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It started even before everyone was entirely free of the ice. The looks. The whispers. The wide-eyes and shock at the sight of him, of what he had been reduced to. Thor tried to ignore it, tried to keep in mind that it was only understandable that his friends and teammates would be surprised. The last time he’d seen them all, barely a couple of days ago, he’d had two arms of flesh and blood. Now one was irreparably gone, and in its place was a construct of black uru that was probably as intimidating as Mjolnir itself had been.
Screwbeard really had done a magnificent job, and Thor could only try and wait for a quiet few days when he would have the freedom to take his friend out for the sort of feast he deserved, in gratitude for the quick work. The weight of the arm was perfectly balanced, and it fit almost as seamlessly as his real one had.
That didn’t change the fact that uru was incapable of feeling, however. When not actively using it for something, Thor was coming to find that it still felt like there was nothing on one side of him. It was deft dead weight, but it was still dead weight when he wasn’t actively engaged in using it – no warmth, no rush of blood, just the place where the smooth edges of metal met the remnants of flesh.
Those moments were still quickly proven preferable to those moments where his mind played tricks on him as insidious as any his brother had once managed at his worst, and Thor felt the phantom of sensation once more. He would forget for a moment only to be all the more brutally reminded in the next.
But the looks, the shock, that was worst of all. Thor was a god, and all that meant to the universe at large. Thor had always tried to respect in particular what that meant to people on Earth, but here he was yet again running up against the stark disparity between what it meant to humans and what it meant to Asgardians.
Asgardians lived a very long time, and most of them lived very hard lives. Most of them, in Thor’s experience, would never have had it any other way. Yet part of living so long and so fiercely was that, inevitably, things got lost: memories, people, limbs. It was just a fact of life. After a certain point, it was an inevitability. So no one talked about it. You got a replacement if you wanted one, so you could at least keep on living your life with the least possible loss of balance, and you carried on. Talking about it was seen as, if not outright impolite, then at least highly tactless and almost certainly too familiar.
After all, everyone had their moments of weakness. For a god, those moments could stay with you forever. There was still no call to go around drawing attention or rubbing it in. After all, the missing pieces might one day be yours’.
Thor was no longer quite so certain how he felt about that. The last few days had given him…well, a lot to talk about. Yet he knew he would find no peace for that desire, not in Asgard. Not with everyone busy over his mother’s new pregnancy, not with his latest rift with Loki.
After all, even if it was accepted that most warriors lost something at some point in their life, even something as small as teeth or fingers, Thor was supposed to be a prince. He was supposed to be an example for all to strive for and admire. He was supposed to be better. No, not just better. He was supposed to be perfect.
And if he hadn’t always managed to reach that point in mind or heart, at least he had always done so in body. Screwbeard really had done a marvelous job with the arm, especially in the short time he’d had to work. But even as it proved useful, even as it let him keep fighting as he needed to, there was no hiding what it was. There was no hiding the fact that he was now carrying around a visible testament to weakness and failure, and it was not nearly as easy as Odin or even several of his old allies had made it look in the past.
There was also the fact that Thor somehow still had trouble fitting the very idea of it into his mind. It was “the” arm or his “new” arm. It wasn’t his arm, not yet. It wasn’t a part of him yet, it was just a tool, the same as his old axe. Useful, functional, important, but apart. He was still missing his arm, and always would be.
Already, the sight of Malekith, carelessly tossing away a part of him and burning it to nothing was a new player in Thor’s nightmares. Somehow, “time” was no longer an acceptable solution, especially when this was a problem that might feasibly last as long as he lived, or until the end of time. Whichever came first, of course.
How did he deal with that? He might as well have been swiping at shadows. How did he shake off feeling like he was drowning all over again, dragged down by the only thing keeping him useful?
Thor didn’t know, and had no one he could stand to turn to anymore who might.
He did know that he preferred careful silence to pity.
If he had to tell the story one more time, he was going to go berserk. If he had to hear “how did it happen” one more time, he was going to break something. It had happened very simply – Malekith had taken his axe and chopped off his arm, and he’d been too beaten and weak to do a damn thing about it besides sink. How was that so hard to grasp?
Worse still, if he had to hear one more well-meaning but inane plan to “fix” him…
Thor wasn’t certain what about those plans bothered him the most. The presumption that they knew better than Nidavellir’s finest smiths and one of his other friends, perhaps, or the thoughtless cruelty they showed in offering him false hope and wondering why he smacked their hands aside. His arm was gone. Any other replacement they could offer him, no matter how fantastic or complicated or magical, would still be just that. He would rather learn to work with the one he’d been given – one that could not be burned to ashes before his eyes – than go grasping at something nebulously “better”.
Besides, it was one thing to be ashamed of himself. It was quite another to know that one’s friends agreed. That, more than anything, was why the offers to at least make a more “realistic” replacement left him as cold as the ocean’s black depths.
Much like the storms he commanded, when Thor’s temper started to boil, there was only so long he could hold back the inevitable explosion. So the end result of all of that was an overturned table, several broken plates, a Tony Stark who was lucky to still have all his teeth, and Thor, here, on the roof and trying to remember how to breathe as Tony’s words echoed in his head like thunder.
“Listen, Thor, if you would just let me take another look. We could get it on the table and I could make a few adjustments. Come on, it would be easy…”
Until finally Thor had snapped and snarled back. “Just as it would be easy for me to put you through the wall, Stark! If you are going to continue yammering on about matters you know nothing about, spare me the trial of listening!”
So here he was, blessedly alone with only open sky above him and the sounds of New York around him, spared further inane chatter. Thor knew that the entire uncomfortable subject would certainly be dropped eventually, either the next time there was a global crisis or the next time another member of the team turned up hurt or cursed or similar. By rights, if he could only be patient…
But, the thought was in his father’s voice. Thor had never been a patient man, and Earth had done very little to help in that regard.
Thor didn’t know how long he was alone on that roof. He had the sense of time passing, as the sun drifted across the sky through tatters of ragged grey clouds. Yet at some point, he emerged from the mire of his own thoughts to be suddenly, piercingly aware of another presence on the roof with him, a few feet behind him. Thor didn’t care who it was, only that he was very certain he was not yet ready to face people again.
“I have no desire for company, and precious little patience left to spend this day,” he growled, without looking around. “Whoever you are, I advise you to leave, for both our sakes.”
He expected any number of voices in reply. Justifications from Tony, smart remarks from Jessica, placation from Steve, admonishments from Natasha. None of those replies came. No one spoke at all, yet the sense of presence behind him didn’t move or change at all.
As the seconds ticked by and he felt his temper coming to a boil once more, Thor turned where he sat, flesh and metal fists clenching, opening his mouth to snarl…
…and closed his mouth sharply at the sight of Clint Barton standing there, hands in his pockets, like a man who had all day.
The sniper smiled wryly, giving a half-shrug. “I’m sure, whatever you just said…if you just said anything…it was profound, and all. But I didn’t catch a word of it.”
Oh.
They were all getting better about accounting for Barton’s deafness. That wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been a few false starts along the way. In particular, communicating with him during a firefight had been an adjustment that hadn’t been made until almost too late. When the vast majority of the Avengers were made up of people who could hear, and one who couldn’t…well, it could be hard to switch from one mode to the next. That didn’t make it an excuse. That just made it a fact. Doing so had proven even more difficult for Thor, who had long ago come to take it for granted that he would always be heard and understood. Any sentient creature in the Ten Realms who could hear his words could understand them.
But that, of course, was the issue itself.
The renewed realization came with a renewed stab of shame. Thor almost fancied, for a particularly glum moment, that he could see it pouring out of him, like blood in the deep water, along with his earlier anger.
Still, he’d never been one to wallow in his mistakes when there was an easy way of fixing them. Especially when easy fixes seemed to happen with increasing rarity, these days. Thor turned around so that he faced his teammate squarely instead, his back to the open sky. “My apologies,” he said, first and foremost, and Barton nodded in acknowledgement this time. “I only meant that I do not desire company at this time, Barton. I would appreciate being left alone.”
“S’okay,” said the archer, nodding easily. His gaze darted this way and that, in the way that Thor was well-familiar with by now – subconsciously checking angles, scanning shadows. Nervous habits of the sort they all indulged in, especially when stalled for what to say. But now, his gaze always returned inexorably to fix on Thor’s face and confirm he wasn’t speaking, before darting off elsewhere for an instant again. “I just…I came up here because there’s something I wanted to say. Or thought I probably should say. Couple of things, actually. And I know you’ve probably had a lot of that, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this is something you haven’t heard before, since you lost your arm. But hey, if I’m wrong, feel free to chase me back downstairs. Sound good?”
After the way the past few days had gone, Thor couldn’t think of any well-wishes, platitudes, or increasingly ridiculous plans that he hadn’t heard from all corners. All the same – perhaps to make up for his earlier, albeit unintentional, slight – he nodded anyway. “Go ahead.”
This time, Clint lifted his eyes to meet Thor’s deliberately, and Thor actually drew back a little in shock. Yet that one point of connection between them, even though Clint only held it long enough to speak three words, meant that those three words fell with the force of mountains.
“You’re not broken.”
After the way the past few days had gone, Thor couldn’t think of anything he hadn’t heard about his newfound condition…
…except that.
Barton kindly gave him a minute to process as much, before he continued on.
“You’re not, and I’m not. We’ve changed, and it’s a change there’s no going back from. But I’m still me, just me with no hearing. And you’re still you, just you with an axe and one arm. I mean, most other people are nice about it, anyway.” Thor wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or concerned that Barton’s standards for such things were apparently low enough that “still forgetting to make sure he could follow a conversation” counted as “nice”.
Cautiously at first, then more confidently as Thor made no move to stop him this time, Barton paced over to the edge of the roof as well. He took a seat beside Thor, letting his legs dangle over the edge, heedless of the height and fearless of the drop. He was apparently so wrapped up in what he was saying that he wasn’t looking at anything much, not the view, not Thor, and Thor found himself wondering just how long these words had gone unsaid.
“But deep down, I think we kinda freak them out. Nobody likes to think that there’s no going back, and we’re the walking proof. And so they try to find the perfect fix, to convince themselves it’s not true. They get so wrapped up in lying to themselves that they don’t understand that taking the time to find the 'perfect fix'…is something we don’t really have time for. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, it’s that…”
He closed his mouth, sharply, almost guiltily, and then hung his head with a soft sigh. It couldn’t have been plainer to Thor that he’d veered into the personal without meaning to, and that at some point since losing his hearing, the very idea of “gratitude” had taken on a bitter taste from too much twisting.
Thor opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and rested a hand on Barton’s shoulder first. The archer looked up, ready to listen.
Even then, Thor could only nod his understanding at first, understanding of everything Barton was saying and maybe even of some of the words unsaid. Even if the other man had started discussing his own personal experiences, these were still thoughts that had been echoing in Thor's own head for days, now, and Thor had started to think himself mad for having them.
“Gratitude has nothing to do with it,” he finished. “We only need to focus our efforts on living, and carrying on, rather than grasping at shadows.”
Clint smiled, shaky and yet so genuinely relieved that Thor felt his heart ache in sympathy. “Yeah,” he breathed, letting out a breath that might have been a sigh and might have been a laugh. “Yeah, that’s right. I mean…” Here he faltered, embarrassed, before carrying on. “I’m not trying to claim that we can understand each other perfectly, just because we’ve both lost something. Hearing, arm.” He gestured to first his ears and then Thor’s arm. “Apples, oranges. I’m not saying that.”
“I understand.”
"It’s more that I’m trying to say…what they say. What they think. I think I get how that probably feels for you. Because it can be kind of all the same to them, even if it’s not all the same to us. It can’t really be any other way, because they haven’t been there. So they forget to say that you’re not broken. Even if it’s obvious. So I’m saying that. Because you’re not. I’m not.”
“No, you aren’t.” And…he wasn’t. Maybe it should have been obvious, but somehow, having someone else take the time to say the words aloud…it meant a great deal. So Thor added without hesitation, wholeheartedly. “Thank you for your words, Barton. I will try to remember them, in the days to come.”
“Sure. Yeah.” Barton still looked almost giddy with relief. Maybe at being understood, maybe at finally being able to speak honestly, maybe both. “I mean, I know you’ve got a lot on your mind, but…maybe it’ll help.” Looking as though the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders, the archer made to stand, and Thor made to let him. Then, all of a sudden, Barton sat back down again, wincing. “Wait. Shit. I forgot. There was something else I wanted to say.”
Again, Thor waited until they had eye contact before speaking. “Of course. What is it?”
“I know I said that I’m not saying that we can perfectly understand each other. Or get what it's like living with things like this. But I’ve been wondering. Has anyone shown you how to take care of your arm?” He gestured at the metal arm for emphasis, and Thor frowned in puzzlement.
“‘Take care of it’?” he repeated, slightly incredulously. “Barton, this arm is made of black uru metal, just as Mjolnir is. I assure you, it needs no tending to.”
“Doesn’t matter. Wait. Not what I meant.” Barton leaned forward and carefully rested his hand on Thor’s upper arm, where metal met flesh. The shock of contact there was almost physical, and Thor pulled away with a wince. “Sorry,” his teammate added immediately. “Sorry. I just meant…whatever kind of metal it’s made of? It’s the bit where it connects to you that you’ve got to worry about. Pressure, chafing, dirt. Or…so I’ve read." Looking somewhat abashed, as though admitting a shameful secret, he added: "I might have done some Googling.”
Despite Thor's earlier confidence, that was worrying to hear. Everything had been moving too quickly after he’d first received the arm for any sort of discussion of such things. Since then, he hadn’t taken it off once, not even to sleep.
“Can you even take that off?” Barton asked cautiously, as though he'd read Thor's thoughts. Thor nodded, because he still knew that he could. He wasn’t inclined to demonstrate, however, and thankfully Barton didn’t seem inclined to ask. “Well. I...probably can’t help you with any of that. I mean, a: it would be kind of awkward for both of us. Especially since, b: I’m not remotely sure I could even lift your arm and that would just be embarrassing for both of us.”
“Perhaps.” Thor was privately inclined to agree, but could appreciate the sentiment from Barton all the same. All the same, whatever ritual of care he might have to go through in order to keep himself functional with his new arm…he knew it was something he would want to manage alone, if he could.
“But I can print out some of those pages I found for you. And I can slip them under your door. Maybe they’d help, or at least give you a place to start until you figure out what it takes to take care of uru.”
“I would appreciate that, Barton. Thank you.”
There seemed to be precious little else to say, after that, but at least the silence that settled between them was a peaceful one. Thor Odinson and Clint Barton sat together for a little while longer, there on the roof. Barton excused himself first, wishing Thor a good evening, as the sun started to set. Thor looked up at his friend and wished him the same, and thanked him for his help once more.
Clint smiled, an expression that had become all too rare in recent weeks and so was all the more pleasant to see once again. He ducked his head in equal parts acknowledgement and embarrassment, then turned and went back to the door and the stairs leading back down into the tower.
Thor waited until long after the sun had truly set before he followed. When he did, it was to follow a hunch and go straight to his room in the tower.
Sure enough, when he opened the door, his first step into the room beyond crunched on paper. Thor looked down for a long, thoughtful moment at the papers that had been left there, slid under his door, as promised.
Reaching down to gather them up in his hands was almost as hard as it had been to ride off and confront Malekith in the first place, a decision that already seemed like a lifetime ago. Thor made himself do so anyway, in fingers that felt heavy and clumsy whether they were metal or flesh. He gathered the papers up, carried them over to his bed, and settled down to read.
When, some couple of hours later, he managed to work the catch on his metal arm so that it came loose from the stump of his shoulder, he immediately winced at the feel of air on his newly exposed skin. The pressure patches faded after an hour and a shower, thankfully. There was still the sense of having acted just in time.
He made a mental note to thank Barton anew in the morning, when they had a quiet moment. He made a mental note to make a quiet moment to thank him, if the general hustle and bustle of the tower did not otherwise permit.
Then it occurred to Thor that there was one other thing he might be able to do in order to show his gratitude – whatever that meant – and perhaps more importantly, his appreciation of even this tenuous basis for renewed empathy between them. It was true that just because they’d both lost something, that did not enable perfect awareness. Still, the journey towards understanding had to start from something and somewhere. The papers and information gathered and provided to him by a friend who otherwise had no cause to understand were proof enough of that.
Clint Barton had reached out to him today. Perhaps all that really mattered was that Thor wanted to find a way to reach back.
All it would take was someone who actually had the time to teach him.
* * *
Much as his father and his brother liked to mock him otherwise, Thor was not an idiot. Jane Foster did not know sign language herself, but she knew someone at the clinic who did and was happy to put the two of them in touch.
They met whenever Thor had a day off for a few weeks. It was frustratingly slow going, but largely because Thor had never had to learn a language in his very long life before. Progress was made, however, or at least he was assured by his teacher that progress was made, so that was all that mattered.
His first time broaching the subject with Clint was both desperately unsuccessful and as much of a success as he could have hoped for. Clint’s eyes went wide when he realized that Thor was trying to sign…and then he burst out laughing.
“No, no, no,” he tried to say around breathless gasps of amusement, as Thor’s face fell. “Easy mistake. Really subtle distinction. I think I know what you were trying to say, just let me show you…”
So he did, and one correction spun out into an impromptu lesson that gradually segued into another conversation, one that was much slower but, from Clint’s expression, a good deal easier to understand. This, more than anything, kept it from being frustrating to Thor.
Since this entire scene was playing out in a corner of one of the tower’s common rooms, Jessica Drew drifted by at some point, looking hesitantly interested. When Thor offered to show her what signs he knew he was getting correct, however, she sat down without hesitation. Clint, in turn, sat back to correct when he had to, but mostly to listen.
The entire thing spun out from there, like ripples in a pond. Most of the team never become entirely fluent, but there was definitely more consideration, more time taken to make certain that Clint was following a conversation or aware that someone was trying to speak. A few basic signs to help make up the difference, more people remember to pull up masks or pull aside faceplates so that lips could be read.
Maybe as a related effect of this newfound understanding, and maybe not, pointless questions about Thor’s arm slowly ceased as well. Maybe as a side-effect of having some small way to know that he was taking care of himself, and maybe just as a matter of time, the dreams eased as well, so that fire and water and the glint of light on the axe troubled Thor’s sleep less and less.
Because it was true that those who had lost something for which there was no retrieval had to focus too much on living to worry about nebulous what-if’s and intangible ideas of “fixing”. It was up to the rest of the world to remember that this didn’t mean they should be left behind.
Help could take many forms, and what was not broken did not need to be fixed. Sometimes life could change you, and there was no going back.
A hand offered, a patient while to listen, all the things that made up true friends and companions, were nevertheless sometimes the very best ways to carry on.