Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“It’s a chronicle,” he told them when asked. “Of what happened inside the tower. Everything that was said. All the decisions that were made. Everything we stood for. Would you like to contribute?”

“Perhaps tomorrow,” Robin said. He felt very tired, and for some reson the sight of those pages of scribbles filled him with dread.

Or, at least that’s what they had decided to run with. After Babel’s collapse and Victoire’s successful escape, Ibrahim’s book was salvaged in the rubble with his body. The book made rounds, picked up by the publishing houses and also by independent journalists to try to understand or ridicule the ‘terrorists’ who tried to bite the hands that fed them. Edited moments put forth into those pages by either pure imagination or stitched in by Letty’s biased stories. A few moments that were leaked anonymously, reeked of Victoire’s doing. 

And that was how I was able to keep tabs on my friend and what the Hermes have been put to lately. Apparently, a lot. The tower’s collapse was monumental to the cause. Things have not only been in an uproar just in Britain, but everywhere across the world. Almost every continent has been cornering the Britishers, clearly the hard work of Hermes Society. I’m still unsure of Victoire’s whereabouts; has she decided to return to France, Haiti or was she still in the kingdom? Maybe sought refuge with Hermes after her escape. One thing you could say about Victoire, is that she knew how to survive. Our life story, later published as Babel, Or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of Oxford Translator’s Revolution had diluted our lived experiences a lot, so as to make it easier for the whiter population to digest it. Heavens forbid they find out about unnecessarily acts of violence people of color had to suffer by their own hands. That might shock their brains into pulp! 

You might be wondering who is speaking to you right now or what relation do I have to this specific movement. Because I was the catalyst to it, Robin Swift. And I’m here to set the record straight. I’m here to tell you the whole truth; the good, the bad and the ugly. Starting all the way from when my father—biological father, Professor Richard Lovell, took advantage of my mother and then raped her for his pseudoscientific research to attain the perfect translator for the Oxford’s esteemed Royal Institute of Translation and Silver-making. How his cruelty, hatred and ironic admiration for my country and its people led to the downfall of Babel and ultimately, his country’s. Shame he wasn’t alive to see the very creation he worked so hard to perfect crumble everything he stood and cared for. 

I’m Robin Swift, brother of Griffin Lovell and son of #######, here to tell you my story, unfiltered. 

Chapter Text

“—slate,” and with that, the tower crumbled before my eyes. I saw my mother’s smiling face, calling for me, a hand reaching out. She was saying my name, my real name. Or at least I thought she was. But what I heard didn’t sound like it at all. The loud static making it hard to register anything around me on top of the pain my leg is in, after being crushed under one of the pilers.

It’s done. I’m done. My fight is over. I close my eyes, reliving my life. All the moments spent at Babel with the people I considered akin to my family. I think back on the all the balls we attended, the secret Babeler’s party during our final year. Letty and Victoire dancing and giggling. Ramy’s smile. Our late night sessions at the tower. Ramy drunk. His laugh. His snickering. His snide. The way he would hold my hand when no one was looking. The weight of his head on my chest. His dark tan hand holding my sickly pale fingers. His habit of fidgeting with my hands. The first time we introduced ourselves to each other. Good lord, his smile then. One of pure joy he’d dawn whenever he spot me in the crowd. I’m taken back to the ball night, the one where he kept dismissing Letty when she’d ask him to dance with her. The look in his eyes when he’d said, “Don’t you know why, Birdie?” Oh, I knew. I knew very well why. The intensity of his stare didn’t leave any room for doubt. The way he’d constantly look out for me whenever we were in public even though he was at a higher risk of being picked on. Yet, his first thought seemed to always be me. Just like how my every thought was always him. Ever since the first year when we went around Oxford on our free days. Hanging out with each other till we passed out on bed with exhaustion. His tired eyes and husky voice calling me Birdie. Birdie. Birdie. Bir—

“—die. Birdie, no, no, you can’t. Not now, Birdie. Just a few more minutes, please little Birdie. Please.”

It’s so funny how you relive all the best moments in your life. And a lot of those, for me, happened to be with Ramy. So much so that my brain is hallucinating his voice. It’s truly fascinating how brains work, even in our final moments. The hallucinations feel so real for some reason, a pair of arms holding me feel so similar to how Ramy’s did. It’s the only pair that’d ever held me so tight, the only one who never saw me as diseased and something to keep ten feet away. Oh what I’d give to be back in those arms right now. Soon, I delude myself. Soon, I’ll join him.

I still remember the day, it wasn’t that long ago when Letty had decided she was to betray us and then kill Ramy. She could insist she panicked until her last breath but she knew, I knew, and Ramy knew why she chose him. Why it had to be Ramy, my Ramy. I held his bleeding body, trying to make the silver do its job, pulling out the bullet with the magnet match-pair bar and healing it with the silver I always kept in my pants pockets. I had pressed it on his chest, praying to any god who’d listen; Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Krishna—whoever would answer my prayers. I wasn’t above groveling to Satan if it meant Ramy would be fine. But the urgency of the situation forced us out before I could get the chance to think, to do anything.

I still resent Letty for what she had done, all of it. Everything even Victoire had said. Letty was not as nice a person we liked to think. She was insufferable. Horrible to us, especially to Victoire. Belittled our problems, stating she had it worse because she was a white woman. To an extend, I do understand she had her own hardships to face but her blatant refusal to understand the concept of our mistreatment never ceased to amaze me. We didn’t know how to tell her that her current hardships were our normal tuesdays. We already face all of those issues, and on top of that have to deal with being ridiculed, shamed, belittled, discriminated, beaten up, berated, spat on, sneered at just for the color of our skin or the shape of our eyes. Because we weren’t White. How would I be able to explain to Letty that on the way back to Magpie Lane from the tower in the middle of the night, I was picked up by drunk Oxford kids, thrown into a secluded lane and stripped naked on the accusation of stealing. Then pickpocketing them. Then beaten till I bled just because they wanted to see if my blood ran red like theirs. Pissed on because I wasn’t entertaining enough; I wasn’t crying or yelling or pleading enough. That I wasn’t licking their boots as they stomped on my head, enough. All the while I couldn’t even get a word out. Because if I had yelled, cried or pleaded, it would result in attracting more of such attention by more of such bullies. That night, I had limped back to Magpie Lane, wearing my clothes in varying degrees of tatter. And that’s when Ramy saw me, presumed to be on his way to look for me. He knew what exactly had happened, because the week prior, it was him who had been picked on by the drunks. The rage on his face was palpable, the sight of my disheveled state turned his knuckles white and his iron will ready to risk it all.

But all of it melted when he heard me sob for the first time. It might’ve been the first time ever, too. I had learned very quickly that staying silent was the way to survive. To not make a sound when beaten, to try keeping tears in till nobody was around. To not have anybody but myself to hold onto when I cried. And for the first time, I cried freely. In Ramy’s arms. Even though I was dirty and disgusting, Ramy held me like something precious, something worthy. Someone to protect. I had clung onto him and he held on tight. I don’t know how long I cried, I think I cried even when he had got me into the bathroom to clean me. Delicate fingers peeling off my torn clothes. I still remember his soft, warm fingers brushing my tears away. How they felt when he ran them down my back, just to rinse off the dirt. How carefully he’d washed my upper body, careful of my wounds, all the while I muttered incoherently. He’d left me briefly to allow me to wash myself completely as he stood by the door, keeping guard. The utter humiliation I had felt in that moment could’ve caused me to cease existing. But he still took me back to my room, treated my wounds while talking animatedly about his family back in Calcutta, making sure I fall asleep before leaving to go to his room. The disappointment I felt might’ve reached him since not even five minutes later, he was back in my room, on my bed, holding me to him as he, too, fell asleep.

Both of us were glad it was our day off the next day but before I opened my eyes again, Ramy had gone back to his room.

If heaven does truly exist, I could only beg to be let in. After all, what heaven opens their doors for a murderer. I didn’t just kill my own father in cold blood but countless other people while taking the tower hostage. Logically, we were terrorists. I was a terrorist, risking civilian safety for my cause. It doesn’t matter that the government was informed of the steps we were going to take and they decided to not heed our warnings. Because at the end of the day, it was your everyday regular people struggling to make ends meet that suffered through no fault of their own. Just mine. Because I spearheaded this rebellion, banished anyone who opposed me, not even caring what would happen to them if they got caught by the government. All I can hope for, is Ramy. Hope and pray he made it and never has to face any other hardship in all his eternity while I pay for my sins in Hell. Did some of them truly deserve what happened to them? Possibly. But did that give me any right to play God? It doesn’t, does it? There was a high enough chance the ones who died by my hands were abusers. Killers, even. Men whose idea to relieve stress was by beating their wives and kids. Men who thought that people like me deserved being treated worse than their pets. Because to them, we weren’t humans. We were mere objects to own, use and abuse. So tell me, does that justify my wrongdoings? Does it justify killing my father for not being able to say my mother’s name, mother who he raped to sire me, his perfect experiment; a second attempt at breeding the perfect object to use in his selfish schemes?

Would heaven’s pearly gates open for me, allow me my happily ever after with Ramy?

All of that ran through my head in the last eight minutes of my life. Eight minutes. Of those, 7 of them were about Ramy. Just one chance, all I ask for is one more chance with him so I could do it all right this time. Atone for my sins while selfishly hold onto my happiness and reason to live.

Who knew, a dying man’s wish would truly be answered because here I am, writing this to you in hopes to set the record straight. Maybe try to justify why was it that we needed to go to the extreme, because violence was the only way our voices could be heard, our pleas to stop this madness, to see us just like you see your neighbors; as fellow human beings. Someone with feelings. Some ones, not things. Maybe this is just a madman’s cry to you, a thing to mock and crack jokes about, but even then, I’m glad you’re listening. You’re paying attention, even just to make fun of it, at least I am heard. And I’m glad we got this far.

Okay, maybe not all of this should make it in the final cut, I think I rambled on way too much about Ramy. Even now, just thinking about him hurts, and in a world were we don’t even have basic human rights, who is going to pay attention or care for gay chinaman’s intimate relations with an Indian man. I’m just going to use this as my diary for now, record everything as I recall. I’ll visit this again to see what parts to use in the final version.

Until then,

R.S.