Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24431758-20140313050841/@comment-26854521-20151016130042

There are many things pointing towards her not just 'finding' Baam in that cave.

Starting with what and where that place is. In the most recent chapters even Baam himself drew the conclusion that that cave must have been a prison and as far as i know SUI said it's outside of the tower. That really doesn't seem like a place someone would just stumble upon and then decide to look after that child day after day in addition to that a person who knows about the story of the tower and about the stars. If you think about the combination of both of those things it's quite interesting. For the outside people things about the tower should be a mystery and for them a starry sky shoudln't really be something special (except that Urek seems to have that fetish for that as well but maybe he just misses it because he knows its beauty ). But rachel has knowledge of them both.

It all points towards her being assigned to look after him and make sure he decides to climb the tower (there would have also been the posiblity that she was to make sure he doesn't climb it but if you think about Baam or any other person it doesn't make sense to desire something you have absolutely no knowledge of). That would also mean that Baam's root/origin was from the very beginning expected to become something extremely powerful.

So now as to why Rachel did what she did and how she came to envy Baam. The story of the sky is a central piece here. It is unclear whether Rachel had always liked that story or whether it is something she just learned when she was given the task to look after Baam and to make sure he has a desire to climb. Maybe that story became her dream but it was never meant to be hers. She even told the story to Baam but it meant nothing to him, which isn't really something she could blame him for though since she kinda raised him to be that way but that is i think the reason Headon called her out on her lying and her trickery.

If things went normally she would have raised Baam and he would at some point enter the tower of his own desires or something Rachel managed to convince him for. That would mean that Rachel would be all alone in that place and that is what i think she was most afraid of.

Being left completely alone with no purpose in life and instead a kid with no desire for anything that was okay with just the two of them being in that cave (when Baam meets Rachel at train city he kinda talks as if he wants to take her back to that place, even though they technically can't do that i guess) gets to have the world open to him. So she raised him in a way that where he would have no desires of his own and would only ever enter the tower for her sake or in other words for his sake to be with her, which comes down to the same except it doesn't make Baam look like the angel people want to see. Maybe that was something she decided early on or maybe she did that after seeing how much affection that kid she knew was to become a monster showed to her.

Anyway by doing something that probably wasn't in the manual for getting Baam into the tower she got she ended up where she did. Now to the deal with Headon. Headon started using Rachel even before they made a deal. He realized quickly that Baam was after the girl he had just seen come into the tower and made Baam take the test. Rachel wasn't a regular and she knew she doesn't have the strength to pass headons test so she had no choice but to take his deal. While i don't believe that this action was selfless just for Baams sake it is certainly not something anyone could criticize her for that since she still had that dream of being at the top i guess. If you think about the people pulling the strings it kinda looks like this.

Headon>Rachel>FUG>Baam (not in order of strength obviosuly, also there's a Hwa Ryun somewhere in the chain as well, probably on the same level as Rachel, oh and Gustang maybe)

From the very beginning Baam was too weak for them to climb the tower together and Baam wouldn't grow if he had no desires unfullfilled. It's not that he didn't have the talent to climb but when you think about his struggles it was rarely ever a normal test but things related to his status as irregular while he's still just a baby shark. I don't think she ever wanted to kill him and her actions in season one were guided and as you can see in the train arc she has quite a good relationship with Hwa Ryun and  both of them seem to actually really care about Baam, whcih doesn't mean they can't have ulterior motives. If you think about all the big FUG ambushes they were pretty much all direct power ups for Baam following Rachel. From Ha Jinsung as a teacher to the fake thorn/demon to the real thorn and then the hell train's revolution. Possibly thanks to the meddling of Gustang.