Witch Hunter Robin Fan Fiction ❯ Binah (Understanding) ❯ But Myself Keeps Slipping Away ( Chapter 10 )

It was perhaps symbolic of their recent travails that summer rain began to fall on Tokyo after Robin first went to the Walled City coven. It fell blissfully wet and cool on the hot, dirty streets. It woke Amon early one morning. The air's smell changed—it was earthier, now, cleaner. He got out of bed in disbelief, just to check. Outside his window, he could just barely see the drops, although their trickling noise on the roof, which he guessed had wakened him, was certainly present.

Cursed as a light sleeper and now unable to sleep, he went to the kitchen to start coffee. The kitchen door was open; only a screen shielded them from invasion. Adrenaline coursed through him, reaching electric fingers through his gut, and he crossed to the door only to find a vision of Robin standing outside their building, eyes closed, and face upturned to the rain. Her mouth was open, not to catch drops, but to breathe deeply. He watched her chest rise and fall. Her hair was going wet and stringy, and her hastily-put-on shirt was beginning to plaster to her body. Her feet were bare on the wet pavement. The simmering annoyance and resentment of Doujima that had steamed in the back of his mind since her purchase of Robin's new clothes began to dissipate in the face of a new and more powerful enemy: the very weather, it seemed, wanted to him to recognize in Robin all the qualities which he should never, ever allow himself to see.

As though his eyes had somehow touched her in their lingering, Robin opened hers and turned to him, watching him watch her through the screen door. She smiled, gently. It was an open invitation: come on, the water's fine. Amon didn't even need to shake his head; a fraction of movement was enough to dim her smile and start her up the stairs again. He escaped to the bathroom and emerged with a towel, just as she re-entered the kitchen.

“It's so beautiful!” Robin enthused innocently, smiling and wiping drops of water from her face with wet fingers. She blinked and more water fell; even her eyelashes were wet and glittering. In fact her entire body, clad just in the summer uniform of shorts and a t-shirt, was covered in drops of water. They caught the light from each bare arm and leg. One clung to the very tip of her nose. Her smile continued.

“Yes,” Amon answered, handing her the towel, and watching her bury her face in it. “It is.”

***

Moments later, when both of them were dressed and having coffee (a rare occurrence, since Robin slept absurdly late most days) Robin said: “I want to go back to the coven, tonight.”

“Is that wise?”

“I told them I would return,” she said. “If I don't come back soon, they will think my word means nothing.” She sipped her drink. “I think I managed to upset the balance a little, before, and I should return before they have the chance to make plans.”

“They will be easier to control if they're disorganized and frightened?”

Robin swallowed, and stared into her mug. She held it with both hands. “It's the entire philosophy behind the Walled City, isn't it?” she murmured.

“Yes.” Amon watched her fingers tighten on the mug. “You were trained by Master Hunters, were you not?”

“Yes,” Robin answered dutifully. “Sastre, and there were others, too. And Juliano-” her voice caught on her father's name, “was Solomon's Master Hunter Trainer.”

“Is that where you learned to use your fists?”

Robin's face came up. She nodded silently. “Is that important?”

“It was unexpected.”

She shrugged in answer. “It's just basic; anyone else could have done the same.”

“Anyone except the girl you hit in the face,” Amon said dryly. “There are plenty of others who would not have known what to do.”

She frowned. “I'm not sure I understand what you mean.”

“Your training as a Hunter is a part of you,” Amon intoned. “Thinking like a Hunter is not a habit that can be broken.”

Sadness tinted Robin's features as she looked down into her mug again. “Not ever?” she asked.

“Never,” Amon answered. He thought of the gun collection under his bed. He knew his weapons better than the streets of Tokyo he'd lived on most of his life. And he knew the many different ways of killing another human being even better. Once a Hunter, always a Hunter. Or so he had believed, until another rainy day like this one. And if Robin wanted to continue standing in the rain, perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing that he still thought like a murdering bastard. He had been prepared to die if she willed it, that night above his brother's office. One part of him, he knew, was already dead—frozen and barren, devoid of all life. “But, it is…useful.”

Robin looked out the kitchen window. Her face, seen in profile, was drawn and pale. He wondered suddenly why she had wakened so early—what force could interrupt her usual desire for hour after hour of sleep. “They want a deliverer schooled in oppression,” she murmured.

“You were simply killing them, before,” he said. Robin flinched, but continued her gaze out the window. “It's a kind of improvement.”

“I don't know how to lead anyone, Amon.” She shook her head. “I'm not a leader.”

“They don't know that.” He moved from his position leaning against the kitchen table, and began re-filling his mug, finding the wet sound of the coffee hitting the ceramic oddly comforting. He set the pot back down in its place, and drank. Robin was watching him—even she couldn't turn away from the possibility of exposing herself to her favorite stimulant. He watched her over the rim of the mug. “When was the last time anyone said no, to you?” he asked.

In answer, Robin's eyes flicked to the kitchen door. Then they landed on him. It was all she needed to say. Very softly, Amon shook his head: he didn't count, in this game. Robin's eyebrows knitted together for half a second with annoyance, but her face cleared again. Then memory took over. She was going over his question. Finally, she shook her head, too. “It doesn't happen very often,” she answered vaguely.

“Yes, because you never take it for an answer.” He put the mug down on the counter. “You always do things your own way, and expect others to go along with it.”

Surprise and hurt spread across her face. “I don't mean to-”

Amon silenced her with a look. “They asked you to lead,” he reminded her. “They didn't ask you to be polite. You said it yourself.”

Robin pondered this. She sipped her coffee, swallowed, and bit her lip. Her eyes narrowed a little, then came up to meet his. “What if they're all stubborn, like you?”

He willed himself not to choke on his drink with laughter—again, she was only funny when she didn't mean to be, when she said things that were so innocently honest and true that they couldn't help but stick. But it was a valid question, the implications of which spread straight to the reasons he often found himself unable to say no to her. Even he couldn't yet answer that, however. So instead, he merely said: “Even stubborn people can take orders.”

Robin continued looking at him. It wasn't one of her surreptitious little glances; a flick of the eyes that landed on him occasionally and burned briefly like one of her own sparks on his skin. This was steady, and strong. Amon felt and watched those eyes take him in detail by detail, evaluating, calculating, taking notes. He was reminded of that first day, at Harry's, when he'd passed her in the hall. She'd stared at him then, too, and hadn't backed down when he stared back. Or was it he who had engaged it? He could never remember, after everything else. In the end, it mattered very little if he had looked at her first or she him—they were bound up in one another, now.

“Tell me about your training,” Robin said, interrupting his thoughts. His eyes focused on hers again, perfectly green, clear, and adamant. He reflected with an unfamiliar kind of pleasure that for a girl not raised in Japan, her imperative tense was perfect; she was damn well going to practice giving direction, and it was starting with him. He remembered that she had been raised around Inquisitors, and had a naturally curious mind, possessed of all the ruthlessness of youth—she would naturally go places he didn't want her to. Until then, he had to trust her, and do for her that which he was so loath to do—answer questions.

“It was difficult,” he said simply, testing, trying not to smile.

Robin slowly put her mug down, and folded her arms. Her chin came up, a little. “And?”

He started talking.

***

“His training was so hard on him,” Touko told the Hunter sitting with her over a cup of tea. It was the second day of their interviews. Rain fell steadily outside the windows of the near-deserted tea shop they had chosen for their meetings. Touko had opted not to use an umbrella, and drops of rain clung to her scalp. “I'm sure you understand, being a Hunter, yourself.”

Margarethe nodded. Her face was blank, stoic. “It can make or break a person,” she admitted.

“They have to break you down, to build you up again, stronger than before,” Touko continued. She twisted her cup inside its saucer. “But in the process, you can lose something.”

“Is that what you think happened to Mr. Nagira?” Margarethe asked. She watched Touko's face carefully, looking for any sign of deception. It remained unclear to Margarethe why Touko would come out of the shadows now, to talk about the German Hunter's predecessor. It was obvious, when Touko spoke of Amon Nagira, that there was something else going on within her mind and heart other than a simple recounting of the facts. Speaking of him, her face was a mixture of sweet nostalgia and pain, as though the man were savior and damnation in one, the millstone round her neck dragging her to dark and watery depths, and also the only thing keeping her afloat.

Touko sighed. “I'm not sure, but…” Her brown eyes met Margarethe's blue ones. “He came out different than before. Harder. Colder. More distant.” Her voice was both bitter and regretful.

“And an excellent Hunter,” Margarethe said. “Even his most basic information in Solomon's databases says that he was on the track to becoming a Master Hunter, given a few more years' experience.”

Touko nodded emphatically. “He reformed STN-J's entire program,” she said glowingly. “He was just what they needed.”

“Even without the use of the Craft?”

Touko's face darkened. The lines that Margarethe imagined were put there by long hours in physical therapy and being the daughter of Solomon's latest black sheep deepened. “Amon didn't need the Craft,” she murmured.

“It seems not,” Margarethe affirmed, with a gentle inclination of her head. She was on unfamiliar ground with an unfamiliar person, speaking an unfamiliar language. It was best to tread lightly. “All four years of his training are characterized by good marks, certainly, particularly in the Investigative portion of his curriculum. There are very few complaints.” She consulted a file that she balanced on her lap. “Of course, his social skills were lacking…”

Touko frowned. “That's his academic record?”

Margarethe nodded affably, as though her possession of the file were the most natural thing in the world, and not the product of much wrangling with other offices after having waited on hold for far too long. Carefully lifting her eyes, she saw Touko's face alive with temptation: she wanted to see that file. She wanted more information from the time she was separated from this mysterious Amon Nagira—craved it, in fact. Subtly, Margarethe drew the file closer to her body, and watched Touko lean almost imperceptibly forward to follow it. Yes, there was indeed something else afoot. The Hunter's intuition that told her that Touko was attempting to use her to reach Amon Nagira again gained a bit more ground. What remained to be seen was why exactly the young woman with the hungry eyes sitting before her believed so strongly that Amon Nagira was alive.

***

Robin's eyes widened. “You know how to use a sword?”

Amon made a small shrug. “Of a certain type.”

She smiled gently. “Me, too.”

Amon blinked. “You do?”

She nodded. “Sastre taught me. He said that fencing would increase my balance and agility, and my sense of physical space. It was an essential part of his physical education, at his boys' school in France. It was a very conservative Jesuit school; where there was a significant attempt to preserve the old culture.”

“So your style is French?”

Again, Robin nodded. “Sastre said the Italian was too sloppy, not precise enough. I really only learned with a foil, though. The saber was too heavy.” She seemed to brighten. “When I did well, he gave me driving lessons.”

Amon crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, taking in Robin anew. Fencing, driving. If she was mystery before, she was an absolutely foreign language, now. His image of Robin the convent-girl was in itself flawed, he realized. There was too much that he didn't know. “What other classes did you take?”

She shook her head. “I didn't take classes, only tutorials,” she said. “My instructors came to the convent, to teach me. They reported my progress to Juliano directly.” She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. Despite her tired eyes, a slight smile played at the edges of her mouth. “Did you get good grades, Amon?”

“Yes,” he answered honestly. There was no reason to lie, certainly. And it made sense that she would want to know—he was supposed to be protecting her. “I made my best marks in Combat and Investigative Science.”

Robin nodded sagely, as though this made sense to her. “What were your specializations?”

“Firearms and profiling.” Amon watched her raise her eyes to him, looking up through her eyelashes. Her expression said that for some reason, she was not surprised. It also asked for more specific information. “I graduated in the top tenth percentile, in both specializations,” he added. “My Master Hunter certification probably would have come from profiling, if I were nominated for the title after somehow distinguishing myself.”

“Sastre's specialization was profiling, as well,” Robin said softly. Her eyes were unfocused. “He knew, when others didn't, what the Witch would do. He knew how to flush them out of hiding, by providing the proper motivation.”

“The paper cranes,” Amon said.

Robin stiffened momentarily, then relaxed. “Yes.”

Amon looked at the kitchen table, at their mugs of coffee now gone cool in the rainy late morning light. As yet, they hadn't eaten. He was feeling sluggish, without food and a shower. But he wasn't particularly compelled to move from this spot, either. And there were still questions to be answered, and worries to be put to rest. “He was your instructor. He knew you very well.”

“Not well enough,” Robin whispered.

There was little to be said, after that. If Sastre the expert profiler and Master Hunter did not know Robin well enough to sense when her limit was nigh, there was a chance that Amon was also mistaken in what he thought he knew of Robin. The thought was at once disturbing and enlightening. At the core of Robin there was a mystery—not merely in her Craft, but in her decision-making. There was the girl who drew baths for him, and the Witch who had killed her own teacher. There was the shy, blushing child, and the woman who tolerated no offense. His eyes found themselves focusing on her again. She was watching him, too, knees still curled to her chest. “You could say I didn't have time for a normal childhood,” she said. “And, if that were true, this is the first time I can feel myself grow up, a little, for real.”

Amon stood, and began a gesture with his hands. “That's-” His coffee cup was swept off the table by his errant hand, and Robin reached out immediately to catch it. The cup was already gone, however; it hung in the air over the floor. But above Robin's hand it continued to hang, suspended but quivering. The coffee spilled helplessly to the kitchen floor, leaving dark splashes on the linoleum.

“How…?”

“I don't know.” A tremor that began in Robin's hand traveled up her arm and into her shoulders. They shook, as though she were straining at keeping something locked within. Her voice was a pained, frightened whisper. “I don't know…” He watched the mug hanging in air, and her bowed head, even the individual hairs of her scalp trembling a little. Her face came up, and her eyes, so teasing a few moments before, were full of fear. A thread spooled between them briefly; her fear was his, his apprehension her own. “Amon…”

The mug imploded in midair. Pieces of ceramic fell to the floor, but Amon failed to notice them or hear their clatter. Robin jumped at the sound. They continued watching one another. The words came out before he could consider them: “Have you been hiding this from me?” he asked.

If possible, Robin's eyes went wider; she looked near tears. “Amon, no…I…”

“Where did this power come from?”

She shook her head. “I'm not sure. The cup was going to fall, and I reached…”

“You've never been able to do this, before?”

“Never! It's not my Craft! I…” Robin's hands came up, shaking violently. She made a futile attempt at making them into fists and controlling their tremble, but even that was too much. “I don't know what's happening to me…” She bit her lower lip. “My hands won't stop…Amon…”

“You're afraid.” It wasn't a particularly gentle phrase, but he tried to soften his voice. “Robin, you must calm yourself.”

“I didn't mean to do it, Amon, I didn't!” Robin's fingers moved in the air stiffly, as though she were crunching a fist with arthritis. “Please, please believe me…”

Amon knelt suddenly, sitting on his haunches before Robin. The chair squeaked out of his way. Ceramic shards bit into his bare feet. “Robin, listen.” She nodded mutely, tears still hovering at her eyes as the mug had in the air above her hand. “The Eve of Witches never, ever pleads,” he said clearly. “No matter how afraid she is. The moment she begs, she becomes dependent on another. Do you understand me, Robin?”

She blinked, and nodded silently. The tears faded back into her eyes. She swallowed. It was an audible event in her throat. Her hands found their control again, and made fists, then came to rest slowly on her knees. Amon waited patiently. Robin licked her lips. “Go get a towel,” she instructed in a wavering voice. Amon nodded, and rose to fetch something to clean up the mess. He returned with a towel over one arm.

“The coven?” he asked.

“Yes.”

***

“You've been very helpful, Touko,” Margarethe said, shrugging into a long gray trench coat. It was darkening outside, although the rain had not let up. The coffee shop was slowly filling with those on their way home from work or school, attempting to escape the downpour. “I am very grateful.”

“No, I'm only doing that which I offered to do,” Touko said, shaking her head. “You've been very good to listen to me, this way.”

“I'll be in contact,” Margarethe replied, and nodded gently before leaving the coffee shop. She opened her umbrella, and stepped into the rain. The heavy drops made a leathery, campground sound on the waterproof fabric of her accessory. Margarethe felt Touko's eyes on her as she left and wondered when Touko's phone call, asking in timid but fervent tones if she might also come back to Tokyo, would arrive. It was obvious that the young woman wanted a chance to return to her stomping grounds with Amon Nagira. Her hunger while speaking of the man was plain.

Of course, it all pointed to a suspicion Margarethe had nursed all along: Amon Nagira, and most likely Robin Sena, were still alive, somewhere. Perhaps it wasn't in Tokyo—they'd had plenty of time to run. But they were out there. She had seen the Japanese Hunter's marks, in his academic record, after having studied his STN-J case record. This was a person who had passed his survival course with flying colors. In reviewing his records, which were frustratingly dry and impersonal, but detailed enough to chronicle his injuries, Margarethe was impressed by his toughness. Amon Nagira was a Craft-less Witch Hunter, who still went out and did the job knowing the deck was stacked against him. His apparent lack of a Craft had not hindered him in any way during his training, to look at his instructors' comments. They were universally impressed with his work.

But all of their personal asides were alarmingly similar. “Isolated,” they read. “Can direct a team, but does not encourage team loyalty.” One particularly articulate professor had written: “A distraction to the class through his strenuous attempts to fade into the background.” Another had directed that he only do special details within Solomon's Hunting hierarchy: “Regional Hunting not advised for this candidate. It is recommended that he further specialize in the Investigative Science division, and apply his intelligence there, where he can direct himself without necessarily being asked to work with others.” Conversely, his Combat instructors said: “Mr. Nagira's martial tactics would be a boon to any paramilitary squad. His best fit would most likely be with a team of well-practiced professionals, however; Mr. Nagira has yet to demonstrate the patience for new team members.”

It sounded similar, in a way, to what Touko had described: cold, hard, distant. Margarethe had never met the man, but he was beginning to seem more and more familiar. The German woman stopped at a crosswalk, watching for the light on the other side of the rain-slicked street to turn colors, and for the little tune to click on that meant it was all right to cross. Although she had never lived in the former East Germany, Margarethe's mother said that there was once something similar, there, until the “liberation” had taken place, and decades of a culture were swept aside in favor of the “glories” of MTV, McDonald's, and the Gap. The light turned, and the little tune came on. Dutifully, the Japanese around her began walking. Margarethe walked with them. She turned right, plodding slowly toward her hotel with wet shoes.

Of course, there was something that didn't fit, when one considered Amon Nagira. And her name was Robin Sena. After Miss Sena's arrival at STN-J, Amon Nagira's life as a Hunter turned upside down. One didn't need direct testimony from the man to know this for the truth; his case record bore it out. Gone was the careful, patient tactician. There were more deaths. There was more danger. And mostly, there was an injured man, who Solomon paramilitary troops swore under oath had tried to shoot them down all by himself, who had traveled to Father Juliano Colegui in Italy, before returning to Tokyo…

When Margarethe thought about it as she entered her hotel's lobby, shook out her umbrella, and crossed to the elevator, an injured man was how she was beginning to consider Amon Nagira more and more. Solomon's records went only so far back before attaining the level of Confidential, naturally. She had access only to records that concerned no one but the allegedly-dead Mr. Nagira: his transcript, and his work portfolio. Anything possibly pertaining to Syungi Nagira or other living relatives was beyond her reach. But a cop's instincts that rarely failed her told her that there was another wound—one that even Touko was loath to bring up, out of respect for a man that she most likely still believed to be alive. When asked when she had first met Amon Nagira, Touko had said only that it was during childhood, and that the late Mr. Zaizen had taken an interest in the boy. Margarethe had inferred the rest from the pain written across Touko's face. It was not a difficult story to predict.

Where Robin Sena fit into the puzzle remained a conundrum, however. Somewhere along the way, the man who Solomon thought didn't play so well with others had found in a fifteen-year-old foreign Craft-user someone who understood his own private game. Or, if she didn't understand, she was at least willing to learn, and possibly play. After reading the details on the attack at Factory, Margarethe had never really believed that Robin Sena could be dead. It seemed doubtful, then, that Amon Nagira would be dead, either. Though her own records were even more deeply obscured than her partner's, Miss Sena did not seem the type to leave a man behind in a collapsing building. If one was dead, both were dead. If one lived, so too did the other. Even during her attempted Hunt, the partnership was that way.

Margarethe sat down heavily at a desk within her hotel room, and kicked off her wet shoes. She watched the flat gray rain outside, and sighed. “You were the man who couldn't miss,” she said aloud to the silence. “So, why couldn't you hit her?”

The phone rang. Calmly, the Witch Hunter reached for it. “Touko?” she asked, without needing to.

“H-How did you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

Touko laughed nervously, on the other end of the line. “I…I think that Amon's still alive, Miss Bonn.”

Margarethe nodded. “I sensed that.”

“And…I'd like to come back to Tokyo with you, to help you in any way that I can,” the younger woman continued. “It would be better for Amon if he is found, if he's alive. He could be injured, or have fallen in with the wrong people, or…”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” There was a rush of relief in Touko's voice. “When are your flight plans?”

Margarethe brought out her itinerary, and both women discussed their new travel schedule together, until full dark enveloped the room.

***

This time, Robin did not opt for jeans.

The black trousers and black button-up shirt gave her an oddly boyish look, were it not for the streams of loose ginger-blond hair falling down her back. She looked rather like a very dark candle, which, Amon realized, was not an inappropriate metaphor for the fire-wielding Eve of Witches. Her eyes, after all, could only be described as blazing as she marched through the doors of the now-familiar warehouse. Again, candles crackled into life around her. Robin pointed at Neville, who sat in state with a group of other, older Witches at a table.

“You have some explaining to do.”