"Here. I brought you some coffee," the man said, handing the cup to Ilene. She didn't respond, just glared at him. He continued, "I promise it's not drugged or anything." Ilene drank a sip.

Heartened by her sip of coffee, he proceeded, "I'm sorry that we had to kidnap you like this. I just want to know more about where I came from."

"How on Earth is kidnapping me going to help you discover your past?" Ilene was incredulous.

"I'll explain later," he said, "but first, what is your name?"

"You kidnapped me to learn about your past and don't even know my name?"

"My name is Thanatos," he prompted.

"Ilene," she sighed, thinking privately that Thanatos must have some kind of mental disorder.

"Thank you, Ilene. Maia wouldn't tell me your name. She said if you actually could help reawaken the past, I would just remember."

Ilene changed her mind and decided that Thanatos was either on drugs or clinically insane. "How can I possibly know anything about your past? I've never seen you before in my life."

"I don't know. I don't think you know who you are either."

"What are you talking about? I know exactly who I am."

"You just look like there's something missing."

"Probably because I've just been kidnapped!" Ilene shouted.

"You still don't know everything about your own past!" Thanatos yelled back at her.

"Try me!"

"You were adopted," he said, hoping to see some of the despair he had lived with his entire life cross her face.

"You think I didn't know that? I grew up in a tiny farming town. Gossip is easy to hear," she said, finding it mildly disturbing that he knew this and not her name, "What does that have to have to do with anything?"

"Read this. I think you'll find it very informative," Thanatos said, disgustedly throwing down a stack of newspapers, all blazed with a headline about the mysteriously appearing babies.

Ilene glared at his back as he retreated out of her cell. Curiosity demanded that she look at the papers, but her pride refused to allow her to do anything that Thanatos had commanded her to do. Eventually, her self-control faded and she began to read the stack of newspapers.

First, Ilene was shocked. Then she couldn't believe what she was reading. Surely Thanatos, who was definitely crazy anyway, had created fake newspapers about inexplicable babies. But could he manage to replicate the way the aged paper rolled or the yellow color it had obtained? Both of the solutions available to Ilene painted Thanatos with superhuman abilities.

She remembered the way the people of her town fell silent and stared at her as she walked past in the street all throughout her childhood. Could this tale of questionably human babies explain those frightened looks? Ilene hoped that this could be the truth. She didn't want to live her life as an ordinary human; she knew she had been built of something extraordinary.

Ilene mentally slapped herself, "This is no time for your silly childish imaginings," she thought, "Grow up, Ilene. You are an ordinary human; nothing is going to change that. Stop trying to invent reasons for not fitting in." Taking a deep breath, she tried to commit herself to the thought of being standard, but her mind refused to accept that. She pushed her mind away and ignored those nagging doubts that had been building up since she had begun to write down her dreams.

Zephyr closed his eyes and mentally tried to stop himself from counting the number of tiles on the floor again. He knew how many there were, he knew where the half tiles were, and he knew which tile was coming slightly out of the floor. He knew how many tiles were black and how many were white. He also knew that none of the tiles was loose enough for him to dig it out of the floor with his fingernails.

Since being kidnapped, Zephyr had felt predominantly one emotion. Boredom. He was almost completely sure that his captors had never even planned on taking him; they seemed much more interested in Ilene, but he had had to come along as well as part of the whole process of kidnapping. He hoped that maybe they might torture him or interrogate him or something. Anything to alleviate the all-encompassing, mind-numbing boredom that gripped him.

Just as Zephyr was considering breaking one of his own toes to entertain himself, the man who looked exactly like him came in. Zephyr glared at him as if he had been personally responsible for stealing his own face.

"Here's some other clothes for you," the man said, throwing a wad of fabrics at Zephyr, "I didn't mean to leave you in here by yourself for so long."

Zephyr glared at him, hoping he might leave, and when he didn't, gruffly asked, "What do you want with Ilene?"

"You are a clever man, brother. Did you know that we are actually twins? That you are adopted?" the man said, evading his real question.

Zephyr ignored the remark about adoption, though it did throw into light the real reason for his fair hair in his dark Alaskan town and growled, "Just answer my question. What do you want and who are you?"

"You don't seem surprised to know that you were adopted. Did you already know, like the girl? She already knew. I suppose you'll want my name, but it's not very important, and I don't know your name either."

"Just tell me about Ilene!"

"She's off by herself getting over her temper issues. Tell me who you are. It's important."

"It's Zephyr."

"I'm called Thanatos. That makes us brothers in names as well, you know."

"I know about the Greek origins of my own name."

"Yes. Tell me, do you remember anything about you distant past, Zephyr?"

"I'm not giving you my childhood memories!" Zephyr said, disgusted.

"No, before that, or have you never read an old paper either?" Thanatos sneered.

"I try to avoid looking into mysteries that want to stay hidden or that don't exist."

"Here. Try these papers. Maybe then you'll fancy yourself a better detective." Thanatos threw a stack of newspapers at Zephyr's feet.

Zephyr looked at him, waiting for him to leave. He wouldn't. "Are you waiting for something?"

"No, I just didn't think you'd look exactly like me."

"You look like me. I have looked like this far longer than I've been trapped here in your bathroom."

"And I have had this face my entire life."

"The least you could do is have a different haircut than me. How do even have exactly the same ponytail as I do? It's not exactly a common haircut."

"This face just works best with long hair, as I'm sure we have both long since discovered."

"Don't do anything horrible to Ilene using my face as a cover."

"Why would I be cruel to the only person who might tell me who I am? Read those papers and then you'll understand better. See you later, brother."

Zephyr glared at Thanatos as he left for having the insolence to repeatedly call him brother. He glared at the papers, hating himself for wanting to read them, and sat down, trying not to look at the stack. Eventually, his boredom got the better of him and he opened the top one.

First, horror flooded Zephyr that anybody would be crazy enough to fake such an awful story. Then, a pervading sense of the truth enveloped him as some long hidden instinct said that this had to true. Then, horror again as he realized that Thanatos had grown up all alone, separated from any friends just because he knew where he came from. It wasn't fair that anybody should suffer in silence while his peers would know nothing other than love and admiration their whole lives; while kidnapping did seem a bit extreme, Zephyr would forgive poor Thanatos for his crimes. If he had spent his entire life privy to this information as well, he would also take dramatic measures to find out the complete story behind the nightmare of his life.

The longer Zephyr sat there, the more he wanted to speak with Thanatos again, but this time out of friendship and brotherhood rather than anger. No person should ever be left so lonely just because of their knowledge.

It was about at this point that Zephyr realized that ignorance truly is bliss.

Ilene was tired of sleeping on a bathroom floor, sick of being given cold soup for meals, and done with trying to explain to Thanatos that she didn't know who they truly were or where they had come from. She had spent her entire life up to that point not knowing the complete truth about herself, and she had been fine with that, but now, she wanted to hit herself on the head for never talking to her adoptive parents about why they wouldn't tell her the truth. She had always assumed they just wanted her to feel like she was theirs, but now she thought that they had just been protecting her from the truth that she had been born and abandoned in a field where people seemed to think babies would be a good gift for the earth. Ilene was frustrated for not asking them who she was and even more frustrated for not asking about her bizarre dreams.

All her life she had dreamed about a man, and then one day a week ago, he had shown up and said to call him T. He had led her to Zephyr, who she considered a true friend, and eventually to being kidnapped. Ilene was almost completely positive that if she hadn't known Zephyr, Thanatos wouldn't have abducted her. She wanted to scream at the miserable turn her life had taken.

"All I wanted to do was to become an astrophysicist and know more about the stars," she thought, "and now here I stuck, trying to explain why I don't really know who I am."

Ilene allowed herself one fanciful "It's not fair!" before mentally slapping herself and trying to figure out how to maneuver around Thanatos' madness to earn her freedom. She wondered if she could lie and say she had figured out where they had all originally come from. If he was truly this desperate to know who he was, he should believe that lie.

Ilene closed her eyes to try to imagine a sufficiently convincing lie and tried to ignore that she wanted to know who she was just as desperately.

So I had started writing this chapter way back in December, but then my laptop crashed. It was out of commission for all of January, and I was busy for all of February getting caught up on everything else I missed while my laptop was out. Before my laptop crashed, I'd already written the whole first part with Ilene, and I managed to back it up before this whole process. So I had planned on having this posted the second week of January, but that just didn't happen. So here. Yep. I'm trying to get the next chapter to you in the next two weeks, circumstances permitting.

Anyway, I tried not use a bunch of different points of view for this, which was harder than I thought it would be. I'm going to work on that for the next several chapters, unless I have a brilliant idea involving changing points of view.

So, anonymous reviewers who posted asking for the next chapter, I really meant to respond to you, but I couldn't because of the curse of the anon. Ahhh, that frustrates me.

Disclaimer: Tolkien owns. Not me. That would be odd.