Black Widow had driven out of Washington to New York, found a bar, and started drinking—only to find that, thanks to her constitution, she couldn't get drunk no matter how hard she tried.
She'd always believed she understood herself, and now, all at once, she realized she'd never truly seen into her own heart.
Bewilderment, confusion, a low simmering frustration—every kind of feeling came welling up at once. She'd left the bar and was walking the streets alone, bored out of her mind, when she caught the commotion over here, and curiosity got the better of her.
Lorna needed no introduction—Black Widow had seen her any number of times at Daisy's villa.
And not just Lorna—she knew the other kids too. Coulson had opened special files on them, convinced that every one of them had real potential.
A handful of half-grown children had, without ever realizing it, already landed on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s reserve list. Black Widow had committed every file to memory at a single glance, so the sight of them gathered together now didn't surprise her in the least.
She had nothing better to do, so she sauntered out, amused, to take their measure.
At the sight of her, Lorna deflated a little and put the handgun away again.
A few vagrants posed no threat whatsoever to Black Widow. The boys and girls watched, wide-eyed, as this exquisitely lovely woman knocked the vagrants flat like so many sandbags—tendons torn, bones broken, every one of them left wailing on the ground.
Low spirits or not, Black Widow was well aware that S.H.I.E.L.D. was hunting for someone. She ran an eye over the blond man hemmed in by the children and tipped her chin at Lorna. "This the guy Coulson's been after? Where'd you turn him up?"
She checked his wounds as she spoke.
Thor's injuries weren't serious in the slightest. He'd had too much to drink, then played the hero, and he was still out cold—but he was in no danger.
"Call it a job well done. I'll take him off your hands. And unless you want me phoning your families, you'll head home right now!"
She called in agents to see the children home, but Jane Foster wouldn't budge; she still meant to thank Thor in person. With a single-minded woman like that, Black Widow had no good options. She drove the man to the hospital, filed her report, and left the whole thing for the people who cared about world affairs to fret over.
Daisy got the news in the small hours of the morning. Lorna pestered her relentlessly, dead set on showing off what they'd accomplished, and Daisy—unable to out-stubborn her—simply brought the girl along.
Not long after she reached the hospital, Coulson and the Asgardians arrived as well, each from their own direction.
At the sight of Thor on the bed, his head wrapped in bandages, the Asgardians all breathed easier.
Daisy had already asked around on the way over, so by now she knew it was Lorna and the others who'd found Thor. All she could say was that it wasn't that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s agents were useless—it was that with all these protagonists clustered together, the unspoken resonance between them ran strong, and Thor had all but jumped out on his own to be found!
She asked Jane Foster a few questions too, and after listening to the beauty recount a damsel-in-distress rescue about as clichéd as they came, she turned at last to the Asgardians.
"So this is the Thor you've all been going on about? I really can't see what makes him so strong..." A certain someone was asking what she already knew full well.
The Asgardians' faces all turned a little sour. The mighty god of thunder of Asgard, his head busted open by a gang of petty thugs—to Daisy, who could fly and "lift" the god of thunder's own hammer, that was a thoroughly unimpressive showing.
"Thor's body is in a bit of a state right now, which is why..." Sif answered on the group's behalf. You could see plainly that they were worried about him too.
As the sky began to lighten, Comrade Thor at long last came to. The thick reek of liquor made Daisy knit her brows, but as the highest-ranking agent on the scene, she stepped in as Earth's representative and joined their conversation all the same.
The Nordic brutes had no use for empty ceremony—it was all hugs and slaps on the back.
Daisy's mouth twitched. She watched, helpless, as Volstagg, the burliest of the Warriors Three, swept Thor into an embrace so crushing that she thought she caught the faint sound of Comrade Thor's ribs giving way.
Three close brothers-in-arms each delivered a hug, and in the end even Sif, for all that she was a woman, was no exception. After the four of them had finished manhandling him, Daisy reckoned Thor was worse off than he'd been the night before—though one look at his beaming grin told you he couldn't have cared less.
"Earth has need of your power, Mr. Thor." Once their reunion was through, Daisy clasped her hands behind her back and stepped forward.
Catching sight of a beautiful woman, Thor's first instinct was to toss off something flirtatious, but his mind was still steeped in the joy of seeing old friends, and he couldn't quite shift into that teasing register. Turning his own circumstances over in his head, he gave a self-mocking little laugh. "My father is dead, and I haven't the power to return to Asgard. I'm just an ordinary man now."
Daisy raised an eyebrow. Had Odin simply dumped this guy straight into New York? Which would mean he hadn't even tried to lift the hammer yet?
She was still chewing over what Odin truly meant by all this when the four Asgardians, all talking over one another, began filling Thor in on the real state of Asgard. Odin wasn't dead—he'd merely fallen into the Odinsleep. Sif, sharp as ever, asked Thor exactly who had told him Odin had died.
"It was Loki..." Thor wasn't quite stupid beyond saving. At last he understood his own situation.
"I have to return to Asgard! I have to go back! Heimdall! Send me back!" Thor bellowed and shouted in the ward. It was a mercy they'd booked him a private room, or he'd surely have been tied down as a madman.
"We found your Mjolnir..." Ignoring the disapproval in Sif's eyes, Daisy mentioned the hammer anyway.
"My hammer? My hammer will give me my power—where is it?" Thor cried out, beside himself, ready to snatch up the hammer and fly back to Asgard that very instant. The four Asgardians wore strange expressions, but seeing the state Thor was in, there was no stopping him.
Daisy's grin turned sly. "I brought your hammer over. It's out in my car."
With that, under Thor's horrified stare, she made a gesture he knew intimately—right arm extended straight out, all five fingers spread, as if to close her grip on something unseen.
"You—!" Thor very nearly bit his own tongue. He scrambled to the window and peered out.
And as he searched, desperate, a familiar silhouette streaked past trailing a ribbon of light, swift as wind and thunder, carving a graceful arc through the air. It shot by right before Thor's eyes, just a few centimeters (an inch or two) from the tip of his nose, and dropped at last into Daisy's waiting hand.
"How is this possible..." Thor's eyes bulged like an ox's as he watched the hammer fly into another's grip. The shock of it hit him harder than the news of his own father's death.
But he was a true god of thunder after all, and two glances were enough to spot the catch. "You haven't won Mjolnir's acknowledgment?!"
The good news lifted Thor's spirits at once. To be cast off by the god of thunder's own hammer—how was that any different from being a washed-up nobody? A moment ago he'd been frantic enough to leap from the window; mercifully, the truth wasn't quite so dire.
"That's right. Why don't you give it a try?" Daisy said, with a trace of genuine regret. For one fleeting instant just now, she'd glimpsed the lightning coiled in Thor's eyes! A pity the timing was off. The emotional jolt might have been enough, but his own strength wasn't, so there was nothing for that flash of feeling to take root in. Hammer-boy had better go back to lugging his hammer around the old-fashioned way.