Willow had arrived today at the Noceda residence for her's and Caleb's date. She knocked on the door as she did before during her visits where she wanted to see her boyfriend.
Camila answered the door and smiled upon seeing her. "Willow, great to see you. Are you here for Caleb?"
"Yes Camila." Willow responded.
"Well, he's upstairs." Camila replied. "He's a little nervous."
Willow sighed. "I tell him not to worry."
"Well, you know what he is."
"Trust me, Amity is usually a lot worse." Willow said. "She kept asking me if there was a hair out of place for 34 minutes."
Camila laughed. "No wonder Luz loves her. Do you want to go up and check up on him?"
"I might as well." Willow replied before walking upstairs to Caleb's bedroom. His bedroom door had a sign hanging with his name on it in red font. She saw it was slightly open and considered it an invitation to go in.
But when she got in, she saw a sight she'll never forget. Caleb was standing by his mirror without a shirt, checking himself out. "You got this." Caleb said to himself. "You got this. You're going to go out and have a nice time." But when Willow began to analyse his shirtless form, she noticed that there were many scars all over his chest, stomach and back.
"Um, hi." Willow said.
"Oh, hi Willow." Caleb then screamed and quickly grabbed a blanket to hide his shirtless form. "Don't look!"
"Sorry." Willow covered her eyes.
"Actually, it isn't too bad you can open them." Caleb said as he dropped the blanket and began looking for a shirt to put on while Willow opened her eyes to look at the scars.
The scars all over his body appeared to be very old. Most of them were cuts from blades, whips, a burn mark and what appeared to be a very severe stretch mark. The mere sight of the scars made Willow almost cry as the thought of Caleb being in pain was too much.
"You're looking at them, aren't you?" Caleb asked, interrupting Willow's train of thought.
But in order to not make him uncomfortable, Willow quickly wiped away the tears. "Yeah. I mean, you work out real good. I mean, if you want we could compare abs."
"No." Caleb shook his head. "I meant my scars."
Willow knew there was no point in hiding it, so she sighed. "I was. It's kind of hard not to look at them."
"Tell me about it." Caleb responded. "I sometimes get distracted by them."
Caleb sat down on his bed with Willow following as she wrapped her arm around his shoulder and began snuggling him. "Do you wish to talk about them? We don't need to, if you want."
Caleb pondered if he should for a moment but seeing this was Willow, someone who knew him and knew how to talk to him. He removed her arm and pointed to the one on his face. "This scar, was given to me when I was 12. I came back too early from being on the knee for a month and with him not being impressed, he formed a blade that cut my face." He then pointed to the scratches on his back. "These scars were given to me by Belos whipping me over and over again to toughen me up." He then pointed to his right breast. "This burn was given to me when Belos forced me to do 50 push ups on a field of burning coal. They affected my palms also." The palm of his hands were covered in burn scars and another scar. "These scars on my hands are when Belos tried to make me catch a whip and you can see how I failed." The very painful memories started to make Caleb cry as he began to reminisce.
"Perhaps you should stop." Willow suggested.
Caleb wiped his tears away. "No. I've been meaning to talk about these and I wanna get them off my chest. This one on my chest, was when I missed a sword that Belos was teaching me to dodge. These stretch marks on my stomach, was from my first Golden Guard armour when I was 11. Belos made me wear it for weeks until I suffocated and almost passed out." Then, he lifted his pants leg to reveal a bite mark. "This was when I tried to tame a griffin, but it tamed me instead." He chuckled even though Willow wasn't laughing and was staring at him with a hint of sadness all over her face. "The rest you can figure out for yourself. Blades, whips, all the awful stuff. It's not these physical scars I just have, I have nights where I remember that I'm back with him and he's hurting me. Then I wake up and realise, I'm home. I'm not with him, I'm with my family." They sat together for a bit until Caleb had a thought. "Hey Willow, just so we're clear, you aren't going to do anything like that to me, right?"
But instead of a verbal response, Caleb saw that Willow was looking at him in sadness, horror and concern that tears were beginning to fall from her eyes. Turns out, the story of his scars was more intense than she thought it was going to be. She then held on to her boyfriend, tears still falling from her eyes. "I will never hurt you. I….will never….hurt you."
Caleb was at first surprised but then tears began falling from his eyes as he returned the hug. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I told you."
"Don't apologise for that." Willow sniffled. "Just don't." The two continued to hug each other which was giving them the comfort they desperately needed. Sure they had a date, but right now, they just wanted to make sure they were okay.
