At first, he just hadn't been able to understand what his brother saw in her.

                That girl, that pale-faced scrap of a girl—he was just stumped the first time he saw her. So skinny, no curves whatsoever, flat and angular, as asexual as only young children can be, the only feminine to her an exquisite, elfin face, but that too thin and white, and those huge, incredible, intense, green eyes, but those too huge, too incredible, too intense, too green…

                Too everything. Not human.

                And her voice, soft and pleasant, but so careful, so empty, he couldn't imagine that voice ever laughing fully, with abandon. Her clothes, always in mourning, forever in the funeral black, Christ, she's so morbid. Aged fifteen, built like seven, acts like forty, is there anything about this girl that could possibly be attractive to anyone but the most macabre of pedophiles?

                Cradle-robber.

                But he saw it, saw it every time. He kept a closer eye on her than anyone thought, saw her with his half-brother a hundred, a thousand times, and every time he sees it. His half-brother, usually so cool and collected, suddenly he can't keep his eyes off of her, can't concentrate on anything when she's in his line of sight. She walks into the room and any judgment his half-brother might have had has officially left the building. His half-brother, usually so calm and fly-by, suddenly his life has meaning. Suddenly he's alive. Suddenly he's needed and needing. Suddenly his half-brother cares about someone other than himself.

                He wonders if his half-brother really understands exactly how old she is.

                Her? She's oblivious. Too caught up in the frustrating emptiness that is her life to see anything past what she wants to see.

                The dynamics of this, they're not making sense—he can't reason this, can't see the meaning here, that has to be here, somewhere…

                Except, every now and then, when she turns her head a certain way, when she moves in a particular direction, when she stands like that, when there comes this look into her eyes, then there's something, a glint of something that may be silver, maybe steel, under all that black crepe and wool, under that strange hairstyle, and then he's kind of nervous, God forbid afraid, because there's this tight feeling in his chest that confuses him, this hollow place in his stomach that makes him angry, a sensation that makes him want to see more of her, that makes his eyes seek her out first when he goes into a room, that makes him think that hers is the kind of love that you don't fall into but that takes you by the throat—

                This makes him stiff, this makes him angry, because it's like he doesn't want to want, but then this girl, this child, this baby, she offers up some half-piece of a half-smile, so sad, so full of pain, and he's patting his own judgment on the head and sending it outside to play with his half-brother's.

                Yeah. He's nervous.

                Because Amon just might be beginning to see what his half-brother sees in her.

A/N: A stranger one than normal... Special thanks to Finchgirl and Kathryn Anne, who encourage my weirdness, whether they meant to or not. (So very dedicating my first longer work to you two. Would offer my soul, but I think I might have sold it off already in another fandom.)