Disclaimer: As I have said countless times. Nothing is mine except the plot and Kevin. (hehe)

Please Review!!!! I'll love you forever if you do! For those of you who have been reviewing.... I love you!!! Thank you and keep at it!!!!

NO POV

Lizzie rolled onto her back, her eyes still heavy with sleep. She had slept on a rock all night, and her back muscles could prove it.

Slowly sitting up, Lizzie glanced over at Kevin. He was still sound asleep. She shook her head and let a small chuckle escape her lips.

She cringed at the sound of it. It seemed such a hollow and empty laugh, a laugh that had no real feeling or meaning behind it. She hated that laugh.

Somehow gathering enough energy to get onto her knees she crawled over to a small brook they had found the day before. It was a small clear brook that showed her reflection perfectly.

Her reflection. For the first time, she actually looked at it. Her face was thin and her eyes seemed extra large because of it. Her filthy hair was long –down to her waist- and scraggly, filled with twigs, knots and dirt that would never come out. Her eyes were still grey, though one of them looked... different.

There, looking at her reflection, she broke down. It was the first time she had cried since escaping that wretched place, but now the tears wouldn't stop. She cried for herself, for Kevin, for Nick, and for her lost memory.

For a long time, she sat there. It must have been an hour before the tears stopped and she just sat there in silence.

After a while though, even the silence was too much. She needed to do something. She didn't want to think about this anymore.

Rising shakily, she managed to go a ways down the brook, to a small pond. Looking at the pond she sighed. This time it was a sigh of mixed feeling. She reached her arm down and began to remove her clothes for the first time in a long time.

She cried a little as she took them off. They had been the only things she had for as long as she could remember. They had been the only possessions she had, the only things she had worn for these past years.

Her clothes came off fairly easily, as she had lost a lot of weight, not to mention that they were starting to fall apart anyway. She swirled them around in the water a little and let them soak for a while.

Then, holding her breath, she too sank into the water. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt water on her skin, the last time she had felt the tingling sensation of it as she moved through the slight current.

She rubbed that water over every inch of herself, her stomach, face, hair, everywhere. She wanted to be clean. Even when she got out a long while later, she didn't feel as clean as she would have liked.

She lay there in the sun for a while to dry herself, just staring up at the clouds. The water had washed the excess dirt off of her, but she was still the victim of years' worth of filth.

Eventually, her thoughts got to wondering why Kevin wasn't up yet. But she passed over that thought as she got up to get back into her rank and repulsive clothes.

Walking around a bit, finally stable on her legs she found a trail in the forest. It was a hard packed, dirt trail and she followed for a short while. Until she came to a camp site that is.

She turned to go, before she intruded on them, but something held her back. There was a family there, an older woman rummaging through some kind of cooler while a man tried to assist her. Two children were running around the campground, battling with water guns.

Lizzie watched the scene with her grey eyes, for some reason she just couldn't turn away.

Suddenly the younger child stumbled over some unseen object and fell. She started crying a moment later, clutching at her knee until her father came over and took her in his arms.

Lizzie watched with an indefinable emotion in her eyes. Pushing her gnarled hair back from her slightly cleaned face, a single tear slid down her face and she turned away.

Walking through the tears, Lizzie shed a few more tears. Had she ever had a family like that? A mother, a father, and a sister? Or maybe a brother, or maybe she was an only child. She didn't really care which she just wanted to know. Looking up at the strip of blue through the canopy of the trees she let one last tear fall. They have to be out there somewhere.

It was some time before she headed back to their makeshift camp. She realized that Kevin would be terrified for her. Otherwise, she probably wouldn't have gone back.

When she arrived back, she was shocked to find that Kevin was still not up. Slowly filling with some kind of dread she ran over and kneeled beside him.

"Kevin!?" she asked over and over, poking and prodding him.

Finally, he began to wake and Lizzie ceased her disturbance. But she was still shocked s her gaze fell over him. He was pale, even more so than usual, and there were purple rings under his eyes, worse than her own. He looked horrible, much worse than he had the night before.

"Kevin! Are you okay!? Here; eat something." she managed, handing him their last piece of bread they had "earned".

And she knew he wasn't feeling well when he accepted the bread without insisting that she take some.

"I'm fine, I just- need to be alone for a while. I'm going to wash up in the river- like you seem to have done already." He said quietly, as if he was strained to speak.

Lizzie began to protest but Kevin held up a hand and tried to stand. Thankfully, Lizzie was there to catch him when he stumbled. After a while, he kept resisting her help and used the trees as supports to walk, murmuring "I'm fine, nothings wrong" over and over.

But Lizzie didn't believe him. She had noticed times when his energy seemed to disappear, his eyes would get dull, and his face would get pale. Whenever this happened, he would get defensive. Lizzie got the feeling that he was hiding something from her, but she wasn't quite sure what that something was.