21 January, just an ordinary day to the others, but to Hardison it was a milestone. Today was not only his twenty-third birthday it was also eighteen years to the day when the social worker dropped him off with the woman who would become his Nana. That old woman defied every stereotype in existence. When Alec was eight, the local gangs had been recruiting rather heavily and had been pressuring him to join, attracted by his way with numbers and disdain for authority. When she'd found out about it, Nana had sat him down and given him one of the strangest talks of his young life.
"Alec," she'd said, "you're too smart to go running with that kind. They'll use you up and leave you bleeding in the streets. I know you ain't got a love for the law, and after what it put you through I don't blame you, but being a thug with a gun ain't you. I'll make you a deal, young man: do what you will long as it don't hurt nobody and I'll look after you, but hurt or kill someone and I'll put you in the ground. You understand me, Alec Hardison?"
That was the first time that he got even so much as a hint that his Nana was more than a little old lady. Little things popped up over the years, like how she managed to find the right tutor for him in electronics and how she overlooked where the money came from when the house needed repairs. His Nana knew the basics of what he was learning from his tutor, if not the full details, and gave implicit approval with her silence. When she was in the hospital that last time, he'd tried to ask just how she knew where to hire a world-class hacker as his tutor, but she'd only smiled and said that one meets all kinds in the world if one keeps an open mind.
Even now Hardison couldn't find any background on the woman who had become his family, only a few records going back four years before he was dropped on her doorstep that January afternoon. She just appeared and the system kept on going. For whatever reason, she'd seen that a lawful life just wasn't in him and had done her best to keep him from being turned into a neighborhood thug. Every year since she passed, Hardison kept up his tradition and hacked the Bank of Iceland. Their attempts to block and track his yearly theft were adorable, really, and usually left him laughing for hours afterward even as he scrubbed the stolen money through eight shell companies before he donated it to Sisters of Mercy Hospital. He had his yearly fun, and the hospital which saved his Nana's life enjoyed his thanks, so everyone benefitted. In a day or two he'd get a birthday card from his Nana, and he still couldn't figure out how she found the unpublished amount that he'd stolen (as the Bank never released that information, being too ashamed that he'd broken in yet another year), but she'd code it right in with her best wishes. Yeah, his Nana rocked- age of the geek, indeed!