Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author's Note: This episode had Claudia and Steve looking for a flask at a Civil War reenactment. Early in the episode Claudia is seen finishing up telling Steve her life story and then asking for his. The first half of this chapter shows how I think that story might have gone and ends on some actual dialogue from the show. The second half picks up at the end of the episode right after Steve finishes telling Claudia about his sister. It's not one of my better chapters, but I literally couldn't think of anything to write. The next chapter will feature HG. :) Enjoy!

Sharing Day: Round Two

"Ugh!"

Claudia let the lid of the chest drop closed. She hung her head for a moment before looking over at Steve.

"It's not here," she informed him.

"Or here," Steve said. He scooted over to the next chest and began rummaging through it as well. Claudia eyed the row of wooden chests before shaking her head emphatically. Instead she pushed herself to her feet and dragged over the wooden chair near the entrance to the tent.

"This is going to take forever," she moaned, sitting down with a dramatic thud.

"I thought you wanted to be an agent," Steve teased.

"This is not agent stuff," Claudia told him drily. "This is like the inventory from hell. Which, may I remind you, I've already done a whole year of."

"Alright," Steve said, shifting so his weight rested on his right leg. "How about this: I'll pull out the ones that match Artie's description and you can check them over for the name."

"How is that any faster?" Claudia asked him.

"Would you rather go through that entire chest yourself?" Steve asked. Claudia looked over at the wooden chest he was pointing at and then back at him.

"Fine," she conceded. "We'll do it your way."

Steve picked up a flask from the top of the chest and tossed it over to her. Claudia looked it over briefly before tossing it into the chest next to her.

"You know," she said, looking over the next flask Steve handed her, "if we're gonna be here for a while, we should talk about something. Otherwise I'm gonna go crazy. Well, crazier."

"What did you have in mind?" Steve asked.

"I don't know," Claudia said with a shrug. "We could... swap origin stories."

"You mean how we got the Warehouse?" Steve translated. Claudia nodded.

"Sure," she said, kicking her feet up. "I'll go first. My parents died in a car crash when I was young and my big brother Joshua got custody of me. When I was seven he tried to use an artifact to teleport. Well, he didn't know it was an artifact. But the experiment messed up and he vanished. I totally thought he was dead."

"That's intense," Steve said sympathetically.

"It was a little scarring," Claudia admitted. She turned the flask he had handed her over in her hands before tossing it into the pile. "After that I became a ward of the state. Got bounced around through foster homes, that kind of thing. Then when I was fifteen I hacked a computer and changed my file so I was legally emancipated."

"That sounds like you," Steve said with a nod.

"Doesn't it?" Claudia agreed proudly. "Anyway. I looked out for myself until I was seventeen, when I started having visions of my supposedly dead brother. I thought I had completely lost my marbles, so I check myself into the International House of Nut Jobs."

"The institution," Steve filled in. Claudia nodded.

"We have a winner," she said dramatically.

"So then what?" Steve asked.

"Well, eventually I realized that I wasn't actually going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and my big brother was in fact alive. See, his experiment had gotten him trapped in this inter-dimensional space where he'd been for the last twelve years. Talk about cabin fever. So I got myself out of the Loony Bin and started looking for a way to save him. That eventually led me to Warehouse 13."

"Wait a minute," Steve interrupted. "The Warehouse is classified. Most of the government doesn't even know it exists. How did you even find it?"

"Dude," Claudia said, offended that he even had to ask. "I'm me."

"Fair point," Steve conceded.

"Anyway," Claudia continued. "I finally tracked down the location of Warehouse 13. So I came down here and picked up Artie-"

"And by picked up," Steve clarified, "you mean..."

"Borrowed," Claudia said awkwardly.

"Kidnapped," Steve corrected.

"Semantics," Claudia said with a shrug. "Anyway. I took Artie to Josh's old lab and once I convinced him that I wasn't a few fries short of a Happy Meal, he agreed to help. Together we figured out what went wrong with the experiment and rescued Josh from Purgatory. And after the whole hoopla with the inter-dimensional space, I realized what I really wanted was to be a Warehouse agent. So what about you? What's your story?"

"My story?" Steve asked. "ATF, Jimmy Hendrix's guitar, and... the first time I saw Artie's eyebrows."

"No," Claudia said with a chuckle. "I mean like before all that."

"Before all that is that past," Steve said quietly. "Which is where I'd like to keep it."

"Ah," Claudia said, deciding to back off. "Word of warning? At the Warehouse, the past doesn't always stay in the past. Literally. Did I mention we have a time machine?"

Steve chuckled.

"Why doesn't that surprise me?"

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

"Dude," Claudia said, shaking her head. "Your sister sounds awesome."

"She was," Steve agreed. "You remind me a lot of her. You have her attitude."

"Did I ever tell you I had a sister?" Claudia asked carefully. Steve shook his head.

"No," he said. There was interest in his eyes. Claudia shifted in the chair so she could pull her knee up to her chest.

"Her name was Claire," she began. "She was three years younger than Joshua. Obviously I was a bit of a surprise baby."

Steve smiled as she had intended.

"What happened to her?" he asked.

"She died in the crash with my parents," Claudia said quietly. "They had gone out to run errands or something. This car ran a light going a hundred miles an hour and crashed into theirs as they were coming out of our driveway. It flung their car into a tree. My parents were killed on impact. Claire made it the hospital and then flat-lined."

"What about the over driver?" Steve asked.

"No idea," Claudia admitted. "Nobody else saw the accident, so I have no idea who the driver was."

"I'm sorry," Steve said quietly. Claudia nodded. "I've heard you talk about Joshua, but you've never mentioned Claire before."

"I don't really have a lot of memories of her," Claudia admitted. Then a grin crept across her face. "I do remember this one time she bought me a puppy. But my mom made her take it back because Josh was allergic. Actually, now that I think about it, she may have just bought it to make him mad."

Steve chuckled, which elicited another shrug from Claudia.

"She and Josh fought a lot, but they loved each other," she told him. "Claire was always really protective of me. This one time we went to the park and I was in the sandbox playing with this little backhoe, right? And this six-year-old comes over and decides he wants it. So he pushes me over and takes the toy. Well, Claire comes over and grabs him up and starts laying into him. Literally screaming at this poor kid. I swear he wet his pants. His mom's standing right there and even she's too scared of my crazy screaming sister to do anything."

"He's probably in therapy now," Steve joked.

"For real," Claudia agreed. "Man, my sister was a bear. She might have messed with me and Josh sometimes, but if anybody else so much as looked at us funny she would take them out."

"Olivia was the same way," Steve told her. Claudia shook her head.

"You know," she said, "even after all this time, I still miss her."

Silence fell as the two of them thought about the sisters they had lost. The moment was broken by the office door suddenly opening. Steve looked up and Claudia turned around as Artie came into the office.

"I'm heading to Leena's for some dinner," he said, pointing at the door.

"Sweet!" Claudia said. She stood up and pushed the chair up against the desk. "I am so out of here."

"Me too," Steve said as he go to his feet.

"Come along, Watson," Claudia said. She clicked the button to open the door.

"Why am I Watson?" Steve asked, heading after her.

"Because I'm the smart one," Claudia said as if it were completely obvious.

The two of them headed out into the umbilicus, still bickering. Artie remained in the office for a moment, watching them go. Claudia's last statement was eating at his conscience.

"How am I supposed to tell her?" he asked quietly.

The Warehouse gave no answer. With a heavy sigh, Artie headed into the umbilicus after the two younger agents. The heavy metal door swung shut behind him.

To quote one of my professors: "Questions? Comments? Snide remarks?"