Chapter Text
It began, like many things did, with an accident.
A simple mistake, just the slip of a finger on her keyboard. Nothing particularly threatening or dangerous, merely a few seconds lost in a job that often gave Georgia more than plenty to spare. Public Records were never the most exciting things at the best of times. Even after barely escaping Gotterdammerung, files still needed updating, numbers crunching, and data acknowledged.
One wrong input, however…
“What in the hell?”
Her words were soft yet stern, a descriptor that fit Georgia like a well-worn glove. Petite, plump, and with bright eyes once called 'bottled sunlight', the flowery dresses she'd been infamous for in the office belied a harsh steel that next grated at her voice.
“Coincidence. It has to be, can't be- no.”
Fingers tapping out a concerto, computer keys moving faster than they had in many months, she worked. Rapid mechanical clicking echoed throughout the darkness, Georgia illuminated only by the all encompassing gaze of her computer screen. She liked it that way. Preferred it, even.
It had been three months since that Thursday. People grew accustomed to things. There was an itch below her dress that was a further testament to the notion. The thinning trail of cards surrounding her desk, another.
It was five minutes. Then ten. Then thirty. Eventually, a whole hour eclipsed, and only the siren song of pain medication drew Georgia away from the desktop, a grim mood leaving her to limp through pitch blackness, mind elsewhere.
Two pills and a slug of now-cold coffee later, she returned to her work. It wasn't officially, work that is, more a distraction. Yet allowances could be made.
They always could.
She wasn't a detective, was the problem. Things never quite added up in the same way for Georgia, not so neat and tidy. She loved reading about them, watching actors on television and film as gears turned away in their faux minds, fake people feeling things not real yet mired in almost-true blood and horror. But it had never been real for her, except now, and she'd found herself severely under qualified.
“Come on, come on!” she muttered, gripping her mouse so hard its plastic squeaked.
The data was complex. Not so much in actual difficulty, but sheer size. She was searching for a needle in an agricultural feed warehouse and desperately needed directions. It hadn't been her department's job to salvage these particular records, nor render them searchable, but she almost wished it had been so she'd know whom to verbally eviscerate if they ever crossed paths again.
Brute force led to her victory though, that and a bloody minded stubbornness she'd inherited from her mother. Two more pills had passed, however, and the sacrifice of time had cost her the start of a nauseating migraine. Yet, it was relatively insignificant, a mere flesh wound in her melee.
Except it wasn't a victory.
Because staring back at her, Georgia Richter, was a birth certificate she'd never known existed.