Fog hung in the air like a phantom, cigarette smoke in an enclosed space, a guest that'd overstayed his welcome but still refused to leave. It was cold, but not too cold, and there was no wind.
Perfect weather for hanging out the window.
People plodded along through the soup-fog below the third story window, dark figures in a hazy world. Robin wondered, idly, if they could even see her hovering above them, watching them like some sort of child watching for her parents to arrive home. In the flat behind her, Robin figured Amon was still in his room, interacting with his laptop as he did most of the time. Fleetingly, bitterly, she figured that the piece of electronic equipment and Amon got along better than herself and Amon did. Amon always had been one for his gadgets. He seemed to acquire new ones all the time. It made Robin feel like she was living in an epic noir spy movie, sometimes. Maybe she was. She couldn't really tell, anymore.
A thick, old, leather-bound book sat overturned, in stasis on her bed in the room behind her, waiting for its reader to return. It was a 'historical' account of witches and witchcraft printed sometime in the early 1800's, picked up for relatively cheap at a hole-in-the-wall antique bookstore in downtown Brussels some time ago. It was printed in German, and Robin had found it quite difficult to read at first, her German teachings coming back to her in bits and pieces. Now she found she could read through it with greater ease, even though sometimes phrases and words eluded her, and caused her to seek out Amon's help or to utilize the internet to help her along. She wasn't sure why she kept buying and reading all the ridiculous books of the lore and 'histories' of witchcraft; maybe it was because she was always hoping that something would jump out at her, a sign, a key, a truth. It hadn't happened yet—but at least reading gave her something to do to pass the time.
Grey-sweater clad arms dangled back and forth in her vision; her own arms, swinging slightly as she leaned over the window frame and stared down into the street below. One arm reached up and a hand scratched lightly at her scalp, her golden-ginger hair pinned back into something resembling a messy twist of a bun, ends sticking out everywhere and loops hanging here and there. At her own realization and Amon's suggestion, she'd mostly given up on her old hairstyle due to its telltale quality. Unfortunately, Robin didn't know what else to do with her hair, really, so more oft than not it ended up getting pinned back in whatever manner kept it back.
Right then at that moment, the book, German, her sweater, Amon, her hair—none of those was on her mind. She was lost in thought about what she was going to do, where she was going to go, how she was going to proceed. She was laying plans, staring at them, crumpling them up and relaying them again in her mind. The fog-muted world around her seemed to be seeping into her brain, somewhat preventing her from thinking properly—or perhaps it was the fact that she still wasn't too sure of what she was doing that was preventing her from thinking properly.
From within the flat, Amon sneezed. It sounded more like a roar. He sneezed very loudly, always. Robin already knew this. One came to know these things about a person when they spent every day, day in and day out with that person. Trivial little things; living with someone didn't necessarily mean that you learned any more about what made them tick. This was very true for Robin and Amon.
First and foremost was to wait for word from Nagira; Robin knew this, too. She had her reaching power, but it was still too vague, really, to be much of a help in finding others. And plus, trying to find them on her own without any information, any recommendations, could possibly lead them right into the open, waiting arms of SOLOMON. She was worried that Nagira wouldn't be able to come through with any information for her and Amon, but she assured herself that her worries were unfounded—natural—but unfounded. Nagira knew everyone. Nagira knew how to find anything, anyone, anywhere. If she'd handed him a cinderblock and a gladiola, Nagira would have hidden them behind his back and when he pulled them out again, they would have been turned into a treasure map where the buried treasure was actually a bunch of witches.
Once she'd gotten information from Nagira, she and Amon were obviously going to have to sit down and discuss what they were going to do, where they were going to go, what kind of risks they were willing to take. Rather, what kind of risks he was willing to let them take. Although, admittedly, Robin knew, Amon's sense of danger and gut-instinct were uncanny (a holdover from Hunter days, in all likelihood). He'd caved to letting her start to search for other witches, which showed that he might not have agreed with it, might have disliked it—but didn't deem it one hundred percent life-threatening. The young Eve of the Witches had learned to trust her warden's instinct when it came to keeping their hearts beating. It hadn't been wrong yet; they were still alive, after all. She also knew that her darker half was much better at logistics and actual planning, it seemed that he had more of a head for formats and the business-end of things than she did.
After they'd thought up a comprehensive game plan, then they'd go about the business of perhaps tentatively making contact with the other witches, if had been decided that it was at least relatively safe to do so. Robin was powerful; she had come to terms with that fact, and the fact that she was only going to get even more powerful as time wore on (after all, it was what she had been scientifically crafted to do)—and she knew that Amon was going to grow into a powerful witch of his own right; despite his Craft getting the better of him often, she'd seen him exercise it in full-force several times before with incredible results. However, all of this didn't change the fact that she had no idea how they would fare against an angry group of potentially very powerful witches. Also, something she was not used to having to do was having to actually worry about Amon. Even if she'd seen him use his powers before with favourable results (they'd actually saved their lives, a few times), she'd also seen those same powers render him mostly completely helpless for extended periods of time. That worried her greatly.
She was jerked out of her thoughts suddenly by a group of people in the street below laughing loudly, their din permeating the fog-air. They hollered at each other in Dutch, staggering along, weak with laughter, clutching at one another for support—Robin's Dutch was non-existent, but she thought that she caught the word 'Utrecht' in there. She wondered what could possibly be so uproariously hilarious about a Dutch town made famous by a treaty. Before she could fall back into her thoughts and plotting, a sound at her door made her sit up quickly and turn, almost succeeding in cracking her head a good one on the window as she did so. "Yes?" she called, and her door opened, revealing Amon standing there, hand still on the door handle, dark and imposing in the doorway.
"What are you doing?" he asked her, shooting her a semi-perplexed look. She realized that perhaps she did look a little silly half-hanging out of the window. Or perhaps the fog was creeping into her room.
She favoured him with a sheepish little smile. "Just watching people. Nothing special."
"Ah." He entered the room suddenly, decisively, his hand finally leaving the door handle. As he strode past her bed, he tossed a casual glance over at the book that sat upon it, then kept walking. Obviously, he hadn't deemed it important enough to warrant his closer observation. The window, however, had been deemed important enough. He liked to watch people way more than she did, after all. Robin had always noticed that he actually kind of excelled at it. "Almost too foggy to be doing that, it seems."
Robin watched Amon's tall form walk up to the window next to the open one she was semi-leaning out of, stop in front of it, and fold his arms over his chest—another trademark Amon pastime. "Yeah," she murmured. Since it was already on her mind, she found herself asking about Nagira.
"No. He hasn't contacted me yet." Amon looked over at her with one of his eyebrows quirked up high; this was his primary way of showing subtle amusement. "It's only been a little under a day since we talked to him, Robin."
"I know. I was just wondering." So she seemed a little anxious, so what? After weeks of inactivity, Robin found herself excited to be doing something again even if it was potentially stupid and dangerous.
Amon looked away, his eyebrow sinking back to its normal position as he gazed out the window. "There was a small earthquake in Japan today," he said suddenly, as if he were actually attempting to make conversation. "I read about it in the news earlier." He caught the beginnings of Robin's panicked, concerned look, and shook his head slightly. "Nothing near anyone we know, anywhere near Tokyo. It was near Takamatsu, not even on the mainland. I wouldn't worry too much. It was only a small earthquake, anyway."
"Oh." Robin wondered why he would have even bothered to tell her about something like that. It actually did seem like Amon was trying to make conversation. This was unusually chatty behaviour for him—to all of a sudden just come into her room and start talking to her without any kind of purpose in clear sight. He seemed almost as if…perhaps he just wanted the company, which elated and amazed Robin at the same time. She looked over at him and he looked over at her, and their peculiar form of wordless communication occurred—Robin had felt it.
His eyebrow climbed upwards, again. However, this time, he seemed to be more amused with himself than with her. "My twenty-sixth birthday was three days ago," he informed her casually, and chose not to react outwardly to Robin's look of subdued indignation. "I suppose you're experiencing overwhelming, incredulous disbelief at my negligence to share this fact with you," he quipped, voice tinged with dry sarcasm.
"Well, no, not really," Robin answered truthfully, still fixing him with her somewhat indignant look. "It doesn't surprise me that you didn't tell me. But then…why are you telling me now?" A faint smile broke the gloom of her previous look. "Feeling guilty? Or perhaps just feeling old?"
"Possibly both." Amon didn't seem at all ruffled by Robin's tentative jab at his inability to tell her anything. "Maybe I just thought you should know. Maybe I just thought I should remind myself."
"As if your memory was that terrible." She wrinkled her nose a bit, not quite sure what his last statement had meant, really. "If you'd told me, I could have wished you a happy birthday at the very least. Maybe I would have even been able to go buy you a gift of some kind."
Amon was so amused by her comment about a gift that both of his eyebrows arched up high, his face somehow magically expressing theatrical shock without having moved hardly at all. His mask was flawless; amazing, morphing, adaptable. "And what, if you don't mind me asking, would you have bought for me?"
Her lips pursed in thought. He'd caught her off balance with that one; she had no clue what she would have bought Amon. He'd never really outwardly expressed interest in anything. She didn't know what he liked or disliked, what he considered amusing (besides her actions) or boring, or anything of that nature. Robin's brain stalled. "Um. I guess I really don't know," she confessed, after a long moment of mind-spinning.
Amon nodded at her in a very told-you-so sort of way. "My point exactly. There really wasn't much cause for me to inform you of my birthday."
Silence coated them like the fog coated the world outside. Robin had thought it almost necessary to make a comment about how still, even if she hadn't gotten him a gift, she could have at least told him happy birthday—after all, most normal, civilized people who lived together informed each other of such things. Not she and Amon, though, and she found herself almost commenting about that as well, but she figured it would either seem sort of bizarre and personal to Amon, or it would strike him as incredibly insignificant. Suddenly she frowned, her eyebrows bunching together in disbelief. "You're a Libra?" she said, her voice taking on a definite incredulous tone on the name of the Zodiac sign.
"Yes, I am. September 25th." An extremely rare smirk appeared on Amon's face. "My apple fell very, very far from the tree with that particular aspect of my personality."
"Just a bit, I think," Robin replied with her own brand of quiet sarcasm. Amon was the most un-Libra Libra that she'd ever met in her life. She was opening her mouth to say something else when Amon unexpectedly opened his.
"You're an Aquarius." He sounded very sure of himself. Robin gaped. "How'd you know?" she asked. "Did you know when my birthday is?"
"No," he replied, still sounding somewhat smug. "I can just tell." Again, before Robin could get words out of her open mouth, Amon beat her to the punch with something out of complete left-field: "We're going to the symphony tonight, even if it isn't particularly wise for us to do so. If you get to take unnecessary risks with our lives, then so do I."
Robin blinked rapidly into space, her outward manifestation of complete and utter shock. Lacking anything better to do, she leaned out the window somewhat again, the foggy air pressing against her face, ethereal. "Um. That sounds nice," she managed, finally, still a bit shocked. Of course, she was undeniably pleased at getting to go out and about, but she was still battling the shock of the revelation. New bit of information, one she immediately filed away in the file cabinet in her brain reserved for bits and pieces of Amon, later intended to be drawn together in a more complete picture: he obviously had some sort of mild interest in orchestras or classical music. Her previous plotting and planning about finding her fellow witches was almost completely forgotten in the tidal wave of Amon's strange, uncharacteristic sociability.
He had not moved, save his head to look at her, since he'd entered the room. "I've already taken care of the arrangements through the computer. I was suddenly spurred to celebrate my birthday a bit late. We'll go eat dinner somewhere beforehand." This, too, was a shock to Robin.
What have you done with the real Amon? Her mind screeched, agape. You're not the real Amon. You're some sort of strange replacement sent by space aliens. Biting her lip and remaining silent, leaning further out the window, her mind held a conversation with itself. Or perhaps this is more of what the real Amon is like, beneath the mask and the fifteen-feet-thick wall around him. Confusing. Can't he ever not be confusing? Not be complex? Not be a complete mystery? Not be…completely him? Normally Amon had to be wheedled to death (in a quiet, Robin-like fashion) in order to get him to move about much in public, normally. And now he was volunteering to go out? She'd never figure the man out.
"I just wanted to let you know about all that," Amon said suddenly, turning on his heel and striding back towards the door of her room. He didn't look back, even as Robin's perplexed and wondering eyes followed his impromptu departure. "We'll be leaving at about five-thirty. You have until then to continue spying on the Dutch, or practice falling out the window, or whatever it is exactly that you're doing." With that rather strange comment, he opened the door and left, closing it almost soundlessly behind him.
Robin exhaled heavily through her nose, trying to digest what exactly had just transpired.
Five-forty five found a tall, broad-shouldered figure and a smaller, wispy figure moving through the fog carefully. It had intensified, the vapour, and cars and other pedestrians were moving along at a snail's pace. Still no wind stirred the air in the slightest.
Robin snuck a glance over and up at Amon when she was reasonably sure that nothing was going to magically materialize in the fog in front of her and cause her to run into it ungracefully. Once again, the feeling of being in some sort of noir spy film hit her in various ways. Maybe it was the fog, maybe it was the city, maybe it was just her brain—or maybe it was how Amon looked, moving through the fog, somehow relaxed and casual and wary all at the same time. He looked ahead of him, walking confidently but carefully, apparently not bothered by the fog. Robin assumed that he was probably seeing right through it all with little difficulty. She didn't know how advanced his Craft had been getting; he never mentioned, but she knew that it was definitely enabling him to have a much easier time navigating through the fog than anyone else in it, save perhaps animals with keen eyesight.
Her eyes went back to the path in front of her, but after a while of once again discerning no obstacles, they went back to Amon, discreetly. She marveled once more at his ability to morph, somehow. He'd never been too terribly Japanese-looking, aside from slightly slanted eyes, pale skin, and black hair. His appearance spoke of only one parent of Japanese ancestry, although Robin could never find the nerve to ask him about his parents, so she stayed guessing. But there, in Europe, among all the Europeans (such as herself, to a degree), he seemed nothing more than European. With a simple change of clothing to Western-style suits and a magical, almost imperceptible change in air and attitude, he'd become a European, just like that. Now that Robin was thinking about it, he'd even managed to seem mildly American while they were there, despite the fact that they'd both been extremely uncomfortable and ill at ease with America. Visions of driving across the Southwestern United States popped unbidden into her head, Amon driving the car with seeming ease and comfort, working the clutch easily, his hair pulled back behind him, long black sleeves rolled up to his elbows, shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest (breaches of his Amon-protocol that she'd never seen before in her life), all to keep cool in the amazingly searing desert heat.
"Be careful," he warned suddenly, out of nowhere, and Robin looked from him to the path in front of her, where four seconds later a shape appeared that turned out to be a phone booth. She sheepishly sidestepped it and knew then that he'd been aware of her staring all along, just like he always seemed to be—no matter how discreet she thought she was being. If he hadn't seen her looking at him, how would he have known to warn her about the phone booth? Cheeks burning, Robin murmured a thanks. "Keep your eyes on the road," Amon reminded her, to which her cheeks only burned with a greater fervor. It seemed like a million years ago to Robin that she had been good, pure, pious, ready to become a bride of Christ and serve Him forever. Now that she'd met Amon and come to know him somewhat, she couldn't imagine any worse torture than having to live without him indefinitely, a life where thinking about him would be a sin.
His hand on her arm, gripping like a carefully tightened vice suddenly made her stop dead in her tracks, bewildered by the sudden contact. He'd stopped completely, head tilted up slightly, eyes locked forward completely, feet apart as if bracing himself. He vaguely reminded her of a wolf, when confronted with a threat of some kind.
A threat.
Her own countenance suddenly wary and tense, she turned to stare intently into the direction of Amon's gaze. He wouldn't have just stopped like that for anything, she knew. Jaw set, she inched closer to him slightly, as ready as she ever would be for a fight. Her skin burned, already, with the Craft coursing through her veins.
A figure came through the fog; small, hunched, and Robin relaxed for a moment. Then, as if on cue, Amon's body followed suit. The figure turned out to be a hunched old man who was ambling straight towards them as if by accident, but once he saw them his eyes lit up and he hobbled forward excitedly.
"Geld voor een slechte oude mens?" he asked, hopefully, and Robin found herself on the edge of anticipation, wondering what in the hell he had said. Amon began to rummage in a pocket, suddenly, and Robin wondered if perhaps this was one of his mysterious contacts that he always seemed to have or acquire wherever they went. However, he usually went to find them, never them to him—it seemed as if he wished to conduct all business as far away from Robin as possible. After all, she was probably in the most danger out of the two of them.
"Ja. Besteed wijselijk het," Amon replied, placing a slightly crumpled piece of colourful paper in the old man's hands. That done, the old man went on his way and Amon finally released Robin's arm, appearing relieved. He resumed walking, and Robin, after a startled moment, resumed as well, catching up with him.
"What on earth was that all about?" she asked, urgently.
"Old beggar," Amon replied, with a trace of amusement, as if to say 'look at us, all wound up over nothing'. "He alarmed me so because whether or not he knew it, he was walking straight towards us. I don't think he knew it. There should be no reason that anyone should cross the street to walk straight towards us—that's enough cause for my alarm." He had said all of the latter quietly.
"Oh." Robin's piqued curiousity fell flat, somewhat. Perhaps secretly inside she'd been wishing that she'd just been witness to some sort of clandestine meeting with one of Amon's contacts. The man did build up a certain air of mystery around himself; it was just the kind of thing she would have expected him to take part in. "What'd he say? What'd you say?"
Amon made a 'heh' noise; the closest thing to a snicker or a
laugh she'd ever heard him make. "Robin, you should really have paid more
attention to SOLOMON's language training. He asked me if I had any money for
him—and I said yeah, but to spend it wisely." Amon shrugged slightly. "I
wonder who's worse off—him or us?"
Robin wasn't quite sure what Amon meant; worse off in which sense, but it gave her something to think about as they continued to walk through the fog, Amon's eyes serving as a figurative set of headlights in the mist.
Robin felt desperately underdressed for the symphony; it wasn't until they'd arrived that she'd realized that perhaps she should have dressed up. Her usual Victorian dress would have perhaps been a bit ridiculous looking, but her scarf, sweater, skirt, boots ensemble made her look like a vagabond compared to everyone else. (At the very least she should have done something with her hair, she figured.) Even Amon's suit, even though she'd seen him wear that particular one many time before, suddenly looked about fifteen times sharper than it usually did. His bizarre joviality had continued all throughout the evening, although Robin had begun to wonder if it hadn't been emphasized and spurred on by the drinks he'd consumed at dinner.
The sudden trill of the strings and the winds in unison made her nearly jump over the balcony that she was leaning on; sitting forward, arms folded on the top of the box's wall. Amon was slightly behind her, at her side, sitting with his legs stretched out and his fingers steepled under his chin, looking somehow calculating in the darkness. With a full stomach, Amon in high spirits, and pleasant music drifting into her ears, Robin's head felt strangely empty. It was devoid of any real thoughts; errant little flashes in the pan appeared now and then, but nothing serious. To her amazement, she'd even stopped wondering obsessively about when Nagira would call them. For the moment, she was simply content to be. She closed her eyes and reached, tentatively, just enough to make her suck her breath in a bit (the noise overwhelmed by the sounds of the symphony), just enough to bring the radiance of her own glow and Amon's into her mind. It was strangely warm and soothing, like immersing one's self in a warm bath. The sounds of the violins and flutes and all the other instruments of the orchestra suddenly were very far away, as if listening to them through a wall a million miles thick. If she kept the reaching there, barely stretching it out at all, Amon wouldn't notice and she could stay in the comforting reality forever and ever—or at least until she had to get up and walk around, or open her eyes to talk to someone.
When something feels good, though, human beings become greedy. Just a bit further, Robin thought, just a little more. In her mind's eye, it felt as if she'd just fallen over the edge of the balcony, but never hit the hall floor below—and the music grew further away still, replaced by the dull humming, whirring noise that she'd become so familiar with, the noise that would eventually grow into the murmurs of others. Stretching out, traveling away from the glow of herself and Amon slowly, so as not to raise an alarm too quickly—
--right there. Right below them. Burning like a supernova. Another witch. Here. Robin's eyes flew open with a jerk, and she sat up straight suddenly, her heart jolted. She was vaguely cognizant of the sound of Amon's chair creaking as he sat up quickly in reaction to her sudden movement, his feet sliding across the floor. There, far below them, in the rows of seating along the hall floor, was a man.
And the man was staring straight up at their box; more specifically, at Robin, who found she could do little more than stare back, a measure horrified. By now Amon was hovering at her elbow, looking down below them, almost instantly noticing the man. His jaw tightened noticeably.
"He's a witch," Robin murmured, scooting away from the balcony, skin burning, pupils constricted to almost pinpricks. "He might be a Hunter, I can't tell if—"
"Shhh." It was a low hiss from Amon, his head turned slightly to the side, as if he were catching the scent of something on an invisible breeze. Robin's adrenaline and her Craft had begun to flow, circulating through her bloodstream, as was Amon's, she knew. This was no false alarm, as it had been earlier that evening with the old Dutch beggar.
Something was happening.
"There are people coming up the stairs," Amon murmured, standing suddenly and quickly, moving to the door with an animal fluidity that was almost feline in nature—his Craft was definitely at work. Standing closer to the door, he listened again. "I'd say four," he whispered, then his face darkened. "And they're trying very hard to be quiet. Coming in our direction. We've still got time."
Robin had stood from her own seat, moving to Amon quickly, looking up at him, eyes knowing. "Hunters."
His eyes locked with her own as he withdrew his gun from the holster within his jacket, any traces of amiable nature that had been present earlier that day no longer locatable. This was the Amon she knew, she was used to—the hard, driven look of the Hunter, eyes barely moving about, yet seeing everything. His heartbeat was visible, quickened and strengthened greatly, as it pulsed in his neck. "Ready?" he asked, voice like a knife piercing their tense, Craft-charged silence.
"Yes," she breathed, fire inside of her, fire under her skin, fire ready to be unleashed. Everything she was burned like a fire.
There was no reply from Amon. He simply opened the door; come what may from the other side.
