Larten Crepsley, when he was younger, had always been a hit with the ladies and quite often still was, although he was less interested now than he had been in previous years. But even though he had a stern demeanour, he was still a sucker for a damsel in distress, which was why he couldn't help but pity the slightly familiar dark haired girl, sitting on the filthy floor, sobbing quietly.

Unsure of how to approach her, he decided not to – it was never a good thing to surprise an upset woman. So instead he coughed, giving away his presence. He could see how she tensed and was silent almost immediately. She slowly wiped her eyes before looking towards him and he realised how she seemed familiar.

It was the girl who had nearly fallen onto the rails...what was her name again? He racked his brain for an answer but found nothing. Knowing it was a foolish question, but wanting to say something, he spoke.

"...Are you alright?"

She directed her gaze towards her shoes as she sniffed and gave a small nod and it fell silent, not a comfortable silence, but an awkward one as Larten began to regret making his presence known and he was ridiculously thankful when she finally spoke in weak tones.

"Why do you hand out the flyers here? Why not some place busy?"

"The Cirque Du Freak always draws in a crowd, no matter how little or poorly we advertise," he explained briefly, even though he himself had to wonder why he'd been sent there of all places, normally he was somewhere at least a little bit busier.

"I bought tickets," the girl stated, standing now and leaning against the wall, gesturing to her bag on the floor which made Larten do a double take.

Last time he saw her, he hadn't exactly studied her bag, but he would have remembered if it had been in such a state. It looked damp, dirty and even slightly green.

"What happened to..." he trailed off, not sure whether it was wise to ask in case that was what had upset her, and indeed it was.

He face fell, the slight composure she had gained fading a bit.

"Oh, uh, somebody dumped paint in it," she murmured resentfully.

Larten couldn't help but wrinkle his nose at that as he recalled that although it had been many, many years since he had lived among humans as one, he still remembered that they were often cruel, dishonourable creatures and he found he had nothing else to say.

It fell silent, but only for a minute before the metro arrived so I pulled my sorry excuse for a bag over my shoulder.

"See you," I murmured to him as I stepped onto the metro, wanting nothing more than to shower and go to bed as I slumped down into the torn seat.

It was only two stops later and a short, brisk walk until I arrived at my mum's flat, finding the door leading into the small kitchen unlocked I walked in, happy as warmth and the smell of food met my nose.

I made my way out of the kitchen and straight across the small corridor, into the living room and poked my head around the door. My family had never been a conventional one and we'd never had a conventional relationship.

My parents had divorced four and a half years ago when I was eleven, leaving me unsurprised. Since then my mum had gotten a boyfriend, Mick. It wasn't that we didn't like each other, no, he was a pretty nice guy, it was that we didn't understand each other. All of his previous girlfriends, if they had kids, either had sons who were sports fanatics who he could watch football with or daughters obsessed with making their hair perfect and the latest boy bands, who he could simply buy the latest chick flick or best selling CD and they'd be happy and if those girlfriends had both, well he could win them over with his sense of humour.

So when he met me, the girl who sat around in her room, burning incense, listening to music by people he'd never heard of and painting with supplies he knew nothing about and who had a rather bizarre sense of humour, he had no idea how to "bond" with me. So he didn't. I didn't mind, I didn't have the slightest clue what to talk about with him, either, so we were on good terms, but we were never close and I doubted we ever would be. As long as he didn't try to discipline me and as long as he made no snide comments, I had no issues with him, and he was a nice guy, so he never did.

My relationship with my mum was strained at best. My dad had been the main one to raise me, giving me most of his personality traits and my mum and dad were such opposites I often wondered why they'd ever even married. My mum wanted to go to parties with friends and when she'd gotten pregnant with a girl, I was sure she'd been happy – she'd have a best friend like she'd been with her mum. She could discuss fashion with me and take me along to family parties where I'd flirt with family friends and dance whilst she'd socialize with her friends (who I personally couldn't stand).

So when I got to around ten and started refusing to go to said parties out of both dislike for her side of the family, her friends and parties in general, she'd been disappointed to say the least, and probably even more so when I had started refusing to let her choose my clothes and I retreated to the darker side of the colour spectrum and if I did ever wear skirts, they' be gypsy skirts. The divorce had made our relationship even worse since I couldn't help but blame her so we'd constantly argue over stupid little things, like me wanting to be at my dad's for my birthday.

There were two people in my family I was close to, those two people being my dad and my brother who was older than me by eight years at the age of twenty three.

People often told me I was like a young, female version of my dad when it came to my personality. I was introverted but with a sarcastic sense of humour and I'd rather spend a night at home reading or watching a film than going out with my friends – it was the same with my brother, except he had gotten my mum's need for socialization. I didn't mind though, he was funny when he was drunk and when he stumbled through the door to my dad's house at three in the morning, it was funny to hear him babble nonsense. I never let him know what was going on at school, though. If I did he'd demand to know everything and then make things worse by either getting arrested for hurting one of them, or making me more of a victim by threatening them.

The one down side about being at dad's was money. He had none. I'd offered to sell my guitar that I never played that could bring in quite a lot of money, but he always refused, I even offered to go to town and try and sell some paintings but he'd always tell me not to worry about it, even as he ate at work to save money rather than buying food for himself.

"You stayed late again?" mum frowned as I crossed the room, shrugging off my jacket.

"Uh, yeah," I mumbled, hanging the jacket up on the coat rack in the corner of the room.

"I need a new bag," I sighed eventually, putting mine on the table in front of her and Mick.

"Jesus Christ, kid, what did you do to it?" Mick exclaimed.

"I didn't do anything," I sighed "Somebody poured paint in it during art."

"And what are the school doing?" mum frowned "We can't afford a new bag!"

"Paying for a new bag. They can't do anything unless they know who it is," I shrugged, picking up the bag again.

"Well do you know who it could be?" mum sighed, as if I had made this happen.

"I have a few ideas."

"Well deck the kid in the face!" Mick said exasperatedly.

"Yeah, 'cause that'd go well," I snorted humourlessly, retreating to my bedroom.

I sighed, comforted by the room as I turned on my bedside lamp, bathing the room in a dim orange glow. I slipped on "Fellowship of the Ring" just for some background noise as I shrugged off the blue navy jumper, white polo shirt and black trousers that I had to wear for school before pulling on some pyjama bottoms that drowned me, a black tank top and tied my hair up into a messy bun before I sank down into my bed with a relieved sigh, already dreading the next day.

It wasn't that I cared about what they thought of me, it was just how constant they were. Every single day it'd be snide comments, giggles, getting stuff thrown at me but it'd never been as bad as this and it was really wearing me down, I mean, the pressure of high school was bad enough but with this added?

"Come in," I called as a knock at my door distracted me from my thoughts.

My mum walked in with a plate of lasagne in her hands.

"I made your favourite, I had to re-heat it since you were home late, but you seem a bit down..."

"I'm fine, thanks mum," I gave her a small smile accepting the plate from her as she placed a comforting hand on my shoulder and left the room.

I was happy to finally have food – the only food I'd had all day was a toaster waffle for breakfast since I'd skipped lunch and if there was one thing I adored about my mum, it was her cooking. She'd been born in my hometown but she'd lived in Italy from when she was fourteen until she was twenty when she met my dad, who born and raised in Italy. In her six years there, she'd fell in love with the cooking and my dad had often joked that he had only married her for the food.

I had eaten about five bites of the lasagne before I remembered why I hadn't eaten lunch that day, as the girl's voice rang in my head "Do you really think you should be eating that?"

I sighed, taking another small bite of the food before discovering it suddenly didn't taste as nice as it had at first. Great. I was nowhere near overweight and I knew it, but there was nothing like somebody implying that you were to ruin your appetite. I put the plate on the floor and brought my knees up to my chin before deciding to actually watch the film on the TV, hoping for some kind of mental escape, if only for a few hours.