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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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.

Thor drops to his knees and pulls Tony close to him; he presses his palm against the wound urgently, trying to quell the flow of blood even as it pools up between the gaps in his fingers.

There's no saving him, he knows, but he still has to try.

"It's going to be all right," he tells Tony. "It's going to be all right."

Thor doesn't know if he's saying it for Tony's benefit or his own.

"Odinson."

Tony's glassy eyes drifted to the spectre as it re-emerged just beyond Thor's form. They didn't move again.

"Knowing the truth, and so content to waste away in a gilded cage. King of nothing. Clinging like a mewling kitten to a dead man."

Thor gently Tony down, and holds out his hand so that Stormbreaker finds its way back into his grip. His fist is shaking as he rises to his feet and looks up at him in defiance.

"I'm not," he says, hoarsely. "I'm going to find you, and I'm going to kill you. I don't care how long it takes. You will pay for everything you have done."

From the darkness, the spectre merely smirked. There were no more words--there was no need for them.

Destiny had already arrived. For Thor. For him.

The flash of a brilliant, golden gauntlet eclipsed the room and Tony Stark, Asgard, and the rest of universe were snuffed out in an instant.

Thor's eyes shoot open and he bolts upright. He frantically gropes for Tony's sleeping form, but finds that it isn't there.

He tries to swallow back his panic, but much as he tries, he can't.

"Stark?" he throws the covers off the bed, as if expecting to find Tony hidden somewhere beneath, but even as his palms cover the length of the mattress, he ascertains that Tony's not there.

He stumbles out of bed and over to the wall. As one hand blindly reaches for the lightswitch, he summons Stormbreaker into his hand with the other. Normally, Stormbreaker would be enough to ground him. It's not enough right now.

Finally, Thor's hand finds the switch and he snaps it up. Light fills the room. Tony isn't there.

"Stark?" he calls out again, as if expecting that he'll suddenly answer from wherever he's hidden.

Silence.

Thor forces himself to breathe, but it does nothing to mitigate his panic. Tiny sparks of lightning crackle out from his fingertips in brilliant blue-and-white arcs up the length of Stormbreaker's handle.

Soon thereafter, the door slowly creaked back open. Tony was clad in his humble sweater-and-sweats bed combo, a bag of cherries under his arm. He squinted at the bright colors of the room, fully illuminated for some reason.

There was Thor in the midst of it, weapon in hand, and lighting up like a Christmas tree.

Tony immediately drew back into the doorway, raising a hand. He had no concept of what was happening, but it was clear that whatever it was, Thor was barely keeping a handle on it. "Easy, easy...it's just me. No ghosties, no ghoulies."

The sound of Tony's voice is all it takes to snap him out of it; his grip weakens on Stormbreaker enough that the weight of gravity allows it to fall from his grip and to the ground where it lands with a dull, heavy, metal sound. The sparks that danced around his fingers go out and Thor stands, staring at Tony uncomprehendingly.

Thor stands there for a second, still trying to take control of it of the emotions that threatened to swallow him whole. He's managed, for the most part, to keep them them at bay with a mission or by busying himself with meaningless things. He had done this with great skill and to great effect. There were rare moments where dark thoughts started to rise to the surface, but almost every time he had been able to turn away from the void before it swallowed him.

Thor takes a breath and then forces a smile. It doesn't feel right, but it seems like the right thing to do to de-escalate the situation. "Nightmare," he says in the same tone of voice someone uses when they realizes how silly they're being. Thor doesn't feel silly; he feels overwhelmed. 1500 years and nothing has come close to preparing him for this level of grief and regret.

He's not sure how it happens, but somehow, his feet carry him to the bed and he sits down on its edge, looking down at the gaudy comforter that still lay sprawled out on the floor. "We, you know," he says attempts, lightly. "We take dreams very seriously on Asgard."

"Yeah...?" Tony remained standing in the doorway, bag of fruit balanced on the sling that still supported his left arm. It wasn't broken like it once was, thanks to the inn's healers' efforts, but his elbow was still mending at its own pace. He finally walked back in, bumping the door closed with his foot.

"It's alright. You're alright." He slowly approached.

Thor takes a deep, shuddering breath.

"Yeah," he says, and he attempts that smile again. "I'm fine."

He wants to say something about the cherries, make some quip about how he's glad Tony's eating something, but he can't quite push the words forward.

"'Alright' being a relative term, here. You're the least 'fine' I've ever seen you." Tony had made his good-faith attempt to reassure Thor, but he couldn't lie to the man's face with niceties. He was never the type and he wasn't about to start.

Instead, he claimed his spot beside the larger man and cracked open the bag for him to partake. "...We don't have to talk about it. But we can if you need it. Or anything else." After the shock (near-literally) of walking in to see that, Tony didn't anticipate making it back to sleep.

Thor doesn't reach for the cherries. He'd rather have a drink than some cherries, but he doesn't keep anything in the room and he doesn't particularly feel like leaving, either. He's not sure he can talk about Asgard or about Thanos now, or possibly ever, but there are some things he's more comfortable talking about. He might lack Loki's cunning, but he knows well enough that if he talks about the lesser of these things, Tony might well assume that his nightmare had something to do with that.

And he'd prefer that Tony think that all of this was connected to Hela instead of all the other numerous terrible things that had piled up since shortly before his father's death. It had been a mistake to mention Thanos before, but he had no idea how else to convince Tony. Even now, he couldn't help but feel that my brother is dead had been a shitty card to play.

"When my father died, he told us that we had an older sister, who he imprisoned in Hel," he says. "He told us this minutes before he died. 1500 years he had to tell us that, and he chose to tell us seconds before she burst out of Hel and attacked us both."