The girl who barrelled through the door as soon as Jen opened it was looking distinctly angry. She paused a moment as soon as she had charged through and barked over her shoulder; "Hurry up!"

Jen peered through the door to see Rory wearily trudging in behind her. She offered Jen an apologetic smile. "Sorry. This is my friend, Paris. She's a little over-eager."

Jen stared at Rory with wide eyes, her expression darting to Paris who was still stood in the middle of the kitchen, being watched warily by everyone.

"Over-eager?" Paris sniped, "Thanks, Rory." She turned her attention to the corridor leading to the rest of the house.

Closing the door, Jen retook her seat at the table. Dawson offered Rory his seat but she shook her head to the negative, instead heading over to Paris and placing a restraining hand on her arm. "Paris, maybe we should just go."

Paris furiously shook her head. "No!" And then she yelled. "Tristan DuGrey! Get your preppy, no-good, disappearing act ass down here right now!"

Rory winced as she noticed the confused looks on everyone's faces. "Hey, Rory?" Pacey said carefully, "Maybe you should tell your friend that no-one lives here called that."

The sound of the back door opening had everyone's attention swivelled to it. Charlie walked through it, yawning loudly, as he deposited his bag right by the door, wearily offering a; "Hey guys," before he noticed Paris' imposing figure, her arms crossed in front of her. He visibly gulped.

Charlie had imagined meeting one of his childhood friends a million times, but the reality of it was spectacularly different. For one thing, he'd always imagined it would be in Hartford when he'd finally gone home. Or in some huge city where he was a successful musician. Or it would be with one of his useless guy friends who he knew he would at least be better than. He'd never imagined that it would be in his small kitchen in Boston with the old friend being Paris Gellar. Or at least, he'd hoped it wouldn't be with Paris. Because he was fairly positive she was going to kill him.

He gulped again. "Hey, Paris."

She stared at him for a full minute before walking across the kitchen and slapping him firmly on the cheek. Charlie winced and moved his jaw slowly. "I deserved that."

Paris' eyes widened. "You think? Because it seems to me you deserve much worse. I mean, my God Tristan! You. Ran. Away. From. Home." She punctuated each word with a poke to his chest.

He backed away until he hit the door. "Hey! I didn't run away from home. I just left military school and came to a college where no-one knew me. At no point did I actually run away from my home."

Paris just frowned, obviously not swayed by his logic. "Semantics, Tristan. Lots of people go away to college, not many change their name, give up their privileged upbringing and cut all contact with their old world!" She threw her hands up in the air. "We don't even get a Christmas card!"

"I lost you address?" Charlie offered meekly.

"We were your friends. We dealt with all the same things. Why did you have to leave?" She looked at the floor. "Why on Earth did you feel the need to stop being a DuGrey?"

"What did being a DuGrey ever get me?"

"Lots of money?" Rory offered cheerfully from the table.

"Lots of money?" Joey repeated weakly.

Charlie chuckled. "Yeah, lot's of money. A guaranteed spot at some prestigious Ivy League school. A guaranteed spot at some prestigious law school. And a guaranteed miserable life."

All of the outrage seemed to leak out of Paris. She stared at him for along moment. "You should have told someone." She grinned wryly. "I wouldn't have expected it to be. But at least someone." Paris looked over her shoulder at all of Charlie's friends. She smiled slightly. "I think you have some explaining to do."

She turned to leave, giving him a brief hug. Rory followed her, hugging him a little tighter. She breathed into his ear; "Meet for dinner?" He nodded against her shoulder.

Paris noticed and smirked as they left the house, her; "I knew it!" floating through the door.

Charlie smiled after them and then turned to face his assorted friends, who were staring at him with an assortment of expressions ranging from pissed off to curious.

"So, where do I begin?"

"Tristan DuGrey?" Jen said quietly, rubbing a hand over her forehead.

Charlie just nodded in reply, Jen had been saying the same thing for the past ten minutes and he'd given up trying to give her a decent answer.

"I just don't get it," Joey practically yelled, "you could have gone to Harvard or somewhere else equally good with no problem."

Pacey shot her a look. "That's what you're concentrating on?"

"Well, if I concentrate on the fact that one of our best friends has being lying about his identity since the day we met him I think my head might explode."

"How could you just give up everything?" CJ asked, his normally calm voice had a slight edge to it.

Charlie already felt immensely guilty and the fact that the normally unflappable CJ was kind of flapped just made him feel even worse.

He just shrugged and tried to answer without annoying his friends further. "I guess I felt that I wasn't giving up everything."

"Tristan DuGrey?"

Pacey shot Jen a look. "But surely your parents wouldn't have been that bothered if you'd decided to study music instead of law? I mean what could they do? Handcuff you to the law library?"

Charlie sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I don't think you guys quite get who my parents are."

"Tristan DuGrey?"

"Jen!" Joey exclaimed, "We get who your parents are, Charlie."

"No you don't!" Charlie yelled, beginning to pace in the small kitchen. "My Father isn't just a lawyer, he's a lawyer who works at a law firm that has been in our family since my great-great grandfather! I'm an only child! Do you really think that I was going to be allowed to study music?" He paused by the table, resting his hands on the surface. "The only person who might have accepted me was my Grandfather and he died three years ago."

"You know, man, they might still want to know where you are even if you're not doing their degree of choice," CJ suggested sensibly.

Charlie laughed wryly. "I doubt it. My Mother can't stand to look at me because I look so much like my Father, especially through her haze of vodka martinis, and my Father has been too busy sleeping with his secretary of the week to have cared about me at all since I was twelve years old."

"Charlie," Joey said sympathetically, moving to rest a hand on his shoulder.

"I just didn't want to be the perpetual screw up of the DuGrey legacy anymore," he grinned, adding self-depreciatingly, "I'd much rather be a screw up under my own name."

Pacey chuckled. "Well, that I can totally understand. Though you should have told us, I mean, we've lived with you for, like, a year and suddenly the name on the contract doesn't even match the one on your birth certificate?"

"I know I should have told you guys…"

"Yeah, you should," Jen interjected from where she'd slouched against CJ's shoulder.

"But," Charlie continued, "you guys knew me as Charlie and I kind of liked it that way. I'm still the same guy," he added, slightly desperately.

"Just with a trust fund," Joey added, rolling her eyes.

"Hey," Charlie grinned, "I'm living under the name of Charlie Todd and I most definitely don't have a trust fund."

"So, how do you know Rory," Dawson asked, speaking up for the first time, "and her slightly insane friend?"

Charlie chuckled. "Paris? We went through the same elite education system. She had, like, the hugest crush on me though I was too busy with a variety of skanks and sluts to notice her."

"And Rory?" Dawson persisted causing Pacey to laugh.

"Rory I met when we were sixteen and I bugged her to go out with me for, like, a year until I managed to kiss her during a school play before I got boosted off to military school. She basically hated me."

"Well, that has certainly changed," Jack said grinning and good-naturedly slapping Dawson on the back.

"Wait," Joey's face was scrunched up in confusion, "Rory's a year younger than us."

Charlie shuffled his feet. "Actually, she's a year younger than all of you."

Jen perked up. "You're joking? Tell me you're joking."

"I'm eighteen," Charlie said sheepishly, "sorry."

"Oh God," moaned Jen, letting her head flop onto the table, "I dated a younger guy."

"Another younger guy," Jack offered unhelpfully. "Henry, remember?" Charlie privately thought that he looked way too pleased to be bringing that up in conversation.

"You know what, guys?" Charlie said, edging his way out of the kitchen, "I think I'm just going to go lie down for a minute. It's been a stressful afternoon."

"It's been a stressful afternoon for you?" Jen repeated incredulously, "I'm the one who just found out she slept with a seventeen year old!"

Charlie slipped out of the room before she found something to throw at him. The last time he'd revealed something she hadn't liked he'd found a stiletto heel headed towards his head.

Leaning heavily against his bedroom door Charlie breathed a sigh of relief. He'd actually expected the scene with his friends to go a lot worse. And he'd been expecting more dramatics from his confrontation with Paris.

He ambled over to his closet and dragged out the battered old box. Rifling through it's contents, and grimacing when he noticed the pictures of his parents, Charlie grinned when he found what he was looking for.

Dusting off the old photograph Charlie tucked it into the frame of his mirror, surrounded by photos of all his current friends. He studied it for a moment, trying to remember the boy that had sat and posed with Paris and a handful of his other Junior High classmates.

He decided that he probably wasn't that much different from the man he was today. The overt arrogance of his high school days wasn't present anymore and hadn't yet appeared when the picture had been taken.

Charlie moved back over to the box, pulling out his birth certificate.

Maybe it was time to go back home.