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Amora had kept to herself while they departed Hel and made for their way beyond the ice. As the group paused to rest, she had spoken briefly with Loki and then departed just as promptly. The Enchantress pulled the hood of her cloak up, silently huddling over compact mirror. She could be fixing her hair, or something in the curve of her make up.. or scrying for something she sought. One never could tell with the blonde goddess.
Yet by the thin lipped lookg she held it was clear that she not find what she sought. A huff followed and she snapped the gold rimmed mirror and tucked it away in her pocket.
While the others dithered and readied for Loki to work the magics to return them to Midgard, Thor spots Amora breaking from the group, and a frown furrows his brow. Not always the most astute of person, even he could pick up on the shift in her mood, and moves away from the pack to approach her.
"Amora?" he inquires, his voice low as he gets in quiet speaking distance. "Thy mood seems most soured. Did your exchange with Hela leave you with a sour stomach?" he inquires, concern on his broad features. He'd seen her speaking to the Death Goddess— but like the others, hadn't had the temerity to interrupt a clearly deeply personal and quiet exchange. It would have been extraordinarily rude in the least of circumstances.
Amora looked up to Thor as he approached, tucking her hair back from her features with care. Green eyes seemed to sharpen with some emotion as she looked upon the Thunder god. "Soured is one way to put it, my Prince." She whispered and then shook her head slowly.
"It matters not, I owe Hela a debt for it. The same deal she made with Loki was what she offered me. Merely reinforced with magic." She held out a hand and her own lime green magic twisted and vanished in a puff of smoke. It smelled of strawberries and greens.
Thor looks stunned. "You— you bargained with Hela? What possessed you to do such a thing?" he asks, thunderstruck. Amora was /raied/ by the Norn Queens. She of all people should know better than most the exacting cost of a bargain with the Queen of the Dead.
"What deal di—" he looks at Amora's hand, her reference to Loki, and horror rises in his features. The flesh pimples at the back of his neck.
"Amora, what did you /ask for/," he whispers, shoulders tensioning in nervous expectation.
Amora closed her eyes briefly, his words brought a bitter twist to her lips. "Aye. I know." She whispered, wind whipped around them and she glanced back to him, approaching and reaching out with both of her hands toward his.
"A bargain that will follow me 'till Hela calls for my debt. Unnamed. Unchecked. Whatever she asks of me.." A sad twitch of her lips followed and she stifled a laugh. "I would've given her anything if she could give me an answer for what I sought. Yet she was not able to. No one is. And ask me not, you know what I asked."
Thor looks aghast, glancing at Amora's handss— then pushes them aside and steps from her reach, revulsion on his features.
"Still. You still pine for him, even while you reach for me and beg my affections," he tells her, scorn write large. "If Hela had offered you what you seek, what ends would you have taken for it? Would you have ended my life for him?" he demands. "Would you go back, and tell yourself 'Nay, aid him not; let this man languish as an echo of himself'?" he tells her, ignoring the hoary, cold winds whipping against his face.
"If Hela had given you a blade to press to my throat to release Donald to you, would you even /hesitate/?"
Tears welled up and died in Amora's eyes as he looked aghast and pushed her hands aside. His words earned a flinch and she looked away from him. "I asked her, if he had crossed the bridge. She said he had not. I agreed to her bargain in hopes he was as Kai was. A dead taken from the proper realm and with held. Loki and I spoke.. we feared it would be so." Her throat tightened, her jaw squared.
Then slowly grew cold, emotion bleeding out of it. "'Tis so well that you think me so base, so cruel, so utterly without thought or feeling that I would lay your neck bare with a blade." Her expression darkened twisting in rage. "You tell me to mourn him. I mourn him. You tell me to stifle my tears and I push forward to know to what ends all was sent… and now, now you accuse me of something so vile and utterly wretched! Is that how you see me Odinson? Is that all I ever shall be to you? A witch of some foul deed unworthy of your trust or acceptance?! Is that all you see me as!?" Her voice that had started tearful and soft, grew in rage and pitch until she stood there shaking. Her hands clenched at her side as she snarled and glared in his direction.
"I know not what you want!" Thor bellows at Amora, finally, frustration and shame mounting until anger bursts forth in a shout. "I never have! You flit from man to man like a butterfly kisses flowers. You profess love for me, then scorn me. You claim to protect me, then lure me into injury or— or humility! Then when I languish, -dead- to the world, you fall in love with a /specter/ of me, a- a shade, a flimsy echo!" he rages, venting his spleen quite thoroughly. "And you alternate between flinging yourself at me as a substitute, then scorning me when I am somehow NOT this… perfect man," he says, spitting the unspoken name jealously, "and now I find — as you say things are… as we're…" he struggles to describe it.
"I thought we were finally… things between us were /becoming/, Amora, and now you strike a bargain with Hela herself to seek out a dead man," he says, bitter and quiet.
Amora's anger vanished just as soon as it appeared, the wind looking to be knocked out of her as she stared at Thor. She stared at him, her mouth parting as the chill breeze whipped her hair around her features and cloak. "You truly do not understand me.." She whispered, her shoulders slumping faintly, her gaze slowly departing from the golden haired prince. As if the realization had injured her somehow.
"At all.." So softly was her voice that it was nearly carried away beyond hearing.
She pressed a hand against those full lips of her's and slowly her gaze shifted back toward him. "I have always wanted you. Since we were young. And you've spurned me with equal measure as you call to me back. Why think you I sought comfort else where? Why hence have you?" She added her voice barely a whisper and shook her head. "I chide you now for your curses," Her throat swallowed dryly and her hands climbed to cover her eyes.
"How was it right for me to not cover all such possibilities? To hear such tales of the dead being captured? How could I not seek affirmation when we knew not? Or do you truly think me so thoughtless and cruel to leave a bit of you to the tender mercies of the Slavic Gods? By what means or magic they have taken Kai?"
Thor is silent, lips pressed thin and equal measures anger and regret stamped on his bold features. He listens to her words, shaking his head unconsciously.
"And yet since we were young, you've been cruel to me," Thor reminds Amora. "Cursed me when you felt I was inattentive. Lashed out at the other women I've felt tender affection for. For all the times you professed your love, you also professed your hate for me as I did not return your wants— as if, for you to have merely /expressed/ a desire, I should suborn all my heart and soul and give it to you."
He rubs at his brow, glancing at the entourage following Loki away. "I look in your eyes and I wish to believe your words, Amora, but I have seen how selfish and cruel you can be when something— anyone— stands between you and your desires." He looks at her heart-shaped face. "When you asked Hela where … he… was, did you do so solely out of concern he may share Kai's fate? Or because you hoped, against all hope, that some fragment of him yet dwelled here, and you might carry him from this realm and … … and I know not what you could even /do/ with such a fragment of a spirit."
Amora lowered her arms, his words breaking over her like a breath of chill wind. She shivered, and all that was there in her was sorrow. The fight had gone out of her, there was now only a bone deep misery. "If his spirit was in Hel. Then I planned to stay." She whispered, her eyes shuttered with a shadow of a tears. "There was no body to restore him to. He would not have forgiven me had I undone what was done to restore you." She smiled sadly, and shook her head.
"At least then I would not be met with looks of distrust and have my motives questioned constantly. It would've been worth it." Her jaw tightened, "At least part of you would've looked on me with love instead." She didn't respond to the rest of what he said. Did not so much as blink in regards to how she'd been in the past, nor fought to deny it.
Thor stands quiet, facing the opposite direction Amora does, in profile— wind whipping against his face, head bowed and silent for a long moment.
"Amora, I never know where I stand with you. I never have. You desire my happiness, but you wish to cage me. My freedom, as long as 'tis on a leash you hold. Rare times we have had… moments, of gentle touches and intimacy. And then, mercurial as the wind, you turn around and lash out at me for some transgression, no matter how slight or mispercieved."
"Amora, you've given me much cause to care over the centuries. We've shared much of our lives together. But you've given me so little cause to /trust/. And I fear … I fear I must guard my heart most jealously yet, 'fore were this other man to return, I know you'd quit me in a heartbeat. And if I could be revived… perhaps he could, yet, as well."?
Amora exhaled a breath, "Cage you how? When have I ever been one to cage you? I am a jealous woman by nature, yes, but have you ever given me reason not to be? My jealousy is born out of fear, Thor. Fear that has nearly been realized each time you slip a ring upon another maid's finger. I do not desire to simply be a mistress. Do you realize that if we were ever serious, I needs must be utterly loyal to you? To be thine and thine alone? Do you realize how much I would happily give up to be that one? How very many marriage proposals I have turned aside in that exact same fear?" Her brows furrowed as she stared on at him.
"I took no others while I had that part of you at my side, did you know that?"
Her head tilted to the side as she peered at him, her lips parting. "Have I not proven time and again that I am your's?" Her voice lifted in pitch, "When Loki plotted against thee to steal crown and country and promised me if I spied on thee, to restore me to power and grant me all I could desire? When your father asked me to seduce you and turn you away from mortal eyes, did I not tell you?" Her brow lurched upwards.
"I know not how many times I must prove myself in order to surmount the times my heart was broken and I lashed out."
"And yet, absent 'us' ever being discussed, you have time and again decided I am the only man for you— whether or not I agreed with you," Thor rebuts, tartly. "When Sif and I were enamoured of one another, your petty machinations bordered upon the dangerous. Cruel you have been to me and anyone I fancied. Never have I been allowed to make /my/ choice about 'us', about what I wish or desire. Never have you asked me what I desired of you— always it has been you acting alone, 'for my good' and in my name. A foregone conclusion for only one party is not a relationship nor is it love, Amora."
"You have treated me less as a spouse than as a dog you would whip because I will not come to heel when called," he tells her.
"…but as I said once, perhaps there is reason there is no Princess of Asgard, either," he mutters.
Amora flinched at his words, and a familar anger lit up in those green eyes, defensively. Then she smothered it, held up a hand and looked him up and down. "Then why have you kept me by your side on and off throughout the centuries? If I am vile to you and impossible. If I am so loathed to you? Why catch my hand and hold me and my heart so? Judge me by my actions and I ask you to do the same. You have spurned me and then brought me to your bed within the breath of a week. You have had me over the centuries at your side as beloved as any maid of the week." She whispered, her lips pulling tight.
"How am I the cruel one? When you turn me away and then bid me stay and call me ally, friend, and beautiful? The blame is not entirely mine, Odinson." Her throat tightened and she hooked an eyebrow upwards, though her voice remained carefully flat and did not rise.
"No, not entire," Thor exhales. "Perhaps we are both poor in spirit. Or capricious as the winter squalls and summer winds, taking and pushing in equal measures."
"Amora, I have never called you ugly. And in truth there are times when you /have/ been a steadfast friend, and loyal ally. We've known each other for so many years that I cannot recall a time that we have /not/ been in each other's lives as adults, which … is a relationship hard to ignore, no matter what color it might hold."
He cocks a brow at her, a smile tugging at his cheek. "And in /fairness/, 'tis not as if you haven't dunked water 'pon my head in the meadery, then snuck into my chambers at night, either," he chides her, with a ghost of humor. "Perhaps 'tis our way, to hate and love in equal measure at times."
Amora quirked a smile at his words, reflexive as the one on his own lips. She crossed her arms and shifted her weight upon her hips. She stepped forward and raised a hand to tap his arm lightly. A flutter of her eyelashes followed, and just like that, her sadness was hidden away and gone. The yawning, gaping wounded look was banished back behind her usual confident smile. "Well. Tis not as if you have ever kicked me from your bed." She whispered, hooking an eyebrow upwards.
"That would be unforgiveable and there are men wanting in the other Nine Realms." She winked up at him. Her tone light and back to the flirty tones one expected of her. Not so much as a shadow on her mercurial features.
"We are not what many would consider to be expected of our stations. But perhaps, tis why we constantly swing about one another so often." She breathed and stepped back, her hand falling away. "And if one were to consider the Mortal's tales, then we are by far more temperate than others."
Thor smiles with Amora, and a moment of good humor crosses his face. He looks over her shoulder as she looks over his, then steps forward with one arm and hugs her to him. There is nothing unchaste or aggressive in the motion— a friend, hugging a friend. Offering reassurance and apology all in one.
"I suppose we should rejoin the party," he tells Amora, breaking the embrace after a moment. "Come. Let us away from this cold and dark land, to realms of a warmer spiritual fare."