The kids opened the garage of the toy factory and stepped out into the sunlight. The threat of Chucky finally over, the two realized that they didn't have a plan after they escaped the building.

"Where are we going?" Andy looked up at his foster sister.

The teenager responded, an exhausted tone in her voice. "Home."

"Where's home?"

Kyle thought for a moment and crossed her arms, smiling. "I have no idea. Looks like I'm stuck with you."

"You'll deal with it." Andy joked, earning a laugh from the older girl. She took hold of his hand and led him away from the factory.

She knew they had to find a place to crash somewhere, now that both of their foster parents were dead. The crisis center seemed like their only option. However, Kyle concluded that the two of them would have to deal with even more shit before they would finally be able to relax again. The teenager still had her suitcase and belongings at the Simpson residence, and there was the matter of Joanne's corpse still being upstairs. It was only right to head back and report the matter and let the police take care of the body properly. But they would have to find a way to get there first. The station wagon was totaled, so the next best option would be to get a ride back somehow.

Once they made it to the entrance gate of the factory, Kyle looked over Andy one last time to make sure the boy wasn't hurt. She knelt down to his level, concerned eyes scanning his body for any cuts or bruises.

"You sure you're alright? He didn't hurt you too bad did he?" Kyle asked.

"No, I'm okay," the child replied. "Are you alright?"

Kyle tucked her hair behind her ear. "My head still feels fuzzy, but I'll shake it off. We should head back to the house first. I've got some things I need to get."

"Is Joanne still mad at me about Phil?" Andy wondered as they continued walking.

Kyle hesitated for a bit before answering. She knew Andy was mature enough to accept what's been happening to him, but she didn't want to add more stress on the kid's shoulders if she didn't have to. There was no easy way to sugarcoat it and he deserved to know the truth.

"Joanne's dead."

Andy blinked, processing the news for a moment. "Did Chucky get her?"

"Yeah, he did."

"Oh."

Andy felt numb. He felt like a storm, bringing death and destruction wherever he went. Hopefully with the doll blown to bits, the storm would finally vanquish.

"I liked Joanne," Andy commented. "She was really nice to me. Before the accident."

The older foster sibling sighed. Despite Phil being kind of a hard-ass, Kyle had to admit that the Simpsons had been one of the few families where she truly felt somewhat comfortable at. "Yeah, I liked her too. She was one of the only foster parents I had that actually treated me like a person and not a liability."

"What are we gonna do?" The eight year old asked.

Kyle pondered for a moment, forming a plan in her head. "We should go back to the house and call the police. From there, they'll probably take us back to the shelter since we can't be by ourselves."

The two made it out of the lot of the factory and back to the busy streets of the city. Andy took one last glance of the waving Good Guy sign in the distance before running to catch up with Kyle.

"What will we do when we get there?"

Kyle shrugged. "Dunno. We'll probably end up just staying there for awhile before one of us gets sent to another family."

Andy's eyes widened. "Are they gonna separate us?"

The girl noticed the worry in his voice. "Hey, don't focus on that right now, okay? One step at a time."

Andy's face fell and he clutched onto the sleeve of Kyle's coat as he stared at his shoes scraping the concrete below. "I don't want you to go."

Kyle smiled at the younger boy, touched by the fact that someone actually wanted her around. She knelt down and ruffled his hair, assuring him that everything was going to be fine. "I'm not going anywhere, Kiddo. We'll be home soon. Wherever the hell it is."

She stood up and looked at the cars zooming past the sidewalk where they stood. "But first, we gotta find a way home."

She stuck out her thumb, hoping that a decent human being would pull over and help them. A couple of kids out on the streets? Nobody was that much of an asshole to just keep driving, right? Andy gave her a weird look. "What are you doing?"

"It's called hitchhiking," Kyle explained. "You put your thumb out like this and you just wait for someone to stop and give you a ride."

"A stranger?"

"Yeah, but hopefully it's a nice stranger."

A few moments passed, as well as many cars who didn't even bother looking in the kid's direction, until finally a middle-aged man in a rusty, old pickup truck slowed down to a stop and rolled down the window. "Where you two headed?"

Kyle gave the address of the Simpson house to the trucker and he gladly offered to give the foster siblings a ride. Andy and Kyle sat in the back, finally given a brief moment of rest. The boy nodded off on Kyle's shoulder until she shook him awake when they arrived.

"You kids be safe," the trucker said before driving away.

Kyle and Andy stood weary outside the front door, hesitant to enter their, soon-to-be, previous foster home. Kyle knew Phil and Joanne always kept a spare key under the mat. She put the key in the lock and slowly opened the door, the pink and blue interior still vibrant despite the hell that the house had been through.

Placing her hands on the young boy's shoulders, Kyle instructed him on what to do next. "Andy, I want you to stay down here and call the police. Tell them there was an accident upstairs and they need to get here quick, okay?"

The child nodded, big brown eyes still fueled with terror. "Okay."

"Good boy," she praised and patted him on the back. "I'll be down soon. Just gotta collect some stuff from my room."

The teenager hurried up the stairs, trying not to focus on the ball of yarn that led all the way up to Joanne's room. She flew open the door to her old bedroom and began to gather the items and clothes she actually bothered to unpack when she first got there. Her Walkman and cassette tapes were safely stored away in her suitcase, all that was left was to return back downstairs and wait on the cops with Andy.

'Poor kid', she thought. This whole time he had been right about that stupid doll terrorizing him, and all she did was tease him and joke about it until it was too late. She wished they could've discovered the mangled doll that was buried under the swing sooner. Then maybe this whole mess could've been avoided. Phil and Joanne didn't deserve what happened to them. Andy didn't deserve what happened to him.

The police arrived shortly after Andy had made the call. After questioning the kids for a bit, they had written off Joanne's death as a suicide, and an officer escorted the two back to the crisis center. The ride back was silent for the most part, Andy blankly staring out the car window and Kyle often glancing at him in concern. She knew Andy was kind of a quiet child, but after a few hours of him not asking where they were going or even a comment about being hungry, she was starting to miss the sound of his voice.

The cop in the driver's seat looked in his rear-view mirror, checking in on the foster kids. "You two alright back there?" He asked. "Look like you've been through hell. Especially the little one."

"He has," Kyle answered softly. "But he's strong. He'll get through this."

The cop nodded, a look of sympathy in his eyes. "I'm sorry for whatever you kids had to go through, but the shelter here is a good place. They'll take care of you two."

Kyle snorted. "We should know, we've been there before."

The police car pulled up to the orphanage and the duo were greeted by one of the social workers, waiting for them. As they walked inside the building, Andy noticed one of the doors on the right covered in bright yellow caution tape, marked with a giant 'X'. That was where Chucky had stabbed Andy's old case worker, Grace Poole, and taken him hostage. The boy paused in his steps, staring at the door thinking that he could see what was on the other side if he concentrated hard enough.

Kyle noticed, walking up behind him and steering the boy away from the room. "C'mon, Andy, don't look."

As they made it up to the second floor of the orphanage, the social worker stopped by a door. "Andy, your room is right upstairs. Kyle, you'll be staying in here," the man said.

Andy, not fond of the idea of being by himself again, clutched onto Kyle's tan jacket and peered up at her. All she needed was the look in his eyes to know what was bothering him.

"Look, if it's alright with you, I'll room with Andy for awhile," the girl spoke. "He's been through a lot and the last thing he wants is to be alone right now."

The man sighed and shook his head. Seemed he wasn't in the mood to put up an argument. "Alright then. His room is upstairs. Second one on the left."

"Thanks."

Andy still had most of his stuff packed away in his suitcase up in his room. He had only been there for about an hour before Chucky had forced Kyle to pull the fire alarm in the building. Thankfully, the room was accompanied with 2 beds. Kyle set her suitcase down on the unused bunk, next to the window. "Alright, Kid, you and I gotta talk."

"About what?" The boy finally spoke for the first time in hours.

The teenager plopped down beside him on the bed, frowning. "Don't play dumb with me, Andy. I know you're still freaked out about this whole thing."

Andy stayed quiet again, his mind trying to comprehend the multiple emotions he was feeling all at once. "I'm happy that Chucky is gone, but I'm also scared."

"Why are you scared?"

The boy bit his lip in hesitation. He was afraid to admit what he was thinking. He remembers his mother telling him how you should never tell anyone what you wished for after you blow out the candles on your birthday cake or after seeing a shooting star, because then it wouldn't come true. But it wasn't his birthday and the sun was still out. And this wasn't a wish, this was a fear. What if it did come true if he uttered it out loud?

Kyle's voice pulled him back to reality. "Andy?"

He sighed. "I'm scared because what if Chucky comes back?"

Kyle laughed in disbelief. "Andy, you saw what happened to him. You fucked him up real good! There's no way he's coming back from that."

The boy wasn't convinced. "But the last time we...fucked him up, he did come back."

"First of all, watch your mouth," she warned and poked his side which made him giggle. "Secondly, if that creep ever does return, you'll just kill him again. You've got it in you."

"I do?"

"You bet, Squirt," she praised. "Remember how I said you've got to learn how to take care of yourself? I'd say you're heading in the right direction."

The eight year old felt prideful. He smiled up at his foster sister and she ruffled his hair in response. "Come on," Kyle said as she stood up. "Let's go see if they got any food for us. I'm starving!"

The rest of the day went smoothly. The kids ate together before having to be separated for a bit to talk with their case workers, trying to find a new family to stay with. Afterwards, Kyle led Andy to a small park near the orphanage to let him play around for a bit and for herself to sneak a smoke. Both of them fell exhausted after dinner, having been pulled around in different directions all day.

Up in their room, both of them were in bed, Andy watching the night rainfall from their window and Kyle reading a magazine while listening to one of her mix tapes. Andy often thought of his mother before he went to sleep. He liked to pretend she was right by his side, watching over him like one of the angles from those Christmas specials he loved. He wondered if he told her about how Chucky returned and he took him down (with a little help from Kyle, of course), would she be proud of him? He'd love to think she would. She would wrap her arms around him tightly and kiss him on the cheek repeatedly, saying "that's my brave boy!"

Andy rubbed his eyes and rolled over to the other side of his bed. "Kyle, will you read me a bedtime story?"

The teen turned down the volume on her stereo. "Aren't you getting a little old for bedtime stories?" she teased.

"Pretty please?" He begged. "Just one." He put on his best puppy dog face, something that always made his mother cave in.

"Hey, I saved your butt today," Kyle continued eyeing the article in front of her. "That alone is one hell of a story."

Andy frowned. "I saved your butt too!" He whined.

She couldn't find a way to retort that statement. If it weren't for Andy stepping up, her face probably would've been melted off at that factory. The blonde smiled and rolled her eyes. "Okay, okay," she sighed and turned off her music, strolling to the toy chest they had in the room and shuffling through the endless pile of toys and games cluttered around until she found something to read. Walking over to his bed, she jerked her thumb playfully. "Scoot."

Andy made room for his foster sister as she lay down beside him, storybook resting in her lap. Once Andy was comfortable, nestled into her side, she began read him The Three Billy Goats Gruff. About halfway through the story, Andy asked a question that had been on his mind for awhile. "Kyle, is it scary to be on your own?"

"What brought that up?" She responded.

He shrugged. "When I first met you, you said you were gonna be on your own next year? Why?"

Kyle explained the rules of growing up in foster care, her cynical tone taking over. "Because when you turn 18, you're basically considered an adult and they kick your ass to the curb."

Andy didn't like the sound of that. "So nobody takes care of you anymore?"

"Pretty much," she confirmed. Realizing her demeanor made the concept sound more harsh than it actually was, she also told him the benefits of adulthood. Andy had to have something to look forward to as he got older. She didn't want to scare him. "But it's not so bad. Being on your own means you have more freedom. No one telling you what to do, getting your own space, having fun. You'll warm up to the idea when you become a teenager."

"I hope I get to see my mother before then," Andy mumbled.

Kyle gently brushed the hair out of his eyes and gave him a sympathetic look. "I'm sure you will. You've just got to tough it out for a bit longer. Now let's finish this story or else I'm gonna be the one falling asleep."

Kyle continued reading the fairy tale to Andy, minute by minute his eyes getting heavier. At the end she looked down and saw that the boy was sound asleep. Satisfied, she smiled and set the book on the nightstand and turned off the lamp. She tucked Andy in, covering his shoulders with a quilt and silently observed the boy who was now resting peacefully.

Her mind flashed back to when the two were at the park, sitting beside each other on the swings. Andy had asked her why she came back for him in the first place.

"Well, because I knew that you were right and that you were in danger," she told him. "I may act like I don't care about much, but I'm not heartless."

And it was true. Staying with other foster families in the past, Kyle had full experience of dealing with younger siblings. Most of which, immediately got on her nerves and she tried to avoid them whenever possible. She assumed it would be the same as soon as Andy had walked in on her sneaking a smoke in her room, but he proved to be different. He was quieter than most boys his age, a bit paranoid at times, but completely understandable given everything he had to endure. But overall he was just a kid trying to grow up in a difficult environment.

Kyle knew what that felt like; growing up too fast. Every argument she heard coming from her many foster parents, constantly being sent back, having no one to really talk to about the problems she faced - it was painful every time it happened, but eventually she got used to it. And now Andy was beginning to deal with that, which was probably why, Kyle concluded, she felt the need to look after him and teach him about being independent.

She looked at her foster brother one last time, patting him on the shoulder and whispered, "The nightmare's over, Kiddo. Sweet dreams."