I just had this crazy idea, so I decided to write about it.
Summary: While on a mission/vacation to Sutos, the team learns a bit about their old friend Wilder, and a long-forgotten figure from Sophie's past shows up.
Disclaimer: I do not own Huntik.
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Chapter 1: The beginning.
Fourteen years ago
A twenty-year-old man wearing a dark suit walked down the streets of Paris, combing his sleek blond hair.
I can't believe I'm finally in he thought to himself and finally out.
Zack Wilder had just recently been accepted into the ranks of the Organization. He'd received his first Titan to bond with and a paycheck to give him a head start, since he didn't have much. Right now, he was looking at apartments in various cities where the Organization had bases. He had searched the Czech Republic, Spain, and Italy, and now he was touring France. The Organization bosses who ran the operations in the countries he had gone to were getting annoyed, but Wilder just hadn't found that place that said "Home" to him.
Of course, he had no idea what it was like to have a real home, so he didn't really know what exactly he was looking for. Having been in the foster system in the U.S. since he was born, he'd been moved around from one house and horrible set of foster parents to another. As soon as he had turned 18, he'd taken the money he had collected over the years, some of it from various jobs he'd had over the years and some of it stolen from the most terrible of his foster parents, and purchased himself a ticket to Europe.
Once there, he had bounced around for a bit before he ended up picking a fight with the wrong people. Left for dead, Wilder had been rescued by a group of Organization suits and offered the chance to join them. He'd had to prove his worth, of course, but he'd gotten through it.
Wilder was in the middle of a flashback, remembering when he had first met the Professor and pledged his loyalty to the Organization, when he heard a noise. Stopping in his tracks, he listened. There it was again! It almost sounded like. . . crying? Wilder slowly and cautiously went towards the noise. He rounded the corner into an alley and stopped short.
In front of him, crouched down on the ground with her knees pulled up to her chest, was a little girl. She had long, light brown hair, pale skin, and wore a teal dress that was ruined by soot and scorch marks. She looked up when she heard Wilder approach. Her green eyes were rimmed with red from crying, and her tears had cleaned the soot from her face where they had fallen, leaving trail marks. She couldn't have been more than four or five.
"Are you okay?" Wilder asked in a soft voice so as not to scare her. The girl tried to scoot away from him, but fell. Wilder saw that she was injured, her legs having been badly burned. "It's alright. I won't hurt you." The girl stopped trying to get away. "What's your name?"
"I don't know," the little girl replied in a voice so quiet Wilder almost didn't hear her.
"You don't know your name?" Wilder asked. The girl shook her head. "Where are your parents?" The girl shook her head again and resumed her crying. Wilder reached out a hand towards her and she backed away quickly, stumbling on her injured legs. "You're hurt. I have to get you to a hospital. Maybe we can find your parents. Will that be alright?" He held out his hand. The girl looked back and forth from his face to his hand, then slowly reached out her own hand and placed it in his.
Wilder helped her to her feet, but could see that she wouldn't be able to do much walking on those legs. It was also starting to rain a little bit. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around the girl, then picked her up and started walking. It wasn't long before she fell asleep. Wilder was able to get a cab and asked the driver to take him to the nearest hospital.
"Something wrong with your daughter, sir?" the driver asked.
"She's not my daughter," Wilder replied, looking at the sleeping girl in his arms.
"A relative of some sort, then?"
"No."
"Then who is she?" The driver was giving him a suspicious look.
"I don't know," Wilder answered. "She doesn't remember her name and it looks like she just came out of a fire. I'm hoping to find her family as soon as her injuries are taken care of."
"Don't get your hopes up," the driver told him. "Most likely, she's an orphan. Her parents probably died in the same fire. It's best you just drop her off at an orphanage. There's one not far from here. They'll take care of her."
"I'm paying you to take me to the hospital," Wilder said through clenched teeth, "so take me to the hospital."
"Okay, okay." The driver dropped the subject, and the cab was quiet. The only sound to be heard was the girl's soft snoring.
They reached the hospital soon after that. Wilder paid the driver and walked in, immediately getting the attention of the nurses to come look at the girl.
Two weeks later, Wilder walked through the doors of an orphanage, the same one the taxi driver had spoken of.
The hospital had been unable to locate the mystery girl's family, so she had been sent to the orphanage. Wilder frowned as he took a good look at the place.
Looks almost exactly like the one I was in Wilder thought when I was in between foster families.
In other words, this was no place for a child to grow up in. Wilder's heart went out to all the children here, but especially the girl he'd found.
She had no real memory of her name. Each time she was asked, her answer changed back and forth from "Rena" to "Rennie" or something similar. After arriving at the orphanage, she had been given the name Scarlet, after the scars that the burns would leave on her legs. Wilder did not like that name at all, more for the reason than for the name itself.
He entered a courtyard where a bunch of kids were playing and looked around. He spotted Scarlet sitting by herself on a bench by the back wall, staring at her shoes. She was wearing a dull gray dress and her legs were still bandaged. He started to walk over to her.
"May I help you?"
Wilder turned to see the orphanage caretaker standing there. The old woman was giving him a curious look.
"I'm here to see Scarlet," Wilder answered.
"We have more than one 'Scarlet' here," the woman said in a patient voice. "Which one are you referring to?"
"The one who came here not two weeks ago," he answered. "The one with the burns on her legs. I'm the one who found her and took her to the hospital." The woman smiled.
"Ah, yes," she said. "That Scarlet. Adorable little girl, but not very social. She's right over there." The woman pointed to where Scarlet was sitting.
"Thank you." Wilder began walking across the courtyard. Quite a few of the children stopped and stared at him as he passed them. He ignored them. He just kept walking until he was right in front of Scarlet. She looked up as soon as he stopped.
She had been crying again. Her face was just as sad as it had been the day Wilder had found her, but, when she saw him, her whole face lit up. She jumped down from the bench and reached out to hug him. He knelt down and hugged her back.
He sat there with her, and they talked until the bell rang for the children to come inside. He held her hand as he walked with her, but let go when they were in the hallway.
"Hey!" Scarlet exclaimed, reaching for his hand again.
"Sorry, kid," Wilder said. "I have to go." Scarlet's smile disappeared.
"You're leaving?" she asked. Her voice sounded as if she might cry again.
"Don't worry," Wilder told her. "I'll be back."
The look on Scarlet's face told him that she didn't believe him. She turned and walked away with the other kids. Watching her, Wilder thought back to all the people who had come to the orphanage to talk to him, people he thought would adopt him, and the pain he felt watching them leave without him. He thought about all the foster homes he had been in, going from place to place, never settling down somewhere he could call home. He thought about the awful life he'd had, a life that was now undoubtedly in store for Scarlet.
With those thoughts going through his head, he made up his mind.
Eleven years ago
"AAAAAHHHHHHH!"
The familiar scream woke Wilder up in the middle of the night. He threw off the covers and made his way towards the bedroom across the hall. Opening the door, he saw a little seven-year-old girl in practically the exact same position she had been in when he'd found her.
"Renee?"
When Wilder had filled out the adoption papers, three years ago, he had decided to name the girl Renee, as it was very close to the answers she had given when asked her name. Not very creative, but it was at least better than Scarlet.
Renee looked up, her tear-stained face just visible in the moonlight shining through her window.
"Daddy!" she shouted when she saw him, racing out of bed and over to him. He knelt down and let her throw her arms around him. He picked her up and held her close as she cried into his shoulder.
"Did you have that nightmare again?" he asked. He felt her nod.
Every year, around the time he had found her, Renee would get terrible nightmares that always had something to do with fire: huge, towering flames that were destroying everything in sight. Wilder thought they might've had something to do with the condition she'd been in when he found her. Renee didn't remember anything about her past, not even her own name, but she seemed to remember something horrible that had to do with fire.
"It's okay," he whispered into his daughter's ear. "Shh. You're alright. I'm right here."
Wilder stayed with her, holding her and rocking her gently, until she fell asleep. Even after he had tucked her back into bed, he sat down and watched her the rest of the night, just like he did every year, prepared to chase away those nightmares if they even thought about coming back to hurt his daughter.
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How was that for a first chapter? Yes, it's the Wilder you're thinking of. As for his first name, I had a friend in elementary school named Zack Wilder, so I thought "What the heck? Why not?"
Review and tell me what you think.
