Chapter 5: Scars

“Well? What have they?” asked Deanne, suddenly worried. “Are they reopening or… or have I added some new ones?”

She had cut off the Bond as soon as she had heard the word scars. She couldn’t fathom the very idea that she could hurt her beautiful little man. She knew how fragile Minors were – some didn’t like that fact to be stated, but it was a truth. They were far more sensible than MAJORS, which were harder to hurt, both physically and mentally. And someone as mistreated as Jason had been needed to feel safer and be handled with even more care than any other of his kind she had ever interacted with – if only because she was the first she was intimate with.

“I’m fine, really!” cried out a very blatantly embarrassed Jason, who tried to wiggle free from her daughter’s embrace.

“No you’re not” wailed Mary-Rose. “You’ve scars everywhere! Everywhere!”

Deanna watched the small teenager more closely. She had made sure that Mary-Rose was always safe, probably even pampered her far too much, she wasn’t really caring about the plights of her kind – or anyone, really. And she never had seen a scar, she realized. MAJORS healed almost every battering they took without a trace and Cyclopeans were just as resilient, if not more, even discounting their superior size, strength and body density.

“It’s nothing, really” mumbled Jason, who was blushing ever more and trying to hide his member, even if her daughter wasn’t looking too interested right now –and thankfully!

“But… You have so many…”

“It isn’t so surprising my cute baby ball” said Deanna, making use of the affectionate term she had stumbled upon when she had seen her latest daughter for the first time, screaming and still covered in blood, curled into a little ball of flesh and confusion. “Our poor Jason has suffered a lot at the hand of his family – and that’s a common theme for a lot of Minors who are born in backwater or poor neighborhoods, where the advancement of your kind has hit a lot of roadblocks…”

She hesitated to say more. It could reopen fresh wounds for the Minor she was trying to woo. And she could end giving nightmare to a girl she knew was far more susceptible to be frightened or terrified by this kind of things, even if she would have refused to admit it. And herself had seen far too many reports about mutilated Minors, or some whose mind and sense of self had been so degraded that they had become hardly more than sickly shells, wandering around more than living. And she knew that most of them couldn’t be saved, barely made better even with the gentlest care workers.

“That’s horrible…” sniffled Mary-Rose, finally releasing Jason, who seemed happy that she did.

“It… it wasn’t that bad” he tried to say, but his words were drowned by Deanna’s indignant words.

“Don’t ever say that!” she thundered; while crouching to be closer to him, putting her right hands on the back of his shoulders, engulfing them easily. “What was done to you was atrocious. It’s something I’ve fought against every day of my life, since I was old enough to understand what had been done to my Dad, and how it impact hundreds of Minors, thousands even over the world.”

“Thousands doesn’t sound so bad” said the young boy –because he looked more like a scared boy pretending to be brave right now, but it made him all the more adorable and worthy of her love.

“There is only thousands because millions of Minors were slaughtered more than two hundred years ago” said the giantess, slowly and carefully sitting on the ground to be closer to the two smaller people, who looked at her with confused and frightened expression. “I’m afraid that even if your population has grown by quite a lot… it’s still extremely marginal.”

“So I’ve no hope of meeting someone my size and age I could fall in love with?” asked Mary-Rose, her lower lips trembling and her eyes watering up.

“Oh my sweet baby…” said Deanne, feeling her throat tightening. “It would be extremely doubtful, even with the clout and possibilities offered by the Matthewson name.”

“So I’ll never find love?”

Deanna almost cried. Her daughter sounded so distraught, so desperate, that she could feel her heart breaking. Even Jason, still naked, still clutching his clothes, looked utterly dejected and on the verge of crying. She needed to do something, quick, to appease them. And she decided that Mary-Rose needed priority on that front – and it would be a good thing to give her crush the time to get clothed, before anyone else would come by. Her grand-parents wouldn’t sleep all day, after all.

“Jason, would you mind if I put you back on the table for a moment? It’ll allow you to get back into your clothes – the one I haven’t destroyed, that is.”

“Uh… sure, no problem” he replied, perhaps a little puzzled.

He didn’t flinch too much when her fingers coiled around him, and she did her best to not rub him everywhere, like she desperately wanted to. MAJORS were impulsive; her family was no exception and she was by far not the most restrained of the lot. But she knew when the time to act like a young girl in love was and when to be the wise and reassuring mother that was needed. She still sighed a little when, having rose to her full height, she gently dropped him on the table to crouch once more, and inviting her daughter to climb into her lap.

“I’m sorry” said Mary-Rose as she did so, letting herself fall on the giantess’ thighs.

“Sorry for what, my dear?” asked Deanna, caressing the small head gently.

“For being so selfish” sniffled her youngest child. “You told me yesterday that I needed to care more about other, otherwise I was someone terrible and – and I can only care about me and how I won’t ever find love…”

“I never said you wouldn’t, Mary” gently rebuked Deanna. “Only that finding love with a Minor would be really difficult because of how few your kind still is, even if progress have been made. And I don’t think that you have anything to be sorry about right now.”

“But I only care about me!” whined Mary-Rose, looking utterly confused now.

“Not really. You were distraught by Jason’s scars. Isn’t it proof enough that you aren’t has self-centered as you had been?”

“That’s only because you forced me to see how terrible I was” sniffled her daughter, trying and failing, to stop her tears from running on her face by wiping them with her hands.

“I don’t think so. Minors are a lot more altruistic than MAJORS, probably because you needed to, in order to survive, when our ancestors were more solitary brutes roaming the wild lands. You just needed someone to open your eyes and make you realize who you truly are, deep down.”

“You really think so?” asked Mary-Rose, looking up at her with snot running down on her lips.

“Yes I do!” smiled Deanna. “But you need to accept that changes are always progressives, for everyone. You wouldn’t expect to become someone else from one day to the next? Especially without blowing your nose!”

“It’s not my fault” complained her daughter. “I don’t have a tissue on me.”

“Well, then, let me help you” said the titanic woman, towering so much over her littlest baby.

She extended an arm and grasped the torn fabric which had been Jason’s t-shirt and give some piece to Mary-Rose. During a moment, her daughter seemed utterly puzzled, then with a very loud sniffling noise, she brought a small part of this bundle to her nose and blew it, as strong as possible. Even then, the sound looked really weak and cute to Deanna, who started laughing. The small girl in her lap glared at her even while she blew her nose a second time, and then a third, adding to the Cyclopean’s hilarity each time.

“You look really cute” explained the giantess, trying to make her daughter understand that she wasn’t mocking her. “And I may be a little old compared to you – or you Jason, I hope you listen to me! - but I’m still a little girl when it comes to seeing in you such cuteness, calm and even beauty.”

She beamed a radiant smile at Mary-Rose who replied in kind, got up and managed to propel herself against the vast bosom which had nourished her when she was but a baby. Deanna gently reciprocated, putting her vast arms around her daughter to embrace her in a warm hug. She felt the tension leaving Mary-Rose as she relaxed, knowing well how safe and loved she was when protected like that. Looking up, the Cyclopean woman saw that Jason was looking at her, his face a mixture of envy and shame.

Without saying a word, she lifted her right arm and extended it toward him. He flinched but didn’t fell back, and she carefully brought him back to her, adding him to her embrace. She did her best to not extend her mind into his own. She didn’t want to intrude on what he felt like now, she didn’t want to influence him. He needed to feel safe and loved, and when she felt his arms trying to hug her back, her heart missed a beat and she felt a huge smile appear on her face.

“I love you both. Differently, but totally, without compromise or reserves. I’ll always be there for you, no matter how you feel about me, what you decide to do in the future, and whatever kind of life you want to have. I want the two of you to know that.”

“You promise?” asked Mary-Rose, looking up at her expectantly, just like Jason who remained more guarded. “You’ll always be there?”

“Forever and ever. Amen” assured Deanna. “I won’t ever let you go so far that I can’t come to your help. I’ll never let any of you drift away from me so that he or she wouldn’t dare to call for me if the need arise. I swear it, and it’s an oath I intend to uphold till my dying breath.”

“But what if… what if we aren’t worthy of something like that?” asked Jason, his voice cracking a little toward the end as he ran his fingers over the scars adorning his body.

“Why wouldn’t you be?” asked Deanna, sincerely curious.

She knew that a lot of Minors suffered mild to severe cases of a form of imposter syndrome. They were competing with MAJORS in every portion of their lives, and for many, any success which didn’t transition into a painful situation were felt as too good for them. Even after decades spent happily married with her Mom, her little Daddy had revealed that he still felt out of place, as if he had stolen someone else’s happiness and chance at a fulfilling life with one of the most powerful person on Earth. That he had grown old when Shannon had barely done so didn’t help him.

And he had been far from the worst case she had ever seen in her life. As she started getting her work in the division dedicated to pushing for more rights for Minors. One of the worst had been a teenage Minor who had managed to woo his and his younger sibling’s crush. For a few week he had been extremely happy and then he had killed himself, opening his throat with a knife he had found. In a letter, he had explained how he felt as if he was stealing his little brother’s life and that he didn’t deserve to be with the brilliant young woman he was with.

She had delved deep into it, searching for something to make sense. It had been her truly first case dealing with the horrors that Minors endured every day of their life. That kid, Alec, had been belittled, if not downright bullied by other teenagers. Only his brother Ken and this slightly older woman, Janet, had displayed real, genuine love and care for him, and they had become the most important peoples for him. And when he realized that they both had feelings for each other but that Janet loved him more than she did Ken, it had destroyed him.

“Well? Why wouldn’t you be worthy of my love? Because you’re smaller? Younger? Weaker physically? None of it matter. None. Of. It. You are important peoples, who will earn and deserve each and every joy and happy moment you’ll have. I want the both of you to know it, to believe it, even. Do you think you could do that? To swear that you won’t think that you don’t deserve to be happy? That you won’t harm yourself, in any way, because of such nasty ideas?”

“I swear I’ll do that” said Mary-Rose. “What you said about not feeling bad about myself and all.”

“And I’ll do it too. As best I can” added Jason, who seemed rather doubtful that he would be able to do that, which saddened him, but it wasn’t surprising.

“Thank you, the both of you. I know it’ll be extremely hard, for both of you. But I know some ways to help, if you agree with them. Especially you, Jason, because they can be hurtful at first.”

“How much hurtful?” he asked her, perhaps a little worried but not much more, from what she could tell without the Bond – which she couldn’t tell if it was a good or a bad thing.

“You’ll have to talk with us about your past, and I think that the best way to do so would be to explain to us how you got each of your scars. Do you think you could do that?”

“Mom!” cried an indignant Mary-Rose. “You can’t ask him something like… something so cold! How could it help him to revive all those horrors?”

“It… it’s fine, really!” said the other Minor in her lap, looking at her daughter with a weak smile. “I don’t mind them much, if you want to know” he added, giggling nervously.

Deanna doubted it was the truth. She could see plainly how his hands were touching each and every scars he could. She could hear his breathing becoming shallower, his skin starting to perspire, even if the latter could be due to how close he was to her, her body warmth washing over the two smaller people. Even Mary-Rose, who had basically grown at her hip, protected and often held in her arms, against her ample bosom, seemed to feel the heat, and she couldn’t help but find it adorable, how their bodies simply couldn’t pretend she wasn’t here.

“Jason. If you don’t want to, you won’t have to. Not right now. We have as long as we need for you to feel better about it and open your past for us. But what I want for you is to know, deep down, that you are not an impostor, that there isn’t someone else who could be at your place. No one.”

“But how could you be so sure of that?” asked the Minor, just as her daughter said “But you can’t know it just yet!” their reaction so funny she couldn’t help but giggle.

“I have hyperthymesia” she explained to them. “It means I remember everything which happened to me, since almost the time I was born. And I remember as clearly as what I did ten minutes ago. It’s a blessing and a curse I’m used to live with. A blessing because each and every time I felt happy, that I had feelings for someone, are still as strong and vibrant than the day I felt them for the first time.”

“Then how can it be a curse?” blurted Mary-Rose, looking completely lost now.

“Because I also remember every terrible time. I remember the feeling of loss when my Dad –your grand-father- died, how I felt as if everything I assumed was eternal, someone who loved me, so, so much despite my many short-comings, the man who had been there for each and every birth of my children up until now wouldn’t see the next ones, and that hurt me more than anything I ever experienced. And it still burns, as much as it did back then.”

She stopped talking for a moment, as the pain returned to the forefront of her mind. As always, she couldn’t keep the tears from forming in her eyes. Her Dad had been a constant fixture of her life, the reason she cared so much about Minors and their plights. She had to do constant efforts to avoid situations which reminded her of the moment she realized he was going to die, when he had weakened so much that even walking had started to become difficult, when his mind had slowed a lot and he had to take so much time to answer anything…

“Mom! You don’t have to…” started Mary-Rose, but Deanna gently cut her off by putting her large digit on her small mouth, which was almost comical.

“I’m used to living like that, my cute little baby ball” she said gently. “Don’t worry about me. What’s important is that I know how I feel about you two. I know that I never experienced those feelings I now have before meeting you, Jason. And I know that all of my children, you are the one I care the most about Mary-Rose. Probably because I worry a lot more about you, but we won’t go saying this to your siblings!” she finished, laughing a little.

“Wouldn’t they be jealous if they knew?” asked her daughter, her worried look slowly turning into a wide grin, as she seemed mightily happy to learn that she was the favored children in the whole litter that Deanna had produced over the decades.

“You bet they would!” admitted the giantess. “But it’ll remain our little secret, right?”

“Of course. Until they Bond either of us” stated her daughter, nudging a Jason who still seemed startled by what he had just heard.

“I… hadn’t thought of that…” admitted Deanna, who felt suddenly embarrassed. “A… Anyway, we were talking about what I think you could do to avoid some pitfalls, the both of you, but especially you Jason. So, do you think that you could do it someday? To talk about your scars?”

He looked at her, his face a mixture of fear and acceptance. She extended one hand to caress his naked torso, feeling his ribs. He was so skinny, compared to the usual Minors body type, it still made her a little afraid that he could break like glass under her touch. She was enjoying the fact that he wasn’t retreating away as she did that. In fact, he even seemed to lean closer to her finger, and to see how quickly she had managed to earn his thrust and possibly her love. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked deeply into her own and pointed at a small, star-like scar on his right shoulder.

“This one, it’s my dad who did it to me. He had had a terrible day at work, and I was… six, I think. He slapped me, not too hard for a MAJOR, because I was making too much noise, and it had angered him. He wore a ring, back then, which was always faced down when he hit me. And the skin was torn open. I remember I cried a lot, and it made him even angrier…”

He stopped and Deanna did her best to hide the tide of rage which washed over her. She was used to it, she had seen and heard so many atrocious tales. The general public didn’t realize how much Minors were still mistreated, and she never managed to now if it was better like that or not. Sometimes, she feared that any reveal of mistreatment on the smaller bred of humans would only lead to imitators taking up the same behavior. Some of her advisors countered it with the proof that such actions were met with a general wave of disgust, but she knew her history better than to believe that it meant that things would become better.

“This one” continued Jason, touching softly one on his belly, “was done by my… my sister.”

He gulped hard, and even Mary-Rose seemed to realize that it was someone different than even his brutal father. She gently and silently took his left hand in her right, and pressed gently, while Deanna leant forward to better enclose the two of them in the ring of her arms, insuring that they would feel safe. He shuddered a little, but then she saw resolve hardening in his eyes and his jawline tightening. He squared his shoulders and kept talking.

“She was in a very bad mood and I had been… used by the rest of the family already when she came home, so I couldn’t get up. She was really pissed and walked on me with her high heel, and it hurt like hell, and it pierced the skin, I had to be sent to the hospital. They said to the doctor that I had been playing outside unsupervised and had probably ended beaten. My sister told them that she was the one who found me, and rushed me to the hospital…”

Mary-Rose fainted. Deanna barely caught her in time to prevent her from banging her head on the floor.

“I’m sorry!” yelled Jason, looking up at her with a very worried look on his face. “I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s not your fault my love” she said softly, managing to hide how shacked she was. “I didn’t expect her to lose consciousness like that…”

It wasn’t a total surprise, however. Her daughter had never been really strong-willed. As a child, the mere sight of blood made her weak in the knees and scream uncontrollably until she had to be Bonded into sleep to calm down. Hearing something as atrocious as what had happened to Jason, and it was barely scratching the surface of his past, she knew it, and she had had a lot of reports done on his family after all, even if she lacked many of the more intimate details. And it was something to want to learn more, and another to let her daughter on it.

“Wha… what should we do?” asked the still conscious Minor.

“We should eat while it’s still somewhat warm. I’m famished, you need to get something in your stomach too, and if I know my Mary-Rose at all, she’ll regain consciousness as soon as she hear us eating. Don’t worry about her; she’s fine, I’m sure of it.”

“You’re sure? I don’t want to have hurt her… I don’t want her to hate me…”

“She won’t hate you for it. Once, one of her elder brother pranked her hard, she was very angry but got over it once a little time had passed. Here, you did nothing to her, you don’t need to feel bad my dear. No reason to castigate yourself, really.”

She slowly get up, carrying both Minors as if they had been rather large action figures. It was in moments like that that she relished the more her nature as a Cyclopean. Normal MAJORS couldn’t do that. Sure, they towered over the smaller humans, but that was it. They weren’t living colossus, like she and her whole family was. It made her feel so much more important and powerful, and it gave him the ability to protect those she cared about easier than she could have had she been normal-sized.

“So, does it mean I have to eat the super-spicy food, or could I have something for me, like fruits?” suddenly asked Jason as she dropped him on the table.

“Well, you can have anything my love” replied Deanna, leaning forward and kissing him on his forehead. “Anything you want.”