Nighttime at the Silver Dragon was Yan Lin's favorite part of the day. Sure, her old joints ached in places she hadn't known existed during her youth, and with every passing year closing up took a little longer as she moved a little slower, but there was a satisfaction to the sore feet and cleaning that came from a rewarding day at work.

Hay Lin always took off her apron at closing, as she should, felt Yan Lin. The girl did enough to help out, most of which her own parents had no idea about. Thankfully, she thought, rolling her eyes at her son's overprotectiveness. He and his wife stayed around to clean the tables before retiring home as well. It had always fallen to Yan Lin to close down the kitchen. And she took her time with it, enjoying the silence and the comfort of her home-away-from-home.

She was surprised, then, that first evening, when Caleb didn't leave along with the others. It was his first day on the job, only his second week on Earth, and Yan Lin had assured him that he could stop working now. Confused, he pointed to the dishes in her hands. "There's more to do."

"Yes," she nodded. "But you don't have to do it."

If anything, his expression grew more confused as he shook his head and continued wiping down the stove in silence. Yan Lin shrugged behind his back. The boy had only been with her a short time at that point, but if she'd learned anything, it was that the youth had a stubbornness that matched her own. She saw no reason to argue.

She didn't broach the topic again the next night when he remained in the kitchen, and neither did he. In fact, Caleb hardly spoke at all, and Yan Lin found herself looking over her shoulder at him half the night. The clock ticking on the wall suddenly seemed to echo throughout the back of the restaurant, and it was driving her mad. As much as Yan Lin liked the quiet, she liked the quiet when it was natural. With another person around, it was anything but.

"Do you like working here, Caleb?" She asked finally, louder than she'd intended. Caleb looked up, stared at her smiling face for a moment, and turned away.

"I appreciate you and your family allowing me to stay in your house so it's the least I can do."

"Yes, but do you like the work?" She pressed. "Talking to customers, carrying the food, cleaning up?"

He shrugged. "It's fine. Different."

"How so?" Yan Lin turned the faucet on for some background noise, so the boy wouldn't feel interrogated, and waited in curiosity as to whether or not he would respond. One of the first things she'd discovered about the Meridian boy that Hay Lin had brought home (dripping wet - "I dropped him in a lake," her granddaughter had explained. "Accidently!") was that speaking was not his forte. At least, speaking about himself. Ask him about the rebellion and she could hardly shut him up, but when she'd asked how old he was, he'd mumbled, "Fifteen," and left the room.

"In Meridian I give orders, I don't take them," he answered suddenly. Then added, "But I don't mind. I appreciate-"

"Us taking you in," Yan Lin finished for him. "Yes, you mentioned that." Oracle, give me patience. Was this brevity typical of all teenage boys, or just this one? It had been a long time since her son was that age.

"I like it back here better." Yan Lin raised an eyebrow, and Caleb flushed slightly at his admission. "I don't…I'm not sure what to say to all Earthlings."

Yan Lin nodded. "Duly noted."

Well, that was something.

Caleb had been on Earth four days straight, longer than his usual stays. Yan Lin didn't mind; she got to bed a lot earlier with the extra help, especially on the weekends. Caleb minded, but since they hadn't found a portal he didn't have a lot of options. "Aldarn can handle things without me," he said. "But I'd rather be there."

"What about your parents?" Yan Lin asked.

"What about them?"

"Do they worry when you don't come home?"

"I don't have parents," he replied quickly.

Yan Lin paused, setting her drying rag down. That was new. "Everyone has parents."

Caleb didn't look up, shrugged, and continued polishing silverware. "Mine are dead." She nodded, and, without any prompting, he continued. "My father died a year ago." He stood up. "Over a year. It's been 15 months. There was a battle at Grey Woods, it's a-"

"I've been to Grey Woods," Yan Lin said with a smile. "Kadma, Nerissa and I once fought a kaliedobeast there. Now there's a story worth hearing. But you first. Your father?"

Caleb blinked. "Oh. Um, yeah, it was the third time the rebellion met the guards in the field of battle. There weren't many casualties, actually. Overall, it was a great success." His words sounded recorded, as if he'd said them a hundred times before without really believing them. "Only five people didn't come back."

"Including your father," Yan Lin said softly. He nodded. "What of your mother?"

He shook his head. "Never knew her." He tossed the silverware into the drawer. "What happened with the kaliedobeast?"

It was the cautious start to a strange friendship. When she asked him the next day who Aldarn was, Caleb told her a lengthy story about a game they'd played in his friend's father's blacksmith shop where Aldarn had nearly lost a finger. He'd worked in there some growing up. "Aldarn's better at building weapons than me," he admitted, then smiled. "But I'm better at using them."

"Who's more modest?" She teased.

"Him."

He told her the next evening that their village no longer existed; Cedric's army had burned it down. He told her about stealing apples from the neighbor's trees for fun and, later, to survive; about learning to joust and, bored with that, learning to swordfight; about horseback riding along the Mapleback Cliffs before the rebellion made that impossible.

She, in turn, told him about her father's journey from China; about meeting her husband on her walk back from prep school each afternoon; about buying the Silver Dragon and running it by herself after her husband's death left her as a single working mother. She reflected one evening as she regaled the boy with a story about a failed romance with a prince from across the veil, which nearly had him doubled over in laughter, that Caleb knew more about her life than even her own granddaughter did.

Of course, she considered him one of her own too. And as he animatedly told her about a farming endeavor gone horribly wrong, she realized he probably felt the same way. Along with that came another thought, and she interrupted him to ask. "Where do you go when you are no here, Caleb?"

"Huh? The Infinite City," he said nonchalantly, and prepared to continue on with his story until she pressed him on it. "I just have a house there. We all do. It's not big. It's just where all my stuff is."

"By yourself?"

He nodded. "Did I tell you how Aldarn and I found the Infinite City?"

She listened as he did, and realized that, beside herself, he probably had no one to tell these stories to. And no one who would ask.

She was with him his first evening on Earth when that changed. "So," she'd said conversationally. "How's your father?"

Caleb took his time responding, pouring himself a bowl of leftover rice. "He's good," he said finally.

"That's it? Good?" Yan Lin tossed a rag at him and he smiled.

"He's doing well. I think life in the mines was rough, but he's healthy and he's happy to be out."

"I would imagine. That's not really what I meant, though. You're happy he's back?"

"Yes, of course." Caleb nodded, running a hand through his hair absentmindedly. "He moved in with me."

Yan Lin didn't know whether to laugh or grimace at the irony of life in Meridian. "You two have spoken, then?"

"Yeah." He hesitated, frowning. "It's….strange, having him back. I'm glad he's here!" He added quickly, a hand going up in a defensive position he didn't need. "It's just…different, having a parent again."

"Can't get up to your usual trouble anymore, huh?" Yan Lin said with a grin, and he rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, right."

She wasn't expecting to see him that evening. It had been a week since she or any of the girls had seen Caleb, though Blunk had visited three times without his rebel friend. When she saw the flash of blue slipping beneath the basement door, she expected the small green goblin to come creeping up the stairs again and Yan Lin instinctively moved the night's leftovers out of reach. When the door opened and a much taller young man stepped into the kitchen, Yan Lin couldn't help the look of surprise that passed briefly across her face, though she quickly replaced it with a warmer smile. "Hello, Caleb."

The boy raised a hand in halfhearted greeting, not quite meeting her eyes. "Good evening, Mrs. Lin." Despite her protests otherwise, he stuck to his formalities. "I know I missed my shift today, but I thought…"

"It was a slow day. Grab a broom." He did as instructed and began sweeping silently. The quiet lingered, and Yan Lin was reminded unhappily of their first weeks of closing the restaurant. "How have you been, Caleb?" They were friends enough by now that she could ask.

He sighed, setting the hardly-used broom aside and sitting down. "I've…I'm sorry I haven't been here the last few days. I should probably tell that to the girls that, too. I've just been… It's…" He clenched and unclenched his fist, staring uncomfortably at the floor.

"Quite a week, you've had." Yan Lin put her own work aside and picked up two of the plates she'd just cleaned. "Have you eaten?" He shook his head and she filled them both, then took a seat across the table.

"Thanks," he said, indicating the plate. "I should apologize to the girls tomorrow."

"They understand, as do I." Yan Lin cracked open a fortune cookie. "'Blessed are the children, for they shall inherit the national debt.' Who wrote this?" She frowned, tossing the fortune aside. "So. How are you?"

He shrugged, pushing some chicken around on his plate. "I'm… I don't know. I'm mad, I guess."

"At Nerissa?"

Caleb winced almost imperceptibly at his mother's name. "At my dad."

That surprised her. "He didn't know-"

"He knew she was alive," Caleb interrupted, his eyes flashing. "Do you know the last time I asked my dad about my mother? When I was four, and he said it was getting late and I needed to go to bed and then left the room. And then I realized…I was never going to know. He was never going to tell me anything so I just stopped asking. And then…" He groaned, putting his head in his hands. "He knew she was alive the whole time. I've spent all these years wondering but never asking and he knew."

"What does your father have to say about all this?"

Caleb glanced up. "I'm trying not to talk to my dad right now."

"That doesn't seem like-"

"You know, at one point I thought he might have found me." Caleb stood up and began pacing. Yan Lin sat silently and let him talk. "I don't really look like him and since he never wanted to talk about her, I thought maybe he didn't know and he didn't want to tell me that he wasn't really my father. I actually thought he found me somewhere." He shook his head, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "I figured it was either that, or she'd died and he didn't want to talk about her."

"Both are very logical explanations."

"But he should have just told me!" Caleb practically yelled in exasperation, turning to her, searching for some justification for his anger.

He didn't find it. "I imagine your father had his reasons for doing what he did. I think, Caleb, that you need to talk to him."

"I can't talk to him," Caleb groaned, taking a seat once again.

Yan Lin watched him for a moment. Then, carefully, she said, "You talked to your mother."

His wince wasn't subtle this time. "To Nerissa," he said quietly. "Yes, I did."

"What did she say?" She realized two things, then: that she was holding her breath, waiting for Caleb's answer, and that her question wasn't entirely for him. It had been decades since she'd heard, really heard, from her friend. And Nerissa had once been a very good friend. What had happened to her hurt Yan Lin. She'd wondered for years what she could have done differently, what she had done wrong that had led Nerissa down the path she'd chosen.

When she'd learned the truth about Nerissa and Caleb, she couldn't prevent a fleeting moment of joy, of hope. A mother's love was unlike anything else in the world. If Nerissa had a child, then maybe…

Looking at Caleb now, though, she shook that feeling away. She'd left him, long ago, and left him to suffer the consequences of that abandonment.

"Do you remember, when I was babysitting Irma's little brother, you told me that you used Guardian magic on him to make him do what you wanted?"

Yan Lin scrunched her eyebrows in confusion. "Yes…And then I told you I gave him cookies. Why is that remembered right now?"

"Can you really do that?" Caleb was watching her intently, appraising her like he might another rebel to determine whether he was being lied to or not.

"No," she said honestly. "I did not and I cannot."

"Can any of you?" He pressed, leaning forward. "Like how only the Air Guardian can turn invisible and only the Earth Guardian has telekinesis. Can the Keeper of the Heart…control people?"

"Why are you asking this?"

He leaned back, slumping down in his chair and running a hand through his hair again. "Something Nerissa said. She…" Caleb paused. Ordinarily, Yan Lin would have urged him to continue, but something told her that his hesitation had less to do with her and more to do with him right now. "She made it sound like…like she knew the rebellion was going to happen long before she could have known. Like it was all part of some plan of hers. Like…"

"Like you were part of the plan," Yan Lin finished, the implication of his words dawning on her. Caleb simply nodded.

Now, instead of hope for her friend - former friend - she felt anger. "Now, listen to me. Caleb!" The boy looked up. "Nerissa fled. She gave up on her life and she hid. She left the Guardians, and she left you, and those are decisions she's had to live with for years, and try to justify to herself. You led the rebellion. Everything you have done, you have done because of who you are. And she had nothing to do with you. She made that decision many years ago. And you made yours, and each and every decision was yours alone. Understood?"

Caleb's lips quirked to something very near a smile. "Yes, ma'am."

She nodded once, firmly. "Good. Now either eat, or grab that broom and sweep."

He opted for the latter. "How did you find out you were a Guardian?" He asked. "How did you and the others meet?"

Your mother was my first friend. But he didn't want to hear that, not now. Maybe one day, if either of them could forgive Nerissa the wrongs she'd done them. "That's a long story."

"Well, there's a lot of work to do."

I discovered W.I.T.C.H. was a pre-teen. Recovering from a surgery at home with nothing else to do, I happened across a new show on Jetix (does that channel exist anymore) and was addicted. Years later, I discovered all the episodes on YouTube and had a binge watching session, and I quite enjoyed feeling like a 12-year-old for a few days.

What's fun when you're watching any TV show in a binge watching session is that you can really see how characters change. Caleb and Yan Lin were my two favorite characters, and I thought both of them were very different by the end of the second season, and I think a lot had to do with the impact Nerissa had on both of them. They always seemed to have some sort of friendship between them, too, so I thought I'd examine that a little closer while also delving into their pasts a bit. This was fun to write. I own nothing, but love reviews.