"What are you doing here?" Clara asked.
"Thinking about buying real estate in Brooklyn," Tony Stark said, stepping over the threshold without being asked. He looked around. "Cozy."
"Seriously," Clara said. "What are you doing?"
Tony shuddered and asked, "Is there a window open? Aha." He pointed a finger at her. "That's where the chill is coming from."
She scowled at him silently until he chuckled and held up his hands, mimicking an act of surrender.
"All right, Miss McKenna, I'll be honest with you. I'm here to ask you to join the Avengers Initiative."
Her scowl fell away. "Really?"
"No," Tony said. "But I am here for S.H.I.E.L.D. They've heard some interesting things about what you've been up to, and wanted to talk to you about the possibility of a special arrangement. An offer you won't refuse, if they have anything to say about it."
"Are you threatening me?" Clara asked.
"Would I do that to you, Princess?" he asked innocently. "Just passing on a message."
She scoffed. "I'm surprised you'd do something S.H.I.E.L.D. demanded of you."
"Oh, I volunteered." He grinned, pausing to scratch his goatee. He could tell she was in suspense and seemed to enjoy her discomfort. "Shouldn't you offer your guest a drink? Did you learn nothing in a political family—where are your manners?"
Grumbling, Clara went into the kitchen and looked into the fridge. "We've got pineapple juice and Sam Adams. I wouldn't recommend mixing the two." She handed him a bottle of the beer at his request. "So you volunteered to come. What, you missed me?"
"I saw the pictures," he said. "Your blog? You've got a knack for that sort of thing. Can't say Nick Fury was too happy, though."
"Who's that?"
"Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. In charge of the Avengers—so he likes to believe. Anyway, he wasn't pleased to find his little 'soldiers' plastered across the Internet like that."
"You guys were all over the news!" Clara said, indignant. "Everybody saw you! You can't blame me for your exposure. Not initially, anyway."
Tony shrugged. After another sip of beer, he made a face and said, "Don't kill the messenger. I'm just saying, it was speculation until you offered an up-close account of Earth's mightiest heroes."
"But you agreed to it." She was growing annoyed at Tony and feeling more than a little betrayed.
"Sure did. Fury didn't, so he was…miffed. But Thor gave him an idea, and that's why I'm here."
Her eyes went wide before she could catch herself. "Thor talked to you?"
Tony gave her a side look, and she thought she could guess what he was thinking. She kept her mouth closed, slightly dreading what he was going to say.
"Came to Stark Tower yesterday," Tony said. "Wanted to tell me about an offer that he made to a certain tourist. I think he was hoping I'd add some persuasion. Or maybe he just wanted to be a pal and give a heads-up."
Clara rubbed her forehead and looked around to avoid making eye contact with Tony. She glanced at what remained of her ham sandwich and felt ill.
"But you turned down the job," Tony prompted.
"Yes, I did," Clara said. "I wasn't interested."
"Well, apparently S.H.I.E.L.D. is." Setting the beer bottle on the counter, he casually wandered around the apartment's tiny living area, observing the artwork on the wall and the dingy furniture. "Like I said, Fury's not happy about the added publicity, but since it's out there, he thought mighty Samson had a point. Might be a good way for a certain senator's daughter to help her country…and her planet."
Clara looked at him contemptuously. "I turned down Thor. Do you really think that S.H.I.E.L.D. is gonna convince me to do it when I said no to him?"
Tony turned to her, his eyebrows shoot upward. When Clara saw it, she closed her eyes and groaned.
"Don't…don't…take anything from that," she said, waving her hands at him.
"Miss McKenna," he said, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. "Is there something else going on?" He squinted and tilted his chin. "Have you been playing with Thor's hammer?"
Clara rubbed her eyes, half-hoping this was a nightmare. She wasn't even sure if the warmth in her face came from embarrassment or pure annoyance. "You did not just say that," she said.
"I did," Tony said. "And?"
"No!" she shouted at him. "Definitely not."
"If you say so," he said, with a tone that made her want to slam his head through a wall. "Just so we're clear, you're saying no to Nick Fury, no to S.H.I.E.L.D., and no to Thor himself?"
"Yes, yes, and yes," Clara said. "We're clear."
"What's your problem, anyway?" Tony asked, again wandering around. She wondered if he just couldn't stand still. "A polite 'no thanks' is one thing, but this whole idea seems to piss you off."
She couldn't tell him everything she had told Thor, or even everything she had said to Odin.
"You may not believe this, Mr. Stark," she said, "but I'm not my father. I got enough political nonsense growing up, and it's just not the direction I want to take my life."
"Uh-huh," Tony said. He turned to peek through a partially open door. "This your room?" Before Clara could stop him, he nudged the door and looked in. "Now, I really expected better from a trust fund baby."
When he stepped inside, Clara went nervously to the doorway, wondering whether she should kick him out, or if that would look too suspicious. She forgot about the ring on her nightstand—until the two of them saw it at the same time. She was too far away to grab it before he did.
"This…looks familiar," he said, tossing it into the air before holding it up. "I think I saw your boyfriend wearing one just like it." He looked at her, smirking. "Matching rings already? Cute."
"It's so I can go back to Asgard if I want…need…to," Clara said. "It's connected to the Tesseract somehow."
"Thought you had no intention of going back?"
"Not as a diplomat," she answered.
"So why would you go back otherwise?"
"I don't know," she mumbled, leaning with her head against the doorframe. "Would you just put it down and get out of here?"
"Not until I get the right answer," Tony said. "Don't want to make Fury…furious, you know."
"Like you care about that," Clara said. "But if you insist, maybe I'll just call the cops and have you arrested for trespassing."
"Mmm-hmm, good luck with that," he said, plucking a photograph from the bulletin board above her desk. He looked at the picture—Clara and two friends on a trip to Paris—before tossing it onto the desk beside her computer. "And don't try to use Daddy as a threat. I already know you two aren't speaking."
Clara moaned painfully, feeling desperate. "Please, Tony," she said, trying to infuse her voice with as much sincerity as she could. "Tell S.H.I.E.L.D. anything you want, but I don't want to get pulled into this. Please just leave me alone."
They looked at each other for a few moments, Clara agitated and Tony vaguely intrigued. Finally he pursed his lips and nodded.
"Well, it was fun trying, at least," he said. "We must do this again sometime."
"Don't call us, we'll call you," Clara muttered.
When the door shut behind him, she thought, I haven't seen the last of him.
Clara was tense for the rest of the day, wondering if S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to send a team of thugs to drag her away, or—even worse—if Tony Stark was going to come back. Fortunately, neither happened.
What did occur, however, was that the comments on her photos continued to build up in her inbox. She got several emails from other bloggers asking for guest posts, and even a few interviews. Calls and texts overwhelmed her poor phone: friends and relatives asking about her photos, the alien attacks, and her brief disappearance. She ignored them and instead focused on editing the photos for her first post about Asgard.
As she worked, however, she began to dread the response. Disregarding how her readers would react, what would S.H.I.E.L.D. say about her trip? She did not know much about the organization, and she definitely did not know Nick Fury, but Tony's vague remarks, coupled with her past experience with government security, already scared her. She started to wonder if refusal to cooperate would end with her waking up in a cell in Guantanamo.
But then she would pull up another photo, and feel a tug in her heart.
Once again, she stayed up far too late, switching back and forth between editing photos and drafting her next blog post. It was incredibly difficult to describe even a tiny part of what Asgard had evoked within her. She described Odin and Frigga briefly and carefully, not knowing if Their Highnesses could find out what she said. She had even more trouble thinking of what to say about Thor. Blog comments were as…complimentary about him as they had been about the other Avengers. At first she laughed, but now she did not want to encourage any more.
Choosing the right photos among the hundreds was even more difficult. She was torn between an innate desire to talk about the things she had seen and done, and a jealousy that wanted to keep them for herself. She felt a stabbing pain in her gut when she found her one shot of Loki in prison. She scrolled hurriedly past it, but then looked back. It was there, in his eyes—the hatred, confusion, and, yes, pain. What kind, she did not know, for what kind of pain would drive a person to do what he had done? Her finger hovering over her keyboard, she stared at the photo. He is kind of beautiful—in a really creepy way, she thought. With a shiver, she finally clicked over to a different image.
She settled on a few landscapes, a couple shots of the palace interior, and some action shots from Fandral's practice and the festivities. Once she had decided on these, she wondered if she really could stretch this out into a week-long series. Ten photos—ten photos only would her soul part with. She could not share everything, somehow fearing how much of herself would go with it. But they could not get the wrong impression of Asgard; she would not allow it.
You were there a few days, you moron, came into her mind. You were in Paris for a week and didn't feel this attached to it. You spent a whole summer in Italy in high school, and even then you were still glad to come home.
I didn't kiss anyone in Italy, she thought.
Get over yourself.
She looked out the window. The sky was growing light, and her clock declared it nearly 7am.
"What was this 'upstate' crap you told me?" her mother shrieked at her.
Clara covered the phone with her hand. "Could you get me an almond biscotti too?" she whispered to Safia. Her roommate nodded and headed to the cashier. "So you believe me now?" she asked her mom.
"I don't know if I should, you already lied to me about where you went."
"I'm sorry, Mom. I don't know why I did that. I guess I wasn't ready to talk about it…or something."
"You talked about it enough on your blog, it looks like," her mother said bitterly. "Honey, did you really go to Pandora, or were you just in the hospital…or in a mental institution?"
"I was in Asgard. Pandora is from Avatar." She lowered her voice when a table of three college-age guys turned to look at her curiously. "Where did you even get that?"
"Oh, I don't know," Mrs. McKenna said. "I guess there is a lot that I don't know, like when my daughter travels to another planet with a perfect stranger. There's a sentence I never expected to say. I told your nanny you were too young to watch Doctor Who that day. And look what happened!"
"Mom, I can promise you that my watching a few episodes of Doctor Who when I was a kid had nothing to do with my decision to go to Asgard." Clara accidentally made eye contact with one of the guys, and she shifted in her seat to turn her back to them. "I think I'm gonna have to call you back."
"No, no!" her mother shouted. "You are not hanging up on me. I want to know what the hell you were thinking!"
"I was thinking about my blog," Clara said. "I was thinking I wanted to get out of the city for a while and see someplace new. No different from any other travel decision I've made." At least, it didn't start out that way, she added silently. "I was thinking these people just saved New York, and I got to meet them, and it was a one-time opportunity. Did you see that link I posted today? This guy has a sci-fi blog and we've been following each other for a while, so he wanted to interview me. So…that was something else, too. Website traffic, ad revenue, you know…"
In spite of the clatter of forks and cups, the ambient music, and the conversation of the employees and patrons at the coffee shop, Clara still heard her mother's scoff on the other end of the connection.
"I'm sure it has nothing to do with how cute he was," Mrs. McKenna said.
"I plead the fifth on that one," Clara said.
Her mother paused before asking, "You're not going to tell me anything that isn't already on your blog, are you?"
"Not on my phone in a public place."
"Fine. But this isn't over, missy."
Clara sighed and hung up. She only got a few seconds of peace, however, before she felt someone staring at her. She turned and saw one of the guys at the next table leaning over his seat toward her, grinning. Just over a week ago, she would have thought he was incredibly cute, but today his untidy blonde hair and the blue eyes behind a pair of rectangular frames only reminded her of someone else.
"Hey, are you the girl who met the Avengers?" he asked. "The one with the blog?"
She could have lied to them, too, but they probably already heard everything she had said to her mother. Instead, she nodded, wishing that the barista would hurry up with her latte.
"So that's all real?" he asked. "They weren't just some dudes in costumes?"
"No," she said. "You recognized Tony Stark, right—Iron Man? He just…got some friends to help him out." She inwardly rolled her eyes at her own remarks.
"Awesome," another guy, lanky with reddish-brown curls, said. He turned to the third boy, a stocky fellow with clever, dark eyes. "I told you it wasn't fake!"
Safia came back to the table with two pieces of biscotti and their beverages. Clara thanked her vaguely. She tried to hide her offense when she asked, "Didn't you see the pictures of Asgard? Did you think those were fake, too?"
"Hey," the dark-eyed guy said, "I'm majoring in graphic design. You'd be surprised what kind of crap you can pull with Photoshop."
"Oh, I know it," Clara said. "But trust me when I say that I was just using it for cropping and fixing the lighting. I couldn't make this 'crap' up."
"And Clara wouldn't make it up," Safia said. "She is very honest." Clara returned her smile with one of gratitude, even as she thought her roommate might be slightly mistaken.
"Hey, can I ask you something?" the first guy said. "I'm a broadcasting major—name's Tyler Sawicki—and I'm doing an internship at this radio station. I think they'd love to interview you. As far as I know, you're the only person who's got details on the Avengers. They just kinda disappeared, except Stark. One of the morning DJs was talking about your blog, too, and I think he'd just lose it if we could get you into the studio. I don't know if he saw your post with the pictures of Asgard yet."
Is this how it's gonna be? Clara thought.
"I dunno," she said, grimacing. "I'm really no good with that kind of thing. I'm just a photographer."
Thor's words echoed in her head, coming so suddenly that it caught her breath for a moment.
If they react strongly to your reports, if they want to know more, if it captures their attention—then, perhaps, reconsider.
Clara looked at Safia, who cocked her head and shrugged, with a knowing expression. She sighed again. "Fine." She reached into her bag for a business card and held it out.
Tyler grinned and reached for it. The curly-haired guy watched them exchange the piece of paper, then jerked his chin toward Clara's hand.
"Cool ring," he said.
Two days later, Clara discovered that the intern had given her the wrong impression about the DJ. She emerged from the interview a little shaken, taken aback by his skepticism. He believed the photos were really the Avengers, but "Morning Meathead Monty" required much more convincing to believe the pictures of Asgard were really what Clara claimed they were. Even when he finally came around, he was not convinced that all other Asgardians were completely peaceful in their attitude toward Earth.
Too many movies about hostile aliens, Clara thought. But judging by the reactions she'd gotten from other people, both online and face-to-face, his was not an uncommon opinion. Turns out, Thor knew what he was talking about—the Asgardians did need an ambassador. Loki's plot had inflicted a lot more than just physical damage.
I hope they find someone for the job, Clara thought.
"Hey, sorry he kinda gave you a hard time in there," Tyler said on her way out of the studio. "I guess I'm so used to it, I forgot to give you enough warning."
"It's fine," Clara said. "It was definitely…an experience. I'm just glad it's over now and I can go back to hiding behind my computer," she added with a laugh.
Even hiding, however, was no longer an option. She had fallen behind in trying to keep up with the emails flooding her inbox. Her phone hardly stopped buzzing with texts and calls. Finally she turned off her phone and sat down at her desk, earbuds in her ears and a sandwich in one hand, ready to tackle some more photo editing. She pulled up the first photo from those she had yet to edit. The hand holding her sandwich dropped to her lap; the music flowing into her head went unheard.
It was a picture she had taken of Thor at the banquet. He was standing with Volstagg, laughing at something he had said. Volstagg was gesturing with a dagger in one hand and a goblet in the other. Clara could not remember what the warriors had been saying to each other. Volstagg's cheeks and nose were bright red with wine; Thor's face carried the fainter flush of simple good cheer. His golden hair caught the daylight, his smile flashed a brilliant white, and his eyes held a warmth that she knew she had caught for just the right moment. Clara thought he was attractive from the start, of course, but he had never been more gorgeous—or more human—than he was in that one photograph.
I want to go back, she thought. She closed her eyes, struggling to breathe normally as she felt that too-familiar burning in the back of her throat. I don't want to be here.
She slammed her computer shut and resentfully munched on her sandwich. When she swallowed the last bite, she turned her phone back on. She had a voicemail from yet another missed call.
"Hi, I'm calling for Clara McKenna. Ms. McKenna, this is Vicki Roman with The Today Show. I'd like to talk to you about appearing on an upcoming episode, if you're interested. Please give me a call…"
Clara was too stunned by the voicemail to think about writing down the number. When the message had played in full, she stared at the phone in shock, as though the device itself was responsible. The hand holding it shook, and for a minute she was afraid the sandwich would come right back up again.
This was bigger than a few blog posts and a radio interview. This was beyond anything she could have conceived of when she walked into that blown-out shawarma restaurant. Her eyes still on her phone, she wondered if she would have changed anything, had she known what was coming, had she been able to see the outcomes of from her decisions, of the hasty request that had given Thor an idea: an idea that seemed to be coming true, whether she wanted it to or not.
Could it be worth it? she thought for the thousandth time. I don't think I'd do just anything for him, but maybe I can do this. Besides, I started it—maybe I'm the only one who can finish it.
One thing she knew for sure: She couldn't do this alone.
She did not pack a bag. Clara did not even look in a mirror before she grabbed the ring from her bedside table and jammed it onto her finger. She turned the stone with a faint click, and instantly her surroundings dissolved. She clenched her eyes shut, prepared for a rush of changing sensations as she was transported between the realms. Not until her feet were again on solid floor did she remember that this was the first time she had made that trip without Thor beside her.
In a glance, she saw that she was just inside the palace foyer. Fantastic—she actually knew where to go. She chose the direction and ran, her footsteps clanging against the shining metal, glass, and stone of the corridors. She thought she saw Sif as she ran past, but Clara did not stop. Panting heavily, she came upon a set of golden doors flanked by guards. She recognized one as the soldier caught snoozing outside of Loki's cell. He looked at her fearfully, then nodded to his partner. In a moment, the doors were opened, and she was striding across the vast chamber toward the throne of Odin.
The king was conversing with a man in a blue robe similar to the ones that the magic-users wore. Aside from more guards and a few courtiers she did not recognize, there was no one else there, not even Thor. They ceased their conversation as she drew near. Heart pounding, Clara stopped at the bottom of the sweeping steps that led up to the elaborate throne. With a nod from his king, the robed man drew back. When Odin stood, she took a step backwards and almost lost her nerve. He glared at her, aggravated by the interruption and curious as to the reason.
"What have you to say, Lady of Midgard?" he asked, his voice resounding.
Looking up at him, Clara took a deep breath. The words caught in her throat, and she had to start over.
"I'll do it," she finally said.
