Chapter 7 .:Love:.

.:Love:.
Identity: Kestrel Falconer

I was seventeen when I first met Rook.
Five months prior to this meeting, my father had unexpectedly opened the door of my bedroom and announced, "We're getting you a job." Communication between me and my father was rare, nearly unheard of, to the degree that I barely felt we were related in the least; I was simply someone who had come to live with him from the moment of my birth, and even after all this time we had never gotten to know each other.
My response to his sudden, unexpected insistancy was, at first, immediate confusion. I never talked to my father about my future, nor my present; I supposed I had it all figured out, as you expect you do at that age. In my head I had the necessary steps planned out for the next ten years of my life. But now my father had interrupted them, rather suddenly. Immediately after the announcement he closed the door of my room and left me to sit there thinking about it.
What I realized at that time was that my life was always predominantly, insidiously ruled by my father. He chose my schools. He chose my classes. He had even chosen my future college. He did not do this directly; it was a slow, coercing process that approached me and silently took hold without me really realizing it.
Even discovering, acknowledging this, I knew that I couldn't refuse him.
I was silent about the matter. If it was what he wanted, he was going to get it done. We never spoke about it. This was normal for us.
I had finished high school early, which was, I realized again, because of my father. At his insistence the school allowed me classes that were traditionally above my grade level, but, as my father knew, I grasped them immediately and eventually graduated just after I turned seventeen.
And now I realized that this was the reason. He wanted to get me a job.
Why?
It was a strange question at the time. Of course, now I am fully aware of what his intentions were.
One way or the other, he made it happen without ever once conversing with me. He was good at doing things that way. All I know is that I arrived at home one evening to find him waiting for me. This was about a month after his sudden announcement from my doorway.
We stood there, looking at each other but simultaneously avoiding the other's gaze. It was him who broke the silence. "Kestrel."
I looked up but not at him. I was afraid of looking him directly in the eye. I didn't say anything.
He blinked his dark, acute eyes at me, deliberately, before he slowly extended his arm and handed me a brochure. Thick, for a handout. I took it, of course, not knowing what else to do, thankful for something to look at. I found myself staring down at the cover as my father continued. "Starting next week you have a position as an assistant working at the Animal Testing Program." He stood up, glancing at me. "The interview is in two days."
And then he walked away, leaving me looking at the paper in my hands.
The interview was not really a complete interview. No resume was required. All they wanted to know was of my knowledge and skills, particularly biochemistry. They all seemed to know my father. At the end of the interview, they shook my hand--there were three of them there--and told me, "Your orientation starts on Monday."
The orientation was a combination of a tour--the facility was huge, far larger than any building I had legitimately been in--and a long, continuous explanation of the Program, nearly every room an example for some sort of obscure experiment. I learned that the A.T.P, as they preferred to call themselves, was not exclusively for animal testing; there were all sorts of procedures going on--chemistry, physics, microbiology. Almost anything scientific. Although, yes, originally the Program was created primarily for the breeding and improvement of show animals, it had now extended far beyond that, explained my orientator.
In all, the orientation lasted a week.
Finally, one day I walked in and they informed me that I had been assigned as a research assistant in the Biochemistry/Genetic Engineering lab. I was given a dark lab coat (why not white, the color we all think of to be the orthodox standard for lab technicians? I've always wondered) and led up several flights of stairs. I was silent, feeling detached, controlled, confused. Why was my father doing this? --That was the constant question on my mind. It made it difficult to take everything in.
At the top of a flight of stairs, a door was opened and we stepped into a cold room with white walls, as most of the rooms had. I was gazing at the floor, observing the rest of the space only with my peripheral vision.
And then, completely unexpectedly, a pair of navy blue Converse sneakers came into view, sloppily tied and rugged. Their apparent insterility took me by surprise, broke me out of my trance as I wondered what place someone who wore Converse sneakers to work could have in a place like this. I raised my eyes to the owner of the shoes as I was simultaneously introduced. "Ms. Falconer, this is Rook Shaw. You will be working as his personal assistant."
He reached out his hand for me to shake and I took it, out of my trance but falling into another daze. His handshake was warm, soft, firm. "Nice to meet you. Falconer, was it?" He looked at me, and immediately I was captured by those silver eyes. Narrow and pale, certainly cognizant and well-knowing. They were partly obscured by unruly strands of his dark hair, which was straight, casually unkempt, short but not too short. He wore the same dark coat as me but beneath, corduroys and a white shirt partially unbuttoned to reveal a blue t-shirt underneath.
"Yes. Kestrel Falconer." I responded, blinking, transfixed and intrigued at his subtly suave casualness in a place like this. Our hands released, and he gave me a small smile. Already I could see in him such a confidence yet practicality, these traits perfectly in balance.
That's what it started out as. An admiration. Despite his rugged causality, he was apparently a well-respected and effective biochemist around the area. He was also significantly younger, like me, I learned. Only three years my senior, barely twenty years old and already in a position like this. It made me respect him even more.
We knew how to communicate with each other immediately. This was something I had never been able to do with anyone; always too timid, always to cautious, always feeling the conversation was too esoteric for me to take part in. But Rook and I knew each other's elusive language. He spoke of things I knew and I understood him when he spoke. I was so grateful to have someone telling me what to do, and I could tell that he loved having someone so accedingly at his command. He always called me Falconer. "Falconer, would you hand me that pipette?" "Falconer, please locate the position of those documents that Dr. Portier brought over earlier." "Falconer, I need more information concerning this pathogen. Could you follow up on that?"
And I always responded subserviently, "Yes, sir." Sometimes I would catch a small smile on his face after I answered this way, but he never said anything about it. I think he liked being spoken to this way. The more time we spent together, I learned that he had three older brothers, so he had become used to perpetually being the forced underdog of any group. However, he was the only member of his family to go to college and graduate high school. At home his precocity had gone to waste, unacknowledged in the pool of children. He told me once that he always preferred school because it was the only place where he was actually listened to. Once Rook left home and started college at the age of sixteen, he was finally able to thrive. A year ago, he graduated and started working here and quickly rose in the ranks, finally recognized.
I understood what he meant by this, too. I was accustomed to not being heard. Initially, the two of us bonded through mutual lack of family ties. His parents were too caught up in their lives and the rest of his siblings to deal with him, and then there was my father subtly controlling my life like a puppet-master.
Out of this understanding and compatibility bloomed a latent and unrequited love. I felt it before I even thought of it that way. The admiration became adoration, the acquiescence became an eagerness to please. I wanted him to notice me. Before I knew it, I realized that I wanted him to be mine. I felt guilty about it, but smothering that feeling was the complete avarice that inevitably accompanies an unrequited love like this.
After years of practice, I was good at concealing my feelings. I continued being his accommodating assistant, grateful just for the opportunity to be near him as often as I was. If he noticed anything, I had no idea.
It went on like this for years, until I began to think of it as part of my job. It wasn't something new and exquisite anymore, it became a part of my life, working with him, loving him, it was all on par. I had already long ago given up hope that he would notice me in the way I noticed him. Sometimes, rarely, he would give something in such a way that it would give me the slightest sliver of hope; once, on a lunch break, as I was retying my hair I let it fall down over my shoulders for a moment as I arranged the hair tie. Rook had glanced over and remarked, in his distinctly casual way, "Your hair looks nice that way. You should leave it down more often." I was struck and didn't how to answer. But out of a combination of shock and a hopeless desire for him to say something else, I left my hair down for the rest of the day.
Things like that were all I got out of him for seven years. I worked right by his side the entire time and even with our ostensible connection, I felt ignored. But I stayed quiet about the whole thing, as was my nature.
I waited for him. I would have waited for him forever, for the rest of my life.
At first I had underestimated exactly how much I loved him.
But all the waiting paid off.
It was him who came to me.
I thought that was all I ever wanted in life.
(I was wrong.)

Author's Note

ANY suggestions would be really helpful for this one. I'm thinking about redoing it completely.