Started shedding my skin until there was nothing left... (Openish)
Robin is sitting pressed up against the door to the room that they brought Jo to. He's wearing a short sleeve shirt and plain black pants, because he's tired of ruining suits. He's running out of suits and running out of money to continue buying them. He should ask Wyatt to pay him for being a fucking guinea pig. The short sleeves show off the
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She's quick to change back to her clothes and she's darting out of her room, slowing down once she spots Robin and once again he looks...she doesn't think there's a word for it. If it once existed, it's a dead language.
God, she has timing fail.
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It's Rachel Dawes.
And fuck if his eyes don't well with tears at the sight of her after... fuck, everything that happened. He stares at the wall across from him, swallowing with a lot of difficulty past the pain that weighs on his heart.
"Have to quit... meeting like this."
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It feels like there's an endless highway between them as she takes careful steps towards him.
When she finally reaches him she kneels down, still at a safe distance.
His name is trembling uncertainty on her lips. "Robin?"
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"People here get pretty fucking destroyed," he says as way of explanation, and then puts his fingers against his forehead. "I should have been able to stop it. For both of them. They never should have ended up this way. I just-"
Right. Not going to get emotional. Not in front of Rachel Dawes, especially, who he wants to still like him after she finds him hunched over in the hallway, but he's so fucking exhausted. So tired of keeping it all inside. So tired of everything.
He presses his fingers against his forehead and bites his tongue until he tastes blood. Pearly, white blood.
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How many times has she heard something similar in reference to Gotham, damning her for her idealism? The moment the Waynes were murdered, the moment she decided to become a lawyer, all the moments that followed.
That neighbor Rachel remembers every now and then (rotting teeth, bright lipstick, poison for a tongue and Rachel would think to herself hers is not a body but a room of bones and do not listen to her).
Gotham's gonna suck you dry, sugar, and she'll always be left wanting.
But this isn't Gotham. She's in Chicago with Robin and he's hurting and she hates it.
"You just what?" she whispers achingly, sitting down beside him.
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People are dead.
Jo has killed and been covered in blood.
Ruvin is broken into shattered pieces that he has no ability to put back together or even hold on to.
It all rests on his shoulders like a boulder. He said to Ruvin that he wouldn't blame himself, but he does. He always does. His fingers tremble against his forehead. He doesn't want emotion to spill out of him, but he can feel that it will. For whatever reason, it's easier around her. It's easier to hurt despite... despite what it might mean.
"I'm not the nice kind of angel, Rachel."
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She bites down on her lip hard. Is being a nice person the same thing as being a good one?
Rachel senses it coming, whatever it is, knows that it's about to define something and he's coming undone because of it.
Her eyes search his face as her own crumples slightly. "What kind of angel are you, then?"
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What happened? What happened?
To answer that, she would have to understand what he and Jo are. What it means to them to be in certain situations. How they can't change their emotions. How they're stuck between so many things.
He doesn't look at her when he finally speaks. And how did he go from never admitting it, to admitting it to two different people in such a short time frame?
"Vengeance angel," Robin says though the effort it takes to say it almost breaks him. Mid saying those two words. Two short words. "They're- Something happens to them when they're young." Yes, they as if it's not him. "So they're against whatever it is that hurt- happened to them when they turn into an angel. To the extent that there's... rage, but not much control over it. It's a bit like..." insanity.
He swallows, and then bulldozes through before she can ask about him just yet.
"She- The angel behind this door, she's one. I- Didn't talk to her when I should have, and now she's gone and killed people. Bad people, but-" But that doesn ( ... )
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If she'd thought his words had splintered something inside her before she'd been terribly wrong because this, this, the painful knot forming at the center of her chest with the unwillingness to release it as it travels to her very fingertips, the familiar stinging underneath her eyelids - don't cry don't cry don't cry - it has to be the real thing.
Oh. She feels like she's been punched in the throat, and whatever she wants to say is lost to her. Oh.
"I - " Suddenly she understands and for a selfish sliver of a second she wishes she didn't. That look in his eye. His evasion, his exhaustion, his warring ghosts. Complicated.
"Were there..." she stops herself before she can finish. They're useless questions. You're not in your world anymore, Rachel, you're in this one and it's fallen. There was no one to answer to, or she and Martha wouldn't have to be working on creating a system for them ( ... )
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It wasn't hard to figure out without her saying it. What else would have existed in that neighborhood? Why else go after the people in that neighborhood?
"I haven't killed anyone," he says. His voice is incredibly quiet and tight and drawn out and making it clear that he's on the verge of tears. He wouldn't be if he wasn't so fucking exhausted. Robin presses his forehead against his knees, again. "In case you were wondering."
Not yet.
The sickness fills him up, again, from his stomach up to his throat. The bile rises up in him like fire at the back of his mouth, and he can feel the rest of his body shaking.
"And she's-" Another she this time. Ruvin. "She means the world to me, and I left her, and she was broken, shattered in ( ... )
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If it's hard to listen to she can't imagine what it is to say it, to live through it and bear the scars. Rachel's had cases that deal with child prostitution. How many charges has she brought down on men and women involved in sex trafficking of a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity?
It never gets easier (it never, ever should) and it isn't fair that this happens in a world where people try so hard.
The nausea that mingles with her own unease arrives suddenly and without warning. She realizes belatedly it isn't hers. Pain explodes somewhere within her but she doesn't release his hand and the sight of him keeps her from truly feeling it.
"Robin, look at me." The hand he isn't holding curves over the side of his neck. Pain. It engulfs them and chains her down. It doesn't stop why doesn't it stop death anger death - she shoves it away forcibly. "Please, look at me."It's not too late," she insists with quiet ( ... )
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He doesn't look up at her until she says please, and even then he'd rather keep his head down, because he can feel the tears in his eyes, and he hates that they're there. Robin hates the weakness, but he's searching in his head, in his mind for the anger that always gave him strength, and he can't find it. He can't find it with her hand in his and her fingers against the back of his neck.
Robin looks at her, and then he knows he's fucking crying. Goddamnit, but the panic fades, because she's calm. How is she always so damn calm? He loves that about her even if he can't understand it, even if he's envious of it. He feels everything too much unless he's got enough drugs in him to put down a lion ( ... )
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She can't give him a lie. Rachel really can't give him much of anything and it hurts to know it. Such a promise can be broken and so are people, crushed under the weight of the world and she feels every smothering inch until her skin is unbearably empty and carved inside out. She'd never known anybody could feel this much before.
"Yes, you can. It doesn't feel that way right now when it's raw and you're hurting. It only seems hopeless because it matters so much to you, because she matters so much to you. But Robin, you can," she tells him, belief etched in every single part of what she's saying.
Vengeance angels. A calling that leads to murder. Nothing she has ever dealt with before but it isn't about her. A broken girl has blood on her ( ... )
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It's her lips against his neck that remind him. It reminds him how much he wanted to kiss her not long ago and why she had to pull away. She can feel. Everything twisting and tumbling inside of him on top of her own emotions, and he hisses as though in pain at the realization.
Oh, God. Oh, fuck.
He pulls away gently so as not to hit her forcing his hand from hers, forcing the emptiness back so he won't need someone to hold on to.
"Rachel, you-" The apology is in his eyes even if he can't form the words. "I forgot."
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She remembers that uncertain little girl she once was, waving goodbye to her childhood friend. Her friend, who shouldn't have had to experience such grief at the age of eight. She'd vowed even then to never let the ground be stripped from under her, to find sense in the senseless but she can't this time.
Solid. Level-headed. Composed. All adjectives used to describe her before but now, at this very moment, she feels startlingly small. She doesn't speak until she trusts that her voice won't waver, until she knows she won't choke on the bile lodged in her throat. "It doesn't matter."
And to her, it doesn't. It's the least important thing right now. She's not thinking about herself. She'll deal with it later. Later.
"Martha - " this is not your voice, "Martha mentioned someone named Vincent. Does he know about this?"
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He's amazed by her calmness.
He's amazed by her keeping his distance is difficult.
It's difficult, because as much as emotions burned in every portion of his body at being so close to her... it was better than this aching emptiness, and it's all he can think to do to comfort her even if she doesn't look like she needs comfort.
"He helped me calm her down," Robin says, which is the light, vague way of explaining what happened last night. "Helped me get her here. She'd be dead if he hadn't helped."
He would be, too, but that seems less important.
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