Author's Note: Well, surely that female servant/driver Gene has in canon would've noticed something going on by now. She shuttles him around unquestioningly. Also I need sleep. These two things are enough to inspire this one shot. I experimented with present tense in this, which I think turned out okay. But as always, critique, opinions and thoughts are always welcome. Feel free to tell me how I've done and what you think.

Enjoy.

Temugin is six, and he is crying.

He is too old to be crying, so he's choking it back, but the tears still fall down his cheeks despite his best efforts. One of the Tong enters and he glares daggers at her. She looks down at him, not unkindly, and holds out a plate to him. He has not eaten since his mother died and he grows angry at the sight. He moves to knock the plate from her hands, but stops when he sees the food she has made.

There is buhz, auruhl, and a small cup of sutei tsai. He frowns. Zhang - he will not call him father, not now or ever - had packed them up and moved them to Beijing, the center of the Tong's activities, now that he had the Ring. There was not a Mongol to be found in this part of China. He frowns up at her, confused.

"Who are you?" he asks, reaching up and taking the plate from her. "Are you a setgel?"

"No, young master, I am not a spirit. I am merely a servant of the Tong with similiar origins as yourself."

His eyes widen in understanding. "You're Mongolian," he whispers quietly. "Like me."

"I am from far away," she replies evenly, a silent yes. "I know the struggle of travelling and adjusting. Eat your supper, young master." She leans over to ruffle his hair and add very quietly, "And know you are not alone."

When she leaves, he realizes he is not crying anymore.

Temugin is seven, and has been sent home from school.

Khorkhoi, his driver and only friend in the household, does not want Zhang (he notes with approval she does not say 'Mandarin') to punish him unfairly. He has beaten his stepson more than once for lesser things. So she has picked him up from school under the guise of leaving under secret orders, something no one will question. They will not mention it to Zhang for fear of consequences. She has parked the car and sits in the back with him, an old battered book in her lap. Her hair is always in a bun, and her eyes are kind.

"Listen to me, young master. You must be able one day to find the other Rings. For this you must keep our people's language alive and in your mind. They were hidden when all that your people spoke were Mongolian and Mandarin, so the old classical alphabets for both will be your only chance of finding out where they are hidden."

"But no one speaks Mongolian to me anymore. How can I learn their old alphabet when I can't even talk right?" he asks, hanging his head and feeling like a failure. She places the book in his hands.

"I will teach you," she says simply, as if the answer was obvious. "I will slip notes and lines under your tea cup, I will leave poems and charts in your pillowcase and shoes, and you will learn what you can, when you can."

"Why are you helping me?" he asks with the suspicion Zhang has taught him evident in his face. It has been not a year and he has already corrupted this poor child into a mindset of fear and doubt. "You shouldn't be giving me nice food or presents or any of the things you're doing. You'll get in trouble."

"I have been in trouble before." She smiles benevolently down at him. "I do these things because I know that one day, you can become the true Mandarin. You can be the hero this region needs. I have faith in you. If you are half the hero your parents were, I will be honored to be in your presence. Now," she pointed to a character, "This is the letter 'ne'..."

Temugin is nine years old and he is scared.

They are moving to America. For business reasons - there is too much competition in crime here, and the government is beginning to sense something is wrong with Xin Zhang. They will surely take him down as they have other high profile Tong members, with ruthless efficiency. So Zhang is running like a coward with his ill gotten gains, across the ocean like a rat on a ship, his tail between his legs. He doesn't like Zhang any more now than he did before. If possible, his hatred for him only grows with the years, like a well kindled flame. More prevalent than that, though, in anxiety. He's scared of the future and ashamed of the past. His world is changing and he feels, not for the first time in his life, alone.

When he sees Khorkhoi he has to fight to keep from calling out to her. Her Chinese name, her mask, is Suyin. He has learned to never utter anything else where others can hear it. But he knows her, the way he knows the moon and sun. She is always present, a shadow, and to see her lugging bags onto the plane and sitting beside him reassures him all is not lost. Sitting beside her in passenger class, a world apart from the first class seat Zhang is in, he feels the anxiety in his stomach fade out. So long as she is here, she will not let anything harm him. America will not be his end.

The Tong are spread out across the plane so as not to look like a group travelling together. They might as well be alone. She wraps an arm around him and says quietly, "Let me tell you the story of Nadaam, Temugin."

And he can't help leaning into her shoulder, feeling a warm content come over him as the familiar words wash over his mind.

Temugin is eleven and by now he regularly reads and writes in Mongolian.

His interest in classical Chinese script was approved by Zhang (still not his father, never) who fostered it. He believes Temugin to be sucuumbing to Chinese culture, forgetting his half Mongol roots. He believes he has the boy under control, in his grasp. Temugin lets him believe that because it will help him in the long run. He is learning two dialects of Chinese now, which will only further his ability to reclaim his legacy. Khorkhoi has told him she approves of his growing power at manipulating the situation to his advantage. Her approval is like a warm mantle settling over his shoulders, armor that he wears proudly. He has not been broken yet by the world and under her watchful eye he has only gained in confidence as the years have gone on.

She is restricted from interacting too much with Temugin. It is, she explained in a note left in old Mongol script, a plan to isolate him and hurt him. That is why he has never been allowed friends or outings unsupervised. He knows her words are true. And he will rise above this as he has everything else. He is not a child anymore. He has been trained up by his fellow minority member into something else, someone else. There is a mask that has formed smooth and whole under her tutilage, that of a calm and obedient child, but underneath that a haughty and brilliant mind rests.

She knows this and leaves him a book under his pillow one night. He pulls it out in secret and reads the title. The Secret History of the Mongols. The tale of his ancestors. Even if she cannot be with him anywhere near as often, she is sabotaging the attempts of the Tong to turn him against his own race. He has sat through many rants about the way minorities destroy the purity of places from Zhang. If he didn't have anyone to remind him of who he was, he would perhaps believe the lies, the madness. But he has Khorkhoi.

So long as she lives, he has a source of strength that cannot be touched, no matter what food they restrict him to or how they try to put him under house arrest.

Temugin is thirteen and he is only called Temugin by one person.

He is Gene, American-Chinese, respectful and friendly. He is a model student who attends a private after school program to keep his Chinese alive and fresh in his mind. He is also Temugin Khan, child of a man who made history through sheer angry willpower, and he has many secrets. He keeps all his Mongolian writing hidden in the most clever of places - inside blankets, in the wall, in a hollowed out book, and more - to keep his mind sharp and ready for the day his opportunity comes. He plays chess under the pretense of wanting to appear sophisticated and respectable to his American comrades when it is a way to learn how to read people and their motives.

Every so often he comes home, opens his desk drawer and finds a small bundle of borts in a cloth or a few bohv in a plastic container. His iPod goes missing and when he finds it again there are songs by Sarantuyaa, Altan Urag, Nomin Talst and Ayulan on it. There is a defiant streak in him that is being nurtured and encouraged by this woman, who he knows would surely face execution for her treason. That she would risk death for him purely because of his heritage is an honor and a pressure, a force driving him forward towards his goals.

He is the one true Mandarin, and when Zhang sends him to military school for the summer in an attempt to break him, he finds a silk khadag packed into his bag. He keeps it hidden inside the lining of his backpack and, when he feels himself being pushed to his limits, chants old Mongol words in his head to himself to keep going. He bites his tongue through the humiliation and the screaming by recalling every note of Ijii Mongol in his head. He runs laps to the beat of drums in his mind. Gene eats the terrible food with precision and feigned neutrality, learns faster reflexes to please the men here who think of themselves as terrifying, and mimics them perfectly. They think they can hurt him. They don't know that at home lurks a murderer far more capable of angering him than they are. They are merely citizens. Zhang is a monster. They may as well be in clown make up for all the effect they have on him.

He comes back having graduated top of his class, and all Zhang has done is make his competition strong, physically, mentally and tactically.

Temugin is fourteen and tomorrow is his birthday.

By now suspicion has fallen on Khorkhoi aka Suyin, but there is no proof because she has never revealed her own heritage to anyone. Blame fell instead on Mungen, a man of open mixed heritage who had served in Zhang's house for a similar number of years. He has vanished and everything knows what that means. That is Gene is worried for Khorkhoi. The ramifications of her risk taking are sinking in. Her life is in danger. They suspect the oldest workers in the household. This cannot go on forever. She is living on borrowed time, playing a dangerous game she cannot win. He wants her to go away almost as much as he needs her to stay. He is torn and confused, but firm.

"You're going to get yourself killed because of me," he says through the opening in the glass of his limo. This is not the first time they have had this discussion this week. "This is insanity."

"This is love, my Khan. You would do well to learn the difference."

He ignores that. He is, by now, very good at ignoring things and pretending they didn't get to him. "You need to leave, soon."

"You need to open your present," she counters. He scoffs at her but does as he is told. "I saw you looking at these once. I hope they're to your liking."

Sunglasses? He put them on and looked at himself in the mirror. They made him look older, cooler. Harder to read. He smiled approvingly. "They're perfect. Where did you get them? When did you get them?"

"That's not important." She smiles. "I'm just glad you're happy, and safe. Torson odreen mend khurgeye, Temugin."

That she has not agreed to leave slips his mind as she pops in a CD of old tunes he remembers his mother singing, long ago, in a life that seems like it belonged to another man. He closes his eyes and hums, staring out the car window and losing himself in dreams of what life will be like once he has reclaimed the Ring. He will be a benevolent ruler, he decides. And his loyal servant shall be forever by his side, and she will never have to work another day in her life. He will buy her a fine silk deel and her own driver. More importantly, he will buy her the freedom she so rightfully deserves.

Then he will use the Rings combined power to ressurect his mother, and together the three of them will be unstoppable.

Temugin is sixteen and he has taken his birthright.

Zhang's paranoia has done him in. He has been wittling down the number of servants until there were only three left, wearing the armor more and more in front of his underlings, trying to assert power as resistance grows and the Maggia become more bold. His behavior has changed to the point where it is totally believable that he dismiss two of his remaining servants and become reclusive. They all saw that coming.

It's safe to say, as he looks up through the bars at Gene's triumphant smile, that he didn't see this coming. Khorkhoi steps into place beside him, her face impassive and collected as always. He has been defeated by filthy Mongols, primitive dolts who live in the dirt, and to add insult to injury they are a child and a woman servant. His hands curl into fists so tight his fingernails dig into his palm and draw blood.

This sight please Temugin, and he turns away from the old man. And oh, it feels good to call him that to his face, to spit at him openly, to say all the things that he has never been able to. Ten years of pain, of being told he was worthless, of being monitored and restricted and forced down, have finally errupted into a perfectly coordinated plan.

Since she will not leave, Khorkhoi stays on as his servant, ever the oblivious woman, confused by the insane actions of her Mandarin. The Tong take this as a sign that his quest for power has gone to his head, that he wants only a lowly woman in his house. She furthers their ideas by not clarifying matters and by working odd hours. She plays the part of no-name servant so well that Gene himself would be fooled if he did not know her.

But this is where things begin to go wrong.

He has to concern himself with the Maggia, with his schoolwork, with his gambit for Tony Stark's friendship. He grows increasingly convinced of his brilliance and increasingly solitary, drawing away from her. Zhang's voice whispers to him many times that he will regret trusting this woman, that she only wants his power to be her glory once he has the Rings. The pressure of being Mandarin, Gene, Temugin and heir to the Khan legacy is beginning to overwhelm him. And in his arrogance or his fear, he never is sure which, he begins to treat her poorly for the first time in his life. She becomes nothing more than a driver and a servant to him most of the time, and this is why she doesn't leave. She fears for his sanity.

Khorkhoi becomes more professional and stoic around him. She speaks in English around his as he has ordered. She comes down one day to find the khadag she gave him a burnt scrap in the fireplace. She can't hold down a conversation with him that lasts more than four minutes. He paces more often. His dreams are nightmares. Things are moving too fast for him to keep up with, and eventually she knows his empire will crumble. She tries to poison Zhang to stop his influence on Temugin, but he can taste even the most subtle recipes she knows. He remains alive albeit thinner on the same diet he restricted his stepson to.

And one day, it all comes crashing down.

Temugin is ancient, and his only true family is dead.

He is tied up and defeated, slumped over in his seat, the weight of his sunglasses suddenly an unbearable reminder of his failure. He stares ahead, feeling the last of his hope flicker and die inside him. The shock has yet to truly register, the pain has only just begun to eat at his heart, the stability suddenly taken from his mind. He has failed her. He has failed Khorkhoi, and his mother, and every Khan before him. He has failed his people, his legacy, and his title as Mandarin.

She taught him how to survive, how to get to the Rings, how to reclaim his heritage and live life under pressure. In return, he got her killed. That was what he did. He got the people closest to him killed in stupid ways. He failed them. All his clever schemes and intricate plans had been for nothing. Her throat was slit and her pulse was gone. Nothing remained. Zhang had most of Gene's things burned. It was as if Khorkhoi had never set foot in their house. The only thing he had left of hers he wore on his face, a gift from another, better life that couldn't possibly be his.

"Now I have no one," he choked out honestly, not caring what Tony or Pepper thought of him.

And I have no one to blame but myself.

Temugin is born again, newer and wiser, less sentimental and more pragmatic.

There are ten rings out there, and with them he will correct both of his gravest mistakes. He was not struck down, he was momentarily defeated. As the original Genghis Khan murdered his uncle and his brother-in-spirit Jamukha on the path to saving his country, so to has Gene had to sacrifice people to get to this point. But it will be worth it. When he has the power of all ten Rings, he will have everything and everyone he wanted. Everything will be normal again. It will all be worth it, he tells himself as he stares at the map, ignoring the voice whispering in his head that he's wrong. It will all be set right. Khorkhoi would want him to persue his heritage. She'll be so proud when she sees him again. Who cares about his friends when compared to his family?

He throws his head back and laughs so that he will not cry.