hiii i love your work! i was wondering, for queen of all waters, do the avengers know about the gods? i mean they have thor but who knows if thor kept quiet about it all
if they (or thor) do know, will that affect how they go about the snap at all?
Thank you for the ask! And the answer is yes and no.
Thor obviously knows but doesn't plan to bring it up to the others unless it becomes relevant. Beside, given how smart they all are, the norse thunderer is under the impression that the others must have put together that if one of the pantheons of old are real then surely some of the others spoken of in their histories must be.
Banner had crossed paths with the Norse before, though not Thor specifically, but the situation was so fraught that both have agreed not to talk about it.
Bruce Banner weren't always in the know but after becoming the Hulk the mist stopped effecting him. Hulk has been mistaken on occasion for a monster of unknown origin by the occasional demigod and Banner has had a few messy conversations that almost went south over the years with gods or immortals who couldn't place what he was and assumed he was from another pantheon and breaking the inter-pantheon treaties or trespassing during his travels.
Hulk and to a lesser extent Banner are largely unaffected by godly boundaries or hiding spells so the two stumbled into a lot of secret or sacred spots by mistake over the years.
Unlike Thor, Banner is aware that the others don't know about the gods but thinks that this is probably for the better. The paranoia it would probably induce in the spies is bad enough but he dreads Tony's reaction the most.
Tony is an atheist and Bruce does not want to see what he would do when faced by a god who hasn't been altered by worship into something he can accept as Alien instead of Divine.
side note: if you smash mcu and the pjo universes together then you need to explain why Thor acts so differently to his myths. My belief is that the event's of the movies were so publicised that a lot of people were quickly forced to accept that Norse gods were 'real' or at least inspired by aliens. That's millions of not billions of people! As a result the Norse pantheon got a power boost from quasi-worship. Unfortunately this came at a steep cost. Much like how the Greek gods gained a Roman aspect the Norse gained an 'Alien' one. The added belief also awakened a lot of beings that were close to fading which is why things on their end suddenly went to shit over the course of a couple of years.
Tony did do a mythology deep dive but only to see if the Norse gods/aliens might have impacted other other cultures and how they could potentially be the origin of other myths. He found the fantastical nature of so many of the tales not to mention the many conflicting accounts irritating and eventually just wrote it all off as Alien's messing with humans, wrongly assuming that if there was more to it than that Thor would have told him and the others.
This is especially funny given that Tony is a legacy of Hephaestus. His dad did tell him this but Tony wrote it off as either the ramblings of a drunk or his father finally developing a god complex.
Clint and Natasha try not to think about gods though their reasoning differs.
For Natasha, Thor being classified as an alien and not divine was a relief. With how much red stains her ledger the idea of Divinity and an afterlife is enough to make the fabled Black Widow panic. If she had thought about it for any real length of time she probably would have realised the likelihood of other gods existing in some form but she didn't allow herself to and the topic never came up until post snap.
Clint spent some time in foster homes and orphanages as a kid after his mother was arrested and I'm guessing that at least one of them had to religious. The idea of God, never mind gods, has always made him uncomfortable and after Loki messed around in his head the archer did everything he could not to think abut such things.
Fury knows Gods exist, he's clear sighted. He also doesn't say shit about it because he knows better. Even after the Norse gods existing became common knowledge he didn't bring up the other pantheons because that was just inviting trouble. Anything they build to handle the Norse should theoretically work against the others so drawing their attention unnecessarily just isn't worth it in his mind.
After the Snap Fury does approach Thor about the possibility of Divine intervention but is shot down with the rather horrifying explanation that the Snap had not only effected the godly realms but also seemed to have had far more catastrophic consequences than just death.
Fury fears little and holds no faith despite being aware that the gods are real, but even he is horrified by the knowledge that Thanos actions didn't simply kill half the universe.
Those that were lost are gone, their souls never reaching any afterlife or rebirth.
Fury agrees with Thor's assessment that the deities that are left need to prioritise stopping the planet from being ripped apart by out of control magic or natural forces that no longer have anything keeping them in check.
The Avengers and S.H.I.E.D. can't save anyone if what's left of the population is killed by floods, earthquakes, monsoons...
The fall of Asgard and the slaughter of its people had already created imbalance between the pantheons as they were all forced to pick up the slack. Had Demigods not agreed to ascend Earths population would have been quickly whittled away down to the thousands.
It isn't until half a decade later that they get things under control and Hermes is able to step away from his many jobs to check in on the mortals and nudge them in the right direction to bring everyone back.
And when the nudge is too subtle he decides fuck it and teleports in to give his help directly.
Is he breaking a few ancient laws? Definitely but he suspects the Fates or Fate (2 were taken in the Snap) will look the other way this time given what's at stake. He knows his current King and Queen certainly will and if this works like he hopes the ones that return need never know.
The Avengers do not take the Gods being real well, they take the knowledge that the snap atomised souls even worse. That said it is definitely a strong form of motivation for those who had been questioning if Time Travel was worth the risk to buckle in and start helping.
