A/N: This is my first Fosters fanfiction :) I love this show so much, and my favorite character is Jesus. There seems to be so few fics written about him, and after last week's episode, I just couldn't get this idea out of my head! I hope you enjoy, and please leave a review. The title is based off of the song 'Whispers' by Passenger

Mariana Adams-Foster liked to think herself as a rather collected individual, thank you. She could (usually) juggle the stresses of out smarting everyone in her grade level, undying friendship drama, and whatever crisis of the week happened to be unfolding with her family, all without getting a hair out of place and while maintaining that glistening smile that alerted others to just how "fine" she was.

But when you're not-boyfriend who snuck into your house with death lolling at the tip of his tattered soul awaited his freedom solely to fulfill his love laced delusions of you, and then your STEAM partner has the audacity to test your patience with her recklessness, you're bound to get a little cranky.

So when her moms called her in for a family meeting, interrupting the very few moments she had to get things done, her temperament was already at a steady boil before she even reached the bottom of the stairs.

Huffing in poorly concealed annoyance (not that she was putting much of an effort into hiding it. She had WORK TO DO. Worse, she knew that they knew- being the leader of a prestigious club was no easy feat, after all, and humbleness was never one of her strengths- that she had work to do), she plopped down on the couch, nervously bobbing her leg up and down.

Keep it together, Mariana, she told herself, using the fact that the less she said at this stupid meeting, the less time she spent on this stupid couch and the sooner she could return to working on her non-stupid robot as her sole anchor to sanity.

"We're selling the house."

So much for that plan, then.

The reaction of her family was instant.

"What?! Why?!" She cried, a million possibilities gnawing on the tendons of her mind. Off to side she heard Jesus argue with Brandon, but she zoned him out, lost in the own suffocating state of rage.

And then Stef was asking about his headache, and red filtered through her vision. Here they were, surely staring homelessness and poverty right in the face, and somehow, they had managed to turn the focus onto something as trivial and meaningless as a headache.

"He's fine!" She snapped, pushing her own throbbing pain away. "Are we going to be homeless? Oh god, I'm not going to get into a good school."

She was working herself into a panic, desperation rising and spilling over like a study gush of lava burning any and all reason her moms were trying to tell her in its wake.

"Will we still go to Anchor beach? We're going to live in an apartment?" The questions tumbling out, each more frantic then the last.

Lena was doing her best to calm her down, answering each inquiry with a calmness only she could manage. Somewhere in the background, Brandon was talking- or rather, arguing (what's new?) with Stef, and then he was scooping Mason up in his arms, exiting the house in a swift display of dramatics.

Mariana pinched the bridge of her nose, the pulsing ache rearing its ugly head back into the front of her thoughts once more. Great, now she could add ADHD pill side effects to her frequently growing list of stresses.

Out of her periphery, Jesus was standing up. Good. He's leaving. I can't deal with him right now. She spat internally, bitterness clouding her every movement.

Turning back to Lena, she opened her mouth once more, five more questions already forming at the tip of tongue when suddenly-

"JESUS!"

She had turned around just in time to see her brother crumple to ground in a boneless heap, earning a collective gasp from everyone in the room.

The next few moments were a flutter of heart crushing fear. Utmost terror gripped her every breath, clutching at her soul with the suffocating force of hopelessness. Within the hollow of her rib cage, she could all but feel the agonizing transition of her steady heartbeat forging itself into a mad, beastly pounding. It throbbed and ached and tensed all at once, stuttering with every other beat over the horrid sight that lied before her.

Jeśus, a being relentlessly shadowed by an aura of nervous energy and ruthlessly dictated by an undying hyperness, lied as still as the warm air outside. Had it not been for the slow uprising and deflation of his chest, she might have assumed the worst and collapsed under the weight of her own despair. But as it stood, he was indeed still breathing, and, as perhaps as part of her rite of passage into being a twin, so was she.

Each second crawled along as if covered in molasses, the ticking of the clock a cruel taunting to her already weakened resolve. With a wobble in her knees, she stumbled to the ground, choppy and crisp, a mockery to the way her poor brother had fallen like a stringless puppet, and reached for his hand.

She clutched it with all the strength and desperation one could muster, pleading for him to squeeze back.

His hand remained limp and lifeless underneath her grasp.

Tears, like little soldiers holding what remained of her happiness captive, threatened to spill over, but she refused to let them. She would not, could not, break down right now. The mere thought of showing such a weakness, of daring to drawn in the attention of others, when her own brother, her best friend and protector, suffered on a cold hard ground beneath her, sent waves of queasiness throughout her every nerve.

However, before she even had time to scold herself for such little self control, paramedics were piling in, and suddenly her brother was being lifted away.

Away from her.

And then just like that, the solid cement of a confident and self assured teenager shattered, leaving in its place a small child, scared and broken and completely alone except for brother. Numerous hands held her back as she thrashed and twisted in a crazed dash to reach him. She was a wild creature, yelling for him in an ineligible hodge podge of words, each step taken by paramedics further away from her serving as shock of electricity zapping through her veins, each more excruciating then the last.

Finally, when she could see him no more, and the ambulance was rushing away, her fight fizzled. The vice like grip of hands imprisoning her loosened and forged into soothing pats as she whimpered, yearning so desperately to be by her brother's side.

"Mariana, darling, get up, we're going to follow the ambulance." She didn't register who said it, already too deeply embedded in and deafened by her thoughts of despair. Still, she somehow managed to nod her head numbly, and let herself be guided up off the ground and into the car.

With her head pressed against the cool glass, eyes half heartedly licking up the blurring images flashing outside the car window, she succumbed herself to silence, not even offering so much as a gesture in anyone else's direction.

For her anchor had been severed, and now she was washed away in the seas of fear.