Someday Maybe

A/N: I think I'm pretty fond of this chapter. I hope the beginning and transition isn't too confusing. For the first time since the beginning of NaNoWriMo I'm ahead of the goal for the day! I wouldn't expect another chapter again today but there should be one (maybe even two) tomorrow sometime.

Thanks again to my loyal reviewer Lisa and everyone who took the time to read this.

Lisa: Ty can be pretty scary, yeah. Hopefully this chapter answers a few of your burning questions.



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A small blonde child sat playing on the floor of the doctor’s office. This was the second time in a week that he’d been there. The child didn’t seem to mind at all, in fact he rather enjoyed it. They had fantastic toys there and his green eyes were brilliant with delight as he played. He’d come because his pre-K teacher was concerned. He often sat staring into space while other children whooped and sang and played around him. He would show no reaction for long stretched of time. And other times when he played by himself he’d do odd things. He’d put all his crayons in neat little rows. Or if he’d made a tower of blocks... nobody could knock it down. And it wasn’t that he’d glued them together or anything, it was just that no one tried to knock them down and this was a preschool for goodness sakes! It was like everyone had an aversion to that part of the room. But as soon as Ty left someone would run over and ruin his tower. Obviously something strange was going on.

His mother had been reluctant to bring him to the doctor because it took time away from her that she’d be able to relax but the teacher had threatened to remove Ty from the pre-K program and, after all, his doctor’s visits were at least free because children could have state insurance. It was more worrying to her that Ty would be removed from what she viewed as a free daycare program than his supposed affliction. After all if he had to leave pre-K she would have to pay to put him back in day-care for the rest of the year until he could start kindergarten. And besides, she had never noticed anything strange about him and she was his mother, wasn’t she?

Still, during the first examination they’d given him a regular check-up and checked his sight and hearing and speech development. There were no obvious signs of OCD or autism and the doctors just chalked it up to him being odd. They said that he’d assume the tendencies of a normal child if he was left alone and allowed to learn from and mimic other children his own age. And that was that. Or rather, it would have been left at that and Ty would have grown out of his “oddness” if only someone else hadn’t been interested in his test results.

He was brought back for an intelligence test. Brought back again for an aptitude test. Brought back again for a MRI and PET scan. His mother assumed they were just being thorough in trying to figure out what was wrong with him and wasn’t concerned that they didn’t actually share the results of these tests with her. But the people who prompted the tests and received the results were very interested in his scores and even more interested in the way his brain lit up on the scans he was given.

Ty could remember, vaguely, a little of all the doctor’s visits but most of the events that followed had confused and saddened him at the time to the point that he preferred not to think about them but since then he’d learned enough of the tactics that he could reel off what had happened like ticking off boxes on a check list. His mother had lost her job and was forced to search for a different, much lower paying one. They’d had to change apartments, he’d had to switch schools, she’d started drinking. He still didn’t know if that had been her own decision or if she’d been helped along there. She’d lost her job again and shortly there-after had been declared an unfit parent.

One of the parents of one of his classmates had unexpectedly kicked up a fuss and become a foster parent and tried to get custody of him but even though that might ordinarily have worked it didn’t this time and Ty was dragged off to be a ward of the state. He was unceremoniously shuffled from one group home to another until he felt totally ostracized by the time he was ten and then he ended up at his final destination, a place full of children who were not like regular children.

Ty wrenched himself from his musings and stopped staring at the little girl in the doctor’s office. She was baby-blond but not him and wouldn’t become him. He didn’t need to think about things that were past. Things he shouldn’t care about anymore. He ran his fingers through his hair, his shoulders still stiff with tension.

He looked out at the street but the vision he was afforded here wasn’t the god-like bird’s eye view he’d had from the ledge of the building. He didn’t have the benefit of seeing the patterns that moved the people along this time but instead was limited to the way they hurried past him. This perspective wasn’t a bad one, he could see them more as individuals on this level instead of a great swarm but even still he knew their minds were full of petty concerns that would make him scoff at them if he ever let himself be bothered to scoff at each passing person.

He continued walking and eventually veered into the lobby of an office building as though only having just remembered an urgent appointment there. The lobby was pleasant but gave no indication of what kind of offices the building housed. He walked over to the receptionist’s desk and waited. The girl sitting there wasn’t a familiar face and her overly-casual air as she pretended to file her nails didn’t fool him for a moment. Not when he could feel her trying to scan his thoughts.

“Usually you use your little parlor tricks to figure out what people want and why they’re here before they even open their mouths.” He told her. He wasn’t guessing. And yes, it was a little petty to point out her faults to her and a little hypocritical of him since he was typically against all forms of pettiness. He was just tired and snappish and she had had the bad misfortune of trying to read his mind. Which, even on the shallow level that she could manage it, was more than enough to get him angry.

To her credit she did put down the nail file and sat up straight and pull her professionalism around her like an armored cloak. “Do you have an appointment?” She asked expectantly, falling back on her training as a receptionist instead of her meagre gifts, which were obviously what had landed her a gig here. “Of course not.” He responded. She shot him a flabbergasted look. “Then I’m afraid that you’ll have to make an appointment. Who was it you wanted to see?” She asked, her fingers poised over the keyboard to begin typing.

“My name is Ty. I’m always welcome here and I was asked to come see Ms. Whisler and Mr. Dergin.” He told her, placing his hands on the edge of the desk and leaning forward, subtly intimidating her even though she was older than he was. She frowned as she tapped into the computer. “I’m sorry but you’re not in the roster and Ms. Whisler and Mr. Dergin are both very busy people.” Ty tugged on the edge of her monitor so he could read it and pointed at one of the names in the roster list, his full and legal name. “That’s me.” He told her. “Click on it, it’ll be my picture and stats there.”

He waited for her to confirm his identity. “Now read the special notes on my clearance level and tell me when I can see them. I can wait if I have to.” She read them over and then colored, embarrassed at having mistaken such an important person because he was so much younger than she would have expected to be in such a position. “Of course Mr-” “Don’t call me that.” He interrupted her. “Just Ty.” She frowned but continued. “Of course. You can go and wait in the lounge upstairs... Ty.” He nodded and turned toward the bank of elevators. He didn’t ask which lounge or which floor, he’d been here enough times to know where he was supposed to be going.

He went into the elevator and rode it up to the appropriate floor. He smiled at the secretary sitting in this lounge but didn’t waste time flirting with her. Ordinarily he enjoyed flirting but he didn’t want to lead her on and today he was just... tired. Instead he immediately settled to wait in one of the chairs after removing a hand-held video game from his pocket. For the moment he was sick of reading and just wanted something to distract him from the coming meetings.

After a while the secretary called out that Mr. Dergin could see him now. He shut off the video game and slid it back in his pocket. He straightened his shoulders and approached the man’s office then stepped inside. Dergin looked worse for the wear of his new position. He’d moved up in the world recently and while he took to the task with vigor he was terrible at delegating. His body showed the tell-tale signs of a previously overweight man who was strung out on amphetamines and had been for a while. Ty didn’t comment on that.

It was harder to hold his tongue about the other thing, however. Dergin was shuffling papers on his desk and staring at them intently. He didn’t look up at Ty when he entered the room. He wouldn’t look up at him the whole time, he knew. Dergin was harder to read than most and the blond made it a point not to try too hard with him because he really didn’t want to know some of the things that went through the man’s head. But the reason he didn’t look up was unease. Which meant, perhaps, that he was frightened of the young man standing before him? Or that he didn’t like the idea of the things they had him do? Or maybe it worried him that so much rested on such narrow shoulders?

“I needed to clarify a few things in your report.” Dergin said, scanning the pieces of paper that contained the mission report he’d written up. “I wrote down the names, locations, groups, everything- just as he remembered them. I don’t have any more information to give.” Ty immediately defended. It was never his memory that failed. But if the person whose mind he was looking at just didn’t remember something then he couldn’t find it.

“No. That was all complete. I wanted to ask about earlier in the mission. You detailed that he met with some persons of interest inside the club while you were sent off to dance. You describe what they spoke about well enough but after that you skip to subduing him in a back room and the torture and such. Why do you fail to describe how you gained entrance to the club and what happened between the end of the meeting and the time of the torture.”

Ty narrowed his eyes, dark and angry. “Irrelevant.” He snapped. “It’s not your prerogative to decide what is and what is not relevant to the mission, Tyrin.” Dergin responded with equal acidity and the young man flinched at the words though it was hard to say if it was more at the tone or the use of his full first name. “Just tell me about it.” He added. He had retrieved a recorder and set it recording by this point so that when Ty spoke it would be on he record.

“Fine. I’ll add to your perverted jerk-off fantasies.” He responded angrily, for the benefit of the recorder. Truthfully it was possible that Ty knew about supposed fantasies that Dergin had and it might be assumed that he did. Action might get taken. But likely not. “I fed into that man’s fetish. Dyed my hair pink and put it in pigtails. Applied make-up and dressed in a school uniform meant for a young girl and froze my ass off in the cold until he arrived and took me to the head of the line to go inside. He bought me a drink and told me to go off to dance while he had his meeting. After the meeting he bought me more drinks and drugged them and I pretended to be affected by the drugs and alcohol and crawled all over him until he invited me into the back where I tortured and killed him as I detailed. Satisfied?”

A few different expressions flickered across Dergin’s face and Ty numbly noted that he wasn’t surprised but that he was disgusted though what by was more difficult to say. It could have been the fact that Ty had been told to do whatever necessary by them. It could have been the fact that Ty had crawled all over the man at all. Or, the one that Ty chose to believe, he was disgusted by the man’s fetish and attempt to rape the blond before him.

“Yes. Thank you. That will be all.” It was a clear dismissal and Ty took the opportunity to storm angrily from the room. He threw himself back into a chair to wait to speak to Ms. Whisler at her convenience. He stared moodily into space for a long time before he began playing his video game again. It was quite a while before the secretary informed him that Ms. Whisler would see him now. He put the game away and walked into her office.

She smiled at him as she looked up from her computer and stood up. The image of him sitting and waiting playing video games was forefront in her mind. She thought it was cute. She walked around the desk and stepped up to him and hugged him. Cheryl was younger than most of them but brilliant and a good leader so she quickly rose in her position. Still, no matter how bitchy she seemed to be to everyone else she had always had a soft spot for him. He felt it was more of a maternal thing than anything. He knew she was reminded of her son in his blond hair and smile.

She herself was petite, about five feet tall and had rich brown hair and eyes and a wide smile when she was smiling. They both sat down in the pair of chairs in front of her desk, facing each-other. She slipped a sheet of paper from her desk. “This is your physical fitness report.” She said and handed it to him. He scrutinized it and spent more time that necessary analyzing the numbers that more more or less normal and avoiding looking at the ones that were carefully circled in red pen.

He set the paper down and crossed his arms over his chest. He was going to get scolded. Not eating enough. His weight was down. His blood sugars and cholesterol and triglycerides were all off from where they should be. At least there was no definitive test to determine if he wasn’t sleeping enough, not unless he was a lot more sleep deprived than he was at present.

He knew the lady was happy to have an official excuse to see him other than just her own desire but at the same time she was also sad that she had to scold him for not eating enough. Because after all, she thought of him as a son and she wanted her children to eat enough. “I know you know all this already but I have to tell you that you have to eat a more calorie dense diet. That big brain of your consumes so many calories the rest of your body may begin to suffer, especially when you use your gift a great deal.” It was true. He had heard it all before and he did know he had to eat more especially when he used his powers more than usual. And how did you define what “more than usual” was when it was impossible to turn off the background chatter of other people’s thoughts that intruded on your own every single fucking day?

“I am aware.” He said finally. “I’ll try to be more careful, pay more attention.” He amended, trying to soothe her worries. “Good.” She said with a nod. “We’ll go to lunch, then.” She said brusquely and stood up immediately. Ty let her move away to collect her coat before he followed suit. They took the elevator and walked across the lobby together and down the block.

Ty couldn’t help but look in the window of doctor’s office again when they passed the building. The little baby-blond girl was gone but Ty was briefly reminded again of his mother. His mother who had given him up without a fight. No. He looked over at Cheryl Whisler and smiled faintly. She’d never abandoned him. She was even taking him out to lunch because she was worried about his health. That was a mother. His mother.



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A/N: Reviews? Please? Thank you in advance, they make my day.