Chapter Text
The water was freezing.
Thor should not have been able to feel it.
Not in space, with the Guardians, searching for something he would never find because it had been lost forever.
Not after watching Tony Stark’s body engulfed in flames.
Not after witnessing his funeral, the funeral pyre of Asgard, the silence of his companions, and Morgan smiling through her tears as she held tightly to her mother’s hand.
Not after losing everything he had tried to protect.
And yet he could feel the water sliding over his skin, seeping into his hair, filling his lungs.
Thor opened his eyes.
For a moment, all he could see was red.
Red.
Then black.
A flash of lightning.
A blinding light.
A voice.
“Thor.”
The god turned around.
There was no one there.
Only water.
And then the images came.
Ultron.
The Avengers.
His hand wrapped around Mjolnir.
Wanda.
Vision.
Asgard.
Loki.
Heimdall.
Ragnarok.
Surtur.
Hela.
Thanos.
The Titan.
Loki.
The Gauntlet.
Stormbreaker.
Thanos’s head.
Five years.
Valkyrie.
The Guardians.
Gamora.
Tony.
Steve.
Natasha.
Clint.
Morgan.
The funeral.
Thor tried to breathe.
“No.”
The water trembled.
Another image.
Tony was sitting in front of him.
His face was tired.
His eyes were filled with tears.
“Everything’s going to be okay, buddy.”
Thor reached out a hand.
“Tony!”
The figure disappeared.
Then Loki appeared.
This time, he was younger.
Smiling.
Thor remained motionless.
Loki held out a hand to him.
“You’re late, brother.”
Thor felt something inside him break.
“Not again.”
Loki laughed.
“You still don’t understand?”
Thor shook his head.
“Understand what?”
“This time, you can change everything.”
The image disappeared.
And Loki appeared once again.
He was no longer smiling.
He was gasping for breath, lifted off the ground by an enormous hand wrapped around his throat. Yet Loki, the brave Loki, was not looking at the one holding him.
He was looking at him.
Thor.
With barely a whisper, he spoke the words Thor could never forget:
“The sun will shine on us again.”
Thor found himself in the water once more.
But something was different.
He could feel his own heart.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
He was young.
Too young.
Thor looked down.
Powerful arms.
Hands without scars.
No beard.
No weight upon his shoulders.
No exhaustion.
His body.
His old body.
The one he had possessed when he still believed that being Thor simply meant wielding Mjolnir and hitting hard enough.
“This is impossible.”
A laugh, both feminine and masculine at the same time, echoed through the water.
Thor turned around.
Wanda.
Heimdall.
They were there.
Or perhaps they weren’t.
The two figures, so different from one another, shifted at dizzying speed, alternating between one another until they overlapped and merged into a single presence—something both fascinating and unsettling.
Their eyes began to glow.
Then they spoke.
“You have seen what you needed to see.”
“You have lived what you needed to live.”
“You survived.”
“But you did not live.”
“Now the one dearest to you is alive.”
There was silence for a moment.
Then, together:
“Now you can live.”
Thor stared at them.
The figure changed.
For a moment, he found himself standing before himself.
It was him, wearing the same clothes and bearing the same wounds he had carried after the Battle of Wakanda.
But Thor did not recognize himself in that man.
He did not recognize that flame still burning in his eyes, that rage demanding vengeance, demanding the blood of the one who had taken everything from him.
Because that flame inside him had long since gone out.
Vengeance had not given him back what he had lost.
It had not given him back his brilliant, fearless brother.
It had not given him back Loki.
The figure took a step toward him.
“Now we can protect Loki.”
Another step.
“Now we can love him the way we should have loved him from the beginning. But we were too stupid, too arrogant, too blind to do it.”
The distance between them continued to shrink until there was almost nothing left.
They could touch each other now.
“Now we have a chance to defeat Thanos before he can obtain the Infinity Stones.”
Thor felt the blood freeze in his veins.
Suddenly, he was no longer the Thor forged by the battles of the future.
He was young Thor again.
The Thor who had not yet been broken by pain.
The Thor who knew nothing of despair.
He was the same Thor whose body he now inhabited.
The water around them began to glow.
“Do not waste this opportunity.”
The voice became deeper, more urgent.
“Do not let it happen again.”
Another voice joined the first.
“Live in a world where the sun shines upon both you and Loki.”
The figure placed its burning hands against Thor’s cold arms.
Then it pushed.
With all its strength.
“Love and protect our heart.”
Thor felt something explode inside him.
Every memory of the battles.
Every sensation.
Every loss.
Everything came rushing back into him.
For a moment, he saw everyone who had once been important to him.
Tony.
Steve.
Natasha.
Clint.
Bruce.
Peter.
Strange.
Wanda.
Vision.
The Guardians.
Sam.
Bucky.
Carol.
Rocket.
Nebula.
All of them.
Friends.
Companions.
Family.
Then, one by one, their faces began to fade.
Their importance seemed to dissolve.
Until there was only him.
Loki.
His brother.
His enemy.
His friend.
His heart.
His everything.
Loki.
No one else mattered.
Only him.
Thor slowly began to perceive the outside world again.
The water.
The air.
The sound of lightning.
A voice.
A voice he had not heard in many years.
Erik Selvig.
Thor opened his eyes.
It took him a few moments to realize where he was.
And, more importantly, when he was.
The cave.
The water.
Erik.
The old scientist was desperately trying not to fall and to protect himself from the lightning Thor had unconsciously summoned around him.
Thor closed his eyes.
He took a deep breath.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then he regained control of his power.
When he opened his eyes again, he looked at his old friend.
He could clearly see the concern in Erik’s gaze.
And the fear.
Once, Thor would not have noticed.
Or perhaps he would have immediately begun apologizing, trying to reassure Erik and convince him that there was nothing to fear.
But that was no longer the Thor he had once been.
After everything he had experienced, he no longer had the strength to pretend to be harmless.
He was sorry that he had frightened him.
He was sorry that he had made him worry.
But he could not find the strength to minimize what he was.
He was a god.
And he had just lived an entire lifetime that no one else in that cave could possibly understand.
Thor did the only thing he could manage.
He quickly stepped out of the water.
Then he gave Erik a smile.
“Sorry, old friend. I didn’t mean to.”
Erik Selvig had expected many things when Thor had brought him to that cave seeking his help.
But he had never expected this.
He had never expected his friend to start summoning lightning only moments after entering the water.
And he certainly had never expected him to start screaming.
Words in a language Erik could not even remotely understand, spoken with such overwhelming desperation that Thor’s voice had become hoarse.
For several endless moments, the scientist had feared that something had gone terribly wrong.
Then, slowly, the situation began to calm.
The lightning diminished until only occasional bolts remained, harmless enough for Erik to avoid them.
And Thor’s eyes became clear again.
Focused.
Erik, however, had begun to notice certain changes.
Thor’s posture, although apparently relaxed, had taken on a stiffness that made him seem suddenly dangerous.
And then there were his eyes.
They were the same eyes Erik knew, and yet they seemed to have aged all at once.
They were no longer the eyes of the young god he had known.
There was something different about them.
Something that had not been there before.
A spark.
An awareness Erik could not explain.
The scientist silently wondered what Thor could possibly have seen to leave him in such a state.
But something deep inside his mind screamed at him not to ask.
The man standing before him was Thor.
But he was no longer the same Thor Erik considered a friend.
And that theory was somehow confirmed by the Asgardian himself.
Thor merely stepped out of the water and offered him a few reassuring words.
Without his usual exuberance.
Without the youthfulness Erik had always associated with him.
Because standing before Erik was no longer merely the God of Thunder.
It was a man who had lived an entire lifetime.
A man who had lost everything.
And who had just been given a second chance.