A Piece of History: Consider It Done

     The blue pushpin stood out amidst the sea of black, wiggled lightly by Jonas Foster’s tapping finger. The former death mage and hit for hire peered at the map and lifted an eyebrow. "France?"

     "A small village near Versailles, to be precise," Betre said, taking another sip of brandy. "She’s in a foundling home. Orphan and all that."

     Jonas straightened up, fixing Betre with a cold stare. "She’s an orphan?"

     "You should be celebrating that," the demon said, smirking. "Death made it easier for you to acquire her." He took a puff off of his cigarillo and stretched luxuriously. "You won’t have to worry about getting annoying parents out of the way."

     Ax blinked, looking at Betre. "Why would they need to be out of the way? She’s his, isn’t she?"

     "It’s not that simple, Ax," Jonas muttered, flopping into a chair to eye the map. The entire study showed the wear of the laborious search much worse than Betre did. Overflowing ashtrays, discarded maps, stacks of phone books, international birth record printouts, several overheating laptops all cluttered the study’s broad tables. Jonas’s blood-stained and torn clothing was now pocketed with holes from where Betre had torn bits to aid in his search. All three men looked…a bit more world-worn than they had a few weeks ago, but that hope which had lit in Jonas’s eyes a fortnight before was now very  much like a blaze. He looked at the map, a smile touching the corners of his mouth. Ax and Betre exchanged a look before Ax rose, walking over to peer at the map. "So she’s there? Will it be hard to bring her home?"

     "…home," Jonas murmured, watching Ax try to measure distance with his fingertips. That was a word which had never been given weight in his mind, never had true meaning. Now he looked around the study with new eyes. "…you know, we really need to clean this place."

     Betre’s laughter ran off of the bookcases, and he kicked his heels in surprisingly helpless laughter. Ax and Jonas both blinked, eyebrows lifting in perfectly synchronized puzzlement. Jonas looked at Ax, Ax looked at Jonas, and both looked back at Betre, frowning as the demon nearly flipped his chair over with the throes of his laughter. Ax blinked again, and looked around the room. "I don’t get it. It really is messy."

     Ax’s forthright statement only served to send Betre into deeper hilarity as he collapsed helplessly onto the table before him. His laughter died out slowly, with gasps and restrained sobs, and silence reigned for a moment before the demon sat up, wiping tears from his reddened face. Jonas was standing with his arms crossed, frowning at Betre, and he made a disgusted sound when the demon merely smirked at him. "Forgive me," Betre choked, still trying to calm himself. "It’s just such a flip from when I first met you that I couldn’t help myself."

     Ax still looked puzzled, but Jonas’s expression was now set. He regarded Betre quietly for some moments, and the amusement in the demon’s face faded before that cold look. "Never before have I had a reason to change," he said, almost to himself. "Now there are things to be done." He looked at the map, his eyes focusing on that single pushpin, and then he nodded. "There is a lot to be done. I need my passport updated, a plane ticket and the adoption papers."

     The blonde demon frowned. "Why do you need papers? She’s yours, isn’t she?"

     "It is no longer that simple, Ax," Betre said, lighting up another cigarillo. He tapped a brown folder next to his cell phone. "She belongs to another country, and as such, the papers are going to be a bit more…complex. I’ve gotten a start on them. As soon as I knew she wasn’t in the United States, I started researching international adoptions." He looked at Jonas, his storm-grey eyes clear. "It won’t be easy, I can tell you this now. To be frank, I don’t know how possible it is. You’re unmarried, you have no "steady" employment, and finding people to vouch for your character might be a bit of a trial."

     "I don’t care," Jonas said quietly, his finger resting on the pushpin. He looked at Betre and Ax, and both of them merely gazed for a moment. There was a light, a…fire in his eyes that neither had seen, or even imagined possible. It seemed to lend a glow to his entire face, giving him the look of a martyr. "She’s going to come home, and it will be soon." Jonas Foster, former death mage and hit for hire, nodded decisively as he touched the pushpin once more. "Soon, little one," he murmured. "Soon."