I'm sorry your people are like that. I'm kind of starting to get the sense mine are pretty special. I know I'm lucky. I never expected, after years of pushing them away, that they'd welcome me back the way they did.

[Really, between Loki's situation and Tim's "I can't imagine a world without crime where people hurt each other and prisons" thing...yikes. His people really are exceptionally kind, and he does feel a lot of sympathy for these people and their worlds where maybe they don't get to live with the kindness they should.]

But.

[He gestures with his open palm for emphasis, tilting his head.]

Look, I just met all of you guys, okay? It's one thing to talk to my people. They know what I've dealt with. They knew me growing up. And they've dealt with a lot of the same things.

Maybe we dealt with it differently but they at least get it. And they still had to learn to deal with it.

[Hugtime was instituted for a reason. Out of relief they were all alive and free. As a way of comforting each other. An affirmation of life and that the people around them finally wouldn't be stolen away anymore.]

[Their refusal to give up singing was another coping mechanism, too, an insistence on joy. They'd even kept doing it while trapped in the troll tree, before they were free.]

[They're different coping mechanism than the ones he used but they were coping mechanisms nonetheless. Because they'd still had to cope.]

Maybe some of you could understand a little but not perfectly. Not the way they can. So any talking about feelings and stuff can wait until I get home.

Especially since I'm not really getting the sense that a lot of you have to worry about the same things. I mean even aside from the Bergens and what happened in the past, there's constant potential predation. I can't even walk outside without having to worry about being carried off by a bird.

How many of you guys have to be on guard like that? All the time? Every single day of your lives?