Work Text:
A Reborn Lover - a story by luis
thanos was empty before he met thor. before thor, thanos was no one. thor, however, loved bruce banner.
thanos was so sad. so sad, in fact, that he killed half the universe. his despair grew in compass with the destruction that ravaged the farthest galaxies on sight. it was only four years later, when confronted on his farm world, that thanos felt a glimmer of hope. it was a man, standing by the avengers. a broken man, exhausted by his experiences; he seemed to glow with energy thanos knew to be of another realm. to have absorbed so much of it meant that this man, whoever he was, had spent ages frozen in there.
thanos... thanos was interested. nevermind stark, who'd made him bleed, or the asgardian, king of no one, consumed by revenge; nevermind the witch, strong enough to oppose him for a moment. this man; he looked almost as damaged as all three of them combined.
the battle wasn't hard. the avengers were barely prepared; stark was being eaten from the inside out by his grief, the asgardian was driven by pure spite and not much more, and the witch was dead. the others weren't even any better. they retreated, as best as they could, but there was not much to be done.
thanos went back to sit by his chair, by his crops. he took off the gauntlet; it was in terrible shape, after all. he laid back, enjoyed the sun rise in a grateful universe--
and then he woke up.
and the gauntlet was encasing the man's hand, just a few steps next to him.
"what?," the man said, snark and all, despite all the pain he so obviously tried to mask, "it's just another heist."
and then he shrunk.
thanos was fucking lost, but damn if his heart wasn't suddenly beating faster.
so, like, scotty then used the gauntlet, right? and he turned back time to before the war. and thanos was all like "oh damn you ruined my plans but damn if i wanna kiss you!" and scotty was like "i know i'm with the avengers and i have like three hundred partners and you're evil and killed cassie but i suddenly see why you did that as our planet is slowly dying but not due to resource scarcity but due to the capitalist nature of the top percent creating a false sense of need because it's profitable for them to have people die," and then scotty explained to thanos why he was wrong and then thanos became an avenger.
the end.