Time is Often Lost

71-Hour Ahmed: And you. Apologies, it's inappropriate of me to partake in such informal conversation in front of your detectives.

Vimes: It's all right. I am equally to blame.

Hunger games fans: *neatly fits all of their books into their handbag*

Harry Potter fans: *just about fits them all in their arms, might drop a few*

Percy Jackson fans: *Carries all of their books in two reinforced plastic bags, will definitely have a sore arms*

CH. 1

It started out so simple. Just a letter on my desk, pink envelope, stickers, there were even hearts over the i’s for pete’s sake. How was I supposed to know some 12 year old little girl in Minnesota was wanting to meet him? She’s not even the first one, more and more kids are asking to see these guys. The other interns have even started passing their letters around since they don’t get fulfilled. It’s kind of become an in house joke between us, “which one has a secret fan this week,” and so on.

But this one? This one was different. This girl was dying, like Stage 6 last ditch efforts kind of dying. Her parents could barely afford to feed themselves let alone deal with all of her medical needs. She didn’t even want to meet the guy, just see if he can “magically” help her family. Now I don’t condone theft or whatever this guy would do to “help” her, but I could at least see if we can send a letter from her “hero”.

So I did it, didn’t even give the other guys a chance to talk me out of it.

I wish they did.

At first he laughed at me, started making jokes about why he hired me in the first place. Better than what I thought he would do, though not by much. Then he read the letter and everything became still. A phone call was placed to his boss, the she called her boss, and so on until all of upper management was sitting in a conference room. For some reason I was still there, probably forgotten about in all the confusion.

“How many? Just how many kids have been asking about these...people.” The big boss finally spoke, his eyes resting on each person in the room before finally focusing on me. The words felt stuck in my throat and no one else knew the answer. “A-about 12 or so a month? That’s not even counting the number of letters that don’t even make it to us. Normally we throw them awa-” “You do what?” The words that had begun flowing like a river stopped in their tracks. What do you say to that? We have an official policy of never completely ignoring a request but these? How could we even begin to fulfill the misguided wishes. “We got rid of them. They never would have gotten granted, these guys are most often thieves but some of them have tried to destroy the whole planet before! How we even hope to start granting these kids wishes.” The heavy silence that was already in the air took on a distinctly denser note. No one wanted to say it, or even look at me in all reality. Only him, god I’m terrible at names but even I knew him. A retired hero and here I am asking if I can contact someone he would have happily thrown in jail just to make one little girl smile.

“What’s different?” “Sir?” “What is so different about this girl?” Oh right, that would be an important question, and of course now everyone has decided that the table is not the most interesting thing to look at during this exact moment. “Um, well sir, I know who this guy is, or at least his reputation. He operates in my hometown and tried to rob a bank my sister was using at the time. Standard stuff, but you see, he never did anything to the hostages. Just told them to sit quiet and not do anything heroic. Well she tried and he just shut her in a room, mumbling something about not hurting when he doesn’t need to. I-I think that this one might actually be kind of good underneath. At least enough to not hurt the kid more than she already is.” The words were coming out smaller and smaller by the end. I was able to get across my meaning and it was as if a rubber band snapped and everyone jumped up at once. Some of them said to do it, some villains have morals and so on, while others would hear nothing of it, these were bad guys what good could they do. All the while I just sat there trying to memorize the markings on the table while the boss just stared at me, not moving and ignoring the commotion.

This went on for a good ten minutes before they started to settle, something about your boss slowly laughing has a way of ending a fight. Those who stood to make themselves feel like they were being heard better slowly sat back down and gaped at the man.

“I like it!” The table is far less interesting. “You what?” My manager almost jumped back out of his chair. “This is Harry Schnee! He freezes everything he touches! How could you possibly send someone to talk to THAT THING!” He just smiled and turned to me, “I know more about villains than any of you here and you’re not completely wrong, there are some good ones out there. They are hard to find but I need someone to make certain this guy is legit, and I want you to do it.” “M-m-m-me? Why me? I’m just an intern, I figure out what department gets what letter and make coffee, that’s it! I don’t even know how to find him!” “You brought this forward, so now you get to deal with it. I won’t take any excuses from you if you can’t do it. Besides, you already said, he’s from your hometown.”