After my brother Ben, came Nivana. She was brought to Titan as a teenager, but before that she had worked as a slave girl. We all said that Father rescued her from a life of servanthood, but in reality, she just traded one master for another. She was angry, all the time. She was jealous of father's favoritism of me and that jealousy turned to hate. She tried at every turn to undermine me in front of Father. Her power wasn't that great, but she was trained and molded to be a skilled killer. Soon after her, another brother came. He was never much for words, but he was dutiful and loyal. Him and Nivana became lovers soon after he was brought to Titan. Nivana knew better than to take a lover, especially a boy we welcomed into the family. To her devastation, he was killed in battle soon after. It was during that battle, in fact, that I found a baby girl in the planet's palace. All of her family had been killed and there wasn't anyone left to take care of her. I brought her to Titan and I raised her. She was my last sibling: sweet Bellia…
Heat. Chills. Hunger. Madness. Freedom… Euphoria. In a single movement, Kara felt everything at once. Feelings she had words for but never known; parts of herself she guessed lived in her, but never seen. Her soul flew out of her body, up, up, up into the night sky. Among the stars. She could reach out and touch them.
It took several nights of Kara trying to be with Thor before it happened. She would go to his room, telling herself that tonight was the night. He would be happy to see her and wrap her in a big hug. They would kiss, and he would pull her close… and she would, just… stop. She would always apologize, but he was always fine. Thor just liked having someone to talk to again, someone to sleep in his bed. They became each other's comfort and rested in each other's arms. After the third night of nothing happening, she sat up in Thor's bed as he slept. She wondered why she couldn't have sex with him. Was it guilt? Because she knew she was doing something wrong to Thor by tricking him? He was a good man, she knew that. Maybe they all were. Just because they might be good, does that mean they are exempt from Thanos' plans for the universe? Is sparing them from defeat worth leaving earth at risk? Thanos had always made this very clear: the universe would never know peace until there was balance, justice, and a supreme power. The avengers were defending their planet, but they didn't realize they were just delaying the inevitable. Until Thanos rules it all, the world will not have peace. The avengers were putting a band aid on a severed limb, without even realizing. Were they willfully ignorant or just stupid? Kara found herself relighting the anger towards the avengers she held when she first came here. Not anger against them, but righteous anger for the earth and its people. She hoped that it would never come to a fight between Thanos and the avengers, but if it did, she knew she was on the right side.
She nudged Thor awake. His eyes opened, looking around the room before meeting Kara's. Kara had fire in her eyes as she pulled herself close to him. No going back. He held her, and stroked her hair. She hissed his lips, then his chest. She straddled him, but her weight didn't crush him. His fingers pressed into her thighs and his lips trailed her jaw, collarbone, stomach. They inhaled each other, body and soul. He loved her with everything he was, intensely and passionately. And Kara felt it all. Everything. Every human feeling she had never known. She floated outside her body and saw into infinity. Kara forgot her anger, she forgot her duty, she even forgot her mission. She feasted on love and desire all night and reveled in the joy it brought her.
This was it. Kara was it. Thor was in love. He laid in his bed the next morning, both hands behind his head as he starred at the ceiling. Kara was in the shower and he traced over the events of the night again and again. He couldn't stop smiling. He knew he was done for. He had given her his everything, all that he was, and she had devoured it. His soul belonged to her, and there was no escaping it. Kara was it for him. Thor chuckled to himself, remembering how confused he had been when Kara woke him up. He instantly thought something was wrong, then when he saw Kara's eyes, he couldn't tell if she was going to kill him or make love to him. He was glad it was the latter. For Thor, it truly was making love. He poured out all of his love to her, and he believed she did the same.
I should have done this years ago, Kara thought to herself, smiling. She let the water wash over her once more before stepping out of the shower. Wrapped in a towel with hair down and dripping water, she opened the door and peaked out. Thor hadn't moved from his bed and he still had the same dumb smile on his face. She couldn't help but adore him. He was an injured puppy, and she had taken him home and bandaged him. From that day on, Kara felt like a new person. She hadn't realized how scared she had been, not just with Thor, but in life. She had been living in fear and doubt about herself and her mission, and it had been holding her back. But no more. She was so sure. She was empowered. She felt like she could conquer anything.
In the months that followed, Kara and Thor fell into a whirlwind romance. Kara invested all her energy into being among the avengers and learning from them. She started working under Banner, learning from him in his lab. There were only several occasions where she met Hulk, but, inexplicably, he needed up liking her the most out of any of the others on the team (maybe it was because she was the only one who could lift him up and through him in the air). She grew closer to Natasha and was thankful for another woman to exchange exasperated looks and hushed secrets. After a few months, she noticed Tony becoming less and less annoyed by her presence. She asked him one day to teach her about leadership, that she admired his role on the team and how he always stepped up to the plate. Boasting his ego seemed to soften him towards her, and their tension eased. Barton had stepped away for a bit to focus on his family, so that just left Steve. Steve was interesting to Kara. She knew he didn't belong to this world either, having grown up in a different time. His aversion for this place and its ways was apparent and he had an innocence around him. Kara could tell Thor had innocence that manifested itself in him as blissful ignorance. The innocence the captain contained hardened him and turned him away from what he didn't understand. Kara never saw much of Steve, but when she did, his gaze lasted a little too long and it was always overcast by a showdown of sadness… perhaps loss.
There were moments, many moments, that Kara forgot the lie. She began to live in this new reality, accepting her façade as truth. It was only when there were questions or mentions of her made-up past that snapped her back. The more time she spent with the avengers, the more times they laughed, the more she learned about their stories, the more they grew closer, she could feel herself tearing into two—the true Kara, loyal to Thanos, and the new Kara, the one she invented. And she began feeling more and more comfortable as the new Kara, slowly forgetting her 'true' self.
As time went on, Kara felt the desire to retreat back to her own apartment less and less. She spent most nights with Thor, and most of her days with the others. Before long a year pasted since she had first met them. Through out the time there were the occasional missions to be done, saving the world here and there. There was never any attempt to take the stones, not on Asgard and not on earth, by Thanos or any other. Thor occasionally went back to his home planet, checking in, and reported back that all was well. Neither had there been any attack on the monastery in Tibet, and Tony felt more and more confidence in Kara as the time went on.
Even as Kara lost sight more and more of her mission there, she couldn't help herself from taking mental notes of the weaknesses within the group. She knew a team couldn't survive with two alpha leaders, and already saw some cracks in the foundation as Tony and Steve often disagreed. Kara knew it wouldn't take much to break the group in two if the leaders felt their differences couldn't be overcome. She also found out that, while Thor was strong and mighty, most of his power came from his hammer, Mjolnir. Without it, Thor told Kara, his was as good as useless. Tony had his faults and weaknesses of his own. She noticed how important Pepper was to him, and how he would drop everything else to make sure she was ok. Tony's strength came from his suit, and without it he would be defenseless. Natasha had very little weaknesses, Kara found. She seemed to have complete control of her emotions and was highly skilled in combat and cool under pressure. Kara felt nothing but affection for her friend, but she still kept one eye out for what could neutralize the Black Widow. And Banner's weakness was obvious. To neutralize Bruce, one just had to make him angry. However, once he was angry, you would have a much bigger problem on your hands—his name was Hulk. Figuring out how to hold Hulk back still puzzled Kara. She never had tried yet, but she thought perhaps she herself could hold him back if she used the extent of her strength. Little else seemed to slow him, and the only thing she had seen him calm to was Natasha's voice. So, perhaps she was his only weakness.
Kara wondered if the avengers had these thoughts about her as well. She wondered if they kept one eye out for what they could do to stop her. Physically, she had no weaknesses, a fact she wasn't so much prideful about, but rather accepted as simply true. What was a little bit difficult for her to swallow was the fact that she had a weaker mind, susceptible to those who had the power of mind control. Back when she lived on Titan, she would try to train and exercise her mind to be stronger just like she would train her body. She hoped that one day it would get strong enough to withstand the Createan Man's debilitating darkness. It never was. Perhaps the avengers thought that maybe love for Thor would be a weakness for her. Well, the joke was on them because she knew she didn't love Thor. Even at night, when he held her, and she felt perfectly safe in his arms, she told herself she didn't love him. Even when he smiled at her and caused her heart to flutter, she knew she couldn't love him. She reminded herself of what her father had said to her when she asked him why he had killed the girl that Ben loved. Thanos had said, "We are in a line of work that doesn't have room for love. It is a weakness we cannot afford. Love for another does nothing but hold us back and give others a way to use it against us. Ben needed to learn that, sooner rather than later. You do too."
"But," Kara remembered responding, "You you love me, Father, is that not the same thing? Do you not follow your own rule?"
"It's true." Thanos had responded, reaching a hand down to cup her cheek, "But I know I will never let my love for you change my mission. I will never put you above what is best for the universe. I will never let love cloud my vision. Your brother doesn't know how to do this yet, how to sacrifice himself and the ones he loves for a greater cause. He isn't strong enough to do that. It is better to never love in the first place."
So, she wouldn't. She wouldn't let herself love. She cared for him, for Thor. She adored Bruce and Natasha. She enjoyed her time with all of them and loved who she was when she was with them. But she would never allow herself to love them.