The walk back home was quick, with my feet eating up the pace, my booted feet crushed granite with every step. By the time I got home, I'd almost forgotten about the fight. Its scale was so small it was nearly nonexistent, not enough to keep a place in my memory banks. If not for the bag I still carried in my second hand, I don't think I would've remembered it at all.
I spotted Ajak a few minutes after I got to the homestead. She was astride her favourite horse, galloping after the cows she had let loose to stretch their limbs. It didn't take her long till she found me, and after she did, she glanced at her farm animals before heading towards me.
"Odinson, how was your trip?"
She called out with a smile as she got closer, the horse slowing from a gallop to a trot.
"Eventful," I replied with a grunt.
She stared at me, her brows furrowing in thought. "Something happened," she noted, even if she didn't sound accusatory, simply as open-minded as ever. "You got into a fight."
"How do you figure?"
Then she smiled. "I've been in enough fights to have a nose for violence. It's nothing special. Should I be worried? I assume if you're fighting people, the person must be in a horrible shape, if not dead."
The way she spoke remained soothing and non-judgmental, so as I walked forward while she trotted beside me, I told her what happened. How my brief trip to get the groceries had turned into stopping the enhanced man, and how I deemed it too risky to leave whatever he had stolen there, so I had taken it along, indicating the black bag in my hand.
She was quiet till we got to the front of the house, deep in thought, while I simply enjoyed the cool plains breeze.
"You made the right choice, even if that choice means that whatever trouble might come for the bag would disturb us instead of the humans in the town. Have you searched to look at what is inside the bag?"
I shrugged my shoulders in apathy, which was as much of a no as she was going to receive, and she chuckled in response.
"Fine. Whatever it is, you can simply stash it. With any luck, we would be gone before anyone comes looking for it, and I'm sure even stolen alien tech would be of some interest to Phastos."
"Phastos, the Eternal with a spark for technology," I muttered in remembrance.
"Yes, I believe he would come with the rest, and they're due to arrive any day now. So for now, you can wash up, stash your little prize, and come join me in wrangling the farm animals, if you're up for it." She ended her statement with a leading tone, and I was never one to stay away from a challenge, be it a race to kill as many giants as possible or a drinking contest.
"I'll be out in a minute." With those words, I power-walked up the stairs, still careful to displace my weight so the entire structure wouldn't fall on my head.
__
Sleeping was a hard feat for a god.
It was not something I had thought about before, but when you were in the monumental shoes that I was in, it was something you were forced to realize.
To sleep was to rest, to ease tiredness, both of the physical and mental nature, to prepare a tired and weakened body for the next day. The problem was that I found it hard to get tired in the first place, considering my vitality.
That exhausting feeling was not something I'd felt since the fight against Ragnarok. The original Thor had used a different method to chase after that dream state that others found so easy to enter. He fought anything and anyone that looked like they so much as looked at him wrong, and he drank. Drank entire villages dry of their mead in a single day till he was shit-faced drunk and was forced to pass out.
Over the month, I had figured out a better way. Memories. Not mine, of course. My life had been as boring as anybody born on Earth, with an average constitution, an average life, and probably an average death. However, the same could not be said for Thor. His was a tale, a story so long-stretching, so sad, so mournful, and yet so uplifting in its final throes.
I immersed myself in those memories, and always, sooner rather than later, I would find the sleep I sought. Since the memories I immersed myself in most of the time involved kinder days with Thrud, Magni, Modi, and Sif, it always left me with better dreams than the horror Thor had been forced to face. These memories were of times before Odin. Before the Allfather had sunk his claws deep into my family.
That thought, that memory of Odin, killed whatever plans for sleep I had this night, so with an annoyed grunt, I simply remained in bed, arms over my chest in a resting pose, and my eyes closed. However, my ears remained open, which was why I heard it.
Footsteps.
It was not Ajak. After living with the matronly Eternal for over a month, I knew her footsteps as well as I knew mine. Another thing that clued me into the fact that it wasn't her was the way the person moved. If everything wasn't so silent, if I wasn't so still, if it wasn't i the middle of the night, and if I was not Thor, I would have missed it. Unfortunately for the intruder, all those ifs were in my favor today.
The footsteps continued. The person was light, very light, a woman most likely. She took the steps and got to my door. Then I felt something in the air. A brief burst of something so fine that I would not have noticed it if I weren't so still and focused. Then the footsteps returned, and this time they were coming from inside my room.
I had not heard the door open.
The person stood over me for a short moment. I was not sure what they could see in the darkness, with the only source of light being the light from the half moon that floated into my room through the open window. Then, after a brief bout of stillness, I heard fabric creak as the person bent low, hand reaching beneath my bed, and that was when I decided to give up the charade.
"What're you doing sneaking around someone else's house like a rat at this time?" I started with a grumble as I moved. My eyes blinked open as I sat up, and the person flinched back till her back was against the wall.
She flickered like a still image. White tight combat suit, with a hood and four glowing points in the mask, right where the eyes would be. Ava Starr, or the woman more popularly known as Ghost.
"You took something that does not belong to you. Return it," she said, her voice distorting.
"And if I don't?" I grunted as I stood up with a crack of my neck, towering over her with my full, over seven-foot-tall frame.
I could nearly see the scowl on her face behind the mask before she charged. Her movement was like a flickering TV screen. One minute she was here, another it looked like she had teleported and was closer. She was fast, but not nearly fast enough to avoid my blue gaze. Then she rammed herself into me, still flickering, and only managed to get halfway through before she was forced to bounce back, ejecting like a spent cartridge.
"H-How dense are you?" I could hear the sound of surprise in her voice, so I replied.
"Dense enough."
Then I backhanded her out of the room. I slowed my hand just enough that while it was a blur, it slowed enough moments from impact that instead of turning her into a blood splatter and seeing Ajak frown at me for turning her house into a mess, she was only sent flying out of the house.
She turned on her intangibility in time to phase through the wall instead of crashing through it as I expected. I suppose all that training she received from SHIELD did not go to waste then.
I followed after her, with only a brief glance at Ajak's room. There was some sound from inside. I suppose my attack had been enough to wake her. I would deal with this before she rose completely.
I stepped out of the house and met Ghost half-kneeling in front of the building. She had pushed the hood back and had ripped off the face plate. The right side of it had been completely crushed, while spiderweb cracks spread to the other. It was completely useless now, which allowed me to see her features for the first time, and I slowed.
She looked tired. Her hair was a rough, scrambled mess. Her dark green eyes were bloodshot. Already a bruise was forming on the part of her face I had struck, and the eye was swelling. She also had dark circles under her eyes, and with the loss of the face plate, she began to flicker more.
"You'll regret that," she growled, then unsheathed a pair of batons from behind her, and they extended before her. A heartbeat later, she lunged forward like a wildcat, yet instead of making the same mistake of trying to phase through me, she dived, going for my legs. This time, she managed to phase through, then she rolled to her feet beneath me and spun, batons whipping out to strike my back.
She was greeted by the sound of dull thuds, like she had struck granite. I tilted my head back, bushy red brows raising in curiosity. Then, with a snarl, she flicked a button on the baton, and it came to life as electricity visibly ran through it, arcing across the baton and sinking into my back.
My brows raised higher in amusement as her face twisted into surprise. Electric batons against the God of Thunder. I would've been offended if I weren't so amused. I lashed out again, fast yet slow enough to not crater her on the spot, and she flicked that mental flip that allowed her to phase. This time, I could feel it better.
There was a resistance, and even as she phased out of my backhand forearm, it was with a pained grunt. Curious, my right arm shot forward faster than she could see, but she had kept the flickering on while dodging back, and other than the noted resistance, she still managed to slip out of my grip with a pained grunt before she rolled back to give space. Electric batons discarded.
She looked up at me, confusion warring with pain and surprise on her face. "Don't bother," she announced with false bravado, even though I could see her eyes searching for an escape route, a way out. Ghost was an assassin, a trained killer and fighter, and the woman could already tell this was not a fight she could win. "Your attacks have no effect on me."
My fingers twitched at that, at her tone, at her sense of superiority, at her belief in her ability. So I questioned, "My attacks have no effect on you? Who decided that?"
Before her pupils could do more than widen in surprise, I moved.
Exploding into motion so fast, the world cracked. A small crater was left where I was previously, as I appeared in front of her with a crack of thunder. My hand reached out at once and grabbed her by her neck, my meaty fist clamping down on her throat and most of her head.
It would've been so easy to kill her. A flick of my wrist would've ripped her head off. A tightening of my grip would've crushed her neck into mush. Yet I stared down and into her eyes, my blue orbs glowing with electricity, and in her green eyes all I could see was fear and weakness.
After what felt like an hour, she finally reacted, and I could feel her beginning to flicker as she tried to phase through my grip and run away once more, but I was not having that. Her weakness was easy to spot. She had been unable to phase through my bulk, yet she had been able to phase through my extremities, even if it had been with some difficulty.
Some aspect of my being, my godly density, my half-giant physique, I was not certain which, but whatever it was, it made it hard for her to phase, which meant that if I wanted to stop her from phasing...
Badumph.
My heart beat like a reactor that had been left long dormant. Ozone filled the air. The sky darkened even further above us. Lightning came to life in my veins, and I channeled it in one brief, explosive burst. Ava Starr only had a second of surprise as she was pumped full of lightning, despite being in a state of quantum entanglement that should've rendered that feat impossible. With that, she was ripped out and back into this realm, her eyes rolling over her head and smoke pouring out of her body as it dropped limp in my grasp.
I stared down at her unconscious form for a second as the door to the house opened and Ajak came out, covered in a bathrobe. She looked at me, then at the unconscious figure in my arms, and without even as much as a blink, she asked, "Coffee?"
"Yes, please," I grunted as I slung Ghost over my shoulder and walked into the house.
__
Ava Starr/GHOST
She woke up with a jerk.
The ceiling above her was unfamiliar, yet paradoxically familiar. Wood beams, aged and solid. It reminded her of the past, bringing back memories of what it felt like to have an actual home and not the sterile white of safe houses or the cracked concrete of abandoned buildings she'd grown used to.
Her body ached in a way that felt wrong. It was not the constant quantum pain she'd learned to live with. It felt like she had been put through a meat grinder.
She tried to phase. The instinct was automatic, as it was natural. She lived in both states. In fact, the immaterial was more natural than the material to her. Yet despite waiting, nothing happened. Her body remained solid, anchored to the bed beneath her in a way that sent panic crawling up her spine.
What?
"You won't be able to do that for a while."
Ava's head snapped to the side. The woman sitting in the chair beside the bed was older, beautiful in an ageless way that said she could be anywhere from forty-five to fifty. She wore simple clothes, and her expression was calm and understanding, like what vague memories she had remaining of her mother told her about.
Beyond the kind-looking woman, standing near the door with arms crossed, was the giant. The man was huge, messy red hair falling to his sides. He looked exactly as he had when he'd nearly killed her, massive and impassive, while those unsettling blue eyes fixed on her with the same curiosity someone might show a broken tool.
Ava disliked it.
"Who are you?"
"You may call me Ajak."
"What did you do to me?" Her voice came out rougher than intended. Her throat hurt. Her everything hurt.
"Odinson pumped enough lightning through you to fracture the earth's mantle if he had wanted," the woman said matter-of-factly. "The only reason you survived at all is because a vast amount of it was shunted into the realm you draw your power from. Your body used your phasing as a pressure valve, if you will. Saved your life, but it has left you depleted. The mechanism that aided the switch scraped raw in essence."
Ava stared at her, then at the man, then back. Fear and surprise warred in her chest, but beneath it was something else. Exhaustion. She was so tired of running, of fighting, of the constant pain that came with existing half in and half out of reality, that she did not mind this brief respite.
The man grunted, a sound like shifting stone.
Ajak looked at him, then nodded as if he'd spoken actual words. She turned back to Ava, and her expression softened in a way that made Ava's throat tighten.
"I can fix you," Ajak said simply. "If you want."
Ava's breath caught. For a moment, she couldn't process the words. Couldn't understand what they meant. Then understanding crashed over her like a wave, and all she could do was stare, mouth slightly open, as hope, terrible, dangerous hope, came to life in her chest for the first time in years.
"W-what do you mean?"
The woman smiled in that soft, matronly way. "Perhaps this is a discussion better had with a cup of coffee or tea in hand."
A/N: Is that a reference from one of the greatest characters ever? yes it is.