Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nothing had prepared Darcy for how boring the apocalypse would be. Most everything else, she'd expected. Loneliness was a given, the fear came and went, the sadness unavoidable. But all of these things had always seemed a natural part of the end of the world. Not jarring, but expected.

This was the third day running she'd knocked off from work, made her way home, and proceeded to spend a full five minutes stood frozen in her doorway, keys in hand, realising she had nothing to do and no one to see. For all that it was Friday night, she may as well have stayed at work.

She'd never felt more like Jane. And there was the sadness again. Darcy huffed a sigh through her bangs, keys and bag clattering to the ground with great drama as she dropped them where she'd stood and made her way to the kitchen. The city stared back at her through the large picture window opposite the counter - this was the nicest apartment she'd ever lived in, but even so she'd rather go back to the roachy shoebox she'd lived in when she'd started interning for Jane if it meant the world would be put back to rights.

After standing with the fridge open for a moment, gazing at the silently accusing collection of fresh greens huddled (untouched) in the crisper, Darcy swung the fridge shut and fished a frozen meal without looking from the freezer. She's stabbing holes in the cling film with a fork when her eyes fall on the paper she'd bought a week or so ago and left untouched- much like the broccoli, butternut pumpkin and sweetcorn still waiting in her fridge.

This she hadn't even bought, or at least, not directly. It had been delivered to her doorstep in a tightly-furled roll, sat there for a few days, then she'd moved it to its current position a mystery number of nights ago. The microwave beeped under her fingers, and as she waited for the meal to cook (ironically, chicken with broccoli, corn and sweet potato) she used her fork to split the seal holding the paper shut.

Darcy hissed in a breath as she read the huge words of the headline: GOD OF THUNDER'S EPIC BLUNDER. Her heart sank as she quickly scanned the page; past an unflattering paparazzi photo of Thor at a Stark party (or at least, what passed as an unflattering photo of him) clearly taken some years ago, down to a scathing few paragraphs by an author that had somehow learned that Thor could have killed Thanos, if only he had not 'put his selfish desire for revenge above the needs of the people he and the reset of the so-called Avengers claimed to protect.'

"Shit." Darcy hadn't known that - however much of it was true, at any rate. The microwave sang out happily as the timer reached zero, but was ignored as Darcy stared unbelieving at the paper, then the date at the top of the page - it was from over a month ago.

Flipping her phone from her pocket with a sinking feeling, Darcy chucked "Thor Odinson" into Google and groaned as she found more headlines like this - and worse - as she scrolled. The microwave chirruped politely in the background as Darcy scanned scathing headlines, absently chewing her lower lip as she did.

It turned out she did have a friend left after the snap. Darcy let out a heavy breath as she finally looked up from her phone and out over the view of the city. She didn't feel guilty, exactly; everyone had been so wrapped up in their own shit after half of everyone disappeared, and of all her friends, Thor certainly didn't usually seem anything other than... Well. He was the Norse god of Thunder.

Reports from close to the Avengers say Odinson, the self-proclaimed 'Strongest Avenger', appeared in the Battle of Wakanda wielding a new weapon purported to be even more powerful than the hammer he has notably used in previous Avenger engagements. This author asks, if Thor visited some alien weapons stockpile, where was the offer to bring better armaments for the rest of the Avengers?

Slight against his supposed alies aside the Asgardian Blunderer, apparently equipped appropriately to eliminate Thanos, chose instead to wound him in pursuit of an unknown end. Perhaps he hoped to gain further glory off-world with Thanos as his prize. Regardless of intent, we all know how this ended---

Maybe Thor could use a friendly face, even if he didn't need Darcy's actual help.

First, she would need to find out where he was. Fortunately, she was possessed of a very particular set of skills. Skills acquired over a long career.

...She fired up Tumblr and checked her tracked tags. Thunderchasers and Avengeready turned up nothing from after the snap, but Thursyay (which she may or may not have been active on herself in different times) had a single post from three months ago: Thor and what the poster thought was... Hundreds of refugee Asgardians? That didn't make sense. Had settled... And built? In a remote coastal location in Norway. Darcy read the post a couple more times, but it wasn't much use: online translators could only do so much.

After that it was easy: a quick Google to see the price of flights to Norway (she'd waited, teeth grit in uneasy anticipation, then been greeted by a price that was positively unthreatening, even when upgraded to business class. "Thank you, Darcy," she chirped, tapping ‘buy’ with gusto. An even quicker check after that of her bank balance was even more shocking: all work and no play did indeed make Darcy a dull girl, she'd thought, but she hadn't anticipated that it would also make her a financially comfortable one.

It didn't take long for Darcy to settle in to the work of preparing for her impromptu journey. In fact, the work of researching what visas and passports she might need, burrowing into the internet to check and double check her findings had a comfortable familiarity she'd missed since the snap. The results were surprising, though perhaps given the state of the world they ought not have been; she didn't require any documents to travel. No visas, no passports, no permits. She'd need some basic photo ID to ensure she wasn't fleeing from the law (and even then, many petty crimes had been forgiven in light of the dire need for both labour and community the world over), and that was it. In fact, if she couldn’t afford her ticket, it seemed many governments were offering jobseekers interest-free loans on funds to enter their countries to work.

Darcy checked the QR code for her flight was safely stored in her wallet app, then went to her room to quickly fling the usual sundries into her overnight bag. Wheeling it behind her as she reentered the living room, her still-open laptop waited for her on the kitchen island, accusingly.

She blew a huff of air threw her bangs. Fine, she conceded silently to nobody, I’ll let Kayleigh know where I’m going. It didn’t occur to Darcy to ask permission for leave from her boss - though in total honesty it wouldn’t have before the Snap, either. Which was why her resume was peppered with short employment stints, probably.

Hey girl,
I’m off to Norway for a while. Got a friend who really needs some help. Big guy. You’d love him. Email me.
Darce

She snapped the laptop shut, slid it into her carry-on, scooped her keys off the floor and made her way to the airport.

The microwave sings once more to a dark, empty apartment, and the cold lights of the indifferent city below.

Chapter Text

The end of the world had a funny way of twisting itself into things that were convenient, as long as you didn’t pause for a moment to think about how they’d gotten that way. On the up side, everyone seemed to struggle with it just as much as Darcy did. “Airplane food’s much better these days,” a curly-haired woman had grinned at her as they’d uncovered their meals on the flight - hers an aeroplane-sized lamb shank, Darcy’s an incredibly aromatic Massaman curry - and Darcy had grinned back, though both their smiles had faded as that brief interaction gave them both time to take in the emptiness of the flight.

All in all, the commute and flight was more efficient than it ever could have been Before, and even as she was grateful for the fact, Darcy tried not to think about it. The trip from Virginia to Norway had barely taken fifteen hours from her apartment door to the bus that ferried her to the little coastal settlement where - Darcy had read on the flight, after a more thorough stretch of her google muscles - what remained of the people of Asgard had settled following the destruction of their home world. Could a race of gods be refugees? Darcy hadn’t decided, and neither had the papers.

Unsurprisingly, once one was near enough to it, New Asgard was not difficult to find. The Norwegian people had welcomed the wayward race of alien gods like long-lost cousins, and gifted them a little coastal settlement with room to build among and alongside the buildings that were already there. From the bus leading down into the bay, Darcy had been able to make out several distinctly otherworldly structures - great halls of intricately carved wood that gleamed in the sunlight in a way that confused Darcy’s eyes.

It was far more difficult, upon finding it, to convince the Asgardians that Darcy was indeed a friend to their King. That revelation had been a big one; not that Darcy had ever met Odin, but the idea that Thor’s father, the eons-old god of myth and legend and… reality, had died was difficult to get her head around, even with half the universe having recently been turned to dust. Her heart had sunk when she’d heard it, and he wasn’t even her dad.

The sinking feeling had not abated as she’d asked for the Asgardians she knew who were not the new King to confirm her identity - Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg. All gone to Valhalla, the sad-eyed Asgardians had said. Lady Sif gone Mímir-knows-where. “Heimdall, then?” Darcy had asked, tightness in her throat, dread in her stomach.

She hadn’t asked for him initially - hadn’t wanted to bother him, surely he’d be busy, almost as busy as Thor— “The Guardian’s eyes are closed,” the statuesque woman had said, bowing her head with a hand over her heart, “may he feast in Valhalla with all the glorious dead.”

“Please,” Darcy entreated, finally ready to use the name she hadn’t wanted to invoke, not when the hurt was still so raw, “I’m a friend of Doctor Jane Foster’s, I really do know Thor, and I’d like to see him. Please.”

The warrior woman had relented, finally, though Darcy couldn’t tell if it was because she’d gotten through to her or because the Asgardian had decided that this small bespectacled Midgardian could not possibly pose a threat to her leige.

Darcy had expected the new accommodations of the Asgardian monarch to be something like The Golden Hall of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings - wooden and rustic perhaps, like much of the new buildings of the settlement, but with a certain old-world grandeur. Something that befit the status of the Earth’s most recent— and perhaps first authentic— god-king. This, however, was a shack.

A shack perhaps larger than the buildings around it, but one which didn’t look Asgardian in construction. Instead, this was a sad old stone-and-stucco building, its sides stained with the wash of ages and the leavings of generations of seabirds. If a building could slump in a sigh, this building would.

Darcy stood in the dwelling’s yard, looking up at it with her hands on her hips. It didn’t feel very Thor-like. But she supposed, her boots crunching in the gravel as she made her way to the battered wooden door, it was quite Thor-like to ensure that buildings for the people — like the grand wooden hall wrapped in scaffolding behind her a-ways — were completed before any personal lodgings for himself. She redirected a sigh upward into her bangs as she rapped sharply on the door and forcibly rearranged her face into a hopeful smirk. She could imagine how Thor might take what the papers were saying about him. She could imagine how hard it could be to feel responsible for all of this. The door swung heavily inward a little the next time she rapped on it, and she deepened her smile as she pushed through the door.

“Thor?” Time for someone else to be the strong one, she figured.

Chapter Text

Unworthy, unworthy, unworthy. He repeated it to himself like a terrible mantra, until that dark thought occupied his every moment. He told himself again and again that if Mjölnir still existed, there was no way he could lift it now. He'd failed.

He'd accepted, for a long, long time, that if he failed in a quest; if he'd been bested by some foe, he would die. It had been fact for so long, and he had so rarely even come close to losing, that the thought held no more terror for him. His face was buried in his hands, his fingers over his eyes. He didn't want to look up and see Stormbreaker where it rested against the wall of his house. The hall of the worldless king. He didn't want to look up.

Because he had failed, but he hadn't died. No Valhalla for Thor. The damnation of it twisted in his gut. No, everyone - everyone - else had died. Countless billions. God of Thunder. Not for the first time, he thought he was going to be sick. Unworthy.

He didn't want to look at Stormbreaker because he could feel it judging him, too. Perhaps it, like Mjölnir, was not all it could have been. Mjölnir’s handle was- had been- too short, for a war hammer, a result of the forge not being hot enough in its construction. Had he failed in that, too? If he had held on in Nidavallir for just a little longer, held the forge open a few seconds more, would Stormbreaker have been sharp enough to cut all the way through the Mad Titan’s chest? Down to his spine? To make that one strike a killing blow?

Reluctantly he raised his gaze to the axe, which sat, mute and accusatory, where he had left it. No. The axe was as sharp and deadly as ever a weapon of uru had ever been. It was not a fault in the manufacture. It was a fault in its use.

It had been sharp enough, in the end. It was a Thanos-killing kind of weapon. He was dead, now. For all the good that did anyone. Late. Far too late. Thanos would not see Valhalla, nor Hel, for whatever little that was worth. No eternal existence on any plane the King of the gods of Asgard had dominion over. The Mad Titan would have an infinity of nothing. Of oblivion.

Thor's face returned to his hands. He had gone to the Worlds Tree. The King of Asgard could touch its bark, could climb down to where Niflheim was nestled softly in the embrace of the tree's silent, eternal roots. He had passed Garmr - a King of Asgard could do that, too - and he had searched. He had searched and searched among the souls of the peaceful dead. He had gone to Valhalla’s golden threshold and, his heart aching, peered with his one true eye into the halls of the valiant. It should have been overflowing, so many had fallen in battle with the Mad Titan. But they weren't there. They were not there. He turned away from the light before he could be seen.

Turning his back to the golden warmth of that great hall, he began to walk. Away from the light, away from the warmth, he walked, and walked, and walked until he was in the complete darkness of Naströnd, where even an Allfather could not stay for long and emerge again. The feeble hands of the souls of the truly wicked had clung and clawed at him, scrabbling and seeking to anchor to him as he searched. But they were not even there, in that place where light and heat could never dwell. Where even he had shaken and shivered with cold.

The victims of Thanos - the victims of Thor's greatest failure - were not in the lands of the dead. He couldn't tell the Avengers. They would not believe him; it was hard enough for them to accept that gods were real. It was hard enough for them to accept the enormity of this loss, without him telling them that there was indeed an afterlife, a realm of the dead as real as Midgard… and their lost ones were somehow being denied it.

His fingers dug into his scalp, nails biting in in sharp crescents of condemnation. As though they had never lived at all.

Thor had thought that if he could find the lost in the realm of the dead, perhaps he could restore them. Bargain with the Nornir, trade his fate for theirs; a life that could extend to the end of existence in exchange for billions of brief, bright, mortal ones. He ground his teeth together hard enough to feel the lightning start to snap and roil in his blood. Nothing he could think of was enough. Unworthy. What was the use of gods that did not protect their people? What good an Allfather whose failure shattered life across the cosmos?

Knock, knock, knock. Thor straightened in his seat, raised his knuckles to wipe wetness from his left cheek. He tried not to let his people see his misery, even though he knew Val’s keen eyes saw straight through his forced smiles and fake laughter.

“Thor?” The voice that filled the quiet house was not one Thor had expected, and he rose immediately to his feet, the building’s battered wooden floorboards creaking with his movement. Despite everything, his heart felt a little lighter. A life not lost to the destruction of the Infinity Stones, not snuffed out by his failure.

“Darcy Lewis?” His voice was not what he wanted it to be, quiet and subdued, lacking any echo of the thunder that was his hallmark. She ducked her head around the corner, bespectacled face grinning at him from beneath bangs, an oversized beanie, and a sumptuous scarf. Thor’s mouth - surrounded by whiskers a little unrulier than usual - twitched in the first smile that wasn’t forced in Norns knew how long. He stepped towards her, stumbling minutely on his cloak, discarded upon his return from Niflheim. The smile he offered was a mere shadow of what he’d intended, but he raised his arms wide in greeting all the same.

Thor cleared his throat. “Please, come—”

Darcy crossed the room in three swift strides, and wrapped her arms tight around his middle, pressing her cheek to his chest. The big Asgardian froze as she hugged him, the warmth of her arms and the gesture slowly seeping through his armour. Thor lowered his arms slowly, uncertain, unbalanced. She gave him a little squeeze, and finally, Thor let his arms rest around her shoulders. He felt warmer than he had in months.