He knows what they think. He can see their hidden smiles, the glances from the corners of their eyes, the snide remarks. He might be drunk and fat and weak, but he's still not stupid. He just doesn't care.
Brunhilde is as amazing as he had always imagined Valkyries to be. She leads their people while he is busy searching for the next bottle and playing games he has no care for, just so he can say he's doing ... something. She is queen in all but name and in the few moments when Thor stops to think — mostly at night — he is proud of her and hates himself even more. It's a wonder sometimes, how that is even possible.
Still: the people don't want him as their king anymore. They think him weak and pathetic and incapable. Thor is fine with that. He doesn't want to be their king anymore, either.
He’s just there, breathing, because he has to. Because he can't die, can't give up completely, while so many where lost. Half of the whole universe. His family.
Not while it's his fault.
“You should have gone for the head.”
Thanos voice haunts him, asleep and awake. His taunting words, the satisfaction. He knowledge that he'd won and that Thor had failed.
“No resurrections this time.”
It gets quieter when he's drunk. It doesn't go away, not completely just that — quieter.
So he just — is. And wishes he could rest and stop hurting and having to stay alive all the same.
And then there's a knock on his door and faces he had secretly hoped to never see again and words he secretly never wanted to hear.
Bring them all back, of course. Of course the rest of the team would find a way.
But, he thinks as he ignores their pity, what about my family? My home? Can you bring them back, too?
He's always been selfish.
And they do it. Or rather — they do it.
He's of no illusion that he was any help. It's honestly a wonder that Rabbit got the Reality Stone while being stuck with him. He knows. He should care more about that.
But — being in Asgard. Running by Lo- by his cell, his beautiful mother — He had tried so hard to forget what he's lost, what he had failed to protect and then it was all right there in front of him, just at the tips of his fingers — and at the same time further away than ever. This was the past, and he was an intruder and ever second he so much as looked was stolen.
But he had to come here; no one else knows their way around Asgard; no one else knows where Jane will be. He has to face this. It's only because of his failure that these missions are necessary.
“You should have gone for the head.”
He fails, as it is his norm. He just — can't.
He's not even sure what about Jane upsets him so horribly. Their break-up had been mutual and without resentment and her loss is the one that hurts the least. He had never dared to even check but there was even a 50% chance that she was still alive.
He just can't bare seeing her here, in Asgard, knowing his mother will die in a few hours to protect her, knowing his little brother is down that way — all so close, yet so unreachable, gone forever, because he hadn't — because he couldn't -
He runs the other way. Rabbit has a better chance at this without him breaking down screaming and sobbing in the corridor.
He hates himself, truly. More than Loki had ever dreamed about.
And hey — look at that. The first time he so much as thought his name in the last five years.
All praise Thor, the god of thunder!
They return to the present and Natasha is lost. Dead.
Had Thor known that there would be a sacrifice he would have begged them all to go. But he hadn't known and once more someone dear and wonderful and important is dead.
Another friend gone without a chance to say goodbye.
He just wants it all to stop.
When it's all over he takes a moment to think back to his mother. Her words are not as much as a comfort to him as she had probably hoped.
Still, he had seen her. Talked to her, touched her. It's a gift he had not deserved.
Loki should have been there, too. It makes it bittersweet that he hadn't been and that he had not had the courage to tell his mother — to tell her that his baby brother is dead because he had failed to save him.
“The sun will shine on us again.”
She would have been heartbroken to know what faith awaits her youngest. Loki had always been her favorite.
He had been Thor's favorite, too.
Still, he is glad that the lost have returned. That these amazing humans managed to do the impossible; that his failure has been undone.
He leaves them as soon as he can. Every second, every heartbeat that he's around them hurts. They remind him of a past he can't have ever again, a pain that they all feel, even now that they have — won.
It doesn't feel like victory.
Every time he closes his eyes he sees death. His mother, laying there still. His father, turning to dust. His brother, thrown away like a doll. His people, massacred on the floor of a burning ship. Heimdall, a sword in his chest. Natasha with lifeless eyes, even though he had never seen her. Tony, burned by a power he should not have had to wield. All dying with so much to live for.
He wishes he had spent more time with them. With Natasha and Tony. These amazing, strong humans; resisting and wielding forces meant for gods and winning always, till the end. Dying to save the universe. Brave, strong as Thor could only ever wish to be.
He had heard them talking, the other Avengers, while Tony and Rabbit had built their time travel machine. Tony had married the beautiful Pepper and had an even more beautiful little daughter.
Thor wishes he would know how to help.
Pepper and her child, with losing husband and father.
Clint with losing his best friend, a part of his family.
But he and Tony had never been as close as he wishes they had been. He doesn't think Tony would much approve of him approaching his little family when he can't even cope with himself. No father wants a pitiful, weak drunk around their five-year-old child.
He wouldn't know what to say to any of them, either way.
But all of these are just excuses. The reasons he's running from them, running from earth and these amazing humans is simple: he had had the chance, right there, in the beginning. He had had the chance, and he had missed, he had failed — Thanos had been right there and had the chance to kill him before any of this would have been necessary, and he hadn't and — and now two of the most important individuals that Thor had ever met were gone.
Their little team, so precious to him, short of two, because the had failed.
“You should have gone for the head.”