AN: Hello! Here's a random Theonor story that doesn't even have Theodore in it. Yep. I thought of it in the shower today, and had to hurry and finish so I could come write it! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The Chipmunks and Chipettes belong to Ross Bagdasarian and Janice Karman. I own nothing.

The hospital waiting room was bright, clean, quiet. The only sound that met her ears was the calm humming of the old air conditioner on the left-hand side of the room. The television was on, its volume turned down to an unintelligible low. The pictures flashed in the corner of her eyes, but Eleanor paid no mind to it. It was just some stone-faced announcer pouring out bad news.

The other people in the room spoke not a word to her, nor to each other. It was as if there was an unspoken agreement amongst them, not to ask anything of one another.

There weren't too many people in the room. A woman with a young child that appeared to be ready to fall asleep, a man looking worried out of his wits, a teenage girl who looked as if she were about to burst into tears.

Eleanor had stopped watching them not long after she had taken her seat. She had far too much running through her head to pay them any mind.

She didn't understand the feeling that was coming over her.

She wasn't crying. She had been worried, of course, extremely so. But the injury had been minor, nothing too much to worry about. She was sur-...

She thought.

The feeling that enveloped her mind and body was somewhat foreign to her. She knew she had felt it before, but she couldn't place where.

Her eyes drifted down to her fingers. Earlier, they had kept a steady rhythm, tapping on the edge of her chair as she waited for an answer from the nurses. Now, however, her fingers no longer kept that rhythm. They were shaking erratically, as was the rest of her body.

The only thing she could relate the shuddering to was the feeling of being cold.

But she wasn't cold. The room was relatively comfortable, temperature wise.

The Chipette's mind flashed back to the earliest parts of her childhood. She couldn't help but relate the feeling to the way she felt when she and her sisters were homeless.

Those days were so cold. Bitter.

Hopeless.

It wasn't just the cold that had made them shiver. It was the idea of not knowing. Not knowing what was to come, if they would live through the next day. Not knowing if they would have food or fresh water. Not knowing if some horrible accident would occur due to their horrible living situation.

She was feeling that now. The feeling of not knowing.

Fear.

That's what it was. Fear.

She was scared. Terrified, even.

But he should be fine. His injury wasn't even that bad. He had just stumbled off of the stool when trying to retrieve something from the cabinet. No big deal. He had just hit his head on the counter. He should be fine.

Despite the constant reassuring thoughts, the fear still engulfed her.

Eleanor didn't like it. She didn't like being afraid.

She had always been a rock. Both in her relationship with Theodore and in her relationship with her sisters. She was never scared, she hardly ever even cried.

She was always the brave one. Brittany was brave, sure, but even she had her moments.

Eleanor was much braver than Theodore. She held his hand when they walked home all throughout childhood. Not because they had figured out that fate was going to eventually pull them together, but because he was terrified something was going to jump out and grab him.

She held his hand when he said his wedding vows, calmly and wordlessly reassuring him to go on despite the fact he had missed a few lines and stuttered throughout the entire thing.

He had been more afraid than she was during the births of their children. Some of the squeezing she had given his hand wasn't due to pain, it was an attempt to tell him, wordlessly again, that everything was going to be okay.

And now here she was, trembling in fear. And there he was, in some other room, lying in a hospital bed. She was unable to hold his hand. He was unable to hold her hand.

She couldn't give him that comfort that he always needed. She couldn't give his hand a reassuring gentle squeeze.

And now she needed it herself.

Eleanor bit her lip. Her body still shuddered, and if anyone viewed her from behind she figured they would think she was wracking with sobs. But she wasn't. Not a single tear left her eyes.

She wanted to cry. She wanted it desperately. Perhaps if she cried it would rid her of this horrible feeling of fear. Of helplessness. Powerlessness. The fear of not knowing.

She instinctively glanced towards the door when she heard it swing open forcefully, two familiar figures stepping through.

Alvin didn't spare her a glance as he nearly sprinted to the desk in the little office beside the waiting area, demanding to see his younger brother. She watched as he visibly grew angrier and more upset at being told that, no, he couldn't see his brother right now.

The other person who had entered the room with him took a seat to Eleanor's right.

She glanced over to her sister. The other's blue eyes watching her intently, the emotion behind them unreadable.

Eleanor's eyes moved back to her lap, where they had been before the silence of the room had been broken. She didn't know what she had been expecting. Brittany wasn't exactly the comforting type.

One thing she definitely hadn't been expecting, however, was for her oldest sister's fingers to intertwine themselves with hers, to give her that unspoken comfort. That reassurance that everything would be okay.

Now she didn't just think everything would be okay, she was sure. She knew that now, everything would be just fine.

Thanks for reading!