N would have liked to ask himself why he ever thought going to the funeral was a good idea, but that would've been a lie. He knew full well it was a terrible idea, but he talked himself into it anyway because he was a glutton for punishment. And now he was sitting in an admittedly nice office wasting some nice lady's time after letting himself be talked into another bad idea.
He was supposed to talk to her. He agreed to talk to her. He knew that he should talk to her. But couldn't, because he knew that if he did, he wouldn't stop. The sluice gates would open and seventeen years of daily trauma would come out in a rambling mess. He would be lucky if she didn't get up and sprint screaming from the room within the first couple minutes.
The only option left was the only one that was ever left: bury it. Throw it in the deepest, darkest pit his mind could supply and walk away, knowing it would eventually claw its way back out.
In the meantime, he would sit until he was ready to resume normal function, marinating in the awkward silence that was occasionally broken by the light scratching of the female drone's pen...
"...What are you writing?" N asked when he could no longer contain his curiosity.
"My notes, of course!" Annette answered with a soft smile. "I know it's a cliché, but I find that it's the best way to show that I'm paying attention."
"But I haven't said anything," N said with a confused head tilt.
"When you've been at this as long as I have, you can learn an awful lot from what people don't say."
"You think you've learned something?" N challenged and immediately wished he could shove the words back into his mouth.
This was the same woman who, having never said two words to him beforehand, casually and correctly called him out. She was not one to play mind games with.
"I believe I have."
The surety in her words should have told N all he needed to know. It should have told him to apologize for wasting her time and leave. But for all that he wanted to do just that, the thought of backing down and running away incensed him.
"With all due respect, no one is that good," N said as he casually draped an arm across the back of the chaise lounge and slapped on a smirk that showed just a hint of fang. The picture of smug confidence.
For the first time, Annette's smile slipped. Her gaze hardened, her lips parted in a disappointed sigh, and she proceeded to give N exactly what he had just asked for.
"...You're big on that, aren't you? Respect, I mean. Easy to see why, after spending your whole life giving it, but never getting it. Now you have it, and it's everything you dreamed it would be. But you don't know how to keep it. What you want is at odds with what experience has taught you. Everything in you is screaming that it's wrong, but you have no frame of reference for what's right. All you know is what's been beaten into you over and over and over again. So you use it as a framework.
Pain is penance, so you allow us to hurt you to soothe ourselves. Compassion is weakness, so you acknowledge that we have suffered at your hand, but you have never openly apologized for it. Strength is worth, so you walk around as a symbol of confidence, control and power, to show us you can handle anything. Fear is respect, so you flaunt your capabilities in subtle ways, like moving around the bunker unseen and unheard to sneak up on people at their most vulnerable and act like it's not on purpose. Remarkably nice, supremely confident and casually terrifying: that is the N you want us to know, because that is the N who gets respect."
Annette took no joy in what she had just done; watching N go from false bravado to looking like he was about to implode from shame didn't sit well with her. But she knew it was necessary to let him know that dishonesty and posturing would do him no good. So as he ran from the office too fast for her optics to follow, he did so with the knowledge that she had seen through him entirely.
