AN: Written for Yuletide, for magic_at_mungos, who wanted George and Alanna, and Beka if I could. ;)

Spoilers: The Lioness Quartet and the Beka Cooper books, so far.

Rating: Kid friendly

Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit. That doesn't mean I love them any less.

Summary: "The interesting question, love, is why I became the Rogue."

Going Rogue

"Why did you become a thief?"

There were too many things in this room. It was dark during the day and doubly so at night. Alanna would have used it as a storage room, or possibly as a play room for those little ones George kept hinting at, even though they'd only just moved into the Swoop and she certainly hadn't had her fill of him yet.

"That's an awfully personal question, wife." George slumped gracelessly on the dusty red sofa they had been working all evening to uncover and tried to pull her into his lap.

"Don't distract me," Alanna said, batting his hands away from her face. "You've asked me why I wanted to become a knight."

"Knighthood is a noble profession, love," George said. His voice was as soft as the firelight that glanced off the walls of the room that he was determined was going to become his study. "Thievery is hardly something to brag about."

"That never stopped you before," Alanna pointed out. "You've never been exactly modest."

George was quiet for a long moment, and sat staring into the fire. Alanna stilled and then finally settled beside him, and let him cosset her, as he never seemed to tire of doing.

"I was hungry," he said at last, in that same quiet tone.

Alanna leaned back against his broad frame and sighed in the circle of his arms. She'd gone to bed exhausted, muscle sore, bone weary, gift drained and bloody, but she'd never known true hunger. She had seen it, of course, in the street of Corus, and she knew that Jon and Thayet did their best, but also that it would never be enough.

"The interesting question, love," George said, his voice lighter and his city-cant coming to the fore, "Is why I became the Rogue."

"You mean you didn't do them both at once?" Alanna said. She followed his cue, and made her voice lighter as well.

"Not at first," George said. "I told you it was more interesting."

"Then tell me," she said, tucking her legs around his and turning slightly so that she could see his face while he spoke.

"I was just a lad," George said. "And I didn't really understand what the Rogue did, but I was already a thief, on my second strike, and my mother was desperate to keep me from getting marked."

"I wouldn't have crossed your mother," Alanna said.

"She was different, then," George said. There was a wistful sadness in his voice. "She had only just been forced out of the temple, after all, and I was very clearly the reason why. It didn't take much to start tongues wagging, and when word got 'round that I'd spent the night in the Cage at a Kennel, she was at wit's end."

"What did she do?" Alanna asked.

"She gave me a book," George replied. "I could barely read, for all she'd tried to teach me my letters, but after she read me the first few pages, I struggled with it every day until the words came easier."

"And that kept you out of trouble for how long, exactly?"

"Oh, that wasn't why she gave me the book," George said, "though I am sure it was a nice side benefit. It was a journal, written by my ancestress Beka Cooper, who had been a Dog back when the Provost would still take on women to be guards."

"Jon's changing that law, I think," Alanna said. "Or Thayet will."

"Now who's being distracting?" George teased her.

"I'm sorry, dear husband," Alanna said with insincere formality. "Please, do continue."

"Thank you," George said, winking at her. "Beka wrote about how she became a guardswoman, how the Dogs worked, and how she made a life for herself in Corus. It was a hard life, but it was a life she loved. Sound familiar?"

"A bit," Alanna smiled.

"I think my mother hoped that I would learn respect for the law and develop a wish to honour my ancestor, but that didn't happen quite the way she planned," George continued. "You see, almost as soon as she became a trainee, a Puppy, Beka fell in with a few newcomers to Corus. They'd come to join the Court of the Rogue."

"And your Beka was part of that?" Alanna asked.

"No, she stayed on the straight and narrow," George admitted, "but she wrote about them, how they acted and what they believed. How the Court was structured back then, and how it managed to get along in spite of what the Lord Provost would have preferred."

"Your mother gave you a book that taught you how to be a thief," Alanna said.

"No, not exactly," George replied. "It takes only quick fingers and quicker feet to be a thief. But to be Rogue, that's a true lesson, and one that's hard to come by. Once I'd read about Beka's friends, how they could be crooked and yet still be on the right side of a Dog, I decided that I was going to be that kind of thief, and that I'd have the Court of the Rogue when I grew up."

"Youngest Rogue ever," Alanna said. "I'm not sure you were quite grown yet."

"Age is a different matter with thieves," George admitted. "I like to think I'll never be entirely grown."

"Are you really going to use this room as an office?" Alanna said, refusing to rise to the bait. "Anyone who comes to see you will have to walk up eight flights of stairs, and the poor footman who brings your meals and messages will have to be in very good shape. Not to mention you'll have to do all those stairs at least twice a day."

"How else am I ever to keep up with you, Lady Knight?" George replied. The firelight reflected in his eyes now revealed a gleam of mischief, and Alanna couldn't help but smile back at him.

"There is that," she said. "But I am not going to be up here when you dust. I'll be sneezing for a week."

"Fair enough," George replied. He looked at the walls with a keen eye. "Do you think there will be secret passages?"

"I thought you were done with being crooked," Alanna said, but she was already looking.

"If the Lady of Pirate's Swoop should not be entirely tame, I think it's only fair that the Lord can be a little bit crooked," George said grandiosely.

Alanna pretended to consider it. "Yes, you're right," she said. "Let me up, I think there might be a passage on the left of that shelf over there."

There wasn't, but that didn't stop them from spending the next few days searching.

fin

Gravity_Not_Included, Yuletide 2010