She is silent, because that is the easiest way. She is like one teeny tiny flower bud in a enormous meadow, and maybe, just maybe, if she stays tiny and out of bloom, she won't be pulled up by her roots.
But sometimes she turns her petals towards the sun, sometimes she lets her roots be tugged at, and this is something that only music can do. She has a keyboard. She saved up for it, using what little money her dad remembered to pay her for being an employee at Sonic Boom.
In the early mornings, before she has to get ready for work, when the streets below her apartment building are empty, she will play, and the music will fill the small living space, and Ally will feel like a tiny feather floating on a breeze light and momentarily free. It's not flying, because she can always see the ground.
Maybe she's not so much like a feather. Maybe she's like a balloon, soaring only until she's popped. She has her limits, she always falls. But she would fall further if she were to end her silence. She is always silent. She's almost forgotten the sound of her own voice.
Sometimes she likes the nighttime, but sometimes she doesn't. She takes advantage when she does, though. She walks down six flights of stairs, cursing both the broken elevator and the cheap landlord under her breath, and strolls outside, feeling the night. This is one of those nights.
She will go anywhere, because she isn't afraid of the dark. The dark is amazing because it's the only way to find any light.
There is a hard tug on the back of her blouse. She is not afraid. She is silent, and she is still. She allows herself to be picked up, allows herself to be taken away.
And she attempts to formulate a plan.
But thinking won't save her this time, she doesn't have enough time. She sees the gleam of the knife, and she doesn't scream, but she wants to. She does not fear death, because in all honesty, she has nothing to live for. But she doesn't want this to hurt.
The man mutters something unintelligible. The knife comes closer, but it doesn't stab her, it doesn't cut her, it barely scratches her.
It tears her shirt opened, that is all, and that is what makes Ally truly afraid. Large hands wrap around her waist, and she tries to shrink back, but is forcefully pulled even closer.
She screams as loud as she can. And then she screams again at the sound of her voice. And then a lot of things happen at once.
She's on a light blue couch that smells of pancakes. She's under a thick grey blanket. She's wearing a shirt that is not hers. Hers is probably still lying torn in the alley where it'd been yanked off and thrown.
She cannot think. She can hardly remember how to breath. She brings her knees to her chest, and stares at the ceiling, too broken to wonder where she is.
"Hey, are you alright?" She shrieks as a blonde-haired man stands at the end of the couch opposite her head, peering down at her.
"Stay away!" she tries to scream. Her voice is raspy from several years' unuse. He backs up.
"Sorry. Do you need anything? I mean, I know what happened, and I can't even begin to imagine how you're feeling. If you need anything, tell me, alright? I'm Austin." He speaks sort of all-at-once, but Ally can still understand him.
She burrows further under the blanket, and shakes her head.
"Nothing," she whispers.
"You need nothing?"
"I feel nothing." He is silent. She is still. She wants to sleep, but now she is afraid. She closes her eyes, but only to blink back tears, ones that leak out anyways.
"Hey. It'll be okay eventually." He knows nothing. It will never be okay. Something has been taken from her, something she can never, ever get back. She is about to ask Austin to leave, but he goes all on his own. "Tell me if you need anything." That seems to be the only thing he deems appropriate to say in this situation.
She closes her eyes again.
"Ally." She opens her eyes immediately. She knows she never told him her name, because the only thing she's ever said to him the two days she's been in his apartment was to stay away from her.
She's said it a couple times.
Austin is holding a phone, her phone. She took it out of her pocket and placed it on the coffee table last night.
"Ally, your dad called. Do you want to call him back?" She shakes her head. She doesn't know what she'll say to him if she does call. She is his silent daughter, and now she feels more silent than ever. She will not call. "Is it alright if I invite him over to see you then?" She shakes her head again. "Are you sure? It's your dad, he wants to make sure you're alright."
"Stop. No," she whispers hoarsely and Austin nods.
"Alright."
He leaves her again.
On the third day, she sees that he is gone. He's left her a note on the coffee table. He has to go to work, he'll be back at three o'clock. It's eleven.
Even though she doesn't trust anyone, and even though anytime he comes near she forces him to go away, she doesn't like being alone in the empty apartment. She feels too vulnerable.
She finally gets up, though. She walks around his apartment, in the jeans she'd been wearing since that night, and the t-shirt that is not hers.
She decides she needs a shower. Except she doesn't want to take off her clothes.
It takes a lot of willpower. And a lot of tears.
And she quickly burrows back under the blanket when she's done. She's been mindlessly sitting under the blanket for three days, getting up only to use the restroom. Austin has been staying out of her way, unless he's asking if she's alright, if she needs anything.
She never says anything in response to those questions, but he still will give her meals, he'll still turn up the heat just for her, he'll still reassure her from afar that everything will be okay. If she were in her right mind, she'd never be accepting his hospitality. She's much too independent for that.
When he comes home, he smiles at her. She stares back at him. He notices something on the coffee table (she doesn't know what) and comes near to reach for it. Ally inhales sharply and backs up as far as she can.
Austin looks up, and hastily takes a few steps back. "I'm not going to do anything to hurt you," he tells her solemnly. She wants to believe him.
She doesn't believe him.
"How old are you?" he asks her, sitting at the kitchen counter. She hear him sit down, but her back is turned to him.
"Twenty." It's the first question she's answered.
"See, you're a year older than me. I'm just a little teenager. What could I do?" There are a lot of things he could do. They all flash through her mind at once, and she turns around to look at him. "I feel like that was a bad thing to ask you. Ally, you're welcome to stay on my couch as long as you want, but what about...your life? I keep hearing your phone, I'm sure there are people that know you, that you aren't afraid of. I'm sure you'd feel a lot safer with them."
Ally turns away again. Maybe she would, but she doesn't want to leave here. She doesn't want to go outside, where anyone can get to her. She's afraid now.
"I want to go home," she finally whispers, several minutes later.
"Then we'll have to take you home, won't we?" His voice is light, but there is something else underneath that that Ally can't quite detect.
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow it is. Try and get some more sleep. Tell me if you need anything, Ally."
He walks her home. Not very close; he makes sure to lag a few feet behind, to give her space. But he is there nonetheless, and that's all the reassurance Ally needs. She only allows him any closer when a group of people, men and women, rowdily flock down the opposite side of the street at one point. Then he is right behind her, telling her that nothing will hurt her.
She turns in front of the apartment, and he is wary to continue to follow her up the stairs. But he does, because she doesn't stop him. There are a lot of stairs.
At the door, he does stop. "Are you going to be okay here? By yourself?" She nods quickly. The door is unlocked, and she turns the knob. "Ally? Is it...would you mind if I came back here, to make sure you're alright?" He doesn't like feeling as though he's abandoning her, after all she's been through.
"Tomorrow." The same thing she said yesterday. He gives her a small smile, but she just stares at him. Her brown eyes are a little bit like doorways, and when they are opened, he can look straight into her broken mind.
She slips inside. He stands outside the door for a moment, and he can hear her sobs. But he will not comfort her, because that is not what she wants.
He slowly makes his way down six flights of stairs. Somehow, going down is harder than coming up.
He comes back the next day. And then another tomorrow. And tomorrow's tomorrow. And then the day after that.
And she is still too often silent. He comes over after work each day, and stays for about an hour, and while, if she's listening like he thinks she is, she must know everything about him, he knows almost nothing about her.
He knows her name. Ally Dawson. He only knows because her father told him. He knows she works at a music store, because he told him that, too. She is twenty years old. She is afraid. And at the same time, she feels...nothing.
She's been living fine the past four days, from what he's gathered. Fine on the outside at least. He knows it'll be a long time before she's ever truly fine again.
When he walks in on Friday, he can tell she's been crying again, but he doesn't bring it up. He sits down on the couch; she's in the armchair. Everything in her apartment is grey. All the furniture, all the doors. The walls are white. There is no color anywhere, at least not in the main room; that's all Austin has seen.
When she is in the restroom, he looks around. For color, or something like that. Instead, he finds the keyboard in her room. It's also grey, but he doesn't care, because now he's found something out about her.
He turns the keyboard on, and begins to play a simple melody. Something he heard long ago, disoriented by memory, but still decent. He plays for a long time (or it feels like long), getting lost in the music, sort of. He hasn't sat down at a piano or anything of the sort in months. This is good for him.
Ally is in the doorway, and when he finally realizes she's standing there, he nearly gets up and out of her way. Then he notices her smile.
"Why don't you play something?" She almost isn't going to. She's almost going to shake her head, and let him be; Austin can tell. But then she changes her mind. She nods, and he gets up so she can have the stool to herself.
She's a lot better at piano than he is. Her hands move in a blur across the keys, and yet every note is spot-on. She's a musical genius. She turns to him, her hands never faltering.
"I'd sing too," she says, louder over the music. "But I can't anymore." She hasn't sung in so long. Years.
She stops.
"That was really, really good. Ally, that was amazing." He notes her smile again, and it makes him want to smile, too. Supposedly happiness is a little bit contagious. Like yawning, or like a cold. "How long have you been playing piano?"
"A long time."
And after a long time. she finally begins to speak to him. She finally sits within five feet of him. Even though he knows he doesn't have to visit her every day, he wants to. She doesn't mind. She's told him that.
And she's told him about her job, and her dad, and her friends, but mostly she talks about music. The second he brings up music, her eyes light up and he can see the corners of her mouth twitching into a smile.
She has written songs, though she won't share them with him.
"They're...they're just songs for me. I can write new ones that I"ll share with you."
"What's the point of writing a song just for yourself? Aren't songs meant to be shared?" Ally frowns, and shakes her head.
"Not my songs. And...there's no specific way a song has to be. A song is whatever you choose it to be. I choose for it to be mine. Only mine." He nods, but because he can't write songs to save a life, and he so badly wants to hear hers, he doesn't quite understand.
Sometimes, Ally acts like nothing ever happened at eight forty-six on a Friday night, five months ago. Austin loves when she is able to do that.
And sometimes, like today, he walks into her apartment and she is not is sight. But Austin can hear her sobs from her room. He calls out to her, only to let her know he's in her apartment; so he doesn't startle her.
She is on her bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, her head down. Her small body shakes. She knows he's there, she must know, but she doesn't look up. And he sits down next to her, he wraps his arms around her shoulders, and he comforts her. Because he knows it's what she needs.
Her head slides down from his shoulder and into his lap, and even after her tears have stopped falling, neither of them move.
"How did you find me?" she asks him after awhile. Her voice is no longer constantly raspy. It's clear, and it's nice.
"I heard you scream," he replies softly. They are silent again, for a little while. "I'm not going to do anything to hurt you. And I won't let anyone else hurt you, either."
It has been a long, long time now. And Ally still cannot let go of that night. Three years ago. It was a Friday.
When she is sad, about anything, her mind will direct her to that night, she will tell herself that even her minor problems aren't so bad, they could be worse.
And nothing could be worse than that night. And so when she is upset, her theory is to remind herself of the worst things ever. Then the little things will cease to bother her.
She has told Austin about this method.
"Why make yourself feel even worse," he scoffs, "when instead you can make yourself feel better? Why focus on the bad things, when there are so many good things happening at the same time?"
This is how they are so different. Maybe, if they'd met in any other way, she'd say that he was the parade that refused to acknowledge her rain, but he knows about the worst things, and so sometimes he can be rainy too.
"If you could go anywhere, where would you go?" he inquires one day, but today they are in Sonic Boom, her dad's music store.
"I would go anywhere."
"Why don't you ever leave Miami?" Ally leans back against the counter, and thinks for a moment. She barely has enough money to leave the state, let alone the country. But if she really wanted to, she could leave Miami. Miami is where the worst thing happened, it'd make sense f she left. She maybe wouldn't be reminded of it as often.
But Miami is also where Austin is, and he is her savior, she only feels safe as long as he is close by. Without him...
"I am afraid," she says softly.
Austin has messed up. He has lost her trust, he has lost Ally. He has messed up.
He has kissed her.
It's still early evening. Of course it's still early evening. It was early evening a few minutes ago when he kissed her, and it is early evening now. Except a few minutes ago, Ally was alright, and now she is not.
He asked her what her biggest fear was, because even if it seemed like she'd give him the obvious answer, he wanted to hear it, from her.
And she told him that she didn't want to lose him. She told him that he was her protector, and that when he is not there she feels like she's in constant danger, even when she's not.
And he told her, like he always has told her since day one, that nothing will hurt her if he can help it, and he's gonna do everything he can to help it. And then he kissed her, and when she jerked her head back the tiniest bit, he pulled away to see that she no longer felt safe.
She is still on the porch, but she's far away now. And she's silent again. That's the worst thing. He has reopened her deep, deep wound, and because he can see that he's no longer her protector, he can't help to heal her.
"Ally." She won't speak, he knows she won't. He doesn't know why he's trying. "I'm sorry, Ally. I hurt you, didn't I?"
It's tricky. Because yes, yes he did hurt her, and he should have known not to do anything like that, at least not to her, because three years ago she was broken very badly and she cannot be mended as easily as that. Especially not if she keeps cracking again.
She can feel his eyes on her, but she's turned away and she is too scared to turn back.
"Why did you do that, Austin?" And she sounds like a child the way she asks him that, curious and at the same time completely clueless. But she also sounds like herself because she is not curious or clueless, she's just...herself.
"There's no good way for me to answer that."
"Try."
After what he's put her through, he should. He should try, but how can he tell her all of it, or even any of it? He can't quite explain the way she puts her hair behind her ear, or when she wraps her arms around his neck in a hug, or how she may be broken, but that that's what makes her Ally, and that's what causes him to love her so much.
"I...I wanted to."
"That doesn't mean you just...can."
"I know."
She is silent. He is still.
She does not hide away from him for long though. Because in a way, she needs him. Yes, he's hurt her. But he's hurt her in the very best possible way.
And so a week later when it's nighttime again, and it's cold at the beach, and Austin wraps his arms around hers to keep her warm, she lets him. It does little to heat her up on the outside, but inside she can feel the cold dissolving.
"I'm sorry, Ally." He keeps telling her that. She wishes he wouldn't because each time he does, she's reminded of that kiss, and it confuses her.
"It's alright. I only-I...uh..." Her words are mangled before they even fully leave her mouth, because she's thinking about it again. She closes her mouth, deeming it the safest thing to do. "Not yet," she murmurs after awhile.
And she's not even sure what she means when she says that. Not yet; she can't let go of the memories yet, she can't forgive him quite yet? Not yet; she doesn't want to kiss him just yet? Maybe she does want to kiss him, but she can't decide.
And so when she does kiss him, he doesn't expect it. It's quite some time after he kissed her, but at the same time, compared to how long it took him to kiss her, it's not very long after, not at all.
They are walking past the alley where a lot of things happened that should not have happened, and even though she's walked by it before, she has to to get to Austin's, and even though Austin is with her, she stops. He comes up behind her.
"Hey, are you okay?" She nods.
"I'm gonna go down the alley," she proclaims abruptly, and Austin thinks that he might've heard her wrong. These are not the words of his Ally.
"What?"
"I'm going to walk down the alley, and then I'm going to walk back, and you're going to wait here, and I'm going to be fine." He can tell she's also talking to herself. She doesn't believe everything will be fine (even if it will) but he's glad she's going to try anyways.
"Are you sure?" She nods before she can change her mind. "I'm proud of you." She turns, but before she takes another step, she looks back at him fearfully. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you, I promise." She takes a deep breath, and keeps walking.
When she gets to the end, the end that opens out into a new street, she pauses. She's too far away for him to see her expression, but she puts her hand against the wall, and he can imagine.
When she's close enough for him to see her face again, he notes that she's crying, but it's because she's so relieved.
He spreads his arms and she falls into them, shaking, because even if this isn't a happy occasion, she's so inexplicably happy.
She raises her head and she kisses him, and he kisses her after a second of surprise, and she knows that things are going to be alright when he's there.