Chapter Eight.
Miley.
"How can she possibly sleep through the noise?"
"Is she even asleep? Sure she's not faking it?"
"Nah I asked the night guys, said after I got sent out for duty she was studying until about four am and when they glanced back she was completely out of it." I heard a distant voice murmur, "They were going to wake her, but thought better of it when they saw she had a gun in her hand-"
"Wise decision, what is she even doing?"
"Assembling practice most likely,"
"Loaded?"
"Can't tell, and don't exactly want to risk finding out."
"That makes two of us."
"Well I'm sorry but she can't sleep on my desk all day."
"No she can't," An older voice snapped.
There was deadly silence as I felt someone lift my fingers, pulling gently until I let go of the object in them. My fingers were slowly wrapped around another circular and warm object, while a mouth-watering scent filled the air.
"Send her to me when she wakes up."
"Yes Sir."
Silence ensured again as I heard a slam, "Did he just do something nice, or was I just imagining that whole thing?" Demi's voice asked,
"No I saw it too, he just gave her his coffee? " Kevin murmured surprised,
"But he didn't look impressed, I think she's still in trouble."
"I can't believe he took the gun from her hand I wouldn't have risked it."
"No neither, it's like he knew she wouldn't react-"
"Like he's dealt with this before?" Nick murmured.
"He probably has, I doubt Miley's the first person to fall asleep in the office."
It was only at the mention of my name did I truly begin to wake up a little. I let out a murmur feeling pain radiating while my body felt so stiff and exhausted. I clutched the cup moving it to my lips without opening my eyes,
"Coffee…Mmmmm" I whispered.
I instantly heard laughter, a lot of it actually, as I sat up pressing my fist against my head leaning back. I slowly opened my eyes wincing at the bright lights and loud environment, it was only then I noted the eyes staring at me. Why were they staring at me? Where was I? Was I in bed? I rubbed my sleepy eyes still foggy, my body completely lethargic,
"It's like she's still asleep-"
"I'm awake," I murmured slumping back onto the desk,
"Oh no you don't, get up!"
Hands grasped me tightly as I got to my feet keeping my eyes closed, the hands releasing me. I stood for a moment only to lean to the left as the hands quickly grabbed my waist, "My god! Have you ever seen anyone sober act like this-"
"Is she drunk?"
"No, this is complete exhaustion at it's best."
"I'm awake," I responded nodding my eyes firmly closed,
"Yeah you are Miley, come on shake it off you gotta see the Commissioner."
I instantly groaned, "No, tell him I'm busy he can call back later."
I heard Nick give a small chuckle in my ear, "He didn't call Miley he wants to see you in his office." Nick continued to push me forward as I huffed pulling the coffee to my lips taking a mouthful of it only to realise that it wasn't as good as I'd been lead to believe,
"This is his coffee, ergh, not enough sugar! He likes it strong."
"Well you can tell him-"
"No, don't listen to Joe! Don't say anything okay?"
"Mmm kay," I murmured,
Nick stopped and spun me around as I leaned my head on his shoulder. I could hear Joe and Demi giggling away as Nick huffed, "Look both of you could help me here, we need to get her at least presentable!" Nick snapped pushing me up, "Miley! Snap out of it you have to talk to the Commissioner."
"Fine, where's the phone?" I groaned.
Demi and Joe instantly started laughing again as Nick gripped my waist tightly,
"Miley! Eyes open,"
I pushed open my eyes rubbing them as Nick knocked on the door. I gazed at him finally realizing where I was, the loud noises, the laughing, how the hell did I end up at the department? Wasn't I asleep a minute ago in bed? Nick was glaring at me, which made me even more confused, had I done something wrong? I opened my mouth to question what exactly was going on only for the door to open,
I looked up at my uncle my open mouth turning into a yawn,
"Hey Jason," I murmured pushing the coffee at him, "I'd like three sugars thanks."
I pushed past him heading straight towards his office, my mind solely on one thing. "Sir please don't punish her for this, she's been working so hard studying and I think the sleep deprivation has finally hit. Demi and me will take full responsibility for her-"
"Hell I won't-" Demi hissed.
"We will."
"It's fine officer, I will deal with her accordingly."
"Sir please don't-"
The door slammed as I found the sofa in his office and plummeted face first into its softness, the leather melting around me. I let out a murmur in appreciation and snuggled up relaxing for the first time in days.
"Classy Miley," Jason announced.
I didn't respond as I heard a tired sigh, "What am I going to do with you Destiny? You make everything harder on yourself. Actually you're just like your father, once you get motivated you don't stop until you've accomplished the job." I heard my uncle say quietly, "However this is like your mom, you're such a terrible morning person."
"Can you stop talking?" I asked hopeful,
"If you don't snore than we have a deal,"
I stuck out my hand as I could just imagine his small smile as he shook it.
"What happened to keeping work and our private life separate?" He asked.
"I'm breaking the rules, stop talking, let me sleep."
"Do you want to go home?"
"I am home." I whispered.
"Right, okay, I have a meeting now if you're asleep when I get back you can stay here but if you're awake I'm calling your aunt to come and pick you up okay?" He announced as I just nodded into the sofa, "You're really not helping protect you're identity here Miley, this is going to look suspicious,"
"If I wasn't this tired I might care-"
"When was the last time you actually slept for a full night?"
"Three weeks ago," I stated into the leather, "Before you fired me."
"Right well that's going to have to change, get some sleep."
"I'm trying stop talking Jase."
The door opened and closed gently this time as I tried to get back to sleep again my mind still trying to process the million or so facts I had to remember for the exam. I'd always been a good sleeper but lately I'd been so jumbled around with stress, study and having to deal with my uncle and aunt it had been pushed aside for more important things. Plus lately I found myself thinking about Nick, and honestly it was scaring me a lot, to the point where I was nervous about sleeping concerned about the dreams I'd have. It was so hard just to turn everything off when so much was happening around me.
My body sunk further into the leather as I relaxed knowing that everything surely would be better if I just got another fifteen minutes rest…
"Ummm Jason-"
"Yeah?"
"You appear to-"
"Oh god she's still here, is she awake?"
I could feel the eyes staring at me but I didn't shift, my mind too groggy to respond. Instead I listened hearing a large sigh, "She's been here since six-"
"Pm?" A confused yet familiar male voice asked.
"No Am, I thought she would have left but clearly-"
"She's been asleep since six Jason? That's-"
"Fourteen hours I know,"
"Is she okay?"
There was deadly silence as I felt a hand press lightly against my forehead, "No temperature, I think she's just exhausted herself completely." My uncle murmured his hand moving from my forehead,
"She seems very determined to succeed."
"Too determined, I honestly didn't think-"
"She'd what? Try this hard? Of course Miley would Jason she's your brother's daughter. You know he got determination from the smallest of things, especially Tish, she hasn't got a boyfriend has she?" I heard my uncle laugh as I recognized the other distant voice to be the Chief's
"I wouldn't know, she doesn't tell me anything."
"Not even Amy-"
"No she went as far as changing the locks on the apartment."
"What? When?" The Chief asked.
"I don't know, I tried to get in the other day long story short I had to pick the lock to get in to her." My uncle murmured, "She doesn't wants us going in there, it's the only place she can still hold onto them without being yelled at, well that's what Amy thinks anyway. The apartment is exactly as they left it, and if she can protect that then it doesn't fell like they're dead, just not home yet."
"So she still won't let go-"
"No, every single morning she picks up that stupid snow globe and shakes it-"
"She wants them to come home Jason." The Chief whispered sadly.
"I know that, and it's like she can't understand that-"
"It's not that Miley doesn't understand, it's that she doesn't want to accept it."
"Well how do I fix that?"
"You don't," The chief murmured, "It's not you she needs,"
"Then who is it?"
"I don't know Jason, are you still fighting with her?"
"At the moment no, we're having a truce," My uncle murmured as I heard him give a small sad laugh, "I have a truce with her! How stupid does that sound? She's my niece and the second we're in a room together, and she's conscious we're at each others throats ready to kill each other."
"What do you even argue about?"
"Her parents, being a cop, how's she trying to become them."
"Do you honestly think that's true?"
"Yes." I heard Jason murmur, "I'm definite that's the only reason she's doing this."
There was a silence as I felt everything in me tighten, how dare he say that! I didn't move though, I didn't want to let him know that I'd heard what he'd just said. After everything though, I thought he might have changed his mind, but no he hadn't. He'd never accept me as being a cop, because all he saw when Jason looked was me trying to become them and clearly that threatened him.
"Maybe she needs to leave the city Jase…"
"Where?"
"Your parents place-"
"No," My uncle snapped, "No, they would treat her like shit, that hated us for moving to the city, she doesn't deserve that."
"But she's in pain Jason, anywhere might be better than here."
There was a moment of silence as my uncle sighed, "We are all in pain, we always will be that's just how it works now. Miley's pain is based on her parents, waiting for them to come home even though some part of her knows they're not coming, while mine is solely based on her, the idea of losing Miley is just-"
"You won't lose her Jason, she-"
"I might though!" He spat, "This line of work, anything could happen to her! And If I lost her, God I don't know what I'd do, she means everything to me and…I wake every morning and I go to her room, just to make sure she's still okay but she's not there anymore, yet I still do it. I still feel like I need to protect her, because if I don't no one else will,"
"That's not true and you know it Jason." The chief hissed.
"I don't want her being a cop."
"So what? You're going to fail her?"
"Maybe?"
"You know you won't win this battle, it's not just you it's the board-"
"I've already convinced a few, I only need half-"
"Jason!" The Chief spat, "No you can't, if she found out, if anyone did! You would lose her-"
"She'd be still alive at least-"
"Are you sure about that?" I heard him snap horrified, "I know she's had issues before that have landed her in treatment, Jason if she found out you'd jeopardized her career what if it pushed her over the edge? What if she saw it as no one loving her, and that the only people who did were dead so why not join them? You have to realise your actions towards her have a meaning in her head that you need to consider before you do anything."
"So what let her become a cop and get killed in the line of duty like her parents?" Jason retorted furious.
"Jason!" The Chief yelled, "She's not going to die!"
"How do you know that-"
"I don't, but you need to trust her! That she'll keep herself safe!"
"But she can't, she never has! Miley will never be safe because she does stupid things that'll get her killed one day."
I don't know what made me do it, but I sat up because I couldn't deal listening to this anymore. I didn't want to hear the truth; I never had in regard to anything because it hurt so badly I just wished everyone would lie instead. I caught my uncle's gaze as his expression looked at me guilt ridden, but I couldn't face him not after what he'd just said about me. I stood up and grabbed the door handle throwing it open,
"Good job Jason!" I heard the Chief proclaim sarcastically.
"Miley wait-"
I opened the next-door feeling the tears coming to my eyes as I entered the office. I tried to get away, I walked as fast as my feet would drag along the cement ground but he caught me. The next thing I knew he was grasping at my struggling wrists while I cried trying to push him away,
"Let me go, let me go! Stop!" I felt myself scream,
"Miley stop it, stop, just-"
"Jason let her go!" The chief hissed. "Jason stop."
Instantly he released my wrists and I took a few stumbled steps away pushing past someone in the process. The further I got away the more the tears started to fall as I realized living here, in this city, I'd never be happy because no one would let me, no matter how hard I tried someone would always be there to remind me that I was nothing more than a stupid orphan.
I don't know how long I walked around the city for, or how many people saw me sobbing as I navigated through the streets, but I knew that none of them cared because no one asked me if I was okay. No one cared about me like they were supposed too. I wanted my mom and dad because they loved me and wouldn't do anything to sabotage my happiness. They embraced me the good and the bad, and let me make my own choices and mistakes without feeling like I was stupid. While my Uncle my whole life all he'd tried to do was change that moral my parents had taught me, to make me realise what he saw when he didn't understand how much it hurt. He hadn't lost his mom and dad he'd has a childhood where as me I'd never had one.
I'd never move on and no one could make me…
Nick.
"He what?" I hissed,
"Selena text me saying he like screamed at her in the office-everyone saw it." Demi announced.
"God I've been waiting outside her apartment for an hour!" I spat frustrated leaning on Miley's apartment door, "I thought she'd gone home but clearly I was wrong."
I'd been pissed when it appeared Miley was ignoring me. To the point where I'd stood outside her apartment yelling and knocking on the door for a good forty minutes, trying to convince Miley to let me in. I honestly thought she was mad at me for being stupid enough to hand her over half asleep to the Commissioner, hell that would have made more sense than this. Instead it appeared she'd been in his office all day and wasn't even at home, then add the huge argument I'd basically just missed adding to the complete confusion my brain was currently in.
"So she was crying?"
"No sobbing supposedly."
"Sobbing?" I repeated, "She wouldn't-"
"Exactly, so either Selena is lying or-"
"Something really terrible happened to her."
"Yeah," Demi murmured, "I got to go, call me if you see or hear from her."
"Will do."
I hung up the phone and stood there confused, it just didn't make sense. I turned heading towards the elevator knowing that there was no point standing here any longer when it was very clear she wasn't home, or even in the vicinity. I pressed the button the elevator trying to make sense of everything,
The Commissioner and Miley clearly had some withheld past, just what exactly?
I just couldn't put my finger on it because she didn't seem the type to get involved with someone like him in any sense. So why? Why was Miley-
My thought was erased as the doors open and I looked up.
"Miley…" My lips whispered.
Her eyes darted up to mine shining so brightly and beautifully in a terrible way. They were filled with tears and heartache, while her arms were wrapped tightly around her body, like she was trying to hold herself together. She just stared right through me for a moment, her body slightly shaking, as I looked more closely seeing her swollen eyes,
Her small voice brought me back as she uttered two words from her quivering lips,
"I forgot."
The anger I'd felt for her diminished and plunged from me in an instant as a different emotion took hold altogether. The need to look after her, to protect Miley from what had happened to her,
"It's okay, come on…" I motioned to her,
I held out my hand as she just stared at it, her face completely blank while her eyes shone telling the tales of her misery. She reached one hand out and took mine as I pulled her from the elevator,
"What happened Miley? What did he say?"
Miley moved forward as I brought my arm around her waist, while her eyes remained distant. "I'm never going to be good enough," She whispered her whole frame slumping, "No one cares, no one ever will and maybe I don't even care anymore."
"What do you mean?"
She shrugged, "I don't know, how much does life mean to me anyway? When there's so much more incentive on the other side?"
The words she spoke I didn't understand their context but I comprehended the meaning instantly. I'd seen the scars on her wrist, to a passing eye they wouldn't be spotted but in training it was hard to miss them. I'd had my suspicions, the scars however looked old and forgotten yet here the words were slipping from her lips and I knew this was worse than anyone would realise.
"I don't have anyone who cares." She closed her eyes, "So why bother?"
"I care,"
She didn't move her eyes still searching for something or someone I could not see
"I care Miley, I care about you."
"You're lying, everyone lies to protect me."
"What?" I asked confused,
She pushed me away shaking her head, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. "I'm a not kid yet still they lie and lie to my face, only to then blurt the truth out behind my back. They blame me, they think it's my fault I've made myself like this but it's this world…I just…I want what I cant have, so how can I ever be expected to be happy?" It was only then I truly realized she wasn't seeing me, I was here sure but Miley's conversation was merely with herself.
"How about I get you to bed? You're tired Miley."
Miley just stood there lost in a sea of thought that she'd surrounded herself with and refused to be rescued from. I latched my hand gently around her wrist and pulled Miley to the door, she continued to ramble sentences to me while I opened her bag finding the key. After shuffling around and turning on lights I put all her stuff on the table and turned to find her at the window,
"Why won't they come home? Can't they see I need them here with me?"
Her fingers ran down the glass as she shook her head,
"This isn't fair," She murmured exhausted.
I moved over and pulled her easily from the window. I looked at Miley realizing the last person I'd seen so lost was my mom and I understood finally whom Miley was addressing. She couldn't see me because her mind was too busy looking for the ones she couldn't find, the conversation Miley was having wasn't with me, it wasn't with herself it was someone she'd lost and refused to let go of.
I found her bedroom, not bothering to turn on the light as I got her onto the bed without any disagreement. Her eyes focused beside me and she reached over picking a snow globe up shaking it for moment before putting it down staring at the snow.
"My perfect world." She murmured closing her eyes exhausted.
I sat on the bed next to her, feeling my own pain seep into wounds I'd also bandaged and forgotten. Seeing her like this was scary, but it was real, this was what Miley was like and no one noticed because like she said no one appeared to care. I leaned over rubbing her back until a few minutes later her breathing evened out. I didn't want to leave her here so vulnerable, but tomorrow I knew just like my mom she wouldn't remember this. I kissed the side of her head and stood up,
"I do care Miley, I wouldn't lie to you."
With that I left, not before catching sight of something that made me stop.
A photograph of a little girl… the same photo that lay smashed in the Commissioner's office. It was only then I turned and looked at Miley did I realise whom she was speaking to as I felt tears come to my own eyes realizing the mistake we'd all made.
She was talking to the parents who she'd never said goodbye too and refused to let go of because to eight year old Destiny they were all that mattered to her in this world.