PAIN

Skyler laid on the ground as he watched her, he saw as her hands would move every once in a while to drink from the bottle, he waited but she didn't glance back at him as her eyes continued to look at the sky.

He noticed that she wasn't doing anything else and there was no sign of her coming back to meet him so instead he helped himself up and then he slowly approached her. Skyler reached her and he noticed her gaze on the moon that had just appeared in the sky. He stood at her side and glanced at her face and he saw the far off look in her eyes.

Her face was calm as her eyes focussed solely on the moon but he could tell that she was thinking about something else as her eyes continued to look ahead.

"Isn't it beautiful" Aliya said more of a statement than a question without tearing her gaze off the moon.

Skyler just continued to stare at her trying to understand her, a few moments ago she was a tigress ready to kill her prey and now she was so damn emotional that he couldn't find any remnants of a tigress in her. He could see the way her eyes were filled with tears but she didn't let them out and would just blink them away.

He wanted to hold her and tell her that it was okay to cry sometimes but he knew that he couldn't, he couldn't bear to see her cry.

"After you left....I was lost, I was so lost and I didn't know what to do. I would come out when it's dark and stare at the sky and began to wonder why." Aliya said with her voice low as she tried to control the different emotions surging through her.

Skyler could only listen in silence, this was the first time she was openly talking to him about the past, he had noticed that she didn't like talking much about it and he didn't want to force her to but since she was telling him openly he could only hope that maybe she was finally accepting him.

"I use to come out at night, I'll wish upon the stars and I'll ask the moon why? I would demand answers from the sky everyday and..I don't know I guess it kinda helped." Aliya said as she shrugged her shoulders while taking another fill from the bottle as her eyes welled up with the past memories.

"I use to hope and pray that one day I would get a message from you or something but all I got was nothing. I remember those nights when I would cry myself to sleep thinking about all the times we've spent together. I was so sad and I wasn't willing to share my sadness with anyone."

"At that point in life I didn't know what to do, I was just a teenager who fell hopelessly in love with a boy, I guess I was very naive" Aliya murmured and a dry chuckle left her lips as she relieved the hurt and pain of her past.

"After months of crying I finally decided to stop, the truth was that I just couldn't stop myself from loving you, I tried hard but I just couldn't, every breath I took hurt as it only proved how I couldn't live without you. I didn't know what to do, I wanted the pain and mystery to stop and so one day I tried to kill myself but I was caught by one of the maids and I was reported to my....my mum" Aliya said as she took more sips from the bottle.

Skyler could feel the lump in his throat when he heard her say the word die, he couldn't believe that his little act had such an effect on her.

"After my mum caught me trying to kill myself I was then assigned to a therapist, I wasn't allowed to leave the house and I had to finish highschool at home doing home school.

My mum asked me what was going on and I....I didn't say anything, I couldn't tell my mother what I was going through as she wouldn't understand. My mum feared that I would make another attempt to kill myself so she had all sharp objects taken away from me." Aliya paused as her eyes looked at the sky before it moved back to the moon.

"My therapist tried but still couldn't get through me and my mum hired another...and another...and another" Aliya said and she chuckled again. "Non of them was able to help me, more off I didn't want to be helped. I let myself get drown in pain and in the feeling of loosing you and I went down so deep that it was almost impossible to get up. All my therapist they all kept telling me one thing, that I picked being sad over being angry and I....I knew they were right buy I couldn't get myself to feel anger for you at that time.

My heart never stopped aching and the tears they never stopped pouring, I saw the way my mum would worry every passing day and one of my greatest fear came to life. I didn't want anyone worrying about me, I then realized that what I was doing was selfish and so I decided to stop it."

Aliya said as a sad smile formed on her lips."I decided that the best way to make this pain go away was to remove the cause of the pain. So I locked my heart, I locked it in a cage where no one would ever be able to find it, at least I thought I did" Aliya said and a dry chuckle left her lips "I guess it was easier to hate you. I choose to be angry rather than being said as that was my best option at that time. I turned all my love to hatred because I couldn't forget about you, I was so obsessed with you that I couldn't even begin to imagine a world without you in it. No..I didn't even want to imagine it, I wanted to wake up from this nightmare and hope that it was all a dream but days passed, weeks passed and even months but this nightmare refused to end. The sleepless nights, the tears, the pain, they were all something I've never felt before, I've never felt this much hurt my entire life and I didn't know how to deal with it. You were the cause of my sadness but at the same time you were the solution" Aliya said and her hands on the bottle tightened.

"I talked to my mum and told her that I was alright now but I still didn't tell her my reason for acting that way. It took sometime before my mum finally believed me, I was already in my last year in high school when I was allowed to leave the house. My smiles my laugh, they were no longer like they use to, I distanced myself from people as I didn't want anyone questioning me. After that day I became someone else, someone I couldn't recognize in the mirror. I tried so hard to forget you and in that process I also forgot my heart too, I lost my ability to feel anything because if it's not your warmth or your touch then I don't want to feel it." Aliya said as she took all the alcohol in one go.

Skyler could only stare at her as he tried to process everything she had just said. Even though he had prepared himself for this day he could still feel her pain, anyone who would hear her story right now would feel the same pain. He hadn't known that his disappearance would cause her this much pain, she had an awful past and it was all his fault.

"Aliya I'm sorry..I didn't know that..I .... I'm so sorry" He said as he wrapped his hands around her tightly as he tried to control the emotions swirling inside him. He couldn't imagine what she had gone through those times to the extent that she tried to commit suicide. That thought alone made his heart ache so bad and he wondered how it was for her. He couldn't even begin to imagine the pain she went through.

He hugged her as he pressed her body closer to his chest, he didn't know what else to do to comfort her at this moment and the hug was the first thing he thought of.

He could feel the way her body shook and he could guess that she was crying and so he stroke her back soothingly.

"Why did you leave?" Aliya murmured in between her sobs as the tears she was trying to hold back rolled down her cheeks.

Skyler couldn't find words to answer her and he could only hug her more tightly trying to absorb all her pain.