But he knew even before he opened his eyes it was wrong. It was softer and denser than desert sand, and he smelled brine, heard the rising and falling of waves, the cries of sea birds irritated that there were creatures disturbing their favorite section of coastline.

He opened his eyes, and wondered how the hell they had ended up on a beach.

It was still early morning, the sun wasn't quite up yet, but the cloud layer was so thick it was almost impossible to tell. The sky was like a ceiling of grey cotton. It wasn't raining, just misting, and just cold enough to make it all rather miserable. But it was a nice change from the heat of the Outback.

Logan sat up before he remembered he had broken limbs to watch out for, but they weren't broken anymore. He wasn't hurt, he was fine, and he knew, at the same time, that Bob's energy was no longer in his head. He wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but it left him feeling slightly off somehow.

He looked to find they were on a beach, just a few feet from the incoming tide, and even in the grey half-light the ocean was an incredibly deep and vivid blue, a color he had seen only once in his life - looking over the sea from Bob's porch. So they were still in Australia, just out of the desert.

Helga was laying on the sand, just out of arm's reach, and didn't appear to be injured, but some injuries weren't obvious. He felt a little better when she came to with a jolt, and looked around as bewildered as he must have. "You okay?" He asked.

She nodded, barely sparing him a glance. "Yeah. You?"

"Yeah."

"Where's Bob?"

"I don't know."

"Where are we?"

"Australia still. I think."

He got up, and held out a hand so she could pull herself up. She did, and they both looked around the empty beach. It looked like there were luxury houses just up the beach. On the slope of a hill looking out over the sea. They were probably trespassing on a private beach, but who really gave a fuck?

They looked around fruitlessly once more, and Helga asked, "So, did we win?"

That was an amazingly good question. "I don't know. But we're still in one piece, right? We must have."

But even as he said it, it seemed strangely hollow.

Maybe they did win, but at what cost?

***

Helga went off to look, shouting for him, but while the place smelled heavily of Bob, none of the scent was recent. Logan simply collapsed on the couch and put his head in his hands, letting himself rest. Even though he was physically okay, he still absurdly tired - dimensional "jet lag", he supposed - that had happened before.

He didn't want to see Helga's face as she came downstairs, but he didn't have to. She came slowly down the stairs and collapsed beside him on the sofa. She didn't say anything for a long time - the only noise was the metronomic ticking of a clock somewhere in the kitchen. Finally she asked him, "Is he dead?"

"No." He said it without thinking about it; he really didn't know if it was true or not. But it was hard to imagine. "He just didn't need us anymore. Maybe he took the fight to another upper realm where we weren't wanted."

"You don't have him in your head anymore,do you?"

"No."

"Shit." She wiped off the sign of Moros around her eye with the back of her hand, and grumbled, "If he's dead, I'll kill him."

Well, stranger things had happened.

***

Once he stretched out on the sofa, listening to Helga in the kitchen, talking with someone about "taking the flyer out" over the phone, he felt drowsier than he had a right to be. He threw a forearm over his eyes and figured he'd get a nap in before Hel shoved him awake and dragged him to some airport.

But soon he was dreaming he was on the beach again, the sky overhead clear this time and as blue as the sea. He knew he wasn't alone, but it wasn't until he sat up that he saw Bob sitting on the beach too, about ten feet away from him. He was staring out at the ocean as if there was something new to look at, and then, aware of his scrutiny, said, "I always thought this was a pretty place."

"Few beaches are real armpits," he pointed out.

"True."

"So where are you?"

Bob sighed, and turned to face him, never getting up. "I'm in one of the Higher Realms. I kinda got banged up a bit - I thought Fenrir alone was bad - so I'm recuperating' up here."

"You dead?"

"Aw fuck no mate - do I look dead to you? I'm good, just not ready to face the lower realms just yet."

Logan didn't know if he should believe him or not. "But you're comin' back?"

"Of course! You guys need someone watchin' your backs, and they're kickin' me out as soon as I'm fully corporeal again. I did the thing they wanted me to do for 'em - now they want me to go the fuck away again."

"And you're sure they're not in-laws?"

He gave him that rakish, shit eating grin that he probably had patented. "Not most of 'em, no. I just didn't want you guys thinkin' I kicked it."

"So we did win?"

He nodded. "Kumiho is no more. She bit off more than she could chew, and got herself violently discorporated. Apparently she never learned you can't fight city hall the hard way."

"You knew you could get killed in the process, didn't you?"

"Sure. But has that ever stopped you from doin' something?"

He hated it when he turned around questions on him like that. He scowled at him, but Bob just continued to grin at him, unfazed. "We're not talkin' about me. If you knew you were probably gonna die, you could've warned us."

"But why? What could you do about it? Besides, I'm not dead - you only wish I was." He winked at him, but then his expression sobered somewhat, perhaps because he realized that Logan wasn't exactly buying his "I'm perfectly all right" claim. "I'm gonna be okay," he insisted. "And I'm comin' back - can't get rid of me that easy. I just wanted to thank you and Hel - you guys saved the world. And still, nobody will give you a table at a fancy restaurant."

"Isn't that always the way?" He picked up a shell and tossed it into the ocean. It barely made a splash, and was quickly lost in the white caps. "I never wanted to save the world, you know? I hate it."

Bob chuckled knowingly. "But that's the great irony of the world, mate - the people who want it the least sometimes fight the hardest for it."

"Why?"

"You tell me."

He thought about it, watching the waves come in, gently collapse against the shore and wash back out again, and he knew he had no idea at all. "I don't know. I just fight - it's what I do."

"You do more than that."

"Hardly. But what about you? Why do you bother? You could have the world, and you fight for the damn thing, but otherwise you don't fuck around with it. What's up with that?"

Bob smirked down at the sand, running his fingers through it and creating a pattern that almost looked like the runic characters that had once been painted on his skin. "At the end of the day, Logan, I just want to live my life. As grotesquely long as it is." He looked up, and gave him a small, sad smile. "And I know you understand that."

Logan looked away with an annoyed grunt, not really wanting to admit that.

"You take care of yourself, Logan," Bob continued. "You did good. And if I come back and find out you got yourself torn to pieces again, I'll be pretty pissed off."

"Not as much as me." He glanced out at the rolling waves once more, and told him, "Come back soon. I think you're needed."

"I know. That's always the bitch of it, isn't it?"

Logan realized he was probably including him in that as well, but when he turned to say something, he suddenly woke up on the sofa in Bob's front room. He found Helga standing in the kitchen archway, looking at him as if he'd grown a second head. He stared back at her, and said, "Bob just got in touch with me."

"Yeah - he was speaking through you."

Now he gave her the funny look. "What does that mean?"

"Means what it means. He was speaking through you." She sagged against the jamb, but it seemed to be more a result of exhaustion than relief. "At least he's still alive somewhere."

"Yeah. " He was speaking through him, to Helga, while speaking to him in his own head? That was creepy. He must have been in better shape than he thought.

Helga turned away, back towards the kitchen, a hand over her mouth, and he knew she was more upset than she was letting on. He didn't think he could blame her either.

Epilogue

When he did get up again, he realized Bob had been to the cabin and made some revisions since he was last here. There were new books, new bottles of booze in the bar, and new crap in the root cellar. Along with a spare generator and a small washer and dryer, he'd added even more weird foods to the stores - who needed two pounds of yogurt covered pretzels and a box of "just add water" tahini mix? Well, at least if he ever got a sudden craving for prickly pear cactus candy, he had some.

The last time he'd been here, in this lone cabin smack dab in the middle of nowhere in the Laurentian mountain range, he'd cut enough wood to apparently last until now - it was still a knee high, neatly stacked pile in the far corner of the cellar, next to a keg of wood screws ( he knew better than to ever ask ). But still he grabbed the axe after helping himself to a morning beer ( some Quebec brand he'd never heard of before, but remarkably good - Bob had good taste ... well, when he wanted to ), and went out to cut some more. It wasn't that he really thought he'd need it, even though it was still so cold up here the snow was calf deep and hardened to a crust on the surface - it was just strenuous physical activity, and that helped  take his mind off of things.

He hadn't gone back to the mansion because he just didn't feel ready to face them yet. What if they asked where he'd been? What was he going to say? "A couple of weird ass dimensions. Helped save the world from a crazed goddess out to eat it, and discovered, when broken, adamantium bones hurt like all fuck. Also found out most gods - except Bob - are pretty humorless, and hell has the strangest magazines in its waiting room." Yes, that wouldn't get him funny looks at all. Even he couldn't quite believe it when he heard it in his own mind.

He just wasn't up to dealing with people right now - Human or otherwise. He just needed some down time to think and be by himself, away from all this shit. And he couldn't be more away than up here - well, unless he went back to Ogdoad, but he didn't want to, and besides, he knew damn well Amaunet didn't like him. Which was okay, because that was mutual.

He read the books and tromped through the snowy woods, looking for gods knew what, and enjoying the silence and lack of human smells. He was starting to remember how much he hated to be alone with his thoughts when, on his fourth day, he heard a Sno-Cat in the distance, headed up here. He was braced and ready for trouble ( although how anyone could have found him up here he had no idea ), but it turned out to be Helga. He hadn't told her he'd be up here, and she'd had the same idea he had had about getting away from it all. He offered to go, but she insisted he stay, as she didn't intend to be here for more than a couple of days - she really didn't like the "Arctic wilderness" so much, it was just staying at Bob's Sydney place without him there was driving her crazy. It was too big, and too empty.

In a way, it was hardly like he had company at all - he was out in the woods and the snow, and she stayed back at the cabin ( she was not a "cold weather demon", whatever that meant ), trying to see if she could get any reception on the portable t.v. or radio in the cellar. ( His guess on that was no, although she probably had better luck with the radio. )

There was the problem of the one bed, but he didn't care - he rarely used it, as he seemed to have a penchant for falling asleep on the couch while reading. But she woke him up later with a kiss, and even though he knew she didn't actually want him - she wanted Bob - the single bed issue became irrelevant. Well hell - who was he to kick a woman out of bed? Or, more appropriately, off the couch.

They fell into a loose pattern of behavior after that - pretty much staying by themselves during the day  and ending up together at night. It was probably very wrong, but it hadn't stopped them before, so why stop now?

One morning he got up before she did - he'd had a surprising lack of nightmares so far, but that didn't necessarily mean he slept in ( especially since he did sleep an entire day ) - and made breakfast for them, since he was tired of eating the packaged stuff, and the fresh food he'd bought at the last chance general store down the mountain was going to start going bad if he didn't do something with it. She was surprised that,(A) he could cook and (B) it was edible, and he pointed out that he'd cooked for himself before - he didn't completely live on fast and bar food, just mostly. That led her to ask what he had done after he'd woken up naked and with no memory fifteen years ago - a good question that no one had asked him before. Maybe that's why he told her, or maybe he had actually wanted to tell someone; he really wasn't sure.

Not that there was a lot to tell. He was pretty sure he was insane for the first six months or so ( he thought it was that much, but it might have been as little as three months - back then, he had no real sense of time yet ); his mind was Swiss cheese, with more holes than substance, and he was driven much of the time by pure instinct, much of which centered around fear. He was afraid of people, so what he ended up doing was breaking into some chalets near a resort in what must have been the Canadian Rockies - they were mostly vacation and "ski" homes of the wealthy, so no one was there, and they hadn't been lived in for months. Still the homes were furnished, and they'd left clothes behind, some food in the pantry, and he managed to survive basically as a "squatter", taking what he needed, sleeping inside when it was just too cold outside. He started to read the books they had ( not many, in most cases - once he found what looked like a library, but what turned out to be three-D wallpaper that just looked like shelves and books ), and sanity began to slowly reassert itself, or maybe his mind just started healing itself. He finally got tired of being afraid - tired and fucking pissed off - and he knew there had to be answers to what he was, and what he was so afraid of, out there somewhere.

What he didn't tell her was that he was so overwhelmed by people at first - the sound of them, the smell of them - that he had to retreat and wait for his built in filtering to kick in before he could venture among them again. He knew how to filter these things out subconsciously, but he had lived beyond people for so long, and his mind was so fucked over, it took a while for his body to remember how to do it. Bob had been right there - the downside to "super" senses was that everyone frankly stunk, and made too much goddamn noise. If he didn't want to live his life in a sensory depravation tank - and he didn't, although it sounded nice sometimes - it was just something he learned to live with. It was amazing what he had learned to put up with now, but back then it nearly knocked him flat.

She did ask him another question no one had ever asked."I know you were what - on the bare knuckle boxing and ultimate fighting underground circuit, right? Your ring savvy on Dis kind of proved that. So you never merc-ed?"

He looked at her askance as she grabbed the pan and emptied the last of the eggs onto her plate. She certainly wasn't one of those women shy about eating, she just tucked in. Kind of like the rest of her personality - coy and demure was for pussies. "Why do you ask that?"

"I ain't exactly as pure as driven snow - I know the underground scene. Okay, in the States, not necessarily Canada, but I know guys of questionable character would hang around those underground type dealies and hire out mercs from there. They figured the guys were tougher than Clint Eastwood's ball sack, desperate for money, and crazier than a shithouse rat. You were never approached?"

He didn't know how far he was willing to go. He felt comfortable opening up to Helga because - as long as you were straight with her - she'd never use information against you. She liked a fair fight, and would only fight dirty if you went there first. But there was a lot of his recent past he was more than willing to forget. "I was approached, yeah. But the fuckers oozed sleaze like hair oil."

"Not interested?"

"No." She studied him with an uncomfortable scrutiny, fork paused half way to her lips. Maybe she couldn't spot liars quite as well as he could, but she'd been with Bob, and was a professional assassin - she knew a pose when she saw one. "Okay, the money was sometimes temptin' 'cause I had none, but at the end of the day I couldn't justify workin' with guys who I knew would stab me in the back first chance they got." Maybe someday he'd tell her the whole truth, but right now he wasn't up to it.

Either she believed him, or understood his reluctance to talk about it, as she dropped it after that.

Helga stayed on for two more days, then decided she was getting "cabin fever" and had to leave before she went nuts. Besides, she was hopeful that Bob would be back very soon. She was obviously hoping he was back now, but he'd have certainly contacted them if that were true - he wouldn't leave them hanging like this, no matter how much of an asshole he could be at times.

As he saw her off, she gave him a passionate kiss and a big hug, and whispered in his ear, "You know, it could have been you."

It took him a moment to figure out that she meant if she didn't love Bob, she could have love him. He took that as the high compliment that it was.

He'd gotten used to having her around, as much as a pain as company was; he only realized that later that night, tossing kindling into the fire and finishing off a bottle of rum. It was better to be alone though, but still he did kind of miss her. Okay, yes, he mostly missed the sex, but he did miss her as well - she was a hell of a woman. She proved Bob had taste if nothing else, in women but mostly just in people - did that mean there was hope for him?

Nah.

He watched the red orange flames make patterns in the hearth, and remembered the flaming desert, and Kumiho and her hair and eyes of fire. It was funny - if he unfocused his eyes and tilted his head at just the right angle, he could almost see her face, captured inside the flames. What was it about only the criminally insane wanting to rule something?  He couldn't say the world since Kumiho wanted the Higher Realms; she just wanted to eat the world for fuel or something like that. Too weird. Eat the world? Shit - his life was really out of control if that only struck him as passingly weird, and hardly worth noticing.

As Logan sat there, being soothed by the crackle of the flames and the sharp scent of fresh pine, he thought about what Bob had said about just wanting to live his life. That was what he wanted too, wasn't it? He just wished the world - and his past - would let him. Nothing was ever that simple, was it?

He knew he had to get moving soon - Helga wasn't the only one in danger of catching cabin fever. But where would he go? He still wasn't ready to face the others just yet. He could try and give his forgotten past another gander, but hell, was there anything there that was worth remembering? So far he had been remarkably disillusioned by the bits and pieces he had found ... but since when was he coward? And there had to be something else out there, some clue, that would lead him to the Organization once and for all. If he couldn't shut them down, who could?

Logan sat back and enjoyed the silence, figuring he'd worry about tomorrow when it got here.

****

The End