After I tucked Zack in (yes, I know what you're thinking: why would a responsible mother like Zoe let her ten year old stay up until midnight? Well, for your information, Zack just happened to be doing his homework for school), I went into my room, and sat down on the bed. I sat there for a long time before Justin came through the door that connected our rooms.

"Hey, you alright?" He asked when he saw that I was just sitting on my bed staring at the door.

"Not really." I decided to be honest, I mean, he was my partner. He came over and sat down next to me, and for some reason I felt safe.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"When I came home today, Hannibal was on the doorstep. And he didn't want to see me, he wanted to see Zoe." I said every word dripping with disdain.

"And you're jealous." he said, nodding.

"Yeah, I'm jealous. I mean he's my dad, not hers. He promised me he'd be back." I started to cry just a tad.

"He is back." Justin started to rub small circles on my back.

"I know, but he doesn't want to see me. Not anymore. My God, I am so angry with him; but I don't feel angry. I just...I feel empty. There's nothing left." I sobbed and he pulled me into a hug that I was so thankful for.

"Don't let the emptiness control you," He whispered in my ear. "You need to use your anger and frustration about feeling empty for your advantage. Don't do what I did." 'I shouldn't,' he thought as he held me close to him. But he did it anyway. He brought his mouth up and kissed my temple, making me feel so safe, I felt like I could stay there forever. I rested my head on his shoulder, and he gently laid his chin on the back of my head. I don't know how long we were there, but after a while, I closed my eyes, and fell asleep on his shoulder.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~

'Oh, great,' I thought as I slowly ambled through the hallway of my high school. 'Another meeting, another disappointed teacher. I absolutely did not want to have another meeting. Every time I go into one of these things, I always get yelled at for nothing. I understand that I get good grades, but I realize that I didn't have the best attitude towards anyone when they started to complain about their lives and how horrible their chores are. It made me mad to hell that they can't even imagine how upset over how my life turned out. When I opened the door, Mrs. Wawrzynek looked up from her papers at me.

"Sit down," She motioned towards the desk right in front of her. When I sat down she sighed. "You acted out again, Anita."

"I know." I nodded slightly.

"Why?"

"Rachel was talking about how she hated her dad and mom because they were making her go to Yosemite this summer. How they make her feel like a child." I said a little sterner than I probably should have.

"She didn't know." Wawrzynek came back with the same amount of sternness. She then pulled out a manila folder, opened it, and began writing on the paper inside. "Maybe you living with Zoe isn't the best idea-"

"Don't even say that!" I stood up from my desk and went over to hers. "Living with her is the best place for me! She is the one that helps me through everything!"

She stood up and pretty much towered over me, her being six four, and me being just over five foot. "Sit down, Ms. King!" We glared at each other as I took a seat. "You need to learn to respect your elders! And believe it or not, many of the other teachers, including myself, care about what happens to you. You need to stop this messing around about your father and think of your future. You need to make good plans; you can't just walk your way through life, like you are right now."

"Oh, yeah, like getting good grades is walking through life! Because I'm obviously Fiyero from Wicked!" I shouted, and she didn't get it. "Wicked? It's a musical?" Still nothing. "Whatever."

"Look," Oh, great, she's giving me that look again. "If I hear about anymore outbreaks from any of your teachers, I will make sure that you are put into a different home. Do I make myself clear?" I didn't answer. "Ms. King?"

"We're clear." I said lowly defeated. "We're clear." I then got up, and walked out and was pretty much ready to go ahead and quit my last two weeks of high school.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~

I opened my eyes to find that I was staring at my window. I flipped my quilt off of me, and got out of bed. "Did I go out last night?" I said to myself as I checked the chest in the corner where I keep all of my weapons.

"No, you didn't." That all too familiar voice said behind me. I spun around to my find my...father leaning on my door. We stared at each other like arch enemies would in a comic book; many of which I had collected and placed in a pile by the door. They were mostly Batman, Daredevil and Green Lantern comics, but that's besides the point. "We need to talk."

"Damn right we do." I sat down at my computer chair, which spins so that makes it all the more fun. "So, talk."

Awkward silence. After a few minutes, Hannibal spit out, "I'm glad to see you've grown up."

"That was so fan-fucking-tastic, that I almost cared. Now, unless you are going to talk about something more important, like why you were gone for, oh, I don't know, 15 years, then I have better things to do." I got up and started for the door, when I tried to open it, he pinned himself against it.

"I didn't come back when I had planned, because during those two weeks, I was kidnapped and turned."

"By who? Another Danica Talos you met in a pub?" His face became very dark.

"Don't you dare say that name to me." His voice was full of hate at both her and me.

"You know, I used to idolize you because of what you went through all those years back. But then, I had a lapse of my own, lasting about three months. By a Talos descendant no less."

Suddenly his face dropped, "They got you?" Hannibal's voice was so concerned that I almost bad for being mean to him.

"Yeah. Wanna see it? It looks exactly like yours." I pulled down the waistband of the pants I wore last night just enough for him to see it. "The same place too. Novak made sure of that."

"I so wanted to keep you from all of this." Now that I could not believe.

"Really? So, leaving us was for the better?" He looked down at me who was looking right back up at him with his look.

"I left so that I could find a place for us to live where there were no vampires. So that you, Zoe, and I can live as a normal family. But the moment that cab pulled away, I was bound and gagged and bitten, and kept in a small town in the middle of West Virginia."

Okay, so I started to cave in. "You haven't aged a day." I observed.

He nodded. "It's a side effect of the first bite. When Sommerfield first treated me, not everything was completely 'deleted'. The 'no aging' of the vampires was the gene that was not destroyed. So, if I make it to 80, I'm going to look like this. It makes me kind of sad, I wanted to grow old." I was now so caved in, I was almost to tears.

"Do you think that's gonna happen to me?" He was close to tears as well.

"God, I hope not." And then, we hugged each other like we should have last night.

"I missed you, Daddy." I cried into his shoulder.

"I missed you too, Squirt. God, you don't know how much I've missed you." He hugged me tighter than he had ever had before. And I did just the same to him.