Thor Odinson, God of Thunder, King of Asgard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pirateangelbaby) wrote2019-05-09 12:10 am
pirateangelbaby) wrote2019-05-09 12:10 am
Home Is Where...?
[OOC: Contains minor spoilers for Endgame. Trigger warnings: depression, alcohol abuse.]
It has been two weeks since Thanos snapped his fingers.
Chaos has erupted across the universe; Thor knows this without seeing it for himself. He should go, travel to the remaining Realms and let them know that they are not forgotten, that their fallen will be avenged, that the slaughter will somehow be undone. But he cannot.
Stormbreaker has the power to send him across the cosmos, certainly. But despair has sunk its claws deep into the man now bearing the title of Allfather, and Thor cannot see what good he could possibly do. God or not, he is only one man, in the end. He cannot keep the universe from ripping apart in the aftermath, the damage already done, his words as hollow as his heart. He can make no promises to anyone, anymore.
He wants nothing more than to shut himself away. To seek his solace in drink and solitude, desperate to find some way to bear the weight of what he's done. But the others will not let him, seeking to rally their friends even in their grief, dragging him from the undeserved shelter of his bed to demand his presence at the table though he rarely says a word, just sits and drinks alone. The conversations go round in what seems like endless frustrating circles, seeking some path through the horror that will make things right, yet never making progress on how to fix it, only ways to help those who remain, like placing a bandage over an amputation. They are all trapped, ensnared by the deathblow that still echoes a fortnight after the world ended, unable to find a way forward because there is none. None, other than finding where the Mad Titan has gone, and even with half of all life snuffed out in a moment, the universe is too incomprehensibly vast to find one soul in trillions, with nowhere to start looking.
If Heimdall was here...
But he isn't, and Thor cannot shake the sight of those golden eyes staring into the distance, unfocused in death. They see everything. They see you leading us straight to Hel. And he had. Gods, he had.
You're a destroyer, Odinson. See where your power leads.
Thor cannot stand the inaction any longer.
He cannot fix this. Cannot find where Thanos has fled through sheer willpower, or find peace in the bottom of the bottle in solitude, or listen to one more day of the same empty determination repeated over and over with no real solution in sight. But there is something he can do, some small thing to help someone, what's left of his duty urging him to take up his axe and open the Bifrost to travel to the one place he might find some shred of redemption.
Norway is no less affected by the culling than anywhere else, and it takes him some time to find the right place to go, the right people to speak with. Two weeks after, with the full weight of the apocalypse pressing down on every person that still draws breath, the Sokovia Accords that he had thought would be his greatest obstacle are barely graced with a mention, their uselessness apparent enough in the ash that coats half the world. But Thor is not here as an Avenger, anyhow.
Before, he had thought he would come here, him and his entourage resplendent in their polished armor and helms, drawing on every lesson in diplomacy he'd ever received as he would petition their government for shelter. He would have leaned on their nostalgia for the gods who had watched over their ancestors, returned after a thousand years away, invoking the memory of Odin as he had stood in that field and declared that Asgard was not a place, but a people. Thor would have presented an image of strength and peace, of a people who would be proud to make this country their home, to share knowledge and strengthen the bonds between Asgard and Midgard for the first time in centuries of absence.
Instead the king of Asgard stands before the acting Prime Minister, alone and disheveled and clad in yesterday's clothes, and all but begs for asylum for his people.
Later, he will not remember what he spoke about, the memory of his words blurring together into a haze of desperation. Desperate to find a home for what little remains of his shattered people, desperate to do something good even if it cannot make up for his mistakes, desperate to do anything at all. And he did not expect to hear a decision immediately, especially not from a government still struggling to cope with the devastation his actions have wrought, but it still strikes him like a blow to the belly when he is told that his petition will be considered, that they will let him know, and that he is dismissed.
And then he is alone on the streets of Oslo, the city in shambles around him. Vehicles abandoned, storefronts smashed and looted, the sounds of sirens and humans wailing in the distance. There is no corner of the universe that remains untouched, nowhere he can hide from the truth of what has happened, the consequences of his failure.
Thor does not return to the compound that night.
He sits on the edge of a cliff, gray waves breaking on a sunless sea below, the stars obscured by heavy dull clouds that pour rain in an endless drone. Two dozen empty bottles litter the grass around him, their weakness barely touching the endless agony that dwells in his chest, and here in the place where Odin breathed his last, Thor closes his eye and bows his head, water dripping from his untrimmed beard. "Father," he prays, grief twisting deep inside him. "I could really use your counsel right now."
His only answer is the thrum of the rain as it beats down on his shoulders.
It has been two weeks since Thanos snapped his fingers.
Chaos has erupted across the universe; Thor knows this without seeing it for himself. He should go, travel to the remaining Realms and let them know that they are not forgotten, that their fallen will be avenged, that the slaughter will somehow be undone. But he cannot.
Stormbreaker has the power to send him across the cosmos, certainly. But despair has sunk its claws deep into the man now bearing the title of Allfather, and Thor cannot see what good he could possibly do. God or not, he is only one man, in the end. He cannot keep the universe from ripping apart in the aftermath, the damage already done, his words as hollow as his heart. He can make no promises to anyone, anymore.
He wants nothing more than to shut himself away. To seek his solace in drink and solitude, desperate to find some way to bear the weight of what he's done. But the others will not let him, seeking to rally their friends even in their grief, dragging him from the undeserved shelter of his bed to demand his presence at the table though he rarely says a word, just sits and drinks alone. The conversations go round in what seems like endless frustrating circles, seeking some path through the horror that will make things right, yet never making progress on how to fix it, only ways to help those who remain, like placing a bandage over an amputation. They are all trapped, ensnared by the deathblow that still echoes a fortnight after the world ended, unable to find a way forward because there is none. None, other than finding where the Mad Titan has gone, and even with half of all life snuffed out in a moment, the universe is too incomprehensibly vast to find one soul in trillions, with nowhere to start looking.
If Heimdall was here...
But he isn't, and Thor cannot shake the sight of those golden eyes staring into the distance, unfocused in death. They see everything. They see you leading us straight to Hel. And he had. Gods, he had.
You're a destroyer, Odinson. See where your power leads.
Thor cannot stand the inaction any longer.
He cannot fix this. Cannot find where Thanos has fled through sheer willpower, or find peace in the bottom of the bottle in solitude, or listen to one more day of the same empty determination repeated over and over with no real solution in sight. But there is something he can do, some small thing to help someone, what's left of his duty urging him to take up his axe and open the Bifrost to travel to the one place he might find some shred of redemption.
Norway is no less affected by the culling than anywhere else, and it takes him some time to find the right place to go, the right people to speak with. Two weeks after, with the full weight of the apocalypse pressing down on every person that still draws breath, the Sokovia Accords that he had thought would be his greatest obstacle are barely graced with a mention, their uselessness apparent enough in the ash that coats half the world. But Thor is not here as an Avenger, anyhow.
Before, he had thought he would come here, him and his entourage resplendent in their polished armor and helms, drawing on every lesson in diplomacy he'd ever received as he would petition their government for shelter. He would have leaned on their nostalgia for the gods who had watched over their ancestors, returned after a thousand years away, invoking the memory of Odin as he had stood in that field and declared that Asgard was not a place, but a people. Thor would have presented an image of strength and peace, of a people who would be proud to make this country their home, to share knowledge and strengthen the bonds between Asgard and Midgard for the first time in centuries of absence.
Instead the king of Asgard stands before the acting Prime Minister, alone and disheveled and clad in yesterday's clothes, and all but begs for asylum for his people.
Later, he will not remember what he spoke about, the memory of his words blurring together into a haze of desperation. Desperate to find a home for what little remains of his shattered people, desperate to do something good even if it cannot make up for his mistakes, desperate to do anything at all. And he did not expect to hear a decision immediately, especially not from a government still struggling to cope with the devastation his actions have wrought, but it still strikes him like a blow to the belly when he is told that his petition will be considered, that they will let him know, and that he is dismissed.
And then he is alone on the streets of Oslo, the city in shambles around him. Vehicles abandoned, storefronts smashed and looted, the sounds of sirens and humans wailing in the distance. There is no corner of the universe that remains untouched, nowhere he can hide from the truth of what has happened, the consequences of his failure.
Thor does not return to the compound that night.
He sits on the edge of a cliff, gray waves breaking on a sunless sea below, the stars obscured by heavy dull clouds that pour rain in an endless drone. Two dozen empty bottles litter the grass around him, their weakness barely touching the endless agony that dwells in his chest, and here in the place where Odin breathed his last, Thor closes his eye and bows his head, water dripping from his untrimmed beard. "Father," he prays, grief twisting deep inside him. "I could really use your counsel right now."
His only answer is the thrum of the rain as it beats down on his shoulders.