Many would consider Thor’s gift to be beautiful. The spontaneous creation of lightning was something many people found breathtaking. But as the universe stands stunned at the disappearance of half of existence, the distant rumbling of thunder is suddenly unsettling.
Were it an almighty crack of thunder, it would be startling yes, but not unsettling. This deep rumbling, seemingly shaking the core of everyone who has just witnessed death, is not a deafening force. It is a slow build. It is the begging of grief. It is a flatline and a scream and a sob all at once. And it is utterly unfair that each of those is burdened upon one man alone.
There is no identifiable lightning, though science says there should be. There’s just noise. The thunder seems to never end, one boom bleeding into the next until you can’t quite remember what silence sounds like. It rumbles through each layer of your skin and you can feel the vibrations at the very core of your bones.
Though Thor is in wakanda, the thunder isn’t confined to earth. It rumbles through the vacuum of space to planets outside of our galaxy, and to those who don’t know what happened a sudden thunderstorm seems to be coming. But this is nowhere near sudden. It is a build up of unfelt loss. It is the loss of Thor’s father, the loss of his brother, the loss of his friends, the loss of his people, the loss of control.
Thor thinks he could have stopped this. His mind is plagued with self doubt and if only’s. If only he had been better. If only he had tried harder.
If only he had gone for the head.