Page 119 of Dishonored

About everything.

He could tell just by the way she looked at him. He knew that meant she cared—and fuck him, because he’d never had somebody actually give a shit before. They were either too stuck in their own problems to notice he was drowning, or it was inconvenient for them to acknowledge there was a reason why he was the way he was.

That someone did this to him.

“Say it again,” he said suddenly. “That I can tell you, or talk to you about anything. Tell me you won’t use this for something, and—”

“You can. And I won’t.”

Yeah.

He knew that.

Somehow.

“It started when I was seven,” he said quietly, staring down into the amber liquid. “And it continued until just shortly before my sixteenth birthday.”

Aria cleared her throat, but he refused to look at her. “That long?”

“Probably would have been longer, but uh, I had a bit more freedom by then and learned how to avoid her as much as I could.”

“Oh.”

He was grateful she didn’t apologize again.

Why should she?

“My father married my mother because she wanted to; he loved her,” Caesar said, smiling a bit, “and then she died, so he had to marry again. For his status, and because he had a four year old that apparently needed a mother. He was too busy to notice anything—too busy with his own issues and problems. Still grieving a wife, and trying to do as little as possible with the problematic cunt he married because someone told him he had to. I think that’s why she first started to mess with me; it was a way to get closer to him. Angelo paid more attention to me than he did her.”

“Jealousy,” Aria filled in.

Caesar shrugged. “Call it that if you want, I guess. Martina came to him already fucked up. Already had a drinking problem; she even drank when she was pregnant, but she thought nobody noticed. It started with little things. She’d come into the bathroom when I was taking a shower, or walking in on me when I was getting dressed. But she was supposed to be taking care of me, so even though I felt awkward, I didn’t know the difference when she started doing other things. And then she’d start coming into my room at night when she was drunk, and …”

His jaw clenched tight; like his hand around the glass he was holding. “When I was younger, well, it just made me ashamed. What was I supposed to tell people—that my step-mother was telling me this was how you felt good? That she made me touch her? And then when I was older …” He let out a bitter laugh, and shook his head. “Someone rubs on you, and you get fucking hard. You can’t control it, even if you don’t fucking want it. She used that shit a lot, too.

“All of it,” he added, “was just another way for her to hurt my father, I think. Because the more I distanced myself, and worse I became with my behavior or toward him … the happier she seemed to be. She used sex to hurt him, and in turn, I just wanted to hurt everybody else. I wanted them to feel even a little bit of what I felt like because they didn’t know or help me.”

“That’s not sex, though,” Aria whispered. “Sex is supposed to be good, and consensual, and whatever else you want it to be, Caesar, but it’s not supposed to be that.”

Caesar glanced up to find she was staring at him—no pity looked back, though. Just another soul who might possibly be a little broken like he was, but it still wasn’t the same. It was enough to make him take notice.

It was enough.

“It’s not supposed to be that,” she repeated.

“Monsters rarely look like monsters.”

“I know.”

Sometimes, monsters were pretty women with a drinking problem, and an ever-constant presence that he couldn’t rid himself of.

Caesar tipped his drink up, and swallowed the rest of the whiskey in one burning pull before he set the glass aside. “Time to get back to hell.”

Aria let out a soft sigh. “Hard to believe.”

“What is?”

“It’s almost done. I’m almost free.”