The Noviciate
Only doing his job.
That's what he told himself. He was doing his job; he was following Zaizen's orders. He was responsible for all her actions. If she was not in her bed, he reasoned, she was wandering the city and that was out of the bounds of acceptable for him.
With his reasoning intact, he slipped his key into the lock and stepped into the darkened apartment registered to T. Masaki. His voice mail had alerted him several hours earlier he had a new message. Touko had called to inform him she was out of town for two weeks. She had not specified the exact nature of her out-of-town business, instead choosing to keep her message clipped. He appreciated her tendency to keep things curt and straightforward.
Slipping his shoes off at the entryway, he forced himself to reexamine his motives. Was he being polite by removing his shoes and following tradition or was he planning on staying longer than his duty required? He was only doing his job; it was not a social visit.
Men didn't make social visits at three in the morning. He didn't make social visits at all. This was business, he reminded himself as he stepped into the apartment, peering around the darkened room. The living room to the left, the kitchen to the right… her bedroom was just beyond, only a few feet away. He could see the doorway from where he stood, closed and secure.
Was it locked?
Did she lock her bedroom door behind her?
He wondered, he stood and contemplated it for several long moments. Was she even asleep? The apartment was silent but that didn't mean she slept. What if she was a light sleeper? What if he opened her door and she woke up? What would he say? How would he explain himself to her?
He moved toward her door and raised his hand to the doorknob, placing his bare palm against the metal door handle. It was cold. The entire apartment was chilly. Was the heat off?
Slowly, he turned it and the doorway was obediently silent. The hinges, too, were quiet and the door swung open without sound revealing an equally dark bedroom.
Robin's room was what he expected. It looked different at night than it did in the day. He had visited only a day earlier, this very room, while both Robin and Touko were out. He had ran his fingers across her dresser, along her bed, touching his fingers to her blankets… her suitcase was the only thing that seemed to be hers in the room. The place was devoid of personalization.
Unwilling to resist his temptation, he had opened the box. Inside, he found nothing shocking, nothing expensive, and nothing elaborate. A girl's box of things. No jewelry or hair ties, no pictures.
Robin was an orphan that he knew.
Unabashed, he had slid his fingers against the soft white panties he had found, pushing them aside as he looked through her things. Her hosiery was delicate and silky against his hands, her slips pearly black…
Her file at STN-J headquarters had said little, but it mentioned her status as a hunter and a noviciate, a girl in training to become a nun. He had had some idea about her lack of worldiness just from seeing and working with her, but to see it in print… that she was a noviciate…
His guilt for his interest in her was mild. She was on the brink of womanhood, a girl going to bloom into a woman and then cloak that delicate beauty in the black folds of permanent chastity and service and poverty.
He was still unsure how he felt about her noviciate status and how it affected him. Part of him wanted to see her accepted into the convent, to see her beauty framed in black, to know she would be permanently chaste and beyond the corrupting touch of man. Part of him wanted to share that corruption with her, to teach and experience worldly things with her…
He stepped into her bedroom fully leaving the door ajar behind him. The curtains blew in breeze, her window was propped open with an old hardcover book. The two wall lights on either side of her bed were off leaving the room in darkness but the moon was bright and full casting delicate silver rays over her crisp white linens.
Standing at the foot of the bed he glanced over her. She was laying on her side, her blankets kicked to edge only her white sheets covering her skin. Stepping to the left side, he noted her shoulder was bare and his eyes drifted down her back. It too was bare. She wore nothing to bed?
A girl of her age?
A noviciate?
Naked?
Was that normal?
Her hair was loose and fell over her pillow limply. She looked older with her hair loose, graceful, he was glad she wore it up. Nothing, however, hid those large, luminous eyes in the daytime. He could stare forever at her face. He was spared the hynotic pull of her gaze by her being asleep, her eyes closed, her lashes laying against her cheeks.
He turned his eyes to her bed table. The clock reminded him of the late hour. She was in her bed, asleep, as he wished to confirm. His job was done, he could go home and rest. Chances were that she would not be leaving that night. He had awakened her early and kept her out late.
He turned and quietly retreated from the room. As he reached for the door, he turned to glance back and caught sight of her dress hanging on the other side of the room. It rippled slightly with the breeze flowing in from the window.
He recalled the day he'd first seen her in that dress, walking down the halls of Harry's. He recalled those eyes of hers, those he would never forget. It was something so uniquely Robin that it made him itch in a way he had never quite experienced before. It wasn't a physical itch it was… It was beyond definition.
Was it black silk against her skin or was it cotton? Did it make her sweat? How many dresses of that design did she own? Did she have one and she washed it daily? What did she wear beneath it? Was it always the same? Did she have colored things as part of her wardrobe or were such things forbidden? How did she feel about lace and silk?
She was a noviciate. She would beocme a nun and take vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty. She would give her life to God and never be touched by man, any man. He turned and stepped out.
His duty was done for the night. Tomorrow, she would return to the office and those bright eyes would turn to him and he would spend the day caught between his work and looking at her.
A noviciate, a woman who would become a nun.
AN: Is there more to this? Probably, so I'll list it as incomplete. It's really kind of a practice thing, I've never done WHR before. Robin's hard to write...