HAPPY FALL BITCHES!

I hope you all are enjoying the incoming cool weather (unless you're in the southern hemisphere) and are staying safe through all the storms in the southeast US/Central America. Kinda seems like the world is crumbling if you ask me. But I'll spare you existential ideations.

Herein lies some plot bunnies I thought might be enjoyed by y'all. They're not necessarily gonna be chronological, but they will be in the same storyline as all my others (Memory in the Mirror excluded. I almost forgot about that one). No routine updating is gonna happen here, and some chapters might be shorter than others. This is gonna be a very lax series of oneshots lol. I really hope you enjoy!

First up: Mementos

Summary: During Ingrid's first summer at X, she's helping the Fillmores move from one house to the next. She comes to realize she got more than she bargained for upon entering her partner's room and finding Fillmore in the center of the contents of his closet: things he calls "mementos" strewn out across the entirety of the floor. She calls it all junk, but he takes it on himself to change her mind, and the more he reveals to her, the more she worries where he stands on their friendship.

xXxXx

Chapter One – Mementos

"Some room," Fillmore scoffed. Ingrid stared at the large black words on the white wall in front of her with disdain as he set down a steaming cup of cocoa in front of her. "I practically spent my first two months of school here—" She eyed the cup suspiciously. "—'til, that is, my former partner Wayne drafted me out of a life of delinquency and into the safety patrol." Ingrid remained silent but, after a moment's pause, Fillmore sat down next to her and pressed on. "You're lying, Ingrid. You didn't do it and I can prove it."

Ingrid shrugged and finally shifted her glare to the dark-skinned boy next to her. "So what?" she said. "Look, they're gonna expel me and I want out. Why would I want to stay here?"

Fillmore ignored her question and explained, "I have an ATM tape that proves you weren't anywhere near the school when that stink bomb was set off."

Ingrid's glare hardened. "And I have an eggplant that looks like Fred Durst!" she argued, her voice piercing the air like knives. "Didn't you hear me? I – don't – care. I just want to forget you people!"

Fillmore fought off the split second of confusion – he had no idea who that was – and squared his shoulders, infuriated that she'd lumped him with Parnassus of all people. Especially after everything he'd been doing for her. "Don't say 'you people'!" he snapped and stood up defensively, pointing a thumb at himself. "This person's been out there busting his tail trying to clear your name. And what do I get in return? A messed-up eggplant."

Guilt sparked in Ingrid's chest as he started to sit back down. He made an excellent point. When was the last time anyone had ever stuck their neck out for her? She had already confessed, yet here he was, still trying to prove everyone wrong, including herself. Needless to say, she felt… well, grateful.

"What's that?" he exclaimed jokingly. "Joan of Arc cracked a smile!" She hadn't even realized she had smiled but she wiped the smirk from her face as he continued. "Ingrid, you didn't do it. Don't take the fall because of a hundred fools who want easy answers. You've got a friend at X." Ingrid frowned down at her desk. "Me."

'Friend?' she thought to herself. No one had called her their friend for a long time. Partner in crime? Yeah. Someone to use? Definitely. But… friend?

"You know, I was thinking," she started, but paused to choose her words carefully. Fillmore nodded, urging her to continue. "If one person other than the welcome wagon girl was the least bit nice to me by two o'clock, I wouldn't confess to doing something I didn't do."

Fillmore smirked softly at her. "I would've been here earlier, but I've been busy trying to clear a friend's name." Despite herself, Ingrid smiled again and looked back up at him as he held out his hand to her. "Cornelius Fillmore."

She shook his hand. "Ingrid Third."

Ingrid, clad in a carefully distressed Sex Pistols t-shirt and a pair of dark jean shorts, strode towards the Fillmore residence. Normally, shorts weren't her thing – it wasn't a secret how pale she was, so why should she flaunt it? – but the relentless heat and humidity made anything more conservative than shorts almost unbearable. From (very recent) firsthand experience, she'd discovered that Minnesota summers could be brutal and unforgiving, and that she'd much rather grin and bear the temporary discomfort of showing off her legs and risk blinding everyone she passed than melt.

Ingrid approached the home just as a large U-Haul truck turned onto the street and headed in her direction and her heart leapt in her chest. Relax, Third, she berated herself. She sped up – suddenly all too eager to reach the front door before the moving truck – as she fought off the intrusive memories of skipping from one town to the next. She didn't bother to knock before turning the knob and shutting the door swiftly behind her.

"Ingrid, perfect timing!" Joelle greeted. Her strained voice came from behind a large box labelled "fragile dishes" – with three lines of emphasis under the word "fragile" – and Ingrid ran up to steady it. She heard a sigh of relief from the other side of the box. "Oh, thank you," Jo said. "Let's just put it down right here for the movers."

Ingrid grimaced at those words, but she told herself it was the weight of the box they were lowering to the ground, and not the harrowing fact that her best friend was moving. Joelle exhaled dramatically as they set the hefty box on the ground with a quiet clatter. "Looking for Cornelius?"

Ingrid shrugged and eyeballed the box his mother had just been struggling with. "Not if you need more help than he does."

Joelle let out a hearty chuckle and shook her head. "Honey, I couldn't even get him out of bed til after ten, he's gonna need all the help he can get," she chided as the movers knocked on the door Ingrid had just entered. "He should be in his room, and if you see him back in bed, would you slap him with something for me?"

"You got it," Ingrid chuckled and walked in the direction of Fillmore's room as Joelle greeted the men enthusiastically, ready to move onto the next chapter of their lives.

It was a foreign feeling, packing up someone else'shouse to relocate. Ingrid had always been the one doing the moving. As she continued down the hallway, warily eyeing its recently barren walls, she had to fight the apprehension rising in her chest. It's not like he's leaving the state, Third, she told herself. Hell, he's not even leaving the school district. You wanna calm down?

The Fillmores moving was a goodthing. Karim had been working much too hard since their youngest son had (finally) straightened himself out, giving him the time he needed to work on getting his family out of the projects and, more importantly, getting his son out of the area that had turned him towards delinquency in the first place. Of course, no one was particularly worried that he'd fall back into old habits, especially with Ingrid around, but they were ready to move on nonetheless. Moving uptown was the change that they needed.

But Ingrid wasn't too big on change. While she'd gotten used to it over the course of her childhood – parental abandonment and constant moving with minimal transitioning made sure of that – she allowed herself to become much too comfortable with the way her life turned out, and she didn't want to risk it changing. Well, she didn't have much choice in the matter, anyhow.

A loud thud followed by a faint curse came from the other side of Fillmore's bedroom door and she hurried over to it. "Fillmore, you okay?" She turned the handle and, expecting it to swing open, she kept moving forward, but the door hardly budged and she ran into it. Stunned, she stared dumbly at it, then jiggled the handle again. But, it's not locked…?

"Hold up—" Another crash. "Ah, sh—"

"Fillmore?"

"I'm good!" he called, sounding slightly pained. "Just a sec." She heard scraping on the other side of the door, and seconds later, it opened, albeit slightly. "You can squeeze through that, right?" he huffed.

Ingrid raised her eyebrow at the narrow opening he'd given her. "I'm sure I can, but," she sighed heavily and pinched her chin in phony thought, "it would take some effort, and it's still fairly early in the day." She heard him scoff in amusement. "In fact, I might need to go grab some coffee while I think about it—"

"Only if you get me some while you're at it," he interrupted, with a grunt of effort as he pulled at whatever was blocking the door, "and spike it with Jim Beam or something." The door creaked open farther and he finally poked his head around the back of the door. "Actually, just bring me some JB, with or without the coffee."

She rolled her eyes, but, at the way his dark eyes gleamed in a mixture of mischief and stress, she couldn't help but smirk. "I think I'm a little too young to provide that kind of hook up," she chuckled as she turned sideways and shuffled into the room. "And if I'm a little too young to come through, I know that you're a little too young to be asking."

"Yeah, I wish I wasn't," he said with a laugh. Once she squeezed past the bookcase which had been blocking the door, she saw why. Ingrid wasn't normally easy to surprise, but, considering the fact Fillmore was supposed to be packing, the amount of… well, junk that littered his bedroom floor shocked her. It all seemed to be originating from his closet. She could see a small, barren circle by its wide doorway, just Fillmore's size, where he must have been sitting and pulling it all out. She shook her head, desperately trying to disguise the rising laughter in her chest with a disappointed sigh.

"Oh, Fillmore."

He rubbed the back of his neck bashfully, with the other hand on his hip. "Yeah, I, uh…" he paused, not sure how to defend himself. He looked back up with a one-armed shrug. "Nostalgia?"

She scoffed. "You mean clutter?"

"It's not clutter if it's been hidden in my closet and out of the way for…" he trailed off and skimmed over the objects strewn across the floor. He scratched his head and looked back up at her. "…ever."

"No wonder your mom said you'd need help."

"Hey, she knows that underneath this masculine exterior—" he motioned to himself, and Ingrid didn't hold back an eyeroll, "—I'm a pretty sentimental guy."

"Clearly." Ingrid poked an empty box marked "closet stuff" on the floor with her toe. "And here I was thinking some of these boxes would be marked 'Goodwill'."

He gasped, offended. "Are you saying you think all this—" he motioned to the dozens of objects strewn across the floor "—is junk?"

Ingrid scanned the floor again. She saw an old, broken bike lock, an old tin container, a couple of yearbooks, among many other things, but none of which screamed "significance" to her. It all seemed disposable. She shrugged. "I mean, I never said 'junk'."

Fillmore pointed at her. "Good. Because it's not," he told her as he returned to the barren circle on the floor. "So stop rolling your eyes." Ingrid bit her lip to hide a smile. He wasn't even looking at her, yet he knew exactly what she was doing. He knew her so well already… and now he's moving. Jeez, Third, she thought as her stomach twisted into knots again. Don't be so dramatic. Isn't this hard enough already?

She shook her head as he sat down in the circle, pointed to the tin container, and said, "I can't help it when you claim that an empty container of Ouch! bubble gum isn't junk."

"Hey, that just so happened to be the only bubble gum I ever enjoyed as a kid, and I'll be damned if I let myself forget the pain I felt deep in my soul—" he held a fist to his chest, "—when they discontinued it."

Ingrid chuckled. "Sounds like the wound's still fairly fresh, so what do you need the reminder for?"

"Because," he began, pulling over an empty box to set in his lap, "while you have that handy photographic memory, one day, my looks and charm are gonna be all I have going for me, and I'm gonna need all the reminders I can get."

"You know, they say that you can't take it with you."

"Well, sorry to disappoint Third, but I'm moving, not dying."

"Maybe not now," Ingrid replied with a shrug, "but if your mom comes in and sees this mess, you might be doing both."

"Why do you think I put the bookcase where I did?" Fillmore grinned up at her as she shook her head, a mischievous gleam in his dark eyes. "I'll tell you what: if you let me prove to you that every single one of these things have true sentimental value, I'll let you start putting them into boxes."

Ingrid raised her eyebrow. "And what am I supposed to gain from this compromise other than doing all the work for you?"

"My mom won't kill me." Ingrid scoffed, but couldn't hold back a smile. "So, whaddya say?"

Ingrid sighed, despite that she'd already made up her mind about helping him when she walked in the front door. She carefully brushed her foot across the floor, gently pushing the bike lock she spotted earlier towards him. "What's with this?" she asked before she sat down.

Fillmore snatched the cable lock from the ground, weighing it in his hands. "This thing of beauty is the Bell Watchdog 100." His lips curled up in a mischievous smirk. "It was from the first bike I ever stole."

"Now that I understand."

Fillmore winked and handed her the box, tossing the cable inside it when she had the box firmly in her hands. He rubbed his hands together and looked around. "Now, what's next…"

xXxXx

An hour passed before Ingrid finally began to see the difference in the amount of clutter as mementos made their way from the floor and into a box. They'd already filled one and were on to the second when he got to his yearbooks. He'd flipped through a few of them with her, and instantly regretted each one as she watched him transition from a toothless wonder, to John Bender-esque delinquent, to Safety Patrol legend.

"I still have that shirt," he admitted with a quiet laugh, pointing to the frayed red flannel his 11-year-old self wore. It was moments like that which made her grateful for a photographic memory. She knew, someday, that would come in handy.

"Looks like somebody had something of an idol," she said coyly as she flipped the page, which was a picture collage of candids. She quickly skimmed over them all, looking for the young face of the boy sitting next to her, when her eyes fell on another familiar face, many years younger.

"Yeah," he admitted, dragging out the word, "if I'd had the chance to be John Bender for a day, I woulda jumped on that in a heartbeat."

Ingrid bit her lip as she stared down at the picture, unsure if she'd known him long enough to ask. Curiosity got the better of her, and she tapped on the picture with a delicate finger. "Was she your Claire Standish?"

Fillmore did a double take as he registered exactly who she pointed at before his face fell. Come on, Ingrid, she thought as she observed his fallen expression, you've only known him for, what, seven months? Way to overstep. She was thinking about how to apologize when he said, "Maybe," and gently pulled the book from her grasp and set it down on his lap, "if Claire Standish always overcooked her chicken." Ingrid shifted uncomfortably next to him as he ran his finger over the picture. He and Penny were perched on the bleachers, the girl hiding her smiling face in one of his arms while his other was stretched out towards the cameraman, attempting to block his shot.

Ingrid noticed something different about him in that photo – the glare in his eyes held a muted malice she'd never seen in him before, and his shoulders were taught, almost defensive. The Fillmore in the picture was the complete opposite of the boy who sat comfortably next to her, who stared down at the picture with a long-lost affection in his eyes Ingrid recognized from when he first laid eyes on Penny at the auction. She'd known something was there, but she didn't ask, and he never told. At the time, she didn't want him digging into her past, so she decided to stay out of his unless he offered it.

That was months ago. They still hardly knew much about each other. She had a good idea as to how Fillmore's mind worked – what his tells were, when she needed to talk sense into him, and when she needed to leave him be – but she hardly had a clue how he came to be the Fillmore she knew. Maybe, she bit her lip, this is how I start.

"You never told me much about her," she pointed out, uncrossing her legs and hugging them to her chest.

Fillmore shrugged. "Not much to tell," he said nonchalantly. However, when he never looked up from the picture, Ingrid knew better.

"Is that why you can't take your eyes off her?"

He finally tore his eyes away from the picture to smile at the far wall and shake his head. Without meeting her eyes, he said, "For someone I haven't known for all that long, you really know how to push my buttons."

"Well, for being the best undercover guy on the Patrol, you're kind of a bad liar."

He chuckled and stole a glance at Ingrid, who smiled softly at him, before he looked back down at the picture and sighed, fighting the heat rising to his cheeks. No one had ever asked about her before – they all knew his and her records overlapped pretty frequently, but that was that. No one ever thought to dig deeper. They were criminals and that was all anyone needed to know.

"Back in the sixth grade, Sonny said he knew a guy who could help me con some S.A.T.T.Y. 9 answer keys to sell to all the kids freaking out about the big test. Turns out, it wasn't a 'guy' at all. It was Penny."

Ingrid's brow furrowed. "I've never heard about that con."

"That's because we never got the chance to get them to print," he explained. A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. "That was the first time I ever got busted by Wayne."

"Wow," Ingrid said, eyeing Wayne's school picture somewhere between Fillmore's and Penny's. "You guys really do go back."

Fillmore chuckled. "Yeah," he said. "After that, though, Penny and I were inseparable. We kept Wayne busy for sure. Locker rigging, cutting class…" Fillmore trailed off, looking behind him and reaching into his closet for something, and he dragged out a bound stack of comic books. "We even started a comic book poker ring." He handed her the pile of comics and she set it carefully on her lap to brush the dust off its plastic cover with her hand.

"You guys got away with a lot in a span of two months, though," she said, slowly wedging the stack into the box in front of her. Fillmore nodded as he watched her. "Seems like you guys worked really well together."

"Yeah, we did," he agreed, snapping the yearbook shut and holding it lightly in his hands. After a moment of silence, Ingrid felt the tension still lingering in the air between them. She was almost too afraid to push him – seeing as, in her mind, this was a risky conversation to start with him in the first place – but, if she was being honest, she was too curious.

"But?" she asked, praying she didn't push him too hard.

Fillmore refused to look over at her. "But what?"

She bit her lip, cautiously. Her heart raced at the thought of him being angry at her, but a part of her couldn't let it go. For the last hour, he'd shown her dozens of items, all of which had a degree of sentimental value that Fillmore couldn't let go of. She'd seen an old shirt he'd gotten from Wayne (one she was sure he'd outgrown by now) from a convention they'd gone to together, his purple rabbit mug that Karen had gotten him as a welcome present on his first day on the force, and plenty of other things whose meanings she marveled at. But the one thing that almost every single item had in common was that there was a person attached to that piece of history. And she'd noticed a pile behind him he'd refused to touch – a pile, she now wondered, that might represent Penny.

He was right: these things weren't "junk" to him. They were reminders of what had been important to him, or rather, who. And she couldn't help but notice that he'd yet to show her something that reminded him of herself. Of course, Ingrid couldn't necessarily blame him, considering they'd barely known each other for a year, but for her, that drove home a point. A point that none of the things he kept were worthless. The people tied to those objects mattered to him.

And a pile of well-preserved limited-edition comic books from his days with her, along with the pile of mementos he was hiding behind him, proved her point.

"But, you loved her." Ingrid held her breath as he blinked in shock. He hadn't expected that kind of conviction from her. How had she guessed that? For a moment, he almost brushed her off, told her that she was crazy and that he and Penny were just close friends, but… she knew. Saying otherwise would be pointless.

He finally sighed and nodded. "So much that I took the fall for her."

Ingrid tilted her head to the side. "What do you mean?"

"Wayne was getting too close," Fillmore told her and ran his hand over his head. "He got wind of where we were playing poker one night, but Penny had one more strike before she'd be expelled. And I didn't have enough time to get everyone out without risking Wayne catching her by chance."

"What did you do?"

"I slipped her a note under a card. Told her we were gonna be busted, but if she could slip out without alerting everyone, I'd take care of it. And she did." He looked down at his hands, which rested palm-up in his lap. "And she never looked back." Ingrid bit her lip. Penny ran from him? It shocked her, that for two people who seemed to be so close, she never looked back. Fillmore continued, "Wayne said he'd cut me a deal: help him solve another case or spend the rest of the year in detention. I only agreed because I needed to warn Penny to stay away from it, but I couldn't find her. She transferred out."

"Did she ever tell you why?" Ingrid asked, and Fillmore shook his head. "Not even when she invited you to dinner?" He shook his head again.

"I thought she was going to, but we never got around to it if she was. Before I could ever ask…" Fillmore trailed off, wondering if it would be smart to share something like that with Ingrid. While he trusted her to have his back in the field, he couldn't know how she'd react to that truth. They were both on the right side of the law, and while neither of them cared for coverups, this was different. At least, it was different for him. With a deep breath, he hoped she'd feel the same. "…she slipped up. And I found the rest of the counterfeit rookie cards in her garage."

Ingrid's eyes widened. She knew something was suspicious when Penny disappeared the day after the bust, but she didn't think it was that. She thought maybe it was hurt pride, or fear of false accusation. "She was the one who left them on the football field the next day?" she asked.

He nodded. "After I found them, I told her to meet me at HQ the next morning and I left. But when we heard that someone found them on the field, I knew she was gone. And she didn't leave any trace of evidence behind, so I thought… why bother dragging her name through the mud again, you know?" He looked over at her, a pleading look in his eyes, and Ingrid frowned. Her heart ached for him.

"I'm sorry, Fillmore," she murmured after a long silence.

He shrugged, relieved that she didn't say anything more. "Ah, I've moved on," he said, waving her off, but she raised her eyebrow, and eyeballed the pile behind him.

"Is that why you're still holding onto those Barry Bonds cards?" she asked with a playful smirk, and he laughed bashfully, running his hand over his face.

"I can't sneak anything past you, can I?" he laughed.

"You don't have to," she told him. He looked at her and she shrugged. "You know, Fillmore…" she paused, uncertain if she wanted to open up to him, but figured if he could do it with her, she could do the same with him. "You're probably one of the first real friends I've ever had." Fillmore smiled at that, and she fought a blush rising to her cheeks. "All of this—" she motioned to the mementos all around her "—it's a new thing for me. After my mom left, I've never stayed in one place long enough to have good friends. And what's the point of carrying all this kind of stuff around if I'd just move again?

"I've never been one to really open up to people or one to want anyone to get close to me. Especially if they're only temporary. But this place… you—" she nudged his shoulder and he chuckled, taking it in stride, "—you changed all that for me. And I'm not planning on going anywhere any time soon so…" She held her breath for a moment to gather up the courage. "I want you to be able to trust me. With anything. We are cut from the same cloth in a way, so it's not like I can judge you for your darkness when I have my own."

For a moment, Fillmore just stared into her eyes, searching their depths for a tell that he knew probably wouldn't be there, looking for any sign of deceit. Then, he smiled at her, knowing full well she was telling the truth. She smiled bashfully back at him, feeling self-conscious of her vulnerability, when he reached behind him for the rookie cards she'd pointed out.

"These are the real ones, you know," he told her. "She left them on my front porch for me to find the day she skipped town. They'll be worth a fortune someday."

She smirked. "I guess you can't say she never gave you anything."

Fillmore laughed, tossing them carelessly into the box in front of them. "Touché."

"Hey guys," Joelle called through the door, "I've got pizza!"

"We'll be right there!" Fillmore called back. He stood up and stretched as his stomach growled and Ingrid couldn't help but laugh. He looked down at her defensively. "What? You telling me that the thought of pizza doesn't make your stomach growl?"

"Can't say that it does," she chided as he walked to the door.

"Well, I guess that means there'll be more for me then!" he joked and slid between the dresser to get to the door. Her joints ached as she stood up, and she stretched as well, and her eyes fell on a box of CDs on the desk to her left she didn't notice before. If she hadn't spotted one of the album's covers sitting on top, she wouldn't have stopped to look. Predominately blue and orange, she recognized it instantly and scoffed in shock. No way…

Fillmore wasn't a hard rock type. He loved his R&B, his hip hop, the occasional mainstream rock hit. But, among his collection of RUN-DMC, Jay-Z, and Eminem albums, lay her favorite Limp Bizkit album, Significant Other. The day she met Fillmore, he'd had no clue who Fred Durst was. She had to explain her eggplant joke to him later.

"Yo Ing, are you coming?" Fillmore called from behind the book case. She looked up just in time to see him poke his head around the corner, and she held up the CD with a grin.

"Quite a variation from your default music collection."

Once he registered what album she had in her hands, he grinned at her. "Yeah, some girl I met once told me that album changed her life. She even named her eggplant after their singer." Ingrid couldn't hold back her laugh as he continued, "I figured if I wanted to get to know her better, I'd give it a listen." She smiled at him, hoping he didn't notice the butterflies careening around in her stomach as he winked at her. "I'm glad I did." He disappeared around the corner again and his footsteps retreated down the hall and out of earshot.

She tapped the case in her hand with a polished nail before setting it back in the box she found it in. She took a good long look around the room at all the memories and took a deep breath. The more things he'd shown her, it surprised her how increasingly worried she became that nothing he had in front of them was a memory of her. He didn't have anything from her in those boxes because she wasn't just a memory of times past. She was in his present.

She couldn't have been more relieved.

xXxXx

Spent a lot of time on this one, so I hope you guys enjoyed it! I'm working on something (hopefully) I can get to you by Halloween, so cross your fingers! See you soon!

ellameno