Author's Note: Yeah, I know, took me long enough XD I hope this slightly longer chapter makes up for the long wait =P

By the way, thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! It honestly means the world to me! =)

Disclaimer: I don't own iCarly or The Vampire Diaries!

Enjoy! ;)


Darkness Times

Chapter 7: Late Night Plans

Freddie Benson

What the hell is going on?

That was the question that had been haunting Freddie since the moment he overheard the conversation between Pam and Jorge.

He had been repeating what he had heard over and over in his mind for the past two hours, trying to figure out the right meaning behind the words he had heard, but he just couldn't do it. Each sentence, if analyzed alone, could make a little bit of sense, but when he tried to place everything into a big context and try to find the meaning behind the whole conversation, that initially simple task just turned out to be pretty much impossible. So since he couldn't find a better way to do it, he decided to examine each part of the conversation separately, hoping that way he might find something that actually made sense in there.

At first, Jorge was talking about a trip he wanted to make. Freddie found nothing out of the ordinary there, but things started to get confusing when he mentioned a name.

Tyler.

Jorge said that this Tyler guy had destroyed their family and their lives, killed their son and their daughters... So did that mean that he was the murderer who had killed Sam and Melanie? Probably, Freddie thought, since he couldn't make any other conclusion out of that part of the conversation.

But then, what did Jorge mean by wanting to make Tyler pay for what he had done? The first thing that crossed Freddie's mind was to have him arrested, but he could clearly understand by Jorge's tone that wasn't exactly what he meant. What was it then? Freddie couldn't know.

Freddie decided to drop that line of thought for a moment, since he knew that he wouldn't be able to figure it out even if he tried to for hours. The next thing that confused him was that Pam insisted that Jorge had found them, and based on the rest of the conversation, Freddie could only assume that she was referring to Sam and Melanie.

But then, did that mean that… They were still alive? Even though Freddie knew that he probably shouldn't start building up hope simply based on a conversation he couldn't even understand, he just couldn't help it. What if Sam was still alive? He still couldn't be sure if she really was or not, but the single existance of that possibility was already enough to get him out of the trance he had been in throughout the past whole year.

Going back to the conversation topic, Pam kept insisting that Sam and Melanie weren't her daughters anymore after they woke up and 'became what they became', according to her, but Jorge insisted that they were still the same and that they couldn't ignore the fact that the twins were still out there somewhere.

Freddie was pretty sure that anyone would be extremely confused by that if they were him. The only meaning Freddie could make out of that was that both Sam and Melanie were indeed still alive, and that Pam and Jorge were pretty much aware of that, meaning that they had lied to everyone about the twins' death.

But how could that be possible? And why would Pam and Jorge hide the truth from everyone else like they did? And most importantly, why would Sam and Melanie even agree to that? But then, why did Jorge say that Tyler had killed them, if they were still alive? And what did Pam mean when she said that Sam and Melanie had stopped being her daughters after they woke up and became what they became? What would that be?

Freddie shook his head, trying to clear up his thoughts, but it didn't work at all. He needed to find out the truth, but he didn't know how to do it. He couldn't simply knock on Pam's or Jorge's door and ask them why they had possibly lied to everyone about Sam and Melanie's death, but he didn't want to just sit there and do nothing about it either. He needed to get the bottom of that story, but he couldn't think of a way to do it.

And as that thought crossed his head, Freddie suddenly remembered something else from the ex-couple's conversation; something that had, for some reason, slipped his mind until that very moment, but that right now seemed to be a very important part of the puzzle he so desperately wished to solve. Pam had mentioned a letter from Sam that she bet Jorge still had. Maybe if Freddie could find that letter somehow, then he'd be able to understand things better. But where could it be?

He had an idea, but he didn't exactly like it.

If Pam was right, Jorge still kept the letter somewhere, and if Freddie somehow managed to find it, he'd be able to figure it all out, or at least understand things a little bit better. But where could that letter be? He thought about it for a long time, until he finally came to the conclusion that the only place it made sense for Jorge to keep the letter was probably in his house, which was the same one that had been Pam's just a few months ago.

But then, how would Freddie be able to read it?

Well, that was the part he didn't really like about the idea.

Breaking into someone's house could really get someone in trouble, and knowing that the person he was talking about was a police officer, he knew that if he got caught, he'd probably end up spending the rest of his life in prison. But he couldn't think of any other way to clear things up.

He knew that Jorge worked until late at night, so maybe if he went there in the evening—when it was already dark enough for him not to draw too much attention—and left fast enough so Jorge wouldn't get home and catch him there, then maybe it could work out well.

But he knew that he couldn't do it alone. He'd need someone to keep an eye on things outside the house while he was in there, and if anything went wrong, the person would warn him, so that way he'd be able to leave the house before getting caught.

Freddie could only think of one person to do that, but he suddenly felt conflicted on whether or not he should ask that person for help. He knew very well what they would say and what they would think, but the single thought of actually seeing Sam again was just so overwhelming that he ended up deciding that no matter what he'd hear from anyone, he had to give his crazy idea a shot.

But... Was all that really worth it? Maybe he was actually reading too much into things, and maybe he was only making a fool of himself, building up false hope that would only make him end up hurt in the end. Could Sam really be alive? Was that even possible?

Freddie shook his head, pushing all those thoughts to the back of his mind. There was only one way to find out the truth, and he knew that if he really wanted to know the answers to all those questions, he needed to do something about it.

Sighing, he grabbed his phone and dialed the phone number of the person he hoped would agree to help him.

3 hours later...

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Gibby asked Freddie as he parked his car about two blocks away from Jorge's house.

"Look, Gib, if you don't want to go with me, that's fine," Freddie said, resting his hand on the car handle, ready to open the door. "I'll do it by myself, then."

Gibby quickly stopped him. "No way! I'm not gonna let you do something so stupid like that by yourself!" He shook his head lightly from one side to the other. "And that's not what I meant it like, anyway," he added. "I'm asking you if you really think this is all worth it." Gibby said the last part hesitantly, as if afraid of how Freddie might respond.

It annoyed Freddie deeply how everyone seemed to be walking on eggshells around him, which was precisely what Gibby was doing in that moment—hesitating to say whatever was in his mind, afraid that Freddie might just lose it at any second. "Why wouldn't it be worth it?" he asked, even though he already knew what was in his friend's mind.

"Well…" Gibby seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "What if you find nothing in there? What if you understood everything you heard the wrong way?"

"And what other way is there, then?" Freddie asked, trying not to say something he'd regret later. He understood why Gibby was saying that—he was worried that if Freddie didn't find anything he was expecting to find in the house, he'd just snap, since all the hope he had started to build up after he had overheard that conversation would just come crashing down over him.

He hadn't told Gibby everything he had heard, only that he had mistakenly overheard Pam and Jorge talking and that they had said something about the twins' death that had really intrigued him. He said that he thought they were keeping something from everyone and that he wanted to find out what it was, and the only way to do it was to find something Pam had mentioned, which Jorge probably kept in his house.

Gibby had been hesitant at first, but he ended up agreeing to help Freddie anyway, since he knew that if he didn't help his friend, Freddie would try to do it by himself, and that could end up having pretty bad consequences.

"I don't know, man, I just…" Gibby trailed off for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice grew much lower. "I just don't think it's healthy for you to put yourself through something like this. I mean, what if it was all just a misunderstanding? You've gotten so much better over what happened. Maybe something like this could get you down like that all over again, and I'm sure no one wants that for you."

"Thank you, Gibby, but I know what I'm doing," Freddie said, even though the meaning of Gibby's words truly worried him, because he knew deep down inside that maybe his friend was right. "Let's just go." He shook his head as he got out of the car, trying to get those thoughts out of his head. He wasn't wrong about all that; he just couldn't be wrong. Or at least that was what he kept telling himself as the two made their way to Jorge's house.

The plan itself was pretty simple. Freddie would somehow manage to get inside the house and look for the letter, while Gibby would stay hidden somewhere outside the house to keep an eye on things. If anything went wrong, like Jorge getting home early that night, Gibby would warn Freddie by sending him a text, so he'd have the chance to leave the house before it was too late.

It sure wasn't a perfect or flawless plan, but that was the best Freddie could come up with in the little time he had had to think about it.

They were both wearing black, so it was harder see them at night. Even though it was still evening, it was already as dark as night, since it was already winter in Seattle.

Gibby hid himself behind some bushes in the front garden of the house across from Jorge's and Freddie headed to the house itself. It didn't take him long to pick the lock of the backdoor, which was something he had learned from Sam a few years ago. When he heard a low click signaling that the door was now unlocked, Freddie pushed it open slowly and walked inside hesitantly.

He closed the door shut behind him and turned on the small flashlight he had brought with him. He didn't want to risk turning on any lights inside the house, fearing that it could alert the neighbors about his presence. He looked around calmly, just then realizing that he was standing in the center of the kitchen.

Freddie walked to the living room slowly, and when he got there, he paused, not sure where to look next. He had been so worried about getting inside the house without getting caught that he hadn't put much thought into the search itself, and now he had no idea where to start from.

The whole house was so silent that the only sound he could hear was from his own breathing as he let his eyes wander over everything in the living room, suddenly remembering the last time he had been there.

It was about three weeks before they had all gone off to college, over one year and a half ago. They had done their last webcast that night and had decided to have a movie night to celebrate it. But as Spencer had a date over and Freddie's mother was at home and wouldn't let them watch anything more violent than a cooking show, Sam said that they could go over to her house, since her mother was away for the weekend.

Freddie and Gibby let the girls choose the movies, so they ended up renting a romantic movie Carly said she had wanted to watch for a while and a horror movie that, according to Sam, wasn't scary at all, but the other three had their doubts about that.

At Sam's house, Freddie and Gibby set up the first movie while Carly and Sam made popcorn and tried to find something to drink around the house that didn't belong to Sam's mother's alcohol stock.

They began with the horror movie, even though Carly didn't seem pleased with that at all. Throughout the whole movie, she kept screaming and covering her eyes with her hands, rocking back and forth on the couch and muttering to herself that nothing she was seeing was real. Sam's reaction to the movie was the complete opposite—she laughed at almost everything in the movie and kept saying that it was hilarious. Both Freddie and Gibby remained calm during the whole movie, not really frightened by it, but also not amused either.

When the time for the romantic movie came, Carly breathed out a loud sigh of relief. And throughout the entire movie, she kept saying how everything was cute; how the guy was sweet; how she wished that her previous boyfriend, whom she had broken up with that same week, was like that, and so on.

The other three didn't seem really interested in the movie in the beginning, but near the end, Gibby was sobbing because of the ending, and so was Carly. Freddie shot the two an amused look, and then looked down, just then realizing that there was an extra weight resting on his right shoulder.

A smile formed on his lips when he realized that Sam had fallen asleep with her head resting on his shoulder. He watched her for a moment, thinking of how cute she looked when she was asleep. She looked so vulnerable it was almost impossible to believe everything she could do when she was awake.

At that time, Freddie still had hope that someday, he'd be able to tell Sam how he felt about her, and he still believed that maybe there was a chance that they'd be together someday and that things would work out for the two of them. But now he could see how wrong he had been. Or at least that was what he thought at the moment, since he still had no proof that Sam was still alive.

Shaking his head as he tried to clear up his thoughts and focus on his current task, Freddie looked around once again and decided to begin his search on the second floor of the house. He walked to the stairs and climbed up to the second floor slowly and soundlessly.

The sound of his own heartbeat seemed to be loud enough for him to hear as he walked down the hallway and peered through a few open doors, before finally finding the room he had been looking for. He took a deep breath before walking inside, trying to prepare himself for what he was about to do, and then hesitantly walked in.

Freddie had never been to Sam's room before. Of course, he had already been to her house more than once, but his knowledge of the old Puckett residence didn't go beyond the first floor.

He looked around calmly, studying the place curiously. It was extremely different from how he had imagined it to be. Instead of the dark colored walls and messy place he had expected to find, he found lilac walls and no mess at all. Everything was so different from how he had thought it would be that he even wondered for a second if he wasn't in the wrong room.

But he knew it was the right room when his eyes found the pictures on the nightstand. There were at least seven picture frames with pictures from several different years there. The majority of them were pictures of Sam, Freddie and Carly, but sometimes Gibby and Spencer were also in them.

Freddie smiled as he examined the pictures for a moment, his eyes tearing up a bit. Even though he had been trying to put up a good face, pretending to be feeling better about Sam's death, especially when he was around Carly, on the inside, he felt just as hurt and broken as in the night he was first told she had died. And it hurt, horribly.

When he was finally able to tear his eyes away from the pictures, Freddie looked around one more time, ready to leave the room before he had some kind of mental breakdown in there, when something suddenly caught his eye.

He walked up to the farthest wall of the room hesitantly and when he got there and laid his eyes on what had caught his attention, his breath got caught in his throat.

There was a dark red stain on the wall, and the only thing it could be made of was blood. For a moment, Freddie was completely frozen. Could it... Could it be Sam's blood? And if it was... Was that the place where she had died?

It was suddenly extremely difficult for Freddie to breathe, and he practically ran out of the room, his heart racing widly inside his chest. Seeing the blood on the wall and knowing that it could be Sam's... The possibility of being in the exact same place where the girl he loved had possibly died... It was all too much for him.

It took him several seconds to finally be able to calm down, and when he finally did, he resumed his search. And soon after that, he found himself entering a room that looked like an office. Assuming it was Jorge's office, he began to look around the place, thinking that if the letter was somewhere in that house, it would probably be there. But the problem was... Where could it be?

He started going through the drawers on the sides of the desk placed near the wall, but there was just so much paper in there that he soon started to doubt he'd ever find what he was looking for. There were so many police files and that kind of stuff inside the drawers that he started to feel like his search would never end. When he finished going through one drawer, there was always another untouched one right below, and when he opened it, it seemed to have even more papers inside it than the previous one.

He was about to start looking through the papers inside the fifth drawer of the desk when Freddie felt his phone buzzing inside his back jeans pocket. He pulled it out quickly, his heart starting to beat faster as he read the message he had just received from Gibby.

'Jorge's here! Get out of there, now!'

Freddie looked down at his watch briefly and noticed it was some minutes after eight o'clock. How the hell did time go by so fast?

Freddie quickly stood up and practically slammed all the drawers shut, before running out of the room and toward the stairs that led to the first floor. But it was already too late. Before he had even reached the top of the staircase, he heard the click of the front door being unlocked and then the sound of the door opening.

He suddenly started to wonder how much time in prison someone could get for breaking into a police officer's house, panicking as he looked around, trying to think of a way to leave the house without being noticed.

Jorge Puckett

Jorge unlocked the front door of his house calmly.

He had had a pretty calm day at work, the only bad thing about it being his argument with Pam haunting his every thought since the day before. Their discussion just wouldn't leave his mind, no matter how many times he tried to forget about it. And even though he had constantly tried to push it all to the back of his mind, Pam's words about the twins kept haunting him during every single second of the day.

Sighing, he threw his jacket on the couch and sat down, resting his head on his hands. He had expected Pam's reaction when she learned about his trip to Jacksonville to be bad, but it ended up being a lot worse than he had imagined it would. She just didn't seem to understand how important this was to him. If only...

The phone rang.

Jorge looked up abruptly, startled, but soon ended up grabbing his cell phone from his uniform pants pocket to answer the call, not even bothering to look at the caller's ID before lifting the mobile up to his right ear. "Hello?" he spoke into the phone, his voice tired.

But as soon as he recognized the voice coming from the other end of the phone line, he didn't feel tired from working the whole day anymore. "Officer Puck—I mean, Jorge?" Matthew's voice echoed through the phone.

"Matthew! Do you have any news?" Jorge asked eagerly.

"Yep, actually, I do," he told Jorge calmly. "Just like I had thought, Tyler is indeed here in Jacksonville."

Jorge suddenly felt anxious, and he had to make a brief pause before responding, trying to make his suddenly racing heart calm down before he had a heart attack. "Are you sure?" he couldn't stop himself from asking.

"Yes, he's definitely here." Matthew made a short pause. "But there's something else I need to tell you."

"What is it?" Jorge asked, suddenly curious.

"Tyler is not the only one I found here," Matthew explained hesitantly, letting his voice hanging the air for a moment. For some reason, he did not elaborate any further, but there was actually no need for him to.

Jorge's eyes widened as the meaning behind Matthew's words slowly sunk in. "Wait, do you mean that..." He shook his head from one side to the other, struggling to say the words that seemed to have gotten caught in his throat. "Sam and Melanie are in Jacksonville?" he finally asked, his mouth suddenly feeling unusually dry.

"Exactly," Matthew replied, before explaining, "I just thought I should warn you about who you might be running into while you're here."

"I appreciate that, but that actually doesn't change anything." Jorge, for some reason, felt the need to say that, though he was not entirely sure who he was trying to convince; Matthew or himself. "I'm still going," Jorge said firmly, and made a short pause. His thoughts had grown slightly confusing after the last piece of information he'd just received. Finally, wishing the conversation to be over with so he could have a moment to think about what he had just heard, he said, "Thank you, Matthew. For everything."

"It's nothing, really," Matthew replied, apparently sensing Jorge's sudden discomfort. "I'll talk to you later."

"Yeah," Jorge replied absentmindedly, and before he could hang up himself, the line went dead.

It took a few seconds until the meaning of Matthew's words actually sunk in.

After almost a whole year, Jorge would finally be able to have his revenge for what Tyler had done. He had thought about driving a stake right through the vampire's heart every single day since the unfortunate night the previous year when his whole life had fallen apart, and now, he'd finally be able to do it.

But in that moment, there was something else in his mind.

There was a tiny possibility that he might end up coming face-to-face with his daughters, and he didn't know how he should feel about that.

He had tried to avoid the thoughts about what they had become, not wanting to think of his own daughters the way he had learned to think of vampires—monsters that existed for the single purpose of creating chaos among the human race, and the duty to protect as many people from those creatures as possible had fallen upon him. But he refused to think of both Sam and Melanie as monsters, or at least not until he had any kind of proof that the two girls he knew were actually gone for good, but even the single thought of it already pained him.

Even though he still couldn't know for sure if he'd actually come across the two, the single knowledge that meeting them was in fact a possibility was already enough to make him feel extremely nervous and anxious, mostly because he had no idea what he'd do if he ever met them again. What should he do? What should he say? How should he act? Even if he believed that the twins were still the same people they used to be, he couldn't ignore the fact that they were both vampires now.

And what if…What if they aren't the same? He couldn't stop the thought he had been struggling to avoid from slipping into his mind.

Jorge had never considered staking them, even if he had the chance; even if his own life depended on it. They were his daughters, and nothing in the world would ever change that. Even if the truth was that they were now monsters in the shape of his daughter, wearing their bodies like they were some kind of living disguise, he'd still look at them and see Sam and Melanie.

He had tried to protect them from all that. He had done his best to try to give them a normal and safe life, away from anything that had to do with the supernatural, but he had failed terribly. Instead of protecting them, he ended up being the one responsible for making them cross the line between normality and supernatural. They were pushed away from their own lives and became part of a world they didn't even know that existed, and there was no way to bring them back.

The truth was that Jorge blamed himself for what had happened. He blamed himself for not killing Tyler as well when he killed the female vampire. He blamed himself for being so clueless about what was going on; for not knowing about Tyler's desire for revenge. He blamed himself for not being there to protect the twins against Tyler. He blamed himself for not being able to stop Tyler from taking away their lives. He blamed himself for letting them go.

He had kept all that guilt bottled up inside of him for the past whole year, but now, it all came crashing down over him, and his hands clenched into fists as the desire for revenge grew even bigger inside of him, overwhelming him with anger and hatred for the vampire that had destroyed his whole life.

He remained silent and unmoving like that for a few minutes, trying to make himself calm down before standing up from the couch and walking toward the staircase a few steps behind the couch.

When he reached the second floor, he walked down the hallway. His legs seemed to have developed a will of their own, guiding him to the place he had done his best to avoid for the past twelve months.

He found himself stepping into Sam's room, a place that brought back memories he had done his best to bury deep inside of his mind, but now, he let them all surface and engulf him.

He suddenly felt as if Sam was standing there right in front of him, the white part of her eyes red and black veins under her eyes, her hands covering her mouth as she screamed in pain, since her fangs were coming out for the first time, and apparently, that hurt a lot. He remembered seeing the shock in her eyes as soon as she caught sight of her face in the mirror. But most importantly, he remembered the pain he felt when he looked at her face and saw her become the thing he dreaded the most in the world.

The blood stain was still on the wall, near the window. It wasn't really big—he could even classify it as tiny—but its presence still held a huge meaning to him.

Jorge remembered the day he moved in that house, a few days after he had been released from the hospital. The first room he visited was precisely that one, and he found himself standing in that same spot he was standing in right now. That was also the day he found out the explanation as to how Sam had completed the transition into a vampire. He knew that she needed to drink human blood within the next 24 hours after Tyler had turned her or else she would die, a fact that had been being discussed downstairs in the living room by Pam and Jorge before they heard Sam scream. They had come to the decision that they should let Sam decide whether or not she'd complete the transition. They'd explain everything to her and let her make her choice, since they both knew it would be completely unfair to make that decision for her; it was her life, not theirs.

But Tyler didn't seem to want either Sam or Melanie to have that choice, since he made sure they'd both complete the transition by leaving a blood bag for Sam somewhere in her room and a girl compelled to cut herself for Melanie to feed on. At first, the only one Jorge could be sure had been done by Tyler was the first one; the note attached to the empty blood bag left no doubt about that. He was only sure about the second one when he found out that the wound on the dead girl's wrist could only have been self-inflicted, and Jorge couldn't think of any explanation for that other than mind-compulsion.

After eyeing his surroundings for another long moment, he calmly left the room and walked to his office.

There, he walked straight to his desk and rounded it, pausing when he was standing right in front of the painting that hung on the wall behind the chair. He eyed the painting of a black horse running through a green field for less than a second before holding the painting by the sides of its white frame and calmly pulling it off the wall.

He placed the painting carefully on the floor, resting its back against the wall, before looking up once again, staring at what had been hidden behind the painting.

A safe.

He quickly entered the combination by pressing the metal buttons right under the tiny green screen, which made the safe door open with a low beep.

He didn't only keep money or things of monetary value inside that safe. There were also things that had some kind of emotional value for him in there, and some that he didn't want anyone to know he still had with him.

As he looked through the things inside the safe and kept searching for what he was looking for, he came across two newspaper pages he had carefully folded together about a year ago. He hesitantly picked them up and unfolded the two, separating them.

They were both pages from the Seattle Tribute obituaries, but each one of them was from a different year. On the first one, which was from 2007, he read:

Ryan Puckett, 02/13/1990-05/29/2007, killed in a car accident.

And on the other one, this one from the year before, 2012, he read:

Samantha Puckett, 04/17/1994-12/17/2012, murdered.

Melanie Puckett, 04/17/1994-12/17/2012, murdered.

Jorge held the two pages in front of his eyes for a few more seconds, before finally putting them back inside the safe. And that was when he spotted what he had been looking for all along. He picked it up in his shaky hands and held it folded for a moment, before unfolding it and staring down at the familiar handwriting written on the piece of paper in his hands.

Sam's letter.

He had read it so many times that he had soon come to memorizing it, but he still got it out of the safe sometimes to simply run his eyes over it. Pam didn't understand why he still kept it, and he knew that she never would. He still kept the letter because it gave him hope; it made him think that his daughters weren't actually gone like Pam thought.

As he thought back at his ex-wife, her words echoed inside his mind.

"Sam and Melanie are dead. You can't change that, and even if you ever find them, what's the point of bringing them back? They're not our daughters anymore."

Pam was wrong, she had to be. And he'd show her that. Now, the possibility of meeting the twins again didn't entirely frighten him. He even let a small smile spread across his lips as he thought about it.

He had found them.

Jorge sighed, finally tearing his eyes away from the letter. And that was when he realized that there was something weird about his office. The papers on his desk weren't the way he had left them. It seemed as if someone had been looking through his stuff and didn't even bother to put everything back where it had been before.

He looked around, wondering how someone could—

The sound of his cell phone ringing filled the air once again, and he hurried to answer the incoming call, thinking that it could be Matthew. But when he looked at the caller ID he saw that it wasn't Matthew, but Carl, an officer that worked with him at the station.

"What is it?" he asked quickly, his voice earning a serious and professional tone. He then heard Carl's voice telling him that they needed him at the station immediately.

The preoccupation with the papers on his desk vanished from his mind quickly as he listened to Carl's words carefully and absentmindedly laid the letter he had been holding on the desk right in front of him. When the phone call was over, his mind was completely focused on what the other officer had just described to him, so he hurried to close the safe, before putting the painting back on the wall.

Jorge then walked out of his office hurriedly, before quickly leaving the house, headed to the Seattle Police Station.

Freddie Benson

Freddie breathed out a sigh of relief when he heard the front door closing shut downstairs, before hesitantly stepping out of his hiding place. He had struggled for several painful seconds to think of safe place where he could hide until, in the worst possible scenario he allowed himself to imagine, Jorge went to sleep.

Jorge's office was the first room he discarded as a possible hiding place, just like Jorge's room, another room he could only assume had previously been Pam's and the bathroom in the hallway. And the only possibility there was left was Sam's room.

But as he walked out of the office and stood by the beginning of the staircase that led to the first floor of the house, he heard a question that made his heart beat like crazy and his mind go numb for a second.

"Wait, do you mean that... Sam and Melanie are in Jacksonville?"

Jorge was clearly on the phone, and even though a little voice in the back of his head kept telling Freddie that Jorge could go upstairs at any second, he suddenly found himself unable to move from where he stood. But after several seconds, he finally managed to make his legs move and started walking down the hallway, headed to Sam's room.

He practically tip-toed into the room, avoiding at all costs looking in the direction of the blood-stained wall and walking straight through the door that led to the bathroom. He left the door just like he had found it—partially open, which would allow him to hear the sound of any one of the doors in the house closing shut.

He didn't dare to move an inch while Jorge was still in the house, fearing that even the lowest sound would end up giving away his presence, and his heart almost jumped right out of his chest when Jorge walked inside Sam's bedroom.

But soon enough, Freddie heard the sound of Jorge descending the stairs and closing the front door shut soon after that, and a huge wave of relief washed over him as soon as he realized that he was alone in the house once again.

He silently made his way back to Jorge's office, still afraid to make any sound. He suddenly remembered the mess he had made in the office, and he knew that he had to put everything back where it had been before he left, or else Jorge would know someone had been there.

He quickly walked over to Jorge's desk and was about to start organizing all those papers when something that hadn't been there when he had left the office a few minutes ago caught his eye. He stared at it curiously for a moment, before reaching out for the small piece of paper resting on the desk and picking it up.

And when he laid his eyes on it, his heart sank.

He found himself holding the letter he had been looking for all along, which was the reason he was there in that house in the first place.

Freddie recognized Sam's handwriting right away, and his heart started beating faster as he read the letter he held right before his eyes. He lost track of time as he simply stood there, reading and re-reading the letter several times.

And as everything he had heard the previous day dawned on him once again, a thought he would have judged as impossible not seventy-two hours ago slipped into his mind, and right now, he couldn't deny the truth in those words.

Sam is alive.

That thought echoed inside his head over a million times, but its meaning took some time to actually sink in, and when that finally happened, a smile spread across Freddie's lips. He couldn't believe it, but it was true. Sam had been alive all along.

But... How was it possible? If she and Melanie were alive, then why did they fake their own deaths? Why would they lie to everyone? Why would they make everyone who cared about them go through so much suffering for absolutely no reason? Why did they even have to leave in the first place, like Sam said in the letter? And why would their parents agree to that, and even play along?

Freddie didn't have the answer to any of those questions, but he expected to have them all soon. He needed to get to the bottom of that story, and he was determined to do it, no matter what he'd have to do to get there.

He suddenly remembered what he had heard just a few minutes earlier, and he was suddenly sure of what he'd do next.

He'd go to Jacksonville.

But he'd go on his own. He had already dragged Gibby into too much danger that night, and he'd better go on by himself. He'd just have to tell Gibby that he hadn't found anything in the house, and he was sure Gibby would believe that, since he didn't think Freddie would actually find anything in there in the first place.

Freddie folded the letter and stuffed it inside his pocket, not actually caring if Jorge realized it was missing, before walking down the stairs hurriedly and walking out the back door.

And as soon as he stepped outside, he ran into Gibby, who seemed to be about to go inside.

"What are you doing here?" Freddie whispered to his friend, who seemed to be out of breath.

"I was going in there to get you!" Gibby whispered back, his tone urgent. "What took you so long? It's been almost twenty minutes since Jorge left, but you wouldn't leave! I thought he had killed you!"

Freddie couldn't stop himself from rolling his eyes at him. "He wouldn't have killed me if he had seen me," Freddie told Gibby, who didn't seem completely convinced.

"I still had to be sure," Gibby replied, shaking his head lightly. "So does that mean he didn't see you?"

"Yeah, but he was close. If whoever called him hadn't called, I'd be at the police station right now, behind a set of bars," Freddie answered, and made a brief pause. "I think we should get the hell out of here before Jorge comes back home," he added.

"Yeah, we should," Gibby agreed, and the two rounded the house quickly before making their way back to Freddie's car.

As Freddie drove to Gibby's house, where he'd drop his friend off, a tense silence built up inside the car. Freddie knew Gibby had several questions in his mind in that moment, but his friend refused to voice them for some reason, as if hesitant to speak.

After a few minutes, though, Gibby suddenly broke the silence. "So... Did you find anything?" he asked, sounding pretty hesitant as he looked out the window, and Freddie waited a few seconds before answering, which made Gibby wonder if he had even heard him.

"Not really," Freddie replied lowly. "I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did hear something interesting."

"How interesting?" Gibby asked, raising an eyebrow at his friend.

"I heard Jorge talking to someone on the phone, and he was talking about going to Jacksonville," Freddie said.

"And?" Gibby asked, sounding impatient.

"That trip seems like a big deal to him," Freddie replied, not taking his eyes off the road. He was trying to make it seem like he was trying to see something where there was actually nothing to see, thinking that Jorge's trip to Jacksonville had something to do with the twins, but when actually, to Gibby, it clearly seemed like it didn't.

"And how can that be so interesting?" Gibby asked, sounding slightly annoyed.

"Well, don't you think that probably means something?" Freddie asked.

"No, it doesn't!" Gibby exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air in frustration. "Freddie, listen to me. I thought that maybe this little insane plan of yours to break into Jorge's house would open your eyes, but I can clearly see that it didn't! I hoped that after you found nothing in there, you'd finally be able to get this out of the way and live your life! I'm sorry that I have to be the one to say this, but you have to move on!"

"Well, that's the thing, Gibby," Freddie began, his voice earning a serious tone as he tried to keep his voice low and controlled, something Gibby was clearly not making a single effort to do, "I don't think I can move on."

"You have to! You have to live your life! Do you really think Sam would want this for you if she was still here? Do you really think that she'd want you to keep hurting over her death like this, letting your life pass you by? You have to forget about her!" As Gibby spoke, Freddie parked the car in front of Gibby's house, but he didn't turn off the engine.

"I know you're right, Gibby, trust me. But I just…" Freddie shook his head lightly, closing his eyes, before opening them again a moment later, finally looking up at his friend. "I just can't forget about her, no matter how much I try to," he whispered.

Gibby stared at him for a long moment, until he finally sighed in defeat. He grabbed the door handle and pushed the car door open, before stepping out of Freddie's car. "I'm your friend, Freddie, and I just want the best for you. Don't forget that," Gibby said, before closing the car door shut loudly without even waiting for a reply and turning around.

Freddie watched as his friend made his way up to the front porch, where he paused to send a quick glance toward Freddie's car, before vanishing from sight as soon as he closed the front door shut behind him.

Freddie let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.

He didn't like arguing with his friend, but making Gibby think that his trip to Jacksonville wouldn't lead anywhere would prevent his friend from wanting to go with him. Even though Gibby was his best male friend, he wanted to go after Sam alone.

That last thought brought a smile back to his lips as he drove away from Gibby's house and headed to Bushwell Plaza.

Since the night his mother had showed up at Carly's apartment to give everyone the news that Sam and Melanie were dead, since that very moment, the thing he wished for the most in the world was to find out that all that had been a lie, and that Sam was still alive somewhere. And now, it was finally happening.

And he'd find her, no matter what he had to do.


Author's Note: Uhhhh, so Freddie is going to Jacksonville, and so is Jorge. Things are gonna get interesting real fast... ;P

Thank you so much for reading! ;D

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xxiCarlyFanxx