Salvation || Thanos & Claire
After all was said and done, after every death was counted, after every life was changed, they had been successful. The war had been won and life had been restored to the multiverse –
After the heroes dragged their wounded from the field, after the enemy scattered and fled, after the stars were returned to the sky and the scars began to settle into the earth, life was normal again –
For the humans. For the children of Earth. They had their world back. They had their victory. They didn’t have to sift all of creation through their minds, feeling the raw, agonizing ache of all of that energy passing through. Even with Mar-Vell and Carol and Romulus, it had been a pain so intense, Thanos had nothing to compare it to. The madness of the Infinity Gauntlet had been nothing next to this. The lust for blood had been nothing. It had been hell, and when the greater powers finally were returned, the ones who should have been handling it from the beginning, Thanos had been grateful. For once in his long life, he was grateful. He had held out the longest, continuing to serve as a conduit even after the three warriors collapsed, spirits burned nearly to ashes, held out until he was sure that the restoration could go to better hands –
And then Thanos had let himself cease.
For a while, he had no body. He had no eyes, he had no heart - an organ that some would have argued he had never possessed to begin with. There was no blood to pump, no skin to feel the absolute chill of Space, and it was the deepest rest he could remember. He fell into nothing, into silence, into something very much like comfort, and there he stayed. It felt like an eternity to him, that drifting, the time of being consciousness without form, mind without purpose. He had time to look back over all of his life, the darkness, the tiny spots of life, and he had time to regret.
It was not reform, but it was something.
When he came back, when the atoms and energy of the Titan’s body came together once more, complete with his powers, with his secrets, with his schemes and his evil and his brilliance, the first place he went was to Titan – but there he learned the ugliest truth. They had returned many worlds to life, but not Titan. Titan was as he had intended to leave it, once upon a time. The world was hollowed out, nothing but ashes inside, charred, empty, lifeless.
There was no sign of his brother.
Thanos spent weeks there, examining the differences, examining the things created again, that simply looked as if they had been left behind. He listened to the radio waves, he listened to the cosmic waves, to the light, to the stars –
But he was alone. There was no one else in Titan and, as far as he could tell, there was no one else at all. Earth seemed to be the only hint of life. It infuriated him. He knew they had returned the worlds to their places – why else should they have suffered so? They had defeated their enemy, why was this victory so incomplete? He stood for hours, staring at the distant planet, a beautiful speck of light when she was visible. He worked, he toiled, he created, he invented, and he studied all that could have happened –
But there were many questions, and very few answers.
The Universe was silent as it had never been. It seemed to be filled with nothing but empty graves, unable even to whisper for their loss. Finally, when the silence became too much even for him, Thanos set out for Earth. He knew he would likely be treated as an enemy there, but it was nothing to him. He had fought and died for them, had he not? Let them break themselves with any hostile ingratitude they felt, let the wrath of Earth’s children crash against him; it would be ineffective as the waves dashing again and again against the cliffs.
It did not occur to him, then, that the waves eventually win.
When he arrived on Earth, it was immediately clear to Thanos that something was wrong. There was something dark here, an energy that called to him, sang sweetly and silently, every note poison. Hatred was seething and softly hissing as it began to coil around the planet, passing from heart to heart, an invisible plague. He heard talk of hope, but realized quickly that it meant something else, now –
Keeping to himself, keeping out of notice, a feat that was terrifyingly easy for him when he chose it, Thanos made his way to New York City. He haunted it, listening, learning. Eventually, following a young human man filled with rage and fire, dauntless despite his blindness, Thanos found himself in a church. It was old, torn between shabby and ornate, worn but still strong. He could feel the faith of the thousands who had been in here; their belief soaked into the walls, into the floor. It was held in the water, in the marble, in the stained glass and in the pews, in the frayed covers of books, in the old glass jars that had seen many a candle burn out. Saints waited in recessed worlds of pain and prayer. Everywhere, in here, the devotion and the desperation of humanity was palpable - to him.
It was late, though, well after midnight, and the place was nearly empty. He watched as the man he’d followed prayed quietly to a piece of wood, then left without even seeming to realize Thanos was there.
For the best. The Titan would rather be alone. He enjoyed it here - the place was dark, save for the flickering lights of a few candles, save for the city-light coming in blue and purple through the colored glass. Across the Universe, there were so many temples like this one that Thanos had utterly destroyed, desecrated, where the faithful had fled upon hearing that he was near, where they sought sanctuary… Yet he had never really stopped to feel one like this. He had never stopped to feel the prayers.
Standing still in nearly the center of the church, his blue eyes gave off a chill light of their own as he listened in silence to the echoes of pleas. There were so many – so many here.
And why, why was it that these echoes persisted when Titan’s did not? Pure faith could taint anything, but there was something under them, something strong, impermeable, that when his mind touched it, he shivered.
“Earth’s salvation will not be found within these walls,” the Titan said, mentally withdrawing from the experience – and it was then that he noticed he was not alone. Turning, he saw a small woman with curled hair and eyes that burned. Thanos should have sneered at her and left, but he did not. He had come here with questions - perhaps this one was, in her own way, an answer. So he nodded his head to her once and said, in a velvet tone that was so soft, it sounded familiar:
titsay
jacobvanloon
yousharknotpass
gummygunk
izzy806
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
