A/N: Special thanks to TheLastPrototype for inspiring me to come up with a logical explanation as to how Sam and Tim Scam might have gotten together. This story is written in a dialogue-only format, but the speakers' identities should be obvious.

"Grandpa Tim?"

"Yes?"

"Can you please read me a bedtime story?"

"I don't know, Danny. We've already read through all the books in your room."

"But Grandpa Tim, surely you must know another story besides the ones in the books. You know so many things! Can't you just make up something?"

"What fun would that be? I'm over seventy years old now, Danny; my mind simply isn't as quick as it used to be."

"But Grandpa Tim, I can't fall asleep without a story…"

"Oh, okay. Here, I'll tell you one you haven't heard before."

"All right! So what's it about?"

"This is a true story about a boy I knew very well. He was right around your age when the story began."

"Awesome! Did he like the same things I like?"

"Yes – many of them, actually. He learned to read at an early age, and he liked figuring out how things worked. He often tinkered with items around the house. He was somewhat mischievous and sometimes got into trouble, but he was very bright. His parents were generally very supportive of him."

"They loved him a lot, didn't they?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"That's great! Then what happened?"

"Here's where the story gets to be not quite so nice. When he was six years old, his parents suddenly went away and never came back. The boy was sent to live with his uncle instead."

"What was his uncle like?"

"The uncle was not a friendly person, to say the least. He called the boy names and often beat him. The boy was very afraid of his uncle for a very long time. During the day, the uncle went to work and left the boy alone at home. So the boy had to learn many things very fast. When it was time for him to go to school, he figured out how to take the public bus to get there by himself, and also learned to cook his own meals since his uncle was either too busy or didn't care. After school, his uncle didn't come back until it was very late at night, so in the afternoons he often took the bus to go to the city library so he could read some more. He enjoyed reading."

"So he must have been quite lonely…"

"For a while, he was. But he often forgot about his loneliness because he loved learning more than anything else. He had very unusual reading interests – he was often found in the science or reference sections of the library. When he was eight years old, he took a test at school and was found to be reading at the university level."

"Wow, he must have been proud."

"He was. But at the same time, he was also getting tired of his uncle's mistreatment and vowed someday to get back at him. It wasn't until he got to the sixth grade that he really started to change."

"What happened to him in the sixth grade?"

"That year was the year before he entered junior high. He heard that the junior high boys could start getting involved in the athletics program. So he began to seriously work on making himself physically fit and strong. He wasn't scrawny to begin with, but he was determined to be the best he could possibly be. He exercised regularly and changed his diet so he could put on more weight. The coaches noticed his talent and began to train him for the wrestling team."

"Wrestling? Why did he choose wrestling?"

"First, the coaches thought he would be a good fit for it, and second, somehow I guess he was naturally drawn to it. Just the thought of being able to physically overpower another person was appealing, especially since he still had a lot of pent-up anger directed at his uncle."

"So then what happened?"

"Well, the boy progressed very quickly. He found that his interests lay in science and math, and during the summers he would also attend training camps for high school wrestlers. Those were intense workouts that lasted for whole days and he worked very hard at them. It wasn't uncommon for him to weigh ten pounds lighter at the end of one training session."

"Wow. Did his uncle know anything about this?"

"One of the nice things about his uncle's lack of interest was that he essentially gave the boy the ability to do anything while he was gone, since he was too wrapped up in his own business anyway. So after several years, he didn't even notice that the boy had changed noticeably. One day when the boy was in eighth grade, his uncle lost his temper at the boy over something unimportant. Things came to a head very fast. The uncle reached out to strike him as usual, but the boy, who was now thirteen, just grabbed his wrist in mid-air, looked him in the eye, and firmly said, 'I am not seven years old anymore, Uncle David.'"

"Good for him! Uncle David must have been shocked."

"Oh, you'd better believe he was! After that, the boy established himself in the house as a force to be reckoned with, and his uncle just let him be. He entered high school and got promoted to the varsity wrestling team, and he also placed into the highest level math and science classes as a result of all the readings he did on his own time."

"This is really starting to sound like a happy story now, Grandpa Tim."

"Well, it was a happy story for a while. He graduated early from high school, was accepted into a very prestigious university specializing in engineering and science, and got to move far away from his uncle. His university years were some of the best and most productive years of his life – they marked a time when he really grew into a man. He studied aerospace engineering and physics, and also interned with the military. When he graduated, he got a job offer from a secret agency to work as a weapons technician."

"That sounds like an amazing job! Did he like it?"

"He did, but unfortunately it didn't last for very long. After several years of loyal service to the agency, he was falsely accused of misusing weapons for his own benefit. The evidence they used against him was not solid at all, but nevertheless his boss swallowed the lies whole and dismissed him from his job. He was hurt – very, very hurt, although he refused to admit that at the time."

"Oh no! What did he do then?"

"Danny, I'll pause here to tell you something important. You aren't old enough to have experienced this yet, but let me say this: when a person has worked for many years to get themselves out of a rough situation, only to find themselves much worse off than before, they get so hurt that they can't find it in themselves to forgive others. And that's what happened to our young man in this story. He had slaved away for so long to escape his uncle for good, only now to find himself unfairly labeled as a criminal, with all future job prospects destroyed. So he was extremely upset – one might even say depressed – but to cope with it, he put on airs of arrogance and decided with his whole heart to embrace the 'criminal' title, since that was what they had pegged him with anyway."

"I don't understand, Grandpa Tim. I thought he was a good person."

"He was, Danny. He really was. But it was a very hard blow for him – to see everything he'd ever worked for simply evaporate into thin air in a single instant, and not because of something he'd actually done. He acted like he was confident, but on the inside, he was still completely torn up. He lashed out at others at the agency by exacting revenge on them in the most brutal ways, but that was because deep down inside, he wanted them to feel how much he was hurting himself."

"Okay…"

"You're a smart boy, Danny. You'll know just what I mean someday; I promise. But anyway, the story's not over yet. In the midst of this very dark time, the man sensed that there was someone at the agency who might have a faint hope of understanding him."

"Who was it?"

"She was a young woman when she started working there – a teenager, actually. The first time she met the man, he was still set on trying to get his revenge on the agency. But before she found out about that, she saw qualities in him that she liked, probably because he was very similar to her. She was also smart, hard working, and dedicated – much like he was in his younger days. She was naturally horrified when she found out that he was actually fighting against her employer, and hated him for a long time because of that. Secretly, though, she often wondered what had caused him to become this way."

"So did she ever ask him why?"

"Not at first. But gradually, through her various experiences while working as a spy, she began to doubt her own faith in the agency. In one case, she worked a solo undercover mission to foil another criminal's plot, and was surprised to find that her best friends, who were unaware of her role, immediately turned against her and locked her in jail before they found out. In another case, one of her best friends was set up, and that friend was kicked out of their living quarters and even suspended from her job before the agency figured out something was wrong. Those experiences made her keenly aware that her good relationship with the agency could very well be hanging by a slight thread."

"Well, that agency doesn't sound like a very nice place to work at."

"It wasn't. Curiosity got the better of this young woman one day, and she started writing secret letters to the man in prison. She disguised her handwriting so he wouldn't know her identity, but it wouldn't have mattered because all he wrote back were rude, sarcastic replies. She was stubborn though – very stubborn. In the end, he just told her the truth because he figured it wouldn't matter anyway."

"But it did matter, didn't it?"

"Yes, very much so. The man didn't know this, but when the agency shut down for the night, she secretly hacked into the computer mainframe and tried to gather as much information on his past as she could. She really tried her best to understand the facts as they really were. So here's a new vocabulary word for you: bias. When a person or organization is biased against something or someone, they will do their best to muddle the facts in order to make that thing or person seem like they are at fault. This happens very frequently in life, so you must use good judgment and carefully consider your sources whenever you learn about something."

"So she found out that the agency had a huge bias against the man, right?"

"Of course. So the next thing she did was to write another letter to the man. This man was infamous for continuously breaking out of prison, because he was one of the agents who had helped to build the security system in the first place. She asked him when and where he planned to escape to next. He was starting to find this correspondence entertaining, so he answered honestly anyway because he knew the agency wouldn't be able to stop him even if his response was leaked. What he didn't expect was that the woman resigned from her job shortly after he broke out again, and she confronted him at his hiding place to tell him she had officially left."

"Wow."

"Of course he was curious and wanted to know why. That was when she confessed that she didn't want to work for an agency that had such mistrustful tendencies, even towards its own employees. She felt that she had spent too much time chasing after something that claimed to bring her honor and integrity, when it really could be anything but that. The rest of the story is more of the same thing – she knew that the agency would be suspicious of her sudden decision to leave, and by that time she was old enough to be a fully independent woman. It took her a while to adjust, but ultimately she escaped with the man and they were never caught."

"Grandpa Tim, do you mean that the agency was actually not quite as good and peaceful as it seemed?"

"No. I guess that was partly a result of its being a secret agency, but it became quite clear to both the man and the woman that no matter what anyone claimed, and no matter how rigorous the screening processes they had to go through, they would still never truly be trusted."

"So… is it like one of those things where the good guys actually turn out to be the bad guys in a way?"

"You could say that."

"What happened to the man and the woman in the end?"

"Considering what they went through, I'd say they had a fairly happy ending."

"Yay! But Grandpa, one question – how do you know this man's story so well?"

"We're very close. I've known him for as long as I can remember."

"He's had quite an interesting life. Will I ever get to meet him?"

"Someday you may. By the way, it's already past your bedtime. We need to go to sleep because tomorrow is Monday, and I need to drop you off at school. Once you're done with your homework in the afternoon, I'll teach you how to play poker and some gambling strategies. But don't tell your mother; I don't think she'd be very happy about it… Are you tucked in now? Good; sleep tight!"

"Wait – Grandpa Tim?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks for the bedtime story. It's the best I've ever heard!"