"Me too," Marcus admits with a faint smile that's completely lacking in any real warmth. It looks more like a grimace than anything and he takes another mouthful of soup before continuing. "First time it happened, I think I was five. My mum wouldn't have taken me to a doctor anyway."

He doesn't think it was her the first time, he's fairly certain it was his dad, but she'd done her fair share of it, too. Thrown him into walls, slapped him hard enough to bloody his nose, dragged him around by the arm hard enough to leave finger shaped bruises. In the early seventies in the tiny town he'd grown up in, no one had really cared much about trying to prevent that sort of child abuse, so he'd suffered the two years in silence until they died.

"Was it your dad?" he asks, figuring he might as well. It's a difficult question, but one an abused kid will always think to ask.