**While The World Is Crashing Down** [ Part 6 ] ^^I’ll Teach You to Fly On Hidden Wings…^^

© Jessica Swinburne 2011

[ Part 1 ]
[ Part 2 ]
[ Part 3 ]
[ Part 4 ]
[ Part 5 ]

AN: One word. Chaos 

[{ Part 6 }]

I wasn’t sure how long I walked before I found them. They were sitting on a bench in front of a dark little pond that made me a little depressed just looking at it, and yet it had its own strange beauty.
Rain looked up at me as I advanced slowly towards them. They were both silent and looking in different directions.
Seth looked at Rain, and then followed his gaze. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.
I stopped about a meter from them and looked at Seth, eyeing him questioningly. When he looked away, I crossed the distance and sat next to Rain.
I looked into his eyes, not questioning, not demanding and not trying to extract information. Just trying to figure out what happened.
“I passed out.” His voice was horse, like he was sick, or had been crying. But he couldn’t have been crying, because his eyes were fine, not red, or red-rimmed.
“I heard.” Our gazes didn’t break, or falter.
“Are you okay?”
“Did you just ask me, if I’m okay? Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Disbelief coloured my voice, but it wasn’t harsh or accusing.
“I’m always okay.” He was talking in barely above a whisper. I guess we both were.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t say you had too.”
“Rain…” Seth cut in, and we both looked at him in surprise. I, at least, had forgotten he was there. “We’re just trying to figure you out. You don’t have to push us away; we can deal with whatever goes on in your life.”
“How can you say that if you don’t know what that is?” He looked away from us both and out over the water.
“Because we deal with each other.” I put in. “And while that might be very different from you, we do understand people who hurt a lot, because we deal with each other.”
“Seth?”
“My Dad’s mean and my Mom’s a little psycho, and they fight almost constantly, and have since I was little.” I looked at him with surprised, very few people knew his Dad, and the stuff he said to Seth, but even fewer people knew his Mom was crazy, and getting crazier, or that their relationship was unstable, to say the least.
He met my eyes. And I knew trusting Rain was, for him, a way to gain his trust.
Rain turned his eternally sad eyes on me, “Your Mom died.” His barriers were still there, but they were slipping.
“Yeah, and my Dad can’t look at me.” I smiled bitterly and shook my head, and looked down at my hands, and then over the water. “You’d think we’d cling to each other for support, right? No such luck. He loved, loves, my Mom so much, her death destroyed him, and he needed someone to blame. He choose me.” My voice turned emotionless as I hid behind my own barriers.
I felt a hand twist itself into mine, and I looked down at our, now, joined hands. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it? Really? Are you sure?” A bitter edge crept into my voice.
“Yes, I am,” I looked up and him and saw all the conviction I had hidden from for five years, so I wouldn’t blame my Mom for leaving me. It wasn’t her fault she died. So I had blamed myself. “Stop blaming yourself, you didn’t kill her. You loved her, I can tell, you loved her enough to blame yourself and not blame her for dying. It’s no-one’s fault she died.”
“She’s gone, and I’ll never see her again, and I’m not even allowed to be sad, because ‘It’s not what she would have wanted,’ so what? What if I want to be sad? What if I can’t deal?”  By the time I was finished, tears ran down my face, unchecked.
“Then you trust the people who love you to help you.”
“Then why don’t you let us help you?” My tears dried, my voice lost its hysterical edge and became deadly serious and I stood to face him all at the same time.
“Because no-one has ever understood enough to help me.” He lost all pretence and just told us the truth. “I will trust you enough, one day…”
“But not yet,” Seth broke his silence, and Rain turned to him.
“But not yet,” Rain nodded his head.
“Rain…” I said, consigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to open up to us then and there.
“Ri.” I sighed and dropped back into my seat next to Rain.
“Can we go home, please?” The emotional strain hit me then, and my head started to pound.
“Where we going?” Seth asked.
“Mine. My home.” They nodded, and Rain got up and pulled me to my feet. We stood there with my hands in his. I looked from them to his eyes, and saw trust there, along with an emotion that I never wanted to go away.

Sleep

It’s midnight!! And I’m still awake and writing at midnight, why? Because I’m totally out of my mind? But we knew that already.
So why do we sleep?
Because we’re tired?
Because our bodies force us?
Because we want an escape?
Who honestly wants to deal with all our problems all the time? We’ll go insane!! But then I already am. It is midnight, after all.
I love sleep. It’s so nice to just close your eyes and forget the world sometimes. But parties seem to work in that respect to. Like I didn’t worry about my crazy life once tonight while I was at my friend’s party. And now I’m sitting on her bed, on her laptop, listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks. At midnight .
In conclusion?
Sleep is good for more than just fixing our bodies after we exhausting ourselves and black is a cool colour.

I’m out.
Chaos

**While The World Is Crashing Down** [ Part 5 ] ^^I’ll Teach You to Fly On Hidden Wings…^^

© Jessica Swinburne 2011

[ Characters ]
[ Part 1 ]
[ Part 2 ]
[ Part 3 ]
[ Part 4 ]

AN: This is mostly a filler, I just wanted to put something up. Anyway, this is dedicated to Kerry!

[{ Part 5 }]

Rain didn’t turn up at the cars after that, so we left.
I had come to think of his picture as the same kind of revelation that me telling him about my Mom had been.
It told me about him. It told me he had some hidden pain, as cliché as that is.
Whatever he life had entailed before he came here, it wasn’t an easy one.
How did it get this understanding from a picture? No idea. I just did.
Seth was worried, I could tell. He knew something was up with Rain and his life too.
Cya was peacefully oblivious, as she normally was.
The next day was thankfully dry, but still cold, with no break in the apparently endless bank of clouds.
Also, no Dad, so I only got to school once the bell had gone. So I didn’t see Seth, Cya, or Rain.
I didn’t even pretend to listen in History, or my next class, or the next.
I was walking towards our usual break spot when I stopped.
“…He totally just passed out when he was walking into class. I’ve never seen Seth Hallo move so fast, he was at the back of the room, but he got to Rain in like, 3 seconds.” One of the senior girls was talking to her friend at her locker just around the corner from where I was.
“What did they do with him?” Her friend asked, sounding appropriately shocked.
“Oh Seth took him to the nurse, and after that Chris saw them get into Seth’s car and drive off.”
I turned and fled. I texted Cya and told I was sick and was going home and would see her later.
Seth’s house was 15 minutes from the school, but I swore I got there in 5.
It was a gamble to assume that they were at Seth’s and not Rain’s mystery house, but I had to start some place. Unfortunately I was wrong.
His car wasn’t in the drive, and there wasn’t anyone in the house.
I didn’t know where Rain lived, so I couldn’t exactly go look there.
I tried to think where Seth might take him, but I just didn’t know.
I felt an uncontrollable sense of panic. I felt like I was losing someone else that I loved.
I pulled my hand through my hair and sat down hard on Seth’s front steps. I pulled my knees up to my chest, put my arms around them, and rested my head on them.
I sat up abruptly. I remember that Seth used to take me to the most beautiful gardens about 20 minutes from town. I didn’t know why I thought about them then, but it did, and I wasn’t going to ignore it.
I jumped down the stairs and ran to my car, but paused with my hand on the door handle. What was I going to do if I found them? Did it really matter? I decided that it wasn’t, and got into the car.
Gradually houses and buildings changed to less populated scenery. I forced down the irrational panic, and made myself keep my car’s speedometer below 100. Crashing wouldn’t help anyone.
The gardens truly were and had always been incredibly beautiful, but when I drove in, none of it even drew me out of myself.
Once I had stopped driving, I sat and stared out the window blankly for a moment.
I reached into my bag and pulled out the picture of the rain and the girl whose face you can’t see.
“What deep, dark secrets are you hiding Rain Winters?” I threw the picture down on the passenger seat and got out the car.
This made me realize that I had no idea where they would be. It was a huge place.
“Oh no…” Now I was talking to myself, added to the fact that I was acting like an irrational psychopath.
Why didn’t I just try to phone them? I was going to do just that when I saw Seth’s car. Which completely side tracked me.
I walked onto one of the paths that lead into the gardens. I wandered for about half an hour before I stopped to think where Seth had always taken me, when I realized there had a different place for every mood, occasion and celebration, and that he had only ever taken to one place twice.
So I headed toward that place. It was an incredibly happy place, where I had two of my favourite memories.
It was secluded and hard to find, being hidden in the trees, but once you went in the garden itself, it was light; the cream coloured stones reflected the cloud-defused light.
I glanced around and stepped out into the garden.  I walk down the paths of the gardens, over the bridges, and paused on a part of the path and stood in the pond itself.
The garden, which wrapped around pond, was styled completely Japanese, from the bridges, to the shingled gazebo, to the statues that dotted the entire place.
But no Seth, and no Rain.
I crossed the small garden from where I stood to the exit opposite from the entrance I had come through.
I stopped and looked back at the place where I was almost completely sure dreams came true. And turned my back and continued walking down the path.