Raizel gave a nonchalant shrug.  "I did not do very much," she said, crisp and matter of fact.  She relaxed, watching the wizard with a faint smile.  "It is just confidence, I think.  If there's a problem again, tell me," she urged, shifting her gaze to Adon again.  "If it was a curse, I don't think it will come back once it's been broken, but I don't know this one well enough to say for certain."

She could see the tension in the other mage as she changed the subject.  The subtle shift in his expression, the hitch in his voice that might have been a choice to whisper, but felt like more.  It had been ten years since she had really known Adon Eleor; ten years since she had been able to read him as well as her own handwriting, since she had known which buttons to press to set him off or which words to say to sooth him.  In all that time, he'd grown no better at hiding his emotions.  His vanished smile, the tenseness in his stance -- he did not want to have this discussion.

Raizel frowned, watching him intently for a moment, and then glanced away.  Trevelyan had apparently moved on past "Lumos;" he was cradling his wand, regarding it determinedly. The Cursebreaker smiled, dropping her gaze for a moment before settling to regard him again.  Even if it felt a little like intruding, watching the wizard test his abilities was a convenient reason not to look at Adon.

"The last time I saw them, they were in Iraq," she said after a beat, in crisp, accented English.  "That was January.  They have been mostly in Jordan though, down in the south -- that is where they were with Benny."  She took a quick sip of beer to hide any steadying breath.  "Katsaros left them at the end of 2003.  I don't know that he's been back with them since."  Her eyes flickered to the other mage, and she gave him a worried look, forgetting that she had been avoiding eye contact. 

"They are not nice people, Adon," she said with clear, even deliberation.  "The Group.  I can maybe find out more, but I don't -- I would rather know as much as I can before I start asking."  For when they found out that she was asking again.  Raizel watched him, brows knit, concern obvious in her expression as she carefully bit her lip.  "Is there more that you know from what Dreogan said?  When did your brother make his prophecy?"

Adon grit his teeth, shaking his head in dismay.  Turning away, he breathed slowly through his nose. She hadn't said anything too grave--but it felt like bad news. Any news with this group was bad news. He began to pace at the list of places, of names, and dates. 

"They are not nice people, Adon--"

Adon turned sharply on his heel. "Really! They are not nice?" Adon burst out in a quiet, intense tone.  And the Nazis were probably bad, too! "No shit! Harah..." turning away again, resting a fist against the wall as he rested his forehead against it, thinking.  "I can maybe find out more, but I don't -- I would rather know as much as I can before I start asking." 

Adon sighed, rolling his head along the wall so he could look at her.  "You should be careful who you're asking." In a more dull tone, he added, "Not that you are not. But since we can both pretty well agree they are not nice people..." He sighed, letting the tension in his shoulders drop away as he pushed off from the wall. "I don't want you getting hurt."

Crossing back towards Raizel, he considered. "Not much that I know of.  It happens in the Jewish Quarter; probably by Ha Omer or Ha Kara'im, from what I can pick up from the description.  Under an alley archway.  Near a gate that opens up to a courtyard.  Residential." He shook his head.  "He told me about the dream last August.  But he'd been having it for about 9 months before that. So a little over a year and a half." He swallowed, feeling nauseous.  Considering the beer in his hand, Adon rolled his eyes and moved to set it down on the nearest flat surface--Jonas' desk.  "The Dream's short. About 15-30 seconds, Dree's said."

Just as he had the first time they'd discussed it, as soon as she tried to inquire further into his mode of prophesized death, Adon snapped.  Raizel nearly recoiled, but this time, the Auror subsided more quickly.  Raizel eyed him with a tense, guarded expression, though the gradual words were enough to sooth the situation.

She took a deep breath, frowning as she tugged the fingers of her right hand through her hair.  Adon thought he was going to die, but he didn't want to talk about it.  Extracting information from him felt like yanking teeth from a dragon's mouth, one by one; even when he was trying to be helpful, he cut his descriptions short.

"So...two winters ago?" she asked with a frown, clearly trying to do the math in her head.  "That was when he started having them?" The Cursebreaker hesitated, and then shifted her gaze back to Adon, already steeling herself for the possible explosion.  "What happened in the dreams?"

For once, Adon didn't blow up.  He ran a hand over his face, exhaling deeply.  Frowning as she watched him, Raizel nearly opened her mouth to rephrase her question, but the clearing of a throat cut her off.

Apparently the mage's outburst had been enough to call a temporary end to his partner's experimentations with magic. Jonas flashed her a tight smile as he grabbed the chair behind his desk and pulled it closer to where the two Israelis were talking, spinning it around backwards to face him. 

"I think it's near sunset," he answered, glancing at Adon to make sure his friend didn't mind him cutting in as he carefully eased himself to sit on the backwards chair.  He spoke in a steady, matter-of-fact manner, his tone almost clinical as he listed off the facts. "The call to prayer's going, and the streets are empty.  Dreogan says he feels disoriented, stumbling along behind Adon.  He can't go on, so A grabs him and ends up dragging him along." 

""I don't--I drape his arm over my shoulder..." Adon corrected weakly.

Jonas stopped, casting a sidelong look at the other Auror, and then gave his friend a tight smile.  "Right, mate," he agreed more gently, looking straight back at Raizel.  "They get to somewhere that Adon seems to recognize," he continued in an even, level tone.  "Dreogan wasn't sure where it was, other than somewhere in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter.  Adon tells Dreogan they're there, and then pushes open a gate, calling to whoever's inside.  But Katsaros answers instead."  Jonas took a deep breath, his words still steady but his face noticeably gray.  "He casts a wordless spell, and Adon gets knocked back into Dreogan.  Dree said that there's blood everywhere, and Adon starts convulsing, and then --"  His voice hitched slightly; Jonas had to stop and swallow.  "Then he dies," he finished quietly.

Raizel stared.  Knowing what Adon had told her -- even seeing the Israeli Auror so clearly terrified -- was one thing.  It was hypothetical and analytic, something to be discussed and debated from a distance, even when she made firm, fierce promises to help.  But hearing the details of it, even so coolly recounted -- this was not some hypothetical storm cloud over the horizon.  Suddenly, she could understand why Adon seemed near to breaking every time it was brought up.

She swallowed, rubbing at her eyes, and then glanced back at the other two.  Jonas's expression was pained, shadowed; he seemed to be giving his friend as much of a moment to recover himself as he could, instead intently studying the wand in his fingers.  Adon wasn't looking at either of them; he simply looked miserable.

Raizel bit her lip, watching the other Israeli silently for a moment.  Without a word, she bent to set her beer down on the floor, and then quickly crossed the room to his side, slipping her left hand around his arm with a reassuring pressure.

"Well, it is good that we won't let it happen, then."  Raizel spoke firmly and deliberately, determinedly overriding any quiver in her voice as she dropped her hand from Adon's arm.  "I will see if I can find Katsaros -- I can deal with him," she added fiercely, lifting her chin.  "And I think that maybe there is more that we can do, too.  With the spell, with the place."  She waved a hand impatiently.  "If you don't --"  Raizel cut herself off, regarding Adon with a worried expression.  "Do you want to help?" she asked him quietly, bracing herself.  "If you don't, then we can still find a way to fix it."

Jonas walked them through the dream, and in his mind, Adon could recall the details--like a memory that hadn't yet happened, and that he hadn't lived.  Imagination filled in the gaps where facts and Dreogan's recollection could not, and Adon wondered now just how much of the dream he remembered was the dream that was going to occur.

Adon considered if it would only be a matter of time before the ghost-like future started playing itself out not just in his waking hours, but in his dreams, too.  Listening to the recollection with a locked jaw, Adon finally closed his eyes tightly, forgetting a moment to breathe.

"Then he dies."  Adon didn't think he had ever heard it that way.  He had said himself he'd get killed. Dreogan'd said that Terry'd kill him. But this wasn't about what Terry did. This was about what would do.  Adon--he would die.  Dying was something he did--something he didn't want to do.

There was a forced air to it that made him feel particularly trapped.  Adon would be forced to do something he didn't want to.

Swallowing, Adon looked back, in the silence, towards his friends and felt intensely, immediately sorry he had.  Not just sorry he had looked at them.  Adon felt intensely sorry for the expressions on their faces.  Sorry about what would happen when he--when he was forced to do what he didn't want to do.

"Well," he cut in to the thick melancholy of Jonas' office, not sure what he was going to say, only that it couldn't go on like this.

"Well, it is good that we won't let it happen, then."

Adon gave a grimace of a smile, nodding at the hand around his arm.  It did feel less lonely.  But, hearing her talk, he wasn't sure companionship came with a price he'd pay.

"No," he cut in firmly.  "No 'dealing' with Katsaros.  I want to be involved, but we need to be careful we're not repeating mistakes here.  I'm not sure I should be heavily involved. In the past, that's tended to escalate things."

He was quiet a moment before pushing, more strongly, locking gazes with his partner, "And we have to be careful how we look for him, too.  Dreogan tried that with scrying, and it went bad. Very bad--Terry possessed Dreogan which," Adon added tightly, "is how Katsaros found out about this dream in the first place."  He sighed and looked up a the ceiling before glancing back at Jonas.  A little over 5 months ago, in this very room.  He glanced over to Raizel, surprised for a moment; he hadn't told her that yet.

"So Katsaros knows everything.  If he didn't have motivation to go after my brother--and me--before, he has sufficient now.  He knows--that we'll be looking for him."

Adon looked down at the floor, choosing Raizel's beer bottle to consider deeply a moment, "It's my own damn fate. I'm not going to be written out of it any more than I... than it feels like I am.  But I'm going to need to be careful--very careful that what I do, what Dree does, what we all do, does not set into motion what we're trying to prevent."

Jonas let out a deep breath as he finished speaking, let his gaze drop.  Somehow, it was even harder to treat this with the cool detachment of an Auror than it had been when he'd watched Tait die.  He hadn't known Adon nearly as long as he had his onetime housemate, but the younger man was just as vibrant, every bit as full of life.  Tait's murder had always been something that had happened; even magic couldn't change it.  But Adon's death was something in the future -- watching his best friend struggle with the weight of his possible destiny was far harder to passively accept.

He looked down, pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth, and breathed in again.  His wand felt solid in his hand -- he ran his thumb over the smooth wood, imagining that he could almost feel a friendly thrumming in response.  Having his magic back helped immensely.  The knowledge that he would be able to do more than stand there, that he wouldn't have to sit on the sidelines next time, felt like it had lifted the weight from his shoulders.  But as long as Adon still didn't want to talk about it, as long as he insisted on avoiding the subject, there wasn't very much that he could do.

"No," Adon cut in, and Jonas looked up to meet his friend's gaze, mouth pressed firmly shut as he listened silently.

This was better.  He gave the younger man a tight, hard smile -- not because there was any reason to be cheerful about the subject at hand, but because at least he was talking once more.

"Yeah.  Bit Oedipal, the whole thing, innit?" he asked, and then rethought over his words.  He blanched.  "Not -- you know -- you and your father...err, mother, or anything --" he said quickly, grimacing as he waved a hand awkwardly at Adon.  "I mean, that isn't -- it isn't that sort of thing at all," he concluded weakly.  "Just, you know.  Setting things in motion.  You try to prevent something, and all of a sudden, you've shipped your only son off to be unknowingly raised by a shepherd and he's come back and, err, done you in or something --"

Raizel gave a loud snort, and Jonas shot her a look.  Taking a deep breath, he ran his index finger over his wand, and then visibly composed himself.

"What I mean is," he said more steadily, looking to Adon, "you're right.  We need to play this game smarter if we're going to beat it."  It was like chess -- predicting future strategy dozens of moves before it had been implemented.  "Find the place where it's supposed to happen -- I can do that in Jerusalem, if you don't want to tempt fate, A.  Get our house into order in case it does happen.  And shore up our defenses, too," he added thoughtfully.  "If your brother getting grabbed triggers all this, that's something we should be putting an eye to, as well."

"And doing it together," he concluded firmly, looking between the two Israelis before focusing on his partner.  "We've done alright whenever we've coordinated.  When one of us runs off alone, that's always when we seem to have trouble."

Adon gave a silent laugh, catching eyes with Raizel to express mutual amusement.  Jonas' response was ambling, it was awkward, and it was somewhat uncharacteristic--but it was welcome.  Oedipus was a comedy by comparison to what he had been feeling only moments before.

"Well." Adon quirked a light smile at his friend. The throbbing of his heart in his ribcage hadn't slowed any, and the nausea in his stomach--the sick twists and turns--hadn't exactly settled, but the knot he felt in his throat was loosening.  And that was something.

The Oedipus example carried some weight, but a natural, instinctive protectiveness towards his brother kicked in.  "We aren't sure, though," he clarified, "that what Dreogan did--locating Katsaros, and Katsaros finding out--that those actually brought all of this about.  It may be just as likely that it was going to happen anyway, and that Katsaros simply knows as much as we do now... And Dree--in locating Katsaros..." he sighed and cut himself off, almost hearing Jonas' conciliatory 'yeah, mate,' in his head.  In anticipation, his eyes flicked over to his partner.  "Anyhow..."  What Dreogan had done couldn't be all bad.  It was simply... intelligence gathering that had given away their position to the enemy.

Okay, that was bad.

Another sigh.  "But  I think Dree's already been keeping an eye on safeguarding himself.  We don't know when the Dream is supposed to take place," he added.  "It could be next week--could be in four years.  Short of going into hiding, quitting his job, and getting a secret keeper until we've--until Katsaros has been dealt with, I don't really think there's much--" he shook his head exasperatedly and looked away, clentching his jaw.  This was supposed to be a decisive action-building session.  "Yeh," he said, jaw still tight as he nodded.  "We'll monitor it closely." But even Adon knew that there were too many moments of vulnerability to fully prevent any and all possible future attacks.

"Yeh," he agreed, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly.  "Yeh--we can do that."  Adon recalled the night on the couch--watching Band of Brothers in which the topic had come up; Jonas' anxiety on being left out.  His reassurance that he'd be there.  Raizel's reassurance, just moments ago. 

"And doing it together," he concluded firmly, looking between the two Israelis before focusing on his partner.  "We've done alright whenever we've coordinated.  When one of us runs off alone, that's always when we seem to have trouble."

Adon tried to remember a time when he'd run off alone to go "fix something." Was he talking about when he'd gone to deal with Hyskos alone?  Or was it more when all three of them--Dree, Jonas, himself--had split opinions? Because if they had listened to Dree, Hyskos wouldn't have even been able to impersonate...

"Yeh," he said, nodding quickly at his train of thought.  "Dree has got good ideas.  He--well he usually thinks things through.  If this is going to work," and Adon had serious doubts about that, "we'd stand a lot better of a chance if he was involved in everything, all the way.  Besides," he said with a slight shrug, "he and Katsaros are the only people who have even seen the Dream--or where it's taking place."  Adon's expression clouded as his gaze diverted to the floorboards thoughtfully distant.