asgardmeridiem | [closed]

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Who: Mr. & Mrs. Duderaider
What: A very awkward married date night (yes at a library. nerds.)
When: Shortly after they encounter each other over the network
Where: The great library, Odin district
Rating: oh who the hell knows with these two lmfao TBA

It wasn't an uncommon thing for Nate to say or do something and then immediately regret it after. That was just the kind of person he was. Shoot first, ask questions later. Do what feels good until it chafes. Of course, when he sat down and actually thought about it, he wasn't really sure what part of asking Elena to get together was a good idea, or at what point it actually felt good. There was something weird going on in this place, and he knew it, and he also knew that she wasn't nearly as pissed off at him as she should've been. It was a curious thing, and since the bear didn't seem to be quite ready to maul him just yet, Nate thought he could stand to poke it again.

Now that he was sitting at a table in the library anticipating Elena's arrival, he was removed enough from the conversation and situation in order to see how much of a truly bad idea this was. Her memories might be fucked up and out of order, but his sure weren't. The last time he'd seen or spoken to his wife, it'd been World War 3. Under any other circumstance, he would've never reached out to Elena like this, and in fact would've run in the other direction if he saw her coming. He was sure that she hated him by now, was ready for divorce papers to show up in his mailbox every day, and it just wasn't something that he was ready to deal with yet. Not that he ever would be.

Nate slunk down a little in his seat and tried to focus on the book in his hands. It was just a simple history book on ancient Nordic civilization. Nothing he didn't already know, unfortunately. But for the life of him, he couldn't seem to find anything about this particular version of Asgard itself anywhere in the library. He did, however, find a part of the building that was completely and utterly inaccessible. It didn't take him long to put two and two together, but all things considered, he decided to wait for Elena before solving this puzzle. If they were going to do this together, they were going to do this together. As a team. Just like they always had-- just like they were supposed to. Before everything went to hell.

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Elena knew this was a terrible idea. It had been a terrible idea the first time she'd agreed to see Nate again, and at least that time Sully had been there to keep her from throttling him into the ground. Of course, apparently Nate didn't remember that. She couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not. On the one hand, she was pretty sure that meant he didn't know as much about his stupid plan to find Iram as she did presently. On the other hand, it raised other problems. As in, as far as Nate knew, this would be the first time they had been face-to-face since their separation.

Either way, this was probably going to suck, but he was the only familiar face here. And as much as she hated to admit it, she could feel that tingle in the pit of her stomach she always used to get during particularly exciting assignments. This was certainly undocumented territory, and as weird and vaguely terrifying as that was, it was also exciting.

It wasn't really hard to find Nate once she'd gotten into the library, but she took a couple seconds to mentally collect herself before heading to sit down in the chair across the table from where Nate was studying. She folded her hands on the table, and leaned forward a little, before clearing her throat.

"Find anything interesting, yet?"

Nate didn't see Elena approach, but it wasn't because he didn't notice her arrival. It was because he stubbornly refused to pull his eyes up from the page he was staring at; it was because he was afraid of what he might've seen. Just the sound of her voice made his chest tighten with anxiety, and he had to squash the urge to jump out of his seat to run and hide. Those things alone were ridiculous, and there was a part of him that knew it, but there was nothing he could consciously do to change the way he felt.

Before Elena had sat down at his table, he had already formulated a plan to tell her immediately about the lack of information and the blocked off area of the library-- to just jump right into things without giving her a chance to fight him or say no. But those words died on his tongue the second he became aware of presence, and when he finally gathered the courage to lift his head and look at her, the thought was all but forgotten. He wasn't really sure what he'd been expecting, but for some reason, it hadn't been to see Elena looking just as beautiful as she always had, staring at him with an impassive look on her face. He supposed he just hadn't expected this whole thing to seem so normal.

Shifting a bit in his chair to sit up a bit straighter, Nate closed the book he'd been semi-reading and licked his lips. He wasn't sure what his feelings were doing, but he was sure that he didn't like it. All at once, he was torn between the urge to run, the urge to lean in and kiss her, the urge to break down and beg for forgiveness, the urge to pick another fight with her, and the urge to just ignore all of those things and just focus on the task at hand. Unfortunately, that last feeling was the weakest one, even though it was the one he wished he could pull to the forefront.

"I found that I'm having trouble keeping my Olafs straight," he said finally, pushing the closed book away from him with his fingertips. "Other than that, no."

She knew she was at a slight advantage in this situation, because she'd already seen Nate. And while he may not remember, she was still clinging to enough agitation at him for running off and leaving her and Sully to contend with Marlowe.

It was still hard, though. She missed him more than she would even admit to herself, and some days it was harder than others to remember why she was actively ambivalent towards him. He was doing a pretty good job on his own right now, though. Hadn't even been stuck in this place a day and already he was dragging her into some new mystery.

"That figures," she sighed, picking up the book he'd pushed away and looking at it critically, like she was trying to find a secret puzzle within the cover. That was usually how things went whenever Nate was involved. "They probably don't want us to find out anything about this place beyond what we've been told."

For a moment, Nate said nothing. He just watched Elena with a bit of silent reverence, drinking in the simple sight of her leafing through the book. The quiet wasn't entirely awkward or disconcerting, but neither was it totally comfortable. Whatever the feeling was, it sat at the bottom of his stomach like a rock, and his heart threatened to drop right down next to it. All things considered, he didn't really know how he still felt about his estranged wife, mostly due to the fact that he refused to let himself think about it for any extended period of time. He did know that he missed the sense of familiarity around her, that he missed her weight beside him in his bed, and that he still cared-- probably too much-- what she thought of him.

And now, here they were. Sitting at opposite ends of a table with a sea of books between them, just the same as they had so many times before. But, at the same time, it was different somehow. In the back of his mind, he knew that he didn't really need Elena's help to do what he was doing. He rarely ever did need her on the job. He just wanted her there, now more than ever, now that he knew that she was still willing to at least give him the time of day.

Damn it. He was getting distracted now. She probably noticed. Come on, Nate, he scolded himself. Focus. Beneath it all, there was still a very real and very severe issue concerning the fact that they'd been whisked away to Viking La La Land, and they both had their reasons to get the fuck out of it.

"The city itself doesn't look particularly Norse either, does it?" he said. It was the first thing he noticed when he stepped into Odin's district. Everything was so western European, and not particularly Scandinavian at all. "We might be barking up the wrong tree."

She hadn't actually noticed the silence at first, she'd been so busy focusing on the book in an attempt to give herself a few more seconds of not having to look at him. This was volumes easier when Sully had been there to act as a buffer. It was easier to avoid wanting to pick a fight when she was trying to keep Nate's adopted father happy, since she was actually fond of the old man.

After flipping past several chapters of nonsense on Nordic myth without really reading any of them, though, she did notice that Nate wasn't talking over her perusing like he usually did. She glanced up at him finally, shutting the book and setting it back down on the table.

"Maybe, but if this is the wrong tree, where the hell is the right one?" She knew they'd dealt with metaphors before, but this was a level of surreal she couldn't quite get her head around. "The architecture is one thing, but the level of technology packed into these communicators? It's like something out of a science fiction movie."

Oh thank god. An opportunity for him to get up and move around. Nate was sure that if he'd been stuck in this chair for much longer, he was going to go crazy under the sudden intense pressure he felt. He gave Elena a bit of a knowing smile as he rose out of his seat.

"Aha," he said, a bit of familiar excitement creeping back into his tone. "I was hoping you'd ask. Books aren't the only thing I found here. Let me show you something."

Without waiting to see if she would follow-- because he was sure that she'd do it on her own-- he stepped away from the table and headed over to the area of the library that he'd found earlier. The part that was inaccessible. It didn't look much different from an ordinary wall, except for the fact that it was a bare wall amidst a sea of bookshelves, that it was in a prime position for a separate room, and it looked like it could have had a handle at some point in its past.

"This isn't the only wall like this," he explained. "There's a few others, and they all look the same, and they all seem to be leading to the same place. I bet whatever it is they don't want us to know, they're keeping it behind these walls."

"Huh." Elena frowned as she approached the wall, having lagged a few steps behind Nate. That certainly added to the paranoia level of this place. She frowned a little, resting her hands on her hips as her eyes scanned over the wall, not really expecting to see anything Nate hadn't already. One thing she could give him, he was incredibly observant when it came to things like this.

"Have you talked to any of the locals about this?" Not that most of them seemed overly helpful when it came to the big questions, but it was usually at least worth asking.

"Uh, well no, actually," he admitted.

He awkwardly shifted his weight from foot to foot. The truth of the matter was that he hadn't even thought to ask the locals about this. They creeped him out. He couldn't help it; he just had a severe distrust of things that he couldn't see, even when he was looking right at them.

"I was waiting for you," he said. It was mostly the truth.

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