THOTH & MORVEREN
The lid of the box snapped shut, surprisingly noisy in the quiet room. Thoth's intelligent brown eyes searched Arthur's face questioningly, as though looking for non-verbal answers there – which was next to impossible. Thoth could digest academic writing of the highest level in any language one cared to write in, but he couldn't read faces. The only person he could take non-verbal cues from was Tristan. With anyone else, he could detect a lie only if he knew that the words were factually inaccurate from other sources. Of course, Arthur shouldn't lie to him – but Thoth had little faith in the promises of adults.
A good man. That was more or less what Aura had said, too. Those simple words had reassured him for years, especially since he was used to living with a superhero. Heroes were busy, out saving the world all the time – they couldn't always be at home with their kids, which was fine... as long as they did come home eventually. Before his mother's last, permanent trip to Earth, he had been shunted in and out of care for most of his life while she had been out doing whatever it was she needed to do to save Shaman from Gwythr. It was highly doubtful that Arthur spent the same proportion of his time with Tristan as non-royal, non-god parents did with their kids. That was accepted. That was okay.
Those words stopped being reassuring when his parents stopped coming back for him. One other word Arthur had spoken echoed in his head: was. 'He was your father,' he'd said. 'Was' was past tense: it inferred that Adonis never would be his father again. That he wasn't going to come back. Somehow, that was more believable than him being a good man.
There were a dozen questions spinning around in his brain. One jumped to the forefront.
“Am I like him? I'm not like my mum or my sister.” The question hung in the air for a moment, but not long enough for Arthur to formulate and produce a careful response. “Because I know everything else that matters,” he pressed, a little forcefully. “I know that he didn't want me. He told me himself that he left because he couldn't handle having a son with my condition. I know that he never read me a book, or played a game with me, or tucked me in to bed. I know that he didn't come back every single bloody time I got taken into care. I know that he didn't even come back when my mum – not even for the funeral – not even to say anything – or just be there - ”
It started off with forced calm, but got louder and louder until the shouting climax somewhere towards the end, after which it quietened down again when his voice cracked. Once it was finally out, the overwhelming feeling was more one of relief than distress. There was a definite sense that the sentiment, unspoken for so long, had been building up for a while.
“Who does that?” He demanded, mostly because he knew he'd start crying if he didn't maintain the anger. “Seriously, who doesn't come back for that?”
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