I won't be able to post tomorrow, so here's a chapter a day early. Enjoy!

Thor V: Valhalla

Valkyrie's first winter at the cabin went even better than Thor expected. They bought her booties to protect her paw pads from the snow and ice, and she accompanied them on every cross-country skiing trail they attempted, trotting beside Thor every step of the way. Downhill skiing, especially at the level Thor usually preferred, was out of the question because she couldn't keep up with him, but Thor didn't mind. He found he'd rather enjoy a slower paced hike with his dog by his side than a race down a mountain without her.

After skiing all day, they spent every night curled up by the fireplace in their cabin. Valkyrie loved to sit in front of the fire, sometimes so close they had to move her away for fear she'd burn herself. She even saved Thor on the trail one time. He seized suddenly, and she was the only one close enough to catch him on the way down. Thor couldn't believe it had taken them this long to consider a seizure response dog. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

~0~

Valkyrie had been accompanying Thor to school for almost a year, and she always lay quietly by his feet as she'd been trained to do. That's why it came as such a surprise when she started whining in the middle of his math test.

"Shhh." He scratched her behind the ears to calm her, but she refused to be silenced. She whined louder and even started pawing at his lap. "Val, stop it," he hissed. Students around the room looked up from their tests to see what the fuss was about.

"Thor," his teacher said sternly. "Is there a problem?"

"I…don't know. She's never been…like this before."

"Either get her quiet or take her outside."

"Yes sir."

He stood up, which only seemed to stress her out more, and took her out the nearest exit and to a field outside the school. "What's the matter?" he asked, frowning. He'd thought maybe she needed to use the bathroom because she wasn't feeling well or something, but she didn't go. Instead, she just kept whining and pawing at him, occasionally stopping and standing behind him like she was about to do Help. Suddenly, Thor understood. The trainers had told him that Valkyrie might learn to sense his seizures before they happened. That must be what was happening.

Thor sat down in the grass and that apparently pleased her. "Is that it? 'M gonna seize?" She pawed at him again until he lay down completely. Thor didn't feel any different, though he didn't always feel weird before a big seizure. He trusted Valkyrie knew what she was talking about. Since they were outside, he didn't think she could get back in the building to find a person to help, but the grass was as forgiving a surface as any and Thor figured it would probably be okay. Besides, his teacher had seen him go and would notice that he hadn't returned yet. Valkyrie sat down beside him right before he passed out.

~0~

Thor awoke on his side, the first thing he saw Valkyrie curled up in front of him. Her eyes met his, and hers lit up when she saw him awake. He reached out a shaky hand to rest on her shoulder, letting the sensation of her fur beneath his fingertips ground him. A few moments later he noticed the school nurse was there too. "You back with us?" she asked.

Thor took a few moments to collect himself—talking was always harder right after a seizure when his focus was shot—and managed to say, "Ja."

"Your mother is on her way. She's going to bring you home so you can sleep it off. Do you want to stay here or do you want to try and move to the office and a real bed?"

That was a lot of words to take in all at once. Thor barely caught half of what she said, his only coherent thoughts still focused on Valkyrie. She'd seen this coming and tried to warn him. And she had. Successfully. Thor was already on the ground by the time convulsions began, the safest possible position for him to be. His head hurt less than usual, which mean it had also been a more minor tonic-clonic. His pants weren't even wet; another small blessing. "Good girl," he told Valkyrie. She wagged her tail proudly and gently licked his hand.

"Stay here or move?" the nurse reiterated, thankfully using fewer words this time.

"Here," Thor said. He didn't want to waste the energy moving back inside when he would just have to come outside again when Mor picked him up. With Valkyrie's help, he worked himself up to sitting. By the time Mor arrived, he was ready to fall asleep again, but she helped him to the car and put him to bed back home. "Val knew," he muttered as she pulled the blanket up to his shoulders.

"She knew what to do?"

"Knew it was…coming."

"Okay. We'll talk about it more when you're rested up."

"'Kay."

When Thor awoke, Loki was home from school and doing homework, so it must have been at least two or three hours. The instant he sat up Valkyrie hopped to attention beside his bed. He got up, went to the bathroom, and got himself a glass of water. Mor called the family to dinner a few minutes later.

"Valky-rie knew it was…coming," Thor repeated. By this point, everyone in the house knew he'd seized earlier that day. There was never another reason for him to be napping at three o'clock in the afternoon.

"Did she?" Far asked. "How do you know?"

"Sheh…she acted diff-rent."

"The whole story, Thor," Mor insisted. Thor grumbled and took a sip of water. She always made him tell a story in full detail to practice his speech fluency, and he hated it because it was embarrassing to sit there and flounder through the words in front of his family. Knowing he had no chance of escaping this task, he began.

"I was tahk…taking a…math test and she…started wuh…whining. She's never…mesbaved," Thor regretted his overambitious choice of word as soon as it left his mouth, but he tried again. "Mis…bee…aved at school before. I…thought…she was sick or something. Mah…my te-cher…asked me to take her…out-side. She kept when-ing—no, whining—and…pawing at me, and she got behaind…behind me like she was…trying to catch me. Accept…except I wasn't falling. I felt fun—fine—but she…wouldn't settle down until...I got down on the grass. And then I had…a big seizure."

Man, that was exhausting. Speaking required such concentration that to do it for so long on end was as headache-inducing as squinting to read fine print. Worse was the childish praise his mother issued after he finished: "Great job, Thor."

"They did tell us that Valkyrie might be able to sense Thor's seizures before they happen. Sometimes there's a chemical change in the body that a dog's sense of smell can detect. I guess after all this time she's finally learned what a seizure smells like. Is that right, Valkyrie?" Far said to the dog under the table.

"I guess so," Thor said. "We'll seh…see if she does it…again."

"If she can do that, it will certainly come in handy," Mor said.

"If the dog can warn him before a seizure happens, does that mean he'll be able to drive?" Loki asked.

"No. I'm sorry, but the risks are still too high, especially with absences also on the table."

"It's okay," Thor said. "You can…drive me places."

Loki stuck his tongue out at him, and Thor returned the gesture. Even if it couldn't return his ability to drive a car, Thor knew that being warned of his seizure ahead of time would make his life so much easier and safer. Maybe he could even shower standing up again.

~0~

That summer was supposed to be the best one ever, but Clint's passing immediately cut it down to one of the worst. Unlike many of his friends at Gravesen, Thor had never lost anyone important to him. Watching them cope with their grief so maturely made him feel naïve and foolish. The ceremony itself was a beautiful tribute to Clint's life, and he returned from America feeling slightly less horrible than when he'd first heard the news through Steve. The boy had the decency to do it over the phone instead of just texting, which Thor appreciated. And in the weeks following, Wanda Maximoff re-entered the group after running into Tony and Parker at the airport, reinvigorating them all. And at least Thor still had the summer cabin trip to brighten his spirits. It would be Valkyrie's first summer up there, and Thor couldn't wait to get her in the water. Laboradors supposedly excelled at swimming.

When they arrived, he found an arrow buried in the trunk of a tree. Thor stared at it in awe, with no idea of who it belonged to or how it got there. "What's the matter?" Far asked when he trundled over. He took in the sight of the arrow too. "Nothing to worry about, some recreational hunters or archers probably got it stuck there."

"Not worr-ied. Clint loved ar-cher…y," Thor explained.

"Oh, wow. Maybe he shot this here from Valhalla, huh?"

Thor smiled, the thought immensely comforting. "Yeah."

They finished unpacking the car and settling into the cabin. Thor took a picture of the arrow and sent it to the Avengers group chat. Among them, Natasha seemed the most touched.

"Did you take up shooting?" Bucky asked.

"No. I just found this lodged in a tree when we showed up at our cabin," Thor explained.

"Wow. That's incredible," Parker said.

"Amazing," Steve wrote.

"What's going on?" Nick asked. It occurred to Thor that he couldn't see the picture.

"I found an arrow."

"Wow. That's awesome."

"Thank you for sharing this sign," Natasha said. Thor couldn't think of a better start to a stay in his favorite place on Earth.

First thing in the morning, he and Loki set out for the water. Per Loki's suggestion and with their parents' permission, they grabbed a canoe with the intention of rowing out to the little island off the coast. It was more of a chunk of rock than an island, but they first found it when they were much younger and liked to pretend it was their secret lair. Mor and Far got their own canoe and ferried Fenris along in it. Valkyrie sat behind Thor, and every time he glanced back she had her nose to the wind or stared out at the water longingly.

"Do you think she'd rescue you if she thought you were drowning?" Loki asked.

"I dunno," Thor said. It wasn't part of her training, specifically, but he knew labs were good in water. He didn't want to test it though, because that was dishonest. Valkyrie already did so much saving him for real, and he didn't want to disregard that by faking it. They arrived at the island and spent half an hour walking over its entire bare surface, just to see if anything had changed. There was a little wooden shed on one end that for some inexplicable reason contained bits and pieces of medieval armor, including a crazy-looking helmet with huge horns that looked like a big unibrow.

Thor thought this must've been an ancient Viking outpost, a secret place where they restocked on armor if theirs got damaged in battle, but Loki thought it was more likely a group of people had a Renaissance fair of sorts out here and stowed their armor in the structure they'd been using as a Porta-potty. "If it was really that old and was stored in a wooden shack on a rock in the middle of the ocean, it wouldn't be in such good shape," he always explained. Thor ignored that and continued to pretend it was from the Vikings. It made him happy, and it didn't affect anyone what he believed about a bunch of hunks of metal, so what did it matter?

Still, he had Valkyrie sniff the crazy unibrow helmet and asked her if it smelled like Viking. She didn't answer, but Thor knew she must've smelled Viking. They rowed back to the cabin and returned the canoes to the shed. Thor got out Valkyrie's beer bottle, much to her delight. He chucked it right into the sea. Valkyrie raced down the dock and leapt into the water without a second's hesitation, swimming strongly and with a fierce determination.

"Alright!" Thor cheered. He dove into the water after her. She immediately swam up to him and dropped the stuffed bottle, nudging it towards him to throw again. Loki hopped in too and demanded to race Valkyrie. Thor looked to either side of him and made sure neither of them was ahead of the other, then hurled the toy as far as he could. Valkyrie took off, her reflexes a hair faster than Loki's. He swam with all his might, but it was a close race. Loki's hand brushed against the toy first, but Valkyrie had her jaws around it before he could grab it.

"Winner!" Thor declared when she brought it back. Loki splashed him with the biggest wall of water he could possibly make. Thor retaliated by dunking him. He came up laughing, and they both gave up fighting each other and just floated on their backs gazing up at the clear sky above them. Once again, Thor thought of Clint and of Far's comment about Valhalla. Whatever type of heaven did or didn't exist, he hoped it was just like this. Clint would have loved it here.