On Ice, by Pythia (PG)

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

Fandom: HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS
Pairing: none
Author Website: The Heliconian Museum
Why this must be read:

Far in the future, a pair of archaeologists discovers the body of a man frozen in the ice of Northern Siberia. A man who appears to be 2500 years old, whose clothes don't match his supposed origins. A man who claims to be a mythological hero...

If you don't count crossovers, this may be the only science-fiction AU we have in this corner of the fandom. This is one of those stories where I don't want to give too much of the plot away; let me just say that it's a long, satisfying read. The worldbuilding is meticulous, and I love the way the story keeps you hanging on the edge until the very end.

So – we had a man dressed like a warrior, with a weapon seemingly forged several centuries before he’d lived, draped in an extinct species of wolf and in a far better physical condition than might be expected of a man two and half thousand years old. He had nearly a full set of teeth, and they were strong and lacked any sign of cavities. There was evidence of previously broken bones, all of which had been expertly set and apparently healed without distortion or thickening around the breaks. He was dehydrated, which was only to be expected, but evidenced no sign of disease, infection, fungal infestation or even bugs of any sort. (We combed all that hair in search of fleas and found none – nor head lice, nor ringworm, nor anything else for that matter.)

There were frost burns on the back of one hand, and a fresh abrasion on his right cheek – and other than that we had a man in perfect health and perfect physical condition.

Who’d apparently been dead for two and half millennia.

By the end of those two months we knew we had to try to revive him. It was the only way that we might possibly find out who and what he was.

On Ice