I figure even perpetually positive folks must have those private moments when they just fold under the weight of their worlds. This is one of those moments. Takes place after the first scene of Chapter 3 but before the new day begins in the Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name universe.
This story was written for the following prompt: "You think because I am poor, plain, obscure and little, that I have no heart? (Jane Eyre, 2006)"
But Tonight…
Tonight the bed was uncomfortable. Beneath his shoulder blade a spring was jabbing him savagely, and the overslept-in sagging of the mattress frame left his hips uncomfortably cramped and dipping ever closer to the cold floor. On any other night Hanna's mattress-on-the-floor sleeping arrangement suited him just fine, but tonight… Tonight he felt heavy, as though the weight of the day was pushing him deeper into the musty bed, closer to the thinning carpet and the cracking concrete floor. On the wall sulfur light from a dying streetlamp flickered across the peeling paint through the tiny window. Any other night Hanna wouldn't notice the dying light; wouldn't feel the sharp staccato of it on his retinas as his eyes tried to adjust to the irregular sputter; but tonight…
He shifted uncomfortably in an unusually desperate attempt to relieve the gnawing hitch in his bones. "Hanna?" {…} turned his glowing stare to the mattress, voice filled with his usual concern and a shade of puzzlement. For all his hyperactive living Hanna slept sound and still, much like an overactive toddler {…} thought. But Hanna felt that conversation had gone far enough tonight. The day had revealed too many hidden things. The night had brought up too many questions, too close to the squirmy secrets Hanna was so careful to bury. So he didn't respond, and {…} wasn't fooled but he let it be for Hanna's sake.
Today had just been too much to bear behind a smile. The whole thing turned out to be an awful demonstration of just how hopeless he was at this job, in spite of how hard he tried. It started with the ghost ripping through him. God, what a mess that was. Veser could have been killed. And who knows what might have happened to {…} when Lee took him. That would have been enough, but today…
Today a vampire had to fucking remind Hanna again that he was empty; remind him again that death lingered on him. It brought everything into such clear, painful focus. He wasn't terribly good at his job. He often got other people who didn't belong tangled up in the danger. And yeah, he might be just a cursed rotten hollow shell of a boy, but that didn't mean that he hurt any less for his failures.
Tomorrow there would be smiles, and work to do, and an evasive, feigned forgetfulness of the events past. But tonight the light from the window blurred hot and damp and silent and secret, and {…} watched over Hanna as he trembled violently on until sleep.