GHOST PROTOCOL {JLU/DP}

• MONTHS •

IT'S BEEN SIX MONTHS. HALF OF a year.

Sam can't believe it.

Danny had been dead for six months.

Tucker hadn't spoken in six months.

Jazz had been disappearing to no where for six months.

Maddie Fenton hadn't moved from her spot in bed in six months.

Jack Fenton had been locked in his lab for six months.

...Sam had been on her own for six months...

"Sam?" Came her grandmother's frail-sounding voice. "It's time to get up. You have school." She reminds softly.

Both women knew that Ida Manson wanted Sam to leave the house as much as Sam wanted to wear one of those stupid dresses her mother always tried to get her to wear six months ago.

Sam would love to wake up to her parents shoving one of those ugly things into her face.

She'd even put it on.

Just to see them smile for real one more time...

"I know."

"...Alright..." Ida goes to close the door when she pauses, turning to look back at her granddaughter, her granddaughter who was curled into a shaking ball under the covers of her bed, thinking Ida couldn't hear her crying. Or maybe she knew and just didn't care. "...I love you, Sammy."

"...I love you too, Grandma..."