He had gone in tough, knowing he wasn’t. That’s what it took, father had said, not skill as much as size. And not size as much as toughness.

Father hadn’t been happy. He had never wanted his son to go like he did. But Danny thought he saw a glimmer of pride in the old, beaten brow of his father— it was usually pride when the scar tissue above his glabella swelled so. And Danny thought they were tears of pride, really, right below those old scars.

So Danny had put his brush down and picked up his fists and gone. It was going to be hard, he knew that. It was the only noble choice, though.

How long had his father told him of the hellish nights and the tense days, hiding. Practically from the crib he bore into his son how awful the days were, how hard it was to survive. How this scar happened, and that one. How his son wouldn’t understand— he was a better man. Intelligent, gifted. That place wasn’t his world and couldn’t be.

Danny didn’t have scars of his own. Just a hole, and a bruise from the fall.