After the War

What's coming will come

Valkyrie

The first day after the funeral was one of the worst. Everyone was silent and gloomy after finally saying their goodbyes to Banner. I have to say, even I was saddened about the loss, even though I didn't know the man that well. I did know the Hulk though, we had been quite good friends at Sakaar... he had been the only friend I had there... That's why the loss was hard on me as well. Especially since I had already lost so many friends before. Losing someone, a friend, or someone even closer to you, the feeling of it... it's something that you'll never forget, something that will haunt you for years if not forever, because loss leaves a hole that can't be filled... not even with booze. I tried that before and I wasn't gonna try that now. Instead I tried to be with the friends that were left to me... which was basically only Thor. Well, him and the cats.

Yes, the cats were still with us. Every single one of them. They walked around our ship, they walked around the Avengers Compound and they walked around the ship of the Guardians, winding themselves around your legs, sometimes making people struggle when they weren't paying attention. I think they sensed the sadness, it has been said that animals do that and tend to try to make people feel better when they're sad, especially pets like cats and dogs.

It was things like this that made me miss my Pegasus. Yes, I used to own a Pegasus. Yes I know that that is awesome. Most people might just view him as a horse, or a winged horse in his case, but to the Valkyries our steeds were more than just that, they were our friends. So my steed, Aragorn meant a lot to me. I left him when I went into exile... and I didn't know what had become of him. I sometimes wondered if he missed me, especially in the beginning... but the more I drank the more that feeling left me. That was till two days after Banner's funeral.

The day started off quite normal, I woke up, had breakfast. Then lady Sif came to me to ask me if I wanted to help clean up the stables on the ship. "Stables?" I asked her in confusion. I seriously had no idea that we had stables on the ship. "Yes, stables, you think we left Asgard to be destroyed without taking the horses?" "I don't know, I was busy fighting Hela's undead soldiers." "Yeah, I guess that's right. Anyway, the horses were evacuated and I wondered if you wanted to help. Valkyries used to have steeds right? So I take it you're good with horses." "Yeah, I am." "So, do you want to help, we recently got back all the horses we lost, so it's quite a mess in there and we need all the help we can get." I nodded, "Sure, I'll help."

We went to the stables together, where some Asgardians were already cleaning up horse manure. It smelled pretty bad in there to be fair with you. I stopped in front of a stable where a big black horse was standing on his eight strong legs. "Is that..." "Sleipnir," Sif finished. "Yes, that's him. Odin's old steed. I imagine that now that Odin is dead he should go to Thor, don't you think? A steed fit for a King." "Yeah, he sure is." "The fastest horse in all of the nine realms." Sif continued to talk a little bit about Sleipnir, while I got distracted by a whinny behind me. The whinny sounded familiar, yet strange in this place. It was as if I had heard it before but as if the owner of that whinny just didn't belong here.

I turned around and found myself eye to eye with a beautiful white Pegasus. A Valkyrie steed. "Brunnhilde?" I heard Sif say behind me. "Uh... yeah?" "Are you looking at... of course you are. We found him after... well... you know after what, let's just say he had been dusted after Thanos snapped his fingers. We found him in the stables, I think he was the only Pegasus that survived... Do you know who he belonged to?" I nodded slowly, "Yeah, I do." "That makes sense, since he's a Valkyrie steed. I take it you also know his name?" "Yeah, his name is Aragorn... and he's mine."

I carefully walked over to the stable, hoping he wasn't mad at me for leaving him. "Aragorn... hey, it's me... do you remember me?" He whinnied softly, he didn't sound mad. In fact he sounded like he was happy to see me. I continued to walk closer and closer. Then, as I was close enough he laid his head on my shoulder and whinnied loudly. "Hey, you want me to go deaf or something? Weirdo." He tried to pull me even closer with his head. "Yeah, I missed you too, boy," I said as I hugged him. He nibbled at my hair. "Really? Do you have to?" I guess he did cause he continued to nibble. "Yeah, fine, just... nibble my hair."