Robin couldn't quite describe the feeling in her brain coherently upon waking. Rolling about a bit with her eyes closed, suggling under the covers, she attempted to piece together the fuzzy events of the night before and the even fuzzier thoughts of her brain. It was like a headache, the searing afterimage of fear, and cold medicine all mixed together. It wasn't helping her to piece together the events of the night prior any better, either. Underneath the blanket, she opened her eyes and stared into the very muted light in her own little cocoon; dawn, always awaking shortly after dawn.
She groaned slightly, stirring. She was still wearing all of her clothes.
"Robin." The sound of Amon's voice suddenly and inexplicably next to her, loud and serious, set her to scrambling and fighting to surface from the covers, startled. She poked her head out from under the covers, eyes wide and just-awakened-bewildered, to behold Amon sitting in a chair next to her bed, looking stiff and stale as if he hadn't moved all night. She blinked.
"Where did you come from?" she asked, stifling a yawn immediately after. He regarded her evenly, a bit tiredly.
"I've been right here all night," he replied, and Robin supposed that the fact shouldn't have shocked her. He sat forward a bit, elbows coming down to rest on his knees, eyes boring into her. "Do you remember last night, Robin?" he asked bluntly, and Robin's brain reeled.
How could I forget last night? her brain wondered, even if what she did remember was very fuzzy and distant, as if it had been a billion years ago and not the evening prior. She nodded slowly. Amon waited for a moment to see if she had any words, but once she spoke none, he continued.
"Do you remember passing out?" he asked. She'd heard the tone in his voice before; serious, even, neutral--it was the same voice he'd used to interrogate suspects with.
She nodded again, vaguely knowing where he was going with all of this. She'd attacked him--step one towards losing control in Amon's mind. She wondered if even then, at that very moment, he was sitting in the chair next to her bed wondering if he was going to have to kill her.
"What happened?" he asked then. Amon simply watched her as she sat up a bit more fully, leaning back against the pillows and folding her arms on top of her covers.
"I remember I was having problems with...my sight," she began, trying to blow the dust off the surface of her memory with her words, hoping that things would become less fuzzy to even her as she explained them. "I went into the bathroom, and things kept going from normal sight to...blackness, and glowing. How I see other witches, in..." She stopped. "I don't know what to call it. An otherworld, maybe?"
Amon brought his hands up to clasp underneath his chin, his elbows still resting on his knees. "This world of darkness and light that you describe, that's how it is when you...reach out, and touch other witches?"
Robin nodded. "Yes. I see other witches as little spots of light, more or less. But I see nothing else. It's like a photo of the universe, or something. My sight kept going back and forth, uncontrollably...and I was getting scared." She sighed, rubbing at one of her eyes. "I still had the hiccups, I think. I was trying to make my way to Nagira's room to ask one of you for help--although, I'm not sure what either one of you could have done to fix my sight."
"So you entered Nagira's room at that point?" Amon asked, still playing the interrogator.
"Yes. And you jumped out from..." Robin trailed off, trying to remember where Amon had come from, but failing. All she could remember was walking into the room and suddenly he was before her, in her face, shouting a word in Japanese. "...out of nowhere, and you said something. I don't remember what you said, honestly."
Amon nodded. "Yamero. I'd decided that I was going to try to scare the hiccups out of you."
Robin swallowed. "And then...it was like my brain snapped. It didn't understand what was going on, or where you'd come from, or maybe even that it was you...well, no. That's not entirely true," she corrected herself, shaking her head a bit. "Part of my brain did realize that it was you in front of me, and that there was no reason to be so frightened. But the other part just...lashed out. Everything went dark and all I saw was the glow, the big glow that was you--and I pushed at it." Robin stopped, blinking. "I...I didn't hurt you, did I?" she asked, her voice small.
Amon continued to look at her, impassively. "I'm fine. So you're telling me that despite the fact that part of your brain knew it was me in front of you, the larger part of your brain simply retaliated?"
Robin frowned, shaking her head. "But it wasn't like that. It wasn't as black and white as you're making it out to be. I'd already been having problems controlling my Craft before I'd encountered you, and it wasn't as if I intentionally wanted to attack you. The larger part of my brain just...lost it, I suppose."
Amon was silent, serious. "That's not a very comforting explanation, no matter how you put it. The fact of the matter is that you attacked someone- -it happened to be me, but it could have been Nagira, or Gróa, or anyone. You failed to exercise the control over your Craft that you need to have, Robin."
She felt as if somehow he was trying to pin everything on her--even if she was the one who'd lost control of her Craft, he'd had a bit to do with it, jumping out and scaring the living daylights out of her and all. If he'd been having similar issues with his Craft and she'd done something like he had done to her, she thought that he would have reacted similarly-- strike first, ask questions later. "You startled me. Wouldn't you have done the same thing if your Craft was irritated, and someone scared you half to death?"
"This isn't about me and my Craft, Robin," he replied, and she wanted to groan. "I can't say how I would have reacted, but this is about you and the fact that you did react. I'm not really sure what to think about all of it."
She looked away from him, her eyes sad, her mind trying to formulate some sort of good reply that would make him drop the whole subject. She couldn't think of one. The seeds of doubt had been planted in Amon the day that they'd met Nagira at the airport, and now it seemed as if everything she did caused him to lose a little less faith in her, caused the seeds to sprout seedlings that were growing into full-blow vines.
"You need to remember that I'm still your warden," he said, looking at her meaningfully. "I made a promise, Robin. It doesn't tread lightly on my conscience. Things like this are things that I'd rather forget, but can't. It'd be very easy for us to just go along and pretend that both of us had perfect control over our Crafts, but the simple fact of the matter is that we don't." He paused, his hand rubbing slightly at the very faint stubble on his face. "You realize that one day you will be immensely powerful." It was more of a statement than a question.
Robin looked down at her hands, folded on top of her blankets. "I--yes."
"Power corrupts, Robin," Amon said, quietly. "Even people like you. I'm here to act as a check on that power. And that means that incidents like this are going to concern me. I have to know that you're going to be able to withstand the strain of your Craft growing and that you're going to be able to handle your role--the Arcanum, the burden on your shoulders, all of it. If you can't, and you crack under the pressure, or you let yourself be led astray by the potential of what you could do with your powers..."
Robin looked over at him for the first time in a few moments and was taken aback by the sad, tired look on his face. Amon looked haggard, wasted, over-worked. There were circles under his eyes, and his face was slightly in need of a shave. She wondered if he'd always looked like this in the morning and she'd just never noticed it, or if his sudden aging had been a new occurence since last night. She felt oddly guilty.
"...you know what I'll have to do," he finished, darkly. "Perhaps I wouldn't be capable of killing you, once it'd reached that point, however." He pondered that for a moment. "Your powers are growing a lot faster than you've been telling me. I wish that it was easy for me to ignore, but it's not. The simple fact of the matter is that one day, you will be exponentially more powerful than I am. I think that perhaps you've already reached that point in simple ability, but you just haven't learned how to harness it all properly yet. But know this, Robin." He cleared his throat, hand rubbing absently at his shadow.
She swallowed.
"If such a time ever comes, a time where you lose control and you become a threat to yourself and others--I will use every ability I have to fight you," he said. "I will fight you until there isn't a breath left in my body, if I have to."
Robin shook her head, looking back down to her hands. "I don't want to talk about this, Amon. I know you made me a promise, but...I don't think it'll ever get to that point. I don't want to talk about us fighting to the death."
He looked at her pointedly in the morning lightening of the room. "You think I want to talk about it, either?" Amon asked, the forlorn tone betrayed in his voice catching Robin off-guard. "I feel as if I have to, now that your powers are growing faster than you'd originally told me. I'd like to believe that you're completely incorruptible, Robin, I really would. I'd like to believe that I know one hundred percent that you will take every power that you will one day have in your arsenal and use it all for good, but I...I just don't know that. No one can ever know those kind of things. No one can ever really trust any other person completely, one hundred percent, no matter how much they want to. I can have all the faith in you that I want, Robin, but that doesn't change your potential for wrong."
She looked back over to him, her eyes imploring. "But I trust you completely, Amon. I know that you only do what would be good for me--even if sometimes I don't want it or like it--and I know that if some day, if I lost control, really and truly lost control, I'd want someone to stop me before I could hurt any innocent people. But...I have faith in myself that I won't let that happen, and I know that it won't. I won't lose control." She blinked as he stared at her evenly and a trifle sadly. Amon looked decidedly hurt, decidedly depressed--and it appeared to Robin that as if the longer that this conversation went on, the more that he said, the more it took out of him. With every word he looked older and more exhausted.
"The only person you can ever trust completely is yourself, Robin. Remember that. I'd like to tell you that it's good for you to have absolute faith in me, but I'm just a man. There may come a time where I will fail in something, and you will be disappointed in me and you will feel let down. Then you will be bitter, and it will be because you trusted me too much." He looked completely drained, now. "I don't want to ever let you down, Robin, but I fear that some day it may happen whether I want it to or not. It would be wise for you to not place all of your trust in me, completely. Matter of fact, I'd prefer that you didn't."
Robin frowned. "That's a very negative way to look at it," she said, feeling somehow angry that he would ask her to have less trust in him. "I know that you're just a human, Amon, even if you are a witch. So am I. But I have faith, and I believe in you. Just because you might fail doesn't mean that I'd be disappointed and bitter--that'd be a very immature, petty way for me to act." She drew in a deep breath, still frowning. "I don't expect you to be perfect. I expect that from myself, but not from others. We're all just weak human beings, Amon, remember that," she said, and amazedly wondered how the conversation had gone from Amon giving her advice to her giving Amon advice. "We only have so much power, ourselves. The rest is up to God, and what he choses to do with us."
"I wish that I could just try my best and put the rest of my thoughts with God, but I can't." Amon shrugged, rubbing his eyes. "There's not really anything else for me to say. We could sit here until eternity and debate the subjects, and still not get any further along. The only thing that is for certain is that time will tell." He stood a bit stiffly, one of his knees popping. "I'd simply wanted to figure out what had happened, and remind you of a few things."
Robin looked over at him, sadly. "I won't trust you any less, no matter what your obligations to me are. I'm sorry."
He looked at her solemnly, his eyes flickering but unreadable. "I know you won't. I'd hoped that maybe I could have changed your mind, but I knew that somehow, I wouldn't be able to. I'm not sure if your unwavering trust in me flatters me or if it makes me feel guilty."
"It should do neither," she protested, gently. "It should just...give you faith in yourself."
"I see," he said, vaguely dismissive and perhaps somewhat uncomfortable. Amon turned and walked over to his bed at the other side of the room, and sat down on it. "I'm going to sleep now. You can go back to sleep now if you'd like."
Robin shook her head, tossing the blankets back and throwing her feet over the edge of the bed. "Absolutely not. You stayed up all night to watch me, now I'll stay up. Just like always. She watched him looking at his feet, silently, lost in thought. She looked down at her own feet. "I'll go to take a bath, if that won't disturb you while you're trying to sleep."
He reached down and started to unlace his boots, hair obscuring his tired face. "Go ahead."
She stood, moving slowly towards the bathroom as Amon pulled his boots off behind her, his movements a bit clumsier than they usually would have been. No doubt he felt extra-drained due to the fact that he'd not only been awake all night, but that he'd been awake all night worrying excessively. Robin looked back to Amon slightly before reaching the bathroom door, to find him unbuttoning his shirt, getting ready to shrug out of it. She looked away, blushing. "Amon," she began, talking more to the bathroom door than to him. "I'm sorry I hurt you, and I'm sorry that I made you have to worry about these sort of things all night long. I shall have to be more careful from now on." She looked down, slightly. "And I'm glad that you're still concerned about my control. Thank you."
He sighed, and she could hear him shuffling covers about. When she gathered the courage to look back, he was busy burying himself under the blankets, only his shoulders and his head visible, his back turned to her. "Please don't apologize to me, and please don't thank me," he said, voice slightly muffled. "You are what you are, and I am what I am. I'm tired and I'm talking nonsense. You should go take your bath, and I'll go to sleep."
Robin nodded slightly, gazing at his hair on the pillow, his white, broad shoulders above the blanket. "Okay," she replied, and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Being tired and talking nonsense was always his excuse whenever he actually said something to her, not just spoke to her.
---------------------
She soaked in the bathtub for quite some time, and when she finally did get out and creep across the bedroom to her bag, wrapped in a towel, Amon appeared to be deeply asleep--as deeply asleep as he ever was. He'd stirred when she'd opened the bathroom door, and stirred when she carried her bag into the bathroom to get dressed. She imagined that he'd woken up both times.
After she'd dressed, she'd recrossed the bedroom (Amon stirring again at the minute noises) to the door that conjoined their room to Nagira's. It was still fairly early in the morning, not quite eight am, but she figured that perhaps she could convince Nagira to wake up. Instead, she opened the door and was greeted with the sight of Nagira already awake, sitting in his bed, a TV remote in his hand. A cigarette was stuck in-between his lips and a perplexed look was plastered on his face, and Robin could hear the faint chatter of Icelandic TV as she entered the room, a bit timidly.
"Good morning," she said, and Nagira looked to her, smiling, removing the cigarette from his lips.
"Hey, kiddo," he said, grinding the cigarette out in an ashtray next to his bed, indicating the TV. "Just trying to make heads or tails of what's going on in this show. I think that this woman, here, is related to this guy or something...but they didn't know it, and now they're dating. But they're related. ...At least, I think that's what happening. Who the hell knows?" Robin entered the room, feeling a bit embarassed that Nagira was still in bed, and apparently shirtless. She sat down in one of the chairs and looked to the TV for a few moments, listening to the chattering weirdness of the Icelandic language.
"How long have you been awake for?" she asked.
"A while," he said, shrugging. "I heard you and Amon talking, and I woke up." He caught Robin's apologetic, nervous look, and shook his head, scratching at his disarrayed hair. "Nah, don't worry about it. I don't sleep very heavily, so just about anything wakes me up."
Robin nodded. "Amon, as well. Well, I'm still sorry that we awoke you."
Nagira shrugged again. "That's fine. He asleep right now?"
"Yes. Although, he can probably hear us talking right now, too, and he's probably awake." She sighed. "I was thinking about ordering up some room service breakfast," she added, quietly. "Would that interest you?"
"How about you give me twenty minutes and I take a shower and then we can go out to get some breakfast?" Nagira asked, grinning. "Now that we know for pretty sure that SOLOMON's not in the country, we can actually go outside during the daytime like normal people."
Robin thought about it for a moment, pondered how irritated Amon could potentially be, but then decided that it wouldn't happen. He'd probably even welcome them leaving the other room for a while so he could sleep, uninterrupted. She nodded, smiling faintly. "That'd be nice," she said, and Nagira rolled out of the bed, shirtless and in a pair of boxers, which led Robin to look away quickly, blushing. She didn't know if Nagira had noticed or not, but he chuckled about something.
"I'll take a shower and get dressed and we'll go, okay?" he said, heading for the bathroom. "In the meantime, you can try to figure out what's going on in this damn TV show."
--------------------
Nagira and Robin caught a cab from the hotel to one of the small but bustling downtown areas of Reykjavík so that they could walk around a bit and do some exploring. Robin had been delighted; almost every time that Amon and she went outside, to travel by foot, Amon's paranoia kept them moving at a breakneck pace, no time for anything, only for moving. Nagira and she stolled along leisurely, not attracting any more attention than anyone else out on the streets (although Robin could have sworn a few people stared, amused, at her too-big heavy coat).
It felt wonderful to be a normal girl, on a normal morning outing, if only for one day. It helped her to push the memory of what had happened the night before and her conversation with Amon that morning to the back of her mind, allowed her to momentarily forget it.
They wandered into a small cafe along the street and thankfully found that, upon inquiry, most Icelanders could speak English. Robin and Amon's training with SOLOMON had given them a rather good grasp of the English language (as well as some others), and both were even trained enough to be able to speak it with little to no accent. Nagira, however, had learned most of his English in passing, thereby making it spotty and somewhat accented--more than passable, however. It'd been a very unorthodox breakfast, consisting of fish and fruit (Nagira ordered wine, as well), but it had been simple and delicious. It had reminded Robin of Japanese breakfasts, in a way--both Iceland and Japan were island nations, after all, and both populaces consumed large amounts of fish in their diets.
After they'd left the cafe, they'd spent more time wandering the streets aimlessly, leisurely.
"Maybe, some day," Nagira said, "when more countries follow Iceland's lead and kick SOLOMON's ass out, you and Amon could live somewhere quiet like this and not be bothered."
Robin blushed faintly at the idea of Amon and she living together forever, like some sort of bizarre husband and wife--but somehow, in the back of her mind, she knew that if they were ever separated that it would mean that one of them had died. "Perhaps," Robin replied. "It would be nice to be normal."
"Well, we are talking about you and Amon, here," Nagira teased with a wink, hands stuck into the pockets of his fuzzy white coat. "It'd be nice not to be chased by SOLOMON, but I don't think you two are capable of being normal." He grinned at Robin's look of quiet indignation, and then quickly changed the subject. "What's say we do some shopping?" he asked her suddenly, and she looked at him in mild confusing.
"Shopping?" she echoed, then slowly shook her head. "No, no. Amon says I have too many things as it is." Nagira reached out and tugged on the sleeve of her ill-fitting coat, and snickered. Robin sighed--the coat was really starting to become a pain. "We couldn't find anything that would fit me properly, in London. Amon says I'm at the age where nothing is going to fit me properly, probably."
"A growing girl!" Nagira teased again, and then shrugged. "Well, either that or Amon just doesn't know how to take a girl shopping. Well, it can't be helped. How about if we took you shopping for something useful--like a new coat, perhaps? One that actually fit you?"
Robin's brain warred. Part of her mind told her that no, it would be wrong for Nagira to buy her a new coat; especially when he'd done so much for she and Amon already, and after Amon had already been kind enough to purchase the winter coat she already had--even if it was too large for her. He'd tried. Another part of her mind was so excited at the prospect of going out and doing something that could possibly be fun that she'd really had to restrain herself immediately after Nagira's suggestion from bursting out with "yes!".
And besides, she was getting really tired of looking like she had no hands, since they were hidden within the too-long sleeves of her coat. She looked like a little girl.
Five minutes later found Nagira and Robin walking around inquiring as to where they could buy the young lady a new coat. After a couple of suggestions and a couple of instances where the person asked didn't speak English, Nagira and Robin happened upon a clothing store with some coats in the window, on display, along with several other articles of clothing.
"Couldn't help to look," Nagira theorized, as they looked around the store. Robin set to work digging through racks of coats, most entirely too large for her. She frowned. Would it be that she would never find anything that would fit her?
A tap on her shoulder made her turn around, and she looked up into Nagira's grinning face with the same disappointed frown on her lips. "You're looking through men's coats," Nagira informed her, to which she looked greatly cowed. "Amon really doesn't let you out much, does he?"
--------------------
Robin's old coat was tossed over Nagira's shoulder casually, and Robin felt extremely guiltily pleased wearing her new coat. It was a light grey-blue colour peacoat, one that Nagira said had complimented her lovely eyes and hair so well (much to Robin's blushing denial), and made of a heavy woolen material. It was very warm and actually fit her--and she secretly wondered if she really did look cute in it, as Nagira had told her she did. Her eyes had almost fallen out of her head at the price tag, but Nagira simply waved it off and smilingly handed the helpful woman behind the counter a few colourful, crisp Euro notes as Robin had fingered the gift box that the woman had packaged the coat up in. Once outside the store, she'd been all gushing thank you's and denials of her deserving the coat.
On the walk back to the general area where they'd been dropped off by the taxi originally, Nagira suddenly grabbed Robin's arm and started dragging her towards what appeared to be a phone booth of some kind. She stumbled after his long legs in bewilderment, stuttering.
"What are you doing?" she asked, and Nagira jerked his head at the phone- booth thing.
"C'mon," he said, sounding like a big kid and looking like one, too. "We're going to get our pictures taken."
There were several things, over she and Amon's life of running together, that he had expressly forbidden. One was telling people large details about themselves. Another was for her to use her reaching power. Another was for her to go anywhere by herself. She'd broken those all before, a few times--all to the extreme irritation of Amon. But there was one of the things that he'd told her not to do that she hadn't done yet.
Never allow yourself to be photographed, his voice rang in her head, sternly. I think the reasons for that are rather obvious. We're supposed to be dead. Dead people don't sit for photos.
Robin pulled against Nagira, weakly, but he ushered her into the booth quickly and then climbed in behind her, the two of them somewhat cramped in the small space. Robin felt faintly nervous, not only because she knew what she was doing was wrong, but because--well, Amon had been right to forbid her to have her picture taken anywhere. They were supposed to be dead--photos of them surfacing somewhere would just confirm their existence, and who knows what investigative methods SOLOMON had at its disposal, in the heart of the organization--what if they could trace photographs, somehow?
Nagira fed one, two Euro notes into the slot in front of them, and then wrapped his arm around Robin, giving her a little squeeze. "Hey, kid, smile! It's a photo booth, not an execution chamber!" Robin gave a weak little smile and Nagira shook his head. "No, no. I want to see a real smile. I'll tickle you if I have to," he threatened, and on cue his fingers dug into Robin's side sneakily, through her heavy coat. She began to squirm and giggle against her own will--how had he known that she was ticklish?
Maybe Amon had told him? But Robin didn't think that Amon knew, either-- why would he know?
Nagira's free hand shot out and hit the red button that started to snap the photos, poking Robin's side all the while. For the second round of photos, the smile was still left on her face so that he didn't have to tickle her.
Two minutes later they were off, down the street, each one of them holding a little strip of four photos, chattering about how silly they looked.
---------------------
Back at the hotel rooms, a short time later, Amon was awake and sitting in front of his laptop, shirtless and shoeless when they walked in. He turned to look at them impassively and Robin immediately looked away, her stomach feeling fluttery at seeing Amon so casually half-naked. He did a double take at them and then stood, hands on his bare hips--Robin frowned slightly, noticing that he was not wearing a belt as he usually was, and that his pants seemed to not fit him as well as they once did. They seemed a big large on him. The sound of him clearing his throat brought her back to reality to find him looking at her expectantly. She coloured once more and tried to feign calm.
"Where did you get that coat?" he asked her, by way of greeting. She stuck her hands into the pockets of it, almost self-consciously.
"Nagira bought it for me," she said, timidly. "I...I didn't ask him to."
Amon looked to his brother, a disapproving look on his face. He still hadn't shaved. "Why did you buy her another coat?" he asked, voice betraying slight irritation. "She's already got two of them, the one over your shoulder brand-new. We don't have room to be hauling a massive wardrobe around with us, Nagira."
The lawyer shrugged, lighting up a cigarette. His brother's ire did not appear to concern him. "This coat," he began, flopping it off his shoulder and onto the table where Amon's laptop sat, open, "was entirely too big for her. I know maybe you meant well by trying to keep little Robin covered up so no one would be scoping her out," here, he winked at Robin, "but it was just a tad excessive. So I took it upon myself to buy her a coat that wouldn't make her look like a five-year-old girl playing dress up in her daddy's clothes."
Amon apparently had some kind of remark that he'd wanted to make about his intentions to keep Robin from being looked at, but he settled for merely glaring and sitting back down, looking back to his laptop. "I take it you two went out for food," he said, his fingers tapping the keys deftly.
Nagira exhaled a cloud of smoke, watching Robin head towards she and Amon's room, quickly unbuttoning her contraband coat. "Sure did. You eaten yet?"
"No." Amon was looking at the computer screen, rubbing slightly at his shadow--it seemed to be a force of habit, if a shadow was present. "I'm not hungry." He stood, looking at the computer screen pensively, his hands once again going to his bare hips. Nagira looked over at his brother out of the corner of his eye, lazily; while he wouldn't say, by any means, that Amon was wasting away, it was obvious to him that his brother had lost perhaps five pounds or so. Without a belt present, Amon's slacks were considerably looser than he'd ever worn them.
"You're going to waste away," Nagira commented around his cigarette as Robin reentered his room sans coat, tugging at the sleeves of her sweater. She sat down on the edge of Nagira's unmade bed. "You haven't eaten hardly a thing since I've been here."
"Alright, mother," Amon said, irritably. "I'll be fine. I just woke up. I have not been awake long enough to be hungry yet. And anyhow, at the moment, we have a bit more of a perplexing problem."
Robin, still tugging on her sweater sleeves, looked to Amon with ill- concealed nervousness. "Problem?"
Amon leaned down and tapped a few more keys, then studied the screen of his laptop again before speaking. "Yes, problem. I was awoken today by my phone ringing."
Nagira couldn't help but frown, gazing at his brother through the haze of cigarette smoke. "Your phone ringing. Wrong number?"
Amon looked at Nagira with a slight tilt of his head. "No. Gróa."
Robin's face relaxed instantly at the mention of the Icelandic woman's name and she leveled a curious glance at her ex-partner. "So what's wrong with that? Gróa means us no harm."
Amon walked away from the laptop to the window, wordlessly, his hand under his chin, in thought. Robin watched the muscles of his back move under his skin as he reached up to run a hand through his hair, quickly. "What's wrong with it is that I never gave her a means to contact us, Robin. Nagira is the only one who knows how to contact that phone. And in order for someone to find out what the number was, someone would first have to get ahold of--somehow--the list of all of the randomly generated phone numbers that the phone has used on outgoing calls, and start scrambling them and running them through some sort of system until it finally came up with the number that was the right number for the phone, not one of the probably thousands of dummy numbers."
Nagira was frowning then, too, his cigarette momentarily forgotten. He looked to his brother, in concern. "That would take some serious detective work. Not to mention a serious code-cracker or code-cracking program."
Robin shook her head. "I don't think Gróa has those kinds of things at her disposal."
Amon turned to look at her, his eyes hard and thinking; he was on the defensive, investigator mode--trying to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together. "No, most likely not. But the chances that she knows someone who does are very likely, from the looks of things. And as far as I knew, most independent organizations didn't have access to those kinds of things very readily."
Nagira was crushing his cigarette in an ashtray and immediately lighting another. "SOLOMON," he said, flatly. Robin looked from one brother to the other, shaking her head slightly.
"No, no." She bit her lip. "Gróa said she was going to help us. Maybe...we've underestimated her. Maybe she does have those kinds of things at her disposal, Amon. Maybe it was just a stroke of blind luck--"
Amon looked at Robin, his glance steely but somehow sad all at the same time. "Robin, if we've underestimated her, it's more than likely in the sense that we underestimated her potential for harm to us. It's just too coincidental--I have the distinct feeling that we're being led towards some sort of trap that's waiting to snap closed and grab us by the leg."
Nagira was pensive, thoughtful; all traces of the playful big kid that had been present that morning had disappeared. Nagira was in lawyer mode, working a case, the cogs in his brain turning as well. "She said something strange, the other evening--she mentioned that the influence of some witches in the world spreads even into SOLOMON, as in witch-sympathizers within SOLOMON, feeding information to the outside, to covens and independent groups. Perhaps...perhaps a double agent has gone double agent?" Nagira said, thoughtfully, ashes falling unheeded onto his suit coat.
Amon nodded, gravely. "Yes. That could be so--perhaps one who was originally thought to be a witch sympathizer with ties to a coven is actually a SOLOMON-planted spy, gathering intelligence about covens and their contacts. What better way to kill many, many birds with one stone?"
Robin was shaking her head, in denial. Something about all of it didn't seem right, at all--she couldn't help but feel that Amon and Nagira were jumping to conclusions. Deep in her heart, she'd sensed no animosity from Gróa; the woman had seemed truly interested in helping them. Robin wasn't about to give up hope on the woman so soon, even if she'd only known her for a day. "But what if the witch sympathizer hasn't gone double-agent?" she broke in suddenly, causing both brothers to look at her. "What if Gróa simply utilized that contact in order to find us, to have a way to contact us and stay in touch with us? I just can't..." Robin sighed, looking down at her hands folded tightly in her skirt-clad lap. "...can't believe that Gróa would do something like that to us."
"You barely know the woman, Robin," Amon stated, a measure patiently. She couldn't help but pick up on the slight "told-you-so" attitude to his voice, however.
Nagira looked at Robin and then nodded almost hesitantly. "Hate to seem like I'm ganging up on you, Robin, but he's right. We don't know the lady. She seems nice enough, but then again...sometimes appearances are deceiving."
Robin shook her head, more vehemently this time. "No. It can't be true that she's plotting something, that she's trying to hurt us--I think we're just jumping to conclusions. If she'd wanted to harm us, to hurt us, don't you think she would have done it yesterday?" Robin queried, pointedly. "She could have poisoned us all and been done with it. That'd be it, SOLOMON would have won."
Amon shook his own head then, looking at Robin knowingly. "That's not SOLOMON's style and you know it. There's no way that they would simply just kill us, Robin. They'd want to, if at all possible, to take us alive and wring all the information that they could out of us--and who knows what else," he said, ominously. "This has a bad feel to it."
Robin was slightly sour. "You think everything has a bad feel to it."
"It's probably why I'm still alive after all this time," Amon said, either not hearing the sourness in Robin's voice or pretending to ignore it.
Nagira looked at his cigarette crushed in his fingers, introspectively. "Only one way to find out which one of us is right--and that's to go to Gróa's place, tonight, with a few extra precautions if you know what I mean. I'm assuming that's what she called about, right?"
Amon nodded. "Yes. As a matter of fact, she asked if that when you two returned it would be possible for us to depart for her home immediately. She said that we...had much to talk about." Amon held his brother's gaze meaningfully, as if they were both in on some sort of secret that the phrase "having much to talk about" held. Nagira went back to looking at his cigarette, exhaling smoke through his nose.
"Well, then, I guess we shouldn't disappoint," he said, a bit cockily. "We'll show up, a bit early--and if things look fishy, or something starts to go wrong--we'll be packing more heat than the sidewalk on a summer day, and things'll get swiss-cheese-ified real quick." Nagira looked over to Robin, somehow managing a lopsided grin at her. "Little Robin can be our backup firebomb napalm support. We can call her in for airstrikes."
"I still think we're all overreacting," Robin said, sullenly. Amon turned back to the window.
"If we are, then we are," he said. "It's better to be safe than sorry. I suppose we'll just have to find out--but you must admit, Robin, that something could be happening. And you can't let your emotions get in the way of protecting your life just because you refuse to believe that someone is incapable of harming you." His words struck a peculiar place inside of Robin, and she found herself wishing that she could have seen his face while he was saying them, but he remained turned to the window.
After a few moments, Amon excused himself to go to their room to shower and get dressed, and Robin and Nagira sat in silence, each lost in their own world of thoughts.
She groaned slightly, stirring. She was still wearing all of her clothes.
"Robin." The sound of Amon's voice suddenly and inexplicably next to her, loud and serious, set her to scrambling and fighting to surface from the covers, startled. She poked her head out from under the covers, eyes wide and just-awakened-bewildered, to behold Amon sitting in a chair next to her bed, looking stiff and stale as if he hadn't moved all night. She blinked.
"Where did you come from?" she asked, stifling a yawn immediately after. He regarded her evenly, a bit tiredly.
"I've been right here all night," he replied, and Robin supposed that the fact shouldn't have shocked her. He sat forward a bit, elbows coming down to rest on his knees, eyes boring into her. "Do you remember last night, Robin?" he asked bluntly, and Robin's brain reeled.
How could I forget last night? her brain wondered, even if what she did remember was very fuzzy and distant, as if it had been a billion years ago and not the evening prior. She nodded slowly. Amon waited for a moment to see if she had any words, but once she spoke none, he continued.
"Do you remember passing out?" he asked. She'd heard the tone in his voice before; serious, even, neutral--it was the same voice he'd used to interrogate suspects with.
She nodded again, vaguely knowing where he was going with all of this. She'd attacked him--step one towards losing control in Amon's mind. She wondered if even then, at that very moment, he was sitting in the chair next to her bed wondering if he was going to have to kill her.
"What happened?" he asked then. Amon simply watched her as she sat up a bit more fully, leaning back against the pillows and folding her arms on top of her covers.
"I remember I was having problems with...my sight," she began, trying to blow the dust off the surface of her memory with her words, hoping that things would become less fuzzy to even her as she explained them. "I went into the bathroom, and things kept going from normal sight to...blackness, and glowing. How I see other witches, in..." She stopped. "I don't know what to call it. An otherworld, maybe?"
Amon brought his hands up to clasp underneath his chin, his elbows still resting on his knees. "This world of darkness and light that you describe, that's how it is when you...reach out, and touch other witches?"
Robin nodded. "Yes. I see other witches as little spots of light, more or less. But I see nothing else. It's like a photo of the universe, or something. My sight kept going back and forth, uncontrollably...and I was getting scared." She sighed, rubbing at one of her eyes. "I still had the hiccups, I think. I was trying to make my way to Nagira's room to ask one of you for help--although, I'm not sure what either one of you could have done to fix my sight."
"So you entered Nagira's room at that point?" Amon asked, still playing the interrogator.
"Yes. And you jumped out from..." Robin trailed off, trying to remember where Amon had come from, but failing. All she could remember was walking into the room and suddenly he was before her, in her face, shouting a word in Japanese. "...out of nowhere, and you said something. I don't remember what you said, honestly."
Amon nodded. "Yamero. I'd decided that I was going to try to scare the hiccups out of you."
Robin swallowed. "And then...it was like my brain snapped. It didn't understand what was going on, or where you'd come from, or maybe even that it was you...well, no. That's not entirely true," she corrected herself, shaking her head a bit. "Part of my brain did realize that it was you in front of me, and that there was no reason to be so frightened. But the other part just...lashed out. Everything went dark and all I saw was the glow, the big glow that was you--and I pushed at it." Robin stopped, blinking. "I...I didn't hurt you, did I?" she asked, her voice small.
Amon continued to look at her, impassively. "I'm fine. So you're telling me that despite the fact that part of your brain knew it was me in front of you, the larger part of your brain simply retaliated?"
Robin frowned, shaking her head. "But it wasn't like that. It wasn't as black and white as you're making it out to be. I'd already been having problems controlling my Craft before I'd encountered you, and it wasn't as if I intentionally wanted to attack you. The larger part of my brain just...lost it, I suppose."
Amon was silent, serious. "That's not a very comforting explanation, no matter how you put it. The fact of the matter is that you attacked someone- -it happened to be me, but it could have been Nagira, or Gróa, or anyone. You failed to exercise the control over your Craft that you need to have, Robin."
She felt as if somehow he was trying to pin everything on her--even if she was the one who'd lost control of her Craft, he'd had a bit to do with it, jumping out and scaring the living daylights out of her and all. If he'd been having similar issues with his Craft and she'd done something like he had done to her, she thought that he would have reacted similarly-- strike first, ask questions later. "You startled me. Wouldn't you have done the same thing if your Craft was irritated, and someone scared you half to death?"
"This isn't about me and my Craft, Robin," he replied, and she wanted to groan. "I can't say how I would have reacted, but this is about you and the fact that you did react. I'm not really sure what to think about all of it."
She looked away from him, her eyes sad, her mind trying to formulate some sort of good reply that would make him drop the whole subject. She couldn't think of one. The seeds of doubt had been planted in Amon the day that they'd met Nagira at the airport, and now it seemed as if everything she did caused him to lose a little less faith in her, caused the seeds to sprout seedlings that were growing into full-blow vines.
"You need to remember that I'm still your warden," he said, looking at her meaningfully. "I made a promise, Robin. It doesn't tread lightly on my conscience. Things like this are things that I'd rather forget, but can't. It'd be very easy for us to just go along and pretend that both of us had perfect control over our Crafts, but the simple fact of the matter is that we don't." He paused, his hand rubbing slightly at the very faint stubble on his face. "You realize that one day you will be immensely powerful." It was more of a statement than a question.
Robin looked down at her hands, folded on top of her blankets. "I--yes."
"Power corrupts, Robin," Amon said, quietly. "Even people like you. I'm here to act as a check on that power. And that means that incidents like this are going to concern me. I have to know that you're going to be able to withstand the strain of your Craft growing and that you're going to be able to handle your role--the Arcanum, the burden on your shoulders, all of it. If you can't, and you crack under the pressure, or you let yourself be led astray by the potential of what you could do with your powers..."
Robin looked over at him for the first time in a few moments and was taken aback by the sad, tired look on his face. Amon looked haggard, wasted, over-worked. There were circles under his eyes, and his face was slightly in need of a shave. She wondered if he'd always looked like this in the morning and she'd just never noticed it, or if his sudden aging had been a new occurence since last night. She felt oddly guilty.
"...you know what I'll have to do," he finished, darkly. "Perhaps I wouldn't be capable of killing you, once it'd reached that point, however." He pondered that for a moment. "Your powers are growing a lot faster than you've been telling me. I wish that it was easy for me to ignore, but it's not. The simple fact of the matter is that one day, you will be exponentially more powerful than I am. I think that perhaps you've already reached that point in simple ability, but you just haven't learned how to harness it all properly yet. But know this, Robin." He cleared his throat, hand rubbing absently at his shadow.
She swallowed.
"If such a time ever comes, a time where you lose control and you become a threat to yourself and others--I will use every ability I have to fight you," he said. "I will fight you until there isn't a breath left in my body, if I have to."
Robin shook her head, looking back down to her hands. "I don't want to talk about this, Amon. I know you made me a promise, but...I don't think it'll ever get to that point. I don't want to talk about us fighting to the death."
He looked at her pointedly in the morning lightening of the room. "You think I want to talk about it, either?" Amon asked, the forlorn tone betrayed in his voice catching Robin off-guard. "I feel as if I have to, now that your powers are growing faster than you'd originally told me. I'd like to believe that you're completely incorruptible, Robin, I really would. I'd like to believe that I know one hundred percent that you will take every power that you will one day have in your arsenal and use it all for good, but I...I just don't know that. No one can ever know those kind of things. No one can ever really trust any other person completely, one hundred percent, no matter how much they want to. I can have all the faith in you that I want, Robin, but that doesn't change your potential for wrong."
She looked back over to him, her eyes imploring. "But I trust you completely, Amon. I know that you only do what would be good for me--even if sometimes I don't want it or like it--and I know that if some day, if I lost control, really and truly lost control, I'd want someone to stop me before I could hurt any innocent people. But...I have faith in myself that I won't let that happen, and I know that it won't. I won't lose control." She blinked as he stared at her evenly and a trifle sadly. Amon looked decidedly hurt, decidedly depressed--and it appeared to Robin that as if the longer that this conversation went on, the more that he said, the more it took out of him. With every word he looked older and more exhausted.
"The only person you can ever trust completely is yourself, Robin. Remember that. I'd like to tell you that it's good for you to have absolute faith in me, but I'm just a man. There may come a time where I will fail in something, and you will be disappointed in me and you will feel let down. Then you will be bitter, and it will be because you trusted me too much." He looked completely drained, now. "I don't want to ever let you down, Robin, but I fear that some day it may happen whether I want it to or not. It would be wise for you to not place all of your trust in me, completely. Matter of fact, I'd prefer that you didn't."
Robin frowned. "That's a very negative way to look at it," she said, feeling somehow angry that he would ask her to have less trust in him. "I know that you're just a human, Amon, even if you are a witch. So am I. But I have faith, and I believe in you. Just because you might fail doesn't mean that I'd be disappointed and bitter--that'd be a very immature, petty way for me to act." She drew in a deep breath, still frowning. "I don't expect you to be perfect. I expect that from myself, but not from others. We're all just weak human beings, Amon, remember that," she said, and amazedly wondered how the conversation had gone from Amon giving her advice to her giving Amon advice. "We only have so much power, ourselves. The rest is up to God, and what he choses to do with us."
"I wish that I could just try my best and put the rest of my thoughts with God, but I can't." Amon shrugged, rubbing his eyes. "There's not really anything else for me to say. We could sit here until eternity and debate the subjects, and still not get any further along. The only thing that is for certain is that time will tell." He stood a bit stiffly, one of his knees popping. "I'd simply wanted to figure out what had happened, and remind you of a few things."
Robin looked over at him, sadly. "I won't trust you any less, no matter what your obligations to me are. I'm sorry."
He looked at her solemnly, his eyes flickering but unreadable. "I know you won't. I'd hoped that maybe I could have changed your mind, but I knew that somehow, I wouldn't be able to. I'm not sure if your unwavering trust in me flatters me or if it makes me feel guilty."
"It should do neither," she protested, gently. "It should just...give you faith in yourself."
"I see," he said, vaguely dismissive and perhaps somewhat uncomfortable. Amon turned and walked over to his bed at the other side of the room, and sat down on it. "I'm going to sleep now. You can go back to sleep now if you'd like."
Robin shook her head, tossing the blankets back and throwing her feet over the edge of the bed. "Absolutely not. You stayed up all night to watch me, now I'll stay up. Just like always. She watched him looking at his feet, silently, lost in thought. She looked down at her own feet. "I'll go to take a bath, if that won't disturb you while you're trying to sleep."
He reached down and started to unlace his boots, hair obscuring his tired face. "Go ahead."
She stood, moving slowly towards the bathroom as Amon pulled his boots off behind her, his movements a bit clumsier than they usually would have been. No doubt he felt extra-drained due to the fact that he'd not only been awake all night, but that he'd been awake all night worrying excessively. Robin looked back to Amon slightly before reaching the bathroom door, to find him unbuttoning his shirt, getting ready to shrug out of it. She looked away, blushing. "Amon," she began, talking more to the bathroom door than to him. "I'm sorry I hurt you, and I'm sorry that I made you have to worry about these sort of things all night long. I shall have to be more careful from now on." She looked down, slightly. "And I'm glad that you're still concerned about my control. Thank you."
He sighed, and she could hear him shuffling covers about. When she gathered the courage to look back, he was busy burying himself under the blankets, only his shoulders and his head visible, his back turned to her. "Please don't apologize to me, and please don't thank me," he said, voice slightly muffled. "You are what you are, and I am what I am. I'm tired and I'm talking nonsense. You should go take your bath, and I'll go to sleep."
Robin nodded slightly, gazing at his hair on the pillow, his white, broad shoulders above the blanket. "Okay," she replied, and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Being tired and talking nonsense was always his excuse whenever he actually said something to her, not just spoke to her.
---------------------
She soaked in the bathtub for quite some time, and when she finally did get out and creep across the bedroom to her bag, wrapped in a towel, Amon appeared to be deeply asleep--as deeply asleep as he ever was. He'd stirred when she'd opened the bathroom door, and stirred when she carried her bag into the bathroom to get dressed. She imagined that he'd woken up both times.
After she'd dressed, she'd recrossed the bedroom (Amon stirring again at the minute noises) to the door that conjoined their room to Nagira's. It was still fairly early in the morning, not quite eight am, but she figured that perhaps she could convince Nagira to wake up. Instead, she opened the door and was greeted with the sight of Nagira already awake, sitting in his bed, a TV remote in his hand. A cigarette was stuck in-between his lips and a perplexed look was plastered on his face, and Robin could hear the faint chatter of Icelandic TV as she entered the room, a bit timidly.
"Good morning," she said, and Nagira looked to her, smiling, removing the cigarette from his lips.
"Hey, kiddo," he said, grinding the cigarette out in an ashtray next to his bed, indicating the TV. "Just trying to make heads or tails of what's going on in this show. I think that this woman, here, is related to this guy or something...but they didn't know it, and now they're dating. But they're related. ...At least, I think that's what happening. Who the hell knows?" Robin entered the room, feeling a bit embarassed that Nagira was still in bed, and apparently shirtless. She sat down in one of the chairs and looked to the TV for a few moments, listening to the chattering weirdness of the Icelandic language.
"How long have you been awake for?" she asked.
"A while," he said, shrugging. "I heard you and Amon talking, and I woke up." He caught Robin's apologetic, nervous look, and shook his head, scratching at his disarrayed hair. "Nah, don't worry about it. I don't sleep very heavily, so just about anything wakes me up."
Robin nodded. "Amon, as well. Well, I'm still sorry that we awoke you."
Nagira shrugged again. "That's fine. He asleep right now?"
"Yes. Although, he can probably hear us talking right now, too, and he's probably awake." She sighed. "I was thinking about ordering up some room service breakfast," she added, quietly. "Would that interest you?"
"How about you give me twenty minutes and I take a shower and then we can go out to get some breakfast?" Nagira asked, grinning. "Now that we know for pretty sure that SOLOMON's not in the country, we can actually go outside during the daytime like normal people."
Robin thought about it for a moment, pondered how irritated Amon could potentially be, but then decided that it wouldn't happen. He'd probably even welcome them leaving the other room for a while so he could sleep, uninterrupted. She nodded, smiling faintly. "That'd be nice," she said, and Nagira rolled out of the bed, shirtless and in a pair of boxers, which led Robin to look away quickly, blushing. She didn't know if Nagira had noticed or not, but he chuckled about something.
"I'll take a shower and get dressed and we'll go, okay?" he said, heading for the bathroom. "In the meantime, you can try to figure out what's going on in this damn TV show."
--------------------
Nagira and Robin caught a cab from the hotel to one of the small but bustling downtown areas of Reykjavík so that they could walk around a bit and do some exploring. Robin had been delighted; almost every time that Amon and she went outside, to travel by foot, Amon's paranoia kept them moving at a breakneck pace, no time for anything, only for moving. Nagira and she stolled along leisurely, not attracting any more attention than anyone else out on the streets (although Robin could have sworn a few people stared, amused, at her too-big heavy coat).
It felt wonderful to be a normal girl, on a normal morning outing, if only for one day. It helped her to push the memory of what had happened the night before and her conversation with Amon that morning to the back of her mind, allowed her to momentarily forget it.
They wandered into a small cafe along the street and thankfully found that, upon inquiry, most Icelanders could speak English. Robin and Amon's training with SOLOMON had given them a rather good grasp of the English language (as well as some others), and both were even trained enough to be able to speak it with little to no accent. Nagira, however, had learned most of his English in passing, thereby making it spotty and somewhat accented--more than passable, however. It'd been a very unorthodox breakfast, consisting of fish and fruit (Nagira ordered wine, as well), but it had been simple and delicious. It had reminded Robin of Japanese breakfasts, in a way--both Iceland and Japan were island nations, after all, and both populaces consumed large amounts of fish in their diets.
After they'd left the cafe, they'd spent more time wandering the streets aimlessly, leisurely.
"Maybe, some day," Nagira said, "when more countries follow Iceland's lead and kick SOLOMON's ass out, you and Amon could live somewhere quiet like this and not be bothered."
Robin blushed faintly at the idea of Amon and she living together forever, like some sort of bizarre husband and wife--but somehow, in the back of her mind, she knew that if they were ever separated that it would mean that one of them had died. "Perhaps," Robin replied. "It would be nice to be normal."
"Well, we are talking about you and Amon, here," Nagira teased with a wink, hands stuck into the pockets of his fuzzy white coat. "It'd be nice not to be chased by SOLOMON, but I don't think you two are capable of being normal." He grinned at Robin's look of quiet indignation, and then quickly changed the subject. "What's say we do some shopping?" he asked her suddenly, and she looked at him in mild confusing.
"Shopping?" she echoed, then slowly shook her head. "No, no. Amon says I have too many things as it is." Nagira reached out and tugged on the sleeve of her ill-fitting coat, and snickered. Robin sighed--the coat was really starting to become a pain. "We couldn't find anything that would fit me properly, in London. Amon says I'm at the age where nothing is going to fit me properly, probably."
"A growing girl!" Nagira teased again, and then shrugged. "Well, either that or Amon just doesn't know how to take a girl shopping. Well, it can't be helped. How about if we took you shopping for something useful--like a new coat, perhaps? One that actually fit you?"
Robin's brain warred. Part of her mind told her that no, it would be wrong for Nagira to buy her a new coat; especially when he'd done so much for she and Amon already, and after Amon had already been kind enough to purchase the winter coat she already had--even if it was too large for her. He'd tried. Another part of her mind was so excited at the prospect of going out and doing something that could possibly be fun that she'd really had to restrain herself immediately after Nagira's suggestion from bursting out with "yes!".
And besides, she was getting really tired of looking like she had no hands, since they were hidden within the too-long sleeves of her coat. She looked like a little girl.
Five minutes later found Nagira and Robin walking around inquiring as to where they could buy the young lady a new coat. After a couple of suggestions and a couple of instances where the person asked didn't speak English, Nagira and Robin happened upon a clothing store with some coats in the window, on display, along with several other articles of clothing.
"Couldn't help to look," Nagira theorized, as they looked around the store. Robin set to work digging through racks of coats, most entirely too large for her. She frowned. Would it be that she would never find anything that would fit her?
A tap on her shoulder made her turn around, and she looked up into Nagira's grinning face with the same disappointed frown on her lips. "You're looking through men's coats," Nagira informed her, to which she looked greatly cowed. "Amon really doesn't let you out much, does he?"
--------------------
Robin's old coat was tossed over Nagira's shoulder casually, and Robin felt extremely guiltily pleased wearing her new coat. It was a light grey-blue colour peacoat, one that Nagira said had complimented her lovely eyes and hair so well (much to Robin's blushing denial), and made of a heavy woolen material. It was very warm and actually fit her--and she secretly wondered if she really did look cute in it, as Nagira had told her she did. Her eyes had almost fallen out of her head at the price tag, but Nagira simply waved it off and smilingly handed the helpful woman behind the counter a few colourful, crisp Euro notes as Robin had fingered the gift box that the woman had packaged the coat up in. Once outside the store, she'd been all gushing thank you's and denials of her deserving the coat.
On the walk back to the general area where they'd been dropped off by the taxi originally, Nagira suddenly grabbed Robin's arm and started dragging her towards what appeared to be a phone booth of some kind. She stumbled after his long legs in bewilderment, stuttering.
"What are you doing?" she asked, and Nagira jerked his head at the phone- booth thing.
"C'mon," he said, sounding like a big kid and looking like one, too. "We're going to get our pictures taken."
There were several things, over she and Amon's life of running together, that he had expressly forbidden. One was telling people large details about themselves. Another was for her to use her reaching power. Another was for her to go anywhere by herself. She'd broken those all before, a few times--all to the extreme irritation of Amon. But there was one of the things that he'd told her not to do that she hadn't done yet.
Never allow yourself to be photographed, his voice rang in her head, sternly. I think the reasons for that are rather obvious. We're supposed to be dead. Dead people don't sit for photos.
Robin pulled against Nagira, weakly, but he ushered her into the booth quickly and then climbed in behind her, the two of them somewhat cramped in the small space. Robin felt faintly nervous, not only because she knew what she was doing was wrong, but because--well, Amon had been right to forbid her to have her picture taken anywhere. They were supposed to be dead--photos of them surfacing somewhere would just confirm their existence, and who knows what investigative methods SOLOMON had at its disposal, in the heart of the organization--what if they could trace photographs, somehow?
Nagira fed one, two Euro notes into the slot in front of them, and then wrapped his arm around Robin, giving her a little squeeze. "Hey, kid, smile! It's a photo booth, not an execution chamber!" Robin gave a weak little smile and Nagira shook his head. "No, no. I want to see a real smile. I'll tickle you if I have to," he threatened, and on cue his fingers dug into Robin's side sneakily, through her heavy coat. She began to squirm and giggle against her own will--how had he known that she was ticklish?
Maybe Amon had told him? But Robin didn't think that Amon knew, either-- why would he know?
Nagira's free hand shot out and hit the red button that started to snap the photos, poking Robin's side all the while. For the second round of photos, the smile was still left on her face so that he didn't have to tickle her.
Two minutes later they were off, down the street, each one of them holding a little strip of four photos, chattering about how silly they looked.
---------------------
Back at the hotel rooms, a short time later, Amon was awake and sitting in front of his laptop, shirtless and shoeless when they walked in. He turned to look at them impassively and Robin immediately looked away, her stomach feeling fluttery at seeing Amon so casually half-naked. He did a double take at them and then stood, hands on his bare hips--Robin frowned slightly, noticing that he was not wearing a belt as he usually was, and that his pants seemed to not fit him as well as they once did. They seemed a big large on him. The sound of him clearing his throat brought her back to reality to find him looking at her expectantly. She coloured once more and tried to feign calm.
"Where did you get that coat?" he asked her, by way of greeting. She stuck her hands into the pockets of it, almost self-consciously.
"Nagira bought it for me," she said, timidly. "I...I didn't ask him to."
Amon looked to his brother, a disapproving look on his face. He still hadn't shaved. "Why did you buy her another coat?" he asked, voice betraying slight irritation. "She's already got two of them, the one over your shoulder brand-new. We don't have room to be hauling a massive wardrobe around with us, Nagira."
The lawyer shrugged, lighting up a cigarette. His brother's ire did not appear to concern him. "This coat," he began, flopping it off his shoulder and onto the table where Amon's laptop sat, open, "was entirely too big for her. I know maybe you meant well by trying to keep little Robin covered up so no one would be scoping her out," here, he winked at Robin, "but it was just a tad excessive. So I took it upon myself to buy her a coat that wouldn't make her look like a five-year-old girl playing dress up in her daddy's clothes."
Amon apparently had some kind of remark that he'd wanted to make about his intentions to keep Robin from being looked at, but he settled for merely glaring and sitting back down, looking back to his laptop. "I take it you two went out for food," he said, his fingers tapping the keys deftly.
Nagira exhaled a cloud of smoke, watching Robin head towards she and Amon's room, quickly unbuttoning her contraband coat. "Sure did. You eaten yet?"
"No." Amon was looking at the computer screen, rubbing slightly at his shadow--it seemed to be a force of habit, if a shadow was present. "I'm not hungry." He stood, looking at the computer screen pensively, his hands once again going to his bare hips. Nagira looked over at his brother out of the corner of his eye, lazily; while he wouldn't say, by any means, that Amon was wasting away, it was obvious to him that his brother had lost perhaps five pounds or so. Without a belt present, Amon's slacks were considerably looser than he'd ever worn them.
"You're going to waste away," Nagira commented around his cigarette as Robin reentered his room sans coat, tugging at the sleeves of her sweater. She sat down on the edge of Nagira's unmade bed. "You haven't eaten hardly a thing since I've been here."
"Alright, mother," Amon said, irritably. "I'll be fine. I just woke up. I have not been awake long enough to be hungry yet. And anyhow, at the moment, we have a bit more of a perplexing problem."
Robin, still tugging on her sweater sleeves, looked to Amon with ill- concealed nervousness. "Problem?"
Amon leaned down and tapped a few more keys, then studied the screen of his laptop again before speaking. "Yes, problem. I was awoken today by my phone ringing."
Nagira couldn't help but frown, gazing at his brother through the haze of cigarette smoke. "Your phone ringing. Wrong number?"
Amon looked at Nagira with a slight tilt of his head. "No. Gróa."
Robin's face relaxed instantly at the mention of the Icelandic woman's name and she leveled a curious glance at her ex-partner. "So what's wrong with that? Gróa means us no harm."
Amon walked away from the laptop to the window, wordlessly, his hand under his chin, in thought. Robin watched the muscles of his back move under his skin as he reached up to run a hand through his hair, quickly. "What's wrong with it is that I never gave her a means to contact us, Robin. Nagira is the only one who knows how to contact that phone. And in order for someone to find out what the number was, someone would first have to get ahold of--somehow--the list of all of the randomly generated phone numbers that the phone has used on outgoing calls, and start scrambling them and running them through some sort of system until it finally came up with the number that was the right number for the phone, not one of the probably thousands of dummy numbers."
Nagira was frowning then, too, his cigarette momentarily forgotten. He looked to his brother, in concern. "That would take some serious detective work. Not to mention a serious code-cracker or code-cracking program."
Robin shook her head. "I don't think Gróa has those kinds of things at her disposal."
Amon turned to look at her, his eyes hard and thinking; he was on the defensive, investigator mode--trying to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together. "No, most likely not. But the chances that she knows someone who does are very likely, from the looks of things. And as far as I knew, most independent organizations didn't have access to those kinds of things very readily."
Nagira was crushing his cigarette in an ashtray and immediately lighting another. "SOLOMON," he said, flatly. Robin looked from one brother to the other, shaking her head slightly.
"No, no." She bit her lip. "Gróa said she was going to help us. Maybe...we've underestimated her. Maybe she does have those kinds of things at her disposal, Amon. Maybe it was just a stroke of blind luck--"
Amon looked at Robin, his glance steely but somehow sad all at the same time. "Robin, if we've underestimated her, it's more than likely in the sense that we underestimated her potential for harm to us. It's just too coincidental--I have the distinct feeling that we're being led towards some sort of trap that's waiting to snap closed and grab us by the leg."
Nagira was pensive, thoughtful; all traces of the playful big kid that had been present that morning had disappeared. Nagira was in lawyer mode, working a case, the cogs in his brain turning as well. "She said something strange, the other evening--she mentioned that the influence of some witches in the world spreads even into SOLOMON, as in witch-sympathizers within SOLOMON, feeding information to the outside, to covens and independent groups. Perhaps...perhaps a double agent has gone double agent?" Nagira said, thoughtfully, ashes falling unheeded onto his suit coat.
Amon nodded, gravely. "Yes. That could be so--perhaps one who was originally thought to be a witch sympathizer with ties to a coven is actually a SOLOMON-planted spy, gathering intelligence about covens and their contacts. What better way to kill many, many birds with one stone?"
Robin was shaking her head, in denial. Something about all of it didn't seem right, at all--she couldn't help but feel that Amon and Nagira were jumping to conclusions. Deep in her heart, she'd sensed no animosity from Gróa; the woman had seemed truly interested in helping them. Robin wasn't about to give up hope on the woman so soon, even if she'd only known her for a day. "But what if the witch sympathizer hasn't gone double-agent?" she broke in suddenly, causing both brothers to look at her. "What if Gróa simply utilized that contact in order to find us, to have a way to contact us and stay in touch with us? I just can't..." Robin sighed, looking down at her hands folded tightly in her skirt-clad lap. "...can't believe that Gróa would do something like that to us."
"You barely know the woman, Robin," Amon stated, a measure patiently. She couldn't help but pick up on the slight "told-you-so" attitude to his voice, however.
Nagira looked at Robin and then nodded almost hesitantly. "Hate to seem like I'm ganging up on you, Robin, but he's right. We don't know the lady. She seems nice enough, but then again...sometimes appearances are deceiving."
Robin shook her head, more vehemently this time. "No. It can't be true that she's plotting something, that she's trying to hurt us--I think we're just jumping to conclusions. If she'd wanted to harm us, to hurt us, don't you think she would have done it yesterday?" Robin queried, pointedly. "She could have poisoned us all and been done with it. That'd be it, SOLOMON would have won."
Amon shook his own head then, looking at Robin knowingly. "That's not SOLOMON's style and you know it. There's no way that they would simply just kill us, Robin. They'd want to, if at all possible, to take us alive and wring all the information that they could out of us--and who knows what else," he said, ominously. "This has a bad feel to it."
Robin was slightly sour. "You think everything has a bad feel to it."
"It's probably why I'm still alive after all this time," Amon said, either not hearing the sourness in Robin's voice or pretending to ignore it.
Nagira looked at his cigarette crushed in his fingers, introspectively. "Only one way to find out which one of us is right--and that's to go to Gróa's place, tonight, with a few extra precautions if you know what I mean. I'm assuming that's what she called about, right?"
Amon nodded. "Yes. As a matter of fact, she asked if that when you two returned it would be possible for us to depart for her home immediately. She said that we...had much to talk about." Amon held his brother's gaze meaningfully, as if they were both in on some sort of secret that the phrase "having much to talk about" held. Nagira went back to looking at his cigarette, exhaling smoke through his nose.
"Well, then, I guess we shouldn't disappoint," he said, a bit cockily. "We'll show up, a bit early--and if things look fishy, or something starts to go wrong--we'll be packing more heat than the sidewalk on a summer day, and things'll get swiss-cheese-ified real quick." Nagira looked over to Robin, somehow managing a lopsided grin at her. "Little Robin can be our backup firebomb napalm support. We can call her in for airstrikes."
"I still think we're all overreacting," Robin said, sullenly. Amon turned back to the window.
"If we are, then we are," he said. "It's better to be safe than sorry. I suppose we'll just have to find out--but you must admit, Robin, that something could be happening. And you can't let your emotions get in the way of protecting your life just because you refuse to believe that someone is incapable of harming you." His words struck a peculiar place inside of Robin, and she found herself wishing that she could have seen his face while he was saying them, but he remained turned to the window.
After a few moments, Amon excused himself to go to their room to shower and get dressed, and Robin and Nagira sat in silence, each lost in their own world of thoughts.
