Thor stood there, waiting patiently, not wanting to interrupt him-and a part of him not really sure what he was doing here after all. Had it been a mistake to come here? Had he been a fool to heed his dream?
Finally, his father took a break. He set down his anvil, leaned forward, and wiped the sweat dripping from his brow with the back of his hand. Then he turned-and as he did, he froze. He flinched upon seeing Thor, his eyes opened wide in shock.
There was a moment when Thor was filled with hope, with expectation. Would everything be different this time? A part of him hoped that it would. Maybe they could start again.
But as he watched, his father’s face darkened, settling into a deep frown.
That frown told Thor all he needed to know. His father was not repentant. His father was not forgiving. His father did not want to start again. He was the same old dad.
“And look who has come crawling back home,” his father seethed, looking Thor up and down as if he were an insect. “Dressed in all your fancy armor, are you? Did you think that would impress me?”
Thor felt himself shaking inside. He had forgotten how mean, how cutting, his father could be, and he had not wanted it to go down like this.
“Well, it does not impress me,” his father continued. “Not in the least. The day you left here you were dead to me. How dare you come back?”
Thor 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 times in Thor’s life.
“What is it that you are doing here?” he screamed in Thor’s face. “What is it that you want from me?”
Thor could feel his father’s anger coursing from his hands and into his shoulders.
But Thor’s shoulders were bigger and wider now than when he had left, and his hands and forearms were more powerful, too, twice as strong as they had been. His father always thought he could end an argument by grabbing Thor’s shoulders, by shaking him, by infecting him with his anger-but not anymore. As soon as his father’s hands dug into his shoulders, Thor reached up, lifted his hands between them and knocked his father’s hands away; then, in the same motion, he shoved his father with the heel of his hands, right in his chest, hard enough to send his father stumbling back a good five feet, and sending him so off-balance that he nearly fell.
His father looked back to Thor, shocked, as if wondering who he was. He looked as if a snake had bit him. His face remained red with rage, but this time, he stayed his ground and kept a healthy distance and dared not approach Thor-for the first time in Thor’s life.
“Don’t you ever lay a hand on me again,” Thor said calmly and strongly. “It is not a warning.”
Thor was being genuine. Something inside him would not tolerate this treatment anymore; something inside him warned him that if his father ever laid a hand on him again, he wouldn’t be able to control his reaction.
Something unspoken passed between them, and his father seemed to understand. He stood there and lowered his shoulders just a bit, enough for Thor to realize that he wouldn’t attempt it again.
“Have you come here to harass me then?” his father asked, sounding broken, sounding old, in that moment.
“No,” Thor said, finally remembering. “I’ve come here for answers. Answers that only you can give me.”
His father stared back, and Thor took a deep breath.
“Who was my mother?” Thor asked. “My real mother?”
“Your mother?” his father echoed, caught off guard. “And why would you want to know that?”
“Why wouldn’t I want to know?” Thor asked.