✔ᵉⁿᵍˡⁱˢʰ War Dogs [The Punisher | Frank Castle]✔

─⌖❖ 04

There was only one thing left to do for today. One last thing, one little thing and after that, Page could finally go home. Home where she will surely sit down at the laptop to find something. Something, be it ever so small. At some point, something was sure to be missed. Something that at first glance seemed unimportant or looked like nothing.

In the doorway of the gymnasium that belonged to the university's Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Page stopped; barely noticeably raised her hand and wrestled a weak smile of greeting. Every week, same time, same people. The only routine she currently possessed in life. An unintentional routine it had been, which she had come to welcome warmly.

"Are only a few minutes late," Page chortled as she saw out of the corner of her eye a man dressed in black stop in the hallway and lean back against the wall, "Twenty minutes."

"Good to know." the man replied grumbling, taking hood off his head but not his cap.

"Page," Ruben called across the hall, beckoning for Page to finally join him and the others where she should take a seat, "We have plenty of seats left."

But Page merely shook her head, put her hands in her pocket, and leaned her right shoulder against the frame. After today, she felt even less like talking than she already did. Listening was more one of her strengths than anything else.

─⌖❖⌖─

The remaining minutes passed with Page simply leaning against the door and listening to the others in her group. One of them, Torben, a man in his mid-thirties, opened his mouth for the first time today and told his story. For the first time. He joined weeks ago, came to the meetings every week, and except for his name and age, she knew nothing else about him. After four weeks, he opened up to people he knew less than fleetingly.

"They're ordinary people, with ordinary jobs, and not like me, which provokes, conjures up, or where you know in advance that certain things are going to happen to you," Page gasped, talking more to herself than addressing the cap wearer because she had almost forgotten about him.

"And you don't have a regular job?", Page heard the voice near her, turning her head to the side and looking down the hall where she gave the man in black a questioning look, "You said with a regular job and not like mine."

"That blonde woman with the white blouse there. Um... she's a nanny," Page began, but paused and looked up at the ceiling before continuing, "Every morning she took two kids to school and on the way there, they stopped at the bakery. One day on their way, there was a shooting and she and one of the two children were hit. The child died on the spot. An ordinary nanny gets into a shootout. With officers of the police, CIA or FBI, the likelihood is enormously high that one day, that's exactly what's going to happen to you, and everybody who does that job knows that ahead of time and you're prepared for it, but a nanny, yet not."

Wrong time, wrong place.