"Bless you." Keeper said reflexively as he stared around the cluttered attic. There were boxes and trunks everywhere. Stacks of stuff made it almost impossible to walk through the crowded space. He shook his head in dismay. "She will be at the conference for at least a week."

Gem finished the climb into the attic, placed his hands on his hips and groaned. "I had no idea that she had this much stuff." He moved to a stack of old packing boxes and batted the dust off the top. The resulting cloud sent both of them into paroxysms of choking. "Damn, how long has this stuff been up here?"

"I have no idea." Keeper said daunted by the task before them. They had planned this very carefully, this excursion into Shado's attic. Their leader was away at a conference on the East Coast for the week, leaving them this perfect opportunity. What they hoped to accomplish was simple. It was time that the beach house under went some modernizations. Insulation being the primary upgrade. Even though the weather in the Pacific Northwest was mild by certain standards, it still got cold in the winter and living on the water as they all did, they had decided to take matters into their own hands and remedy the situation. Shado, herself, had groused about the heating costs in the previous winter, but had been very reluctant to undertake the chore of taking care of the issue. She was oddly against any changes in the five bedroom home that she had provided for them. Respecting her wishes, they had left well enough alone, until now that is. Something needed to be done and Keeper had decided to take the bull by the horns and do it.

Which brought them into the attic with the intention of shifting the contents into the basement until the insulation had been laid. Keeper sighed heavily and began the chore, picking up the upper most box off a stack and heading down the narrow staircase. Gem shrugged and wrapped his arms around the next case. They carried their cargo into the basement, then returned to the attic for more. Conversation was limited to grunts and groans and they shifted the heavier boxes, and speculation about the contents of said boxes when the load was lighter. They had too much respect for their "leader" to open the cartons they were moving. Shado, as all of them, was intensely private, if there was something that she felt they needed to know she would be the one to tell them. When the girls got in from dropping Shado at the airport, they joined in with good natured razzing about the lazy boys, and soon they were looking at just a few remaining boxes and a large foot locker. It was the foot locker that held their attention. It was a battered combat green affair, various dents and scratches marred its surface. The faded and worn stenciling on the top wasn't difficult to read. This was Shado's locker from her years in the military.

"I thought she had ditched all that stuff." Mage stared at this ghost from their past like it was a coiled cobra.

"Evidently she decided to keep it." Keeper shoved the box with his toe but it didn't budge. He bent and tried to lift one end but its weight decided the matter for him. "Gem, you'll have to help with this one. It's too heavy." Gem grabbed his end, and with a three count they hefted the locker. "Damn, what's she got in here, rocks?'

'Knowing Shado, it's probably a dead body.' Brit teased. She and Mage followed the guys carefully down the stairs. Maneuvering the locker in the narrow confines wasn't easy, the weight and its dimensions making it a clumsy burden. Things went well until Gem reached the last step. His foot caught on the riser and he stumbled, dropping his end to catch his balance against falling. The foot locker hit the edge of the stair with a loud thump and the distinct sounds of splintering wood.

"OW, shit." Keeper cussed. He hurriedly set his end down and rubbed the muscles in his lower back. "Gem, you ok?"

"Yeah, just tripped. Sorry." He bent to pick up his end once more, but an ominous cracking stopped him. "Oops, I think it broke."

Mage and Brit squeezed between the wall and the locker, having set their boxes on the steps. "Oh, man she's going to kill us all." Mage moaned. Shado's temper was fast becoming legendary and none of them wanted it turned in their direction. Keeper leaned against the wall, still rubbing his strained back.

"Maybe it won't be that bad and we can fix it." Faln replied from her position at the basement door. She trotted up the steps and knelt to run her hand under the tilted box. She frowned. "I really can't tell we're going to have to empty it to fix it. I'll grab another empty box and we'll see what we can do. Why don't you all shove it off the steps and out of the way?"

When she returned from the basement, she joined the others where they stood staring at the chest sitting in the center of the living room. She stifled a giggle at the looks on their faces. You would think it was a bomb or something, she thought. She set the box down and nudged the locker with her toe. "Ok, so who is going to do the honors?"

"I vote that Keeper open it." Mage said. Brit seconded her, and Gem made it official. Keeper glared at them all. "After all this was your idea to begin with."

"Alright fine." He snapped and bent to pull the lid open. Silence reigned for a long moment, then he whispered. "Oh shit."

They all stared into the trunk in surprise. Somehow they had been expecting something a bit more, interesting than what they found there. Items carefully wrapped in tissue paper had been just as carefully placed into the foot locker. There were a few things that hadn't been stored with such care, and it was these items that caught their attention.

"Guys, I get the feeling that this is something that Shado would definitely not approve of." Gem said softly. He reached out a hand, contrary to his words to trace his fingertips over a photo album that lay on the top. It was a cracked embossed affair, it's exterior showing age and care. The gold lettering on it had worn so thin that they could barely read the lettering. "We really shouldn't pry." His hand clutched the photo album in reflex and he pulled it from the trunk.

"It would be really bad form." Keeper agreed and he pulled a shoe box wrapped tight with red ribbon and tied in a hard knot. Faln and the girls all knelt to pull other items from the depths of the foot locker. With out speaking of the violation they were about to undertake, they took their recovered treasures to the side and sat in a circle, the better to see what each of them had uncovered.

"You realize of course that she WILL kill us." Mage said holding the tissue wrapped bundle she had chosen to her chest. Nods ran around the circle but no one made the effort to return the prizes to their resting place.

"Face it guys, we're just a bunch of snoops and we are all dying to know what deep dark secrets that she has hidden from us." Faln said and she unwrapped her bundle. The yellowed white tissue paper parted easily enough to reveal a black suit jacket. It smelled of cedar, as did everything in the trunk, and with a snap of her wrist she shook it out. It was made of wool and cut in a style that had gone out many years before. Faln's eyes lit up slightly. "A man's." Mage and Brit followed quickly, revealing in turn a dark blue turtleneck and a black one. Small frowns of disappointment creased their brows. "I wonder where she got these?"

"Maybe from a relative. She did, does, have family you know." Gem speculated. "What you got in your box, Keeper?" Keeper as carefully as the girls, removed the ribbon tying the shoebox closed, slid off the lid and stared into it for a long moment. His face paled slightly and he seemed a bit shaken by the contents he had revealed.

"Um, well it's definitely not clothes." He whispered. He pulled a pen off the table behind him and reached it in. Hooking something with the end he carefully lifted the pen. A Walther P.38 dangled from his hand. The pistol had been modified in some strange fashion and was well cared for, gun oil gleaming dully in the light. The grip was worn and showed signs of heavy use. There was a silver K personalized the weapon, and this sent a cold chill through the group.

"Wow. I knew Shado had a past, but a monogrammed gun?" Brit breathed. Mage shook her head negative.

"Shado's name didn't have a K in it, Brit." She observed. "At least not one that I know of, that could be used like that."

"Are you sure of that?" Keeper said softly, recalling the fact that not one of them knew each other's true names. Not even after five years of living together did they know who they all had been in their past lives. It was an unspoken agreement, reached when they had fled the military. Their identities would become the names they had learned during the experiments, their former lives gone for the safety of the team and of their families. They had in effect, killed themselves off. Mage thought for a moment, then ruefully acknowledged Keeper's point. He set the gun carefully aside and pulled out the next item. It was a old fashioned silver ink pen, heavy in his hand. He turned it over in his hands for a moment, noticing the various scuff marks and scratches that marred the shiny surface, then with a shrug handed it off to Faln who was sitting next to him. When it had made it's way around the circle and back to him, he laid it carefully next to the Walther on the carpet. The next item he pulled from the box was a thin black wallet, a man's from the look, equally battered and scarred. He flipped it open to reveal a single card in the plastic protected slide pocket. The gold card was still legible and only added to the mystery of the foot locker.

"United Network Command for Law and Enforcement." He read. "There's a signature here, but its too faded to read clearly. I can make out an I, an N and there's our K. What the hell was the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement anyway?" he asked the room in general. He closed the wallet and it also made the rounds of the room to at last come to rest beside the other items he had recovered. "Any clues, anyone?' Negatives came from everyone. They grew more mystified as he pulled other odds things from the shoe box, a gold cigarette box that obviously wasn't cigarettes, a pair of cuff links, some shirt buttons, a gold travel clock and some really strange darts that they had a feeling were more dangerous than they looked. At last when the box was empty, their attention turned to Gem who sat with the photo album on his lap. He caressed its worn cover once more and looked thoughtfully around at the group.

"I think we'll probably find our answers there, Gem." Faln said indicating the book. Mage had moved slightly off to the side, the better to look into the foot locker. She was peering into its depths in a concentrated fashion. There were plenty of other items still wrapped in tissue, and from their shape and bulk, she guessed out loud that they may be other articles of clothing.

"I think you are right." He agreed and without further prevaricating, he opened the album. Everyone crowded around so they could see what was there. The first page was blank except for a hand written face page, they all recognized Shado's distinctive scrawl; Illya Nickovetch kuryakin 1968-1969. A rose had been pressed and still clung to the page, it's brown petals still holding a faint trace of color. Gem carefully turned the page hoping that he wouldn't destroy the fragile memento. He sucked in his breath and whistled softly. "I think our questions are answered."

The subject of the photos rarely varied, a young blond man, in his late twenties or early thirties, slimly built graced them all. In some he was shown with another man, dark haired and suavely attractive. The captions under the pictures along with small personal notes, all in Shado's handwriting, gave their identities as Illya Kuryakin, the blond, and Napoleon Solo. There was a series of photos, labeled Partners, that seemed self explanatory. The affection the two shared was obvious in their postures. Several of the photos had been taken in locations outside the States and only bore the country name as caption. There were a few pictures of others in the album, an elderly man named Uncle Alex; and a younger couple April and Mark.

'Still it leaves a lot to be answered." Keeper said mostly to himself. "Wonder if she worked with them, with him?" he speculated. His relationship with Shado was a difficult one to define and at times jealousy would spur him to ration words and actions. "Notice, there are no pictures of herself in here." He pointed out.

"Seems Shado's aversion to self portraits is an old one." Faln smiled. "I doubt that will ever change." The others agreed, it was something they often teased her about, her dislike of photography. "Keeper's right, though, this raises just as many questions about her as we had before. We still don't really know who these people are or how she knew them." She looked at one of the photos labeled "Partners", it was one of only a couple that were in color. "Although, you gotta admit, they were really rather good looking."

'I suppose." Keeper growled slightly. Gem hid a chuckle in the turning of another page. This one didn't contain photos, but it had another pressed rose and a folded invitation. "Ah, crap."

Gem flipped the invitation open and read it to the group. "Mr. Alexander Waverly and his Wife, Eleanor formally request your attendance at the Wedding of their granddaughter, Pagan Michelle Waverly to Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin on Sunday May the 1st , in the year of our lord Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-eight. The wedding will take place at 12:00 pm at St. Patrick's Cathedral with Reception to follow directly after at the home of the bride's grandparents. In lieu of gifts donations can be made to the Archdiocese Charities Fund. RSVP required." He laid aside the invitation and held up the photo that had been underneath. The smiling face of their sensei as she looked into the eyes of her groom answered their questions at last.

It was a while before anyone spoke, they finished off the photo album lost in their own thoughts. None of them had known that Shado had ever been in a serious relationship much less married. It was a sobering thought, that they knew so little about the person responsible for their current freedom. They weren't certain what to think, they knew she had her secrets but this was a rather large one to be kept. It was Faln who voiced the question that was in the forefront of their minds. "What happened to him?"

"Well the album dates are from '67 until '69 so I'm assuming the marriage didn't last." Mage said. "A divorce do you think?"

Brit shook her head. "No, I don't think so. If they divorced, why did she keep this stuff? I mean, look, the clothes are his obviously, as is everything else here. Would you keep mementos of a bad marriage?"

"I think something happened to him." Mage said. She flipped back several pages in the album. "I mean look, these guys go around armed. From the photos and the ID card, they were involved in some kind of Law Enforcement agency. That means it was dangerous at least some of the time. She tapped her finger on one picture that showed Illya shackled to the wall. "And unless they were into bondage, and I wouldn't put it past Shado, I'd say that dangerous would be a mild description, why else would they train for something like that."

"Points to Mage for observation." Keeper agreed. He motioned toward the foot locker. "Faln anything else in there that might be interesting?" She obliged him by carefully unloading the remaining items from the box. The last thing she pulled out was an old reel of 8mm film. "Bingo." He grinned. "I think I seem to recall an old projector among the stuff we moved, along with a screen. Home movies anyone?'

The girls carefully repacked everything into the box Faln had brought up from the basement as gem and Keeper went in search of the movie equipment. They didn't look at each other, uncomfortable with the knowledge they had gained in the past couple of hours. Guilt was beginning to set in, guilt that they had given into their curiosity and had found things they may have wished not to.

With much clattering and noise, the boys set up the old equipment, arguing about the placement and exactly how to thread the film into the projector. The thing was as old as any one of it's would be operators and almost defied their ability but at last it was set. Before beginning their viewing, Faln closed the shades on the large bay windows, shutting them all into shadow. Something they found appropriate given their journey "into" Shado's past. Mage poured them all something to drink and Gem at the risk of being thought frivolous, grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry. He claimed hunger and a lack of breakfast as his motivation when Mage growled at him. Keeper did the honors and started the film.

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