Just Routine - A Little (Double) Drabble Do Ya

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

It always happened late at night. A few Section IIs would gather - more than two, less than six -  and they would go through the empty office and remove all the flourishes of personality. Photographs, house plants, souveniers brought back from exotic places and little pieces of home brought here to ward off the night. They would work together silently, efficiently, and they would pack their dead away in cardboard boxes.

Then facilities staff would move in with paint and industrial cleaner to make the hallowed space pristine. To wipe away those other touches - the dent where a fist might have met a wall after too many bad missions, the stain where coffee might have been spilled in the demonstration of a move better left for the gym. They would stand and watch, a silent audience, and if a bottle of whisky might be passed around, who would speak against them?

And then the door would be locked and the room forgotten, a blind spot in everyone's vision until new agents moved in, too often young and too fleetingly alive. They never ask who had the room before and they are never told.

They are all deep in dead men's desk drawers.

Comments

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Wow! Now that was deep. Well told and brava!

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Little weird writing something without characters.

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

Good to have a different POV once in a while.

[jantojones.livejournal.com]

Beautiful, simply beautiful.

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you. Glad you liked it.

[carabele.livejournal.com]

Extremely haunting

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Thanks. There would need to be routines for these things, wouldn't there.

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

The grim reality. There's a Sapphire & Steel story in there somewhere, beneath the paint.

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Oooh, there really could be, couldn't there? Thanks.

[jkkitty.livejournal.com]

A few tears at the end, so touching

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks. It's always nice to hear I've provoked an emotional reaction.

[lindafishes8.livejournal.com]

It's a task that must be completed and it was done with respect and dignity, as befitting a fallen agent. I have to tell you I got rather emotional reading this.

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you, that's pretty much what I was going for.