Saudade

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Night had fallen for the ship. However, it was an arbitrary designation, night only in the sense of collective agreement it was time to sleep. In the dead of space, there was no daylight or moonlight to break time into meaningful days, only infinite darkness interrupted by the gleam of faraway objects. The cargo ship holding the last of the Aesir was quiet save for the dull, rhythmic hum of its engines and pipes.

Heimdall stood at its helm, watching the ephemeral glint of photons that had traveled impossible light years to reach his eyes. Some were long dead, their beckoning light the only legacy left behind. Focusing on the bright spots among the vaccuum, he tried to see into them, to catch a glimpse of what worlds they contained. To his dismay, his reach was failing, the gift of vision fading alongside the dust of their planet. It haunted his dreams when he tried sleep.

A shuffling noise behind him interrupted his thoughts. Someone else was awake.

He turned his head and visually swept the empty, container-like room. A woman stared back, unfazed by the inquiry of his all-seeing eyes. She sauntered over to him, a bottle of amber fluid sloshing back and forth in one hand.

Raising it up, she asked casually, "You want a drink too?"

One should not be drinking at a time like this, he thought to say, but instead countered, "Why are you awake? The entire ship is asleep."

"The days on Sakaar were longer. I am used to the day being 35 hours," she explained as she unscrewed the top of the bottle and poured herself a glass. Normally, she would have downed the entire thing in one go, but judging eyes made her uncharacteristically self-conscious about her alcohol consumption. "Shouldn't you be asleep too?"

Heimdall shook his head and sighed. He'd not be able to sleep for ages. "There is an event horizon approaching us, something terrible that I cannot see."

"I thought you saw everything," the valkyrie replied flippantly, taking a drink from her glass and grimacing at the burning sensation flowing down her throat.

"Asgard was the source of my sight."

"Well, shit," she declared. Neither of them lingered on the gravity of his statement. They were both too hardened by lifetimes of continual crises to feel any panic. It was just one more thing to add to the list of problems to be managed. Setting down the bottle on the ground, she slumped into Thor's chair and swiveled around irreverently. Turning her head up to regard Heimdall's statuesque form, she raised her glass to him.

"Sounds like you need this more than I do."

He glanced at her coldly, refusing to take her offer. "That will not help me see any better."

The valkyrie shrugged and emptied the glass in one gulp. Her gaze traveled to his face and she noticed for the first time the grey twisting thru his hair, the lines under his golden eyes, and the weariness that permeated the air all around him despite his best efforts to maintain a steady, unshakable presence. Time had not been very kind to him.

"You're much older that I expected you to be," she blurted out bluntly, "I remember you. You were just a young soldier."

Heimdall refused to meet her eyes and give her the satisfaction of provoking him. Looking out into the cosmos, he lectured, "That should come as no surprise. Your planet revolved around a black hole that dilates all around it. Of course time passed differently for you."

"Yeah, I know. Relativity is a real bitch," she exclaimed as she poured herself another half glass.

Taking a small sip, she complained, "I never thought it'd be like this. Asgard was nothing like I'd remembered. The people are not anything like those in my memory. It's like the world I spent so long hating never existed."

Her companion slowly turned his shoulders toward her and gave her a meaningful look. "It did exist. I remember."

Silence overtook the room as their parallel thoughts drifted toward another reality. She tapped the glass with her nails impatiently, and he looked out into the vast nothingness. Here they were, the last two people who could contemplate a world deep in the past, two vestiges of an obsolete generation. She finally broke the stillness and bitterly replied, "Looks like you're the only one."

"It was a simpler time then," Heimdall mused, his voice filled with nostalgia.

"Remember when the entire Einherjar force had to do tours around the nine realms?" She asked excitedly, "I was so naive that I thought it would be fun."

He chuckled at the memory and replied, "My commander told me it would be like taking a holiday."

The valkyrie laughed at his answer, cocking her head to the side as if she could see their time back in the core together. "God that was some awful shit, stuck in that tin can with nothing to do for months on end. I think I spent at least two hours a day polishing my equipment."

"It was the cleanest I have ever been. Nothing to do except clean and get into fights."

The valkyrie gave him a wry smile and offered her drink again. To her surprise, he gently took it from her hand. Delighted, she grabbed the bottle from the ground and raised it in a toast. A toast to the useless memories they shared. A toast to the long shadow their past cast as the light of life set past zenith toward the horizon. The simple truth was that for them, the road ahead was shorter than the distance already behind them. Heimdall clicked his glass against the neck of the bottle and proceeded to drink. His back stiffened when the offensive liquid burned as it went down.

"You get used to it. I barely notice it now," she muttered casually as she took a big swig from the bottle itself.

"You drink too much."

Raising an eyebrow, she shot back, "You don't drink enough."

He sighed and took another drink of the strong liquor. Perhaps she was right.

"You know, I have always thought that I left Asgard behind. But seeing these people—the way they are inspired by grace, not force— I think it's Asgard that has left me behind. I don't know if there is room for a jaded soldier like me here," she confessed, eyes unfocused and wandering.

"Surely you do not wish to return to that world."

The valkyrie shifted in her chair uncomfortably, unsure of what she wanted. The feeling of saudade made her heart hurt, for saudade is the cruelest of nostalgias; a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy. She'd picked up the word from a scrapper who constantly talked of his home, an impoverished, dreary place at the foot of a volcano that she would have mistook for hell if not for the longing in his eyes when he spoke.

"No," she whispered, still lost in her own head, "But it just all gets brighter with age, even the grimy parts. It was a simpler time."

Every time they reached and played the past through their heads, the memory corrupted a little. Like a bad tape cassette, the images and sounds warped with each repeat, losing the bits and pieces that were unpleasant. She'd played it over and over in her head so many times in the past few days that it no longer resembled the original.

Heimdall put a hand on her shoulder. The gesture contained a kindness she'd not expected of him. "Stop thinking about it. We need you, Brunnhilde," he said simply.

Breath hitched sharply in her throat as she heard the name no one had spoken for ages. Her eyes fluttered open in shock. The last time someone called her by name…

She took a long drink and stood to take another good look at him. Resignation and tiredness were etched deep into his face. Slowly, she reached out with a hesitant hand and traced the lines at his temple. True to his reputation, Heimdall barely moved, eyes fixed on her. All that betrayed his response was a small twitch of his hand. In a moment of impulsive desire, she leaned in and pressed her lips against his.

He made no move to push her away, but he didn't have to. She quickly backed away, dropping her hand to her side as if burned. Their kiss had no warmth, no feeling. It was a mistake that only blossomed the aching nostalgia in them both, amplifying the loneliness.

"I'm going to bed," she said quickly.

He nodded and did not reply. They shared a knowing look that neither of them would ever speak of this again. It would just be another part of that drifting past they'd tried to touch. When she broke her gaze and walked away into the darkness, he took another drink from the glass she'd left behind in his hand.

Something blue and geometric flashed in his eye. It's fiery power was so strong that he had to look away.

He could see again.

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