The Mighty Thor of Asgard

"We must go to the Bifrost site," Thor tells his friends. All his friends, but mostly his old comrades, the ones who will accompany him to Asgard, the ones who know what all this means. The ones who were betrayed too. All amusement has leached out of him now, leaving only grim anger. "I would have words with my brother."

( He notices the approaching hum, but it's nothing dangerous and nothing Asgardian, so it hardly demands attention at the moment. )

Thor strides into the maelstrom of wind. The Bifrost catches him up on its rushing path, and he flies, Sif and the Warriors Three half a heartbeat behind, between worlds and stars and towards home. Towards a reckoning.

No more dodging. No more delaying.

( He pauses only once, at the sight of Volstagg's shield abandoned in the dirt. )

Just...

The sky over New Mexico is clear and blue -- except in one spot north of town, where a stormy spiral of dark grey reaches down a straight finger toward the dry ground. Thor can't feel the storm under his skin the way he's always taken for granted, can't feel the changes in the atmosphere and the potential building in ions and airflow, but this isn't a normal storm anyway. This is the Bifrost opening.

( The question is why, and for whom. )

It's good to have his friends at his back again. Even if he can't stand at their side.

The area Jane Foster calls their kitchen is entirely different from the kitchens Thor and Loki used to sneak into to beg or filch a snack.

( (Stealing is wrong, brother, Thor used to argue, tempted and scowling to cover it, and Loki would roll his eyes and contend that it was only training, just like the tasks their armsmasters set them, and if they'd be given the food for asking how was it wrong to sneak in without disturbing anyone with requests? )

Thor returns to the breakfast table with a lighter heart. If he must leave this place tomorrow, at least he has made amends where he caused harm.

The car's journey is long, though not as long as it was in Jane Foster's van, with the way uncertain. Thor changed obediently (though the space is very cramped) into the fresh t-shirt and button-down Erik gives him. Erik seems to think the combination is too light for the desert night, but Thor doesn't care. The clothing is insubstantial, but Thor doesn't feel the cold; perhaps he's still Asgardian in this.

Perhaps.

Neither of them talks much on the drive back to Puente Antiguo.

But true to his word, once they're in town Erik Selvig steers them to a place of drinking that he calls a bar. Like Milliways, Thor thinks, but it's not much like. The same long table called a bar, with stools set before it, and other seats at smaller tables around the perimeter, but that's where the similarities end. This place is dark and dingy, full of loud music and sharp smoke and flashing lights whose colors would remind Thor of home, if their patterns weren't so alien. There are men behind him playing a game of knocking small balls about on a green table.

Erik leads the way to the bar, and asks the barkeep for two beers. They come in bottles of dark brown glass, chilly to the touch. Thor drinks and finds the brew thin and sour and weak. But he's not so ill-mannered as to complain of a gift, and he's not of a mind to complain of much right now anyway.

He drinks slowly, Erik Selvig at his shoulder nursing his own bottle.

It's a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. These people have been good to him, however little he might have earned their kindness.

Thor steps through the door from Milliways, and he finds himself where he expected to be all along: in the bleached-bright sun of a Midgardian desert, surrounded by the dull grey stone of the lot where this hospital's conveyances are stored. Midgard's sun is so different from Asgard's, as if the light itself is stripping color from the world.

( He strides out across the square. )

He doesn't know what made her change her mind, but he's glad of it. Jane Foster, even if she doubts his sanity, is far better company than any steed. He's smiling again, bright and glad, as he opens the van's door.