"Can you - can you come in here and give me a hug?"

"I'll be right there, Charlotte," Dr. Eschenheimer says, and gets up from her seat and disappears from her screen, and a moment later she's in the younger Charlotte's quarters.

Hug.

Cling.

She cries onto Dr. Eschenheimer's shoulder a little, squeaks out a few quiet sobs.

After a few moments she dehugs.  "Can you go back out, I don't want us to have to stop in the middle of a sentence when the window closes - "

"Of course."

She turns her attention back to the screen.

"I just... I want it to be a good thing that you found me.  I want to be able to feel good about being rescued.  And I do, but - I'm reading all this shit - and the thing with six eighty two fucked me up so bad, for so long..."

"The Foundation has a long way to go," she says, quietly, somberly.  "But you don't have to say everything the Foundation does is good to say that - it's good that the people who were good to you found you.  It's good that the researchers who gave you what they could to make you happier did that.  It's good that you and your parents were both protected from the curse on you.  It's good that we met.  You don't have to decide how you feel about the whole Foundation to be thankful for that."

Sniffle.  Wibbly little grin.  "That makes sense."

Smile.

"...You want to make the Foundation better," she says.  "That's why you work for it."

"Yes."

"I think I do too."

At Dr. Eschenheimer's recommendation, Charlotte Fiftythree is inducted into a Foundation program, spearheaded by O5-1/963-2 and Site-19 director Agatha Rights, for educating cooperative anomalous humans and humanoids about the Foundation's history, purpose, and methods, as part of a push to make more effective use of anomalous resources and give humanoids psychologically beneficial context to their containment.

She studies.  She devours the lecture tapes she's authorized to see, talks on containment and experimentation by the likes of Gears and Salt, Veritas and Stochasta, Montauk and Lecter and Sharpe.  She learns about the founding of the Foundation during the Cold War, as a spy network of seditious agents from both the US and the Soviet Untion, when it became clear that the occult forces both sides were both trying to harness were more dangerous to the world than either side of the war.  Its days after the Soviet collapse, beholden to a by-then more sympathetic US for funding; General Bowe and the disastrous Omega-7 project, which together with the containment of 029 sowed the seeds for paranoia and dehumanization of humanoid scips.  231, the first apocalypse-in-waiting by an independent power group, contained by unknown but rumored-horrifying means - a ritual designed by Robert Montauk, the details of which were the first Thaumiel-class SCP object.  The increasing prevalence of what the Foundation calls "anartists" throughout the late 90s and 2000s.  The final break with the US military as the Foundation secured funding from international alliances and front corporations and the occasional judicious use of stable anomalies instead.  The mysterious death of the original O5-1 and his replacement by the current holder of the title, who alongside Rights finally began to push for reform.

Some of the lectures are in-person, and she attends by videoconference.  There are other anomalous humans at many of them.  A girl made of a mixture of conventional machinery and probably-anomalous clockwork, with a few swatches of human skin here and there.  A woman maybe a decade older than her made of porcelain.  A boy a couple years younger than her who causes anyone who comes near him to dissolve (also attending by videoconference).  A quiet girl also near her own age with pitch-black eyes.  Two children made of clay with sewing needles emerging from their fingers.

She makes friends.  She says she wants to become a containment researcher and help the anomalies that people are scared of.

She gets a little wheeled drone that can navigate around Site-19, a couple more at other sites where other lecture-giving researchers are stationed.

She talks to her friends about her containment and her mixed feelings about it.  The Foundation did a lot of things wrong in her early life but she still thinks of them as the people who saved her, which is why she kept her number as her last name.  (Last name, now, not middle name.  The only other last name she could think of for herself was Eschenheimer, and as much as she loves Dr. Eschenheimer that didn't feel quite right.  So: First name Charlotte, last name Fiftythree.)

She thinks the Foundation is still probably doing things wrong, but there are people within it doing good, and working to make it better, and she wants to be one of them.

She doesn't talk about SCP-682, but she thinks about it.

Him.  It.

Twenty-two years (almost to the day, in fact) after Charlotte Fiftythree is first Secured and Contained, she receives an email:

FROM: rrstochasta@scp.foundation
TO: charlotte053@scp.foundation
SUBJECT: Foundation Doctoral Program

---

Ms. Fiftythree,

I have been following the academic careers of several of the participants in Rights' and O51's educational program with some interest, including yours. Initially the program was only intended to supplement the standard K thru 12 education you were denied by the circumstances of your containment, but the scope of the program has expanded since its inception.  I've been impressed with your dedication to learning about Foundation containment and testing procedures.  For the past few years you've actually been working at a college level - you've essentially been earning a degree in containment of humanoid and sapient anomalies.

The Foundation has a postgraduate program - we typically use it for poaching promising college students, but if you're serious about becoming a Foundation researcher, I think you'd be a good fit for it.  Your doctorate would only be recognized in the Foundation and some other sub-veil organizations, but the program is just as rigorous as a mundane postgrad education, and you'd be learning just as much.  If you're interested, get in touch.  I can answer questions and point you to the people in charge.

Redmond-Ruby Stochasta

Well okay.  She sets up a meeting!

Dr. Stochasta introduces herself and goes over some of the process of earning a PhD with her, choosing and researching and defending a dissertation.

"...I have a thought but I'm not sure I could conduct the research, uh, properly, because I'd also be one of the subjects of it."

"What's your thought?"

"...When I was three years old I was crosstested with SCP-682.  The hope was that he would attack me and my defensive anomaly would reactively injure him severely enough to kill him... actually you've probably heard about it?"

"I had.  You want to... replicate the cross-test?"

"I want to, hmm.  I want to try to demonstrate the feasibility of containing SCP-682 without recourse to" torture "uh, the expensive and unstable system we have in place now."  She feels like she's saying "uh" too much.  "Or at least examine the feasibility.  My secondary anomaly seemed to render 682 a lot less hostile than by default, even fresh out of an acid bath.  Which would be enough to upset anybody."  Chuckle.

Dr. Stochasta does not chuckle.  "The report I read has it that 682 was non-hostile toward you but equally violent to other Foundation staff."

"...It was a long time ago but I remember the guards shooting first."