AN: I don't own Tower of God. Also, I try here to stick to canon as much as possible but Baam's backstory is always a little fuzzy in canon. So if I veer a little off the edge, my apologies.
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5 Things Rachel Was to Baam.
#1. A Mystery
Rachel would often remember, fondly, how Baam had reacted when she first arrived in his cave. It had been difficult to find the way in. No one was supposed to go here, to this odd subterranean level of a floor that otherwise was quite mundane and ordinary. But Rachel had been curious. She had wanted to see what was down there, what was so monstrous that it needed to be locked away from the rest of the world, and she always got what she wanted.
She arrived and he gaped at her, or perhaps at the brightness of the light behind her. If no one ever came down, then he was always alone down here in the dark. And without the opening in the ceiling, it was truly a dim world. Lit enough to just barely see, no more.
"Hello," she called down to him. In the darkness she hadn't been able to see more than the basic shape of his figure. "Hello? Who are you?"
He called up, but his voice, echoing against the walls of the cave, pronounced no words that she could understand. She figured he was speaking another language. It wasn't until much later that she realized he didn't know any language at all.
(When you're alone, you don't need anything like that.)
She started climbing down the pile of rocks but he intercepted her less than halfway down, crawling up on all fours more efficiently than she. She stopped to take stalk of him.
He didn't have any clothing back then. She brought it all for him later. And he stank. Rachel doubted there was any point in hygiene when there was no one else around you, but still, his sweaty, dirty smell made her wrinkle her nose.
His hair was almost down to his angles, a deep brown (ebony, her mind supplied) and his eyes were golden. Both contrasted sharply with his sickly pale skin. Here was a boy who had never seen the light.
The eyes, she thought, were the only reason she didn't run away from him at first sight. And later on, a part of her would regret she ever stayed.
But for now, she stood still and let him stare at her. He had perhaps never seen a girl before. Perhaps he had never even seen the color red and was simply astounded by her jumper, or by the yellow color of her hair.
He looked her over, slowly and carefully. Then he cautiously reached out to touch her. He grabbed at the bottom of her skirt and gasped at the softness of the fabric.
Gently, she pulled the skirt away from him, making him flinch. "Hello," she said softly. "I'm Rachel. Are you a monster?"
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#2. A Teacher
It took a long time to teach Baam anything.
She taught him to wear the white smock she brought him the very next time she came down, because there was no way she was going to keep on visiting the creepy cave boy if he was going to keep on going around naked. Ew.
That was simple enough. He actually seemed pretty excited about having something so nice and soft to put on his body. Although nothing would ever compare to that initial excitement at meeting her. Even now, he would still get ridiculously excited whenever she showed up, as if every time he doubted she would ever return.
He learned how to walk fairly quickly considering his age. He could already walk in a way, but he did it with a sort of awkward crouch and dropped into a crawl too often. Around her, he began to straighten up and stay on two legs as much as possible, except when she pulled him down to sit.
And he learned how to brush his hair quickly as well. That seemed intuitive from the first time she brought him a comb, although he seemed to enjoy brushing her hair just as much, if not more. Probably because it was golden and therefore the brightest thing in this gloomy place.
But teaching him to speak took forever. She expected it to take weeks, of course. Couldn't help that.
It took years.
The first word he learned, of course, was Rachel, and it took him a near forever to learn it. Nouns were simplest. Food-she used it to refer to the various provisions she would bring down with her when she visited at times, and the fish he caught in a subterranean stream and mushrooms he plucked from the walls that seemed to be most of his diet. She had no idea how he didn't die of malnutrition, though the fish were surprisingly good considering he ate them uncooked. Comb-A word that shouldn't have been one of the first he learned but somehow was. Dress, hair, face, rock, wall, cave, light, mouth, teeth...
And eventually verbs. Eat, run, walk, swim, touch, talk, see...
It took forever.
It was months before they could even communicate enough for her to ask him if he had a name. And that took a full pantomiming session, because she hadn't taught him the concept of "name" or "word" yet.
Eventually he told her he did not.
"I'll give you a name," she said. "Hm..." But she couldn't think of anything suitable. A normal name didn't seem right. He wasn't a normal boy. And while she considered naming him Monster or Beast, they did not suit him so well as she had thought they would when they first met. He was too harmless.
"I'll call you Baam," she said at last. "Twenty-fifth Baam. Because I first came down here on the twenty-fifth night of the month." She smiled. "We can call it your birthday."
Baam, who didn't know the word "birthday" yet, smiled back.
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#3. A Friend
When Baam had become conversant in actual human speech, and the novelty of sneaking down into the cave had worn off, Rachel began thinking of him as a friend more than anything else. One of her better friends, perhaps, but also one of her less intelligent ones. There were many things about the world he didn't understand still, would possibly never understand.
He made up for it in devotion. He always wanted to see her when she came down, never wanted her to leave, never let his attention drift in her presence. She loved the focus of his eyes on her face, almost desperate in their clinging affection.
They played games together. All her friends upstairs were getting too old for the sorts of games she still liked to play, but Baam didn't know they were childish, and even had he known, he was more a child than anything else. Hand games, tag, word games (and Baam found those to be very tricky indeed), or sometimes make believe.
He liked to hear her talk. He liked to hear her stories.
"What's at the top of the tower?" he would ask.
And she would say, "Anything you want is up there. Power. Fame. Riches, the easy life. Of course, no one's ever actually gotten up there. But the higher you climb, they say, the better things get."
"Why do people climb?"
"I just told you, Baam."
"Aren't things good enough down here?" he would ask. And she would laugh, because truly he was very foolish.
She knew that he had no great desires, not like her. He would have been fine with staying in the dark for the rest of his life, so long as he got enough to eat and she came down to visit him. He was a peculiar creature like that. It made him a good friend, though, because he would do anything she wanted.
She chose the games they played. She chose when she came and when she left. She chose what they talked about. Here, with Baam, she always had absolute control. It was a welcome feeling. In the real world, the world where she lived with her family and her real friends, she rarely had control of anything.
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#4. A Lover
She didn't consider him to be a boy.
Not really.
Boys were better dressed. Baam only had the clothes she brought him, which, since she had no way of judging his size, were often just huge white smocks. Boys knew how to read and write and understood the world. Baam couldn't do any of that until she taught him. Boys lived upstairs, and Baam lived in a world of darkness.
He wasn't a boy, really. He was barely even human. He was the half human, half bestial creature she chose to visit because he was a pitiful creature, really, and she was being kind.
He wasn't a boy, but he had the shape of a boy. And his face was really rather pretty, even if his hair was far too long and he rarely washed up.
So sometimes she kissed him as if he were a real boy, someone worthy of being loved and desired. But only when she couldn't help it. Only when some boy upstairs had rejected her or when she was feeling particularly lonely. And frustrated.
Baam, who for a beast had very few animal desires, never understood what she was doing. But he would let her. She taught him how to kiss back, how to hold her in his arms as if she were a lover rather than a friend. She taught him the things you say to a girlfriend, and he would repeat them back to her by rote.
She never let things get too far. It was one thing to have a little fun with Baam, to pretend he was a real boy. But she couldn't enjoy herself too much-that would be improper, and he wasn't worth it. And she couldn't let herself fall in love with him, because really, falling in love with someone so inferior would have been ridiculous.
Baam, she thought, was not in love with her either. She didn't think he would understand the concept. He barely understood the concept of romance, or that kissing her and holding her was any different from playing tag or braiding her hair.
"Remember," she would tell him, after kissing him. "This is something you only do with certain people. You need a special relationship with them."
"You need to be friends?" he would ask.
"More than friends."
"How can there be more?"
"If there is a girl who you like more than any other girl in the world," she would say. "And you don't want to kiss anyone else or hold anyone else, then that's who you kiss. She has to be the most important person in the world to you."
"So," Baam would say. "This is something I only do with you."
She would laugh. "Yes." It was funny. It wasn't like he was ever going to meet anyone else.
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#5. A Mother
He was dependent on her for everything. She was his only companion. She was his source of light, opening the door into the cave. She was his source of any food that was not fish or mushrooms, and he had grown to like the food. She was his source of life.
When she taught him the word mother, he called her it for a little while before she got mad at him and told him to stop. As if she was that old. And being a mother to the creature she kept on kissing would have been a little bit sick.
She didn't mind being maternal to him though. She would brush his hair and tell him stories, as much a mother's activities as a friend's. She would teach him about the world, the information as vital to him as food or drink.
One time she came down to visit him and he had fallen sick. Perhaps something he had eaten, perhaps some contagion in the water, or perhaps some sickness Rachel had carried down with her in her last visit. There was no way he'd ever been vaccinated for any disease. Whatever the cause, he was running a high fever and barely noticed her coming in until she was already feeling his forehead for the temperature.
She gave him water to drink and brought a blanket down for him, and sang him lullabies, although she was unsure whether he was aware of her presence or not. Delirious, he mumbled half formed words, forgetting everything she had taught him of speech.
She stayed with him until he started periodically throwing up. Then she left because, ew. Besides, there was no way left to help him. She had done all she could, and he couldn't tell whether she was there or not anyways. She doubted he even knew whether he was alive or dead.
When she came back down a week later he was better. The vomit was cleaned off the ground and the blanket was neatly folded in a corner. He thanked her. Told her no one had ever been there for him when he was sick before.
She smiled, brushed the hair out of his face, and said, "You don't have to be alone anymore."
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(+1 Thing Rachel Always Wanted to Be to Baam But Never Was. )
#1. A Memory
She had never planned on keeping Baam.
He was a curiosity, at first. She had only intended to come down once. Later he was an amusement for when her other friends were being mean or she was bored. Later he was perhaps a friend, but still nothing important.
She always planned on leaving him behind. Because someday she was going to get the invitation into the tower, and she was going to climb to the very top.
And the tower had no room for freaks like Baam.
Someday, she had planned on leaving him, closing the door that let light into the cave and never opening it again. She would race up the stairs and levels of the tower with no one stopping her, no regrets holding her back. Of course, she would remember him fondly sometimes. But as a memory of long passed times, days that would never return and that she didn't particularly want to return.
And she imagined he would miss her. Perhaps for a while he would think she was coming back. But eventually he would realize that she was gone. That a being of light like her couldn't stay with a creature of night. No, she had to go up to the stars, and he had to stay in the basement. That was just the way things were.
Perhaps he would cry. Tears would stream from his face until he got dehydrated and couldn't cry anymore. He would lie on the ground in the cave, miserable without her, unable to live. Perhaps he would die of his sorrow, her name the last word to leave his lips. If so, it was only a fitting way for him to die.
He wasn't meant to follow her up the tower. That was what Regulars did, not freaks like him. He was disgusting, a cave creature, less than human, not worthy of a space in her life. She would give him a little bit of her time, but sooner or later, all she wanted to be to him was a memory.
And to her he would be a memory of her own kindness, a testimony to her generosity in having the patience to befriend him, to keep a poor beast company in the dark. He was supposed to be honored to get that much from her, not keep on wanting more.
He wasn't supposed to follow her.
But he did.
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AN: So...One again, it's hard to stick to canon in a story like this. Like, all we really know is that Baam was in a dark place and Rachel came down to him and changed his life. But what was his life like before that? How did he live? What did he eat? What did he wear? How did they communicate if she had to teach him all the words? It's a mystery that I tried to explore a little bit here, but ultimately I have no clue.
Also, for the record, BaamxRachel is not my ship. It is my antiship and a little messed up, at least in this version. But I do think Rachel is a very interesting and fun character. No matter how much I hate her, you have to love someone that twisted and pathetic.
Review and I will love you!