The crow of a rooster was what woke me up, a sound that was rapidly becoming as familiar to me as the calls of hungover men, as well as the stench of vomit and mead in whichever tavern I'd found myself on a previous drunken binge. My eyes blinked open slowly, lacking the wide, frantic waking that had marked my first week here. I was slowly getting used to this life.
It was progress. Small, but progress nonetheless.
I sat up carefully, mindful of the bed frame that we had reinforced twice already. The original bed had been put in the cellar, and on Ajak's insistence, we'd gone shopping in the little town nearby for a king sized bed frame that barely fit my bulk, and even with that, after the first night I'd woken up with Mjolnir in hand and ready to break open Jotnar skulls, we had been forced to replace it.
My room was still dark, it was the second room in Ajak's four-bed homestead. I looked out the window, and if I squinted a bit, I could catch the faint purple-gray of approaching dawn. My short stay in South Dakota had taught me of early sunrises and late sunsets, with long days that I filled with work to keep my hands busy and my mind quiet.
I stood, my bare feet hitting the cool wooden floorboards with barely a creak. Which was another change, I'd learned to move my bulk better. Spread my feet out wide and slid across the wooden floorboards with more care and consideration than I would have bothered to apply months ago. Still, no amount of careful stepping could make up for the sheer bulk I moved around with, especially since the house wasn't built for someone who weighed as much as three men.
The mirror on the wall caught my reflection, and I froze for a heartbeat.
It was funny what a month could do to a person. It had been over a month since Makkari had brought me here half dead and alive. Over a month since I'd killed my father. Since I had killed Odin. Over a month since I had been separated from my family, and already, I looked different.
My features were just as rough; the scar that parted my brows was still present, even if the dark circles under my eyes from nightmares had eased up. My beard was still there, but it was trimmed now with no small effort from Ajak. I had not realized how much of a wild animal I had looked with my messy and unkept features, not after being used to the sight, but Ajak had seen something else and had insisted on helping me out. She'd been gentle about it, her healer's hands steady as she'd shaped the unruly red mass into something more controlled.
My red hair was mostly left as it was, even if it had taken what felt like half a day and two full bottles of shampoo to wash out the blood, grime, grease, and dirt of unknown centuries, and shorn a slight bit. Now it hung down till it kissed my jaw instead of my neck. In one smooth movement, I quickly bound it back into a messy man bun, pulling the major part of the hair away from my face and tying it at the crown of my head. I usually left it like that to keep the sweat out of my eyes during the day's work, but after that, it depended on how hot the day was.
I ran a hand across my belly, feeling the difference. The bulk was still there, I was still half Asgardian and still half Jotnar. I would always be built like a wall rather than the supermodel physique that MCU Thor had carried about, yet I had lost some of the belly fat. A month of hard labor, no mead and Ajak's cooking and subsequent healing every day just before bed had carved away some of my gut, and once more I could feel the coiled strength that had always been there but had been buried under despair and drink.
I felt stronger, even if I did not have any way to test it.
I stared at myself in the mirror and realized that I almost looked normal. As normal as a seven foot eight god masquerading as a human could.
I moved to dress. The shirt was simple cotton, which had stretched over the month and had grown large enough to fit my frame without tearing. The pants were denim, another gift from Ajak, who'd taken one look at my torn pants belts with gold buckles and declared them unfit for civilized company. The boots came next. I was not sure how she got the heavy leather things that could withstand my weight, but according to her, it had taken Makkari over an hour to find a couple of them.
I left Mjolnir where it rested against the wall, hanging on a cloth rack. The hammer called to me, as even without my urging, lightning crackled across its rune etched head. It was always a constant hum in the back of my mind, and I stretched out a hand, my finger running across it, tracing runes inscribed by the Huldra Brothers. In the end, I turned from it. I did not need it now, but I knew its time would come sooner rather than later.
I walked out of my room and out of the house, and looked up in time to catch the sky as the purple slowly gave way to pink and gold. The air was cool, but I knew that this was simply the early hours' weather and it would not last the whole day. I stood in the morning quiet and turned around to soak it all in.
The homestead stretched out before me. Ajak's home was a small and modest house, yet well maintained. A barn stood to the side, its red paint slowly fading to a rusty brown, and inside were the horse stables as well as the portions allocated to the cows. To the side was the chicken coop, on the other was a vegetable garden that Ajak tended to on some days, and beyond that, fields that rolled away, empty grasslands that the horses loved to race across.
It was home.
I made my way to the barn first. The chickens needed feeding, and if I'd learned anything this past month, it was that the feathered pests waited for no one, god or otherwise. They would peck at my boots and squawk their displeasure if I was even a minute late, and I had grown attached to them, so throwing lightning at them was out.
Feeding them consisted of lifting chicken feed that weighed easily five hundred pounds, but I hefted it with one hand and scattered the grain across the coop. Then the cows. There were three of them, gentle creatures that gave me less stress than the chickens. I checked their water trough, then refilled it before moving to the hay. Each bale weighed nearly as much as a man, and I carried them two at a time before dumping them into their enclosures. I did the same for the four horses that I could almost swear Ajak loved more than she did most people.
The work had grown repetitive after a month, and my hands already knew what to do, so for the first time in a month, my mind could wander, and I let it. I thought about Thrud, Sif, and the rest of the Aesir. Kratos and his son. I assumed with everything that had happened, he would probably go hermit. The thought of failing and Thanos making the snap as he did in the original timeline, and somehow Kratos losing his son, forced my hand to still for a second. The image of the old god tearing his way across the universe in a mad mockery of his deeds in Greece would have brought a shudder to my frame.
But I would do worse if it were Thrud.
Those dark thoughts snapped me out of my wandering mind, in time to realize I was just about finished with the animals, and the sun was cresting the horizon properly, painting the world with amber. I paused to watch it, one hand resting on the fence post, as the now released horses and cows wandered in the enclosure, and I felt something in my chest unclench.
The vegetable garden was next, but my last time trying to take care of that had taught me that whatever finesse I thought I had grown was not enough to handle delicate flowers, and Ajak had banned me from them subsequently, so I was resting against the fence watching the dawn when I heard the door of the house open.
"You're up early," Ajak called out with gentle amusement, her thick accent as present as ever.
I glanced up to find her standing on the porch, wrapped in a simple shawl against the morning cool. Her dark hair was loose around her shoulders, not yet bound up for the day, and she smiled down at me.
"I had dreams of your roosters chasing after me, immune to the lightning strikes and shockwaves I struck them," I replied in my signature rumble, and she smiled.
"Their ancestors gave Ikaris and Gilgamesh more hell than they do you. In fact, I think they like you."
It was innocent statements like that which showed a side of Ajak the movies had never had time to flesh out. The matronly woman was a nurturer, and the fact that she had somehow kept and bred the same set of chickens, creating a lineage that was centuries old, should have been surprising, but it was not.
"So you've already finished the feeding?"
"Aye."
She shook her head, but there was fondness in it. "Thank you, I suppose, but next time you can wait for me to wake and we can do it together."
"It's no bother," I said with a heavy shrug.
"Come inside," she finally said after a short pause. "Let me make breakfast."
"No," I heard myself say. "I want to try."
She blinked, surprised. "You?"
I shrugged, suddenly feeling awkward. It would be my first in this new life, but how hard could making eggs and coffee be? "You've done enough for me. The least I can do is cook a meal."
For a moment, I thought she might argue. But then she smiled, a real smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes, and nodded. "Very well. I accept."
Apparently, making eggs was very hard when you had fingers more suited to hefting giant killing weapons than a spatula. That was not helped by the fact that Ajak's kitchen was small, like everything else in the house, but I'd learned its layout over the past month watching her, and that included how she liked her coffee.
After what felt like an hour but was probably five minutes, I set the eggs and coffee on the table, where Ajak was seated, and she looked down at the plate I had set before her with a soft smile on her face.
"You've gotten really good at this," she observed.
"I follow instructions well when I want," I replied with a grumble, setting down my own plate of eggs and coffee even if I did not dare to sit on the fragile chair. "A lifetime of following Odin's orders made sure of that." I continued, surprised by the reflexive bitterness in my voice, but Ajak just nodded along.
"There's a difference between following orders and learning a skill because you want to," she said quietly. "You didn't have to offer to cook. You chose to, just as you chose to change."
I said nothing, simply taking a sip of the tea and looking behind her.
This was almost like a well rehearsed play. Something she said would trigger the hate, anger, and bitterness that Thor had bundled up for centuries, mostly in relation to Odin, and Ajak would always have something soothing to say in reply.
She never pretended to completely understand, as most therapists would, but she'd lived long enough, seen enough, that very little was truly foreign to her. That perspective made talking easier sometimes. Made it possible to say things I wouldn't have said to anyone else, to tell her about Odin, and slowly we were working together to resolve the centuries of abandonment, bullying, daddy issues, and repressed anger that made up Thor's personality. A personality that had overshadowed my original one. I could not even remember my actual name, yet somehow I was not bothered.
We ate in companionable silence for a few moments, yet a dark shadow had fallen over the kitchen table.
"Thor," Ajak said eventually, her tone shifting into that particular quality it took on when she was about to say something important. I turned to her and raised a heavy brow. "You know that healing isn't linear, yes?"
I grunted in reply as I downed the last of my coffee.
"Some days will be harder than others," she continued. "Some days you'll wake up and feel like nothing has changed, like you're still the same person, the same weapon your father created, but that feeling is a lie, a lie made up by the mind. It doesn't mean you've failed. It just means you're human."
"I'm not human," I pointed out. "Half Aesir and half Jotnar."
"You're close enough," she replied with a disarming smile. "The point is, you're allowed to struggle. You're allowed to have setbacks. But you're not allowed to wallow in them."
I gently dropped the cup, my silence an opportunity for Ajak to speak once more.
"You're building a foundation, Odinson," Ajak continued. "Do not forget that. A foundation that would allow you to grow and change and, like a snake, shed your past and become a new person."
I let out a chuckle that shook the table. "Horrible analogy considering my relation to Jormungandr."
"Thor..."
"But I understand." I finally replied, her seriousness met with raised arms. "Thank you for the talk, Ajak."
Her features shifted into one of kindness. There was no judgment despite some of the deeds and stories I had told her of committing as Thor, there was only acceptance and understanding.
Sunlight began to stream into the open windows, and somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.
"Makkari should be back soon," Ajak said eventually, in a bid to change the conversation.
I looked up from my empty cup. "She's been gone for a while."
"She's searching for the others. The rest of our group scattered years ago, and finding them takes time, even for someone as fast as she is." Ajak sipped her coffee. "Hopefully, she will bring back news as well of what is happening across the rest of the world."
I did not care for the second part of her words, but I did not bother to let her know either. I did not care about Earth. This was not my Earth, not my home. The only parts of this planet I truly cared about were the homestead and maybe the town close by.
Ajak finally finished her own breakfast, and before I could insist on washing the dishes, she swept them up and moved to the sink.
With nothing left to do, I excused myself to wash up properly. The work had left me sweaty and dirty, and I had plans for the rest of the day that did not involve smelling like a barn.
When I was done bathing and putting on a new pair of clothes that consisted of the same kind of wear as my previous, just neater and better smelling, I found my way out of the house once more and caught Ajak in the garden, already back to work despite having just eaten. She looked up as I approached.
"Heading into town?" she asked.
"Aye. We need a few things, and..." I shrugged. "Walking helps. Gives me time to think."
"It's a long walk."
"Not for me."
"I suppose." She straightened, brushing dirt from her hands. "Be careful. And good thoughts only."
I nodded, and without another word, I turned and began the walk to town. Ajak usually rode down with a horse whenever, but if there was a horse that could carry my bulk, it had not been born yet, so I was left to walk.
The walk to town should have been just over an hour at a steady pace, but I'd made it dozens of times in the past month, and when I wanted, I could cut the journey down by power walking without any breaks or slowing down. It was a good exercise, and one of the things that helped with reducing my monumental gut.
It didn't take me long to get to the town. Madison was a small town and was mostly inhabited by students who stayed close to Dakota State University, which was the only actual highlight of the town. That was unless you considered the stories some of the older folks told about how there was a secret military base somewhere close by, their only proof being the fact that sometime in the 80s before the college was founded and when the town was still a sleepy place with only a handful of shops, there used to be loads of black cars and jeeps, the government kind, that rode past before turning somewhere across the hills on the north side of the town.
That was a long time ago, and now, other than the college students who made the small town a bit lively, it remains like it used to be. Four main streets that cut across each other, forming a cross. A couple of shops and five diners that mostly served as the social hubs for the students, and not much else. Madison was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone, and a newcomer, especially one my size, was impossible to miss.
But I'd become a fixture over the past month. I was simply known as the helpful giant who lived out at Ajak's place. The man who'd helped repair Old Man Carter's fence after a storm, and the same man who'd carried Mrs. Kimberly's groceries when her hip was acting up, and also the one who'd spent an afternoon helping the mechanic lift an engine block that would have taken three normal men.
In essence, they liked me here, loved me even. They didn't seem to mind my size, and it was because of the discussions and stories that I knew so much about the town. Yet I had stuck to the northern part, which was a fair bit away from the college kids and was filled with the older residents.
"Morning, Ginger!" called Sam from the general store as I approached. I had not bothered to tell them my name, and the townsfolk had stuck to my second most prominent feature. The dark skinned immigrant was sweeping the front step, his weathered face creasing into a smile. "Here for the usual?"
"Aye," I replied, not bothering to return the smile. My features were not made for such niceties. "Whatever Ajak's list says."
He laughed. "Woman keeps you busy, doesn't she?"
"She keeps me sane," I replied, and I meant it.
Inside the store, Sam gathered what was needed. Flour, sugar, coffee, and a few other sundries, while I looked out of the door. Sam's wife, Marie, talked my ears off with her usual chatter about town gossip, who was getting married, whose crops were doing well, which college student had gotten into trouble with which farmer's daughter, and I listened with half an ear as I watched a vaguely familiar man stumble out of the shadows of an alley and into the afternoon sun.
"You take care now," Marie said, passing me my bags. I hefted them and turned as the woman continued speaking. "And tell Ajak we said hello!"
"I will."
Back outside, I could see the man better. His skin was pale, his head was clean shaven, while his beard was grown out a bit. His clothes were torn, and what I could see of his body was bruised, but more importantly, there was a wildness in his eyes that drew my attention further.
I knew the man, but I just could not place where.
He carried a bag slung over one shoulder, looking like he had just gotten out of a fight, and despite the injuries and bruises I could see on him, he walked like he knew what he was doing, heading toward an elderly Asian woman who was just getting into her car.
She, I recognized by face, if not by name.
The man grabbed her arm, yanking her away from the car door with enough force to make her cry out, and threw her to the side. My brows furrowed at that as I paused outside the store.
He took the time to throw the bag into the back seat, which was enough time for the older woman to get to her feet.
She screamed something that sounded like Chinese in anger, finally drawing attention to the scene. There were a few people out and about, five of them college students who came out from the sole ice cream store in the town. "Hey!" one of them called out, while another whipped out her phone to make a call.
But the man ignored them and moved to get into the car again, but the woman held him back, and in response, he grabbed a hold of the side of her head and slammed it hard into the bonnet of the car, and flung her back. This time when she fell, she didn't rise.
My fingers twitched, and ozone filled the air.
The college students immediately rushed to him, but he was already in the driver's seat, and with his foot on the pedal, the car shot forward, leaving them in the dust.
I was moving before I consciously decided to, bags dropped on the sidewalk, my feet carrying me forward as I stepped into the middle of the street and planted my feet. The car kept speeding down the road, and as it got closer, I looked through the windshield and into the surprised face of a man whose familiarity finally clicked.
What was Carl Creed doing in South Dakota?