Andy sat in front of the microfilm reader and patiently scrolled through the tape. Past headlines of the Daily South flashed past his unfocused eyes.

November 5th, 1977. November 6th, 1977. November 7th, 1977.

Nothing.

He kept going.

He waited in the hospital lobby with Terry, Joe, and Rock, and tried not to let his growing headache show on his face. He never thought he'd see the day when Terry was one of the quietest people in the group, but his brother seemed distracted - haunted, his mind supplied, and Andy cut it off before it could say anything else - letting Joe and Rock run wild.

"Perhaps you should take the kid outside," he said, poking Terry in the side.

"Huh? Oh, yeah...I guess." Terry stood up and walked over to grab Rock, provoking another fit of giggles. "All right, let's stop bothering all the nice people here and - huh?"

"Mr. Bogard?" A middle-aged nurse called from the hallway. "Mr. Bogard, please come here. Your results are in."

December 18th, 1977. December 19th, 1977. December 20th, 1977.

What had he been doing back then? It was hard to remember. They must've still been in the orphanage - they hadn't been on the streets all that long, and he hadn't seen any articles about the fire. That would've been front-page news, he was pretty sure. In December 1977 he would've been five years old, running around behind Terry and getting into trouble that was never his fault. The sisters would've been putting up decorations, the ratty tinsel and worn paper chains, and everyone would've been getting ready for Christmas Mass...

"So these lines show the DNA bands of each of the subjects," the nurse explained. "The more lines match, the greater the chance that the given subject is the child's father. It's tricky without having a mother to compare, but even so you can see here that Subject D is a very strong match. But then again, so is Subject B."

Whatever the nurse said, Andy couldn't see anything but a mess of lines. They all seemed to match to him, but it was impossible that they were all Rock's fathers, so he nodded along and tried to look like he understood. Joe wasn't even bothering with that much.

"You said Subject B is a strong match?" Terry said, and the tension in his voice made Andy pay more attention. Which one of them had been B...?

"Yes, enough that it's a bit confusing. It would be helpful if you'd avoid putting other close relatives into the set - while we're 90% sure D is the father, I'd say there's a good 85% chance of B as well...unless you have some reason to know which is which, there's no way for us to say for certain."

Wait. Hadn't he been B?

January 4th, 1978. January 5th, 1978. January 6th, 1978.

"COMMISSIONER CALLS FOR CRACKDOWN ON CRIME" blared out from the past, accompanied by a grainy black and white picture.

Andy stared at it until his eyes hurt.

"We're sure B isn't the father. Dead sure." Terry's voice was steady. From somewhere past the glass that seemed to have fallen between him and the world, Andy noticed his fingers digging into Rock's shoulder, making the kid squirm and whine.

He should, he thought, say something. But it all seemed so far away, and by the time he had gotten his mouth open Terry had already let Rock go.

The nurse frowned a little, but was too professional to let it into her voice. "In that case, I'd say that B is some other relative - looking at the child, B, and D together, I'd say that D is the father to both. There's extra variation in here, probably from different mothers, but..."

Andy didn't hear another word she said.

"Hey. Librarian said I'd find you down here." A voice from behind made Andy turn an see Terry settling himself on one of the other chairs, his legs wrapped around the back. He looked irritatingly normal.

"Where's the kid?"

Terry grinned and made a vague gesture towards the main stacks. "Children's storytime, 1-1:30 every Wednesday. It's a little young for Rock, but he knows to go get his own books if he's bored, and there's plenty of moms around to keep an eye on him. So, what're you up to?"

"Don't shove your kid off on someone else" was on Andy's lips, but he held it back. Instead he silently moved aside so Terry could see the viewing screen.

Terry leaned forward, drinking up every detail. He looked over at Andy, then back at the screen. Finally he settled back on the chair with a sigh.

The image of young Geese Howard watched them both.

"That's a joke, him saying the city needs to do something about crime. Bet it was all some plot to get control of the gangs himself."

"Yeah," Andy mumbled, still staring at the screen.

Geese had worn his hair long back then. Was that Andy's forehead outlined in cheap toner? Was that his eyes watching an invisible crowd? His lips turned into a triumphant smile?

Why had he never noticed the resemblance before?

"It's really bothering you, isn't it," Terry said, and Andy couldn't take it anymore.

"Of course it is!" he snapped, turning on Terry with fury in his voice. "I'm related to - I'm the son of the man who killed my father! How am I supposed to feel about that?!"

"Andy-" Terry reached out and Andy smacked the hand away.

"How much of him is in my blood? How much am I like him? I spent over a decade training to kill my own father-"

"Andy, sssh! Library!"

Andy sat down in an embarrassed rush. The librarian walking towards them with blood in her eyes stopped, gauging if she needed to come over and chop their heads off or whatever happened if you were too loud in a library. Andy had never been a rowdy enough kid to find out. He awkwardly waved the librarian away, face burning red.

They sat like that for awhile, Terry watching a point about six feet away in the air, Andy alternating between glancing sourly at the screen and away again. Neither spoke. The only sound was the soft, constant ticking of the clock, marking the drips of the past fallen away from the present.

Finally Terry sighed and adjusted his cap. "It doesn't change anything, you know."

"Of course it does." It changed everything.

"Well...it doesn't have to." Terry was playing with his cap now, not even looking at Andy. His voice was quiet. "I'm not good at figuring out the right way to say things, but...you're still my brother, right? And Jeff's still our dad. So nothing's changed. You're still you."

Andy could tell his brother was just trying to help. It he had been in a better mood, it might've worked. But at the moment, platitudes were just that. He snorted and said: "How much did you think about your parents, back at the orphanage?"

"I didn't."

"Because you were taken, right? That's the difference. I was abandoned." Andy realised his hands had formed fists and forced them open and flat on his knees. But he couldn't bring himself to meet Terry's patient, open eyes. "I was always hoping...maybe it was a mistake. Maybe I wasn't supposed to have been left on the doorstep. Maybe it was temporary. Who knows. But I was sure that one day, one day my parents would come and pick me up and take me home with them. Every time I got called into the office, I was hoping that-"

"-it would be the day you found out you were a long-lost prince and you had to go home and rule?" Terry was grinning and Andy barely resisted smacking him for making it all seem cheap. He settled for looking away and didn't care if it was sulking.

Terry kept going. "Man, what happened to me in these fantasies? Can't think your noble parents would want a scruffy punk hanging around. Did I just get left at the orphanage?"

"I'd convince them to take you too, obviously. Stop over-analysing it; they were just...daydreams." He didn't want to mention how long it had taken for the daydreams to fade completely. If he was completely honest, they weren't entirely gone until the sharp, crystalline moment when Terry had dragged him home to their father lying cold and stiff beneath the sheet. Killed by the man still watching them both from the microfilm screen. Andy stared right back, burning the grainy image into his brain. "I didn't imagine royalty or anything either. Just a nice couple with a house and a backyard. Maybe a pool." And look what he had ended up with.

"I get it," Terry said, and Andy was glad he left it at that.

"Didn't you ever- I mean, how much do you remember from before?"

Terry shrugged. "I remember getting hit."

"That's it?" It wasn't surprising there wasn't more - Andy couldn't remember a time without Terry, which meant he must've been taken away when he was pretty small. But still...

"That's it." Terry leaned back in the chair, looking at the ceiling. "Sometimes I'd try to remember if there was anything else, but...didn't really seem worth the effort. If they'd been worth staying around I wouldn't be in an orphanage. So I stopped worrying about it pretty quick."

"I get it," Andy said, and he did. He wished he'd felt the same way.

"But you know...I wouldn't blame your mom."

Andy couldn't think of anything to say to that. He hadn't been blaming her. He hadn't been thinking much about her at all. She'd faded into unimportance next to the terrible knowledge of his birth father. He hadn't even bothered to wonder if she was still alive somewhere. It seemed unlikely; Southtown was a dangerous place.

"Geese wasn't that old - he would've been about our age when we were born, which means your mom was probably around there too...or even younger." Terry trailed off and started playing with his cap again. "Well, I don't know how to say this either, but she probably didn't have much of a choice. That's all."

"Probably not." He wouldn't know what to do with a kid if he had one now, let alone any earlier. And it wasn't like Geese was good to his family - the living proof was up there listening to storytime as they spoke. Andy didn't resent his mom. It wasn't worth it.

He tried to keep his voice neutral when he said: "You're being awfully reasonable about this."

"Am I?" Terry sounded surprised.

"Yeah. Doesn't this bother you? I'm Geese's son. You can't just pretend that doesn't mean anything." If Terry tried, Andy swore he would punch his brother's face in and to hell with the librarians. He'd take the risk.

"Hmm...well, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't anything about this that bugged me." Terry sat up straight on the chair. "To be honest...you being Rock's brother and his uncle is really weird."

Andy stared.

"What? It is weird. Honestly, I'm not sure we should tell him - I don't think he got what the nurse was talking about there, so we can probably get away with it."

"...sure. I'll stay Uncle Andy." It hadn't occurred to him to try to be anything else. He shook his head and changed the subject. "But speaking of...you've been down here awhile."

"Huh? Oh damn, you're right," Terry said, looking at the clock on the wall. "Better check and make sure he's not getting too bored up there. Not that Mrs. Ainsley isn't a good storyteller or anything, but...you know. He's probably got a pile of books for me to read to him too."

"You can read?"

"Hey!" Terry swung his arm around to swat Andy, who ducked with his first smile since the hospital. "I'm not great at it, but all the librarians say that reading to kids when they're little is the best way to get them in the habit, and reading's all fundamental to learning, so I've been knuckling down and hitting the books." He puffed up with pride. "Rock says I'm almost as good as Mrs. Ainsley. Not as good as his mom, of course, but I'm trying."

Andy's grin faded into a quiet smile that covered up the odd ache at seeing his - goofy, immature, reckless - brother becoming a father. "You must be here a lot."

"Sure, I love libraries. Free AC!" Terry stuck his cap back on his head and stood up. "Well, I'm going. Don't stay here too long, okay? Richard wants us down at the cafe before the evening rush." Andy nodded and agreed, promising to wrap it up soon. Just as he turned back to the screen, a hand fell on his shoulder.

"I mean it, Andy. It Idoesn't matter/I. None of us have lineages to be proud of, but Rock's a good kid and you're a good man. That's the only thing that counts."

Andy rested his hand on top of his brother's, just like when they were kids. "Yeah. I know."

But Geese still watched them - with Andy's eyes, Andy's hair - from a past they couldn't escape.

---

So just to be clear here, this is an AU. Andy being Geese's biological son has been a fan theory since AoF2 came out and we found out that Gosling looks a lot like Andy, but SNK denied that shit back in 1995.

...but that fan theory is the most interesting thing about Andy SO HERE WE ARE.

Anyway the Daily South is named such because the Japanese Dreamcast manual for Garou: Mark of the Wolves has a newspaper reporter giving blurbs for each of the fighters and that guy works for the Daily Second South. Clearly there was only one thing to call the original.