Breakfast today was big. Eggs and bacon, served in a way that looked like a smile. It was a little silly, but Anya appreciated it. Of course, it was Papa's work. Mama would have murdered the poor… egg man, the kitchen would look like a crime scene. Speaking of…
"Are you ready for your internship today, Anya?"
"Of course, Papa!" She grinned.
She could sense the sadness in her father's mind, real and genuine. Maybe, back when this family first started, he wouldn't have felt this way, but now, Anya was his daughter, and he felt the same sadness parents felt when their children grew into their own. (Anya had checked.) It was still hard to believe at times, how supremely lucky they had all been…
"You remember what I taught you?" Mama asked, her expression concerned.
"Yes, Mama." Anya sighed. She loved her mom, but her view of the world… she seemed to think Anya's internship would be action and violence and a struggle for her life and not… paperwork and grabbing coffee, or whatever. Sure, Anya would love it if it was that cool, but she could read minds. It was going to be paperwork. Bleh.
"Will you be back in time for dinner?" Her father asked, "I'm going shopping later today…"
"Yeah," Anya smiled, "Boiled peanuts for my big day?"
"If you work hard…" Why Papa even tried to pretend otherwise, she couldn't imagine. Those peanuts were as good as hers.
Feeling chipper, Anya stood up and did a few final checks, not wanting to forget anything. Her outfit today was Mama's old tan jacket and Papa's old hat; Anya thought they worked decently well together, and it definitely made Mama happy, so…
A kiss on Papa and Mama's heads and a pat on the head for Bond- who had lived so long the neighbors had started asking questions- and she was off to catch the train. Somehow, it felt different than the thousands of times that she had left the house before, not even when she started picking up shifts at Scruffy's store last summer.
This was the feeling of being an independent(ish) woman! She was master of her own world!
Her own world didn't seem to include the train car. It was crowded and stuffy and the sort of place she needed long training to actually tolerate. When she got old enough to start wanting to go places by herself, Papa helped 'train' her to get used to it. Heh. Well, there was that, and there were those quiet nighttime rides with Damian…
Unfortunately, this was nothing like those almost romantic trips through darkling Berlint, tens of thousands of windows sparkling… this was a crowded, gross-smelling carriage that squeezed.
Still, Anya liked to think she made the train-riding experience better for everyone around her, because she could… take preventative action if anyone got dumb ideas. Anyone with plans of doing something lewd in her vicinity would get a few sprained fingers, if Anya had anything to say about it. Really, that was a merciful punishment. When someone tried it on Mama, she almost threw them out the window. On an overpass.
How exactly she did it, Anya couldn't be sure. Was she some experiment like Anya? Did grandmama- rest in peace- cook with steroids, or something? Well, it hadn't done anything to Yuri, although he was his own sort of headcase… Well, maybe it was just best to accept that Mama was uniquely Mama, and there were no substitutes.
(Honestly, Anya was really glad that Fiona Frost had eventually moved on. Reading her mind was genuinely depressing, especially once she was old enough to start her teenage brooding.)
The train began to slow, and Anya realized she wasn't sure what stop was next. Before she could get too panicked, she rifled through their minds, and… yep, this was her stop. Perfect. Berlint Police Headquarters, the place where all the detectives worked.
With her powers, she probably could have done a bang-up job as a psychiatrist, like Papa, and while it was certainly an impressive job, Anya wasn't sure if she could do it. More than a decade of mind reading taught her that the mind was stupidly complex. Could she understand a person's mind in a way nobody else could? Yeah, and she was positive that understanding didn't mean anything! The mind was too complex!
Now crime? That was comparatively simple. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who couldn't even think about their own crime. It was helping people, it was an application of her powers…
It was perfect!
(She was aware that if someone like her, with powers like hers was floating around in Berlint a bit more than a decade ago, the Forger family would have been sunk. It was a grim thought… but Anya held herself to standards!)
Unfortunately, her prediction seemed true. A lot of her work was running around, doing paperwork and petty errands, but she was probably the best intern you could ask for. She knew coffee preferences without having to ask, she could head to people who needed her before they even called…
It also let her pick up the scent of anything interesting. Come on, could you blame her? She was here to learn about a job, not the coffee preferences of a bunch of petty egotists. (She had already handled enough big heads at Eden, good grief…) Detecting a mystery, she approached a certain cubicle, where a man was leaned over a series of seriously gory murders that happened in the outskirts of Berlin.
At that moment, a sudden problem cropped up in Anya's mind, a problem she didn't even think of before signing up for the internship. Was that Mom? She had 'worked late' a couple of days back, and the splatters almost looked like Mama's MO…
Calm down. Papa had always stressed approaching problems calmly.
Wait a sec… "Defensive wounds?" She mused aloud, looking at the palms were bad, like they had tried to grasp at the knife that had done the job. Mama didn't leave defensive wounds- she was good at taking people by surprise, and very good at stopping a struggle quickly. Defensive wounds were a pretty obvious sign of murder, sure, but not her mother's murders.
"Forger!" The detective- who was now staring at her- snapped. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Bringing you your coffee? Two creams, one packet sugar one packet artificial sweetener?"
The detective blinked. "How did you know…?"
"A detective figures things out." Anya grinned, before taking another look at the photographs. A bloodstained kitchen knife next to the body, and some closeups of jagged, rough cuts. Hmmm…. "Do you think that knife's the murder weapon?" Anya asked, tone doubtful.
"Why would you think it wasn't?" The detective prompted. He thought she was onto something, he was testing her….
"The wounds look too rough for a smooth blade like that. I'd guess a serrated one. Murderer might have tried to plant the kitchen knife? I wouldn't trust the prints…" she gulped, "Sir."
"You've got good eyes, Forger. And you make a fine coffee."
Success!
(She supposed that was a happy benefit of her upbringing. She picked up a lot about crime scenes from her parent's heads… and both of them had given her lessons regarding knives after Mama gave her boots with a knife holder inside. Papa had a surprisingly informative presentation about cutting away, survival uses, a bit of self defense… Mama had just given her instructions about how to stab someone.)
(Learn from the best, right?)
Time for her lunch break! It was a bit of walk, but she had someone she was planning on meeting today.
Damian reminded her a bit of Papa. Not in a gross, weird way, but how he reacted. When he grew, it was harder to get a visible reaction out of him- Becky hated the way he seemed unperturbed by everything- but Anya knew his mind, knew that he had mental freakouts to shame her father. It was glorious, and Anya genuinely felt sorry for the whole world for missing out on it.
The lunch rush was coming in, and a lesser woman might have been completely lost, but Anya was no lesser woman. Slipping between a few people, she crept behind a certain head of black hair, a boy looking this way and that expectantly…
"Damian," she whispered about two inches behind his ear.
It was remarkable, how it was possible to scream mentally. Practically loud enough to give her a headache, yet somehow Damian turned that into a quiet, calm "Anya, don't do that." His cheeks were on fire, though.
"Do what?"
"You know what!"
"I do?"
Damian sighed. "Come on, the cafe's gonna be full."
"No, stop." Anya said, putting on her bad-acting voice on, "I can't keep up."
"Anya…" His cheeks were already reddening…
"I think I need to hold your hand."
Beautiful.
(Lunch was actually pretty good. Damian's restaurant recommendations were half genuinely good and half weird artsy cuisine his rich friends talked about. Did Anya purposefully schedule their dates to avoid haute cuisine? Absolutely.)
After lunch, there was more paperwork to be done and the general mess of a new case coming in, bagged evidence floating in piecemeal and photographs being developed. There was enough hustle and bustle that Anya could almost feel a headache coming on… when she picked up a familiar mind in the distance.
When they came inside, it was like a wave of silence spread throughout the entire building, radiating from the front door. It felt like the only sound people could hear- or bothered to hear- was the sound of boots stomping on the ground. Up a stairwell, to the detective's wing of the building…
There was incredible silence, remarkable silence.
"Uncle Yuri!" Several people choked, but Anya was busy hugging her uncle.
"Anya." He smiled, and there was genuine compassion there. He was slow to warm up to her, but he could see how motherly love flattered Yor… if loving Anya made Mama so happy, then Yuri couldn't be opposed to it. In fact, he should probably be following his sister's example.
"Did you come here to see me?"
"I'm afraid not. Your mother didn't even tell me about your internship."
"Guess she forgot." Anya grinned.
"Like how she forgot to tell me she was married…" Yuri grumbled. Well, some things didn't change. Yuri shook his head. "See you Friday?"
"Friday!"
He gave her a pat on the head and walked off to talk to the detectives- seemed like the SSS was taking over one of their cases… Anya figured they should have been relieved. Hey, less work. However, the prevailing emotion seemed to be fear.
Well, it was Yuri.
Work, she learned, was pretty lame. Well, she already knew this from working from Scruffy, but this job didn't even have the benefits of people-watching and idle conversation. Maybe she should have picked a job where the majority of people she met weren't the victims or perpetrators of horrific crimes…
But she could really help people here. There are cases she could solve that no one else could, people who would be completely helpless otherwise. She really wanted to do it… even if the entry-level stuff made her want to throw up her hands and quit.
The afternoon shift wasn't that much longer than the morning one, but somehow it felt like an entire eternity between Yuri confiscating the evidence and the end of the workday. How was it so long? Well, all she had to suffer through after the day was over was the train ride home, and then it was dinner and peanuts and old reruns with the family. That sounded pretty great right about now.