So in the previous drabble here with Thor (chapter 7), I didn't realise that Quill's Milano had been replaced by the Benatar. Sorry...

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these one-shots. If you're reading this, you make me weep with gratitude. (Really).


It even smells like the sea.

Thor knows it is a dream as soon as he sees the white gold sand and swaying palms. It is too blissful. He has not seen this much sunlit serenity in years. Still, he takes his first step.

It is the same dream as before – he is on the island.

The island that he knows is in the shape of a chalice though he is yet to view it from above like the gulls calling cheerfully overhead. He has no idea why a chalice, but his dream self does not need to know.

Thor keeps walking. He strides despite the peaceful tropics, because he is searching for something, as always, in this dream. He strides, and he knows he gets a little closer each night.

It is a person he looks for on this island. Thor has no idea who it is, but he knows they are at the centre of the island's forest. He wants to find them.

He reaches deeper into the island's forest each night before he wakes, always with the sense that whoever it is sighs in disappointment as they wait for him to continue his search the next night.

Tonight on the island, Thor encounters a curtain of silky green vines like a royal cape. He reaches forward to push it aside.


He wakes. It is cold. Or it is at least to his mind, because the Benatar's air temperature and pressure are automatically controlled and yet Thor finds he has pulled five blankets over his shoulders in his sleep.

The artificial lighting inside the ship has adjusted to mimic warm sunlight. Thor swings his legs over the edge of his firm mattress and stretches, so his joints and bedframe crick in unison. Waking these days is much easier than it had been several months ago, in New Asgard, when sleep for him was not so much that as a coma steeped in liquor and grease. He is starting to feel a little more like his true self, if at least only physically.

The dream is the same as it is every night. Thor is not sure what this could mean, exactly, but he is not fazed. As far as his trauma goes, a few visions of a tropical island are nothing.

As he dresses and pulls on his boots, he hears Groot and Rocket bickering in the common below; Drax interjects every few moments. Accompanying the Guardians after Thanos was defeated has done him some good, Thor knows, more than if he had remained in New Asgard. Almost as if he were a young Midgardian finishing his schooling and taking a gap year.

Thor pauses with a small frown. Then he remembers where he heard of that term, gap year – the astrophysicist Darcy Lewis had explained it to him once, back when they had been closer friends.

Although he had no doubt that it would, Thor is glad his own skillset has proven useful to the Guardians during their travels. They were welcoming enough to give him a place on the Benatar, albeit grudgingly on Quill's part. Now it seems to be a given that Thor works – and argues – alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy each day. He had not understood why this provoked such a swell of homesickness in his chest, until once he had accidentally called them the Warriors instead.

He climbs down the porthole to join the others, who are gathered around the multidimensional light map projected above the main table. In it, a tiny projection of the Benatar streams behind another ship.

"We're catching up to this guy. I bet we'll have him cuffed and our bounty collected by midnight."

Thor scans the view outside the side windows. Yesterday they had cleared the asteroid belt, and the impassive face of the giant planet whose shadow in which they hide is now unobstructed. A dozen moons hang back from the looming surface like frightened children. Thor absently counts them, noting their broken mountains and frozen valleys, until he himself freezes.

"Wait," he croaks.

Everyone turns to him.

"That moon."

Thor points against the cool glass until the others crowd closer. They stare with him at the moon that has chunks torn out of it so that it nearly resembles a chalice.

"What about it, Thor? It's just one of Creith XI's moons that was probably hit by an asteroid or something and managed to stay in orbit."

Thor cannot look away. "It's familiar."

"Well, you did say you've passed through this galaxy before."

"I saw it in a dream." Thor says. He knows he is not making sense. "But as an island, shaped like a wineglass, just like that."

"Er. Tell me, do these dreams involve the wine too? We know you drank a lot after the Snap to cope with the aftermath, but we weren't sure if it was still a problem – "

"We need to go back," Thor finds himself insisting.

"What?" Now Quill is twisting around in the pilot seat.

"We need to make a landing and let me investigate that moon."

"Thor, you realise there won't be any actual drinks there – "

"Enough about my drinking. I don't speak in jest."

"You really want to stop on that barren moon? Do you think something's there?"

"There is in the dream." Thor watches everyone stare as the nonsense that sounds utterly right to him spills from his mouth.

"When people have ominous, recurring dreams, I'm not sure it's always a good idea to try see them through…"

"They were not nightmares," Thor argues.

"Really? How did these island dreams end? Any volcanoes erupting? Floods?"

"I search for someone."

"Who?"

"I don't know." He regrets the feebleness of his answers.

"Okay… So what happens when you find them?"

"I haven't yet."

"Alright. So our two options are completing our current assignment that'll end in monetary compensation, or pursuing a dream assignment that'll end in nobody knows what. Let's all vote. All those in favour of the first option say – "

"Stop it, Rocket." Gamora speaks behind him. "Sorry, Thor, but I say we keep going. We don't know that you're not just having strange dreams, and we could lose our target if we stop now."

Quill pipes from the front. "I agree."

"Me too."

"I am Groot."

"You know, we basically just did a vote," Rocket mutters.

Thor sighs. He does not know why he opened his mouth in the first place; he would not convince them to humour his frivolously bizarre demand that he wishes he had kept to himself. "Very well. I'm sorry, my friends. Let's continue our chase."

He watches the last of the strangely shaped moon disappear past the edge of the window frame.

He shakes himself. They are only dreams.


He is on the island again. He stands before the vines, and hears the tide urging him from behind.

But, this time, he knows the island is empty. Thor does not try to push past the foliage and instead pulls himself into wakefulness.


He kicks off his blankets and stares at the dark ceiling, just long enough to feel a strange pang before slipping back into sleep.


It is his coronation. Thor grins even in the shadows of the back chamber, because he has been waiting for this day for years. Why did he never get it, again?

His favourite red cloak is fastened over his dark armour. He is the bolder version of the figure suddenly at his side, cloaked in silky green.

Nervous, Brother?

Thor laughs. He looks down.

In his hand is a chalice, the kind meant for raising to the ceiling and smashing to the ground while demanding another, knowing another would be brought.

When have you ever known me to be nervous? Thor smiles.

When you couldn't find me again. On any barren moon or crevice where I hid.

It makes no sound, but Thor knows the chalice falls from his grip and smashes into more sharp fragments than possible, leaving a hundred scratches upon the floor.