Author's Note: This chapter contains graphic descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Reader discretion is advised.
A special thanks to u/Revyokami of r/blacklagoon for ensuring that this story follows the Black Lagoon canon.
On a personal note: I sincerely apologize for the length of time between chapters. I write consistently, but often reread my work multiple times to ensure quality before publication. If you enjoy this story, please consider becoming a beta reader to help it get published more quickly. You will be credited in all future Author's Notes for doing so.
Chapter 5
Revy cleared away their dishes after they finished eating. She dumped them in the sink. It was starting to get full. Then she grabbed her Cutlasses from their holsters and sat on the edge of their bed with her legs dangling over the side, facing the wall. If she was going to relive her past, she wanted them in her hands. She thought about asking if Rock wanted to know about her dream, but then remembered its ending and decided not to. If they were covering her story, she'd get to that part eventually, if she decided to tell him. She popped her clips, traded them, and slid them back into place several times before she spoke.
"Where should I start?" she asked without looking at him.
Click, click. Click, click.
She kept trading her clips. Rock was forcibly reminded of their first night together.
"Where and when you were born sounds okay. But really wherever you want."
Revy took a deep breath and began.
"I was born on Mott Street, New York City, USA. Never knew my mom. Dad'd kick my ass whenever I asked about her. Did that a lot, my dear ol' dad. That, 'n drink," she added. Rock stayed silent.
Click, click. Click, click.
"I dropped outta school… wanna say… 'bout seventh grade. The place was shit. So I just stole shit to sell for a while. Got real good at it too. Dad didn't care. Sometimes I'd bring some money home. Sometimes booze. He liked that. Also, 'round then's when I started to use a gun." She paused for a moment to look at her Cutlasses, during which time she stopped trading the clips. "Dad had a couple pieces stashed in a drawer. Let's see..."
She paused here, thinking back.
"One was a Smith and Wesson 439 and a Harrison and Richardson STR022. Shit compared to what I have now," she smiled down at her berettas. "Good for practice though. Used to shoot cans in an alley. Long as I bought my own ammo and kept 'em clean, he was none the wiser."
She continued to stare at her Cutlasses for a moment, then began trading the clips again and continued.
"Sometimes I got caught. Got arrested. Dad'd come to bail me out. Beat the shit outta me when we got home every time. Always yellin' 'bout how much cash I cost him. Bastard."
Click, click. Click, click.
Rock couldn't help but tighten his jaw. This was the second time in less than five minutes she mentioned being hurt by her father. He gathered that this was a common occurrence, and he liked the man less and less.
"When I was twelve, I got sent to juvie for a year. Stole some smokes. Had enough of a sheet by then, the judge put me away. Didn't see dad for a year. Only good thing about it."
She paused again here, remembering. She hadn't thought about this stuff in years.
"They told us that the only difference between juvie and prison was the size of the shackles. They marched us in. All chained together. Me an' about thirty other little brats. They laid down the rules. If we were good, we got good shit. If we were bad, we got bad shit. The food was always shit though..."
She made a face of disgust.
"Dinner most times was some kinda stew or pasta thing. First time I tried it I couldn't make it past the first bite. Think there were maggots in the bread too. By breakfast the next day, I was hungry enough I didn't care.
Click, click. Click, click.
"They made me clean the bathrooms for fifty cents an hour. I tried to fight at first, so they shoved me in solitary 'til I went along. A toothbrush in there cost five bucks. Soap cost fifteen. And just one fuckin' pad cost twenty fuckin' dollars," she said with added disgust. "Most of us girls just used toilet paper. Three bucks a roll, plus whatever you could swipe from the can.
Click, click. Click, click.
"One day this big, black cunt decides to start shit with me. I was smaller than a lot of the other girls. Guess she thought I'd be easy. Cornered me in the bathroom. She said 'Ey chinky! Lick mah vag!'" Revy laughed at her own impersonation, then continued, "I told her to fuck off, and she got mad. Punched me in the stomach. We fought. I had the mop, but damn she was fat. C.O. got to us before it got too crazy. Shoved me in solitary for a week."
"Why'd they put you in solitary?" Rock asked.
"Fighting," she spat.
"But it was the other girl who started it," he protested.
She looked at him with dead eyes.
"Ya think they gave a shit?"
Rock shook his head sadly.
"Clearly not. That's horrible, Revy."
She shrugged.
"Please go on."
She turned back to her guns.
"When I got out, they dropped me back at dad's place. I remember coming back home. Think that might be the only time I was kinda happy to see the joint. He was sitting in front of the T.V. Yelled at me to get him another beer. First thing he said when he saw me."
"Seems to me," Rock commented, "He didn't care much either."
Revy turned to him. Her eyes were odd this time. On the surface, they were still dead, like the boarded windows of a house. But there seemed to be a small light behind them this time. Maybe a small glimmer of shared understanding.
"No," she agreed. "He didn't."
Over the next half hour, they talked about that part of her life. Revy started to feel oddly flattered. It was like she was in a museum of her early life, conducting a tour of its horrifying exhibits. No one had ever asked to be on her tour before, and Rock was an excellent audience. He asked appropriate questions and listened to her answers. He shared her revulsion of her father. He was horrified by the violence she'd experienced, and he cast no negative judgment on her past bad behavior. If it had been anyone else, she would have been far more guarded, but he had a way of putting her at ease. She even laughed a few times at her own jokes. She told him more than she'd ever told anyone and jumped around to stories that she herself had nearly forgotten.
She turned to face him but made sure the safeties of her guns were on as she kept playing with them.
As she spoke, Rock remembered what she had told him about her life during their first night together. "She was unlucky as shit. Like she was cursed. Because everything and everyone bad in this world found her out, no matter where she tried to hide, and everything good took one look at her and ran off in the other direction." He had to admit she had an accurate assessment.
She spoke again.
"Then, when I was about thirteen," she paused and twirled her guns by the trigger guards, "maybe fourteen, dad gave it to me worse than he ever had. There was this boy on a street corner I kinda liked. Name was Petey. Used to buy me smokes and bullets. Well, one day we were talking, and I kissed him," she smirked at Rock for a moment, who nodded once with no sign of jealousy, before turning back to her guns. "Somehow, dad found out. Pissed him off worse than I'd ever seen. Called me a whore. Smashed me across the face with a bottle. Asshole."
Click, click. Click, click.
"Wait," Rock interrupted.
Revy looked at him.
"I just want to see if I'm getting this right," he continued. "Your dad didn't care that you dropped out of school, started stealing, and got sent to juvie. But he beat you up whenever you asked about your mom and smashed you across the face because you kissed a boy?"
Revy smirked.
"Yup," she responded. "Had some great fuckin' family values, my dad. I'd say he kicked my ass just about every month. You could say it was his..." she looked pointedly at Rock to emphasize the next word. "Hobby."
She laughed hard at her own joke. Rock smiled. He could appreciate the reference to his confrontation with Balalaika in Japan.
"That was one good thing about juvie," she chuckled. "Apart from that time with the black bitch, I didn't get my ass kicked near as much as I did at home. It wasn't much," she shrugged. "But it was something."
Rock nodded thoughtfully.
"Oh," she added suddenly. "Also, juvie's when I started praying to God."
Her shoulders fell when she said this. Her eyes looked sad. It was as if she was disappointed in herself for once having religious beliefs. Or, that she was sad that she once had and no longer did. Rock couldn't tell which it was.
"They had Bible classes in there every Sunday. It got me out of bathroom duty for a while, which was cool. And they kept going on about how God loves his kids. Sounded good to me, so I prayed to Him. For a while, anyway."
Revy looked back at her guns and kept talking.
"I ran out of our place after dad smashed me. Ran a few blocks over. Sat on a curb. My face felt like shit. It was dark. The cops got me. Dunno why," she shrugged. "I was just sitting there. They shoved me in a cell. I waited there a few hours."
She paused again here, staring at her guns. Rock remembered what she'd told him in the submarine so long ago. "I believed in God right up until that night the cops beat the shit outta me for no reason at all," she'd said. He wondered if this was the same incident. He wished he'd listened better then. Finally, she spoke again. More slowly this time.
"This big ugly fuckin' cop came up to my cell." She felt herself shiver at the memory. "Called me cute. Asked if I wanted to earn some money, long as I was 'ere, or get out a little sooner than normal. I asked him how, and he told me to suck his cock. I told him to fuck right off, and he got real mad." She gripped the handles of her guns as hard as she could, her fingers tight on the triggers. "He barged in. Knocked me back. Then, he unzipped his pants," she expelled a deep, shuddering breath on the last word. Her guns rattled in her hands. Each word she spoke came out like a column of black smoke; sweat had appeared on her face. "He yanked down my jeans and..."
She trailed off. Suddenly, she felt cold and stiff. Stuff she'd tried so hard to forget came barreling into her skull like buckshot. She remembered the sneer of her principal on her last day of school and swearing never to go back there again. She remembered the cold contempt of the judge as he confiscated a year of her life. She remembered that black bitch in juvie. Remembered nearly throwing up for how much her fist hurt in her stomach. She remembered the sanity crushing boredom of solitary. She remembered praying to God. Begging Him for help. She remembered dad in his Laz-E-Boy watching T.V., yelling at her to get him another beer, after a full year of not seeing him. She remembered the pain of the glass as he smashed the bottle across her face. She remembered the weight of the cop on top of her, the friction of his tongue as he licked her cheek, the stink of his breath, and the faint glint of the wedding ring on his finger.
Suddenly, she remembered that Rock was there. She'd been so consumed by memories she'd temporarily forgotten. She looked him in the eyes again, and her expression was full of surprise and anger. Her breathing was heavy. The hammers of her guns clicked back into place, ready to fire. But she didn't aim at him, not yet. He'd been a good audience so far, and she didn't want to lose him. Still, the killer in her woke up and looked at him through her eyes. It was searching for any sign of pity. If she saw it, she might well blow his brains out the back of his head; nice apartment be damned. To be pitied by him would be to be looked down upon by a man who had no right to look down on her.
Rock, for his part, was maintaining an attentive poker face. His years in the criminal underworld had taught him when to keep his mouth shut, to control his expression, accept the sound of guns as normal, ask appropriate questions, and let one side talk. He allowed his eyes to widen in horror, to show that he was listening. He thought he knew what was coming. She'd gone far enough that he thought he could guess, but he kept quiet all the same. He gave no other physical reaction except to blink once because he had to. He thought that if he intentionally forced himself not to blink, she might take that as unnatural. He didn't know what was the best reaction to give in this situation, but he knew what ones would be the worst.
It only lasted a few seconds, but time seemed to stand still. The very air in their room seemed to grow heavy and stop. The sounds from outside dimmed to absolute silence. Every fiber of Rock's attention was focused on her and on not doing anything to interrupt or dissuade her. Finally, his efforts paid off.
Revy took a shuddering breath and spoke as calmly as she could force herself to, though her tone came out deeper and quieter than normal. Her guns rattled as she trembled slightly.
"He raped me."
Rock's face slid into an expression he hoped would convey sorrow and horror, though not pity. Apparently he hit the magic number, because she didn't level her guns into his chest. He was trying as hard as he could to think of an appropriate response, though it seemed like part of his mind had frozen in shock. He was afraid that he might say something that would make her regret having told him this. He felt he had the start of a good response, but he took a little too long thinking.
Revy decided she'd told him enough.
"So?" she asked him.
"Hmm?" he asked.
She narrowed her eyes and persisted.
"You just got chapter one of the tragedy of Rebecca Li," she answered, her eyes cold and dark. "Think it'll sell?"
Rock leaned forward and met her gaze. He forced his voice calm.
"First of all, no one is going to hear what you just told me. Not from me, anyway."
She twisted her features in a reaction that was part instinctive disbelief, part warning that he'd better not. But she didn't say anything or move her guns.
"Second, thank you."
Her expression betrayed slight confusion. She lowered her pistols. The killer in her rolled its eyes and settled back into her chest.
"I wanted to know your story, and in giving it to me, you were willing to relive a series of truly horrific events. Thank you, Revy.
"Next, I want you to know just how much I admire you. I can't imagine what you went through. I'm amazed that you survived, Revy. Hell, I'm in awe of you."
Revy sat there quietly. Her eyes relaxed. She took a few deep breaths and looked down at her guns. She didn't know what reaction she had been expecting, but this was none of the ones she'd been guarding against. She felt empty. The bloodthirsty killer in her slipped back into slumber, leaving only the sad empty girl behind. She didn't know how she was supposed to feel, but she didn't feel angry or bitter. She'd tried as hard as she could to forget that night. She drowned it in violence, work, pills, and booze.
Rock, for his part, was coming up with another reaction. He knew she was an individual who admired personal strength. She had been violated. If she viewed what happened as some sort of failure on her part...
"There's also something else," he continued. She looked at him.
"It's not your fault."
"Huh?" she asked. She was a bit confused, and that confusion made her angry.
Rock thought back to his day with the Romanian twin. He had often thought about what he should have said to her before her death. He knew that nothing he said could have saved her, but he still thought about her and her situation. He saw parallels between her and Revy, and he decided to use some of the same lines he'd thought of since then.
"When you were born," he said, "you were owed, and deserved, a bare minimum of protection and respect which everyone close to you failed to provide. There was nothing you could have done to stop it from happening, nor could you have been expected to. What happened that night was not your fault."
Revy's face was expressionless. She didn't know how to feel. She could feel her heart rate rise and breathing increase.
"It's not your fault," Rock repeated, coming closer to her and raising his hand to touch her shoulder.
Suddenly, Revy stood up. Turning away from Rock, she holstered her guns.
"I wanna shoot something," she said. "Ya need anything before I go?"
She tried to keep her voice flat, but it quivered slightly on the last word. She inwardly cursed herself for her moment of weakness. Rock noticed.
"Revy…" he said, his voice full of that horrid sympathy and understanding.
"Rock!" she spat his name as if she had just been skewered by one of Shenwa's knives. "Do you need me before I go?!"
Rock wanted to say more, but he knew she didn't want it. He let his hand fall back to the bed in defeat.
"No. Stay safe, Revy."
She stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her.
"I love you," he whispered into the dark.