Call me Legion, for I am many.

-Mark 5:9

Hogan, with some difficulty, managed to refrain from sighing in pure, sybaritic pleasure. He glanced around the office, one more time. It was luxurious in ways he hadn't known to appreciate before the war… and he was appreciating it to the full now. He had a fresh new uniform on, for one thing; that alone was bliss. The walls were freshly distempered, there was a carpet on the floor—a floor that wasn't made from splintery plywood, either— and he was sitting on a padded leather-upholstered chair—a comfortable chair. And there was a window, an honest-to-God window, one that didn't have bars or heavy wooden shutters barred on the outside. For the first time, it really sank in that the war was over.

The war was over. Just the debriefing to get through, a few weeks of questions to answer and answers to explain, and he could go home. Another thing he hadn't really known to appreciate before the war. Not the way he appreciated it now.

The door opened; Hogan tensed with risk-trained reflexes, and looked up immediately as a tweed-suited, studiedly unremarkable man walked in the door.

"Stephens?" A smile broke over Hogan's face, and he relaxed. He hadn't seen or heard from the other agent in nearly a year, and with the grim fatalism necessary in his line of work, had more than suspected that the man was dead. Sometimes being wrong is nice. "Hello! It's good to see you. Are you doing the debriefing?"

"It's good to see you too, Colonel Hogan," Stephens said, smiling in return. "As for the debriefing, not just me, but I am the first hurdle you'll have to clear. I'm afraid we have rather a lot of business to discuss before we can let you go home, but I promise we'll be as quick as possible. I don't doubt there are quite a few people you'd rather be talking to than me."

"Business before pleasure; I understand that," Hogan said, diplomatically not agreeing with that last bit. "I can't imagine that you don't have things you'd rather be doing, too."

"One or two, perhaps," said Stephens, with a faint smile. He sat down behind the desk and pulled a bulging file folder from his briefcase. "But soonest begun, soonest done."

Hogan looked at the small mountain of paper warily. It didn't seem to bode well for his chances of getting home any time this year. "That's my file, huh?"

"Not at all," said Stephens, and paused just long enough to let Hogan's hopes rise before mercilessly crushing them. "This is volume one of your file. As I said… we have rather a lot to discuss. I don't think you have even the faintest idea how much ink has been spilled documenting your exploits."

Hogan grimaced. "That can't all be about me. There were other members of the team."

Stephens snorted. "I know. They have files of their own." He looked up, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. "If it's any consolation, I believe Corporal Newkirk's dossier is even longer than yours. And rather more, er, colorful in spots."

That pulled a chuckle out of Hogan. "God help whoever has to do his debriefing, then."

"I appreciate the sentiment," said Stephens. "I'll need all the help I can get. Some of his individual case files—describing a single mission!—weigh in at several hundred pages apiece. It's unconscionable."

"That sounds like another good reason to skim through my file as quickly as possible, then," said Hogan. He sat back a bit in his chair, appreciating all over again how comfortable it was; it seemed as though he was going to be in it for some time. "Before we get into it, though, there's something I want to ask. You never tried to hide the fact that 'Stephens' isn't your real name. What should I call you?"

"'Stephens' will do perfectly well," he said, and hesitated. "Well… the war is over. And I did say that someday I'd tell you some of my other names. Very well, Colonel; you've earned it. In some circles, I'm known as 'Nimrod.'"

Hogan went very still. "…You're Nimrod," he said slowly. "You?"

"I'm afraid so," he said. "Disappointed?"

"Just shocked," said Hogan. "Wow. I have to say—Nimrod, I was a big fan of your work."

"Likewise, Papa Bear," said Stephens, with a small grin. With that, he opened the folder and turned to the first page. Before he could say anything, though, the door opened. Both men looked up.

If learning Nimrod's identity hadn't already used up Hogan's supply of astonishment for the next month or two, he would probably have been very surprised to see the man at the door. But there he was, large as life and twice as irritating. "I say! Just wanted to pop in and say hello, Hogan," said Crittenden, with the breezy and entirely unwarranted air of utter self-confidence that always made Hogan want to strangle him. "Oh, debriefing, are you? Jolly good. I thought mine would never end, what?"

"I bet," said Hogan. "Had a lot to go over, did you?" He hadn't kept careful track, but to his knowledge, the group captain was an alumnus of at least four separate prison camps, presumably because the Germans had eventually figured out that letting him escape back to his own lines would do more damage to the RAF than the Luftwaffe ever could. The only flaw in their plan was that the RAF knew it, too.

"One doesn't want to make a fuss about it; I just did my bit, like everyone else," Crittenden waved it off. "I will say I'm glad to be done with all the secrecy—and I'm even more glad that no one will be calling me 'Nimrod' after this. Dreadful code name. Can't fathom what they were thinking when they picked it."

"Wait—you're Nimrod?" Hogan looked from Crittenden to Stephens and back. One of them was obviously lying, and he was honest enough with himself to admit that he was prejudiced as to which one it might be.

"A mighty hunter before the Lord, eh, Hogan?" Crittenden chuckled. "I don't suppose I can complain; not after they saddled you with all those fairy tale names. I could have ended up as 'Thrushbeard' or 'Solomon Grundy,' what?"

Or 'Simple Simon', Hogan managed not to say aloud.

"Stolen valour doesn't suit you, Group Captain," Stephens snapped, angry. "You aren't Nimrod, and we both know it."

"I say! I'm not one to toot my own horn, but I most certainly am Nimrod," Crittenden said, just as angry.

Before the argument could get any further than that, there was a knock on the door. "Mr. Stephens?" came a female voice. "Oh, there you are," she said, letting herself in.

Well, letting themselves in. There were two of them. Both blonde, both beautiful, both with some valid reasons to believe that Hogan had been on the point of proposing. Hogan suddenly wished that he was anywhere else; the three of them had never been in a single room at the same time.

"Hello, Colonel," said Helga, with a warm smile. "Stephens, here's the report you asked for. It covers the last few months of the operation."

"Oh, and Colonel, if there's anything you think I've forgotten or misreported, we can go into greater detail later," Hilda said, with a saucy wink. "Over dinner, perhaps?"

"Thank you, ladies," Stephens said, taking the paper, with something very like his usual mild tone.

"Happy to help," said Hilda. "One last job for Nimrod, before she goes back to civilian life."

"And not a moment too soon," said Helga, with a little laugh. "I'm not sorry I did it, but I'm not sorry it's done, either."

Hilda blinked, taken aback. And affronted. "You? What did you have to do with it?"

"Everything!" said Helga. "I was Nimrod!"

"No, you weren't! I was!"

"This is all nonsense, what?" said Crittenden, wading recklessly into the fray. "I'm Nimrod, and there's an end to it. Now, I'm sure you were both splendid, and did quite well, for girls, but—"

That was about as far as he got before both women took umbrage. Hogan watched the carnage for a minute, then decided, first, that Crittenden had brought this on himself and therefore deserved whatever he got, and second, that this was a battle that didn't require his assistance. He therefore felt entirely justified in slipping quietly out the door and into the corridor. One world war was enough for a lifetime.

Just emerging from another office was yet another familiar face that Hogan didn't especially want to see. "Oh, Colonel Hogan. I'm glad I ran into you," said Klink. He looked incomplete somehow; it took Hogan a long moment to realize that he wasn't carrying his riding crop. And, as a result, didn't seem to have any idea what to do with his hands.

"Yeah, long time, no see, Kommandant," Hogan replied, and mentally kicked himself for slipping so easily into the habitual speech patterns. He didn't owe the other man the honorific, not anymore. Not ever again.

"And I seriously doubt we'll be seeing much of one another in the future," said Klink. "So while I have you here, I'd like to thank you for everything you did. Not just for the times you saved me, although I'm grateful for that, of course, but for what you did to shorten the war. The world is obliged to you and your men."

"You mean the 401st? Yeah, they were a great team," said Hogan. "Couldn't have asked for better."

Klink gave him a wry look. "No, I do not mean the 401st, and you know it. I understand why you're keeping up the charade, but I assure you that such caution is unnecessary. And always was. I knew about your mission from the beginning—because I was part of it from the beginning."

"Right, you were the one in charge of making sure the cooler stayed full," said Hogan. "We couldn't have done it without you."

Klink just nodded. "No, you probably couldn't have," he agreed. "I was protecting you, Colonel. Far more than you ever realized. I am Nimrod, and I apologize for not being able to tell you earlier."

"Is that so," said Hogan. This was officially getting ridiculous.

"It is so," said Klink. "Although I can hardly blame you for not believing it. Poor bumbling, useless, stupid, unlucky, cowardly Colonel Klink—so easily fooled, so easily manipulated. Who would ever suspect that he could ever have done anything much more perilous than tally up balance sheets?"

"Colonel! We never thought that," said Hogan. Then, before he could stop himself, he added, "We knew you kept track of our Red Cross packages, too."

Klink laughed, a little. "Very amusing, Hogan. But anyway, you don't need to take my word for it. Let me just say again that I've enjoyed working with you, and I'll watch your future career with great interest." With a wink, as he went back into his office, he trilled, "Disssss-missed."

Hogan stood there in the hall, blinking a couple of times as he tried to process what he was hearing. None of this made sense! How many Nimrods were there?

Before he'd quite recovered—in fact, just as it occurred to him to be annoyed at being dismissed one last time—another voice rang out. A loud, shrill voice, just short of frenzied and well past sane.

"Colonel Hogan! What are you doing here?"

Hogan stifled one quick, panicky jolt of recognition, and slowly turned to face the speaker. And almost didn't recognize him, because Hogan didn't know what to make of the expression on the other man's face. It was almost incomprehensible.

Hochstetter was… smiling.

Well, the Gestapo no longer had any power, and Hogan was no longer a POW. He didn't need to ingratiate himself with that walking straitjacket advertisement anymore. "Enjoying my freedom, thanks for asking," he said shortly. "I think a better question, Hochstetter, is what are you doing here?"

Hochstetter laughed. "Catching up with a few old friends, same as you," he said, in a normal, conversational tone of voice that Hogan hadn't really believed that he was capable of producing. "I'm glad we ran into one another; I wanted to offer my congratulations on a marvelous job. Didn't I always say that I knew you were Papa Bear?"

"You kept insisting that I was up to something," Hogan said, with a careless shrug. The operation was complete. That didn't mean it was no longer classified. "Don't ask me what. Frankly, I never did get all the details straight."

"Very good, Colonel," said Hochstetter. "But the time for such caution is past. I know we haven't exactly been the best of friends—"

"No, but you were a terrific enemy," Hogan cut him off. "Let's leave it at that, huh? I'll see you at your war crimes trial."

"You just might," said Hochstetter. "I'll be testifying for the prosecution in rather vivid detail. A great many of my former colleagues are going to be very unhappy to learn that they had a double agent under their noses the entire time." He laughed again. "Of course, I won't be the only one pointing out that their powers of detection left rather a lot to be desired. After all, they never found you, either, did they?"

"No thanks to you," Hogan said, with some understandable resentment. "You spent half the damn war trying to get someone to believe that I was some sort of superspy."

"Indeed," said Hochstetter. "That's why no one took any of those very obvious coincidences in your vicinity, the ones that I kept pointing out, seriously. The more I ranted, the more unhinged I seemed to be, the less inclined anyone felt to actually look into anything I had to say for fear of being tarred with the same brush."

Hogan was forced to admit, if only in the confines of his own head, that there was some twisted logic to that. He'd used the same stratagem with several would-be whistleblowers—discrediting them and their reports by making them look foolish or crazy. It didn't make him feel any better.

"I have to be going now, Papa Bear," said Hochstetter. "You don't need to believe it now, but when you do, remember that Nimrod wishes you the best."

"You're Nimrod?" Hogan asked, more because he could tell the other man wanted him to ask than because he believed it. "Funny, Klink just told me the same thing."

Hochstetter's face twisted back into something resembling his usual contemptuous anger. "Klink? That idiot? Impossible! If he had been working for the Allies, the Germans would have won the war!"

"Could be," said Hogan. "Who knows? He's right in there if you'd like to talk to him about it."

"Bah! I think I will!" he said, storming off. It was almost a relief to see him behaving normally.

Hogan continued walking through the building. Along the way, he ran into General Burkhalter, Captain Gruber, Sergeant Schultz, Frau Linkmeyer, Group Captain Roberts, Corporal Langenscheidt, Marya, Bruno, Major Teppel, General Biedenbender, and Berlin Betty—among others—all of whom shook his hand with great cordiality and confessed that they were Nimrod. Hogan stopped arguing after a while. He just nodded, expressed polite amazement, pointed them towards whichever member of their cabal was nearest, and left while the argument over which Nimrod was the real one was warming up. It seemed easier than dealing with the situation in any concrete manner.

Stepping out of the building with a sigh of relief, Hogan looked up and down the busy London street and decided that he needed and deserved a beer before he went back and finished the damned briefing, preferably with someone who was not claiming, (and quite plausibly, which made it even more frustrating,) to be one of the war's most mysterious heroes. If there was anyone left in Europe who wasn't either Nimrod or a reasonable facsimile thereof. And that was a pretty big if at this point.

Hogan started off down the street. He made it almost a hundred yards before hearing yet another familiar voice call his name. One that, for a change, he actually wanted to hear.

He turned, and smiled despite himself. "Newkirk! Good to see you. And who's this?"

Newkirk grinned, and indicated the fetchingly pretty young woman at his side. "Colonel Hogan, I'd like you to meet my sister Mavis, and since you aren't my commanding officer anymore, I can say that you had better mind your manners. Mavis, this is the one and only Colonel Hogan, and since you'll always be my baby sister, I can say that you'd better stay on your guard."

There hadn't been much need of the introduction; she couldn't possibly have been anyone else. The young woman smiling up at him looked very much like her brother, which was slightly off-putting. Throughout the entirety of their acquaintance, the thought that Newkirk had very pretty eyes had never so much as crossed his mind, and he sure as hell didn't want to be thinking it now. Even if it was a completely different Newkirk. That was distracting enough that for a moment Hogan didn't even notice that Newkirk didn't sound anything like himself. "A pleasure to meet you, Colonel," she said. "And if you really spent three years sharing a barracks with my lout of a brother, you have my sincerest sympathies."

"Now, now, sister dear," Newkirk mock-chided, still in that upper-class drawl. "Let's not exaggerate, shall we? If nothing else, we were most certainly not sharing a barracks. The Colonel had a private room."

She rolled her eyes in a familiar way that didn't make it any easier for Hogan to think straight. "You have my sympathies anyway," she told him, in the same cultured tones.

"Ah… thanks," he said, mostly on autopilot. There wasn't any good way to say it, so Hogan just let fly. "Newkirk… what's going on? Why are you talking like that?"

Newkirk grinned again, a bit ruefully. "Old habits, mostly," he said. "One does tend to revert to familiar patterns in familiar settings, and accents are no exception. I can switch back to the city dialect if it would make you more comfortable."

"No, it's fine, I just… you were faking it? It was all a front? Are you're saying that the whole time I knew you, you were pretending to be someone you're not?"

Newkirk had the grace to look a little ashamed. "I was pretending to be something I'm not. Well, rather a lot of things, really. An East Ender, obviously. And an RAF corporal, if we come right down to it. But who I am… Colonel, that was no lie. I swear to you, that was always me. I'm the same man I ever was, save for not dropping my Hs."

"Why the secrecy? We had British POWs with every accent in the Empire. Why did you feel the need to—wait a minute. You're not even RAF?" Hogan took a step back. "Who are you, Newkirk? If that's even your name!"

"It is," he said. "And the deception was necessary, or, at least, imposed on me, for, well, a number of reasons that are classified. I'm sure you understand; I really can't talk about it, especially not with a civilian here."

Mavis sighed. "I'm not a civilian, Peter. And I know a great deal more about what you—and you as well, Colonel, if it comes to that—were up to during the war than you suspect."

Newkirk turned to her, dumbfounded. "What are you talking about, Mave?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake. Did you think I spent the last five years sitting at home? Knitting socks and rolling bandages?" She put her hands on her hips. "I was fighting for our country, every bit as much as you were. You boys weren't the only heroes in this war. Unsung or otherwise."

The tiny stress she laid on the relevant words said it all, along with the knowing glint in her eyes. Hogan looked at the siblings staring each other down, and thought to himself that the resemblance was even more pronounced than he'd originally thought.

A slow grin spread over Newkirk's face. "I might have guessed you'd find a way to get yourself into the thick of things," he said. "What is it you think you know?"

"I know who sent you to that camp, and why," she said. "Uncle Bertie was positively furious about it, I might add. And when they reassigned you to that sabotage unit rather than pulling you out after your original mission, I thought he'd have apoplexy. I made something of a point of keeping abreast of what you and your friends were doing after that."

"You were concerned about me?" said Newkirk, quirking a very disbelieving eyebrow.

"Good Lord, no. I just wanted to be somewhere very far away if he got any more bad news about you," she said sweetly, and they both laughed. Clearly, that sort of deeply affectionate and seemingly heartless banter was a longstanding family trait.

Hogan had time to think blearily that this little glimpse into the extended Newkirk clan explained a great deal before she looked back at him, still smiling. "So, Colonel, let's start over, and be introduced properly, shall we?"

Newkirk bit his lip, then nodded. "Perhaps you're right, Mave. It's time to take off all the masks. You asked me who I am, Colonel, and you do have the right to know. No more secrets."

"No," she said softly. "No more secrets. It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Papa Bear."

"The pleasure is all mine…?" Hogan trailed off, knowing, with a sick, hopeless sort of resignation, what he was going to hear.

"I'm Nimrod," said two voices in uncanny unison.

Mavis, for the first time in the entire conversation, looked genuinely shocked. She rounded on her brother. "What do you mean, you're Nimrod?"

"What do you think I mean? Go ask Uncle Bertie—he'll tell you! He's the one who picked the damn code name to begin with, and it wasn't because he felt like handing out any compliments," Newkirk snapped, his voice scaling up in a very familiar righteous fury. His temper, it seemed, had always been genuine, even if his accent had not. "What do you mean?"

That, Hogan thought, was probably his cue to leave. As the siblings settled into what looked likely to be a somewhat spectacular quarrel, Hogan threw up his metaphorical hands, turned on his actual heel, and walked off. He was only human, and it had been a long war.

By Hogan's count, there were now a great many RAF officers, Luftwaffe officers, three German NCOs, a pair of secretaries, a Gestapo lunatic, a double agent, a Red Cross worker, two apparently highly-placed siblings, an assortment of international spies, and a partridge in a pear tree all arguing at once over precisely which of them was Nimrod. The way things were going, at any moment his mother would pop out from the nearest phone booth and tell him that she was Nimrod. He might even believe her if she did.

Who was Nimrod, then? Hogan found himself wondering if there had ever been a Nimrod at all. It just didn't make sense that, out of the blue, everyone was suddenly claiming to have been the same shadowy figure. There were only three possibilities: either they were all lying, all insane, or all telling the truth. Hogan, oddly enough, was leaning towards the latter possibility. Perhaps Nimrod wasn't a single person. Maybe he'd never been anything more than a campfire story, or, at most, a name to borrow for the duration of a mission. Something for the Allies to cling to when they needed to feel brave, or even just hopeful. If that was true, if it had worked, was it really such a bad thing?

"Mon Colonel? Colonel Hogan?" There was only one person who pronounced his title with that particular Gallic twist. Hogan stifled a groan and walked faster, before he had to hear LeBeau confess to being Nimrod, too. Undaunted, LeBeau called again. "Colonel? You have to wake up."

Hogan broke into a run.

LeBeau was right on his heels. "Colonel, you have to wake up," he repeated, a bit more urgently, and shook him by the shoulder.

Hogan came awake all at once. He glanced around, taking a quick survey of his surroundings. The room was drafty, the magazine pictures pasted to the wall faded and torn, the bed lumpy, the blankets inadequate, and the window shuttered tight. If anyone had told him that he'd ever have been happy to see the place, he'd probably have laughed.

"I hate to wake you, Colonel," LeBeau apologized. "But there is a problem, and we need your help."

"Isn't there always," Hogan said, with an ironic little sigh, and swung his feet to the (uncarpeted) floor. "What is it this time?"

LeBeau conceded the point with a very Parisian shrug. "Not so much a new problem as the same old one getting worse. Karl Wagner wants to make another attempt at storming the prison where they are holding his brother. He says that if we will not help him, he will go by himself."

"He can't!" Hogan said. "It's suicide!"

LeBeau shrugged again. "I know it. He must know it, too. But he is determined that at least someone will have tried."

"That's his right," said Newkirk. There was no humor in his voice. "And his lookout. Not ours. I can't in good conscience blame him for that. If it were my brother in there, I'd probably do the same."

Hogan shot him a dark look. There was no 'probably' about it, and they all knew it. "And if they take him alive, it could be our lookout pretty damned fast. If they break him, he's got plenty of tales to tell, and we've got starring roles in a lot of them. He could start with last night. Remember? Because I seem to recall a certain Englishman impersonating a German officer in an attempt to break Hans Wagner out of prison. Would you blame him for that?"

Newkirk didn't argue the point, but he didn't back down, either. "Then our other choice is to nab Kurt ourselves, and keep him locked up here for his own good until it's all over. There's a faint chance he might resent that a bit."

"He's right, Colonel," said Kinch. "Kurt's got a hot temper and a stubborn streak, and not a lot of common sense when those other two come into play. He won't give up on his brother, and he won't forgive us if he thinks we have."

"Well, gee, what does he expect us to do?" asked Carter. "That place looked like a cross between Alcatraz and the Alamo! We'd need a division of tanks driven by Harry Houdini just to get close to the joint."

"Not to mention Joshua at the walls of Jericho," said LeBeau. "He is asking for a miracle, Colonel. It cannot be done. Nimrod himself could not get in there."

"Nimrod? Yeah, too bad we can't ask him for some advice," said Newkirk. "Foist the whole matter off on someone else for a change. Let him deal with Kurt."

Hogan grunted sour agreement, the dream running through his head again. He paced a bit, wondering idly what sort of advice he would have gotten if he asked any of the 'Nimrods' in his dream. What might Stephens have suggested he do? Or Hochstetter? Or Marya? Or Klink?

He stopped dead in his tracks. "That's it," he murmured. Then, louder, he said, grinning, "That's it! That's what we'll do. I know how we're going to save Hans Wagner. Newkirk, you're brilliant."

Newkirk flicked a glance to his teammates to see if they had any idea what he'd said that was so brilliant, and was both relieved and slightly annoyed to see that they didn't know what the colonel was talking about, either. "Er… how so, sir?"

"We'll just let Nimrod handle the whole thing," said Hogan. "It shouldn't be any problem for the greatest secret agent in the entire war, after all. In fact, I bet—" He stopped short, fixed Newkirk with a suspicious glance. "Wait a minute. Newkirk, repeat after me: In Hertford, Hereford, and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly happen."

Newkirk flicked another glance at his teammates. It didn't work any better the second time. "…Sir?"

"You heard me! Just say it however you normally would."

"I normally wouldn't. Sir."

"Say it, and that's an order!"

Newkirk snapped to attention. "Yes, sir," he said, sounding put-upon but doggedly obedient. "In 'Ertford, 'Ereford, an' 'Ampshire, 'urricanes—"

"Okay, okay, okay. That's good enough. Just checking," Hogan said, waving it off.

"Checking what?"

"Forget it. Nothing important—I'll tell you all about it some other time. For now, we've got a job to do," said Hogan. With a decided spring in his step for the first time in two days, he set off towards his office. He paused at the door, looked back at his bewildered crew, and grinned, completely in control of himself once more. "Well?" he said. "Do you want to save Hans Wagner or not?"

They looked at each other. Kinch was the first to smile. "When you think about it, what have we got to lose?"

"Our minds?" LeBeau muttered.

Carter laughed aloud. "Boy! I think that ship has sailed, don't you? Sailed and sunk!"

Newkirk grinned, a bit lopsidedly. "I'm in, too. Nice fool I'd look, backing down from a plan that was apparently my own idea. Whatever it is."

LeBeau scoffed as they all followed Hogan into his office. "I know. That, mon ami, is the reason I was hesitating in the first place."

"That's nothing to worry about. Even if it did start out as his idea, I'll bet that Colonel Hogan's got a way to fix it. You know, make sure it actually works the way it's supposed to," said Carter.

Newkirk just rolled his eyes. Under his breath, he muttered, "And even if he doesn't, maybe Nimrod does."

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Author's note: This, obviously, is a slight reworking of 'The Missing Klink,' or, as most people probably think of it, 'the one about Nimrod.' As far as I can tell, roughly three-quarters of the fandom has taken a swing at identifying who the mysterious Nimrod might have been, and in the process named roughly three-quarters of the extended cast as plausible candidates thereof. And they *are* all plausible, too, that's the trouble! I couldn't help playing with that uncertainty a little bit, or making a little fun of our shared writerly penchant for solving riddles the show left unaddressed.

(Oh, and Stephens is an OC from a few of my pre- and post-series stories—who I did name as Nimrod, as it happens—most of which were decidedly Newkirk-centric, and several of which did run to several hundred pages apiece. I couldn't help making a little fun of that, either.)