Speechless.

“No”

“Aw, common Lietty.”

“No!” The woman said crossly, indignation written all over her face. “You think because I’m a woman and she’s a woman that we’ll just bond over something like that.”

John wasn’t quite sure what it was that had gotten her all worked up only that now he was treading on dangerous waters.

“Well, I mean,” But the look she was giving him was erasing his thought process. “I guess, I just…” She narrowed her eyes on him and his shoulders slumped, giving up. “Sort of…yeah.”

“Look, I may have left home but I wasn’t on the fucking streets and I was never in the same situation as her, there isn’t some mystery surrounding my Mickey—hell, I don’t even have a ‘Mickey’. Her and I are not the same.”

John looked at her with pleading eyes and she sighed, she was a sucker for John.

“What do you want from me John?” She questioned quietly, suddenly feeling sorry for getting so argumentative with him when his intentions had only been to help a friend. But Lietty was in no position to be helping the charity case of ‘friend of a friend’s; she was barely in the position to have a bunk on one of the tour buses they lived on. “All I’ve got is debt up to my eyeballs, hospital bills I can’t afford to pay, a Father who is trying so hard to be good its making me sick, and I’m in love with a guy who would sooner throw me off this moving bus then actually have a civil conversation with me.”

John gazed at her reproachfully as sudden regret filled him for having forgotten the severity of Lietty’s situation. Thinking about it, Lietty was not so different from Amelia. Where he had originally thought their common ground had been Mickey it had truly been almost every other aspect of their lives that could be found similar. Both had fled home, both had relatives trying so hard to be good figures in their lives that it was smuggling them, both were so unbelievably strong it led everyone to forget that they were just as human, just as mortally weak, as everyone else.

“Now if she’s looking for tips on how to make the boy she loves hate her or how to rile up an ex till he’s tripping over a mic in anger than I’m your girl. But other wise…” She trialed off and John nodded in understanding. “But since I figure by your desperation to help her that you at the very least love her and her ex is a particularly nasty prick I don’t know what you want me to do.” Silence fell over them, there was nothing more that Lietty could say to help him and there was nothing more John could think to say to Lietty. “John I wouldn’t worry about her, it was not all that long ago that I was a little bit lost, a little bit of a charity case myself and somehow I found my way to you.

You tried so hard to help me, remember? All you wanted was to make me smile when I’d forgotten how to. Kevin may have given me a roof over my head and a warm bed to sleep in but it was you who nursed me back to…me. Somehow you got me back to the person who had grown like a stranger to me. You worry too much John and by the way it sounds like you’re trying too hard to help her. You’re going to do more harm than good that way; you’re going to smother her. She has you John and at the end of the day I think that is all she’s going to need. Not me giving her advise about how to raise that little girl, not me telling her to spill her guts until she’s bled dry. Sometimes in life all we have are our secrets, sometimes that’s all we have left to cling to what we know, what we understand. But they are secrets because we’re so terrified that those things are so much more messed up then we originally thought, that people will see us differently so we hide these ugly bits of ourselves deep within.”

“What have you ever had to fear of people seeing differently of you?”

“My father?” She reminded him with sharp annoyance. Her father loomed over her head the way Mickey’s identity loomed over John; it was always there, it never went away and both her father and Mickey defined Lietty and John in some way. Even if Mickey was not John’s daughter he felt this indescribable pull toward her and he knew that no matter what happened Mickey would somehow always define him. “Kevin?” Her voice became very small, quite and for a moment and John wondered if he’d ever heard her at all, but he recognized the name. “Logan.”

Suddenly Lietty appeared very small and vulnerable; she resembled the frail looking woman he had met on tour those short years ago. John reached out and wrapped his arms around her, the instinct to hug her like old times guiding him. It still surprised John to this day when she wrapped her arms around him as well; strong, calloused, diabolical, Juliette was hugging him. He remembered when she had first come to tour, nothing more than a shadow behind Kevin. A ghost of a once beautiful and vibrant being had grown into nothing more than skin and bones; sallow skin, dark eyes, weak voice had been all that had once defined her once. Kevin had told John and a select few others whom Lietty had grown to attach herself to, to watch over her. He had told John that he had constantly second-guessed his decision to bring Lietty on tour, he claimed it was too strong, too unforgiving, and brash for someone like her. But somehow when John had looked at her he hadn’t seen a victim like Kevin had, he’d seen a survivor; which was much the way he saw Amelia now.

“Lietty…” He trailed off, the wheels in his mind turning as a plan took over the forefront of his mind. “Perhaps there is something you can do.”

“What might that be?”

“Can you ask Kevin if Amelia Flyzik can keep Mickey on tour with us for a bit?”

And then Lietty froze, her eyes wide first with shock, fear, then finally annoyance.

“Amelia Flyzik,” Lietty questioned cuttingly and John was abruptly reminded of the girl who had once been bullied by this tour had successfully made the entire thing and everyone in it her bitch. “as in Matt Flyzik.”

John winced. “Common Liet,” he said weakly. “She can’t help being related to him anymore than she can control her brother’s job.”

“Or the dickhead he manages…” She grumbled.

“Please Lietty.” He implored, watching the muscle in her locked jaw jump, but her hard eyes thawed some.

“Fine,” She snapped, caving though bitterness still stung her ever word. “I’ll ask him. But just because Kevin seems to have developed some fucked up sensitive spot for charity cases doesn’t mean he’ll say yes. This is punk rock summer camp not daycare. A kid on a tour is a bad idea no matter who you are.”

John opened his mouth to retort.

“Were you actually present in the past three years of my life or not?” She questioned rhetorically. “You know why, you know my entire screwed up past. I was a special needs case in every sense of the word.”

“So is she.” He countered. “She’s just as strong as you are. She isn’t as broken as you were she just needs friends, family, to support her.”

Lietty turned away from him, glaring at a spot on the wall.

“I told you I’d talk to him didn’t I?”

John rubbed a hand over his face, nodding.

A moment of bitter silence passed over the two until John couldn’t stand it any longer. “Who knows, maybe you two will become friends over nothing more than your mutual hate for Matt Flyzik and All Time Low.”

A flicker of a smile passed over her lips, a nearly sad smile replaced it. “I don’t know,” she mused. “It’s impossible to hate Jack…”

John smiled at her before ruffling her hair and Lietty ducked out from under him before shoving him away.

“Get out of here,” She chuckled. “Go tell your girlfriend slash not girlfriend that its okay if her daughter slash not daughter comes on tour.”

“But you didn’t even ask Kevin.” He commented hesitantly. He didn’t want to question it but in the same token he just had to.

“It’s okay with me.” She kissed his cheek.

John nodded with a smile in relief. “Thank you.”

She nodded mutely as he moved toward the door.

“and John?” He glanced over his shoulder to look at her. “Send her my way if anything—a cold, a temper tantrum,” A flicked of a smile crossed her face and she winked. “I’ve got her covered.”

John paused for a moment as he stared at Amelia, understanding what it meant for her to say that to him. She turned away from the door and wrapped her in a bear hug before kissing her forehead.

“Thank you Lietty.”

And John knew in that moment that things were looking up.