ALL CHARACTERS AND SETTINGS ARE PROPERTY OF MARVEL INC.
Okay, this will not make any sense if you haven't read chapter 13 of Midguardian!!! Also, this is like, eleven miles long, so you've been warned. There is also lots of allusions to romance and kissy faces, and some crying boys, so if you don't like any of those, then go away! Crying is beautiful!
Balder stared in horror as I fell to the ground, and Karnilla stood over me. She looked at him, a grim satisfaction in her eyes. “You should have chosen me, and perhaps, just perhaps, she would have been allowed to live.”
Thor stared at me, too shocked to do anything but that. Karnilla looked at Doom. “I have finished here. Let us go.”
Doom bent down, and using the gloves, took Mjolnir from Thor. “Hmm,” he muttered. “Bit of a zing to it.”
The two villains left, and as they left, Loki woke up. The first thing he saw was the brother who, in another time, he had betrayed, chained to the ground. His face was ghostly white.
Sitting up, the boy looked around and saw me, lying with my loose black curls strewn across my face. Thor, who wasn't tied down and was rather harmless without Mjolnir, turned and lifted me up, cradling my tiny head in his hand. Everything about me was small, he realized, something he hadn't really noticed before. Usually I had enough life about me to make me seem just as tall and powerful as he was.
“It can't be,” muttered Loki. He stood up, then fell back to his knees, wracked with guilt. If he hadn't been hit by Karnilla's strike, could he have helped save me?
Slowly edging his way towards Balder, he used a simple tool to unlock the adamantine cuffs from around the larger man's wrists. He backed away meekly, and an unbelieving Balder stood up and walked over to Thor, dropping to his knees beside me.
Taking me in his arms, he pressed his lips to my still warm forehead, then held me to his chest. Loki reached out to touch my hand, but Thor stopped him. He shook his head, traces of tears in his eyes. Loki had already been letting his tears spill and was shocked that Thor had been able to restrain them for so long already.
“Take them to the town and make sure they can't leave and that Thor can't try and break through,” Doom said to Karnilla as they walked down the halls of their palace.
“As you wish,” said Karnilla.
“You may have him after I have shown the world that I have won.”
Jacob Anderson, also known as Rider, was a guy I hadn't known for long, but there was something deep and good and quiet about him. Something that everyone and anyone could sense. Maybe it was his unshaking faith, not so different from mine, maybe it was just that he was that sort of person you could anchor yourself to and never need to walk away from.
He and Sophie, both teammates and friends, stood awkwardly, staring at Balder as he sat on the floor, back against the wall, clear on the other side of the town hall meeting room.
One of the first things Jake had noticed about Mr. Balder was that he seemed to glow, whether he was actually glowing or not. His eyes were always bright and he always seemed so. . . well, so shiny.
But now that glow was gone, and the only thing he felt like he could compare it to was a lightbulb right after it's turned off, and the light is gone but the shadow is still there.
“It's so hard to think she's gone,” said Sophie.
Jake nodded. “Yeah. It's like she's just. . . I dunno, in the bathroom or something. Like she'll be back in a second.”
Sophie crossed her arms. “We should say something to him.”
“Like what? 'Sorry about your dead friend, what to go get some pizza'?”
He was in a rightfully sour mood.
Sophie glared at him. “Are you an idiot, Jake, or do you just pretend to be one? Like, really?”
Jake looked at her with an incredulous expression. “What do you mean 'am I an idiot'? They were friends, Sophie, and --”
“They were in love, genius.”
Loki walked up to Jake and Sophie, his pale young face somber and his glittering green eyes red around the rims. “He can hear you, y'know. Whether he's really listening or not is anyone's guess, but he can hear you.”
Jake and Sophie both took deep breaths and blushed a bit. Well, that was just shameful. Here they were, arguing about me, and there he was, perhaps more devastated than they.
Then again, it really explained a lot.
And that made this even worse.
“We really shouldn't talk to him right now, Soaps.”
“Someone should. We can't just leave him there in the corner like that.”
“Sophie, I really don't – of course you're gonna do it anyway,” he sighed as she started walking forward. He followed her, because what if she said something really stupid? Sophie could be denser than bad fruitcake at times, but apparently so could he.
“Hey . . . Mr. Balder?” she said quietly. At first, Balder didn't move. He was still, sitting with his legs bent a little and his elbows resting on his knees. He was hunched forward, held down by the weight of his grief.
After what must have seemed like ages to Sophie, he looked up to her. Likely, all he saw was a reminder of me. Hadn't Sophie been my friend and sister in battle? And then thinking of me in battle turned to thoughts of me in training, then thoughts of me walking down the streets of his city, then memories of me talking to him, and memories of our few stolen kisses. Memories that meant little and meant the world.
He wanted her to go away.
“We. . . well, mostly me, since Jake didn't want to bother you --”
Wise lad.
“I was just wondering if you needed anything?”
To sleep. To sleep without dreaming. To sleep so deeply for so long that he disappeared.
“I am fine,” he said robotically. His voice came out in a rough whisper. “Please, leave me be.”
“Right,” said Jake, and he grabbed Sophie's trembling shoulders.
Her muscles felt tighter than a guitar string, and when he took her into another room, she turned right into his gut (since she was too short to reach his chest) and let out a long, single-note sob. “Why couldn't it have been someone else!?” she gasped. “Why did it have to be her!?”
Jacob stood there with the sobbing girl against his gut. He hadn't known her long either, but he felt like he'd known her half his life. He grabbed her and held her tight, sobbing as well. He knew what it was like to lose someone, especially someone close. How many had he already lost?
“It was just how she was, Soaps . . . because she was the best of us. She did what we couldn't do . . . Because she knew it would be more painful to watch her friends go through it.”
The two stood there for what seemed like both forever and not long at all, together so they didn't have to bear it alone.
It was a sentiment that echoed throughout this prison that Broxton had become. Mrs. Beth Sooner looked up at the sky, at the bubble that surrounded my old home. The sky had a strange purplish gleam, where a wall of some sort held them in.
She wasn't really the fighting sort, but at the moment she just needed a reason to argue. But at the same time, just needed a purpose, something to keep her busy. Well there were soldiers to feed and wounds to dress, people that needed beds and mourners that needed comforting.
Poor Doctor Blake had been on his feet all these past two days. He seemed to be working through his grief, until he couldn't work anymore. His eyes were dark and hollow, where they were usually full of a casual life.
Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore.
“Dr. Blake?” she said gently.
He looked up from his bag, suddenly, as though she'd disturbed him from a very serious bit of work. She put her round little hand on his shoulder gently, and said, “come on now, Doc, you look exhausted.”
“No, sorry Beth, I've gotta --”
“Now you listen here, Doc, you've been workin' hard for goin' on two days,” she said firmly, but her voice shook. “You won't do anyone any good if you pass out on your feet. Come sit down and eat something.”
Don dropped the roll of bandaging he had in his hand and closed his bag.
She is correct. Looking forward, he saw Thor standing before him, though no one else could. He looked as haggard as could be expected. Rest. Rest and food will. . . help.
Yeah. They might bring her back, he snarled in his head.
The invisible Thor furrowed his brows. This is not my fault!
No, it's not. But we know who to blame.
Doom.
Thor nodded.
Don limped after Mrs. Sooner to a table that had been set up in a shady area on the street, the shade extended by a tent. She pushed a bottle of water into his hands as he sat down. “Where is your cane?” she asked.
“I, erm. . . lost it.”
A lie. His cane was with Doom. The power to level cities, to flood towns, to break the Earth's crust itself was in the hands of that maniac. And he was helpless to stop it. Not long after Mjolnir had been taken, somehow Don found himself in the same chains that Karnilla's mindless soldiers had bound Thor in.
“Y'know, we loved her too.”
Mrs. Sooner sat next to him, handing him a plate of food, the smell of which made his gut ache with hunger, but didn't motivate him to eat it. He set it next to him. “I know,” he said.
“She went out. . . she went out protectin' us,” sobbed the older woman. Don nodded and handed her an old hanky. “I hope she wasn't in. . . in pain.”
“I don't think so.”
Beth's mind wandered to the hollow shell of a man that sat lifelessly in the town hall. “That poor, poor Mr. Balder. He's got to be hurting so badly. . . an old woman's eyes see a lot more than these old glasses would let on,” she noted, holding up her spectacles, the ones that made her eyes almost comically big.
“We all loved her. Why, I recall when she was only about three and she walked right up to me and snatched my glasses right away and put them on, then climbed up my desk and started looking through the ledger! Just like a little secretary.”
Don nodded and held Mrs. Sooner's hand as she pressed the handkerchief to her mouth.
And what of Balder? Wondered Thor. What of he who has lost the one he loved most? What of he who lost one he desired most? Perhaps. . . perhaps I could be to blame for this. Perhaps. . . perhaps I should have shielded her, rather than letting her go to battle? Perhaps I should have made her stay.
Don sighed. “There are no answers,” he murmured, hunched over and looking around. “She loved to live. And Balder needed someone like that.”
“I was half-sure that he would have spent his life with her, if he had the chance.”
Perhaps I am responsible for my brother's pain.
Don stood up and took the plate of food. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Sooner, I think I should go check on Balder. I don't know when he's eaten or even if he's hurt, he hasn't let anyone else near him.”
“Yes, yes of course, just make sure you take it easy.”
He nodded as he stood up, and walked to the hall, his limp not as bad now that he had taken a second ot sit down. The food on the plate was probably cold, but Balder needed to eat. While he was walking he passed that Jacob kid and Sophie, holding each other and quietly crying.
“Hey, Balder?”
Balder looked up. This man, the man who his brother became. Surely he could understand wanting to be alone? “Blake,” he regarded the man.
“Sorry, Balder, I know you don't want to be bothered.”
“My brother. . . Thor, might I. . . speak with him?”
Speak? The man sounded like he hardly had the will to even say one word. “I'm sorry, Balder, but me and Thor can't change places without Mjolnir. He can hear you, though.”
Balder glanced at the food. “I do not wish to eat.”
“I know. Neither do I. Don't suppose you want to talk either.”
“Nay.”
“Didn't think so. Mind if I sit with you? My leg is giving me trouble.”
He didn't say anything, so Don sat beside the much larger man. He wasn't bogged down with extra armor, and looked odd in borrowed jeans and his own white undershirt. “Did he hear what I heard?” asked Balder.
I heard her say she loved him.
“Pretty sure he did.”
“I have ever been lost in this world and in our own. And just as I felt that I was able to say I had a place, she ruined it. She ruined everything. She smashed through my walls, broke down my barriers, and the little minx stole my very heart.”
“So. . . you're mad at her?”
“No. I need her. I can't breathe without her. It is as though the very life within me has been snatched away.”
Don nodded. “My lord Balder?”
Both looked up at Volstagg, who looked very somber indeed. Even the feathers on his helmet seemed limp with mourning. “You are being demanded at the boundary.”
“Demanded? By who?”
“You sons of – when I get in there I swear to God I'm gonna --”
“Agent Martin!” cried Don.
“Where is the guy in charge! Where is Thor!?”
Balder looked at the man with a bit of confusion, but mostly his face was still blank. “Who is this man, Dr. Blake?”
“Erm. . . That's her father.”
Balder's mouth popped open, and he turned back to the lavender colored boundary. He stood up tall and straight, and though there was power there, oh yes, there was no pride. He had none at the moment.
“I am Balder, I am the king of Asgard. Why have you come here?”
“My daughter is dead! Why do you think I'm here! You killed my daughter!”
Balder's hands gathered into fists at his sides. “I did not kill her. She died in the defense of my people and hers.”
“Yeah!? How many of your men died! My daughter is dead! You let a 17 year old girl run off into battle and get herself killed!”
The man pounded his fists against the boundary that separated him from Balder, and Balder knew that, if he could, he would be acting this way as well. “Agent Martin, her loss has been difficult on all of us --”
“Difficult!? Bring me my daughter's body you son of a--”
“Now listen here!”
“Mrs. Sooner?” called Don, as he watched the short, plump woman literally push Balder out of the way, then pause and pat his hand kindly.
“Listen up, Jeremy, you shut your mouth! You shut your mouth right now! If Anthy were here, you think she'd let you talk at him like this!? Anthy loved Balder and she loved Asgard, and she loved us enough that she gave herself up for us all! And how are you gonna thank her, by shouting at her boyfriend and the man who's taken better care of her over the last four months than you have in the last seven years!?”
My father was quiet then. Very, very quiet. He rocked back on his heels, as though Mrs. Sooner's words had actual physical force behind them. Mrs. Sooner herself wiped sweat off her forehead and put her hands on her hips. “I may not know much, Martin, but I know that if anyone deserves to mourn here, well it ain't you. You gave up all right to her the moment you left her and her mother alone in that big old house all alone.
“Mr. Balder?”
“Yes?”
“We gotta get outta this box and get our girl back. I know that that. . . witch let a few of yours stay behind and . . . tend to her. But we need to give her a proper Christian burial like she would have wanted. Do you agree?”
“Of course.”
The last thing he wanted to think about was my funeral. He wanted me alive and thriving. He wanted to awaken and realize that this had been a horrible nightmare. He wanted to think of me and feel my touch on his face again. He wanted my lips, the words they uttered and the kisses he craved.
Mrs. Sooner turned to Agent Martin. “Get to Oklahoma City and find her mother. Tell her what's happened and get her down here. Now!”
While it was true, and she was the first to admit it, that Mrs. Sooner had been too hard on him, that man deserved nothing less than the truth. He had up and left that girl when she needed him and now the worst had happened. And now he would be part of his daughter's end.
"Mrs. Sooner. . . we can't even get out of this bubble," said Don. "How are we supposed to get out?"
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