Psych - HIATUS

תשעה - עשר

"You've returned," Frigga states calmly once you appear next to her.

"You don't seem all that worried about me being gone so long," you tell her, hoping she'll let you sleep now.

"As you know, Heimdall watched you the whole time you were gone. If you were in any danger, I would have sent Thor."

"I was on a spaceship being fired on by another spaceship."

"Heimdall said there was little reason to worry. You landed yourself on the ship of a talented pilot."

Can't she show some worry? "I'm going to try to forget this," you mutter under your breath.

"You do not have the focus to accurately travel long distances," Frigga continues, either not hearing your remark or ignoring it.

"Long distances? I can teleport from one end of Asgard to the other."

"And? Asgard is one planet."

"Does long distance really mean on another planet here? Because if you have to drive, like, over a couple hours, I'd say that's long distance." You sigh, getting frustrated. "Look, I don't just switch what planet I'm on that often. I've been to two planets. If I do travel to other planets, Heimdall can help me. But I doubt I'm going to need to teleport from planet to planet often."

"Why would you not want your abilities to flourish? You can do so much more than travel around a small area. You can go so much farther. Why do you not want to fill your potential?"

This sounds sorta manipulative. "Listen, there's a difference between building up to what I can do and jumping into the deep end. You've been pushing me to learn as fast as I can. But I need time to learn! I can't just instantly be perfect at all this. I don't have a problem with learning to teleport across 'long distances,' it'd be cool to just hop from one planet to another. But I'm not ready for that. I almost passed out every time I did it, which means I'm pushing my limits in an unhealthy way. If something doesn't change, I'm going to injure myself."

"Your life is short, [Y/N]. I taught my other students slowly because they have thousands of years to study. You have a mere seventy years left in your life, and that is an optimistic estimate. If you want to learn what there is to know, you need to learn quickly."

"You say that, but everyone is going to die before they learn everything about their field of expertise. There is always innovation and discovery, and we simply can't learn everything there is to know. So, what, I'm going to know less than a random Asgardian that has the same powers as me. But I'll know even less if I die early because I push myself too far."

Frigga sighs, pinching her fingers against the bridge of her nose. "I see you need some time to sort through your thoughts. I have found it's somewhat common for sorcerers to become temporarily irrational after attempting something quite difficult. Side effect of the sorcery. You have a week to sort your thoughts out."

'Temporarily irrational?' You are tempted to shout at Frigga, but she'll only use that to justify her argument. Instead, you walk out of the room without another word and speed walk to your temporary bedroom. Well, it's Loki's old bedroom. There's an Asgardian superstition about entering the chambers of a traitor, so none of the palace's staff go in there. It's close to Thor and Frigga, which means there's less of a chance of you being caught. So you've been staying there, trying not to think of how weird it is. You lock the door behind you and flop onto the bed. You're exhausted after all of the teleporting and Frigga being ridiculous.

***

"[Y/N], are you awake?" you hear Thor ask after a few knocks wake you up. Groaning, you stand up and walk to the door to let Thor in.

"Yes, Thor?"

"My mother told me she will not teach you for a week. What happened?"

"Long story," you hesitantly answer. How the heck am I supposed to tell him that his mom is ludicrously annoying? Even Loki wouldn't like it if I talked about her like that. "Don't want to talk about it."

"If you don't want to talk, would you like something to do?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"I was thinking the other day. You don't know how to defend yourself. You have your sorcery, but it wouldn't hurt to learn other ways to defend yourself. I have a friend who is usually willing to tutor others. Especially women. We haven't had many women warriors since the fall of the valkyries unfortunately. She would love to see a change, and would likely teach you."

"Sif?"

"Yes, how did-right, of course," Thor asks before correcting himself. "If you'd like me to, I'll ask her to teach you."

"Sure. What the heck? What can I lose?" And that isn't a bad idea anyway. After being captured by Loki twice and shot at by mind controlled mercenaries and aliens, self defense seems like a good skill.

***

"I'll be honest, I don't know what I was thinking you'd do, but I didn't think you'd give me my own sword," you say as you hold the sword, unsure of what to do with it.

"You need to adjust to its weight," Sif explains. We'll spar with wooden swords for now, but you should become familiar with your blade. I'll teach you exercises to do on your own to adjust to your sword."

You nod as you examine the sword. The steel shines brightly and the hilt is black with mini ridges. You don't know what type of sword it is either. It's a medium length (you think) and the cross part of the hilt is on the smaller end. You slide the sword back into its leather sheath and set it aside to grab the wooden sword Sif has laid out.

You spend hours with Sif. Thor is letting you and her use the sparring field designated for him and formerly Loki. It takes some time for Sif to adjust to your Midgardianness. You aren't as strong as her, and she has to take that into account as she teaches you. She also is more endurant than you and was surprised by the amount of breaks you take.

"What is Frigga teaching you?"

"Long story short, I can teleport, and she's been teaching me to control it."

"How well can you do it?"

"Pretty good. I'm pretty accurate, as long as I'm on the same planet I need to go to."

"Try teleporting as we spar. You need to use any advantage in a fight for your life. It'll help if you've already worked on teleporting and fighting at the same time."

You nod, now having a new task at hand.

***

You and Sif stop when Thor walks into the field with Jane. So it's time for Dark World? you think, holding back a sigh. "I'm sorry for the intrusion, I wanted to introduce you two to Jane Foster. Jane, this is Sif, one of Asgard's finest warriors, and [Y/N] [L/N], one of the Avengers."

Your eyes widen in surprise. "I wouldn't call myself an Avenger...."

"You helped stop Loki at New York," Thor argues.

"Hmm, did I though?" You spent the entire time being drugged by Loki, being mind controlled by Loki, being injured, or being unconscious.

"Either way, you are a friend and were a great help in saving your world."

You cut off your conversation with Thor and say hi to Jane. "Let me guess," you start after initial greetings are done. "You're here because of the-what's it called? Red flowy thing?"

"Aether," Thor says.

You point at him and nod. "Yes, that thing, that's why you're here."

"The Aether?" Sif asks in surprise.

"How did you-"

"I'm a psychic," you interrupt Jane. "I can see snippets of the future and past sometimes. So I roughly know some things that are happening." Well, you know them pretty well. And right now, you aren't looking forward to them.