If there was one thing VFD was good at, it was making things disappear.
One of the first things they all were taught to be a thing that differentiated VFD from the world was that the world was way too careless with information. They spread lies and forgot the truth. The volunteers stood as figurative knights guarding the truth, the librarians protecting information. They were taught to trust the files over everything.
Then, as they came of age, sooner or later they learned the bitter truth: no single group of people, no matter how noble or well-read, could be the sole responsible for this mission. Humans made mistakes, and disasters happened, things got lost and even the most guarded building could be set on fire.
Worse yet, humans had beliefs and feelings and so could never be truly impartial. Humans had goals and agendas. No document could be proved pure at its origin and no archive could be protected against the interests of its guardian.
Every volunteer realized this at some point, and either became a part of it, or fought against it. Usually both.
If there was one thing VFD was good at, it was making things disappear. Besides the personal interests of each volunteer, there were matters that were of interest of the organization as a whole, and they developed methods for it.
They could make children disappear until everyone gave up hope of finding them. They could make fortunes disappear without leaving a trace. They could make the evidence of their less noble actions disappear from the archives.
Bertrand was a high ranked volunteer for his young age, and he often used his position to access the most secrets libraries of the organization.
(His rank was often not enough for him to get official permission to visit them, but that was an advantage of learning your whole life how to do things without being discovered.)
Dewey was one of the librarians in one of them. He was part of a special rank of volunteers that officially did not exist. Officially, he did not exist.
It was a lonely life, most times. Very few people could access that specific library, and there wasn't as much of a need to retrieve top-secret archives as there was to, well, archive them.
Dewey had a collection of pens and fancy journals and three typewriters. He knew how to make 75 different types of origami with discarded paper, and sometimes when he had to find the proper place of a misplaced photograph he gave the people in it nicknames and tried to imagine what they were like. He could write perfectly with both hands and with a sheet upside down, as well as while hanging upside down from the ceiling. He could copy a file in reversal, as if it was seen in a mirror, and he was learning how to imitate other people's handwriting. The day he first met Bertrand, he was halfway through memorizing a dictionary just for fun.
The arrival of a boy just a little younger than himself was the most interesting thing that happened there since he could remember, so instead of kicking him out as soon as he realized the boy shouldn't be there, he decided to listen to him.
And so the visits became a habit
They chatted in low voices or just sat together in silence, reading or doing some late work. Tonight it was the latter, it seemed, until Dewey spoke up with no context.
"You are intriguing."
"Am I?" Bertrand asked, truly surprised. That was not an adjective he heard used to describe himself often. Or at all.
"I couldn't find it." Dewey said, and Bertrand didn't need explaining to know that "it" referred to the very reason why he visited secret libraries so often. "There is nothing about your biological family anywhere. It's like it doesn't even exist."
Bertrand nodded sadly. It was the same everywhere he went, and he couldn't understand why. It was such simple information, why was it so hard?
Dewey had said that there was no information he could not find, so he had hoped this time it would be different.
"What is the big deal about you anyway?"
Bertrand shrugged.
"Maybe it's just not important." He suggested. "Not relevant enough for anyone to write it down."
"It makes no sense," Dewey said. "We have all sort of irrelevant information on every volunteer."
"Have you checked to be sure it's every volunteer?" Bertrand raised an eyebrow.
Dewey didn't reply. The two remained in silence for a few moments, but it wasn't the comfortable silence they were used to sharing.
The truth was that this small matter was much more important to each of them than they wanted to let the other know. Dewey was very concerned about the idea of something not being in the archives. He didn't know what would be worse, this being an intentional or unintentional flaw. He didn't want to think of it.
As for Bertrand, he decided to speak.
"I don't like this." He said. "It feels like everyone else can draw their family trees from prehistory, meanwhile for me there's just me. It's like I am a ghost."
Dewey hesitated. He wished he had some way of fixing it, but he didn't.
"It's not a pleasant feeling, right?" He said in a sympathetic tone. "I may not know what it's like not to have a past, but I don't really have a present, and when I think about it, I feel like a ghost."
"At least you chose it."
Dewey hesitated again.
"Yeah."
Bertrand sighed.
"Do you miss it? What you left behind."
"A lot." After a moment, Dewey added. "I'm sorry I could not help you. Maybe I just didn't look in the right place. But if it's worth anything, it doesn't matter for me where you came from. I care for you for who you are."
Bertrand gave a small smile.
"And I for you. You do exist, and you are my friend."
If there was one thing VFD was good at, it was making things disappear. The two boys were aware of it, but they hoped their feelings were not one of those things.