They name her "Eve" when they come.

It can be anyone, at any time. The other day, a young woman with fashionably dark hair approached them right on the street just a block from the Louvre, holding out a sleepy, pink cherub of a baby.

                "Bless her, Eve," the young woman had pleaded in Parisian French. "Bless my daughter, for her grandmother who was the witch Blanche of Rheims."

                "B-blessed be," Robin had stammered, eyes wide, and then flinched almost imperceptibly when the Frenchwoman took Robin's hand and kissed it.

News of their coming races ahead of them, as if carried on wings. They are met at airports and train stations by entire crowds, men, women, and children alike, some with the touch of the Craft, others who have friends, family, lovers who are Craft-users, others who had friends, family, and lovers who were Craft-users, all so willing to feed them, clothe them, take them in, so happy to see them, so filled with hope and love and reverence.

                They cry out, "Eve, Eve," and old women and elderly men fall to their knees before her, reaching out their palsied, rune-marked hands out to hope.

"I don't understand," Robin says. Her face is white, strained, bleached with exhaustion. "I don't…I don't know what they want from me."

                He isn't sure what to say. "They want you to save them," he offers, because it seems appropriate.

                She turns those red-rimmed, weary eyes on him. "Save them from what?"

                Sometimes, he thinks he wishes it were Amon here instead of him. And then she leans against him, takes his hand, lets him help her through a crowd, crawls innocently under the covers with him at night when the nightmares are too strong, and, wouldn't you know, he would rather be here than anywhere else in the world.

Sometimes, they call him "Adam."

                The first one to do it was a little girl in Lyon. She was there with her mother, paying respects to the Eve, and she'd turned those bright blue eyes on him and said, "If she's Eve, are you Adam?"

                He'd laughed, surprised into it, but felt his stomach drop out when the mother and the white-haired dame standing behind her turned their intense looks on him.

                So now he doesn't laugh when they call him "Adam." Robin doesn't laugh, and if she needs him to be…

                Well.

They check in with Amon periodically.

                They are in Bordeaux when they next contact him. It's supposedly an untraceable number direct to Amon and Amon only, but they still keep the conversations to sixty seconds or less and do it from public phones.

                They never discuss where they will be going next. They never talk about when they will next hear from each other. They never speak of what they've been doing. They never ask details. It's always, Yes, we're alive, No, no one's following, Yes, Solomon is still operational, No, there hasn't been anything suspicious.

                France has a ban on such organizations as Solomon. The liberal, egalitarian French threw out their own branch years ago, and Craft-users are a growing minority with almost full legal rights. But witch hunters are traditionally contemptuous of trivial things like laws and borders.

                They never discuss any of this stuff, but one thing is always the same.

                "How is she?" Amon would say, voice thawing for just a second, something real coloring that distant, cold voice for the briefest of heartbeats.

                "Better," he would always lie, right through his teeth.

                Then Amon hangs up.

One night, in Marseille, he buys her a dress and takes her dancing.

                She's lovely in modest green, a white, slip of a girl with such intense eyes. Robin's exhausted, always is, but he took a gamble and got paid in spades. They both have a good time, her with some color in her face, him with a change of scenery. There are some looks, because, damn it, she still looks so young, too young, but they ignore them and she's laughing and aglow and it's great. Dinner, dancing, and supposedly it's not a date.

                Except for after, when in the guest rooms of their host, some minor marquis or whatever.

                Except for then, when suddenly she's not the Eve and he's who he is and she's just so perfect with him.

                Except for that moment, when he could almost buy into all this Adam crap.

They name her "Eve" when they come, and they name him "Adam."

                But she smiles more now, holds her head up a little, and laughs easily, without pain.

                Nagira Syunji decides he doesn't really mind.

A/N: Must…write…coherently… *sleeps*