Chapter 12: The Captain And The Princess
Obviously, Steve had been worried when he heard the noises coming from the guest room, especially since Kory was already in a delicate situation. Temporarily leaving Maui in the kitchen, he went to check on her, but before he could even knock, the door catapulted itself open and Kory accidentally ran into him. He tried to catch her but the weight and foot placement caused the two to accidentally fall on the ground.
"Steve! I'm so sorry!" Kory exclaimed, struggling to pull herself up.
"No, i…" He had planned on saying 'no, it's alright', but the moment his vision, his blue eyes were staring right at the green eyes with the stain glass effect he had associated. He hadn't noticed how those irises stood out with her red sclera in her Jotun form, making him think of pine and holly even though he knew Kory didn't celebrate Christmas. The latter looked probably as confused as his head was when he stared at her. Even he didn't understand why right now, he thought that her Jotun appearance was just as lovely as her human appearance. "Hi?"
"Uh, hi to you as well." Despite the confusion in her tone, a blush appeared on Kory's cheeks. If it had been bluish red whenever she was in her human form, her blush was more reddish blue as a Jotun, causing the coloring to stick out of her blue cheeks like the hue in a sunset.
"I, uh… Just wanted to check you… I mean, check up on you!" Great. Steve hadn't mumbled like this since he'd first known Peggy. He tried to pull himself away from her to give Kory space, but since it collided with Kory attempting to get up herself, poor timing caused them to stumble onto one another again, this time with Kory's hands griping onto Steve's neck for support and causing the two to be much closer.
"I'm really sorry!" She exclaimed.
"You already apologized…" Steve said reassuringly, blushing himself a bit when he saw that his own hands had landed on Kory's waist. "I shouldn't have… I'm sorry!"
"This is awkward on both parties, I can't see how this can get any worse…" Kory groaned. And right on cue, Maui came into the hallway, saying something under his breath about how cool the 1940s living room was, he froze in his tracks and looked speechlessly at the two. In all honesty, the last time he had seen them, Kory was left unconscious in the guest room and he just had spring water with Steve. Seeing Loki's daughter and Captain America on the ground, the former practically straddling the latter by accident in her Jotun form, and the two reacting in cute embarrassment rather than alien disgust… Maui's silence and stoic composure was enough to put the two awkward kids in a situation of getting back up on their feet.
"Let's establish that I'm going to pretend I didn't see anything," Maui offered.
"Agreed," both Kory and Steve consented.
"Don't get me wrong. I thought it was cute, but we got people upstairs."
"Right," Kory grimaced sourly. "How long are we stuck here?"
"Three weeks, I'm afraid," Steve said. "Your, um, friends managed to convince Angerboda to give you three weeks to decide."
"Decide what? Do I need to remind everyone that the day I become Queen of anything will be the day that the Sun goes supernova and everything collapses, which in my case will be billions of years after I'm dead in the 28th century! You know, if I manage to reach the demigod golden years!" Kory hissed.
"I think she meant willingly or by force."
"What a charming woman." Kory's gritted hiss revealed some of her teeth sharpening until shock caused her to turn human. "Wait… isn't Passover in three weeks? Are they shitting me?"
"Yep. And Gerd and Utgard-Loki plan on 'visiting' you to get your preferences for coronation preferences," Maui sighed. "I'm sorry, but Bacchus and I tried. This was the best we could do… and threaten them with your flyting."
"Great. Maybe I can flite them into going back to Jotunheim and staying there," Kory responded with a dry tone.
"I'm not exactly sure what flyting means," Steve admitted.
"Oh, it's like a rap battle, except without the music, the cultural exchange, the cheering crowds or the good sportsmanship. And multiply the soul-crushing insults by a thousand," she explained to him. "Obviously, I got the insulting skills from both He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and my great-great-who-cares-how-great-she-is grandmother Freya."
"Loki and Freya were among the most notorious at the oral exchange of soul-crushing insults," Maui added. "Trust me, it was a mess when these two flited back in the 1400s against each other, but it got messier when Kory flited against Freya in the 1960s. And beat her divine ancestor."
"And she had the audacity of still treating me like shit afterwards." Kory rolled her eyes.
"Kid, you're a biromantic ace who insulted the crap out of a Norse love goddess and publicly embarrassed her! It's a miracle she's never spoken to you ever again or even mentioned you to Odin!"
"Right, how great would that have been. 'Sup, Odin, guess what? My descendant, aka your son's daughter who never got killed, verbally shamed me!'" Kory shook her head. "I hate flyting. I only do it when I feel threatened or if button-pushers really test me."
"You're in the Avengers Tower. You might want to try restraining yourself because this whole tower is full of button-pushers."
"She managed to scare off the Hulk," Steve pointed out. "I think Kory will be fine."
The demigods stared at Steve as if he had just spoken to them in another language. "I swear, the way you stay so calm confuses me." Kory shook her head.
"Speaking of calm, I should let the Big Guy know you're awake… And to make sure that nothing will be a danger zone if you have to go upstairs." Maui began making his way to the elevator.
"Ko ahau te rangatira o te kino, wairangi!Ko nga wahi katoa e haere ana ahau he rohe morearea!" Kory snapped at Maui in Maori, startling Steve a bit. (I'm the princess of mischief, idiot! Everywhere I go is a danger zone!)
"Ae, e kore ko Steve Rogers tetahi o ratou.Ki to whakaaro ka waiho e ahau ko koe anake ki a ia?" Maui's smirking comment caused Kory to gasp in bafflement. (And obviously Steve Rogers isn't one of them. Why do you think I'm leaving you alone with him?) Kory looked like she wanted to shoot an ice blast at him, but the Polynesian demigod was saved by the elevator doors closing behind them. She grumbled before turning and noticing Steve staring at her. "What?" She asked in English.
"I think this marks the third language I heard you talking since we met," he smirked. "You spoke so naturally. But… honestly, I don't think I ever heard you letting out an accent."
"Well, I obviously learned British English growing up." Kory shrugged. She cleared her throat, noting its dryness. "I… I don't suppose I could ask for a cup of water?"
"Always." Steve guided her to the kitchen. The moment they stepped in, Kory probably took the same surprised step back that Maui had at seeing the décor. "I know. I'm a bit old-fashioned…"
"A bit?" Kory smirked. "It feels like my childhood home… Except the kitchen window had a view of the fjord and my mother put the Sabbath candles right by it." Steve pulled a stool out for Kory, surprising her as she sat down and he kindly pushed it closer to the counter. He really is from the 40s, she thought.
"When you told me the languages you knew how to speak… Did you learn them from your friends?" Steve pulled out a water pitcher from his fridge and evenly filled out two glasses.
"It's hard to explain."
"How."
"Well for one I'm from Norway. Obviously I speak Norwegian but I never learned the Sámi dialect, which frustrated my mother since my grandmother was a Sámi woman. But since control of my education was to her family friends the Berkovitz, they insisted that I learned English, and for obvious reasons, I learned Hebrew and Yiddish." When Kory took a sip of water, her grasp on the cup caused some frost to appear on the glass under her fingertips. "Came the revelation of my demigod nature. Despite being a half-blooded Frost Giantess, I…" She shuddered in disgust. "Being the daughter of the Nordic god of mischief and technically being born with Asgardian magic, I have some All-Speak. The natural-born skill that helps Thor and his kin communicate with people from different species and their dialects. I can speak fluently and naturally a diversity of languages, but my half-human nature bars me from knowing every single language out there."
"So, you still had to learn."
"Of course. I picked up Maori with Maui, Greek and Latin through Bacchus, and Arabic with Anubis. French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, and Hindi mostly come from interacting with Frost Giant communities. And…" Her grip tightened on the glass. "I learned Xhosa from my partner from Wakanda. Abimbola."
"Was he…"
"Was she, Steve," Kory corrected. "Abimbola was a woman. And yes, she was the one who originally owned the mambele."
"I'm sorry."
"For what? The gender confusion or the loss?"
"Both." Steve pulled out a stool to sit on. "I've been there, though. I lost nearly everyone I knew back in the war. My best friend? I failed to save him. I still can't forgive myself for letting him fall off the train… into the ravine…" Steve took a grim sip of water. "I couldn't even drink my pain away… The dame I knew… I crashed a plane full of bombs into the Arctic… We set up a date over the radio… And I woke up only a couple years ago." When he noticed the silence, he looked at Kory. The demigoddess's green orbs stood out in the red and paid direct focus at him, the way they were wide open showing that she had been attention. For some reason, her teeth nipped at the skin of her index finger.
"To think I've been complaining my problems." She said critically.
"It's fine, Kory…"
"So when you meant that your father died in front before your birth, you meant the first war."
"Mustard gas exposure."
"And your mother died when… Steve, you lost your mother to tuberculosis during the economic crash?"
"Yes. And… Maui told me what happened to your mother."
Kory stared at her half-empty glass. Her grip on it caused the water inside to freeze. "Just great."
"I'm curious, though. If you don't want to be queen, why do you let people call you the Princess of Mischief?"
"I don't let them, Steve." Kory's exasperated tone was followed by a reddish blue blush. Keep in mind that she was still in her Jotun form. "It was… my mother's pet name for me since I was little."
Steve smirked. "She called you that?"
"In Norwegian, it was Ulykkesprinsesse." Kory sighed. "Loki did tell my mother he was a prince of Asgard."
"But she never told you."
"Of course she didn't." Kory grimaced. "She just told me he never treated beneath or above him, so when she called me that, I just assumed she called me that because loving parents treat their daughters as such. The few villagers in Tønsberg who caught her calling me that back in the 20s thought it was just her way to 'butter up' my status as a devil's child."
"You're not a devil's child."
"You're conscious that for the Vikings, Loki was pretty much the Nordic version of Satan, right? The horns on his helmet don't really help." Kory made the hand gesture to shape out the helmet in reference. "I told you I was capraphobic back in Georgetown. Shortest way of saying the fear of goats I developed when I was little and a bunch of kids in school thought it would be fun to provoke a goat to hit me in the stomach. 'Why don't we hit the devil's child with his own animal?' It's a miracle the school nurse liked me enough to patch me up. Most of the teachers didn't like me. Decades forward, some mortals had the audacity of calling me a witch or a Satanist. VERY insulting! There is a distinguishable line between a witch and a sorceress. I incline myself to the second because I make decent money, I don't engage in pagan cultures, and I don't waste my decades of learning by persecuting humans for the fun of it!" Kory paused to take a deep breath. "I tend to make myself a long list of ways I am different from Loki. One of them is that while Asgard buttered him with wealth, power, and lies to make him feel like he was meant to be king, everyone I knew since I was a child used all of their honesty to tell me that they saw me as nature's greatest mistake."
"Small question, Kory. If you think everyone sees you as nature's greatest mistake, why are we talking about this in your Frost Giantess form?" Steve asked, quietly, but patiently. Kory blinked in shock at him. "I mean, if you thought I was going to be that repulsed, wouldn't you have changed into your human form?"
"Well… No… I mean… How should I know, Steve? You almost got frozen by two Frost Giants!"
"And here I am."
"Loki is your enemy! And two out of this world species are using Earth as a battlefield because of me!"
"And here I am drinking water with you, having a conversation over our problems and I'm not even leaning back to avoid you." As if to emphasize, he finished drinking from his glass. "I can do this all day."
Kory just stared at him in disbelief. Frowning, she bit her lip, holding herself back and failing, finally releasing a laugh. Her laughter caused her body to change into her human form. "Is Captain America always this smug or did you pick that up from the egocentric millionaire upstairs?"
"I had no idea Tony was egocentric." Steve let out a sarcastic smile, further worsening Kory's laughing fit.
"And I thought he built this building to be the size of his ego!"
"I think it would overfill the Atlantic."
Kory's laughter got to the point where she had to lean in on the counter for support. She wiped away a joyful tear until loud gurgling sounds caused her to sit back up in embarrassment. "Did that come out of me?"
"I don't think I've eaten at all today." Steve put a hand on his own stomach. "You're not ready to be near the other Avengers yet, right?"
"I… don't think so. Knowing the industry you're in and the people upstairs, I'll probably be at my worst. Being surrounded by people bound to push my buttons wind up provoking my nasty side, and if you think Loki is a manipulative jerk, you don't want to see me as sarcastic, snappy, and flyting jerk. I could probably deal with the Hulk, but not the others. ESPECIALLY not Thor."
"Good point." Steve asked. "Did you want me to make something or…"
"I think you've done enough for me today." Kory smiled softly. "Have you ever had goulash?"
Meanwhile, on Thor's floor
Thor had to hold back Loki for the 3rd time in a row. Since waking up, Loki had tried to make a run for the door. With the anti-magic system enforced in his room, the only main strength he had was anger mixed with entitlement.
"LET ME THROUGH!" Loki shouted at Thor.
"BROTHER, THIS ISN'T HELPING!"
"IT'S MY RIGHT!"
Hit at the nerve, Thor managed to give a final push and shove Loki onto the bed, breaking it in the process. "Listen carefully, brother! For once, shut up and listen! I am just as angry about it as you are…"
"Fancy that. The great Thor Odinson, angry for his Jotun 'family'…" Loki sneered. "If you were still the same from a couple years ago, you would have been disgusted enough to kill her!"
"So would you!" The strong comments made both of them calm down and take a breath. "Loki. The Frost Giants and Chitauri wage war against each other and this Other wants to use your child against you! You saw what happened back in the battle!"
"I did." Loki bit his lip. "Divine psychic links. Demigods share it with their divine parents upon birth. Depending on how close they are to one another, they can feel each other's pain. If they are emotionally close enough, it hurts less… That time I glitched between my forms earlier in the week! I must have sensed her presence in this city by accident!"
"When Utgard-Loki and Gerd attacked the tower and Banner had to raise the heat, your exposure might have affected her as well!"
"And when I was assaulted by Angerboda and that pest of a young mortal?"
"And of course, the recent battle! The fiend! He knows that the weak link you share with her will give you two tremendous pain! He will try to break her body and soul and force you to feel it. You might not be able to stop it!" Thor stopped when he realized that Loki wasn't responding. His brother sat on the remains of the bed, hands fidgeting. "Loki?"
"She must look so much like her mother…" Loki said.
"The magenta streak gave it away then?" Thor smirked.
"Evangeline said it was a strange hair discoloration that ran in her paternal side of the family." For the first time in a long while, Thor saw a fond smile that he hadn't seen on Loki in a while before it then faded into a sad smile. "Why did I ever listen to Odin?"
"Because his beautiful lies rivaled your own."
The Asgardians turned. As if the anti-security had never existed, Anubis stood before them, his arms crossed behind his back. In his eyes, the gold stood out of the black two burning suns, rivaled only by the flashing teeth his smile had. Some seconds, his teeth seemed like perfect, straight human ones while at the next seconds, they morphed into more canine fangs that a jackal would need to rip through teeth. "Let's not kid ourselves. I merely manifested an illusion of myself here while I'm currently watching Bacchus criticize Stark's choices in booze."
"But this room repels magic!" Thor exclaimed.
"Correction. It repels his magic." Anubis pointed a finger at Loki. "Need I remind you barbarians that I am a thousand years older than your own All-Father. The Vikings may have had their glory, but don't forget that the Egyptians were among the founding pillars of civilization." An angered Loki grabbed the nearest lamp to throw it at the illusion, only for said illusion to grab the lamp and melt it in its touch. Thor instinctively put himself in front of Loki. "Which means that my illusions are stronger than yours, moron."
"There's no need for conflict…" Thor began.
"Really? I could have sworn that you always had a need for conflict, Odinson." The illusion admired the remains of the melted lamp. "Don't get your hopes up. I'm not here to provoke a conflict. Just reminding you of your position in this situation."
"If you want to kill me, you can't," Loki said.
"I'm aware. Great Ra, you're far denser since the last time I saw you! I've been listening to your whole conversation, so thank you for confirming that the divine psychic link was the reason for my pupil's pain!" Anubis stared at Loki. "Then again, it's mostly your fault and Odin's. The lack of physical and emotional presence in your child's life weakened the psychic link. The pain one of you endures would be for the other far worse than Prometheus' sentence. And my pupil spent seventy years creating mental and internal shields to protect herself. If the Other manages to crack through all of them… I don't think she'd survive."
"Would strengthening the link help?" Thor asked hopefully, only to be met by thundering laughter from Anubis.
"Of course not! That's wacky nonsense!" The god of mummification exclaimed. "Even an apology wouldn't cover a lifespan of suffering! No, rekindling it wouldn't work. Murder would actually work since the murdering party wouldn't die or feel the pain of the murdered one, and dear Loki, your daughter would gladly do the one thing the royal family of Jotunheim is best known for. PATRICIDE!" The emphasized words were addressed with bared teeth and venomous growling. "Come near the demigods or anyone closely associated to my circle and I will let Kory rip you alive and I won't hesitate to stuff your organs canopic jars and feed them to my children!"
Loki paled up at the god's threat. "OK, no pressure then! You relax in your…" Anubis mockingly eyed the room, "… abode, and I'll be continuing my conversation with Thor outside!" The door suddenly opened and Thor felt a sudden force pull him out, shutting the door behind him. Loki's banging and muffled shouts came from the other side. Thor frowned angrily at the illusion of Anubis, who entertained himself by admiring the few framed pictures Thor had on his floor. A great portion of them were of his mortal friends, especially of a certain astrophysicist. "So nice of a couple. Not as stable as me and my wife or as heartwarming as Kory with Steve Rogers…"
"What do you have to gain in all of this, Anubis?" Thor demanded while the illusion lazily sat on the nearest couch. "Why won't you let my niece near her family?"
"My pupil's family is dead. The only one she has left is Aaricia, who, may I remind you, outright ridiculed Loki and is currently explaining to Dr. Banner every single detail about the Hulk merchandise on Frost Giant markets… It's ironic. Kory and Aaricia have a healthier, non-lethal sisterly bond that rivals the toxic one you and Loki have. And need I say this again? Your side of the 'family' mean nothing to Kory."
"You don't know that unless you give it a chance," Thor said.
"Alright." Anubis got up from the couch and looked at Thor. "Let's do a scenario where it's back to the days before your supposed coronation and the fiasco that led to your so-called character development and the beginning of Loki's self-existential crisis. Let's imagine that I came to you and told you that your brother was actually a Frost Giant and you have a half-mortal niece who's a half-Jotun, has magical powers, and likes to walk around her house in her cute, blue self. Would you have A, ignored your prejudiced view on Frost Giants, embraced your brother and niece as they are and offered to make things up by convincing Odin to let Kory live with her 'family' on Asgard, or B, called for an executioner to kill off what you have been told were savage monsters?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"Answer, Thor. A or B. BEFORE you landed on Earth."
Thor bit his lip, unable to answer.
Anubis' illusion smirked as he continued. "Alright. Another scenario. Let's take it back to last year during Loki's invasion. Let's pretend that a SHIELD agent found out about Kory before Loki did and told you about it. Would you have A, given her the benefit of the doubt and all your protection, or B, let SHIELD interrogate and experiment on her because they think that since she's his daughter, Kory must be in league with Loki?"
"Your questions are unfair!" Thor protested.
"Because humanity is unfair, barbarian." Anubis smirked. "You may have changed, Odinson, but even you can't answer to your own past prejudices." He shook his head and went back to the pictures on the wall. "Kory is powerful, but she is delicately sensitive. The first time she and I had our first proper conversation, it was in March 1945. The loss of her mother AND of her first greatest love in one war had driven her to attempt a double-suicide."
"She tried to take her own life?"
"Oh yeah. Stabbing in the stomach while leaning over an open portal. If I hadn't intervened with the help of Bacchus and Maui, her stabbing would have been followed by a one-way ticket to Muspelheim."
"Don't tell me you convinced her to sell your soul to you…" Thor grumbled.
"In exchange for bringing her to Ingrid's clan and saving her? Fat chance. I'm her patron god. My grasp on her life has existed since your mother and I collaborated to save her. To Kory, I'm already the thing she never expects from Loki: a lifelong mentor and annoying father figure. No, she never traded her soul. She's not that stupid. We had a fair trade during our proper first conversation. A trade I only give to my pupils in sorcery. They pick the time they're willing to commit to learning, and in return, they do services that culminate to that same time."
Anubis turned to show off his necklace. "Tell me, how much gold do you see on this?"
Thor squinted at the god's necklace, a crazy rainbow of jewels made of bone, metal, glass, and gold, until he recognized the forms of the beads. "YOU USE YOUR PUPILS' TEETH AS JEWELRY?" He was repulsed.
"Aren't I a tooth fairy?" Anubis joked. "But yes, a tooth surrendered by a pupil reflects the time they are willing to sacrifice to learn and serve. A regular incisor for a day, a metal canine for a month, a glass premolar for a year, and a gold molar for a century." He tapped on the necklace's main centerpiece: four molars positioned to form a golden diamond, shining brightest among the other fancy teeth. "Kory was clever. She gave me all her wisdom teeth. The only pupil to over do that. She willingly decided to serve and learn from me for 400 years."
"Are you mad?" Thor exclaimed.
"Hey! She chose and I offered! Besides, when I say 'serve' me, I don't mean slavery but more like… freelancing call of arms. Each summoning is marked as a day in the agreement. I gave her lessons and recommendations to the greatest sorcerers out there, she gets to go wherever she likes, live and feast as she pleases, and in return, she shows up to do things I need her help with. You know, like helping file my taxes, kill an enemy, control the stock markets in favor of my bank accounts, babysitting my kids, and others. She just owes me a total of 145,600 services."
"Don't 400 years make 146,000 days?"
"Yeah, but I make deductions when she does VERY well. And her services in the 70s and 80s satisfied me enough to reduce 400 services. Unlike your relatives, I bear magnanimity and generosity."
"And how many services has she completed?"
"2,013." Anubis crossed his arms and smirked. "I call the service and she does it. A good example: if you don't respect what I said and you don't keep your distance, if you try to get Loki near her or speak to anyone on Asgard about this, I will easily tell her that her 2,014th service would be to kill you and Loki. Who knows, perhaps Loki's death would get the Chitauri to leave?" The illusion went on to casually pat Thor on the shoulder. "Relax, it's relatively easy! Out of all the Avengers, I only trust the Hulk and Captain America to not irk Kory."
"The Hulk, I can understand. What do you have against the Captain?"
"Nothing! Are you that dense that you still don't understand that Kory and Steve are already acquainted? Kory was rather shaken when the mess with the Chitauri and Jotunheim had her leave New York early, she thought that yet again, her heritage ruined another potential friendship! And as far as I've seen it, besides Aaricia, he's the only mortal who actually keeps her calm and isn't like the sinful pigs out there! I know, you may find it ironic. Captain America in a respectable friendship with the daughter of Loki! Even after finding out she's not fully human, he still humanizes her and protects her. His nice boy routine really pulled her heart strings…" Anubis' smirk widened furthered. "How ashamed would the Houses of Odin and Laufey be? Tell me, Thor…" The illusion leaned in, suddenly beginning to become gradually transparent. "Loki was already jealous of you for being your father's favorite. How jealous do you think he'd be if his own child not only continuously rejected him but actually favored one of his enemies, one with a much kinder heart? But more importantly… how will YOU handle it?"
To that, the illusion disappeared, leaving the thunder god baffled.