Emma Joan Tallis

chapter twenty: Strange New Friends

"We meet no ordinary people in our lives."
C.S. Lewis

~*~

I stood near a window and just stared into the clouds. This morning, I didn't think I would be back on Earth, much less that I would see Steve again. I shook my head and laughed, and my mother was trying to convince me to get married this morning.

"What's so funny?" I heard behind me, and I saw Steve walking up.

"Nothing," I said wryly, "just something my mother said this morning."

"Your mother?" Steve asked, he was having a hard time looking at me.

I blushed when I realized that it was because of how differently I dressed on Asgard compared to World War Two. "Idun," I said, and Steve looked a little bit bewildered.

"Is she like them?" Steve asked.

"She was known as the goddess of Youth and Spring," I told him. "And the guardian of the apples of youth, though it's more like apple of youth since I'm the apple. I still don't know how that legend started."

"Apple?" Steve asked, "of youth?"

"Long story," I said with a sigh.

"What about your father?" Steve asked curiously. "Is he like the god of trees?"

"Poetry," I said laughing. "I'm not sure if he would feel insulted that you guessed trees."

Steve looked surprised, "I honestly wasn't sure what you were going to say."

"I'm sorry I never told you the truth," I said honestly as I smiled sadly at him.

"I don't think I would've believed you," Steve said. "I just assumed that your strange ability to heal quickly was just luck."

I sighed, "it was bad luck, if it was anything. When Schmidt found out that I couldn't die, the things he did to me." I shuddered, "I've been alive a very long time, and there was nothing that could've prepared me for what he did."

"You never talked about it," Steve said.

"It wasn't something I was ready to talk about," I told him honestly. "The only person I would've opened up to about it would've been Bucky."

"Not even me?" Steve asked.

"In time," I said smiling sadly. "But no, not at first."

Steve didn't say anything, just gazed at the clouds with me. "How old are you?" He asked suddenly and I cringed.

"I'm younger than Thor," I said awkwardly. "But technically older than Loki, though he's adopted, so who knows how old he is."

"How old is Thor?" Steve asked curiously.

"About fifteen hundred years old," I said as I thought.

Steve coughed awkwardly, "and Loki?"

"A bit over a thousand," I said.

"You're over a thousand years old?" Steve asked in shock.

I held up my hands defensively, "Asgardians age differently."

"How old are you?" Steve asked, "I'm not even sure I want to know the answer..."

"Eleven hundred," I said as I winced.

"That's," Steve said shaking his head. "That's..."

"Old," I supplied.

"And I thought I was old," Steve sighed. "It must be hard, the difference in age."