A Way Home

Chapter 9 – Clueless

"Fiction and reality collide/ Faceless and so busted up inside/ You've been searching; you've been crying out/ Will you be destroyed by all your doubt?/ You decide/ Who will you run to?/ Wrong or right/ There is no reason/ for you to hide/ Only love can change your life/ You decide." – You decide, Fireflight.

-

I smiled and held Dominique on my lap, with Charity on one side, and Erik on the other. Finally, we were together, and we had to sit still in that position while the stupid photographer took our picture. Being in Erik's presence was making him nervous, and he kept fumbling with the film.

"Just take the stupid picture already!" I finally yelled, tired of sitting still for so long. Charity, Dominique and Erik all looked at me. "What?" I asked. "I'm not a patient person when it comes to the fact that I'm losing more time that I could be spending playing with my girls." I was saying this directly to Erik. He raised an eyebrow, but I could tell he was amused. "I apologize for raising my voice, though," I said, smiling, despite the fact that I was supposed to be remorseful.

Charity seemed disgruntled a little, but Dominique smiled at me, and looked happy.

Finally, after much more grumbling on my part, and encouragement on Erik's part (which surprised the photographer, to say the least), the picture was taken, and we paid the man before Henri showed him out the door.

"Finally," I said.

"Aren't you glad you sat through that, now?" Erik asked, his eyes alight with amusement, and a smile on his lips. I kissed him. "Yup," I said.

"You have a weird way of talking," Charity said.

"It comes from being raised in the future," I replied. I didn't feel like a mother to Charity, anymore, when I knew I should have. I felt more like a big sister. A big sister who was also their mother. It was strange, but it couldn't be helped.

"Maman?" Dominique asked, tapping me on the shoulder.

"Yes?" I replied. "Est-ce qu'il y a une problème?"

"No," she said, "I just wanted to know what it's like in the future."

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that, Dominique," I said.

"Why?" She asked, her eyes overly wide with pretend innocence.

"Very funny," I said, "but I am the master of being innocent, so you can't use the puppy-dog eyes on me." I smiled, and she pouted. "I can't tell you, ma belle, because it could wreck the future."

She frowned. "But wouldn't it actually make the future come true?" She asked.

"I don't think so, no," I replied.

"Why don't we get something to eat?" Erik suggested.

"Sounds good to me," I replied. I took Dominique's hand, and Charity followed us into the kitchen.

-

I watched my family eat, but I couldn't. My mother was already instructing Dominique on how to sit still at the table. They could eat, but I wasn't hungry. Erik caught my eye, and I looked away. He knew that something was bothering me. I had told him what had happened, and how I had gone into the past to send my mother to the future to save her life. I didn't know if he was proud of me, or angry at me. Either way, his gaze unnerved me.

I felt like this adventure I had been on wasn't over yet, and wouldn't be for a while. For some reason that I didn't understand, I needed to be alone. I had been alone for so long, and now that my family was finally together, I wanted to be by myself. Go figure.

I excused myself and said I was tired. I went to my room, then snuck outside into the garden. I needed to find something to occupy my mind, as I couldn't find out what it was that was bothering me.

As I pondered what had happened to me in the past five weeks, I realised that the thing that was bothering me was that no one knew who really killed the man that Erik had been accused of killing. Who was the real killer? And why would the man frame my father? Didn't he know that Erik had children? Or was it that he didn't care?

I needed to figure it out, but I didn't want to involve my family. Dominique was too small, and my mother needed to spend some time with my father, so they could bond some more and stuff like that. I couldn't involve them in my ideas.

All I needed now was a clue as to how to go about searching for the killer. I was sure that he wouldn't suspect me to be the one to search for him, so there was no way that I would be in danger. At least, not at first.

As much as I knew it would worry my family, I had to do this on my own.

"They would only be in danger," I muttered to myself.

"Who would, and what are you planning?"

I whirled around and saw Erik and Rebecca standing in front of me.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I thought you were tired," Erik said.

"I was. I came out here to think," I replied. I folded my arms over my chest. "What's your excuse?"

"She's just like you," Erik said to Rebecca.

She smiled. "No," she said, "I'm worse." Then she turned to me. "We came out here to find you, because you seemed like you were upset about something," she told me.

"So you both came?" I asked, still suspicious of them.

"Of course," Rebecca replied. She and Erik looked at each other, and I couldn't help but wonder if they were trying to decide what to tell me, and if anything, how much. "We want to be parents together, not separately," Rebecca said.

"Well, I just need some time alone for the moment," I said, trying to get them to leave so I could come up with a plan.

Rebecca looked at me a moment, and then turned to Erik. "Erik, I'm going to go check on Dominique. I'll be back in a little bit," she said. She gave him a pointed look, and I figured she was giving him some sort of message.

Once she had left, Erik held out his hand, and tried to steer me in a specific direction. "Charity," he began, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry? For what?" I asked, confused.

"For abandoning you when you were five," he said. His face was turning a little red under his mask, which he had reclaimed when we had been released from prison.

"You had no control over it," I said. I walked with him.

"I know that," he said, "but, something told me that you might be feeling like it was all my fault."

"You mean Rebecca?" I asked, forgetting to call her 'Mom'.

"You're supposed to call her, 'Mom'," he corrected me.

I shrugged. "She doesn't feel like my mom," I said. "I thought she would, but that was because my intention was that she would appear the same day she left, and therefore would change everything that had happened."

"Time doesn't work that way," Erik said.

"I know that now," I replied, and we continued on in silence.

"What were you talking about before, when your mother and I came in?" He asked after a long moment had passed.

"Nothing," I said, trying to avoid his question.

"Charity," he said in a warning voice. For some reason, that warning voice made me feel guilty, and I then proceeded to tell him everything that I had been thinking about. "I was just thinking that someone has to find the person who framed you ten years ago and caused all of this stuff. Maybe if we used the time machine, then we could figure out who it was, and then we could –" But Erik cut me off.

"The machine is broken," he said. "There's no way that you could go back," he said. "And if you actually managed to get to the right year, there's no telling if you would be able to get back to our year, and then you would be gone again. I don't want to lose you a second time." He stopped walking and put his hands on my shoulders. I was almost as tall as Rebecca, but that was scrawny compared to him. He was so tall, and I knew that I would take after my mom. The same way that I knew that Dominique would take after him.

"I could find him," I said. "I could find out who he is."

"And how would you do that?" Erik asked. "You don't even have a clue as to who it might be, let alone who it actually is. There's no way you'd be able to find him before he found you, and by then, it would be too late. You'd probably be dead, and you would devastate the rest of us."

I hung my head. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. But what else was there to do? I couldn't very well leave the guy to try again. Something had to be done.

A/N: There's the next chapter. Review, please! Here are the translations:

1. "Mom?"

2. "Is there a problem?"

3. "…my dear…"