I am so, so sorry for how long it's taken for me to update. These past few months have just been crazy, first there was a lot in school, then I had a work- experience at the hospital and it left barely any energy or time to use for writing. Then I was back in school with not too much left of actual school but then we needed to fix everything for graduation because I was in my last year. And so there was graduation and then finally- now I have loads of time to write yay!

Leoni123: As an answer to your review on when the past catches up. No! The girl on the bus isn't Lexy. The girl on the bus is actually me, myself and I and no one else. Thank you for your review and I'm glad you took the time to R and R.

Enjoy!

I lost count of time while I sat there on my knees in front of the empty chair I had just been pretending that Luce sat on but that had now gone back to being just an ordinary empty chair. But yet I didn't move from sitting on my knees in front of the chair with staring with empty eyes towards the chair and barely noticing what was going on around me until I felt George's hand on the back of my shoulder.

"You alright?" I nodded, still looking down yet doing my best to keep it convincing- even though it was getting hard to do so. And yet I couldn't gather the courage to put my soles against the floor and stand up- as I told George to leave me alone. "Are you sure?" I nodded, but then gathered all of my strength to get up on my feet and ten turned around and left the quiet room and ran the fastest I could up the stairs.

I had barely closed the door to my room and pulled the bureau to the door to keep anyone from entering the room and then I couldn't hold myself upright anymore and simply collapsed on the floor. I couldn't move and just laid there breathing heavily for several minutes. All of my senses seemed to be shut off and everything got blurry- sounds just as much as my vision.

I knew it- I knew he was dead- there was such a tiny itsy bitsy chance for Luce to make it from Gota and hear. He just had to be dead. And maybe as I already knew getting the news about that wouldn't be quite as hard then as they would have been if I hadn't known.

Mum and Aaron had been killed by a bomb, dad and Sophie had gotten shot the same day as I was even though I survived. I couldn't know how Luce died- but I guess he was because I just felt so empty- like I had no one left- I had no family left, I was in a whole new country with whole new people that did barely know anything about where I came from.

I looked up to the wall that had written "Love is stronger than hate" and for a moment got lost to when it had become the motto of me and what was left of my family at that point- because it had been right after the first blow that split my family up from killing our mum and our baby brother.

Flashback

"I just can't believe they're gone." Sophie said for at least the hundredth time that evening as she stood and looked out the window to where we had put up two crosses in the memory of our so beloved family members. The other who were left of us- me, Luce and all of ours dad sat around the table. Dad sat with his head in his hand staring what seemed like callously in front of him, I sat with one hand shoved in my pocket and the other palm resting against dad's back to give the support I could, Luce now stood up and went over to Sophie.

He laid his arms around her lying his hands towards her back, she turned towards him and buried her face in Luce's ragged T- shirt. She cried silently, and the only thing that we could hear was her sniveling and sometimes just a tiny little whimper. I wanted to get up and hug her too- but at the same time I didn't want to leave dad.

Dad had been sitting like that, staring right in front of him since we came in after putting up those crosses. Sophie had been standing by the window- I guess no one of us really knew what to say or what to do because I guess the only thing we all wanted was to take away the pain- both from ourselves and from our loved ones. Even I and Sophie- at ten years old would have done anything to take the pain from the others even if it so meant we were keeping ours.

We heard airplanes- the bombing planes go low under our house and I gripped tightly onto dad's hand. He finally stood up and all four of us we silently walked down to the cellar. It was barely safe enough but at least safer than what we would be up on the ground and in the house if another bomb hit us.

But when we heard them go off we knew they were- once again bombing the town of Reesh- five kilometers away from where we lived in the outcasts of Lulei. Dad sat on his own again, his hands out together and almost whispering prayers in Gote- the language that had belonged to people in Gota- but that had died out more and more during the last decades.

I wasn't great with understanding Gote and could only understand if someone spoke slowly and with easy words- dad had grown up with it being the only language of his parents- even though at this point almost everyone in Gota had English as their first language- and even if I had been better dad's words were too quiet and too fast for me to tell them from each other.

Luce sat down on the floor with one of his arms around Sophie who sat crouched under his arm and still leaning against him. I walked over and sat down on Luce's other side and he laid his right arm around my shoulders as I leaned against him and reached for Sophie's hand.

"I hate them" Sophie whimpered as we heard another bomb going off in Reesh. "I hate them all." I didn't answer, I didn't know what more to say as Luce pulled us both closer, and it wasn't until then dad suddenly pushed himself up and came walking over to us, kneeling in front of his oldest and looking over the three of us.

"I know you hate them Soph…" He said- with us being so hard to tell apart that's what people would say not being able to see who was who. "I know we all do." He took Sophie's hand in his and squeezed it. "But you know, hate is what get people into war so during this one thing you always need to remember is that love is the strongest power. No matter how hard people will fight to get their victory, no matter how much the government fight with themselves. Love is always going to win and do you know why?" I reached out my hand and dad took mine in his bigger hand.

"Because love is always stronger than hate."

End of flashback

When my eyes fluttered open I laid on my side on the floor in my room, apart from me and the stuff I had- the room was empty. That was good I could guess- I didn't want anyone to think that I was weak for blacking out being overwhelmed and then getting more overwhelmed by a flashback.

As I pushed myself up and hugged my pillow to my chest I felt warm, salt tears running silently down my cheeks. "Everything I've ever loved has been taken away from me." I half whimpered, half whispered. "So how could love still be stronger than hate when there is nothing left for me to love but so much more to hate?"

I was asking the question more to myself than to anyone else. Or maybe to God- if there was one- I hadn't been able to believe in one for a long time because how could I believe in something that let one place having so much it would have my whole family getting ripped away from me in the cruelest ways.

I laid down again, too weak to hold myself upright. And then the thought about Michael and Molli crossed my mind. Maybe that was it, maybe the reason Molli had been forgiving her brother because she was so little- and when you're that little and too little to know what's going on in the world- you just know that love is stronger than hate.

And love would also be stronger than fear, stronger than loneliness- which was something we had learned from our neighbor Faiz. His wife- Teresia had been injured in the bomb that hit our village- badly- the one that killed my mother and little brother. The closest thing we got to a hospital was in Reesh- and that was what was bombed the day dad for the first time explained how low would always be stronger than hate.

Faiz and Teresia had had two children- the oldest- Magdolna was good friend's with me and Sophie. She was one year younger than us- and was eight at the time her mother died. The youngest was a few years younger- and even though Alvaro had still been almost two years older than Aaron at six years old by then- they had always played well together.

They had been talking about sending Magdolna and Alvaro to safety in Great Britain or somewhere. But they came to the conclusion that maybe it would be the best to just keep the whole family together. Just like we talked Luce into letting our family stick together- and now we could see how that had went… but well… now we were talking about Faiz's family.

After Teresia had been killed, Faiz saw fact better than we could- he decided to let send Magdolna and Alvaro to Great Britain, they tried to talk me and Sophie into doing it too but we still refused and so Magdie and Alvaro were sent away. A year and a half later Faiz went into another one of the neighbor- towns and right there and right then another bomb went off- since then we hadn't heard anything from him we had understood that he had been killed.

And then a few months after that Luce had come running into the house getting some of his things, and after that he had constantly been on the run from the police. There was no way he could have made it this far.

I would just have to face the fact that I was never going to see my brother again.

I laid my head down towards the floor as I couldn't even gather enough energy to hold it up. Closed my eyes as I couldn't bear to hold them open. And then- without really meaning to do just that I started drifting off to unconsciousness

I was running in a forest with Luce's voice echoing around me "Hello, Sophia. Here I am come here." I kept on running back and forth, to the right and to the left, I thought I saw him everywhere but all the time it turned out to be just another tree and I kept on running with my breaths getting faster and more shallow for every step I took.

With a sharp intake of breath my eyes flew open, from the ground floor a loud knocking was heard on the front door as I pushed myself up into a sitting position and leaned against my bookshelf and hugged my knees. And after just a few seconds I stood up and walked down the stairs.

Michael POV

Molli was in the garden doing something, Mike had asked her to leave when our father came so I and dad would get some talking done on our own. I sat in the room I had been sleeping tonight twisting my sweaty palms towards each other as I heard Mike go and open the door and greet my father.

Dad greeted Mike back- and I could hear his voice for the first time in months, my body was trembling from head to toe while I heard their two pairs of footsteps coming closer and then Mike showing my dad into the room where I sat and looked up just as dad saw me and he stopped in the middle of a step.

"Michael?"

This chapter is kind of short. But if I continued it, it would be too much going on in one chapter so I'll end it there. Cliffy, cliffy.