Only in Darkness

10: Second Chances

Washington, District of Columbia

2018

"Rachel!" Marlowe called as she pushed through the door to the roof. Lifting a hand to block the sun from her eyes and seeing the girl curled up on the bench. Cautiously making her way over, she stood at the end of the bench. 

Rachel finally looked at Marlowe after a tense second of silence. Watery blue ice caps meet winter oceans in a painfilled embrace and Marlowe felt her heart twist in her chest. The look all too familiar from eyes mimicking a forest canopy.

"I'm a monster." Marlowe couldn't explain it. Maybe it was the look in her eyes, the way she could hear someone else's voice layered under Rachel's. The breaks lining up and shattering the wall Marlowe had tried to put up.

"I'm so sorry-"

"Stop." Marlowe cut her off, sitting beside the girl, eyes turning to steel with her voice. "Don't ever say that. You are not a monster, Rachel." The girl didn't look convinced, Marlowe swallowed hard, knowing what she had to do. 

Slowly reaching out, Marlowe laid a hand over Rachel's surprising both of them is she was being honest, "What happened in there wasn't your fault."

Rachel could feel a lot of things through their connection, fear, pain, suffering. But also, truth, light, good intentions. Rachel's lip began to tremble, her breath hitching in her throat, the dam finally breaking as she gripped onto Marlowe's hand for dear life. The girl falling forward into Marlowe's shoulder as she cried.

Marlowe tired not to make her uncomfortableness apparent, slowly bringing her free arm around Rachel's shoulders and settling it there. Marlowe expected to feel panic begin to build at the close contact, or, at the very least, the feeling of a million bugs crawling over her skin. But neither came. And slowly she started to relax, petting Rachel's hair – pulling glass out when she came across a piece.

"Everything is going to be okay Rachel." Marlowe didn't like to make promises, in her experiences they were only ever broken and led to hurt feelings and bad things. But this was a promise she wasn't going to leave up to fate. 

Dick was going to leave, she had already gave Rachel her word she wouldn't. At least until she was safe. Marlowe was just layering onto that promise. She would make it all okay, for Rachel. Because she was sacred.

Because she was just a kid. 

Rachel was younger than she had been, when she had been forced to grow up, and something about the girl in her arms being robbed of the little amount of childhood she had left to live didn't sit right with her. Rachel not getting a real childhood made her feel sick. 

It reminded her of watching her brother train at the tender age of thirteen. He should have been hanging out with his friends or asking girls out to dances, instead he was locked in the house basement doing endless drills under the thumb of their father.

If Kyle got one thing right it was that they had grown up very differently. He hadn't ever had the chance to be a kid, and that's all Marlowe ever really had been.

"How do you know?" Rachel pulled away, looking at Marlowe dead in the eyes. Water still trailing down her cheeks but she had mostly calmed down now.

"Because I used to know someone like you. Someone with abilities," Rachel perked up just a bit, and Marlowe licked her lips before continuing, "Powers don't make someone evil. It's how they use them that determines what kind of person they are."

"I killed that guy-"

"You're not the only one with a body count." Marlowe's fact obviously didn't do anything to make Rachel feel better or prove her thinking wrong. The girl pulling away slightly and sitting with her arms wrapped around her stomach, facing out towards the roof edge. Taking a breathe, Marlowe wet her lips and looked to her lap for a second to gather her thoughts.