Just a small piece I wrote for HC-Bingo last year. The prompt was "Learning to be loved". Hope it's enjoyable!

Disclaimer: Revenge does not belong to me.

What Family Do

When she first met him she thought he was a loser. Why would someone rich like him care about the daughter of a man nationally considered a monster? So what he had helped him once? After all those televised trials the guy should have got the hint.

And it only got worse. It didn't matter to him that he had already made her ridiculously rich. No, he had to look out for her too, picking her up at night, not minding in what kind of hole she had ended up in.

Amanda Clarke found Nolan Ross to be extremely annoying. Didn't he have anything better to do? Like, minding his company, for starters?

"You have to read the journals, Amanda!" he had insisted for the millionth time. She was not interested on those idiotic journals. She had lived on the shadow of her father long enough. She was brought up in foster homes and then ended up in juvy, all because of it.

But Nolan was such a pain in the ass she ended up reading the damned things just to make him shut up. However, it worked backwards. She could finally see how it was to her father to pay for a crime he never committed, a crime he hadn't even had the means to commit. It was all the Greysons' fault – all of it. If she could choose, she would go back in time and burn all those journals. What good did all those information do to her now?

Falling to her knees, she just cried. When it reached the point of sobs, a pair of arms raised her from the ground and hugged her tightly. She was so disorientated that she hugged him back.

"Why are you doing this, Nolan? We don't even know each other."

"You might be right." He said in a whispered tone. "But I've waited for you to get out of that place for a long time. For me, you are the little sister I never had."

That statement shocked her to no end. Little sister? Was she so broken she couldn't bring herself to care for anyone anymore?

"I don't know how it's to have a family anymore." She confessed, her tears finally giving her a break.

Nolan opened a sad smile to her.

"I know that, and I'm sorry it took me so long to go rescue you. If I had done what your father told me to, exactly like she told me to, I might have prevented you from getting to that place."

"It's okay, Nolan. That was my fault, and mine only. I'm the one who set the place on fire."

"It doesn't matter. Family protect each other, that's what they do."

"Then, we don't really know what it's like to have one."

Emily woke up suddenly, breathing heavily from the bad dream. Such a collection of memories, why was she remembering all of that now?

"Are you all right, Ems?" his voice invaded her ears, leaving her even more confused.

"What are you doing in my house?"

"I came by to ask you something, but I found you asleep in the couch. I just decided it would be a lost trip if I get back home without talking to you."

Emily sighed as she got up. Sometimes he annoyed her to no end, however, she just couldn't picture her life without him in it anymore.

"You're impossible, I hope you are well aware of that."

Nolan just laughed.

"That's what family do, Ems."

She opened a small smile to him.

"Yes, that's what family do, Nolan."