felt his breath taken away by the harshness of his father’s words. It made him realize, in comparison, how kind the new father figures in his life had been—MacGil, Kendrick, Erec. None of them were related to him, yet they had all been much kinder to Thor. It made him finally realize what a cruel, small man his father was—especially compared to other fathers—and how unlucky he’d been to be his son. It was odd to Thor, because for most of his life he had idolized his father, had thought he was the biggest and most important man in the world. But now that he had gotten out of this place, now that he had met the others, he realized that it had all just been an illusion.
He was beginning to feel a new feeling: that his father was nothing to him now. He was beginning to feel like a distant acquaintance who it displeased him to run into again.
“I have not returned to you, father,” Thor said coolly and calmly, shaking inside but respectful, as he had always been. “I haven’t come back here to stay.”
“Then for what?” snapped his father. “Did you leave something behind? Or have you come to deliver some news of your brothers? It had better not be bad. They were finer men than you will ever be.”
Thor tried to remain calm, tried to stay brave. He felt flustered now around his father, as he had always felt, and he could not think as clearly as he had before. He had always had a hard time standing up to him, had a hard time expressing himself in the heat of the moment. But this time he resolved for things to be different.
“No, I’ve not come to deliver news of your beloved other sons,” Thor said. It felt good to speak the words, and he heard in his own voice a new strength, one he had never felt before when speaking to his father. It was the strength of a warrior. The strength of someone who had become independent, his own man.
His father must have sensed it, because he got to his feet, agitated, turned his back on Thor and began fiddling with his tools as if Thor didn’t exist.
“What then?” he snapped, not looking Thor’s way. “Because if you’re coming to ask my forgiveness, you won’t get it. The day you left, you lost a father. Unforgivable. I heard you barged your way into the Legion. Do you think that makes you a man? You stole your position. You got lucky. You didn’t deserve it. You might fancy yourself some sort of warrior. But you’re nothing. Do understand me?” he asked, turning red-faced, facing Thor in a rage.
Thor stood his place, beginning to well up with rage himself. He had seen this going so differently in his head. He had come here with plans to ask his father certain questions—but now, in the moment, those questions all fled from him. Instead, another question popped into his head.
“Why do you hate me?” Thor asked calmly, surprising himself that he had the courage to ask the question.
His father stopped and looked at him, stumped for the first time since he had known him. He narrowed his eyes at Thor.
“What kind of a question is that?” he asked. “Whoever said I hate you? Is that what they teach you in the Legion? I don’t hate you. Like I said, you are nothing to me now.”
“But you don’t love me,” Thor insisted.
“And why should I?” he retorted. “What have you ever done to deserve my love?”
“I’m your son,” Thor responded. “Isn’t that enough?”
His father looked down at him, long and intense, then finally turned away. Before he did, Thor detected a different expression, one he had never seen before. It was one of confusion.
“Sons don’t deserve love just by being sons,” his father said. “They must earn it. Everything must be earned in this world.”
“Do they?” Thor retorted, not letting it go this time. In the past he had always given in to his father’s arguments, his father’s abrupt way of ending a conversation, of getting in the last word and refusing to hear anymore. But not this time. “And what exactly must a son have to do to earn his father’s love?”
His father reddened, on the verge of exploding, clearly outwitted and fed up. He turned and charged towards Thor, reaching out to grab him by the shoulders with his strong, callused hands, as he had so many