He listened to her silently, watching her history dance before him among the stars, feeling awestruck for a moment how anyone else could voice the pains that he never knew how to explain. This woman who drifted among the realms, whom he had met only by chance, saw so much. Had he ever felt truly connected to anything before this moment?
“I tried to tell them. I always do. But you’re so right; no one wants to see. Perhaps someday they will,” his voice was barely above a whisper. He almost believed himself just then. He really almost did. He laced and unlaced their fingers, exploring the way they fit together.
“What matters,” she went on, voice a whisper, “in the end, is how you see yourself. It’s not easy. Gods, it’s not easy. To remove yourself from needing to know how other people see you.” She shifted over onto her side more, cupping her other hand over their interlaced fingers and looking at his face. “You’ve spent so much time knowing what they thought, and shaped by that, right? That you were not the same as — ” she hesitated, but plunged on, ” — as Thor, and therefore not as good. Different is bad, right?”
“It shouldn’t be,” he said bitterly, eyes flicking away. “But it is. That is the way of this world, and all worlds beyond. If you are not powerful in the highest way, you are cast out as nothing. What difference does it make how I see myself, if I am alone?”
“If you see yourself as useless, lost — all the things others have placed on you, how can you ever be willing to see the people who don’t see you as different? You’re so sure no one can ever see you as worthwhile — because you can’t see it.” She closed her eyes, clearing her throat. “You aren’t alone.”