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Thor listens in quiet reverence as Sam Wilson lists every legal, moral, and ethical issue with the “New Avengerz” title. He counts them off on his fingers, aggressively.
Thor is certain his anger is directed more at Barnes, who averts Wilson’s withering gaze, than anything else. With every word, Bucky’s jaw tightens, and Thor has been present for enough team arguments to know when one is about to break out.
He has no desire to get into it. He’ll make up his own mind about the merit of this new team. The leader, a small, blonde Russian, reminds him of old friends. The loud red one annoys him. Thor is unclear on the one called U.S. Agent; he reeks of insecurity and keeps attempting and failing to impress Thor. Ghost, Ava, stays quiet for the most part. He’s only heard her speak to make fun of the U.S. Agent.
But the Sentry; he is something interesting. There is a sadness and loss behind his confused, bright eyes. A wallflower, he avoids everyone but the members of his strange little team. He wears no costume, just pajamas and slippers. If Thor didn’t know better, he’d think a civilian had accidentally wandered in.
The argument finally begins when Bucky flies out of his seat and meets Sam in the center of the room, metal index finger digging into his friend’s chest. Thor sighs from his vantage point on the far wall. Sentry tenses in the corner of his peripheral vision, and he’s far more entertaining than the current argument, so Thor turns to face him.
Sentry (Thor should really learn his civilian name) side-steps his way behind the bar. He idly rearranges the bottles and glasses there. Thor recognizes the signs of someone attempting to appear useful when they are far out of their depth. He used to do the same as a young prince. His father’s wine goblets had never been so interesting to him as when the council members got into it.
“Because, Bucky—“
“Why the fuck did you say my name like that?”
“You have a stupid ass name!”
Thor drags a hand over his beard and sighs, remembering when Steve and Tony had yelled at each other in equally loud, equally petty ways. He can feel their ghosts here. Natasha’s sits in the form of that blonde woman currently rolling her eyes at Sam and Bucky’s antics.
Sentry jumps at a particularly loud shout, and Thor recognizes that, too. He frowns, glances around the room; no one else is watching him. Thor sighs again and crosses the floor. Sentry doesn’t notice him coming until it’s too late to politely dodge his attention, leaving him trapped behind the bar.
Thor attempts a disarming smile. By the looks of Sentry’s tense body language, he does not succeed. “Hello,” he says, then glances over his shoulder at what has become an intense bout of shoving, “Are they always like this?”
Sentry shoots an anxious glance towards Sam and Bucky. “If not them, Ava and Walker. Or Yelena and Alexei. Someone’s always arguing.”
“My family fought often,” Thor says, fingers instinctively finding the crystal stopper of a cask of expensive wine. “The ‘old’ Avengers did, too.”
“Sorry about the name thing,” Sentry says, cheeks flushing pink.
Thor shakes his head. “It’s alright. I…I have not felt like an Avenger in a very long time. My team is splintered, half of us dead…”
He loses his train of thought, then shakes his head. “My apologies.”
Sentry’s eyes are wide. “No worries.”
Something made of glass is broken behind Thor’s back, and Sentry’s reaction is much too heightened to be considered normal. Yelena’s voice enters the fray, trying to save the peace. Thor watches as Sentry’s hands begin to shake and darken. Inky blackness crawls from the tips of his fingers, rapidly spreading over his skin.
Sentry glances down and yanks his hands away from Thor, wrapping himself in a tight embrace. “I can control it,” he says, more to himself than to Thor, “I can control it.”
But the darkness is spreading up his arms now. His entire body trembles. Thor doesn’t think, just reaches for him. The second his fingertips brush his skin, Sentry’s expression shifts into panic.
“No!”
Thor doesn’t have time to register confusion before everything goes black.
He is distantly aware of more shouting. Yelena calls Sentry’s name, Bob. Sentry stumbles over himself, apologizing over and over again. Yelena and the others try to calm him while Sam demands to know where Thor has gone.
Thor opens his eyes to find out for himself.
The first thing that registers isn’t the sight before him, it’s the sound of the waves crashing beneath his feet, amplified by the acoustics of the Observatory. It’s deafening, hollowing out his core until he’s left drained and wavering on his feet. His vision blurs, focus shifting in and out.
The warring sensations of home and horror leave him nauseous. The walls of Heimdall’s Observatory seem to swallow him like the maw of some great golden beast. Odin towers over the scenery, just as imposing as Thor remembers.
That armor had always terrified him.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done, what you’ve started?”
Thor shakes his head. “No,” he whispers as the reality of this time and place settles over him. He tears his gaze from his father to see Loki, small and silent and impossibly young, curved in on himself in fear. And then, Thor, a version of himself that he hardly remembers.
The younger Thor is furious and blind. “I was protecting my home!”
“You cannot even protect your friends,” Odin shouts, and Thor feels the sting of those words even now. Especially now, when all his friends are long dead. “How can you hope to protect a kingdom?”
Thor wants this to stop. Bile rises in the back of his throat. The waves outside and beneath his feet call to him. If he has been cursed to remain here forever, he will find his way to their embrace.
“There won’t be a kingdom to protect if you’re afraid to act!”
Thor’s feet carry his unwilling body forward. He lurches, a tree taking an axe to its base.
“That’s pride and vanity talking. Not leadership. You’ve forgotten all that I’ve taught you about a warrior’s patience,” Odin says, his voice shaking in dismay.
“While you wait and be patient,” Thor hisses, the words falling from his lips like poison, “the Nine Realms laugh at us! The old ways are done. You’d stand giving speeches while Asgard falls!”
“You’re a vain, greedy, cruel boy!”
Thor rushes in and steps between them, hands planted on his own shoulders. The other version of himself doesn’t fight. Thor presses his palm over his own mouth, desperate to stop the next words.
He succeeds, somewhat. The young Thor frowns, expression contorting into something sadistic. “It’s too late, fool.”
“Get out of the way,” Odin growls behind him, and suddenly Thor is flung backward into the Bifrost key. Pain blooms over the expanse of his back. Lightning springs from it and wraps itself around him, holding him in place while the scene resets itself.
Thor struggles against it. Wrenching his body from right to left, forward and backward. “No!” he cries as his younger self challenges Odin. His father’s next words are drowned in the sound of his struggle, but he hears Loki.
“Father—“ his brother begins, only to be cut off by a growl.
Tears well in Thor’s eyes as he continues to fail. The lightning is too strong, betraying its master.
“You have betrayed the expressed command of your king,” his father begins. Thor has heard these words so many times his lips move in silent compliance, mouthing alongside him, “Through your arrogance and stupidity, you have opened these peaceful realms to the horror and desolation of war!”
Thor takes a ragged breath, sagging against his confines. Animalistic despair courses hot in his blood. He drives his heel into the floor. The sound reverberates off the walls.
Above his head, Odin slams Gugnir into the Bifrost key, powering the bridge. Thor stares at the light, transfixed and empty. Odin’s words wash over him: “You are unworthy…unworthy…unworthy of the loved ones you have betrayed.”
Thor sobs. He kicks against the ground with all his strength. Again and again until he feels it crack. It sobers him. He goes still, gaze locked on the widening gash in the floor. He plants his boot at the center, the weakest part of the fracture, and crashes onto his back.
The sky. Familiar stars, the stars of home. It’s not the tower, but Thor allows himself to feel the relief of having escaped that awful memory.
His breathing has just begun to regulate when he hears his own voice again, strained. Thor’s eyes widen, and he wishes desperately that he could climb back inside his banishment.
“I did it for you, Father!”
Thor squeezes his eyes shut, and decides that he cannot stay in this place a moment longer. He feels at his side and finds himself close enough to the edge. In the span of one deep breath, Thor rolls himself off the Bifrost.
This landing is more harsh than the last, as he collides with the ceramic steps of his mother’s chambers. The edge slams into his jaw, rattling his skull and piercing his eardrum with a deafening ringing. He flops onto his stomach and slides against the floor. When he stops, he lies still. His right cheek rests on the cool tile.
Thor pushes himself to his hands and knees. The ringing in his ears subsides. He listens; when is he now? What new horror must he relive? He lifts his head. Asgard, still. Always Asgard. His great failure. Smoke plumes in the distance; Malekeith’s fleet swarms overhead.
Frigga lies in a pool of blood. The dark elf is carted away by his lackey. Thor crawls to his mother. Her blood coats his palms and his knees, and he doesn’t realize that he’s sobbing until he reaches her. The past version of himself charges after Malekeith, but Thor does what he wished he had then.
Pulling Frigga into his lap, he buries his face in the crown of her head, “I’m sorry,” he cries, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
A vicious wind picks up, whipping furniture and candles and papers around the room in a hurricane. Thor calls to it, begging it to stop, but it does not heed his order. Instead, a thick blanket his mother had weaved flies off her chaise and into his chest, pulling him away from his mother’s body. It cocoons him, binding his limbs so tightly he is forced to stop fighting.
Prone and helpless, Thor watches Frigga die again and again until the sound of her body hitting the floor no longer makes him flinch.
Finally, the quilt relents, and he scrambles free. As he is running towards the balcony, he catches sight of the large dressing mirror his mother kept propped against the wall of her chambers. His steps falter.
Sentry stands in the center of a Midgardian room, frantically scanning for something, Thor knows not what.
“Sentry,” Thor croaks, “What is this?”
The Sentry says nothing. Thor growls in frustration and drives his fist through the reflection. The mirror shatters, and he climbs through.
If he had any hope that doing so would take him to Sentry, it is dashed as soon as the stench of burning bodies hits his nostrils. Thor gags on the heavy, smoke-filled air. The ashen walls of the Statesman expand around him until he is engulfed in it. He falls to his knees and dry-heaves until his muscles ache.
He won’t look up. He can’t. The crack of breastbones and spines and muffled screams and the steady crackle of fires blazing is enough. Even with his eyes closed he sees it.
“Thor?”
The voice is familiar, but not safe. He stays still.
Something moves in front of him. A person. Two hands cup his chin and gently lift. It’s Yelena, and at her back, Sentry. Bob. They block the sight of his brother’s twitching corpse.
“It’s time to go,” Yelena says. She smiles softly, a mirror of her sister. “I’m sorry it took us so long to find you.”
“What is this place?” Thor asks, and he’s shocked by the broken gravel of his voice.
“The void,” Bob says, picking at the hem of his blue sweater. “It’s…It’s me. A part of me.”
“No time for explaining,” Yelena says, shaking her head.
Yelena waves Bob down, and he joins the two of them on the floor. Then, she pulls Thor forward until his exhausted body sags against her shoulder. Bob wraps his arms around his back. Thor hears Loki take a final, desperate breath, and opens his eyes in the Tower.
Doom is coming, Thor thinks, but not tonight.
He has found his way to the rooftop. While he was gone, the sky had cried protest, the worst storm New York had seen in years. The thunder god safely back, fluffy pink clouds peek out from behind the high-rises, happy to see him. The honey-gold remnants of the sunset streak across the sky while twilight gathers at the horizon.
Thor hears shuffling footsteps at his back. “Hello, Bob.”
The footsteps stop suddenly. “Yelena told me what happened,” he says, “I wanted to apologize.”
Thor shakes his head. “There is nothing to apologize for,” he says, and means it. He finally turns his head to see Bob standing an awkward three feet away. “There was once a time when I could not control my powers either.”
Bob nods. “Yeah.”
Thor tilts his head towards the skyline. “Come,” he says, “I am not afraid of you.”
Bob shuffles closer until they’re side by side. Thor turns back to the sky. Throughout the city, people are switching on their lights for the night. Purple overtakes pink.
It’s not silence that stretches between them; the city is too alive for that. They bask in the way humanity becomes a collective white noise.
“I have never been able to speak about what happened on that ship,” Thor says after a while of this. The images and sounds return to him, sharper now for having been refreshed. “Everyone who was there is dead except me. Only I have borne the weight of every sickening detail.”
Bob tilts his head at this. His lips part, as if he is about to speak, but words never cross them.
“I am glad…” Thor takes a shaky breath, “I am glad that I do not have to shoulder those images alone anymore. Even though…”
“We didn’t live it,” Bob finishes, nodding. “It was terrible.”
Thor scoffs, tears flooding his vision, “Aye.”
Bob tilts his head up to the sky. “Yelena says it’s better to share the burden. It doesn’t make it go away, but it gets lighter.”
When Thor closes his eyes, he sees the Statesman again, but the image fades to nothingness, passing by without harm. “Aye, it does.”