There’s something in the way she says it that has Thor turning more closely toward her, his one good eye meeting hers. “You take no one’s place but your own, and I wouldn’t have you anywhere else. I’ve missed you just as much.” Maybe under other circumstances, it would be awkward to keep holding her hand like this, but if he is honest with himself, he needs this reassurance for himself, if nothing else. He’s always been a tactile person, touching his friends and family at the slightest whim, and never thinking anything of it, never imagining for a moment that one day they might not be there for him to hold.

He knows better, now.

The Aesir are long-lived, but that does not mean that all will meet their ends after they’ve gone old and gray. Ragnarok alone was proof of that, and Thor now knows that death may come for any of them, at any moment. He’d thought to worry about the short lives of his human friends, their lives so fleeting compared to his, and never thought to turn that same worry to his own people, assured that he would have centuries to prepare himself. But even with his own dreams of prophecy warning him for more than a year, he still hadn’t been ready. Still hadn’t believed it would really happen, that nearly everyone he loves would be gone after its passing.

All he knows for certain now is this moment, right here, right now. He will not take that for granted again.

So though the grief of his losses still tangles in his heart, there’s a lightness there too, knowing that he’s not alone and that one day they will all be together again, though he knows not when. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in four thousand years, but it will happen, someday. Nor shall we mourn, but rejoice. “We’d better have some stories to tell, when that day comes. They would be disappointed if we didn’t.”