Alice Holmes was unlike most foster children. Her parents died at the age of fourteen, leaving her an orphan. She was raised in a good home, with loving parents, and a loving brother, although he did struggle with drug addiction. She went to a good school, had good friends, got good grades. She was a good kid, is a good kid, because she was raised in a good home. But a fatal plane crash crushed her and her brothers spirit, it left their parents Elena and Atticus, dead. On a business trip to Sweden, the parents were supposed to arrive home that night, relieving Alice's brother, Jaxon from his duty of watching his little sister. What they were greeted with the next morning, as you can guess, was not their parents. Alice awoke to banging on the front door. She assumed that her parents were upset, maybe they were locked out, regardless she skipped out of her room with excitement and opened the door, but all that excitement ran away when the people on the other side weren't her parents. Police. A police man, and a woman dressed business casual stood next to him solemnly. "Are you Alice Holmes?"

That day would forever be the worst day of her life. She was sent to foster care that night, a 'wonderful family' her social worker promised. What she was greeted with was not a 'wonderful family' let alone a family. Mrs. Jones was 45, drunk, drugged, and fat. She smelled of booze and marijuana and her arms were scarred with needle marks, her hair was greased, and her teeth were rotting out of her head. She was disgusting, and that's what Alice was left with. The family aspect was the abundance of foster children that were living there. Alice would never forget them. Justin, he was the oldest of them, seventeen. Rowen, frail and broken, she was twelve. Hunter, only six. And the smallest of them, Justice, only three. They were in one room, and Alice silently cried herself to sleep on her space on a cot on the dusty trash ridden floor. Jaxon, although old enough to be her guardian had ruined any chance of that ever happening when he started drugs at ninenteen. Three years before his parents died. The courts ruled him an unfit guardian and Alice rarely saw him. Mrs. Jones loved to abuse her children, and her favorite tactic was to shoot them up with heroin and watch them get high, then take it all away and watch as they began jonesing for more. Alice in particular was going crazy without it, and went to find more out in the streets. In one year she sold her body to twenty men for drugs, until someone found her in the streets half dead. The foster mother was arrested and prosecuted and the children were separated into different homes, but Alice? Alice was sent to rehab. She was told that all the youth centers were full, but she was an emergent case and she'd be taken into an adult center. She didn't care. She wanted it to stop, and if that's what it took then oh well.

So there Alice was. Laying in the detox room of Riverside Rehabilitation Center, crying into her hands as she itched and scratched at her skin. She'd felt as though she'd been dropped into a pit of snakes and spiders and scorpions, and she didn't want to open her eyes, she didn't want to see them and know it was real. Because when she did she screamed.

"Hey, hey," she heard from next to her.

Alice continued to scrape away skin violently, flailing back and forth. "No no no no!"

"Hey, sweetie. Hey. What's your name?"

Alice cried, looking towards the dark haired woman with sunken in eyes. "Alice."

"Alice, honey, you're alright."

"There's bugs everywhere!" She screeched, trying to use the blanket to rid the 'bugs' from her skin. "Everywhere everywhere everywhere."

"Alice, there's no bugs. I'm a doctor, okay?" She took a heavy breath, scratching her own skin. "Sweetie it's the drugs leaving your system. Your nerves are itching for more of the drugs we've been shooting into our system, okay? It's not real, it's not real."

"It is! It is!" Alice sobbed. "I want my mommy."

"So do I." She muttered under a hushed voice. "Honey look at me." She said. "Look at me."

Alice did.

"Do you see any bugs?"

"N-No..."

"Let's make a deal alright? If I see any real bugs on you, I'll call the nurse. And if you see any real bugs on me you do the same. That way we'll be safe. Okay?"

Alice sniffled, lying down on her bed, shaking. "O-Okay..."

She held out her hand for Alice to grab and she did. "My name is Amelia. Amelia Shepherd."

"Holmes." Alice muttered. "My last name is Holmes..."

"How old are you, hon?" Amelia asked softly, rubbing her leg.

"F-Fourteen." Alice bit hard on her bottom lip, trying to concentration on that pain rather than the pain searing through her skin. She wanted to itch, needed to itch.

"You're so..."

"Little." Alice hugged her knees to her chest, tears still spilling over her cheeks. "All the-the youth rehabs were-were full. They could't...couldn't take me."

"So little to do this to yourself." Amelia muttered.

"I didn't." Alice spat. "Don't ever accuse me of that! I'm not like the rest of you. I didn't do this to myself!"

Amelia was taken aback, and decided not to speak again.

Alice ripped her hand from Amelia's and thrashed to turn away from her. She hadn't meant to come across so nasty, but it was the truth. This was done to Alice, Alice didn't do this.

Amelia and Alice sat awake late in the night. Another symptom popped up for Alice. She was vomiting her guts out every other hour, each time she cried. Amelia tried to ignore it until she heard Alice whimper and Amelia felt a wave of pity wash over her. She sat up in her bed. "Are you okay?"

"No." Alice blubbered. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm keeping you awake."

"Don't be sorry." Amelia mumbled. "Do you need anything? Should I get the nurse?"

Alice shook her head, moving the puke basket to the table next to her. "No. Please don't...I'm just so cold. So cold..."

Amelia sat up from her bed slowly and inched her way over to Alice's in the dark. "Do you want a hug? Human to human physical interaction radiates a lot of heat."

Alice sniffled. "O-Okay."

So Amelia and Alice sat with each other in Alice's bed, Alice snuggled up against Amelia, a feeling she'd been longing for when she found out her mom was dead.

"What did you mean when you said you didn't do this to yourself, Alice?"

"My mom and dad died a few months ago." Alice muttered. "I was put into foster care. My...foster parent, she um. She'd shoot me up with heroin, to watch me get high and beg for more. She, uh, she couldn't give me more. She'd use it for herself, and I was detoxing and it hurt so much. I felt the bugs, and the puking and the fevers, and the sweats. It was bad. I'd...go to the streets to get it. I wasn't addicted by choice. I...couldn't help it. I couldn't do it. I needed it. I needed the drugs."

Amelia's heart broke for the girl and she shakily caressed the girls oily hair. "I am so sorry, Alice. That's horrible. G-d that's horrible."

"I didn't mean anything bad when I said I'm not like you...I don't even know you...you don't seem like a bad person." Alice began to shake again, she curled into a ball.

"I've done some bad things, Alice." Amelia sighed, she was freezing as well, but the warmth from each other helped. "But I'm not a bad person. At least I don't think I am, and neither are you. You're right, Alice. You aren't like me."

"What did you do?" Alice asked, her voice small.

"Well...I've hurt a lot of people since I was pretty young, only a little older than you." and Amelia began to share her story.

"Hi, hi." Alice smiled.

It had been a couple weeks, and they were both past their detoxing stage, and were now roommates in the small room they shared. Amelia was snuggled against a chair outside with a blanket. She looked up towards Alice and smiled back at her. "Hi."

"Anyone sitting here?" She raised a brow, pulling the neck from her sweater further from her, she pulled out a candy bar and began unwrapping it.

"Only if I can have one of those." Amelia responded.

Alice flung a bar at her and sat next to her, pulling her legs closer to her chest.

Suddenly, a woman came up behind the two. "Amelia, you have a visitor. Sheldon? He said he'd like to talk to you."

Alice wiggled her eyebrows at Amelia, munching on the thick bar. Amelia looked towards Alice, and a breath faltered. She looked back towards the woman. "Can you just...tell him I'm busy?"

"Of course." She smiled, and turned the other way.

"Busy?" Alice snorted. "Last time I checked, you were eating a candy bar with a fourteen year old girl."

"I...said things." Amelia began to unwrap her bar.

"He's your friend, and he came to see you, so obviously he doesn't care about what you said. You need your friends in a time like this." Alice said. "I lost my friends. My brother wouldn't step a thousand feet near a rehab center."

"You're my friend." Amelia nudged Alice with a smile.

"May I remind you again, I'm fourteen." Alice gave her wide eyes.

Amelia shrugged. "So what?"

Alice sighed. "Whatever. Do as you wish, I guess. You'll need to talk to him at some point, though."

"Yeah...that some point isn't now." Amelia muttered.

Alice took another bite of her candy, and there was silence between the two of them, other than small pops of Alice's knuckles.

"I don't want to go." Alice cried softly against Amelia's shoulder. "I don't want to leave you."

"I promise that we wont lose touch, Ally." Amelia mumbled, gently caressing the girls cheek. "I want you to go and live with the nice family that I hope you get next. And when I get out of here, I promise I'll come looking for you. I'll see what I can do."

"What if they make me shoot up?" Alice wiped her tears. 'What if I have to come back again?"

"I'll be here." Amelia mumbled, moving her hands to the girls shoulders. "I'll be here. I'll help you through detox. And when I get out, I'll wait for you. It'll be easier if I can wait for you. Okay?"

Alice nodded, rubbing her eyes. "Promise?"

"I promise."

Amelia kissed the girls forehead and the social worker honked her horn. "I promise I will come find you."

Alice extended her suitcases handle. "I...love you."

"I love you too. You're family, Ally." Amelia pursed her lips to keep the tears in. "You're family."

Alice disappeared from view as she got into the black sedan, and the social worker put her suit case into the trunk. That wasn't the last time Amelia would see Alice at Riverside Rehab.

"I told you, Ally." Amelia smiled at her, pushing a strand of black hair behind her ear. "This is easier."

Alice licked the inside of her cheek angrily. "I hate this. We're being split up, twice."

"And when your time is up, I'll be the first person you see." Amelia said matter of factly. "And after that, we'll figure things out. You got me? I've spoken to Nancy already." Nancy was Alice's social worker.

Alice sighed, her face softening. "Fine."

And again, Amelia kissed her forehead.

Little did Alice know, Nancy had refused Amelia's pleas. And Nancy sent Alice away to another foster home. They lost contact a year after their meeting, but Alice never forgot what Amelia told her. That she was family.

Alright so basically, this may be slightly confusing for those who haven't watched Private Practice. In season five, Amelia is sent to rehab where she meets Hailey, an 18 year old drug addict. To be honest, I felt like they could have used that relationship and it could have been something great in Amelia's life, but then again that's just me. So I wanted to continue it, just not with that character, so I kinda re-created Hailey. Anyways, this is just flashbacks to how they met, and their relationship, so the next chapters will be present day. Thanks. :)

-Sam