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

Maggot was a particularly tenacious creature.

Of course – that is, for those who believe in the truth of names – she'd have to be. It started as a leering nickname back in elementary school (third grade, probably, when children began a lifelong education on the benefits – i.e. 401K, health insurance, cold cash – of cruel competition), a nickname whose origins were (rumor had it) not unjustified; it aptly described some tiny, pale-faced critter whose modest stature did little to minimize the impending gawkiness of pre-pubescence. Childhood malice festers on such victims, so eager are little children to try on their training wheels of injustice that their microcosm of contemptible bullying just about proves that, in the end, Darwin will out-survive us all. That fit little bastard.

So when Kathleen Rupp – Kat, they called her; clearly a misnomer because her playground etiquette more closely resembled that of the blood-sucking chupacabra – approached this small-framed girl for target practice, it began something like this:

"Hey Maggot, are those maggots in your lunch? Huh, Maggot?"

Unperturbed, the target in question craned her neck so as to level her larger opponent with a well-rehearsed glare.

"What, cat got your tongue?" Kat snickered, then paused for a breather. She was suddenly struck by the perfect pun in her own insult. Unplanned brilliance was clearly her forte. But little Maggot didn't miss a beat:

"And what would you be doing with my tongue? That's really gross, Kath-reen."

The crowd ooh-ed, fearing for the worst when faced with a dangerous lack of comeback from the aforementioned blood-sucker. This had happened before. And, sure enough, in the next moment Kat had launched herself at the straggly-haired little girl, hoping to at least claw her way to victory (a jungle cat after all), but what happened next was certainly unprecedented. Little Maggot, with the instinctive alacrity of someone accustomed to making good use of a God-given brain, stepped aside and let her nemesis endure the rough landing, a landing made historic by the collision with a tether-ball pole on her way down. The spectators didn't exactly cheer (they knew better than to take sides), but even in the black-and-blue aftermath Kathleen Rupp sensed the first tittering of a tide-change.

Yes, Maggot was a tenacious underdog, and she had certainly won this particular battle. Too bad the yard teacher felt differently.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Again, Maggie? A-gain?"

Because she was well-versed in the rules of rhetoric, Maggie Lisa knew when to keep her mouth shut. Adults always had a way of asking questions that were not meant for responses – they could be so ridiculously redundant sometimes. Moments like these, when she was faced with the inevitability of punishment, she remembered that there were good talkers, and then there were smart ones. She absolutely desired to be the latter.

"The girl's got a bruise the size of a grapefruit."

"Sorry, Aunt Kay."

"Maggie…"

"But, um, to be fair, her head was already pretty big." Crap-nuggets; definitely should have stayed quiet.

"Ohhh, my mistake."

Sensing sarcasm but still wanting to be polite, Maggie muttered a mellow, "That's okay."

"Are you kidding me?"

Tricky, but undoubtedly another rhetorical question. Maggie decided to lay low for a bit.

Although Maggie Lisa had never been much of a fighter, trademark accidental victories still seemed to follow her wherever she treaded. At just age fourteen, it would be the eighth (maybe more, but who's counting?) time someone she hated was conveniently injured – again, not specifically of her doing, but her aunt (and instructors) seemed to suspect otherwise. Still, there was no sufficiently condemning evidence; she'd learned a lot about that from following the O.J. Simpson trial. Not that what she did – or didn't do – could be remotely comparable to what he did…or didn't do.

"Quentin, it's your turn."

Her uncle peered ever-so-carefully out from one side of his book, too small and clutched much too close to his face to conceal anything. Maggie tried for eye-contact; only he could save her now. He was, rather unfortunately for her, a piss-poor wingman and she usually ended up worse off for his clumsy moral support.

Now he cleared his throat, generating a dry, grating noise before: "Um…what?"

"Talk to her, Quentin."

He turned his full attention on Maggie, finally catching her frantic attempt at eye-contact; her telepathic efforts were finally answered with: "Well, um, Maggie…"

"Yes?"

"You know your aunt doesn't like violence," he began, adding (but only after a death-glare from his wife), "…and neither do I."

"Yea."

"So that leaves only one question." He paused for effect. "Was it still worth it?"

"Quentin!"

"Totally."

Kay was almost seething with some variation of (dark) purple-rage now, clearly vexed by the less-than-educational repartee occurring between her husband and the child they were supposed to be enlightening.

"She was big, too," Maggie added, with not a little pride in her voice. "But I was more quick."

"Quicker, you mean," Quentin corrected her. Grammar was very important in this household.

"You're giving her a grammar lesson?" Beside herself with desperate frustration, the older woman had begun to froth excitably at the mouth; the beginnings of what some might consider an epileptic fit. Maggie recognized the danger signs and quickly clarified:

"I didn't hit her. I just ducked. Honest." She paused in search for the right words to round out her explanation, finally uttering a modest, "Cross my heart, hope to rot. Stick a needle up my b– "

"We get it." Kay stalked into the kitchen, having thoroughly given up any hopes of discipline, and thusly missing two very crucial fist-pumps of victory synced quite simultaneously to her departure.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Maggie's first word happened the day after she became one year young. Neither of her parents expected it; they had collectively read enough baby books to know that no ordinary child would begin yapping until at least its fourteenth month. Oh, the Ceras knew all about means and medians and standard deviation – among their parental repertoire had probably been an 80's equivalent of Statistics for Dummies – so they reasonably deduced that any baby burped under their very suburban roof should never aim to be anything but comfortably standard.

"Kay," she had gurgled.

Once again, their comfortable world would give way under the weight of the extraordinary. Naturally, they first debated over the literary significance of this word. Kay beamed (alright, she gloated) at what she believed to be the first of many occasions that her child would inadvertently choose her as the unequivocal favorite amongst numerous parental units in the home. Quentin objectively objected; obviously the child had been attempting to answer a question he posed only moments earlier – "How do you feel about the current political administration?" – and her response ("o-kay") directly signified polite detachment and careful analysis – the very trappings of a prodigious future political analyst.

Eventually, however, the legal guardians held off on endless debate in order to discuss the trajectory of Maggie's upbringing. Given the cryptic (and confusing) manner by which they came to be parents, it would have been practically sound to curb – or altogether bypass – any talk (now that "talking" was imminent) of Maggie's real parents. But both Kay and Quentin felt this path of least resistance would, sooner or later, only create more plot-holes to mend; children could be relentlessly intuitive that way. Besides, Quentin had remarked, he didn't think he could face their child knowing he was deliberately deceiving her. What kind of a life would that be, anyway, to always be lying about something?

To this, Kay had no response; she had her own, very separate, reasons for wanting to be upfront with Maggie about her parentage. Despite the accidental estrangement between her and Aggie, Kay had – and still – cared for her good friend; nostalgia for their one-time camaraderie made her hesitant to claim any maternal title for herself. Excepting the circumstances for which life gave her little choice, she refused to make dishonesty a habit. And – though she dared not keep too much faith – there was a part of her that still believed Aggie would return. Should that day come, Kay wanted to be sure she'd have a place in Maggie's life that would not be jeopardized (or replaced) by the prodigal mother. Aunt Kay, she thought, had a nice ring to it. In any case, she would be a mother; titles didn't always decide the parameters of love.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Privately, she called herself Maggot also.

She didn't mind the name, really; it was an identity, and anything that put her on the map…well, she wasn't about to complain. Half the time she was running from it anyway, running from titles and definitions and useless boundaries, from people and places and things that strapped and stripped her down ad infinitum when what she really was, beyond all the individual parts of herself that seemed to continually collide within and implode into larger, epic traumas – each signifying that there would never be an end or limit to the ever-increasing multitude of fragmented selves and emotions she could discover – what she really was, was…

She didn't know.

A chameleon maybe, the way she just knew that she could, if she wanted to, appear quite successful at most anything she put her mind to. It was a strangely absorbent mind, too, because her whole life – thus far – had been, on the outset, entirely too ordinary; it was her brain that saved her from freezing to death in the beautiful monotony. She had the kind of parents who, God-bless them, never forced her to be exceptional. Oh, they believed in her, and they (sometimes, depending on the amount of collateral damage) delighted in the aftermath of her quirks, but it was not from them that she learned to push her own limits. Rather ambitiously, she decided (at age eleven) the time had come for the public to view the culmination of her God-given gifts. In one private concert (tickets did not come cheap) for her aunt and uncle, she delivered a strong program whose highlights would include: Speed-singing through "Losing My Religion" (R.E.M. in ten seconds), a well-timed delivery of a self-written, R-rated "knock-knock" joke (Aunt Kay cut this segment short), and a gorgeous single-axel high-jump followed by a spectacular, face-first pratfall on the living room carpet.

Above all, she lived (and loved) to laugh.

Her uncle encouraged it too. In some ways, they were two peas in a pod, both preferring the simplicity of contentment to the puzzling complexities of being human – it was he who bought her her first paint-set (penance for not allowing her to come along on one of his paint-jobs) and took her to galleries and garbage dumps and amusement parks for inspiration. Art, he would say, comes from anything and nothing at all. On these little trips (so often just the two of them), he taught her to dream, with abandon, just so she might do more than exist…that she might do her fair share of living, too.

She taught him things too, like how to out-jam Queen and how to keep his face straight during times of severe ice cream brain-freeze; together, they shared secret smiles (and secret evils) and enjoyed life with the same kind of relaxed sensitivity. Quentin knew about childhood – that the days would only be all-too-short and, much as she may ache to grow up now, he hoped with every strum of his paternal heart she wouldn't become one of those adults without a youth to look back on with rose-colored spectacles. There were no real promises in life – maybe hers would be mostly smooth-sailing but somehow he doubted that; in any case, the only guarantee (and the best gift) he could give his child was a future nostalgia for simpler, happier times. This, this he could promise.

With her aunt, there was that shared appreciation for quietude; Kay was never much of a talker (except when motivated by rage), but all the same, she was the parent Maggie visited after a shitty day in school, after enduring the pettiness of high-school drama and competition that usually didn't work in her favor (despite clear combat abilities) – quirky, smart kids with an odd sense of humor didn't have a solid place in the scholastic setting; it didn't help, either, that puberty had hit her late and then, when it finally did hit, turned her into some sort of nefarious mythical creature with stilts-for-legs and a pair of chesty sandbags that she had no fucking idea what to do with. Except tape up and pray to every brand of higher power that she might make it through one day without someone gawking at all the wrong parts of her without ever noticing her at all. She tread a fine line in those days, never sure of whether she wanted to be seen for all the wrong reasons or remain altogether unseen – in the end, it wouldn't be her choice anyway. As paradoxical proof that she somehow belonged in the intimate political setting of the schoolyard, Maggot learned early enough that of all the things she could be, awesome would not be one of them.

She didn't have the assuredness to bother with most relationships of any kind in those days, but she did accidentally end up with a pretty good friend to swap notes (and lunch) with. Conversation, though, was usually limited; Maggot had little use for gossip and she didn't have much to say about herself – not the kind of "stuff" that people were interested to hear, anyway, so she mostly knew nothing about friendships and received no training on being a good friend, though she suspected that most people with friends didn't have the faintest clue on how to be a good friend either. And hey, if that didn't stop them.

It was during these days, especially, that she felt a cozy gratitude for her aunt's quiet company; there was never any pressure to speak, but just knowing that she could…well, that was plenty. On these days, Kay would brew some mysterious tea-like concoction and they'd munch on dipped madeleines (a tradition they religiously emulated ever since they started, but couldn't finish, that Proust volume) over a game – Battleship, probably – or an enjoyable read. Sometimes Maggie wondered if she made her aunt a little sad, because for just a fleeting iota of a second, she might catch a look from Kay that suggested a frightening storage room full of stories and emotions that she would never be fully privy to. And then it would pass, and she'd wonder if she was over-thinking again; always, she blamed the questionable tea.

Besides, her Aunt Kay had always been an enigma.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

There was an older photograph of Aggie that Kay left on her beside table, and no one else paid much attention to it anymore. It belonged to happier times, probably, since Aggie was still glowing from the kind of optimism that only youth and impending motherhood could produce; it had clearly been taken when she was seven or eight months pregnant. Every once in awhile Kay herself might look at it, but usually in more private moments that were always accompanied by an unsettling look of terror similar to one Aggie herself had in that last meeting so many years ago. Little Maggie, in her more pest-like stage of childhood, had once played with it, even pried it open from the back, only to find some hasty scribbling on the backside of the picture she could barely discern (and could certainly not yet read):

Soon may involve more
harmful messy gore.
Foolish, irresponsible choices form
bad truths. Blame indiscreet planning.

(Common sense will tell us,
that the power which hath endeavored to subdue us,
is of all others the most improper to defend us.)

And then, at the bottom right corner:

Agnes Rocher, love is more than love

"Agg-niss," the little girl had giggled. It was funny name. "Agg-niss Wokker."