Never before in his entire life had Amon felt so frustratingly, agitatedly, fuck-all helpless.  Robin, evidently unable to deal with the sight of Gróa's body--which Amon could not behold, at all--had retreated to the opposite corner of the cellar to sit in the corner (or so Nagira told him).  Meanwhile, Nagira attempted to describe the state of the Icelandic woman's body to Amon so that Amon could act as the brain for Nagira's hands.

Amon was the only one among them who had any kind of even mild grasp of emergency first-aid--and, in a strange twist of fate that he knew shouldn't have really shocked him at all, he was the only one who couldn't see.

Sitting there on his knees in the cellar, feeling the wet blood seeping through the fabric of his pants, Amon stared ahead blankly.  For one panicked moment, he wondered if he would be permanently blinded, then forced himself to push the thought out of his head.  Never mind the fact that all he could see was white noise--he had to try to help his brother to save the life of the woman who was somewhere near him. 

Gróa gave a delusional little moan when Nagira rolled her over onto her back gently, at Amon's behest.  Robin sniffled miserably in the corner, at the edge of Amon's hearing. 

"There's a lot of fucking blood, that's for sure," Nagira said darkly, and Amon sighed.

"You're going to have to tell me where it's coming from, and what caused it," he said.  He could hear Nagira moving and Gróa moaning pitiably--the more Gróa moaned, the louder Robin's sniffling in the corner became. 

"Christ," Nagira breathed suddenly.  "She's been shot.  Twice."

"Where?"

"In the ribs and stomach.  You'd think they would have just shot her in the head."

"You'd think."  Amon sighed, gritting his teeth, forcing calm on his body.  "Feel for exit wounds on her back."

Gróa began to moan some more, and suddenly the sound of feet pounding up the wooden stairs was heard.  Robin was fleeing the cellar.  It didn't shock Amon that she wasn't able to deal with what was happening--she usually didn't even look at the bodies of the Hunters they killed, and nor had she ever had to deal with the body of someone they sort of knew, very injured and still alive.

"There's one," Nagira answered, after a few seconds.  "The bullet in her gut is still in there."

Amon gritted his teeth some more, trying to figure out how in the hell he was going to do this.

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

The lawyer watched his flash-blinded brother staring into space, jaw clenched and teeth grinding against each other.  At this point they were both covered in blood, Nagira somehow having the presence of mind to remove his white coat before doing anything. 

They were sure going to get some strange looks when they returned to Reykjavík, if they returned there at all. 

"Amon, she's still bleeding," Nagira said, shortly.  "If you're thinking, you need to make it snappy."

Amon growled.  "I fucking know that.  We may be too late already.  If there's as much blood lost as you say there is, it's almost certain that nothing we do is going to help."  Amon reached, blindly, for Gróa's shallowly breathing body, almost falling onto his face in the process.  His hand somehow found her torso and delicately began to probe about.  He located the bullet hole in the ribs and nodded to himself, wide-eyed, and then moved downwards and groped about until he found the bullet hole in the woman's stomach.  He sighed.

"It feels like the one that went into her ribs is low enough to have missed most of the important things," he said.  "The only thing we can really do there is plug the holes and bind it, for now--try to get some of the blood to quit leaking."  He paused.  "You're going to have to somehow try to pull the bullet out of her stomach."

Nagira looked over at Amon incredulously, even though he knew that his little brother couldn't see it--he didn't even give any indication that he knew that Nagira looking at him.  "Are you fucking shitting me."  It wasn't even a question.

"I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to do it," Amon snapped in irritation, rubbing at his forehead, unmindful of the blood on his hands.  A large bloody smear appeared on the white skin of Amon's forehead.  "We need Robin's help."

Nagira frowned, shaking his head.  "I don't think she's going to be able to.  She doesn't seem to be--"

"Unless we have Robin's help it's almost certain that this woman will die," Amon cut in, darkly.  "I'll deal with Robin's emotional backlash later, but for now, she needs to do what I tell her to do."

Nagira inhaled and exhaled deeply, suddenly wishing he had a cigarette very badly.  "Fine."

"Robin," Amon called upstairs.  "You need to help us."

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

Upstairs, Robin breathlessly tore the house apart, looking for the items that Amon had commanded her to find.  The tears were still wet on her face but had recently stopped falling in the wake of Amon's firm, commanding voice from the cellar.  She had things to do and was in the process of doing things.

Boiling water--the pot was on the stove, quickly and haphazardly filled with water.  It was the only probable way of sterilizing things.

Find a needle--preferably one with a large eyehole, but any old sewing needle would do.  Heavy duty thread of some kind--preferably fishing line, but any heavy thread would do.  Clean towels and a bowl of water.  Tweezers of some kind and a pair of scissors. 

And lastly, if she could locate it, any kind of liquor or high-content rubbing alcohol. 

She found the tweezers in the bathroom and the scissors in a kitchen drawer, and tossed them into the pot of water on the stove.  It was starting to smoke and simmer, close to boiling.  Towels were also located in the bathroom, and a bowl of water was made in the kitchen, at the sink.  A needle and thread took Robin considerably longer to locate.  A needle--several, actually--was located in a sewing box on the top shelf of the closet near the front door, but no suitable thread.  It was all too thin and flimsy.  Robin reported this to Amon, who informed her that Nagira had located fishing wire on a pole in the cellar; she didn't have to worry about thread. 

The water was boiling.  In went the needles.

Hunting around some more, throwing contents out of cabinets and things onto the floor, Robin finally located a small bottle of Stolichnaya vodka in a hard-to-reach cabinet in the kitchen, and she added that to her pile of supplies.  The stove burner went off, and she ran as quickly as she dared down the stairs with the pot, its hot water, and its metal contents.  Back up the stairs and then back down them with the bowl of water, the towels, and the bottle of Stoli.

Robin tried not to look at the minimally stirring, moaning, bloody form of Gróa lying on the floor as Nagira dumped the water out of the pot on the floor behind him, as per Amon's instruction.  Out came the home-sterilized tweezers, still burningly hot, Nagira cursing as he took them up.  A hole in Gróa's ribs was plugged up with what appeared to be a handkerchief, semi-stopping the slow trickle of blood out of her body.

If there was even any blood left to run out. 

It was confirmed that there was as Nagira winced and stuck the tweezers down into a bullet hole in Gróa's barely-moving stomach.  Blood ran out in quick little rivers, causing Nagira to curse again and Amon to question, roughly, what was happening.  Gróa moaned loudly, her head lolling about on the concrete floor.

Amon groped for the bottle of Stoli and found it near his knee, and then unscrewed the lid.  Reaching over with a hand to confirm where exactly Gróa's torso was, he poured some of the vodka onto her, rousing more moans out of her.  Blood continued to flow, and Nagira continued to curse.

Nagira, at Amon's command, stuck the tweezers as far into Gróa as he possible could in an effort to find the bullet that was obviously still lodged inside of her.  In response to Nagira's probe, Gróa let out a delusional, choking gurgle.

In response to the whole situation, Robin turned and ran up the stairs, her heart pounding.  She slipped, once, falling onto her hands on the bloody stairs.  As quickly as she had fallen she pushed herself back up again, rocketing up the remaining stairs frantically. 

As soon as she reached the kitchen sink, she vomited.

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

For the better part of an hour, Robin cowered upstairs, feeling utterly pathetic and wasted.  She just couldn't stand the sights and the sounds of Gróa--something she'd realized with a certainty while washing her vomit down the drain in the sink, earlier.  At the same time she felt disgruntled with herself, useless--if it'd been up to her, Gróa probably would have died.  She would have been too slow, too loath, unable to get over her own feelings and her own despair to help the woman.  Nagira had jumped right in, without complaint, and even Amon was doing his best to save Gróa--and he couldn't even see

What's your excuse? Robin's mind asked her, disgustedly. 

She lay on the small couch, with her face turned to its dull, blue-clothed back.  She hadn't even noticed the two dead men earlier, while on her mad dash through the house to find the things that Amon had commanded her to find.  Now one lay a few feet away from her near the entrance to the hallway, dead by her own hand, and the other laid dead in the bedroom, near the open doorway.  The one in the living room lay in a puddle of blood, looking as if someone had squeezed all of it out of his head.  That someone was Robin, even if she still wasn't too terribly sure how she'd done it or how it had all worked like that.

The one in the bedroom looked as if he'd been shot in the throat, the blood spraying high up onto the walls, spread all over the floor.  It ran obscenely out of his mouth like coagulated drool.

Robin found herself wondering why she'd wandered back to look at the body, after the fact.

From downstairs, the booming sound of Amon's voice calling her name rung out.  Hesitantly she rolled over slightly, so that her face was turned upwards towards the ceiling.  She did not reply, feeling sick at the very thought of having to go downstairs again and hating herself for it.

What would she have done if it had been Amon that had needed immediate medical attention?  Or Nagira?  Would she have run and hid just like she was doing?  Wasn't the Eve of Witches supposed to be stronger and more mature than this?

Amon's voice rang out from downstairs again, this time, a slight edge of urgency in it.  Forcing herself to ignore the bile in her throat, she rolled weakly off the couch and shuffled reluctantly towards the kitchen, towards the bloody stairs.

"Yes?" she called hesitantly. 

"You need to come down here and help carry Gróa," Amon called back, firmly.  The tone of his voice seemed to say because I said so.  "I still can't see." 

Robin found herself wondering why Nagira couldn't carry Gróa himself; after all, it wasn't like she was a large woman--and then immediately berated herself, again, for being so selfish and immature.  Slowly she descended the stairs.  At the bottom she turned and looked into the cellar with trepidation.  Both Amon and Nagira were looking towards the stairs; or at least, Nagira was and Amon was looking in the general direction of the stairs.  Both looked sweaty and semi-worse for the wear, and both were decently covered with blood.

"She's still alive, somehow," Nagira said, looking at Robin.  "Somehow.  I don't fucking believe it."  Amon nodded, as if to agree with his brother.

"Stronger than she looks, perhaps," Amon said, and then frowned, as if perhaps just catching the irony of him talking about how anything looked at that moment.  "Robin.  You need to take Gróa's feet and help carry her up the stairs.  Nagira will take her arms--you two need to try to keep her as level as possible."

Robin swallowed, the bile not leaving her throat.  "Is she going to live?"

Amon looked towards the direction of her voice, staring somewhere into her stomach.  "It's hard to say.  I'm inclined to say no, based on sheer blood loss from what Nagira has told me...but she has survived this far, and that is amazing.  She may not make it through the night, however...there could be a fair chance of internal bleeding.  We did the best we could, but we aren't surgeons by any means."

Robin remained rooted to her spot, taking in the discarded supplies all around the brothers.  The towels were bound around the petite woman's torso tightly, and her shirt and brassiere were both set aside near Nagira's feet.  "Oh..."  Robin murmured, trailing off slightly.  Amon frowned severely.

"Robin.  I'm not asking you to do this because I like making you suffer," Amon said, "but because I am incapable of doing it at the moment.  To bend her would risk tearing the sutures.  Now, I'm not going to ask you again."

The young witch's feet moved across the cellar floor like they were made of lead, and she stood near Nagira, trying hard not to look at Gróa's bloody, bleached-white body below her.  "Alright," she began, her mouth dry, her voice oddly detached, "I'm ready."

Nagira nodded, his face looking inexplicably sad in the corner of Robin's vision.  "Okay, kid.  Grab her legs, then.  I'll get her arms."

Together they maneuvered around Amon, who remained sitting on the floor, and headed for the stairs.  Gróa made a few weak mewling noises as they carried her up the stairs, and Nagira jerked his head back towards the rear bedroom.  "Let's put her in her room," he suggested quietly, as if the dead men in the house with them were taking naps.  Robin nodded, and they moved slowly into the rear bedroom, carefully stepping over the dead body in the entryway.  Once Gróa had been laid down on the bed delicately, Nagira looked to the dead body in the room with them with a heavy sigh.

"I suppose I'd better move our friend," he said, sounding relatively unconcerned.  He looked to Robin and smiled at her, reassuringly.  "I'd hug you but I'm covered in blood," he said.  "And somehow you've managed not to get any on your new coat, so I won't ruin it for you.  You gonna be okay, kid?"

Robin nodded, weakly.

Nagira nodded back, still smiling.  "You did a good job, getting all those things we needed very quickly.  I'm proud of you.  Amon is too."  He jerked his head indicatively towards the body.  "I'll take care of this guy and you go downstairs and get Amon.  He's probably trying to crawl up the stairs on his own, the stubborn bastard."

Acting on Nagira's words, Robin's body moved numbly out of the room--stepping over the body in the doorway--and towards the cellar stairs again.  As Nagira had suspected, Amon was waiting there at the bottom, holding onto the railing with one searching hand.  He appeared to be debating whether or not he could make it up the stairs on his own. 

"Amon," Robin said quietly, from the top of the stairs.  "Do you need help?" she asked, even if she suddenly realized that it was a completely foolish question.  Of course he needed help. 

He nodded, looking upward.  "Yes," he said.  She descended the stairs, wrapping her arm around him and guided him up the stairs slowly.  "You vomited earlier."  It was a statement; he obviously knew.

"...Yes," Robin replied, feeling somewhat ashamed and childish.  "I couldn't help it."

Amon's arm around her back that had been gripping loosely at first, for simple balance, seemed to tighten its grip a notch.  "It's fine," he replied, knowingly.  "It is a fairly normal reaction for someone who's unused to seeing an alive, very injured person.  The first time I saw someone who was seriously injured and still alive--a very long time ago, when I was still in training in Europe--I vomited, as well."

Robin's brow furrowed, slightly.  "You did?" she asked, in quiet disbelief.

"I did."  His arm hadn't loosened its grip any, despite the fact that they were up the stairs.  "It's difficult to see someone who's still alive in such grotesque pain."  Robin led him through the kitchen, slowly, and he was silent.  "Take me to where you two put Gróa," he said, suddenly.

She began to steer her ex-partner in the direction of the back bathroom, noting that the body that had been in the room's entry previously was gone, and a bloody trail led from the original spot to a doorway on the left of the hallway.  Nagira had evidently dragged the dead body into another room.  He appeared in a dark doorway as she led Amon past, arms resting up on the doorframe.

"I'm going to put the other one in here, too," he said, to no one in particular.  "There's a storage room here."

"Fine," Amon replied noncommittally, allowing Robin to help him sit on a chest at the foot of Gróa's bed.  She disengaged herself from him and looked to their injured host, briefly, making sure the woman's chest was still moving.  Then she looked back to Amon with a sigh.

"Robin, I realize that this was very difficult for you," he said, almost out of nowhere.  His voice was quiet, as if he feared that someone would overhear.  He was apparently not aware of the fact that Gróa's blood was smeared on his face in several locations.  "You did well--you did exactly what I told you to do, and if Gróa lives it'll be in large part to your efforts."

"I barely did anything," Robin muttered dejectedly, the guilt and bile creeping back into her throat. 

"That's not true.  Your help was extremely important."  He sighed, looking up in the general direction of Robin's face.  "You may feel as if I had to really get on you to get you to help, but you actually complied a lot more willingly than most people would have, I think.  You did very well."

Robin gazed at him wearily, feeling utterly and completely drained.  Her neck throbbed and her ribs hurt from her impact with the ground earlier that day, and her brain felt disturbingly disassociated from everything.  "Do you think she's going to live, Amon?" she asked of him, her voice tiny.  His mouth opened to speak, but she beat him to it, quickly:  "I feel like I'm surrounded by death.  If she dies..."

Amon blinked, staring.  "Sure.  She'll live." 

Robin frowned, feeling tears stinging her eyes.  "Do you believe that, or are you just saying that?" she asked, a measure bitterly.  In the hallway, the sound of something being dragged across the floor could be heard. 

Amon closed his eyes and sighed, rubbing at his forehead with a hand coated in dried blood.  "Both, I think.  I don't know what else to say to you.  She may live and she may not.  I don't know."  His hand went down to the chest below him, patting it slightly, his eyes attempting to blink away fragments of dried blood that stuck to his eyelashes.  "Hey.  Sit down."

Robin did so miserably.  Without asking for his permission or knowing if it was even alright, she leaned against him heavily, her hands folded in her lap and her head pressed against his shoulder. 

"I'm covered in blood," Amon said, almost a reminder.  Robin looked down at herself and noted that Nagira was right--somehow, magically, she'd managed to get not a drop on herself.

"It's fine," Robin replied tiredly.  A few seconds later, one of Amon's bloody hands came up to hold her head to his shoulder, lightly. 

"You did well, Robin," he repeated, staring at the wall in front of them.  "I wish that I could spare you from things like this, but I can't, and tonight I even had to have you take the place either I or Nagira should have occupied."

Nagira appeared in the doorway silently, looking at his brother and Robin with his arms folded over his chest.  Robin looked up at him but said nothing and silently wondered why Amon hadn't heard Nagira coming--perhaps not utilizing his Craft, in light of the fact that he couldn't see, and his guard was somewhat down?

"I killed a man," Robin murmured, speaking to Amon but looking at Nagira.  "Not like usual--not the same, not as impersonal.  When I burn people, there's nothing left...nothing left.  Nothing left for me to see, or to think about.  It happens so quickly that I..." she trailed off, feeling like a monster.  "...don't even have time to register that it's a person that I've just burned.  But tonight..."  Amon's other hand moved over and blindly settled onto her leg, lightly.  "...I reached out, and I saw him in the otherworld while he was trying to strangle me and I...I pushed.  And I...I went back and looked at him later--I don't know why--and...he'd bled from his eyes, his nose, his..."  She trailed off again, shuddering, closing her eyes.  Amon and Nagira let out two almost identical sighs through their noses and she felt Amon's head turn to the doorway, staring at the source of the noise, undoubtedly.

"...I didn't just kill him," Robin finished in a whisper, her voice low and disgusted.  "I slaughtered him.  I...crushed something, inside of him.  It seems even worse than if I'd shot him."

Nagira straightened in the doorway and walked over to the chest, seating himself on the very edge of it, on what little room there was left next to Robin.  Surprisingly, Amon had not moved, even though he was now aware that his brother was in the room as well.  Nagira's hand, likewise crusted with Gróa's blood, was placed on Robin's back.

"Self defense, kid," he said sadly but reassuringly.  "You didn't slaughter that guy--he would have murdered you, wrung the life out of you with his own hands.  You did what you had to do.  And one of those bastards shot Gróa.  He tried to murder her and she's not even a witch."

The three of them sat there for a moment, unmoving, each in their own little world remembering the events of the afternoon turned evening.  There, sandwiched between the two brothers, Robin knew she should have felt safe and comforted.

She was more than slightly despaired that she didn't.

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

Nagira watched his baby brother through a cloud of smoke, staring at him evenly.  There, unguarded, half-blind, snowed in, and out of Robin's sight (she was asleep on the couch in the living room), Amon looked fifteen years older and almost dead.  He wasn't just worrying about his baby brother, either, as he sat there and smoked.  Nagira worried about himself and Robin, as well.

"Can you see any better?" he asked around a cloud of smoke.  Amon nodded numbly.

"A bit."  Amon squinted dramatically.  "Mostly shapes and outlines, but my vision is coming back."

Nagira nodded slowly, staring into space.  "So," he began, "what now?"

Amon shrugged, staring into space as well.  "Our fearless leader is asleep," he said, and Nagira couldn't tell if it was sarcasm or amusement that he detected in his brother's voice.  "I am just the lieutenant."

Frowning, Nagira leaned back in his chair some, the wood creaking out through the silent kitchen and house.  "Talk strategy with me then, lieutenant."

The statement gave Amon pause and then he leaned back as well, staring up at the ceiling.  The overhead lighting accentuated the shadows on his face, even when his face was tilted up towards it.  "I am correct in assuming that we're pretty well snowed in, am I not?"

"Somewhat."  Nagira picked idly at his teeth.  "I checked earlier.  The snow's mostly stopped now, but unless some kind of plow comes through during the night ain't no way in hell we're going to be able to drive back to the city."

Amon sighed.  "Not to mention that we're more than likely going to have to dig the vehicle out of a drift, correct?"

"Correct."

"I'd say it's safe to assume that SOLOMON knows that you're here with us," Amon continued, a hand absent-mindedly rubbing at his now fairly-advanced shadow.  "I think you, moreso than Robin and I, should be concerned about your life.  We are already wanted by them.  Nothing we do will change that.  Up until this point you were just a minor blip on their radar--and now, potentially, you've got even more direct ties to Robin and me than you had before."  His tone was severe and grave.  "You may not be able to return to Japan."

"That's not such a loss."

"Now," Amon said sternly, gazing up at the ceiling, "or ever."

Nagira shrugged.  "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

The ex-Hunter made a thoughtful, gutteral noise in his throat.  "We need to leave this country immediately.  It took them this long to follow us, I assume, due to the difficulty they probably encounter in attempting to enter the country.  However, we cannot allow ourselves to think this place safe any longer."

Nagira nodded, sagely.  "I agree.  So where to?"

Heavy, pensive silence on the part of Amon.  "I haven't a clue.  Gróa was severely injured before she could put us in contact with anyone she knew--and to be honest with you, I am done with this little mission.  I think Robin is finally starting to understand that it isn't all just a big game."

As if she subconsciously knew that they were speaking about her, Robin rolled over audibly on the couch in the living room, the old piece of furniture's springs giving off a tired creak.  Nagira rolled his eyes towards the darkened living room and then looked back to Amon.  "I don't think she necessarily thought it was ever a game."

"She certainly didn't understand the consequences fully."

"She's just a kid, buddy."

"I know that."  Amon's reply was short and snappish, almost too quick.  It seemed to Nagira as if Amon had spent ample time considering Robin's status as a kid, and he had a decently good idea why.  Amon's Adam's apple bobbed up and down once with his heavy swallow.

"She's very old, in a lot of ways," Nagira amended, sensing his brother's inner turmoil, "but in matters like this--death, destruction, guilt--she's still just a kid."  He smirked, darkly.  "She isn't old and bitter and jaded like us, yet."

Amon tilted his head back down from ceiling-gazing and looked to the tabletop, squinting.  "Good."

Silence like a blanket settled between the two.  Nagira smashed out his cigarette in a bowl on the table, his fingers resiliently grinding the embers between them.  His mind chugged along, thinking of future scenarios, contemplating the consequences of the evening, wondering what their next move would be.  Amon appeared to be similarly lost in thought, his whole being heavy with his morose--and with good reason--mood.

"Gróa is dying," his younger brother stated in monotone after the thoughtful pause.  Nagira leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers under his chin.  "The room is heavy with death, Syunji.  You cannot tell me that you didn't feel it."

Nagira desperately wanted to say that he hadn't, but unfortunately he'd been around too much death--whether or not he'd wanted to be--during his lifetime, and his brain silently agreed with Amon.  It was something that could not have been mentioned while Robin was still awake.  He recalled an instance from childhood, during one of the few periods in time that Amon had stayed with their father and himself in Japan.  A pet dog had suffered a stroke; for two days afterwards, the dog laid miserably on its side in the entryway to their father's summer home, barely moving, simply waiting to die.  Nagira remembered the feeling in the air, the scent, the very taste of death all around the dog.  Because Amon had been young and had seemed so preternaturally fixated on the dog's immobile, invalid status, Nagira hadn't wanted to say anything.  Memories of  a nine-year-old Amon--still at that point speaking mostly French and Czech, stubbornly refusing to learn the language of his unfamiliar father--laying on his side next to the dog rushed into Nagira's mind unbidden, the somehow morbidly touching memories of his baby brother lying there staring into the dog's glazed-over eyes, wordlessly. 

They'd known, together, collectively, that the dog was going to die.  And they knew, together, collectively, that Gróa was going to die.

"What do you wanna do?" Nagira asked Amon, his eyes beholding the twenty-six-year-old across the table from him, but somehow seeing the nine-year-old with the dog in the same sight.

Amon was silent for a moment, before replying.  "I want to sleep," he said, dazedly, dreamily.  "I want to crawl into a cave with my memories and my guns and my Craft and Robin and just hibernate."  He closed his eyes.  "If we could just sleep forever, we could be safe."

Nagira didn't know how to reply to his brother's typically cryptic admittance of despair.

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

She was dreaming.  She was dreaming of blood and gore, of voices whispering and shrieking.  Everything was in darkness, however; the only way that she knew she was dreaming of the blood and gore was from the sickening sounds of flesh puncturing and sinews tearing.  The voices crooned and hissed, a sea of incomprehensible nonsense that no matter how hard she tried to focus upon, remained a sea of incomprehensible nonsense.

It was familiar to her by now, the sea of voices.  It was what she heard every time she went into the Otherworld--it was the voices of witches speaking to her, or trying to speak to her.  She didn't know how to understand them.  Normally they were just content to murmur to her quietly, reassuringly, every witch in the world's prayers coming to her as if she was their God--

--but in the darkness, this time, over the sounds of the flesh ripping and the bones splintering, the whispers were crescendoing into cries and angry, frightened banshee screeches.  They were trying to tell her something and they were tired of her not understanding. 

In the darkness Robin's sense of self curled into a fetal ball, her invisible arms around her invisible knees, rocking back and forth--make them stop make them stop make them stop--

And from somewhere in the distance, the shrilling sound of a bell ringing resounded through the darkness.

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

Verdant eyes opened quickly, muscles tensing and breath catching.  Robin relaxed in the next second, the unseen horror of her dream fading into her subconscious.  Groggily, she propped herself up on an elbow and looked towards the light of the kitchen, her sleep-induced-light-sensitive eyes watering slightly at the sight.  Nagira appeared to be talking on the phone, standing near the kitchen table, and Amon was watching him like a wary animal, on the lookout for danger.

Who would Nagira be talking to on the phone?  She pushed herself up further on her elbow and the movement caught the older brother's eye.  He looked over to her solemnly, the phone against his ear.  "Uh-huh," he said, suddenly.  Amon looked into the general direction of the living room and squinted harshly, then looked back to Nagira.  "I see.  What the hell makes you so certain that I should believe anything you're telling me?" he queried suddenly, roughly. 

Robin, still a bit too sleep-hazed to understand fully what was happening in front of her, put her bare feet onto the wooden floor and stood, padding in the direction of the back bedroom.  The blood stains on the floor had since dried.  The light in the back bedroom was on and she could hear the sounds of Nagira's voice echoing from within the house.  Robin hesitantly nudged the door open all the way with her bare foot, looking in on Gróa with apprehension.

She'd bled more.  Her breathing looked shallower.  And Robin noticed with a twinge of horror and fear that there appeared to be a bit of blood near the small blonde woman's mouth. 

Her mouth moved numbly, her brain on autopilot.  "Gróa," she whispered in horror from the doorway, her hand gripping the doorframe slightly.  The woman made no indication of hearing Robin as Nagira's voice went on in the background.  "Gróa," Robin whispered again.  "It's me."

Robin nearly jumped out of her skin as the woman on the bed gave a throaty, gasping gurgle, and moved a little.  Paralyzed then, Robin hovered in the doorway like a small child at the threshold of her parents' room. 

"The Eve," the Icelandic woman rasped, sounding like a frog--or a life-long smoker.  "You've come."

"Yes."  For a moment, the young saviour's brain ceased to supply words to her mouth.  Then: "How do you feel?"

A croak.  "Allt í Lagi."  ["Everything is fine."]

Biting her lip, Robin decided that now would not be the most opportune time to remind Gróa that she didn't speak Icelandic.  The woman went on. "Ég var að hugsa um þig.  Ég setti mig í hættulega aðstöðu fyrir þig...Þetta er spurning um tíma."  ["I was just thinking about you.  I put myself in a dangerous situation for you...and it's only a matter of time, now."]

The unfamiliar sounds of Gróa's language coupled with her sickly, gargling voice frightened Robin.  "Gróa," she whispered shakily, frozen in the doorway, "I...I don't understand."

"Ég er villtur." ["I am lost."]  The woman let out a gurgling sigh, and Robin nearly screeched when she felt a hand on her shoulder suddenly--looking behind her, wide-eyed, she beheld Amon squinting urgently into the room, silently.  "It is of no matter, now, Robin.  My ex-husband...he will find you.  This was..."  She trailed off, and Amon left Robin's side and made his way very carefully to the side of the bed.  Straining to see, he looked down at Gróa, shaking his head.

"I feared this was happening," Amon said gravely, to Robin.  "She's bleeding internally."  He swallowed, his face the impeccable mask.  "She is going to die."

"Yes," Gróa affirmed, before Robin could even protest.  "I took myself to the cellar...to die."

Amon nodded, looking down at the woman on the bed with a strange look on his face--strange in the sense that it was understanding.  "I know," he said in reply.

"We have to do something," Robin squeaked from her rooted spot outside the door.  Amon looked to her, shaking his head.  She blinked back at him.  "Yes."

Nagira appeared in the doorway behind Robin, looking at Amon.  "Is she...?"

Amon nodded, looking over Robin's head.  "Yes.  Internal bleeding."

"Aw, fuck."  Nagira rubbed at his cheeks, sighing as if he was allowing his whole soul to escape.  "Her...her ex-husband's on the phone.  Wants to talk with us.  He said he'd talked to Gróa today--I'm assuming before the Hunters showed up.  He said that they'd known Hunters were trying to work their way into Iceland, and that's why she was in a hurry to meet with us.  He says there's more on the way, but they're keeping them detained on the Continent--we've got two days, at most."

"Nagira, do something," Robin urged, looking back at him, desperately trying to ignore the choked sputtering noises escaping from their dying hostess.  "We have to help her."

"I don't think we can, kiddo," Nagira said, sadly.  "We--"

Gróa's weak, drained hand reached out lethargically and latched onto one of Amon's, startling the hell out of all three of them.  She rolled her head limply to look at him through slitted, glazed eyes.  "Þetta er tilgangslaust." ["It is no use."]  "End this."

Silence fell over all four people.  Robin's mouth dropped open, her eyes wide and terrified.  "No," she breathed in disbelief.  Amon squinted down at Gróa and only at Gróa.

"What?" he asked of her, solemnly.

"You will," she sputtered, a blood bubble at her lips, "end this.  Send me...away."

More silence.  Nagira exhaled heavily.  The phonecall--Gróa's ex-husband--was suddenly forgotten.  All that mattered was the woman on the bed.   

"Amon," he said, quietly, "she's..."  Robin's voice decided to find itself at that precise moment.

"No!" she hissed abhorrently.  "She's asking you to--no!  I won't let you do it!  You can't--"

Amon looked at Robin then with what was the closest to pure anger that she'd ever found herself on the receiving end of from him.  He disengaged himself from Gróa's faltering grasp and jerked his head towards Nagira as he crossed the room swiftly.

"Sit with her," he commanded, and then he led the shell-shocked Robin down the hallway in a firm grip.  At the end of the hallway he turned her to face him and he looked down into her face, his jaw clenched and nostrils slightly flared.

"Robin, that woman is dying," he said, sourly.  "She's choking on her own blood.  It is coming up through her windpipe and out of her mouth.  She has been dying, very slowly, for several hours now."  He paused for a moment, staring into Robin's wide-eyed face, and then continued.  "Robin, if she wants us to end her suffering, it is the least we can do for her."

Robin's stomach turned at the very thought of putting someone out of their misery in such a way.  "But--" she began, helplessly.

"No."  Amon gave her a slight shake, his eyes boring into hers pointedly.  "Listen.  That's not a pet, or a cause for you to champion lying on the bed in there.  That is a human being, and she is suffering.  Neither you nor I, Robin, has any right to keep her alive if she does not want her to be--especially for our own selfish reasons."  She found she could not look at him directly.  "It would not be fair of us to keep her alive simply because we cannot let her go."

Robin sighed.  "But--"

Amon shook her again gently but firmly, his look somehow intensely bitter.  "No.  You heard her.  She went into that cellar to die.  This woman sacrificed her life for you and I, Robin, and the least I owe her is a quick and honourable death."  His face twisted slightly in anguish at the look of abject misery and disgust in Robin's eyes.  "Yes, Robin, you think me a monster.  But some day you'll understand.  If it was you lying in there on that bed, dying, and you asked the same of me--"

Robin shook her head.  "But I wouldn't," she whispered, defiantly.  "I couldn't put that responsibility on you."

"The responsibility of many people's lives are on my hands, at this point in my life," he replied bitterly, shortly.  "Yours would be more difficult than any, but don't you see that it would be my responsibility as a human being to release you from your suffering?"

Robin shook her head once more, the feeling of shell-shock and disbelief not releasing their death-grip on her body.  "God would--"

"I am not sure if you and I believe in the same God, Robin," Amon interrupted her simply.  Her eyes slid down to the floor again, and Amon tilted her head back up to look at his with his hand under her chin.  "Often times, He doesn't act quickly enough for the likes of humans.  And that is when, at times, we have to take things into our own hands.  We cannot leave everything up to God."

Silence.

"You're going to kill her, aren't you?" Robin rasped miserably, her beryl eyes searching his leaden ones, imploringly, sadly.  His eyes conveyed their own horrible weight of burden and nebulous, crushing sorrow.  In the back of her mind she wondered if his sight had returned fully yet, or if he could even see her face in front of him.  Was he even aware that he was allowing his eyes to be that expressive, that human?

"She has asked me to," Amon answered lowly.  "It would be cruel of me to refuse because I dislike the idea."  His hand was still under her chin.  "I am sorry, Robin.  Someday you will understand."  He sighed brokenly.  "You may never forgive me, but someday you will understand."

As Amon turned and walked back into the room, Nagira looked up at him with a knowing look on his face.  Robin stood there in the hallway with her breath caught in her throat as the light from the bedroom grew fainter and fainter; Amon was closing the door behind him, slowly.  When it closed, Robin stood in the darkness and breathed shallowly, as if she were out of breath.

Somewhere deep inside of her, a part of her that felt ancient knew that Amon was right--but another part of her wanted to break down and scream and cry and kick at the sheer unfairness of it all.  The unfairness of Gróa being taken out of the world by SOLOMON Hunters, even though she wasn't a witch; the unfairness of having to just accept that sometimes God didn't work as he was supposed to; the unfairness of having to watch her beautiful, strong, impossibly sad warden take one more life. 

And when the door to the back bedroom opened and Amon came walking out, his steps even and moderated, his eyes glued squintingly to the floor, Robin stepped aside wordlessly to let him pass, and watched as he went into the living room and sat down in the dark in one of the armchairs.  He said nothing and did not move.  Robin didn't know if it was quite possible, but she found herself loving, hating, and pitying Amon all at once.  Nagira came walking down the hallway with a morose, serious look on his face a moment later, looking up at her once with detached reassurance in his eyes.  He headed back towards the kitchen, undoubtedly towards the phone.

Looking down the hallway, Robin could see the still, small body of Gróa Guðmundsdóttir lying on the bed with a pillow over her face and her hands folded atop her breast, as if she was to be holding a crook in one hand and a flail in the other.