AN: As you could tell if you've read the books, this takes place in the very beginning of OSOT and is in Bex's point of view. This is just my take on how Bex was feeling at Cammie running off like she did based on the scenes between Cammie and Bex in the beginning of the book.

I'd love to know what you thought about this, so please leave a review if you'd like(:

Cover Image Credit: Hidingbehindalegend over on tumblr :)

Disclaimer: I'm not Ally Carter so obviously I don't own these characters.

Broken

In that moment, she wasn't a spy in training or the daughter of two MI6 agents. She was a girl who was more confused than she would like to admit. She didn't know exactly how she felt because all of her feelings muddled together. Was she worried? Angry? Scared? Upset?

The only thing she knew for certain was that she was broken. It was as if a part of her was missing, and perhaps, that was almost true. She had, after all, spent the last three months chasing false leads with her parents and sometimes Zach.

She looked around the room she shared with her two roommates at school and the broken feelings got worse.

It should be three. Not two.

She should have three roommates, instead of just two.

Suddenly, the room became too small and she couldn't take it anymore. She jumped up from her bed, muttered something to the two girls who shot her questionable looks about needing some air and slipped out of the door.

She slowly worked on getting her breathing back to normal before she passed out or worse, had a panic attack.

Get it together, Bex, she scolded herself. Baxter's don't act like this.

She didn't even care where she was going; she just let her feet lead her where they wished. As she walked, the same thoughts she'd had all summer came back to her.

Why didn't she take me or Zach with her? Why didn't she take anyone? Why couldn't have she told someone? Anyone?

But that was too much to ask for because Morgan's and Cameron's were stubborn. Too stubborn for their own good, and Cammie was both.

She didn't know where she had ended up, until she almost walked into a wall. She stopped and surveyed her surroundings, learning that she was in a narrow corridor near the Hall of History. She quickly glanced around for the light switch on the wall and pulled it. A bookcase slid aside to reveal a secret passageway and she slipped inside.

She followed the dark, narrow corridor until she came to a door where she could hear humming and beeping coming through the wood. She opened the door and slipped inside.

She took a deep breath as she took in the sight in front of her. The person who lay in the hospital bed, hooked up to machines with his torso covered in bandages was her former Covert Operations teacher.

The boy, who sat in the chair next to the bed, wasn't the guy who would give his life for her best friend, nor was he the cocky spy with the cool indifference.

He was just a boy who looked as sad and pitiful as she felt.

In that moment, they were alike.

She wanted to say something but didn't know exactly what she should say. So she stood there, in the awkward silence of the room.

A moment later the silence was broken but not by her.

"He's stable," Zach said, and she could hear the strain in his voice. She knew he wanted more than anything for Joseph Solomon – the man he saw as a father – to wake up.

She also knew that he was looking for something else – anything else to talk about besides what was really pressing on both their minds.

He sat there, staring at her, searching her eyes for any speck of hope. But she couldn't give him what he was looking for; she wasn't the one he wanted or the one he was looking for. She wasn't the chameleon with the dishwater blonde hair that had run away from him. From her. From Gallagher. From everyone.

"Do you think we'll ever find her?" she heard someone ask and was shocked to learn that it was her. It felt odd, hearing her own voice – she had only spoken when she absolutely had to.

It was a question they'd all been asking for the months (three months, 16 days, 10 hours, 18 minutes) that she had been gone. It was a question that had gone unanswered for so long because they were all too afraid of the answer.

"That's not the question you should ask yourself," Zach said.

He didn't have to say anything else for Bex to understand what he was talking about. She knew, eventually, that they would find Cammie. But the real question was would they be too late?

She hadn't been thinking it because it was too much to handle – even for her. But she didn't have many other options at this point and it was hard for her not to think like that.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Bex," Zach said, causing her to open her eyes and look at him. His voice sounded weak and sad, which was exactly how she felt. She hated it and she hated her for making them feel that way. "Why didn't she take me with her?"

She didn't respond because she truly didn't know what to say. She couldn't answer him because she didn't know her best friend anymore and she sure as hell didn't understand her anymore. She just didn't know anything and it was killing her.

Why didn't she take me? she thought.

She suddenly felt claustrophobic in the small room, and that was something that Rebecca Baxter had never had happen to her. Of all the small places she'd been forced into on the countless missions she went on with her parents, of all the criminals she went up against, she'd never once felt like this.

She felt cornered, defeated, lost, and almost scared. They were all foreign to her and it was all her fault. Her leaving caused Bex to feel like this.

"She'll find us," Bex said. "She'll come home." She said it more to convince herself than Zach because she needed that more than anything.

Zach gave a sad smile and nodded. "She'll come home when she wants to. If she wanted to be found, she would have been found already."

Bex knew he was mostly right. Cammie would return when she wanted to, but only if she was able to return. And the other part didn't reassure Bex in anyway, because this was the Circle of Cavan they were dealing with. If they wanted to find someone, Bex knew that they would and it wouldn't be pretty in the end.

"Where did you go?" Bex found herself asking. She didn't need to add any detail because she knew that Zach would understand what she was talking about. The weeks during the summer when he'd just disappeared and no one could find him.

"I went searching for her," Zach explained. "I even hacked into the CIA's and MI6's databases' for any speck of information and I found nothing. When that didn't work out, I went looking for her."

Bex knew exactly who he was talking about. His mother. Catherine Goode. The leader of the ancient terrorist group who was after her best friend.

"I looked everywhere I thought they might be. I figured that if I could find my mother, I could find Cammie. It turns out I was wrong," Zach went on. "There's this saying that I've heard before. 'Everything has a way of working out in the end.' I don't really believe in it. But throughout this whole year, it gave me something to hold onto. It didn't really stop me from going crazy though."

Silence filled the space between them, but the silence wasn't what kept them apart. It was the memory of her, Cameron Morgan - the girl who couldn't stop running away. The one who left everyone behind to go chasing after people who wanted her dead.

Bex soon realized that they'd both been hurt repeatedly in their lives, especially through the past few months. She was reminded that sometimes what hurts the most is the betrayal of those who they were closest to.

It's the people you hold closest who have the power to make you bleed.

In that moment, neither of them were spies. They were just a boy and a girl who were broken beyond repair. They were two people, who were hurt and were emotionally scared, because of a one girl.

Bex knew how he felt and he knew how she felt. They were united in this, not by choice but by a force of will. They were nothing to the other, but they were all each other had.