"Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb."
― Sue Grafton
chapter 35
Bar could excuse his mother leaving him, he really, honestly could. Given the chance, he'd leave himself.
But she didn't just leave Bar. She left him with Talmai.
She left her son-- her baby with a wife-beater, with someone who abused him, with someone who Bar had to stay around to protect his baby sister from.
She left him.
He stayed in that house, he stays there and he protects Gwen.
But she couldn't have stayed for him? She couldn't have protected him?
Why is that not okay for a mother to do, but okay for a seven year old to step between his father and toddler sister and take a couple fists to the face?
Why wasn't she there-- why hadn't she been there for him?
He needed her.
His whole life, Bar needed her.
But she was just... she was just here? Without pain, without worrying that her ex-husband was busy turning her son into a monster by beating that dark side out of the him and into who he became?
How could she have done that? How could she have left him like that?
"Oly," Clementine grabbed his hands, a worried expression on her face. "What do you m-mean? I thought your mother was dead."
"She is-- my dad, he told me she died... She died but she's here. Look," He pulls out his necklace from under his shirt, the dog tags gleaming next to the gummy bear that Clementine had given him and his mother's name fully visible. "That's her name. She looks exactly like my mom."
Clementine stared at the dog tags and Bar's anxiety exploded, leaving him behind to put out the flames left in it's wake.
"I know I'm probably being crazy," Bar stepped back, running a hand through his hair. "Shit, I'm stupid, forget this--"
"Oly," Clementine grabbed the brute in a tighter grip, holding him to her. "How many times do I, do I have to tell you that I'm here for you until you believe it? I believe you, that's your m-mom."
"Really?" Bar raised an eyebrow, looking down at the little goddess as she nods before looking back over to the woman. "What... what do you know about her?"
"Not a lot. She doesn't talk a-about her family much but she lost her brother and dad around the same time a couple years back. She's been working here since I, I was little." Clementine said.
Bar felt like someone punched him in his gut. She's been in his town... she's been not even a twenty minute drive away from him his whole life and he didn't know?
His mother got to see Clementine grow up, but not her own son?
How is that fair?
"It was my Tio Bash and Abuelo," Bar swallowed, still feeling the lose. "They were... they were all the family I had before Gwen was born. They were all I had."
They were all he had because his dad is a deadbeat and his mom was dead. Now, he learning, that she left in a completely different way.
Clementine pauses before she asks, "Do you want to t-talk to her?"
"Talk to her?" Bar says a little too harshly, his hand coming up to hold his throat as the air suddenly seemed too thin, his body too weak. "She doesn't-- she doesn't want to talk to me. She doesn't want me."
Clementine's eyes flashed in pain for the brute and she placed gentle hands on Bar's biceps but he didn't want her pity, "Oly, hey, breathe, okay? You n-need to breathe. You don't have to talk to her, you don't h-have to be around her."
"She left me," Bar told Clementine, dark eyes welling with unexpected tears. "She didn't die, she left! She left me with him!"
Bar was hyperventilating now and it was drawing the attention of Alysia and the other maid.
That's the last thing Bar wanted-- he didn't want to be gawked at, he didn't want to anyone to worry.
He didn't want his mother around him for too long.
Because that's not his mother-- that's just a stranger who gave birth to him and then ran away.
"Alysia, Mari, get out." Clementine ordered and within seconds the other maid scurried out of the room but his mother didn't-- not sacred of the tiny girl who controlled her pay checks.
With blurry eyes, Bar clutches his head and stumbles onto his knees, Clementine going with him and just holds him.
"I'm sorry, Oly," She combing her fingers through his curls curls Bar wraps his arms around his in response. "I didn't know who she was. I'm sorry t-this is how you found out, I--"
"Young master," Alysia began but she quickly got cut off.
"Didn't I tell you to leave?" Clementine snapped. Bar raised his head enough to see minty eyes glaring right at his mother.
"I just want to speak with him," Alysia raised her hands, pleading. "He deserves to know the full truth, I don't know what Talmai told him."
"Talmai?" Clementine turns to Bar.
"My dad," He chokes out, still trying to breathe properly. Bar pulls the little goddess onto his lap, curling himself around her as he rests his forehead on her shoulder, unable to look at Alysia as he speaks. "He told me that she was dead. He told me that she was gone and that it was my fault, he told me--"
"Oly, that's not true. Even if she was dead, it wouldn't be y-your fault, okay?" Clementine told him. "Do you want to talk to her?"
She said that as if his mother wasn't in the room, watching then with eyes that matched his Tio's.
Bar shrugged.
"Yes or n-no, Oly, otherwise I'm going to go get a, a guard and have them escort her out of my property."
"Yes," Bar said, worrying and panicking now that if he doesn't ask her why she left him, he'd never get to know. "I need answers."
"Do you want me h-here for that?" Clementine asked. Bar pulled back and looked into her minty eyes.
He wanted the support, he wanted his little goddess there to keep him calm.
But they would be talking about his dad.
No part of Talmai should be connected to Clementine and hell would ensue for Bar if she found out about the abuse and then if his dad found out about the little goddess.
"Can you go tell Gus and Law what's going on?" He asks softly. "I'll go out there when I'm done talking to her, baby."
"Are you sure?" Clementine frowned, eyes searching Bar's darker ones.
He nods, "I'm sure, babygirl. If I need you, I'll text you, okay?"
"Okay." She placed a kiss on Bar's forehead before standing and sending once last glance throughout the room and a warning look to Bar's mother.
Clementine closes the door behind her and Bar's body tenses, his lungs aching and needing and his body no longer sure of itself.
No longer sure of its origins.
Before, he had been only half-monster, only half-beast.
But now, what was he?
What kind of inheritance did he have? An abuser as a father and an abandoner as a mother?
That's what's in his blood?
"Bartholo--"
"Don't call me that," The brute growled put, dark eyes glaring up at his mother from his spot on the floor. He wondered, for a moment, if she saw his father in those dark eyes of his. "Call me Bar or Red or any insult that works, your choice."
Alysia looked perplexed for a second before she said, "Right... Bar, there's no excuse for me not being in your life and--"
"You're right," Bar interrupted. "There's no excuse. So why..."
He couldn't even get the words out.
"Why did I leave?" Alysia nervously crossed her arms over her chest, eyes dancing away form Bar. "Talmai was--"
"No, not that. I know why you left," Bar said. "No one would willingly put up with my father if they had the choice. But why... why didn't you take me with you?"
Was he really worth that less?
That his own mother could just leave him like that?
His mother paused, eyes wide as she started at the brute.
"I didn't... I didn't think that he'd be bad to you," She admitted and Bar flinched, knowing the truth. "I thought I was doing a good thing. Leaving you with him, I mean. I had no job, no way to provide for you. He did."
"You thought that he would be a good dad?" Bar snarled out, standing. "You thought that he would be good to me? What part? The drinking? The beating? The insults? The years of never being good enough to him? Which one! There's too many to choice from, right? Too many horrible things and you thought I'd be safe?"
Bar laughed, full of hate and bitterness and sadness, "I wasn't safe. I wasn't taken care of. You left me with a monster! You left me to turn into him!"
Bar was yelling now but he didn't care, he didn't even notice the tears in her eyes.
He was crying, too.
"I look exactly like him," Bar sounded so broken. "I hurt so many people, you left me with someone who taught me that that was okay before I learned better. You left me."
"I'm sorry," Alysia sobbed out. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know he told you I was dead, I didn't--"
"That's bullshit!" Bar's fists clench and he takes a step back, trying to distance himself from the pain and tension tearing through the room and the people in it. "You knew exactly what he told me! Tio Bash was there, him and Abuelo let me believe you died and I know that's not because my dad asked them to. They hated him. They did it for you."
So many people betrayed him, there were too many open wounds on Bar's soul now to count.
"So tell me, Mom," The title was a mockery. "What else don't I know? What else have I been lied to about my entire life?"
"Nothing, there's nothing else," She cried out, taking a desperate step forward. "I wanted to know you, I wanted to talk to you."
"Then why didn't you?" Bar bit out.
"I was scared," Alysia's accent thickened. "I was so scared that Talmai would find out that I was in your life and drag me back into that house and I wouldn't be able to escape again."
"Well guess what," Bar snarled. "I can't escape that house, I can't leave it! You were lucky you didn't care about someone enough to stay. You were lucky you got out because me and my sister? We can't!"
His mother covered her mouth as a sob tried to escape, "Sister?"
"Gwen. She's only eleven," Bar wiped his tears, feeling suffocated. "I would've gotten away from him by fourteen." He thought about the scars on his wrists. "If I didn't have to protect her."
"I'm sorry."
Her apology didn't even matter.
"I don't care," Bar said. "I didn't matter to you back then, we don't have to matter to each other now."
"Please, we can work this out," Alysia pleaded. "I'm still your mother."
Hearing those words, Bar slips off his necklace and takes the dog tags off of the chain before putting it back on with only the gummy bear on it. He hands them to her, staring down at the woman-- a stranger of kinly blood -- Bar keeps his voice even and emotionless, "You're no mother of mine."
With saying that and with tears still in his eyes, Bar leaves Clementine's room.
He felt like he was one move away from snapping in half and just falling into pieces all over the floor. Bar was always so liable to break and he hated it.
He hated how easy it was for his thoughts to go dark.
The brute didn't even notice as he came into the living room, his best friends standing and coming over to him. The little goddess was probably talking to Eli and Fen but Bar didn't look for her.
He had someone else he needed to talk to.
"Hey," Law's worried frown snapped Bar out of his distraction enough for him to notice that Gus was frowning too, that happy mask he put on no where to be found. "How not okay are you?"
"I want to punch something," Bar said honestly. "But I don't want to die."
"Do we need to keep you safe?"
In other words: Do you feel like hurting yourself?
"No, I'm fine," Bar shook his head. "I just feel..."
"Like everything you know is a goddamn lie, squeaky clean of the truth?" Gus filled in and he nodded.
"I have to talk to me dad," Bar told them. Both of his best friends eyes widened. "I need to know everything."
"No," Law says. "You're going to get hurt, man."
"I'll be careful," Bar reassured but all of them knew that careful is not a term that applies to abuse.
"Call us," Gus demanded. "If you're going to do this, then you need to call us before and after. We need to know if you're okay or not."
"I will." It's a promise Bar won't be breaking. "And don't... don't tell my babygirl where I'm going. If I show up with bruises after seeing my dad, she's smart enough to make the connection."
With sad eyes, his best friends nod and lets Bar leave.