Title: Key Punch
Fandom: The Bletchley Circle
Rating: G
Length: 100
Content notes: no warnings apply
Author note: for owl_by_night; this one is also a fill for the Punch square on my bingo card
Summary: For years after she’d left Bletchley, Millie’s dreams were punctuated by the sound of the machines



For years after she’d left Bletchley, Millie’s dreams were punctuated by the sound of the machines, keys punching out the Hollerith cards that held the messages she and Susan, Lucy and Jean decrypted. Two million cards a week, the official histories said.

No key-punched cards recorded the other messages: the ones never encrypted in the first place, hidden in plain sight. Millie had come close to telling Susan how she felt before she left, but the words remained unspoken. One day, perhaps, some historian would write about that world of women, what the war gave and what it took away.