Moving Forward

The Mission

Uncle's POV

"I want to say a few words before I take you through the file." I informed them. "First, this is not to leave this room, if one word gets out, I will personally hunt you down and make sure you never speak again. That includes telling Owen and Sean. It isn't their business. Second, I find it a damn shame that one of you have the nerve to insult the member of the family that just took you into their private home and treated you like an honored guest. Third, this kind of behavior may be acceptable when you are five, but not at sixteen. Luke and Victor are remaining in Boston; they are remaining on Raschel's team. They like living in Boston and they like the dynamics of their new team. They are not going to change their mind, accept it. You want to remain their friend, then grow the hell up and stop acting like a spoiled brat who had a toy taken." I was pissed. This was not how I wanted North to learn the truth. Sven had allowed me to copy the file and photos he kept so I could go over it with North privately. We asked Raschel's permission first, it was about her life after all and I didn't want to bring her more hurt. North didn't deserve to feel even worse about what he had done. He made a mistake, one he was trying to repair. Raschel had forgiven him; it was time he forgave himself.

"Nat shut the cameras off and collect everyone's cell phones." Tilly ordered her nephew.

"They are already off," Nathan told her as he collected the phones. "We were having a private meeting between the five of us; I figured we didn't need anyone spying on us."

"Maybe you should explain to Gabriel that he shouldn't scream during a private meeting, he is loud enough to pierce through my headphones." Tilly's tone was dry.

"Sixteen years ago, several Academy members were gathered together and asked to handle a special mission," I started. "The Lead Team could not handle it because it concerned one of their members, therefore, concerned all of them. I won't go into every detail, you will read some of it soon enough. Raschel was born when Sven was fourteen, she was kidnapped from Ropers Hospital's nursery when she was only hours old. A team was formed by several members being called in from various teams, our job was to check out any lead we were given. I won't lie, it was tedious most of the time. While we were able to rescue some children along the way, they weren't the one we were searching for. Five years passed and a member in Illinois contacted the High Council, he was asking for a favor. They were called constantly from the same neighborhood, a rural area. People were reporting hearing a screaming child; it went on for weeks. They questioned everyone in the area, people had claimed to have heard it, but have never seen the child. They were suspicious of one woman, she seemed amused by it all, but they could never get any evidence on her. One day a neighbor was bringing her daughter to play with the woman's daughter, as she was leaving she saw a child's foot sticking from behind the couch and there was blood on it. That is when the Policeman called the High Council, he wanted an outside team to come in and investigate the family. If they were hurting a child, he wanted her out of there by any means." I took a sip of the water Tilly had provided for me. "Our team was sent to investigate and it took a couple of weeks for us to get cameras and bugs into position. Within a few days, we had proof that there were two children living in the house, not one as they claimed. We learned that the younger girl's name was Sang Sorenson and the woman believed she was her husband's bastard child. Doc Roberts' team did the legal search for us; there were no records, the little girl was a ghost. One night, the entire neighborhood was awakened by the child's screams, and then they just stopped. It was eerie, the sudden silence. We mobilized, some started looking for her through the cameras and the rest of us entered the woods surrounding the house. It wasn't long before the police joined us in our search, having received complaints. We found her around three in the morning, four hours after she stopped screaming. She was unconscious and suffering hypothermia, the rag she was wearing was unfit for a winter night spent outside. Doc Roberts examined her as well as he could where she lay, we couldn't move her because she was chained to the tree. We were waiting for someone to bring us metal bolt cutters so we could remove the metal collar someone had welded around her neck. We didn't dare try to warm her that was a process that had to be done slowly by doctors in the hospital if she was to have a chance to survive." I paused to take out my wallet, removing a picture from it and placing it on the coffee table for them to look at. It was a picture of nineteen-year-old Sven receiving comfort from his family and his team, he was crying as he stared down at his daughter's broken body as she lay on the hospital bed. While it might seem like a strange picture to carry with me, it served as a reminder. The image showed a true family. A mixture of blood family and Academy family, one and the same, it was something I have always wanted for my boys and wouldn't rest until I was assured that it was what they had. I went through the file with them, page by page and image by image, leaving nothing out. They were graphic and I wasn't surprised when some of the boys emptied their stomachs into pans Tilly had provided. Several were abused children themselves; they knew how the extreme the abuse had to be to result in injuries as Raschel had received. I let Tilly take over and went to sit beside North; I wrapped my arm around him and comforted him as he cried. This is exactly what I had hoped to avoid. My youngest nephew hadn't had an easy life, my brother had put him through hell. If it hadn't been for the Ericsons, I would never have been able to have gotten him out the mess in Greece that my brother had dragged him into. I had sworn I would never use the favors they had given me for rescuing Raschel; I hadn't felt I had done anything out of the ordinary to deserve them. I changed my mind when I learned about North and had no other way to remove him from my brother's so called care. I called in my second favor from them when Owen kicked Luke off the team. While it may have started as a favor, Luke had quickly earned his place there in his own right. It did my heart good to see him so content, now I had to achieve the same results for North.

I tilted North face up and made him look at me. "You didn't do this to her. Yes, you made a mistake and you paid for it when Both Ericsons kicked your ass. You have been working hard to make sure you will never do it again. Stop blaming yourself. She has forgiven you, now you need to forgive yourself. You also showed them something they needed to know, you showed them that Raschel could defend herself. While she may never be strong enough to fight off all attackers, she can fight enough to make it hard to take her. While you might not think it is much, to them it is the world."

"He has trouble letting her out of his sight, doesn't he?" North's voice was hoarse as he wiped his eyes.

"He does," I confirmed. "She is allowed to go nowhere without a member of his team, a member of the Toma Team or both Victor and Luke. College, there are Academy members who are students and help watch over her."

"Overkill," North snorted.

"The kids at the Children's Home are helping her a lot, they are teaching her that she can make friends and not every female wants to hurt her." I looked up to face the rest of the boys. "Gabriel was diagnosed as Bipolar at the end of August and feels he doesn't need the medication prescribed to him. Sean couldn't tell you because of patient confidentiality. I feel you have a right to know since he is your brother, you can't help him if you are kept in the dark."

"It makes sense," North whispered to me. "He has been all over the place, even before Luke left."

)Z'4