And both hands, now use both hands, oh, no don't close your eyes

Jun 15, 2010 19:15

It is that room with the four walls, filled with the smell of alcohol and her and the monster, which was awakened at the scent, at the slur of her speech.

He is the monster, and she is the prey.

His fists are shoved into the carpet, body trembling, fighting against what he is. A feather sticks in the sweat on his arm. His suit has been torn to ( Read more... )

rp, rachel dawes

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despite_myrage June 16 2010, 01:44:20 UTC
"You're drunk," it spits out between sharp teeth, betrayal and hatred wrapped within that word.

It doesn't matter how she's gotten this way.

She's drunk, and she's in front of him. She told Robin that she loved him, believed in him. She said so many things which have no meaning, because she's drunk and she must face the monster, who doesn't care. The monster created by what's running through her veins, stinking up her breath.

"You're drunk. You--" A hiss of pain, of anger, and his fists tremble at his side. The words are nearly incoherent, because they sound like growls. They're not human. They're dark and predatory and threatening. "You lied. You hurt-- You need to be stopped."

If Robin is still somewhere inside it, he is screaming, and he will never be loud enough. He is walking against an endless dark, and he will never take a step into light. He is clawing at his own flesh, and he will never scratch the surface.

The monster has only hate in its expression, and he-- it crosses the room with speed, wings spread behind him, hands reaching for her neck, reaching to wound, reaching to kill. There's hate, red, rage, violence, and nothing else.

Before he gets his hands around his neck, he shoves her against the wall, and then the neck. And then he reaches for the neck to stop the alcohol, to kill what needs to be killed, to destroy the physical manifestation of years of abuse. What words he could have are drowned out in growls, yells like an animal, like a monster.

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wearsnomask June 16 2010, 02:00:30 UTC
"I didn't choose this. I've always chosen you," Rachel whispers, exhaustion and pain coiling around every word. How could you love this, Rachel? How? Her head thumps fiercely, like her whole body is a cage and something inside is slamming itself against the bars, screaming to get out.

There's nowhere to run. There are four walls, broken glass, and the monster. He's a monster and nothing else. She's barefoot, shards of the glass digging into the soles of her feet and that doesn't matter, either.

As long as she gets away from him. "Robin, you're hurting me. You're scaring me, please stop. Please."

The words are choked by sobs, choked by the panic lodged in her throat, choked by the realization she's not coming out of this alive. All their plans and all their dreams, and it ends with her last breath at his hands.

She lets out a piercing scream when he finally reaches her, fists pounding against his chest to push him away. They're never strong enough. She's never fast enough.

The back of her head hits the wall and her vision bursts into black, and then stars.

Her fingers dig into his wrists in a feeble attempt to jerk his hands away from her. The screaming has subsided, shifted into gasps while trying to force air back into her lungs. The lights have dimmed--or is that her? It's all darker now.

Rachel can't breathe, and she doesn't understand how the hands that once loved her could do this. "You're nothing but a monster."

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despite_myrage June 16 2010, 02:40:00 UTC
"Then you did choose this." It's another hiss from his lips like poison and fire. He's made of ice, but the rage is fire. The monster is fire, and it melts away what's ice, what's stable and sane, what she fell in love with. But they're the same.

If she chose him, she chose this. This is him. this is a part of him, and Robin told her. Robin warned her. The monster doesn't care that she's chosen them both. Robin and monster, which are one in the same. Two halves of a whole. You can love the one, but it will always come with the other.

She begs. She sobs. She screams, and he doesn't notice. No, it's not that he doesn't notice, even if the way that his expression doesn't change or flinch at the sounds would make it seem like he didn't. He doesn't care. It doesn't care. There's an intense look in his eyes that's completely focused on the kill.

The killing of what the other half loves, and it doesn't matter to him. Nothing matters, but the violence, but fulfilling the anger, but hatred that burns within him.

He can't feel her fighting back. She may as well be tapping him. He can't feel her nails digging into his wrists. She could stab it with a knife, cut open skin, pull out an organ still beating, and it wouldn't notice.

The grip tightens and tightens around the warm, soft neck that Robin is so familiar with.

You're nothing but a monster.

He hears it, but it does nothing to him.

It does nothing to him, because it's true.

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wearsnomask June 16 2010, 03:04:03 UTC
Rachel has poison of her own to hand out. It's swirling in her tongue, all but begging to be let out. It almost doesn't sound like Rachel. It's her lips, her face, her body--and it's not Rachel. "I guess I did. They were right all along. You were a mistake. My mistake. I never should have believed you were more."

The last bit is cut off by the fact he's snatched her swiftly by the throat, fingers digging into the vein where her pulse throbs wildly--until the moment comes where it doesn't.

Until it's nothing but a faint, barely noticeable plea that cuts into his violence.

A tear slips down her cheek, followed by a whimper. She tries saying his name but nothing comes but another choked gasp. It's better this way. Robin isn't his name.

There's not a name for what he is.

His grip on her neck remains dangerously tight, clogging the passageway to her lungs. Her eyes fight to remain open, looking into his. The fear has dulled into something else, and for once it's devoid of love.

Her back digs into the wall behind her. This should have never happened. She should have neverended up here with the monster, who's right at the end of the day. Her choice and her downfall.

Rachel thrashes in the air weakly, one last, final attempt. "You lied," is all she manages to say again, almost inaudible. She doesn't want to fight anymore. What's become of her, what he's made of her, why would she fight what he's doing?

How would she live with this?

The fog is taking over. The light is swallowed by darkness.

Rachel's head lolls back and she dies crumpled in his arms.

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despite_myrage June 16 2010, 03:47:21 UTC
The monster doesn't hear her poison. It's not affected by it. Somewhere Robin is still screaming and clawing. It's like a shift until nothing is left of himself, and it's impossible to break through.

What they have always said is true. Why wouldn't it be? All the belief in the world doesn't change the truth. It's the truth that has its hands around her neck squeezing until that pale, beautiful flesh is ugly and bruised by his touch.

She dies in its claws, and it doesn't care. She whimpers, and the face remains unchanged, perhaps even satisfaction slips over it for a moment. She is dying. It's being destroyed. The rage can find its rest, its relief. The burning through his body can finally stop, and he has satisfied the urge and need to kill.

He has done right, because that's what this is to the monster. This is right.

It isn't until she crumples in his arms, limp and empty but heavy with death, that the shift happens. Like a switch. Jekyl and Hyde. The monster is gone. After all his screaming, walking, and clawing, Robin is back in control. He's back in--

Rachel is dead.

Rachel is in his hands. She is pale, unmoving. Dead by his hands, and there's shock, beyond the shock there's understanding, beyond it all something terrible pressing through.

Years. Decades, he's spent shoving this monster away, keeping it in a cage. The monster is what he fights every single day. It is what terrifies him, not because it's unknown, but because he knows the monster as well as he knows himself, as well as he knows-- as well as he knew her.

Years and years, keeping all of him behind walls for the safety of others, and he kills-- His face crumples with grief, and he sobs, pulling that dead-- pulling her against his chest though she can't feel it, because she's not there. She's gone. She's gone, and he can't quite accept it. He presses his face against hers. Never. He should have known. He should have never let those walls down, should have taken a step off the roof when it mattered, and it's too fucking late.

His hands trembles, and he runs his fingers through her hair. She's too cold against his hands, once she was warm. She's always been warm and breathing and--

"Rachel, please," he says-- begs, but it's useless, of course. She's dead. He killed her. She's dead, and in the end, he was nothing but a monster, as he's always feared, as she finally understood.

It doesn't matter that he warned her, because she didn't understand until today, until minutes ago. And God, it's only been minutes. She had no way of understanding, and he tightens his hold on her, clinging to what remains as if it could stifle the grief. It's only a body, empty and hollow. What he loves isn't there. Who he loves was squeezed from it painfully, violently by his hands.

She was beautiful and strong, and she loved him when no one else did. She believed in him when no one else would. Rachel Dawes. He's never known anyone as well as he knows-- knew her. The way that she smiled at him, the way she looks when she wakes, how she feels beneath his hands, and the way her body feels against him. her wisdom. He's never loved anyone more, and he will never love again. He will not live to see tomorrow.

"Please," he chokes out again, throat tight on more sobs, which push up through his chest like shards of glass. His chest aches and screams, the way that he should be screaming if he could manage to make a sound. He's too weak. His voice is strained and trembling and only able to beg.

She's dead. She's dead by his hands.

By his hands.

You were a mistake, she said, and nothing has been more true.

He sobs, a pained noise, and he hears her say it again in his head, wishes she would.

And then Robin wakes with a start, face wet from tears. He's in bed, and he sits up. His hands grip and cling to the sheets that's spread over him. A nightmare. Another one. The first one in two weeks.

It isn't real. It isn't--

Breathing. He has to catch his breath.

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wearsnomask June 16 2010, 04:18:52 UTC
The few times Rachel had nightmares immediately after the events of Wyatt's kidnapping, they usually remained strictly in conformity to what really did happen. Only sometimes would they shift into something else afterward. Sometimes Wyatt's face behind the glass she couldn't get to would become Christopher Clark's.

Sometimes the four-walled room became a burning warehouse and she did end up dying.

Sometimes she'd hear Robin's painful scream.

The monster was never Robin.

It became easier to try and give up on sleep altogether.

She had so many things to do as it was with all the chaos existing while she was awake. It wasn't until the pages she was working on would blur together that she'd fall asleep on her desk. Lather, rinse, repeat. Chicago has a way of doing that to people, and Rachel's sleep and eating schedule had already been erratic since Gotham.

Gotham. She dreams about Gotham, too. Sometimes those dreams are even when she's waking.

Lately she hasn't been having dreams at all. It's the first time in a long while Rachel actually gets to sleep. Deep, comfortable sleep. Comfortable enough she almost doesn't feel Robin startling up.

Something's wrong, and she stirs awake as if hearing the warning. Her eyes attempt to blink away the thick sleep hovering over her eyelids. "Robin?"

Any sort of grogginess immediately fades away once she sees his face; his hands, gripping the sheets tightly. Rachel shifts forward, twisting to the side to look at him. A hand reaches up to cup his cheek gently.

It's wet, and even in the darkness she can see he's crying. Rachel's chest clenches painfully at the sight of him. She hasn't seen him look like this since--Rachel can count on one hand the times she has seen him look this bad and it hurts.

"Robin, what's wrong?"

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despite_myrage June 16 2010, 04:41:40 UTC
When he'd first woken up, he forgotten. He'd forgotten why it had been two weeks since the last one that he'd had. He'd forgotten that she came into his apartment and made it a home. It was another nightmare, but after every other one, he'd woken up alone and had to talk himself into believing that she was still alive out there.

Her warm hand slips against his face, and it's familiar and it's right. Her voice is beside him and strong, not filled with fear or choked from lack of air.

She is alive.

The realization hits him slowly. The shock of the nightmare fades, but the imagery is still clear in his head. Her cold, dead body in his hands. He can feel it there still, reminding him what he could do-- what he almost did.

He reaches up slowly. His hands slip against her elbows and up her arms, taking in every part of her, gently. His hands press against her shoulders, her collarbones, against her neck (and he stifles a pained noise touching this part of her again), and to her face.

She is alive. She is.

Relief floods through the pain and grief that's finally beginning to fade into the background.

His arms slide around her, enveloping her whole, and he pulls her against him into a tight hug, pressing his face against her hair. He clings to her, as if he's afraid that letting go means she'll be gone again, dead again.

Robin doesn't want her to worry, but he can't manage a word. He can't manage to speak.

"Nightmare," he says in a gruff, strained voice, pressing a protective kiss against her hair.

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wearsnomask June 16 2010, 05:09:41 UTC
Rachel waits. She's patient and quiet while he sorts through whatever it is that's going on in his mind right now. It's not the first time that he's had a nightmare and she's caught him waking up from it. He's caught her waking up from a few himself.

Chicago is what it is, and at some point, it'll give you reason to wake up terrified and wondering what's real and what isn't.

However, it is the first time that she's seen this reaction of him. Normally she'd be pressing for him to talk to her. She has in the past. This time she doesn't, not yet.

She's more patient now, despite the worry holding her entire chest hostage in a violent grip. If she's scared, it's not of him but for him.

Rachel doesn't startle at all when his hands reach for her. The noise he makes when his hands press against her neck almost makes her flinch--his need to reassure himself she's in one piece lets her know without words she was in the nightmare. She has an idea of what that means.

When he pulls her to him, she goes effortlessly and without question.

Rachel presses a soft kiss to his neck, wrapping her arms around him just as tightly. Her fingers thread into his hair at the back of his head, moving through the short strands. Part of her wants to stay like that for a very long time. Questions can come later.

Making sure he's okay comes first.

"It's not real. You're here, and you're with me," she whispers, mouth resting on his neck again. She draws back a little, only enough distance so that she can look at him.

Her hands wipe at his cheeks, and her lips press gently against the fading tear tracks. "You're here with me."

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despite_myrage June 16 2010, 05:31:48 UTC
Robin is quiet too. He has to battle back the emotions that have caught up in him. His chest feels like it's burning, literally, flesh from bone. The grief weighs on his shoulders still, and he closes his eyes, breathing her in, hands slipping up and down her back.

She's breathing.

She isn't cold and dead and empty, and nothing.

Made to nothing by his hands.

His fingers follow the curve of her spine, and he lets out the breath that'd been captured so tightly in his sternum, and he presses another kiss to her shoulder this time, to her neck.

He would never hurt her, but he has before. He has before, and he shuts his eyes again, wincing. Robin swallows thickly, and then says against her warm, living skin, "You're alive."

It's the barest of whispers. If they weren't so close, she wouldn't have heard it, but it's there.

He didn't kill her.

The monster did not win.

She's alive, and the whole of him shudders.

His chest burns on.

He pulls back to look at her again, and his hand rests against her neck one more time. Gentle hand. Some part of him trembles with fear of himself, but he is in control.

It was a dream.

She's alive, and he's taking in the entire sight of her before him, living, breathing.

His hands, and he pulls back further, almost too quickly. She is alive, and he has to fight back the demons awakened in the dream before he can breathe easy again.

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wearsnomask June 16 2010, 05:51:42 UTC
The longer he's quiet the more it unnerves her and something keeps her from pushing still.

It's hard to explain, it's something she just feels. There's a chord wrapping tightly around her heart, forcing its way in.

It hurts, and she has to push through that first before she can say anything else.

Rachel's head rests on his shoulder, and it remains there until he speaks again. They're just two words, barely a whisper, and they say more than anything else ever could have.

She does flinch this time, as if something jolted into her, and her head lifts up to look at him. Her face remains close to his, and a grim realization falls upon her.

The expression on her face reaches beyond the silence in its terrible sadness; it reaches beyond the memory of something that should have never happened and was too terrible to even contemplate as possibility.

Breath settles sharply into her chest.

That night is so hazy for her. It comes in fragments and words and the very end where it all went black.

The alcohol that had flowed through her veins makes it impossible for clarity to come no matter how hard she tried, and for months Rachel tried more than should be humanly possible to remember what she never wants to in the first place.

Her fingertips smooth his eyebrows, and she leans her forehead to rest against his. She takes his hand, the one that pulled away from her so quickly and she flattens it against her chest, right above her heartbeat.

It's steady, and it's strong, and it's hers.

Rachel places her own hand on top of his.

"I'm alive," she repeats, in case he needs to hear the words from Rachel herself. She's here, with him, and nowhere else. "I'm alive and I'm whole and I'm happy."

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despite_myrage June 16 2010, 06:10:02 UTC
Robin feels her flinch. They're so close together, and he knows that she realizes what it must have been about. There are so many times that he has feared her death before, but there is only one time when he was close enough to watch as it happened.

His jaw locks as he fights back that emotion that he doesn't want. The anger, but even that is small right now. It is so small in comparison to the grief and guilt which feel like tons of bricks, pressing individually into his back.

She was so cold, so empty.

It had felt so real.

He had had no control. She'd been so afraid of him, terrified, and then she'd died at his hands, understanding.

She'd understood that he was a monster. The solidity of that understanding rang between them both in those final moments where she fought for breath but eventually succumbed to death without choice in the matter, because he was squeezing the life out of her.

The life that he loves so much, so much more than anything else.

He watched it dim, and this part of himself that can take over, it didn't care.

Robin tenses when she brings his hand to her chest, as if for a moment, he's irrationally afraid that the violence will come from that hand alone and crush her somehow.

He nods when she speaks. For a moment, he looks down, settling the emotions out in his chest, and then he returns his gaze to her. He loves her so much, and he watched her die, he killed her. It was a dream. It was only a dream, but it lingers still on the edge of everything and makes him exhausted.

It's what finally calms the emotional storm within him. The exhaustion comes and presses over him like a heavy cloud, and he wipes his face with his free hand.

"We were back in that room," Robin says, and he doesn't know why he's sharing this horrible nightmare with her, but the words come automatically. "I..." He swallows thickly. "Couldn't get control that time. I-- I said I hated you. I killed you... choked you. You were so afraid, kept... saying things, and then you were..."

He can't say the world.

He can not say it out loud, not after holding her dead in his hands. He can't.

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wearsnomask June 16 2010, 06:27:04 UTC
Rachel hates Wyatt Jameson.

She has always tried to be above hating another person. It's wasting uselessly one's energy, and it does nothing but hurt the person that's carrying the emotion.

But she loathes him. She hates him more than she thought she hates Christopher Clark, and that is saying a lot in terms of the depth of it.

She hates what he did.

She hates that for two months, Robin's life wasn't his own and he was subjected to--god, she never did ask what he was subjected to.

She hates he valued their lives so little he forced them to play guinea pigs to an experiment that ended their relationship and tainted so much of what was beautiful between them.

She hates it brings Robin nightmares that make him look the way he looks right now.

Rachel's gaze meets his when he finally looks up, her hand cupping his cheek again. She doesn't know if her touching him makes it worse, considering how he tensed earlier, but she can't help it.

She can't see him hurting and not do something.

I--I said I hated you.

Rachel doesn't move back, but she winces again. He continues telling her the nightmare, and her stomach drops, somersaulting painfully within her body.

It's horrible and it's her own worst nightmare and it takes more effort than she thinks it should to keep her hand from trembling. Her own cheeks are wet before she realizes it, and the hand cupping his face moves away only to wipe at them.

It wasn't real.

It's not what happened at all, and the fact that for even a second it could have been a possibility--it's why their goodbye had felt so final.

"Saying what?" she finally asks in a whisper. Not because she wants to make him talk about it, so much as she needs to know. If they were words so distorted to reality, she'd like to contradict them. He might logically and rationally know they're not true, but feelings aren't always rational.

The mind and the heart don't always believe the same things.

Rachel pushes back the painful lump rising in her throat. "What was I saying?"

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despite_myrage June 16 2010, 06:53:48 UTC
When she touches him, it makes it better. It makes it better as soon as he fights back the fear that somehow she'll be hurt by him.

The feeling is irrational.

There is no alcohol in this apartment. The monster remains locked in its cage, and there's no reason for him to rage when he's on a bed, vulnerable with her and exhausted from that nightmare.

However, the fear remains. It's what makes him tense when she touches him. It's what makes him pull away, but he can't not be touching her either. He saw her dead, unmoving. He felt her still under his hands. Robin needs to feel her under his hands, living and breathing.

He shuts his eyes at the question. His chest is burning still beyond the exhaustion, and he shakes his head.

It doesn't matter. It was a dream.

It was a dream that remains, and he won't keep secrets from her anymore, even ones about something that isn't real.

His hand slips behind his neck, and he pulls them both into his lap.

His hands.

And he shuts his eyes again. He can imagine them wrapped around her neck, twisting the life out of her, and he--

"You said..."

Robin takes in a deep breath and opens his eyes again, but he doesn't look at her face. He looks at her hands, at her body. He sees enough of her to see that she's breathing, and it keeps him calm.

"It was a dream, Rachel," he says, because logically he knows that it wasn't true, and he needs her to know that he doesn't believe what dream!Rachel said, as painful as it might have been.

It's much too difficult to repeat it all. It shouldn't be so difficult, because rationally he knows it isn't true. He shouldn't remember every word as well as he does, but he's had this dream so many times before. It's like a script that he can read off. "You said that you didn't choose this, always chose me. That I lied. You said I was a monster..."

It was something they both learned in the dream, and he clears his throat of emotion again.

One more deep breath. "You were begging me... not to hurt you," he says, jaw tightening. "And that they were right. I was a mistake. Your... mistake. You shouldn't have believed..."

Robin shakes his head, emotion falls over him again pushing through the exhaustion which is heavy. It's heavy, and he feels detached, and she's alive. He has to continue to remind himself of that.

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wearsnomask June 16 2010, 07:16:35 UTC
Rachel grows quiet. She doesn't dare say anything while he answers her, every new detail added to the horror of his dream like pins and needles poking at her skin, piercing through her heart. She's aware he understands that it's just a dream, and she's aware that he has to know there's no way she'd ever say that, much less believe it.

There are still those pins and needles somewhere around her skin, and she shivers involuntarily.

Rachel looks out the window, the heel of her hand wiping at her cheek again. She can almost sense the detachment in him, the exhaustion never too far behind and neither her connection to him.

She can remember what it was like to place her hand on his chest and feel the fog in front of all those emotions.

"I know it's a part of you," she says, and she does, as much as she makes a distinction of the two in her head. She knows it's not as simple as boxing the Calling into one slot and Robin into the to other. It's inside him, to his very core, and he fights it every day of his life.

"I know the risk now more than I ever could have before. I wouldn't be here if I didn't still believe in you."

The monster is a part of him, but he's a part of her, and she fails at explaining that, too. Her head is still turned toward the window, the dark of the night, the stillness of it that belies so much of what's happening all around the city.

Her voice is soft, hushed in its tone. Partly because it's late, like a secret in the dark. Partly because if she speaks any higher her voice would break.

It'd just break.

"I'd have nightmares too, you know. We'd be back in that room too and I couldn't save you. Every night I'd try and I couldn't. We save ourselves, I know, but I tried. You'd tell me I was a liar, too. Everything I'd promised--they were just words. I turned my back on it, on you, when it really mattered." Rachel looks down too, at her own hands. They're small and they feel a lot smaller now.

She doesn't try reaching for him again, still sensing that detachment, the hesitation, but she does stay where she is; sitting in front of him, half-on his legs.

"I'd wake up with a weight pressing down on my chest and I couldn't remember why at first."

She swallows that lump in her throat that keeps resurfacing every time she thinks about it, all of it. How much it changed, and made it all seem so hopeless and dark.

But things are darkest before dawn. They really are.

"You fought back so well when everyone said it wasn't possible. When there wasn't hope once your trigger was right in front of you. You were so strong, Robin, and I didn't think of you as a monster. Not for a second. You know that but I still..." had to say it. She looks down at her hands again.

"You said I was the most important t-thing." Her voice finally does crack, and her eyes burn with tears but they don't fall. She wants to look up but she doesn't, just yet. "You're the most important person in the world. To me. That could never be a mistake."

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despite_myrage June 16 2010, 07:55:00 UTC
Robin keeps his eyes closed at those words. It's like thunder resounding in his chest, in his heart.

"I know," he says, and his voice is weak, hoarse. "I know you wouldn't be here if you didn't still believe in me."

Actions speak louder than words, especially words spoken in a dream.

But sometimes years of molding and conditioning, which is the best word to describe his childhood and the years that followed, speak louder than both. It's not that his mother or Romana or the people who treated him differently, knowing what he is... It's not like any of them meant to mold or condition him the way that they did, but that is how it happened. It's how he understood what it meant to be a vengeance angel, what it meant to be himself.

He wouldn't admit it, but he needs the reminder.

He needs to hear it sometimes, even if her actions are more than proof of how she feels.

"It means so much to me that... you never gave up on me," Robin says, quietly, with obvious emotion in his voice, pain, gratefulness. "Not even in that room."

So many others would have. They would have seen and understood that he was a monster. They are all right. They would never be able to look at him the same.

Rachel Dawes is different than all of those other people. She is different than his mother. She's different than Romana. She is different than everyone who said that a vengeance angel couldn't be controlled, had to be put down, wasn't useful, or were accidents that could do nothing for anyone. She's... He doesn't have the words for how amazing that makes her in his eyes. It's--

She is his hero.

It's as simple and complicated as that.

Robin closes his eyes tight when she describes her nightmares of that room to him. "I never--" He swallows. "Even when you had to walk away from me, I knew you believed in me. You did... what you had to do. How could I have ever expected otherwise from you? After what I'd done... when I signed my life away to him."

He has finally raised his gaze to look at her, watch her as she stares down at her hands and see the pain that this causes her too. It is the worst memory in his head, and he has so many.

He has countless at the hands of his mother. He has standing with Natasha in the park, knowing she would die. He has holding his sister against a counter with a jagged edge pressed to her neck. He has the final day of the plagues, walking out of her room afterward, and walking away from her in the park when they'd both been certain that it was over.

The memory that he has of what occurred in those four walls with Wyatt watching... it is the worst of them all. It's why nightmares of that memory twisted into an even worst case scenario affect him like this.

Robin shakes his head. He doesn't want to hear encouragement for that. He fought back, but he hurt her still, and its not-- When there's something so wrong and horrible that's a part of him, it hardly feels right to take comfort or pride or be strengthened by the fact that he didn't let it take him whole, even if it is miraculous.

"If it hadn't been you there, I might not have been able..." To hold back. He's positive that he couldn't have. It was love, as corny as it sounds, that combated that emotion. He loved her, and the love was stronger than that monster.

Robin reaches for her when he hears her voice crack. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close again, because he has to, and tears slip down his face again. Robin could say that he knew, and he did, but still. Still, words are important. He needs to hear it sometimes. He needed to hear that, and he presses his lips against her face, kissing her eyelids and pressing a kiss to her lips.

Tears do slip down his face. He's never been anyone's most important person before, and there's such strength and love in that. It presses through the exhaustion. "I love you," he says against her skin. "I love you, and I'd never--"

He would never kill her. Never. He believes that too.

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wearsnomask June 16 2010, 08:33:38 UTC
If vengeance angels stopped being treated as mistakes and accepted into their community, helping them, that would make all the difference.

Rachel doesn't mind saying them. It's hard to be this emotionally bare, despite the fact she never does and never will wear a mask, but she wants him to know. It's the truth, and a truth should be told when it makes the difference.

He's a person, with feelings and thoughts and human dignity. Angels and demons, they're basically human in nature. Their strengths and their weaknesses--their triggers and their Callings don't make them more or less.

In Rachel's mind, everyone should be equal.

Everyone who's a vengeance angel is a person that has a right to live and the right to fight for the chance to carry out a life as normally as they possibly can. To be taught coping mechanisms, to be accepted into a society as best they fit. It's idealistic of her and she knows but that's what she believes.

They're conditioned to believe otherwise. There's no hope. They're mistakes. If you tell someone something enough times, they believe it. If you kick someone enough times, they stop trying to pick themselves up and lay down.

She has not, and never will be, the sort of person that turns away from something--from someone--because there are risks involved, if she believes. And she does.

More than that, she's always listened to her heart when it comes to Robin, when she's always been so ruled by her head.

If she's Robin's hero, Robin's her miracle. He honestly is, because of what he's managed to do for himself and what he's managed to change in her.

Also as simple and as complicated.

As everything between them ever has been and ever will be.

"It felt like giving up," Rachel admits to him. "I had my reasons, but that's what it felt like. Even if you understood." Her feelings aren't always rational, either.

If it hadn't been you there, I might not have been able...

She closes her eyes, another tear trickling past her cheek. She'll never understand why they were made to carry these burdens. She will never fully now how much he has to fight and how tired he must be from it all.

They remain closed when he presses a kiss to her eyelids, and she gives a small, tearful laugh. Her hands frame his face and she kisses him back leaving nothing for herself. "I know," she whispers, and her face threatens to crumple at the weight of everything they're saying.

"I love you." There's honestly never going to be a day that isn't true. "I want to be with you, as long as I'm alive. For as long as that is." Her hand falls down to his waist, fingers pinching him the slightest bit. It's a shame Robin isn't tickling. "I'm afraid you're going to have to deal with that. Tough."

She's alive. She's not supposed to be, by all intents and purposes, for reasons that have nothing to do with Robin. She's supposed to be dead, and she's not.

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