Disclaimer: THOR is not mine.
Thanks for reviewing to: musician'sluck2010!
...
...
Aella ended up holding the trigger on the taser longer than she had intended. Her plan had been to only paralyze him and then mine his still-conscious mind for some answers. Instead she found that the expression of shock and betrayal in his blue eyes made her feel too guilty to focus, and though it partially gave way to a flash of anger followed by profound confusion – presumably because she caught him as he fell, slowing his fall to the ground – it still made her heart ache in an odd unfamiliar way.
The alternative was inconvenient to say the least. It was easy to 'read' a conscious mind; prominent thoughts and emotions of the present simply flowed across the link she created without the other person having any idea of what she was doing. It was equally easy to tap into any memories that said mind was recollecting, and by extension any memories with strong emotional links to their present.
By contrast an unconscious mind was an almost impossible to navigate quagmire of partially-formed thoughts, with little concrete memory to be gleaned from it, and worst of all, the three times she had ventured into the human subconscious had been nothing short of depressing and terrifying because while thought and memory were indistinct, brought into the light were all the dark corners of the soul – every base drive, every ounce of hate and spite that normal people suppressed… and though Aella was fully aware that she had more than her share of these dark facets, there was a reason they were well hidden in the subconscious. Each time she had to face them in the light of day, a little more of her threadbare faith in humanity –including herself - eroded away.
Still, it would answer a few questions about Thor, and she decided that as long as his subconscious had no more dark facets than any normal person, she would extend trust to him – though after what she had done, it was doubtful that he would want to trust her.
Pushing aside her irritation at the fact that for some reason with Thor she was not able to follow her usual principle of not giving a crap about how other people viewed her, Aella placed one hand on his forehead and the other over his chest, closing her eyes and letting Thor's subconscious engulf her.
Nothing in her life could have prepared her for what she found. Usually she would fall into darkness, lit by faded hazy hopes and dreams and haunted by isolation, envy, and hate. Instead she found herself in the midst of a lightning storm – a fact that ironically put her at ease since she had always loved those. Except, she reflected, it was not really a storm. There was no wind or rain – and the lightning was not coming in flashes across cold and darkness, instead it was constantly arcing around her, coming close enough where she could feel it tingle but not do damage. Thunder thrummed like a heartbeat, comforting instead of deafening. Perhaps even stranger than the 'weather' for lack of a better term - was the overwhelming comforting emotional warmth that surrounded her.
Pushing aside the indistinct – and very unusual subconscious, she looked for any partially formed thoughts that were in his mind.
There were flickers of a faded anger and a more fresh sense of loneliness.
A more tangible and recent thought that Aella could discern was a brief wish that he had Mjolnir in his hands – coupled with a vague memory of wielding the heavy weapon and smashing some big blue heads – coupled with a momentary feeling of anger and betrayal that was dominated by confusion.
Ah, so those had to be from when she had tased him – well, everything except the big blue heads – a fleeting image that confused Aella beyond belief and only served to pique her curiosity more. She found fleeting subconscious images of which she could only comprehend a few: a starry sky filled with galaxies, a glassy bridge that shone with rainbows and an ocean that dumped into space –none of which were any less weird than the big blue guys, though they were much more aesthetically pleasing. Oddly she did not find any discernible images of Mjolnir, though she heard Thor wishing for it by name, and felt the very prominent-in-his-subconscious sensation of holding it in his hand, quietly humming with unimaginable power.
Okay – so he definitely was not human – the miserably few indistinct images she could actually make some sense of were not from Earth…. or anywhere near it. That should have been disturbing, but it was dwarfed by the shocking realization that came from turning back to Thor's subconscious with all her guards down to look for the dark facets that just had to exist – and did not.
There was not even a trace of deceit or hate in Thor, and the faint emotions of loss and loneliness found no ground within him to fester and become bitterness and spite. For the first time, Aella found the experience of reaching into a subconscious mind healing to her own scarred soul, and finished with her search, she simply stood still within the heart of the storm letting his lightning fight back the darkness and bitterness that had engulfed most of her life.
...
...
A/N: You didn't think I was going to have her kill him :-O , did you?
Next chapter, Thor is going to wake up... Hm that might be a bit odd.