Disclaimer – Don't own any of them. I'm just borrowing them for a bit.

***

Someone sinks into the seat opposite me and I don't need to look up from the book I am pretending to read to know who it is.

I hadn't wanted to talk before and Hannibal had glanced over at Amy and let it go.

But I knew better than to think that the conversation was over. I might have been able to con Amy, but Hannibal knows me too well.

"What did you tell Amy?" he asks, curious.

I raise a small smile. "The truth."

"Uh huh," I hear him take a draw on his cigar. "How much of the truth Lieutenant?"

Like I said the man knows me.

"I didn't tell her I was only sixteen." I rub a weary hand over my face.

I feel Hannibal straighten and I know I've surprised him.

I'm not usually so candid. At least not right away. Frankly I'm too tired to be anything but honest and, right now, I could do with some advice.

"Was it enough?" he asks softly

Trust Hannibal to cut to the chase

"To explain why she left me? I guess. As a career choice it came with a pretty hard sell at the Orphanage. I'm fairly sure the good Father entertained secret hopes that I might follow in his footsteps. At least until I hit puberty." I tried to grin.

Hannibal's lips raise in a smile, but he's not going to let me get off that easily.

I don't blame him. When I arrived in Vietnam I was so close to the edge its amazing I lived long enough to meet him.

"What about to understand why she didn't just tell you?" Hannibal asks innocently, but his gaze is sharp.

I sigh. Trust Hannibal to find the one question I don't want to answer.

"No," I admit frankly. "But I can live with it."

"Can you?" Hannibal isn't about to let this lie.

It took him until I wanted to sign up for a second tour to drag the truth out of me. Why a scared, damn near suicidal seventeen year old had ended up in Vietnam in the first place and then actually wanted to stay there.

I don't know what I had been more scared of, that he would let me stay or that he would send me home. When I was finished, he'd butted my shoulder fondly and said 'Sex isn't love kid."

It hadn't meant that much to me at the time.

I hadn't had that much experience with love.

"Did I thank you for coming?" I ask with my best innocent expression.

"Face."

There is a wealth of meaning in that one word and he rolls his eyes at me. In equal measure at my desire to thank him for something he would do without thinking and my attempt to change the subject.

See. I know him as well.

"No. Really." I insist.

This is important to me. I squirm slightly in my seat and look down at my hands as I try and put this into words. All my life, all I have ever wanted is to belong, to fit in. To be a part of something .. real.

To be a part of family.

People who will be there, just because. Because they love you. Because you need them. Because you ask.

And, sometimes, even when you don't.

Suddenly, a warm brown hand is covering both of my clasped ones.

"You knew we would," Hannibal speaks softly. "That's what a family does, kid."

And I smile.

You see, I may not have the whole white picket fence fantasy.

At least, not yet.

But I do have a family.

And a man who will do everything in his power to see that my dreams come true.

That has to be something worth smiling about.