OW

Clementine grinned behind his face mask. He twirled a kitchen knife in his hand.

Across the room from him was a smaller man, some fool who paid for his own hit, just to see if he could survive. He looked confident, despite being faced with the much larger man. He had his own knife, as he had long since lost his gun when he got a fist square to the face after his ambush attempt.

Now, Clementine isn't one for enjoying his kills, especially when they're messy, but he couldn't help but find it a little fun. Hell, he'd had no idea the man was the one who'd hired someone to kill him, so the ambush was quite a surprise. His silly little speech on boredom was...boring, but now he had a knife! That was fun.

"Smart of you to request only one person to show up, my handler would've shot you immediately."

"Shut up and come at me, big guy."

So, he did.

Clementine ran at him, but veered to the side last second, dodging the swipe that came and catching the man off guard. He slammed his empty palm into the side of the man's head and sent him into the wall, "Oops."

He let go and the man fall to the ground, grunting. Clementine chuckled a bit and crouched over him, "Looks like you weren't as clever as you thought."

"Cocky bastard!" The man shouted and launched from his crumpled position, slashing the knife at Clementine.

The action caused Clem to fall back, a slight crack was heard. He blinked in surprise and put his hand to his mask. It was cut, but also slowly getting wet. He'd been cut, his tooth had been chipped too. The one time he wore a flimsy little fabric mask to a nonsocial hit and he gets cut. 

The man laughed, "Maybe you're-"

Clem slammed his hand around the man's throat and raised the knife in his other hand into the air, "You've been on the internet too much. Maybe you shouldn't believe every story you read."

It was an utterly unceremonious end.

~~~

The recruiter, Clementine never did ask her name, cleaned up the cut on his face, shaking her head, "Christ, Clementine. If anyone ever does see your face now, they'll get the idea that this is why you wear a mask."

"Nothing wrong with scars."

"I know that, it might not scar though."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Alright, it will probably scar. But it's your own fault, you're the one who forgot about the knife. I get you don't find the job interesting, but," She tossed the cotton balls into the trash, "You don't need to go with a crazy idea just because Passion isn't there to knock some sense into you."

"He only hit me once."

"Yeah, well he also managed to hit your face. What are you going to do if you hurt your face again and I'm not around, huh? I know you only called me because I've seen that mug of yours before."

Clementine shrugged, "I don't need to worry about that."

"And why's that?"

"There's no way I'll outlive you," He grinned, "I'm too unlucky."

~~~

Clementine stared at the mirror, blood running from his nose. He'd gotten a pretty nasty kick to the face during a sparring match and had rushed out of the training area as soon as he felt the warm liquid start to spill.

He pulled up his phone and hesitated as he went to click his messaging app. He shook his head and instead clicked the browser. He quickly typed in a question about how to deal with bloody noses.

He'd been trying to get better at learning how to do first aid, mostly for himself. Funnily enough, he was pretty bad at it. Mostly used to getting help from others, because it wasn't all that common for him to get a wound that was bad enough to need anything more than an ice pack or a bandaid.

It was a learning curve, that was for sure. But it's not like he had anyone left that would be able to help him patch up his face anymore, so he would have to help himself. It wasn't that hard, it was just new. Change is weird, but he could handle it, eventually.

He looked up at his reflection again. He could handle it.