Annie POV

I parked the car behind the police station. Just to be safe.

The man and I sat in the car, the heat blaring in our faces, and I gripped my hands on the wheel. I turned to him first.

'Uncle?', I asked, wanting confirmation or explanation, or both. He nodded, a truthful look in his eyes.

'I swear it.', he said, sticking a hand down in his pocket. As I'd been trained, I automatically reached over and got my hands around his neck, keeping him from doing anymore digging.

'Reaching for a gun?', I asked, breathing in his face. He looked shocked and confused, his eyes wide. I felt that under my palm, his pulse hadn't changed at all. He wasn't afraid of me. He should be.

'You are-', he brushed my hands off of him, 'extremely quick to invoke self-defense methods.' He coughed once, trying to recover from my grip.

'I was reaching for my wallet, Annie.', he said, finishing pulling it out and holding it up. I looked down, feeling dumb.

'But smart. I'm glad they've trained you to defend yourself. That's smart.', he said, nodding as he dug around in the wallet, looking for something.

'As if I'd need self-defense mechanisms if I really wanted to get away from someone.', I said, smirking lightly.

'Pardon?', he said, looking up from his quest to find whatever it was he was looking for.

'My powers?', I said, expecting he knew.

'Powers? Oh.', he said, looking confused. 'You got them too? Must not have presented themselves when you were young.'

I was growing suspicious of him now. Not aware of my powers? A check in the stranger column.

'Why should I believe you aren't just bluffing?', I said, running a hang through my hair as I looked at him. 'What if you're just some serial killer you'd find on the ID channel, and now I'm in this-'

'Then you'd be really freakin' screwed, Annie.', he said, cutting me off, popping up an old folded up picture. I examined it. It was him, younger, holding a little girl, with a woman standing beside them.

I took in a shaky breath of cold air, taking the picture in my own hands to get a closer look. The little girl. She looked exactly like me. Curly brown hair, hazel eyes. Face absolutely covered in chocolate icing, it looked like.

'Is this... me?', I asked, waving the picture at him once.

He nodded, smiling sadly. That stupid sad smile. Almost made me feel like I could trust him. But I couldn't fall into the trap, if it was one.

I looked down at it once more.

'And the woman?', I asked, staring at her porcelain skin, tracing her dark brown hair with the tip of my fingers.

'My sister. Your mom.', he said, and then I heard him swallow. Continuing to look at it, it suddenly began to look familiar. The face. It was vaguely familiar. Something I'd seen close up before, a fuzzy memory in the back of my mind.

'You have her nose.', he said, folding his hands on his lap.

I did. I actually, really did. An exact replica. I put my hand to my nose, feeling its curvature. Like it'd been a from a carved statue made in her likeness.

I closed my eyes for a minute, laying my head back on the seat's rest. I felt the worn out paper of the old picture between my fingers, soft and wrinkled. And then, I felt a warmth behind me. A familiar warmth. I knew what this was.

I opened my eyes and looked in the back seat to see which ghost it was.

And there, a glowing blue version of the woman in the picture, not aged a single day. I felt the warmth move through my entire body, from my chest to the very tips of my fingers.

She smiled at me, her eyes sad, and familiar.

'Annie.', she said, her voice almost breaking.

'M.. mom?', I said, holding my hand out to touch her, and my hand passing through her.

'Hello.', she said, tucking her bottom lip under her top one to keep it from quivering. I looked at my uncle, still sitting in the passenger's side. He looked at me warmly, knowing what was going on. He hadn't known of my powers, but he was probably assuming correctly now.

'Are you really?'

'I promise I am.', she said, nodding slowly.

'How're you... why're you... how are you here?', I asked, confused. She wasn't a spirit I'd ever seen before, and I hadn't summoned her.

'Your memory of me brought me back to you.', she said, reaching out her weightless arm to touch my face. It felt like nothing but a brush of air. I wished to reach up and touch it, but I knew I'd feel nothing there. 'You weren't able to see me because you didn't remember me anymore.'

It all made sense now. Dad had told me all my life that my mom was dead. He'd told me she was a bad lady, and I'd assumed I just couldn't see her because she didn't want me to. I thought she didn't want to know me. But now, here she was, talking to me as if she really did love me. And she didn't seem bad at all.

'Brunhilda Schnieder?', I said, making sure.

She nodded again. I shook my head, looking down. I didn't know how to react.

'What do you need from me?', I said, looking up at both of them, with open and innocent eyes.

The man, Friedrich presumably, looked down, and then back to my mom. She looked at him, questioning. He nodded.

'We need you to save us, Annie.', she said, her eyes growing fearful.

'Save you from what?', I asked, confused.

'Save us from the pain of seeing you dead.'

I was taken back, a lump forming in my throat. My face scrunched up, so confused. What?

'From the pain of seeing you all dead.'

'What do you mean?'

'They're going to kill you, Annie.'

'Who?', I asked, growing impatient with the cryptic nature of their descriptions.

'The commission. They all want you dead. You and your whole family. The entire Hargreeves Society.', my mom explained, and I began to grow a bit dizzy.

'You mean that thing that uncle Five used to work for?', I asked, making sure.

They both nodded.

'They want us all dead?'

They nodded again.

'Why?'

'It's complicated. We can explain later.', Friedrich said.

'It's not the whole commission, Annie.', she said, trying to be reassuring. 'There's a small sect of us who don't agree with the proposition. Most notably, the Handler.'

'The Handler?'

'She's the woman who handles all assassin affairs.'

I was confused. 'Then can't she just push to have the whole situation stopped?'

They shook their heads. 'Not without your help.'

'Why me? Why not Quinn or one of the others?'

'You're very clearly the most powerful out of all of your little force, Annie. We need you if we're going to get some stuff done.', my mom explained, and then moved in closer. 'And this is a secret, so you can't tell anyone.'

I nodded. Who the heck would I tell?

'When this is all averted, we're going to push for you to fill the handler position.'

'I thought there was already a handler?'

She looked down for a minute, biting her lip.

'Yes, but she's going to step down for you.'. Sounded made up, but whatever.

'So whaddo' we do? Just go to this commission thing and bust the heads of whoever's on the Hargreeves death party committee?', I asked, letting some sarcasm drip out. Friedrich laughed slightly.

'Bingo! But you know what it takes to bust heads?', she asked, smiling.

'What?'

'A body.', she said, grinning as she eyed me.

I breathed out sharply, then looked confused at Friedrich.

'How does she know about my powers, yet you didn't?'

He shrugged. 'The woman's a ghost.'

Fair enough I guess.

'So?', she asked, rubbing her hands together. 'What do you say? Wanna' get me fit to fight?'

I thought for a moment.

'This is important, Annie. Do it for your dear old mom.', she said, trying to sound sweet.

I laughed a bit, not looking at her.

'Fine. I'll do it.' . What could it hurt?

She lifted out her mist hand smiling widely, and I brought my right up to meet it, letting the power flow out of me, and then I fell asleep roughly into a black abyss.

Brunhilda POV

I cracked my back, popped my neck, and stretched out my newly materialized arms. Taking in my first deep breath in fifteen years, I smiled widely and closed my eyes.

'Hurry up and get in the driver's seat.', Friedrich said, waving his arm at me, impatient.

'Shut, up, dummkopf, I'm getting accustomed again.'

'Get accustomed quicker. I'm not sure how long she'll be out for.'

I got out of the back of the car, opening up the driver's side and picking Annie's body up, flopping it into the back seat. She was already so knocked out that drool ran down the side of her face, and her body was limp as a noodle.

'Don't think we'll have to worry about her waking up anytime soon.', I said, smirking as I sat down and fastened the seatbelt. I felt the heater blow in my face, and I closed my eyes, taking it in for a moment. Simple pleasures.

I put my hand to gear shift, putting the car into drive.

'Wait.', Friedrich said, stopping me with his own hand.

'What now?', I said, turning to him.

'Do you really think she believed it?', he asked, smiling shyly.

'She ate it up like an apple strudel, brother dearest.', I said, eyeing my naïve little daughter in the back seat.

'Poor, dumb little girl.'

And I drove the car out of the parking lot, past the several police cars she'd parked us by, and down the street into the cold.