The wind, ice-cold and razor-sharp, whipped across her face without abandon. With no trees, no buildings, or no structures of any other kind about, Robin found herself being forced to play the role of windbreak. It dried her eyes and made them water, perhaps more than they had been watering before, and the crispness of the cold, dry air made it difficult for her to breathe.

Or had all of that been happening in the sanctity of Gróa's living room, as well?

Her hood did her little good since it just kept blowing off her head, stubbornly. It wasn't as if it would have been much help anyway since her coat was too ridiculously big for her, and the hood would have obstructed her vision anyway. Marching up the nearest green hill dotted with rocky outcroppings, Robin moved away from the house with bewilderment and hopelessness beating in her breast like a second heart. Nearing the top of the hill, the wind almost blew her over backwards but she kept marching on, numb hands clutching at her heavy black skirt with a vice-grip; partially to move the skirt out of her way as she marched, partially to keep it from flapping up in the gale.

"I thought I was supposed to walk with you," Amon's voice called from behind her, and Robin attempted to double her march. She said nothing, just kept marching. Something inside of her was threatening to snap again and it was going to snap on Amon, again, if he persisted in following her. "Robin. Slow down."

The sound of his voice was almost lost in the wind around them and the gale of emotions loose inside Robin's mind. A part of her brain reached out, and the felt the sunfire presence of Amon behind her, persistent; she stopped the reaching before it could spin out of control and show her the entirety of the witch-world in a show of light. He was gaining on her, she both sensed and saw it in her mind's eye.

"My legs are longer than yours," Amon offered, coming down the other side of the hill. "I'm going to catch up to you, inevitably. Unless you'd care to try to run from me--but I can outrun you, now, as well."

Coming down the hill her footfalls were heavy and clumsy. She scrubbed at her eyes, her face feeling pinched and dry from all the wind. Tendrils of her hair whipped about uselessly and she pushed at them in irritation, as well. Amon was almost right behind her, then.

His hand gripped the loose, heavy fabric of the coat on her shoulder, effectively jarring her into a stop. She attempted to pull away, half-heartedly, knowing that she wasn't going to be able to do it; Amon's grip tightened accordingly. Robin whirled to face him, face wind-whipped white and pink, eyes dry and watery all at the same time. Her nose was beginning to run, slightly, and she sniffled. Standing with her back to the wind caused her hood to flip up and over her head, and from underneath its safety she stared flatly out at Amon, who regarded her evenly through his mess of whipping black hair.

"What?" she asked tiredly, voice straining. He continued to just look at her with the same measured glance--as if to say, You know what. She attempted to jerk away from his grip again, only to have it tighten once more.

Her mind itched within its confinements. Robin allowed one arm, one powerful arm to extend from the confinements, seeing in world of light, and she poked Amon. Hard. Right in the center of the sunspot of light that represented him in the witch-world; and she knew he felt it. She knew that he'd felt her mind reaching out before. He'd told her so himself, and that, she suspected, had been more of the reason he'd wanted her to stop doing it rather than fear of SOLOMON agents sensing it. He did not like the fact that she could, in a way, get inside of him, into his head.

His grip released immediately and he drew back, looking at her. "When did you learn how to do that?" he asked--no, more demanded of her. She simply looked at him.

"I've known how to do /that/ all along," she replied, lying somewhat--she'd known how to see in the witch-world, but she had not known how to be pointedly forceful about her intrusion...and she wasn't sure, really, when exactly she had learned. "It's easy, especially when someone is so close." Her voice held a slightly accusatory undertone and Amon either did not detect it or did not care. He frowned, and looked at the sky momentarily, before taking a step towards Robin.

She poked him again, and then he scowled.

"Stop that, Robin." He folded his arms over his chest; his size made all the more impressive by the large winter coat he was wearing. His eyes were barely readable pieces of charcoal concealed by the constant wind-shifting of his hair. "I know you're angry with me but that's no excuse to use that particular aspect of your Craft against me."

She blinked at him. "Would you rather I incinerated you?" she asked, innocently menacing. He shifted on his booted feet and folded his arms further, tilting his head at her.

"I'd think the first thing to be learned about being God's chosen witch would be that it's not very becoming--or mature--to run around threatening people and attacking them without provocation," he pointed out, firmly. Robin frowned at him, incredulously; the action of frowning pulled on her already too-tightly-stretched-by-wind skin.

"What would you know about it?" she inquired pointedly, her face feeling frozen. What would Amon know about her, anyway? It seemed to her, mostly, that he didn't care to know much about her--just how to tell her what to do and how to make her unhappy.

He shrugged slightly. "Probably a bit more than Gróa, and you were asking her--she's not even a witch, Robin, and you barely know her."

I barely know you, most of the time, Robin's mind interjected glumly.

Amon cleared his throat slightly before continuing, having to pick up the volume of his voice a bit as the wind began to tear along at a new pace. "I know you're angry with me. You don't have to demonstrate your powers on me for me to know it."

"What else would you have me do?" Robin asked, helplessly. "Nothing seems to make a difference to you--whether I was happy, or unhappy, or angry, or scared, or...or...anything." She cast her eyes to the ground momentarily, trying to collect a coherent train of thought that was somewhat logical. That, she figured, would be perhaps the only thing that Amon would understand--or at least make an effort to understand. "It was obvious to you, wasn't it, that I didn't want you to follow me?"

"Yes," Amon admitted nonchalantly.

"And yet you persisted," Robin continued. "I don't see how anything I did was wrong. You kept following me and I reacted. Isn't that something you would do? If you knew that I didn't want you following me, why did you keep doing it?"

He looked directly at her then, the force of his gaze somehow not hampered--as it had been previously--by the obstruction of his hair. "Because I wanted to," he said, simply. The power of his direct gaze, as it often did, held Robin's captive. "Because I didn't really care if you wanted me around or not. I wanted to take a walk with you because I know that you're angry with me, and I hoped that I could somehow fix that."

Robin's brain fumbled uselessly for a few seconds, and then somehow fed some words to her mouth--something, anything, to break her free of his nailing stare. If she kept looking at him like that and he kept looking at her like that she might never speak again. "You think," she began, with a lot less conviction and focus than she would have liked, "that you can just make people unangry with you just like that?"

His eyes did not move. "You can't go on being angry at me forever, and I can't go on chasing you around trying to get you to not be angry at me forever. I shouldn't--can't--go on being angry with you and Nagira forever over something that's already done and happened. At some point there must come an end to it." There was a silence between his words, the stare continuing on into infinity. "You and I cannot survive without each other. If we're angry with each other and not communicating, it could be our downfall. And I am notoriously difficult to live with, Robin--you of all people should know that, by now."

How was he doing it? Was it the stare, the words, the semi-truth stated within them? Robin felt the anger within her dissipating; a boiling pot of water taken off the burner and left to cool. In a way, she felt it wasn't fair--that somehow, no matter how angry or upset she became, she could never sway Amon...but with a few well placed words and an intense stare, he could change her entire mood. Whatever was happening, she couldn't help it, and she told herself that watching people and learning how to move them in the way he wanted them to go was Amon's specialty.

"You should try to be less difficult," she said, feeling stupid at having said it. As if Amon would ever bend his will or change his ways to satisfy someone else.

"I am trying," he offered, honestly. "I fear I'm not doing a very good job of it." One of his hands broke free from being folded against his chest and ran through his now very-much-wind-tossed hair, his eyes staring at a point on the horizon, as if he were gathering his thoughts. "I'm sorry, Robin." The words sounded so strange coming from his mouth, and Robin looked at him in muted amazement, knowing that he probably felt as strange as he looked saying those words. "You had every right to be angry with me. You have every right to be angry with me. Today, you let me have what I deserved. I have known, for a long time coming, that I've deserved that."

He looked down and over at her again. "Especially coming from your mouth."

Robin was stunned into muteness by the sudden revelations from Amon. Her mouth worked uselessly as the wind blew around them, and she knew that she should say something but she simply could not. Somehow, strangely, she felt as if she should be apologizing as well, but it wouldn't come. Amon did not apologize, ever, and she wondered if that's why she felt as if she should--feeling as if she'd somehow forced Amon into doing something that he never did. Amon perhaps intuitively sensed that Robin pondered apology and shook his head, slightly.

"I don't deserve an apology," he said, almost angrily. "I won't accept it and I don't want to hear it."

"So," Robin said, after silence, attempting to squelch the feeling that she should be apologizing, as well, "where does all of this leave us now?" Amon looked at her and she swore that in a way, he was smiling, even though his face didn't appear to have moved at all. Had he won? Had she won? Was it a stalemate? And since when had she become so concerned with winning?

"It leaves us," he said, amusement or pleasure or something like one of them definitely present in his voice, "to taking a walk."

--------------------

Robin couldn't help but burst into giggles when she walked into the kitchen upon she and Amon's return some time later. Nagira was clad in a ridiculously small apron, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He looked at her as if he had no idea what was so funny, and shrugged.

"How was the walk, kid?" he asked, and looked beyond Robin slightly, squinting. "And where's the ogre?"

Robin came into the kitchen, stopping to peer into a large pot of something simmering on the stove--it appeared to be some sort of stew. Noises from a small cellar entry told her where Gróa had disappeared off to. "He's hanging up our coats," Robin replied. "The walk was very windy, but fine."

Nagira drew a bit closer to Robin, simultaneously ashing his cigarette in the slightly abused-looking ceramic sink. Robin noticed a small pile of ashes down at the bottom of the sink; obviously Nagira had been smoking like a chimney, as usual. "Did he apologise?" he asked her, quietly, quickly. Robin nodded and Nagira grinned. "I knew he would." Robin opened her mouth to reply but at that moment the sounds of heavy footfalls alerted them to the fact that Amon was heading towards the kitchen, and so she closed her mouth. A few moments later sounds from the cellar indicated that Gróa was coming back into the kitchen, as well.

Amon appeared in the kitchen's doorway, hands on his hips, hair looking more ruffled than it usually did. Apparently the wind had done damage that could not be easily corrected by his hands. "You look absolutely ridiculous," he quipped in deadpan at the sight of his older brother, who shrugged in response.

"So do you, but I'm nice enough to never say anything about it," Nagira retorted. "Nice hair, by the way."

Mildly disgruntled, Amon attempted to tame his hair with his hands to no avail. Robin watched him and was thankful for the fact that her own hair had remained relatively normal thanks to the amateurish knot she'd tied it in at the back of her head. Amon apparently had the same idea a moment later and pulled a rubber band out of his pocket that she presumed that he kept there for that precise reason. He managed to get most all of his hair into the band at the back of his head, but large chunks of it kept falling into his face and he grumbled.

"Oh, grumble, grumble," Nagira said, removing the lid from the pot on the stove near Robin. He took up a wooden spoon and stirred the stew; Robin saw onion slices and carrots, split peas and some type of meat. "Get a haircut, you hippie."

The look Amon favoured Nagira with over Robin's head would have melted steel and it was that precise look that Gróa was greeted with as she ascended the stairs from the cellar with a jar filled with a dark substance in her hand. She looked between Robin and Amon, a slight smile on her face. "Ah, you've returned. And how was your walk?"

"Intensely scenic," Amon said, and Robin wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or just plain weird. She turned to Gróa with a small smile. "It was nice," Robin added to Amon's comment. "It was very windy, though."

Gróa nodded, opening a bread-box on the counter and pulling out a few thick slices, laying them on a plate. "It tends to be so in the fall and the winter. I guess I hadn't thought of that when I sent you two out for a walk." She shrugged, opening the jar she'd brought upstairs, and produced a knife from a drawer. She began to spread the dark contents onto the thick slices of bread fluidly. "No matter. You two looked like you needed some air."

"Ah." Robin found she didn't really have much to say in response. She couldn't exactly thank Gróa for sending them outside thereby allowing Amon and she to talk without severely embarassing Amon. So, she kept her mouth shut and watched Nagira stirring with a vague, detached interest.

After coating several slices of bread with what Robin had now discerned to be jam of some kind, Gróa turned to them and indicated a small table there in the kitchen. "Please, sit," she almost commanded and Robin did so without complaint. Amon followed her to the table a split second later and sat down on the end, next to Robin, who'd seated herself next to the wall on the far end of the table. Gróa pointed at Nagira. "That means you, too. I can finish from here, although you have been a wonderful help." Nagira, smirking somewhat, put his cigarette out in the sink and removed his goofy apron, draping it over the back of his chair. He seated himself across from Robin and winked at her as he did.

Gróa began pulling bowls and plates out of the cabinets, and silverware out of the drawers. "I suppose I should have set the table prior to this. Oh, well. I don't entertain often." She laughed slightly. "For lunch today, my dear guests, we are having hveitibrauð með lyftidufti and rabarbarasulta, and saltkjöt og baunir for the main course."

Robin found one eyebrow raising slightly at the seeming gibberish that had just come out of Gróa's mouth, and, looking to Amon, she found him to be favouring Gróa with the most incredulous look she'd ever seen him display. "What," he began, somewhat dumbfoundedly, "the hell is all that?"

Nagira seconded Amon's question with a disbelieving nod.

"Baking soda bread and rhubarb jam, and salted-meat and split pea soup," Gróa replied, obviously getting a kick out of the trio's reaction to Icelandic. "Doesn't sound nearly as exciting in English, no?"

"It sounds like it's from this planet," Nagira said under his breath as Gróa set small plates with the bread and jam on them in front of the three. A few moments later she'd dished up the soup and set two bowls in front of Nagira and Amon first, and then in front of Robin. Finally, after she'd handed out all the silverware and napkins, Gróa dished up her own food and sat down at the last remaining spot--incidentally, the head of the table.

"Dig in!" she chirped, and everyone did so. There was silence for a while as all four ate, punctuated only once by Robin's praise of the food. The blonde witch was pleased to discover that Amon appeared to be in the process of clearing both his plate and his bowl of soup; she often wondered how he survived on how little food he ate. Nagira, as he had before, appeared to be taking his sweet time in eating his food.

"I assume," Gróa said suddenly, after the eating silence, her own dishes almost clean, "that you all have many more questions for me."

Robin, her own dishes almost similarly clean, set down her spoon and looked to Gróa. "I never got to ask you--you said that you'd heard of us, before. You even knew our names. Since we haven't made contact with any other witches or circles, and you're no longer associated with SOLOMON, how did such a thing happen?"

Gróa leaned back in her chair, her spoon idly twirling in her small fingers. "A justified question, I suppose. Well, for one thing, witches are pretty good at finding information about their own. It mostly all started out as hearsay, really--then, news came of what had happened in Japan, with the SOLOMON building--"

"Factory," Amon supplied for her, picking up his piece of bread--already half-eaten. "I'm not surprised that Factory's collapse and the STN-J's insubordination turned some heads in the Craft-using world. It's not every day that SOLOMON completely loses control over one of their branches."

Nagira snorted slightly with laughter at Amon's no-nonsense statement. "I'll say."

"In any case," Gróa continued, spoon still twirling idly, "news started to come out of Japan and filter out into the community. Naturally, witches wanted to know more...especially when the rumour that the incident had begun from within, rather than from without. So, certain witches--my ex-husband, included--started sniffing around for news."

Robin looked over at Gróa, her face darkened. "Do they know of orbo?" At the mention of orbo, Amon's chewing slowed and he looked over at Robin momentarily, gauging her state, and then as if nothing had happened, he resumed chewing at a normal speed and went back to his stew.

"They know enough," Gróa replied, just as darkly. "But let's not speak of that, now. More news started to be discovered--including that someone had eliminated a good deal of SOLOMON's top European Hunters, including the infamous Sastre." Gróa's petite nose wrinkled, momentarily, her face bunched slightly in disgust. "To be honest with you, I was shocked that he hadn't died already of natural causes. The man was rather old, wasn't he?"

Robin furrowed her brow. "He never appeared that old to me."

Gróa smiled slyly, secretively. "It would appear that the miracle of cosmetic surgery is still a miracle," she said with an evil glee. "But it appeared that it didn't matter how much he'd tried to turn back the clock on his aging body--it was all for naught when he was burned to a crisp." She grinned evilly at Robin's embarassed, astonished look. "And that's when we heard about you, Robin. And that's when we started piecing together the breakdown in operations in Japan, bit by bit. Not too long afterwards we heard about you," she said, nodding towards Amon, "but that was more because SOLOMON was in an uproar as to what to do about you."

Amon looked at her pointedly, an eyebrow raised. "And how exactly did you hear about what SOLOMON was thinking or doing?"

Gróa's secretive smile returned. "I'm getting to that. My ex-husband pieced together most of the puzzle himself, and a few other covens, I think, caught on as well--and that's when the word was out that top priority of every Hunter in the world was the death of you two."

"I'm honoured," Amon said. His tone made it rather obvious that he was exactly the opposite.

Having been largely silent since the beginning of the conversation, Nagira suddenly sat forward and looked to Gróa. "I'm assuming it's an inside thing, right? It's fucking hard--" He stopped, momentarily, frowning. "--Pardon my French. It's pretty tough to get into SOLOMON's information, especially the amount of information you and your friends seem to be accessing. Believe me, I've tried and have had people try. Even if you did work for them at some point...well, hell, these two did, and even they can't get information like you can, now." His finger drummed on the table slightly and one hand reflexively reached into his shirt pocket for his pack of cigarettes. "I don't suppose you'd have any kind of alcohol around, would you?"

As Nagira lit his billionth cigarette of the day, the trio's Icelandic host stood and crossed the kitchen to a large cabinet, from which she produced two bottles of wine. "Take your pick," she said, her accent making her voice sound as if she were giggling. "Syrah or pinot grigio? Two completely different ends of the wine spectrum, I know, but my taste is varied."

"Syrah," Amon answered, before Nagira could even get a word out. Incidentally, both Robin and Amon ended up with glasses of syrah in front of them, and Nagira opted for a glass of the grigio. Gróa poured herself a glass of the syrah as well. It appeared to be the more popular of the two choices--although, moreso because Robin didn't really know what she was picking.

Taking a sip from her wine, the host directed her attention towards the smoking man again. "Well, I was going to get to all of that, but yes--in a way, it is a manner of...infiltration, one would say? You'll hear more about all of that when you finally meet my ex-husband, but it is very much the same with witches and witch sympathizers as it is with SOLOMON--they are much more far-reaching than many would think." Gróa raised her glass then, startling Robin into half-raising hers on an impulse. Amon almost chuckled, which was as good a full-blown laugh from anyone else. "Here. I propose an impromptu toast in honour of whatever good fate delivered you people into my hands. I'd think," she said, casting a meaningful glance at each of them in turn, "that it was no coincidence that you found me."

Amon half-raised his glass, then, as well. "Perhaps," he replied, enigmatically.

"To the future, as generic of a toast as that may be," Gróa enthused, and then smiled at Robin who had raised her glass a bit more. "And not to put a load of bricks on your shoulders or anything like that, but from what I've heard there's a lot expected of you in this future."

Before Robin could ask any questions, Gróa had already raised her glass fully to the rest of the table, and drank from it as well.

Following custom the brothers and the saviour of all of witchdom did so as well.

--------------------

Noontime faded into afternoon, faded into dusk, and it seemed perhaps polite that Gróa be left to her own devices for the evening, since they had arrived so abruptly and, in a way, rudely. Most of the lunch had been eaten (very few leftovers, Robin and Nagira--afflicted by a sudden bout of late-afternoon hunger--had seen to that) and both of the bottles of wine had been emptied. Many things had been discussed, both relevant and not-so-relevant, and it seemed that perhaps even Amon was seeing the point in reaching out to find other witches.

Or maybe that had been the wine talking.

The wind hadn't eased much by the time Gróa was seeing her guests to the door, Nagira shrugging into his ridiculous white coat and Amon helping an obviously impaired Robin into her too-big army-green coat. The temperature had also dropped somewhat, prompting a not-so-obviously-impaired Nagira to playfully tug Robin's fur-lined hood down over most of her face, snickering when she struggled against his big-brother-bullying advances.

"Come back tomorrow," Gróa said, at the door to Amon, who was by far and away the soberest of the three. "Come back...in the evening? If you end up staying later than is convenient for you to drive back to Reyjavík, I can accomodate the three of you here for the evening. Tonight I will contact my ex-husband and others--by tomorrow evening at very very latest I should have news from them, information for you."

As Nagira and Robin bumbled off to the Mercedes together, arm in arm, Amon watched but spoke to Gróa at the same time. "And my Craft?"

"I only know what I know about it," Gróa replied. "But I can have more information tomorrow evening. Please do come back." She smiled up at him, a long distance. There was at least a foot and a half between them, possibly even two. "Even if you were a bit...upset at the beginning, I enjoyed having you as company. I never thought I'd get to meet you two--and your brother, while not nearly as notorious, still a very nice man."

Amon found himself bowing slightly on impulse; a derangedly Japanese habit driven into him by years of living in Japan, being subjected to their somewhat bizarre--even to a semi-native--cultural rules. "Thank you for having us today. I...apologise for my behaviour."

Gróa shook her head, waving him out the door. "It is not a problem. Go, now, but return tomorrow evening. I fear what will happen if your brother or the Eve attempts to drive."

Outside of the door, wind whipping his semi-pinned back hair viciously, Amon looked at the tiny woman in front of him. "You called her the Eve," he said, half in wonder, half in confusion.

"That's what she is, isn't it?" Gróa asked bemusedly, before slowly and gently closing the door. Amon turned and headed for the Mercedes, where it took him another five minutes to chase Nagira out of the driver's seat and into the back seat in order to begin the hour-long trek back to Reyjavík.

--------------------

Robin had developed the hiccups. It had definitely amused Nagira; he'd laughed out loud at the development. She couldn't be sure if it had amused Amon or not, she thought that perhaps it might have. Holding her breath for as long as she humanly could didn't even seem the fix the problem. Nagira suggested that he perhaps scare the wits out of her to attempt to rid her of the hiccups, but she pointed out, brain feeling fuzzy, that he couldn't scare her if she knew it was coming.

The drive seemed to take longer than it did on the way there, despite the fact that Amon was driving faster than Nagira had been. Robin suspected it was the wine affecting her. Nagira chain-smoked silently in the backseat, until:

"We should go out somewhere," he suggested mildly. Amon's brow furrowed immediately.

"Like where?" he asked of his brother, impassively. Nagira shrugged, slumped lazily across the backseat.

"Dunno. A restaurant, a bar, a club, anywhere. Hanging out with you two makes one long for a little...life, in their life. It's like I'm at a funeral in a car or something," Nagira quipped, pointedly ignoring his brother's eye roll. "C'mon, we've already got wine in us. Oughtta keep the ball rolling, you know."

Amon was silent for a moment, hands on the steering wheel, face eerily illuminated from the instrument panel. "Not tonight," he replied after deliberation. "Have you ever stopped to wonder if, perhaps, Nagira, you have a drinking problem?" Amon asked. "You know, just a wee one," he added, sarcastically.

Robin jumped into the conversation, feeling obligated to--especially after her brain recalled that it had recalled, in the recent past, that she'd been witness to Amon himself drinking somewhat frequently. "Amon, do you really think that Nagira is an alcoholic?" she asked, her voice gently chiding. Luckily her hiccup came after she had spoken. Amon did not answer, but merely looked into the backseat through the rear view mirror.

"Nah," Nagira said, with bravado. "I'm not an alcoholic. Alcoholics go to classes." Flicking his cigarette out one of the cracked rear windows, Nagira kicked the back of Amon's seat insistently. "So does that mean no about tonight?"

Amon deliberated again, for a moment, Robin watching him, hiccuping. A large part of her hoped he'd change his mind about the whole thing; it was obvious that Nagira didn't want to go out without his little brother. "Yes, it means no," he reaffirmed, and Robin turned away, disappointed.

"Killjoy," Nagira accused from the backseat, unrepetantly. He was awarded with another eye roll from Amon.

--------------------

They returned to the hotel without further incident or much conversation. Amon handed the keys to a valet as they exited the vehicle, and the trio reentered the hotel via the lobby. Robin found her hiccups had still not subsided. By this point, they'd been occurring for about a half hour and they were starting to drive her insane--not to mention become rather uncomfortable. Perhaps, she thought, if she ignored the hiccups and pretended like they weren't there, they'd go away. It was a rather psycho-analytical approach to it, but it didn't sound any stranger to Robin than some of the things Nagira had suggested to her, like drinking from a soda while upside-down.

So instead she watched people as they crossed the lobby, observing the various activities. Two people, a man and a woman, appeared to be having coffee in two wooden-framed armchairs that flanked a small wooden table. They were speaking Icelandic, which Robin understood none of.

Gróa had gone briefly into some of the details of what her powers were probably beginning to encompass, and what they would more than likely end up encompassing. How Gróa had come into possession of such knowledge bewildered and confused Robin, but she wondered if it was better to just not question the knowledge of the woman. The deeper into conversation they descended with Gróa, it seemed that they all developed more questions. Tomorrow night, Robin told herself resolutely, as she entered the elevator behind Nagira but ahead of Amon, she would ask fewer questions and simply absorb more information.

There was an imperceptible change in Amon's...aura? She didn't know what to rightly term it, only knew what it looked like in her alternate vision of light and darkness; a glow, a haze, a brightness that represented Amon rather than resembled him--or even a human--in any way, shape, or form. Oddly enough, and somewhat disturbingly, Robin discovered that since she'd used the alternate vision today to push at Amon, she'd been having problems keeping her normal sense of vision and the other world's vision from coming and going, spottily. She wondered if perhaps it wasn't a side effect of the wine she'd drank that it had seemed to get worse in the last hour or so, but it felt...different, somehow. Her hiccupping persisted.

Amon's glow had dimmed, somehow--not the bright flame she'd seen it as before, always. Why had it dimmed, she wondered--perhaps, his Craft relaxing? Or was it simply because he was unsure; wary of the new situation they'd been dumped into by no small fault of Robin's?

These thoughts continued to run through her mind as she semi-stumbled, hiccupping pitifully, into the bathroom of the room that Amon and she shared together, partially closing the door behind her. The stumbling was part wine-induced, part-vision induced--it seemed that the room was darkening around her, except for the glow that eminated off her own being. At least, a small part of her brain reasoned, you're not seeing anyone else save yourself and Amon. Remember what happened last time you saw others near you, in Amsterdam? The light beige walls of the bathroom were alternating between confining and disappearing into nothingness as her sight went from that of a normal person's to that of the Eve of Witches.

Somewhere in the back of her mind Robin realized that she was starting to panic, somewhat. Her breathing was increased, causing her hiccups to become almost painful, and she gripped the edge of the bathroom counter, squeezing her eyes shut as if she was attempting to chase away an evil sight from her vision. She wondered why her actions seemed so familiar to her but the answer came to her in an instant: this was the same way she'd seem Amon attempt to pacify his own Craft whenever it threatened to gain the better of him. It didn't seem to be working very well for Robin, however.

"Hey, kid, you okay in there?" she heard Nagira's voice through the glow and the gloom, and the bathroom door, and she swallowed heavily before answering, coating her dry throat with the lubrication necessary to form words.

"Yes," she answered back, a bit more loudly than she'd meant to. She heard Nagira's voice muttering something about "wine" to someone--presumably Amon, there was a glow at the corner of her vision, in the gloom somewhere--and then the glow disappeared out of her immediate range along with Nagira's voice.

It wasn't going back to where it usually resided when she commanded it, the vision; it remained, coating her mind, refusing to retreat back into the little box in the back of her consciousness where it remained locked up whenever she didn't want to use it. Her mind was beginning to ache with the effort of trying to subdue it.

Somehow, blindly, her hands found the door and opened it, shuffling out of the bathroom slowly. Not trusting her hiccupping voice to call out for Amon or Nagira's help, she made her way across the room--her vision bursting back and forth between real time and the gaping darkness, towards the glow that she knew represented Amon--and opened the door that joined the two rooms together, fumblingly, awkwardly. One step into Nagira's room, her mouth barely open to speak--

--her normal vision registered the form of Amon in front of her suddenly, in a blur; sprung from the place against the wall next to the door, and his loud shout of a word she didn't understand at the moment, her brain overloaded. Her vision switched, like a slide in a projector, and all went black except for the glow in front of her--and her heart beating at a million miles a second, willed her startled and confused brain into action. A small shriek issued from her mouth because a portion of her brain backpedaled furiously, knowing what was about to happen, but the larger part of her pushed right at the center of the glow in front of her, in self-defense; pushed so hard that it seemed to distort downwards, slightly, to a funnel in the center.

Then everything went absolutely black, not even glowing present. Sounds ceased. Thoughts ceased. There was only nothing; blessed, light-free, nothing.

--------------------

Nagira barely had two seconds to register what had happened in front of him. One moment Robin was walking in the door, her mouth open, teetering on the edge of a word--obviously, she was done being sick in the bathroom, which is what Nagira had figured she was doing.

The next half moment, Amon had leapt out from next to the door with a speed that was not nearly human and leaned closer to Robin, shouting the word yamero in Japanese, loudly--a rare moment of joking, Amon had decided to scare the living hell out of Robin in order to see if he could cure her hiccups.

A full moment, and Robin shrieked; Amon clutched his head suddenly in what appeared to be very real, painful confusion, his eyes somehow blank, unsteady on his feet. A half a second later, Robin simply slumped forward, eyes rolled back in her head, fainted dead away. Amon, still appearing very disoriented and disconnected from everything that was happening, moved forward clumsily in an attempt to catch Robin as she fell, but didn't get there in time and the young girl hit the thick carpeting with a muted thud.

Nagira rushed forward, stooping to pull Robin up into a sitting position in his arms, her head lolling uselessly around and around in a semi-circle as the lawyer checked her pulse and her breathing, just to make sure that she hadn't just had a heart attack. Her heart was beating faster than usual, and her breathing seemed a bit accelerated, but after a few moments both began to drop to more of a normal rate. Nagira looked up to his brother, who was standing braced against a table, still looking shaky on his feet.

"I'm glad to see that you're awfully concerned about this," Nagira said flatly, his eyes searing into Amon. "What the hell was that?" he asked, and Amon shook his head, dazedly.

"My mind is tingling," he replied, when he finally did, about ten seconds later. Nagira raised an eyebrow at his brother's cryptic, strange statement. "She was in my head. It feels like she still is, in a way," Amon said, distantly. "It feels like a burn right in the center of my brain--no, not a burn. The afterimage of a burn, after you burn yourself and the area is numb and ready to blister."

"Are you telling me that Robin...burned your brain?" Nagira asked slowly, somewhat skeptically. Amon made his way, unsteadily, to the floor where Nagira crouched, cradling an unconscious Robin against him. His brother's grey eyes turned to the unconscious girl, appearing a tad unfocussed.

"No..." The eyebrows above the unfocussed grey eyes drew together, in thought. "It's as if I stared at a light for too long, and now there's an afterimage spot in my head. It's as if she...shined a spotlight right into my head--" Amon broke off there, abruptly, his eyes starting to come back to their normal state. His brows did not relax, however. "She did it today, too, except not as forcefully."

Nagira picked Robin up as Amon remained crouched on the carpet, trying to piece something together. He laid her out, gently, on his bed, and she remained there motionless as a puppet with no one tugging on the strings. His brother rose, slowly, his face serious. "To who? You?" Nagira asked, and Amon nodded.

"While we were outside." He looked at the prone form of Robin again. "It felt like she was putting her finger on my forehead and pushing me away, but...it was inside my head. I've felt her presence before, when she does this..." Nagira was watching his brother with interest now; he had never heard of such things coming from Robin--hadn't even known that she was capable of them. "She sees, sometimes, in this...I don't even know what to call it. The best way for me to describe it would be that she has some sort of...witch-radar. She can sense them, around, if she concentrates on it. Limitedly, she has the power to touch them, I think. I'm not even certain about all of it, really--I could feel it, before, though, when she was doing it. I used to make her stop every time it grew enough for me to feel it because I was worried that Hunters would feel it, as well."

Nagira was now just as serious as Amon, even though part of his mind was amused; imagining his brother's reaction to Robin being able to reach into his mind--who knew what kind of strange things she could find there? "I've never felt it."

"You're not a witch," Amon replied, walking towards the bed. "She doesn't appear to be able to do anything to humans--not yet, anyway. Just witches." He sat down on the edge of it, still staring at Robin like she was a puzzle that the pieces were not fitting correctly in. "Before, it just felt like someone was touching my shoulder, this strange feeling of not being alone in my head...but today, she was actually able to hone it enough to push at me, when we were outside Gróa's house."

Nagira too looked to Robin, hand on his chin in thought. His fingers itched for a cigarette. "Do you think she accidentally lashed out with it because you scared her?"

"Perhaps." Amon's fingers pressed at the skin under the edge of Robin's jaw, checking her pulse. To Nagira it seemed that Amon's fingers stayed there a bit too long to be simply checking her pulse, however. "It's likely. However, my point is, that she was not able to do this a week ago. Her powers may be growing that fast. And obviously, they are growing too quickly for her to control them."

Nagira's itching fingers finally gave in and fumbled through his pockets for his pack of cigarettes. "But you said that she was able to control it, today. I think it's just that you scared the hell out of her, Amon--and she does have some wine in her system. Being mildly drunk coupled with being frightened...it's perfectly logical, you know, that her instincts may have just acted before her brain did." The snap of a lighter sounded through the air, and the scent of burning tobacco filled the room.

"But then why would she have fainted afterwards?" Amon asked, pointedly. "That's out of the ordinary. And I don't think Robin would intentionally use an attack of such force on me, if she could help it." Nagira watched Amon as he stared at Robin, and his brain pieced together why--aside from the obvious--why this incident was bothering his brother so much. Robin had attacked him, and Amon was, on some deep level, hurt by it. It was as if a child's pet cat had turned and scratched the child, hissing all the while. "It's finally starting to subside now, but that was an attack meant to disable and disorient a threat. With more force put into it, with more honing from Robin...that particular attack could probably stop an opponent's brain completely."

Nagira exhaled heavily, shaking his head. He stode over to where Robin lay and Amon sat, and looked down at the two. "Now you're just being paranoid," he assured calmly. "While Robin may have been momentarily unable to control herself, I don't think that she intentionally meant to hurt you, ototo--but you have to admit, you probably scared the shit out of the girl. She reacted without realizing what was happening, and maybe...maybe using something of that magnitude, what she did to you, sapped her."

Amon was silent, watching Robin. Nagira sighed, flicking his ashes to the carpet. "You should take her to bed," he suggested, and Amon didn't move for a moment; he eventually stood and picked Robin up from the bed, headed for the door to their shared room.

Nagira watched Amon leave the room, and wasn't startled in the least when he didn't return. Knowing Amon, and knowing what had just happened, Nagira already knew what his brother would spend the rest of the evening doing, or at least until Robin awoke.

He would watch her. The little boy and the Hunter in him were both wary; and the Warden had been frightened into remembering, jarringly, that he still had a duty that entailed a horrible promise.