Avengers 1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Breaking the radio silence with a hastily scrapped-together story written while procrastinating summer homework! How wonderful~ I know very few of you are my Hetalia watchers, but for those who are; I'm sorry! X/Y kinda fell onto the backburner after The Avengers came out and I fell off the Hetalia archive, but I still love the story and as such it shall be finished! And I'm also working on a PruHun oneshot, so expect that too :) **

**ANYWAY! This isn't up to my usual standard of "reviewed for weeks with a red pen" but I'm curious as to how this new fandom will respond, so viola! Expect one or two subsequent parts within the next few weeks. This story isn't too seriously thought out, but I figured "Hey, I havent written the obligatory Be Careful What You Wish For archetypical story yet. Why not now?" This was actually inspired by something I saw on deviantart, depicting the earth as seen by the righteous as completely black and white. We all know that there are shades of gray, but Movieverse Thor doesn't seem to have realised this yet. Please excuse any spelling and gramatical errors, I have no Beta and it's quite late. **

**The Consequences of a Righteous World**

**Part One**

Loki was a firm believer in balance. There is always a balance, an equilibrium of sorts, to ensure that the universe remains stable and life a struggle. There could be no happiness without sadness, no sadness without happiness. There could be no light without dark, no dark without light. No good without evil. No evil without good. And Loki understood that neither part could be hindered, nor squelched, no matter how hard so-called 'peacekeepers' and 'heroes' tried.

As the god of mischief, Loki was a constant player in this balance. He understood that his mischief was keeping the balance, providing a far more positive outlet for the negative forces of the universe than many of his counterparts would.

Therefore, it stands to reason that shallow minds of the Aesir never ceased to vex him.

"Your mischief causes naught but trouble!" Thor chastised, pacing before the throne. Odin sat behind him, chin high, eyes low, staff planted firmly beside him. It was to Thor that Loki's punishment fell, and Thor would make sure his brother faced justice. "Your lies carve skin from the backs of innocents! Your evil is felt across the nine realms, your wake spreading beyond even that! You have brought destruction, death, carnage, and misery! Odin forgive me, but I fear you would herald Ragnarök if given the chance." His voice echoed as loudly as the following silence, filled again quickly by the clacking of his boots. He continued with a softer tone; that often reserved for disciplining unruly children. "You are restrained, and yet your power grows daily. Soon, nay, now, we may be unable to hold you. Still you remain. Certainly! For some devilish purpose we are not yet privy to! So tell me, brother, why should we not kill you where you kneel?"

Loki looked up, his neck craning. Despite his proximity to the floor, he would not be looked down to. He was strong. The muzzle clamping his tongue jiggled when he jerked his chin, the angry shine in his eyes saying what his words couldn't.

Behind the would-be-king and the will-be-king, Odin Allfather tapped his staff against the floor. The muzzle fell to the floor with a clatter, and the father of all things spoke. "Defend yourself, Loki, but do so with discretion. A single lie and your voice will be taken from you with no hope for it's return."

The trickster wiped the corner of his mouth with a shoulder, his arms bound painfully behind his back. "It is typical of you, _Father," _he spat, "so eager to silence my lies, you would not care to wait for the truths that would follow. Tell me this; do you silence all of your prisoners before you pull what you would consider the truth from them? Or am I a happy exception?"

"You are a liar, Loki. Your truths are muddied."

The trickster laughed. "My truths are the most sincere truths your ears would ever hear, should you only look for them, and as few and far between as they are. Now, I would gladly tell you the truth, should you ask nicely."

Odin said nothing.

Thor looked on angrily. "Tell us your 'truths', brother. I asked you once before, who controls the would-be-king?"

"I am not your brother!" The room seemed to freeze. Lies would silence the Silvertongue. For a moment, Thor feared all was for naught – for Loki was his brother despite his belief otherwise – but then Loki opened his mouth and spoke again, this time through a devious smirk. "I speak only the truth."

Something overcame the prince then, as his resolve crumbled to ash between his fingers. His father stood. He took two steps forward and with the end of his staff nudged Loki's chin, guiding him into a standing position. "Then speak, Silvertongue. Show to the court the evil that hides beneath the skin of an Aesir."

For a beat, Loki prepared himself. He made a very important decision then – born not in anger and thirst for revenge but from the desire to teach such ignorant regents a lesson – that would forever revolutionize the realms of Yggdrasil. And then he began.

"No evil lies beneath this skin of Aesir. Malice, certainly, but not evil. Asgard teaches such a righteous view of good and evil, does it not? There is good, and there is evil, and that is it. Good brings only happiness, evil only melancholy, and that is it. You have been blinded. But I can see. You would have peace eternal, joy eternal, happiness eternal, if only you could eliminate all you deem 'evil'. So you think. But without that which you have deemed evil, you will see horrors the like of which you have never known."

Something caused the trickster to shiver. It was a complete, encompassing shiver, that of a man anticipating death. "I was saved from my fall by the Eternal One, who was to destroy me then rebuild me as he saw fit. A weapon, if you will. The deed was nearly done, but there was not enouth time. I was sent to Midgard prematurely, to retrieve the Tesseract for the Eternal One and my fellow acolytes. But the Tesseract _saved _me from the Eternal One.

"It showed me this truth, among many. There is a story on Midgard, of the creation of all life self-aware. The Great Creator – even greater than you, Allfather – planted a tree to bear fruit. This tree was called the Tree of Knowledge and it held that all that the Great Creator knew, because the seeds from which it had been planted had been since a time before even him. They are the same from which the great Yggdrasil was grown. When _his_ creations ate from the tree, they became as knowledgeable as the Great Creator himself. The story is true, though not even you are aged enough to remember it, Allfather. The Great Creator burnt the tree after this betrayal, but collected the fruit, for such knowledge is not to be wasted. So he hid them about Yggdrasil for us to find.

"It is said that Aesir are the descendants of those who first feasted on the fruit. That the other realms are primitive and stupid because their ancestors ate not the fruit of the tree. It would certainly explain our – your – sense of superiority. I digress; as millennia have passed, all those who have but touched the fruit have been changed. We have known a child of such fruit our whole lives, and yet we knew it not. For many years the fruits were rare, taking many different shapes. In our time there has been but one. The last fruit of this tree I have touched, I have tasted. I have always believed in balance, that for every action there must be another, opposite, counteraction, and the fruit of knowledge has only brought me vindication."

Thor interrupted, "What mean you by all this, Liesmith? You tell such a tale and hope we forget what was demanded of you."

Loki laughed. "I tell no lies, my voice is proof enough of that." Again he shivered. The prince wondered if the action was voluntary after all. "But my time here grows short. You have said that you can no longer contain me. You are correct." A soft blue glow melted the cuffs from his wrists. Thor took a backwards step, a tiny spike of fear forming in his stomach, but the all father remained resolute. His gaze did not falter. "I am hunted. Should I stay, the Eternal One would find me and this time succeed in remaking me. I must go. But if I am to learn the consequences of my actions, you too shall learn the consequences of yours."

He lifted a hand into the air and with six graceful swipes painted a spellcaster's circle in his aura. Thor's hand fell to Mjolnir at his waist, but the Allfather remained resolute. "If you will not hear my lies, then I will not speak. If you will not tolerate my mischief, then I shall make none. If you are not fond of the chaos I create, then let there be peace. Through peace you shall taste true evil. We will see how happy you become." The circle glowed a bright red, then moved toward the trickster, shrinking, finally making a home on his forehead before fading away. "I bid you farewell, Allfather. I bit you nothing, Thor, but good luck. Because now you have lost not only a brother, but the only chance at happiness you ever had."

With that he disappeared, not even a wisp of smoke to prove that he had ever been there in the first place. Thor looked to his father, who he had learned to defer to since his banishment, but the Allfather's gaze was trained on the spot where Loki had once stood. "Father," the prince began, "what do we do now?"

Odin Allfather tapped his staff against the marble, a tiny wave of energy flowing out, over all of Asgard, over all the nine realms. He sighed. "Loki has left the Realms of Yggdrasil. Now we return to our lives."

...

**Please review, I crave feedback!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Yay! Finally got the guts to write part two of this little diddy. Not quite as fond of it as I am of the first part, but it took me three tries to get the beginning right, so...yeah. Just a warning, before I get going, I totally butchered the Marvel Universe and Norse mythology here. Kinda not all my fault, it'll fall into place later, but for now, just bear with me. It'll get better. I promise. **

**Additionally, this'll probably be another one to three chapters long, depending on where the next chapter takes me. It also might be a little bit of a wait, because it's college application season and that is something I desperately need to do. Thank you all for your patience! **

**The Consequences of a Righteous World**

**Part 2**

The great peace that fell over the earth made Tony Stark thankful he had pulled from the weapons industry. It was only seven months before Hammer industries failed completely, and no doubt Stark would have followed.

It was funny; as if a switch had been flicked, wars stopped, unrest quieted, and peace settled like a blanked to warm humanity. Tony Stark would be the first to admit that he had been thoroughly warmed. Everything that had ever been wrong with him didn't seem so momentous anymore. All his rough edges had been buffed away on the sandpaper of this new, glorious peace. He could turn on the news each morning and expect _good _news, and he was _happy_ about it. He found himself sitting through board meetings quietly and with a smile. He found himself heading home without a word of complaint when pepper told him he couldn't afford to go out; not that he even had the desire to. He thanked Happy with sincerity, he said 'hello' to the doorman, and he made idle conversation with Jarvis.

And he found himself working!

Oh, he had always been rather industrious. From a very young age, Tony Stark was thinking and building and creating – it was a compulsion, as natural as breathing and just as important – but he had always had other interests, too. Now, there were no such other interests.

No cars.

No women.

No movies.

No public appearances.

No catch with Rhoedy.

No dinner with Pepper.

He spent days on end in his lab, and because this was not altogether unusual nobody thought to check up on him. They didn't think anything was wrong.

Of course, nothing really was. And that was the exact problem. Tony knew that he should be reveling in this freedom – freedom from pain and desire and distraction – but something had taken its place. An itch. He'd had many similar itches before, sex itches and stupidity itches, but it simply couldn't be. It couldn't.

So, he tried to scratch it.

He worked. And worked. And designed. And built.

The world changed in three weeks. Eco-friendly pesticides. Cars than ran on water. The cure for cancer.

Pepper was worried. Rhoedy was worried. Even the righteous Captain Steve Rogers – who had applauded Tony's newfound dedication at first – was worried. But Tony wouldn't let them in the workshop. Jarvis's overrides had been overridden.

Finally, finally, Steve broke the door down. And there Tony Stark lay, face pressed against the blueprints for the Mark X, as serene as if he were sleeping.

But he wasn't sleeping.

The day they buried Tony Stark was the day Hell came to earth.

In the time that it took the engineer to work himself to death, the rest of the world began to feel the same itch that he did.

Of course, the geniuses were almost all gone by then. All the smart ones; they felt it at about the same time as the prodigal engineer. The intelligent were particularly prone to itches, you see, and now that they had nothing but peace they had no outlet. No way to scratch. And they, the only ones with any ability to figure out what was going on, were dead, dying, or insane.

Who ever else would an intolerably itchy society turn to?

Politicians, of course.

But everyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that politicians are mostly worthless. And they were itching just as bad as everyone else.

It soon built to intolerable levels, and the peace that once engulfed the planet was set alight; for what better a kindling for anarchy than peace? Than boredom?

Where the headlines were once sparkling good news, happiness, and a disturbing lack of crime they were now filled with tales of death, horror, and misery.

In Bangladesh, forty homeless people committed suicide. They shot themselves, all forty of them. Two blocks over, a religious-anarchist movement used the deaths to bolster their cause.

In Germany, a feminist-socialism movement caught wind. A mob of near fifteen-thousand women castrated all the men in a three-block radius from the French Embassy.

Four-hundred-thousand children were systematically raped and murdered in sub-Saharan Africa by some odd combination of militant rebels, actually military, revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, and disgruntled adolescents over a period of two weeks.

Nobody really could pinpoint who had started it, but Palestine and Israel eagerly exchanged weapons of mass destruction – biological, chemical and nuclear – birthing the first ever full WMD war. India and Pakistan followed not long after, followed short after by North and South Korea. Somewhere along the line Iran thought 'what the heck?' and fired it's only weapon at the United States, which was about the worst decision that anyone could have made.

Meanwhile, murders skyrocketed. Organized crime underwent a resurgence. Gang wars spread and more and more civilians got involved. It was a very dangerous time to be a mortal on Midgard.

But not as dangerous as it was to be a Frost Giant on Jötunheim.

Because relations between Asgard and Jotunheim were so poor, Odin did not learn about the other inhabitants of the planet until it was far too late to do anything about them. Millennia ago, before Laufey and Odin were even thoughts, when Ymir was building his race, the Storm Giants ran free. Big and burly and horrifying, they fought Ymir and his posterity.

The Storm Giants brought tragedy to Jötunheim; the brought heat, they brought sun, the brought stagnancy, and in their wake they left pain and destruction beyond the comprehension of lower beings.

It took many generations, but finally the Storm Giants were locked away in the heart of Jötunheim, frozen where they stood until the time when the ice melted. The ice was never to melt though; it was the essence of the planet, kept alive by the souls of the greatest of Jötun regency, by the power of the Casket of Ancient Winters, and a whole bunch of other compounding factors.

As one would guess, Jötunheim was in a bad way. The great King was dead, his rightful heir gone from the realms, and the casket of ancient winters buried deep within the Aesir's treasure vault. The ice began to melt. The Storm Giants ran free. Slowly, Jötunheim began to die. From his seat of power in Utgard, the sitting regent Helblindi called for a page who called for a page who sent a pigeon to Asgard, asking for counsel with the king. As was expected, the invitation was refused, and Helblindi mounted a horse and took off for Asgard.

Odin was not one to turn away a guest, not even a Jötnar guest, but Thor was. It was by the graces of the Norns that Odin was present and hushed the kingling away, taking the giant-king into the conference room and sitting him at an ovular table.

Helblindi told his tale. Odin listened carefully from the other side of the table. Thor listened carefully from the other side of the door. And when he finished Odin sighed, old and tired as he was.

"I see your plight, giant-king," he muttered, his one good eye drooping. "But there is little we in Asgard could do to quell your rebellion. You see, we are facing our own."

The Jötnar's eyes widened – the Aesir regency had been in place for as long as anyone could remember, and none dared rise against a family of such ancestral magic. But Odin explained that the family was no longer as strong as it had been. Like a tree with a severed branch, they were unbalanced and prone to infection. Where there had always been many sons there now was but one, and he was destined to be a fool-king, not fit to lead Asgard to prosperity.

From behind his door, Thor scoffed quietly.

It was all Loki's fault, really. The Allfather _knew_ it _all_ was Loki's fault, but he didn't blame all of it on his wayward son. "When Prince Loki attempted coup on your world he split ours instead. There are a good many Aesir who would rather see his kind – charismatic, militant, intellectual conquerors – on the throne than our ruling family. And with Loki gone, the movement has no organizer, no figurehead of order. It has become an anarchist movement." Thor did not scoff at that. He feared his throne would be taken by the rebels just as his father did, though the old man never showed it. Then Odin did something Thor had never expected. "However, the Storm Giants cannot be allowed to return. I shall return to you the Casket of Ancient Winters should you swear on you and yours it shall not be used to aid rebels in Asgard."

The young king's eyes widened. He made move to push the doors open but they were jammed shut, locked magically in place. Odin knew that Thor was listening – he knew his first son better than any save his second – and he fully intended to keep the child away.

Helblindi took the offer gratefully and left, wishing well on the House of Odin.

There was a fight after words, between the kingling and his father, but Thor lost and thus does not like to talk about it.

Instead, he endeavored to _do _something about it.

He had not the time for three years afterwards, during which the nine realms fell into chaos that they had never known. Between a sudden onset of the Odinsleep and Thor's official coronation, there was little time to do anything at all, not even cap the problems of other realms so they would not leak into his own. The Casket of Ancient winters was not enough to push the Storm Giants back into the heart of Jötunheim. Surtur, the great fire demon, had reclaimed his throne. The soul-eating Disir escaped their imprisonment and consumed warriors as they were carried to Valhalla. Midgard, poor, pitiful Midgard, had not heroics enough to protect them from the shadow monsters, the life suckers, the plasmid scourge that crawled up from the cracks in reality to torment them.

Thor was Midgard's only hope, but Asgard's king. It was not a difficult decision. As it was, the Avengers stood to protect the tiny realm, if only they could figure out how. He was _sure_ they would figure out how.

But three years afterwards saw Thor standing before the graves of nearly all of his once-comrades. Tony Stark had gone quietly into the night, before the horrors had truly begun (perhaps they would not have been so horrible if the man had lived to engineer a solution, find a way to fight enemies that had no shape or touch). The agents were laid out on his left, Miss Potts on his right. He knew not which of the stones marked the Furious One or the Lady of the Hills as he could not read the Midgardian scripts, but he knew they were there. The great green beast – Hulk, he believed it was called – still lived, somewhere on the outskirts of society, Banner having succumbed to the monster entirely when he had no strength left to fight it. Captain Rogers was alive, presumably, but he knew not where.

He wondered vaguely if Jane still lived. He hoped not. It was too terrible a world now for one so soft and beautiful.

Amidst these thoughts came another. A dangerous thought. He remembered back to the brother he one had, the brother that had promised chaos in his absence, who had spoken nonsense about the fruit of Yggdrasil and of misery from peace. Loki had not set foot in any of the nine realms since his departure, and many a night had Thor spent awake, pondering his once-brother's fate.

It seemed poignant to find him. Find him and beat his face into the ground. Find him and then find out what all this was meant to teach.

Thor didn't know where to start looking. But Odin Allfather would, certainly. It would be a heavy blow to his pride to ask for such help, but Thor's pride was not all at stake.

Perhaps he was maturing.

**A/N: Tell me what you think. And if you see any glaring spelling or continuity errors, let me know and I shall fix them post-haste! **


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Avengers, Drama, Supernatural