Disclaimer: All storylines/characters that have appeared in "Chuck"-verse up until this point (publish date) are not of my creation and belong to NBC. All others (storylines/characters) are 100-percent figments of my (possibly) terrifying imagination.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On the least particular of summer days, Kay Beatrice Cera found herself weeding, by hand, through the pathetic expanse of pebbled soil in her front yard. Moments like these always made her sigh, still wistful she missed out on some golden opportunities to marry a man who might know a thing or two about landscaping. Inside the house (white, but no picket fence), the television was – naturally – parroting mindless coverage on Reagan's campaign. Quentin liked to leave politics blaring in the background when he water-colored.

"Keeps my mood neutrally pissed," he had cheerily responded, knocking over a cup brimmed with mud-swirled water and neutrally cussing until he ran out of deities to desecrate.

My better half, she had mused, sighing another of her wistful sighs before handing him the mop. On this unparticular day, she was disappointed to find that life – or her life, at least – was always changing yet ever the same.

So it came as something of a surprise when an unfamiliar vehicle – a sports car? She hardly knew – screeched to an agonizing halt at her curb, momentarily interrupting her depressive pebble-sifting and irking her in the process because she resented unsubtle modes of transportation. Stranger still was that Kay thought she might recognize the woman now emerging from the offensive automobile, except that it couldn't be who she thought it was and the confusion of it all just made her fear for her own sanity. Fucking heat stroke, she cursed, wanting to return to the sifting but – upon second-viewing – realizing that she had been right.

"Aggie?"

The other woman was now only a few feet away (and nearing), smiling a little tentatively as she approached Kay with a fidgety bundle in her arms.

"Hello, Kay."

For the first time in hours, Kay hiccuped.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Wow, you still do that." A smile played tug-of-war at the corners of the Aggie's mouth as she watched her friend down a third mug of water.

"What? I haven't. In…days." Kay was indignant. "What are you doing here anyway? I thought you forgot all your friends."

"That's not true."

Kay attempted a sneer. "Did he leave you?"

"Who?"

"Your man. He ditched, huh?"

"No, he's…" Aggie hesitated. "It's complicated. Listen, I need your help."

Kay swiped a look at the athletic baby still huddled close to Aggie's chest. Kick, gurgle, gurgle, wave.

"Nuh-uh. I'm not gonna be your baby-sitter." Gurgle.

"It will just be for the weekend, and we'll – I'll pay you." Kick.

"Why me? I haven't seen you in…you haven't been around. I have a life too, you know." Gurgle.

"Please."

Something about her tone unsettled Kay, and for the first time since her old friend resurrected, she felt something other than bile and loathing rise within her. Pity, maybe, but whatever the case, it wasn't enough to make her budge. Except…Gurgle. Damn cute babies: "Fine."

"Thank you."

"Quentin's not gonna like this." But, as she awkwardly folded her arms around the little bundle – a girl bundle; the best of its kind – that, for some reason or other had chosen her finger in replacement of a pacifier, she smiled (quite despite herself), and secretly decided that it might not matter what her husband thought. It would just be for the weekend anyway. She sighed.

"I'm sorry. For your trouble." Aggie held out a neatly clipped stack of bills. "I can't afford to write checks, and I thought cash might be better anyway, so – "

"I'm not gonna take your money, Aggie." She looked at her friend, almost warmly: "What's her name?"

"Margaret. Margaret Lisa Payne, but…we call her Maggie."

"Okay, well you go do what you gotta do. Maggie'll be fine here." She smiled at the baby. " Won't we, Maggie? Ooga-boog…"

If she hadn't been so beside herself with a different sort of nauseating behavior, Kay might have noticed a change come over the other woman, whose face suddenly registered a kind of tragic fear only other parents could fully recognize. With her thumb sweeping the golden curls edging over Maggie's forehead, Aggie kissed the child's right foot briefly before turning abruptly toward the front entrance of the house. Kay finally noticed.

"Aggie?"

She stopped. "Yes?"

"Are you ever gonna tell me what this is about?"

"God, I hope so."

"It was good to see you, Aggie."

"Well…don't miss me too much." Aggie smiled, this time radiantly unveiling two charming, ever-so-slightly bucked front teeth.

Then she was gone.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He ended up surprising himself and flooring his wife when he (kinda, sorta) fell for the little goober. After so many years of it being just the two of them, Quentin naturally assumed a baby would fuck up the ambience.

And it – she – did. He just didn't mind it.

Quentin Cera was not a man of few words. He liked to talk, and he loved to listen. To himself. Talk. So it broke his stride a bit when he found that the baby gave him a run for his money. She didn't talk, of course – too young for that – but she sucked up all the attention in the room, and he had gotten used to being the center of his wife's love and affection. Tonight, as he grumbled about the surge in gas prices ("A dollar and fifty-one for a tank of car food? Hell, if it wouldn't cost me half my life's earnings, I'd drive over to D.C.and give Carter an ass-whupping myself."), he discovered he had lost his audience to a more subtly engaging character in the room.

"How long is she gonna leave her here? Kay?"

"What?"

"Your friend. Did she say how long – "

"Just for the weekend."

"Okay, well, I might be painting the house in a few days, so it probably wouldn't be too good for the baby."

When Quentin was just a little boy, he stumbled across a good read on Pablo Picasso, whose early years were marked by indefatigable support from his own father. By the time Pablo turned thirteen, his father – himself an artist – had ceremoniously handed his own brushes over to the prodigious son, deeming him the superior artist. Quite excitably, Quentin had related this bit of information to his own father, who responded by handing his son a brush and a bucket of whitewash for their fence; far more Tom Sawyer than Pablo Picasso. It was the elder Cera he cursed, now, whenever he found himself drenched in the deadly aroma of house paint; Quentin Cera was a professional, well, house-painter, but he still preferred "ex/interior designing."

"Do you wanna hold her?"

"Hm?"

"Can you hold Maggie for a second? I have to get dinner."

Damn. "Yea, okay. Just, uh, leave it – her – there and I'll get her…in a sec."

"She's not the mail, Quentin. You have to hold her."

Shit. "Fine." He held his arms out and did some interpretation of limp jazz hands as signal for her to drop the child in his ill-prepared care. Surely sensing his inadequacy, Maggie gave them hell just trying to settle her in his arms, attempting perfect-ten high kicks at his face. By the time he got her feet to stay she had already made a wild grab for his nose and was now holding it hostage. For ransom, probably.

"Ow, she's…"

"I know."

He hadn't been prepared to fall in love.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On a not-so-idle Sunday, then, Kay was croaking out the tonally-deaf version of an old song her mother liked to sing for her when she was still a dirt-nap babe. The television, as per usual, chatted away ad tedium in the background. Quentin had been out on mission for over an hour now, probably forced into a price-check on the diapers he had so desperately wanted to pretend were lumberjack tools or something else a man would rather be caught buying. Men, she thought.

"When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, what will I…"

So wrapped up in her own musical stylings (and Maggie, of course), Kay missed hearing the first faint rings issue forth from their house phone. Still singing, she made her way to the receiver on its fourth ring.

" – I be pretty, will I be rich, here's…Hello?"

"Kay, I need you to keep Ma – " Bzzz.

"Aggie? The reception's – "

" – for me. There – papers – tomorrow."

"What? I can't hear you, the phone line's not – "

"Check the blanket. Blanket – hide it. Please."

"What blanket?"

"I'm sorry." Click.

"Aggie?"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"We can't wait on this anymore."

"Quentin, we don't even know if she's really gone."

"But the papers arrived three days ago."

"It says to wait a month. In case they reappear."

He paced about in anticipation of some sort of absolution, finally settling for: "I don't like this."

Kay sighed. "We might hear from her again."

"What the f – " He eyed the child carefully before starting again, in whispers. "What the hell kind of sick business is this? What exactly are we, anyway? Her babysitters? We can't just sit around waiting to see if she croaks before we..."

"It says if we don't hear from her in a month – "

"Then Maggie…"

"Is ours."

He shook his head. "I just don't like this."

"Me neither."

"Why us? Why'd she choose us?"

Kay paused for a moment, lavishing a soft glance at the sleeping baby before leveling her husband with a look of clairvoyance. "She must've known we'd need this."

He nodded, grimly. "Did you ever figure out that blanket business?"

For the first – but certainly not last – time in her life, she lied to her husband:

"No."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Though she would never have reason recall it again, August 14th of 1980 turned out to be a momentous occasion for little Maggie. She would not turn three months old for another three weeks, but this day marked the first of many days she would just be another normal kid in yet another boring family. On this very particular day, Quentin Cera finally allowed himself to become a real father, shopping with (some level of) ease in the baby food section of their local market. This time there would be no price-checking.

For her part, Kay Cera decided to give up on that pipe dream of marrying a competent gardener and instead spent this day (of many days to come) turning loose the packed and pebbled soil in her front yard. For a lemon tree, perhaps, as she thought happily of lemonade stands and grubby-faced smiles on the laughing children of alike happy families, all un-alike in their own ways. She didn't want to think about the ways people were different, because she never wanted to discover that her own love might be inadequate in harboring some unhappy shortcoming that only biology could rectify. Kay had, quite ironically, stumbled upon the universal insecurity of parenting without realizing its commonness. In this, with each passing day – sometimes hour – she wondered when white lies and avoidance would tumble toward exponentially increasing half-lives of tragic dishonesty. She tried not to think about it.

On this most particular of days, Margaret Lisa Payne, daughter of Agnes Rocher and Thomas Payne, would become Maggie Lisa Cera, the soul(sole)-child of two well-intentioned adults still bewildered by a sick twist of fortune designated to make their lives very different and ever the same.