“Well is that not just the problem,” he murmured, staring up through the trees and into the far reaching expanse of the night sky. He felt somehow lost in it; vertigo from the ground looking up. “I am a king with no kingdom. I know I am destined for greatness, somehow,” he added, trying to rein in his defensive tone.
“What’s your rush?” Summer asked, pausing to yawn in the middle of the words. “If I understand correctly, you have centuries. Be the king of mages.” She threw a hand out to brush his arm. “You have so much magic … “
Perhaps it was the empath projection, but he did feel…calmer, with her there. Like there could be time.
“Yes, tricks and games. And then what? I have failed so many times, I will never be respected.” He caught her hand in his own, curling his fingers into the connection as if he could absorb more of her warming presence.
“What you did, with Thanos, that wasn’t a game. It was a grand trick, but it definitely wasn’t a game.” She stopped for a moment, squeezing his hand gently, then went on, “Did you even tell them what you’d done? Or did you let them all go on thinking what they’ve always thought? It’s hardly fair to expect respect when you keep secret the very things that would earn it for you.” Her own past unfolded itself in her memories, spilling from her lips.
“It’s hard for people who’ve been around you all your life to see how you’ve changed; they see it every day and so the incremental stages pass them by. When I was younger, I had a terrible temper — no, don’t laugh, you didn’t know me then — and I worked hard to learn to control it. To learn what control meant. It wasn’t about /not/ feeling it, it was about what I did with it.
“But I never felt like my parents, my family, saw that I’d changed, that I was different. I felt like all I ever heard from them was ‘hold your temper, Summer’, ‘don’t get angry, Summer.’ It’s only been in the last couple of years, really, that my mom has acknowledged that I’ve changed, that I got better.”