[OOC: This thread is a plot thread between my two accounts. Robin's speech is italics and bold, whereas Natsumi's is just bold. Enjoy.]

In the end, Rudjek's plans were foiled. For all his might and terrible cunning, my friends and I had escaped his wrath. Robin was safe, delivered beyond the priest's reach by mortal and god hands alike. For their efforts, the world was spared another day, and the general populace kept in the dark from how close their apocalypse had come.

But at what cost was this victory had?

The wounds I sustained from my confrontation with Rudjek were hardly superficial. They took a heavy toll on me, rendering me unconscious and bedridden for over 24 hours after the fact. I was under constant supervision and sedation during that time, and, although I was not in danger of dying, there was no shortage of worry to go around.

When I finally woke up in that place, my first sight was of a tear-stricken Robin resting her head at my bedside. She was asleep when I sat up, still dressed in her armor like she hadn't moved since the battle's end. I half-expected her to be overjoyed when I saw her stirring from that sweet slumber, so I greeted her inevitable gaze with a carefree smile. Sadly, that was not the right action to do like I thought it was, for all I received in return for my sunny disposition was a slap on the face from an angry lover.

"You idiot," Robin cried while slapping me across the cheek! "Why didn't you run?! I told you to be careful, and this is what you do!" She broke down crying again after that. The people in the room at the time saw us and tried their best to offer comfort, but I vehemently waved them off. I angrily told them to get out, and didn't respond to Robin until they had. Even then, when we were alone, she interrupted me before I could speak, getting her words out through intermittent sobbing.

"I'm not sure I can take this anymore, Natsumi. Ever since that kiss in Adeluna, you've been distant. You could have told me you were injured. You could have escaped instead of fighting till you were in this state!" Mustering her strength, she pointed at the heavily bandaged wound on my chest and continued. "Look at it! That wound is right next to your heart. You could have died and I wouldn't have known, because you didn't tell me anything about the danger you were in! Please, you need to tell me the truth. If you don't trust me, if you don't love me the same way I love you, please end it. Let me move on! Just tell me now and stop leading me along."

Robin's words, along with the pleading manner in which she said them, hurt worse than any needle or scalpel in that Aestas hospital. I couldn't rightly figure out how to respond either, even as my right cheek swelled up from her slap. Instead, I could only frown while looking up at the ceiling before asking the first thing that came to mind.

"Robin, why do you love me?" It was an honest question, though not one either of us expected. Robin stopped crying once I asked it, and just started looking at me with this dumbfounded and afraid expression.

"What," she asked in hushed disbelief? "Is that some kind of joke?"

"No," I reiterated, "it's a serious question. Why do you love me?" Robin paused for a bit as the candle lighting of the hospital flickered in the breeze. She was trying to collect her thoughts; and, eventually, she gave me an answer, though not one I was looking for.

"I've loved you since Ataiyo. You're a good person and you've never steered me wrong. I enjoy your stories, and, even though you're a recluse, you still have friends that believe in you. I believe in you! Your compassion saved me and brought me hope, so why wouldn't I love you?"

I sighed upon hearing this, and then swiftly began my rebuttal while turning my gaze toward this girl who had turned my world upside down.

"And yet I've been lying to you for the past six years. You and many others think I'm just a mage: a powerful outsider who is simply older than she looks. My knowledge? You believe that is a product of my age and intelligence, much like everyone else in Revaliir does. The reality is darker. I am a spy, Robin. My home was destroyed as a result of the combined hubris and apathy from mortal and immortal alike, and I've spent innumerable years trying to reverse that destruction that they left behind. Many times I've had to murder, cheat and steal to achieve that goal. I've even killed people like you, good people, just to accomplish it. I've committed genocide in the name of a greater good; and my purpose in Revaliir was the same as it's ever been. I stole the world's knowledge, and became the Nameless One, just like always. It's why I constantly push people away, because I know I'll only ever bring them terrible things. For that reason alone, I am not a symbol of hope like you think I am; I'm a symbol of terror. No one deserves a friend like that; like me."

There it was: the negative self-image that I took great pleasure in using as a weapon to bludgeon my self-esteem. It tore me up inside, haunting me like the specter of a murdered wife for centuries untold. I never thought I would be good enough for anyone because of that past, and I questioned how Robin could truly love me, being the hideous beast that I believed myself to be.

Yet Robin… she didn't run away from me after I pulled out that metaphorical blackjack covered in broken dreams and misery. She didn't even reprimand me. Instead, she looked me square in the eye and spoke compassionately.

"You saved me," she said while putting a gentle hand on my arm. "I was a simple foster girl who could have disappeared and no one would have known or cared. Misako could have killed me that night that I went back to the Mori estate, and I would have just been written up as another number in Kenshiro's wake. You had no reason to help someone like me, and yet you did. Not only that, you gave me a home! Symbols of terror don't do that, Natsumi; so I can say that, whatever your past actions, you likely had a good reason for them." I almost scoffed at that statement, but didn't.  Deep down, I couldn't argue with Robin's logic, even though superficially I still tried to justify my negativity.

"Did I," I asked while returning my gaze to the ceiling? "I thought so for the longest time, and then I found myself crying in that pyramid. I knew what I was doing all those years. I knew the logic behind it. That didn't make it morally right! I had a hard time reconciling my actions with my humanity early on, but, instead of trying to deal with that problem, I put my humanity into a lockbox. I tried to become cold as ice so that the job was easier, and, for a long time, that worked. I committed atrocities, convinced myself that I had no choice. But there's always a choice, and a dam is not the same as a drought. Instead of ridding myself of my emotion and humanity, I just allowed it to build up inside until there was no room left. I wasn't dealing with the problem, and Rudjek's taunting was the last pressure my dam needed to break."


"Natsumi," was all Robin could say in response to this relentless self-deprecation of mine. She was trying to be sympathetic and comforting, but she didn't get much of a chance to follow through. Before she could, I quickly asked her the same question I had before: this time with clarification as to what I had really meant to ask.

"So I'll ask again: why do you care for a piece of shit like me when you could have almost anyone else in this universe or the next?" Indeed, the truth was I didn't think I was good enough for Robin and so I was subconsciously trying to sabotage our relationship. I loved her deeply, but that didn't mean she loved me: the real me. I needed to know why she stuck around and that it wasn't just for a fake story that I fed her to keep her unafraid.

Oddly enough, though, her response to this true question was unexpected.

"You want to know something funny," she asked, causing me to look at her with a confused expression? "I don't actually know." Pausing for a moment, the girl assumed a more somber expression and then explained. "I could have thought of you as a mother or sister after everything we've been through, but I didn't. I'm happy around you, Natsumi: the kind of happiness I always read about in those romance novels you buy for me. I can't really tell you a specific reason why, and I don't think it would be right to or even if whatever reason I eventually came up with would be something you could accept. I'm in love with you. No matter how many times we fight that will still be true."

Apparently it was my turn to cry then, though with tears of laughter instead of sorrow. Robin had expected me to break up with her in that moment, she later told me; but, instead of doing that, I started roaring with laughter even as shocks of pain rattled my body with every chuckle.

"Ouch, that hurts! But it's so funny!" I kept laughing for a while until Robin spoke up again in her typically cute, pouting fashion.

"…That's not nice, you know," she said while blushing, not understanding why I was laughing at her feelings. I wasted no time, of course, in explaining, lest she get the wrong idea.

"No, but the coincidence is too funny not to laugh at." Calming down, I finally told her how I felt about her. "It's been a long time since I really knew love, Robin. I'm rational to a fault, so much so that I subconsciously made myself afraid to feel love again lest I remember the pain of losing it. I even thought of my relationships with my family as a matter of duty and courtesy rather than genuine affection, because I was afraid of losing them; so afraid, in fact, that I forgot to live. I forgot to love. That temple was the first time in a long while that I broke that barrier of my own making." Turning toward her, I gently grabbed Robin's hand and then showed her the image from the golden egg that had propelled me into a fight with Rudjek for her sake. "It's fine if you can't think of a reason, Robin, because neither can I. I don't know why you appeared in this egg other than to say that I'm in love with you too. But I needed to know before I said those words. I needed to know you weren't just fooling yourself for my sake when you said you loved me. I'm sorry that I made you worry, and I'm terribly sorry for being such a distant jackass before now. I have been in love with you since that night at the koi pond in Nisshoki, but I was too afraid to say it until Rudjek drove me into a corner. When he threatened to turn you into a sacrifice and make me watch, I lost all control. I couldn't comprehend what my life would be like without you, and I-"

I was on the verge of crying during that long-winded gut spillage, and I would have kept going had Robin not interrupted it with a kiss. She placed her lips firmly against mine in the middle of my sentence, just as the first tear started to appear on my face. The act calmed me down, enough that Robin was able to talk to me while moving into a hug.

"Stop," she said as I settled into her embrace. "Just stop. I forgive you. Don't beat yourself up over what's done. Just don't make me worry like that again."

It was then, in that moment of tender warmth, that I decided to ask Robin to marry me. I would later propose to her on the same river bank that we first met, and it was there under the stars that she would finally say "yes."