This post has the following content warnings:
Accept our Terms of Service
Our Terms of Service have recently changed! Please read and agree to the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy
post-snap avengers in (and out of) the halls of mandos
Next Post »
Permalink

He's not quite sure where he is. He's not quite sure what he is.

He's not in his physical body. Okay, that's unusual, but not unheard of. He must be in some part of the Astral Dimension very far from the Material, because he can't see anything that resembles physical surroundings. Thanos must have used some pretty powerful magic to knock him this far out of his body—I guess they don't call them Infinity Stones for nothing—but Thanos had left Titan—

Oh wait.

He's dead. Big purple bastard must have completed his quest. Then he remembers. Big purple bastard had to complete his quest. They have one chance in 14,000,605. This isn't part of what he remembered of the one successful timeline.

He doesn't suppose it would be. The Time Stone wasn't showing him his subjective experience in the possible futures, more of an overhead view. He'd known he was going to die (and come back), but he had no idea what to expect in the interim. He hadn't really expected anything. For all of their arcane knowledge, the Masters of the Mystic Arts don't really have a tradition regarding an afterlife. He'd kind of always assumed he would just cease to exist.

What is this afterlife like?

Total: 163
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

"They are in Mandos; two of our mortal guests are Thanos' victims who have returned from there.

"And I am not your lord. But I wield authority in this city as I must, and I thought that I could not in good conscience allow you to risk being parted from your newborn child. This has been our law since the days of Beleriand. But now the parting has been made regardless, and I see that I was wrong.

"The Men who oppose Thanos are going to try to retrieve a Silmaril to use against him." (The part about resurrecting Fëanor seems vaguely like classified information.) "I need you to keep an eye on them—make sure the jewel ends up here when all is said and done, and not in some mortal research lab."

Permalink

"I would do anything at all toward the cause of having Thanos strung up in the Void by his ankles for Morgoth to use as a punching bag. Babysitting your family's stupid shiny rocks does not seem to fall into that category."

Permalink

"If Thanos is going to be killed with a Silmaril, wouldn't you like to be the one who does it? And then bring it back here—I mean, where else would you go with it?"

Permalink

Sigh.

"I could throw it back into the sea to spite you and all your House?"

Permalink

"Since when did you feel spite for the House of Fëanor? You're halfway named for him, and I'm pretty sure your mother-name is a reference too."

Permalink

"That might be a reason to feel spite for someone. I did not choose my name.

"But in fact I admire Fëanáro's greatness and mourn his tragedy as I always have. I only hate you."

Permalink

Well, as he already said once, damn all his grandfather's opinions on classified information.

"They're going to reembody him. That's what the Silmaril is for—to break in and out of Mandos. And also kill Thanos, maybe, later."

Permalink

Calanáro manages a half-smile for the first time in a while.

"Now I'm definitely going. I still hate you, but I'm going. He can have the Silmaril, so I suppose I won't throw it into the sea."

Permalink

Celebrimbor leads Calanáro back downstairs and introduces him to the Avengers.

Permalink

"Hi. Tony Stark, you might know me as Iron Man."

Permalink

"Dr. Strange—that one works both ways."

Permalink

"Peter Parker. Uh, Spider-Man."

Permalink

"What is this, a party in Tirion?" he says in perfect English. (He has the accent of a BBC radio announcer from the first days of radio's existence, which combined with his youthful mannerisms is a little off-putting to the mortals.) "One name apiece is plenty."

Permalink

"So you've been to Earth. Dare I ask what year?"

Permalink

"Uh, Elë and I went to Italy on our honeymoon. I think the local year was, uh, 1532?"

Permalink

Sigh.

"Yeah I know time is fucky here but that was five hundred years ago."

Permalink

"I keep up with trends. You've almost managed to single-handedly drag Earth up to our technology level, I'm impressed."

Permalink

"I know, I'm impressive.

"How long does it take to get to Earth from here?"

Permalink

"Not long, there's a portal a few hundred miles out to sea and that's instantaneous. Pops you right out in the middle of the Atlantic. Some people are old-fashioned and make the voyage in sailboats which makes it slow but we can do better than that.

"We don't have general FTL, no one has really put any effort into it because no one wants to go anywhere but Earth and we're not going to beat the Valar, who can make their domains adjacent to arbitrary points in space."

Permalink

"Oh is that how she was doing that."

Permalink

He smiles weakly. "You've met Varda? Most of them are more subtle about it, bend space instead of breaking it but she's just like 'nope, you're here now'. I suspect Eru finds it horribly unaesthetic but he allows it because she's his favorite."

(Eleniel, who used to be one of the Starqueen's handmaidens, one of those weird things the Vanyar do that's one part religious order and one part intensive astrophysics program, could explain exactly how the teleportation thing works but he is trying so hard not to think about that—)

Permalink

"Alright, can we get out of this time warp immediately please? I know it's getting late but if we spend the night here that's like four more days at home."

Permalink

"Late isn't a thing here. We need to sleep like fifty, sixty hours a month and while it isn't pleasant to do that all at once it's not exactly uncommon among the Mírtáni."

Permalink

"Well we need to sleep a bit more often than that but we can do it when we get back to New York so that it takes eight realtime hours and not eighty."

Permalink

Tony, Peter, and Calanáro board a ship and fly east, through a pass in the Pelóri, and at some point they are over the Atlantic Ocean on Earth instead of the eastern sea of Valinor. They turn around and head back toward New York.

Total: 163
Posts Per Page: