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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Now that he had his eyes on Thor's face, Tony couldn't take them away. There was an outpouring in his chest.

Finding out he was going to die and Thor being submerged in an ocean of grief? Real nice time for the highs to hit, but there they were. The hands on him felt good, incredibly so. They felt real, they felt warm. Just being this close made him feel drunk in the best way possible. Now, it wasn't just that it made him forget. He would have done absolutely anything for the sake of one smile out of the man.

It was a truly awful realization. They fit together entirely too well. Two broken pieces to make a whole, or something equally bathetic.

"You got me. You got me good."

It occurred to him in that moment they all stood together in silence, before Steve said oh God in that sad and desperate voice that probably mirrored exactly how all of them felt, that he might very well outlive everyone. He should have been thankful when he survived that he had lived through it, but standing there, he became acutely aware of it:

He could very well survive anything.

Thor played ignorant well enough that others were well enough convinced that he didn't know much about anything most of the time. But as he stood there, arms and legs stretched, opening the iris, he knew exactly what he was getting into. He knew that it was more likely that he was going to die than he was to survive. Gamma-ray bursts were the most violent form of energy there was, each one of them the equivalent to all the energy expended by Earth's sun. And for minutes, he lived through it. A decade before, he had sustained a mortal blow from the Destroyer. Now he was standing against a sun so dense that even a teaspoon-sized scoop of it weighed a billion tons.

Thor knew from the moment he started making Midgardian friends that it was likely he would outlive them; he knew and accepted (though sometimes painfully) that inevitability from the start. His longevity had plenty of advantages, more than his his short-lived companions. He cycled through those thoughts over and over again whenever he was struck by the realization that he'd out-survive them until the words felt like a mantra. And up until that moment when Thanos snapped his fingers and he watched as half the universe turned to dust, he believed it was possible that they might outlive him, and knowing that possibility was there brought him some strange measure of comfort.

But after withstanding the full force of a neutron star and surviving Thanos' snap that snuffed out lives easily and without discrimination, Thor knew there was nothing that would kill him.

If he had been more intelligent, more disciplined, Thor wouldn't have allowed himself to grow so attached to his Midgardian friends. To Jane and to Tony. But being around them, loving them came so naturally that it felt right. Who was he to try and stop it?

Some small part of Thor wishes he had. He still would have grieved half the universe, but grieving his friends was impossibly more painful than grieving for strangers. He had already accepted Asgardian extinction as an inevitability in the week of peace they had aboard the Statesman, but he hadn't accepted the possibility that his friends might die, or live to suffer through the deaths of those closest to him. And that was just as painful as realizing that after the Asgardian survivors were culled once, and then a second time with Thanos' snap, they numbered less than 100.

Thor pulls back his hand, and unable to stand the weight of Tony's gaze, made his way to the far side of the bed and sat down on its edge, his back facing his friend's. He knots his fingers together and tries to think of nothing, but finds for the first time since his arrival at the Madonna Inn that he can't do it.

Tony followed. He still wanted to leave, take some time in his suit where things were familiar. That wasn't going to happen, at least not anytime soon.

He didn't know what was at the end. Maybe all of it came true, maybe none of it did. Maybe the reality of it was Tony came from an ever so slightly different universe and was mourning over nothing. All that he could languish over later.

He knelt before Thor's slumped form, gazing up at him silently.

How could he face the weight of a neutron star and yet be so unable to face the weight of Tony's gaze. He tries to ignore it, but like so many other things right now, it's impossible.

He looks to one side of the room. He doesn't know what to say, and so he doesn't say anything at all.

There was surely some piece of wisdom, some comforting word he could summon that would break the tension. Tony had become adept since his stay, certainly moreso than he'd ever been. Nothing was coming. Thor was a void.

Still, he had his truth. Despair, relief, they were comforts that Tony Stark still wouldn't allow himself to wallow in. Not before his supposed death was staring him right in the eye.

"...It's not over. Not for you. Not for me."

And for the first time since he sat down on the edge of the bed, Thor manages to make eye contact with Tony.

"If we remember when we go back," he says hoarsely, "there's still a chance you can stop it from happening."

Maybe not in Thor's reality, but if he could stop it from happening in Thor's, in Loki's, in Quill's, in Rocket's, in Peter's, then it would make what he endured worth it.

There it was. The spark of hope.

"I don't know what'll happen." Tony was quick to admit, rising to his feet. "Maybe everything will change. Maybe nothing will. But I'm going to tell you what I told Loki six years ago. If we can't protect the earth, you can be damn sure we'll avenge it."

While he had Thor's eyes, Tony extended his hand.

"On your feet, Point Break. Please. I need you."

Thor's eyes follow as Tony stands. They have no idea what is going to happen, if changing things is even possible.

But Thor wants to believe it, because it's nicer than believing the alternative.

Thor swallows.

Then he takes Tony's hand and pulls himself to his feet.

Tony's gaze followed Thor as he rose, keeping their grip tight.

He was sure there were more words, somewhere, but they were for later. He jerked Thor's arm down, bringing their lips together.

Thor is so taken aback by the sudden jerk of Tony's arm that ehwne his lips meet Tony's, they are slightly parted in surprise.

It takes him time to register what is happening. He allows their lips to stay together for a few moments before he pulls away, his mismatched eyes blurred with affection and sorrow. "Quill doesn't know," he says, his voice steady. It's the first time he's called the man by anything but moron. "Neither does Loki." Obviously. "I haven't spoken to the Spider-Boy, either."

Tony is the first to know.

Tony wore a nakedly infatuated look following the kiss before his expression hardened. Business time.

"And we're keeping it that way." 'For now.' "If there's a decent reason to get folks worked up about a future that may or may not happen, I can't think of one."

"I am glad we are in agreement."

Thor didn't want anyone to know, even Tony, and yet, it had come out without him meaning to.

Thor smiles thinly, then runs a hand through his own hair.

"And I'm sorry you had to find out."

"Save it. I'm serious." Tony rapped Thor's arm with his knuckle. "Me and my old man rarely saw eye to eye, but I can appreciate this gem: a man never cries until its all over."

He began to walk past to lead the pair out for that fly around, but paused. "But...you know. If the urge strikes before then, I'll be here."

Thor follows after him, and he wonders why it's possible for him to feel hollow, and yet hopeful at once.

Thor places a hand on Tony's back.

"Same goes for you," he says.

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