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Thor was sitting to the side when they all came back, resting on a fallen tree on the plains of Wakanda. As relieved as he was to see the return of friends old and new, he knew that their closest loved ones had more than earned a more private reunion. Or, as private as a reunion could be in the open field that had been a battleground not too long ago.
Even coming as he did from a world of gods and magic (and oh, did is his heart ache with the thought of it), Thor could not hope to explain how time seemed to reverse itself in front of his eyes. Fallen comrades reappeared from the dust, as if pulled from the ground by the green tendrils of the time stone that swirled in the air around them.
The armies of Wakanda rose first, chests still heaving from a battle that had long since finished. They prepared their stances for combat, but the tension soon bled from their muscles as they looked around to see familiar faces. Family and friends slowly drifted towards each other, bodies heavy with the thoughts of what could have been (what had been, briefly) but their laughter light with relief, echoing joyfully over the plains.
Their King appeared next, emerging from the ground as if erected in stone. T’Challa stood, regal and unwavering, until his sister wrapped herself around him in a sudden blur of movement. Instantly, T’Challa’s cool demeanor seemed to melt off him, and he bent down to wrap his arms around Shuri. She seemed to be yelling at him for daring to leave, but the relief was clear in the way she held him tight. He didn’t respond, only closing his eyes and resting his chin on her hair. Okoye moved behind him and rested an arm on her King’s shoulder. She tried to maintain her usual stoic composure, but soon enough tears began to trickle down her cheeks as her chin wobbled imperceptibly.
Seeing the royal siblings embrace, Thor forced himself to look away. He looked around for his other returning friends before he could stop to examine the way his heart clenched painfully in his chest.
Across the field, Bucky rose from the grass. He barely had time to cast a confused glance around to check his bearings before Steve ran over – the fastest Thor had ever seen the Captain move – to crush Bucky into a tight hug. By the time they both leaned back to look at each other, their faces were streaked with tears and nearly splitting with the force of their smiles. They settled into a long stare, their faces a mix of complicated emotions and shared history that Thor couldn’t hope to parse from his position, both physically on the other side of the plains and culturally on the other side of the cosmos. Steve and Bucky’s relationship seemed to teeter precariously on the edge of an unknown something for a moment when suddenly the two of them were wrapped in a bruising hug, breaking their absorption. Sam had returned as well, and he let out a giddy laugh as he wrapped his arms around the other Steve and Bucky’s shoulders, holding the three of them together.
After a moment, Natasha wandered over to the three men, Bruce hovering nervously a few steps behind her. She paused beside them for a moment, as if considering her next move, before the weight of all that had happened seemed to lower itself onto her shoulders. She slumped, as if truly taking her guard down for the first time in her life, and let herself lean her head on Steve’s shoulder. Bruce eventually joined them, wringing his hands before resting a trembling hand on Natasha’s lower back. She started, tension returning for only a second before she finally let herself relax in her friends’ embrace.
Thor’s gaze eventually drifted to Rhodes who, like him, stood apart from the crowd. Rhodes spared a contented half-smile for his rejoicing friends before tilting his head up to stare at the sky, steaked with orange and blushed with pink as the evening crept closer. Thor followed his gaze, thinking of those who had apparently stowed away into space in search for Thanos. He’d been told that Stark was up there along with the Wizard and young apprentice Thor had yet to meet. Had they survived the battle? Were any of them returning this very moment, as if crafted from dust? Thor would have to go and seek them out once everything was settled, if Dr. Strange hadn’t already found some way to bring them back home.
Returning his gaze to the former battleground, it became clear to Thor that not everyone had been awarded their deserved reunion.
Wanda stood alone, arms folded tightly across her chest as if they were the only things holding her together. Her red magic writhed nervously around her clenched fingers as she braced herself for the same loss all over again. Without the Mind Stone, Vision would not be reappearing alongside his friends and teammates. From the despondent look on her face, Wanda seemed to know this on some level, yet she still looked around expectantly, like her dead lover would nonetheless emerge from the dust and embrace her. In his tired resignation, Thor almost envied her hope, but was glad to have been spared from the second wave of grief he knew would come to her once it was all over.
Nearby, Thor’s strange new friends had been reunited, but the same grief still hung heavy in the air over their heads. Rocket, Groot, Peter, Drax, and Mantis all exchanged tearful hugs, but the empty space where Gamora should have been seemed to muffle their relieved laughter and weigh down their smiles. Thor wanted to ask what had happened to that stubborn green woman he had met not so long ago to prevent her return, but thought it best to leave the Guardians to their grief.
Unfortunately, this left Thor without any more distractions from his own.
Thor had been putting off years worth of grief. Something huge and pressing and universe-ending always seemed to present itself before he could allow himself the time to mourn. He thought of that ordeal with the Dark Elves, somehow both a couple years and a lifetime ago. He thought of his mother and his brother (however temporarily) being ripped from him so suddenly only to have to bottle up his grief in order to move on to more urgent matters. He thought of his father, all that had remained of him still drifting through the air when life had hit him again in the form of Hela. He thought of Hela, too. Despite everything, she was still his sister. He had not been able to process his complicated feelings towards Hela before she was consumed by the flames of Asgard and he was launched into space, suddenly the king of a grieving people. He thought of Asgard, his people, and all the little losses that had hit him later, gradually, as they had attempted to make a log of all the Ark’s refugees. Volstagg. Fandral. Hogun. Sif. Gone somehow without Thor seeing, only able to know their loss through the empty spaces left behind.
Thor remembered the complicated feelings he had felt as he stared out the Ark’s windows and into space, grieving the loss of his home and carrying the weight of its people, but still steadfastly hopeful as he and Loki looked towards an uncertain future. Then, Thanos’ ship had filled their vision, and all that hope was gone.
If the loss of Asgard was almost incomprehensible to him, then the loss of the rest of its people was even more so. Every moment Thor dwelled on the horror of it, a different loss seemed to burrow its way into his chest, filling his lungs until he couldn’t hope to breathe. Heimdall, in the end not as eternal and immortal as he had always appeared to be. The Valkyrie, whose true name Thor had yet to coax out from her scarred shell. Even Korg’s death stopped the air in Thor’s lungs as he thought about a universe without his casual cheer. None of them would be coming back.
And, even after all his experience dealing with the loss of his brother, Loki’s death still hurt the most. In Thor’s mind, idyllic scenes of his childhood on Asgard with Loki were juxtaposed with the stark, cold horror of Thanos’ attack on the Ark. He felt the sting of a toy sword and heard Loki shout in childish glee all while feeling the searing pain as Thanos set his entire being ablaze and Loki watched in restrained anguish. It seemed impossible that the smug, mischievous Loki of his childhood could possibly be the same person who had stood before Thanos, using the last of his energy just trying to maintain his usual air of confident defiance.
No matter how hard he tried, Thor couldn’t rid his mind of the sight of Loki being strangled. Though Loki had tricked Thor into believing him dead many times before, Thor knew deep down that this time had been different. It was always horrifying to watch his brother die, but this time it had lacked the drama and the grandeur he associated with Loki. This time, it had been brutal and unambiguous. There had been no valiant last words meant to carry on a legacy, no graceful tumbling into the great unknown. Thanos had crushed the life out of Loki, inch by excruciating inch, until only cold hard reality remained. No tricks, no illusions, no glamour, not even any dignity – just another cold corpse among the remaining people of Asgard.
Thor looked around to his friends once more, but the joy he had felt witnessing their reunions had dulled. Even with his friends surrounding him, relieved and happy, Thor was still without a people, without his family.
For the first time in years, Thor finally let himself slump, elbows perched on his bent knees and head cradled in his hands. He let tears stream down his cheeks, one for every person on Asgard he had lost in a matter of a few short years. He let the electricity crackle in his finger tips, eager to lash out, to avenge, but having no direction to go.
For the first time in years, Thor let himself grieve.