Choose? This has never been a choice, and Thor feels a twinge of desperate anger that Loki does not seem to understand. That he thinks this is something Thor is doing to himself, that this is something he wants to be happening, his own fault.

Is it?

It hurts all the more deeply that Loki's words could have come straight from Frigga herself, an echo of their mother who always saw through whatever tale they'd chosen to tell. What Heimdall had seen with eyes, Frigga had seen with heart, and she had done much the same the last time Thor ever saw her alive.

He jerks his hands back, choppy and disjointed, and runs them through his hair, pulling harshly on the strands as he tries to figure out how to get himself out of this. It's too late, too late to deflect, to lie, to get Loki to believe he's mistaken. But he doesn't know what to do.

"It's fine! It's... it's not as bad as it... looks. Don't I look okay?"