Work Text:
The P-O box was empty, more often than not. Other than the occasional letter from Morcant, few people ever bothered to send letters or packages anymore. The organization set up anonymous email addresses for all of its agents; there was no need for letters anymore.
And while a hundred years ago, knowing of someone else's location was a helpful thing for relays or information, nowadays it was more of a risk than it was worth. That's why every agent was also provided with a P-O box nearby to receive anything they'd need.
All of this meant Abolish only really checked the box once per month. Morcant normally timed his letters to arrive at the start of the month, so remembering to check it was easy enough.
This time, though, in addition to Morcant's monthly letter, there was another envelope waiting for him in the post box. It was small, squarish, and bright white; the flap was held close by a stamped red seal.
Huh.
The mystery envelope itched at Abolish's brain on the drive back home. Without having taken the time to check out the seal, there was no telling who it could've been from. Morcant sealed his letters with green, so there was no way it could've been him. Other vampires who were still fond of the ancient ways sometimes sent sealed letters, but they were more formal than this and of regular formatting, not the almost-square of this one.
Shelby, Scott and drift would rather text him than go through the trouble and the wait of sending a letter. Abolish never answered them. He wasn't even sure how they go this number. Sometimes he wished he'd just change number, just so they would leave him alone.
The first order of business after getting home was finding out who that letter was from. It felt heavy, too. Not a whole lot, but more than normal paper would weigh. He could feel something moving within it. Two different things, small objects.
Finally flipping the letter around, Abolish scanned the address, the small pinch of worry fading when he saw the neat penmanship, ink that had been no doubt applied with an authentic feather quill.
The wax seal was, indeed, stamped with the Goldsmith's crest.
Shelby had sent him a letter. Weird.
The torn envelope revealed a letter and two enamel pins. One was of a dragon with a flag wrapped around it, greyscale stripes getting lighter as they reached a green stripe in the middle. The other was of a sword, also wrapped in a flag, this one varying colour from orange on top to blue at the bottom.
He had no idea what any of these colours meant.
The letter, in that regard, wasn't very informative either. It read:
"Hey Abolish! June is coming up and I wanted to do a little something for all of my friends :D Please tell me if these flags aren't accurate, but you've not given me much to work with here. I'll send you new ones if they don't fit, don't worry about it!
Happy pride,
Shelby <3"
So these were... pride flags? For identities of varying gender and sexuality expression, he assumed.
Abolish had never given much thought to those things. It wasn't well seen to think or talk about those too much when growing up, so he hadn't. As time passed and the world slowly became more open to sexual variety, Abolish had watched from the sidelines, happy for his friends and colleagues who could finally live and peace, but not all that bothered by it himself.
Unlearning the prevalent ideas of homophobia and sexism from the time he was born was the most thought he'd ever put into any of this. He had never felt concerned by it himself.
These were interesting, though. Abolish never had that good of a knack for introspection. Shelby, on the other hand, tended to be quite perceptive, as long as they didn't put their blinders on. Maybe this could teach him a thing or two about himself, even if the flags wound up not being so accurate.
Settling into the couch, computer on his lap, Abolish set out to find the meaning of these pins. Searching for a flag by only its colours was hell. He wound up looking up a few lists instead, trying to find at least the name of the identities attached to the flags.
As it turned out, the flags Shelby had given were quite niche ones. It didn't take long to find them, by any means, but a fair few lists just didn't have them; especially the orange and blue one.
The green one was meant for agender folks. The definition was fascinating: an agender person was someone who didn't see themselves as part of the gender binary at all, or any other system of gender assignment. Completely removed from it, identifying as neither man nor woman or anything else, not even in part.
It was... interesting to think about. He had never cared much to think about his own gender.
The other flag, which he found out was nicknamed the sunset flag, was meant for people who didn't experience both romantic and sexual attraction.
That one hit home.
Abolish had never had a crush. Never had he understood the woes of his teenage friends smitten to another or the reason so many nowadays used dating apps to find a lover. His own lack of romanticism had never bothered him; romantic love and union with a partner seemed like such annoying things to deal with he had never questioned why he didn't want any part of it.
Other than a quiet resentment of people who acted like romance was the ultimate goal in life, and that not finding love was a personal failure — Abolish had spent 200 years living without and was perfectly fine, after all, no part of his life had ever been affected by it.
Maybe it was why he'd never really thought about it until now.
He knew this thing about him wasn't the norm. He hadn't cared much, because there were a lot of other things about him that weren't normal. But knowing that other people felt this way, putting a name onto the experience, it was... nice. He wasn't expecting that.
This flag and identity specifically were also nice. It made no distinction between the two types of attraction, which he didn't really care to go into too much detail about regardless. He had never wanted a relationship or cared about anything it could bring, including sex. That was enough for him.
Turning back his attention to the other flag, the gender flag, Abolish spun the pin in his hand, unsure of what to think about it.
His experience with gender had been even less of an anomaly than with attraction. He had been born a boy, grew up to be a man. Once again, never putting much thought into it. There was no reason to; he liked his body as it was. No need to think too deeply about his relationship with it when it had never felt wrong.
He browsed the other possible gender identities instead, trying to make up a mind about what else there was. By the time dinner rolled around, he had gained an immense amount of knowledge on all of the declinations gender expression could take, even skimming over studies and articles published in renowned psych magazines. He still couldn't quite make up his mind.
It didn't quite matter. Reading up on all forms of genders and expressions wasn't all he had to do today.
A thought kept bugging Abolish throughout the rest of his day. He couldn't quite tell what, didn't care to take the time to sit with it proper; there were things to do, business to attend. Namely, he had been put on watch of a vampire who'd just turned someone, making sure they took good care of their fledgeling and didn't kill or turn someone else in the meantime.
The nagging thought was simply discarded, or at least pushed away, like he had done for decades at this point.
When night came, Abolish lay in bed, unable to push it far enough away to stop plaguing him.
While he didn't strictly need to sleep, or at least didn't need it as much or as often as he used to, Abolish still enjoyed the routine. Instead of sleeping the full eight hours every few days, like he did at first, he had come to settle into a routine of about three to four hours of sleep per night. It made for a much more consistent routine.
That night, much of those three hours was spent thinking. The nagging thought belonged, in fact, to the dragon holding that green flag between its claws.
There was a void that appeared whenever Abolish heard himself described as a man. It was nothing he'd ever cared enough about to unwrap; but now, with a name to hold, it had become unavoidable.
Nothing was wrong with his body, so to speak. He had always been comfortable in the skin and flesh he had been given at birth. There had never been a moment when he'd looked at the mirror and didn't see exactly what he'd expected to see: himself.
But all of the 'boy's and 'sir's and 'mister's had always been devoid of meaning when addressed to him. He had had his fair share of being mistaken for a woman a while back when he'd grown his hair longer; it had never bothered him. At least, not as much as any other man in his life, who all would've made a scene about it.
This... thing, this lack of any attachment to societal indicators of gender. It put a name and a handy little one-sentence blurb to something he'd never known quite how to explain, even to himself.
Abolish got up with the sunrise, a newfound feeling having settled into his bones. The void, the emptiness which he'd grown accustomed to over the decades had faded, just a bit. He couldn't quite tell what had taken its place, but he felt a little bit more whole.
Shelby was going to the park for a walk when she found a letter at her doorstep. It was a small, squarish envelope, the previous wax seal scraped off and replaced with a bright pink one, stamped with the initials A.R.
The sunny morning's walk all but forgotten, they sat down on the couch, excitedly but carefully breaking the seal. They wanted to keep it forever. Pink was a special occasion, too, praise and congratulations; he had to have gone out of his way just to get some. She had a feeling she already knew what would be written inside.
There was a single picture inside the envelope. A close-up of a hoodie she'd come to know, the one she'd mended for him so many times it couldn't possibly still have the base material showing through the patches and embellishments. On the lapel were two pride enamel pins: one a dragon, one a sword.
On the back of the polaroid, sharpie arranged in a strict, neat writing, were two words:
"Thank you."