[One week later]
The universe carried on as it always had: boisterously, with a jittery energy, and filled with whispers built upon lies, stacked so high that truth itself seemed lost somewhere in the pile.
One thing was certain: Gorr the God Butcher was dead.
How he died was another story.
Across distant pantheons, gods whispered Thor's name like a prayer and a curse. The last god seen facing Gorr. The last one to survive him. In their minds, the math was simple. Thor Odinson finally did what the rest of them could not. He killed the butcher.
Only Heimdall and Odin knew the truth.
...
[Back on Earth] [Stark Tower]
Thor sat on a couch in the mess hall.
The television played some loud human action movie involving explosions, slow-motion running, and dialogue that Thor found very entertaining.
Before him sat a table completely buried under food. Pizza boxes stacked like a defensive wall. Noodles from three different countries. Shawarma, tacos, a steak, and a pile of dessert. And not to forget, beer.
Thor ate while watching the movie.
He shoved another forkful of noodles into his mouth and chewed slowly while the movie shouted in the background. Normally, he would be halfway across the Nine Realms by now, chasing danger, swinging Mjolnir, proving himself through action. That was how it always worked.
Except now, when he reached for the hammer, there was nothing.
The Bifrost had been repaired days ago, and Heimdal called for him, but he refused to go. He looked toward the corner of the room.
Mjolnir sat there.
After Gorr's death, the hammer simply dropped beside him. He was able to pull it up once, but couldn't call it like before, and the weight felt heavy in his hand. Now, after a week, he simply couldn't pull it up.
Thor frowned and grabbed another slice of pizza.
'Worthy.'
The word sat wrong in his chest.
He had always thought worthiness was proven through battle, sacrifice, and strength. He had bled for realms and saved countless others. If that did not qualify, what did?
Thor dropped the pizza.
It slid off his fingers and landed on the floor with a soft, greasy slap. He did not even look down. He leaned back into the couch instead, hands resting on his stomach, eyes closing as the noise of the movie washed over him without meaning.
Tony's voice replayed in his head, clear as if the man were standing right there.
"Gorr was right. If I were in his shoes, I'd have done the same thing. And so would you."
Thor swallowed.
At first he had rejected it outright. Gorr was a murderer. A butcher. A creature of rage who blamed the universe for his pain and answered it with slaughter. Thor had fought monsters like that his entire life. There was nothing new about it.
Except Gorr had not been lying.
Thor saw it now, and the realization gnawed at him in the quiet moments when there was no battle to distract him and no cheers to drown out the thoughts. Gorr had lost everything. His gods had listened to his prayers and done nothing. They had feasted and laughed while mortals starved and begged beneath their temples.
Thor had wanted to deny it, but every memory betrayed him.
The banquets of Asgard. The songs sung in his honor. The way mortals looked at him with awe and relief when he arrived, as if the mere sight of him fixed what was broken. He had enjoyed that look. Not maliciously, not consciously, but it had felt right to be needed, to be admired, to be worshipped.
A god worthy of praise.
His jaw tightened.
Gorr had called the gods vain, selfish, and vengeful, and Thor had shouted back with his hammer and his lightning instead of an argument. Now the words echoed louder than any thunder.
If he were born powerless. If he had watched his people suffer while the gods ignored them. If his prayers were met with laughter or silence. Would he not have hated them too?
Tony had not argued with Gorr's reasoning. He had ended him because the path Gorr chose would have burned the universe, not because the hatred itself was unjustified.
Thor exhaled slowly and opened his eyes.
His gaze drifted to the corner again.
Mjolnir sat there.
Somewhere deep inside, a quieter thought had taken root, one he had tried very hard not to look at.
Did mortals truly need gods at all?
Thor shifted, unease creeping into his bones.
He had seen mortals fight without him. He had watched them stand against impossible odds with nothing but stubbornness and fragile bodies that broke far too easily. He had seen them protect one another without prayers, without divine intervention, without expecting reward.
They did not need worship to act. They did not demand gratitude to care.
And he.
He had grown up knowing he was destined to be revered.
The idea sickened him now.
Thor pressed his hands over his eyes and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His shoulders slumped.
If the gods vanished tomorrow, would the universe truly be worse? Or would it simply learn to stand on its own?
The thought felt like betrayal, and worse, it felt honest.
No god deserved love simply for existing. No hammer should answer a hand that believed itself entitled to it.
Mjolnir did not move because Thor did not believe in Thor anymore. His own self-doubt caused the hammer to judge him unworthy.
He let out a short, humorless laugh and scrubbed a hand through his hair.
'I still have so much to learn, father.' Thor thought.
The movie exploded loudly in the background as a building collapsed in slow motion. Thor watched it with unfocused eyes, the food growing cold around him, the hammer silent in the corner.
For the first time in centuries, Thor Odinson did not feel like a god.
...
[Meanwhile, A.I.M. HQ]
The facility did not look like a base for world domination.
From the outside, it was buried beneath a dead stretch of desert, disguised as a decommissioned geothermal research site that no one had cared about in decades. Cracked solar panels baked under the sun. Rusted fences leaned at lazy angles. Warning signs flapped in the wind, half-buried by sand and time. Satellites ignored it. Governments ignored it. Even Stark's global surveillance grid skimmed past it.
Underneath, it was anything but dead.
Miles below the surface, the machines ran, and scientists worked in their labs. Quantum compressors, neural lattice printers, Gene-forges running calculations that would make most universities implode.
Armed security walked beside them, carrying energy weapons.
Advanced Idea Mechanics had learned the hard way that subtlety lasted longer.
Andrew Forson walked through the main corridor with his hands clasped behind his back. He was wearing a navy blue coat and looked around 30 or something.
Forson had earned the title Scientist Supreme the hard way, by outthinking, outlasting, and occasionally outliving anyone who challenged him. Hydra had underestimated him once. Strucker had dismissed him as a technician with ambition instead of a visionary with teeth.
Forson smiled faintly at the memory.
A.I.M. did not bow to flags or gods. They bowed to progress.
He stopped outside a reinforced lab door marked with a simple designation.
PROJECT: ASCENSION
The door slid open with a hiss.
Inside, the room was cold and sterile, illuminated by white lights that reflected off glass panels and steel tables. At the center of it all stood two containment cells separated by a thick transparent barrier.
Maya Hansen was pacing.
Her hair was tied back messily, her lab coat wrinkled, and her eyes were sharp despite the exhaustion sitting behind them. She stopped when she noticed Forson and crossed her arms.
"So," she said. "Let me guess. You're here to tell me this is for the good of humanity."
Forson chuckled lightly as he stepped inside.
"No," he said casually. "That line is for politicians. This is for survival."
In the other containment cell, Aldrich Killian sat on a stool with his hands clasped, posture calm to the point of irritation. He looked up at Forson with a tight smile.
"You really should work on your recruitment methods," Killian said. "Kidnapping tends to sour professional relationships."
"You are here," Forson replied. "Which means it worked."
Maya scoffed. "You dragged us halfway across the planet, locked us in cages, and expect cooperation?"
Forson turned his attention fully to her now.
"I expect results," he said. "Cooperation is optional."
He gestured toward the wall behind him, and a holographic display flickered to life. Data streams scrolled past in dense columns. Genetic structures, energy readings, combat projections, and casualty estimates layered over one another.
"This is the world you now live in," Forson continued. "Tony Stark has built gods out of men. Not symbolically. Literally."
Images appeared. Stark in his armor glowing with cosmic energy. Hulk tearing through a mutated beast. Mutants training openly under international protection. Enhanced teams operating with full legitimacy.
"A Hero Program," Forson said, his tone flat. "A monopoly on power enforced by one man's ego and a council that answers to him."
Killian leaned forward slightly. "And you don't like monopolies." Even though he was talking to Forson, his eyes were on the data stream.
"I despise inefficiency," Forson replied. "Right now, the balance of power is broken beyond repair. Governments are irrelevant. Militaries are obsolete. Innovation is centralized under Stark Industries and its allies."
Maya stared at the projections. She studied the genetic structures.
"And your solution," Killian said slowly, "is a super soldier serum? That's stupid."
"No," Maya walked forward, with her brows furrowed. "That's not just a super soldier serum."
"Correct," Forson grinned widely as he began to explain. "That's what I called The Golden Serum, or you can call it Project Sentry. I've recovered the data from an old research facility. Project Sentry started in March of 1947, when a joint American/Canadian government operation employed former Nazi scientists and material from the Canadian program Weapon X in an effort to re-create the Super-Soldier Serum and magnify its effects a thousand times over. Cold War politics interfered with the project, and roughly thirty years later, the program had become fragmented into sub-operations with outsourced research and no central administration properly guiding it."
"So, you stepped in and took over the whole operation," Maya said. She looked really interested in the project.
"Someone has to," Forson said as he turned toward her. "If we can successfully synthesise this serum and create a hundred Sentry Soldiers, no one will be able to stop us from ruling over Earth. We'll become immortals and guide Earth to the real era of Superhumans. So, are you perhaps interested in becoming an immortal?"
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AN: I planned to end this one with a few more slice-of-life chapters that will focus on Tony's personal life and the new heroes, but it'd be such a waste not to explore a bit more. So, yeah, let's go. I'm aiming for 250-300 chs. The updates will be slow because Modern Family ff got a better reaction than I expected and it's up in top 20. I'll be focusing on it a bit more. But no worries, I've got a perfect ending planned for this one, just like my previous ffs.
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