Jessica was missing.

After the other girls had woken up and found out Tiffany had left, Jessica had quietly slipped out the door in the confusion. And now, she had been missing for more than four hours and no one knew where the hell she had gone. Her phone was turned off and she hadn’t even taken a jacket with her.

Things were a mess.

Just when Taeyeon was about to throw in the towel and call the Lee’s, Nayeong, Jaesung, Office Choi and the entire Seoul police force in her desperation, someone walked through the door.

At first Taeyeon thought it was Tiffany, thought the thug had come back and never left Korea at all. But at second glance, Taeyeon saw the stray strands of brunette hair sticking out from underneath the hood.

It was Jessica.

Jessica was home.

Taeyeon almost burst into tears and immediately ran forwards to engulf the younger girl in a hug. It had been a brutal day for Taeyeon and she was close to having a breakdown. She had never been so happy to see Jessica. Tiffany was already gone, Taeyeon couldn’t bear the thought of losing Jessica too, Taeyeon hugged the brunette hard and lifted her right off the ground in her relief. Jessica flinched and yelped. Her hood fell back and Taeyeon almost dropped the brunette in shock.

Jessica’s lip was cut and her left cheek was swollen, limiting the vision in her left eye.

“OMO! Jeshika! What happened?” Taeyeon exclaimed, immediately dropping the girl and bringing one trembling hand to caress Jessica’s battered face.

Jessica looked straight into Taeyeon’s eyes, her almond orbs watery and b with tears.

Then Jessica collapsed onto her knees and sobbed half of her heart out.

The other half was somewhere high in the skies, on route to San Francisco.

Jessica cried. She cried for the pain and worry she saw in Taeyeon’s eyes. She cried for how utterly stupid she had been. She cried for all the grief and sorrow she had felt and witnessed in these past few days. She cried for the uncertainty that was their future. She cried for the loss of a little girl she had too little time to know. She cried for the pain she knew Tiffany was going through but she herself could never understand and share. She cried for it all and still, she thought she had more to cry for. The world’s tears were not enough.

Taeyeon knelt beside Jessica and held the sobbing girl, her own tears running down in endless rivulets, mixing with Jessica’s own.

In truth, Taeyeon wanted someone to hold her, to baby her, to protect her and tell her that everything was going to be taken care of, that it didn’t have to fall on her shoulders alone. But she needed to hold it all together, even if it meant she would break her back doing it. She had to believe Tiffany would come back for them. She had to make sure Tiffany had something to come back to. She had to keep Tiffany’s family together; because that is who they were to Tiffany now. The girl had no one else. They were all she had.

“Shhh…Sooyeon…let it all out…let it all out…”

Jessica cried and cried until she thought she had been drier than the Sahara desert, and not once did Taeyeon lose her grip on her. The kid-leader held her firmly in her embrace, never letting Jessica go. With time, Jessica’s sobs softened into little hiccups and quiet sniffles.

“I’m sorry Taengoo.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“I promise to try harder, to be stronger, to not be so useless…to…to make you worry less.”

“It’s ok.”

“No. It’s not. You shouldn’t have to bear everything alone. Neither of us should.”

“Then…let’s bear it together, ok?”

“Ok…where…where are the others?”

“They went out to look for you. I should probably send them a message telling them you’re home. Give me a second.”

“Mmhmm.”

“…Done.”

“Taengoo?”

“Yea?”

“Mianhe…”

“Yah Sooyeon, what did I just say? We’ll be there for each other, you’ll hold me when I want to cry and sob like a little baby and I’ll hold you when you need me to. There is nothing to be sorry for. Now…tell me what happened.”

“…”

“Sooyeon, I promise I won’t be mad. Just tell me where you went.”

“I…I wanted to understand Stephanie’s pain. I wanted to understand so I could help her.”

“So you got yourself beat up?”

“Yea…I went to a boxing gym… It all sounds so stupid and foolish now. I wasn’t thinking right when I went…I…I’m really very sorry I was such an idiot.”

“Hey, it’s ok. We all have our moments. Though…this particular one is quite…”

“Imbecilic?”

“Yea… But that’s fine, just make sure you don’t make the same mistake. Or if you do, at least have the courtesy to take me with you. I don’t mind seeing what all the fuss is about. Seeing as both you and the thug have done it, I must conclude that there is some sort of attraction to getting yourself wailed on, some sort of inner fulfillment that comes with the pain.”

“Yah…”

“I’m kidding. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up before the girls come home and freak out. I think seeing Tippany come home this morning like a live advertisement for domestic violence was enough for one day.”

“I doubt there’s much you can do to cover up my mess of a face…”

“Gawd Jeshika…”

“It’s bad isn’t it?”

“Well we’ve both seen worse on Pany, I just never thought I would see the day a princess like you would get beaten black and blue…”

“Hey now…”

“What?”

“Only Tiff can call me princess. No one else.”

“Yeesh…okay whatever. Up you get! Let’s take a look at those cuts. Come on.”

“Taengoo…?”

“You don’t even need to say it Sooyeon-ah. Gratitude should be given to someone who’s done something for you that is beyond what they should have done. I’m only doing what I should be doing.”

Jessica rested her chin on Taeyeon’s shoulder and hugged the shorter girl tight from behind. Taeyeon was one in a million, and Jessica was beyond blessed to have a friend…no sister, in Taeyeon.

“Steph was right…you make a great leader Taengoo…”

Taeyeon chuckled and reached back to lightly muss Jessica’s hair. The two then waddled side-to-side like ducks to the bathroom, with Jessica still attached to Taeyeon’s waist, trying to keep their legs from tangling.

Despite everything, they still had each other.

And they would be alright.

For Tiffany’s sake, they had to be alright.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stephanie’s dress was stuffy and the lace kept brushing against her legs, making her itchy. She hated wearing dresses, but Dom had made her. She stood there, holding babygirl’s hands, looking around her at all the people that came.

They were all strangers. No one she really knew.

Then there was Uncle Richard. But he was a stranger in his own right.

Nevertheless the rest were people mom and dad worked with, people who Stephanie was never really familiar with. She had seen most of them once or twice when mom and dad brought them to dinners, but apart from these people exclaiming about how pretty and wonderful she was, they weren’t people she cared to know. Stephanie would be polite and smile and say ‘thank-you’, it was how her parents had raised her to be. Then she would run off and forget all the strange faces, more interested in playing with babygirl and the other children.

Stephanie would see her parents smile and talk to these people, but it always seemed to Stephanie that mom and dad were happier when it was just them. Just their family. These strangers were nice. But they weren’t family.

So imagine her surprise when all these people showed up to her mom and dad’s funeral. Dom had called it mom and dad’s ‘goodbye gathering’. But Stephanie was 12, and she understood what this was. It honestly made her mad that Dom was treating her as a child. He hadn’t even been there! He wasn’t there to see mom torn apart and laid out like those dead raccoons on the road that Stephanie sometimes saw. He wasn’t there to hold dad and lie to him as he died. He wasn’t there when she tried desperately to look for Jaxon in the fiery wreckage, screaming like some mad person. He wasn’t there when Stephanie was left all alone on that dark winding road, crying for someone to help her.

He wasn’t there at all!

He wasn’t there when she needed him most, when she had no one else to turn to. Her brother, who had promised to always protect her, was not there. He had left them and gone to the stupid military. He had made mom cry herself to sleep for weeks on end. He had made dad angry. He had left. Stephanie couldn’t help but think that if Dom hadn’t left, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

So how dare he sugarcoat it and treat her like some idiot? This was a funeral for dead people. Their parents had died. Horribly. It was the least Dom could do to tell it straight. Did it hurt him less to think of this as a ‘goodbye gathering? Well sor-rey! He hadn’t been there, so he shouldn’t be taking this harder than she was. He didn’t have the right to hide himself from the truth, to make this better than it was. He didn’t have the right to hide behind his anger and his gross smelling drinks that always made him a huge mess to deal with. He didn’t have the right to go out every other night and come home smelly and bloody, leaving her to kiss his boo boos and patch him up.

Stephanie looked around her. These people were crying. Like really crying. Tears and snot and everything. Who were mom and dad to them? Had they loved mom and dad more than Stephanie loved mom and dad? Is that why they were crying and she wasn’t? She glanced to her left at Dominic, who was standing stone-faced. Between Stephanie and him, he had taken their parent’s deaths the hardest. Babygirl was too young to understand what was going on and Jaxon…well Jaxon didn’t even know.

For some