FANFIC: slow climb, but quick to descend (Roswell: New Mexico)

This is a little ficlet I wrote for Roswell: New Mexico, inspired by Dessa's "Into The Spin".

Title: slow climb, but quick to descend.
Fandom: Roswell: New Mexico.
Character/Pairing: Nora Truman.
Rating/Warnings: T, none.
Summary: A name, once bestowed, becomes a shape for the individual to twist oneself into.
Word count: 333.

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A name, once bestowed, becomes a shape for the individual to twist oneself into.

She spent the longest part of her life resisting the tagline N-39. Its shape alluded to someone meek and defeated, indistinguishable from those around her. There ought to be no differences between N-39, N-38, or N-17. She would have died a mere number. But he singled her out, and she left their world nameless, and unique.

Two dear friends gifted her with the name Nora; it lasted for a proper year. It lingered, too, accompanied by the treasured memories of the times its sound was articulated with true fondness. A shared joke that drew playful smiles on the corner of their lips after two gentle syllables. This name had a shape that softened her, and it cost her.

Before that, she had earned the honor that came with the title of the Engineer, and it was hers and hers alone. Its shape was one she was all too eager to contort herself into. When she saw its limitations, its blind spots, it could no longer contain her. She pushed at its form with each new role —the rebel, the leader—; if they had returned, it would’ve seen as imperative to change her name: the Engineer no longer sufficed.

But once, aeons ago, the closest translation to the first affectionate moniker she ever received, was “little dragonfly”.

Little Dragonfly avidly made her calculations, eager to train her telekinesis for something beyond its practical uses. She adjusted her legs midair, just thirty centimeters above ground; levitating without support, arms fluttering nervously as she fought to regain stability. A concerned voice echoed in her mind, the distraction enough to tip the balance and make her crash, scrapping her knee on the fall.

She stood up, calming the voice’s apprehension. Apprehension that was quick to turn to amusement, when the now named little dragonfly huffed with annoyance, made two adjustments to the calculations on her screen and extended her arms out once more.