Brotherhood - Loki & Thor ♡

60. I was dead when I woke up this morning

Hela rose from the death, she had someone with her this time.

Thor could never be prepared.

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Takes place after Endgame. Everybody lives. I mean not everybody but at least Tony and Natasha are alive, and Steve isn't an old man so there's that.

///

In the end everything happened in a haze of blurriness for Thor. He remembered Thanos, remembered the battle, remembered turning down Quill's offer to join the Guardians in the space afterward. He remembered thinking to himself if he should've simply accepted that offer, if being out there with the Guardians would somehow keep his mind occupied, so he wouldn't stumble back toward alcohol and depression.

But space was where Thor lost his brother. To be back there again. Thor didn't think he could do that. His old self might be able to. What he was now, that man was gone.

Then Hela showed up. Thor had thought she was dead, he should've known better.

She, too, should've known better. Even though Surtur was not around anymore, earth had the Avengers. Wounded from the recent trauma from the Mad Titan, yes, but they were the Avengers still. And she should've known better than to underestimate them.

There was war and there were deaths. The innocents only given too short a break before another threat washed over without a warning. Thor remained on the ground floor of the Avengers Compound. He fought and slain dozens of Hela's undead soldiers in the past half an hour, there were more coming at him and, sure, he could decapitate them clean with the blade of Stormbreaker, though he seemed to never see an end of it. There were too many. Too many of them, Thor killed them all, they kept coming back.

He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, the other held Stormbreaker in a tight grip, after having killed another one of them draugr; the undead. At least, for now, there wasn't any new one raising from the ground with its teeth aiming at his throat. Just for now, he was allowed a moment to take a breath or two.

The hallway in front of him was empty, though the commotion -- the dead's howling and his friends' shouting -- had never quieted down.

He took confident steps forward, meaning to reach Hela, to actually confront her again.

Thor stopped dead in his tracks the second he rounded the corner and suddenly met with a familiar pair of eyes staring back at him. Those eyes, they were dull now, dull and almost completely white, though Thor still recognised them. The raven hair, the torn apart leather clothing and armour, and a mark ringing his neck with skin as pale as death itself.

That mark around his neck.

And he was in front of Thor now

Thor was the one suddenly forgetting how to breathe.

~~~

Steve yelled something at Tony, something about 'now is the time' while he fought off another draugr outside the compound.

"We're running out of time," he said, shouted, shielding his body from a sword trying to drive its way through his chest just in time.

"Thor's still inside." Tony said behind the Iron Suit as he shot a dozen more of the undead with his repulsor blast in one go, watching them all fell and burn.

Then Tony contacted his god friend through the communicating device he gave each of the team a long while ago.

~~~