Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with All My Children or ABC. (Although I wish I was, because then I would have never killed Ethan off). I am not making money off of this story.

Author's Note: I was really sad with the way they killed off Ethan and the final words he said to Zach. I know I'm not the only one who wanted to see a reconciliation between the two. And yes I realize that the beginning of this fic is a little rushed, but I wanted to cut to the chase.

It was 8:45 in the evening at Pine Valley Hospital. Zach was sitting in the waiting room, staring into space. Occasionally he would look over at Aidan sitting nearby, who would look over at him sympathetically, both visibly stunned by what had transpired that day. Zach being more so.

Zach's mind once again flashed back to a few days earlier, to the discovery that changed everything. Joe Martin had approached him and handed him a small bag. When he opened it he saw a tiny device that resembled a camera. Joe then told him that it was indeed a camera, a video camera. It had been surgically implanted in Ethan and it was found during an autopsy.

Neither he nor Joe knew what to make of that, they were even further perplexed when the video camera turned out to be a live-feed, meaning that whatever was being filmed was being watched live. The next day, however, Tad came to him with a handful of documents relating to Ethan. Two of the documents were birth certificates, Ethan's and an identical TWIN named Alex!

Zach's thoughts were interrupted by a loud "Is it true?" He looked up and saw Kendall entering with Ryan. Both had looks of shocked disbelief on their faces.

Zach stood up and stared at both of them. His eyes said it all. But after a few seconds he replied, "Yes." Then after another second, "Ethan's alive and they're operating on him right now."

The shock on Kendall and Ryan's faces expanded. Ryan looked over at Aidan for confirmation, who nodded and said "It's true. I was there."

Another few seconds of stunned silence passed. "Does Simone know?" Kendall finally asked.

Aidan answered, "I just called her and told her everything. She's on her way over."

"Wow," was all Ryan was able to say.

"How is this possible?" Kendall demanded, shocked emotion visible in her voice. "How can Ethan be alive? We saw him die in the operating room. I mean, we buried him." She paused, then added in a meek voice "Didn't we?"

Zach answered her. "That wasn't Ethan. That was his twin brother, Alex." His solemnity at having lost one son was evident in voice.

Ryan opened his mouth to speak but found himself too lost for words. "I'm sorry….what!" he finally mustered out.

Zach took a deep breath. "It's a long, long story."

Tad, Aidan, and Zach were in the car on the highway outside of Pine Valley; Zach had to greatly persuade the two to help him. Neither of them were talking, they were each too busy trying to process what they discovered in the previous days. Aidan, who was driving, broke the silence. "Zach, I'm sorry. I really am. But I think you're grasping for straws."

Tad agreed with him. "Zach, what makes you so sure that we'll find him out here in the middle of nowhere?"

"I never said we'll find him out here. But you guys haven't been able to find Ethan's twin either. And we know they both owned this warehouse we're going to. I'm not grasping for straws. There's got to be something in there that tells me where my other son is."

Several minutes of silence passed before Aidan once again broke it. "I still don't understand why Ethan had a live-feed video camera implanted in him."

"Your guess is as good as mine," responded Tad.

After a second, Zach suddenly said "Oh my god." Tad and Aidan looked over at him and saw his expression was one of complete shock and disbelief, as if he just had a stunning revelation. "What if…no. It's not possible."

"What are you thinking?" Tad asked.

Zach shook his head. "It's not possible," he repeated. "I'm definitely grasping for straws on this one. I'm not even going to say it out loud." He turned his head and stared out the window, but it was clear to Aidan and Tad that he was still processing his sudden breakthrough. The two of them looked at each other, wondering if they should say something, but the silence continued until they finally reached the warehouse.

The front door to the warehouse was locked and they had to break in. Aidan turned on the light and they started to walk around. The warehouse had two levels to it and they could see there was an office on the top floor. "Where do we start? And what exactly are we looking for?"

"I'll look in the office upstairs, and you two look down here," Zach instructed. "As to what we're looking for? Just…whatever you think that may help me find my son. See if there are any offices on this floor, if there is, there has to be paperwork in there." Tad and Aidan nodded and split up in opposite directions on the first floor. Zach walked up the stairs.

When he reached the top he turned left toward the office a few yards away. Through the office window he could see that the light was out, but when he approached the office he saw that there was a tv on, with nothing on the tv screen but static.

"That's strange," he said to himself. He turned the handle to open door and entered the office, turning on the light as he went in.

What he saw when the lights came on shocked him to his very core, horrifying him. There, lying on the floor behind the desk in front of the tv, and visibly near death, was his son. And just somehow, thinking back to the revelation he had in the car, he instinctively knew that it wasn't Alex that was lying there near dead. Through his horrified shock, Zach was able to scream "TAD! AIDAN! GET UP HERE NOW!" That scream came from his very soul.

He rushed over to his son, lifting him up and leaning him against the desk, and felt a new pang of horror come over him as he saw the extent of his son's injuries. "Oh my god." Ethan had been shot in the side. Zach put his hand to the wound and felt that it was dangerously hot; infection. "Ethan…talk to me. Son, wake up."

Tad and Aidan came rushing into the office then. The shock at what they saw immediately registered on their faces. "Oh my god," Tad murmured, too shocked to speak loudly. He hadn't been sure what they would find at the warehouse, but one of Zach's sons, and Ethan at that, was certainly not what he expected.

"Did you say 'Ethan'?" Aidan asked.

Before Zach could respond to him, Ethan started to groan, regaining consciousness. "Ethan!" Zach exclaimed, clinging to hope. "Ethan, open your eyes. We're here. We're getting you out."

Ethan's eyes opened and stared into Zach's, hope and disbelief visible in the former. "You found me…." His voice trailed off into deep, heavy breaths.

Aidan went over to them on the floor. "Ethan, what happened?" He still wasn't over the shock that they just found Ethan alive.

Ethan mustered out an answer between deep gasping breaths. "He wouldn't let it go…I just wanted to forget about it…Alex wanted revenge…I'd just proposed to Simone…I wanted to move on…he thought I was betraying him…us…he was angry….I didn't know he would…."

Zach put his hand on his shoulder. "Shhh…we can talk about it later." He looked over at Aidan. "He's been shot. The wound's infected."

Aidan started examining Ethan, who groaned in pain when Aidan touched the infected open wound. Aidan nodded grimly. "You're right. Thank Gd there's at least an exit wound."

Tad walked over to where they were but didn't sit down with them on the floor; instead, he stood by the tv. "The tv…the live-feed video camera!" It finally clicked in his head.

"Alex…he shot me…and then I had to watch him…my life…Simone…in Pine Valley…"

Tad pressed the rewind button and after a moment, they all clearly saw Joe Martin in the morgue with a puzzled look on his face as he reached for something and then the screen went to static again. "That must have been when Dad found the video camera in Eth…Alex's body," Tad stated.

Aidan shook his head. "How could he torture his own brother like that?"

"It's…cold in here," Ethan said suddenly. The three of them quickly turned their attention back to him. Aidan felt his forehead. "He's burning up with fever. And god knows how dehydrated he probably is."

Zach's expression was unreadable as he flashed back to the explosion, when he, Simone, and Alex were trapped. He remembered that his son was cold before he died. "No," he shook his head, not willing to lose another son. "Not again." He took off his coat and covered Ethan. "Son, hang on, you're going to be okay."

Ethan looked at his father in the eye again. After a second he gasped out "Thank you...for finding me."

Zach stared right back. He wasn't expecting that, remembering Alex's last words to him. He was too stunned to reply anything else other than "Don't thank me yet. We have to get you out of here." He looked back at Aidan and Tad. "We can't wait for an ambulance; we've got to him to get him to the hospital now!"

They nodded. "Ethan, can you make it down the stairs if we help…." Aidan didn't finish his sentence.

"He's unconscious!" Fear encompassed Zach's face. "He's not…"

Aidan immediately checked for a pulse. "No he's still with us. We've got to go now!"

The three of them picked Ethan up and slowly carried him down the stairs, able to go faster when they finally reached ground level to the car.

Tad said "I'll stay here and wait for Derek and the police."

"Okay," Aidan replied. Zach didn't say anything as he got in the back seat to take care of Ethan. Aidan got into the car and drove off.

A few minutes later, Aidan dialed on his cell phone. "Joe, this is Aidan. You are not going to believe what I'm about to tell you." He looked in the rear view mirror and stared eye to eye with Zach. Both of them let the shock in their eyes speak for itself.

Ryan and Kendall's jaws were figuratively hitting the floor by the time Zach finished explaining to them. "So you're saying that…," Ryan was too stunned to put his thoughts together.

Zach summarized. "Basically, Ethan and Alex wanted revenge on me for denying them, but when Ethan overheard my conversation with Greenlee, he dropped it, but Alex didn't. And by the time Ethan proposed to Simone, Alex was furious at him. My guess is that he shot Ethan and implanted himself with a camera so Ethan could watch Alex take over his life while no one was the wiser." He shook his head. He still lost one son and he wasn't sure if the other was going to make it.

Another brief silence followed. And then Ryan looked up at Zach; the look on the face of the former was one of realization…and disappointment. "It was Alex, wasn't it? Alex was responsible for the blackout."

Kendall gasped and looked at both of them. Her gaze locked onto Zach, realization dawning too. "You were covering for your son….you wanted to protect Simone from what you thought Ethan did…" she couldn't hide the hope in her voice.

Zach didn't say anything. For a moment, his expression was unreadable. But then he simply nodded. He opened his mouth to say something, but soon closed it. He didn't know what to say.

"But why did he…"

Zach cut her off, "I don't know." He shrugged, and then Ryan and Kendall saw that his expression (and Aidan's) locked on to something behind them. They turned around.

Simone had just entered the waiting room and saw them immediately. Rushing over to the four of them she exclaimed "Where is he?" voice choked with emotion.

"They're still operating on him," Aidan answered.

"I need to see him!" Tears were falling down her face. "I don't understand…Ethan's alive? I…" her voice choked on sobs and Kendall pulled her into comforting hug.

Neither of them said anything for a while. After a few moments Zach turned and walked down to the hospital chapel.