A/N: This is a FGB drabble purchased by the fantabulous arfalcon. She's wonderful and generous and has also agreed to share with the class. She wanted any Alice POV, and to me, there was one story that absolutely needed to be told.

Die Unbekannte

Mom was waiting for me in the parking lot. I hated therapy day. I hated leaving class early, with the nurse knocking on my classroom door and everyone else in the room looking at me like I was the Elephant Man. It was worse since … no, I was going to squish those feelings down. I'd lost too many people. Knowing me was a hazard to your health. I thrust my hands in my coat pockets and kicked open the main door. And there was Mom with her car still running, keeping it warm for me.

It was like because I didn't grow there, inside her belly, that she had to work extra hard to prove that she was going to take care of me, like the car was some kind of replacement womb.

We were driving by the graveyard, and Mom slowed the car like she always did. She probably wasn't even aware she did it. She was humming, trying to fill the silence in the car and our hearts. I drummed a little on the dashboard so I could make some sound too.

And then I felt something like cold prickles on my neck. Go to her, someone whispered in my ear, but Mom was still humming, and we were the only ones in the car. I didn't know who said it, who "her" was, but I knew I needed to get out of the car. I unfastened my belt and opened the door. Mom was yelling at me, not so much out of anger but fear. I wasn't processing her words. I stumbled a little as I jumped out of the car, but it didn't hurt. Or, at least, I pretended it didn't hurt. I was getting good at pretending.

The wind touched my face like a kiss, and I heard it again: Go to her. So I ran across the street, into the graveyard. The ground was wet and soaked my sneakers. My toes felt squishy and cold.

I knew the way. I could have probably run there with my eyes closed. She was the reason I was even here. If she hadn't died, Mom and Dad wouldn't have needed to find me. Eddie will sleep here someday, I thought, and then I forced the thought back down, pushed it down, down, down because I didn't want to cry today. I stopped dead in my tracks, because I wasn't alone.

Someone was kneeling at the grave, our grave. Our grave was for family only. I was ready to shove her from the back, maybe smash her head right into the stone. My hand went up to push her, but the wind kissed my cheek again. Find her, I heard.

Eddie? I asked, my heart beating fast, and I looked around me. Are you here?

I touched the stranger on the arm, wondering if Eddie had been reborn already, in another body. She turned around with scared eyes, with scared, sad eyes. No, Eddie was not in those eyes. I bit my lip.

She knew my name. I didn't know how. I didn't know why she was here. All I knew was that Eddie was not in her eyes. I saw his name carved on the stone, and it made it real again. He's gone. He's gone forever.

I didn't know I was crying until this stranger touched my cheek as gently as the wind and wiped a tear away from my cold cheek. She hugged me, this stranger, and it was okay to be sad in front of her because it wouldn't hurt her more. It wasn't like trying to keep my tears in for my family, for Mom who looked like she was about to break. I sobbed and sobbed into her shirt, and she just held me and let me be sad.

I held her hand and squeezed it to say, Thank you. And then she did the oddest thing—she started talking about how much she'd always loved Eddie, and I knew then that she got it. She knew how special Eddie was. And I wanted to cry all over again, but it also made my heart feel a little less lonely, that there was someone who missed him as much as I did.

So I took my notepad from my pocket and wrote I know on it before tearing it out and folding it up. I wanted her to read the note in front of me, so I could see it in her eyes, her eyes that did not have any Eddie in them but had seen the real him. But then I heard Mom calling for me, and the girl ran away. Maybe she wasn't even real.

The wind kissed my face again, and I was cold, so I wrapped my hands around myself and hugged myself tight, pretending it was Eddie. But of course it was only me.

I went back to Mom, and we walked back to the car I knew she had left running so I wouldn't be cold when she found me again.