Steps Singles - The One Shots

Heartbeat (Part 1)

Officially I wanted to name this one 'Only a Heartbeat Away', but singles... so it has to be called Heartbeat.
Hello and welcome to another fic set in World War 2, though this one is my other special interest of that time, Bletchley Park (or the Home of the Codebreakers).
In this one they're all in their late teens/early 20s and working somewhere within the works of the Park.

Lisa:
I sighed as I clipped the locket's chain around my neck, tucking it under my blouse and pressing it against my chest. The little bit of his hair inside wasn't close to comparable to him being here, but at least it was a reminder of the man I loved. As long as I had the locket I felt he was close by, even though the last I knew he'd been the other side of the continent. I hadn't heard from him in two months and, although I really couldn't be given everything that was going on around us, I was worried maybe he wasn't going to come back. Maybe our goodbye kiss on the train platform before his deployment was going to end up being our last. That I'd be a war widow before I'd even managed to marry. But I couldn't worry about that today. I looked round my new rooms and smiled at the picture of mama and father, knowing how proud I'd make them. They knew I was coming here to complete an important job, but I hadn't been able to tell them anything more than that. To be fair I didn't know much more than that yet, except for the fact I was sworn to secrecy about my future work here and that I'd be here for quite a while. I picked up my key and my bag and headed out ready for my first day.
As I left I smiled at the trio from the house next door as I stepped into the early spring sunshine, two young men and a girl, who were also leaving (presumably to head to the same place as me) and the girl smiled back at me. None of them looked to be much older than I was but I was still too scared to go and say hello. So I walked alone.

I couldn't help but marvel at the scale of the place when I arrived, for something so secret that I couldn't even tell my parents what I was doing it was quite a big site, filled with large sheds and a massive red bricked mansion house. If it wasn't for all the trees around the site, which I suppose were there for the purpose of hiding it, it would have been obvious there was something important happening here. I headed towards the mansion, remembering being told when I'd been asked to move here for the job that I'd need to go there to be allocated my job. I headed in, following the sign to the new recruit offices, and eventually stumbled across a desk staffed by a woman probably only a little older than me.
"Good morning, is this your first day?" She asked.
I nodded.
"What's your name then?" She was very soft about her questions and it made me feel more comfortable.
"Lisa." She stared at me expectantly until I realised. "Lisa Michelle Scott-Lee."
She nodded and flicked through a pile of papers, mumbling as she did. "Piper, Roberts, ah! Scott-Lee here we are. Ooh lucky you. Martha, yours I believe?"
Another woman, presumably Martha, stopped rummaging through paperwork and came over to read the paper. She nodded. "Come with me Lisa I'll show you round." She said.
I nodded and followed after her, feeling somewhat relieved that I was going to get some degree of a tour of the place. As I was shown round the mess of buildings I realised this wasn't a conventional tour, Maria told me what a few places were called (most of them just being Hut number-something) as we walked, but many of the building were as if to her they didn't exist. It felt slightly eerie.
"Alright so you're working in Hut 3, and it's a lovely team of girls who work in there with us. It's not strictly a hut anymore, somewhat spilling into lots of others but it's still called Hut 3." Maria explained to me quietly, pointing to a building ahead of us on the left side of the path.
"But what about the other buildings?" I asked.
"I don't entirely know, we don't need to and aren't suppose to - you know in case the Germans find us." Maria explained. She glanced round and dropped her voice to a whisper. "But just about anything to do with decryption and passing on of messages."
Sighing I realised that was as much as I was going to get, so dropped the subject. "And what's my job?"
Maria let us in and shut the door before answering. "You'll be helping translating and making sense of messages. Hut 6, the one next to ours, decrypt them for us."