Standing By Aleka (River Phoenix Fanfiction)

Bittersweet

 A week had gone by and it was the final day of shooting, when Aleka woke up in the morning she felt a sickening feeling of anxiety. She felt that a line in the script summarized everything that she had felt in a sense when it came to the set.

'Everything was there. And around us. We knew exactly who we were and exactly where we were going. It was grand.'

And now they were leaving, going their separate ways. For the first couple or so maybe they'd all be in the same place, but then they'd all be off.

Wil would be constantly at work, he'd be in California like Corey who'd be filming in Santa Clara, but it seemed unlikely they'd see each other.

Aleka would be in Tuscon filming eventually.

Jerry would be God knows where.

And River...River would be in Belize, though she wondered if it matter. If it mattered whether they were a few miles apart or a thousand miles apart.

They weren't even exactly friends, while they were civil now, it still was obviously coarse.

Aleka sighed and turned her head and she was reminded of the day after the first night on set.

Waking up with all the boys around.

Except things had changed.

Wil was still beside her, Jerry was still on the other bed, but Corey was where River had been, and River...River wasn't in the room at all.

It felt wrong, but also she couldn't imagine a way it could ever feel right again.

If she closed her eyes she could still see the sun pouring through the windows, the golden beams streaked across River's face. That bliss when she was wondering why she felt at ease around him having not known him for even a day.

It was bittersweet, and seemed so long ago, like it was a childhood notion and she was no longer a child though she knew she was. Though perhaps none of them were really children anymore, maybe they never had been. So much had happened on this set, so much had happened before too.

Aleka got up and walked over to the table in the room, she looked down at her notebook. She pinched the first couple pages turning past them to a blank page not wanting to look at it.

She wondered when she might ever be ready to look at them again.

Aleka swallowed and stared at the blank page and realized her sitting down meant her simply writing down another page she would avoid after.

She sat down and put her pen to the page and wrote,

Sunlight pours in illuminates your face

A memory so sweet, and now so bitter

If it was only true that bitter comes before sweet

If only innocence was found not lost

He bleeds sunlight, and cries the ocean

One moment he's bright, the next he's blue

A two-sided coin, one minute of blistering sun

The next a wave pulling you out to sea

If only it was bittersweet

If only it was innocence found

If only, if only

I played it cool, and was a fool

The sun never hurt me the way night did

If only it was a sunkiss and a moon burn