Truth Be Told - Robin

Robin lays out the required gear on the locker room table, checking all of it before the field training class begins. All around him, his classmates are doing the same thing. No one is paying any attention to him, which is a good thing.
He’s done pretty well so far. Aside from the cereal incident (he checks the boxes for iron content now if he absolutely has to eat cold cereal in the cafeteria) and the bloody nose O’Connor gave him in training last week (He was able to glamour the color of it fast enough but it almost got him sent to the nurses’ station anyway) he’s more or less slid through his first few weeks at the Silver Blade academy with relative ease. No one knows he’s fae, and he’s getting better at keeping it that way. Once he joins a field team, he’ll be good at this.
He ignores the little voice that tells him statistically he can expect to experience a major injury in his first year on the job, the kind that will unequivocally land him in the infirmary and get him outed. Maybe by then he’ll have found and killed the vamp who took his dad, and this will all be over.
An even crueller little voice asks him what he’ll do if he finds his father at the end of all this. If he’s been turned, like everyone seems to believe…will I be able to stake him?
He honestly can’t answer that. And right now he doesn’t need the distraction. He can’t afford to get hurt in training, nothing that will draw blood. The field ops instructor has praised his quick thinking and his ability to dodge any attack someone aims at him. The woman doesn’t know that Robin is as desperate to stay safe as he would be in an actual fight. The other kids here, the humans, they can afford to make mistakes and learn from them. Robin can’t.
But today, when he and his classmates step out into the training room, Robin can’t see Wheeler, with her red-grey braid and her scarred cheek. Instead, the person standing in the instructor’s area is a tall man with black hair and a black jacket.
Beside him is the Academy (and the agency)’s director, Marcus Jamison. Silver Blade, as a small agency, rolls the administration of its field work and its training into one role.
“Class, there’s been a change of instructor. Linsey Wheeler has been transferred to active duty with a field team, and Garret Roman is your new instructor for the rest of this class.”
It’s not an unusual situation. Two other teachers were recalled to active work and replaced with field hunters who have been put on injury leave. Jefferson, Robin’s new vampire biology teacher, has his right arm in a sling and his left-handed chalkboard writing is atrocious, and in tactics class, Halloway walks with a heavy limp.
But Robin can’t see anything physically wrong with this new instructor. Still, Silver Blade is known for shunting its problems off to the Academy, or at least that’s what Robin’s heard. Wheeler herself was waiting until she passed a psych eval after a hunt gone bad. Robin wonders if this guy’s in the same boat.
But there’s nothing in his eyes like he saw in Wheeler’s. Like he saw in Mom’s. Or sees sometimes in his own in the mirror. There’s no buried pain. Just a sort of steely, cold determination. Robin can’t imagine this guy being put at the Academy instead of in the field.
“Hope Wheeler ran a tight ship because I won’t cut any of you any slack,” Roman says sharply. “Discipline can save your life in the field. And you’re gonna learn it here. There will be no less than a hundred percent given in this room, and if that’s not what you’re used to, get it through your head that it will be now.”
He’s abrasive, and it makes Robin feel tense. He’s uncomfortable with people who act like this. People like this are dangerous. But Robin’s good at giving whatever he can already. He’ll be okay. He’ll keep himself invisible just like he was before. It’ll be alright.
Director Jamison leaves, and Roman picks up the clipboard that holds the class roster, reading down the line. When he reaches Kennedy Greene, who’s not in the room but also doesn’t have a notation next to her name explaining she’s out for injury, he scoffs.
“If Ms. Greene thinks she’s going to be given a free pass on skipping class because of who her mother is, she has another thing coming. If any of you know her, please inform her that she will be receiving a recorded demerit and has effectively used her one excused absence in this class.”
Robin can feel the tension in the room. Everyone is wondering who’s going to be the next target of the man’s ire and glad for now it’s not them. Roman continues working his way down the list, scanning the room as if he’s daring anyone else to be missing.
“Robinson, Angus.” There’s a small giggle of laughter through the assembled class, despite the fact that they’ve heard his name every day for weeks.
He wishes he hadn’t had to give over his name, but the fae prohibition against lying extends to the written word. When the form required his first name, he had to give it. And it’s not the oddest name in this business anyway. Hunters have a fondness for the anachronistic.
As long as no one knows he’s fae, it doesn’t matter. They can’t command him in Seelie. He just has to deal with the discomfort of hearing his true name in someone else’s mouth.
“Was your father a hunter?”
Robin nods, feeling a little sick. Roman doesn’t seem overly fond of kids with family legacies. He hopes he’s not about to get singled out like Greene. I don’t think I can slack because of a parent who had the same job. I’m not entitled. But he’s not sure he could convince Roman, and worse, he’s afraid of being someone the man regularly keeps an eye on to make sure of that.
“Adam Robinson’s kid, huh?” The man glances over Robin with a quick but skeptical stare, and something like curiosity. Does he know something about what happened to my dad?
“Yes.” Robin tries not to sound as eager for any scrap of information as he feels. He has to know. This guy came from the same agency as his dad, the black wolf design that was recently picked out of the leather left behind an unfaded and still clearly legible mark.
For a moment he wonders why the embroidery was removed rather than simply struck through with a line of red thread, there’s something skittering around the back of his mind, something Dad said once.
About the time he remembers that’s the mark of a hunter who left an agency in disgrace, barred from wearing their emblems ever again, the man speaks up.
“Didn’t he marry some Seelie girl?”
It feels like the temperature in the room drops twenty degrees. Robin can’t breathe, he can’t think, and everything is slowly tilting. No, no, no, no.
“Doesn’t say you’re fae on the record,” Roman is still talking like he hasn’t just upended Robin’s whole world, his whole life. He can feel the stares. “You wouldn’t be trying to pass yourself off as human, now would you?”
Robin knows if he opens his mouth he’s doomed. But his silence is just as damning.
“You’re coming with me, fae.” A hand slams down on his shoulder. “The rest of you, hit the physical training room. I have a problem to take up with the Director.”
He turns to Robin. “Let’s go.”
Five minutes later, they’re standing in Director Jamison’s office. He’s still at the Academy, probably finalizing some of the paperwork for the personnel change, and looks upset at being disturbed. But when Roman pushes Robin in front of him and snaps, “this one’s been hiding the fact that he’s Seelie”, the man takes notice.
He looks from the class roster to Robin, who’s struggling not to stare at the floor.
“Angus. Are you in any way eligible to be classified as fae?”
Robin swallows. He can’t get around that question. If they’d said ‘Are you fae’ he could have honestly said no, because he’s not fully fae. He’s part human. But this…humans have learned the fae’s loopholes and systematically closed them.
He takes a deep breath and wonders how it can feel so empty and numb to watch your whole life collapse around you.
“Yes. I’m fae.”