No one knocks these days, you find. When you're the vice president of Vought American, you don't get that sweet privilege called privacy — the members of The Seven barging in at all times, your assistant crashing in with a new life-or-death crisis, all crafted by your supes and their tantrums and lash outs, petty and stupid, but in the end, it did fall onto your lap before it reached further.

As for Noir, well, he was just there, at all times.

And you didn't exactly mind, he doesn't make a peep and is the least bothersome of all of them, so you do your work — going through files and diplomatic arrangements all with the silent supe sitting in front of your desk, drinking something through the mask, just basking in your presence. After years of taking care of his image, his movies, his blood-dripping hands and how no matter how much he tries, he always finds it staining darker and darker — he's grown rather dependent.

You don't know this, but even the friends in his head like you, and they all get real quiet when you look up and smile politely at him. No one got to know him, ever, he was the hull of a husk, a shadow on the wall and not much else to everyone but you.

He writes without making a sound, marker against the small whiteboard after quite literally a good hour of doing nothing but sit in your office, staring at you doing work and running through papers and calls, but now it occurs to him. Are you busy? It reads.