TATTOO YOUR SOUL

Cold.

Tired.

Exhausted.

Gorggy.

Drugged.

They were moving. Where? He had no idea. A harsh droning buzzed in his ears, rumbling and thundering, pounding. An engine? An engine to what? Things were foggy, hazed at the very best. His head hurt, aching and spinning at the same time.

There came a time when everything dimmed and went black around him again.

Reality faded away.

xxxx

"Kathain!"

Amon called the name as he awoke, jumping up with a start. The hunter had been locked in a dream that the precognitive and he had been in the woods, chased by soldiers of Solomon. No, not a dream. A nightmare. And it had been so very real. The chips of splinters and stray bits stung at the man, even after the nightmare dispelled. Amon could almost feel the woods closing in on him, the trees looming and growing near. Or was that the intruders of his dreams?

"Amon," her voice gently whispered from beside him, still low on the ground.

The former hunter relaxed in the murky dark. They were at the house; they had to be, sleeping on the futons on the floor. Amon must have forgotten climbing to bed on those mats, and must have accidentally chosen the spot next to Kathain again. Amon could breathe a sigh of relief and return to the blissful, lulling embrace of slumber. But, something was missing.

His head started to clear, as Amon listened keenly. The room was too dark, almost pitch, as if Kristo had amassed all the dark he could, opening the abyss over them.. The room was silent, too quiet for words, far more still than it had ever been in those nights that the former hunter dared sleep in the house. The only sound of breaths came from the man and the girl beside him. They were alone, all alone. No others. The only other sound was a barely audible, high-pitched whine, almost electrical.

"Kathain?" He looked in the direction her voice had come from, worried for her for a flashing instance.

She sounded tired, just as tired and out of it as he felt. "Hmmm…"

Amon reached for the girl, finding her warm form lying sprawled on the ground. Her skin felt peppered and sprinkled with gooseflesh, dimpled here and there. The girl had to be cold, but, with the sedatives, Kathain probably couldn't feel it yet. When they wore off, the precognitive would feel it better. The baby-doll t, arm warmers and oversized, industrial cargo pants that the girl had been wearing before the attack couldn't have been that warm. In truth, now that Amon thought of it, the cold snapped at him, too.

"Kathain, wake up." He gave the precognitive a gentle shake.

Kathain gave a slight whimper. "God, Amon, I've been awake for maybe an hour or two now. At least let me at least enjoy whatever the fuck they shot us full of."

It hadn't been a dream. The nightmare was real. They had been taken, taken by Solomon to God knew where, and for who knew what. And, yet, the invaders seem so hell bent on getting a hold of Kathain. Amon furrowed his eyebrows, wondering why they went right for the girl.

Then, the realization settled over the former hunter. Kathain was a supposed precognitive, to the point that even Karasuma believed in the girl and her gifts. Sakaki and the others trusted the girl's judgment. Kathain was an oracle. She could see into the distant mirror, scry the past and consort with the future in a heartbeat. The strange young lady spoke in the foreign tongues of time and destiny, finding infinity and eternity in even the most jaded and dead of places. This frail seemed creature, so tiny and sprite-like, held the ear of Fate, bending the universe to her will. Or, so, it seemed.

And Solomon had just gotten a hold of Kathain and, thusly, her Craft.

He shook it off, orienting himself. They had to get out, had to find something, anything that could help them escape. Amon rose, fighting the slight dizziness from the last of the tranquilizers as he moved. The hunter circled the room slowly, running his strong hands over the walls and everything. The cell couldn't have been much larger that 10x12'. It was completely bare and devoid of anything, even furniture. The pair had just been left to sleep off the rest of the drugs on the frigid, tile floor.

Amon nodded. It made sense. If he had been in charge of capturing a viable witch and keeping it, the man wouldn't give anything to the witch. Solomon knew this game, this dance, and they knew it well. They would not give anything that could become an advantage, even, as in this case, if the witch held but a passive Craft and the other captive was a seed. Solomon would take no chances. They learned on that terrible night of the Factory incident to never underestimate Amon.

Amon reached for his gas gun, but it was gone, taken from him. He would have been surprised to find it there, but the man had to try. He had to be utterly sure that they had taken all tools. On further inspection, the former hunter found that everything he had, save clothes, had been taken. No cell phone. No wallet. Even the holster. All of it. No pins, no pens, nothing.

Again, the hunter nodded. Nothing unusual to that.

He moved on with the inspection of the room. His fingertips found a strange, new, slick surface, cold from the air. A two-way mirror. Someone had been planning to watch them from the other side, study them. Who knew what Solomon wanted to find in this odd pair.

"What's the point?" Kathain sighed.

Amon furrowed his eyebrows as his fingernails caught on a thin crack in the wall and, then, another, obviously marking out a doorframe. "Figuring things out."

"There's no way out of here," the girl lamented.

The former hunter spun around to sound of her voice. "You're giving up?"

A heavy breath fell from Kathain's mouth spilling out with her own despair and gloom, speaking volumes in one, tired exhalation. "Yes." She paused for a moment, contemplating the consequences of her existence. "Amon, because of me, you are going to suffer. Very soon, now."

"Then, we need to keep searching for a way out." The man drew close, kneeling before the girl in the dark. "Kathain, you need to help me." She whimpered. "Kathain?"

Soft sounds came from her, similar to whimpers, but not quite. She was crying, soft and slightly. Amon wasn't entirely sure what to do. Robin, for everything that had happened, never cried out of sorrow. Once, maybe two, she let tears loose from a combination of grief and rage, but never sadness. And never, never, had it seemed that the teenage Craft user was coming unhinged like this. The man had never found it necessary to even attempt to comfort Robin, but this creature was entirely different. He reached out, wrapping long, muscular arms around Kathain. She fell into him, burying her head in the hunter's chest.

"Amon, I'm so sorry," Kathain apologized again to him.

The man didn't know why she felt the need to keep saying that. Something about her Craft and having seen Amon's future at her hands. Because of her, because of Kathain and her ability, Amon would be tortured, and Kathain had seen it. The girl knew it. It hurt her so to see an innocent, ANY innocent, suffer because of who and what she was.

Amon just remained there, his arms snaked around the girl, crouching still-ly and frozen as Kathain trembled in his hold. "Kathain…"

The girl seemed to settle. "I…. I don't…"

"I need you to focus." The man unsurely stroked her hair, smoothing the curls down. "I need you to look ahead."

Kathain shook suddenly, sharply, an involuntary twitch. "You can't… you can't ask me to do that." Amon didn't answer; tears fell silently down her cheeks. "You can't make me to watch that again." The girl flew back, out of Amon's hold, slamming into the wall and smacking her head. "You can't."

"I need you to." Amon sounded determined, but Kathain could only hear him.

A hand fell upon her shoulder, trying to steel her, but offering no real comfort; the precognitive looked away, into the deep, dark void. "You don't know what you're asking me to do."

The hunter's hand slipped from her. "I do."

"I don't want to." From any other person, it would have sounded like whining, but, from Kathain, somehow, it sounded pained, flooded with hurt.

"I know you don't."

Amon didn't know what to say or how to put it. This was an unknown sentiment to him. Desperation? No, not quite. Sympathy? Possibly. Affection, definitely not. No, perhaps the best term for it was pity. Yes, pity that Kathain had been forced by the role of genetic dice to see such terrible, horrific things.

The former hunter had chased down and sent so many witches to a cruel fate at the Factory, he hadn't thought of how that capture felt until it happened to Karasuma and almost happened to Robin and Sakaki. Yet, even after that, and all the time he spent in hiding with Robin and that band of witches, Amon never contemplated what it felt like to be a witch. He had spent so many years hating witches, the hunter avoided sympathizing or personifying witches. So long as they remained abstract, devoid of any personalization, the man could continue loathing their kind.

Kathain put a face to witches, and a tale. Her suffering put a human quality to the witches Amon had hated and practically feared for so long. The seed wondered if he had awoken, what Amon himself would do or feel.

"But you have to look."

Kathain didn't answer; she just slid into his arms again, seeking the warmth of Amon's body and the comfort of his embrace. A soft murmured trespassed her lips, but the man could barely understand it.

"What?"

"'And in the fury of this darkest hour, I will be your light. A lifetime for this destiny, for I am Winter born,'" Kathain quoted, the song lilting just slightly.

Amon raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"

But Kathain was gone, slipping into her mind, into the distant mirror and into the future. Amon just held her, not knowing what to do exactly. Instead, he just knelt there, the tiny, birdlike girl curled up against his chest, her breathing rapidly slowly, growing fainter and shallower with each passing breath.

"Kathain…."

She fell away mentally, into the very fabric of time.

xxxx

So… at least Amon and Kathain are alive and well. We've established that. Where they are? Well… obviously a dark little room…. Who knows where…. Well… ok… I do. But, you're just going to have to wait and see what happens. Ta!