Sindri
Sindri didn't know what exactly was suddenly wrong with all of the Nine Realms, but somehow he knew that obnoxious brat, as well as his brutish father, had a hand in it.
He lay on his back, well-muscled back covered in a threadbare top, resting against the bare physical representation of Yggdrasil. For a second, as he lay alone, lost in the realm between realms, eyes stuck on the gray void that surrounded him, he regretted leaving immediately after the red-haired brute had killed his own father.
It was a scene that not even in his wildest dreams had he envisioned. Odin was dead, killed by his own son, the brutish monster he had created. A weapon without a hilt that had turned on its own wielder. Brok would have had a laugh at the irony, great shaking laughter that would've forced even morose Sindri to crack a smile.
Now, Brok was dead. Permanently this time, his soul forever lost to him. Once more, Sindri lost his slowly growing joviality as hatred and anger sprang from within him, once again claiming every rational thought. Kratos and Atreus. He was not stupid. Brok's second death was not completely their fault, and the dwarf would have scolded him if he were present to see him blame them, but he wasn't. And while Brok's death was not completely their fault, they had a hand in it.
"You're not the only one that misses him, you know."
Then came the chittering voice of the irritant that had been pestering him for the past few days. "Oh, fuck off." With his part said, he summoned great strength to do the nearly impossible. He turned to his side, turning his back against the speaker.
Unfortunately, the speaker was far more agile, spry, and had more interest in this conversation than he did. A hop took the speaker to his other side as it bounded across him to land directly in front of his face.
"He was a superb employee, and even weeks later, it hurts to know he was killed under my protection, and you know if I could, I would've left the World Tree to join the war against Odin."
"So what?" Sindri replied bitterly to the squirrel before him. The furred face of Ratatoskr twisted as his muzzle shifted into what Sindri recognized as a frown.
"He was just your employee, but he was my brother, and I will mourn him however I like."
The slap came at him faster than he could react, not that it hurt much. Ratatoskr was still barely the size of his arm, with the paw scaled to size. So instead of wincing in pain, he simply glared back at the keeper of the World Tree, but where his furious glare had been enough to move Kratos and Atreus owing to their guilt at having a hand in Brok's death, Ratatoskr was unmoved. Instead, he returned Sindri's glare with his single eye, his second lost from the predator's attack that had led him to find his way to Yggdrasil.
That single-eyed glare made him grunt in annoyance at being defeated, so he turned his back to the squirrel once more. Unfortunately, again, it was somehow even faster this time, bounding to his other side before he had even completed the motion.
The squirrel jabbed a clawed finger into his cheek. "I've had enough of your moaning and grumbling, your sadness and depression with no clear plan to deal with it. If I had any interest in suffering through that, I would not have ripped out my own arrogance, anxiousness, and bitterness and created runic forms for them. So here is what we're going to do. As your boss, I can't allow you to wallow like this. Yggdrasil has been forcibly moved, and such an action has caused microfractures and cracks in its bark.
Kratos is not here, so I'm left with you once more as my sole employee. Your job now is to check on all of the Nine Realms to see how much they've merged with the locations they were placed, and report back to me. That should give you something to do."
Sindri closed his eyes, faking sleep once more in the hope that the squirrel would get tired and leave, just as it had for the past few days, at least until it slipped its metaphorical hidden dagger beneath his ribs where he was most vulnerable.
"It is what Brok would've done if he were here."
Sindri snapped upright in anger, rage clouding his features as he glared at the unmoved one-eyed squirrel. "But he is not here! He is dead, again, and there is nothing I can do to change that!"
"What if there was?"
Sindri froze.
Ratatoskr looked at him without a single notable emotion on his furred face. The cosmic squirrel stared at him with folded limbs, its well-sewn jacket giving him a serious look.
"W-what do you mean? You heard it clearly. His soul was already incomplete, as I was unable to recover everything the last time I revived him. Now there is nothing to retrieve or revive left."
"That was true before we left our former cosmos and imprinted ourselves on this new cosmos," Ratatoskr said with a straight face. "Now, I've heard whispers of stones that could do the impossible while running through the branches of Yggdrasil. As my sole employee left, I'm leaving you with the job. Find out more information about these stones, what they can do, how they can affect Yggdrasil, and also if they can help bring back my number one employee of the year for four years straight."
Hope.
It was such a dangerous emotion. It could just as easily be made true as it could be made false. It was a trap, a trap that Sindri knew of, yet that was how it worked and operated. Hope did not lie. It let you know as it was. It cajoled you, knowing fully well that you could not refuse it, knowing fully well that you would either gain everything you want or sink into the deepest pits of despair from which you would not recover.
Yet even knowing that, knowing just how slippery that word was, Sindri felt a fire come to his chest, and for the first time since Brok's death, he felt his heart beat once more. His blood pumping sluggishly in his veins as strength returned to his limbs. Sindri stood up faster than he should have after lying on his back for what amounted to weeks.
The whiplash nearly sent him falling on his face, but his hand snapped out at the last moment, grabbing hold of something furred. He looked down to see the squirrel glaring at him, and he grunted in response. He didn't have time to waste. If there was the slightest hope that he could bring back Brok...
"Wait, what did you mean by Yggdrasil was moved?"
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He had thought that he had seen the extent of the audaciousness of the father and son duo, but he had been wrong. Apparently, what he knew was just the beginning. He had left immediately after Odin's death and had missed it, but Ratatoskr claimed that Thor, Kratos, and Freya had joined hands. They ended the war with Odin's death, and in order to avert the fate that was Ragnarok, the trio had come to the most audacious plan, to run away with Yggdrasil in tow.
It had succeeded, so now they were somewhere else, in another cosmos unfamiliar to them all, or so he heard the squirrel talk about it. An alternate universe.
Sindri walked up to the gold-gilded door that was the entrance to their home. The blue leaves that Yggdrasil shed lay scattered across the ground in great voluminous piles, dampening his footsteps as he walked forward. He was loath to return home, to the place that reminded him so much of who and what he had lost, but he had to. There was no escaping this first part of the journey, so he walked up to the door and pressed his hand against it.
The door pulsed for a second as the runic magic carved into its frame recognized him. Then, with a subtle flare, it released its magical locks, and with little effort he pushed the door of the safe house open and stepped inside.
He took a second to take it all in. They had built their home around Yggdrasil itself, and it showed in how the branches intertwined with their house. There was the small fireplace just ahead, where they had cooked the vast majority of their meals, and right beside it their apothecary table, with an overarching view of the realm between realms through a wide window.
Then to the side was the sitting and dining area, where fond memories recalled them all sitting and eating, laughing, joking, and ribbing each other. It was at this dining table that Odin's disguise had been stripped, and in retaliation he had—
Sindri snapped his eyes away from the table as he took another step forward, trying to bury the memories of Brok's second death once more. Unfortunately, snapping his eyes away from the dining table took them to the two forges on the left. Two identical forges, yet if one knew where to look they could see the differences. There was his, more meticulously arranged and taken care of, with the tools well packed and the heat from the forge set to simmer.
It seemed like Lunda had been making use of his, even if she wasn't present right now.
The second was scattered. It had been left exactly how it had been the last time it was used. The major difference was the heat, which was completely out. No blacksmith worth his irons would ever allow their forge to go out completely... unless they were dead.
With a groan and watery eyes, Sindri snapped his gaze away once more and moved to turn away. Coming here was a mistake. The memories were overwhelming. Every single place he turned, he saw Brok. That was why he had left everything behind. He could not suffer to return here every day and be reminded of what he had lost. However, as he turned, his palm on the door and ready to push it open, he remembered what was to be gained, and hope sprang forth once more.
The deceptive emotion.
He turned away from the door, hardened his features, and moved to his room. A room he had once shared with... He shook his head. First, he would need a serious shower, a long one to wash off the grime. Then a pair of scissors and blades to shave his head and beard, and finally new clothes and tools. When he was done with that, he would begin his search, and he would start from the one place he had avoided since he brought back Brok from the dead the first time.
His true home.
Niðavellir
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Eitri
Eitri had grown accustomed to the silence that had followed him like a shroud for the past few years.
It was a punishment he'd assigned to himself, one that weighed just as heavy as the metal gauntlets Thanos had forced upon his hands. Silence and solitude were what he deserved. Silence for failing his people, for being too weak to save them, and solitude for watching as the Mad Titan and his children slaughtered every dwarf in Nidavellir save one. Him. The king who had been left alive to wallow in his failure.
The irony and cruelty were not lost on him.
He sat in a forge that had once rang with the sound of a thousand hammers but now sat cold and quiet. The great ring that encircled their star, built by hands far older and more skilled than his own despite his centuries of life, stood as a monument to everything they'd lost. He had lost.
He stood up and found himself wandering through the empty halls like a ghost, and not for the first time. His massive frame casting long shadows across workshops that would never again echo with dwarven laughter or song.
Then the world changed.
It happened without warning, without explanation. One moment he stood alone in the ruins of his kingdom, the next he felt something shift. A glitch. Their long alliance with Asgard had given the dwarves some sort of feel for the deeper realms and the weave of magic, so he felt it even if he did not completely understand that something had fundamentally changed in the very fabric of reality itself.
What he did understand was that the air suddenly tasted different. The light from the star seemed to bend in ways it shouldn't. And most impossibly, he heard new voices.
For a minute he stood still in place, thinking he'd finally lost his mind. That months of solitude had finally cracked something fundamental in his psyche, and now he was hearing the voices of the dead. His wife. His daughter. His son. Yet when he walked to the eastern quadrant, to a section that had been nothing but scorched metal and ash, he saw them.
Dwarves.
They were not like him. These dwarves were smaller, most of them barely reaching his knee, with features that were simultaneously familiar and alien. They moved through a village that shouldn't exist, with buildings that hadn't been there yesterday, structures built in a style he didn't recognize but somehow instinctively understood. He watched them from a distance as they worked forges that glowed with heat, hammered metal that rang with purpose, and called to each other in voices that carried warmth and life.
Eitri watched, hidden behind the skeletal remains of what had once been the grand hall. His size made concealment difficult, but these new dwarves seemed content to remain in their strange section of Nidavellir, a section that had trees, grasses, mountains, and hills. He did not understand, so he watched them for days. Weeks. Observed as they decorated homes and workshops and rebuilt broken things.
They were skilled, he could see that much. Not as advanced as his people had been, perhaps, but there was craftsmanship in their work. Beautiful purpose in every blow their hammers struck on metal. They sang in joy as they labored, their voices carrying across both the grassy and metal plains that had somehow fused together to give the surroundings an unfamiliar look.
The sounds they made stirred something in Eitri's chest, and he could feel it ache in response. Dwarves were not made for solitude. They were made for families, clans, and villages.
Sometimes they spotted him. His height made true invisibility impossible, and more than once he saw one of the smaller dwarves point in his direction, calling to their companions. Most of them waved at the sight of him. The gesture was surprisingly friendly and open, an invitation to join them. The exact way his people had greeted each other. A people he had failed to protect.
Eitri retreated further each time. He did not deserve it.
He didn't deserve their interest. Didn't deserve their kindness or their community. He was a king whose weakness had led his people to ruin, whose hands had forged the weapon that Thanos planned to use to murder half the universe, these new and strange dwarves included. What right did he have to stand among dwarves who still knew joy?
So Eitri, king of Nidavellir and sole surviving dwarf of the original star, stayed away, content in watching the strange dwarves from afar as they explored. He slowly began to learn their patterns. He recognized individuals as they worked. There was one with white hair who seemed to oversee much of the construction. Another, a woman red of hair and strong of arms, who often spent long hours at the forge, her hammer strokes careful and calculated. And the small ones that waved at him, that he had slowly realized were children. Actual children, running between the buildings with laughter that echoed off the stone, wood, and metal walls.
Children. Eitri hadn't heard a child's laughter since before Thanos came.
That was his final cue to leave them alone for good. They did not deserve the curse that was his presence. What good was he but a relic that the universe had immediately sought to replace? His time was past. Perhaps it was time to end it all for good, so the new owners of the planet could do as they wished.
Eitri turned away and retreated to the coldest, darkest corner of the ruined forge he'd claimed as his own solitary space. He remained alone, as he deserved. As he would always deserve. Alone, he contemplated his death. How should he make it?
Quick, so as to see his children and wife sooner, or slow and agonizing, to make sure he suffered and paid the price for being a king that could not protect his people, while enabling what was going to be the biggest slaughter the universe had ever experienced.
He didn't know how much time passed. What he did know was when things changed once more, the herald of that change were footsteps approaching his hiding place.
Eitri stiffened, hidden in the shadows of his forge. His massive frame went still. He'd been careless. Distracted. Had allowed someone to get close without noticing. The footsteps were meandering, like the owner was searching for something or someone. Still, regardless of how well hidden he was, the inevitable was bound to happen, and it did.
A figure finally appeared around the corner of the ruined wall he hid behind. He was a dwarf, a new one judging by his look, because Eitri could not remember him, and with such a neatly groomed beard, he would have. Yet there was something about the dwarf that was familiar. It didn't take Eitri long to realize it was the eyes, dark, heavy, and shadowed. The dwarf's eyes carried something Eitri recognized intimately. Pain. Deep, soul-crushing pain that mirrored his own.
The dwarf's clothes were clean but worn, and despite their look, his features looked like someone who had recently cleaned up and decided to start living again. Something that he had been unable to do.
The dwarf stopped a respectful distance away and looked up at Eitri with wide eyes that slowly shifted to sympathy as he stared into Eitri's own eyes and saw something mirrored. They stared at each other for a long moment, king and stranger, two souls marked by loss. They understood each other more than anyone else ever could.
"Hi," the dwarf said finally, his voice cracked and shaky like someone who had not spoken for a long time. "My name is Sindri. What is yours?"
Eitri's throat felt tight. How long had it been since someone had asked his name? Since he had spoken or had a proper conversation? The dwarves had ripped solitude from him. Now this specific dwarf aimed to take his silence from him. The words stuck for a moment, rusty from disuse, heavy with shame at his deeply hidden happiness at having someone to talk to once more.
Then he looked back into the dwarf, into Sindri's eyes. That pain. That grief. It called to his own, recognized it, understood it in a way that made his continued silence feel wrong. This dwarf knew loss. Knew failure. And yet here he was, stretching forth a hand to him. Who was he to reject him?
"Eitri," he said finally, his voice rough and low. "My name is Eitri."
That introduction signaled another change, as the universe was once more forced to spin on its axis.
A/N: Two dwarves overwhelmed with grief and loss, oh what fun to be had. Anyway, MCU Niðavellir is in such a weird place as it is not a planet, but a star, with what amounts to a space station built around it. So integrating a proper realm around it was fun. Niðavellir is basically like MCU Asgard (A realm simply floating in space), but floating at its heart is the star.