In the Spirit of Beasgiving

Big Team Base - November 23, 2021

Misty paused for about the fifth time outside the room where she and Brenna had—tersely—agreed to meet. For the fifth time, she asked herself if she *really* had to do this. What if it went badly? What if Brenna was mad at her—well, Brenna was definitely mad at her, but mad enough to do something about it? What if—

But it wasn't about whether or not Brenna was mad at her, she reminded herself.  She did something bad and she needed to apologize for it, and that was that. And also she really really wanted Bea not to be in the awkward position of knowing two people who absolutely couldn't stand each other, not least because she was pretty sure she knews whose side Bea would take.

But, she reminded herself, it *wasn’t about that.* It was about apologizing. She steeled herself, pushed the door open—

—and it turned out that Brenna wasn't there yet. She paused, looking around the room, and then collapsed onto one of the couches and tried to wait in a way that didn’t look either sulky or extremely anxious.

Brenna was running late. She never really liked being late, her Father had always emphasized timeliness while she was growing up. It was different when you were potentially keeping gods waiting. But she still didn’t like it. Especially when it meant she was going to look bad in front of Misty. It didn’t take away her moral high ground, but it did feel like being late undermined it.

Brenna took a moment to compose herself in front of the door, then opened it, half hoping that Misty would have been even later than she was. She wasn’t. Misty was there, sulking on one of the couches.

After a deep breath, Brenna walked further in. “Sorry for being late. My sibling’s cat knocked over a bag of flour and I had to clean it up before he ate himself sick.”

Brenna sat carefully down on a couch across from Misty. There was a streak of flour on top of her head and some on the hem of her dress that she hadn’t noticed.

Misty startled when Brenna came in—both from the sudden appearance of, well, Thor, but also because she wasn’t expecting the flour. Or the apology, honestly; not that Brenna had ever seemed rude, but that was not the apology direction she had been anticipating. It took her a moment to recover.

“No, it’s fine—I know how cats are. The ones at the shelter would get into everything, I—wait. Sorry, that’s not what this is about.” She shook her head, the smile at the memory falling away as she did. “Uh. Thank you for agreeing to talk with me. I completely understand why, well. Why you might not have wanted to. So. Thanks.”

The right answer was “oh it’s fine,” but Brenna wasn’t exactly in the kind of mood to lie like that. She didn’t owe that kind of lie to this girl. Memories of the first time they met -- of finding a thief in the forge, their brief fight, the lingering pain and humiliation of the injury and then scar on her face -- felt fresher than they had in a long time, and Brenna didn’t stop herself from brushing her fingers across the scar on her cheek. “I don’t want to talk to you. But Bea has decided you’re important to her, so I’m here.”

Misty managed not to flinch at Brenna’s hand touching the scar on her cheek, but her own hands clenched where she had them balled in her lap, safe inside thick leather gloves. She pulled in a breath—she’d planned out what to say, but she can’t seem to remember any of it right now.

“I—Right. Yeah. That’s fair. I wouldn’t want to talk to me either, probably. But—I wanted to talk to you because—“ she couldn’t stop cutting herself off, not sure how to say what she wanted to say.

“You deserve an apology. And I never gave it to you,” she settled on, after a moment of awkward stuttering. “I—look. I hurt you, badly, and I didn’t mean to but that doesn’t change the fact that I did. And I’m sorry. I—if I had known someone would be there, I never would have gone. I did—the entire—“ she cut herself off again. “Sorry. You don’t care about any of that. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry—for that, and for hurting you during that fight this weekend. I—I should have aimed better. I shouldn’t have shot in the first place. I don’t know. I'm just—I’m sorry.”

It took actual effort not to look away from Brenna, shrink into the couch, just run away out of the room. But she’d told her dad she was done with running. So she sat, not looking away, and waited for a response.

Brenna's eyebrows furrowed as she tried to figure out if Misty had an angle here. Was apologizing for something that wasn't her fault after apologizing for something that was supposed to be a deflection? Get her to say that everything was fine because that part was? Her armor had stopped the worst of the damage from the crossbow bolts. If the wounds scarred, they'd barely be noticeable. She didn't care about what happened on the mission. After all, she'd hit Signe, and that had been on purpose. Well, mind-controlled-on-purpose.

"What do you want from me?" Brenna asked, not quite meaning to ask it out loud. "You're here. We're on the same team. Bea wants you around. I can't just avoid you. We have to work together. Exist together, for Bea. I have to work with the thief who humiliated me. Who-" Brenna knew she should have stopped talked several sentences ago, but regained enough self control to stop short before bringing up her scar again. Even though that was the actual issue. Misty was still looking at her, but Brenna looked away, clenching her fists in her lap.

Maybe talking to Misty was a bad idea. She didn't know how to have a conversation about this. There were too may emotions that she'd never actually confronted, just pushed down. And now they were all back and fighting for attention. Even without a firm connection, she could feel the Thors in the hammer pushing her toward anger. Not for the first time, she wished she could rip it off and have her head totally to herself for a little while again.

Misty bit her lip at the question. *What do you want from me?* It was a question she was familiar with—usually, though, she was the one asking. The comment about her humiliating Brenna, though—she wasn’t expecting that, and it stung.

“I don’t—I’m not—I’m not apologizing to you because I want something from you! I’m apologizing because it was a shitty thing to do and I’m sorry!” She burst out, after a moment. “I *know* you hate me. I *know* you won’t give me anything I want even if I told you what it was. You never would. Do you think *I* like working with Thor after what Asgard—“

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. She was not supposed to say that. First of all, she wasn’t supposed to *yell at* the person she was apologizing to. Second of all, *she was not supposed to say that.* Brenna wasn’t mentioning the Loki thing and Misty really, really should have let sleeping Asgardians lie. Misty managed to stop herself from continuing the sentence, but can’t stop every muscle in her body from tensing up in preparation to run.

It probably should have occurred to her earlier that Misty had a connection to Asgard. That's where they met, after all. Aside from all the symbols Misty was wearing. And she didn't look human, but a lot of people in Halcyon didn't. Misty had probably stolen from someone else and got caught and had to muck out the Valkyrie's stables or something. That's what she'd had to do after she and Kori "borrowed" Freya's chariot that one time...

...but the Thors in the hammer seemed to think it was more than that judging by the uproar they were in, trying to get Brenna to let them into her head. Brenna wasn't ready for that quite yet. Their yelling would put a stop to any chance this conversation had, and she was doing this for Bea. She looked down at the bracelet, then up at Misty. Besides, she had a feeling what they were going to tell her.

"After Asgard what?"

She knew, some part of Misty thought. She had to know, and this was just some long con to get Misty to admit it out loud. What was the *one thing* she wasn’t supposed to do? Bring up her family. Bring up her father. And here she was, teetering on the edge of it anyway.

But if she deflected, Brenna would just learn later. Misty didn’t honestly think the current Thor would never put it together, and if she lied to Brenna now, that moment was just going to be worse, and ruin any chance Misty had of this not going badly. Any chance she wasn’t already ruining.

“Asgard took my siblings from me before I even got the chance to know them,” she said, hating the fact that enough of her stress was in her voice for it to crack. “Not even for anything they did. For what they’re *going* to do, and now they’re all trapped at the ends of the realms. My father doesn’t even *visit* me because he’s scared it will happen to me too.” Her eyes sting at that, the pain an old scar that she’s just accepted will ache when a storm is coming. “I—I don’t expect you to care. Asgard has never cared about Loki’s kids and they’re not going to start now.”

She lets out a breath, and it looks like she almost deflates, a lot of the fight going out of her shoulders. “So…there it is. You can go and tell Asgard, and I’ll have to run, and then I’ll be out of your team and out of your life. I can’t even really blame you. Out of everyone up on top of that bridge, you’re the only one who has an actual reason to hate me.”

The uproar from the past Thors finally broke through, and Brenna grimaced at the onslaught. It wasn’t anything surprising. Hatred, anger, a few smug ones who’d known that Misty was Loki’s kid from the first time they’d seen her and were basically saying “I told you so.” The emotions were bad enough, but what they were telling her to do was worse.

“Please shut up.” Brenna gritted her teeth. “I’m not going to do that.”

The Thors didn’t listen; if anything they got louder. Brenna closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears like that would help. After a moment of waiting, Brenna ripped off the bracelet, which caused her to transform, and threw the hammer with all her strength. After it got far enough away, the voices faded. Brenna sighed in relief, and then stiffened in embarrassment as she looked at the holes in the base walls. GAIA was probably going to be upset with her, but at least she could think again.

“Um, I,” Brenna looked back at Misty, awkwardly crossing her arms. “I’m not going to take your home away from you. I don’t like you, or your dad, but I’m not cruel. If Asgard hears about it, it won’t be from me.”

Misty peeked out from behind the couch. She didn’t really *remember* hiding behind it, but her body had made an executive decision that could best be summed up as *Mjolnir bad,* somewhere around the period where Brenna transformed.

“Uh,” Misty said, wincing as it came out as a squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “What was—I mean. Thank you. Thank you for not—I. I just got home. I really didn’t want to leave again but—if Asgard comes looking it’s just gonna cause so many problems for my dad. My human dad, I mean. And I’ve caused enough problems for him.”

She cut herself off, aware she was rambling again. “Sorry. Thank you. I—well. I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but I—I don’t want to be the person I was when you met me anymore. I want to help people.  So I—I mean, I don’t like you either, really. But I hope we can work together on the team. And, uh, not make things awful for Bea because I don’t think either of us want that.”

She looked down at her hands, and winced when she saw that the tips of the glove fingers were starting to fray. “I’d, uh, offer to shake your hand and do like, proper reintroductions, but shaking hands is. Not a great idea with me, generally.”  She studied the gloves again for a moment, grimaced, and then shoved her hands in her pockets.

Brenna nodded, then rubbed her left arm -- the glowing scars on it showing now that her arms were exposed. She felt bad for scaring Misty, but wasn’t sure how to voice that right now. “Um. Yeah. Put up with each other for Bea’s sake. Sounds like a plan.” She wasn’t sure what to make of the other things that Misty said, so she just let them be for the time being.

“I should...probably go find Mjolnir. And apologise to GAIA…” Brenna grimaced a little at the idea of dealing with the Thors again. “They’re going to be so upset with me…”

“I don’t think this is the worst thing anyone has done to the base, like, by far,” Misty said before she could stop herself, perplexed at the idea of GAIA being upset—the AI had seemed remarkably patient—and unsure who else Brenna could be talking about.

“But—yeah. Uh, thanks. Again. I’m—I’m gonna go.” She had the distinct feeling that staying any longer might be pushing her luck, and she’s already rambled enough nonsense at Brenna for a day. They’ll have to deal with each other at Bea’s for thanksgiving, and *hopefully* now that won’t end in an actual fight. Misty will take the win. “Uh, see you at Bea’s?”

Brenna nodded. “Yeah. See you there.” She stood there awkwardly for a moment and then pointed at the hole in the wall. “I’ll just, uh, yeah.”

With that, Brenna abruptly turned and exited through the door, since the holes Mjolnir made were too small to crawl through. Finding it was going to be a process. As she walked away, replaying parts of the conversation in her head, for some reason her brain fixated on Misty’s haircut. She really needed a better one; it looked like a toddler cut it. Brenna envisioned offering to cut it, but shook that thought out of her head. Like that would ever not be the worst idea. Right now she needed to figure out a way to get a hammer full of angry Asgardians to shut up and accept her decision.

Misty watched Brenna go for a long moment, before—as the door shut—letting out the breath it felt like she’d been holding the entire time. *Well,* she thought, *I guess that could have gone worse?*