“[Oliver] was a killer and a criminal and a hero, sometimes all three at once,” she murmurs. “You’re not so different.” “I am not my father.” As a teenage fuck-up, I’d like to think I did not even approach the depths of scumbaggery that he did at that age. As a vigilante, I have definitely not racked up a body count in the dozens, nor have I alienated half the people I love. Extra points for having never, ever, not even once slept with a psychotic domestic terrorist who used to be my father’s mistress. But I also haven’t spent five years in hell and somehow managed to claw my way out with a soul. I haven’t spent years doggedly proving my trustworthiness to people who’d given up on me. I haven’t died saving the city (literally, Mom says his heart stopped for fifty-three seconds) or died saving someone I love (that time it was seventeen seconds). I haven’t built a family out of torn-up scraps. Dad has never so much as implied that I don’t measure up to him, but he doesn’t have to. There he is, larger than life. And I am a competitive bastard. Through the whiskey haze, I mutter, “I’ll never be the man he is.”
Jonathon Queen, Blood on My Name, Ch.4 by @ash818