Fic: Chasing the Wind - 15. Personal Space
A/N- I am constantly of two minds about David and Rachel’s relationship/interactions. Yes, there were multiple times where Rachel was more than willing to kill David as an equal, whether human or on the battlefield, to protect others or for revenge. However, the fade to black ending these two are given together in series is a very different situation- not only is David clearly the loser with no way to fight or defend himself going into the situation, but Rachel’s just been through a hell of a day herself, and part of that involves seeing the desperation and weakness David has as not being all that different from her own. Know your enemy as yourself and then kill him, even as a kindness? Chilling stuff for any series, let alone a children’s one.
15. Personal Space
As she knelt above him on the grimy asphalt of a woebegone alley littered with fast food garbage and empty beer bottles - the smells from all of this were distracting to his rat brain, even if the human mind could care less- with tears in her eyes and beautiful despite the ugliness of the whole damnable situation, David realized something slightly inane with perfect clarity about his regretfully victorious opponent he hadn’t put together before.
Rachel the academic, Rachel the athlete, Rachel the daughter, the sister, the soldiers, the friend, the mallrat, Rachel the fierce guardian who had once backed his human self into a wall and got up in his face to threaten his life with plastic cutlery with convection in her slightly crazed blue eyes and bared perfectly straight white teeth at him like she was an animal instead of a human girl- this girl really had no regard for societal acceptations of personal space.
Even now at the end- or his end, anyways- she picked him up carefully with shaking hands that were impossibly soft considering the death sentence they were about to meet out upon him, and raised him up to look at him face to face; pink rat eyes fixed unblinkingly on regretful, haunted human blue. She drew a deep breath and exhaled once, the warmth of it stirring his fur and making his whiskers twitch involuntarily as he imagined tasting impossible regrets and unsaid apologies before Rachel’s hands constricted and something deep within his tiny rat body gave a sharp snap and then-
Nothing.
15. Personal Space
As she knelt above him on the grimy asphalt of a woebegone alley littered with fast food garbage and empty beer bottles - the smells from all of this were distracting to his rat brain, even if the human mind could care less- with tears in her eyes and beautiful despite the ugliness of the whole damnable situation, David realized something slightly inane with perfect clarity about his regretfully victorious opponent he hadn’t put together before.
Rachel the academic, Rachel the athlete, Rachel the daughter, the sister, the soldiers, the friend, the mallrat, Rachel the fierce guardian who had once backed his human self into a wall and got up in his face to threaten his life with plastic cutlery with convection in her slightly crazed blue eyes and bared perfectly straight white teeth at him like she was an animal instead of a human girl- this girl really had no regard for societal acceptations of personal space.
Even now at the end- or his end, anyways- she picked him up carefully with shaking hands that were impossibly soft considering the death sentence they were about to meet out upon him, and raised him up to look at him face to face; pink rat eyes fixed unblinkingly on regretful, haunted human blue. She drew a deep breath and exhaled once, the warmth of it stirring his fur and making his whiskers twitch involuntarily as he imagined tasting impossible regrets and unsaid apologies before Rachel’s hands constricted and something deep within his tiny rat body gave a sharp snap and then-
Nothing.