Mother's Insight, a Building Faith Side Job
By Ellf
Chapter Six

Disclaimer: Dresden Files is a series by Jim Butcher. I own neither it nor any of the other series mentioned in this fanfiction.

"All right, Amanda, it's time for bed," I said, patting my seven-year-old daughter on the back. "You have school tomorrow, and I don't want to hear from your teacher that you fell asleep in class."

"I don't fall asleep, Mommy," Amanda said, yawning.

"Come on, squirt, I'll walk you up," my son, Daniel said, standing off the couch and walking toward his sister. I offered him a grateful smile. He really was stepping up into the responsible role, and his dark hair made him the spitting image of his father at that age, from what I remembered of the pictures. "You need to get your teeth brushed and pajamas on. Alicia can help with that if you need it."

"I don't need it, Danny. I'm big enough," Amanda said, and then she turned to me. "Mommy, when will Daddy get home?"

"I don't know, sweetie," I said, brushing her hair out of her face with a hand. "I spoke to him while you were at school yesterday, but he didn't know if he was ready to head home yet."

"Did he find them?" Amanda asked, and Daniel looked to me. It was obvious which them, my daughter meant. Her eldest sisters, Faith and Molly had been missing for nearly a year now. Well, Michael said he saw them around Halloween, but he hadn't been able to actually speak with either of them. The situation around then didn't exactly lend itself to that, and they'd disappeared soon after, dust in the wind.

"I don't know," I repeated, hugging my daughter. "I pray he did. I want your sisters home just as much as you do."

"They shouldn't have run away," Daniel said, quietly, but then he came over and lightly placed his hands on Amanda's shoulders. "I'll get her to bed, Mom. The others are already there."

I nodded gratefully. "Thank you, Daniel. I'll be up in a bit to give everyone their goodnight kiss."

Daniel smiled wryly. He probably felt that he was too old to get a goodnight kiss from his mother. I begged to differ. Just because he was sixteen now didn't make him any less my little boy. Age was no barrier to the kiss. Daniel would be getting goodnight kisses from me until he reached the tender age of thirty, if I had my way.

Faith and Molly would too, if they would just come home.

Daniel helped extricate his blonde-haired younger sister from my hug and then he walked her toward the stairs as I stood to clean up the living room. I picked up the pillows that had been strewn about and placed them on the couch. I picked up the rug that Amanda had been sitting on and flipped it over, wincing when I saw the other side. Etched into the rug was a silver pentacle, large enough for a person to sit inside. This was one of two such rugs that we had in the house.

When the twins wanted to watch TV, they would sit inside the pentacles and activate the circles, blocking off their energy from the outside world. Their siblings would then change the channel to whatever they were planning on watching. It wasn't exactly a foolproof method of preventing damage to our television, but combined with Michael's handiness at repairs, we hadn't had to replace the screen yet.

Of course, I thought as I folded up the rug to put it away. The television hasn't been exposed to magic since they left.

Left. Ran away. Faith had run away once when she was a child, eight years old. I hadn't figured out the reason why until a short while after she and her sister told me that they had magic, when she'd mentioned the past life. Faith ran away because of something in her past life. Some knowledge that she remembered from it was something she couldn't deal with at eight. Maybe that was when all the memories of it came flooding back, and maybe she felt that she shouldn't have been a part of this family. She couldn't have been more wrong.

Faith ran away after arguing with me about keeping her safe. About her letting me know things so I could do that. So I could help her if she needed it. It frustrated me just to think about it. My daughter shouldn't have the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she should have trusted me to make a decision to do what was right. She couldn't, though, and she ran away, dragging her twin sister along with her a short while afterward. Molly wouldn't let Faith face the world alone, even if Faith seemed determined to.

I sighed. I was doing it again. It had been nearly a year at that point, and I was doing it again. Thoughts of both my daughters dominated my mind, and I barely even noticed when the front door opened.

My husband made his way into the living room, where I was, bag of armor in hand, along with the messenger tube bag that he carried his sword, Amoracchius, in. He had some fresh scrapes and bruises, but nothing especially bad, which I supposed was simply because he hadn't been traveling with his best friend, the wizard, who had been conspicuously silent since Halloween.

Before then, he had been helping Michael look. Tracking spells that should have found my daughters failed at the wrong moments, and other forms of information tended to pan out into other situations. Even Michael's correct direction seemed to be on the fritz when asking about Molly and Faith, but that didn't stop him from trying. Something had changed around Halloween. Michael had been pulled away by his duties, and Dresden had sent a warning to us to stay behind our Threshold that evening. Michael claimed to have seen Faith and Molly around then, but he hadn't been able to speak with them. There a minute and gone the next, was the description.

"Charity," Michael said, and I could already hear the apology in his voice so I held up a hand.

"Considering the fact that you came in alone, I can assume that this lead didn't exactly pan out," I said, frowning at my husband. It wasn't exactly his fault that he had been unable to find them, but it still was frustrating.

"No, they weren't there," Michael said as he stepped closer to me, and he winced slightly.

"But something was, or someone," I said, looking to his injuries. "Let me go get the first aid kit, and you can tell me what happened."

I walked into the kitchen to grab the kit from under the sink and made my way back into the living room where my husband had managed to find a chair to sit in. I pulled out some antiseptic, and I started to get to work. "So, Michael, if you didn't find our daughters, what exactly did you find there?"

I had to give my husband credit. Most men would flinch at the antiseptic that I was using on him, even if it was one of the ones that didn't sting quite as much, but he barely moved a muscle. "They weren't our girls, anyway. When I made it to my destination, I had come across what appeared to be a deal of some sort being performed. There were cages that housed people there."

I grimaced. That… I didn't know what exactly my husband had run into. It sounded wrong. I took out the bandages, and started wrapping his wounds. "Cages?"

"Cages, guarded by things that might have once been human wielding machine guns," Michael said, wincing only slightly when I applied a bandage to his arm.

"Might have once been human?" I asked, frowning.

"They looked like thugs for the most part, but they had more to them," Michael said. "They wore black clothing with a black turtleneck to cover it up, but I could tell. Some of them had gills, unnatural muscles, and something off about their eyes. They might have been human once, but they definitely weren't when I saw them."

"You were wearing your armor, right?" I asked as I looked my husband over for bullet wounds. I might have lined his armor with Kevlar, but the right caliber bullet could still bypass the material.

"Of course I was." My husband grabbed my free hand with one of his own. "When the shots were fired, the armor performed as expected. Thank you."

"You're welcome," I said, my cheeks heating a little. "So… the deal?"

"Slavery," Michael growled out. "Or something like it. They were attempting to trade the people in the cages to what I can only describe as a frog-man. I didn't catch any of what they had been saying before I attacked, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway."

Frog-man, huh? It sounded vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place what I remembered about it. It might have been something that Gregor had been delving into all those years ago, but I couldn't really remember what it was. Frog-man would have to do as a description for now. Whoever my husband had rescued, even if they weren't my children, they were better off. Nobody deserved slavery, not to humans and definitely not to anything supernatural.

"No, I suppose it wouldn't matter," I said, understanding my husband's point. "If they were being sold into slavery, the deal needed to be stopped. How did you manage to get yourself hurt?"

"The frog being… I think I heard someone call it a Fomor, it was a sorcerer."

"It used magic?" I asked, wrapping another bandage over a wound. Well, that was a dumb question. There he goes telling me it was a sorcerer, and I reflexively asked the stupid question. "Mortal magic, I mean?"

"Near as I could tell, or it used something close enough to it for it to not matter," Michael said. "Either way, my faith protected me. Yours did as well."

I smiled. "So, you freed the people in the cage after that, then?"

Michael nodded. "While none were our daughters, they were someone's. I managed to get them to the nearest police station so they could be returned to their loved ones."

"My hero," I said, giving Michael a hug. "I'm finished bundling you up, but you might want to get a shower before going into bed. In which case, I'll have to redo your bandages."

"There is something to be said about having my beautiful wife fuss over me," Michael said, and I couldn't help but let out a giggle… that turned into a small sob. Michael wrapped his arms around me and I leaned into his shoulder. "I'm sorry that it wasn't them, Charity. I miss them as well."

"I just… I'm worried that something might have happened to them… I've been worried…" I said.

"I have faith that they're all right. They're both very resourceful young women, and if they're together…"

"Then they'll be working together…" I sighed. "And they probably are together."

Michael nodded. "They'll return home when they're ready to."

I snorted. If Michael managed to find them, then he'd make sure they were alright, but he wouldn't force them to return. I supposed that was the best I could hope for. I wanted my children to know that they could return home when they were ready… That we still wanted them here.

"Okay." I sighed again, extracting myself from the hug. "Go on up, I just have a little bit more cleaning to do before I join you."

"Yes ma'am," Michael said with a smile, and he made his way upstairs.

It really didn't take me all that long to finish up the cleaning in the living room. I placed Michael's armor to the side along with the case for his sword, laying them where I'd be able to put them up properly in the morning. I fluffed the pillows on the couch, and I made sure that Michael didn't bleed on the upholstery of the chair he'd sat on. Verifying the lack of blood, I packed up the first aid kit.

As I brought the kit to the kitchen to place it back under the sink, the phone began to ring. I let it ring twice as I put the first aid kit away, and I picked it up on the third ring. I wasn't exactly sure who could be calling at this time of night, but I didn't want to let it reach the answering machine.

"Hello?"

My heart moved from my chest to the bottom of my throat as I heard a familiar voice on the other side of the phone say, "Mom?"

Swallowing, I closed my eyes, thinking about the way she'd said it on the other line. Fifty-fifty shot. "Molly?"

I heard a short bit of honest laughter come from the other side of the line. "Yeah, it's me."

"Where are you?" I asked.

"Doesn't matter, now." Molly sounded calm. "I just thought you should know that we're coming back to Chicago. Not home… but we'll be closer."

"I want to see you. Everyone does. The both of you," I said.

"We're a bit different, Mom, and I can't promise it will be right away. But we'll try."

I wanted to order her to come home. I wanted to find her wherever she was and clutch both her and her sister close and not let them leave my sight again, but I couldn't. I couldn't try and force this, not when she reached out to me. Not when my daughter opened lines of communication.

"How can I contact you?"

"I'll call you back to let you know, Mom. We've missed you," Molly said, speaking for her sister as well as herself.

"I've missed you so much…"

"We've got to go, Mom. I'll call back, I promise."

"No, wait! I want to…" Dialtone. My daughters were alive, and they were coming back to Chicago. Where had they gone? What did they do?

They were coming back. That's what mattered. When they did, and when we were able to meet again, I'd show them why they should come home. Why they should stay home.

I loved my children. Making sure that they were safe was my number one priority. Which is why they needed to come home. I just wanted them home.