#firstsonofasgard

Thor leaned against the wall of the lesson hall as others shuffled about the corridor. Break was short but at least a welcome reprieve from Mistress Vör’s detailed assessment on their last stratagem simulation, and wit the last chimes of the bell’s echo just fading breathed for what he hoped would be a good fifteen minutes of relief.

His coursebook still felt hot in his hand

Thor furrowed his brow, willing himself not to look back on the edited page for his applied history assessment. Willing himself not to crack open the spine and see those letters that had shifted and illuminated to be that glaring, scripted red ink.

Critical Defeat.

He did not need to open it. The words had burned through to his brain, muddled now with a sensation that felt extremely distressing for its unfamiliarity to him.

Anxiety.

What was he to do now? Father had spent such time teaching him the stratagems, taken him to council meetings where he watched how it was done, and he had gone and received a critical defeat--more than three quarters of his simulated troops slaughtered, the remainder surrounded and forced to surrender to enemy forces.

The remnants of the Bifrost’s beam burned a little at Sif’s knees, the leathers smoking somewhat as she rose from her crouch to a standing position in the middle of the narrow Midgardian street.

Heimdall had done his best to drop her in a place where there was no traffic. It seemed that had been of little consequence as several Midgardian vehicles had screeched to a halt upon her arrival. Sif popped upward quickly, taking herself out of the roadway, glancing back up whence she’d come with a raised brow.

Her brother was getting rusty in his old age. 

Sighing, she dusted off her leathers, the flimsy Midgardian appropriate top and jacket she had worn to blend in better feeling strange and insufficient against the elements. 

The thin fabric rubbed against her skin strangely as she took in her surroundings, feeling the stares of mortals as they crept past. She ignored them, orienting herself and heading in the direction she’d memorised before arriving, her long strides carrying her quickly down the street, the damp of the air clinging to her as she made her way. 

The trees were bare. It was winter then. That made sense, as she had rarely experienced Midgard to be this cool during her past visits. Not that it was particularly cool compared to Asgard in any case. 

A row of red-bricked, tall, homes came into view. All nearly identical. All attached at the sides.

Sif slowed her pace, frowning at each façade as she squinted at individual numbers. When Balder’s residence’s designated numerical identifier jumped out at Sif, she turned abruptly, heading up the steps nearly two at a time, stopping before the door to the flat as she rolled her lips inward, glancing around, suddenly nervous. 

Oh please. 

It felt a little safer now.

Nothing had changed. The gardens were the same, though admittedly some of the more beautiful flowers had bloomed whilst she had sequestered herself in her father’s house, and then in her barracks, and then in her father’s house again. They bloomed in bright reds and violets and every hue in between it seemed. Everything was more vibrant now.

It felt good, too, to be back in her barracks once more. She didn’t think she could have stood another moment of her father’s concern and sympathy. It was overbearing as it had always been, stifling her.

Even Balder, now, too.

Sif made to rake a hand through her hair, but stopped short at the smooth feel of her scalp beneath her calloused palm. Her fingers rasped a little against her skin, and she swallowed hard against the sudden and renewed lump in her throat.

She couldn’t breathe.

Huddling forward, Sif took a deep breath through her nose, shaking for what seemed like an eternity until, finally, she regained her control again. No one can stop you, not even Loki.

Thor’s breathing was heavy, but exhilarated. He tossed the axe down into the pile of weapons waiting at the sidelines, letting its clang echo with the cheers of the crowd he left behind. The arena’s light was bright and golden, but as he stepped downward into the rooms provided for equipment and changing, it tinged bluer with the cerulean brunnstein along the walls.

He wondered if Sif had set it up that way. His own changing room had red ones.

He shrugged it off, turning the corner down the stair of the cool hall push open the door, paying little mind to the warning outside that its occupant not be disturbed.

“Thor? What has you here at this hour?” Frigga set aside a delicate earring, grey-blue eyes wide as her son half-staggered through the door of her chambers. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

The lab offices kept relatively quiet for the day, with only a few patients waiting for their results in the lobby--a young girl with her mother fiddling with her bracelet, a heavy-set man attempting to cover his nervous hands with his use of his iPhone. Don scratched off another set of tests from his list, matching the creatinine levels on the renal test against the IDMS, and setting the stack aside. 

The glass wall of his office, lined with frosted bands toward the bottom that gradually thinned up around chest-level to transparency, allowed a survey of the lobby and the bustling brunette bob of his office assistant sending out another call concerning the results of the lab.

The Post-It beside his own desk phone was hastily scribbled, and periodically he would glance at it with a skewed expression before he went back to verifying the test results the lab assistants had printed off.

What Janey could want his help for, he could not possibly guess.

He set the papers he had been working on into the outbox, and began work on another stack--he would have to go out to discuss the results with the patients in the lobby shortly, but there was no reason why he could not save himself a bit more time by completing the next written verifications. The kidneys were not going anywhere at the moment, and people tended not to mind waiting overlong if the news turned out to be good, besides.

The front door opened and Kim began cooing about something loud enough for the sound to make it through his glass office walls, and Don caught just the bare hint of familiar brown hair over the frosted bars before the broad shoulders and instantly recognisable features of the Norse alien thunder god came into his office.

Don frowned. Kim had not said anything about Janey bringing company--certainly not of the extra-terrestrial sort.

Behind them, another woman entered, tall enough for the beginnings of her ample figure to slink past the frosted decorations, a cloud of black hair curling through nearly the whole expanse of the door frame. 

The water lapped up against the hull in a rhythmic sway as the small boat came to a stop. There had been little wind to use, so Balder had made use of the engines this time, a faster route, but far from his usual habit when taking a trip on his own. It was for the best anyway--he had evaded Volstagg’s shift in trying to cheer him up, and the speed would be a boon, as it was likely the older Einherjar would come looking for him in a short enough time.

It was a futile task, Balder thought, trying to cheer him after the end of the trial. The case had been dropped, but the damage done was irreparable.

He stood upon the narrow deck of the vessel, looking out toward the shore. He had gone from the main port and around the city’s edge, coming round the jutting stones and towers along the coast until it drew back inward with a familiar stretch of pale sand on a beach he had visited time and again to try to settle himself. His gaze came up the pale edge of the sand efore it met the green slopes of the rolling grass, all the way up to the place where it plateaued into a field. There would be no house sat upon the space, he thought.

He did not deserve it.

The boat rocked amid the waves gently, drifting as it was over the drop in the land’s shelf where the water deepened to a blue that deepened the shade of the sky by double. Balder swayed with it, turning his gaze from the distant shore, and finding his eyes drift northward, where over the stretch of see, he could just make out the jagged mountains that edged the next realm over--

He ripped his gaze down to the boat. That was unthinkable.

No, there was nowhere to go, he concluded as he came down to a kneel amid the slow drifting of the boat.

The waves continued to coax against the hull, a deep, bottomless blue.