hobo heart x reader. Perhaps we value each other?

Chapter 17

(Warning: this chapter contains themes of child abuse and sexualizing. Reader discretion is advised)

I eventually collapsed flat on my bed, staring blankly at the stained, water-damaged ceiling. With a heavy, ragged sigh, I closed my eyes and let the darkness take over.

"Well, it wasn't all bad at first," I began, my voice entirely flat, drained of any life. "My childhood was actually decent. But everything flipped when I was about five or six, right around the time I met Marcy. My adoptive parents started fighting. Constantly. Even over the smallest, most pathetic things. The stress in that house was thick enough to choke on, and they didn't give a damn about hiding it from me."

I swallowed, the memories tasting like old copper and ash. "I remember the shouting matches. Cheating, bankruptcy, job loss, jail time. Dad lost his job and got slapped with a lawsuit, so they had to file for bankruptcy to keep him out of a cell. After that, Mom started sleeping around for quick cash. They couldn't afford to divorce because of me, so they just picked up lethal coping mechanisms instead.

"I let out a cold, humorless breath. "Dad drowned himself in cheap booze. Mom started chasing highs. The bills went past due, the power got cut, and half the time there wasn't a single scrap of food in the kitchen. I was terrified, starving, and entirely on my own. The only meal I got was the free lunch at school. And since they stopped forcing me to bathe—and locked the bathroom door so I couldn't use the water—everyone at school treated me like a leper. My friends vanished. Total radio silence. I was just the dirty, quiet kid in the back of the class."

I opened my eyes, staring at the ceiling without really seeing it. "When the drinks and the drugs stopped numbing them, they turned their venom on me. Yelling, screaming, blaming a little kid for every single thing that went wrong in their pathetic lives. They starved me. Sometimes they'd padlock the fridge and eat right in front of me, throwing the scraps on the floor like I was a dog. They sold my clothes, my toys—anything I had that was worth a dime. Then, the day I turned ten, the bruises stopped being accidental."

My chest hitched violently, and I had to stop to force air back into my lungs.

"Hey," Hobo Heart's voice cut through the dark, whispered so softly it barely carried across the room. "You don't have to keep going if you don't want to."

I forced down the suffocating, heavy lump in my throat. "No, it's fine. Really. I..." I let out a sharp, trembling exhale. "I want to tell you. Someone needs to know."

I cleared my throat, desperately forcing the tremor out of my voice. "The first time they really laid a hand on me was because they caught me digging through a dumpster behind a grocery store for dinner. Mom backhanded me across the face so hard I hit the pavement. Her rings tore my cheek down to the bone. She told me I didn't deserve to eat, that everything ruining their lives was my fault. That was also the day she happily informed me I was adopted."

A bitter, broken smile touched my lips. "She told me they only took me in because the state paid them a monthly check to do it. Said if they were still childless, they'd be happy. Said if I hadn't been born a freak, I could have stayed with my real mother. I didn't get it back then. I do now."

I sat up slightly, the edge in my voice turning fragile and jagged. "After that, it was a free-for-all. They threw broken glass at me. Dad would lock me in the crawlspace under the house for days in the pitch black, with no food or water, just listening to the rats. They tried to run me over with the car once when I ran away. Dad purposely snapped my wrist because I made twenty bucks helping a neighbor rake leaves, and then he tore the bloody money right out of my broken fingers."

I shrugged, a cold, terrifying indifference washing over me. "They never took me to a hospital. Didn't need to. I'd just pop the bones back into place myself, screaming into a pillow, and it'd be fine in a week. I always healed freakishly fast, but I thought everyone did. Bruises vanished in a day. Cuts closed up in hours. But the scars... the scars stayed."

My voice dropped, turning dead, icy, and completely hollow. "When I turned eighteen, things got truly disgusting. My mother forced me to strip down at gunpoint and took photos of me in my underwear. I found out later she was selling them to sickos online to buy her fixes. Thankfully, that's as far as her little business went, and she usually cropped my face out. But it was still sick. I felt like a piece of meat."

I clenched my fists so hard my nails bit into my palms. "I tried to get help. I begged teachers, police, anyone. But my parents always cleaned me up just enough, and for some reason, nothing ever happened. The system didn't care. Marcy knew, too, but she always stood in the corner of my room, watching me cry, giving me the same line about how she wasn't allowed to interfere. So, I started hunting for Slender Man. I didn't want answers. I wanted to die. I wanted a monster to tear me apart because it would have hurt less than what my own parents did. I wanted it so badly."

The room went completely dead silent. The lump in my throat was too massive to speak around, and I felt the hot, stinging track of tears leaking down my temples, soaking into my hair.

I took a few agonizing minutes to piece myself back together, sobbing quietly until my breathing leveled out. Once I could breathe, I sat up and looked at Hobo Heart. He was staring at me, his usual cold, killer demeanor entirely shattered by raw, horrific shock.

"That explains a hell of a lot," he murmured, his eyes slowly drifting down to the floorboards, his shoulders tight. "Not just the state of your heart, but the scars. Your death wish. The way you threw yourself into danger just hoping one of us would end it." He looked back up, a crushing weight in his eyes. "They trained you to hate yourself. They stripped away your value before you even knew what it meant."

"Yeah, well, it is what it is," I muttered, lying back down and staring at the wall, curling slightly into a fetal position. "That's just the human condition sometimes. We don't all get the white picket fence and the happy ending. But if I ever brought a kid into this miserable world, I'd die before I let anyone hurt her. She'd have the best life possible. She'd actually be loved."

I felt the mattress shift. Hobo Heart had climbed onto the bed, sitting cross-legged right beside my head. He looked down at me, the monstrous aura he usually carried completely wiped away, leaving him looking vulnerable.

"Do you think you could ever find that value again?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly.

I turned my head away from him, burying my face into the pillow, refusing to meet his gaze. "Probably not. Let's be real—nobody is ever going to value a piece of trash as broken and filthy as me anyway. I'm ruined. So why should I waste my time trying?"

"Well..."I froze as his cold fingers gently, hesitantly brushed against a strand of my jet-black hair.

"What if someone else did?" he asked, his voice barely a breath.

I let out a harsh, choking, mocking sob and snapped my head around to face him, tears blurring my vision. I expected to see him smirking, but his usually dead, empty eyes were wide with a harrowing mix of worry and deep, agonizing pain.

"Then they're a fucking idiot," I sobbed, bolting upright and sliding down to the very edge of the mattress, putting as much distance between us as the small bed allowed, wrapping my arms tight around my shins. "And they seriously need to fix their goddamn priorities. Don't look at me like that. Don't pity me."

My tongue ached from the venom in my words, but I didn't care. Pushing him away was a survival instinct. If I let him get close, if I let myself believe him, it would only hurt a million times worse when he finally realized I was too broken to fix and abandoned me like everyone else. I had to drive him out before he could break what was left of me.

"Maybe it's your heart talking through me," Hobo Heart whispered from behind me.

Suddenly, he gasped, clutching his chest tightly as a sharp, agonizing thud vibrated through his ribs. My heart inside him was violently reacting to my distress, sending waves of raw emotional agony directly into his soul. He winced, tears of phantom pain welling in his own dead eyes, but he didn't back away.

Before I could move, I felt his arms slide slowly, carefully around my waist. He pulled me back against his chest with a terrifying, protective gentleness, burying his face into my shoulder.

"Or maybe I really am a fool," he choked out, holding me tighter as the heart thudded painfully against his ribs. "But I value you. I swear to god, Molly, I value you."