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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"I think we strike a decent balance." Unable to cleanly stretch his other leg, Tony settled for perching proudly on Thor's lap.

Thor hums appreciatively. "I think so, too."

He sets a hand to Tony's back, and looks out at the window. "I'm really glad you're okay," he says, finally. Tony's not okay -- or at least he's not yet, but somehow it seems easier to say than I'm really glad you're alive.

"I'm glad you're not fussing anymore." Tony rolled his eyes, bringing his legs back around to perch sideways. "You never did in the old days."

Thor idly drums a few fingers against Tony's back.

"I think anyone would fuss after you after the blow you took."

"Yeah but you? Thor Odinson, God of Thunder? Isn't dying a warriors death an instant ticket to Valhalla anyway?" Tony pressed back with his abdomen, testing the iron strength of the man's arm.

"I don't want anyone going to Valhalla before I do." Thor stops drumming on Tony's back and lays it flat against its surface; his hand holds steady against his weight.

He sets his chin down on Tony's good shoulder.

"I'm a selfish god."

"Wait, wait, I've been practicing." Tony cleared his throat.

"Ósnjallr maðr hyggsk munu ey lifa, ef hann við víg varask, en elli gefr hánum engi frið, þótt hánum geirar gefi."

Of the many odds and ends the library kept, Hávamál was one of them. While Tony was proficient in Latin-style languages, a Old Norse was an interesting beast to tackle.

"Your pronunciation can use a little work, but if you're trying to say something about our current topic of conversation --"

Thor drums a few fingers along Tony's spine again, as if tapping out a melody on his vertebrae like they were the keys of a piano.

"-- the foolish man has done nothing his entire life, and is unfulfilled. You have done a great deal in yours."

"That's not a proverb." Tony's smirk fell. "And this isn't a debate. Whatever reason you have for keeping me out of a fight for half the life in the universe? Speak now or hold your peace."

Thor's fingers stop playing their song.

"I don't get why there has to be a reason," he says, suddenly bristling irritably for reasons he can't fully understand. "You don't think after losing my brother, after losing my father that I wouldn't want to keep the few other people left in my life safe?"

"That's a reason. And it's not invalid." Obsessively controlling your loved ones movements so they could stay safe? It's not like Tony was a stranger to that.

Still, he couldn't fight the sigh that arose. How the hell did he say "I'm sorry for your loss but this is a no go" without sounding like an utter bastard? If he didn't resent it all before Thor's apology, he was sure starting to.

'I could hold how I'm trying to be chums with the man who attempted to kill me and the entirety of humanity over your head, Mr. Guardian of the Nine Realms. But I'm not gonna. Because someone in this goddamn equation has to keep from being shitty and evasive.'

A filter was sure a great thing to have. He should have tried years ago.

"But, you can't take Tony Stark without Iron Man. I'm sorry."

"Do as you will. I know you well enough to know that I can't stop you and I wouldn't anyway."

Though he wishes he could.

Thor lays back on the bed and looks up at the ceiling and doesn't say anything else.

"...That's it?" Filter, gone. Tony just stared down at the man, wondering when the Thor from his memories would burst out of this resigned stranger's chest and put up a fight. He could have morphed into Pepper herself and that would have made more sense.

"I thought you, of all people--I thought you'd get it." He pushed off with his good arm to stand. "We don't stop just because it gets scary, we don't stop just because it hurts."

Thor bolts upright. He's on a feet an instant after that.

"Don't talk to me about hurt! You know nothing of what I went through!"

Thor was confident; there was rarely a time when he wasn't, but he was confident that there was no person alive who could possibly comprehend what he had been through. Even Tony Stark.

Tony didn't flinch, yet he was sure he felt his hair blow with that one. Any man who didn't know Thor as well as he did would have surely scampered for cover.

"Yeah. I don't." Tony tossed his hand up uselessly. "You won't let me."

That promise about being direct was clearly a one-way street, despite all his hopes that the gesture would become reciprocal.

"You want to know?" Thor snaps. "My sister -- the one I didn't even know existed until 60 seconds before -- appears out of a portal, breaks my hammer, nearly kills men and Loki, then slaughters Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg -- my friends from birth. And while I'm enslaved to this maniac on Sakaar, she kills most of my people, and turns the long-ded warriors of Asgard into her personal undead army. And when I finally escape the psycho who's made me fight in his personal coliseum, I try to stop her so the few people I still have left can escape, she slashes out my eye. I put everything I had into stopping her, and it's not enough. She's going to kill all of us -- she's going to destroy all the Nine Realms and I had to destroy Asgard to save them, to save Earth, to save the shipful of people I still have left. And now there's nothing."

And when Thor stops, he can barely believe he's said it -- that it all came out in what amount to be a breath. His arms are shaking now, the same way they were shaking after his father's death, when all he wanted to do was blame his brother.

Except now, there's no brother to blame. There's no one to blame except himself.

Nothing.

That dark spectre that had been knocking on the back of Tony's brain was solidifying at that single word.

And still, he ached to know. He had to know. Even if he had to walk away from Thor to know it.

"...You're living it. Aren't you?" His lips parted in an empty smirk that was flashingly brief. "My worst nightmare. But apparently it wasn't me who got to be the last man standing."

Thor drops back onto the bed, his hands folded together, and looks down at his feet. He tries not to think about how even after all of this, Tony's worst nightmare comes true.

And it comes true because of him.

Edited 2018-08-31 04:16 (UTC)

Tony was weightless, and his back hit the door. Everything was fading from view.

His future with Pepper. His role as a father to Peter. His pact with the Avengers. His duty to the people of earth. They were like physical things, slipping through his fingers like dust.

Tony laughed a wheezing and hollow laugh. At the center of his despair, why was there a sense of relief?

What can he really say to any of that? He swallows, and he's able to find his voice again, though it starts off hoarsely.

"We don't know if that's what you go back to," he says, hoping that what he thinks might happen will be true. That some good might come out of talking about it. "Maybe when you go back, you can still fix things, stop it from happening. Maybe in some other, parallel universe, everything turns out fine."

Thor likes to imagine that. Maybe it'd make telling Tony all this worthwhile.

"I know now where five of the Infinity Stones are."

"Thank you. And I'm sorry."

There were no tears. There was only a very tired smile at the end of his bout.

"For the truth. For...everything. Trite. Sorry. Again."

A long silence. Tony turned his head. This wasn't painful, he was too numb for that. But he could feel Thor's anguish like a blade to the chest.

"I'll go."

Thor wrings his hands together.

"Don't go."

It's all he can manage right now.

"And have you continue the affair with the dead man?" Tony shook his head.

This had been a mistake from the start, whether Tony wanted to admit it to himself when they were talking or laughing or sleeping together like they were.

He was already in a relationship. His old teammate filled the void. It could have been anyone from home. It was never fair to begin with. No, it was beyond unfair. It was cruel. Why did it take the revelation that he wasn't long for the world to come to terms with it?

'I am the lowest kind of human being.'

"You deserve more than I can give. A hell of a lot more."

Thor thinks of that moment with Thanos, when he pressed Stormbreaker into his chest bit by bit, wanting Thanos for one moment to have some taste of the suffering he had endured up until that point.

And then the snap.

What'd you do? What'd you do?

It was as much Thanos' fault; logically, he knew that, but he held himself at the same level. They were selfish, both of them. And half the universe died because of that.

"You are better than I deserve."

"I don't know. I'm both a carcass and sloppy seconds. Those are some dizzying levels of self-loathing, my friend." Tony's knee-jerk response to summon levity was black as pitch, but he couldn't help it. He felt sick, but he felt at peace. Enlightened, almost.