Author's Note: I watched Eternals over the weekend and had to write something about Thena. Her arc is so interesting, so sweet and sad . . . and far from over, I think. I can't wait to learn more in future movies, but for now, settled for writing an introspective piece for her, during the events of the movie. Spoilers for about midway through to the end. Hope you enjoy.


"Stay here. Say it back to me."

The woods around her flickered, other images cutting in and trying to take control. That blank space called to her, urging her to melt into it. She had an anchor, though. Gilgamesh, staring at her, giving her a simple task: stay. Stay here, in this moment. Stay here, in this spot. Stay here, where you're safe.

She focused on his familiar face, on the sound of his steady voice, and nodded. "Stay."

It seemed like he smiled before he went back to fighting the deviant. Thena pressed her back against the tree, repeating the directive in her mind. Stay, stay, stay. She couldn't give in to that blankness. She needed to fight.

She was fighting, Gilgamesh would say. Just a different kind of battle than she used to.

Not the battle she needed to fight now. She forced herself to step forward, closer to where Gilgamesh was facing the deviant. She was here. She was present. She was staying.

Gilgamesh fell to his knees, tendrils from the deviant piercing his torso. Thena sucked in a breath. When the deviant pierced the hollow of Gilgamesh's throat, the blank space trying to swallow her faded away completely. The fragmented images stopped slamming against her eyes, vying for her attention, and she knew she was free from that fractured state, for the moment at least.

Too little, too late. Ikaris arrived, and she numbly pointed to Gilgamesh to stop him from leaving. Then she went to Gilgamesh herself. His skin was graying by the second. The deviant had taken something vital from him. Thena helped him stay upright, maintaining a tight grip on him, searching for any way to help him. He met her eyes and said one thing. Not asking for help. Not even a goodbye. Just one word. One task, one plea, for her.

"Remember."

She wasn't sure if he heard her say she would remember, that she did remember. She laid him back and let the grief inside her spend itself, and frankly lost track of everything after.

When she poured his ashes into the water later, the first time she had a conscious thought she could remember since losing him, she kept repeating those words in her head.

Stay. Remember.

She realized she'd been hearing them all along, part of her numb mind playing them on a loop in his voice, just below the surface.

Stay. Remember.

She took up the mantra, spreading the ashes. Her voice joined the memory of his.

Stay. Remember.


The others noticed the change in her. Maybe they thought her mind was just a little more broken than before.

She couldn't tell if they realized it was more than a little, and much more than her mind.

No one knew what Gilgamesh was to her. What they were to each other. Not really. How could they? Even she couldn't describe it, except to say he was everything. The one constant in thousands of years. Warm hands. Steady voice. Devoted eyes. Humor, heart, confidence, and a million other traits personified, wrapped into one wonderful whole. He always brought her back from that blank space whenever it threatened. Always called her home, risked everything to keep her there, picked up the pieces when she broke, and in doing, became everything. Everything she needed.

When she learned she wasn't going mad, but remembering snatches of another world, another emergence, it did little to soothe her. Either way the result was the same, thousands of years of forgetting and remembering too much and hurting, herself and others; mental damage she didn't think could ever be undone. The cause of the Mahd Wr'ry didn't matter right now. Nothing could make up for the fact that, because of her broken mind, she hadn't been able to save him.

Still, the knowledge that she remembered another world affected her. It made her wonder if this had happened in any of those other worlds. Was her mind always the one to give in, the weakest of her fellow Eternals? Had she been erased in the middle of a world before, if this had happened, or had Gilgamesh always stepped in to let her keep her current memories? To stay with her, and keep her safe.

"I would do it again. On any planet."

Had he already?

She forced the thought from her mind and turned her attention to the coming fight, repeating her mantra with a little more force than before.

Stay. Remember.


They knew enough of her to realize she needed revenge. They tried to reason with her in their own ways: a quick look, a gesture, a spoken message. All with the same meaning.

"Revenge won't give you peace."

Her reply was immediate, conveyed clearly through the same channels.

"Killing it might."

She would kill the deviant. That much was given, necessary: the minimal duty she owed Gilgamesh.

The sight of the deviant using his powers enraged her, prompting her to give chase into the cave. They clashed, and his move sent her back against a wall that cracked and started spewing lava. Red, thick, hot . . . too much like blood. Memories of a past emergence flashed across her vision, that horrible blank space reaching for her again. Prolonged fighting always triggered it.

Stay. Remember.

She kept it at bay and lunged once more, weapons bared. When the deviant sent her flying back again and she rolled across the cavern floor, it said something to her that broke through her repetition of the mantra.

"Thena."

It wasn't the deviant's voice. She stood, sucking in a breath, every wall knocked flat—and that blank space enveloped her. It was kind, this time. It wasn't the nothingness she was used to whenever those emergence memories slammed into her and she attacked blindly. It was a pleasant fog. A dream within reality. She saw the deviant approaching her, knew she was still in the cave . . . except it wasn't the deviant approaching. It was him. Gilgamesh.

He walked over slowly, as he had so many times.

"Stay. Say it."

A giddy joy leapt in her chest, coming out in a broken breath of a laugh.

"Stay," she murmured.

He reached out, wrapping her in a tight embrace.

Tendrils stabbed into her, muted flashes of pain. They coiled around her waist and twined around her wrists.

He reached out, tilting back her chin.

"Remember."

A tendril plunged for the hollow of her neck with a sharper pain than before. Reality flickered through the dream. The face so close to hers wasn't Gilgamesh. These may have been his words, but it wasn't him. It wasn't even really his voice. He was gone.

She had a vague idea that if she didn't try to fight, she wouldn't have to worry about anything ever again. She could stop fighting. She could let herself slip fully into this blank space that let her imagine he was still alive, and not worry about hurting anyone ever again.

Her mantra sounded, low but insistent, in a perfect recall of his voice.

Stay. Remember.

A memory pulled at her.

"You are Thena. Goddess of war."

The memory tore at her, but settled her resolve. She couldn't give in.

The goddess of war could never stop fighting.

Fury that this deviant dare use the last words Gilgamesh had spoken against her let her slam against the blank space and leave it behind, completely present. She summoned her cosmic dagger behind her back and cut away the restraints binding her wrists.

She summoned two longer weapons and attacked the unsuspecting deviant, killing it with a few well-placed slashes.

She looked at the remains before her, her eyes on the golden shimmer rising from the deviant. Just like what she'd seen when it stabbed Gilgamesh in that fatal blow. Something that had been taken from him.

The weapons left her hands. The golden shimmer, the last visible traces of the loved ones the deviant had stolen, faded and disappeared.

Gilgamesh's words entered her mind.

"When you love something, you protect it. It's the most natural thing in the world."

Stay. Remember.

She ignored the grief tearing her apart inside, the lingering sense of confusion, and looked to the cave entrance, readying herself to continue the fight. To protect the others as best she could.

"Now I remember."