Series: Abs Calamitas

Numbers: 1:1

Anime: Witch Hunter Robin / Abs Calamitas

A/N: Sorry sorry sorry this took so long, I have been much distracted, and getting tense edits is difficult in the editorial process! Thank everyone for reading and reviewing!


That first night the two of them slept close together, because Amon, in his half-stricken state, had not thought to look for wood for a fire, or any shelter. They were lucky that the weather held and there was no real need for either. Robin hardly slept, feeling him so close. Her heart hammered in her chest, so loudly she almost expected him to ask her to quiet down. His back was to her back, and through their clothes she felt the thick muscles of him. He had to feel her trembling, she thought, and bit her lip.

But he said nothing. He did not move all evening, and rose in the morning while she finally got some rest.

It was a night the dreams did not plague her, and she was grateful for that, even if she was tired when he gently shook her shoulder to rouse her. "Time to wake up, Robin," he said in a soft voice, as though he did not entirely mean what he was saying to her.

His own internal schedule worked whether he was ill or healthy. He didn't think it was nearly as necessary for her to follow the same strict schedule. She looked so tired…

Robin sneezed as she woke up, sand tickling her nose. "Amon?"

"We're going to make a shelter today. And then I'll gather wood so that tonight we have a fire." He sat up, leaning against a gloved hand on the sand. "We'll gather some fruit to eat this morning and I'll try to see if there are any fish."

She held her opinion on fish to herself.


"I don't want to hear it," Nagira said as he walked into his office. The same thing every day from Hanamura. 'Where's Robin?' He lit a cigarette and headed over to his desk, looking at the incoming paperwork.

"I wasn't going to say that, necessarily," Mika said with a pointed twist of her lips.

"It's the same thing you say every morning, Hana-chan," Nagira replied. "It's more regular than the taste of your coffee."

His secretary narrowed her eyes at him, and straightened the stack of paper in her hands. "I was actually going to say that you had a very early visitor this morning, but I won't bother now. Men are all the same. One young lover leaves town, they find another one to replace her fast as you please."

"Visitor?"

"She's upstairs," the quiet voice of his accountant offered. Hirata kept his eyes down on his own paperwork wisely.

Rising, Nagira crossed to the door and waved at the two of them before heading upstairs. He didn't bother knocking on the door, knowing that whoever was inside was dressed, unlike Robin.

He had made the unfortunate mistake of entering the room one morning before knocking, and had seen her head and shoulders peaking out of the bath tub. It was then that he thought to check... and found that she had not brought pajamas. It had taken a gulping moment to decide if he was going to accept what his half-brother had set out for him to do, or if he was going to do something else. In the end, Nagira decided to leave Amon the girl entrusted into his care alone, and started treating her like the little sister that he had an inkling she could eventually become, in some form or fashion. After that he had always knocked on the door to what he still considered Robin's room. This time, he didn't bother. He turned the knob and pushed open the door, arching a brow at the smiling face under the blond hair that greeted him.

"So," Doujima asked, "did you miss me?"

Nagira let out a chuckle and nodded. "Of course I did." He leaned against the pillar in the entranceway and regarded the young woman, a smile coming to his lips. "So little time and you're already back on my doorstep, miss. What can I do for you?"

"It's about a friend of mine," Doujima said, sobering slightly. "Is there anywhere to sit down?"

"Not up here," Nagira said, "and I don't suppose you'd like to come downstairs."

"I can't say that I appreciate the look your secretary gave me," Doujima said with a smile, "It's what brought me up here in the first place. I figured you'd have possession of the apartment as well. I just didn't expect to find it so unfurnished."

"No one lives here anymore," Nagira said with a shrug. "And the last tenant wasn't too picky."

"Is that how you sweet talk all the girls?"

Nagira let out a self-effacing chuckle, and gave no more response to her prod. "Maybe you should just tell me what you need, hm? We're both busy people and with nowhere to sit down..."

Doujima's cheery smile faded almost instantly, and she gave a half nod. "Amon... and Robin... do you know-?"

"No," Nagira said. "Nothing new. Nothing old. It's a dry well leading nowhere."

"Ah," Doujima said, brightening in a manner Nagira could read as being quite fake. "I won't take more of your time today then."

"Feel free to take as much as you like," Nagira said with a smile as he opened the door for her. "Next time you may want to come during regular office hours. I don't usually come in until ten or so."

Bowing, Doujima headed out the door, straightening her jacket. She turned into the staircase and saw Hanamura, and decided, wisely, to hold in her groan of displeasure. The sharp-eyed secretary scowled as Nagira followed the blond hunter out of the small apartment. Nagira looked at the sharply dressed woman and blinked.

As Doujima headed down the stairs, over her shoulder, she heard Nagira ask a bewildered, "What did I do this time?"


The days turned into weeks. Even Amon stopped wearing his shoes around the sandy beaches of the island. No ships come by on the water, no disturbances break the tranquility of the setting. His arm healed, the two of them got sunburnt, and the sunburn passed.

But the tranquility was almost too much. Glancing over at Robin's sleeping form, he sensed, not for the first time, that she is troubled in her dreams. Her face creased in a frown and she turned her head, pulling away from him in the shade of their small makeshift abode.

"Amon," she said in a fitful manner, hands tensing at her sides.

The sun has been good for her, adding color to her pale skin, what little of it shows, lightening her strawberry blond hair some. Her eyes stand out more when they are open. The only thing that bothered Amon was that rest seemed beyond her power.

He shifted, leaning over her, and shook her shoulder gently to rouse her. After hurting her during the escape from the Factory, he had been exceedingly careful not to damage her or harm her in any way. He could not justify that to himself. Not after declaring himself her warden.

Killing a Witch was one thing. Abusing a wom- … a girl, girl he reminded himself firmly, had never been a part of his modus operandi.

Especially not one in his care.

Green eyes burst open, bulging a little as though she was being strangled, and Robin sat up, gasping for breath.

By tacit agreement, Amon had not asked her about her dreams. Robin said nothing about them because she was fairly certain he had no wish to know of them. A lot between them remained unsaid in the open sunshine of the island. Robin turned her face from Amon. She was ashamed, feeling that she should have no further qualms about him, after his admission and their reconciliation.

Thinking it his touch that drew her away, Amon lifted his hand from her shoulder.

"Still no ships?" Robin asked softly. Amon never specifically said anything about it, but she knew that was what kept his eyes glued to the horizon. The lean-to they constructed together was situated on the highest of the rocks above the waterfall, and she thought that the reason for it.

"No," Amon said, watching her for a long moment. "And no change in the weather. No tropical storms, no rain, not even a rough breeze."

"That may not mean anything," Robin said, "given the month of the attack, if we landed on a tropical island there would be no need for there to be storms."

"Most islands are affected by the sea around them," Amon replied, turning his eyes again to the water below. "But the sea here seems placid and calm all the time. Even at sunset. There are no fish, only fruit, and no insects."

"Where do you think we are then?" Robin asked softly.

"I'm not sure," Amon admitted, getting to his feet. "But wherever here is, we fell through the earth to get here." She offered him no explanation. After a moment he gave up waiting for one. He headed towards the path leading down to the small forest on the island and eventually towards the beach.

"Are you going to go and swim?"

Amon nodded. His way of staying in good physical condition. Running in the morning before the sun rose too high the temperature followed, laps of the white sand beach. Swimming in the afternoon. Push-ups and sit-ups in the evening before a meal.

In the time that has passed, even the few weeks, his body had become less bulk and more stiff toned muscle, to Robin's eyes. She herself had lost a little weight around the middle from the sudden strict vegetarianism. Or rather, from the fruititarianism.

Unlike Amon, she exercised much less, deciding to swim in the early afternoon and preferring to walk and occasionally jog around the beach to keep her heart muscles in shape. Her craft remained virtually untouched, for obvious reasons, only one of them the dark clad figure preparing to take a swim in the water.

She found herself a little timorous of it, and so she refrained from more than lighting the evening fire. Amon had searched and searched for a flint somewhere on the island, but had come up with nothing. He was a hunter, not a camper, Robin theorized, and it wasn't as obvious to him as it could be where one might be. She looked too, and also found nothing.

There was another wordless agreement that she would light the evening fire.

Amon's feet led him to the beach, and she blushed as she watched, from the distance, him strip out of the heavy black clothing that was all he had to wear. Every day for the last week and a half she found herself staring as he stripped down to swim, cheeks flushed. Thankfully his swims were long, and she had yet to stare as he exited the water. It was easy to avoid him on his return from the beach, and she walked the small patch of green until she felt confident she could meet him in the eyes without divulging her little secret.

He broke way into the water, oblivious of Robin's stare, and moved to hip-depth before diving into it.

"Where is here, anyway?" Robin asked herself, recalling her earlier statement... though half awake, of calling it paradise. If it is paradise, she wondered, whose is it? Did she fashion it herself or did she simply bring the two of them there...?

Amon's frantic words in the factory began to make more sense, she found. What would it have meant if she had sent him here alone? Amon is little without a purpose, without an occupation. The exercise proved that.

Alone on a deserted island, what would Amon have done?


Coming back into the STN-J office, Doujima waved to the security guard and headed up the elevator, surprised to find Michael and Sakaki the only two in the office. She checked her watch. No, she thought, still early.

"Any luck," Michael asked, fingers flying across the keyboard. His amber glasses sat pristinely on his face, not even a scratch from his adventure in the Factory apparent on their surfaces, and his headphones blared music loud enough to drown out the noise of the fluorescent lights overhead.

"Why do you always listen to those things so loud?" Doujima replied loudly, shrugging out of her jacket and tossing it onto her chair before flopping bonelessly into it. "No news is good news, I suppose."

"Right," Sakaki said, tipping his head back and glancing at the blond woman from the corner of his eye, a thick folder of hard copy in front of him. "We're all looking and no one can find them. That's supposed to be good?"

"It's better than finding them dead," Doujima said in an outburst of anger. So long they had been gone... moving on to a second month. Not that she, or any of them, had really expected the two black listed hunters to return to the STN-J or to invite their fellow hunters to tea, but there ought to have been some whiff of information somewhere.

Telepathic witches weren't even really picking up anything, when they were willing to talk at all. That bit of information she got through Nagira, not being in a position to interrogate any Witch not on the hunt list. The STN-J met more resistance to divulging information now, since Robin's so-called awakening and disappearance. But, as Michael assured them, the other Solomon offices were reporting the same problems in field reconnaissance. At least, the Director had mused, they are not alone in being shunned.

The noise of the elevator moving in the background punctuated the pause after Doujima's words.

"You mean like the Witches?" Sakaki asked in a disgruntled tone. "I'm starting to feel like a Factory retrieval team member more than a Hunter."

Recently, some of their upcoming targets, the more note-worthy ones, had begun falling off the map. Some dying off, some mysteriously losing powers they seemed to have been in moderate control of most of their lives. Hunts were not so much drying up as becoming mop-up.

"Sakaki!" Doujima snapped, getting to her feet angrily.

No one mentioned the Factory, any more.

"Calm down, Doujima," Michael said, eyes still scanning the screen in front of him. "He's just voicing what we're all feeling."

"But what does it mean?" Doujima asked, running hands through her thick blond hair. In the month since the disappearance it became her nervous habit, much worse than when they were understaffed.

"Obviously it means that someone else is killing off Witches," Michael said, fingers still flying on the keyboard.

"But why would Witches kill one another for power?" Doujima asked. "They haven't up until now."

"Just because we don't know that they've been doing it doesn't mean that the Witches haven't been killing each other off for ages," Sakaki said, sitting up properly and shrugging his shoulders. "As far as we know they could've been doing it since Witches were called crones."

Michael's shoulders tensed a little. He disliked this thread of conversation. Just how he never liked hearing hunters discussed when Robin was still around. It hit a little too close to home, he thought, that his colleagues should think about hunting one another.

"Talk about something else," Michael said softly, reaching down to turn his headphones up louder, focusing his attention once more on the screen before him.


Dry and warm by the fire, Amon gazed into the flames like a lost soul. His thoughts were too many and too deep to rouse himself from.

"Amon," Robin said in a quiet voice as she sat down beside him on the soft sandy seat. He glanced at her with dark gray eyes filled with confusion and with trouble, and she offered a smile and set the fruit she brought for him down on his knee. "You want to leave," she said, tipping her chin back to look up at the starry sky.

"Mm," Amon replied. "Staying here gains us nothing."

"It's safe," Robin replied, though she wasn't quite sure where she came up with that idea in the first place. "No one will attack us here. That's something, isn't it?"

"Nothing happens here at all," Amon said. "The days and nights are all the same. The light comes, the light goes. The wind rustles the leaves of the trees and cools away sweat. The trees grow fruit."

Robin pulled he knees up to her chest and picked at the fruit. "It's beautiful. Paradise."

"If this is paradise, I would rather have the real world," Amon said, pushing his thumbs into the fruit angrily.

Taking a slow bite of her own fruit, a mango, she figured it probably was, Robin looked at the fire as well, silently.

Amon glanced at the flames and then over at his darkly clad companion. The rock against his back, he thought, had been hot when he let go. The rock through his gloves, he thought, had been near burning when they pushed through… he remembers these things dimly, as though they are from a dream. His closed eyes, her fingers trembling against his collar – like the island and the placid sea surrounding it – just like a dream.

He stared for a long moment at Robin. Warm air. Warm rock. The warmth that had spread through him when she healed away the Orbo wound. The only way off the island, he realized, is likely through Robin's intervention. Her craft…

"You're staring," Robin said softly.

"Am I?" Amon replied, continuing to look closely at her for a long moment before turning his eyes back to the fire.

"You want to leave," she said again.

"I do not trust this place," Amon said. "Too quiet."

Robin remained silent. The fire flickered in front of them for a long while, leaving each to their own silent thoughts until a cold breeze blew, ruffling clothing and hair and sending a chill up the spine of her slender body.

"It's cold," Robin said, putting her arms around herself tighter, turning to look for her jacket. Just as she saw it, across the small clearing, she felt the weight of material drop onto her shoulders.

"Keep your jacket closer," Amon said, sitting back on his heels and lifting his fruit from the ground, repressing the shiver in his own frame.

Robin looked at him for a long moment and then turned her eyes back towards the fire.

"Don't," Amon said. "At night someone may see the fire."

Robin held herself back from saying that if the time that's passed was not enough time to tell that no one was coming then he had too much hope. She sighed and sat back, pulling his coat closer against the chill on the wind. It smelled of him, reassuring, and was thick. She cannot tell what smell it was exactly…

Amon shifted, putting a hand on the fruit clutched in one of her slender hands, and lifted it to her mouth. "Eat," he said, "you need to keep your strength up."

"Ah," Robin said, obediently taking a bite from the fruit.

"Tonight," Amon said, "we will sleep closer together for warmth."

He tried to tell himself that he was doing this for practicality. That he had decided that whatever may happen to them at night was too dangerous to confront with nothing but more fire and a potentially useless gun to combat it with. Seeds and Witches might not be affected in the same manner as humans by the bullet, though the pain of being shot would still remain.

Amon did not look at Robin's face before he rose to collect her jacket.