Thor can't hold the eye contact for long, though he does try. He's already shamed himself by panicking in front of her, and that is difficult enough for him. He just wants it all to stop, and he doesn't know how to do that. Doesn't know how else to cope besides drinking until the memories aren't solid enough to bother him, or finding distraction in dull television where he doesn't need to leave the house and risk something else bringing him harm. It makes him a coward, he knows, but he has come to accept that as part of himself now, a man who jumps at shadows and hides from his problems, shying away from a flame that has burned him too many times.

"I fear I already have," he confesses. He is not whole, and hasn't been since that day on the Statesman. It wasn't until the Garden that he had shattered fully, and he feels as though a part of him died that day, withering like a tree in winter.

Something of Loki comes to Thor, now, a vague recollection of dirt between his fingers and his brother urging him to find himself in the earth and wait for spring to come, to seek out life and make it bloom. He had forgotten most of it in a drunken haze, but not all.