#5

The first light of the sun was painting its first brushstrokes of orange into the dark sky when Thor found Tony Stark in the hangar of the Avengers facility. He was standing with his legs apart and his arms crossed, staring thoughtfully into the hood of one of his cars, a piece of oil-stained cloth slapped across his shoulder. Thor harrumphed to call attention to his arrival but Tony took no notice of him. His eyes, now constantly shadowed by dark circles, remained fixed on the car as if the engine held a mystery he needed to unravel.

"Tony!"

The other man looked up, barely tilting his head as a greeting. Thor felt his heart break a little more at Tony's visible disconnection from himself and the world. Thanos' actions had taken their toll on every single one of the remaining Avengers but while some of them were suffering, like Thor himself, Tony Stark's spirit was crushed. The entire desolation the titan had left behind was glaring at Thor from Tony's eyes whenever he looked at him. It was as if his eyes had soaked up the misery of the entire population and it pained Thor greatly that he was unable to take away even a tiny bit of that misery. Worse still, he was about to add fuel to the fire.

"What are you doing?" Thor asked.

"I am just checking up on 'em," Tony replied in a low voice. "Some of these haven't seen the light of day since …" His voice trailed off. He mechanically went through the motions of screwing a cap back onto one of the containers in the hood and slamming it shut. "I should give 'em a proper ride sometime."

Thor let out a breath he hadn't noticed he'd been holding. "Tony, I need to talk to you about something and you are not going to like it."

"I'm not?"

"I need to be gone for a while."

The other man frowned. "Why?"

"I'm looking for someone."

"As long as you're not looking for Loki." He'd meant it as a joke but Tony realized soon enough that he'd hit the nail square on the head. "You're absolutely right. I don't like it all."

"Let me explain, please," Thor mumbled, painfully aware of how sappy his words must sound to the other man.

"There's nothing to explain," Tony snarled at him, his gaze icing over with hostility. "You're not gonna search for your whack job brother and bring him back here. He practically blazed the trail for Thanos, for God's sake! It's his fault that we're all—" Tony was cut off by his own rapidly accelerating respiration. Sweat started pooling on his forehead and he tumbled backwards, pressing his palm gently on his chest, massaging his heart with trembling fingers.

Thor felt a surge of panic. "What is it, Tony? Are you sick?"

"Anxiety," Tony wheezed, collapsed into a metal chair and closed his eyes. "It's lovely, really, and it's all your brother's fault."

Thor had no clear concept of what anxiety meant, so he simply said, "I apologize on his behalf."

Tony opened one eye and stared at him in disbelief as he took deep breaths of air, his hand resting firmly on his chest. "You can be such a dipshit sometimes," he panted.

Thor ignored the insult. "Do you need some water? I could—"

Tony held up his hand, inhaled deeply and slowly let out a long breath, repeating the procedure about ten times, as Thor stood about watching helplessly. "I'm fine." He looked up at Thor from the chair and, with the anxiety easing off, there suddenly was something else in his eyes, something besides misery. "You were saying?"

Thor debated with himself whether he could really do this to the other man—to all of them, really—but they had been huddled together at the Avengers facility for weeks without any progress. Thanos was untraceable and even if they were able to trace him, they could not defeat him. The entire world was numb with shock. Half of its population was gone, dusted, newborn babies turned to ashes in their mothers' arms; wiped from existence by a single snap of an extraterrestrial's fingers. The remaining half had lost their faith in the Avengers. Worse still, some were even casting the blame on them and who could blame them for it? Thor knew he himself might have prevented the snap if only he had tried a little harder. Not on the battlefield of Wakanda but much earlier. If he had not written Loki off as easily as he had after his decent into madness, if he had maybe visited him in the dungeons, taking actual interest in his brother's motivations, Thor might have learned that Thanos had tormented and brainwashed him. And if he had come to know this then, he would have been able to forgive his brother a lot sooner and Loki would not have staged his own death and exiled Odin to Midgard where he wasted away weakened by grief. Odin, and maybe even Frigga, would have been alive to defend Asgard and the rest of the Nine Realms against Thanos. The people who had been vaporized by the Infinity Gauntlet would still live today if he had not passed over Loki's accusation that Thor had tossed him into an abyss when in reality he had let go; if he had asked him what in the name of the Norns he was talking about instead.

"Thor!"

"Yeah," Thor mumbled. "I'm sorry. Okay." He breathed out sharply. "I know you will think me mad for this but believe me when I say I am not suggesting any of the following lightly. I have actually given this a great deal of thought."

"Oh, I doubt that," Tony sneered.

"Why? You haven't even heard me out."

"Because if you had given it a great deal of thought, there is no way you would have arrived at the conclusion that bringing your brother back from the dead is a legitimate course of action."

Thor suppressed the smile that wanted to come. "Let me explain, Tony," he repeated.

"One more thing. Don't you think the others should have a say in this matter, too?"

Thor's lips parted slightly and Tony's eyes narrowed when the implication behind Thor's facial play registered with him. "Wait, do I have a say in this matter at all?" He laughed grimly. "You're not asking for my permission, do you?"

Thor gave an apologetic shrug. "I'm asking for your opinion."

"My opinion," Tony snorted. "I give zero fucks about your brother. He can rot in hell for all I care."

"I know you think that and you have every right to do so but please, hear me out," Thor pleaded. When Tony finally signaled his agreement, Thor presented a condensed version of everything he had discussed with Valkyrie only hours before.

A simple "no" was all Tony offered in response.

"What do you mean 'no'?" Thor asked. "He could be our gateway to Thanos and don't you tell me that you don't want your revenge."

"Of course I do!" Tony yelled. "Don't be ridiculous. But your brother is an unknown quantity and we can't afford any more of those. In case you forgot, your brother is insane, Thor. Nobody would know where his allegiances lay and in a situation like this …" His voice trailed off.

"But he might be able to help us!"

"He might be," Tony conceded, "but none us could ever be sure that he would actually be on our side and I am done with uncertainties. If we want to turn the tables on Thanos, we need a stable team."

"A stable team?" Thor snorted. "You haven't slept in weeks, Stark. You are no more than a walking corpse. Bruce still can't turn into the Hulk. Steve is a devastated shadow of his former self and I have this pain inside my chest that will eat me alive if I do not make a move against Thanos soon. We have all suffered unimaginable losses and they have crippled the Avengers we used to be. We cannot defeat him as we are now and you know that as well as I do."

"But think about how insane this is," Tony persisted. "If you really think that Loki can lead us to Thanos, think again, because that actually means that Loki could also lead Thanos to us." He paused at that, his eyebrows drawing together as he mulled it over. "Nope, it's still insane. We have no army, we have nothing, and if we risk Thanos coming to Earth again, we will lose. Again. We can't afford that. Humanity can't afford that."

Thor breathed out. "You might be correct but what other chances do we have? The best-case scenario is that we get a glimpse into Thanos' mind and can use this to fight against him as a team."

"The worst-case scenario is that he gets a glimpse into Loki's mind first and declares war on us again," Tony countered, his breathing accelerating once more. "Another worst-case scenario is that Loki betrays us and uses his mental connection with Thanos, if there is one, to hand us to him on a silver platter, so that this shitbag can murder all of us. Another worst-case scenario is that he stabs you before you even have a chance to open your mouth. You see, there are a hell of a lot of worst-case scenarios here."

"But if I could get Loki to—"

"That's one giant fucking 'if'," Tony cut in, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths as he spoke. "We can't handle him, Thor."

"I think I can handle him."

Tony offered him a desperate smile, a film of sweat glistening on his upper lip. "Since when?"

Since last night, Thor thought but since he could hardly confess to that, he decided to switch gears. "I agree that there are lot of uncertainties but the uncertainties are there already, no matter what we do. Thanos could decide at any given moment that we are still a threat to him. What if he comes back here to eliminate us tomorrow? What if the effect of the Infinity Gauntlet could be reversed but only for a limited timespan? What if this timespan is already over and we have already lost our chance?" He saw Tony wince at that but pressed ahead nonetheless. "But what if we actually had a chance against Thanos when we are all together in one place and not scattered across the universe like we were during his last attack? What if Loki actually was on our side? He can be a very good fighter if he chooses to be and he is a god, which means we would have two gods instead of one this time and this can only be an advantage."

Tony thought this over, forming a triangle of his thumbs and index fingers and pressing it onto his face. "As far as I can see, there's nothing in it for Loki. What makes you so sure that he will actually help you, let alone us, to undo the snap and save the universe?"

"Because I figured out how to help him first," Thor replied, hoping that he sounded more determined and more trustworthy than he felt. "I swear to you I can bring him around."

"First of all, you actually have to bring him back though," Tony pointed out, hinting at the true unknown quantity in Thor's plan. "I mean, can you actually do that? Bring people back from the dead? Are you that powerful?"

"We will see. And if I can't, well, nothing would change." The mere thought of things continuing in the way they had for the past weeks made the pain in Thor's chest near unbearable. He could not go back to all that pain, all that guilt, all that powerlessness but least of all he could go back to missing Loki dreadfully each day. Of course, he could not entrust Tony Stark with that particular motivation. He was not even sure Valkyrie would understand.

"Alright," Tony finally conceded. "You have my blessing to look for him but don't you dare bring him back anywhere near here unless you are at least hundred and ten percent sure he is sane enough to not want to kill any of us."

Valkyrie kept watching him intently, her legs tucked under her feet on the bed, as Thor was cramming Midgardian clothes into a large bag. "What do you need all these clothes for? How long are you planning to stay away?"

"As long as I have to," Thor replied, thinking through the many worst-case scenarios that his endeavor might entail. For all he knew, Loki could be entirely out of his mind when he came face to face with him, filled up to bursting with delusions of grandeur and murderous revenge fantasies. He might have been stripped of his powers and his magic. He might not remember him at all. He might try to kill him. He might try to kill himself. Thor did not know which Loki would await him, if there would be one at all. Maybe this had been a dream after all and he was every bit as insane as his brother was before he'd died.

"I really think I should come with you," Valkyrie said, for the seventh time. She had already delivered a lecture about the unsoundness of Loki's mind and its immanent dangers to him, insisting that he would be safer and that she would feel better if he did not face him alone.

"No, you shouldn't," Thor told her for the seventh time.

"Do you think he won't approve?"

Thor laughed in response. "Val, whether he approves of you or not is the last thing on my mind, believe me."

"That lie wasn't even so bad," she mocked him.

"It might not be the last thing on my mind," Thor relented, "but it has a very low priority right now." He grabbed a watch and a wad of dollar notes from the chest of drawers. "You said it yourself, our relationship is … was complicated and—"

"I said it was toxic, not complicated."

"Alright, it is toxic, and we need to figure it out before I can bring him back here and I really don't see how anyone else being there might be of any help." Thor closed his eyes and drew his eyebrows together before he continued. "I need to do this alone, Val," he insisted and cupped her chin with his fingers. "I will be careful, I promise."

She brushed a soft kiss against his thumb. "This is by far the dumbest thing you will ever do."

"You are probably right," Thor agreed and kissed her gently. "Wish me luck."

She managed a thin smile as he reached for the Stormbreaker. "Good luck, your majesty. You will need it."

When he left the room and Valkyrie's soothing presence, he dimly remembered a scene that had been playing on the TV in Jane Foster's apartment a long time ago, a scene of men and women walking to the gallows with their ankles and wrists in chains and dramatic music amplifying the somber mood. He tried to ignore the emotional impact of the memory as he walked through the kitchen, grabbing water bottles from the fridge and a handful of energy bars from the counter. It might be nothing, a voice inside his head whispered softly. He might not even come back. Yet Thor knew in his heart that he would and so he stuffed the provisions in the bag, zipped it close and walked outside with that piece of dramatic music still playing in his ear. He let out one last breath and summoned the Bifrost.

Notes:
I'm still not over Tony's pain that was radiating off the screen at the end of in Infinity War and I don't think this chapter does justice to it but I tried my best. I'm still figuring out what to do with Pepper, since it was now apparently confirmed that she survived the snap (as I prayed she would), but I'm also sure she's approximately 10000000000% done with worrying over Tony every time a new extraterrestrial threat looms on the horizon, so I really don't know yet. But it's gonna be some chapters before the story switches back to the Avengers, so there is still time. Suggestions are also welcome.