This is Paris chapter Part II. Sorry it takes so long to write a chapter, but school and college applications is overwhelming. It's not that I'm neglecting it, because I'm going to finish this, but I have to wait for the right source of motivation, time, and inspiration. And so, after I heard about the recent Miley news, this was evolved. Song is "Carry You Home" by Nashville Skyline, I don't own anything, etc. And I know I said last chapter was the height of the story, but this most definitely is it and you'll see why.

Towards the Sun
Chapter 5

You're not the only one isolated and undone
So many miles to go,
Well I know, I know
I know you think that you've been down,
You never know when things will turn around, turn around

(in her mind)

"This is your fault you know"

But they had told her over and over again that it wasn't.

"We could still be a family"

Because now, they are torn.

"Go ahead, Miley, run away"

She already did.

"It's simpler without you anyway"

A flash of light and a cold, stark wind. There's a beach and she knows not because she can see it but because she can feel the waves crashing at her ankles and snaking up her weak calves. She's shaking and there's a tremble deep below the earth where the tectonic plates diverge and hell opens wide.

The voices- the heavy, crushing noise- keeps her solid upon the sand like a tree whose roots grow out like toenails and stretch into the ground. She's suddenly become tied down. She is attached to a revolving world and the only way for it all to stop is to cut her down completely, branch by branch, leaf by rotting leaf. Each of their words is a notch in her side.

Now divorce is etched into her life's resume, her list of experiences and hauntings and fears; it's just another way to spell failure. It's just another word to define "too much money, too soon" or just too little of everything at best. It started in the summer, when the house was getting too stuffy of heat and fury, and she went to film LOL and came back to shattered love. Now it wasn't just her and Liam who held the struggles and differences, it was Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy who were always the sight of true love to her innocent eyes. Mommy and Daddy who held the family together through move after move, job after job, Tennessee to Canada to California, Hannah Montana to 'Next Brittany Spears'. Mommy and Daddy, who held her.

So it must be her fault because the voices are screaming to her and they're forcing her to believe. She ripped this family into pieces. It's been proven that love is not what she thought it was all along.

"Miley!"

She twists around and Liam is running towards her like a frightening shadow and for the first time, he does not bring peace, only a horrifyingly whipping wind. He is transparent, like he's already halfway vanished. He chases after her with huge wallowing breaths as if she too is nearly gone and it scares her- because she isn't moving.

"I have to tell you something," he rushes and yells against the voices of the wind.

She looks at him and a furious flood of tears starts to fall from her eyes. She doesn't know why; maybe it's the chaos and the black sky; her fear of the unknown; of not knowing what tomorrow will be like.. if there will be a tomorrow.. if there will be anything left at all. Her tears collect with the ocean as it creeps high above her knees. A great pressure is developing behind her eyes, and the wind is roaring like a freight train in her ears and time is running out, she knows it, she's begging for it.

"Yes, tell me Liam," she cries hysterically and the noise just keeps getting louder, "what do you have to say, tell me!"

The wind is picking up and her grungy hair is in her eyes and ears and the nausea is lifting her stomach to the sky and dropping it back down. His words are slow and they stutter out of his mouth and she hates him for it- please let this nightmare end

"I.."

"Liam, tell me!"

"I can't love you anymore!"

As the water reaches her chin, everything is quiet. She can feel the earth moving beneath her, separating and opening, welcoming her to a grave eternity. Her muscles unclench and she's ready to fall to the bottom. She wants to. She is utterly starved. Miley is love and love has been lost. Without it- without giving or receiving it- she is a hollow shell of skin and bone, a bloodless pumping heart and soiled mind. As the seawater bubbles at her lips she mutters, with quivering uncertainty, a final question.

"Why not?"

"Because," he shrugs and watches as the sea swallows her slaughtered soul,
"You're everything they say you are."

(through her eyes)

She wakes up with a shake and sits up. Her heartbeat is speeding and everything is sweaty with scare. It all felt too real, too true, and it sticks to her fearlessly as she tries to regain composure. But she cannot. She flees from the bed as if the tangled sheets were the drowning ocean waves and drags herself to the window. She reaches her fingertips to the frost-cold glass and breathes out, so that a sticky fog spreads into a patch on the window as a physical reminder that she is still alive. It's 3 o'clock in the morning but cars and taxis still drive by. A few drunk people stumble down the sidewalks and a dog or two barks into the night. It's the very early hours of Christmas Eve, it's December 24, 2010, but nothing has changed more than everything has already.

The Eiffel Tower glitters in the distance and she thinks about God. Among everything else over the past few years, she has lost her faith- her solid, stable, undeniable faith. She doesn't want to think that this is all for a reason, that somebody had sat up there and wrote her story before she even gets to have a say in it. Breakdown shouldn't be such a large theme in it and Loneliness shouldn't be the main character. She'd rather believe in something less narrow and a little more reasonable, because escape never should have been an option for her to run away from her enemies and fears. She feels sick for having left, but can't stand to think of returning; and through all this mental and emotional processing, suddenly, a few virgin tears seep out from the corner of her eye.

"Shit," she mutters angrily when she realizes what she's allowing herself to do and swipes them away. Her vulnerability is bleeding out her skin and she hates it because Teen Queens/Disney Princesses aren't taught to cry. They're forced to suck it all in and be pretty (never sexy), thoughtful (never honest). She hates herself so much for letting it all get this far- far enough for her to have lost herself, amidst achieving it all. Now she's just a cause for separation, a wreck, the new Bad Girl, she's singing about sex and getting tattoos and is it all just a phase or is it trying to prove she's unscathed? Or rather has it only proved to be a rebellious attempt to face reality. She's hates herself so much more than she thought and so she breaks down.

Liam is still asleep but the empty space beside him and her helpless sobbing sounds lift him out his own startling dreams. His eyelids stutter open. The forsaken feeling in the air is enough to make one cringe, and he immediately sits up and rubs his eyes clear. His eyes wander frantically; first at her abandoned sleeping spot, the locked hotel door, then at the window. He breaks into pieces when he finally sees Miley, curled in a ball on the ground next to the window where the moon is shining down on her with a solicited light.

"Miley," he says in a broken voice and stumbles out of bed until he desperately falls beside her. She's crying miserably with her face in her hands and he quickly takes her onto his lap. He holds her as tight as he can because you can't break something so fragile if it's already been broken and she's in pieces. "Miley, Miley," he rocks her like a baby and whispers over and over again into her hair, "You're going to be okay, I'm gonna fix you, don't cry" but she keeps going. She's dissolving all four seasons, ten albums, two tours worth of overwhelming terror and she continues to cry and melt into him.

The funny thing is how you can stand next to a person and never see that they're hurting. Behind Miley's clenched smile is a demon that convinced her it was always her fault, that love is condemned, that complacency just isn't for her. It was never part of the plan. Miley, you can be a dreamer but hey, you're never gonna be content. You're always gonna be searching for more. Your life will be a constant battle towards the sun.

He lifts her to her feet and guides her to the edge of the bed. She puts her red face back into her hands and stays there for a moment. The insatiable sobs fade into sharp inhales, but the emotions stay, as she slowly seeps back into reality. "Oh my god.." she whispers to herself as it's all being realized, "what the hell have I become.."

Liam wipes her hair away from her wet eyes. "Tell me what happened."

She explains the nightmare and how easily it consumed her mind. How she felt like it was real and she was suffocating. How she wanted to die- to just end. She tells him of the guilt that has eaten away at her pride and all she thought she knew has drastically changed. She says how she can't believe that it's not her herself to blame for the "irreconcilable differences" that drove them apart.

"I don't know what love is anymore," she says, but Liam looks inside her eyes and he doesn't believe her.

"You may not know what love is but I know you believe in it," he says. "You believe in music and in art, in the power of wise words and expression. It's the way you used to see this world as endless and bright. These things all make you, you- you are love, Miley."

She sits there in silence. He watches her patiently as the streetcar lights paint her face in yellow and red. They make her warm and glow. He sees her and she is beautiful.

"I will love you," he begins desperately, "And I will protect you from what has been hurting you. I will see to it that you be happy and proud of who you are as all your insecurities drift away. I'm here and I love you and I will love you till you die and after that still. I will hold you every night if you need to cry, I will stay with you and ease you back to life. You're going to be okay and we're going to fight until it is."

"We don't want to go home," he says lastly and lets her fall back into him as December's isolation turns away with a final glance, "So we won't."

In December,
Together we'll climb
And I'll carry you home.