Author's Note: This chapter immediately follows "Harold." Harold appears to be Finch's favorite first name and Wren seems to be the root name for many of his current aliases. These two chapters are my take on why.

This story is definitely AU. Although I may make adjustments as new info is available, I'll be sincerely surprised if I'm even close to canon once it's all revealed. All persons, locations and companies in this story are fictitious. I don't speak German so feel free to correct any mistakes I make.

Be warned: a character curses in this chapter. The last chapter contained some offensive invective; why it was said is explained in this chapter.

Altair: a 1970s-era personal computer sold in kit form

Ross City, Illinois
July 1966

Jangled nerves and panicked senses jumbled Danny's memories of the aftermath of the shooting. He knew he had answered many questions from a lot of people, including a real live FBI agent, and that he went to the police station in a real police cruiser but, when Danny tried to recall the particulars of that afternoon, only four things stayed with him.

The first was the sight of his captor lying on the cement not a yard away, his right arm resting against the wheel of the Lark with his revolver still in-hand. The man's lower jaw sagged open loose and the center of his face was gone—no nose, no eyes, no upper lip, nothing but bloody pulp mixed with bits of bone. Although gentle hands immediately turned him away from the body, Danny's stomach knotted then heaved up his breakfast, as much from shock at the sight as the knowledge that, had the old man missed, he would be the one lying there with his head all red and mangled.

For months afterward, the dead man and his ruined face haunted Danny's dreams, hiding around corners or inside cupboards and closets. When the boy came near, the dead man would reach out and rip Danny's face off, leaving him to awake cold and trembling, too scared to scream or explain his pain and terror.

The second clear memory was of a conversation that happened after he saw the dead man. Danny was in the office, sitting on a battered wooden desk with his back to the window. Scratches on the right lens of his glasses blurred his vision. The ringing in his ear from the revolver blast muted the sounds of the police officers talking outside, and his cheek and temple stung where the muzzle flash had hit it. When Danny raised a hand touch his face, he saw that his palm was oozing blood even though it did not hurt. He was staring at the wound, wondering why it was there, when the old woman walked up to him.

"I'm Ella Wren," she said to him, "Son, I'm so sorry about what happened to you."

The boy lowered his hand to his lap as he shrugged off her words. After all, it wasn't like they changed anything.

"We need to get you cleaned up," she continued. "Stevie can't find the first aid kit so we're waiting on one of the officers to fetch us one. Your mother's gone to get warm water and some clean towels from the restroom."

The word "mother" sent a surge of anger through the boy.

"She's not my mother," he snapped. "She's my case worker, and I don't want her help."

Danny lowered his head and stared at the scuff marks on his shoes as his anger spit out its reasons in muttered phrases: he was gonna kill me… paid to keep me safe… ran away…. Remembering that empty front seat and being left alone to get his head blown off enraged the boy. He balled his hands into fists, digging his fingers into the scrapes on his palms, anger keeping the pain at bay.

Mrs. Wren listened for a moment then she seated herself on Danny's left, saying nothing until he raised his head to glare at her.

"Your moth—case worker didn't leave you," she told him, "I dragged her out of her car."

Danny rejected her explanation as a stupid lie. Mrs. Wren was old and at least six inches shorter than his case worker—no way could she have dragged a baby from the Lark, let alone Miss Bellinger.

"Yeah?" he sneered. "How?"

Mrs. Wren smiled as though very pleased with herself.

"I sneaked up to the car door," she replied, "while that man was wasting his time threatening Stevie. I could have told him Stevie wouldn't obey him. That boy is a damp dish rag. It comes from his mother reading that Dr. Spock book and forgetting all the good advice her momma gave her, but that's neither here nor there. What I did was tell your case worker she had to get out of the line of fire so Mr. Wren could concentrate on not hitting you. She didn't want to come with me but, when my mind's set, I don't take 'No' for an answer. I opened her door and grabbed her sleeve and took her back to our car with me."

It took Danny a while to sift the wordy explanation and find its heart: that his case worker did not leave willingly.

"Miss Bellinger wanted to stay with me?" he asked, just to be certain.

"That woman," she replied, "wanted to pull you through the passenger window then take off running with you. I knew that would get the three of us killed so I told her to let my Harold handle things and everything would come out all—"

A rap on the window cut off her sentence. Danny saw Mrs. Wren look toward the window and nod as though in reply to someone then she slid from the desk to her feet.

"I have to go talk to the police now," she told Danny, "but you know this—that man hadn't hit the ground before your case worker was at your side. She wanted nothing except for you to come through safe."

She patted his hand and smiled at him before heading for the door, leaving Danny staring after her, too stunned by the news to respond. A few seconds later, when his case worker came in with clean towels and water, he threw himself into her arms, knocking the bowl and the towels to the floor, and he held her as tightly as he could as he burst into tears. It was the first hug he had given willingly since his family had died, and the memory of Miss Bellinger sobbing with him as they rejoiced at being alive stayed with him much longer than the nightmares did.

The third clear memory came from the office of Ross City's Chief of Police. Danny was seated in the big leather chair behind his desk, having just finished repeating his story for the chief and the FBI agent. After the agent thanked Danny for his cooperation, the chief told him to make himself at home while they talked with his case worker.

After the two men left, Danny did not take advantage of the chief's offer. Instead, he drew up his knees and stared at the hole in the right leg of his slacks and the gauze under it that covered his skinned knee. Miss Bellinger also had bandaged his palms, but the powder burn on his face and the scrape on his nose rated only soap, water, and some iodine. She also had tried to remove the grime that seeped into his shirt and tie when he hit the cement, but her efforts only served to spread the oil stains. So much, he thought, for getting dressed up that morning. Now, he looked like a bully had beat him up then dumped him in a mud puddle—and that was only the parts of him that showed. The way his shoulder and chest ached, Danny knew they had to be covered in bruises from his captor's hands. The memory of being held by that man tightened the boy's chest and set his eyes to watering.

The sound of chair legs being dragged across linoleum drew Danny from his thoughts. He snuffled hard, determined not to cry where anyone could see him, then he looked up to see Mr. Wren standing at the far side of the chief's desk. His left hand held the back of a wooden chair, and the thumb of his right hand was hooked on the pocket of his overalls.

"You mind some company?" he asked.

Danny shook his head, glad of the distraction. Mr. Wren lowered himself into the chair, easing his overalls with a wiggle as his rear reached the seat. To Danny, he looked even older than he had at the filling station, and his gaze kept sliding away from the boy as though the old man's thoughts were elsewhere.

"You doing okay, son?" he asked, his voice rasping the words.

The boy swallowed hard then said, "Yes, sir."

"My wife," he said, "sent me in here to apologize for cussing. She thinks my words weren't fit for young ears even if I had a good reason for saying them."

The boy took a moment to think about the old man's cussing. He had heard men curse before: Mr. Nielsen at a balky cow, Mr. Shipford after the Gantt incident, Mr. Edison from pain after a bout of coughing, but Mr. Wren wielded his curses with artistry and craft, the filth rolling off his tongue like the stanzas of an epic poem. His foster fathers' efforts paled in comparison.

Danny shook his head to deny the need for an apology then he said, "You said those things on purpose. You wanted him to forget about me and get angry at you."

The old man's eyebrows shot up. He stared at Danny for a moment as though surprised then he nodded slowly.

"You got that right, son. When I was a drill instructor, back during the Depression, I learned how to piss off young bucks using nothing but words—to put pressure on them and mold them into Marines. I knew those same words would distract DeWayne and let me take him out before he hurt you."

The name used by the old man meant nothing so Danny asked about it. Mr. Wren frowned at his question.

"Didn't Chief Haas or that FBI agent tell you?"

Danny shook his head. Although the boy had asked about his captor, both men acted like typical adults by figuratively patting him on the head and telling him not to worry. A harrumph of disgust from the old man made Danny hope he might be more forthcoming. He watched the old man frown, his eyes focused on something Danny could not see, as though he were deciding whether to be honest or not.

Finally, Mr. Wren shifted his gaze back to Danny.

"Son," he said, his words slow and quiet, "at your age, you shouldn't know that evil exists and how any day on Earth can be your last. I'm truly sorry you learned otherwise today. Since I can't take that knowledge from you, I guess it's fitting you know the rest of it. Alvin DeWayne, the man who tried to kidnap you and Miss Bellinger, was wanted for the abduction, rape, and murder of six women in three states. You and your case worker were going to be his next victims."

Rape was only a definition in a dictionary to Danny, but he now knew what abduction felt like: a controlling hand on his shoulder, being forced to go places he didn't want to go, choking on a gun shoved into his throat. If Mr. Wren and his wife hadn't needed gas, Danny knew he would have learned what murder felt like, too. His mouth went dry and he grabbed the arms of his chair to keep from trembling.

"I'm damn glad," Mr. Wren continued, "you had the smarts to tell Ella and me you needed help."

Danny dropped his gaze to his knees, shamed by the memory of his mouthing that word in anger at them.

"I didn't really think you'd help me," he admitted, leaving unsaid how he had thought the couple useless.

A dry chuckle drew Danny's attention back to the old man.

"I guess we surprised you on that," Mr. Wren told him. "'Course, the way you handled the situation surprised us, too. You did everything DeWayne told you to do, but you did it slow and deliberate, and you gave Ella and me the time we needed to get my shotgun from the trunk, and get Miss Bellinger out of harm's way. Then, at the end, I could see you'd figured out what I was going to do, and you had the courage to stand still and let me take my shot. I'm telling you, son—you are a brave young man."

Danny shook his head so hard, his glasses bounced on his nose.

"No," he said, the word drawn out until it became a moan. "I was scared."

The old man leaned forward and clasped his hands together on the desk as he peered straight at Danny.

"Son, courage is when you overcome your fear and do what has to be done. You can be scared as a sinner on Judgment Day and still be brave."

The old man sat back in his chair.

"Don't tell anyone, but I was scared, too. Last thing I wanted to do today was kill someone. To take a life is a terrible, terrible thing and this was so God-damned risky—"

Mr. Wren's gaze again slid away from Danny's face to focus on the desktop between them. The creases around his eyes moistened and his breathing picked up a rhythmic hitch that matched the trembling Danny was trying to hide. Something twisted inside the boy as he realized what the old man was picturing.

It's me held by DeWayne at the filling station… the same scene but from where he was standing… he's feeling the weight of his shotgun in his hands… watching the revolver move from pointing at me to pointing at him… knowing he has to kill my captor to save me… knowing he could miss and kill me… and he knows, if DeWayne kills him, then Dewayne will shoot me and the station attendant, and he'll hurt Miss Bellinger and his wife before killing them… he knows there are so many ways this could go wrong… he sees all of them….

The clear mental image chilled the boy. Never before had his brain put a bunch of stuff together to form an insight into anything. It would happen many more times in Danny's life: his comprehension of how computers work when he saw his first Altair, his design for a better cell network for his father, the relational database thesis project that would earn his first million, his method for incorporating object-orientation into relational database management systems that would make IFT even more millions, his organizational structure that allowed his many holdings to interact congruently while shielding his interests in all of them, his conceptualizations of social networking that, when licensed, would make him a billionaire, and then his creation of the Machine, the vast system that sifted all of human communication, sorting and correlating to find the thinnest of threads to save humanity from destruction—all considered 'genius' by others, all nothing more than the boy's brain solving a problem.

Only once did his genius ever manifest itself for a human interaction, and its insight into Harold Wren shook Danny to his core.

I thought he was useless… he knew he wasn't… he knew what he had to do and how to do it… and what it might cost… and he did it anyway… maybe I was brave… but he was braver… bravest… and for a kid he'd never even seen before… me….

Danny let go of the chair arm and reached his hand toward the wrinkled hands clasped on the desk before him. His reach fell short, but the action brought the old man from his thoughts. When his gaze met Danny's, the boy told him "Thank you." The words came out as a squeak, but Mr. Wren's smile in reply proved he understood the message.

The boy saw the old man again in September. His parents drove him up for two days of fishing and listening to Mr. Wren talk of his time in the Marines and his years farming and raising his family. They made the trip again in early November when word came that Mr. Wren had been found lying by his favorite fishing spot, dead of a heart attack. Danny stood by his casket and silently promised the old man that he would remember to risk everything to help if the need ever came to him, not matter what the cost.

The fourth clear memory was from later that afternoon. Danny was leaving the men's room when he noticed a small group of people talking at the far end of the hall. He saw his case worker, a grey-haired woman in a tan suit and, next to her—

His heart lost its beat as he tried to draw a breath.

It was them, the Sutterfields—life-sized and in living color. Mrs. Sutterfield was in white slacks and a bright blue shirt. Her hair was blonder than Danny's and coiled around her head like in his photo. Mr. Sutterfield wore a summer-weight gray suit with a tie the same red as the one Danny had chosen that morning.

The boy glanced down at his tie and its smeared oil stains. What with his blotches and bandages, the scratches on his glasses and the iodine on the tip of his nose, Danny looked nothing like the smartly dressed boy so eager to impress his new parents that morning. He considered ducking back into the restroom to hide from them, maybe taking another whack at cleaning his tie, but he put that fear aside and squared his shoulders, wincing only a little as bruised muscles flexed, before starting toward the group.

If they don't want me, he thought as his steps took him closer, if they only see the dirt and they don't see me, then I don't want them as parents. I'll get Miss Bellinger to take me to the Ranch if I have to, but I won't go home with them.

He was fifteen feet from the group before he was noticed. Danny's case worker spotted him first; she whispered something to the woman in the tan suit while tipping her head in the boy's direction. The woman leaned toward Mr. Sutterfield; Danny heard her say, "There's your boy now."

With that, the Sutterfields turned to face him. Danny kept walking, but his attention was on their faces as he waited for their reaction. Both of them looked shocked, eyes wide behind their glasses, then Mrs. Sutterfield grabbed her husband's arm and the two of them took a step toward the boy. Danny noted how the shock stayed in Mrs. Sutterfield's expression, and he braced himself for rejection.

"Daniel," she called to him. "Bist du verletzt? Nein, no—"

She released her husband's arm and dropped to her knees, bringing herself down to Danny's height.

"Daniel," she repeated, her accent making it 'Don-yel,' "I see bandages. Are you injured?"

Before Danny could say he was fine and correct her about his name, Mr. Sutterfield crouched down next to his wife.

"It's bumps and bruises, Clara" he told her, "nothing that won't heal."

He smiled to assure her then he addressed the boy.

"Mrs. Rayburn called my wife at home and told her someone had tried to kidnap you and Miss Bellinger, but the two of you were safe. She then said we'd have to postpone meeting you—"

Mrs. Sutterfield started shaking her head, interrupting her husband.

"I told her 'No postponing,'" she told the boy. "I called Alan at work and told him we needed to make certain our son is O.K."

She ended her sentence with a smile aimed at Danny, but her voice shook as though she still feared for his safety. Mr. Sutterfield reached for her hand and held it while he continued his story.

"So, I went home and got Clara and we drove straight up here. Mrs. Rayburn followed us in her car. She still has to take you to her office for the paperwork but, Daniel—you'll be home with us tonight."

A big snuffle from Mrs. Sutterfield punctuated his words. Her nose had gone red and big tears were running down her face, but the grin under those tears was made of pure joy. It matched the smile Mr. Sutterfield wore as he beamed happily at Danny. The boy felt every bit of his fear and worry vanish as his mouth formed its own huge grin.

I can be Daniel for them, he thought. They want me… I can be anything they want….