Chapter Text
Thor doesn't mind that Steve doesn't believe in him. Most people nowadays don't. The Aesir never noticed very much; whether they were believed in or not, paid obeisance to and sacrified to or not, was never the point.
Loki has a theory, something he told Thor once, that the gods were just really creations of mankind. "They created us because they needed us," he said, and then it was, "They created us because they wanted us." It kept Loki up nights when he was younger, wondering if he was just something made of the hopes and fears of the humans, if he could change or blink out of existence without ever knowing. Thor thinks that perhaps this strange childhood fear was behind his desire to rule the Earth. The need for attention, for love, for existing.
Thor never worried about that sort of thing. For one thing, even if it was true, what could you do about it? For another thing, he simply didn't think it was true. Loki may not have known where he came from, but Thor knew; he came from Odin and Frigg, all-father and earth-mother, and he was shaped out of cloud and thunder, lightning and oak, wind and rain. These were all things that would never go away.
But he is curious about Steve's god, and so he engages him in spirited conversation one day, over a cup of the Midgard drink called coffee.
Steve tells him a tale of a gentle, kind god who was murdered by a liar who he thought loved him, and who will rise again one day when the world begins its twilight.
"He reminds me of my brother Baldir," Thor says, and Steve laughs nervously.
"I'm sure they're not really the same," he says. "Anyway, most people don't really believe in the end-of-the world stuff anymore. Or they don't tell anyone that they do."
"Whereas Ragnarok is a foregone conclusion," Thor attests. "I have been through it many times, although I do not remember it, and I will go through it many more times."
This seems to upset Steve, and he starts telling Thor about a people called the Jews, who seem to be a race of scholars and merchants, and who believe only in the father of Steve's god, and not the son. "I got in a fight over that, once," he says. "I was a little kid, and I was pretty stupid--I socked this kid for saying Jesus didn't exist. My mom told me that that was wrong, that nobody could help what they believed in, and it wasn't right to blame them for it." He looks off into the distance. "I felt even worse about that years later," he says vaguely, and then looks down at his coffeecup.
"I miss my mom," he says. He stirs his coffee, and Thor waits for him to speak. He has much more to say about the twilight of the gods, stories to tell of Odin's glory and Frigg's beauty, but he has all the time in the world to tell those stories. Steve only has decades. "I was Protestant--well, you wouldn't know what that means. But after she died, I'd go to this Catholic church around the corner and pray to Mary, even though in my type of Christianity, you're not supposed to. She was the mother of Jesus," he explains, "but she was a--a mortal. Just a normal woman who had something really special happen to her."
This reminds Thor of Zeus and his fondness for mortal women. He fathered many demigods on unsuspecting mortals (some suspecting). The Olympians are one of the few other pantheons the Aesir are friendly with. Thor remembers a century-long party on Mount Olympus, of the drinking contest with Dionysius that left him with the first and last hangover he would ever have, of Loki and Eris having a prank war that ended in the sinking of a rather pretty continent, of flirting with a short-haired young woman with a bow and nearly having his intimate parts cut off for his impudence.
"She reminded me of my mom," Steve said. "She was so loving. She wasn't judgmental. Not like the Father. I felt like I could tell her anything, and she wouldn't care. See..." He drains his cup. "That's the thing about being a Christian. It's important to act like Christ would, to be good to other people and not judge them. And I guess that's his mom." He chuckles a little. "But his dad isn't really the nicest guy. The Jews have all this stuff they have to do--they can't even eat ham. Not ever. You can, if you're a Christian--it's complicated--but there are still things you can't do. Even if they don't hurt anybody. You just can't."
Steve drains his cup of coffee, and the look in his eyes tells Thor that he's not seeing what's in front of him anymore, at least for a moment.
"Where does this Father live?" Thor asks at last.
"Oh." Steve returns to earth. "Well...that's the tricky part. See, he's nowhere...and all around us...and kind of up in heaven..." He gestures vaguely to the ceiling, and looks up. Then he looks back at his coffee, as though God were to be found at the bottom of his cup, and laughs uncomfortably again. "It sounds kind of silly when I've got the, um, the 'God of Thunder' sitting across from me. Eating pastries."
Later, Thor pays a visit to Tony's workshop. Tony was afraid when he first asked to see it, he knows. Thunder is not known for its subtlety, and Thor is not known for his delicacy, and Tony was afraid that he would run amok and break the delicate things. As it is, he became impatient when he had to explain things to Thor--first the intricacies of the metal gauntlet he was working on, then the concept of computers, and then the concept of electricity himself.
It's not that Thor doesn't understand what Tony is doing. It's simply that the words are unfamiliar, the way Tony sees things--he puts names and numbers to elemental forces Thor knows no words for, only knows in his bones. But when he learns the words, suddenly he understands, and he realizes that Tony is very clever. He catches lightning and puts it to work, creates it from lodestones and copper wires, and he makes it think.
As Thor enters, Tony is staring at a complicated metal skeleton of an arm. He drops it, and it moves, and Tony jerks his head back as though he is surprised. "That shouldn't have worked," he says. "How do you do that? I mean, I know I'm a genius, but I can't do magic. The resistors weren't even connected yet. And you come in and this thing just goes all Skynet on me." He picks up the arm and stares at it. "Do you think it's possessed? Can we exorcise a robot?"
Thor shrugs. "It's made well, Shaper of Metal," he says, and he touches Mjolnir. The other Avengers don't seem to realize, or don't seem to care, that his hammer is not only an instrument of war. Mjolnir shapes, it builds, it calls. Sometimes it does seem as though it has a mind of its own.
"Deus Mechanicus," Tony says, and he pats the arm. "So, Thunderblast, what's up? Are giant centipedes eating holes in reality again? Because I don't want to do that, if that's happening. That was weird. It was kind of like the time I tried 'shrooms. I don't want to fight a living bad trip."
Thor didn't like the centipedes either. "There is no battle today," he says. "The Captain and I had a most interesting conversation, and I would that you'd shed some light on it."
"Shoot," Tony says. He straddles a chair and props his chin on his crossed hands, waiting.
Thor fiddles with Mjolnir, wondering how to word the question. He has never been good with words, or delicacy, and the way Steve spoke about his gods, it was as though he didn't really want to talk of those things. "What are your gods?" he asks. "The gods of the people of this city, of the land."
Tony sits up straight. "Did Clint loan you 'American Gods'?" he asks, sounding only slightly concerned. "Because that's a good book, good read, Gaiman is a great guy, love his hair, but that would really, really not be a good book for you to read."
Thor shakes his head, but he makes a mental note to ask Clint for the book later. "I was talking with Steve," he says. "His god is everywhere and nowhere at once, and his son died thousands of years ago in a far-off land. His mother seems nice," he adds, "but they seem like they don't belong to this land at all."
"Oh." Tony thinks about this. "Well, the relationship between America and Christianity is, um. It's complicated. Protestant work ethic, Westboro Baptist Church, everything in between. But if you want to know who the real gods of this land are?"
He shows Thor pictures on his StarkPhone, one of a dark-haired man in a white, bejeweled suit, and one of four men walking across a street in single file. "Elvis Presley," Tony says, "the once and future king of rock 'n' roll. And the Beatles. They were bigger than Jesus." He presses a button, and music begins to play.
They listen to the music for a while. It's discordant, but somehow beautiful. The singer speaks of love, of knowing, of surrenduring to a shining void, of the color of dreams.
"Not exactly my thing, personally, but if you want to look for what people worship, it begins here." Tony shuts off the music. "I was always more of a Stones guy. Sympathy for the Devil, that's me all over."
Thor nods. "Steve spoke briefly of the devil."
Tony snorts. "Yeah. It's kind of a made-up thing to scare people into behaving, if you ask me."
"It's tragic," Thor says firmly. "The best beloved of the Father, cast to Earth for defiance, doomed to torment those who the Father loved more than him." He finds that he is tearing up, and wipes his eyes. "It seems that these stories are all familiar, in some ways. The details are different, but the patterns are the same."
Tony sticks his hands in his pockets and leans against his workbench. "Yeah, well. Some people think that's because they're all just made up. Stories people had before they had science to explain why the lightning struck--I mean, shit, I don't know, why the sun rose. And stuff. And people have the same things happen to them wherever they are, so they tell the same kinds of stories all over."
"And do you believe in these stories?" Thor asks softly. "You, who know so much of how the world truly works? You, who can bend my lightning to your will?"
"I believe that other people believe," Tony says. "I really don't know any more than that."