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Every time it storms, every time the thunder beats against the sky and lightning flashes, she remembers Asgard.
She thinks of how the sky would shine bright as she flew through, of how the harsh wind whipped across her face. She thinks of the glory that came with the Valkyrior and the pride she felt every time she marched into battle with her sisters, of the way their swords rumbled with ever clash, loud enough to make the skies shake. She thinks of all the battles she fought, both long and quick, tiresome and casual, victorious and not.
But most of all, she thinks of the day she lost it all.
Of the way she was there one moment, frozen as she watched her beloved die right before her eyes. She thinks of that flash of light that appeared, just when she remembered to move, and how she was whisked off… only to land on this forsaken planet where everything is backwards and primitive and so far away from home.
It took her years to abandon the hope that she could make it back somehow – that she could find a way back to Asgard, even with this planet’s archaic technology, and save her sisters. Or, at the very least, avenge them.
But the years came and went until one day she woke up and realized she couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t keep fighting to get back to a place that abandoned her, destroyed everything she loved for a golden sham. So she just… stopped.
Stopped trying to get back, stop wanting to be Asgardian.
Stopped being a Valkyrie.
There isn’t much to behold on this planet – her personal hell, holding her captive – not after an entire lifetime on Asgard. But she tries to make the best of it, especially as the years pass and Earth gets closer and closer to civilization. Still, it’ll take countless more decades before it will be able to match Asgard, if it even can, and she’ll likely be long gone by then.
She prefers it that way.
Best to leave Asgard in the past.
She’s driving through the desert, trying to make it to the next state before sunrise, when the storm comes out of nowhere.
One minute it’s endless sand and clear skies. The next all she sees are clouds and wind, spinning round and around, like some sort of tornado. Except the moment a light flashes, she knows that this isn’t any ordinary desert storm. Because even as far as she is, she could never forget that light.
Except before she has the chance to fully process it, a bolt of lightning comes crashing right in front of her, shocking her and, unfortunately, her car.
By the time she comes to, the storm has cleared. The only signs it ever passed are her now incredibly dead car and a newly formed ditch twenty feet away, the center of which holds what she can only assume was the source of the storm – a large, very likely Asgardian, weapon.
She should ignore it, she thinks. Whatever it is will undoubtedly be tied back to Hela or Odin or, worse, both. Which is the last thing she wants or needs. She should just walk away before whatever this is becomes her problem.
Except, well, if it’s Asgardian then it will be better made than anything she’ll find on Earth. More valuable too. She could likely pawn it to some alien obsessed freak for a good amount. Enough to sustain her for the rest of the year. Maybe longer.
She sighs and jumps down into the ditch.
Definitely Asgardian, she thinks the moment she gets close enough to see the traces of writing along the edges of the hammer. Her fingers swat at it in a not so gentle attempt to wipe the sand away, revealing what is very clearly an Asgardian transcription.
Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.
Dramatic, she thinks. Definitely Odin.
But the moment her hand curls around the handle, she’s struck by something that feels almost electric.
And in that moment, she’s taken back to the night with Hela. To the sky flashing as she watched her sisters fall around her. To the thunderous roar that came with every blow Hela dealt. To the way it felt like she was being struck when she watched her beloved die.
“Screw this,” she mumbles to herself, letting the stupid thing go before climbing out of the ditch. There’s no amount of money that thing could yield that would be worth it.
Still, she thinks as she hefts her car up by the back bumper, it’s unbelievable that even here Odin won’t just leave her in peace.
She drags her car back fifty miles across the desert to the nearest town, cursing Odin’s name the entire way.
It’s only once she’s there that she learns she isn’t the only one doing so.
“He calls himself Thor,” the mechanic scoffs, “You know, like the god of thunder.”
She presses her lips. “Hilarious.”
The mechanic tells her a bit more, mostly about how this Thor fellow came in with this group of weird scientists he doesn’t trust. How they claim they found him in the middle of the desert. And how he won’t shut up about finding some hammer.
“Uh-huh. And what about my car?”
“Oh,” he shrugs, “Battery is shot. Probably the alternator too. It’ll take me a few hours if I’m able to dig up the parts. But I think I should have it ready to go by the morning.”
Great. She just has to avoid him for one day. She’s managed to go this long without getting dragged back into any of Odin’s dirty work. Surely she can last one more day.
Yeah, that goes out the door fifteen minutes later when she quite literally runs into him.
She has her head buried in her phone, trying to decide if she can drive straight through Texas in the morning or if she’ll need to stop half way through, and he walks out of some diner without looking where he’s going and they just collide into each other. Without even looking up, she knows it’s him because the impact of their crash is enough to make her stumble back a few steps, which has definitely not been her experience with these Earthlings.
His hand reaches out and catches her forearm, anticipating a fall he expects and she knows wouldn’t have come. But the moment his skin touches her, she swears she feels something akin to lightning. Which also pretty much confirms anything she needs to know about that stupid hammer in the ground.
“Apologies,” he says with this smile that is surely meant to charm her.
She pulls her arm back and glares. “Just watch it next time,” she says as if the fault wasn’t equally hers.
As she walks away, she hears him call, “Are you saying there will be a next time?”
She rolls her eyes.
It’s only later, when she’s checking into the only (disgusting) motel in town, that she realizes a human shouldn’t have been able to break out of his grip, no matter how loosely he held her.
Well, now there definitely won’t be a next time.
Not that she ever intended there would be.
She runs into him again, because of course she does.
“I knew there would be a next time,” he says, exiting a pet shop of all things. He has that smile again, as if he’s trying to charm something out of her.
She rolls her eyes. “Actually, I’m pretty sure you asked if there would be a next time,” she says as she tries to move past him. He steps sideways so that he’s blocking her path again, and she seriously considers blowing it all to hell just so she can shove him aside. “And I definitely remember telling you to watch it, but that part seems to have slipped your mind.”
“Then it seems I owe you another apology.”
“Or you could move out of my way,” she snaps, crossing her arms over her chest.
Something almost akin to guilt flashes across his eyes for the briefest of seconds, but he doesn’t move. He just stands there, blocking her path, looking at her as if he’s trying to study her. And she knows that she should just walk away and ignore him. As much as he might be curious about her, he has more pressing matters. Like getting off this archaic planet, for example. He won’t chase her down.
But she doesn’t, because standing there – staring him down, refusing to back down from the one person on this wretched planet who would actually present any sort of challenge against her in gods only knows how long – she feels something almost like a warrior again. A spike of something akin to adrenaline hits her and, for the second time in minutes, she considers blowing whatever flimsy cover she has left. It might be worth it.
“Hey, Thor!” a skinny Earth woman calls from her car, waving him down. “Still need a ride?”
His gaze finally breaks away and he glances over at the woman. “Jane,” he answers, but makes no further movements.
“I’d take her up on that offer if I were you,” she says, her voice somewhere between amused and smug. “I doubt you’ll get a better offer… Your Majesty.”
She slides past him, taking her personal victory with her, as she makes her escape.
Within the hour the skies darken prematurely and the beginnings of a storm stir, just waiting for their opportunity to emerge.
It won’t be long now, she thinks and she lays back in her cheap motel bed. He’s got his ticket back. The portal will open and take him away and that’ll be that. He’ll be out of her hair and this will be nothing more than another Odin Family Memory she’ll be able to drink away.
Thunder blares. Lightning erupts.
Rain pours down as if the sky itself was mourning a loss.
The portal never comes.
A few hours later, once the storm passes, she finds him at the only bar in town, sitting alone as one of the science nerds pats him on the shoulder and walks away, barely sparing her a glance as he leaves.
The science nerd has the right idea, she thinks. If Thor is anything like his father then his foul mood will mean he’s more trouble than he could ever be worth – worse if he’s anything like his sister. So it probably would be best if she left, slipped away without him noticing. That’s what she’s been trying to do all this time, right?
Except it’s late and the liquor stores are already closed and this is the only bar in town, and after everything else she’s already lost to this family, she refuses to let them take anything else away from her, even if it’s just a glass of shitty Earth beer.
Besides, she’s never been one to back away from a challenge, even now.
“It’s you,” he says when she approaches the bar.
His voice lacks the suspicion she expects from him. It’s just flat, as if he’s stating observations: the sky is dark, this bar smells of piss and cheap beer, it’s her standing there beside him. Just another mundane, horrible fact of life. It’s only then that she realizes exactly how deflated he looks.
Against her will, she thinks there’s nothing about him that resembles Odin or Hela in that moment.
“Sorry,” she snaps instead, “Wasn’t aware you had a claim to the only bar in town.”
“I don’t,” he says and his shoulders fall a little and he looks back down at his empty glass. “It appears I don’t have much of a claim to anything.”
The bartender interrupts them, sliding a beer in front of her and the cash away from her. She stares at it for a moment, trying to convince herself not to do it.
It isn’t worth it.
Nothing on Asgard was ever worth it and that will never change.
But if that’s the case, what’s the harm?
Damn it.
She sighs and slides the beer to him, and signals to the bartender for another. His head shoots up and he stares at her for a moment. Or at least she thinks he does. She isn’t sure considering she refuses to meet his gaze, pretending to be focused on the bartender ignoring her in favor of some man in a horrible pair of overalls.
“Don’t overthink it,” she grumbles. “You just incredibly look pathetic, that’s all.”
The exact kind of pathetic that happens when you realize that you’ve lost everything you’ve ever had or loved. That home is nothing more than a memory now, one you’ll try to drink away.
It’s a particular type of pathetic, she will absolutely not say, that she is all too familiar with.
She doesn’t have to say it though. She thinks he understands enough by the way he looks at her before he presses his lips together and nods in thanks, accepting the drink in silence. Without thinking, she nods back.
It’s only when she is about to walk away that he says, “My father died.”
Well, shit, now she has to know.
A heart attack, more or less, gets Odin Borson in the end.
After centuries of battles and bloodshed, after Sutur and Hela, after gods only know what else he’s done since she’s been gone, it’s something as simple as a stress induced heart attack that does it. His reign ends not in the glory of his empire, but in the shame of his child. A child, by the sounds of it, that was trying to do nothing more than to foolishly live up to his father’s name.
She feels no sympathy for Odin.
It’s appropriate, she decides, an anti-climactic death is exactly what he deserves. If he never felt shame for everything he did then at least let him die feeling some sort of shame.
Except she thinks maybe she feels something for Thor. Losing your family alone must be hard enough, but it’s almost unbearable when you combine it with losing your planet too. With knowing that no matter what you do, there’s no going back. There’s no saving the ones you love. There’s no more home.
There’s only this inconsolable pain that never really stops, no matter how much you try to drink it away.
She won’t say as much. Doubts she even could if she wanted to. Which, should be noted, she really does not want to.
Yet.
She buys him another round.
It won’t help, she knows, but they can pretend.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re doing this?” he asks, because of course he does.
She takes her time, chugging down half of her drink, before she shakes her head. “Nope.”
He snorts, but it still seems dignified in a way that only royalty could ever do. “No, I didn’t think so,” he says, finishing his drink. “I’m Thor, by the way. Though I suppose you’ve already gathered that.”
“Pretty sure the entire town’s gathered that,” she says, signaling to the bartender for another round.
If he’s embarrassed, he doesn’t show it. “Never quite mastered subtlety,” he says. “And yourself?”
“Subtlety is overrated.”
“I meant your name,” he says. “What should I call you?”
He won’t back down this time, she knows. She’s shown him enough to garner his curiosity again, and this time he has nothing better to distract him. There’s just her. And it isn’t as if she has much else to lose at this point – Odin’s hardly coming back to drag her into doing his dirty work now that he’s dead. It’s just him, Thor, and his curiosity seeking something as simple as a name.
Except it’s so much more than just a name. It’s her – warrior, lover, Asgardian. It’s everything she ever was, everything she ever thought she would ever be. Everything she thought she let go, but maybe still holds on to. It’s stupid and petty and absolutely not worth clinging to, but it’s hers and it may be the only thing she still has.
It’s something she’s not ready to give up. At least not yet.
“Val,” she says at last. “You can call me Val… Your Majesty.”
It’s an absolutely tasteless joke given everything he’s just been through, but still he smiles. And despite how small it is, she thinks it might be the first genuine smile she’s seen from him. It’s bright and warm. Like a glimpse of the sun peering through the clouds after a storm, she thinks and almost hates herself for it.
Almost.
The thing about Earthlings is that they are pathetically weak, which means their alcohol is even weaker.
It was one of the first things she hated about this planet – how she would have to drink at least thrice as much as she would have on Asgard to feel the same. She tried for years anyways, doing nothing but consuming, trying to drink herself away. She still tries sometimes, but it hardly sticks anymore.
He doesn’t say it, but she knows he notices it too, the way the beer here tastes like water and piss. The way even the largest and strongest drinks do little more than lighten their heads for a few minutes before fading away. It’s depressing, she imagines he wants to say, but doesn’t. She doesn’t either.
Because if they don’t say it, don’t admit it out loud, they can pretend it’s the alcohol that lets them relax. That it’s reason he forgets, even for a moment, about the death of his daddy dearest. That it’s what lets her forget that nothing good ever comes from being near this family. That she is supposed to leave and go back to her shitty hotel because he isn’t her problem.
But most of all, she can pretend that the reason she takes him back behind the bar and pins him against the wall is nothing more than the alcohol.
“You still haven’t told me who you are,” he says, his voice low and rough, the edges of his teeth against her neck.
She thinks it's hardly her name he cares for this time. What he wants, what he's looking for, isn't who she is but rather what she is. It's not his selfish curiosity this time, she can tell. He wants to be sure, wants to know exactly how far he can go. Their biologies may be compatible, but there's a significant difference between what an Earthling can handle and what they can do.
Her hands slide under the edge of his shirt and her fingers trace the hard muscles of his stomach before she presses her palms against him, not enough to hurt him (at least not yet), but enough to keep him pinned against the wall. To hold him back in a way no Earthling could.
His lips part and she feels him inhale against her. Feels other parts of him pressing back against her too.
Thunder crackles above them.
"I'm… surviving," she offers. "Stranded. Whatever you want to call it." She hesitates for a moment before she adds, "Just like you."
He finally pulls back and looks at her, his gaze far more intense than should be allowed. She meets it though, the warrior in her refusing to back down from the first person on this forsaken planet that has ever come close to matching her. It’s enough for him to know what she means. Or, at very least, enough for him to understand that she knows exactly what she's getting into here.
When he kisses her, his mouth hot and heavy against hers, she thinks she feels the briefest flicker of lightning.
Maybe, she thinks afterwards as the rain falls around them and he laughs in this way that would remind her almost of thunder if that wasn’t so horribly cheesy.
Just maybe, storms aren’t so bad after all.