Chapter 53: Chapter 52: The regrets we choose to bear and the regrets that choose us.
A/N: Because there are no f*cking italics, please consider parts between slash-es (i.e. /bla/) as past videos or flashbacks.
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/Screeching could be heard in the labs as Stark typed. Then it stopped. Stark waited. The music to Pinocchio began to play. Ultron sang.
"I've got no strings,"
"To hold me down,"/
Thor entered the room, distracting Steve from the footage on screen.
"My friend!" he greeted, boisterous as always. "You are a hard man to find." He sat down beside him, two beers in hand, one tilted for him to grab. Steve shook his head, refusing.
"It's a big tower," he said, turning his attention back to the screen.
/The child-like voice of Ultron laughed. All the tech shone an electric blue./
"Aye." Thor nodded, putting the refused drink on the floor. "Many places to hide."
/"There are no strings on me." Ultron sang the last line./
The two of them watched most of the electronics in the labs explode in silence for a moment.
"I am not hiding." Steve said.
"Nay." Thor easily agreed and drank.
Steve hadn't expected such a simple response. Not sure what to say, he continued to watch the video. It was his sixth time today.
It always went the same. Stark would go in the labs. Ultron would scream in pain. Then, he would sing and everything turned blue. The lab would always explode after.
/A Sentry entered the room, as Stark's body lay unconscious on the floor, having been knocked out by a wave of energy that burst from the scepter. The Sentry searches for the source immediately. However, just as it reaches for it, it sees a projector dangling from the ceiling. The screws had come undone. It would fall.
Right on Stark./
"Why watch this, Steven?"
/Immediately, the Sentry leaves the scepter and flies over to cover Stark's body. The projector falls on it. Once Stark is safe, the Sentry falls on the ground and starts repeatedly hitting his head against the floor./
Steve didn't answer. The video always ended the same. The scepter gleamed brighter. Ultron stopped his self-abuse and picked it up. He flew away. Later, Stark woke up and Rhodes came in.
"He could have told us." he said instead. "He should have."
"Aye." Thor agreed again. "The Man of Iron keeps his secrets close to his chest, even when he knows secrets do more harm than good."
"We could have helped. We could have come up with something." Steve started, feeling his pent-up anger, sadness and disappointment spill. "Johannesburg wouldn't—." he stopped. He took a deep breath, and changed the channel. The news came up.
"My friend, one should not dwell on past battles so." Thor said, seeming to realize something. Steve didn't know what. Thor wasn't— He wasn't the most— He still found it difficult to read in between the lines of what humans said.
Much like Steve did.
It should have been funny, how 70 years into the future, Steve found more in common with an alien than his fellow man. It wasn't.
It wasn't.
"Regrets for— loss, may come. Should come. But wondering what you could have foreseen, what you could have done different…" he looked at Thor in surprise. The alien sounded lost in thought. "That way leads to madness."
He studied his teammate for a moment and saw grief eating at him. Saw the grief that Steve still saw in the mirror every morning, even after learning that Bucky was still alive. Steve frowned, trying to remember. Who had Thor lost—? Oh.
"I'm sorry for your loss." He said, knowing he couldn't say much more in comfort to the brother of the man who tried to invade Earth. "For Loki."
Thor chugged his beer. "Not many are." He said, somewhat bitter after. "But that is my regret to bear." he then turned to Steve. "And Johannesburg is not yours."
"That is not something that—," he started, but the clank of a beer bottle harshly meeting the glass table surface made him pause. Thor had finished drinking. Steve wondered whether he would get up now and finally leave him to his thoughts. But instead:
"Will you deny the children their regrets?"
Steve stayed silent. He forced himself to remain calm. It had been two days, but he still didn't know what to think about the twins. About how sharply their betrayal had cut, and how much he hadn't expected it.
/Oh, you naive young soul./
He had seen himself in them, he realized that now. Aimless orphans in a war, having nothing but each-other to depend on. New powers that they could not fully control, powers that both made others want them, yet distrust them. And then, forced into a foreign land, where nothing was theirs, nothing was familiar…
He closed his eyes. He had trusted them. Had trusted Wanda. She was a child. And she—.
/Oh, you naive young soul./
"Have I told you the story of how I first came to Midgard?" Thor said, then corrected. "In this century."
Thankful for the distraction, Steve echoed, "This century? You had been here before?"
"Of course." Thor nodded. "How do you think your Midgardian legends came to be? But those are tales for another time. A time with more drink than this." he said with a laugh and a glance at the empty bottle.
"I thought you crashed. Your father took your powers away from you, right?" Steve said, remembering what he could during the debriefing for the Avengers Initiative.
"Aye." Thor said. "I have never shared the full story with any Midgardian but my Lady Jane, however."
Steve frowned. He knew quite a bit about memories that were too painful to tell.
"You don't have to share anything."
Thor looked at him in confusion before laughing.
"It is not pain that has kept me from telling this tale, Captain; it is shame."
As he spoke, Thor stared mirthlessly into empty space.
"The day I was banished to Midgard was also the day of my coronation." Thor started, likely pretending not to see Steve's surprise. "I was happy and prideful, feeling ready for the throne and its duties, though I had only reached my majority a few centuries prior. Father was hopeful, but mother and brother were concerned. We fought on this only days before. However, on that day, instead of the glory I expected, I received insult. Several Jötnar broke into the Weapons' Vault, sneaking into the palace by means unknown. My coronation was postponed. Immediately, I proposed that we wage war with Jötunheim."
Steve couldn't hold back his shock. Thor had always seemed a little careless and impatient but war for a break-in?
"Father refused." Thor continued. "But my folly did not end there. I took Loki and my shield brothers and, against my father's orders, we invaded the Jötnar's realm and attacked their king. It was father that rescued us in the end. However, I still did not understand why fighting— nay, destroying the realm of the group that dared steal from Asgard despite our treaty, was not the right response for a king."
"And then you were banished." Steve finished, not sure how to process this information regarding his teammate and everything he had thought he had known about him.
"Aye."
"That is— That is worse than what the twins… Are you comparing what happened in Jotu—Jötunham to Johannesburg?" Steve asked.
"Jötunheim," Thor corrected.
"That is not the same!" Steve argued. "The kids were in grief. They only wanted to avenge their parents!"
"Aye, vengeance is a much nobler reason to wage war for."
/"We're not at war, Captain."
"They are."/
He lay back on his armchair, defeated.
"Was I wrong?" he whispered. "Was I wrong to trust them?"
Steve hadn't intended for Thor to hear, but the man answered. "Nay."
He looked up.
Thor continued. "I understand their position. The regret. The guilt. The anger that won't fade. The lack of care for the people of a foreign land. The realization that power does not demand that you protect your own people from others, but others from yourself as well. Mistakes have been made. But one can learn from their mistakes."
"Mistakes?" Steve questioned. "Mistakes don't kill hundreds of people."
"No, but anger does." Thor said.
"Normal people don't destroy cities because of anger."
It was Thor's turn to look at him surprised.
"People do not. The powerful do." he said. "Do you think us normal, Captain? Even among the Aesir, I have the power my people do not. Among your own, you, our shield-brothers and the children, hold similar power. Our anger, our mistakes, that is why we learn, why we grow. To do better."
"This is not about having supernatural strength or a magical hammer. This is about responsibility and hurting innocent people." Steve hated what he was about to say. "There were other orphans in that war, yet only Wanda and Pietro chose terrorism."
"How many of these other orphans had power?" Thor asked. "When people grieve, the world moves on. When gods grieve, the world grieves with them. Let these children bear their regrets but help them learn, help them grow."
"We are not gods." Steve insisted.
"I don't think your world agrees." Thor said, looking at the TV screen.
"What?"
A woman was finishing a speech. He recognized her as one of the members of the World Security Council.
"Johannesburg has proven that we are not dealing with an elite taskforce of people we have known and trained for years. We are dealing with superhumans, aliens and gods, and we need to finally realize that our world is not one that will be saved by superheroes, but one that will be changed by them. This is a new age, an age beyond our imagination, and we have proven unfit for it. That will change today."
The subtitles said this was Councilwoman Hawley. The WSC had gone public. When did that happen?
"Today, we learn. Today, we prepare. And we start, with the proposal of the Johannesburg Accords."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Eneid_Elisor
Eneid_Elisor Hello, dear readers!
I know I missed last week, but this chapter fought me. It fought me hard, and very much did not want to be written. After a whole week of staring at a blank page, writing one sentence only to delete it and then writing another, only to delete that too, it is finally written. And I hate it. I can't think of a way to make it better without tears of blood becoming involved, but it also needs to be here, and aaaaaaaaaaaagh, I don't want to proofread this chapter ever again. I hope you think a little bit better of it than I do. And I am sorry, I know you guys were expecting a continuation of the cliffhanger from last chapter, lol, but I am evil, so....
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