Robbin

22. Unknown

She thought Hunt and Robbin had mentioned a Jake, days ago. She would never have known by the candidness of the conversation that the name would ever come up again, let alone in the flesh. By the look on Robbin's face, she felt like he hadn't either.

***

The man began to pace around them.

"Jake," Robbin said, feeling the name roll off his tongue like sour milk.

"Hello, Robbin." The third blur had a voice that fluctuated pleasingly at odd ends. "I'm surprised you recognized me at all, old friend."

Robbin's expression contorted in disgust. It had been too long since he had seen him. "You've always looked the same, Jake," he muttered coldly.

"That surprises me, because I have to say, you look different. I almost followed the wrong fool from that nomad cave of yours, looked narcissistic enough, but then I saw you with the girl and it couldn't have been anyone else."

"Spoken like a true narcissist," Robbin shot back. He shot a furtive glance at Terra. "Unlike you, I grew up. I have responsibilities now."

The man easily nudged the conversation in another direction from his. "I'm trying to remember the last time I saw you, and I think it might have been at Thrushing: just caught a glimpse of you, not even sure if you saw me. Was it... three years ago? No, no, I think it's been two... Were you at Balboa?"

Robbin shook his head, not in refute, but in disbelief. He wouldn't fall into another one of Jake's mind-traps. He focused on the matter at hand. "You've been following us all this time. Why?" He felt another surge of anger shoot up his spine.

Jake clicked his tongue. "Can't say I can tell you. Would it be too much to chock it up to old ties?"

Terra glanced between the two, growing shy with the building tension. Completely lost as to the reason, she bit her lip and folded her arms, uncomfortable at the way the third man kept circling.

"You're a murdering delinquent. We don't have old ties," Robbin snapped. And he meant it, too.

Jake curled his nose the way he always used to when they would eat berries from the village pond. "This whole world's a war, Robbin. How many have you murdered? How many have I killed? It's none of your business. We've all killed."

Terra's eyes widened. Robbin didn't like where this was going. He cut the question short with a senseless, automatic insult. "You killed my mother. You killed my dad. You killed your own parents." Inadvertently, he should have added, but he didn't.

His old brother's reaction was immediate. "You son of a bitch."

Then they were tussling, like brothers more than true enemies. But Robbin got a few good punches in.

She stepped into the middle of the fray, pulling Robbin away by the back of his shirt and digging her heels into the dirt.

At Terra's entrance into the fight, Robbin immediately stopped, glancing at her in shame. Jake followed his lead and eyed the girl in awe before continuing his circling.

"I didn't kill our parents, I took the only option I had at the time."

Robbin scoffed. That was horse crap. "You left with those monsters," he accused. "With the wolves." How could Jake refute that?

There was silence.

"After the massacre," he continued, on a momentum, "you left with those beasts. You may as well have been one of them for all the good you did. Take responsibility. Those were your deaths too."