"The X-Advisors..."

"The X-Advisors..." Part LXV...

"The X-Advisors..."

Summary: Like my Immortal Beloved bits in my Buffyverse stories, these are fragments and short bits, some longer...Just to fiddle with ideas, possibly forming longer tales later.

Disclaimer: All is Chuck's...

Part LXV...

"I came to in a field about thirty miles north of Austin...in 1962. Came to in a manner of speaking..." Bernadette eyed Leonard as they paused in the hallway tunnel. "I'd no idea who I was or where I was from except I remembered my babies...All three of them." Smile. "And never mention this, even in the afterlife, but I remembered Howie first."

"Bernie..." Leonard shook head. "Thirty-three years..."

"I realized quickly I must not be from around these parts or times. I didn't remember a thing about the geography, knew only vaguely what should have been current events but I remembered c learly bits about my home and surroundings, about events in our time. Just couldn't quite get a grip on my name or who that cute Beatles' member-haired little sweetie in my mind was. For a good while..." she sighed. "But I was saved, while I stumbling around, likely prey to any jerk who thought I looked vulnerable..."

Leonard eyed her...She smiled.

"Right, lets get real. I clobbered or terrorized any jerk who thought I looked vulnerable but it was a rough time. Fortunately, I met Max's mother, a pretty hard-pressed woman with three rambunctious kids and she took me in. Since I had no family, had grown to love my more or less foster sibs and foster mom of sorts, and she was concerned for me, after a year, she formally adopted me, so I'd have a name and a family and so she could leave me some money when she got older."

"But you never told them...?"

"It was four years before I even remembered my first name...I was Bea till then, just the fragment I could remember, Be..." shrug. "But I knew all along something terrible had brought me there. That I'd lost everyone I cared about. And that there was someone...Someone evil, terribly evil...Who'd caused it." Eyeing Leonard...

"I know what Howie would say...'Sheldon's not that bad'." Impish grin.

"Sheldon?" Leonard started.

"No, no...Damnit, Leonard. I'm kidding." Perching glasses higher. "I know who Susan Stein is, don't worry. She's lucky she never knew me. I've kept track of the little angel ever since I remembered her, even before I clearly remembered my own name. I've stood outside the Stein house, even peered in the window, God knows how many times. And yes, I nearly killed that little girl several times." Grim stare. "It's only the thought of what it would do to my family here...Max and my other adopted sibs, later my sweet Summer, Mari and Mark, her parents...And my mind's Howie noting he was kind of a creep when younger for a while..." grin. "That kept me from putting a claw hammer through her pretty little skull." Pause. "And of course the hope she'd lead me to her counterpart one day...And, lastly, that thought that you'd be disappointed in me, if it was true I'd ever see you again." Smile at his stricken face. "And I mean you, specifically, kiddo." warm smile.

"The kid isn't..."

"Neither was young Adolf..." Bernadette eyed him, sternly. "But we'd better keep this on the burner, the others are waiting and even a lady and a lactose-intolerent Leonard can't take forever on the toilet. Remember...Only Summer and my adoptive mother have ever heard the story." She eyed him carefully.

"Yeah...In part my way of keeping her from going too far with Howie on that train ride." Smile. "She's already far too interested in my lil' engineer/reluctant astronaut and there's only one girl for lil' Howard Wolowitz."