st_arkravinghazelnut | Iron Will, Iron Heart

When Thor lands neatly before Thanos, the briefest of smiles flickers on his face. Thor's breathing is heavy, labored now; he had exerted himself all to fulfill the promise he made to Thanos aboard the Asgardian arc.

He closes the space between them with uneven steps, then presses his hand against the back of Thanos' head. In any other situation, the gesture might have been mistaken for one of affection. But there's no affection on Thor's face, just quiet, but palpable rage.

"I told you... you'd die for that."

Quiet rage gives way to fury, greater than Thor has ever experienced in his life. He braces himself against the back of Stormbreaker, pushing the sharp edge of the axe-hammer deeper into Thanos' chest.

Thanos starts screaming and there's some part of him, hidden deep in the heart of that righteous fury that takes pleasure in that scream. He's never felt this before in his life, even when he was young and foolish and excited by even the thought of battle.

Thor studies Thanos carefully. Thor wants to remember every second of this moment with absolute clarity. He wants to remember every line of his face, the way his fingers feel against his skin as they, like Stormbreaker, push deeper into his flesh.

Thanos doesn't stop screaming, and it just urges him on. Stormbreaker sinks further and further inside of Thanos' body.

For the first time in a long time, Thor feels real, true satisfaction.

Having been brought to his knees by the man he so easily dispatched not days ago should have filled him with shock. Fear. Anguish. But there wasn't even a hint of pause within the Titan's heart, even as his body slumped in pain--only held upright by Odinson's grip.

A weapon that overcame the Infinity Gauntlet wielded by a man whose heart was full of petty vengeance. If Thanos had the breath, he would have laughed. Even when the God was strong, he was utterly weak.

"You should have..." Thanos' voice was breathy, halting. Anyone observing the gruesome scene could have mistaken it for a sure sign of submission or defeat.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Thanos braced a hand on Odinson's shoulder. He wanted the arrogant God to have his next words burned into his very being.

"You should have gone for the head."

Every ounce of strength that remained lifted the Gauntlet he still bore, forgotten by Odinson in his lust for nothing more than Thanos' suffering. His fingers came together--generating a portal in space. Suddenly, in his grip was the haggard form of Tony Stark who bore a wound in his stomach nearly identical of Thanos' own.

Thanos grips Tony by the head, the same way he held Thor aboard The Statesman. Thor had seen him soundly defeat the Hulk; he threw and smashed him effortlessly and he didn't even need to use the Power Stone. He could pop Tony's head as easily as Thor could break open a walnut, and when this registers in Thor's head, he finds that his hand is retreating from Thanos' larger form.

He feels utterly powerless. Thanos made him feel this way before, aboard the Statesman, and he has made him feel it again now. Thor tells himself that he can't show weakness -- that he can't show that he cares; both he and Loki made that mistake and Thanos had exploited that weakness.

But still, Thor's eyes flicker to Tony's limp body for the briefest of moments. He is choking on blood; he can hear it, same as he could hear himself when Thanos dragged him by the carapace. Thor lies to himself, tells himself that Tony will die anyway, that he needs to do something. His hands that had withdrawn so easily from Thanos' body before snap to Stormbreaker's grip. He attempts to dislodge the hammer from Thanos' body so he might strike him down, but finds that it is so firmly burrowed inside his body that it does not move, even when Thor pulls with all of his strength.

Edited 2018-09-17 12:55 (UTC)

With a clench of his fist, Thanos was gone--leaving only Stormbreaker and Iron Man in his wake.

Tony's breathing was less ragged to his own ears where he hovered on all fours. The shock remained but the pain was gone. He groped at his stomach, his chest, and all that remained were traces of armor but his wound was gone as if it had never been dealt in the first place. He turned his wide gaze to Thor's weapon where it laid on the ground beside him and up to Thor himself.

It is quiet enough that Thor can hear each of his slow, heavy breaths, as if it is the only sound in the world.

He looks down at Tony uncomprehendingly. Was it the Reality Stone? he wonders. If so, what what was real? Was Thanos real? Was Tony? Was Tony's wound?

Thor's eyes stay on Tony, and after a long moment he extends a hand to lift him up.

Tony swallowed hard, desperately trying to fill his dry mouth. Any hope of Thor having answers was dashed by the look on the man's face. He pushed up of his own power, one hand loosely gripping the space where his wound used to be, as if it could have re-opened at any moment.

"You didn't kill him."

Thor watches as Tony pulls himself to his feet with that same look of incomprehension as before. Tony speaks at him, and though they sound strangely distorted to his ears, he knows perfectly what he said.

You didn't kill him.

Thor opens his hand and Stormbreaker's handle snaps easily into his palm.

This is the work of the Reality Stone. He is being toyed with.

Thor spins around in a fury, eyes skyward, hammer-axe readied.

"Where are you?! Where are you?!"

Thor's roars echoed throughout the Wakandan landscape, and all Tony could do was behold the scene. The bodies of his comrades littered the space like discarded refuse, and his brain refused to process any of it. Peter, Strange, and every Guardian had been with him just minutes before on a distant planet. And now he was here--ripped through another wormhole to the absolute end of it all.

And then, Tony was being grounded in the worst way possible when a gentle touch to the top of his head came from behind. He froze on instinct--what little armor he had converging around his chest and back.

"Destiny has smiled upon you today, Stark." Thanos' very essence was perverse sincerity.

The sound of Thanos' voice sends Thor spinning. His hand is on Tony's head again. Is this real? Or is it the Reality Stone again? His eyes flicker briefly to Thanos' gauntlet, and he sees none of the stones are lit up.

He knows that doesn't mean anything; if Thanos is an illusion, surely he could manufacture a convincing facsimile whose gauntlet's stone were still dark. Thor's own brother had managed to convince him he was dead and Thanos was on an entirely different level when he used the stone.

Stone, or no stone, with Thor swings Stormbreaker towards the side of Thanos' head.

Suddenly, Tony was eye level with Thanos himself, lifted off the ground by some sheer force--and staring down the other end of Thor's indomitable weapon as if it were aimed for his own head. His breath halted. Even if he tried to struggle to move, his muscles were paralyzed on a molecular level.

Thor swings out with such force that for one horrifying moment he will send his hammer straight through Tony's head.

Somehow, he manages to stop it just a hair short of Tony's face.

"Lacking even the will to sacrifice one man. The fate of your comrades is written in sorrow." Thanos' words were about Thor, but directed at no one but Tony himself. Everyone else were simply pitiful entities to be judged and summarily disregarded.

Against the power of the Infinity Gauntlet, Tony summoned every ounce of strength to fight, to move. He barely managed to twitch his fingers to life, forcing his eyes to the side. The weight of Stormbreaker was heavy against his head, even it had stopped just short of contact.

"Stark. You who share my curse of knowledge. Stark. You, who sooner saw his own companions shackled like dogs while it meant fulfilling your ideals."

Thor glances briefly over at Tony before settling on Thanos. Stormbreaker is still leveled against Tony's head, as if he is afraid to move it.

"What are you talking about?"

By Thanos' words, there was a flash of naked mortification across Tony's face before his struggling was redoubled. He fell back to the earth, just barely catching himself on all fours. Before another word could be said, every nanite reformed into a gauntlet circling his left arm that he thrust at Thanos and fired.

There was only dust left in the wake of the blast. Once again, the Titan had vanished. His arm remained raised, shaking futilely.

Thor looks at Tony. None of this is making sense. He tells himself it's Thanos, that it's the Reality Stone, but there was something real about Tony's response that doesn't feel manufactured.

Thor lets Stormbreaker settle at his side as he looks down at Tony.

"Stark, what is he talking about?"

Tony clenched the gauntlet--the only part of his armor left to him--with his bare hand. He didn't bring himself to face Thor.

"I had to."

"You had to?" Thor repeats. "You had to imprison our friends? You had no other way?!"

Thor reaches down to lift Tony up by the collar of his shirt, but as he does, he turns to dust.

Then, Thor bolts awake, drenched in his own sweat. His eyes turn to the empty space in the bed next to him, then looks up.

From somewhere in the bathroom, Tony Stark was humming the notes of his favorite Black Sabbath tune, going over his recently-barbered hair with a comb. The smell of soaps permeated the room.

"Rise n' shine, Doll Face." He called, tilting his head this way and that. The creaking of the bed was always a decent tip off. Tony was consistently the first to rouse and get around.

Thor tosses off the comforter, then shifts until he's sitting on the edge of the bed, facing away from where Tony still stands. For a moment, he doesn't say anything; he just looks down at his feet, planted firmly on the floor.

Anything he says is going to sound insane. Sometimes, his dreams were simply dreams; there was nothing to them. Other times, the dreams served as a warning. Thor was always trying to figure out which was which, just as he was trying to discern reality from not-reality in the dream, only to find out later that none of it was real.

He can't ask Tony directly. Not yet. Not without seeming mad.

"Tony," he begins, his voice low. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"What?" Tony squinted at his own reflection. Was it going to be another one of those days? He wracked his brain to think of any little thing that could have prompted that question--coming up short. Their previous night had been normal. Tony had talked him into watching another Stephen King movie, maybe that had done it. Those tended to make Thor paranoid.

"Uh. I'm going jogging? Wasn't exactly a secret."

Thor lets out a little scoffing laugh, then pushes himself off the edge of the bed. "I'm sure."

He pulls down his shirt by the hem, then heads for the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Turning abruptly, Tony motioned at himself, already dressed in a jogging set. He gave Thor a clearly confused-but-indignant shake of his head but left it at that.

"I'm almost out of the bathroom, Big Guy," Tony made for the door, "Should be enough hot water left."

Thor doesn't answer; instead, he turns on the faucet to the sink and splashes cold water on his face. He's starting to cool down physically, but he's still bristling with irritation.

He doesn't bother turning when Tony opens the door.

"You want anything while I'm out?" Tony glanced back as he tugged his sneakers on. The energy surrounding Thor was like an oppressive storm cloud. "Poptarts? Mead? Estroven?"

Sighing, Tony rubbed his mouth and turned the knob. He didn't need to wait for a reply to know quips would go over cold. "You need me, I'll be hitting the dusty trail."

Edited 2018-09-18 22:41 (UTC)

Thor says nothing to Tony's quips; instead, he reaches for a towel and dries off his face. It's not until Tony is very nearly on the way out that Thor realizes it's pointless to hope that Tony will volunteer the information of his own volition.

Thor emerges from the bathroom and tosses the towel on top of their bed. He looks over at Tony.

"Why didn't you tell me you had our friends imprisoned?" The words come out casually, Thor's emotions failing to register fully in his voice.

In the doorway, Tony halted. He turned to look over his shoulder, saying nothing--all his mental faculties dedicated to parsing if he had even heard the man correctly.

"Why didn't I what?"

Thor's gaze remains steady on Tony's face.

"Why didn't you tell me you locked them up?"

"Uh. Because I didn't?" Tony squinted back, as if the answer of where the hell is this coming from would reveal itself.

And there it is. The confirmation.

"Because you didn't," Thor echoes. He lets out a noise that doesn't quite make it all the way to a laugh. "I don't know what to say. Here I was, stupidly thinking it was some disagreement that could someday be smoothed over because I stupidly took you at your word."

"Okay, can we back up?" Tony stepped in, shoving the door closed behind him. He didn't feel like getting a reputation with the neighbors. "Can I start by asking where, why, and what the hell this is?"

"No."

A scoff. "Stellar diplomacy. Top knotch."

"And that's your problem, Stark," Thor says, waving an arm. "You think that how I know is somehow more deserving of a conversation about what you did. Over and over and over again, you do it alone, without talking to anyone, without considering anyone else because your personal ideals take precedence over everyone else."

"Oh, okay, getting a lecture now." Tony tossed up his hands. "Cool, I'll play. So, tell me, was it 'personal ideals' going on with your plentiful secret-keeping? Was that you being a team player? This isn't me changing the subject, this is me not wanting to get a finger in my face from the man who kept my own goddamn death from me."

"Yes," Thor says, shaking his head, lips curled up in a barely-holding-it-in sort of smile. "Let's talk about how selfish I am for wanting everyone to have the one thing I wanted myself and pretend it compares to you hiding things from me because you're ashamed of them."

"No, you know what I want to talk about? I wanna talk about how you act like the only person here who's ever felt pain." Tony's raised voice came, matching Thor's own. To hell with the neighborly reputation.

"You think the breakup of the Avengers isn't a painful subject? The team--the thing I spent the last near decade of my life building? You think being asked to spare a mass murderer who was complicit in my ongoing mental issues because he's your brother didn't enact some kind of toll? No, I don't regret it, don't try and pull that card, but I don't know if you really digested that ask."

He was on a roll, and he wasn't about to stop. "The breakup--yeah, that's for me and Cap to hash out. He was there. It hasn't happened for him. He needs the preparation. You and me? We're facing the genocide of half the goddamn universe and you really want to pin me on something I didn't even ask for."

Tony's words sting and Thor knows it's because some of them ring true. He has been selfish -- tremendously selfish -- asking Tony to tolerate Loki, and he knows that Tony has done more than most people would have in the same situation. And maybe he's been self-absorbed, wallowing in his own pain, but there's one thing that he can't let go of --

"You want to stop Thanos?" he asks. "You start by making up with our friends. You start by not keeping secrets because we can't afford to keep any."

Thor takes a breath. He knows that he's calling Tony out on this, knowing all the while that he has his own secrets he's keeping from him. Secrets that Tony doesn't have the benefit of discovering through pre- or post-cognition.

But Thor forces himself not to think of that.

"I would go to war for you, Stark," Thor tells him. "But I can't do that if I don't have all the facts in front of me."

"Yeah. Working on it. You wanna know the first thing I did upon seeing Rogers? Start the dialogue. You wanna know the first thing I did upon seeing the man who murdered my parents? Not kill him." Tony slowly entered Thor's space, stopping just a foot short.

"You remember the first thing I did upon seeing Loki again? Told him I chose you over revenge. And you come at me like you're the damn judge, jury, and executioner without asking me for my side." His jaw ground from side to side. "I don't pity myself. I've got plenty to answer for. It's the only reason I'm still breathing. But I thought I'd get a little benefit of the doubt from the man who I trust most."

Thor does not back down, even when Tony draws closer.

"Then tell me your side."

"I will." Tony stepped back once, then twice, then thrice. "But not right now."

"Okay," Thor says. What else can he say? He sits down on the edge of the bed and runs a hand through his hair, still damp with sweat. He thinks back to that fight he had with the Hulk back on Sakaar. And then he figures his next words easily enough, though they're still hard to push forward. Thor doesn't even know why; they should be easy, but they're not.

"I'm sorry."

Tony shook his head.

"You push. And push. And push. And I let you. Because I know what's behind it all. But not this time." Tony looked at his partner like he didn't know the man. Without another word, Tony disappeared behind the door and slammed it shut.

Iron Will, Iron Heart

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