Author's Note: Yeah, I'm doing these little drabbles or one-shots about events that weren't seen in the books because these books are so amazing and I'm addicted, yet again. And I have to do something. So, if you want me to continue, say so. I wasn't going to post this until I added more, but then I reread it and realized I like it just as it was. I hope you enjoy! (:


All We Had

"Our sources at six have heard nothing," the woman whispered. She took a hesitant step forward, and I didn't have to turn around to know that she was fidgeting. A machine beeped in the corner and through the thick walls, I could hear the faint laughter of teenage girls. There was a thick silence that weaved and spun its way through the room. I could feel a weight on my chest, suffocating me. Usually, I would crack a joke. Usually, I would make an absurd reference.

But I didn't feel like laughing. I didn't feel like joking. Sometimes, I wondered if I ever would again.

"Rachel," I breathed. "You could have just said that the Baxters heard nothing."

For a second, I expected Rachel to take a step forward and stand beside me, but she kept her distance. She always kept her distance now. "Mr. Smith says that his sources haven't heard anything either."

Of the three of us in that room, I was the best at lying. Rachel always preferred to have a certain amount of truth in her lies. But even with that, I could tell when she was lying. I didn't know how, but I always could. From the moment she was eight and told a little six year old "Everything is going to be fine" after her always accountable father was two hours late to pick her up from elementary school, I could tell. I could out lie even Joe, because the existence of his façade, his cover told that there was reason for one to begin with.

But even with that, I couldn't lie. I could not tell my sister that everything was going to be okay, that her daughter was going to be fine, that her daughter was alive. I could not tell her that the man lying in front of us would awake. I could not tell her that we would be fine, that we would make it out even remotely okay, because for the first time in my life since I was that six year old girl, I did not know. And that was not okay.

So both of us just remained still, remained silent. She stood by the door, clinging to the distance as if that would save us all, clinging to her memories because only there could she find solace. And I sat on the couch beside the bed of a man that I never knew, a man that I might have once loved, clinging to the present, because that was all that we had.