nexus_crossings | [Post Infinity War piece. Any Endgame spoilers must be tagged and minor in comments]

[Post Infinity War piece. Any Endgame spoilers must be tagged and minor in comments]

It starts out like a joke of questionable taste. Captain America, Black Widow, Rocket Raccoon, and Thor God of Thunder walk into the Plaza.

What that it were a joking matter. All of them are pale, beaten, and filthy. None of them says much to anyone commenting to them while they wander past people. Natasha's eyes are wide and panicked, her head turning every which way as if she could count and see all of the people passing them by. Her blonde hair is matted with blood and it hangs in clumps with ever jerky turn of her head. Steve's walking slower than Natasha, his beard and hair unkempt mess. Every step drags. His mouth hangs slightly open and moves every now and again like he might have something to say before he looks down at his feet and keeps going. Thor brings up the rear with Rocket sitting in a daze on his right shoulder, silent with a thousand yard stare that's as empty as the rest of his expression. Most of his left arm is missing, replaced by a very ramshackle prosthetic that isn't quite proportionally right for his size. In its metal skeletal fingers he carries an axe that's easily as large as Natasha is. Every now and then there is a sniffle from Rocket before he paws at his eyes and shakes his head.

Wherever these Avengers have been for the last few weeks, they've clearly been busy.

And it doesn't take much guessing to assume they've Lost.

They wander aimlessly. Eventually Rocket hops down and stops them outside a fountain. Somewhere with seating and clean water so they can tend to their injuries if they'd like. It's going to take more than anyone has to do much yet though. But they all sit. Stare. The question hangs between them all unspoken because there are no answers yet to give.

How can they possibly come back from this?

Whatever this is to them.

[This post is meant to bring several MCU muses in the comm up to Post Infinity War status. This post is OPEN TO ALL, not just Marvel characters. This is NOT meant to spoil End Game in any way. Any comments that may even IMPLY Endgame spoilers due to association with post Infinity War MUST BE TAGGED at subject level and you must talk to your OOC partner before posting them. The standard 3 weeks rule is still in effect regarding Endgame.]

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What difference does it make if Thor is poked and prodded by healers who cannot fix him, or if he is left to despair alone? Only the reminder that others still live, perhaps, and even though it is of little comfort and he wouldn't deserve it if it was, now that he's been given the option he can't bring himself to turn the offer down.

"Fine." The word slips out of him, heavy as the axe, and he feels no lighter for having said it.

He's still unfamiliar with the arm, and it takes him several long moments to find the release, fortunate only that it's not on his blind side so he can still see what he's doing. Thor sets the prosthesis aside, another piece of himself lost, and wonders how much more he can spare before there is nothing left of him at all. He feels as though he is there already, a wraith that does not know it is no longer a man.

For all of his complaining (and he is legendary at that) Bones only has to hear the words 'shock' and 'amputated' for his comm to fall silent and the good doctor PINpointing in with an emergency kit. He's only heard about Thor through the grapevine of conversation surrounding the Nexus so he does double-take when he sees the god at first. But it hardly matters who this man is given the state he's in.

Not to mention the state of the others sitting around him. Is...is that a raccoon in an outfit? Do they know how unsanitary it is to have something like that around all their open wounds? Problems for later.

Jim's dutifully helping his best friend unpack his kit. Holding the little container so Bones can grab and pull on a pair of gloves before he gets anywhere near Thor's person.

"This is Doctor McCoy." Thor probably won't care in the least who Jim's brought to his side but it feels important to keep the man aware of everything that's going on. There's no guarantee it will keep him grounded but the attempt is genuine.

"We'll do introductions later." McCoy's grumble is quiet but like every good healer there's nothing but empathy and concern underlying those gruff words. "I'm going to need to clean that and it's probably gonna sting like a bastard."

Thor pays little attention to the arrival of the healer, other than to note that he's there, puttering around with whatever tools or medicines he carries in the toolkit, and though there's something vaguely familiar about the voice, it's not until he raises his head to actually look at the man that a jolt of surprise cuts through the haze like the blade of a knife, his eye widening.

He knows that face.

Thor's hand lashes out and snares the healer's wrist, holding it immobile, and he's real and solid and... what... the hell is this? The clothes, the hair, the accent, it's all wrong. Where is his armor? The tattoos on his head? There's recognition in the healer's eyes, but not the grudging respect for royal blood, nor the shame he'd sported after serving as Hela's executioner.

But in this moment, Thor looks at him and sees another of Asgard's fallen, and his heart races at breakneck pace as if there is an enemy to fight, but there's nothing he can do but gasp for breath as he struggles to make sense of it all, rational thought momentarily swept aside by the start of what he does not recognize as a panic attack, too destroyed to shore himself up against its ambush and master himself before they can see.

There's Power in that grip. Bones doesn't try to pull away. This impossible hulking wreck of a man wearing George Kirk's face is already gripping him tight enough to stop the doctor from getting away. He's worried that grip will tighten if he tries to jerk free.

"I need you to relax and let me do this. You hear me? You get an infection and things'll get much worse 'fore they get better."

The man does not in fact seem to hear Leonard at all. He doesn't need his tricorder to see that something has the man panicking and badly. Jim's rushing over before Bones even has a chance to bark at him to help. He's putting both hands on Thor's shoulders, though it feels as though he's trying to support a wall. Immovable. Just, the wall is shaking.

"Hey, HEY! Stay with us here, okay? Breathe. Thor look at me. Watch me. In and out. Okay? I know it hurts. Just breathe. Do it. Now."

The physical contact doesn't snap him out of it, but it does catch his attention, and Thor tears his gaze away from the ghost as the captain dominates his field of view and demands his attention, that young voice practiced enough at a tone of command that even the god of thunder responds on reflex.

He lets go of the healer's wrist after a short internal struggle, reaching up instead to clutch at his chest as if he could calm his heart by sheer force of will, or force air into his lungs. It does little to ease the thundering inside of him, echoed by a rumble in clouded skies above that seems to roll from one horizon to the next, but Kirk's words slowly trickle in like meltwater moving under ice, and though it takes several minutes before he is truly matching the captain's breaths, he does eventually manage.

This has never happened to him before. What is wrong with him?

He doesn't trust his voice, but he trusts his eye even less to be able to look at the healer again and not lose himself so terrifyingly easy. "Sorry," he says at last, sounding shaken.

"There we go. Come on."

Jim's ignoring the rumble overhead even if Bones is most certainly not. The doctor's craning his neck to make sure they're not about to be caught in a sudden downpour or worse in this Godforsaken plane of reality. The sky doesn't open up on top of them and Thor does slowly calm down enough for the captain to pull back and give the man his personal space back.

"I didn't know you lot could even get those. Don't worry about apologizing. I know what that's like, at least. More than I'd like to. Was it the treatment or my medic you were reacting to?"

Thor still has no real idea what just happened, his heart still thudding heavily in his ears, though slower as it should be. Whatever it was, it's known to the captain and his healer, and that is at least a small comfort, though not much of one.

He risks a glance in the healer's direction, and finds it far easier to focus on the man's hands, rather than his face. The question causes a faint, subdued smile to tug at his lips as he recognizes the irony at work. "He wears the face of a dead man," Thor answers, averting his eye again, looking to Kirk. "A warrior named Skurge, who fell during Ragnarok. He sacrificed himself to allow our ship to escape."

And look where that ship is now.

The smile drops off his face at once, and he swallows against the lump in his throat that threatens to choke his voice.

Edited 2019-05-02 05:09 (UTC)

Jim wondered as much, though the connection doesn't seem to be quite so personal to Thor. Shocked as he is right now he supposes it wouldn't take much to set the god off into a panic. McCoy is giving them both one hell of a side eye and Jim knows he's going to be getting so many questions the minute they get back to the ship but for now he heaves a gruff sigh and takes half a step closer toward his skittish patient.

"I'm a lot of things but a warrior sure as hell isn't one of them." The doctor shakes his head ever so slightly before getting back to work. He tries not to say much, other than to let Thor know what he's doing. His readings are going to be damn useless because of course this guy isn't human no matter how he looks. At the very least he can start trying to clean up that arm if Thor will let him.

"Can you talk about what happened to you and your friends?" Jim recognizes most of them but they all look like barely warmed over death so far as he can tell. "Is the Nexus in danger?" Is that why they came here, even beaten down like they are?

This time, Thor doesn't grab at the healer or try to pull away, closing his eye for a moment as he takes a breath. There's still a tremor in his hand, and he goes to clasp it with the other before he remembers it isn't there anymore, and has to settle for grasping at his own knee instead to steady himself.

Perhaps it's for the best that McCoy's scans can't get a thorough read on him, because though his worst injuries have healed enough to keep him going, what Thor's body has been through over the past day has pushed even the Asgardian's limits. Recent full-body burns, broken bones that have now knitted together - including a pattern of healed fractures on his temple that looks as if someone had tried to explode his skull from the inside - but the arm is the worst of it, severed in one swing of something incredibly sharp and left exposed, clearly not something done under surgical supervision. Charging into battle with a prosthetic that was not made to fit him has not helped either, chafing away at what's left, and it might be the adrenaline or just that it doesn't hurt nearly as much as the suffocating guilt that haunts his every breath, but he doesn't flinch away from the doctor's ministrations.

The suggestion that Thanos might have affected even the Nexus has Thor's heart seizing in his chest as horror sinks its claws even deeper until he can barely breathe from it. It takes him a moment to find his voice, even as the shreds of rational thought he has left insist that surely the captain would have known, would have noticed if half the population had been reduced to ash. "Has anyone disappeared?" he manages at last.

"You got any allergies? I've got somethin' here for the pain but I'm not sure how well you'll take to it." Doctor McCoy isn't trying for much in the way of conversation but there's certain thing's a doctor's got to ask before he goes messing around with strange species. He's giving JIm a glance but the captain isn't sparing him a look for the moment. His attention is focused instead on the god sitting across from him.

"No more than usual. People coming and going from their worlds. No disappearances such as it is since...well. Winter." Jim was among the vanished then. But he's back now, and doing what he can to help. They look like the Vulcans did the day they lost their planet which isn't exactly encouraging given the question Thor's asking but Jim does his best to tamp down on his own spike of anxiety for the other's situation.

"The Nexus seems to be operating same as it always does." He's not sure just now if that's going to be reassuring or not.

Allergies? Thor has the vaguest notion what that is, and shakes his head minutely. "No. I don't know. I've... never needed Earth medicines." He'd been reluctant to let SHIELD run tests on his physiology, back when they had been thought to be a force for good, and Thor had only stuck closer to his decision when the organization had been revealed for its true nature. Now, without Asgardian healing magics to help him along, there is little other option.

He watches the captain intently, his single eye fixed on the young man's face and seeing none of the devastation that the Culling should have brought. His answer, too, betrays no knowledge of the genocide that has cut the threads of half of the universe. The nauseating regret at having to explain is far outweighed by the relief that it has not spread here, that the Infinity Stones have not wiped clean half the infinite multiverse as well. Trillions is bad enough, and the responsibility for that sinks heavily down on Thor with every breath.

"You would have noticed," he says, his voice barely above a harsh whisper. "Those that were taken turned to ash and blew away in the wind. Half our universe is dead, captain."

Edited 2019-05-10 12:22 (UTC)

"That's encouraging." The doctor grumbles, but he is going to increase the dosage from what he'd give an ordinary human when he administers the hypo. He may not know What Thor is, but he can tell by what few readings he's got that the man's not going to get anything out of it at human baseline dosages. "Let me know if you don't feel right in a couple of minutes."

It gives Leonard time to look over his scans, see what else--if anything--he can really offer this man. Cast a more worried glance at his companions. Are they not human, either? They look like they might need some assistance as well. Just what the hell went on here?

It's a question Thor will answer. McCoy stops what he's doing, PADD clutched in bone white fingers for how hard he's gripping it. Jim's not any better. He remembers the weapon they expunged from Yorktown and what it did to organic matter. He remembers Nero's drill and his red matter. This isn't a matter of worlds or even the galaxy. Half a universe gone? They both know what kind of scale of devastation that must entail. Better than anyone short of an Asgardian.

Jim's breath is stuck in his chest when he leans forward ever so slightly. There is no denying the truth given how they all look. Half a Universe. Snuffed out.

Eradicated.

"What kind of a weapon....Jesus." Kirk forces himself to breathe a bit steadier. "Half the universe..."

Part of him expects them to deny it, the full scale of the devastation too immense for most humans to grasp at once, as if it is some kind of exaggerated joke in extremely poor taste. In the corner of his eye, where he still can’t look at the healer directly, he sees the man freeze as if struck by lightning, and Kirk’s face is pale with a horrific understanding that makes Thor want to weep. No one should know what this is like, not even a fraction of it. Part of his mind keeps turning, trying to find some way to cope with the sheer scope of the death that wraps its coils tight around his universe, but there is none.

His voice wants to catch in his throat, forcing him hoarse as he grits the words out, a confession that does nothing to lighten the burden on his soul. “The Infinity Stones. Remnants of the primordial universe. All six, united by... by a madman. We couldn’t stop him. I didn’t stop him.”

The distinction matters, to him. He will never be able to forget it, that moment burned into his mind’s eye where he will never be rid of it. You should have gone for the head.

It is a fraction because Vulcan's loss and the potential for loss they have stopped in the past is nothing in the face of destruction on the scale Thor is speaking about but it gives them both, the captain especially, plenty of room to grasp the concept. Something inside of Jim twists hatefully especially at the word half. He can imagine all too easily the sort of despot who would design such a weapon.

Jim's sick to his stomach when he shakes his head. He can't hold back how close to tears Thor's loss brings him.

"And now you have to live with what's left." What good would an apology do in the face of that kind of senseless slaughter? It's offensive to even countenance giving one. Jim Kirk reaches out to clasp his hands around Thor's filthy one. He understands, more than anyone should. "Let us help see to you and your friends."

He can't just do nothing after hearing this.

It's such a simple statement of fact. Now you have to live with what's left. But now the thought winds its poisoned roots into Thor and takes hold, a slow dawning of the realization that he has no idea how to even begin to do that. He feels crushed beneath its weight, every breath a burden, a curse.

I'm only alive because fate wants me alive, he'd said, desperate for some meaning as to why he'd survived all the things that should have killed him. But for all his conviction, all his efforts, it has all been for nothing and now he sits in the ashes and breathes it in, and feels unmoored entirely in every way that ever mattered. Why didn't he die with honor, as he should have?

The offer of help is so small, a drop in their ocean of need, but it is all that Kirk can give. Thor had never thought to be on this side of it, paralyzed by his own horror and guilt so strongly that he had not even spared a moment's thought for the others, his mortal friends who risk so much more of themselves than him in battle. As if in a daze, he turns his head to look at them, seeing for the first time the crimson streak in Natasha's newly blond hair.

"Yes," he whispers, a desperate look in his eye as he turns it back to Kirk. "Please. I... I don't know what to do."

"You might not want to look to your world for prosthetics." Bones has Opinions about that unsanitary wreck Thor stumbled into the Nexus with. None of them good. "You could do worse than to ask around here, or let me see what we can do for you if the captain will make an excuse for us to do it."

Bones is well used to having to do his job even in the midst of tragedies he shouldn't be functional for. If he can lead the medical wing after logging his best friend's corpse among the fallen he can damn well take a look at that scowling lady's head wounds, her mute security specialist looking friend, and talk to Thor about looking for something for his arm despite hearing about massive genocide on a world that isn't his.

Not because he doesn't care, because he does. More than most. But because it doesn't stop him from having a job he needs to do. McCoy's certainty helps keep Jim steady. Helps him draw his professional demeanor tighter around himself while Thor looks so lost. The man may be a god but Jim is well used to leadership. He makes himself look as confident as he can.

"You need a bottle of water and to make sure you're not reacting poorly to that hypo Bones gave you. Let us handle this part. Just take a moment and...well. I'm not fool enough to think rest will come easily for you, but you do need to just take a moment before you set yourself off again."

Edited 2019-05-13 01:14 (UTC)

It honestly hadn't occurred to Thor yet that he will need a different prosthesis, the thought entirely forgotten after the snap that had erased all his rage and higher thought in a single moment. For a moment he forgets himself, and glances at McCoy only to quickly avert his eye when his heart begins to speed up again, perhaps more out of expectation of another panic attack than any real threat of one. "I suppose," he answers, once he's sure his breathing isn't spiraling out of control. "I know a smith, but he... won't be making anything else."

That would have been the simplest solution, a guarantee of a replacement that could withstand the full might of Thor's power, useless though it had turned out to be in the end. But the dwarven forgemaster's hands are crippled worse than Thor's, both encased up to the elbows in molten metal and left to solidify.

Is there anyone left who is not suffering?

Thor drops his head into his hand and doesn't quite weep, though he wants to do nothing else. Though the healer's medicines might ease the hurts of his body, it does nothing for the crushing anguish in his very soul itself, defeat tasting like ash in his mouth. The words settle with him slowly, and though he can't imagine ever feeling all right again, he doesn't have it in him to protest, all the fight gone out of him. There's nothing else he can do. Nothing but let others clean up the mess he has created, trying to soothe mortal wounds with bandages and hope. He has never felt so useless. Such a failure. "Very well," he says quietly, wearily.

Edited 2019-05-13 13:04 (UTC)

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[Post Infinity War piece. Any Endgame spoilers must be tagged and minor in comments]

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