Nina Vale: Yes, there are more stories to come. Renee has been through a lot, but she's a tough girl. She can handle it.

Disclaimer: I do not own "Huntik."

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Chapter 17: Catching Up

The team, Wilder, and Grier had turned away from the windows. They sat there in silence for a while, then Cherit spoke up.

"What do we do now?" he asked. Harrison answered that question first.

"There's nothing left to do except enjoy the rest of our vacation," he said, standing up and walking towards his room. "I'm going surfing. I need a break from all this drama."

"I'm with Harrison," Den said, standing up and following his brother. "Surfing sounds good."

"Let's have a surfing contest," Lok called as he jogged after them.

"I'll be the judge," Cherit said, flying after the boys.

"I need to be heading back," Grier said as he stood up. "With everything that's happened the past couple of days, I've fallen behind on some paperwork. Good day to you all." With that, the prince walked out.

"I think I'll go out and work on my tan," Zhalia said, standing up and stretching. "What about you two?"

"I'd like to talk to my sister some more," Sophie said to Zhalia before turning to Wilder, "but I think you should go talk to her."

"There is a lot we need to catch up on," Wilder said. "We've always been pretty close, and now we've been apart for two years. We need some daddy-daughter time."

"In that case," Sophie said as she stood up, "I think I'll also work on my tan." She followed Zhalia back to their room as Wilder walked out of the house and went and sat down next to his daughter. Renee turned and smiled at him.

"You know where I've been the last two years," she joked. "What have you been up to while I was gone?"

"I tried to look for you, at first," Wilder started, smiling back at her, "but I didn't have the resources that I needed available to me. After the Professor was defeated, I tried to take his place as leader of the Organization."

Renee stared at him with a blank look for a few seconds, then started laughing hysterically. She was laughing so loud that the boys came over with their surfboards.

"What's wrong with her?" Lok asked.

"Nothing with a name and definition," Wilder answered. "Trust me. I've had her tested for every mental disorder you could think of."

The boys walked away from Wilder and Renee, who was still laughing, and headed down to the water. Sophie and Zhalia came out wearing their bikinis and holding towels and bottles of sunscreen. They looked at Renee with raised eyebrows for a second, then decided that they were better off not asking. They laid down their towels and started applying sunscreen while watching the boys have their surfing contest.

Renee finally stopped laughing long enough to say, "Good one, Dad." Then she realized that he wasn't laughing and his face was completely serious.

"You're not kidding," she said. Wilder shook his head. "You would have quit before the first week was over."

"Not before I found you," Wilder said. "I would have probably quit after you were safely back home, but not a second earlier."

"So how did you end up here?" Renee asked.

"The Huntik team had asked Grier for help in gaining information about the leader of the Blood Spirals," Wilder began, "someone who had formerly been the Professor's right-hand man. I tried to get the information before them, so there was a big fight. Grier defeated me and brought me back here as his prisoner, of a sort. I tried to escape several times so that I could get back to searching for you, but they always caught me."

"I'm not surprised," Renee said with a smile. "You've always been horrible at stealth missions." She laughed as Wilder tickled her side.

"Maybe," he said, "but, this time, failure didn't mean someone else got the Titan before me. Failure meant another day you were gone from my world. I was afraid that I might never see you again." He wrapped his arm around Renee and hugged her. "I love you, sweetheart."

"I love you, too, Daddy." Renee hugged him back. Spotting Sophie out of the corner of her eye, she said, "So you fought Sophie a lot. How did you manage to have the stomach to attack her, considering she looks just like me?"

"When I first found out about her and saw pictures," Wilder began, "I thought she was you." Renee raised an eyebrow at him. "Don't give me that look. You disappeared around the same time that she started helping the Huntik Foundation, so I was suspicious. I did some more research on her, though, and concluded that she couldn't be you." He sighed. "That didn't make it any easier. Whenever I was fighting her, I kept chanting in my head 'She's not Renee. She's not Renee.' It didn't really help. Whenever I would run into her again, it felt like the universe was mocking me, constantly reminding me of my failure to protect you. I wanted to get rid of her forever just so that I wouldn't have to face her again and be reminded of what had happened. I would often have nightmares that I was attacking you and not Sophie. I will admit that I was a little relieved when Grier brought me here, because it meant that I didn't have to fight Sophie anymore. I still had nightmares for a while, but they eventually stopped." He paused and got a look on his face like he had suddenly thought of something important. He turned to Renee. "Speaking of nightmares. . ."

"I still have them," Renee said, knowing what her father was going to ask. "I had one the night I came here for supplies. I got caught because I woke up screaming. Normally I would have gotten the heck out of there so as not to leave a trail for Carter, but I was traumatized from the nightmare. That, combined with weakness from a lack of food and sleep, is why I wasn't able to get away."

"And when you were kidnapped?"

"I still had them. The girl I knew, the one who burned up, died around the time they started. I had a few nightmares about her. The scientists kept us in cages when they weren't experimenting on us. My nightmares normally take place in a large room, but, in the nightmares I had while captured, I was in a cage that kept getting smaller and smaller. I'll never look at cages the same way again. The nightmares lasted longer than they usually do, but they eventually stopped."

"I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you," Wilder said, hugging her closer.

"I wasn't your fault that I was kidnapped," Renee said. "Don't you start with any of that Of-course-it-was-my-fault-I-was-there-I'm-your-father-I-should-have-been-able-to-protect-you crap," she said as Wilder opened his mouth to say something just like that. "My kidnapping was the fault of my kidnappers and no one else. Don't beat yourself up about it."

"Too late."

Renee gave her dad that look that parents give their children when they find out they've done something they were repeatedly told not to.

"What would you do without me?" Renee asked.

"Crash and burn," Wilder replied, "which is exactly what happened." Renee laughed at that. "Anything else you want to know?"

"Yes," Renee answered, reaching up to finger the earring in Wilder's left ear. "What's with these? You know I'm not a fan of guy-piercings."

"Which is exactly the reason I got these," Wilder said. Renee raised an eyebrow at him. "After you were kidnapped, I was afraid that I would forget about you. I wanted something on me at all times to remind me of why I kept moving forward." He fingered the first piercing in his right ear. "So I got this one. When a year had passed, I got the one in my left ear."

"And it's now been two years," Renee said, looking at the second piercing in his right ear, "so you have three. You're not going to get any more, are you?"

"Only if you disappear for another year," Wilder said.

"I'm not going anywhere any time soon," Renee said. "Besides, I think three is enough."

Wilder smiled and hugged Renee, who hugged him back. The rest of the day was spent telling stories, joking and laughing the whole time. After a while, it felt like the entire kidnapping was just a dream.

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And all is back to normal. What did you think of my story about Wilder's earrings? Was it too much?

This story isn't over yet. I'll write a few more chapters. Please review this one first.