The notes of it are familiar, even if the exact details are not, and though Thor doesn't look at her where she's relaxed under his sole arm, it's clear enough that he's listening. Recognizing what she describes, at least in part if not the whole. Wounded, grieving, but without anything to direct that pain into action, withering away. A pitiable fate for any warrior, denied the dignity of a swift end in battle, left to linger on and slowly fade. Yet not a death sentence, if what she says is the same.
Privately, cynically, Thor has to wonder if the burden will actually ease, or if he will simply become used to the weight until he no longer notices it still crushing down on him. He's not certain which he likes less. Even as the weeks have passed, some days have been easier to bear than others, as if numbness is creeping into him like waves that rise and recede with the tide. Other days it is impossible to shake his darker thoughts, warring with himself in turn with regret that he had not been slain to spare him this, and hatred of himself for thinking he deserves such a mercy now. Yet still he wakes in his house, day after day, with thousands of uncertain years still laid out before him, a curse and a blessing both.
Maybe his own friends are the reasons he has made it this far at all. Loki sending daily messages, amusing anecdotes or photos of the children he's kept in his care, subtle prompting for Thor to answer, even if it is only a few words. Steven and Rabbit coming round to check on him every week or so, even if just for idle chitchat and a drink of water. Harley making a space for herself in Asvera, her cheerful persistence in establishing routines making it more difficult to sit around and drink all day. And now Furiosa, sharing an experience that seems eerily similar to his own in ways that matter, beyond the simple loss of limb they also share.
"You survived because of them," he says quietly, trying to process what that means for her, what it means for himself. Of the many moods that Thor now finds himself in, one of the easiest to find himself sinking into is loneliness, and that is a difficult trap to free himself from.
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Privately, cynically, Thor has to wonder if the burden will actually ease, or if he will simply become used to the weight until he no longer notices it still crushing down on him. He's not certain which he likes less. Even as the weeks have passed, some days have been easier to bear than others, as if numbness is creeping into him like waves that rise and recede with the tide. Other days it is impossible to shake his darker thoughts, warring with himself in turn with regret that he had not been slain to spare him this, and hatred of himself for thinking he deserves such a mercy now. Yet still he wakes in his house, day after day, with thousands of uncertain years still laid out before him, a curse and a blessing both.
Maybe his own friends are the reasons he has made it this far at all. Loki sending daily messages, amusing anecdotes or photos of the children he's kept in his care, subtle prompting for Thor to answer, even if it is only a few words. Steven and Rabbit coming round to check on him every week or so, even if just for idle chitchat and a drink of water. Harley making a space for herself in Asvera, her cheerful persistence in establishing routines making it more difficult to sit around and drink all day. And now Furiosa, sharing an experience that seems eerily similar to his own in ways that matter, beyond the simple loss of limb they also share.
"You survived because of them," he says quietly, trying to process what that means for her, what it means for himself. Of the many moods that Thor now finds himself in, one of the easiest to find himself sinking into is loneliness, and that is a difficult trap to free himself from.