Clemente
Her frankness is startling, and he frowns deeply when she immediately mentions that it came form her ex-husband. But when she asks if he can keep a secret, his head bobbles rapidly, because he can. Clemente is wonderful at such things like secret keeping. He is easily overlooked, talented at disappearing into the woodwork, hearing things not meant for his little ears. She speaks at a sedate pace, confident and calm in the throes of her own story. Clem is left enraptured, staring unblinking at her as she paints a story for him, inviting him into her tragic past. It stirs something in him to realize that much like Mom, she had been hurt too. Unfairly. By a man. It sours his gut, makes him scowl hatefully at the ground as he listens to her continue on. It's a story he has seen played out over and over, and it only makes him feel angrier and more helpless every time he's proven right. Every time he realizes anew that just like when he was a child, there's nothing he can do to protect the women around him.
The fact that she is able to move past the scar's origins only makes him lift his eyes to stare at her in awe. It's a display of emotional strength that endears him to her. But just as he had suspected, she asks about his own history, and Clem curls tighter into himself, bringing his feet up onto the couch and wrapping the blankets tighter like a shield against the memories he's going to invoke. "Uh well...I mean my mom had me really young, with a real shitty dude. We weren't well off in the first place, had a dingy little apartment, but things were okay for a lil' while. But then my father started getting into to some shady business deals, started taking his anger out on mom, hittin' her and stuff. Hittin' me when I'd try to stop him." He tightens around himself again, scowl returning even as his eyes dampen a little. "He was shot in the street when I was uh, ten I think? And things were good after that, for a little while. Mom had a job, I did too to help her out y'know? And it was just the two of us." That had usually involved pickpocketing and doing smaller errands for the better shops in town, but Clem hesitates to say, not wanting to make himself seem like a bad person in front of Rexanna.
Clearing his throat, his hands dig into his arms until the barely-there whisper of pressure grounds him where pain once would have. A bad habit he has yet to break. "Then Mom got addicted to Ether. A drug the humans that hated us - not that there were a lot but yeah - they spread it through the underground. Mom got real addicted, and she kinda just...went away. I had to drop outta school and work full time, steal, just to keep us in the green with her dealer and the owner of the apartment." His tone goes a little dead here, eyes staring off into the middle distance, seeing things that only he can recall. His mother's vacant stare, the smear of color on her nose, the terrifying pounding of collectors on their door. "She started hookin' to get her fix, but when they stopped comin' round for her, she sold me to 'em next." An uncomfortable shrug here, having spent so many years excusing his mother for this particular sin. "So I took over her corner, started hookin' too. But then she...she overdosed, and I came home and she was dead in our bed." Clem's voice wavers here, tears building until his gaze is blurred. But he simply waits them out, swallowing roughly a few times until the silence feels less like a stifling pillow over his face.
"I had to call the police, so she wouldn't just...rot there. And then I ran. They would've put me in a home for kids otherwise, and that's as good as bein' dead. So I started livin' on the streets. Made a best friend who kept me alive with his blood when he shouldnta, struck up some deals with the streetgirls, made it for a few years. And then I ended up here," he laughs, voice rough, and when he blinks the tears streak down his cheeks silently. Clem lifts a corner of one blanket to rub them away, angry at their betrayal. Smiles crooked and broken at Rexanna, and puts on his bravest face. "Not as cool as bein' married to a prince though."
i stopped being a kid the day
you sent me down here to die
