Revy...

She shook from her anger as the seconds ticked on, physically frozen to the spot. She felt her heart hammering in her chest, her head started pounding like she was experiencing the mother of all hangovers. One problem, she wasn't drunk or drinking and this was really happening.

Around her, it seems like time swirled indifferently though she felt emotionally stunted. Dead! For the briefest of moments, she felt actually dead. Her breaths sounded loudly in her ears as she stared at the man who ripped off the flimsy bandaid that had held her together. The thing that had kept the worst of her demons locked away just under the cardboard cover of her blood box, quieted momentarily by liquor and smokes. And he'd just...

She couldn't quite get enough air. Revy's vision blurred from unshed tears she's refused for so long. She didn't even allow herself to cry in prison when it got really tough or when she got shot, burned or stabbed. Not even during the times when she was abused and devalued as a human being; not even then did she cry. But now the tears were burning at the edges of her eyelids as they stared at one another, both wondering what the other would do next.

The son of a bitch's face looked as shocked as she felt. His expression explaining what his wordless lips failed to utter. It didn't matter. Whatever the hell he had to say it wouldn't reach her over the deafening sounds of her own blood roaring in her ears.

The bitterest shame she's ever felt (was still feeling) so raw she didn't know how to deal with that emotion except with rage, violence, and murder.

The demand "how the fuck did you know that?" "Who told you?" physically couldn't pass her lips over the lump that had formed in her throat. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she already knew the answers because no one could have told him. Because she had never told anyone. The little shit figured it out somehow.

Hatred for Rock lanced through her so strongly that it felt like something inside of her was warring to get out.

Always, he was like this! Digging, digging, digging for information. Never leaving well enough alone. She felt stupid, so stupid for allowing him to put his hands on her. For thinking of him as different than the rest. She could just imagine what he was thinking, how much he must have thought of her as a little dysfunctional charity case that he could apply his half ass efforts to in order to save.

His fucking stupid hobby.

Won't cry in front of him. I'm gonna make him fucking regret this!

"Revy... I didn't mean..." Rock started to say,

"You wanna make me happy, Rock?" Revy found herself saying with dangerous softness in her trembling voice. Then she was running towards him before neither of them knew it, tackling him. The bastard didn't even have time to react as her fists went flying. One hit followed another then another. Their bodies collapsing onto the bed with her on top naked. The towel became untied in the squirmish as they fought. Don't care! Don't fucking care.

Forget the guns, she was going to enjoy killing him with her own two hands!

At Rock's words, a feeling akin to a rusty knife slicing her from throat to stomach powered through her body like the rush of a blistering ocean of mixed emotions: shame, guilt, disgust, her own pathetic weakness on display, all of them stabbing her at once.

Shards from a broken mirror with an even uglier reflection. From just a few words and a mountain of pain and anguish shattered inside her. She no longer felt like a person.

I'm not a person. I'm Revy, I'm Two-Hands because of him. Because of them!

She heard herself screaming unintelligible words, saw Rock under her trying to block her relentless attacks to his face, head and any other vulnerable places she could find. There was blood on her fists, there was blood on his face. Rock hollowed in pain when she landed a blow where Fabiola had shot him and fracture a few of his ribs just three months before.

"Fucking die for me then!". She screamed

Unbidden, the memories of that morning after happened in the middle of all this and Revy felt like she wanted to puke or cry as acrid sensations jostle her.

It feels like I'm suffocating. Drowning!

Even now, they were as formidable as ever even after all these years. Memories strong enough to break her down no matter how much she wanted them to go away. To stop.

Please, please just stop. Stop!

To the backdrop sounds of Rock's painful yells, her screaming and the thud of fists hitting flesh, Revy relived the terrors of her abysmal past as vividly as the day it happened.

The morning was still early when she exited the precinct via the same way she came in; her long-sleeved hoodie up to hide the bruises, the mouth of a gun digging into her ribs as she was escorted from the building.

"One word out of your little whore mouth and I'll make sure you never make a sound again, we clear, bitch?" Her rapist threatened under his breath. The feel of his hand disgusted her. To be near him made her almost want to make a sound, to scream out and expose him for what he was and he could kill her right then, right there on the spot. She almost preferred death to him touching anywhere on her body. But as she looked around the early morning staff, there were sleepy faces, (some actually sleeping), their propped up palms or folded forearms commissioned as pillows. Would it make a difference if she did make a scene then died for it? No one cared while she was getting raped last night in a dingy rank cell. The cameras were directly pointing in her direction but no one came to the rescue. The thought of someone else in this shithole place knowing about what happened to her just a few hours prior turned her blood to ice in her veins, the humiliation made her throat tight and her eyes began to water. Rebecca kept her head down, fighting down the sobs as her feet moved her closer and closer to the exit in a slow march when she felt like running.

Just a little more. She thought then, though it felt like miles as if hours were leisurely passing by.

She couldn't help replaying the events that brought her to this nightmare over and over in her mind. There were still shards of glass in her ear from the night before when her father, in a drunken rage, shattered a Jack Daniells liquor bottle over her head. Knowing this familiar pattern so well and understanding that this was easiest it was going to get, thirteen-year-old Rebecca Lee fled out the bathroom window, down the back stairsway then sprinted through the alley. She was out breath by the time she made it to the main street curb where she sat with her head on her forearms over her knees. Time passed, people passed, cars passed, some stopped to laugh at her, shining their lights in her face. It all seemed to go blank after the police picked her up, as if her mind refused to relive anything beyond that point, wiped out by the smell of the city as she stepped through the doors of the precinct. The gun and the hand disappeared. She didn't want to be anywhere near there so she ran and ran until she was climbing up the stairs of her apartment building the same way she'd left. It was as if someone had pressed the rewind button on a remote and her life for the last several hours was playing backward only it wasn't really like that. She dearly wished she had a magic remote to undo everything. To go back as far as her birth and just erase it completely.

Climbing through the bathroom window, she slams the glass window shut then leaped to the door, locking it in a frenzy, immediately sliding down the flakey painted wood in a heap on the floor. Violent tremors washing over her uncontrollably, choked sobs hiccuped over the lump in her throat, lips trembling. She had no control over anything. Not her life. Not her body! Nothing.

Powerless.

Stupidly, she'd prayed in her mind to a deaf God as she was being violated to help, to kill the fucker who was raping her. She didn't know why she did it or expected that any miracle would happen. No good has ever come from her praying before, no guardian angel has ever given enough of a fuck to even spit on her.

The plethora of injuries all over her skin throbbed and pulse as her body tried to heal itself. Putting itself back together again. Yet she barely felt them. The way her skin crawled disgustingly drowned out everything else and she wanted to peel it off with her fingernails. She was more angry with the man on the outside of the bathroom door, no doubt passed out on the ratty pissed stained mattress of a bed in the living room, than she had ever been. Of all the times when he'd beaten her, abused her physically to the point of unconsciousness more than a few times, this was the worst.

This was supposed to be her home. She was supposed to have a loving mother and father who buys her shit and helps her with stupid stuff like homework like she's seen on tv ads. She was supposed to be carefree , normal boring life, rebel and scream how her parents just don't understand and they were supposed to be there when she needed them. They were supposed to fucking protect her!

Slowly, Rebecca scraped herself off the floor and started to undress. She couldnt help but wonder if it might have been better if she had stayed last night , played "punching bag" for a couple of hours or lock herself in the bathroom, escape to the roof. Something, anything but this.

She avoided looking at the bruises on her skin, turning her head away from the bathroom mirror as she removes her clothing. Her stomach, parts of her face, shoulders, and thighs were black and blue but the glaring proof of her ordeal sat on the seat of her panties. The white sticky substance that clunged to her flesh churned her empty stomach making her retch.

Stepping into the shower, Rebecca turned the water on, grabbed the soap and started scouring her body. Somewhere in the middle of her rigorously washing, soundless cries began to sob out while tears, a scorching deluge of frustration and blinding humiliation, ran unchecked, acting accordingly under a cold shower with the difference being that she could feel them. It wasn't the temperature of the water why she couldn't stop shaking. No matter how many times she scrubbed her body and between her thighs, it seemed like she could still feel him. Hurting her. Forcing himself inside her again and again. Marking her with his sperm. The blood on her white panties.

"Becky!" Came a shout from the living room. A crashing sound followed then muffled curses. "Where are you, you little bitch!?" The voice asked callously. It was rough from sleep and weak from drowning the sorrows of whatever demons plague a man and drives him to beat his own flesh and blood to a pulp. To nearly kill his wife almost every day until she went to the grocery store one day and never came back.

"Hate him." Rebecca's voice vibrated with rage.

Turning the water off she collected a clean shirt and a pair of jeans from the laundry basket in the corner. Quietly, she unlocked the door then headed to the kitchen. She passed her father undetected, the back of his head facing her way. She looked at him for a moment before putting her plan in action. A decision made solid in her mind.

There was a large pile of dirty dishes in the sink, the handles of utensils sticking out from under the pots, plates, and glasses. It wasn't hard to tell which were the knives but one tug and it would alert her father that she was in the room with him.

"Becky!" He yelled again at the top of his lungs.

She left the kitchen, softly padding to the back room, her room.

In the streets of New York, you can find just about anything. Get anything if you're skilled enough. As she took out the old shoebox from her poor excuse for a closet-one of those plastic wardrobes with the long zipper in the middle-she laid it on the linoleum covered tiles. Her mom had got the colorful mat one day with some money she'd manage to hide from her husband. Later that night, he'd added blood to the pink patterned flowers as he beat his wife for no reason in particular.

Because of him, she didn't have a mom even before she disappeared. Because of him, she couldn't have a normal life like the kids at her school. She hated them because she couldn't talk about her parents or what fun trips she'd been on like they could. She didn't have any friends because it had to be that way.

She opens the shoebox, reached in and pulling a gun out. Anger made her unfeeling. This wasn't courage. It's everything from last night and all the days and nights since she's been made to live in this shithole piled into one raw need to end it.

It's the final straw!

She checked the bullets in the pistol, only three remaining from the time she'd found it behind a dumpster. She'd never used it. Guns were dangerous and loud and even if she could fire off a round or two at empty cans or something, it would have to be on the outskirts of town or in the junkyard near the train tracks, not exactly on her turf and not worth the trip just to waste a couple of bullets when she could use the taxi money for new piercings or food.

Gun in shaking hands, Rebecca silently reentered into the living room. Her father was still stretched out on the bed, his head in the same place. Deliberately, she made a sound to alert him of her presence in the room.

"Becky, get me a fucking drink " he spat still not looking at her. "Now"

She's been missing all night, out on the street and that's the only thing he cared about?

Add it to the list.

She wasn't his daughter, she was just someone that he could use and project his beatings on. Someone he controlled.

No longer!

Her hands stopped shaking. Stepping into his view she kept the gun low moving it to one hand. By this time, she gripped the handle of the gun so tightly her fingers started going numb.

"Whatcha standing there for? Get me a fucking drink, you stupid little idiot! You're worse than your whore of a mother"

"I hate you!" She screamed grabbing a pillow off to the side. She moved quickly while he was too slow to react. The alcohol in his blood made him sluggish. The thought that he was safe as the adult in his own apartment, left him careless.

Revy didn't hesitate. It ended so quickly. Before he could respond. Before she could take another breath, the pillow was covering her father's face and she was squeezing the trigger at point-blank range. Again and again, she ended him until she spent all three bullets.

Breaths heaving as the sound of gunshots rang out, claiming the space. Feathers from the pillow danced in the stale air of gutter mud and blood. Her father's lifeless body. As the realization of what she's just done hit her brain in the wake of adrenaline, she suddenly had the urge to ran. So she did. She ran away never looking back, the gun still clasped in her fingers.


Because of Rock, she was remembering all of this.

Revy looked down at him and notice that something was off about this situation. He wasn't shielding himself any longer but look up at her bewildered. She heard her breaths hitching, felt like she just got tranquilized or something as a swift numbness invaded her limbs then her entire body. Looking at her hands, she saw her fists barely hitting him to make an impact.

Why am I shaking so much?

Her body didn't feel right. Felt drained as if all her strength was being sucked away.

"Revy?" She hears Rock saying her name, worry in his voice. Why?

A sensation like falling came over her just as black spots peppered her vision. Rock disappeared from under her replaced by the view of the ceiling for a second. Then nothing. Darkness. The last thing she heard before complete silence was Rock desperately calling out her name.