Thor watches them go, one by one.
Tony’s first; it’s inevitable with his self sacrificing tendencies and his already weakened body.
They mourn him for a long time, and Thor can’t get the way he grinned out of his mind.
Next is Bruce, an enhanced sickness he never saw coming. He’d never had reason to fear the flu, and as his immune system was attacked, as it got weaker and weaker, his friends surrounded him with love and laughter.
He dies feeling totally at piece, and Thor wears metal banners across his wrists in his honor.
Natasha lasts longer than she had ever thought; and would’ve lasted longer had she remembered the self preservation she’d been taught as a child.
She gladly takes the spray of bullets for the civilians caught in the crosshairs of battle. She hangs on just long enough for her teammates to surround her on the battlefield, Clint holding her head and Steve holding her hand.
Thor summons a rainstorm for a week, but then makes sure the sky’s stay clear and beautiful for months after.
Steve is caught when he’s teaching the young ones. It shouldn’t have ended the way it did. Thor thinks he probably just gave up, stopped fighting to live and watch his friends die, but when Clint sits next to him at the funeral, with the Young Avengers surrounding them with tears and the entire nation weeping, Thor keeps it to himself and brands the symbol of Steve’s shield in the shoulder plates of his uniform.
Clint outlasts all of them, far into the future. He’s old and grey and dies with his children, grown, beside him and with Thor standing in the doorway, not looking like he aged a day.
Clint laughs and then his eyes ease shut. Thor keeps the thought of the laughing archer near his chest and makes sure the Barton Farm has a good rain season.
—-
There’s a long time where Thor mourns his friends, mourns the humans he lost.
He returns to Asgard and and tries to surround himself with so many people that he might eventually forget about his human friends.
It doesn’t work, but it gets to be long enough that he can pretend.
He learns a lot about death, in the years and years and years since they pass.
He learns that the bodies are buried in the earth on Midgard, and that there are theories the energy of the once-living go into the universe. Thor takes comfort that his friends might be out there in some aspect.
And then he gets a summons from Heimdall, and he’s told he might be interested in a development on Earth. Thor almost wants to decline, but he’d sworn to protect the tiny, young planet and so he goes.
It’s very different than the last time he’d been, he’s even more out of place now, landing in between tall buildings that carve out the sky. There is a gang of boys, fighting one lone fighter with blond hair.
Thor intervenes immediately and sends the gang of boys scurrying away. The blond boy rubs at the blood on his face, and snorts after them.
“I had ‘em on the ropes,” he growls, eyeing Thor with piercing blue eyes. Thor nods, struck silent with how familiar the blue is.
“Who are you?” The boy asks, and Thor blinks, shakes himself into speaking.
“Thor,” he says and the boys eyes narrow.
The boy looks him over before smiling widely, sticking his hand out.
“Steve Rogers, pleased to meet you.“
And as Thor chokes on breath, shaking the boys- Steve’s- hand, he can only hope that if he waits long enough, the energy of the universe will pull them all together again.
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