your eyes ~ RUEL FAN FIC ~

Alira's POV

*listen to little things by Jessica Mauboy while you read this it makes it 10x more dramatic and sad*

I'm driving down the highway twenty kilometres an hour too fast, tears wetting the steering wheel and making it dangerously slippery. My phone is lit up with a map I'm not focusing on. The bush around me is slowly turning into small town, the outskirts of Sydney. 

Dad's given me a week off to come back. Sort everything out. Finish it. Say goodbye to mum, where she's buried. It took me two days to drive here and will take two to drive back, so I only really have three days. I'm stressed and scared.

By nightfall I'm driving up the ever too familiar driveway. At the top instead of the house I'm used to, there's still wreckage, burnt, ashy, logs from the fire that was only put out two weeks ago. The fires that drove me out.

It's not my house and I shouldn't really be here. But I have to. Just to check. I turn off the car. Take a deep breath and step out.

It's different to smell the air. I Imagine myself inhaling different things that linger in the dust around me. What once was the oven, maybe. Or a bed. Or a mirror. Little things.

I kick a piece of wood aside and it crumbles at my touch. 

As the ash settles on my shoes I give an involuntary shudder.

So here I am. This is it. I bite my lip because I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. Am I guilty for not being more emotional? A bit. There's an overwhelming sense of weight being lifted. I just needed to see this, know that it wasn't my fault, know that everything wasn't my fault. It's the end. Finality.

With one last look, I walk back to the car and start it up. Bow my head and take a deep breath. Then drive a few blocks and pull up at our old house.

After we moved to Darwin it was agreed that they could move in since it had been spared from the fires. A few houses around it Have crumbled in the flames and it's merely a fluke ours survived. My breathing is getting faster and more shallow. Lump rising in my throat. What I might find inside scares me. What will be the same, or have changed, in the people I know. I wipe my barely dry eyes on my jacket sleeve, procrastinate convincing myself the seatbelt is stuck, but finally stand up on shaky legs and knock on the door.

After only 5 seconds Coco answers. She stands, mouth slightly open, for a split second, and then I hug her. And she hugs back.

"Oh my god." She whispers in my ear. "You're ok. I didn't know."

"I'm fine."

"And your Dad? Xena? Rocky?" 

"They're ok. They couldn't come, though, I'm sorry."

"That's ok, as long as they're alright. We didn't know if you'd get out, the fires were everywhere, people were trapped."

"And all of you? You're ok?"

She pauses. "Yeah. We did ok."

"Good."

"Come inside, they'll want to see you."

I take a deep breath and step into the house. At once I'm flooded with the warmth of belonging somewhere.

Kate is in the kitchen and hugs me straight away. "Ruel's upstairs... if you want to see him."

"Thank you."

I turn to the stairs. 

"I'll let you go up by yourself." Says Coco quietly.

I nod, bite my lip and take the stairs one at a time, slowly. At the landing I look out the window to the cloudy, dark sky outside. A bolt of lighting flashes in the distance.

Without asking, I know Ruel will have taken my room. I'm not sure how, just instinct. 

I'm right. I knock and there's a faint 'come in', as if he knows it's me.

Some of my stuff is still in there. A wooden framed mirror. A Polaroid of me in the white dress at Romeo and Juliet. Two hair ribbons. A gold lined glass jewellery box.

He's sitting up on the bed and turns away when I walk in. I close the door softly behind me. I was worried it would be like this.

"Hey." I say quietly. 

He doesn't reply. 

"Ruel?"

"You came back."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I missed... I missed you."

"No, you didn't."

"Don't say that. Of course I did."

"Why didn't you call then?"

"Only place we can call is a gas station two hours from my house. Sorry we have bad reception that I literally can't help." I growl.

"You wouldn't have called anyway. You moved on."

"Why would I move on?"

"I didn't move on."

"Maybe you should've."

"Why? Why should have I-"

"So that you could care more. About your family, about your career, about your life. You know that was what I wanted." I can feel myself getting angry again so I bite my lip and quieten down. "You're not the same anymore. You've changed."

He looks up at me, finally making eye contact. Still the same dark green eyes, long brown eyelashes that once shimmered in the golden sunlight. But a different person, a different stare.

"Did you expect to come back here and find me, still me? After everything that happened?"

I fall silent at the tears in his eyes as he glares at me accusingly.

"Did you expect, did you, that I would've just gone on with life? Gone on another tour? Moved out of home? Maybe released new songs?"

I still don't reply.

"Well you were wrong. Everything stopped. I stopped. And it's not coming back."

There's a period of silence in which my eyes follow the single tear that rolls down his cheek. This time I don't wipe it away because then I'll start crying as well.

"What are you thinking about?" I whisper. "What's happening inside your head?"

"It's getting late." He says suddenly, standing up. "You should go."

It hurts to be dismissed like that. But I leave. Close the door before he can follow. Jog down the stairs. Yell a quick 'bye' to whoever's listening. And run back out to the car.

I only get halfway down the road before I burst into tears. And instead of stopping, like they used to, or instead of someone coming to help me, like they used to, they just keep on falling, onto my lap, wetting my clothes, making my head hurt.

Instead of going to the hotel, I drive to the beach carpark we slept in a few times. Fold my chair back and try to sleep. But it doesn't come. And the tears don't stop. It's like my body starts to dry out. At dawn the dry sobs begins to slow down and silent tears peacefully continue.

I call dad, knowing he won't answer, and leave a voicemail saying I'll be home tomorrow. I'm finished. My goodbye is over, I don't need to say bye to mum. It's done.

I drive all day and night and all day again, and then I'm home. Tired and messy. A wreck.

Our small shack is silent and empty. I let myself in and flop into bed.

Sleep comes quickly and something inside me tells myself I don't need to ever wake up.