Witness Protection

Disclaimer: I don't own Kickin' It, or any other Disney Channel show. They belong to their respective producers/writers/companies.

A/N:

Chapter 20 (Magic of Italy)

Italy, a beautiful, wonderful place to visit, and Jack had only dreamed of ever going. Now here he was in Rome, but for him it was business before pleasure. They had to find the address of Hilda's mother before they could stop to do anything else. "So let me get this straight, we're not going to see the Coliseum?" Eddie complained as they walked through the streets. Jack was leading the pack, with Kim to his right and Jerry to his left, Eddie, and Milton were directly behind them. Phil was behind them, while Ciara supported the group from the back, keeping a firm grip in the handle of her blade. Eddie threw his hands up into the air, whining slightly. "Or even the leaning tower of Pizza?!"

"It's Pisa, Eddie," Milton retorted, scoffing at what appeared to be Eddie's blissful ignorance. Jack raised an eyebrowas Eddie rubbed his belly and hummed.

"Not to me, Milton. Not to me." Jerry chortled and Kim looked towards Jack with a laughing smile. He had to admit, it was not surprising to see Eddie was thinking about food at a time like this. They'd just eaten on the jet, and surprisingly, Phil decided against staying with the pilot this time. Typically Phil remained with the pilot and went off to do something fun, like bowling, or hanging out at a bar. Though, listening to Phil do karaoke practically burst everyone's ears.

"That's in Pisa, Italy," Phil marveled. He put his hands up and brought them inwards, tangling his fingers and sighing happily. "Ah such a beautiful land." Jack's eyebrows shot up and he glanced over his shoulder. Phil put his hands to his hips and quickly smacked Eddie upside the head. The boy quickly threw his hands to his head and yelled out a protest. "It's called the Tower of Pisa for a reason."

"Have you been here before?" Jerry inquired. "You seem awfully attached to Italy." Perhaps it was the reason Phil wanted to join them, to see the sights, though Jack was certain this wasn't where he was from. Hell, Ciara was acting less thrilled about Italy, and they knew she'd been there before. Phil breathed in deeply and let out a long, joyous sigh.

"Ah yes, back in my college days I was here. I met love here, and it was so beautiful." He smiled at the man and felt Kim wrap her gentle fingers around his. Jack turned his gaze to hers and gently squeezed her hand. "Italy, none finer than this town." Ciara huffed and shook her head, but said nothing. Phil glanced back at her, slumping his shoulders. "Does Italy not please you?"

"These days, not much does," she admitted. "One of my crew, when we were going around, they found love here too." She looked up towards the clouds and released her grip on her sword. "He'd shut himself off to that emotion so long ago, and the one time he let it open up, the person wound up betraying him. So he shut it up again." Jack brought his hand to his forehead and groaned as the group stopped before a small home. Surely Ciara had to have some good memories from her worldly travels. "I'll admit, a lot of us did find some romance in this place. My husband, for example, that worked out. Italy does have a magic to it that can't really be explained in simple terms."

Kim squeezed Jack's hand once more and put her head to his shoulder. With a smile, he reached over and kissed the top of her head. "A magic place, huh?" Maybe here in Italy, they could find some time to stop and enjoy the sights. After all, he was already feeling some of that 'magic' Ciara and Phil seemed to be talking about.

He felt someone brushing against his arm and looked over to see Jerry exclaiming and pointing. "Look at her!" Jerry cried out. The others followed his gaze to a beautiful looking Italian girl standing in front of a produce cart. She had long brown hair, striking almond eyes, and a tempting smile. Before he could tell Jerry to focus on their business, the boy was already enchanted. "Y-You guys go without me, I'm going to…"

"Jerry?" It was too late, Jerry was already rushing to the girl. Jack smiled and shook his head. "We're not getting him back are we?"

"Nope, we're not," Ciara replied. "Phil, stay with him. Meet up with us in a few hours at the motel." Phil saluted her, and then hurried off. He was a bit skeptical about letting Phil off on his own, considering how entranced the man had become the moment they stepped foot in Italy. As if she read his mind, Ciara tore her eyes from Phil and looked over to the group. Her lips thinned as she rolled her eyes and sighed in defeat. "I'll stay back and make sure he knows not to run off."

"Good idea." He wasn't too worried about any of them running off, they all knew where to meet up at. They wanted to stay in Italy for a few days at least, but it would be a struggle not to get too lost in the country's seemingly irresistible pull.

When they finally arrived at Yvonne Bodil's home, it was only Jack and Kim that were left. Eddie just had to stop for some Italian food, so Jack had Milton stay with him. "I can't believe everyone got sucked in already," Kim was understandably disappointed. "We all said business came first, right? I mean, wasn't that what you said?"

"Yeah, but it can't be helped, I suppose." It wasn't all bad. He got to be alone with Kim for a while, so there was some joy to be held. "It's just me and you for now, so what's so bad about that?"

"Nothing, but responsibility comes first."

"Agreed." He lifted up his hand and knocked on the door. It took a few minutes of waiting, and another knock, but eventually an older woman answered. She had silver hair draped around her shoulders, crows feet at the edges of her eyes, and deep frown lines. Her face was long and straight, having once been shaped like a heart. Her faded blue eyes peered at the two, and her eyebrows seemed thinner than her lips, if at all possible.

Jack was immediately frightened of this woman, but he swallowed his judgmental thoughts before they got the better of him. "Who are you? What do you want?" The woman's voice had a high pitched screech that irritated his eardrums. There was a large temptation to send Kim in and run off, but he wouldn't do that to her.

"We have some important, unfortunate news…it's um…it's about your daughter."

"Simone? Helga?" The woman started to open the door, narrowing her eyes and studying the two. She seemed suspicious of them. "They won't talk to me. They don't care about an old screwed up mother. Garth's just the same, won't acknowledge his own mother. What could they possibly have to do with me?" Jack slowly looked to Kim, she seemed pissed off, as was he. It was heartbreaking that out of these children she named, she couldn't even name Hilda.

"It's not about them. Your other daughter."

"Other daughter? I don't have-" The woman froze, her eyes widened in the shock of the moment. She started shaking her head and turning her eyes away. "I'm sorry, I can't help you." As she began to close the door, Kim growled and stopped the door with her hand, nearly having it slammed against the door frame. The woman's eye gazed out from inside as Kim started pushing the door.

"Hilda Bodil, she might be dead," Kim bluntly replied. A bit more blunt than Jack would have been. The woman gasped and froze, enough for Kim to throw open the door. "We've run a background check, so we know you abandoned her in the Swiss Alps when she was fourteen. I don't think I can understand that…so the least you can do for her, is talk to us about her, because the more we know…the better."

"I…" The woman started to tear up, sinking down to her knees. Kim's gaze was unforgiving, burning into the woman. She was not holding back any of her aggressions. Jack started to put his hand on her shoulder, but stopped, realizing he wouldn't be able to calm her down. "What do you mean…dead?"

"Take it easy," Jack whispered. Kim exhaled and pointed to the woman.

"She abandons her daughter, doesn't care enough about her after all these years, and you want me to calm down?" The woman slowly rose to her feet and walked over to a brown recliner right of a slightly dirty couch.

"No…No she's right." Jack and Kim looked over, astonished. The woman put her hand over her eyes, breathing heavily. She brought her arms down onto the chair's armrests and studied the two. "Who are you? You're too young looking to be police agents. Though in this day and age, I wouldn't be surprised…"

"We're not." Jack moved towards the woman, not really wanting to tell her of Hilda's involvement with the Black Dragons. He wasn't too sure how she would take it. The woman couldn't have been much older than her sixties, but she looked about twenty years older than that. "We…knew your daughter."

"She's old enough to be your mother, you wouldn't happen to know her in-"

"No!" He threw his hands up with a nervous chuckle. Yvonne's face fell. She closed her eyes and smiled gently.

"It's true, I did abandon her. My children never let me live it down, but they never let the affair go either. She was my youngest, my last 'mistake'. I called her that frequently, and that was my real mistake…I know that, after all these years…" She rose to her feet and motioned for them to follow. They walked with her up the steps, and followed her out onto a terrace overlooking the streets of Italy. On the wall right of the door leading out onto the balcony was a photo of a young girl with freckled and dimpled cheeks, and luxurious blonde hair. Yvonne smiled at the portrait and traced her finger around the girl's face. "You don't realize what you have until it's gone…we used to travel a lot, my children, husband and I. One place she always loved to come to was Rome. She loved this town and everything about it."

"That's why you're here?" He knew there had to be something there, a mother never truly hated their child. Kim folded her arms and leaned off to the right. Yvonne flattened her palm against the photo beside Hilda's head, then brought her forehead to the portrait. "I was twenty when I had Garth, my eldest child, but thirty when I had Hilda. Helga and Simone are twins, I gave birth to them when I was only twenty-three. They were all old enough to remember the affair, it happened on our trip to America. I spent many years depressed, distraught, and I treated her like the plague. I never appreciated her for what a smart, and sweet child she was…"

"So when you abandoned her…"

"We'd lost everything at that point." Yvonne turned and slowly walked to the black railing on the edge of the balcony. Jack's watched as the wind breezed the woman's silver hair back. It was like a portrait, an aging woman's sorrow at the loss of a daughter she'd not seen for years. It broke his heart, just as it would if it were a true portrait in a museum. "When we went to the Swiss Alps, my husband's company went bankrupt. We were broke, frustrated, and struggling to make ends meet. We left her…There is no excuse for something like that…a mother should never leave her child behind, she should never tell them such a lie that we told her."

"That you didn't love her?" Kim scolded. Her words were clearly scalding, as the woman cringed and put her arm around her stomach.

"I…I wanted to take it back, so badly. By the time I came to my senses, it was too late, she was no longer at those mountains. We looked and looked for her, stopping only when we realized she'd been at that science store…the one that exploded." Jack's eyes widened and Kim cupped her hand over her mouth. A tear drifted down the woman's wrinkled cheek. She moved her frail hands over her heart and closed her eyes. "I would give anything…to take it all back. Our family, we believe in bad luck, good luck. Ever since that day…we've just been riddled with bad luck."

"How so?"

"My husband, for instance…he's now stuck in his room, completely paralyzed. He only lives by bed rest. My son will not associate at all with us, only my daughters live in Italy, my son…I don't know where he has gone. My daughters as well are both barren, neither of them capable of giving me a grandchild. Maybe there's some magic in Italy, maybe being here…my family will eventually find their light again. Hilda. She was the magic in our lives, but we were too late to realize it…and they say that here is supposedly a magical place…but I've yet to see it."

Jack stepped back beside Kim and leaned in, whispering to her while keeping his eyes on the woman. Her back was turned to them, her head bowed, and her hands gripping tightly to the railing. "She knows she screwed up, Kim. How are we supposed to tell her that Hilda's been involved in some crime syndicate?"

Kim slowly closed up her hands and stared at the woman, full of sympathy. "We…don't…" His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Don't tell her? Then what were they supposed to say? She moved forward and cleared her throat. "Mrs. Bodil?" Yvonne turned her head to the right, gazing over her shoulder with a mournful glance. "Hilda's been working all this time as a scientist in Antarctica. She's had a decent life since those days, I guess…I don't know if she's alive or dead, to tell the truth. When we left, scientists were starting to surround her…she'd been stabbed during a fight." He slowly closed his eyes and pressed his lips tightly together. It was the truth, during takeoff they looked out at the ground to see scientists rushing around Hilda's body.

Yvonne gasped and quickly spun around, cupping her hands over her mouth. "You…You can't be serious? My baby girl?"

"It was Antarctica, she might have survived the wound. The cold air there would have slowed the bleeding. She was in charge of all those scientists, so I'm certain they would have saved her…We need to tell her birth father as well."

"I doubt that man would care. In fifteen years of her life, he never once bothered to talk to her…He was already married to a woman who was well in her own pregnancy at the time of our affair…"

"Still, out of respect…he needs to know." Kim's voice had suddenly become dark and dangerous, a trait Jack knew all too well. She didn't just want to pay a 'respect' or 'courtesy' to the man, she wanted to put the fear of god into him.

"I don't know where he is now, I haven't spoken to him in thirty years. Ken, Kenneth Truscott. Back then he lived in California. That's all I know of him." She was shutting down, a clear sign to Jack that she didn't want to go into that conversation any further. He felt for her, because after all, this was the man that threw their family into perhaps one of their roughest patches.

"We won't trouble you anymore," he sympathized, "Thank you…If we do find anything else about Hilda, we'll let you know."

They heard the sound of a gun clicking into position and quickly looked to the doorway, stunned to see a long haired blonde standing in the doorway with a pistol pointed at Yvonne. Yvonne froze as the woman took one step forward, narrowing her deadly glare. "The name's Una, Hilda's best friend. She's in a coma…she wouldn't even be in a coma or in any of this mess if it weren't for you abandoning her. Now, you're going to die! Just like all the pathetic people out there that abuse and neglect their children, you're dead!"

Ah geez. So the investigative portion begins, and we find the mother of Hilda, but sadly Una Mave decides to show. Not pleasant. So what did you think of Yvonne? What are your thoughts on the woman's story?