Chapter 2- Awareness
A/N: This chapter takes place during Amon's sixth month of recovery after the events of the Factory.
Huge thanks to Auntie Mom for the continued wonderful beta!
Month Six
The first cigarette of the day was always the best. The anticipation, the way the addiction pulled at you, making you beg for it until you were able grab the pack, tap one out, slip it between your lips, and light up… heaven. Still, to him, smoking wasn't about edginess and withdrawal. It was more about giving in to a lazy sort of hedonism moments after you awoke.
Never let it be said that Nagira couldn't turn even the most annoying and costly of addictions into the ultimate, most natural, pleasure.
Usually, he savored that first cigarette, taking long, slow drags, holding it in for as long as he could till he let it out through his mouth and nose. He'd lean back in the chair next to his bed, pushing every thought of impending cases and mindless litigation far away. Then he'd light another cigarette, which wasn't as good as the first, but was made almost better by a casual stroll in his favorite coat down the road to the office.
Most mornings, that first smoke and walk down the streets of Tokyo was what he looked forward to.
But today he smoked a little more quickly, eager to get some nicotine after hours aboard a non-smoking flight. And his gait, when he got out of the terminal, while moderate, was anything but leisurely. In fact, it was pretty damn determined.
Nagira let the grin that had been playing hide and seek across his face all day, making flight attendants blush and the little old lady sitting next to him titter like a schoolgirl, come out in full force once again. Damn, if he didn't check himself, he'd be skipping.
It wasn't like this trip was going to be all roses. Amon was going to be a pain in the ass for most of it, his cold and haughty act made even worse since he'd been on a bed pan and sponge bathed for almost six months. (Though Nagira couldn't see how the second part of the situation was all that bad considering some of the nurses he'd seen on his visits to the clinic.) And when the inevitable conversation came up about a certain little bird…well, Nagira was going to have to do a hell of a lot of damage control to stop Amon from running out of his hospital bed, full tilt.
Still…sure, dealing with his brother was pretty damn annoying and costly at times, but he couldn't help but love getting under Amon's skin, poking at him, showing a lazy sort of brotherly affection that he knew Amon couldn't handle. Even though they hadn't spent that much time together as boys, Nagira had learned early on that even a laid back, easy going sort of guy could irritate Solomon's best hunter with only a few words and an insinuating comment. And damn if that didn't make him grin like an ass. Sure, Amon got pissed, taking that lord of the manor tone. He could whoop his big brother if he was really in the mood. But that didn't really matter to Nagira anymore, if it ever had.
After five months of not knowing whether or not he'd be able to piss his little brother off ever again…well, he knew that first conversation was going to be well worth the toxicity.
"Where is she?"
Nagira sighed as he entered the clinic room. "What? No 'How are you, big bro? Is that a new coat you're wearing? A haircut?' Or, how 'bout even 'It's great to see you, Nagira. I've missed you so?'"
Amon just scowled back at him and replied in a tone which could have been considered lethal, but only if the speaker hadn't been wrapped in a baby blue hospital gown. "Where is she?"
"She's safe," Nagira said simply. "And that's all you're getting for now."
"Excuse me?" Amon said, biting off every word. "I hope you're aware that I am her warder and that her situation is of my utmost concern."
"No, actually, your health is." Nagira stifled a chuckle as he watched Amon struggle against his bed sheets. "Settle down, settle down. Jeez, you've always been a shitty patient, ever since we were kids. I remember when you got the chickenpox…man, were you a pain in the ass. Always wanting to scratch at them…"
"While this little slice of some Rockwellian fantasy you have about our childhood may be entertaining to some, it is not to me. I ask you again, where is she?"
Nagira rolled his eyes, shrugging off his coat and laying it over the small couch at one end of the room. The very couch that he'd slept on way too many nights just a few months ago. Sure, the place was nice- he'd paid good enough money so that it ought to have been. Somehow, though, soft cream walls and Egyptian cotton didn't really balance out watching your kid brother lay like a broken heap of matches on a hospital bed.
He sat on the stool next to his brother's bed. "Amon. She's safe. I promised you I'd keep her that way and that's what I've done. But," he raised up a hand to stop his brother's questions, "I'm not telling you where she is."
"And why not?"
Nagira couldn't help but smirk at the petulant tone. "Because, if I tell you, you'll get some cockamamie scheme into your head to sneak out of this hospital and go find her. I know, for a fact, that your body isn't ready to do that."
Amon sat up quickly, anger in his eyes. That look, however, was replaced almost immediately with weariness.
Nagira's heart broke just a little bit to see it. "Little brother, you're not going anywhere for a while. The doctors say that you've made an almost miraculous recovery, which, believe me, considering your stubborn streak, doesn't surprise me, but that you've still got a few months of therapy before you can be walking normally, not to mention running any marathons."
"I thought there was such a thing as doctor/patient confidentiality," Amon said icily.
"Not in this place," Nagira replied simply. Then he just couldn't hold back what was on his mind, "Damn it, Amon, when you got here the doctors couldn't even believe you'd survived as long as you had. The broken leg, arm, screwed up shoulder, blood loss, massive concussion…how the hell did you get out of the Factory?"
"I walked."
Nagira's laugh boomed out before he could stop it. "You're a piece of work, you know that?"
"How did I…get here after we escaped?" When Nagira stayed silent, Amon huffed, "If you're not going to tell me anything about Robin, you can at least tell me how I got to Switzerland, of all places."
'Always gathering information, aren't you?' Nagira thought with a soft smile. He wasn't fooled by how quickly Amon dropped the subject of Robin. They'd get back to it, eventually, and Amon would go after the truth like a pit bull. For now, he thought that he'd lull his brother into a false sense of security, making him think that he'd accepted not knowing the truth. Well, two could play at that game. Lawyers were trained to reveal their information slowly and with great thought to the larger situation. And Nagira was a much better lawyer than most people realized.
Nagira leaned back in his chair, rooting around in his voluminous pockets to find his packet of cigarettes. Taking his time to light one and inhale, ignoring the no smoking sign hanging discretely over his head, he was all too aware of the furious stare directed at him by a pair of slate gray eyes.
Smirking slightly, he said, "Well, I'm sure there's no harm in telling you about that." He exhaled slowly, pausing his narrative to study the way that the smoke swirled off the end of his cigarette, trailing upward and spreading into a hazy cloud.
"Nagira…" Amon growled.
He sighed, "Ok, ok, keep your pants on." Nagira hid his grin as he reached over and grabbed Amon's medical chart. "You sure are riled up. Wonder if they need to add a sedative to this list…" he trailed off, watching in barely contained amusement as Amon's eyes opened wide in a combination of disbelief and panic.
"You wouldn't dare…"
"Of course not," Nagira said. "As long as you behave yourself I won't have Helga give you the sleepy pills, ok?"
The disgust-filled look he received from his brother was answer enough.
"Well, nobody could find the two of you after the destruction of that freaky building- to be honest, they all thought you were dead. That Miho chick seemed a bit too happy at first, but then she started playing the role of grieving coworker."
"And did you play the role of grieving brother?" came Amon's sardonic question.
"Nope."
Nagira chuckled at his brother's veiled, yet still noticeably indignant, expression. "Because I knew you two weren't dead. It just wasn't possible. I didn't really have a clue about what had happened with Zaizen down there at the time, but…I just knew."
"That's hardly evidence enough for such a hypothesis."
"So says the guy who seems to have a sixth sense about most things and hunts on a combination of skill and instinct?" Nagira asked, tauntingly. Deciding to give Amon a break, he went on, "But I got evidence of your survival soon enough. Imagine my surprise when I'd barely gotten back inside city limits and had a call from Robin on your cell phone."
"Robin!" Amon went ramrod straight. "But, if she used my STN-J phone, she could have been traced. Solomon would have been able to find…"
Nagira couldn't bear to see his brother so freaked out, so he waved his hands, cutting him off. "Calm down, buddy. She used your other phone. You know, the one you and I set up ages ago in case of emergencies?"
"But I never told her about that phone."
"Good thing I did," Nagira said smugly. Ignoring his brother's put-out expression, he said, "Seems she remembered it from one of our conversations right before the whole Factory mess and called me. Poor kid was so freaked out over how banged up you'd gotten, that she was willing to turn herself in if it meant saving your sorry scalp."
Amon went stock still. "She wouldn't…"
Nagira shrugged. "She might have. But I made sure she didn't have to make that choice. As soon as enough of the Solomon trucks had moved away from the area in the woods where you were hiding, I tracked your GPS signal and picked the two of you up. Then I brought both of you to a doctor friend of mine to get you checked out."
"Someone knows that Robin's alive? Nagira, you shouldn't have made her presence known to others so soon after our 'death.' The danger of her discovery…"
Nagira became abnormally interested in watching the smoke as it tapered off the end of his cigarette. "Honestly, I don't think either of us were really worried about that at the time. We seemed to be more concerned about saving your life, though after the grief you give me, I sometimes wonder if it was worth it. But," Nagira held up his hand, stopping his brother's next tirade, "I used a friend of mine who I trust implicitly. He's not related in any way to Solomon. In fact, the only witches he's probably ever seen have been the ones in the Wizard of Oz, so he'd think someone was selling him the Brooklyn Bridge if he was told they were real. Don't worry, he didn't get either of your names. He did a superficial exam of Robin to make sure the poor kid didn't have hypothermia, then set to work on you."
Amon still looked pissed, but seemed to take him at his word. "And then what happened?"
"Jack, that's the doc, realized that your injuries were too serious. So I used my formidable charm and contacts to get the three of us shipped off to Switzerland. I got you to the clinic, they saved your life, and now here we are." Nagira didn't need to tell Amon the rest of it; how he and Robin had each held one of Amon's hands on the chartered flight, how she'd led him in the first prayer he'd spoken in at least 15 years, how they'd taken shifts as Amon lay comatose…
No, he didn't need to know anything about that. Because Nagira was sure his brother wouldn't be able to process it, to get that people in his life actually cared about him enough to do everything they could to keep him alive.
"And Robin?" came Amon's anticipated question.
"She's safe," Nagira said simply. He unfolded himself from the visitor's chair, ignoring Amon's sputtered protests.
"Get some sleep baby brother," he said as he walked out the door. Under his breath he said, "You're going to have to deal with what's happened to Robin soon enough."
During the first few days of Nagira's visit, Amon found himself growing increasingly frustrated at his brother's evasion of the topic of Robin. Each time he asked Nagira about her whereabouts, his brother would just smile enigmatically and say that she was perfectly fine and safe. A few times he slipped when he told Amon stories about his recovery, mentioning Robin's presence in the room during doctors' visits and progress reports. But, just as quickly, Nagira clammed up, refusing to confirm or deny whether she was still in Switzerland.
Amon was going to kill him.
Not knowing about Robin was affecting him more than he anticipated. It wasn't that he distrusted his brother's word- Nagira had actually done a much better job of keeping Robin safe than he ever had. Intellectually, he knew much of his frustration was over the fact that, by withholding information, Nagira was stunting Amon's ability to plan for his next move after he left the hospital.
Yet…there was something more to the edginess that had settled over him since Nagira had walked through the door. Something more to it than mere aggravation over the inability to strategize. It took a great deal of analysis for Amon to realize what he was feeling, but not as much time to be freaked out over the implications.
He was worried. He was so worried about Robin that ice seemed to creep into his veins, traveling to his heart and freezing it solid.
Amon tried to force logic back into the equation, reasoning that it made sense that he was worried about her safety. He still had many of the same concerns that he'd had before his brother's arrival. The extent of her craft…the possibility of Solomon capturing the world's most powerful witch.
But…who was he really worried about? The witch, or the girl?
Something akin to fear, having nothing to do with her powers and having everything to do with her power over him, shocked his system. Amon heard the corresponding acceleration of the heart monitor and willed the beats to slow. The last thing he needed was to be pumped with more drugs that would muddy his mind.
Yes. That was it. This illogical fear was simply a product of medication. The emotions he was experiencing had to be a side-effect of his treatment.
When he looked at the situation clinically, his feelings were quite simple. Robin had been, for a time, a colleague and, perhaps, a friend. Then she became a powerful entity, a player in Solomon's game who was quickly morphing from pawn to queen. And he was the knight in charge of keeping her out of danger. Being her warder required objectivity, vigilance, and above all, a certain amount of distance.
Sedatives and i.v. bags couldn't tell him otherwise.
A few days later, Amon looked up as his brother entered the room, duffle bag in hand.
"Going somewhere?" he asked.
"I do have a law practice to run, you know. But don't worry," Nagira said, cutting off Amon's reply, "I'll be back as soon as I can. Be good to the doctors. Oh, and let that Yvette chick give you a sponge bath even if you feel up to a shower. And make sure that she's wearing one of those white nurse costumes that you can 'accidentally' splash the top of."
Amon just stared disbelievingly at his brother. It was a wonder that they shared any common blood at all.
As Nagira walked out the door, though, Amon realized exactly what his brother had been doing by talking about his own prurient fantasies. He was diverting Amon's attention so he could make a hasty exit. It seemed, once again, that they were more alike that he tended to realized.
"Nagira," Amon called out, stilling his brother as he passed through the door frame.
"Where is she?"
"Amon, I told you…"
For a moment, just a moment, Amon let those feelings, the ones he was so sure were just the side effects of too much medication and bed rest, out and let them show on his face. "Please. I need to know."
He watched as his brother turned around, his face curiously blank for one of the first times Amon could remember. Then the facade fell and his brother looked utterly weary.
Panic filled every part of him, adrenaline coursing through his veins, "Did you lie to me? You said she was safe. Is she…?" Amon couldn't even say the word, four little letters meaning nothingness.
"No, Amon," Nagira said softly, "she's not dead. She's safe, like I said."
"Where. Is. She." Amon asked, threateningly.
Nagira seemed to pause, weighing something in his mind. Then, it seemed a decision was made.
"She's in Europe."