AN: I had such a positive response to Crying Baby, Hidden Whammy that I decided to see if I could expand on the other scribbled paragraphs I had scattered here and there for the fic. Here is the one from the very beginning.

Disclaimer: Not mine…

Description: An AU focused around Naomi and Blair. The beginning of the story that contains 'Crying Baby'.

Hidden Whammy – the Beginning.
By Marnie Rowe AKA Bumpkin
Rated: PG
bumpkin.is at gmail dot com

x-X-x

Naomi Sandburg knew when she hit her second trimester that the child she carried was a high level empath – and she also knew what that meant in terms for her. The next eighteen years of her life would be spent on the move. Never staying in one place long enough for anyone to truly to get to know her or her child. Or for them to get to know anyone in return either… it was going to be a lonely existence where they would only be able to really rely on each other.

Sitting in her grandparent's library, Naomi smoothed a hand over her 'bump' as she thoughtfully considered what the future looked like. What empathy, the talent her whole family had to mostly a lesser degree, was going to end up costing her and her child. Records had been kept, the family histories. She stroked across the old leather covers of the books scattered and resting closed in front of her on the antique table – painstakingly preserved handwritten journals spanning generations – contained harrowing tales of how certain ancestors had to evade both governments and private concerns after being discovered.

Or worse, how they had been treated when they hadn't been able to avoid capture.

At least eighty percent of the main family branch had been wiped out during World War Two between Hitler's ovens and Mengele's sick experiments. Only a few managed to escape the Axis controlled eastern Europe, and since they had always been a clannish bunch there really weren't many members of the family who had been outside of the area when disaster had struck. A once proud and diverse Clan had been reduced to a straggle of refugees, the inevitable odd individuals who'd been cursed with incurable wanderlust, and a few black sheep with next to no talent who'd set themselves up in the United States together after leaving the main family. It was there the refugees headed for when they managed to escape war-torn Europe. They were drawn to their exiled cousins, needing the connection of kin to be able to relax and finally feel safe again.

Caution and paranoia had practically become the family motto after that debacle, Naomi mused, perhaps justifiably so. After the Nazis the family had set some hard and fast rules, things the records agreed on if you read between the lines of the past. One of which was when the talent presented before the third trimester of pregnancy, the level of ability of the child was the kind that drew attention and therefore could not be raised with the family. It would just be too dangerous. Mengele was gone, but he had opened his own version of Pandora's box that governments the world over couldn't ignore. Just like the arms race, they couldn't take the chance that one of the other world powers would have one up on them could they? Needless to say, as the talent's of her family and that of a few other's had been proven and documented there was no way for them to disavow the reality of their abilities, let alone deny and disappear as had been their wont.

Hell, the family was used to being hunted at one level or another as far back as the middle ages. It just used to be a lot easier to fool people, or if that failed, flee and hide. The family had gotten complacent after the witch-trials were over and done with until the big shake up with the second world war.

Naomi had to smile wistfully, even with all the paranoia running throughout, it was rather cool to be part of a family with so much detailed written history. She picked up one of the older books, not many other families keep diaries like these, she thought, or hold onto them as time goes by for that matter. It made her remember a quote she had heard not too long ago by someone named Alex Haley who had said, 'In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future'. Either that or the saying, 'A pack rat is hard to live with, but makes a 'find' of an ancestor.'

Naomi huffed back a mocking laugh as she thought to herself, 'all this history available to us certainly doesn't stop kids from our family from doing stupid stuff does it?' She certainly wasn't exempt, being pregnant at seventeen proved that without a doubt didn't it? Though her own predicament could be partially explained away by Naomi's imperfect control over her own version of the family's empathic talent.

Naomi had a decent degree of the talent in question, more than the family had seen in generations really, but it was unbalanced. Strongest in a receptive nature, with virtually no broadcasting ability at all. The inability to broadcast had caused everyone to think that she had no talent and needed no training. That lack of training had made her rather susceptible to persuasion of a physical nature, hence the pregnancy now.

Her parents had been distressed to say the least when she confessed to both her conditions – she should've fessed up and gotten the proper training from the get go, it seemed, so that there wouldn't be a situation now. Oh, she knew her parents would do everything in their power to help her and their grandchild despite their disappointment in her, didn't stop her from wishing they didn't need to.

It was just that she had felt so strange to be able to receive so strongly when she could barely broadcast at all. Like she was mentally only half there, crippled, a mute. Her unborn child on the other hand, seemed to be no slouch in the broadcasting department already. It didn't bode well for the future, she had waited a long time to get the training for her own ability and so her grounding in the proper techniques was shaky at best. How was she going to teach her son/daughter what s/he was going to need to know?

x-X-x

tbc…