For lilorphanmaggie - Take Your Daughter To Work Day

[dresdenforhire]

When you're a wizard that used to be on retainer with the Chicago PD you don't get called in for the fun cases. It's never, "Dresden, someone has delivered a bunch of cute puppies at the all you can eat buffet during a supermodel luncheon and we need you to investigate". No, it's always something that's gone really horrible. Not just weird but usually violent and gory. When that happens I put on my wizard hat and go earn my paycheck. Only I don't actually have a hate. Well, I do but it's a Cubs hat so not really all that magical.

I haven't been on retainer with the Chicago PD for a while, though that doesn't mean I still don't get asked to look at cases on the down low. The down low comes with considerably less cash but as the Winter Knight I don't have the cash flow problem I used to have. It's not exactly a job but seeing as how Mab shudders at the idea of her Knight being homeless and half starved unless it's because she wants them to be I get something of a stipend. I'm not sure what the limit is because my needs are pretty simple. Clothes, a vehicle, and a place to heat up SpaghettiOs on the stove.

I kind of wish I'd forgone the SpaghettiOs this time though since the scene was a particularly gruesome one. A lot of people don't know how much mass a human body has, especially when you spread it all out. And someone spread these bodies out all over the 16th hole of a golf course in the suburbs. I feel bad for the foursome that was the first to run into it because they clearly didn't know what they'd found until they'd taken several steps into the muck.

The police wouldn't have even had any way to identify the victims until DNA came back except they found a few phones among the remains. They hadn't given me the names exactly but I just happened to overhear what they were saying when I'd planted a magical bug (it was spider) by the command tent that relayed what they were saying. I'd recognized the names instantly as a gang of magical bullies that lived in the surrounding areas. Kind of like the Alphas only the opposite. The Omegas maybe? Bad Alphas? Assholes? Yeah, I was going to go with the Assholes. They were small time, too small time to ping the White Council but still trouble. Not so much trouble that they deserved whatever happened to them. I can think of only a few people that I'd wish a fate like that on and even then I'd feel a bit bad about it.

I needed to find out if everyone in the Assholes had been killed though but I wasn't exactly sure where they'd go to ground after this. People tended to not be particularly open when talking to the Winter Knight/Warden/Rogue Wizard/Me. Fortunately I knew someone that just might know something like that.

I had one of the members of the Za-Lords army send a quick message to Molly (I refused to think of her as the Winter Lady because she deserved to be remembered as a person) and asked her to phone my daughter. Cell phones don't play very nice with me but Molly and Maggie can handle them just fine. Once that was done I headed to Mac's to have a drink and wait for Maggie to show up, assuming she would.

We had a complicated relationship. Really complicated. If they could keep the cameras from exploding we would have been on the E! network with the Kardashians. But I loved her more than she might ever understand, even if I was terrible about showing it, and hoped that she wouldn't resent me for asking her to come along. Selfishly I hoped she would take it as a sign of faith that I thought she could handle this sort of thing.

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[dresdenforhire]

Sometimes you learn a lesson the hard way. You get knocked down and you learn not to do that thing again because it knocks you down. Sometimes you fail though and someone else gets knocked down and that's the worst. A moment that I'd found comforting and touching was hurting my daughter which made me feel about an inch tall. It also made the temperature in the Jeep drop a bit as the Winter magic leaked through a bit. Winter really liked hate, even if it was self hate.

"So... how does Harry Potter like to get down hills? By walking," I said, opting for a joke because it's not like I can't do any worse than I already have. It's times like these where I think that Maggie really probably was better off without me in her life more. "JK... Rolling."

Father of the year, here I come.

[lilorphanmaggie]

The laugh that comes out is sputtering and wet but it's a laugh and she appreciates that he is respecting her wishes to change the topic. Not to mention bad jokes, Margaret loves bad jokes, and non-jokes, because the surreal absurdity of them always makes her oddly happy.

Without much thinking Margaret reaches over and puts her hand on his arm lightly. It's a comforting touch, the temperature has her attention a cool to the heat and sweat that is currently prickling at her skin. It's a touch that reassures that despite the talk of death he is still here, despite everything, he is still here and that gives her comfort. "That is a really, really bad joke," she tells him with a smile. "I love it."

[dresdenforhire]

I could have almost cried with relief at hearing that laugh. I don't care how choked with tears it was it was the most beautiful sound in the world to me. Just like that touch meant the world to me and I had to wipe away salt water leaking from my eyes. Sorry to all the other daughters in the world but I had the best daughter ever. No contest at all. No one else would have stuck with me this long or given me this many chances and believe me, I needed all the chances I could get.

"And you know how the Malfoy's enter every building, of course," I said as we just pulled up to my tiny little place that was just where the suburbs met the city. "They Slytherin."

[lilorphanmaggie]

Street parking this far out isn't a big deal, still, parallel parking isn't exactly something Margaret is actually looking forward to doing in this piece of machinery. Thankfully the parking gods are merciful and she can just pull in behind another car. Which is probably for the best, in his attempt to cheer her up he might kill her with really awful jokes. At least he means well.

A groan: "okay, okay, that's enough of that." But it's followed up with another laugh as she kills the engine and frees herself from the belt."

[dresdenforhire]

I held up my hands in a sign of surrender, indicating that the bad jokes were at an end. For now. I was going to keep that in my back pocket though of ways to bond, by telling each other terrible jokes. Maybe we wouldn't even have to keep using them as a way to deflect from rather unpleasant emotions that reared their head at inconvenient times. I'm not sure when a convenient time for soul-crushing sadness was but just in case there was one I didn't want to leave it out.

"Okay, are you ready to prep to potentially kick the ass of some racists?" I asked as I got out of the Jeep and headed toward the front door. I missed my old place that got burned down but I had to admit that the bit security door on this one opened and closed nicely and I couldn't complain too much about that.

[lilorphanmaggie]

"I am always, a hundred percent ready to rock and roll." Which may or may not be true. Margaret is not a lazy creature but she is also a teenager which means that sleeping patterns are almost constantly in flux and more often than not a day off means not leaving the bed except for multiple bowls of cereal. Since she is a teenager this behavior, by and large is acceptable, and only eyed with mild envy by the the adults in her life.

Margaret joins Harry, a few large steps easily catches up to him as she approaches the house. She too is thinking about his old place, not in familiar terms but in the stories she has heard from multiple sources. When she catches up to him, there's another touch, just hand on arm, to kind of center because outside of bad dad jokes it was an emotionally trying car ride. "I always wish I could have seen your old place."

[dresdenforhire]

“Me too. It wasn’t great but... it was home,” I said with a bit of a wistful smile. Hearing her say that reminded me of the night I lost it. The night I broke my back and needed to become the Winter Knight. My back had long since healed. I still faked that I needed Mab’s magic but that wasn’t why I was still the Winter Knight. Sure someone might mess with Harry Dresden’s daughter if he was a Warden. That would go poorly. But the sort of vengeance I could potentially bring as the Winter Knight was a stronger deterrent. Only Mab could hold Maggie over my head and she knew better. Still, the time to hang up the Mantle was probably getting close. It was harder and harder to push away those urges and the scary thing is that I was growing tired of doing it.

Yes, I know that becoming evil was bad but it was just so exhausting fighting it all the time. The worst part is that sometimes I found myself thinking “but what if I gave in just a little? I could still be good and I wouldn’t have to fight so much.” The moment I gave into a “what if” I’ve lost the fight. And that isn’t a fight I’m going to lose.

“This place isn’t bad though,” I said, pushing those thoughts away as I smiled at Maggie and unlocked the door. Inside the house wasn’t all that big. Actually smaller than most of the other ones in the area but I didn’t need much. Really, the only weird thing about it was the number of skulls placed in it. There was one in each room and as soon as I brought Bonnie out of my pocket her form wooshed from the skull in my pocket to the nearest one.

“Need anything to drink?”

[lilorphanmaggie]

Stepping into the house, Margaret slips off her shades hanging them off the collar of her shirt. "Um, no, I don't - uh, actually water would be great," a teenager that can't totally make up her mind? Shocking. She stands in the doorway, hands in the back pockets of her jeans and sort of just looks around because there's always that moments pause, always that look around to just scope things out. An animal in a different environment.

Finally, because, she can't just stand on the rug all day (or can she?) Margaret leans over to tug rainbow laces loose and step out of her shoes. "Gotta stay hydrated," as justification for the water, she follows Harry further into the house.

[dresdenforhire]

I heard a burst of giggles from Bonnie at Maggie's awkward response followed by a gasp and the glow of Bonnie dashing to another skull, clearly embarrassed at laughing at her sister's discomfort. I thought it was pretty funny as well but I know the relationship between them is even more awkward than the one I have with Maggie.

Grabbing a bottle of water from the ice box I handed it to her before heading into the study. It wasn't very big, none of the bedrooms were. There was a master bedroom and a guest room as well but I didn't have a lot of guests. If you were to count the number of regular guests I'd had over the years you'd get zero. Zero guests.

The study had a desk with some paper and pens along with ever wall of it covered in bookshelves filled with books. They were a mix of fiction and non-fiction with a few magical texts sprinkled in here and there. Without really saying anything, because I reached out and pulled on one of the books. Where the Wild Things Are. It was the first book I'd ever read to Maggie although she probably didn't even remember. That did release the trigger for the door though and the book case popped out and slid aside, revealing a staircase leading down.

"After you, my dear," I said in my best imitation of Vincent Price.

[lilorphanmaggie]

"Wow," out of everything she expected from his house, a movable bookshelf was not among them. "You are so extra and I absolutely love it." If you have a hidden stairway behind a bookshelf then you are extra. No matter what occupation, but it seems so much so for a wizard. Margaret just totally loves it. It's rad af.

She does notice the book he pulls to get the door to swing open and she comments on it as she moves past him. "I really like that book, it's one of my favorites." But yeah, most memories from being little are, mercifully, not easy to recall. Or just not there all together. Carefully she puts a hand on the rail before starting down the stairs, making sure not to trip and break herself open.

"You got some of that fancy electric down here or do we gotta go old school?"

[dresdenforhire]

I had absolutely no idea what it meant to be extra but if Maggie like it then I was happy to be it. I made a mental note later to try and ask someone under the age of 25 what the heck it meant though just in case it was one of those "you're not bad for an old man" type compliments. I'd take whatever compliments she gave, greedily hoarding them all like some sort of dragon, locking them all away to fawn over later. It was a good way to combat those dark, quiet voices that told me I was worthless and the world would be better off without me. It would not because the world now as Margaret Angelica Mendoza-Rodriguez-Carpenter-Dresden in it and it's definitely better off with her in it. Suck it, dark thoughts.

"Electricity? Where we're going we don't need electricity," I told her. There were hurricane lamps along the wall that could be lit easily enough with a spell so we could see all the way down to the bottom. The stairs took us down and toward the back to the house/hard and under the small hill that my lot backed up to.

The lab at the bottom was much nicer than my old one. As nice as the sub-basement had been there was a lot to it I wish I'd done differently now that I had more experience. Starting over from scratch gives you a lot of freedom that you wouldn't otherwise have. Everything was neatly ordered and there was plenty of space. There were books too, magical tomes sprinkled with the young adult novels that Bonnie loved to read. Rows and rows of carefully potions and spells lined one shelf, all of them in small plastic squeeze bottles. Opposite that was my rack of guns - mostly revolvers - as well as a few swords, some knives, and various types of armor. Basically everything a paranoid wizard might need to survive the apocalypse.

If she thought the moving bookcase was extra...

[lilorphanmaggie]

One would think Margaret would get used to flame spells by now but man, there's just something really nice about flicking a switch and having light come to hand. It's not so much different when it comes to magic but Margaret has to do them one by one instead of all of them at once, especially moving down the stairs. Because frankly it's difficult wielding the powers of the universe and going down stairs.

But he's got nice digs, she's gotta admit it.

Standing at the bottom, sort of off to the side she gives a good look around the place, lips pursed together and eyes slightly narrowed. "This is why I don't trust wizards," true story in real life and in game wizards always get the side eye from her. There is never not a moment when she's not thinking about how to best neutralize a wizard. Mainly in DnD but outside of it at times as well.

"Next time I got a shopping list I'm coming to hit you up." Some teenagers just eat all their parent's food, others use up all of their spell components. And as she walks down the shelves studying the layout and the content, one hand remains in her back pocket the other sipping on the water bottle. Truly interesting stuff, some of the items he has she didn't even get to see at school for the first couple of years.