Chapter Six: Make Me A Sammich.
"I'm a new soul,
I came to this strange world
Hoping I could learn a bit
About how to give and take."
New Soul, Yael Niam.
.oHOPEo.
Many thanks and virtual cookies for my reviewers on that last chapter: aussierose89, NoVacancyMind, and Sergeant Hiddles. Your reviews mean the world to me!
.oHOPEo.
"A proper housewife you will never make." Peter watched Anna haphazardly slap together the ugliest sandwiches he'd ever seen, bar none.
"Oh, piss off." She slathered a glob of mayonnaise onto a slice of bread. "He's devouring them faster than I can make them."
Peter snorted. "Maybe you shouldn't feed him so much. Banner will hang our heads over the mantle after he decapitates us."
"Coming from the one who let Thor dig into the 'popping tarts' like a hungry elephant severely lacking in table manners? Please," she retorted sourly, effectively ending the tiff. "Practice what you preach." Her companion blushed scarlet.
Peter, as it had turned out, had been the weakest link in their partnership: after an almost lethal dosage of puppy dog eyes, Peter had caved to Thor's demands for Pop Tarts. Thor had inhaled six pastries before Anna, who had been unaffected by the previous widened eyes and trembling lips, put her foot down, wresting the box from his hands and placing it strategically out of reach. Thor had pouted like surly child until Anna offered to make him a sandwich to sate his hunger. So far, he had managed to demolish a whole loaf of bread and was still going strong.
"Do you ever stop eating?" Anna asked of him incredulously. It was her supposition that Thor's stomach as either a wormhole or a bottomless pit.
Thor paused in his mission to annihilate all of Tony's sandwich supplies only long enough to answer. "This is nothing, Lady Annie; a healing warrior is to expect an increase in appetite. My friend Volstagg, who loves food perhaps more than his wife, once consumed an entire feast by himself. As you may well imagine-" Thor chuckled around his sandwich "-his stomach ached for a considerable amount of time."
"You have no room to talk, anyways, Annie," Peter interrupted dryly, eyeing the turkey-ham-and-cheese sandwich -her fourth- in her hand.
"Look." Anna waved said sandwich about, shaking it in emphasis to each of her words. Thor gazed morosely at the smattering of crumbs that flew every which way, as though even the loss of those few crumbs was cause for great lamentation. "I have a valid excuse, okay?"
Peter's brows skyrocketed. "And that is...?"
Anna pondered him for a moment, measuring the full extent of trustworthiness the boy spider exuded. "Well," she sniffed, "my metabolism runs much higher than the average. Much, much higher. I'd guess that I need something in the range of four to five thousand calories daily. If I don't eat enough, I get slapped with nasty side effects: dizziness, lightheadedness, the shakes, nausea, weakness in my muscles...the works." She pressed the back of her hand against her temple and mocked a damsel's swoon. "Which is no help to anyone anywhere. So I eat as much food, especially protein, as I can get."
Peter gazed at her with all the respect and appreciation that his budding scientist's heart could muster. "Impressive."
"More like freakish. I have a freakish physiognomy. That contributes to my high body core temp, too," Anna rambled offhandedly, tossing Thor yet another sandwich. "I run higher than most people. Convenient in the wintertime, but hellish in the summer." She shuddered delicately, recalling the vicious bout of heatstroke she'd been subjected to in the summer past.
"Oh? Is that why you dress so scantily?" Peter asked testily.
Anna shot Peter the dirtiest, most scathing look she could manage with a mouthful of bread. She chewed, swallowed, and tactfully changed the subject. "We're being awful hosts to poor Thor, here. The man doesn't look like he's understood a word we've said." Their charge did, in fact, have the blank visage of a deer caught in headlights.
Two ruddy circles appeared in Thor's cheeks as he sheepishly blushed. "I admit," he said softly, "that I understood very little, but that may have been your Midgardian phrasing."
Anna's brow furrowed in the epitome of confusion. Midgardian…? The hell is he smoking? She decided to simply let it go. After all, they were in New York, a city filled with nuts. Why should it be so surprising that she had run into one at Stark Tower? "You didn't miss much, I assure you. We were just talking about how different my body is from others."
"That much I gathered."
"Speaking of bodies." She pointed to the pink cast adorning his leg. "Whatever happened to your leg?"
"Ah." Thor rapped on the plaster. "I injured it in battle. I wear this only to appease Friend Banner and the Man of Iron – they were quite insistent that I don it." He grimaced. "Although, to be honest, it is probably healed by this time."
"Must be nice to be waited on hand and foot, right?" Peter remarked lightly.
"It reminds me painfully of home."
"You're not from around here, are you?" Anna tilted her head to the side, sizing up her –their –charge. She noted his rigid, regal posture, the cadence in which he spoke, his choice in vocabulary. That was not to mention his peculiar name: Thor. Who in their right mind names their kid Thor?
The blond man stiffened visibly, catching Peter's curiosity as well. "No," he answered finally, "I am not."
"Then where are you from?"
"I am not at the liberty to disclose that information." Thor fiddled with his cast, frowning deeply. "Friend Barton asked me not to."
Anna beamed widely. "We won't tell," she promised.
"But what about JARVIS?" Peter suggested, lackluster. "There's no guarantee that he won't tell."
She elbowed him roughly in the ribs, drawing a sharp oof from her considerably smaller companion. "Shut up, Peter," she ground from the side of her mouth. "You're not helping."
He rubbed his side, frowning. "That was the point."
"Sir JARVIS." Thor addressed the ceiling doubtfully, as though he didn't expect a response. When JARVIS replied, Thor flinched visibly. "Are you bound to report our doings to Friend Barton and the Man of Iron?"
"To an extent, Mister Odinson," JARVIS responded crisply. "Though I can omit certain details at your request."
"I wouldn't trust the AI. He let Annie in, after all." Peter earned himself another elbow to the ribs.
This appeared to ruffle a few JARVIS's feathers, for, when he replied, his tone seemed sharp and curt and perhaps a tad offended. "Hardly by any fault of my own, Mister Parker. At the time that Miss Hellfire was in the process of infiltrating the Tower, Mister Stark had commanded me to mute after I had 'nagged' about his excessive alcohol intake. I could not inform Mister Stark until she had already entered."
Anna wasn't sure whether to smirk at Peter for having trumped his argument, or to be affronted that it wasn't her own ingenuity that had gotten her into the Tower. She finally settled for, "So you see, Thor? It's completely fine. We won't tattle on you, and neither will JARVIS. Right, JARVIS?"
"In so many words, yes, Miss Hellfire."
Thor chewed the inside of his cheek, scowling deeply. "Alright." His face smoothed of negative emotions, replaced by a flat calm like the surface of a mirror. "I will tell you. I am of the Realm Eternal, Asgard, which, as I have come to understand, you Midgardians would refer to as another 'planet'."
A hiatus, and then – Anna and Peter burst into chatter simultaneously.
"But – that can't be possible – "
"Another planet? Wicked! – "
"I don't understand – how? – "
"Do you guys have flying saucers, like in the cartoons – "
"And you refer to us as Midgardians – ?"
"If you're an alien, why aren't you all blue, like in Avatar? Where's your funky pterodactyl thing? Did the Men in Black bring you here?"
Thor's eyes widened exasperatedly. "Please, my friends!" he exclaimed. "I will answer your questions, if only you give me the chance!"
"Ladies first." Peter pushed his glasses up his nose.
"No, I insist. You first," Anna said impishly.
He scowled, put off by her lack of acceptance of his politeness. "Fine." His tone was prim. "How many other planets are there?"
"There are Nine Realms that we know of," Thor replied swiftly. "Asgard, Midgard, Jotunheim, Muspelheim, Alfheim, Vanaheim, Svartalfheim, Niffleheim, and Helheim." He cocked his brow as if to say 'next'.
Anna huffed, chewing over a thought that had just occurred to her. Images flooded her mind: a car exploding into mangled bits of shrapnel that struck down the people running at her sides, guns firing blue bullets of energy, reptilian skeletors snarling in bloodthirsty delight, death, the stench of burning flesh…the extraterrestrial invasion. "Did your people have anything to do with that invasion?" she asked solemnly, all traces of humor gone from her voice.
A myriad of emotions flickered across his face: anger, regret, betrayal, but pain reigned most clearly. "Yes and no."
Fire teased at the walls of her stomach, feeding a burgeoning anger. "That is not much of an answer."
"My…brother felt slighted by my father," Thor began haltingly. Annie wondered if this was the first time he'd told this story. "Because he felt that my father favored me over him – and, in truth, he did, unfairly so. My brother grew, embittered, until finally he attempted to kill both my father and I.
"He did not succeed. We fought, and in the midst of our duel, I destroyed the Bifrost, the rainbow bridge that provides us transportation between the Realms. In doing so, my brother fell into the…abyss." He paused, composing himself, and Annie reached out empathetically to rest her small palm on his forearm. A smile twitched at the side of his mouth.
"We thought him dead until Heimdall saw him begin an assault here, on Midgard." His smile twisted into something wry and bitter. "My brother, Loki, brought his grudge here. He planned to take this world as recompense, as payment for all the wrongs he was dealt. With him came a ruthless army by the name of the Chitauri."
"Chitauri…" Peter's eyes clouded over in recognition behind his glasses.
"Loki and his army of Chitauri were beaten here by the Avengers and I, and the rest you kn – "
Thor broke off and all but turned to stone, his eyes locked on a point behind Anna's shoulder.
"Spreading slander of me, Thor?" a silky, masculine voice asked, dripping in poisonous menace.
.oHOPEo.
Author's Note: I have a fanfiction-based tumblr now. The username is le-mischief-maker; follow for all kinds of goodies. Ask me any SWR-related questions (or others?) and I'll answer to the best of my abilities. I might release blurbs from the chapter in progress at that point in time.
Anyways.
The author's note ends here, my dears. Until next time!