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Thor was, for all intents and purposes, a god.
That wasn’t him being arrogant—he hadn’t asked for a calendar day to be named after him, even if it was kind of funny—it was just a fact that his strength, durability, and endurance were far beyond the limits of humans. And although he wasn’t immortal, per se, he still had the lifespan of an Asgardian and had lived thousands of years (okay, a thousand. And a half) despite the attempts of many beings who would prefer otherwise. He could rattle off the countless occasions when he had faced enemies that should’ve beaten him, should’ve stunned him, should’ve knocked him off his balance—but didn’t.
Yes, Thor could withstand almost anything.
Leave it to Earth to find that “almost.”
Thor fell to his knees as the shockwave from the energy field he’d just walked into (he couldn’t even say he’d tripped; no, he’d been so intent on the mission and scanning the hallways for enemies that he’d completely missed the low whine of the forcefield switching on) shuddered through him, making his brain skip one, two, three places until he was on the floor, his palms barely bracing himself up.
What…
What was…
What happened…
It wasn’t unlike getting tasered (and he could speak from experience), except that instead of shocking his entire body, it zapped his brain, sending everything into spinning blurs of light as he struggled to get back up.
His chest hit the floor a split second later. Ow.
Dimly, he heard the sound of Mjolnir slipping out of his grip and landing with a thud beside him, but he couldn’t find it in him to pick it back up. Besides, what would that accomplish? Both of them were on the floor now.
His own breathing was painfully loud in his ears as he lifted his head as far up as it would go. The hallway was long and empty and a muted grayish-white, and as he watched, the ceiling seemed to swallow the walls seemed to swallow the floor until it was all a melting twisting mess.
He tried shutting his eyes, hoping that it would pass in a few moments, but the floor gave a mighty tilt and he instinctively reached out to grab on before remembering—distantly, so distantly; his head felt like it was barely tethered to his body—that he was on a solid surface.
And it’s… probably better that I remain here. For now. Until this passes.
Thor let his forehead press to the cool tile. There were white bursts like fireworks in front of his eyes. Almost like forks of lightning.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying there, waiting for the world to readjust itself, when footsteps approached from around the corner.
Heavy footsteps, like the owner was clad inside a—
Tony Stark appeared moments later, the Iron Man suit encasing him up to his neck, revealing his helmet-hair and his mouth going a mile a minute into the suit’s speakers.
“Yeah, Cap, I’m looking , but it’s a big place; maybe give me more than three minutes before you—” His eyes landed on Thor and widened. “Oh.”
Tony took another few steps forward before kneeling down at Thor’s side, the legs of the suit making a little whirring sound. “Never mind, found him.” He switched off the coms and peered down at Thor, his face shifting into an expression Thor had only seen him make when one of his little robots fell off the balcony.
Thor could understand the cause for concern. He had not moved a muscle since Tony had walked into the hallway. He was lying flat on his stomach with his head ringing and his vision set with sparks. He was the strongest Avenger completely helpless.
But did Tony really have to stare at him about it, was the question.
“You good there? I know, obvious question, but…” Tony trailed off as his gaze lifted to the still-humming shield of energy blocking off their part of the hallway from the rest. “Don’t tell me you walked into that.”
Thor managed a groaning sound and pushed himself to a sitting position. He splayed his arms out on either side to keep from swaying.
Tony sighed. “Of course you walked into that. Barton and Nat are working on disabling it, I’m pretty sure, but who knows where they went off to—mission’s over, by the way, in case you didn’t get that. Bad guys give up secret codes surprisingly well when a walking flag from World War Two punches them repeatedly in the face. Then we noticed we were missing somebody—okay, JARVIS noticed, but in my defense I was busy literally defusing a nuclear-grade explosive—so I got search party duty and Cap’s off trying to calm down Banner.”
There was a muffled roar in the distance, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting a wall with extreme force.
Tony winced before his attention fell back on Thor. “Hey, have you been listening to a thing I just said? How many fingers am I holding up?”
Red and gold metal blurred in front of Thor’s eyes.
“Uh… jeg kan ikke… kan være… gi meg et øyeblikk…”
Tony swore under his breath. “All right, big guy, we’re getting you out of here.”
Thor’s confused mind had only a moment to wonder why he was getting the nickname usually only reserved for the Hulk, when two arms wrapped around him and lifted him up to his feet.
More lightning flickered in front of his eyelids, and he fell unconscious against a metal chest.
The next thing Thor knew, he was being violently knocked into a car door as whoever was driving said car was not doing a very good job.
Someone cursed and Natasha’s voice yelled, “Could you be a little gentler?”
“It’s still the speed limit!” Clint’s voice shouted back, from somewhere up in the front seat.
“No, it’s really not,” Steve muttered to his right.
“Well, it’s around the speed limit.”
Steve made a long-suffering sound through his nose, and Thor’s eyes blinked open slowly, stickily, to find himself pressed into the back seat as the road sped into a blur out the window. Tony was sitting on his other side, with a somehow-asleep Bruce squished in between him and Steve. Natasha and Clint were in the front, one of Clint’s hands lazily operating the steering wheel as they shot and rattled over every bump in the road.
It was a tight fit—the Iron Man armor was folded into a suitcase and wedged on the floor between Thor and Tony’s shoes, and Steve’s shield was nowhere to be seen at all (was it in the trunk?)—and Thor shifted aside so that Tony’s elbow wasn’t jabbed quite so far into his rib cage before he attempted to speak.
His tongue felt stuck in his mouth, and he only managed a weak “What?”, but Tony’s gaze snapped to him anyway, a grin forming over his face.
“Good news everyone; he’s speaking English again.”
Natasha’s feet were up on the dashboard; she didn’t even look over her shoulder as she said, “Eto oblegcheniye, inache vy by govorili ob etom dol'she.”
Tony held up his hands. “No. Stop that.” He was met only with a sparkle-eyed smirk.
The car sped around another sharp corner, and Thor felt an unpleasant lurch in his stomach. A wave of dizziness washed over him and he closed his eyes, swallowing hard.
There was shifting and rustling next to him—and no small amount of complaining—as Tony picked himself up from where he’d fallen against Thor’s shoulder and then paused.
“Uh… Clint, you might wanna pull over. Like, now.”
Everything was spinning—spinning, spinning, spinning, and even the others’ voices sounded distorted in his ears. His cheek fell against the side window, which was startlingly cold but also thrumming hard, and his headache only grew.
“This is a getaway,” Clint was explaining from the front seat. “It’s not doing much good if we don’t, you know, get away.”
“ Barton .” That was Tony’s voice again, firmer than before, and there was the sound of muttering and then someone twisting around in their seat, and then:
“Oh.”
Clint immediately pulled the car over to the side of the road, and Thor couldn’t get the door open fast enough, barely managing to stumble out on shaky legs before he was throwing up in the grass.
It was gross, and it was unpleasant, but it was over quickly, and Thor cautiously raised himself back to standing up straight, his hands dropping from his knees to hang limply at his sides.
His head felt like a group of einherjar warriors were using it for a wrestling match.
Most of the others had gotten out of the car behind him, and Thor got the distinct feeling that they were all watching, to make sure he wasn’t about to topple over if nothing else. He wished they wouldn’t.
He wiped his mouth and turned around, staggering a bit more to the left than was strictly necessary. Yes, just as he’d expected: TonySteveClintNatashaBruce, standing in various degrees of leaning against the car, crossing their arms, or just… staring at him. Unceasingly.
You’ve all seen me get wounded in battle , he wanted to say to them. You’ve even seen me pass out before; that time when we were fighting the giant robots on the train. This shouldn’t come as a shock.
His stomach heaved again, and he hurriedly dropped back down, breathing slowly in and out until he was positive nothing else was going to come back up.
Steve was the first one to speak. “Are you okay?”
Thor nodded. Which was a bad idea, as it turned out, because now there were little gray lights flashing in front of his eyes. “I’m fine.” Absolutely everyone narrowed their eyes, and he added, “But, uh. Could we possibly not get back in the car just yet?”
Steve nodded at once. “‘Course.”
Clint frowned and lifted one finger. “Someone could be tailing us, though.” Natasha shot him a look, and he dropped it at once. “Okay, jeez.”
“I could… just… fly?” Thor suggested, but even as he said the words, a sick feeling rose again in his throat and he had to clear it.
“Yeah, your hammer is as of current still in that enemy base back there,” Tony said, making a sort of face. “Or what’s left of the base, anyway.”
Thor’s shoulders dropped.
“Hey, it’s not like any of us could lift the thing—”
“I know, I know.” Thor pressed his hands in front of his eyes, digging the heels right into the sockets. He had to keep reminding himself to stay upright.
“Okay, how about this,” Steve started apologetically. “GPS said there’s a rest stop a little bit that way—stop it, Tony, I don’t have JARVIS on my phone—so maybe we can go and, uh, rest.”
Thor nodded. He didn’t want to argue. In fact, he wasn’t sure he physically could.
A few minutes later, he was standing—with significant help from Steve and Clint—in the middle of a bustling rest stop and trying not to throw up on the checked-tile floor.
The place was decently full for a weekend afternoon that wasn’t a major holiday (Thor didn’t think it was, anyway, but how was he to keep track), and it was almost hilarious how none of the team had worried about being conspicuous in their battle-worn gear until the automatic doors had slid open and they were faced with a crowd of stressed families, tired employees, and a janitor mopping industriously over the same spill of water.
Fortunately, Natasha was a quick thinker, and had snagged a couple of oversized hoodies from the small gift shop, pulling one over her own gear and tossing the other two to Steve and Clint, the former of whom would definitely have drawn the most attention. Now that Tony was out of the suit, he was wearing a regular T-shirt with the insignia of some Midgardian rock band; and Bruce had wisely brought a change of clothes, but still had no shoes, causing a few of the people passing them on their way out to cut him a look.
Thor’s armor had been taken off him in the car—he hadn’t even noticed its absence until they entered the rest stop, but he was grateful for one less weight off his shoulders—and he was now wearing the simple T-shirt he’d had on underneath. So unless he did throw up again, or pass out, or some unfortunate combination of the two, he probably wouldn’t be too conspicuous.
Tony must have caught his expression, because he patted his arm and said, “Don’t worry, Sparky. Nobody here is worried about anything except getting their kids to use the bathroom before they’re back in the car for four hours to visit their auntie. They’re not gonna notice us.”
Thor would’ve responded, but he couldn’t quite get his mouth to cooperate around the words before Tony was handing Steve a credit card and vanishing off to who knew where.
He turned to his other side, but Natasha was already dragging Clint away, already deep in discussion with Bruce following and trying to jump in. Things were moving so fast, and he could feel the floor rushing up—
“Hey, hey.” Oh. Right. Steve was still here, his grip firmly around Thor’s shoulders, almost steering him now as they began to walk toward one of the little stores. “Over here. Don’t wipe out on me.”
Thor stood in a haze as Steve pored up and down the aisle (yes, singular; the pharmaceutical section was little more than a few shelves, half of which were covered in plastic), picking things up and glancing at the labels until he had an armful of small differently-colored bottles, using the other arm to yank Thor in the direction of the register when he was done.
“Assuming your metabolism’s anything like mine,” Steve said in an undertone as he began unloading bottles onto the counter. “I figured we’d need a decent amount to make a dent.”
“Mm.” Thor swayed a little, almost into a shelf of magazines, before Steve steadied him. The lights in this place were so bright , and there was this ever-present buzzing boring into his brain…
He must’ve blanked out for a few moments, because the next thing he registered was the eyebrows of the employee behind the counter shooting up as Steve plunked the last of his findings down in front of her.
“Uh, for this much, I’m supposed to ask for ID.”
Steve instinctively glanced at Thor before apparently realizing that he wasn’t going to be much help. “Um.”
“What’s your date of birth,” the employee asked, already mechanically starting to ring up their purchases.
“Nineteen ei—eighty,” Steve stammered, caught off guard. The employee looked at him over her glasses, but didn’t comment. Fortunately, there were more customers behind them, so Thor and Steve were able to get out, Steve holding a bag in one hand and casually propping Thor up with the other.
He was just so… ack. He didn’t know what it was. That energy shield had knocked something out of place inside of him, that was for sure, and all he wanted to do was lie down and close his eyes for a week—or however long it would take for the world to stop spinning .
They met up with Natasha, Bruce, and Clint again where they stood in front of one of the restaurant areas, Natasha now clutching several water bottles.
Bruce was talking, his hands shoved tight in his pockets like he was cold. “—and I know it’s probably not the time, but this place does have burgers, and—”
Clint interrupted from where he’d been leaning back and forth on the rope that was supposed to be a barrier for people waiting in line. “We are on a mission —” he started, punctuating each word with his most aggravated voice, but then he followed Bruce’s gaze up to the electronic menu, and changed midsentence to “—oh, and they have grilled cheese, I second this motion.”
Natasha rolled her eyes, but that must have been when she spotted Thor and Steve approaching, because she turned. “Hey, how’re you two doing?”
Thor mumbled something— was it just him, or was it oddly warm in here? —and Steve dug one of the medicine bottles out of his bag and held it up.
“Mission accomplished.”
At that moment, Tony decided to appear again, looking distinctly less covered-in-battle-grime and the top of his hair wet like he’d splashed it with water from the men’s room sink. “To bounce off that, I just had JARVIS run a check.” He slipped his phone in his pocket. “We’re all clear; no one’s tailing us and S.H.I.E.L.D. is probably already cleaning up our mess.”
“That’s a relief,” Bruce said, and Clint nodded fervently.
Someone turn down the lights, please—
Natasha shifted the water bottles to her other hand. “That’s great, we can—Thor? Thor!”
Thor wasn’t aware that he was falling until he heard the concern in her voice, and then it was all he was aware of—falling endlessly down into the swirling dark as lights popped in front of his eyes and nausea roiled in his stomach. Still falling, still—
And then someone was catching him, and Steve was holding him up by one side and Tony had the other, and Natasha and Clint and Bruce were all standing around him as though there was the faintest possibility that Thor would slip from either of their grips. The plastic bag had traveled from Steve’s hands to where he’d shoved it at Natasha to where she’d shoved it at Bruce, and Thor didn’t know quite where it was now because sight was difficult when his face was pressed up against the shoulder of a gift shop hoodie and his eyes were sliding shut.
“Just give me… a minute…” Thor managed to whisper as his mind began to go peacefully, blissfully, blank.
“Don’t worry, man,” someone said, and Thor could’ve sworn it was Clint, but who knew when there were two sets of arms supporting him, five figures standing in a protective circle. “We’ve got you.”