Title: Fortress of Solitude

Rating/Content: T/PG for a few instances of mild language. Implied pre-Jalan.

Disclaimer: I make no claim of ownership to Charmed and Dangerous, or its characters. No copyright infringement is intended. Please don't sue. (And, once again, if any of you understood the sheer, crippling irony of me having to write that, your heads would likely asplode. Mine almost does, every single time. Such is life, I guess.) Please enjoy!

-1-

Alan was seven years old, and his little sister Julia very nearly six, when their father sat him down to break the surprising news to him: that he was a wizard.

It hadn't been the greatest of mornings, up until that point. Alan had woken up feeling...well, not exactly sick, but weird. His head felt tight, as though overnight his skull had shrunk, or his brain had grown. (Three sizes, like the Grinch's heart after the Whos down in Whoville showed him the true meaning of Christmas.) And though Mom had pressed her lips to his forehead and insisted he didn't have a fever—not exactly the most scientific method, but even at seven, he already knew better than to argue with a stubborn latina—his entire body felt like it was on fire, as if molten hot magma was running through his veins.

"Well, if you feel that bad, mijo, maybe we should keep you home from school today, just in case," Mom said, frowning as she tried to feed another spoonful of hot cereal to baby Sam in his high-chair. The two year-old kept pressing his lips shut and turning his face at the last second, so that it would wind up smeared all over his face, instead of in his mouth. Judging from the way he giggled every time it happened, little Sammy thought it hilarious.

"If Alan's not going to school, I get to stay home with him!" Julia announced, around a mouthful of Lucky Charms.

"But I want to go to school!" Alan protested. "We're starting a new phonics workbook today, and it has a robot on the cover!"

"Alan, stop being a stupid-head!" Julia hissed, leaning forward and staring at him as though he were insane. "If we stay home, we can watch TV all day!"

"You only go to school until lunchtime! You spend half the day watching TV, anyway!"

"But you aren't here to watch it with me, you retard!" Julia grunted, kicking her heel of her shoe against her chair leg in frustration. "It's boring without you. Besides, all the best shows come on in the morning. I never get to see Tiny Toons, anymore..."

"Julia, what have I told you about calling your brother a retard?" Mom sighed, as she wiped beige mush off little Sam's cheeks. "For the last time, we don't use that word in this house. Now hurry up and finish your breakfast. I'll have to walk you to school myself if Alan's staying home sick."

"But I don't wanna go to school!" Julia pouted, in the same breath that Alan whined "But I don't wanna stay home!"

"Mom, I am not sick," Alan continued, even as Julia glared at him over her cereal. "I feel all better, honest."

"You are too sick, and you need me to stay home and help you get better," Julia growled.

"I do not, Julia."

"You do too, Alan."

"No, I don't!"

"Yes, you do!"

"Don't!"

"Do!"

"Kids, knock it off," Mom groaned, as Sam began to cry. "Stop shouting. You're upsetting your baby brother."

"See what you did, Julia? You're such a brat!"

"Shut up, dork! You made him cry, too!"

"Baby!"

"Penis-breath!"

"JULIA!" Mom gasped, staring at her daughter in shock and struggling to keep herself from laughing as she lifted Sam out of his high-chair. "We don't use that word in this house, either!"

Julia blinked at her mother, bewildered. "But Uncle Kirby calls Daddy that all the time! I've heard him!"

Face flushed, little fists balled in anger at his sides, Alan clambered up onto his chair and leaned over the table towards his sister. "I. Do. NOT. Have pee...pee...pee...PEE-CHOOOOOO!"

And then Julia shrieked and ducked under the table, slipping out of her booster seat just in time, as a blast of orange flame erupted from Alan's nose, passing just over the top of her head and singeing the back of her chair. Alan yelped and clapped both hands over his nose and mouth, staring over them at the charred wooden chair before him with eyes the size of saucers.

A pregnant moment of silence filled the room as everyone—even baby Sam—took an instant to quietly absorb what had just transpired. Frightened, Alan looked from the smoking, blackened chair to his mother, hands still firmly clamped over the lower half of his face, as Julia's head tentatively poked out from beneath the table.

"Is that what penis-breath means?" she asked, staring up at her brother in awe. "Because that was awesome!"

Balancing Sam on her hip, Mom blinked from Julia, to Alan, to the wisps of smoke rising from the back of the chair, and back to Julia. Then, turning towards the yellow spiral staircase that led down to the Hoagie Hub below the loft, she raised her free hand to the side of her face, cupping it around her mouth.

"TERRY!" she called, at the top of her lungs. "YOU'D BETTER GET YOUR EX-WIZARD ASS UP HERE!"