A Clandestine Encounter (IC)

[Sandman XI]

Wesley knew something like this would eventually happen. Ever since the incident with the fog, he had been open with Robin. They had grown close. He shared everything that happened with Robin, like a dutiful boyfriend. Though he had not been totally forthcoming about his past. Sure, he told her about things in his nightmares which alluded to his past, but never up front about his hardships. When she sat down and asked to talk, he just knew he was going to have to answer for everything. Everything. He took a chair and turned it around, straddling it backwards. When she locked eyes with him, he couldn't look away. She wanted to talk, and talk they would, but how do you start this type of conversation? "Yeah," He said, "We do." That was sorta weak, he thought. "So, where should we start?"

[Raveled]

Robin sighed. "We start with coffee," she said. Once she was holding a cup of the stuff, she sipped it gingerly and began marshaling her thoughts. "Lynn, Grimalkin, whatever you think of her as -- she was your girlfriend at the time? What was the situation that you felt she needed to 'die,' even if it was only a simulacrum? Wesley, why didn't you talk to her about this?"

[Sandman XI]

Coffee was good. It kept him awake. Away from the things in his head when he slept. Making the coffee was a quiet affair. He had time to think. What exactly was she going to ask him. There was a whole twenty years of history to dig up. When the coffee was done they sat back down and he listened to her. He nodded at the first question. Indeed Lyn was his girlfriend at the time. And then the big questions started rolling out. Wesley sighed reluctantly. "The reason I didn't talk to Lynn was that I didn't know it was going to happen until it was going to happen. Avenger invited me over to a pig farm in the middle of the night. He told me the situation when I got there." He cleared his thraot and made his voice sound like Avenger's, recalling the speech as it happened right then and there "Here's the plan. Need to convince Grim's landlord that she is dead. Need a head for proof. You shape the head of one of the pigs to match hers. Then I present it to her landlord, and she is freed from his influence. And I am able to help the people in her hotel find their own liberation." This wasn't hard to remember. It was one of the nightmares that filled his head nightly. "So yeah."

[Raveled]

Robin rubbed at her face. None of this made sense, but her inclination was to dig down until it did. "Who exactly was Lynn's landlord? Why did he want her head? Why couldn't you just buy her way out the lease?" This story of needing to kill someone to get out of a land lease was absurd on the surface, but she was willing to give Wesley the benefit of the doubt... for now.

[Sandman XI]

"I don't know who her land lord was at the time," Wesley shuddered back the memory of the visceral noises and sights scene playing out in his head. "The only thing I was thinking at the time was that I didn't want her to die. If that was what needed to happen for her not to die, I had no other choice at the time." His voice tinged, "I did not take delight in seeing a human being's head being severed from it's body. That was the first time I saw a person die. Not just saw it. Really experienced it. The whole lifesight thing?," he said covering his eyes and shaking his head, then looking at her again, "It's not all fun and games watching someone die, but to actually see what was happening? Now you know the reason I don't eat meat."

[Raveled]

Robin reached out and took Wesley's hand, just holding it for a moment. When he did respond she brought his hand up to her face, letting him cup her cheek and smiling at him. "Wesley. I don't think you're cruel man. I think you're a good person, but I think you use your head and maybe you should use your heart a bit more." She kissed the palm of his hand and let it drop back to the table. "Do you understand? You need to think about your actions a bit more before you do them, not after."

[Sandman XI]

Wesley nodded and smiled weakly, "I understand." Thinking things ahead was all well and good, but when put on the spot, love makes you do crazy things. Though the moral of the story was not lost on him. It was quiet for a moment as he looked at her. "I'm glad you're taking this well," he said softly, "It took me a while to adjust." Robin was very supportive of Wesley, it seemed to him.

[Raveled]

Robin's expression drained slowly, and her eyes slid off Wesley's and tracked across the wall behind him. The idea of killing a proxy, especially one crafted from a dumb animal, was easy for her to accept because she had done such awful things herself, a life and an age ago. She didn't anymore, but having such experiences made it easier to accept such things. Of course, the last thing she wanted was for Wesley -- or anyone, really -- to discover what she had been like back then. She honestly believed that it was past her, but sometimes it cropped up in the most unexpected places...

She snapped her eyes back to his and she smiled, showing her teeth. "Blame it on sleep deprivation," she said. "And now I think it's time to call your girlfriend a cab."