My blood pulses through my ears, a cold sweat breaks out across my skin and black dots play with my vision. I think I might faint. Blinking rapidly I do a once over the figure standing before me. "A-A-Amber?" I manage to finally stutter out quietly from shock. After the news from Marco and hard evidence such as the photo Marco gave me, I honestly believed that she was dead. Gone for good. But yet here she is standing in front of me like she had never died.

"Geez, ya both look like ya just saw a ghost or somethin', chill would ya?" Amber looks confusedly at us before she casually goes back to fiddling to the gun in her hands like she had been before we entered.

I don't remember at what point my mouth flopped open but somehow I find myself looking between Declan and Amber, at some point my eyes widen so far that I'm surprised that they haven't fallen out yet. I know that I look like a total idiot but thankfully Declan looks even stupider than me, with his arms madly swinging around the place in front of his face. I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to do.

"Just what- argh! Blah!" I end up almost yelling weird sounds, trying to get my tongue and brain to function normally, it's easier said then done. I mean how are you honestly supposed to react to go from believing your best friend's been murdered- even though there is quite a bit of evidence- and then to suddenly see her normal self literally waiting for you on the other side of the door? How are you supposed to react?

So I do the only thing that I can do at the time, I blink, I blink again, and a couple hundred more times. I just stand there opening and closing my mouth like a fish out of water and blinking as if willing for this to somehow make sense.

Amber who had been completely oblivious to Declan and I's state of shock finally looks back up. I watch as her eyes widen when she sees us, "Ya guys okay? Wait you've been told haven't ya?" She says the last bit in a mixture of shock and worry.

"Have we been told what?! You're dead!" I don't mean to yell at her but to see her like this, breathing perfectly and completely worry-free is just so confusing to me and I don't get it. This isn't normal. I carefully scan my eyes over every square centimetre of Ambers face for any facial expressions that will clear any of the hazy confusion up or maybe some massive injury to her head that will explain all the craziness. Who am I kidding? I should be checking Declan and my head since we're the only ones that seem to be out of the loop right now. Instead of seeing anything though, Amber just looks over towards Charles who is just like Amber, looking really confusedly at Declan and I.

I look back to Amber who is now full on glaring at Charles. Charles notices this and let's out an awkward, nervous, fake laugh, "Ah, oops. I kinda forgot that you hadn't been told. You know, lost in the moment and all." He finishes lamely. I hear Amber snort but I'm too confused to say anything but stare at Charles.

"Been told what?" I ask more confused than ever with a tiny pool of nervousness building up in the pit of my stomach.

"Been told that Amber's not dead. She never was, we just faked her death." Charles rushes out while nervously playing with his hands, probably scared of our reaction. He should be scared. I honestly thought that she was dead and it really hurt. It hurt like your best friend who's close enough to be counted as your sister died. And now I hear that she wasn't actually dead, but fake died. And then to make matters worse I hear that I was only psychologically suffering because Charles forgot to tell us?!

So yeah, to say I was the slightest bit annoyed, would be a huge understatement, "You forgot to tell me that my best friend want actually dead?!" I angrily yell at him while reaching into my pocket and holding up the photo of Ambers dead body. Tears start to fill the corners of my eyes as I watch Amber and Charles's eyes widen at it. In their, oops-I-forgot, faze they never realised how hard it was for Declan and I, and as they see my state now and the photo, I think they finally realise what it's really like.

"Oh gosh, Micky, I'm so sorry. I just assumed that ya already knew what was happenin' with me and Clarence." Amber says softly while pointing behind here. Sniffling I raise a shaky hand to my face and wipe away the few tears that managed to squeeze out, and look behind Amber. Standing there is none other then the supposedly dead Clarence. Since Amber was meant to be dead isn't actually, seeing Clarence alive and breathing, doesn't really come as much of a surprise.

"It's fine, I'm okay," I'm pretty sure that everyone can tell that's it's a lie but they don't say anything to me which I'm thankful of, "Just, just tell me how you did it."

"Yeah, I'm just as confused and annoyed about this whole thing as Micky and quite frankly I want answers too. Don't get me wrong, I'm so happy to see that you're alive but Charles, it's to forget to tell us that it was faked, Charles, that's low." Declan speaks for the first time since we arrived in this room. I'm thankful that he's backing me up but I nod my head agreeing with him anyway. I honestly am really glad that Amber's alive.

"Okay well, I'm serious when I say that I did forget. I was planning to tell you guys and it was the first thing on my mind but after having to rescue you two and then forming our plan of rescuing Clark and leaving straight away, I completely forgot that you didn't know."

I bite the inside of my bottom lip hard to stop myself from yelling at Charles. If I were in his position where I knew that Amber and Clarence weren't actually dead then yeah, I could see how that could quickly get bumped down the priority list to the point where in lands in the abyss of the forgotten. I release my lip when the strong metallic taste of blood splashes onto the taste buds of my tongue. Ignoring the foul taste, I take a shaky reach and look at Charles, Clarence and Amber who have all somehow crammed together in a line, leaving Declan and I on the other side, "Look it's okay, as well as I am still a bit a annoyed, I understand. Really, I do. Anyways I'd just really like to know how you did it because it looked pretty realistic if you know what I mean."

Amber nods quickly and gets ready to start what I presume will be a long speech on how they did it but I don't miss the guilty look in her eyes when I mention how realistic her death looked. She knows that I'm hurt and that I thought she was dead. "Well, after those explosions which separated Clarence and I from you and Declan, we were alright. A bit bruised and knocked about, but we were okay, no serious injuries. We managed to get up and realise that we had in fact, fallen into some sort of underground building, which surprise had a podium which held the final piece to the lavapick. I guess we figured out what the 'let the drop take you' bit of the message meant. Anyway, minutes later, Charles and some of his guys found us and told us what was happening since they knew that we were here and watching through the security cameras until they arrived.

"Charles explained to us how you guys had been found and that they were now looking for Clarence and I for the last piece which they expected us to have. At first I wasn't quite sure whether or not to stay with Clarence and Charles or head back to Gareth cause let's face it, we only started looking for the pieces in the first place because of Gareth. But when I heard Charles worry and certainty about them going to do nothing but kill us once they found us, I made my decision to stay with Clarence and trust Charles.

"We knew that Marco and his buddies were on their way and we should go but we also knew that they wouldn't stop searching for us until they had found us. Thankfully hogmers can't read people's brains unless they can see them or unless their a hogmer. Hogmer's can read each others minds all the time, whether they can see you or not. So, running short of time, we did they only thing we could think of. His hogmers came well equipped for any situation thankfully and one of them had a couple of doses of the 'beta blocker' drug. Your normal heart rate is anywhere between fifty and a hundred beats per minute, on average. The beta blocker slows your heartbeat down to fifty beats per minute but with a lot of concentration and slow breathing, you can fool someone to thinking you're dead.

"So with a bit of fake blood, extra cuts that looked worse then they were and plenty of makeup to make us look pale, we looked good as dead anyway. When Marco finally found us, I guess he thought we looked pretty dead too, so he didn't bother checking for feeling our pulse for long. Which is probably a good thing cause if he stayed any longer then he did, then chances are he would of felt our slow pulse.

"With ma eyes closed I wasn't really aware of anything' that was happenin' around me, only the basics. I knew that Marcos hogmers were pickin' ma up to take me away to the disposal room, which is where some of Charles's guys rescued us from, but I also didn't know that the lavapick piece which I had secured properly in my pocket was fallin' out until it had. By that stage Marco had already spotted it rollin'  across the floor and I knew that it would be a bit weird if my supposedly "dead" body all of a sudden reached out and grabbed it. Sorry about that guys. Anyway, when we got to the disposal room and Gareth's hogmers had left, some of Charles people came and got us here while explaining the plan to us. And that's basically it, I guess. We've just been waiting here for ya'll while giving each other pep talks. Mm really sorry for you believin' that I actually was dead when I wasn't." Amber finishes off with looking at us through large, sympathetic eyes.

I can tell that she's unsure of what my reaction will be and what the main emotion I'm feeling is. Taking a deep breath, I answer her question. A take a couple of steps forward and tightly wrap my arms around her in what could possibly be the tightest hug on record. A couple seconds later I feel Ambers arms wrap around me too. A few last tears manage to roll across my cheeks and into Ambers hair. Normally I'd be hating to be crying here, stuck in a monster pit, about to go into one of the dangerous missions that I've ever been on. This should be the moment of my life when I'm strongest.

But as I hear a tiny sob escape from Amber, who just like me is also crying, I really care. I let a couple more tears drip out of my watery eyes. I may be about to go under a situation where I might die, but I've got my best friend back. I've got someone other then Declan, who is close enough to be counted as my family.

And all of a sudden nothing seems to be as scary. As long as we're together for this, we'll almost be invincible, because you always fight better when you have something good to fight for.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N:

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