ground to stay stable for him, this time. Rocks heel to toe and back again, looks to her in silent expectation.
*
Scarlett stands as she is, an inch off the ground. The dismantling of their embrace of a sorts gives her no difference in altitude. It's up to James to figure his best way down through the shattered buildings arranged row on row; he is the expert in urban warfare, her in the oddness of the universe. Or at least portions of it.
She gestures to encourage him. "Otherwise, my choice is walking up to the perilous portal of destruction and test it. Take a few pebbles. We'll have to toss a few and see whether any hostile tentacles come out." Her gaze is sharp despite the light tone, murmured. "But I can tell you we didn't see a lateral sheet of rock sticking out like that when Thor called the storm."
*
He picks his way slowly, carefully, but she can see his confidence restore itself, little by little. "Debris from abattle beyond it? Not just the fight here?" he suggests. He does, however, scoop up said pebbles, shovelling a handful or two into his parka pockets.
*
The long spars of stone are huge; foundational roots of a mountain, bedrock dumped in a physics collision of a computer game, if such things existed. Dozens of metric tons of rock go at angles through the roof and walls or open space where obviously they were never intended to. Chunks of snow underground? Where would that come from? The other obvious signs that are off come into detail only much closer: boulders that seem to sprout like fungus out of buildings, curtains of ice without an obvious beginning or an end.
Scarlett runs her fingers underneath her eye, scratching her skin lightly. Whatever she feels, it makes her skin crawl. She follows him, drifting at a very short reserve — arm's reach, no more. He crouches, she crouches. It's been this way before when Bucky taught her the basics of slipping from rooftop to rooftop, assembling guns, tapping into old forgotten knowledge.
*
It's a towering thing to creep up on, but so he does. No blithe wandering up, no playing tourist. But eventually they're before that wavering gate. He glances back at her, takes a stone the size of a golfball from his pocket…..and tosses it lightly, underhand, at the shimmering surface.
*
No security between the long plain of empty space between Bucky and the entrance to that tunnel leading to, presumably, a portal. The fell light emerging from the mouth outlines the jagged crush of natural rock and destruction caused by a halo of lightning bolts months ago. It's hard to tell where the tunnel converges into two arms, but what matters is that rock.
It vanishes into the light. The surface doesn't distort, exactly. It puddles in. There should be a corresponding bounce of the stone skittering on the floor, but the sound proves absent.
Scarlett rests on her heels for a moment, and then gauges grabbing another rock. Except…
Except…
A frosty gout roars out the other side, through that white rippling barrier, sending a number of long shards as bad as any sword or spear at the Winter Soldier.
*
Thank the gods for that arm. Flung up hastily, it takes most of the damage, smaller shards ricocheting off in glittering sprays. Almost decorative, they seem at first. But enough of them have found a mark that he staggers back, bleeding. Even an arrowhead can do real damage, after all. "Ff…fuck," he says, kneeling abruptly. "Sorry. That was stupid. At leas we didn't stick a hand in it. 've got a first aid kit in my pack…." There are dark stains spreading, already.
*
The ice spray shatters against the stone buildings as much as flesh, and the facades weakened by an angry Thor in times past are just as likely to collapse as crumple inwards. Groaning rock simply tumbles into slabs or cracks, brittle and weakened. It's to say something for bone too as the spray flings Scarlett back, tumbling end over end. She bounces well enough off a crumbled wall, ripping the ice spur out of her coat.
An arrowhead can do real damage, and shamanic spears are another thing entirely. "I'm the kind to stick my hand in," she mutters, forcing herself up and darting for Bucky before anything more decides to stir. "Get the impression they might be waiting? I can't tell you if that was an actively guarded spot or a tripwire." If he's still upright, good enough reason to be swept up in her arms, and sprang to the back ranks of those houses on an erratic zigzag. No beeline for her on account more things flying through are likely to miss. "However, seeing nothing coming through in the next few minutes would imply we're safe for a few seconds. Hold tight. Patching people is not a strong suit unless borrowed."
*
"I can do it," he tells her. "If we're out of range. Yeah. It was a trap," he admits, on a sigh. He's already begun to shiver - ice is ice, and it's there with the arm in draining heat right out of his core. But he doesn't fumble for his pack, not yet.
*
Getting the backpack off isn't the hard part. Opening it, scarcely that, and even Scarlett knows the basics of a first aid kit. Never mind the bulk of her healing skills lie in two incredibly diametric directions: herbal remedies and neuroscience. But hey! One learns every day. "I can get the ice out just fine, unless too fine to work with gloves on." No chancing skin. Not now. "Tweezers needed? Or is this a plaster and patch job?"
*
"If it's that fine but it's normal ice, it should melt out," he says. "The bigger pieces take out with tweezers. Hell, find the Swiss Army knife, use the pliers on it, for the stuff too big for the tweezers and too small for normal hands. Then just plaster 'em. I don't think anything's too deep." His teeth are starting to chatter. None of the wounds seem life-threatening, at least.
*
"Jotunheim isn't known for normal ice. Frost giants, ice giants; two separate races, kin, and the sort who bring down primeval winter." Scarlett runs through that absence of comfort while frowning, searching for the tweezers. "Now is probably not an ideal time to admit I could just…" She trails off, shaking her head, a black gallows humour evinced where the Winter Soldier is involved. "Breathing fire is never the correct solution, is it? Hold still." It's still incredibly dim outside view of the glowing portal, its greyness a forlorn and unwelcoming presence. Anything large enough for her fingers to safely pull free, they go. "You're cold. Maybe I will have to otherwise. You know, that horrible van is starting to sound appealing. If we have to, we stow you in there and buy off the driver with a promise of weed or something."
*
He snorts laughter, until it hurts. Then he stops, holding himself still. Picking the ice shards out….it's laborious and annoying, but not as difficult as it might seem at first. "Yeah," he agrees. "I'm real cold." Then the van, and he's trying to suppress snickers. "We could pick it…pick the lock. Hotwire it….." He's speculating. "Nothing down here to build a fire with, is there?"
*
"Where would they have wood? Too precious a commodity." Scarlett shakes her head, another piece of ice flicked off. Working by muffled touch is rather like looking through a veil or a sheet. Tell her where it hurts, patient Winter Soldier. Apologetic frown in place, she bends over him, doing some good at least in shedding too much heat for that lithe body. Eventually the idea dawns to pull off her jacket and literally dump it over him, partly to muffle the snickers and also to keep him from losing too much dignity and warmth. "I cannot tell if anyone is coming. Again, the last time? Wolves, trolls, an ice-wielding shaman were the least of our troubles. This time, with our luck, we're up against the Jormungandr. World serpent of…."
And then she halts, staring into space.
*
That sobers him instantly. He's silent, listening. Not much to see in the position he's in. Has she heard something, sensed something? He looks up into her face, questioningly.