Title: Fooled

Rating: K+

Pairing/Type: Kitt-Michael/friendship

Song: Cry Wolf by Jonathan Thulin

each chapter is inspired by a different part of the song

Unbeta'd, so any errors are mine.

Lie, lie, lie 'till you're blue in the face

. . .

It's an empty trade but you do it well

You've got everyone fooled by the lies you tell

The uncertainty of his existence hit Michael quite suddenly one day. Everything was a lie. While he had known that, been comfortable with it, for years, it was driven home when he saw his mother by chance in a shopping mall in Colorado early December 1990. Confident she wouldn't recognize him, Michael walked past her like nothing was wrong, like his heart wasn't simultaneously in his stomach and his throat. Of course she didn't recognize him. But after seeing her, he'd left the mall and made a direct beeline for Kitt. He hadn't greeted the AI like he usually did, only slammed the door and sat with jaw and fists clenched, trying to bring his emotions back under his control. He knew Kitt had scanned him and had undoubtedly picked up on his raised heart rate and whatever else was screwed up at the moment; thankfully, Kitt said nothing about it.

Something in Michael's body language kept Kitt silent. Nothing had rattled his partner this much before. Not even Stevie's death had produced such a powerful reaction.

"She didn't recognize me, Kitt," Michael said in a small, hollow voice that was foreign to Kitt. "She didn't recognize me at all." His voice now held a faint undertone of panic. It couldn't have been one of Michael's one-night-stands. He was usually quite grateful when none of them recognized him; something about it being awkward. "I mean, I know it's been almost ten years since she last saw me and I have a new face but some form of recognition would have been nice maybe a Merry Christmas even though Christmas is still a few weeks away or just a polite smile would have been nice but nothing I was nothing more than just another face in the crowd and if she recognized me so much would have been put in danger and my cover compromised and..." Michael drew in a shaky breath and released it in a slow, deliberate hiss.

Kitt took advantage of this break in Michael's breathless rambling to ask as gently as he could, "Michael, who was she?"

"My mother, Kitt," Michael said forlornly, sounding for all the world like a lost child. "She was my mother." Here he paused, brain working furiously. "Was? Is?"

Sensing Michael's confusion and the panic it brought, Kitt interjected, "Is, Michael. She is your mother. You may have a new face and identity, but she still is the woman who gave birth to you." Michael mustered what energy he could and offered Kitt a tired, lop-sided smile. Trust Kitt to point out something logical like that.

"Y'know, I'd like to think she hasn't forgotten about me," Michael mused, absently drumming the fingers of his left hand against his thigh. "I know it sounds selfish -"

"It's not at all selfish," Kitt interrupted, something he liked to think he rarely did. But he couldn't have Michael slipping into any sort of logic loop. Not until their case was finished, at any rate. "It's only logical to..." How was he going to phrase this? He wanted to say that even thought Michael Long was officially dead, he understood why Michael Knight hoped his mother hadn't forgotten about him. But if he couldn't get the sentiment clear in his processors, how was he going to get Michael to understand?

Michael patted the dash. "Thank you, Kitt," he said genuinely. Relief flooded Kitt. Somehow, Michael had understood what he had been trying to say. "Now what do you say we go find those dealers?" he asked, sounding more like himself.

Of course, the issue wasn't resolved fully. Just resolved enough for Michael to sweep it back under the rug. The middle of a case was no place emotional meltdowns.