Growth comes from change. The change in her that allowed her to let go of the city that defined her and give her something else. The change in her that made it possible for her to see there's more than a world in black and white, right and wrong, what's underneath and what is done. Robin did that for her. Not because he's an angel of vengeance, not in spite of it. It's simply him, all of him, with the angel and everything else.
Rachel swallows thickly, attempting a small laugh but she only manages to inhale sharply, cheeks feeling warmer than usual, streaked with tears. "You say I've never given up on you, and I never will, but you--you've always held out your hand for me to reach. I know no matter how dark it gets and I can't see, your hand is there to take in my hand and I'm not alone. I've seen you grow into this amazing, strong, brave man that stands before me today. I've seen the burdens you've had to carry and what you've had to face. I believed in you then and I believe in you now. I'll never stop fighting for what I believe in, and I'll never stop fighting for us. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I love you, Robin, and you'll always have my hand to hold the way y-you've held mine."
There won't come a day when she won't want this.
There won't come a day when she doesn't want to fall asleep beside him and wake up to him that very same way.
There's no one else she wants to dance with, make love to, share the deepest parts of herself with. There's no one else anymore.
"We once promised each other something similar. Whether it was six decades or six days, we would spend them with each other. It's a year later, and I still feel the same way. I hope for us and the love we share. Now and always."
It is difficult to describe his reaction to hearing her speak, to looking at her and knowing, knowing what she is feeling. He does not have to guess at it. Robin is connected to her, and he has been for such a long time now (not nearly long enough), and he feels it too. It has never been anything that he was capable of describing, how one person can be connected so intensely to another.
It is why telling her how he feels is even more difficult when he is looking at her face, because he is feeling both their reactions to his words. His gaze scans her face, noting the tears on her face and the expression as she takes it all in. If this wasn't such a sacred moment, he would give into the urge to kiss her but he seems to understand that the kiss is what seals these vows.
In the end, it is probably silly. They never needed the wedding. They felt these things without it and they made promises to each other outside the church that they would have kept without it. However, this moment... There is something about it despite how often he has said that marriage is overrated and unnecessary. There is this feeling of culmination and of a beginning too.
It is stating those promises in a way that the entire world knows of them, and Robin has never been more happy to do so. The world will know how he feels. The world will know that he has promised himself to her and her alone. There is no one else that he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Does the universe hear it? It does not matter if it agrees or if it doesn't.
This has never been about anyone else, certainly not the rest of the world. It is theirs and theirs exclusively. When his hand reaches for hers, he knows that she will always reach back and hold on. It is something that is private even when this ceremony is supposed to be more for the rest of the worlds benefit than their own.
In the future, he will be able to look back on this moment. There is much darkness ahead. There is a fight and a war ahead. In Chicago, there will always be these things. However, nothing can take this moment from them. He will look back on it often, remember how quiet and how good he felt to express his feelings out loud and seal it all as a truth that cannot be denied. He will remember the peace that he felt here and remember what it is that he is fighting for.
My turn? She asks in that voice. In that voice, and it is enough to twist his heart, not painfully at all but good. There is nothing that he feels right now that isn't good, that isn't absolutely amazing.
There is another moment that he feels uncomfortable. His head lowers, and he does not know if he can face her while she says all of these things about him. It has nothing to do with shame and everything to do with how he was built and what he was made to believe. However, he takes in a strengthening breath.
He has been through situations much tougher than facing the woman that he loves more than anything as she describes her feelings for him.
Robin lifts his head again and settles his gaze on her face. He is not planning on looking away, not once as he listens to her speak. The tears that she had wiped away return when she begins to speak. His throat tightens, and he relives those moments with her. The moment that they first met. He does not know why he was able to offer his hand to her even then, even then but he did.
The connection has been present from the start. It is why his interactions with her have always been different than they were with anyone else. It is why he has always been able to be more open in her presence about what he is feeling and about who he is. There were rarely any walls up when she was near and speaking to him.
From the start, he has wanted to share his heart with her.
Robin should have known. He honestly should have known then but he had no idea. How could he when he didn't believe such things existed? Love was a fairytale, and it certainly was nothing so wonderful or so great as so many books and movies make it out to be. Or so he thought. And how could he know that it is real?
Love can do so much, be so much, mean so much, and he never would have known that if he hadn't met her.
Robin listens to her as she speaks, and he... It is difficult not to duck his head. They have said things like this before but it always amazes him when she tells him how much he has done for her. It amazes him that he could do so much for someone so wonderful and amazing.
She is his home, and he is hers too.
There is nothing quite like what he feels for her, and it fills him with renewed strength. It brings fresh tears to his eyes, and he swallows thickly past those emotions that have tightened his throat. His heart calls out to her, and he squeezes her hand again. The warm, smooth hand beneath his cold hand. How he knows her. He knows her so well, and there is still more to know about her. He will always want to know more.
Robin reaches over to wipe the tears from her face as she has done for him. They will always do for each other what they can, what the other has done for them. The strength in knowing that makes it easier to breathe every day, but he is not thinking about how he is doing for her what she just did for him. He is wiping away the tears because Rachel is crying and because he wants to, because it is instinct to.
And then she says so many amazing things about himself, and he-- There is the strongest urge to look down or away but he does not. His hand tightens on hers from that small fight within himself to look down but his gaze remains on her face. He nods and swallows thickly. There is no describing how it makes him feel to know that she thinks and feels that way about him.
He is humbled by it and floored by it.
I hope for us and the love we share. Now and always.
And maybe it is not custom either for the groom to speak after the bride has finished her vows but he does anyway.
"I hope too."
The church is silent in the face of the vows. Robin does not think that the priest or choirboy can speak English, but they would not have to to see or sense the strength of the emotion and love between the two of them. He is not even aware of either person until the priest speaks again.
"I believe your vows alone said enough about how you feel for one another and how you promise to honor those feelings and each other in the future so Robin Rice and Rachel Dawes, by the power invested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride."
Robin does not pause. He does not even hesitate. He pulls her in by the hand that he had still been holding, wraps his arm behind her waist to keep her close, and kisses her.
He has kissed her so many times before but somehow this one feels different. Like he can hear singing in his head, bells chiming, fireworks exploding around them. With his lips locked to hers, there is so much beautiful sound in the silence of the church.
She once said to him love wasn't a fist. It was not the first time, and it wasn't the last, she'd gain some level of understanding when it comes to the conditioning he received for so many years of his life. From the time he was a child, to the time he lost the sister that protected him, to the time he was picked up by a First and molded into something else, he was never allowed to believe he could be more than the product of what vengeance angels are meant for. Life for so long was broken bones and rage and walls.
It was his difficulty believing in anything else, her difficulty in bending when she was supposed to, that led them to so much pain.
It led to them walking away from each other. It led to them nearly losing each other for good. It led to a contract and a four-walled room and everything they had imagined but never truly realized the full extent of until there was no going back.
But there was always that something more that refused to die.
Through plagues and conditioning and unbending ways, there was love. Love is fragile but almost impossible to kill when it's real. And despite the need of hers to analyze and find reason in what she is able to, love itself does not need reason. Her need to understand in what logical way she can doesn't apply to this. She doesn't need a reason to why he was able to hold her hand that first day. She doesn't need a reason to why he was less guarded and she was more vulnerable whenever they were in the presence of each other. She doesn't need it because these things simply are, and she has learned if she lets them be, they come into their own understanding that does not necessarily need a tangible answer.
It isn't explained, it's felt, and they both feel it, have felt it for a long time now. It's difficult and wonderful, to give into something led by one's heart and allow it to turn you into who you're supposed to become. Who you are capable of being.
Who you were all along and didn't know it.
Rachel understands he is fighting against those years and those beliefs to listen without them. To look at her and believe what she is saying without the voices telling him it can't be true. It's one more reason to add to an ever growing list to why she's so proud of him. To why she believes he's stronger than he's ever known and ever fully realized. Slowly he will discover those strengths inside of him. He already has, bit by bit. He's begun to see what he has done for her the same way that she has done these things for him.
It's why they were able to come together stronger than before. It's why it has worked, when it the past it has not. It has more to do with their growth individually and the time apart that they spent. It also has to do with the relationship being balanced. They are equals. He doesn't have to jump through hoops of fire to deserve a love that has always been there. He sees her imperfections and she sees his and they are not idealizing the other to be something they are not. It is what she has always wanted, without knowing she wanted it.
After walking away from love once, after idealizing a man that did not exist, after waiting for a day that would never come for a person that was no longer there, she understands just how much she has wanted and needed what she and Robin are offering each other.
It's love without masks, but more importantly, they themselves are without a mask. They're stripped from what armor a person can wear to keep others at bay, stripped from unbending ways that don't allow for other view points, and stand before each other completely as they are. It's why she can't do anything but speak honestly. It's why she can't do anything but say what she has always said in the only manner which she knows how.
When he tightens his hold on her hand, Rachel opens it so that her flat palm can rest against his. It's a gesture she has made countless of other times, in different situations and without much thought with the instinct that dictates the movement.
I hope too, he says, and the whole of her emotions swell inside her chest. She has never and will never be able to live a life without hope. Another Rachel in another place and with a different outcome realizes what she becomes without it. The woman standing before Robin never will.
She gives Robin a shaky smile once she is done, leaning into his hands while they wipe away at her cheeks. They're both tearful at this point and there is no shame in that. It's something they have always, always been able to afford in the company of each other. They have not only bent tradition but thrown it out the window. The ceremony means what it means to them and it does not take away from the importance of it.
Rachel does not have the faintest idea what the priest is saying.
She knows what is necessary in terms of proceedings and what any priest would say, so she doesn't honestly care. She makes out their names, but it's more importantly--it's how Robin looks that lets her know it's done. And she'll never, ever forget how he looks, how she feels that seems to mirror his expression exactly.
It's knowing the promises they have made to each other are the promises they have know made official in some capacity, and while it wasn't necessary for it to be true, it means so much.
There's a ring on her finger that has been placed there by him.
There are vows they have made and acceptance they've embraced.
Another day or another lifetime, they've chosen this for as long as they are allowed, and she can't begin to sort through the endlessness of the feelings in her chest.
Full and painless and entirely right.
Rachel throws her arms around him and the trembling smile remains on her lips when they meet his. They're soft and just as promising as they kiss him, mindless of the choirboy who is most likely hiding behind the man that has just married them.
Married. They're married.
She rests her forehead against his once they've drawn back, closing her eyes and smiling.
Of all the things they have learned, perhaps this one is the most important:
Love isn't enough, and it doesn't always win--
But sometimes it does and it's time it did.
shadows will pass Smoke, it will clear If something survives of us around here I'll be glad 'cause I know I was lost in the glow Of love
Rachel swallows thickly, attempting a small laugh but she only manages to inhale sharply, cheeks feeling warmer than usual, streaked with tears. "You say I've never given up on you, and I never will, but you--you've always held out your hand for me to reach. I know no matter how dark it gets and I can't see, your hand is there to take in my hand and I'm not alone. I've seen you grow into this amazing, strong, brave man that stands before me today. I've seen the burdens you've had to carry and what you've had to face. I believed in you then and I believe in you now. I'll never stop fighting for what I believe in, and I'll never stop fighting for us. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I love you, Robin, and you'll always have my hand to hold the way y-you've held mine."
There won't come a day when she won't want this.
There won't come a day when she doesn't want to fall asleep beside him and wake up to him that very same way.
There's no one else she wants to dance with, make love to, share the deepest parts of herself with. There's no one else anymore.
"We once promised each other something similar. Whether it was six decades or six days, we would spend them with each other. It's a year later, and I still feel the same way. I hope for us and the love we share. Now and always."
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It is why telling her how he feels is even more difficult when he is looking at her face, because he is feeling both their reactions to his words. His gaze scans her face, noting the tears on her face and the expression as she takes it all in. If this wasn't such a sacred moment, he would give into the urge to kiss her but he seems to understand that the kiss is what seals these vows.
In the end, it is probably silly. They never needed the wedding. They felt these things without it and they made promises to each other outside the church that they would have kept without it. However, this moment... There is something about it despite how often he has said that marriage is overrated and unnecessary. There is this feeling of culmination and of a beginning too.
It is stating those promises in a way that the entire world knows of them, and Robin has never been more happy to do so. The world will know how he feels. The world will know that he has promised himself to her and her alone. There is no one else that he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Does the universe hear it? It does not matter if it agrees or if it doesn't.
This has never been about anyone else, certainly not the rest of the world. It is theirs and theirs exclusively. When his hand reaches for hers, he knows that she will always reach back and hold on. It is something that is private even when this ceremony is supposed to be more for the rest of the worlds benefit than their own.
In the future, he will be able to look back on this moment. There is much darkness ahead. There is a fight and a war ahead. In Chicago, there will always be these things. However, nothing can take this moment from them. He will look back on it often, remember how quiet and how good he felt to express his feelings out loud and seal it all as a truth that cannot be denied. He will remember the peace that he felt here and remember what it is that he is fighting for.
My turn? She asks in that voice. In that voice, and it is enough to twist his heart, not painfully at all but good. There is nothing that he feels right now that isn't good, that isn't absolutely amazing.
There is another moment that he feels uncomfortable. His head lowers, and he does not know if he can face her while she says all of these things about him. It has nothing to do with shame and everything to do with how he was built and what he was made to believe. However, he takes in a strengthening breath.
He has been through situations much tougher than facing the woman that he loves more than anything as she describes her feelings for him.
Robin lifts his head again and settles his gaze on her face. He is not planning on looking away, not once as he listens to her speak. The tears that she had wiped away return when she begins to speak. His throat tightens, and he relives those moments with her. The moment that they first met. He does not know why he was able to offer his hand to her even then, even then but he did.
The connection has been present from the start. It is why his interactions with her have always been different than they were with anyone else. It is why he has always been able to be more open in her presence about what he is feeling and about who he is. There were rarely any walls up when she was near and speaking to him.
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From the start, he has wanted to share his heart with her.
Robin should have known. He honestly should have known then but he had no idea. How could he when he didn't believe such things existed? Love was a fairytale, and it certainly was nothing so wonderful or so great as so many books and movies make it out to be. Or so he thought. And how could he know that it is real?
Love can do so much, be so much, mean so much, and he never would have known that if he hadn't met her.
Robin listens to her as she speaks, and he... It is difficult not to duck his head. They have said things like this before but it always amazes him when she tells him how much he has done for her. It amazes him that he could do so much for someone so wonderful and amazing.
She is his home, and he is hers too.
There is nothing quite like what he feels for her, and it fills him with renewed strength. It brings fresh tears to his eyes, and he swallows thickly past those emotions that have tightened his throat. His heart calls out to her, and he squeezes her hand again. The warm, smooth hand beneath his cold hand. How he knows her. He knows her so well, and there is still more to know about her. He will always want to know more.
Robin reaches over to wipe the tears from her face as she has done for him. They will always do for each other what they can, what the other has done for them. The strength in knowing that makes it easier to breathe every day, but he is not thinking about how he is doing for her what she just did for him. He is wiping away the tears because Rachel is crying and because he wants to, because it is instinct to.
And then she says so many amazing things about himself, and he-- There is the strongest urge to look down or away but he does not. His hand tightens on hers from that small fight within himself to look down but his gaze remains on her face. He nods and swallows thickly. There is no describing how it makes him feel to know that she thinks and feels that way about him.
He is humbled by it and floored by it.
I hope for us and the love we share. Now and always.
And maybe it is not custom either for the groom to speak after the bride has finished her vows but he does anyway.
"I hope too."
The church is silent in the face of the vows. Robin does not think that the priest or choirboy can speak English, but they would not have to to see or sense the strength of the emotion and love between the two of them. He is not even aware of either person until the priest speaks again.
"I believe your vows alone said enough about how you feel for one another and how you promise to honor those feelings and each other in the future so Robin Rice and Rachel Dawes, by the power invested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride."
Robin does not pause. He does not even hesitate. He pulls her in by the hand that he had still been holding, wraps his arm behind her waist to keep her close, and kisses her.
He has kissed her so many times before but somehow this one feels different. Like he can hear singing in his head, bells chiming, fireworks exploding around them. With his lips locked to hers, there is so much beautiful sound in the silence of the church.
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It was his difficulty believing in anything else, her difficulty in bending when she was supposed to, that led them to so much pain.
It led to them walking away from each other. It led to them nearly losing each other for good. It led to a contract and a four-walled room and everything they had imagined but never truly realized the full extent of until there was no going back.
But there was always that something more that refused to die.
Through plagues and conditioning and unbending ways, there was love. Love is fragile but almost impossible to kill when it's real. And despite the need of hers to analyze and find reason in what she is able to, love itself does not need reason. Her need to understand in what logical way she can doesn't apply to this. She doesn't need a reason to why he was able to hold her hand that first day. She doesn't need a reason to why he was less guarded and she was more vulnerable whenever they were in the presence of each other. She doesn't need it because these things simply are, and she has learned if she lets them be, they come into their own understanding that does not necessarily need a tangible answer.
It isn't explained, it's felt, and they both feel it, have felt it for a long time now. It's difficult and wonderful, to give into something led by one's heart and allow it to turn you into who you're supposed to become. Who you are capable of being.
Who you were all along and didn't know it.
Rachel understands he is fighting against those years and those beliefs to listen without them. To look at her and believe what she is saying without the voices telling him it can't be true. It's one more reason to add to an ever growing list to why she's so proud of him. To why she believes he's stronger than he's ever known and ever fully realized. Slowly he will discover those strengths inside of him. He already has, bit by bit. He's begun to see what he has done for her the same way that she has done these things for him.
It's why they were able to come together stronger than before. It's why it has worked, when it the past it has not. It has more to do with their growth individually and the time apart that they spent. It also has to do with the relationship being balanced. They are equals. He doesn't have to jump through hoops of fire to deserve a love that has always been there. He sees her imperfections and she sees his and they are not idealizing the other to be something they are not. It is what she has always wanted, without knowing she wanted it.
After walking away from love once, after idealizing a man that did not exist, after waiting for a day that would never come for a person that was no longer there, she understands just how much she has wanted and needed what she and Robin are offering each other.
It's love without masks, but more importantly, they themselves are without a mask. They're stripped from what armor a person can wear to keep others at bay, stripped from unbending ways that don't allow for other view points, and stand before each other completely as they are. It's why she can't do anything but speak honestly. It's why she can't do anything but say what she has always said in the only manner which she knows how.
When he tightens his hold on her hand, Rachel opens it so that her flat palm can rest against his. It's a gesture she has made countless of other times, in different situations and without much thought with the instinct that dictates the movement.
I hope too, he says, and the whole of her emotions swell inside her chest. She has never and will never be able to live a life without hope. Another Rachel in another place and with a different outcome realizes what she becomes without it. The woman standing before Robin never will.
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Rachel does not have the faintest idea what the priest is saying.
She knows what is necessary in terms of proceedings and what any priest would say, so she doesn't honestly care. She makes out their names, but it's more importantly--it's how Robin looks that lets her know it's done. And she'll never, ever forget how he looks, how she feels that seems to mirror his expression exactly.
It's knowing the promises they have made to each other are the promises they have know made official in some capacity, and while it wasn't necessary for it to be true, it means so much.
There's a ring on her finger that has been placed there by him.
There are vows they have made and acceptance they've embraced.
Another day or another lifetime, they've chosen this for as long as they are allowed, and she can't begin to sort through the endlessness of the feelings in her chest.
Full and painless and entirely right.
Rachel throws her arms around him and the trembling smile remains on her lips when they meet his. They're soft and just as promising as they kiss him, mindless of the choirboy who is most likely hiding behind the man that has just married them.
Married. They're married.
She rests her forehead against his once they've drawn back, closing her eyes and smiling.
Of all the things they have learned, perhaps this one is the most important:
Love isn't enough, and it doesn't always win--
But sometimes it does and it's time it did.
shadows will pass
Smoke, it will clear
If something survives of us around here
I'll be glad 'cause I know
I was lost in the glow
Of love
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