Subject: "To tell the truth, I do not have a name."
Author:
Posted on: 2019-08-31 16:00:29 UTC
She turned up the flame of her lightglass a bit so she and Henry could get a better look at each other. "Soul-Singers possess nothing, not even so simple a thing as that. Call me Singer - it does well enough."
Nighttime, as far as anyone paid attention in HQ. The office was mostly deserted. Most of the nurses were busy elsewhere, on rounds or resting.
The newest member of FicPsych, however, wasn't doing either of those things. Singer had a box of patient files open on her lap and a laptop set beside her, hunting and pecking for keys as she transcribed notes into the system. She hummed softly as she worked. Her lightglass glowed softly in the dimly lit office, its little flame burning steadily. It was slow going, both from the sheer volume of notes and from the fact that she couldn't touch-type, but the files were overdue for transcription, and she didn't mind the slightly tedious job. The monotony soothed her, and she loved knowing her work had value. She wasn't even looking at the clock.
(( I'm assuming this is her office, C-22, and that her door is at least partly ajar, since it's not specified and that makes it easier to interact. {= ) ))
A stealthy shape slipped past the door. After a moment, though, it came back, and lurked like a shadow just beyond the ray of dim light lying across the hallway.
Henry Robinson was not supposed to be out and about at this hour; he was supposed to be asleep in his bunk bed, but he was wide awake, and bored, and hungry. The ten-year-old (nearly eleven!) was going through an early growth spurt, so Mom told him, and that meant he needed more food. It seemed like a legitimate excuse to sneak out of his room in the middle of the night, and it wasn't like he'd left FicPsych. He wasn't trying to get into trouble like he had a couple of months ago. He'd even been careful not to wake up his little brother.
Now, though, something more interesting than the old replicator in the nurses' lounge had caught his eye. He'd seen the newest nurse before--living in the department, it would've been hard not to--but he'd never really gotten a good look at her. She was pretty, Henry thought. Maybe not the prettiest, but definitely prettier than any of the girls his age, who were almost all stupid and annoying anyway.
Henry knew it was creepy to stand around staring at someone late at night, so he didn't want to watch too long. Should he say hi, or just go? It looked like the nurse was working on some project, but not too energetically. She probably wouldn't mind being distracted from something like that. Hopefully not even by a kid with a messy bedhead and knobby ankles sticking out from the bottoms of his red pajamas. Henry stepped into the beam of light, knocked quietly on the door, and said "Hi."
Singer's keen ears picked up Henry's footsteps easily, but she paid them no mind at first. HQ was rarely entirely quiet, what with all its temporal oddities. The knock and tentative "hi?" got her attention, though, and she looked up to see the little boy at the door, silhouetted in the low light.
"Greetings, little one," she called back, softly. "What brings you here so late?"
He had heard people say he took after Severus Snape, one of his fathers, in looks, but the messy black hair and the green eyes recalled Harry Potter, the other. Mom (his adopted mom) had green eyes, too; she said that proved he belonged to her, but Henry was pretty sure that was too sappy to be true. She was so weird sometimes.
"I live here," he answered Singer, dodging what he assumed was the intent of the question like a pro. It felt a bit too much like lying once he'd said it, though, so he added, "I was just going to get a snack in the break room. You're new, right? Want to come?"
He wasn't exactly sure why he'd said that. Sharing food was polite, but the woman was a nurse, and she could go to the break room whenever she wanted to, just like the rest of the nurses. Oh well, too late now.
On the one hand, she'd been working for a while, and now that she considered it, she was hungry. On the other, she was only halfway through her stack of folders...on a foot, this was going to take quite a while.
After a minute, though, her sense of duty won out. "I thank you, but I must be working."
Even as she sternly reminded herself that Singers put their work first, and that selflessness was a virtue of her order, her stomach let out a protesting groan, and she took stock of herself again. Mother's mercy, I'm ravenous. Even as she winced at the pangs, though, she doggedly returned to her typing. Doubtless Henry had realized she was hungrier than she was letting on, though...
Henry's face fell when she turned away, but in the same moment, the loud noise of her stomach made him giggle. He didn't mean to laugh at her, but he couldn't help it. It was funny!
"Ironic Overpower got you," he said. "Come on! You can't do good work if you don't eat, you know." That sounded like good, convincing, adult logic.
"I suppose that is true," she conceded, placing a bookmark in the file she was going through and tidying up her work. It wouldn't do to leave files out where eavesdroppers could find them, after all.
Putting away the files only took a minute, and Singer picked up her lightglass and carried it to the door. "Oh - what is your name?"
She turned up the flame of her lightglass a bit so she and Henry could get a better look at each other. "Soul-Singers possess nothing, not even so simple a thing as that. Call me Singer - it does well enough."
... but turned a more dubious eye on Singer. Music was a tricky subject for lots of agents, and it was especially confusing for the ten-year-old, given some of the adults in his life. "Didn't your mom give you a name?" he said. "Or moms? Or dads?" You never knew.
She'd never liked dwelling on the past instead of focusing on the present. Still, a question was a question. "My mother called me Falloren, but I left that name behind to become a Singer of Souls."
"I like that one better," said Henry. He grinned. "It's like my friend Ilraen's girlfriend's name. But... okay. I'll call you Singer if you really want."
With that seeming to be the end of that, he started down the hallway, keeping his eyes on Singer. "Still coming?"
(( I am now wondering if Henry has met Farilan and how that went. Hmm. ))
Henry led the way down the hall, pointing out the offices on the way. Singer probably already knew which nurses lived in which rooms, but like the doors in the rest of HQ, these often appeared out of numerical order, so it was fun to see what popped up where.
"Oh!" He paused by one. "Here's C-14. Mom and I used to live here, but then we got my little brother, his name is Simon, and we had to move to C-7. I think this is still empty, though."
He tried the handle, and when it turned he pushed the door open.
(( This probably just reveals a dark, completely empty room, but I figured I'd leave a little space for shenanigans, just in case. {= D ))