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How quickly you go from comforting to complaining. Before you continue, keep in mind only one of us is wearing heels, and it isn't you. We're nearly there.

[SUCK IT UP BUTTERCUP.]

And the fourth is . . . .

[She hesitates, then. The fourth is someone who will require a great deal of explanation, because to explain him will mean explaining the wendigo, and the hallucinations, and all the little details that have endeared her to Kurama over the past five months.]

I'll tell you the details later, once we've settled at home.

[Read: once we've banged at least twice.]

But he's my closest and dearest friend here. And the only person, to-date, who knows all the details of our relationship.

...The fourth is the one to whom I owe a debt.

[He makes it sound like an interpretation, like he's just taken the sum total of her words and her pauses, her thought and her hesitation, her choices and her omissions, and added it all together into a picture of the current state of affairs.

And really, that's hardly surprising, because it is in fact precisely what he's just done.

But he tugs her over again, dropping a kiss against her head amid her long loose hair, and shifts to sling an arm around her shoulders instead of letting her hold his at her side, instead.]

That's the one who's been looking after my girl in my absence, is that it?

. . . yes.

[God. My girl, it's been five months since she's heard that, too. She'd forgotten how much she enjoyed it. It's such a simple sign of affection, just as absent as that kiss, and yet something in her absolutely leaps at the words.]

Mm. Though it hasn't been entirely one-sided. He's only sixteen, though he acts far older. But . . . yes.

[Ah. There they are, and Rosalind smiles as she reaches for her keys. It's a rather nice apartment, all things considered, and she's got the entire first floor to herself. Frankly, they've got the building mostly to themselves; there's only one other occupant, and she's a quiet girl.

The apartment itself ought to be familiar enough: Rosalind has tried to make as much like their old home as possible. One enters directly into the kitchen/dining room, and heads down a hall to reach the living room. Along the way, there's three smaller rooms branching off: a bathroom and what presumably were once bedrooms, though Rosalind has converted them into a miniature library and a small laboratory.

She's quite pleased with all of it, frankly. But she's gripped with an odd sort of shyness as she waits for Robert to pronounce his judgement. Surely he'll like it, and yet Rosalind waits, gone just a little stiff under his arm.]

There's already a queen bed. We shan't need to change much.

...Rather missing the holes in the ceiling and the exhaust tubing scattered all about, isn't it? Can't say as I'll mind that, honestly.

[He says, which immediately confirms that he's recognized it, too. God. Their home. It's not identical, naturally, but it's similar enough to invoke the deja vu; it's akin enough that he feels a little bit like he had when he'd tumbled through the Tear way back when, manufacturing memories of an apartment that he's never set foot in before now.]

Oh — no, no, wait a moment. Come back out here, just wait.

[And he tugs her back with him, drawing her back through the doorway and into the hall just one single step — just enough room for him to bend and scoop her into his arms so that he can carry her over the threshold more properly on their second go into the apartment.]

There. Be a shame to have not done it properly, don't you think?

[She doesn't realize what he's doing until he's done it, which leaves her yelping as she grabs for him, fingers knotting reflexively in his shirt. It had begun as a desperate reach, but within a moment she's relaxed, her fingers smoothing out the wrinkles she'd just created, because of course this is nothing new. She's had two decades to get used to his picking her up.

Robert, she might have protested on a normal day. She loves being carried, it's true, but it's not a particularly dignified thing to have done to oneself, and Rosalind is nothing if not dignified. But today . . . today is a day of exceptions. It's a day to ignore all the usual rules and conventions, and simply give in to all the whims she's had to go without these past five months. It's a day to indulge, to flirt and tease and be carried. It's most certainly a day to tip her head up so she can kiss and nuzzle along his jawline.

Besides: while he's picked her up plenty of times, he's never done it like this. Never in relative public; never acting like the couple they truly are. Everett had been so appalled her Robert had never married her, and yet here he is, carrying her over the threshold.

It's silly. It's self-indulgent. It's ridiculously, wonderfully soppy and romantic, and Rosalind laughs as they cross the doorway.]

I missed you.

[It's meant as a fond thing, but it comes out quieter than she'd intended. Not just a feeling, but a confession, something murmured against his neck between kisses. And with it comes the hint of something a little more raw, something far more intimate than what she'd told him on the way here. She kisses his neck again, and it's a more desperate thing this time.]

God, Robert, I missed you so much. It's been five months, I haven't--

[Her voice wavers, and Rosalind bites down hard on her bottom lip, effectively cutting off both her sentence and her tears.]

Rosie.

[He makes his decision briskly, more out of impulse than anything else, spurred on by her upwelling of emotion and the way that it drags almost painfully at his heartstrings; in one easy movement, he kicks the door shut with his heel, setting it swinging before swiftly carrying her through the house to one of the couches in the living room.

There'll be no fussing about this time with setting her down and settling in next to her, the way he'd done at the train station. No, this time they're in their own house, in private, and so he quite simply sits and pulls her down with him, keeping her squarely in his embrace until such point as she's squarely in his lap, instead.]

Do as I say, now, and let it out. We're home. I'm right here. Just...

[He reaches up, fingers curved lightly from the palm of his hand as he strokes her hair back behind her ear again and lets his fingers linger even after he's done.]

Just let it out, Rosalind. Five months of bottling it up — but you don't have to anymore...

[This is what she'd wanted. Never mind everything else, the teasing and the kiss and the information, no, it can all wait. This right here is what she'd been after, right from the moment she saw her Robert had finally come back to her. She sits in his lap, her head resting on his shoulder, her face pressed into the crook of his neck. She's still got his jacket on around her, and the entire effect is that of being cocooned: safely surrounded by him, braced in on all sides and kept safe.

It isn't easy to let go. Not even here, not even with him. She can't simply burst into tears, though it won't be long until she does. Rosalind stays pressed up tight against him, her breath leaving her in little pants, clinging to him as if that might prevent him from leaving her. And she has to cling, she has to, because--]

You might yet leave.

[She whispers it.]

This happened last year. I read about it, I checked-- a flood of people arrived, and only a few ever stayed. They were barely here a week, and you might--

[Her mouth trembles, and now her voice rises, the words slipping past her lips in a desperate stream.]

You might leave me, Robert. I'm going to wake up one morning and you won't be there, you'll just be gone! I've been without you for five months, I nearly died and you weren't there, and I can't, not again, I can't do it, Robert--

[It comes out like a flood, once he's managed to get her to finally open the gates holding it back. But she does, she finds it in herself to gather it up and let it go, and so for the first short while it's all he can do to just hold her and try to comfort her with his presence and listen.

He's known since her first messages to him on the network that there was something frightening her. Now at last he's becoming privy to what all that is — and as soon as he hears it articulated, it's small wonder that it is frightening her so.

You might leave me. The ultimate cruelty, he thinks with sourness behind his eyes and a sick twist in the pit of his stomach, to take something he'd once used as a threat against her in the past and make it potentially an unavoidable reality here again in the present. Separation is the one thing that Rosalind dreads most; he knows that full well. And now — now, it's not just separation that's on the table, but a short sweet window of togetherness to whet her appetite for it before snatching it away from her once again.

Small wonder she's clinging, and crying, and shaking. She hadn't sounded like that when they'd died — but she had when he'd been reluctant to come through the Tear to her.

But there's more than just that, and what she says after it are the things that end up terrifying him. I nearly died and you weren't there, she whimpers, and he goes cold all over, because there's so much wrong with it that he doesn't even know where to begin in trying to pull it all apart.

She'd nearly died? In the five months she'd been here alone, she'd nearly died?]

How...?

[It's a strangled, thick word that comes out mangled from his suddenly tight throat. But she won't need more than one word out of him, not when one single word says everything he needs it to.]

[This wasn't how she'd wanted to tell him. She'd thought to do it at night, once things were more settled between them, when she was gathered in his arms and all was calm. A confession, whispered against his throat and kept safely between the two of them. Not like this, not while she's so out of control.

For a long minute, she doesn't answer. It isn't out of cruelty, but sheer need: she can't string a full sentence together, not with how hard she's crying.]

T-there was--

[She bites at her bottom lip, trying to pull herself together long enough to get this out. A gaping breath comes first, followed by a deeper one, a slow inhale and exhale, until finally Rosalind is certain her tears have temporarily retreated. She wipes her cheeks, trying stupidly to appear respectable as she pulls back, as though Robert will care about her appearance.

(His arms are around her. His coat is around her. She's kept safe, she's contained, he's here, nothing is going to hurt her while he's here, nothing can ever hurt them so long as they're together--)]

There was a creature. There's so many strange ones here-- supernatural ones, ones we'd dismiss as fairy tale nonsense. I've been studying them, I was just outside our apartment, and one of them . . . it was hanging about the edges of the forest. It saw me and attacked.

[She's never spoken of this, not in detail. She'd admitted it to Fugo in one sentence, hastily offered, and even then only to explain the presence of Punnett. Strider doesn't know. Kurama had been there, and wonderful man that he is, he'd offered an explanation to Urameshi, saving her the trouble.

She's never had to tell someone, not in detail. She wavers and hesitates, uncertain as to how to tell the tale, her voice shaking the entire time.]

A wendigo, it was called. It-- it possessed me. It took over my mind, my b-body, just like that, it was--

[She laughs damply, a helpless little thing that isn't amused in the slightest.]

Rather like being caught by Fink's vigors, wasn't it? Except what it wanted was-- it was so hungry, it was always hungry, it wanted to eat. It wanted to eat everyone it could, and use me to get close enough to people in order to do so. So it took control over me, it--

[Her mouth trembles again, and Rosalind blinks hard, glancing away to try and hold out just a little longer.]

I just watched. I watched, I had to watch, I couldn't do anything, and god, it-- it talked to me, it told me just what it was going to do, how it was going to eat them all, how I was, and then in the end how it would kill me too, and I couldn't-- I tried. I fought it, I did, Robert, you must understand, I-- I c-couldn't-- I couldn't do anything, I had to just watch--

[She's trembling in his arms. It's all she can do to keep her teeth from chattering, and with a little shudder she presses in closer, as if that might somehow help.]

Shh, shhh...

[It's no good and no help to shush her, he knows, but it's instinct to do it anyway, and particularly when he's at such a loss of what else he's even supposed to do with all of the horrific details of her stay that she's confessing.

Rather like being caught by Fink's vigors, she says by way of comparison, and the ugly thought burns like sulfur fire through his veins. Of course he'd been aware of Possession, that hideous joke of an innovation; Fink had claimed it was for use on machines, and yet if there was one universal fact about Jeremiah Fink that never failed to hold true, it was that Fink would never turn down an opportunity for alternative applications — provided those applications stood to benefit him in some way.

And Rosie had suffered that. A monster had caught her, taken her body from her, her mind from her, and made her a prisoner in her own skin...

And she's been holding this in. She's been holding it in, all to herself, because he hasn't been there before now. She'd been captured by this...monster, controlled, forced to watch, threatened, tormented, manipulated —

And he hadn't been there. He hasn't been there.

(I fought it, she whimpers, and it breaks his heart. As though she's afraid she can't be forgiven unless she tried. You must understand, and it sickens him, to think that she's so desperate to insist that she'd tried, as though she'd be somehow less if she hadn't.) ]

Take your time. Take your time, and let it out. I've got you. Tell me what happened, Rosie...

[Tell me what I missed, he thinks, and feels his guilt bear down.]

It never-- I never--

[She'll get hysterical if she isn't careful. Rosalind curls up closer on herself, kicking off her shoes so she can draw her legs up, and bids herself to hold off on breaking down for just a little longer.]

My friend. The fourth one. Kurama, he-- it went for him first. He's so . . . he's powerful, it wanted to eat something powerful so it could grow stronger, so we went there first, and he--

[She waves a hand by way of explanation. She can't possibly go into all the details of demons, not here and now, but she doesn't have to. Robert will accept whatever explanation she offers, knowing she's telling him nothing but the truth, no matter how fantastical or unrealistic it sounds.]

He could tell. He can smell things like that, he knew it wasn't just me. He let us think he was fooled, and he lured us out to the forest, and when I tried to kill him, he--

[She waves her hand again.]

Plants. He can control plants. He tied me up with one, he tried to get it out that way, but it-- you can't kill a creature like that in such a fashion. It used me as hostage. It stopped my heart to prove a point. And so he let me go, and we ran back to the lab, and it-- I'd developed a way to distract a wendigo. A lure. A little vial filled with the scent of blood and gore. He poured it out on the tiles and the wendigo left me, and--

[One last effort, but this is the easiest part. And now her voice is just a little steadier, her gaze harder than it had been a moment ago.]

We killed it. Together. He immobilized it, and I cut its throat.

[He reaches for the lapel of his coat where it's draped around her shoulders, tugging on it and pulling it up closer around her neck for that slight bit of added security — almost like being tucked in with a blanket. The truth is, he truly can't remember the last time he's seen her like this, if he ever has at all. Oh, certainly he's been privy to Rosalind at her most vulnerable, far moreso than anyone else in the world, and yet there are different tones and tenors to her tears and these are...

Helpless. It was that she'd been helpless. And she's been oppressed before, certainly; she's been marginalized, kicked down, slighted, ignored, but at least in all of those times she's at least had the vindication of being right, and of having the choice to lie down and die or to pick herself back up again and fight back against it.

But this is different. This is something she couldn't fight back against, and no brilliance or trickery or determination on her part could have changed that. It wasn't just that she'd been traumatized by this...thing. It was that she'd been helpless, and Rosie doesn't know how to be helpless, because she's never once in her life been before.

So it fills him with a sick sense of satisfaction, the way she describes the creature's untimely end. She'd cut its throat; the captive princess hadn't merely been rescued, but had taken her circumstances into her own hands in the end, and risen above them through blood.

He thinks of the lighthouse keeper. Did, done, will be done.

But despite himself, he also catches himself thinking of young Elizabeth and her Songbird, how it stayed close to crush her in her rebellion yet nurture her in her...helplessness.]

You killed it.

[It's not a correction, but rather an affirmation, a reminder. The wendigo did these things to her, and in the end, she'd killed it. It's dead. It's gone. It had sought to control her, and she's killed it.

But. So this is the fourth one, Kurama, the one who he owes a debt. He'd been facetious when he'd said the one who's been looking out for my girl for me, but now it's sobering to see that he'd been far more on the money than he ever might have realized.

That's the one who saved her. And of course there are still questions, this business of being powerful, this talk of...smelling her, for god's sake, but there will be time for all that, later.

He already knows everything he needs to know, for the here and now.]

The beast gravely underestimated you and your friends. It paid its price for that.

Yes.

[Ending the story on that note has the effect of drying her tears, at least for now. Rosalind brushes her fingers over her cheeks, wiping away the last of them. She's still caught up in her grief, of course, and she might still cry some more, but for now, there's less of a wobble in her voice.]

That isn't the only thing that's happened.

[God, she still has to tell him about Charlie Astor. She has to warn him about the hallucinations, the bizarreness, jukeboxes and mirrors and all kinds of strangeness. But . . . Rosalind brushes her fingers against Robert's cheek, soothed by the warmth she feels there. The other things can wait. Not forever, but for now.]

But it was the worst. I couldn't . . . I stayed the night on his couch. I couldn't go home, I couldn't be alone.

[I dreamt of you. I hallucinated you, I was so desperate to see you that I put you in his place, I was so terrified and I was so alone. Rosalind's fingers drift up, brushing through his hair, tugging it carefully out of place as she watches him.]

. . . I've missed you, my darling.

Edited 2017-03-19 20:53 (UTC)

[And could he have fixed it, really, if he'd been here? Suppose he had, suppose it'd been the two of them out that day instead of just her — because of course it would've been the two of them, it's always the two of them together. Suppose that had come to pass, and the wendigo had been there, just the same as she'd said. Could he have fixed it, prevented it, if he'd been?

Perhaps it would have taken him. He's got a man's physique, a man's strength. Maybe it would have taken him, and spared the woman of the pair, because he was the better pawn to seize.

That's a nice thing to imagine. He almost wants to believe it.

But what could he have done, if he'd been present? Could he have smelled out a wendigo, the way that this Kurama had? Could he have tied her up, lured it out, immobilized it, helped kill it? Would he have been able to come up with those answers, in time to save her?

Sobering, that he doesn't have an answer. So sobering that it makes him hold her that much tighter, more possessive and more rattled himself, now, than he's been.]

I'm sorry.

[What else can he even say? He already knows this is going to destroy him in the long run, slow and insidious, rotting him away from the inside out because he should've been there and he wasn't.]

Rosie, I'm so sorry.

[She shakes her head gently, not so much dismissing the apology as gently brushing it aside. He's guilty, she knows. Of course he is. She'd be guilty as well, should their positions be reversed. But there's nothing for him to be guilty over. Their separation had been a forced thing, unwilling and unwanted, and now he's found his way back to her, and all is as it ought to be.]

You're here now.

[She wants to rest her head on his shoulder once more, but that would deprive her of the sight of him, and she's unwilling to go without that right now. Rosalind keeps drifting her fingers against him, through his hair, over the back of his neck, reacquainting herself with how he feels.

She isn't hiding her grief. But there's something firmer in her voice now, something that refuses to give into tears once more.]

For at least seventy-two hours, you're here. And I don't intend to waste that time.

...Far better of a reunion than our first, at least, one must give it that.

[He offers a little laugh, which comes out about as halfhearted as the joke he'd tried to deliver, and slips his hand up to the back of her head. It's a practiced movement, one that fits easily and well; he guides her head down as he moves his up to meet it, and guides their foreheads to touch together — aligning their identical features all at once, brows and noses and the rest.

They are one and the same. They fought for years to reach each other. And so yes, perhaps she's right (as always; she's always right), and it'd be a waste to dwell on the melancholy and miss the entire significance of the fact that they're together again.]

Much less blood. Call me biased, but I'm grateful for that, personally. Given that it was my blood spilling out everywhere, making that great of a mess. Couldn't even appreciate you properly for days upon days, what with finding myself laid up and useless in bed until I could pull myself together again.

[Helpless, the idle thought nags at him. Had he been helpless then? His own mind had turned on him, his own body rebelling to the point of nearly killing him. He'd needed someone else then, too...]

[She exhales slowly, her eyes fluttering closed as their foreheads press together. He's chattering on and on, but it's the sound of his voice that she appreciates, not the words themselves. It's an idle tone, something relaxed and utterly ordinary, and she latches onto it eagerly.

Here they are. Rosalind and Robert, brought together once more, so closely intertwined so as to refer to themselves as one entity. Kurama had been so surprised at the way she'd spoken for both of them, making decisions and telling him with certainty just how Robert would react. One of you can render a decision for the both of you, just like that? And oh, he's so clever, but in that brief moment, he'd missed the entire point.

There is no one of them, not normally. Our murder, our friends, our lives together, they do everything in the plural, because there is no Rosalind without Robert.]

Robert . . .

[She murmurs his name, as much to hush him as to enjoy the sensation of his name on her lips.]

Are you going to spend the next seventy-two hours talking about blood?

[And oh, it's not quite a proper smile, not yet, but the ghost of one is there. Rosalind tips her head just slightly, bumping their noses together.]

...Ah.

[And just like that he tapers off, sufficiently hushed as his focus recalibrates from his guilt and his regret and his horror over onto something quite different.

It hasn't been five long months, for him. Truly, it hasn't been even a day since last he saw her. His separation from her has been meager, minute; he'd found it a mild annoyance, when he'd turned up at the train station and she'd been nowhere to be found, but it'd gone no farther than just that: a mild annoyance.

They're different now, and he doesn't like that. They're out of sync, fractured, very slightly dislodged from each other in a way that never ought to be.

But it's very easy to bring them back into step, when they're together. It's so easy it's entirely instinctual, because he doesn't have to think about it in the slightest; he simply has to be himself, and she will be too.]

...I suppose I just might, if you don't hurry and contrive some means of preventing me outright.

I hardly see why I ought to put forth the effort.

[She rearranges herself: pulling back just slightly, worming her way out of his coat so she can drape her arm over his shoulders. Slowly, just a touch tentatively, she uncurls her legs, stretching them out on the couch. There. She still feels the lingering effects of her grief and horror, but it's a bit easier now. She feels safe enough to be just a little unguarded, though she won't leave his arms for a while yet.

And it's good, to be able to focus on something else. It means she won't dwell on things she doesn't want to. Rosalind curls her stocking toes, watching them for a moment before glancing up at him.]

You can surely come up with some other topic of discussion all on your own.

[Oh. Yikes. Hello, Rosalind's legs, you sure are...right there, now, aren't you, just all there and —

...Actually, come to think of it...]

I can, but I don't know how well-received it's likely to be.

[That's how it should be, then. Drawing her back out with normalcy, step by step, coaxing her away from the horrors of her memories with reminders of his presence in the here and now, instead.]

You do look quite fetching in my coat, nary a complaint out of me on that front. But where in high heaven did you come up with...with this business you've got on?

[...]

And more to the point, are you expecting me to match you? I don't know that a comparable slit up the side of my trousers would be nearly so well-received in society at large...

Hardly.

[Oh, god, she's missed this. She's missed teasing him and being teased, going back and forth glibly and sarcastically without a care in the world. She's starting to smile, which really doesn't lend much credence to her falsely brisk tone, but such is life.]

Your trousers are perfectly suitable. Your tie and waistcoat, however, are items you're going to have to do without. You might well undo your shirt one or two buttons, as well. Are you implying you've a complaint about my dress? It's perfectly respectable. I teach in this dress, Robert.

Without my tie and waistcoat!

[A protest that the dulcet tones of Oliver Vaquer just whined through the reader's mind's eye (mind's ear?), assuming the narrative has done its job properly.]

...Good god, do you mean to say you've taught in that? To boys? Are you quite mad?

Robert.

[Rosalind slides her fingers up the back of his neck, gliding through his hair as she smirks. She's teasing him, yes, but on the other hand, it's not as if she's being dishonest.]

You hardly have to act as if I'm parading about in my underthings, you know. Really, you and I will be far more modest than most of the city anyway.

I am not acting as though you are parading about in your underthings. But you must concede that I am far more familiar with the state of being a teenage boy than you are.

[HE'S BEEN THERE. HE'S LIVED IT.]

You mustn't get me wrong, my dear, you look positively stunning in the affair, and that is why absolutely no boys ought to see you in it save myself.

[Here's the truth: one of her students is engaged, two are quite preoccupied with each other, and the fourth is far too respectable to be so improper. But that truth is far less amusing than the truth she's feeding him. Rosalind lifts one leg idly, watching the way it pulls her dress tight over her thighs.]

Pity, then, half the city has seen me in it, isn't it?

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