AN: This story is basically an AU. It was written for a prompt on the kink meme that requested Hanna as female to male transgender. This is a sequence of ten parts of exactly one hundred words each, according to my word processor's word count tool. It was quite refreshing to write exact drabbles, as well as to write a subject matter that's kind of personal to me. Also, I know Tessa has basically said that Worth isn't responsible for Hanna's staple gunned scar, but as this is an AU, I took liberty with that fact. Anyway, Hanna is Not a Boy's Name is still the property of the marvelous Tessa Stone; I am making no money and mean no trespass.
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SOMEONE NEW
-by: Lira-
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.001.
It was easy to say a life ended that night, those years ago.
Usually Hanna laughed it off, those rare times it butted up against his present, when he would give that lopsided grin and words would come bubbling over his lips so fast he didn't know what he was saying. Enthusiasm. Or briskly shooing passerby away from that closet with its skeletons. One could say a life ended, a family was severed, torn asunder.
Or say a little girl breathed out her best hopes for life into something new.
A life began, fragile, shaky; someone new.
Stronger every day.
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.002.
In the real world, there would have been therapists, appraisal, psychological testing to prove that he needed this. Proof demonstrating that the mind rattling in his skull was at odds with the soft flesh of the body entrapping him. In his new world, with spooks his every day, he just needed a name to give the old man on the corner, the one whose cardboard box up the alley bore whorls of marker in arcane trajectories. With Scooby Doo playing audibly from the bar down the street at three AM, it was simple.
Cartoon heroes embodied – "I'm Hanna."
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.003.
The crosses were not his choice.
Even when he bartered a name, a resonance from his past – he would never admit what those parents called him, how they admonished her – his fair-weather tutor did him no favors. Magic for food. Magic for protection. A scrawled symbol here, a few words of explanation there. Never did that man say what he wished to be called.
But he lined up those crosses like gold stars, until they meant more than a childhood in two dimensions.
Hanna called him "Barbara." A wink. A grin.
The man called him "Cross."
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.004.
Eyes blurred. Tongue heavy. Fingers slick with blood.
Tracing the sigils at the edges of the array, knowing the form of the runes by feel and by memory because this was more important than anything and it was impossible to go halfway.
It felt like tearing. It felt like burning.
This was nothing like a "keyhole" – an incision would have hurt less. The feel of everything shifting was nauseating.
Looking down at the pulped mass, an expanse of chest like tenderized meat, it almost wasn't worth it.
Almost.
Finding the doorway was the miracle.
And through the looking-glass...
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.005.
"Yeh look like roadkill."
Panting. A wheeze. Coughing, hacking.
"An' yeh sound more pathetic'n a sack'a drownin' kittens."
He might have begged. He might have just vomited up blood on the grimy linoleum.
"Least yeh dragged yer sorry arse in 'ere, an' least Aye kin do 's stitch tha' mess. C'mere, kiddo."
Thin arms like a heroin junkie, strong like banded steel wires, and flicking fluorescent luminescence as he was tilted towards the ceiling. He almost couldn't feel the chilled metal table.
But he felt the industrial staples, every one.
A chuckle. "Better if it hurts."
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.006.
Hanna was maybe over-eager when it came to girls. He had to set up shop in an apartment he could afford and maybe his landlady wasn't a bastion of feminine warmth – but she liked him! – and his place wasn't really so great for bringing anyone back to.
But he was earnest.
Always the words tumbled out. I like your hair. Your perfume smells really nice. You're the prettiest hag I've ever met, you should try moving somewhere that's not a basement.
He just wished every sad smile, every stumble, didn't remind him of who he used to be.
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.007.
"Not knowing if a person said 'dick' or 'sick' can really screw up a conversation."
Hanna made his best 'serious face,' but the zombie man seemed no more concerned over the matter of names.
So he offered names. They just poured out, but never a hint of recognition, or of satisfaction.
"I can keep this up all night," he chirped.
The even look on his companion's face was almost reassurance. So few people met Hanna with such flat acceptance.
"You're a hard man to please, but that's okay."
Whatever hidden standard, Hanna found himself wanting to meet it.
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.008.
The stitches were quick and efficient, a skill Hanna had mastered long ago, almost before memory. He snipped the thread with his teeth, examining the neat row against Timothy's green skin. The texture was almost like parchment, Hanna's fingers moving over his handiwork onto flesh.
"I don't see the point in lying."
Hanna had gotten that impression, confessed as much, but the words meant something still.
Hanna had never found someone to tell the truth to, about those muddled days long past.
Should he? Where did he even start?
"I thought as much."
At the beginning, of course.
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.009.
The room was dark. Gregory's lantern eyes the only illumination.
Hanna curled in the center of the mattress, knees drawn up against flat plane of chest.
He put it off. Each time with a joke, wide grin, any words but those his heart told him to share. Something so long guarded did not pry free easily.
"Hey you know the night we met-" he blurted, stopper bursting loose.
"-you always listen. I'mma tell you a story, okay?"
A simple nod, murmur of agreement, so much in so little.
The words spilled down like cool spring rain.
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.010.
The fingers tracing his scars were mirrored by Hanna's trembling digits trailing over stretches of stitching. It was still hard to bare himself deliberately, to hold still and bear scrutiny. To display the wrought change, let those now-familiar hands undo his pants fastenings, draw down the last barrier.
Hanna knew what price he'd paid for this, what magic sparked, the wishes that little girl had buried in his mind.
That calm look. The flat acceptance. Tiny spark of kindled desire.
Hanna took that wrist, guided that hand, those precious fingers, to heat and hardness, kissed that mouth with absolutely everything.
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