Thor Odinson, God of Thunder, King of Asgard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pirateangelbaby) wrote2019-09-15 08:02 pm
pirateangelbaby) wrote2019-09-15 08:02 pm
Entry tags:
One Last Shot
[Trigger warnings: mentions of attempted and successful suicide, major character death.]
The elation of returning to the present with Mjolnir in hand and six Infinity Stones in the hands of his teammates is short-lived.
Natasha does not reappear with everyone else, and without saying a word, the devastation on Barton's face as he crashes to his knees is enough to tell them all why.
Gone.
Dead.
Her life traded for the soul stone, which glows a sickly sweet orange as it's placed into the knuckle of the nanotech gauntlet Stark has forged. The other stones shine in their sockets, all the colors of the rainbow, an impossible dream given physical form. And yet, even this power is not enough to bring her back, or so Barton claims. An everlasting exchange, one that speaks of ancient and terrible magic. Thor is no sorcerer. But even he knows that such things are not easily undone, no matter how much power one commands.
It was supposed to be me, Barton had told them as he'd wept, and it twists in Thor's belly like a sickness. None of the others deserved to die to make this right. If anyone had to die, it should have been himself, the one who had had the best chance of ending the Titan's life before he'd snapped his fingers, and hadn't done it. But while he had been on Asgard, utterly useless and being soothed by his mother like a child after a nightmare, Natasha had thrown herself to her death. Sacrificed to save the universe, fighting every step of the way.
It is a good death. A warrior's death, one that may lead her to the gates of Valhalla, eternally feasting in victory. But Thor has lost so many friends, so much family, that he cannot help but mourn her.
He thinks about that as he watches the gauntlet being assembled, the deceptively innocent glow of six Infinity Stones cradled in its metal embrace. The ultimate power in the universe, assembled one last time, gathered to bring back trillions of lives. Half the universe. Everyone that Thor had failed that day.
"All right, the glove's ready," Rocket reports, his voice unusually subdued as he looks up at the gathered group of Avengers. "The question is, who's going to snap their freaking fingers?"
The stones may yet be a death sentence to the one who uses them, but Thor is in a room full of mortals. There is only one god here, and it's on his shoulders that the fate of the universe must rest. Perhaps this is why he did not die that day on the Statesman, or in Wakanda. If by his death he can set things right... Natasha did it. How could Thor do anything less? He may not even die from it, but his human friends definitely will.
He does not think of promises made and promises broken as he steps forward, drawn toward the gauntlet as if by magnetic force. "I'll do it."
He makes it a good deal of the way there before the others realize what he's said, and there's a sudden flurry of objections, Stark stepping into his path so he can go no further, raising his hands as if he might be able to hold Thor back by sheer muscle alone. Thor stops anyway, because it makes little difference if he gains the gauntlet now or in five minutes, the end result will surely be the same. "Whoa whoa whoa, slow down."
Stark isn't the only one. Steve looks away, and grits his teeth. There's a look about him that Thor recognizes all too well, grief and fear and that horrible realization that Natasha may not be the only sacrifice today. And, perhaps, recognition that maybe there is no one else who can do this. "Thor, just... wait. If there's a way we can do this without someone else dying, then that's what we're going to do."
This delay is pointless. There is no other conclusion to draw, no other way to use the stones, no one else who bears the blame that Thor does. His gaze is fixed on the gauntlet over Stark's shoulder, a terrible yearning in his eye. Not for death, but for salvation. To set all this right, and correct the unforgivable mistake he made that day in Wakanda. And if that path ends with Thor stepping through the golden gates of his father's hall, then he could ask for no better end. "I'm the strongest Avenger," he reminds them, summoning every last shred and dignity and honor he has left to his name to stand up straight and tall, as if he was still the same hero he'd thought he'd been. "This responsibility falls upon me. It's my duty."
And yet Stark does not move from his path, his gaze riveted to Thor as if he might dissuade him by sheer willpower alone. "Normally, you'd be right, but you're in no condition. Come on, sit down, let's talk this through," he says, tugging at Thor's arm.
But what is the point? What will talking it over prove? He refuses to budge, until a large green hand lands on his shoulder and pulls him backward.
Hulk looms over Thor, a serious look on his face. "Hulk and Banner do it," he says, shoving Thor back away from the gauntlet, and looks around the room at them.
"Hulk," Steve says carefully, pensively, worry creasing his brow. "Are you sure you can handle this?"
"Put brain and brawn together," Hulk answers, smacking his fist into his palm, and Rocket's ears perk up at the familiar phrase. "Pretty stones use gamma radiation. So does Hulk. Hulk strong enough to use them. Banner tell Hulk what to do. Hulk and Banner do this together."
Thor stares up at Hulk, his desperation twisting up into disappointment and relief and fear. Fear that even Hulk may not be enough to survive the terrible ravages of using all six Infinity Stones, and knowing all too well that if Hulk cannot withstand the radiation that created him, that Thor stands no better chance. He reaches out and puts his hand on Hulk's arm, warm and alive, and prays that this will not be their last act. "Hulk... Banner... be careful."
Hulk smiles grimly at him, and picks up the gauntlet, turning it over in his enormous hands. Too small to fit, but the technology of the glove begins to reconfigure it as he holds it, shifting and expanding and growing in size, until even those massive green hands will fit. All around them, windows and doorways slide closed, covered with armored blast shielding, as Stark summons his armor and an energy barrier. Rhodes and Lang activate their helmets, Barton readies his bow and Steven prepares his shield, and Thor guides Rocket to stand behind him. He does not see Nebula in the room, but perhaps she simply did not wish to watch, after what happened to her father. They can find her later, Thor decides, and thinks nothing more of it. He has more important things to focus on, watching those stones glow with deceptive innocence, the greatest power the universe has ever known brought back from the abyss.
"Okay, remember, everyone that Thanos snapped away six months ago, you're bringing them back to now," Stark says, watching Hulk closely, nervousness in the lines of his face. "Don't change anything else from the last six months, got it?"
Hulk grunts in affirmation, looking down at the gauntlet, and pauses a moment as if listening to a voice no one else can hear. "Everyone come home," he mutters, and slips the gauntlet onto his right hand.
The stones flare bright with rainbow light, sparks shooting up Hulk's arm like wild lightning, and Thor can taste the ozone from meters away. Hulk bellows in surprise and pain, falling to his knees and clutching at his wrist as the energies ravage his flesh, burning away at skin and muscle as the energy travels further and further up his arm and into his torso, veins of light traveling up his neck. There's a jolt that rocks the floor beneath their feet, a shockwave that ripples through the glass fixtures in the room, and out of the corner of his eye Thor can see Iron Man's head jerk up slightly as if listening to something. Perhaps it's simply a trick of the light, but the rest of the room seems to darken as if a massive shadow has fallen across the facility, the stones flaring ever brighter as Hulk struggles to bring his gloved fingers together, his face screwing up with concentration against the agony. "Everyone... come... home!" he roars, and his finger starts to slide against his thumb.
And then there is a bright flash as the entire Avengers complex blows apart around them.
Thor wakes buried in broken concrete and shattered glass, disoriented, with no idea what just happened. He heaves at the rubble, stone clattering aside as he forces his way to the surface, and emerges into a nightmare.
He is in the midst of a massive crater in the ground, great clouds of dust and smoke blocking out nearly all light from the sun, great piles of debris as far as the eye can see. There is nothing recognizable, nothing to mark this as the site of the Avengers compound, the entire facility reduced to rubble. And overhead, casting its deep shadow across the destruction, hangs the ship that has haunted Thor's dreams for six months.
The Sanctuary II. The ship of Thanos, the Mad Titan.
Thor can only gape up at it in disbelief, that terrible floating numbness starting to creep in as he struggles to make sense of all this. Did Banner somehow undo Thanos' death? Has all this been for nothing, or worse than nothing? Has the Titan returned from death itself as a revenant, unable to rest until everything is truly destroyed? Or has Thor finally, truly, gone mad?
He's shaken from his paralysis by a metal-clad hand on his shoulder, and turns his head to see Stark's face peering out of his open faceplate, blood matting the side of his face and his eyes wide. "Hey, come on, you all right? You hurt?" Thor can only numbly shake his head, and Stark's face tightens. "Right, come on, we've gotta find the others. He's here."
"I know," Thor mumbles, his eye returning to the ship above, but Stark shakes his head and drags him to a sheltered spot, part of the building's facade that still stands, looking down on the deepest part of the crater. And in the middle, sitting on a shattered column with that double-bladed sword planted in the earth at his side, a familiar violet figure sits and waits.
Thanos himself.
"FRIDAY clocked him coming through right as Hulk was putting the gauntlet on," Stark reports, almost babbling as he guides Thor into the shattered doorway that overlooks the ruin of the complex. "I don't know how, but he followed us through the time machine. I need you to keep an eye on him while I find the others. Can you do that for me?"
Distantly, Thor recognizes that he's in shock, but the adrenaline is pushing it down and away. This is not Thanos come back from the dead, or some mistake made by Hulk that Thor would have avoided. He still fears Thanos, more than anything or anyone else in existence. And while part of Thor's mind is screaming to run, that this can't be happening again, a thousand years of training and battle instinct is settling into his limbs as if they'd never left, taking over from conscious thought.
Thanos is the greatest threat the universe has ever known. But he is also just a man.
And Thor has killed him once already.
"Yes," he says, his voice surprisingly steady as if it does not belong to him, his one eye fixed on the distant form of the Titan, sitting almost lazily in the midst of the destruction he has wrought. "I can."
The elation of returning to the present with Mjolnir in hand and six Infinity Stones in the hands of his teammates is short-lived.
Natasha does not reappear with everyone else, and without saying a word, the devastation on Barton's face as he crashes to his knees is enough to tell them all why.
Gone.
Dead.
Her life traded for the soul stone, which glows a sickly sweet orange as it's placed into the knuckle of the nanotech gauntlet Stark has forged. The other stones shine in their sockets, all the colors of the rainbow, an impossible dream given physical form. And yet, even this power is not enough to bring her back, or so Barton claims. An everlasting exchange, one that speaks of ancient and terrible magic. Thor is no sorcerer. But even he knows that such things are not easily undone, no matter how much power one commands.
It was supposed to be me, Barton had told them as he'd wept, and it twists in Thor's belly like a sickness. None of the others deserved to die to make this right. If anyone had to die, it should have been himself, the one who had had the best chance of ending the Titan's life before he'd snapped his fingers, and hadn't done it. But while he had been on Asgard, utterly useless and being soothed by his mother like a child after a nightmare, Natasha had thrown herself to her death. Sacrificed to save the universe, fighting every step of the way.
It is a good death. A warrior's death, one that may lead her to the gates of Valhalla, eternally feasting in victory. But Thor has lost so many friends, so much family, that he cannot help but mourn her.
He thinks about that as he watches the gauntlet being assembled, the deceptively innocent glow of six Infinity Stones cradled in its metal embrace. The ultimate power in the universe, assembled one last time, gathered to bring back trillions of lives. Half the universe. Everyone that Thor had failed that day.
"All right, the glove's ready," Rocket reports, his voice unusually subdued as he looks up at the gathered group of Avengers. "The question is, who's going to snap their freaking fingers?"
The stones may yet be a death sentence to the one who uses them, but Thor is in a room full of mortals. There is only one god here, and it's on his shoulders that the fate of the universe must rest. Perhaps this is why he did not die that day on the Statesman, or in Wakanda. If by his death he can set things right... Natasha did it. How could Thor do anything less? He may not even die from it, but his human friends definitely will.
He does not think of promises made and promises broken as he steps forward, drawn toward the gauntlet as if by magnetic force. "I'll do it."
He makes it a good deal of the way there before the others realize what he's said, and there's a sudden flurry of objections, Stark stepping into his path so he can go no further, raising his hands as if he might be able to hold Thor back by sheer muscle alone. Thor stops anyway, because it makes little difference if he gains the gauntlet now or in five minutes, the end result will surely be the same. "Whoa whoa whoa, slow down."
Stark isn't the only one. Steve looks away, and grits his teeth. There's a look about him that Thor recognizes all too well, grief and fear and that horrible realization that Natasha may not be the only sacrifice today. And, perhaps, recognition that maybe there is no one else who can do this. "Thor, just... wait. If there's a way we can do this without someone else dying, then that's what we're going to do."
This delay is pointless. There is no other conclusion to draw, no other way to use the stones, no one else who bears the blame that Thor does. His gaze is fixed on the gauntlet over Stark's shoulder, a terrible yearning in his eye. Not for death, but for salvation. To set all this right, and correct the unforgivable mistake he made that day in Wakanda. And if that path ends with Thor stepping through the golden gates of his father's hall, then he could ask for no better end. "I'm the strongest Avenger," he reminds them, summoning every last shred and dignity and honor he has left to his name to stand up straight and tall, as if he was still the same hero he'd thought he'd been. "This responsibility falls upon me. It's my duty."
And yet Stark does not move from his path, his gaze riveted to Thor as if he might dissuade him by sheer willpower alone. "Normally, you'd be right, but you're in no condition. Come on, sit down, let's talk this through," he says, tugging at Thor's arm.
But what is the point? What will talking it over prove? He refuses to budge, until a large green hand lands on his shoulder and pulls him backward.
Hulk looms over Thor, a serious look on his face. "Hulk and Banner do it," he says, shoving Thor back away from the gauntlet, and looks around the room at them.
"Hulk," Steve says carefully, pensively, worry creasing his brow. "Are you sure you can handle this?"
"Put brain and brawn together," Hulk answers, smacking his fist into his palm, and Rocket's ears perk up at the familiar phrase. "Pretty stones use gamma radiation. So does Hulk. Hulk strong enough to use them. Banner tell Hulk what to do. Hulk and Banner do this together."
Thor stares up at Hulk, his desperation twisting up into disappointment and relief and fear. Fear that even Hulk may not be enough to survive the terrible ravages of using all six Infinity Stones, and knowing all too well that if Hulk cannot withstand the radiation that created him, that Thor stands no better chance. He reaches out and puts his hand on Hulk's arm, warm and alive, and prays that this will not be their last act. "Hulk... Banner... be careful."
Hulk smiles grimly at him, and picks up the gauntlet, turning it over in his enormous hands. Too small to fit, but the technology of the glove begins to reconfigure it as he holds it, shifting and expanding and growing in size, until even those massive green hands will fit. All around them, windows and doorways slide closed, covered with armored blast shielding, as Stark summons his armor and an energy barrier. Rhodes and Lang activate their helmets, Barton readies his bow and Steven prepares his shield, and Thor guides Rocket to stand behind him. He does not see Nebula in the room, but perhaps she simply did not wish to watch, after what happened to her father. They can find her later, Thor decides, and thinks nothing more of it. He has more important things to focus on, watching those stones glow with deceptive innocence, the greatest power the universe has ever known brought back from the abyss.
"Okay, remember, everyone that Thanos snapped away six months ago, you're bringing them back to now," Stark says, watching Hulk closely, nervousness in the lines of his face. "Don't change anything else from the last six months, got it?"
Hulk grunts in affirmation, looking down at the gauntlet, and pauses a moment as if listening to a voice no one else can hear. "Everyone come home," he mutters, and slips the gauntlet onto his right hand.
The stones flare bright with rainbow light, sparks shooting up Hulk's arm like wild lightning, and Thor can taste the ozone from meters away. Hulk bellows in surprise and pain, falling to his knees and clutching at his wrist as the energies ravage his flesh, burning away at skin and muscle as the energy travels further and further up his arm and into his torso, veins of light traveling up his neck. There's a jolt that rocks the floor beneath their feet, a shockwave that ripples through the glass fixtures in the room, and out of the corner of his eye Thor can see Iron Man's head jerk up slightly as if listening to something. Perhaps it's simply a trick of the light, but the rest of the room seems to darken as if a massive shadow has fallen across the facility, the stones flaring ever brighter as Hulk struggles to bring his gloved fingers together, his face screwing up with concentration against the agony. "Everyone... come... home!" he roars, and his finger starts to slide against his thumb.
And then there is a bright flash as the entire Avengers complex blows apart around them.
Thor wakes buried in broken concrete and shattered glass, disoriented, with no idea what just happened. He heaves at the rubble, stone clattering aside as he forces his way to the surface, and emerges into a nightmare.
He is in the midst of a massive crater in the ground, great clouds of dust and smoke blocking out nearly all light from the sun, great piles of debris as far as the eye can see. There is nothing recognizable, nothing to mark this as the site of the Avengers compound, the entire facility reduced to rubble. And overhead, casting its deep shadow across the destruction, hangs the ship that has haunted Thor's dreams for six months.
The Sanctuary II. The ship of Thanos, the Mad Titan.
Thor can only gape up at it in disbelief, that terrible floating numbness starting to creep in as he struggles to make sense of all this. Did Banner somehow undo Thanos' death? Has all this been for nothing, or worse than nothing? Has the Titan returned from death itself as a revenant, unable to rest until everything is truly destroyed? Or has Thor finally, truly, gone mad?
He's shaken from his paralysis by a metal-clad hand on his shoulder, and turns his head to see Stark's face peering out of his open faceplate, blood matting the side of his face and his eyes wide. "Hey, come on, you all right? You hurt?" Thor can only numbly shake his head, and Stark's face tightens. "Right, come on, we've gotta find the others. He's here."
"I know," Thor mumbles, his eye returning to the ship above, but Stark shakes his head and drags him to a sheltered spot, part of the building's facade that still stands, looking down on the deepest part of the crater. And in the middle, sitting on a shattered column with that double-bladed sword planted in the earth at his side, a familiar violet figure sits and waits.
Thanos himself.
"FRIDAY clocked him coming through right as Hulk was putting the gauntlet on," Stark reports, almost babbling as he guides Thor into the shattered doorway that overlooks the ruin of the complex. "I don't know how, but he followed us through the time machine. I need you to keep an eye on him while I find the others. Can you do that for me?"
Distantly, Thor recognizes that he's in shock, but the adrenaline is pushing it down and away. This is not Thanos come back from the dead, or some mistake made by Hulk that Thor would have avoided. He still fears Thanos, more than anything or anyone else in existence. And while part of Thor's mind is screaming to run, that this can't be happening again, a thousand years of training and battle instinct is settling into his limbs as if they'd never left, taking over from conscious thought.
Thanos is the greatest threat the universe has ever known. But he is also just a man.
And Thor has killed him once already.
"Yes," he says, his voice surprisingly steady as if it does not belong to him, his one eye fixed on the distant form of the Titan, sitting almost lazily in the midst of the destruction he has wrought. "I can."