Chapter 9

Holly and Robert made it back to their hotel, after leading their pursuer on a mad chase through the streets, finally getting away on the tube. Holly's adrenaline was pumping; she was pacing around the hotel room like a madwoman. She was furious, she was exhausted, and she just wanted this whole business to be over with. And to start with, she needed Robert to go away. It was getting too easy to slip into old patterns with him, and if that happened, she'd never be able to keep him out of harm's way.

"All right, enough is enough," Holly started in angrily, "why are you still here?"

Robert looked at her, confused. "Crylium is setting you up. I'd like to know why. I have no love lost for a company that intentionally manufactures a deadly virus. And I'm worried about your safety, these blokes mean business."

"I can take care of this myself," replied Holly obstinately.

"Yes, you were doing a bang-up job of that. Dammit Holly, let me help you. Why won't you let me work with you on this?"

"Because I don't trust you!" Holly exploded. "Never in my life have I trusted anyone as much as I used to trust you. But you smashed that trust, first when you played dead for 15 years, and then a little more for good measure when you packed me off to rot in prison in a tropical hell-hole."

Robert looked down at the ground. "Yeah, well, you have to admit that you were playing a pretty good game there in Port Charles." He continued defeatedly, "I guess there's nothing I can do to earn any of that trust back."

Holly was a bit taken aback by Robert's admission which was completely unexpected. "You could start by being honest with me. Trust starts with honesty."

Holly's words threw both of them back to a conversation right after Holly had chosen Robert over Luke:

"Robert, we trust one another and that means what we have is just going to get better and better."

"Trust requires honesty," stated Robert.

"I'm trying to be honest," replied Holly.

"I am being honest with you. You're the one who's been cooking up all kinds of tall tales lately. Listen, Holly, what is it you want to know?" The current-day Robert was starting to get annoyed.

"What do I want to know? Who are you now? What has happened to you? You are nothing like the Robert I loved." Robert winced as though Holly had punched him in the stomach.

Robert collected his thoughts and responded, "There are no easy answers to that one."

"All right, here's another question then," Holly was on a tear, "in Port Charles," she continued, "you told me that I didn't factor into your decision to stay dead at all. Is that really the truth?"

"Now that's an easy one. My first priority was my daughter's safety. Faison was still out there and the WSB was threatening to hurt her if I didn't toe their line. Robin's life superceded anything else at that point, like alleviating anyone's else pain. I'm sorry if that put you pretty low on the priority list. If it's any consolation, my own needs and desires were pretty low down there as well," finished Robert bitterly. "I spent eight years repaying some obligation that I'm not even sure was mine to repay."

"I still don't know how you could do that to any of us. Good Lord, Robert, there had to be another way," Holly persisted.

Robert exploded, "How dare you give me a hard time about anything to do with faking one's death. You were the pioneer in that territory."

"Well, that's what makes it worse. You knew exactly how much it hurt! You told me how my death destroyed you. I cannot comprehend that you would willingly let any of us - especially Robin - go through that same pain," railed Holly.

"Holly, you and I weren't even together then," said Robert exasperatedly, "I was married to Anna - you agreed to a divorce, pretty readily, if I recall correctly."

"That didn't make dealing with your death any easier. It's not as though I had stopped loving you."

"Hold on a minute. You keep insinuating that I had stopped loving you. Are we going to have this conversation every few years, just for old times' sake? I never stopped loving you, you fool. And if you had contacted me when you woke up from your coma, I would have been there right away. I would've dropped everything. Hell, if you had bothered to contact me at any point, instead of coming up with reasons to stay away, if you had been brave enough to realize that what we had was special..." Robert's voice trailed off from a shout. "I'm not saying it would have been easy, it would have been excruciating, especially for Robin, but you just gave up! You gave up on us, Holly!" His voice became raised again.

"So don't go trying to lay some sort of guilt trip on me, luv, " raged Robert.

Holly's anger and frustration by this point had dissolved into huge, wracking sobs. Tears for the years they had lost and the mess they had made of things.

"How about I tell you what I've been up to for the last fourteen years. Maybe then it will sink in to that pig-headed skull of yours. The WSB fished me out of that boat explosion. I was in pretty sad shape. But once I got back on my feet, they informed me that they had some work for me. I was their new hired gun. I went from place to place and did the contract hits. Most of the people I killed were pretty despicable characters, but I kept wondering when my next hit would be some poor slob like me, in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's no job satisfaction in contract killing, at least not for me. My only motivation was keeping Robin safe. And you have to cut yourself off from the past, because there's no going back. And once you do that, it becomes easier and easier to tell yourself that the past didn't happen at all, because you can't find a place for a horrible person like yourself in beautiful memories."

Robert didn't have the strength to stand anymore. He sank to the floor beside the bed, sitting on the floor. Holly sat down beside him.

"When I finally got out from under the WSB, I actually entertained the idea of tracking you down and trying to find some little piece of happiness. I went to Montreal, I followed you around for a day." Robert paused to steal a glance at Holly. She looked nothing short of flabbergasted.

"And then my inner voices got to me, told me I didn't deserve that kind of peace. I thought, given what I had been doing, that you wouldn't want me anymore. Because I wasn't the man that you loved anymore."

Holly remembered how incredibly lonely she had been, how that very loneliness had eventually lead her to accept Dougald's proposal a year or so later. She would have given anything to have had Robert back. Holly started to weep all over again.

Tears poured down Robert's face. It was the most he had allowed himself to feel in years. His chest was hurting and for a moment he wondered if he was having a heart attack. He finally chalked it up to the overload of emotions. He couldn't speak anymore, and finally got up the courage to look at Holly. She had managed to stop crying and was looking at him with such empathy that it started his chest to hurting all over again.

Holly reached out a hand to Robert and then put her arms around him. He put his head on her shoulder and rested. After a long while, their respirations became synchronized and they fell to sleep, still sitting on the hotel room floor, side by side.

Several hours later, Holly woke up, still sitting on the floor. She nudged Robert with her elbow. "Robert, you need to get into bed." He mumbled something unintelligible in his sleep. She managed to pull him to his feet and get him in the bed. "That old back of yours may not be what it used to," murmured Holly as she tucked Robert in and kissed him softly on the forehead, "but you'll still do."