Brett hadn't been able to sleep. Her training simulation earlier in the day had gone horribly awry. Being faced with the difficult choice of saving her brother's life, or rescuing a large group of hostages had been a difficult one. And Brett hadn't been able to choose. After watching her brother be tortured, and then killed- even if it was fake- she'd broken down mid training and run away. Simply left. When Brett had arrived home- all she had been able to do, for hours, was cry. It had hit her then, that this was all real. That situation was not outside of the realm of possibility. Though it hadn't been real, watching someone crucio her brother- hearing him scream in agony- it had broken her. Her big brother had always been infallible. She had idolized him, wanted to be him, and had followed in his footsteps- coming to the auror training just as he had done.

That she could even consider sacrificing his life to save innocents felt like the ultimate form of betrayal. But he had signed up for the corps. Sometimes you had to make sacrifices. Sometimes that sacrifice was your own life. Up until that point, Brett hadn't been taking her training seriously. At least, not as seriously as she should have. Goofing off, talking back, having fun... It was like she was still in Hogwarts. Brett had fucked up. Plain and simple. From day one. She'd been caught making out with Dax, talked back to her superiors, and that arrest night wit Zora had gone wrong, too. Because she hadn't paid attention when they were taught how to clear a room- she had found herself with a criminal on her back. If he'd had a wand, Brett could be dead.

So secure in her capabilities, and being over confident to a fault, was taking its toll on her. Brett hated having to pretend to she was awesome. Especially when she knew she was doing so many things wrong. And today- not even being able to finish her training exercise- having to run away- something inside of her had snapped.

Brett had always been strong. It was a part of who she was. And Brett knew that she had the talent and capabilities to be a good auror one day. Her ego had just been in the way. This had certainly deflated it. She was mortified, knowing those observing her training had watched her freak out. They had found her breaking her point- her weakness- and exploited it. She was angry that she had failed, and angry at her brother for taking part in it. He would have known how she would react. It wasn't fair. The other trainees didn't seem to be having such a hard time. Not even Fauna! And really, the idea of Fauna being better at auror training was tough to swallow. Not that she thought poorly of her friend, but Fauna was timid. Not the sort of person you could see catching criminals and kicking ass.

It was nearly four in the morning when Brett climbed out of bed. She'd been laying there, wide awake, for the last ten hours. Thinking. Crying. Freaking out. Hating her life. She was ready to give up and just admit defeat- she wasn't cut out for training. She would never be an auror. Brett pulled on her robes and instead of trying to sneak out of the house, she apparated. Brett found herself on the dark, London street where the entrance to the Ministry of Magic was. She needed to talk to someone. Explain herself. Something. She needed something. A few minutes later, Brett found herself on Level Two. The girl definitely looked worse for wear. Immediately she went in search of someone she could talk to- someone she could, more or less, trust.

Luck was in her favor tonight. Jonas Trevelyan seemed to have the late shift. He was sitting at his desk when Brett approached. Jonas was one of the few aurors in the office that Brett actually liked. She felt like he understood what it was to be a bit of a misfit. And she didn't feel like he was judging her. Brett got the impression from a lot of her superiors that they just sneered down their noses at her. But not Jonas. She stopped when she reached his desk. Brett opened her mouth once- like a fish gasping for air- then closed it. Even talking was hard, and she could feel a lump in her throat rising and tears stinging her eyes. Just the idea of talking to someone about what had happened earlier in the day threatened her composure. Brett turned to grab a chair, then sat down next to him. Looking down at her lap, she spoke quietly to him. "I can't keep doing this," she said. "I just can't."

There was no worse time to be an Auror than at just before four in the morning.  If you were awake, it was not going to be for a positive reason.  And Jonas would have taken any of those reasons -- a late night broom flight gone awry over Muggle London, a gruesome murder scene in the middle of Green Park, an assassination attempt on the new Minister, an impatient summoning from a trouser-less Cameron Rosier, even a last minute desperate rush to finish paperwork before an early morning deadline -- over the real reason that he found himself here tonight, which was to sit and wait in hopes that nothing would happen until the day shift arrived at 8 o'clock sharp, at which point he could finally be relieved of the unendurable, inhuman, torturous burden of unrelenting boredom that had stretched on already for nearly longer than he could feasibly bear.

Tonight, there had been no respite.  He normally stood a good fifty-fifty chance of convincing Adon to waiting around for at least a little of it with him, but his partner had begged off early -- he had to pack before his trip home to Israel that weekend.  Radley and Pratt had both laughed at him outright when he'd hinted.  Raynor simply eyed him.  And so he had been left alone to suffer through nearly six hours of nothing.  No cell phone.  No distractions.  No escape.  Not even anyone to talk to, save for the pair of Hitwizards who were decidedly uninterested in anything even slightly resembling interesting conversation, and who seemed content to simply sit in the office and glower menacingly at the giant map that showed a distressing lack of potentially interesting magical disturbances that evening.

Jonas had migrated back to the Auror office after 1 AM had hit.  One of the Hitwizards had grunted when he'd tiredly told them to let him know if anything happened that he needed to know about; he'd taken it as consent.  Crumpling pieces of parchment into paper balls and tossing them into Radley's cubicle had entertained him for the first thirty minutes, but after that, even that normally enjoyable expression of his natural frustration had gotten a little stale.  Why the hell did Adon have to be so efficient with their paperwork?  He didn't even have reports to try and update!

So he had spent a good forty-five minutes trying to compose Found Poetry with the Witch Weekly article from last February (his favorite was one that had started "Without the solace of a soft warm pair / Tenderness is a cure-all for the hardened man," which he had left prominently displayed in the break room for Adon and Archer to find in the morning).  Then he had tried to nap.  Then he had attempted to review part of the Corpsus Inversus case file again, but trying to force his way through Gringotts bank account numbers at three of the morning was worse than just sitting there blankly.  And so finally, sometime after checking on the Hitwizards at just after 3, he had hit on the idea of recreating a live-action version of his favorite phone game using enchanted balls of paper, which was very probably not what Night Duty as an Auror was supposed to entail, but since there was no one else present in the entire bloody Ministry, it wasn't as though he could simply find Raynor and check.  Absence of managerial figures was practically as good as permission.

The red-headed Auror was engulfed in his work, biting his tongue as he tried to get the enchantments for the sounds and color just right, when the footsteps gave him a few seconds of warning.  Jonas immediately sat bolt upright in his chair, swept the evidence of everything that he'd been working on into his desk drawer, and slammed it brutally shut.  In one smooth motion, he grabbed for the nearest stack of papers, fanning them in front of him as he bent over and attempted to look like he'd spent the past hour diligently working on Aurorly things in a distinctly Ministerial fashion, and not transfiguring enchanted paper balls to tweet and grunt like pigs.

But the new arrival was not one of the grumpy Hitwizards coming to check on him.  It wasn't Adon, in at some ungodly hour for a reason that Jonas would have only been able to classify as "Israeli."  It thankfully wasn't Rosier, which Jonas felt instantly grateful for seeing as how the only time he had encountered his boss at such an early hour, it had been in a decidedly uncomfortable state of undress.  Instead, Brett Abraham of all people stormed into his office, dragged a chair over, and immediately dropped into it with a wail.

It took Jonas a good three seconds to process what had just happened.

"You -- what?" he asked distractedly.  The papers that he'd grabbed for were momentarily forgotten as he blinked at her perplexedly.  "You can't keep doing what?  Coming into the office at four in the morning?"  Forehead creasing, he gave the trainee an obviously concerned -- though slightly wary -- look.  "As far as I know, that isn't a requirement of your position, Abraham.  What, did Auror Pratt start rattling on about coffee duty again?"

Brett narrowed her eyes at Jonas. Was he playing dumb, or did he genuinely have no clue what had happened to her? Brett was certain the entire office must have been buzzing about the fact she had walked out on her training. Her brother had even come by the house, but she'd refused to let anyone in the room. And when anyone had tried magical means- well, she'd fired her own spells right back. Learning to cast wards had been useful in that instance. And in her anger, her spells had been stronger than usual.

"Auror Pratt can get stuffed," she grumped, crossing her arms defensively.

"And don't play stupid. I know that you know what happened to me. Everyone knows." It had been one hell of a week. Getting into it with Fauna. Addie moving in. Then she had messed up the arrest with Zora- getting attacked and being the reason for forceful entry. And the day after that- yesterday- had been her training exercise gone awry. The stress had piled on quickly, and heavier than she was accustomed to. Brett had reached her breaking point.

She sighed, and rubbed her face. "This. All of this. The training. I don't think I'm cut out for it." Brett stopped- swallowed, and leaned forward in the chair. Her head rested in her hands, and her gaze was fixed firmly on the floor. Tears began to silently stream down her cheeks, and she glanced back up at Jonas for a second- long enough for him to see, to realize how tormented she was.

"It's all I've ever wanted," she continued slowly. "Since I was a little girl. But I just... I keep messing up everything. It's too hard. I can't do it. You people... you see real loss. You guys lost people for real. I knew it was fake when-" her voice caught in her throat, and she pulled her feet up into the chair, holding herself. "What if it hadn't been? What if that had been real?"

Jonas opened his mouth, stopped, closed it again, and then pressed it more firmly shut as he regarded the trainee in front of him, his brows becoming progressively more knit as he listened.  'Everyone knows' was undoubtedly an overstatement -- but then, the more personal a misstep or embarrassment was, the more horrifically global it tended to feel.

Abraham wasn't doing much to fill in the details herself, but as her tears silently began to fall, the big picture became clear.  Auror training was not intended to be easy.  It wasn't even intended that all of the trainees who entered the program would still be there at the end.  The three years in the program were supposed to test and challenge the applicants, so that only the best and most capable made it on to a career in the Corps.  Plenty of trainees broke before the end of it, even those who desired it the most.  They'd had four flunk out of their graduating class, and Tait Aldridge hadn't survived their first year in the field.  The high pressure was intentional, and it was expected that all of the trainees would eventually show cracks.

From the looks of it, Brett Abraham was already cracking.  Jonas didn't know the first year trainee very well; she'd had the misfortune of placing herself on Archer's radar, which was never a good sign, and her older brother seemed a competent member of the Corps, though Jonas had had few dealings with him yet.  But she was one of the handful of trainees that were rooming with his niece Grace, and that put her under the broad expanse of his responsibility.

The Auror took a deep breath, forehead creasing as he regarded the girl.  Dealing with a crying 18-year-old on a personal level was well outside his skill set, and approaching the conversation as such was unlikely to succeed.  But that was the short of it -- if Abraham was looking to be comforted or reassured, he wasn't certain that he wanted to succeed.  A trainee's success or struggles in the program depended solely on themselves; if Abraham wasn't up to the challenge, then he wasn't going to do her any favors by convincing her otherwise.

His role in this wasn't to reassure her.  Frowning, Jonas turned more fully to face the girl, kicking his feet up on the rubbish bin.  He could listen, and he could certainly offer his own thoughts, but he had no intention of coddling her.

"If it'd been real?"  He gave a shrug, fairly unconcerned with what hadn't been real.  Clearly, whatever exercise Abraham had been run through had been enough to truly shake her.  "Then somebody would be dead.  There's a lot riding on us, we Aurors," he added, regarding the girl with a frown.  "Think differently before, did you?"

Brett didn't know what she had thought before. She had known- logically at least- that being an auror was a dangerous job. It wasn't supposed to be easy. They were the best of the best. And Brett had thought it would be... easy enough to pass training. If she wanted it bad enough, she could make it through. That had always been her assumption. "I don't know," she answered honestly, wiping her face on the sleeve of her robes. Not particularly hygenic- but Brett didn't really care at the moment.

"This is all I've ever wanted to be, and if it doesn't work out- I don't know what I would do. We've only been training a few months and I've already ruined it. I don't want to get booted," she said to Jonas. "It's just hard." That was an understatement. It wasn't just the training that was hard. It was every aspect of life. Living with her friends wasn't always a picnic. She was having a hard time learning to respect her authorities. It seemed that every single part of beocming an auror went against every fiber of who she was.

"How'd you make it through?" Brett asked Jonas. "How does anyone make it through training? I guess Dion does okay- because he's a kiss ass. I'm not. I don't mean to be so..." she trailed off for a moment, searching for the right word. "Confrontational? I've just never had to not be me. I'm loud, brash, rude, and obnoxious. It's always been whatever. Until this," she gestured vaguely about the room. "I don't want to make enemies in here. But I don't know how to be any different."

The red-haired Auror blinked, and then laughed, his amusement visibly showing through for a moment as he flashed the girl a quick grin.

"If you reckon this is making enemies, I'd hate to see what you think of things when you get out into the field," he said ruefully, regarding her with a bemused expression.  "Trust me, Miss Abraham -- you might not have managed to turn every Field Auror in the office into your rampaging, cheering fan base, but I can't imagine that you've made many enemies.  If Auror Eleor can't manage it two years after his transfer, don't think that anyone's going to be out for your blood after only a few months on the job."

He paused, pressing his mouth shut as he attempted to swallow back his amusement.  This, for all the late hour and the fact that he suspected that his speech had just barely masked the sound of an enchanted paper ball grunting like a pig in his desk, was a deadly serious sort of conversation for Trainee Abraham.  Every Auror recruit questioned their place in the Corps at some point -- hell, most Aurors still did.  But the universal quality of this personal crisis was not going to make it feel any less powerful for the tear-stricken teenager sitting in front of him now.

"Training is supposed to be hard," he said, finally and soberly.  "I'd say it's the hardest thing you'll ever do, but that won't be true -- there are times in the field that will be even harder.  There's no escaping them, not for any of us.  But what training is supposed to do is teach you how to fail." 

His eyes shifted to meet hers, and he held her gaze unabashedly.  "I made it through training because I kept on at it even when I was going home beat every night.  Even after the best mate I had died in the field."  He gave a noncommittal shrug, though his voice was steady.  "That was how important I thought it was back then.  Important enough that I was willing to look hard at why I was making mistakes and learn from what I found.  Which," he added, a note of wryness creeping into his voice, "as you may have noticed, isn't always the easiest jump to make -- especially when you've got enough ego to think you ought to become an Auror."  He cocked an eyebrow, giving the girl a thoughtful, quizzical look. "You reckon you got any idea what I might have learned about meself?"

She narrowed her eyes when he laughed at her. Brett failed to see how any of this was amusing- worth legitimate laughter. She had never pegged Jonas as the sort to laugh at another person's obvious misery. But she stayed where she was, listening anyway. Maybe enemies was a strong word, but it was how she felt. He might be right, though. They might not hate her as much as she thought.

His next words were more measured, less amused. She tilted her head when he said that training was supposed to teach you how to fail. "That's news to me," she commented. "Seems counter productive." But it made sense, in a weird way.

Brett wondered if he was trying to give her a very strong hint... To look at why she was making mistakes. But she didn't know why. Well, Brett knew that her attitude- her ego, was getting her into trouble. Changing that, though, or fixing it was not going to be easy. It was like changing a fundamental part of who she was as a person.

She had no idea, though, what Jonas might have learned about himself. Brett didn't know much about him, apart from the person he was as an auror. "I can't say that I do have an idea," she told him. Even if she'd had one, Brett wasn't sure she'd share it. The last thing she wanted to do was offend one of the few aurors she actually liked.

"Funny, that," Jonas replied, smiling crookedly.  "Came charging out of Gryffindor with Tait, and between the two of us, I'd reckon we thought we could take on the world.  School was never that much to us; we breezed through our NEWTs, and we'd set our eye long ago that this was what we wanted to do."

The first year had been a challenge.  The Corps was harder in those days -- blokes like Moody and Dawlish and Scrimgeour, who often seemed as if they'd made a career out of crushing the hopes and dreams of hotshot trainees.  Many of them were veterans of the First War -- though it had simply been The War back then -- and they hadn't had a lot of patience for the young men and women who had never seen real combat.  Coming in with an ego was a surefire way of asking for it to be broken.

"But plenty of blokes breeze through Hogwarts."  He gave an amiable shrug, his eyes settled on her.  "No one slides through being an Auror.  I spent most of me first year thinking I was about to fail out and be sent home, and it was a shock, after always being on the top of everything back at school.  But I learned," he said, his voice intentionally even once more, "that I was dogged enough to stick with it, and that's half the battle with this mess.  I kept at it even after I knew that I'd mucked something up."

"It's hard, I guess, cause it seems that my friends are having an easier time at it. Fauna and Dion don't seem to have any problems... And the problems Dax has had that I know about usually are my fault." Like getting caught snogging. "Makes me wonder if it's just something about me." Maybe she just wasn't cut from the right cloth to be an auror. But Jonas confessing that he'd spent a lot of time thinking he was going to fail or be sent home was oddly comforting. He was a capable auror now.

Then maybe it was just a Gryffindor thing... Fauna, Dion, and Dax were all Hufflepuffs. They were supposed to be hard workers by nature. But Gryffindors just... weren't. They were a special breed, really. And from what she could tell, most of the Gryffindors she'd been friends with were hot headed- just like she was. That kind of an attitude didn't go far in an environment like this one. Taking orders wasn't something Brett was accustomed to doing. She wondered if her brother had a hard time with training, too. They'd never really talked about it much. Brett had always assumed he'd been the golden child.

"So how'd you get better at it?" she asked. "What do I do to get better at it? I don't want to be a flake. It's serious to me. Just harder than I thought it would be. More rules. Less structure. I figured it'd be like Hogwarts- just more classes and what not. It's like we got thrown in head first. Just weren't what I was expecting... And I really am a competent witch most of the time, I just want everyone to realize it. Yeah, I mucked up... But I just figured that was normal, for trainees to mess things up until they've done it enough to know that they're doing."

Jonas raised his eyebrows, giving the girl a measuring, faintly bemused look.  "Stop worrying about everyone else realizing it, to start," he said succinctly.  "You're not here to show off or to get a gold star, Miss Abraham.  You're here to learn to be an Auror.  Different cup of tea, this."

It was a different cup of tea all around.  There was no other life like this, of that he was certain -- maybe the blokes in MI-6 came close, but being an Auror always felt far more exciting than even the most cinematic of Muggle careers could ever hope to approach.  Not all of it was the good sort of excitement, of course; this most recent batch of recruits had yet to see how dark things could really get.  If Abraham felt challenged now, then chances were she'd be driven to tears the next time things came close to collapse like they had back in April and May.

But that was what this training period was for.  It helped the teenaged recruits grow into something more than a handful of green rookies.  Maybe Abraham would make it through and maybe she wouldn't, but her success or failure surely was riding on her own shoulders. 

"If you really want to do better, then when you finish an exercise, ask your supervising Auror what you could do better," he said matter-of-factly. "Improve on your mistakes.  Try to make different ones on the next go-around.  You'll impress the lot of us more if you keep your head down, work hard, and don't let failure shake you.  There's no glory in this sort of life, whatever you might have thought going into it.  Training is your chance to see if you're cut out for it."

Even if she wasn't here to show off or get gold stars, Brett would like a bit of encouragement now and again. But she supposed that coddling your aurors wasn't an effective way to teach them anything. And Jonas had a point.

Asking how to improve was something that Brett hadn't even considered. She'd always just assumed if she needed to change or do something different, the supervising auror would just... well... tell her. And that would be the end of it. But if asking how to get better would make things less awful and help her improve, then she guessed she could give it a shot.

This was why she liked to talk to Auror Trevelyan about things. He was a reasonable sort. And she didn't feel like he was going to judge her or be condescending when she came to him for legitimate advice. Keeping her head down and not mouthing off wasn't going to be an easy thing to do. But Brett knew that being an auror was all there was for her. It's all she'd wanted to do since she was a little kid. She'd worked toward this goal her entire life.

She offered Jonas an appreciative smile. "Thanks, Auror Trevelyan. I... I needed to hear some reason." Brett stood up, and stretched. "I suppose I ought to get back home and get some sleep. So that I won't be completely useless tomorrow." Because she was going to come back tomorrow, and she was going to try to put Jonas' advice into practice. "And I'll try to do those things if it's going to help me get out of this rut."

Brett made her way back to the lift so that she could head home and catch a few hours of sleep before she had to report back to the office for more training. She knew it was going to be tough- everyone was probably going to have something to say. But Brett was determined not to let this get her down. She was just going to have to learn and grow from it.