Midguardian: Chapter 9

 “You may be my blood. . . but you are not my father.”

“Fair enough,” he answered, sorry look gone and replaced with a steely cold resolve. Somewhere, far away, I could hear a horse's whinny, like a the shriek of a banshee. Or, at least, what I'd imagine a banshee sounded like.

“Agent Martin, there's a situation out there, we need your help,” said another agent from the door. Agent Martin followed him without hesitation, and that's when I figured it out – my dad was a SHIELD agent. What he did, it wasn't much different from what I was trying to do.

Save the world.

When the doors closed, with a sealing sound like in a sci-fi movie, I listened to the building laughter. My head whipped around to see Karnilla, in an enclosure like mine, right next to mine. Her laughter was downright manic, then insane, until she was laughing so hard she couldn't even breathe.

“Oh this is indeed glorious!” she gasped.

“What is your meaning, witch woman?” demanded Thor, his voice rough and low. Oh, he was even more pissed than me.

“What the hell is so funny, Karnilla?”

She gasped a few more times, before in a single fluid movement, she was off the bed, standing head and shoulders taller than me, by the glass wall that separated us. “Your father is your captor!? Hah! Never in the nine realms have I seen such irony. It is indeed hilarious, do you not think so?”

“I fail to see the humor in this,” I said dryly, as I ignored her crazy and looked around, not failing to see that she had smaller, but similar cuffs to Thor's on her wrists. My ring was in a clear cylinder, capped with a metal circle. The circle had a green light that flashed occasionally.

“The Uru ring isn't what gives me my power,” I thought out loud, “so why is it that all of a sudden I'm not all. . . Asgard-ified?”

“Perhaps it is the presence of your father?” pondered the Thunderer.

“Maybe,” I thought. I glared at Karnilla, who was busy smoothing her white and blue hospital gown. I wore one as well, but still had my jeans on underneath. “Did you do this?”

She wiped her eyes then glared at me. “Nay. I cannot touch your power, Asguardian, for it is your own and deep within your heart, where I am forbidden.”

“Huh?” I asked.

“You did not know?” she asked, then she snorted. “Of course. You are too blind to see it. Even when you were defeated by Doom's forces before, you were not broken. Even though your melancholy was great, you had power. But now you are angered. An anger that has burned for many years. A pain that now stops your power.”

“So, because I'm mad at my dad, I can't use my powers?” I asked doubtfully.

“It does not ring untrue, Asguardian,” said Thor. Turning to look at him, I said, “Oh?”

“Aye. You have a great capability for goodness and bravery. You are not afraid to throw yourself into the heat of battle to save lives. You are kind and benevolent. But when it comes to your own heart, you are as lost as any other young warrior.”

He had a point. That was deep, but not wrong. I put my back to the transparent wall, and slid down to my butt. I rested my arm against my raised knee, and sighed. “This is so. . . so fail.”

“Tch, you are the one they called the 'Hero of Asgard?' Bested by the ghost of your father.”

“What do you mean?”

Karnilla crossed her arms. “That man, be he your father or not, is not whole. He has no doubt lost what made him the man of your memories. This coldness, though he show regret, be the signs of a life hard-lived. He has been broken.”

“By what?” I asked.

“I do not think it is SHIELD, for he seems to accept duty. I think it is more than that. Perhaps it is life itself?” suggested Thor.

“I'm not gonna pretend I ever understood him. I was ten when he left for crying out loud. I didn't know he was a SHIELD agent. I didn't even know he was military! All I know is that he up and disappeared without telling anyone, not even my mom. And I've had to deal with that.”

Karnilla did something I didn't think she could. She sat down close to the wall and said, “what burdens have you had to bear?”

“Mom. Once he was gone, she barely tried to pretend she cared. I mean. . . she took care of me, but it was like. . . like. . .”

“Like she was not e'en your mother?” she interjected.

“Yeah.”

“You bore the brunt of her grief.”

“Yeah.”

“You have grown without the love of a family.”

“Well. . . no. I had a family,” I said, as I remembered Mrs. Sooner and Bill and Bill and everyone else in town I loved. I remembered Don Blake, when he first came to town and how nice he was. I remembered that night in the diner, when I met those Asgardian boys over day-old pie. I remembered that time me and my dad played catch, the day before he vanished.

“I still have that baseball,” I murmured. “He didn't even tell me he was going.”

Karnilla looked at Thor. “What is a 'baseball'?” she whispered.

“Shh!” he hissed at her. “Here it is merely a metaphor.”

I'd rarely known the physical weight of my own anger at him. My father should never have left. Didn't he know what he was going to do? Didn't he know that I'd miss him? That I'd need him? That years of unresolved daddy issues would eventually make me turn to superheroics?

But never had I felt the weight of relief. He was alive, sort of, and he wasn't very far away from me, sort of, and he didn't look very different from before.

Karnilla sighed. Her raven-colored hair tumbled wildly down her shoulders and around her face. She was insanely beautiful. Not even 'pretty' was a good enough word. And deep down, she wasn't a bad person. She just. . . had a weird personality.

I wiped angry tears from my cheeks and ran my fingers through my hair, holding my head in my hands as my elbows rested on my knees.

“I hate crying,” I muttered.

“As do many,” noted Karnilla dryly. “I did not think you the sort for tears.”

I smiled weakly. “I'm not, really.”

“How long has it been since you allowed yourself to weep for your father?”

“I dunno,” I muttered. It couldn't have been that long.

Falling to my side, I rolled onto my back and looked up, crossing my legs and sighing. “What are we gonna do now?” I wondered out loud.

“I know not,” said Thor. “I cannot free myself from these bonds. They are no doubt designed to bind my strength. I cannot summon Mjolnir, meaning it must be in the hands of the worthy.”

“Well who else is worthy?” I asked.

“There are very few, including Hercules, Captain America, brother Bill, you--”

“Halt, Thunderer, you say this girl can raise mighty Mjolnir!?”

“Yep,” I said.

“Aye, it is true. Anthy is worthy of--”

“Worthy of Balder's love,” she cut him off, staring at me.

“Hey, just because I can pick up Thor's hammer doesn't mean Balder's inherently 'in love' with me.”

“Why the air quotes?” asked Thor as I dropped my hands.

“Yeah, we've kissed, but. . . after all that with the spear and the – Thor we forgot the spear and the necklace!” I shouted. “I'm not winning any intelligence contests, that's for sure.”

“I forgot it as well,” noted Thor.

Karnilla cut back in. “He calls for you in his sleep.”

“He. . . he does? Wait. . . have you been spying on him!?”

“Spying is not the correct word. Watching over him is a more apt term--”

“Karnilla you perv!”

She grunted irritably and rolled her eyes. “Should we not be trying to find a way out of this?”

I stared at the glass as I sat up. “If I could just hit it, I'd be fine. But this is bulletproof glass, and I'd break my hand if I did.”

Why didn't she try to break it? Then I got an idea, and it involved my only remaining superpowers – the power of teenage cynicism.

“Why don't you do something useful, oh cunning Norn-mistress?” I mocked, and she turned to the glass wall, smashing into it, then bouncing back to hit the ground. “Huh, that's why,” I noted dryly. It then occurred to me that S.H.I.E.L.D had made this enclosure for superhumans who depended on powers, so wouldn't, by convoluted logic, a normal human be able to get through it?

Thor tried as hard as he could to pull himself free from his bonds. But they drained his energy, just like Karnilla's cuffs. Crossing my legs and my arms, I stared at the glass. What now?  

Well well well, little Asguardian, you're in trouble aren't you? How you gonna get outta this? And what about Karnilla?