Robin Nieves's Story

Robin turned around, at first looking quite perplexed at the offer. He blinked a couple of times, lips pursed, eyes wide, before- ah, yes- that grin spread across his face, slightly mischievous. "Well, I dunno, I wouldn't want to intrude-" He walked over to Nairi' moving to sling his arm over the werecat's neck, "But if you insist, I can't possibly deny that offer!"

Nairi blinked slightly uncomfortably as Robin slung his arm around his neck, shrinking away from the contact somewhat unsuccessfully. He settled for looking suitably displeased, glowering up at the taller boy. "You touch too much." he muttered half-heartedly. "Not intruding. Not insisting. Inviting."

The werecat shrugged, nodding his head to the west, further into the city. "That way." he stated, "Will show you."

He gave Robin's arm a glance. "Are you going to keep that there all the way?"

"Maaaaybe." he chimed, a hand patting his shoulder. "You should get used to it!" he informed him. "It'll help in the future. Since, y'know. We'll probably be together for a little while until I find a place. I-if you don't mind, that is."

Shrugging, Nairi looked up at Robin. "Don't mind. Don't need the space. Can be small." he said, an odd statement out of context. He sighed, apparently accepting the contact, and started walking.

"Hope you aren't allergic to cats."

"Well, it's not gonna kill me if I was, now would it?" He could hardly stifle his chuckles. "So you're like one of those crazy cat ladies, I assume?"

"No," Nairi shook his head, lifting one hand from beneath his cloak. Catlike claws jutted out from it, then retracted again. "Me. I am a werecat."

His expression shifted slightly warily, as though anticipating an adverse reaction, despite his experience in this city so far being that nobody really cared. For whatever reason, he was more conscious of what his new companion would say.

Robin's head inclined in curiosity. "Oh, I had a feeling there was a good reason to all that acrobatics! Those are real, aren't they?" He slid his arm from around Nairi's shoulders to reach for his hand. "Do it again!"

Again, Nairi blinked slightly uncomfortably, almost pulling his hand back into his cloak on reflex. Instead he sighed, humouring the other boy and re-extending his claws. "Of course they're real." he said, giving Robin a perplexed stare. What else would they be? High-tech retractable cosmetic fake nails?

"Hey, anything can happen! Look where you are. I've hardly been here two days and I've seen all sorts of unbelievable things!" he said. He pushed his hands back into his pockets. "Those are really cool! I can only imagine how much damage you must have done that guy with those. If...if you got to him with those without, y'know, getting pulled in. Which you didn't obviously, but you know!"

He began to bolt off forward. "It's this way, right? The apartment?"

Nairi was caught by surprise by Robin's sudden burst of movement, after a moment's hesitation breaking into a run to catch up with him. "Yes." he replied, "Not far. Few streets away. Why are you running?"

The werecat remained conscious of their surroundings, considering the area of the city they were in, and the time of day. The outskirts of the city were a rough place during the day, and downright dangerous at night. His eyes scanned the alleyways they passed alertly.

"I'm running because I can!" he said back to Nairi, fists pumping at his sides. "It's just, you know, good to be alive!"

Because after you die the umpteenth time, you tended to feel really good about not currently dying again. Eventually, he slowed, breath labored. For a guy who was used to running away from all his problems, he was a bit short of breath so soon. "Where's the apartment?"

Nairi shook his head, bemused by Robin's attitude once again. He kept pace with ease, occasionally darting ahead only to wait for the other boy some distance away perched on a railing or the like.

It didn't take long for them to reach their destination, and Nairi slowed at about the same time that Robin got out of breath. They had halted just outside a block of flats, unremarkable and showing signs of wear and tear. "Upstairs." the werecat replied, gesturing at a window about five storeys up.

The elevator was out of order, so they took the stairs. It was a long climb to reach a corridor of near identical doors. Nairi stopped them outside one marked '512' in worn metal plates. "Here."

He turned a key in the lock, and pushed the door open. It opened immediately onto a room, dimly lit by a single lightbulb. Something of an all-in-one, the room had a corner complete with sink and cupboards that served as a kitchenette, as well as a couch and a desk. Notes, the occasional clipping from a newspaper and an old-looking laptop sat upon the worktop, and more paper was littered about the place with scrawled handwriting. Photographs of seemingly random locations were pinned to a board on the wall above the desk.

To add to the mess, a scattering of equally random objects were littered across the surfaces. From matchboxes to toy cars, pebbles to seemingly worthless faux-jewellery - trinkets and nothings.

There were two doors out of the room, one leading to a dark bedroom and the other to a small bathroom. Nairi made his way inside and paused a short way in, glancing back at Robin. "Well ... this is it." He didn't seem bothered about the mess, though his eyes did wander conspicuously to some of the notes. He made his way to the desk and started gathering some of them together to shove into drawers.

Robin walked in, carefully looking at anything and everything that his eyes could reach. "This is pretty homely." he commented to Nairi, eyes darting to the papers. They came back up to the werecat's face. "Ahh, but I'm guessing those aren't for me to see, uh?" He nodded. "Fine with me,then."

But Nairi was not the only curious cat around. It wasn't the time, however. He landed himself onto the couch, hands on his knees. He reached out to take up one of the trinkets. "What're these for?" he asked.

Nairi eventually gave up on organising the notes enough to figure out what was sensitive or not, and decided to rely on how indecipherable his scrawled handwriting was. Besides, it wasn't like he was looking into anything particularly important at the moment. He did, however, slip one particular notebook firmly away into the desk drawer before he slunk back over to the couch where Robin had sat.

He shrugged his cloak off, draping the long black garment over the back of the seat, and unbuckled his sword and other weapons to a pile on the small coffee table in front of the couch. While in the process of removing his shoes, he glanced over at the trinket Robin was holding. "Nothing. Souvenirs. Memories." he said, glancing down at a little pot of marbles on the table.

"That's how I find things. Memories. Things have long memories, if you can read them." He eyed the bracelet that Robin was holding, pointing at it. "From a Queen. Ex-queen. Usurped, ran to Terra to hide. Long time ago. I found her, last month. Son was looking. She runs a bakery now."

He didn't know how to put into words what went beyond the facts, the entire life he could live through flashes of moments and stand-out events. He'd witnessed the fall of a nation through that bracelet, travelled across the galaxy, loved and lost and loved again. It was better than any book. It was why he collected them, the trinkets - the ones that had more meaning than the ones he used just to follow a trail.

Nairi glanced down at his lap mutely, remembering. "I collect them. Stories of people." he said quietly.

Robin glanced at Nairi, amazed. "So that's how you know." he said, returning his eyes to the bracelet. "An ex-queen, huh...wow." He turned it over in his hand, running his thumb down the center. "How much do you see?" he asked. "How well do you see them?"

Robin's thoughts went all over the place. "To what extent? Do you just see things? Are...are emotions attached?" He would have to make sure to be careful around the warecat in the future.

"Just see." Nairi replied, "See what happens around it, hear it, like I'm there. No feelings. Like watching through a screen, but all around."

He looked back up at Robin, watching him examine the bracelet. "Extent? Long, long time. But hard to filter through older memories. Sometimes finding the right one takes hours, days. There are many years in things to see. Long stories."

Absent-mindedly, his hand went to the insignia in his pocket, brushing against the metal of it. It told him nothing, as ever. The werecat's expression remained set in a small frown of thought, slightly uneasy. It had been a long time since he had spoken about these things with anyone.

"Do the memories follow real time, or do you see them quicker than they happened?" asked Robin again. He was curious. It was a useful power! To see the stories of so many people...

"Do you have this power because you're a werecat?" he asked next. "Is it contagious? Like werewolfism?"

"Can go faster. Skip through, but then easy to miss details which might be what I'm looking for." Nairi said, taking the insignia from his pocket and fiddling with it, rolling it between his fingers.

At the second question, Nairi looked up at Robin from the insignia, fingers tightening on it. "Not because I'm a werecat. Taught, by a witch."

His expression shifted slightly, tightening. "And don't think so. Clawed people, bitten people, they've not changed. Don't ... don't know, for sure."

"Hm. Then probably not, eh? But still-" He just wondered how Nairi turned, then. Maybe he was born with it. Maybe it was ma-

"What's that?" said the boy suddenly, pointing to the insignia. He held his hand for it. "Can I see?" His curiosity grew, especially since the werecat seemed attached to it.

Nairi's hand closed around the insignia protectively at first, and he drew it away back towards himself. "Just ... a trinket," he murmured, after a few moments, reluctantly extending his hand out to show it. The insignia was that of a wyrm or drake with jagged wings, its serpentine body curved in the shape of the letter 'S'. It was metallic, bronze and worn-looking.

"Old. Mine. Sort of." He grimaced, staring down at his legs. "Can't read it."