Inamorata

Chapter Thirty-Four - Tender is the Night

Chapter 34. Author's note - the title is a quotation from Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale". For those of you who like poetry, I have included a link on the side of a particularly good reading of it. Also: this story has suffered a drop in popularity recently. So please let me know what you think. The support means the world to me! Finally: sorry for the delay in the release of this chapter. As you will be able to tell, it was a difficult (but important) chapter to write, so it took me a while...

David led Nightingale into a medium-sized room complete with a long table and several chairs. He half-pushed her into a chair across from two men, both of whom were staring at her with wide-eyed, curious expressions.

She sneered to see the way they were looking at her. It was not a lascivious, lecherous look that she was used to from her clients, nor was it the respectful gaze one would give to their equal, but it was something else entirely.

They were staring at her as though she were some exotic animal, something beautiful and foreign but vicious. Something that was being brought out by a handler for their pleasure of viewing.

As she sank down into her chair, her eyes fell on the other occupants of the room. The rest of David's team was sitting with her, each one looking even more unhappy than she felt. Caroline, sitting on her left, was staring down at her hands. In all the time Nightingale watched her, Caroline did not blink even once.

And Nicholas and Pierce were sitting on Nightingale's right, wearing matching expressions of sorrow. The whites of Nicholas's blue eyes were bloodshot and swollen, and Pierce's chocolate-coloured eyes were ringed with red.

Nightingale felt more pity for Pierce than she did for Nicholas, for Pierce was wearing an expression of grief that made him look nearly indistinguishable from Michael. The striking similarity between the brothers made pity well up inside Nightingale till it stabbed at her throat and pricked her eyes.

"Nightingale?" asked David. He tapped her on the shoulder and introduced her to the men before her, who she found out were both government officials and whose names she forgot the moment they were spoken.

"So, let's get started, then," said one of the officials. His smile and his cheerful tone fell discordantly over the sorrow and grief in the room.

At a glare from Nicholas, the official quickly sobered up as he started on the first question for Nightingale.

The debriefing proved to be long and miserable. Immediately, the officials launched into questions that  asked her to detail the raid, with special emphasis on Clarence's death. What little happiness had returned to her from seeing Robin quickly vanished until she was regressed to her previous bitter self with every question.

And she answered every question without a hint of emotion in her voice. She answered everything they asked her in a flat voice with not even an inflection that would betray her unhappiness. She gave all her answers staring straight ahead, focusing on a spot on the wall between the heads of the two officials.

Her apathy began to faded quickly, however, to be replaced with a growing anger, at what was said at the end of the debriefing: 

"You're the perfect candidate for a government agent," said one of the officials sitting across from her. Nightingale looked up as the man went on, staring into Nightingale's eyes, a musing expression on his face. "Multilingual, extremely intelligent, physically capable. You're what we look for."

Nightingale's mouth opened but before she could speak, the second official continued.

"Detective Beckett noted that you're almost" - here the official squinted at a tablet before him, evidently trying to discern something David had recorded - "eerily talented with a gun."