Thor held up his hands with a sigh as he looked at his reflection on the mirror; past the beard, past the godly visage and the hair. He looked into the stormy grey blue eyes in their caving sockets and started wondering when everything started going wrong.
There was a party outside, Stark had his proclivities which Thor usually endorsed, but for the first time in a relatively long time, Thor felt no urge to wine and imbibe.
He just couldn't help but wonder where everything went wrong.
Loki was off being a gallivanting persona of chaos and the evil enigma he had reimagined himself to be after that betrayal a few years back.
His father had all but cast off Loki's name from the family, always speaking the name with that hurtful and angry eye of his. His mother's smile always came out halfway nowadays and he couldn't blame her. He had lost his brother and she had lost a son. Still it hurt.
He had friends. Companions. Comrades. Sif and the Three on Asgard, and the Avengers and the other heroes on Midgard – and still that hole that he thought would close soon only started growing wider as the seasons passed.
The Avengers were not without their faults. Good men and women, edging themselves with frail lines that they ended up crossing, but being good people nonetheless.
He could hear the booms from the speakers and feel the rattling vibrations from the floor above, and he could even smell the revelry going on. He had no stomach for it. Even gods grow tired.
When last had he been on Asgard? A cycle? Six moons? His mother no doubt knew that he was running from how empty the gilded halls now felt. Some would-be king he was. He would rather spend the time here in Midgard or travel the realms to wherever may need his aid.
And the kicker, like some would say, was that despite trying his whole life to one day take the crown from his father, the moment that same crown was placed on his head was the moment he ran. He had gone through a phase, like Stark would say, with the whole losing his power and becoming worthy fiasco, but this was another thing entirely.
Just last week he had spoken to Heimdall due to the reverberations that had been felt through the branches of Yggdrasil and had found out that something had happened in the Underworld(not Helheim thankfully). Something big enough to ruffle the branches of the Great Tree.
If that wasn't worrying enough, then the fact that Heimdall's sight was blocked was. Even his father had said so.
Loki was out there being Loki. The universe was gearing up for some ancient arms race. Something had fractured a part of Hell. He was going through a phase. And to top it all off, he and Jane were going through a thing. In other words, relationship issues.
A sigh vibrated out, one so hollow that he could feel the weariness down in his spine. He looked down at the cracked sink and his eyes trailed the last fizzle of lightning.
And there was that. The stress had gotten to him so much so that his abilities were getting out of control. It wasn't to the point of being noticed by the others but it was slowly getting there. Even without talking to his mother(because he didn't feel like talking to his father, Odin), he knew that the reason was because of how plagued his mind had grown.
He pushed himself off the sink and swept his hair back before tying it up with a ribbon that was highly conductive for some reason, courtesy of Stark.
He went back upstairs and melded back into the party as if he never left—
"Thor, there you are. I was wondering if you had dipped."
"Dipped in what?" He looked a little confused. He had not gone for a swim.
"Right, forget about it." Barton sighed. "So what's up with you? You've been looking extra gloom for some time now. Everything alright up there?" The question was asked with a finger pointing at the sky which made him chuckle.
"Not really, no. In fact, I'll say it's gotten worse. How worse? That, I'm afraid, I do not know."
"Shit. So much for good news." Barton said with a weary sigh.
The bone-deep exhaustion came back with a swerve. "I'm sorry. I have little to give for assurances."
"Well, we can't really do much about it so that's that." Barton put up a thoughtful look. "Is it in any way related to the dude we fought earlier?"
Thor looked at Barton and nodded his head at his acute observation. For a normal human, he possessed quite the sight.
"I'm not certain," he replied after a moment of thinking, "but that was less of a man and more or a demon, or a steeped practitioner of the dark arts."
"And the problem with that is?" Barton's blatant fishing for information was one of the things Thor liked about the man. The others took too many unnecessary steps in what could be answered with a simple question.
"They are not supposed to be this out in the open." He could remember vividly about the hag and her arcane order that tasked themselves with protecting Midgard from magical threats.
Maybe he could use this as a break. He could ask his mother for directions and diplomatically seek out the order and use that time to de-stress his mind. Maybe bashing the skulls of some demonic sorceress would do it. It was therapeutic a thousand years ago, no reason for it to have changed a thousand years later.
"I think I'll be leaving for a while."
"Off to another deep space mission?"
"Not in space, I'm afraid." Thor said as he swiped a glass and downed the content in a gulp. "Who is she? She feels vaguely familiar."
He pointed at the wistful red haired woman that had come in with Yelena.
He saw the wince on Barton's face that the man did not bother hiding. "That's Natasha. She's uh Yelena's sister."
"Estranged siblings."
"Something like that." Thor walked towards where the two(newly) sisters were talking to the Captain but stopped their conversation as they noticed his arrival.
"I never knew you had a sister, Yelena." He said with a smile on his face as he clasped the red haired woman lightly on her shoulder, only for his smile to widen as she held firm as if knowing the exact amount of strength he'd use.
"Haha, neither did I." Yelena's laugh was a strained thing, an awkward expression that he was intimately familiar with.
"Don't worry. The barbs and banter will mellow out soon." He said, then took a pause before continuing, "Well, it never did with me and my brother so, I don't know." He still felt like he had seen the sister somewhere before. A long time ago perhaps.
"See you guys when I get back." He said as he finally left the party. There was a light drizzle under the night sky, his perfect type of weather.
He snapped his fingers and stifled the groan of frustration that overwhelmed him when he felt Mjolnir hesitating before answering his call. He really needed to de-stress.
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...…..
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Mikhail looked at the camp once again and the incredulity of it all still shook him whenever he thought of it, and about how he got there.
The years had not been kind to him or his family, old and new.
The Morlocks have had a change since the previous year that they now looked different than the sewer-dwelling people Mikhail once knew.
Callisto was still as upright as ever, he doubted that would ever change, but even she was receptive to the changes. She even enforced it. Surprisingly.
The camp was doing well for themselves and there was less need to go up to the surface and while he was glad for the former, he didn't agree with the latter. He still had a family up there somewhere, and he couldn't spend all his time hiding down here like a coward. But he also couldn't leave the Morlocks without doing anything to help them.
That was no longer necessary with how good they could now fend for themselves. The Merchant, Isaac, his friend had been a blessing no one could have expected.
But the universe, like always, tried to balance the scales in a way that left Mikhail flatfooted.
He had been trying to, or at least making a plan that would help him find his sister, Illyana. He already knew where and who Piotr was with, having found out not too long ago, but his shame prevented him from visiting his younger brother. As the eldest, it was his duty to ensure that his family was safe and sound but that was something he had woefully failed at.
But even that too fell short because on a random day a portal ripped open in front of him down in the tunnels and out of it stepped out a man decked in armor and a little girl. The man he could vaguely remember. The little girl he had never forgotten.
Somehow someway, he had his sister returned to him without him doing anything and while he was overjoyed and glad by how everything turned out, he couldn't help but feel himself grow inadequate.
Sure Illyana forgave him, saying there was nothing to forgive in the first place, but he didn't really feel like it. She had to drag him out by force to meet Piotr and then the feeling grew even worse.
Maybe Victor von Doom had the right of it by calling him a coward. Maybe Callisto did too by calling him a brave fool.
So now his brother and sister were safe, sound and protected, and what did he do? He remained down here with the Morlocks.
Even if he was distrusting of Doom's intentions of teaching his sister magic, he also couldn't deny the fact that she was the most heavily protected out of the three of them.
She wasn't keen on slumming it with him down in the tunnels and he wouldn't have agreed if she wanted to. It would have been preferable if she stayed with the X-Men but they were a widely unknown group to her and she said she preferred the duplicity of Doom than the assurances of the X-Men, and all that did was make him even more sad.
What kind of life had she lived to adopt such a mindset?
Everything had happened so quickly that despite his gladness, the biggest thing he felt was shame.
"Are you going to sit down here moping all day?"
He ignored her words, at least he tried to, but she clearly wasn't having that as she pushed herself up from the bed and stared down hard at him.
"If you're going to continue being lazy then I'll have to kick you out myself. Whatever is going on with you, deal with it quickly and find a use for yourself." She finished as she got out of bed and holstered her knives to her waist before leaving the tent.
He punched the bridge of his nose in silent frustration but nonetheless took heed of Callisto's words. He couldn't continue like this. Piotr wouldn't want to see him like this, much less Illyana, his little-not-so-little sister.
The next ten minutes he spent convincing himself not to feel like a loser and the next five he spent thinking of anything productive he could do on a bigger scale.
Illyana had a bright future ahead of her, especially with her being Dr. Doom's student(as long as she didn't follow his footsteps). Piotr had already established himself in a powerful group. Both his siblings had forged a path, a great path, that they were already walking on. It was high time he did the same. And he would do it with the Morlocks.
After all, he was the leader of the Morlocks.
The moment he thought so, a wave of clarity hit him. It was ambitious, reckless and undefined, but he gripped the idea and immediately set about it.
He would make something out of himself and the Morlocks. Maybe this was what Callisto had been hitting at since the beginning. The entire idea of the Morlocks wasn't just barely surviving. It was surviving despite everything else.
To do this he needed two major things. Money and power. And fortunately for him he knew exactly where power could be bought. Now all he needed was money.
Illyana did say something about a demon realm, didn't she?
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Patreøn*com/1stDepth
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