st_ormbreaker | (no subject)

(no subject)

Thor idly throws Mjölnir up in the air with a spin, then catches it easily in one hand. He always tends to play with his hammer whenever he's feeling restless and for some reason, he feels restless now. Going home suddenly feels incredibly important, even though the only thing waiting for them there is the festival and accompanying feast for Walpurgis. The holiday might have felt important when he was much younger, the same way Yule was important to him when he was very small, but 1500 years of celebrating and feasting had drained his excitement for it. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy it (he did) -- at this point, it felt more ritual than anything else.

Still, there was something that felt important about it this time in ways it hadn't before. He couldn't help but think it was because Tony was accompanying him. None of the other Avengers had ever had the chance to visit his homeworld, and it was difficult for him not to feel excited and proud to show it all to someone.

"You will want to stay close," he says, before he lifts Mjölnir. "You do not want to fall off of it."

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"Billionaire always comes first. So we make it clear I'm not gold-digging." Tony was quick to add--his mouth moving while his brain processed.

The future aside, he reflected on how it all felt this far.

Being with Thor was...easy. Them being together as romantic partners wasn't much different from them being partners in combatting threats--there was simply some added knowledge of the Asgardian's measurements in there. Neither rolled over when the other got uppity, but neither did they brush up against each other to bicker endlessly. The one-upsmanship was still real, but regardless of who "won," they always ended up bragging to whoever would listen about the other.

Their fellow Avengers likely found that even more insufferable. The thought amused Tony.

The more he thought, the more he wanted it to last. Just like this. It wouldn't--Thor would far outlive him. But if Thor was committed to the time they had...

"...His Royal Highness Man of Iron will do."

"His Royal Highness Man of Iron it is."

It isn't until Tony says it that Thor becomes completely aware of how much happiness he's capable of feeling at once. He had always been quick to joy or anger growing up, and had little problem expressing eitherto great effect. Until recently, when his banishment forced him to consider the impact his brash anger had on those around him, he never felt to reign any of it in. He let himself feel and express those feelings without any self-consciousness or doubt. And happiness more than anything; anger could (and had!) caused problems, but happiness never did.

That joy is radiating off him now, and even if he wanted to hide his growing smile, it would have been impossible for him to do so.

Thor holds out the hand with the ring and opens it.

"It is Earth custom for one partner to give the other a ring, is it not?" Thor had done his research on the World Wide Web with Jane's assistance. "Should I put it on?"

Before he can say anything else, Thor's gaze flickers down to Tony's hand and suddenly he can't remember which hand or finger he's supposed to put it on.

Hands. The gauntlet. The wrong hands. For a second, Thor's smile falters, but then he casts that unease aside. His smile brightens as his faltering memory recovers the relevant facts.

"Left, right?"

"Right, left." Tony can't help but immediately say, his offhand manner belying an intense, mounting excitement. He presented the correct hand for Thor to do the honors.

Had he wanted this that badly all along? As he got older, the promiscuity lost its luster, he had made that obvious long ago. But settling down down...he had had dreams about it, but part of it believed it was fanciful and the relationship would be settled in a comfortable 'committed but informal' status quo.

But there anyone more fanciful than Thor?

"Ring finger, fourth from the right. My right, not yours."

Thor takes Tony's hand into his own and eventually works out what tony means (the finger next to the pinky). The ring slides onto Tony's hand easily and magically adjusts to fit his finger with an appropriate amount of snugness.

Thor had no idea how anyone on Earth managed to figure out anyone else's ring size without asking them themselves. It wasn't as if rings had tags he could examine while Tony was in the shower.

"There," he says, once it's done. "I believe it is also customary that we kiss."

And in an attempt to abide by human proposal custom, Thor leans forward to do exactly that.

Thor's face was hovering expectantly inches from Tony's own, and he didn't bother to hold back the flattered, amused little smirk that arose (since the other man's eyes were closed.)

Tony's eyes began to float closed in preparation of leaning in to meet him--and he never did, sitting back.

"Hold up."

Thor stops, then blinks at Tony.

"What?"

Tony didn't answer, keeping his gaze fixed on Thor's in an almost pleading manner. He pressed his hands down on the larger ones at his lap, swallowing thickly.

"We could stay here."

"Stay here?" Thor echoes, confused; he's not sure he's parsing Tony correctly. "You mean on Asgard?"

Tony's expression returned to his familiar smirk, though it was tinged with solemnity. He stood, his hands the last to part from Thor as he wandered to the window to observe the view. The sun had long since stopped shining on Asgard.

"You know when I knew?" He loosely folded his arms, touching his chin with the side of his fingers. "That I was--that I loved you."

Thor watches Tony from where he sits on the bed. He looks out at the window, hoping to see whatever drew Tony there in the first place.

"No," Thor answers. "I don't." Though he's always wondered.

Thor takes a few steps forward, and stops just short of joining Tony where he stands.

"After Sokovia. The Accords. Rogers..." Tony went no further. "You held it together. Us. You held us together."

Thor feels something catch in his throat.

"I only did what needed to be done."

"I, well, I loved you for longer than that. I know I did. But when the dust settled--when I knew none of us were going anywhere--I told myself. Over and over again. 'I don't want to live where we're not all here.'" Tony looked at Thor's reflection, expression softening as if the man were a beacon at the end of the tunnel.

"Where you're not here, Point Break."

All at once, Thor feels much like he did when they were fighting Ultron and the Hulk suddenly struck him out of completely nowhere. Tony's words strike him hard and he's thrown off-balance. He knows exactly what Tony's giving up and he doesn't ever want him to ever have to give up anything, because --

-- Tony deserves everything.

"You don't have to stay here," he tells him. "We can go back to Earth. I can stay there, be there, come back here when it's necessary. My father, Hela... they can handle it together. They don't need me."

"Not just Asgard. Here. Where everyone is." Tony turned from the beautiful sight to face Thor, taking one of his hands.

"Your family. Our friends. Me."

Thor blinks.

"Our friends are on Earth," he says. The ones that he and Tony shared together. He had Heimdall, the Warriors Three, Sif, his siblings... but those were his friends. He wanted for them to be Tony's friends, but that wasn't something that would happen overnight.

Tony turned his gaze on the ring, apparently satisfied with Thor's response--lifting it to turn on his finger. His eyes were fond, but distant.

"I'm thinking honeymoon already. We can have two, if you want. One here, one on earth. Wakanda just opened its borders, did you hear? What I'd give to check out what's going on over there."

"No," Thor says. He doesn't remember the name, but it feels like he should, even though he remembered little Earth geography outside of the places he had visited himself.

"We can," Thor quickly steps in to clarify; he doesn't want him to think he's saying no to the honeymoons; he's happy to go anywhere that Tony is. "I do not think I heard anything about Wakanda." He dampens his lips, straining to think. Wakanda. Wakanda. Wakanda. How did he know the place?

"Really?" Tony closed the small gap between them, resting his palms on the larger man's chest. "You've been there. When the team needed you most. You were there, like always."

"I was there?" Thor repeats. He looks down at the tile floor of his room, trying to will everything around him to make sense. But nothing's making sense. Things haven't been making sense for awhile, but everyone around him was acting like it did.

How could everyone be wrong, though? Rationally, it made more sense that everyone was right than it did that he was. There's a little tingle at the back of his head, the same tingle his foot got when it fell asleep. It doesn't feel natural. This conversation doesn't feel natural. Thor wonders if there's something wrong with him.

His brows furrow and the frown deepens. Wakanda, he thinks. Wakanda.

His gaze wanders across the floor to the space where he left Mjölnir. When he looks, his hammer isn't there; it's been replaced. An unfamiliar hammer-axe sits where Mjölnir once was.

But it feels like it should be there.

Thor lifts his eyes and then lifts his hand up to grasp Tony's. "I don't know what you're talking about. You just said that they just opened their borders. When was I there?"

Thor knows the question might unnerve Tony, but Thor's been unnerved for a good chunk of the evening. He wants Tony to say something that makes sense, something that he knows is right. Asgard is flat. The sky is blue. He has never been to Wakanda.

He needs to be sure that he isn't going mad.

"I wasn't there. Remember?" Tony blinked. His tone was patient--far more patient than it usually was. "I was--"

"Dread it."

Whatever Tony had said next was swallowed by the booming of a spectre in the shadows the moon and the distant festival fires cast.

"Run from it."

Destiny arrives all the same.

Thor doesn't know how he knows those words, but he does. Everything about this sounds so familiar, like it was something that had happened to him, but a very long time ago. He tenses, frantically trying to dredge up some part of that memory, but all he can pull forth was whatever he was feeling then.

And it's what he's feeling now. Anger, hatred, fear.

Then horror.

Thanos.

"No," he says, and then the words come out in a flood as he steps backwards. Once, twice, three times. "No, no, no, no, no."

He extends his hand, and Stormbreaker snaps right into his open palm, like it's always belonged there.

Thor remembers that it does.

Tony spun around to face it, his hand flying to his chest instinctively.

Only, it never made it.

A blade tore its way through his chest first, emerging from his spine in a sickly gnashing of flesh and bone.

He made some incomprehensible, vanishing, gasping noise as the enormous spectre laid its hand on his head as if in a perverted show of sympathy.

Edited 2018-08-29 06:18 (UTC)

The memories all return at once.

Fighting Surtur on Muspelheim. His father's revelations and his immediate death. Mjölnir's destruction at the hands of Hela. His imprisonment on Sakaar. The deaths of the Warriors Three. Fighting Hela in the throne room and losing his eye for his effort. The evacuation of Asgard. Looking out into the cosmos and watching as his home broke apart in one brilliant burst.

(I have a feeling things are going to turn out just fine.)

Thanos' attack on the Statesman. His desperate attempt to fight and save as many as he could only to watch helplessly as half of them were executed in front of him. The Power Stone sending a burst of pain so excruciating through his body that he remembered hoping for death. Loki's "betrayal" and the last words he ever said to him. Heimdall's death and the metal muzzle that kept him from saying anything else. The sickening crunch as Thanos cracked his brother's neck and tossed him at his feet. The few moments aboard the Statesman where the despair was so great that he felt relief that it would soon be over, then discovering when he finally woke up that it was not.

Thor is breathing heavy now, but he still manages to meet Tony's gaze. Tony's eyes are glazed over, his lids heavy, his breath labored. Blood drips down his lower lip and lands with a spatter on the ground. It takes only a second for Thor to look and to know: there's no saving him. Despite it, desperation seizes hold of him, just as it had before.

(What more could I lose?)

It was desperation that convinced him to keep living before and it's desperation that convinces him now. There had to be a reason why he had suffered so much and yet still lived through all of it. It was that belief that he had some purpose to service before he could finally be allowed to die. And that belief was all that kept him standing, both then and now.

Nidavellir submerged in utter darkness. Discovering Eitri had forged the gauntlet out of desperation to save the people the King of Asgard was sworn to protect. Learning he would die if he took on the full force of a star and discovering that he'd feel relieved as much to be die as to survive it. Discovering the pain of it eclipsed even the Power Stone, but still surviving it. Returning to Earth by the power of the Bifrost and plowing through Thanos' endless army. Lodging Stormbreaker into Thanos' chest, then pressing the full weight of himself upon it. Watching Thanos suffer as he pushed its blade past armor and flesh and finding a satisfaction that might have disturbed him if he only had the presence of mind filled him.

And then --

(You should have gone for the head.)

-- the sickening snap of his fingers.

That sound is enough to press Thor into action. With a shout, he swings back, lightning crackling over his body and over Stormbreaker itself. And when he finally slams the weapon forward, he doesn't hesitate.

He slams it straight toward his head.

The shadows surrounding Tony dispersed upon being struck--the weapon going through them like vapor.

With nothing keeping him upright, Tony collapsed to the floor soundlessly. There, on his side, he used every ounce of his strength to make contact with his arc reactor. He could activate his crowning jewel, his armor, and everything would be fine. His nanoparticles could suture any wound back up, no matter how lethal.

He massaged uselessly at the gaping void where his reactor used to be. It was in shattered fragments, mixed with the growing pool of blood escaping him by the moment. He kept his hand pressed where it was, but lost the strength to even do so much as that seconds later.