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Oh, God damn it all to hell. What the hell was this crap? Bj glared at the door to an office, annoyed with the world in general. A psychologist, a reluctant Grady had said when, ten minutes earlier, he'd come knocking at her door to tell her she was needed in the psychologist's office. Turned out they weren't letting her do anything until the Psych Doctor got a look at her. Just to make sure she wouldn't go around cutting up the whole school.

It was a necessary evil, she supposed, and only knocked once, briskly, before she began shifting from one foot to another, scowling at the ground. In a few moments, the door was opened by a trim, pleasant-faced man in his mid-thirties by her gauge. He wore long blond hair back in a tail down his back that fell almost to his waist, and dressed in worn jeans and a black button-up shirt that looked suspiciously like silk.

When he saw her, his blue eyes brightened, and his lips curved up in a pleased smile. "Ah, Miss Tulsa, right on time. I always appreciate promptness." He said, and opened the door further, revealing a plush office done in dark, earthy colord, the walls lined with mahogany shelves filled with books. There was a small sitting area in the corner, but in the middle of the room was a long maroon couch and a plush chair, facing each other. The room was brightly lits, but she noted that they could be dimmed with the flick of a switch on the wall.

The carpet beneath her bare feet-she hadn't bothered to put on her shoes-was soft and thick and radiated warmth, unlike her cold room. She wasn't accustomed to warmth and comfort, and so she blinked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion even as the man drew her inside, shutting the door.

"Fancy digs, Doc." She said dryly, and the man only smiled, taking her hand in both of his and looking directly into her eyes as he spoke.

"Thank you, BJ. I'm Doctor Larking, but you can call me Connor if you wish." He said, and merely paused for a moment when her hand jolted slightly under his.

"Yeah, whatever you say, Doc. Let's just get this over with." She said, tugging her hand from his. She didn't like the lights on so high, for they cast away most of the shadows in the room. As though sensing her discomfort, Doctor Larking walked over to a switch on the wall, dimming the lights by half.

"There, that must be better for you. I'm to understand that you're a Shadow Runner." He said, and she nodded, sighing. This was going to be a long, long day.

It started, as such things did, at the beginning. In front of him he saw, all too clearly, a little girl with dark hair and big eyes lying unconscious on the steps of an old, dirty co-ed orphange in the slums of Chicago. She had to be no more than two, but still the mark of the Shadow Runner was in her ear, a foreboding symbol on such a small child.

That scene faded, and was replaced with little more than feelings, heavy enough to have him pulling in a breath. There was pain, confusion, fear, as around her were the sounds of laughs and jeers. Hard fists connected with young, soft flesh, blood ran where she bit her lip hard to keep silent, just wanting it to end...

It skipped ahead, just a bit, and the girl was awake now, eyes wary and red rimmed, cowering in the corner of a small, dirty room with fresh bruises on her little arms and legs, while around her boys and girls shouted and laughed, fought and ran. He could feel the fear, could hear, as easily as if she'd spoken it, her thoughts. 'Somebody help me, please, please. Daddy, Mommy, where are you?! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll stop being different, I promise, I promise! Don't leave me here! I can be good, just come back. PLEASE!'

Just then, a tall, dark boy practically stalked into the room, his eyes roving about the room while the commotion dimmed a bit. He received nods of respect, grins of recognition, and one of the older boys said, "About time you got back, Con. We've got new meat. We only roughed her up a little bit 'cause you were gone. Hey, can I have this one?" He asked, and the little girl's heart jumped into her throat when the big boy's eyes circled the room, landed on her. She wrapped her arms around herself, her eyes locking on his in terror as her little body trembled.

The boy's eyes assessed her up and down, unreadable as she shrank back in the corner. It was only too easy to see what he saw. A little waif-like girl with black hair that had been hacked off just above the shoulders, her ribs showing beneath a too-small shirt, her legs nothing but toothpicks under ratty shorts that did nothing to hide the cuts and bruises on them. Her feet were bare, filthy from the floor.

Her face, heart-shaped with a pointed chin, was swallowed up by those wide, wide eyes that were dark and swimming. There was a bruise on her temple, a small cut on her bottom lip, and her eyes were shadowed from exhaustion. She was so small, so fragile, so vulnerable, but she didn't make a sound as he took a step towards her, only stared at him with terrified, innocent eyes.

When his eyes locked on hers, she stumbled back, sliding to the floor against the wall, bringing up her knees and ducking her head, wrapping her arms over her head to form a protective ball. 'Please, please don't hurt me. I don't understand, I don't understand at all. Just go away. I'm not here, I'm not here. Please don't hit me.'

Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, blocking out reality. So she didn't see, though Connor did, the way the boy's eyes gentled, the way his stance relaxed and his hands uncurled from fists.

"No...No, this one's mine." He said, ignoring the protests and groans behind him as he walked to her, crouching down in front of her. When she merely stayed curled up, prepared for a striking blow, he scooped the little body up into his arms.

She let out a frightened whimper, jolted when his hand ran over her hair, down her back. "There now, don't be afraid. No one's going to hurt you anymore. No one's going to touch you. You're mine now, little baby girl." He murmured softly in her ear, and she stayed frozen, even as he began carrying her out of the dirty room. Her head was against his chest, and she could hear his heart beating steadily beneath his shirt.

He took her to a little room that had probably once been a closet, but had since been turned into a one-person bedroom, just off the main bedroom where bunks lined the walls. In this room, she saw as he flipped on the dingy light, lifted her chin with his fingers, there was a mattress on the floor, a little desk in the corner, an open suitcase against the wall.

Connor was standing in the doorway, watching as the boy who'd been called Con tilted her head to look at him, smiled down at her with a kind face that one wouldn't expect from the harsh, scowling boy from a few moments ago.

"There now, aren't you just a dark little pixie? They call me Con, and from now on you'll be staying with me. No one will hurt you again, ok?" He smiled at her again as she stared up at him in disbelief, and abruptly her eyes filled with tears.

'Thank you, God, thank you for sending someone to save me. Thank you!' Her thoughts were clear as day, and Con laughed as he pressed her face to his shoulder.

"That's all right, let it all out now. It was scary, wasn't it? I'm sorry I wasn't here when you came. But don't worry, you're mine now. They listen to me, those guys out there. Go on and cry it out. Such a good baby girl," He rocked her as she sobbed, her hot tears running down her cheeks, dripping on his neck as she wrapped her thin little arms around his neck, clinging. So many feelings, too many to count, were rushing through her at that moment, barating Conner as he tried to take in that first moment of relief.

Raising a palm, he paused the scene in her head, saw only a teenage boy rocking a toddler, his kind eyes too wise for his age as he let her cry. This was her beginning, he thought, and what a way to begin a life...

"You've come a long way, my little pixie." Con's voice was filled with pride, and he stood, now a tall seventeen year old, over her as she planted her small foot on the chest of a boy two years older than her. There was a knife in her hand, covered in blood that wasn't her own, and her breath came out in labored pants.

"Did I do good, Con?" She was four now, her eyes dark and mischevious, her hair tied back as they stood in the dark alley, where the scents of blood and sweat and waste mixed together. She wanted so much to make him proud, to not disappoint him. He said she was a quick study, and she wanted to believe that she'd come to deserve the title of his best girl.

Con looked down, studied the unconscious boy under BJ's foot, looked at her, with only a shallow cut on her arm to show for the fight that had just taken place. He'd stayed back in the shadows while she'd done the deed, and had only come out once she'd taken the nameless boy down.

"You did great, baby girl. I've taught you well." He said, and finally, finally opened his arms, offering. With a grin of delight, she stuffed the knife in her pocket, leaped into his arms. He held her tight to his chest, her cheek nuzzling against his neck as her thin arms wrapped around his neck.

Her training, as they called it, had begun four months ago, when she'd turned four. She'd needed to learn to fend for herself, to earn what she claimed as hers. So he'd taught her to fight, with weapons and fists, until she no longer flinched away from the hatred in the eyes of those around her. Only Con, she thought, treated her like she was somebody, like she mattered. She loved him more than anything in the world, and she'd do anything to make him proud, make him smile.

"I love you, Con. I love you lots, more than anyone in whole world." She said, tilting up her head to look at him with guileless eyes. Connor saw the boy freeze for a minute, then begin walking out of the alley with her, settling her on his hip.

"And I love you, my dark pixie, more than anyone in the whole world." He said, and she smiled, but sighed when she saw the orphanage up ahead.

"Someday we'll leave here, right, Con? You and me?" She asked, and Connor caught the look that flashed in the boy's eyes, though the little girl missed it. But then he smiled, jiggling her on his hip.

"Sure, baby girl. Me and you, just the two of us. We won't need them, not any of them." He said, and, content, she settled against his side, letting him carry her as blood dried on her arm.

Memories slid by, and Connor watched them with something close to pity, bordering on sympathy. So young, he thought, she'd been so young when the light had gone out of those ancient eyes. She'd been taken into foster home after foster home after Conn had left, never rooting in one area for more than three months. Most of the time she ran away, only to be picked up by the system and put into another home. The guardians in those homes ranged from the abusive to the Christian do-gooders.

But there was one in particular, so innocent on the outside, so rotten behind closed doors, that Connor let that particular memory play through as the emotions from it berated him, demanding his attention.

Her name was Laine Flanders, a middle aged woman with a ten year old son. Both of them had hair the color of tree bark, and she kept hers pulled back in a wavy ponytail, her gray eyes cold even as her mouth curved into a generous smile.

"I set store by a clean kitchen, Bobbie Joan, and by a clean body. Now you'll scrub this place spotless, and you'll scrub it good. And then you'll have a bath, you filthy, ungrateful child." The woman's snapping voice played so clearly through BJ's mind, had her body curling on the couch in defense.

There were some, Connor saw, who abused the system, and those in it. But this wasn't physical abuse, but mental in its most cruel form.

Locked inside dark rooms for hours on end, being told you were nothing, less than nothing, every time you stepped into view. Freezing cold baths that made you sick more often than not, scrubbing the kitchen floor with a tooth brush while your stomach grumbled in protest. Locks on the fridge and cupboards, being locked in a dark room, so dark, for hours, sometimes days, when more often than not she forgot to feed you.

But there was the son, Connor noted as he made his way through the memories. The spoiled firstborn son with the kind heart. He hadn't been a friend to the girl, not really, but many times he'd snuck into that dark, locked room, often carrying a sandwich or a few crackers in his pocket. Smiling a little, with a finger to his lips, and he'd sat there, smiling, just a little bit sad, as she'd wolfed down the food, afraid he'd snatch it away again, like the woman did every now and then.

It had taken her three months to escape from that house, he saw, and she'd been picked up again on the other side of the country. Such a little girl, and she'd made a run for it and ended up in southern California. Then she'd been picked up again, and stuck in yet another facility, another home, always running at some point, always getting caught at another. It was a cycle, a neverending cycle, and she'd been chomping at the bit to break away from it for too many years to count. She finally got that chance after three years in the system.

"Is Con here? Could this be the right town?" The single thought going through her mind when she came to a new town, a new place, was this. He'd heard her repeat it hundreds of times. Never settling down, never kicking up her heels in one place for very long. Alleys and doorways, he thought. She'd lived in alleys and doorways, had lived among the monsters and the destitutes the way a chamelion lived in the forest. She blended into her surroundings. No one looking around would've looked twice at her, since she'd looked just like anyone else in the areas she'd frequented.

She'd made no friends, no memorable enemies. She'd done anything necessary to stay alive, had killed without flinching, had stolen without a blink. A born and bred killer, Connor thought, then shook his head, rethinking that. No, not a killer, he thought as he watched memories go through her head of a cold alley, an old man, a bit of bread offered while her stomach rumbled from hunger.

She'd cared, even when her eyes froze over and her mouth thinned into a hard line. Cared enough to feed an old man in an alley when her own body begged for food. She killed when it meant her own death otherwise. She fought for what was hers, and for an old dog in an abandoned warehouse who'd been kicked around by an angry woman.

"Who else could help them, if not me? No one knew they existed, or cared if they got their next meal...They were innocents, and innocents should be protected. Get out, would you? There's nothing left to see."

Conner almost jumped when BJ's voice invaded his head, replacing the memories with a wall of black. She'd broken the hypnosis, he thought, and had to sigh as he drew out, blinked to find her staring up at him from the couch, her eyes blank.

"Satisfied? You've been messing around in there long enough. Life sucks for everyone, so you save who you can, kill who you have to, and die when you screw up. It's not that hard to figure out." She raised a brow when she surprised a hard laugh out of him, and pushed up into a sitting position, trying not to think that the man in front of her knew about the one thing she'd never shared with anyone, and that was Con. No matter who he was, he'd had no right to share her memories of Con. He was hers, and hers alone. This psycho doc had no right to him.

It was only his bad luck that Tor happened to spot her at that moment. He'd been perusing the halls for her for an hour and a half. Rumor had it that Grady had taken her off someplace, but that made no sense. Grady never associated himself with students outside of the classroom.

Ah, and just look at her, he mused, leaning against the wall beside the doors of the cafeteria. She seemed to have worked up a good mad, sending out killing looks as she choked down bits of bread. In the corner again, he saw, seperating herself from the masses.

A small group of students he knew lived down the hall from her kept shooting nervous glances her way, rubbing at bruises and cuts on their faces and various other appendages. So, she'd gotten to the pranksters. Good for her.

Well, if he was going to try to apologize, he might as well do it now, when she was most likely to snarl at him and get it over with. He'd been in the wrong, and he knew it. He'd been annoyed with her constant brush-offs, her blatant irritation every time he came near her. She didn't even seem to care that they shared a bond, were practically family because of what they were.

The Shadow Runners were a rare breed, originating back in the Sahara Desert. Drought and famine had killed most of their ancestors off, until a group of thirteen had taken and survived a trip across the ocean to the Americas. They'd parted ways then, spreading throughout the states, making families of their own.

The gene tended to skip several generations at a time, and was usually recessive at that, so the birth of a new Shadow Runner was a very new occurance. The mark in the ear made it easy to identify a fellow Shadow Runner, so over time an organization of sorts had formed, and he himself was a card carrying member. It was basically one big family, but he'd been the only one of his generation with the gene. The next one closest to his age was in his early forties, so finding BJ, finding another teen Shadow Runner, was a miracle in itself. And apparently she wanted nothing to do with it.

Finding himself getting all worked up again, Torin shook his head to clear it, then began striding towards the girl who would either accept his apology or bash him into tiny, unidentifiable bits.

Dear Con,
I've settled again, temporarily of course. This time I've been scouted out, recruited. It's a school for assassins. Can you believe it, Con? I take what you taught me, did what I had to do to survive, and they consider that the makings of an assassin. But they gave me a mattress, all to myself, and four walls to call my own, a floor. There's food here, no need to beg or steal, and most everyone's always up for a good fight.
But there was nothing in the school handbook about psych evals. They sent some quack into my memories, Con, so they saw you. They saw you, as though they had a right to know you as I did. This guy sifted through my past like it was some old book he didn't much care to read all the way through, digging up things I'd buried. Like you. Well, I'd never buried you, never wanted to. But the memories of you, those I had to keep underground. If I let them out, if I let them stay up front and center every day, it'd kill me inside. Knowing you won't be there when I open the door to wherever I call home for that night, knowing I won't hear your voice.
It doesn't seem quite fair, Con, not fair at all. I wonder still, even now, why you didn't take me with you all those years ago. I'd have done my best not to get in your way, not to slow you down. I'd have done anything, gone anywhere for you. You were the only family I had, the only one I loved, or ever plan to. But you didn't take me with you. Instead you just left, without a backward glance. And you left me with a note. Just a note. Between that and the pictures, the memories, there's no way I'd ever forget you.
Would I recognize you, do you think, if we passed each other on the street? I think I would. How could I not? You made me, after all. Do you still remember the way I would copy your movements, your gestures, until they became my own? If I was your pet, as some of the others would say, then I suppose that would be an apt description. A favored pet, trained to mimic their master, trained to fight, then left behind when it was time to move on.
I wonder, every day I wonder, when I'l lsee you again. I will, that's something I know for certain. If it's the last thing I'll do, I'll find you before I draw my last breath. Perhaps you've forgotten about me already. And if that's so, it's something I'll have to deal with myself. But I don't think you've forgotten me. I was your pixie, your baby girl, and I worked hard to make you proud. You don't forget the child you raised, no matter how short a time you were together.
Don't forget me,
BJ

Bj set down her pencil, studied the note. She'd written hundreds like it over the years, pretending, afterwards, that Con would open it, read it, and understand. And now, in the spartan dorm that she called her own, she treated this letter just like she did all the others. She took a lighter to it, watching the paper burn, the ashes falling to the floor, as the smoke drifted out the window, carrying off in the breeze.

All my love, Con. Here's to hoping you still want it. She smiled, just the ghost of a grin, and then slammed the window shut, and forced the wall in her head to come up as well, blocking the memories that wanted to flood in. With a sigh, content that she'd banished the nasty thoughts for the day, she dropped down onto her mattress-her very own cushy mattress, thank you very much-and let herself drift for a bit.

((One more week...))

In the slums of Chicago, on the crumbling steps of an old orphanage, a tall, dark man loosened his tie, paced back and forth across the filthy strip of sidewalk, fiddled with the cuffs of his dress jacket.

Well, he was back, and there was no use delaying it. After eleven years of absense, he was back in the slums. And he'd come with only one thing in mind: His baby girl. He wondered how she'd react to seeing him. Would she even remember him? He thought so. His dark little pixie had never forgotten anything. She'd be sixteen by now, two years from freedom. He planned to change that for her.

With a steadying breath, he hardened his face, deliberately let the familiar light of challenge enter his eyes, as they had long ago. Even as he pushed open the door of the the orphange, he was pushed back into memories. Memories of fighting for everything he laid claim to, the secret thrill of having those around you nod in respect, in acknowledgement. Past feelings when the center of his world had been a dark little pixie he'd called Bobbie Joan.

The scents of the building struck him, molding garbage and the underlying scent of lemon Pledge that could never completely wash away the smear of spilled blood from the sticky tile floor in the main hall.