Darkness within the Light

"Then if you love me, I'm okay with everything else--except one thing. Just one. Will you move back home? Just be with me? I can see where, doing what you do, you would be extra afraid for Abbey and for me. Fair enough. So hire someone we can both trust to bodyguard us. Make up some excuse that they're long time family friends. I truly don't care. I'm sick of being in the house alone and wanting someone to be there with me. I don't want to be with Vincent or anyone else. Not really. I want to be with you.

"Rob, I don't care what you do--legal or illegal. Not as long as you're here with me. I want to know it all--the good and the bad. I'll walk it with you, as long as you tell me the whole truth. No half truths, no lies. Truth. All of it. I would prefer you did not father children with those other women who were just in the kitchen, but that's not my choice. And yes, I 'saw' them too. Some things aren't as easy to turn off as I'd like.

"As far as most everything else goes, I don't care. I am not as fragile as you think I am. Seems Vincent doesn't even like who I am becoming. I think I'm getting too dark even for his tastes. Especially after the last time he and I talked," She laughed a bit bitterly. It took a lot to be beyond what was acceptable to Vincent Majere, but somehow she'd managed it.

"The truth is, I don't really need the bodyguards either," she said, finally feeling like she was dropping the other shoe. "I'm only saying it if you need it to stop being so protective. That's part of what keeps you avoiding me. If a bodyguard makes it stop, then so be it. I'll learn to live with it. But since you didn't ask, I'll tell you anyway. Vincent is repulsed by my enjoyment of killing. Its a new hobby I have, and it seems I'm very good at it, and it also seems that I like it. He doesn't like that I do it, nor that I like it. So I do think I could hold my own. A lot more than you realize. And before you ask, yes. Daddy does know what I'm becoming. He hasn't said a word. I'm a Lupin--or I was. Not a shrinking violet. I was raised to be tougher than that. Bottom line--do the bodyguard to suit yourself. Not for me. I am very, very capable." She could hear the fierceness in her voice that had never been there before. She was burying deep the pain she felt when he had, basically, refused her in her request to move home. She didnt' understand, and that "I'm a busy man" crap didn't wash. He still was lying to her. Still didn't want to come home. She didn't get it. She really didn't get it. Somehow she was not enough for him. Would never be. It hurt. It really, really hurt. She sipped on her coffee, layering on heavy coats of ice around her heart. She was not ever going to let him get that close to her heart until he started being honest. Nobody was. She began to think, in her mind, about what she needed to do to adopt out Abbey after she was born so that Abbey was out of the way. Not a pawn to be used by either of them. Abbey was better without either of them.

"Some assholes killed the wife of a friend of mine and kept his son hostage while my friend was in a coma fighting for his life. They really thought they could mindbend the young son into doing anything they wanted. I got the boy back, killed his captors and blew their little illegal operation all to hell, robbed all the information I needed from the American Department of Magical Affairs,killed a couple of their agents in the process, and just kept killing until there was nothing left to clean up. The bastards that kept him deserved it, and I enjoyed doing it. They and their filthy little henchmen didn't deserve to live. In case you haven't noticed, Rob, life is very cheap. Especially in these days. People are very expendable and replaceable.

"They destroyed my friend and his family. He's struggling for a reason to still be on this little planet now, and I can't give him one. Not one. Yeah, he's got a great kid, but there's always someone to pick up taking care of a kid when a parent isn't there anymore. "

She looked at the odd look on his face and it made her laugh a bit, " Vincent gave me the same look. Said I wasn't the same as I used to be and said he liked me better as I was. Doesn't like the more brutal side of me. Oh, come on, Rob. If anything, my game is improved. I'm sharper. If I weren''t, Daddy wouldnt take me along to, basically, be a sniper for him on his missions. Nor would he have come along with me on one of my trips to America. And don't think I haven't done just exactly that. I would be a sniper for him anytime he asked, kill whoever he asked, no questions asked. No guilt attached.

"You're looking like my father and I betrayed you because we didnt' tell you. Well, Daddy knew exactly what I was becoming, and as for telling you, what would be the purpose? You were never interested in anything he had to say before. The only reaction he ever got from you was irritation and anger. What would have been the purpose for him in setting himself up to be on the receiving end of more of that? So long as I was in one piece, what was the harm?

"You're self righteous sister scoffs at me because I'm a Lupin. Because I'm not as good as she believes she is. And because I only carry two wands and am not armed to the teeth. Trust me, I don't need it. I don't need to carry 50 pounds of hardware to keep myself alive or to kill someone. Trust me, I'm all done trying to meet anybody else's expectations. "

"And next time, don't lie about not wanting to come home either. You don't want to come home, you say so. Its that simple. If there's something else you haven't said, spill it now. "

She sighed heavily, thwarted at one of the things she wanted the most, "All these months, I've wanted to kill every member of that lab that sold me that potion, and here I find, of all people, its you. The one person on the planet I couldn't ever hurt. Damn."

Part of her really wanted to unleash on him all the rage she felt towards him for so many reasons--the whole bloody list--the real reason her father had allowed her to become his private personal assassin, one of his many operatives. She was by no means his only assassin, but she was one he was coming to rely on for special things. She had signed up for her father's own very large scale international operation, one with quite a different purpose than Rob's. A part of the Lupin family life she presumed Rob knew nothing about. She knew full well that her rage concerned her father enough that he had reeled her in to his ranks in order to keep a safeguard on her rage, a place to vent it, to keep an eye on her and to keep the rage from destroying her. And she knew he always provided for his assassins very well indeed--including the very finest protection--of every type. And for his daughter, Robert Lupin would do anything. Anything.

She had spilled her heart to him, what she could still feel of it, and he response was that he was a busy man. Too busy for her and Abbey. She had become what she detested. And it ate at her like a cancer. Despite all the protests to the contrary, she was pitifully just exactly who she never wanted to be. What the hell was she supposed to do with this? She wasn't totally unresourceful. She was getting some ideas of her own.

"Of course you don't," she said, casually. "What did you expect? Did you expect me to sit around and pine away for you forever? Did you expect me to turn into Narcissa Malfoy? Despite how much I like her--and I do like her a lot--I refuse to spend my life feeling brokenhearted and hanging on hope against every feasible hope that you might give me one single ounce of affection. She's done that with Lucius for years, and look where its got her. She is a permanent mental mess. A lovely one, but a mess nonetheless. I told you before--I will NOT be Narcissa Malfoy for you or anybody else. If you won't be here, if our wedding night was the last time you could tolerate spending any time with me, than so bloody well be it!"

It dawned on her that she still had Sparks to run now that Rob was out of it. "I have a restaurant to run," she said quietly, getting up. She went into the kitchen and wiped away, with one hand everything he had been working on. She didn't want one single trace of it to remain. She wanted a clean slate to start with. She set the kitchen to cleaning itself. She dictated a specials menu off the top of her head to a magical quill while she started working on kneading another loaf of bread that Lizzie had been ready to knead before she had been so rudely interrupted. There were several bowls of different breads waiting to be kneaded, set for, bu their second rise and then baked. Pastries to turn out. Soups, slow braised meats, salads, and she was just one little pregnant woman who didn't have the energy she had before she had become 6 months pregnant. And there was more than enough to keep two people running. She needed her father's cloning spell.

She really wanted to unleash her wrath on Rob, but it would fall on a heart that no longer wanted to love her,a man she didnt even know anymore, a man that loved his whores and his money more than new bride and his child.. He had no concept of what he was doing. She knew it was purposeful on his part to drive her away to protect her, but the fact of that matter was that she did exist and so did Abbey and they were from now on far safer with him than without him. No one would dare mess with Rob Dent's wife or child if and when they were that close to him. He was an asshole. He couldn't see that by creating distance he was drastically magnifying the danger for his wife and his child. She had never believed him to be stupid before, but this was truly stupid. And truth be told, it was public knowledge that she had married him. Who in the hell did he think he was hiding it from anymore? His whores? What did they care as long as he paid them, and he was sure he spent more money on them than he did on her and Abbey. The more she kneaded the bread, the more tired she became, and the more angry she got at him.

The only choice she had, at least until Abbey was born was to go into hiding, since Rob couldn't see it. She would have to hire Lizzie some large burly Auror who could also cook to replace Rob because she wasn't physically capable of this. If he ever thought he would lay his hands on poor Lizzie again, she would kill him. Lizzie did not deserve his terrorizing. She had been protecting Khaat, the person Rob said he loved, and then did everything he could to hurt her. She owed Lizzie more than what she could ever pay her. And being anywhere near where Rob was wasn't fair to her. She had some ideas about perhaps burying her deep within her father's protection and hiring two totally new cooks. That might have to wait til tomorrow. She had all she could do today.