One shot written for Marvelously Magical's Bingo, for my square: "If you were born with the weakness to fall, you were born with the strength to rise" -Rupi Kaur

Charlie was on his way from the dragon keep when he heard it. A loud crash of thunder. When he turned to investigate the noise, he saw a weird rainbow light fading back into the sky. Frowning, he began moving over to the location. He didn't make it very far before he was being run down by a large man. A very large man.

The two of them crashed to the ground in a mess of limbs.

Charlie groaned as he struggled to unwrap himself from this stranger. "I'm so sorry," he said. "I didn't see you, or else I would have moved out of your way."

The man jumped up from where he was and looked around frantically. "Where am I?" he asked, his accent foreign. He was definitely not one of the Romanian dragon keepers.

"Romania," Charlie answered. "At a dragon keep. Who are you?"

The man turned toward him, and in the flickering light of the torches that lined the outside of the keep, his features came into focus. Charlie gasped as he took in the man's grizzled features. He wore an eye patch over his right eye, and he was bloodied. He looked around frantically. "I am Thor, god of thunder, and I do not know how I got here. I was in Wakonda, and there was fighting, and then my friends were turning into dust, and—" Thor cut off, his voice breaking. "My world. My people."

"Hey," Charlie said, looking around. He really didn't understand half of what the distraught man was saying, but they probably shouldn't be having his conversation out here, in the open. "Come with me," he said, gesturing toward the keep. Not waiting for the man to respond, Charlie led Thor into the room that held his favorite dragon.

Once they were both inside, Charlie shut the door, and turned to Thor, who was eyeing the dragon with a look that said he wanted to slay it. "Hey, so this is Dracon, my favorite dragon here at the keep. He won't hurt you if you don't hurt him."

Thor didn't take his eyes off the dragon but nodded.

"So, you were in Wakonda, I don't even think I know where that is on the map, and now you're here? And there was a battle? Am I understanding this correctly?"

Thor took his eyes from the dragon and nodded at Charlie. "More or less. Earth has been invaded by a great warrior, Thanos. He must have succeeded in achieving his goal of collecting all the infinity stones, because one minute my friends were there, and the next they were dust, like they never existed. Thanos used the stones to wipe out half the population of the universe."

Charlie's blood ran cold, thinking about his friends and family back home. The people here at the keep. He spent most of his time with the dragons, he didn't notice if anyone was missing. "Half the population of the universe?"

Thor nodded again. "It's what Thanos does. He goes into a world and wipes out half the population, and spares the other half. It's what happened to my people. We had just escaped the collapse of our world. We were on our way to safety when his ship over powered ours. Some were able to escape. The others…the other weren't as lucky. And as their king, as their leader, I failed. I was too weak to protect them, and they perished because of me."

Charlie was silent as he watched the god fall to his knees and weep.

"It is hopeless," Thor muttered, bringing his hands up to his face.

Charlie shook his head. "It is not hopeless," he said, falling to his knees next to Thor. "It is never hopeless. My people, we fought in a war, many years ago, and we, too, felt it was hopeless. That we could never defeat the evil that was taking over and conquering our world. And yet, we did. We won. Because we never gave up. You can defeat this Thanos. You just have to believe you can."

Thor shook his head. "It is impossible. We're too weak, we've already fallen to him."

Charlie reached over and brought his hand under Thor's chin, causing him to look up at him. "If you were born with the weakness to fall, you were born with the strength to rise*. So rise up, and take back your world."

Thor looked at him with his one good eye for a very long time, before leaning forward and embracing Charlie in his strong arms. When he pulled away, and gestured to the dragon. "Can he fly?"

Charlie looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "Yes," he said, hesitatingly.

"Can I borrow him?"

*quote by Rupi Kaur

Please Review