Previously posted on The Realm, with these notes: (More info on exactly what this project entails here. I was originally going to start with someone else, but I thought that I ought to get this character out of the way first so as not to be accused of preferential treatment. Heh.)

#1

They'd been there for years, and he still didn't know all the nooks and crannies of the headquarters. This was the excuse he gave for his habit of wandering off, tracing and retracing paths, occasionally popping out of a secret passage and startling whoever was already in the room.

They'd been there for years, and he'd never given the headquarters a name. Like the others, he'd always assumed that Lily would do it, one of these days -- there was something about the place that was unmistakably *hers*, despite the fact that she said it belonged to the whole family.

The family -- that was how she referred to them, and he'd been starting to believe it, even though he'd said he'd had enough of family to last him a lifetime. And that was what it came down to, didn't it -- they *were* family, and just as it had been throughout his life, he watched his family disappear.

He knew they worried about him. Hovered. Talked about him when they thought he couldn't hear. Didn't talk much *to* him, but that was probably because he rarely let them.

Lily was the link, he realized. Lily kept him here.

And he wasn't the only one, it seemed. Greg kept finding reasons to stop in. Lindsey haunted the corner even more than he already had, which was saying something. Flowers periodically showed up, and he was pretty sure they came from Kurt.

She always did seem to collect the weirdest, most random people, without even trying. Hell, that summed up the CJB in a nutshell.

But suddenly, that link was just *gone*, and Chris was reduced to searching in corners, in crevices, in the hopes that he'd find it again.

He didn't know how he'd ever gotten by without her. She'd been there for years.