[Though originally drafted in 2012, I went back one year later and edited the story to make it better. More notes at the end of the chapter – these first notes are from my first draft.
Also, CHAPTER 6 (Throwing Punches) IS A NEW CHAPTER. Just so you know.]
So, like my profile says, I haven't tried writing anything like this since my freshman year of high school, so we'll see how this goes. I have a general outline of how I want this story to go, so at least that's a step in the right direction. Any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. Sorry this first chapter is so depressing. Also, this chapter is very OC-heavy, but I promise the story will reach Asgard in the next chapter. I hope you enjoy it!
Also, I do not pretend to be an expert in Marvel or in Norse Mythology, so if things are not correct, I apologize profusely. I did try, though!
Disclaimer: I only own the original characters (only really Kiera so far), and the rest belongs to Marvel.
FIRE AND ICE
Chapter 1: The Accidental Arsonist
Kiera had always had a love/hate relationship with fire. Even now, as she stood surrounded by towering flames, she could not help feeling an intense fascination with them, even as they threatened to burn her to a crisp at any second. Sure, the terror was also there, but kept being pushed aside by awe as flames licked the ceiling, the splintered wood making loud creaking and moaning sounds as they were slowly conquered by the fire.
She continued to stare at the destruction she had caused, forgetting for a moment that the powerful flames could consume her as well as the structure at any moment...
Kiera never meant to start fires. It just happened. In fact, she could not remember a significant moment in her life that did not somehow involve fire.
But her first memory was the worst.
Kiera's first memory of anything was of a fire. She was just shy of three years old, sitting up in her small bed in the corner of her room. She heard the flames before she could see them. The room was dark, with only a small nightlight shaped like a star providing any source of light aside from the eerie glow that had appeared under the nursery door. But rather than cry, she stared at the dancing orange and red under the door in awe and contentment. Somehow she knew that this was her creation. It looked warm and inviting, comforting even. She liked it. She was proud of it.
And then came the screams.
Kiera could not understand why this beautiful thing she had made would scare her parents so much. She cautiously climbed out of bed and tiptoed toward the door. The screams grew louder and she recognized them as her mother's. Why was mommy so afraid of the pretty lights?
Suddenly, she heard a booming crash. Along with it came a terrible shudder that reverberated throughout the house, knocking Kiera onto her back. Suddenly afraid, she began to cry. Sirens blared outside her window. There was another loud bang, and the door to the nursery burst open. Kiera could see her creation clearly now – a blaze of orange shrouded in a thick black cloud of smoke.
She could no longer hear her mother screaming.
A man in a mask crawled inside. He shouted something to Kiera that she couldn't hear over the sound of her sobbing. Then he picked her up, cradling her in one of his arms as he crawled with her over to the window.
As the hulking firefighter carried her down a ladder out of the wreckage of her home, Kiera heard another rumbling noise. She looked over the fireman's shoulder to see what was left of her house crumble to the ground, unable to stand under the brilliance of the dancing lights. She looked around for her parents. Her mother with her soft eyes. Her father with his soothing voice and eyes that looked the color of pure gold.
There was nothing except smoke and rubble.
The small child somehow understood that her parents were dead because of her. She wailed, calling for her mother, who she knew could not answer. The firefighter sat her down in the back of an ambulance, lights reflecting frightening beams of red off the trees and charred rubble of her house. The destruction before the young child's eyes was terrible, but the grief and longing for her parents was excruciating.
And she had thought the flames were pretty.
The years that followed were a blur. Many years after the fire, Kiera mustered the courage to research the cause of the fire, trying to find out if she had truly caused it. The report indicated that the fire had started in the hallway outside her parents' bedroom. Her mother had died of smoke inhalation, and her father, who had been trying to drag her mother to safety, had perished when the structure had collapsed, crushed under the weight of the house. The guilt of killing her parents consumed Kiera, and she withdrew inside herself, refusing to let anybody in for fear of harming them too.
Having no living relatives, she bounced from foster family to foster family, each one finding some excuse to be rid of her. Even the nice families, the ones who seemed to care about Kiera, found some reason to send her away. Eventually, her social worker began to notice that each of Kiera's foster families had some traumatizing experience with fire when Kiera was in their care. Most of the time, the fires were blamed on faulty wiring. No family ever blamed Kiera for the fires, and no proof ever arose of her involvement, but it was enough to make her social worker and the courts wonder.
By the time Kiera was sixteen years old, she had lived with no less than eighteen foster families. Each move sent her deeper into despair. She never meant to cause harm, and she could not help when or where the fires started. She could not control them. She could only start them. And she had no idea when the next one would be.
Of course, since Kiera was normally nowhere near the scene of any of the fires, nobody could press charges. But that did not mean that they wanted to be anywhere near her.
School was not much better. Kiera did not have many worldly possessions, and her wardrobe consisted mostly of poorly-fitting hand-me-downs from other foster children. She was a social outcast and had no friends. Somehow, word had gotten around that she had set every single one of her foster families' houses on fire, and the students at her high school avoided her like the plague. The fact that a couple of small fires had started at her school since she began attending only furthered the gossip. The students had no way of knowing that the rumors were one hundred percent true.
By now, Kiera knew full well that her "gift" was not common. In fact, she knew of no other person that could start fires without trying. She did not even know how she started them or why. However, she was certain that if she did not begin to learn how to control them soon, people were going to get hurt. Frankly, she could hardly believe that nobody had been injured or killed by her fires since her parents' death.
The latest foster family, the Wilsons, had eight other foster children crammed into their tiny home. Kiera could not believe the state ever allowed them to care for children. Mr. Wilson was either gone or drunk and had struck Kiera numerous times for being in his way when he was on a drunken rampage. Mrs. Wilson sat and watched TV rather than the children, who ranged from ages three through seventeen. The children ran wild, but avoided Kiera, as if they could sense she was trouble.
Kiera was sitting on her mattress in the bedroom she shared with the five other girls who lived with the Wilsons, her light golden eyes staring blankly out the window. Three of the foster children were playing outside, playing catch with a muddy baseball. Somewhere on the first floor, two of the children laughed and their running footsteps made their way out to the yard. The television downstairs was blaring Keeping Up with the Kardashians – again.
Loneliness consumed Kiera. Was she really that terrible of a person that nobody wanted to come near her? Was she incapable of a friendly relationship with anyone because of the fires? Why did this have to happen to her? Was there ever going to be a way out? Was there anybody out there who would love her?
A sudden blast rocked the house. Then the familiar screams began again.
Kiera sprang to her feet, dread spreading through her whole body. The house was one giant fire hazard after another. She had to get out. Now.
She flung the bedroom door open and ran down the stairs. Chaos ran rampant through the house as children scrambled to escape the flames that were slowly flooding through the kitchen…
Kiera could not help it. She skidded to a stop and watched the fire spread. It did not make any sense. It was fire that had caused this mess in the first place, but somehow the beauty of fire was still alluring and inviting to Kiera. She was too busy admiring her creation to notice Mr. Wilson stumbling toward the kitchen, rage building on his face.
"YOU!" he snarled, gripping her by the shoulders and whirling her around to face him. She was jolted back to reality as she saw his furious face, inches from her own, and felt him shake her violently, all the while screaming expletives at her.
"LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE!" he bellowed, slurring his words slightly and shaking Kiera's shoulders with every syllable. "I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU RIGHT NOW WITH MY BARE HANDS!"
The flames were hot on her cheeks, but not nearly as frightening as Mr. Wilson. She tried to break his grip on her arms, but could not get free. She started to panic when with an explosion of glass the fire began to consume Mr. Wilson's stash of beer bottles on the counter. Kiera took full advantage of the distraction to wrench free from his grasp and run. She burst through the front door, past a shocked Mrs. Wilson, past the crying and screaming children, past the fire trucks pulling up to the house, sirens wailing. She did not stop running until her sides ached and she could run no more.
The Wilsons lived on the outskirts of town, leaving plenty of open space to run. After running for what seemed like forever Kiera stopped to catch her breath near a small farm house surrounded by fields of dried up corn stalks. On the edge of one field she spotted an abandoned barn, blocks away from the Wilson's burning house. Panting, she sprinted the remaining yards to the barn, wrenched the creaking door open, collapsed on the wooden floor, and sobbed.
It had been a very long time since she had cried like this. The death of her parents and the constant moving from house to house filled with people who hated her had hardened her heart so much that she was astounded by the emotion she felt welling up inside her. Burying her face in her small hands, she wept bitterly, mourning her lack of childhood, her lost parents, and her gift that was truly a curse. Finally, when the tears would no longer come, Kiera finally gave into sleep, wondering when the authorities would find her and punish her, but not really caring.
Kiera awoke sometime in the middle of the night, shivering. Her thin t-shirt and jeans were nowhere near warm enough for the chilly November evening. She curled up into the fetal position, hugging her legs and trying to keep warm. She brushed a lock of long blonde hair from her face and gazed at the wall of the barn. It looked like this building had not been used in some time. The wood was old and rotting, and remnants of straw littered the floor. Everything in this barn was kindling. It was almost inviting her, begging her to start a fire.
If she could ever figure out how to start one when she wanted to.
Kiera's teeth chattered violently and she hugged her legs tighter to her chest. A fire would sure feel nice at a time like this. Laughing bitterly at the irony of the situation, she closed her eyes and thought hard about anything that may have caused the fire at the Wilson's house. She had been sitting on her bed doing nothing. She had not said anything. She hadn't even been thinking about fire, much less willing it into existence.
Kiera picked up a stone from the ground and hurled it at the opposite wall in frustration. She felt weak and empty. This was truly what rock bottom felt like. She was alone, unloved, and all of her hope was gone.
And that's when a spark exploded in the corner of the barn, and the straw kindled the last fire.
Now the terror was mounting, finally overtaking Kiera's fascination with the destructive fire. She glanced around to all corners of the room, finding no escape. The time she wasted admiring the flames had cost her greatly.
Nobody will even notice I'm dead, Kiera thought, the realization causing her to crumple completely to the floor in despair. How long will it be before someone finds me? Would they even be able to tell a person died here? Would they even care? The air was too dry to cry. There was no hope of anyone coming to her rescue.
She coughed and sputtered, desperately trying to breathe the little fresh air that still lingered near the floor. Her body shuddered with the effort. The ceiling was completely engulfed now, and soon it would collapse upon her. Her short life would be extinguished in an instant, if she did not die from smoke inhalation first.
The same way my mother died, she thought.
Help me, she thought, willing anyone to come to her rescue. Help me help me help me…
Her thoughts quickly turned into desperate screams to anyone and no one. There was no way anyone would hear her. Between the crackling inferno and her lungs filling up with smoke, it was hopeless. But she had to try.
Suddenly, Kiera was aware of a powerful whirling sensation and whatever air she had left was ripped from her lungs. She flew through the air. It was dizzying and the pressure on her body was almost unbearable. Brilliant lights swirled in front of her eyes, creating an even more disorienting effect.
This is it. I'm dead. This is what it feels like to die.
Then the agonizing sensation finally stopped. The girl opened her eyes and was immediately blinded by gleaming gold and an intense light. She paused for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust. Her gaze beheld first a spherical room made of pure gold, bright bursts of lightning sparking from a shaft in the middle of the room, and finally a towering man adorned in shining golden armor holding in his hand a golden staff.
"Is this heaven?" Kiera asked.
"No," the man replied in a deep, booming voice. "This is Asgard."
2013 EDIT: I am beginning the process of taking the feedback I've received from readers and re-writing/editing this story. Original notes from the first draft will appear at the top and notes from the 2013 Edit will appear at the bottom of each chapter so you can see the original process compared to the editing process. It was my first attempt, and I really appreciate the reviews and pointers for making the story better. I'm not so great at filler stuff, so I'm going to try to flesh it out a little more as well and make the whole story flow better. I will also point out that I wrote this before Thor: The Dark World came out, so especially at the end the content deviates from the movie plots, in case you were wondering about that. (I've never read the comics so I did some basic research and then added that to what I knew from the movie plots.) Also, one reviewer asked for clarification about the character's ages. I've thought a little about the Asgardian aging process and how it differs from that of the normal human lifespan, and I've decided that for the purposes of this story, the characters (later on after Kiera's been in Asgard for a while) are in their mid-20s. This is also different from how they're portrayed in the movies, but that's just kind of how I wrote them, and I'll try to keep that the consistent age from here on out. Also, for the purposes of this story, I'm going to just say that Asgardians age only slightly slower as children than human children and that once they reach their "prime" (around the mid-20s) their aging slows dramatically so they can achieve that "god-like" age-span. And since (SPOILER ALERT! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!) Kiera is not human, she will have the same-ish aging process. I'll post more notes about this editing process as I go. Enjoy!
P.S. I did change the color of her eyes, so if you're reading this and wonder why her eyes are suddenly green even though they start out gold, I'm still in the process of updating. Sorry about that!
