Julie cut the engine and swiveled in her seat to face R. They were parked next to the metal stairs leading up to the 747, R's zombie bachelor pad, as she liked to call it, the plane he'd brought her to just after they met.

Granted, it had been under horrible circumstances, and was more of a kidnapping than a meeting, but still, she'd come to think of it as their first date. Which was absolutely weird, and a little creepy, she could admit.

R had been quiet the entire drive, and even now was looking off in the distance, across a tarmac littered with abandoned planes, dull under a thickly clouded sky. Not really focused on anything. She wondered what was going on in there.

"So..." she started, and smiled when he seemed to come back to himself, turning to her. His beautiful blue eyes were haunted, but he managed a small smile.

"Why are we here again, when you're supposed to be resting?"

"I'll tell you inside," R said quietly, and opened his door.

"Oh kaay," she sighed, frowning as she watched him pull himself out of the car. His color was terrible, and he was still holding his side, wincing as he lifted himself up. It was obvious the wound was really bothering him.

They shouldn't be doing this.

She climbed out of the car and started up the stairs, her footsteps clanging against the rusted metal. When was the last time they'd both been out here? Was it before the wall came down? That sounded right, but she knew that R had been out a few days ago.

Actually, now that she thought about it, that's when the nightmares started. Which was also weird. Had he stirred something up coming back?

She figured she was about to find out, so she stopped the questions rambling in her own head, and stepped up on the platform behind him.

"Can you get the door?" he asked.

Julie frowned, gazing up at his pale face, "It's really hurting isn't it?"

"I'll be okay."

"You keep saying that," she muttered, pulling the lever across. The door swung open, and she grimaced at the smell that washed over them.

R had the same reaction. "I tried to air it out a few days ago. So much for that."

"Oh... no, it smells better," Julie offered, not meaning it at all.

R smirked, "Uh huh. Sure."

Grinning back at him, she stepped inside. Almost immediately she could tell he'd been doing some heavy searching through his collection, piles had grown, shifted and collapsed with some items scattered haphazardly on the floor and seats, as if they'd been thrown.

"Sorry it's such a mess," he said quietly.

Julie wandered down the right aisle, towards the cart where the record player used to sit. There was just an empty space there now. She ran her hand across the strings of a puppet hanging nearby as she took in the rest of the plane. "Looks like you were looking for something."

He didn't answer, so she turned, just in time to catch the end of a noncommittal shrug. She would have bugged him about it in their usual routine, but he looked so haggard she just stared at him instead. His eyes left hers and fell to what he was holding.

A little brown bear.

"Aww," she said, smiling as she walked back to him. She pointed at it. "That's cute, where'd you get that?"

As she neared he held it out to her and dropped it into her hands. There was such a look of despair on his face she almost dropped the thing herself. Instead, she looked down at the little stuffed toy. It made her smile at first, she'd had one just like it when she was a kid. Her mom had given it to her in happier times, after a visit to a local zoo.

Julie's had been super soft. This one wasn't.

As she turned it over and over, she realized why, and the smile fell from her face.

The fur was stiff and spiky with dried blood.

"Oh..." she said very quietly. And that's all she could think to say. "...oh."

Julie slowly looked up at R. He was staring at the bear, and the despair had vanished from his face, leaving a blankness that gave her echoes of R when she'd first known him, as he'd stared down at her that first night. As if he'd retreated somewhere deep inside himself.

"You asked me once..." he said in a quiet voice, "about the stories here."

Swallowing, she nodded, "And you said-"

"Some of them aren't very nice," R finished, his voice barely above a whisper as his eyes rose to meet hers.

They were incredibly intense, and she knew he was about to share something very important. Something he needed her to hear.

Nodding very slightly, she looked down at the bear in her hands. Apparently it was a part of one of those not nice stories. R was finally going to open up to her about something he'd done. While she knew it was a good thing for him to do, she couldn't help but feel... apprehensive.

"What happened?" she finally asked, as he hadn't spoken.

He sighed. "I killed her."

Julie nodded slowly. "I figured somebody died. Who was she?"

"I don't know. She was young. I... tore her throat out... she died in my arms."

Julie blinked, shocked by his bluntness. "Oh."

She stared down at the bear, now desperately wanting it to be anywhere but in her hands.

"But I didn't..." he said, then paused, as if he wasn't sure how to continue.

"You didn't mean to? I know that," Julie said quickly, as she looked up at him, hoping to make him feel better.

Hoping to make herself feel better.

R shook his head, "No-"

"Right, and that's what's important to remember R, you didn't want-"

He reached out and grasped her arm, "Julie, I wasn't done, please let..."

The suddenness of his motion, in the midst of a story of a blood stained bear, unsettled her enough that she flinched from his touch. She regretted it immediately as R frowned deeply and pulled his hand back.

"I-I'm sorry, I... this was a bad idea," he said, and started to turn away, his arm rising to cradle his side again.

Julie reached out to him, catching his fingers. "No, Rowan, please," she squeezed his hand, "this is important."

She tried to prompt him to continue, "You didn't...?"

As he turned back to her, his eyes were sad. Pulling his hand gently from hers as she frowned up at him, he finally spoke, "I didn't... finish... her."

"Finish her?" she asked, confused.

The look on his face was tortured. "Eating... her." Slowly, he raised his hand, and lightly tapped his temple.

"Oh." Julie kept her face as neutral as she could, but inside her stomach was roiling.

"She was the first person... I killed. I'd... died a couple of days before, and was just... lost. Wandering. Found a park. Sat there with the dead things, a dying oak and a burnt out car. My brother had set up my iPod before I... turned. So I was listening to music, just sitting on a bench."

His voice grew quieter.

"I guess she didn't know why I didn't just attack her... she was curious," he shook his head, "It was just... so stupid. She didn't know. She sat down next to me. Talked to me. For a while it was okay, I was curious too, and the music... distracted me..." His voice trailed off as he looked at her, pained.

Julie looked down at the bear. Her head was filling in the blanks, filling it with herself as a little kid, holding the same bear, sitting on a park bench. Her gut twisted in knots.

"She wanted to see what was playing on the iPod," he started.

"Oh god," Julie whispered.

R's face fell, "But when she looked, I think the display used up the last of the battery, and the music... died."

Julie was starting to feel sick.

"She was leaning over, so close to me. Too close..." His eyes grew distant as he looked over her head toward the back of the plane, "All I could smell was her... life. That's one thing you have when you're dead. That scent, it's... everything... it's... intoxicating..."

His eyes fell to her, "It's what you exist to do... find that scent. Find life. And take it."

The look on his face sent a shiver up Julie's spine. He'd never talked about this with her before. He'd always hid it, covered it up, or danced around it if anything got too close. But now he was presenting it to her, raw and screaming, almost as if he was daring her to react. Pushing her. The look in his eyes was empty, his face expressionless. Like the dead. Was he doing that on purpose? God, she would be okay if he stopped.

"I... got... hungry," he said quietly. "Her throat was there... I... held her. She tried to get away... but it was too late. It was the first time I'd... I..."

R closed his eyes and sighed. When he opened them again, they were dark, and his mouth twisted bitterly, "I absolutely meant to Julie. I wanted to. At that moment, it was the only thing that meant anything, and when I did it, it meant everything. You have no idea."

"But I didn't finish... I didn't break her skull open, I didn't tear out her... thoughts... her memories..."

"R... please... stop," Julie whispered.

He didn't seem to hear her. "Because I was so new... And because I felt her die, I felt her... music stop... and there must have been something of me inside because I just let her go." His head tilted as he looked down, as if he was seeing it play out in front of him, and his eyes were pinched and wet, "She fell from me... and she was just... gone. Staring at nothing. Her neck was... I did that..."

Tears were falling from Julie's eyes.

R stared at the floor, wiping a hand across his face.

"I left her. I didn't want to see those eyes... empty when they'd been so... alive before. I wasn't... upset, I was too new to feel much of anything then, just... confused. I walked away, and it wasn't until later, when I was... hunting again... that I saw I was holding her bear."

His eyes rose to meet hers again, and his pain was palpable.

"I'd taken it from her body. Just like I took Perry's watch, Julie. Just like I took so many things."

He swept his hand out carelessly, encompassing the plane around them, the piles of stuff that cluttered the seats, the aisles, the overhead bins.

"You're surrounded by trophies Julie. Not everything here, but too many things here... taken from the dead. From people I killed. Do you know how many?"

"Stop it..." Julie whispered, her face wet with tears as she stared around the plane in growing horror. All of the things she'd picked up and played with when she was here, laughed over and marveled at... were artifacts of the dead. Remnants of lives extinguished in pain and fear.

Why was R doing this to her? She wanted desperately to run out of this tomb, her skin was crawling with his words, but she was trying so hard to be there for him, to show him she would always be. Why was he pushing this at her so hard?

"I have them in my head Julie... the memories of the people I killed." His voice fell to a sigh, "...hundreds of them... I can't turn them off, I can't get rid of them."

"So many lives. I know what it's like to be an eighty year old man with Alzheimer's, and I know the pain his wife felt as she watched him fade from her, because I killed them both in their home." He walked over and brushed his fingers along the same puppet strings she had touched moments ago. "This was theirs... they bought it on their fiftieth wedding anniversary."

Julie gave a choked sob, "Rowan... no..." Too much. This was too much.

"I know what it's like to be a mother with three screaming kids married to a man who didn't give enough of a shit for most of their life. Thankfully he did when it was important, because at least I don't know what it's like to be her three screaming kids."

Reaching into a wooden tray next to the cart he pulled out a small glass figure. A unicorn, rearing on its hind legs, its horn dipped in gold. "She loved this. Carried it with her everywhere. It was the last birthday present from her dad. I was hunting, found her family in a supermarket. She led me away, to protect them... and I... took this from her pocket when I was done..."

Julie lifted her hand to her mouth, unable to take any more of these moments, these deaths he was giving her.

R turned back to her, and the sorrow in his eyes was unbearable. "Julie... I know what it's like to be a teenage boy falling in love with a beautiful teenage girl in the middle of a walled in city, surrounded by soldiers, watching the world fall apart."

Julie drew in a sharp breath. Perry. He was talking about Perry... no nono. "R... don't do this... please..."

Shaking his head, he walked towards her, "I know what its like to have so much hope inside, an unshakable belief that everything can get better, until the world shows time and time again that its just not true... to watch dad die a corpse at my feet... to give up completely, and just wait for the one mission where I can go off and meet death on my own terms... to meet that death realizing I'd lost the one thing that meant everything to me."

To hear Perry's words coming from R's mouth was horrifying. She shook her head, tears streaming from her eyes, and pulled back as he neared, "No..."

R grasped her arm gently. "You were the most important person in his life Julie. I killed him... I took his memories... that stupid watch..."

"Then I took you..." he said softly.

Anger, horror and hurt twisted through Julie and she suddenly lashed out at R, jerking her arm away from his grip as she swung with the other hand, slapping him hard against the cheek.

The sound was shocking, like the crack of a gunshot in the cramped confines of the plane, and she froze for a moment, her hand stinging, reeling from everything R had just said.

R stood motionless, no longer looking at her, a red mark growing against his pale skin where she had hit him.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled softly. "But I... you had to see..."

Julie glared at him, her eyes blurry with tears. "See what? That I'm just another thing you collected? How dare you!"

R winced and shook his head, "No, that's not what I meant-"

"Bullshit it isn't! How dare you say that to me!" she yelled. "You think I don't know what you're trying to do? You wanted to shock me Rowan? Show me what a monster you were? Well congratulations, it worked! Get the hell away from me!"

Julie turned to go. As he reached out to her, she flinched away.

"Don't touch me!" she cried, and stormed down the aisle. She couldn't bear to look at anything in the plane any more, everything had a story behind it, a gravemarker for another soul, another trophy for the dead. Was that really what she had been for him? Was that why they'd fallen in love? Why he'd taken her, because he was acting from Perry's memories?

Jesus, she couldn't handle that right now, she had to get out of here...

As she neared the door, her stomach twisted in knots. Was she really about to drive off and leave him?

She looked back, and R was still standing there, surrounded by the detritus of his old life. His collection.

No... I am not a part of that! He didn't collect me!

Julie reached for the lever, tears squeezing from her eyes, and pushed the door out into the cold winter air. Taking the steps two at a time, the metal stairs echoing loudly, she reached the tarmac, and jumped in the car.

As the engine roared to life, she broke down completely, her heart breaking as she slammed on the pedal and tore away from the plane.

I was quite shocked when I wrote this chapter, as it went somewhere quite confronting for the two of them. I would be curious to hear what people thought.