Waiting is the action of staying where one is or delaying action until a particular time or until something else happens.

Prologue.

I remembered waiting for them…

My parents.

Everyone had been let out of school and I watched all the other parent's as they rushed forward grabbing my friends away so quickly, so panicked, so scared, but no one took me. No one even glanced in my direction. The noise was like nothing else. At the time I didn't understand what I was hearing, but it didn't take long before I associated the explosions with something bad. I waited still, until I realized they weren't coming, that my parents were not going to pick me up from school like the others. Yet I just stood there on my elementary school staircase waiting…

When ever people asked me of what else I remembered from that day two noises specifically came to mind. The screaming and the sirens. That's what I really recognized the most. I watched people yelling from the steps, on phones, to each other, all hoping to reach their loved ones, to find out they were safe and sound. I saw one elderly man fall to the ground crying while the sirens filled my ears with terror. Still to this day the ringing noise would cause me nightmares, the man's distraught sobbing enter my eyes the second I remembered that sunny clear day that changed everything.

I didn't cry though, not even once while I waited.

My parents taught me to be brave, and that fear was just an obstacle that my mind controlled and could easily be pushed away. I listened to them, I refused to be frightened by what I heard and saw, but when finally there was no one left on the school steps my young mind was consumed by terror. So I made myself move, I made my feet walk towards the playground where I would go with my mom and dad all the time. By then the air was thick with smoke, and everything just felt so wrong. I went and sat on a swing watching the sun, swinging back and forth, the sirens still ringing, the screams still present, and the echo of thousands of people dying in my ears.

I didn't want to admit it, that they were dead.

I was only eight.

I wasn't supposed to become an orphan. It didn't work like that.

So I kept waiting because what choice did I have?

I'd lived in New York City my whole life, I knew it so well, but on that day I didn't know where to go. I didn't know where my parents were but I knew they'd be where the screaming started. It was their job to fix things, to protect the innocent and condemn the guilty. So I waited and looked at the skyline trying to find two buildings I'd grown up with, only to note them missing from my innocent eyes. It took a while to connect the buildings to my parents and even longer to understand what might have happened. Yet I waited because I was eight and I didn't understand, instead I thought they would pick me and take me home when they'd finished their jobs, when it was safe again and we'd be a happy family like always. That never happened.

The car arrived in the late afternoon...

I still sat at the swing, kicking my feet back and forth, trying to get high enough so I could see the buildings. No matter how high I got though I couldn't find the structures always in the sky for all to see. I couldn't find my parents either. The car door opened and I watched him jump out, followed quickly by a sobbing woman from the other side. They both sprinted towards me and I didn't even get a chance to recognize their faces before my aunt and uncle had me tightly in their arms.

"Thank god," My aunt had cried holding me in her arms, "Thank god Miley,"

She cried into my shoulder holding me against her chest,

"I'm so sorry Miley, I'm so sorry, but you'll be okay. We're going to be okay."

Looking back I wished I could have laughed at that sentence. I would never be okay nor would the world. I didn't just lose my parents that day I lost my innocence, my childhood and the concept of a family. Sure my aunt and uncle were great, and they loved me like I was their own, I even reciprocated that feeling. But they weren't my parents, they never would be…

My parents died on September 11th

I guess I never dealt with it, because even though I was twenty, I was still that little girl on the swing pushing higher and higher trying to find them, waiting for them to take me home.

That was until I met him.

He made me realize that I had to stop waiting.

That I had to move on, no matter how much it hurt.

A/N: Hey guys, I thought I'd write this just to give the heads up. This story is pretty sad I read it back the other day and I actually kind of got upset which I never ever do with my own writing. But yeah I started writing it on September 11th 2012 and have managed to write 20 chapters already so I should have no excuse for not updating.