Categories > TV > Buffy the Vampire Slayer > Returned to Active Duty
Chapter 4. - What's the Deal?
0 reviewsPost Chosen and Not Fade Away: As Willow's relationship with Kennedy rapidly disintegrates, Tara is resurrected by the Powers that Be. But, of course, things can never run smoothly in the Buffyverse
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Chapter 4. - What's the Deal?
Tara and Rawn stood in the rain, unmoving, staring at the derelict building that Tara had first arrived in. Or, more precisely, they stared at the blazing ruin it had become. Despite the heavy rain that was still pelting down out of the sky, the building was well ablaze, and given the state of the neighbourhood, Rawn wasn't expecting an appearance by the Fire Department any time soon.
"Okay, now what have we learned from this?" Rawn asked, his voice like that of a lecturing professor. Tara peered uncertainly at her companion throught the sodden curtain of her hair, unsure if that was an actual question.
"Don't leave a naked campfire unattended in a derelict building. Unless you actually want to burn it down, of course." Rawn shrugged, and turned to Tara with a weary twist of the lips that subtly implied he was resisting the urge to laugh.
"What say we go find somewhere a little less ... flamable to dry off?"
Tara nodded briefly, and followed Rawn as he slouched off into the downpour.
"Course, we're not really rolling in it at the moment, so don't go expecting the Ritz ..." The duo swiftly vanished into the night, Rawn continuing to cheerfully ramble on while the blond witch just followed and listened.
----------
A couple of hours later, Tara stood shivering in the bathroom of the cheap hotel room Rawn had booked them into. The room itself was somewhat bland and depressing, but it was at least reasonably clean and, most importantly, it was dry.
Turning, Tara checked for the third time that the bathroom door was securely locked. Something inside, some unexplained feeling told Tara that she could trust this bizarre, tattooed man, but given that she couldn't remember virtually anything about her life, Tara wasn't prepared to risk her life on such an unsubstantiated whim.
Once she'd convinced herself that she was as safe as she could make herself, Tara slipped out of Rawn's jacket, carefully folding it and placing it atop the bathroom counter. Peeling off the sodden sweats, she dropped them to the floor with a squelch and stepped into the shower recess. A quick twist of a knob, and blessedly hot water instantly sprayed down upon her, driving away a cold that seemed to have insinuated itself into her very bones.
For the longest time, Tara stood there, arms braced against the wall, letting the shower's warm spray caress her naked skin, washing away a fatigue she hadn't even felt from her muscles. It was only when the water began to lose that blessed warmth that Tara finally began to stir.
Realizing that she had no idea how long she'd been in there, Tara turned off the shower and stepped out, drying herself off and slipping into a surprisingly fluffy white robe that was hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Given the lack of a hair dryer, or even a brush, Tara had to leave her long blond hair to hang down her back, wet and heavy.
Cautiously, Tara open the bathroom door, letting the accumulated steam from her extended shower billow into the hotel room proper. Catching sight of Rawn, she froze like a deer in a car's headlights.
Rawn knelt on the floor, buttocks pressed against the balls of his bare feet, naked from the waist up, hands resting palm up upon his knees. This wasn't what had frozen Tara though.
Running down the length of his spine was another tattoo, this time composed of tiny, sharp edged glyphs that gleamed blood-red against his tanned skin. This tattoo started somewhere upon his neck, hidden by his shoulder length hair, and disappeared down the back of his jeans.
Stranger still, his skin was covered in scars; some were old, while others more recent, some small, others so large that Tara was surprised that whatever wound had caused them hadn't killed him. Tara realized that whatever this man's story was, he had not lived an easy or peaceful life.
Since Rawn gave every impression that he was sound asleep, Tara snuck out of the doorway, edging past him to perch on the edge of the room's only bed. As she did so, Tara noticed that his chest and arms were just as equally scared as his back. A third tattoo was on his chest, directly above his heart. Or where his heart would be if he were human, thought Tara, recalling the demonic face Rawn had worn in the alley when he'd rescued her.
On closer examination, Tara realized that the tattoo on his chest was the twin of the one she had discovered on her own arm. She wondered exactly what that signified.
"Feel better now, little sister?" Rawn's voice, sudden in the silence made Tara jump, and his eyes opened to regard her with sardonic amusement.
"I ... I thought y..you were a..asleep," stammered Tara.
Rawn shrugged, rising smoothly to his feet and rolling his shoulders. "I was. I've always been a light sleeper though. Growing up where I did, you had to be."
"W..Why? W... where did you g.. grow up?"
"Demon dimension, name of Kai-Chek," answered Rawn brusquely. "Not a nice place. If you weren't a light sleeper, odds where you died young."
"Oh. That must h... have been awful."
Rawn just looked at her, surprised by the sincerity in her voice. He knew through the bond that she was still a little bit afraid of him, but she still felt bad for his terrible childhood. He grinned, and shook his head ruely. Tara really was one of the nicest people he'd ever met; Rawn just hoped that selfsame empathy that made her such a caring person wouldn't get her killed.
"It was a long time ago. And when you've nothing to compare it to, it wasn't so bad." Rawn knew full well that was a bald-faced lie, but with any luck Tara wouldn't. Wouldn't do to have her worrying about little ol' me.
"S... so, you're a d... demon?"
"Half, actually. My mother was human, but my father was Kovai. So I'm a half-breed." He brushed one of the crimson lock in his hair. "These are the only indications I'm not completely what I appear to be when I'm in human form."
"So they're a... actual t... tattoos, not ..." Tara's voice trailed off uncomfortably, and Rawn chuckled.
"No, little sister. They're tattoos, not like a leopard's spots or a zebra's stripes. The one on my face is a clan marking, the one on my back is a record of my lineage. My Kovai lineage, anyway."
Tara shyly pointed at the tattoo on his chest. "W... what about t... that one?"
"Ah, well now, little sister. That's a different kettle of fish altogether. It's mystical in nature, a symbol of the bond between Keeper and Champion."
Tara just looked confused, so Rawn sprawled out on the floor again and tried to explain.
"Okay ... you acknowledge that you were dead, right." Rawn paused until Tara nodded uncomfortably. "Right, now the PTB's, that's the Powers that Be if you've forgotten, don't just bring back people from the dead willy-nilly. They tend to do it on the sly, and usually not with the big guns. That would attract too much attention from the opposition."
"The opposition?"
"Yeah. You know, the bad guys, in one shape or another," Rawn began to tick them off on his fingers. "You've got Wolfram and Hart, various vampire cults, your normal death and destruction type demons, and so on and so forth."
Tara's only response was a subdued "Oh."
"See, if those assorted assholes caught onto what the PTB's were doing, it could kick off a shit storm of mystical tit-for-tat that could ... oh say irrevocably damage the fabric of reality or some such. I think we can both agree that that would be bad."
Tara nodded, even though she didn't quite understand what Rawn meant.
"Right, so that's why they brought you back. You must've been a force of some good in the world, up until you croaked anyway." Tara winced, but Rawn was too caught up in his subject manner to notice, and continued on oblivious to her discomfort. "You can't have been too big in the scale of things though. Maybe a sidekick or something?"
"You m... make me s... sound like a superhero," Tara interrupted, her gentle face creased with a frown. "But I'm not. I'm n... nothing special, I'm j... just ... me."
Rawn smirked. "How do you know that, little Miss Amnesia? You don't know who you were, remember."
"I ... just k... know," replied Tara with a downcast face. Rawn gave a surprisingly eloquent grunt of disgust. He reached out gently, and raised Tara's chin until she was looking at him again.
"I've only known you for a few hours now, Tara, but I already know that you're a far better person than I'll ever be. It's true, you have a few problems with self confidence, in that you don't really seem to have any, but that doesn't change the fact."
"H... how can you s... say that? You don't e... even know me."
"I'm a pretty good judge of character. Plus, it's not exactly hard to be a better person than me." Tara made as if to interrupt, but Rawn shushed her. "I'm of a somewhat dubious moral nature, especially when it comes to the property of others. By which, I mean that I'm a thieving little bastard. I also tend to have an unfortunate habit of trying to solve all my problems with violence, but what can I say, I was raised in hell."
"Anyway, we're getting off target here. You were brought back for a reason. Specifically, you were brought back to help people. To help the helpless." Rawn paused, with a slightly pained expression on his face. "I just realized how incredibly lame that sounds."
"H... how am I s... supposed to help people?" asked Tara anxiously.
"Uh, hello? Ass-kickingly powerful witch? How do you think?"
Tara shook her head in vehement denial. "I'm not that p... powerful."
"I beg to differ, little sister. You lit that fang face up like a Christmas tree with a single word and a look. That says powerful to me. The best I could have done magically would've been to set his shoelaces on fire."
"Y... you can do m... magic?" Rawn had to restrain himself from laughing at the look of total surprise on Tara's face, that he doubted she even knew was there.
"A little bit. A smidge of elemental magic, a few glamours, a handful of runic spells. To be honest, I'm not really that good. Not like you."
"B... but ..," Tara started to object, but Rawn silenced her with an emphatic gesture.
"Look, maybe you're right and you were never that powerful. In which case the PTB's gave you a little power boost when they sent you back. Or, it's just that self confidence problem I mentioned earlier coming back to bite you in the butt again. Either way, little sister, you've got real power now."
"Why do you c... call me that?" Rawn blinked in surprise. "L... little sister, I m... mean."
"Just a habit of mine, I suppose. Does it bother you?"
Tara thought about it briefly, then smiled shyly in reply. Rawn thought it looked like the sun poking out from behind the clouds.
"I'll take that as a no then, and just keep on doing it, shall I?"
"Do I have to c... call you big b... brother?" Tara asked as her smile widened. "I don't actually know your name."
"Bloody hell. Haven't I told you that yet?" Tara shook her head. "Well then, I think it's about time that I remedied that little situation. The name's Rawn." With that, he offered his hand and Tara shook it.
"N.. nice to meet you."
"The pleasure is all mine, Tara."
"If what you s... say is true, and I'm s... supposed to help p... people, how do I know w... who to help?"
"The boys upstairs tell us." Rawn chuckled at the perplexed expression on Tara's face. "When we have a job, you'll know. We'll get a feeling that we have to be somewhere, to do something. It's weird at first ... okay, it's always weird, but it works. Personally, I'd prefer a little more information at times, but they don't really give a crap about what I think." Tara detected a less than faint sense of bitterness in Rawn's voice, but put it to the side for now.
"Y.. you said we? We'll be w... working together?"
"Fraid so, little sister. You're stuck with me. You're the Champion, I'm the Keeper."
"W... what does that mean? Why am I the c... champion?"
"You're the champion because you're the one with the good heart, the pure soul. I'm just a schmuck with certain talents who owes the PTB's. As for what it means, well that's simple. I keep you alive and on track."
"You o... owe them? F... for what?"
"Something a long time ago. Something I don't like to talk about." Rawn's face shut down with that, freezing into a cold mask of disinterest, and Tara wisely decided to leave what was obviously a sensitive subject alone. For now, at least.
"You m... mentioned a b.. bond? S... something about our t... tattoos?"
"Yeah. It's a mystical thingy, supposed to make our jobs easier. It means we can sense each others locations, sense a basic emotional state of being, lets us know when the other is in danger. It's how I found you in the alley."
"But I can't s... sense anything."
"That's because I'm keeping my end of the bond ... kind of shut at the moment. Didn't want to freak you out too much."
"Oh."
"Don't sweat it though. I'll ease you into it, starting tomorrow. Right now, I think you should get some rest."
Rawn noticed that Tara was glancing uncomfortably at the bed after this statement, and swiftly figured out the reason.
"You take the bed, I'll sleep on the floor."
"But ..."
"It's fine. I normally sleep on the floor. Beds are just too soft for me or something. I can never get to sleep on one. Another fun byproduct of my upbringing, I expect. Now go to sleep."
"Okay," Tara answered hesitantly. "Good night." Rawn just grunted in reply as he sprawled out further on the carpet. Tara flicked off the switch on the bedside lamp, and the room was plunged into darkness.
"Rawn?" Tara asked after a few moments of staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
"Yeah?"
"Why can't I r... remember anything?"
"Dunno. Might be a side-effect of the resurrection process, or maybe there's something in your past that's so traumatic that you don't want to remember it. Or ..."
"Or what?"
"Or there's something that the PTB's don't want you to remember. Yet, anyway."
"I t... thought they were the g... good guys. Why w... would they do that to me?"
"Little sister, you came back for a reason. A reason that is yours, and yours alone. They couldn't have brought you back without your permission. There is something, or someone, here that means so much to you that you abandoned heaven for them. Maybe that's what they don't want you to remember."
"Why?" That simple question, a single word in the dark, was so filled with fear and pain that even Rawn's hardened heart nearly broke. He made a silent promise to himself.
"I don't know. But we're going to find out."
Tara and Rawn stood in the rain, unmoving, staring at the derelict building that Tara had first arrived in. Or, more precisely, they stared at the blazing ruin it had become. Despite the heavy rain that was still pelting down out of the sky, the building was well ablaze, and given the state of the neighbourhood, Rawn wasn't expecting an appearance by the Fire Department any time soon.
"Okay, now what have we learned from this?" Rawn asked, his voice like that of a lecturing professor. Tara peered uncertainly at her companion throught the sodden curtain of her hair, unsure if that was an actual question.
"Don't leave a naked campfire unattended in a derelict building. Unless you actually want to burn it down, of course." Rawn shrugged, and turned to Tara with a weary twist of the lips that subtly implied he was resisting the urge to laugh.
"What say we go find somewhere a little less ... flamable to dry off?"
Tara nodded briefly, and followed Rawn as he slouched off into the downpour.
"Course, we're not really rolling in it at the moment, so don't go expecting the Ritz ..." The duo swiftly vanished into the night, Rawn continuing to cheerfully ramble on while the blond witch just followed and listened.
----------
A couple of hours later, Tara stood shivering in the bathroom of the cheap hotel room Rawn had booked them into. The room itself was somewhat bland and depressing, but it was at least reasonably clean and, most importantly, it was dry.
Turning, Tara checked for the third time that the bathroom door was securely locked. Something inside, some unexplained feeling told Tara that she could trust this bizarre, tattooed man, but given that she couldn't remember virtually anything about her life, Tara wasn't prepared to risk her life on such an unsubstantiated whim.
Once she'd convinced herself that she was as safe as she could make herself, Tara slipped out of Rawn's jacket, carefully folding it and placing it atop the bathroom counter. Peeling off the sodden sweats, she dropped them to the floor with a squelch and stepped into the shower recess. A quick twist of a knob, and blessedly hot water instantly sprayed down upon her, driving away a cold that seemed to have insinuated itself into her very bones.
For the longest time, Tara stood there, arms braced against the wall, letting the shower's warm spray caress her naked skin, washing away a fatigue she hadn't even felt from her muscles. It was only when the water began to lose that blessed warmth that Tara finally began to stir.
Realizing that she had no idea how long she'd been in there, Tara turned off the shower and stepped out, drying herself off and slipping into a surprisingly fluffy white robe that was hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Given the lack of a hair dryer, or even a brush, Tara had to leave her long blond hair to hang down her back, wet and heavy.
Cautiously, Tara open the bathroom door, letting the accumulated steam from her extended shower billow into the hotel room proper. Catching sight of Rawn, she froze like a deer in a car's headlights.
Rawn knelt on the floor, buttocks pressed against the balls of his bare feet, naked from the waist up, hands resting palm up upon his knees. This wasn't what had frozen Tara though.
Running down the length of his spine was another tattoo, this time composed of tiny, sharp edged glyphs that gleamed blood-red against his tanned skin. This tattoo started somewhere upon his neck, hidden by his shoulder length hair, and disappeared down the back of his jeans.
Stranger still, his skin was covered in scars; some were old, while others more recent, some small, others so large that Tara was surprised that whatever wound had caused them hadn't killed him. Tara realized that whatever this man's story was, he had not lived an easy or peaceful life.
Since Rawn gave every impression that he was sound asleep, Tara snuck out of the doorway, edging past him to perch on the edge of the room's only bed. As she did so, Tara noticed that his chest and arms were just as equally scared as his back. A third tattoo was on his chest, directly above his heart. Or where his heart would be if he were human, thought Tara, recalling the demonic face Rawn had worn in the alley when he'd rescued her.
On closer examination, Tara realized that the tattoo on his chest was the twin of the one she had discovered on her own arm. She wondered exactly what that signified.
"Feel better now, little sister?" Rawn's voice, sudden in the silence made Tara jump, and his eyes opened to regard her with sardonic amusement.
"I ... I thought y..you were a..asleep," stammered Tara.
Rawn shrugged, rising smoothly to his feet and rolling his shoulders. "I was. I've always been a light sleeper though. Growing up where I did, you had to be."
"W..Why? W... where did you g.. grow up?"
"Demon dimension, name of Kai-Chek," answered Rawn brusquely. "Not a nice place. If you weren't a light sleeper, odds where you died young."
"Oh. That must h... have been awful."
Rawn just looked at her, surprised by the sincerity in her voice. He knew through the bond that she was still a little bit afraid of him, but she still felt bad for his terrible childhood. He grinned, and shook his head ruely. Tara really was one of the nicest people he'd ever met; Rawn just hoped that selfsame empathy that made her such a caring person wouldn't get her killed.
"It was a long time ago. And when you've nothing to compare it to, it wasn't so bad." Rawn knew full well that was a bald-faced lie, but with any luck Tara wouldn't. Wouldn't do to have her worrying about little ol' me.
"S... so, you're a d... demon?"
"Half, actually. My mother was human, but my father was Kovai. So I'm a half-breed." He brushed one of the crimson lock in his hair. "These are the only indications I'm not completely what I appear to be when I'm in human form."
"So they're a... actual t... tattoos, not ..." Tara's voice trailed off uncomfortably, and Rawn chuckled.
"No, little sister. They're tattoos, not like a leopard's spots or a zebra's stripes. The one on my face is a clan marking, the one on my back is a record of my lineage. My Kovai lineage, anyway."
Tara shyly pointed at the tattoo on his chest. "W... what about t... that one?"
"Ah, well now, little sister. That's a different kettle of fish altogether. It's mystical in nature, a symbol of the bond between Keeper and Champion."
Tara just looked confused, so Rawn sprawled out on the floor again and tried to explain.
"Okay ... you acknowledge that you were dead, right." Rawn paused until Tara nodded uncomfortably. "Right, now the PTB's, that's the Powers that Be if you've forgotten, don't just bring back people from the dead willy-nilly. They tend to do it on the sly, and usually not with the big guns. That would attract too much attention from the opposition."
"The opposition?"
"Yeah. You know, the bad guys, in one shape or another," Rawn began to tick them off on his fingers. "You've got Wolfram and Hart, various vampire cults, your normal death and destruction type demons, and so on and so forth."
Tara's only response was a subdued "Oh."
"See, if those assorted assholes caught onto what the PTB's were doing, it could kick off a shit storm of mystical tit-for-tat that could ... oh say irrevocably damage the fabric of reality or some such. I think we can both agree that that would be bad."
Tara nodded, even though she didn't quite understand what Rawn meant.
"Right, so that's why they brought you back. You must've been a force of some good in the world, up until you croaked anyway." Tara winced, but Rawn was too caught up in his subject manner to notice, and continued on oblivious to her discomfort. "You can't have been too big in the scale of things though. Maybe a sidekick or something?"
"You m... make me s... sound like a superhero," Tara interrupted, her gentle face creased with a frown. "But I'm not. I'm n... nothing special, I'm j... just ... me."
Rawn smirked. "How do you know that, little Miss Amnesia? You don't know who you were, remember."
"I ... just k... know," replied Tara with a downcast face. Rawn gave a surprisingly eloquent grunt of disgust. He reached out gently, and raised Tara's chin until she was looking at him again.
"I've only known you for a few hours now, Tara, but I already know that you're a far better person than I'll ever be. It's true, you have a few problems with self confidence, in that you don't really seem to have any, but that doesn't change the fact."
"H... how can you s... say that? You don't e... even know me."
"I'm a pretty good judge of character. Plus, it's not exactly hard to be a better person than me." Tara made as if to interrupt, but Rawn shushed her. "I'm of a somewhat dubious moral nature, especially when it comes to the property of others. By which, I mean that I'm a thieving little bastard. I also tend to have an unfortunate habit of trying to solve all my problems with violence, but what can I say, I was raised in hell."
"Anyway, we're getting off target here. You were brought back for a reason. Specifically, you were brought back to help people. To help the helpless." Rawn paused, with a slightly pained expression on his face. "I just realized how incredibly lame that sounds."
"H... how am I s... supposed to help people?" asked Tara anxiously.
"Uh, hello? Ass-kickingly powerful witch? How do you think?"
Tara shook her head in vehement denial. "I'm not that p... powerful."
"I beg to differ, little sister. You lit that fang face up like a Christmas tree with a single word and a look. That says powerful to me. The best I could have done magically would've been to set his shoelaces on fire."
"Y... you can do m... magic?" Rawn had to restrain himself from laughing at the look of total surprise on Tara's face, that he doubted she even knew was there.
"A little bit. A smidge of elemental magic, a few glamours, a handful of runic spells. To be honest, I'm not really that good. Not like you."
"B... but ..," Tara started to object, but Rawn silenced her with an emphatic gesture.
"Look, maybe you're right and you were never that powerful. In which case the PTB's gave you a little power boost when they sent you back. Or, it's just that self confidence problem I mentioned earlier coming back to bite you in the butt again. Either way, little sister, you've got real power now."
"Why do you c... call me that?" Rawn blinked in surprise. "L... little sister, I m... mean."
"Just a habit of mine, I suppose. Does it bother you?"
Tara thought about it briefly, then smiled shyly in reply. Rawn thought it looked like the sun poking out from behind the clouds.
"I'll take that as a no then, and just keep on doing it, shall I?"
"Do I have to c... call you big b... brother?" Tara asked as her smile widened. "I don't actually know your name."
"Bloody hell. Haven't I told you that yet?" Tara shook her head. "Well then, I think it's about time that I remedied that little situation. The name's Rawn." With that, he offered his hand and Tara shook it.
"N.. nice to meet you."
"The pleasure is all mine, Tara."
"If what you s... say is true, and I'm s... supposed to help p... people, how do I know w... who to help?"
"The boys upstairs tell us." Rawn chuckled at the perplexed expression on Tara's face. "When we have a job, you'll know. We'll get a feeling that we have to be somewhere, to do something. It's weird at first ... okay, it's always weird, but it works. Personally, I'd prefer a little more information at times, but they don't really give a crap about what I think." Tara detected a less than faint sense of bitterness in Rawn's voice, but put it to the side for now.
"Y.. you said we? We'll be w... working together?"
"Fraid so, little sister. You're stuck with me. You're the Champion, I'm the Keeper."
"W... what does that mean? Why am I the c... champion?"
"You're the champion because you're the one with the good heart, the pure soul. I'm just a schmuck with certain talents who owes the PTB's. As for what it means, well that's simple. I keep you alive and on track."
"You o... owe them? F... for what?"
"Something a long time ago. Something I don't like to talk about." Rawn's face shut down with that, freezing into a cold mask of disinterest, and Tara wisely decided to leave what was obviously a sensitive subject alone. For now, at least.
"You m... mentioned a b.. bond? S... something about our t... tattoos?"
"Yeah. It's a mystical thingy, supposed to make our jobs easier. It means we can sense each others locations, sense a basic emotional state of being, lets us know when the other is in danger. It's how I found you in the alley."
"But I can't s... sense anything."
"That's because I'm keeping my end of the bond ... kind of shut at the moment. Didn't want to freak you out too much."
"Oh."
"Don't sweat it though. I'll ease you into it, starting tomorrow. Right now, I think you should get some rest."
Rawn noticed that Tara was glancing uncomfortably at the bed after this statement, and swiftly figured out the reason.
"You take the bed, I'll sleep on the floor."
"But ..."
"It's fine. I normally sleep on the floor. Beds are just too soft for me or something. I can never get to sleep on one. Another fun byproduct of my upbringing, I expect. Now go to sleep."
"Okay," Tara answered hesitantly. "Good night." Rawn just grunted in reply as he sprawled out further on the carpet. Tara flicked off the switch on the bedside lamp, and the room was plunged into darkness.
"Rawn?" Tara asked after a few moments of staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
"Yeah?"
"Why can't I r... remember anything?"
"Dunno. Might be a side-effect of the resurrection process, or maybe there's something in your past that's so traumatic that you don't want to remember it. Or ..."
"Or what?"
"Or there's something that the PTB's don't want you to remember. Yet, anyway."
"I t... thought they were the g... good guys. Why w... would they do that to me?"
"Little sister, you came back for a reason. A reason that is yours, and yours alone. They couldn't have brought you back without your permission. There is something, or someone, here that means so much to you that you abandoned heaven for them. Maybe that's what they don't want you to remember."
"Why?" That simple question, a single word in the dark, was so filled with fear and pain that even Rawn's hardened heart nearly broke. He made a silent promise to himself.
"I don't know. But we're going to find out."
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