The old Caretaker carefully carried his tea over to his desk. As he set it down on top of a pile of leather-bound books of Balkan mythology, he was surprised to see a small, gaily-wrapped Christmas gift no larger than the palm of his hand sitting on the desk's blotter. He moved to stand behind his desk and picked up the tiny box. The tag read "To J, Merry X-mas, E". Jenkins quickly pulled a magnifying glass out of his desk to look at the tag again. It did, indeed, say that it was from Ezekiel Jones, and he recognized the young man's careless scrawl. The immortal laid the heavy magnifying glass on the desk, puzzled. It wasn't Christmas yet, why was he giving Jenkins a gift now?

No doubt another of his ill-conceived pranks of some sort, he decided, shaking his white head. That would be typical of the thief. Might as well get this over with, he thought with a sigh, quickly scanning the area, expecting to see Mr. Jones hiding somewhere and just waiting for the staid old man to fall into his "trap". But the Annex was empty now, except for its Caretaker and his tea dragon dozing nearby.

Jenkins untied the ribbon and then carefully removed the bright Christmassy paper wrapping the little box. It was made of nondescript white cardboard, about the size of a jeweler's ring-box. He lifted the lid, and his heart stopped the moment his eyes landed on its contents. Shocked, he dropped numbly into his chair, and for several minutes he simply stared at the gift in disbelief.

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He found Ezekiel in the Reading Room, sprawled out on a sofa and playing a video game on his phone. The immortal strode directly over to Ezekiel and held out the box.

"Mr. Jones," he said, voice clipped and business-like. "I found this on my desk. I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but I cannot accept it." Ezekiel didn't even look away from his phone's screen.

"Sure you can, mate," he said, distracted by the action on the screen. "You said it was yours, didn't you? Lost it on the battlefield at Hastings, right? In 1066?" Jenkins's arm and jaw dropped in astonishment. He was unable to speak for several seconds as he struggled to recover his composure.

"How do you know that?" he demanded, his voice now harsh and rasping. Jones shrugged.

"I heard you telling Cassandra about it at the British Museum while I was trying to crack the lock on the cabinet that housed the Babylonian tablet we were looking for," he answered. "I heard you over the wire I was wearing, while you two were upstairs keeping a lookout. When I popped the cabinet and got the tablet, I found you both at that "Celtic Britain" display, remember?"

Jenkins paused for a moment as he struggled to keep his voice emotionless and tried to hide behind a façade of righteous indignation.

"Yes, well…I can hardly still claim ownership of something I lost 900 years ago," he continued stiffly. "Besides, I'm certain that the British Museum will miss it eventually. And they do not take kindly to having items removed from their collection, regardless of the motive behind it. You have to take it and put it back." He raised his arm once again and held out the box to the young Australian. Jones only snorted, his eyes still fixed on his phone.

"You really think they're gonna miss one tiny little artifact that's been buried in storage for over a hundred years?" he asked. "Not bloody likely. They probably forgot they even had it!" He cursed as something went wrong for him in the game he was playing.

"When I saw what you were talking to Cassandra about, I took a snap of it," he continued glibly with a shrug. "I made sure they'd never miss it, just in case. Have a mate—he's a jeweler, you know, does really top-notch work—he owed me a favor. He made an exact duplicate, then I slipped it back into the museum a few weeks later and made the switch. Took me all of ten minutes. Museum'll never know the difference." Jenkins stared down at the thief.

"You did what?" he exclaimed, the full nature of what Jones had done staggering and bewildering the immortal. "But...why? Why would you do this?" Jones shut down the game and dropped his phone on the sofa cushion as he suddenly sat upright. He plucked the box from the Caretaker's hand and opened it, lifted out the silver chain that was inside. Dangling from the chain was a pendant in the stylized shape of a horse, about an inch and a quarter long, also made of solid silver over a thousand years ago in ancient Britain.

"I did it because this belonged to Sister Sioned, the nun who raised you—the woman who was more a mother to you than anyone else in the world, including your real mum." Jenkins gaped at Ezekiel, speechless. The thief held the pendant higher and continued.

"Sioned used to call you bran bach, 'little raven', that was her pet name for you. She took care of you, nurtured you, protected you from the abbess who was cruel to you. She sent Sioned away because the abbess thought the two of you were becoming too attached to each other. The night she was sent away, Sioned sneaked into your bedroom while you were asleep and left this in your hand for you to find, to remember her by. You didn't see her again for years, not until you found each other on a battlefield. She saved you from your father, but he ended up killing her instead. She died in your arms. You were only fifteen years old when that happened. Horses were the totem animal of her tribe. You wore it always to remind you of her. To remind you that there had been at least one person in your life who had truly loved you." Ezekiel's dark eyes burned into Jenkins as he went on relentlessly.

"You lost this at the Battle of Hastings; someone grabbed you and the chain broke, and somehow it fell out of your clothes. You spent days afterward combing the battlefield trying to find it, but you couldn't. And it broke your heart." Ezekiel fell silent, looked Jenkins blandly in the eyes. Jenkins pulled himself up to his full height; his soul suddenly felt stripped and exposed.

"Why would you do this, Mr. Jones?" he asked again, disconcerted, barely able to get the words past the large lump in his throat. "Why would you go to all of this trouble...for me?" Jones put the pendant back into the box, placed back into Jenkins's hand, closing his long fingers over the box and raising his face to look directly into the tall man's eyes.

"'Cause I've been there, mate," he said plainly, his customary flippancy and arrogance gone. "I know what it's like to be rejected by the one person in the whole world who's supposed to love you and take care of you, no matter what—except they don't. They throw you away like a piece of trash. And I know what it's like to be found by someone who doesn't owe you a damn thing, but they end up being your true mother, 'cause for whatever reason, they do love you no matter what." The young man stood up and slipped his phone into his back pocket as Jenkins took the box back and stared at it, his fingers and chest numb.

"That pendant is all you have left of Sister Sioned. She wanted you to have it, not some stupid museum. Doesn't matter how long ago you lost it, mate, in my book it's still yours. It needed to be returned to its rightful owner." The Librarian turned and started to walk away, their conversation apparently over as far as the thief was concerned. Jenkins turned after him.

"Wait!" Jones stopped and turned back. Jenkins quickly strode over to the Librarian. He stopped in front of the younger man and paused awkwardly for a moment; Ezekiel could see tears trying to pool in the immortal's eyes. Then, to the young man's astonishment, Jenkins stepped forward and wrapped his long arms around him and held him tightly in a crushing bear hug.

"Thank you, Mr. Jones—Ezekiel," he whispered hoarsely. "I will never forget this. I am indebted to you." Ezekiel smirked as he returned the immortal's hug, giving the old man a few hearty, fraternal pats on his broad back.

"No worries, mate," he answered kindly, just a tinge of his usual impertinence in his voice. He disentangled himself from Jenkins's arms and stood back from him. "After everything you've given me over the last few years, I think we're pretty even now. So, Merry Christmas!"

With that, the Librarian turned and headed off toward the kitchen for snack.