Thor doesn't want to do this anymore. He didn't before, but now a ember of anger and hurt smolders in his chest, harsh words thrown at him that strike deep like little knives. "You call me a liar?" he demands, and he is not certain which hurts more - the accusation, or knowing in his heart that she speaks the truth. He hasn't been honest, not even with himself. No matter how hard he tries to pretend that he's fine.

He's been getting better. He has, truly. But not enough. Not nearly enough.

Frustration leads him to pull a little harder on his hair, ignoring how it makes his head ache all the more from the abuse. Thor accepted long before today that he is a coward, and yet having it thrown out in the open hurts just as much as all the terrible things he's ever told himself. What does she want from him? To hear him admit it? "What would you like me to say?" he asks, this time sounding less like a demand, more of a plea. "That I am being haunted by my own failure? I know this. I would give even more of myself if I could do it over again. But I cannot, and I know this, too." Yet knowledge and acceptance are not the same thing, and Thor still struggles to find the path from one to the other. "I have lost more than any man should ever have to. And now I may have lost even more." The words slip from him without being bid, the dark fear that he's kept close to his heart in Loki's long absence, that insidious little voice that whispers in his ear that perhaps Loki will not return at all.

The fight goes out of him, then, and his shoulders slump as his hands come to rest on the table, empty. "I can't lose anything else," he whispers.