-Real World-
"Loki's little tricks are not worthy of being displayed in public after all!" Tony shook his head regretfully and looked at Thor.
At this moment, Thor was gritting his teeth, clenching his fists and staring at Thanos on the sky.
"Hey! Thor!" Barton threw a bottle of beer at him. Thor subconsciously caught it and looked at him in confusion.
"Come on! Let's finish this bottle! Then we'll find a chance to take revenge on Thanos!"
"Yeah!" Thor shifted his gaze to the beer in his hand, responded muffledly, and then tilted his head back to drink the whole bottle of beer in one gulp.
After drinking it, he threw it directly out of the window and walked straight downstairs.
"Hey! Where are you going, Thor!" Rhodes stood up and looked at his back.
"I'm going to talk to my sister!" Thor walked downstairs without looking back, and his voice floated over.
"Okay... it seems he is really angry!" Rhodes turned around and shrugged at everyone.
They had different opinions on whether Hela could be a help to them!
For example, Rhodes firmly believed that Hela would not join them. He felt that Hela was not that kind of person!
But Banner and Natasha believed that as long as they were sincere enough, it would not be impossible to impress Hela!
The fact that Thanos massacred the people of Asgard was a good insertion point. Maybe they could use this to pry Hela into standing on their side. In this way, their chances of winning the war against Thanos would undoubtedly be greater!
Thor came to Hela's room and knocked on the door.
Hela sat on her large white bed, turned her head and squinted at the door. "Come in!"
Thor opened the door and saw that Hela had regained her composure. He smiled and said, "Hey! Sister!"
"It's you! My 'good' brother!" When saying the word 'good', Hela couldn't help but grit her teeth.
"Come on! Don't do this! I'm doing this for your own good!" Seeing that Hela hated him so much, Thor felt a little helpless.
"Thank you so much!" If Thor had just sealed her like Odin and her power was still there, Hela would not say anything. After all, she had gotten used to it over the years.
But Thor sealed her power, and then locked her in this house like a bird in a cage. Oh no, she couldn't even walk out of this room. Thor was really "good" to her!
Seeing Hela's bitter and resentful look, Thor shrugged his shoulders. "They all think you're dangerous. If you don't do this, I don't know how I'm going to keep you alive!"
"Really?" Hela narrowed her eyes and looked at Thor. Although she was not in her prime, she had to admit that the Thor in front of her was much stronger than the one on the sky!
Even in Asgard, it would probably take her a long time to defeat this Thor!
"Yeah! I don't want to kill my siblings anymore! We are tired of it!"
"But old Odin doesn't think so! He sealed me up just because he was afraid of my power!" Hela became a little angry when she thought of Odin.
"Do you really think that your father sealed you up because he was afraid of your power?" Thor took a deep breath and decided to reveal some secrets to Hela.
Hela frowned. "What do you mean?"
Thor said, "You know Dad set out on a journey to find the Infinity Stones, right? Using the power of the Cosmic Cube, or the Space Stone!"
"He actually found the second Infinity Stone!" Thor stared at Hela's graceful back.
"Then why didn't he bring it back?" Hela turned around with interest after hearing this.
Thor took a deep breath and thought back to when he was still in Asgard.
Flashback
Thor stood in the grand throne room of Asgard, the golden halls gleaming in the eternal light. The weight of recent revelations pressed heavily on his mind as he looked up at his father, who sat upon the high throne, looking older and more weary than Thor had ever seen him.
"Father," Thor called out, his voice echoing through the chamber. "Why did you suddenly give up conquering the Nine Realms? And even stop searching for the Infinity Stones?"
Odin leaned back in his throne, his single eye closing briefly as a deep sigh escaped his lips. The sound carried centuries of regret and sorrow. When he opened his eye again, there was a profound sadness there that Thor had never witnessed before.
"Back then," Odin began, his voice heavy with memory, "I actually found another Infinity Stone. The Soul Stone, one of the six Infinity Stones."
Thor's eyes widened in shock. "What? Then why didn't you bring it back?"
Odin rose slowly from his throne, his staff—Gungnir—supporting his weight as he descended the steps. He moved to the large window overlooking Asgard's golden spires and took another deep, shuddering breath.
"On that distant planet—Vormir, it was called—I met the guardian of the Soul Stone. A creature cursed to watch over it for all eternity. He told me the requirements for obtaining the Soul Stone."
Thor stepped closer, drawn by the gravity in his father's voice. "What request?"
Odin turned to face his son, and Thor saw moisture gathering in his father's remaining eye.
"It demands a sacrifice," Odin said quietly.
Tony, who had been listening intently from where he stood among the other Avengers in the memory, couldn't help but take a step forward. "Sacrifice? What kind of sacrifice?"
Odin's gaze moved to encompass all those present, his expression grave. "The soul of one you love. A soul for a soul. This is what the Sky—what was once mentioned, regarding Natasha."
"What?!" Natasha's eyes widened, her hand going unconsciously to her chest as she stared at Odin in astonishment.
The revelation hit the assembled Avengers like a physical blow. Tony and the others had thought about it countless times—why Natasha could exchange her soul for the hope of life. It was not until this moment that they realized the second soul referred to the Soul Stone itself!
Odin continued, his voice thick with emotion. "I stood on that cursed mountain, looking over the edge of that terrible cliff, and I faced the most difficult choice of my entire existence. I hesitated again and again."
He paused, his hand gripping Gungnir tighter as old pain washed over him.
"But in the end, I realized something fundamental. If I had to sacrifice someone I loved—if I had to trade the life of my beloved just to gain the power to conquer worlds—then conquering those worlds would be utterly meaningless to me! What would be the point of ruling the universe if I had to destroy everything that gave my life meaning?"
Odin turned back to the window, his shoulders sagging slightly.
"So I refused. I turned away from the Soul Stone. I returned to Asgard and became a benevolent king. I chose to let my mercy be greater than my wrath, my compassion stronger than my rage."
His voice grew softer, more pained.
"But Hela... she didn't understand. She couldn't understand. She saw my change as weakness, as betrayal of everything we had built together. But what she didn't know—what I could never tell her—was that if I had continued on that path of conquest, if I had kept seeking the Infinity Stones, she would have inevitably become a victim of my ambition."
Odin's hand trembled slightly on his staff.
"Don't you see? The Soul Stone would have demanded someone I loved. And Hela—my firstborn, my daughter, my greatest warrior—she was someone I loved. The very path she wanted me to continue would have led directly to her death. To me standing on that cliff on Vormir, making the choice between universal power and my own child."
Thor felt his breath catch in his throat, the full weight of his father's words crashing over him.
"But I couldn't tell Hela about any of this," Odin continued, his voice barely above a whisper now. "I couldn't tell her what I'd discovered on Vormir, what choice I'd faced there. Because if I had... if Hela knew about the Soul Stone and its requirements, she would have pursued it at all costs. She would have obtained it, even if the price was..."
Odin couldn't finish the sentence, but everyone understood.
Even if the price was us.
"She would have sacrificed anyone," Odin said quietly. "Frigga. Thor. Me. Anyone she loved, she would have willingly thrown from that cliff to claim the power she craved. And that path would have destroyed her soul more thoroughly than any death could."
Another heavy sigh escaped him.
"That's why I blocked all records of Hela's deeds. Why I erased her from Asgard's history. It wasn't just because of her bloodlust or her refusal to stop conquering. It was to protect her. I didn't want her to be able to gain the support of the people after my death, to reclaim the throne and embark on a new journey of conquest that would inevitably lead her to Vormir. To that terrible choice."
Odin turned back to face Thor, his expression raw with old grief.
"I sealed her away not because I feared her power, my son. I sealed her away because I loved her. Because I was trying to save her from a fate worse than death—the fate of becoming someone who would murder their own family for power."
The throne room fell into profound silence as Odin's words hung in the air.
Present time
Thor stood in Hela's room, the memory of that conversation with Odin still fresh in his mind despite the time that had passed. He relayed the entire story to his sister, watching her face carefully as understanding slowly dawned.
Natasha, still processing the revelation about her own connection to the Soul Stone, felt her heart aching. It wasn't that her soul was so important in the grand scheme of things, but that she and Barton had arrived at that terrible place at that precise moment. That she had used her life to exchange for the Soul Stone, bringing back a glimmer of hope to the universe. The weight of that sacrifice—the echo of Odin's choice—settled heavily on her shoulders.
Across the room, Gamora's expression shifted. She lowered her head, and suddenly, unexpectedly, she began to laugh.
"Hahahahaha! Hahahahaha!"
Everyone turned to look at her in confusion, not understanding what could possibly be funny about such a revelation.
Gamora's laughter was bitter, tinged with something between relief and hysteria. "My father! He has never loved anything in his life! He has never loved anyone! Hahaha! That's why he is doomed to fail! Because he will never get the Soul Stone!"
Her laughter died down, and she wiped at her eyes, though whether from laughter or tears was unclear.
"I concealed the hiding place of the Soul Stone for so long," she continued, her voice shaking slightly. "I guarded that secret, fearing that if Thanos ever learned where it was, he would bring about a terrible disaster. But I never imagined—never even considered—that it would be impossible for him to obtain it from the very beginning!"
The irony of it all—the years of fear, of protecting that knowledge, only to discover that Thanos's own nature made the Soul Stone forever beyond his reach—left her feeling strangely unmoored.
The news made her a little upset, but also... oddly hopeful.