"She sees the world through innocent eyes, filters that others sacrificed to give her."
- m.b.

**

One Year Ago

Luke's Point Of View

"—and what comes from that, Luke?" Mackenzie asks me, her voice filled with annoyance.

"I don't know...redemption?" I shrug at her. We've been at this for an hour and all she has managed to do successfully is piss me off even more.

"What kind of redemption?"

"There are types? Redemption is redemption, Mackenzie. I have a meeting with the label can I go now?" Her eyes bore into me. "I'm sure they can spare you ten minutes." Mackenzie was a laid back person but during her "therapy" sessions, she was never quite able to pull out the stick that was lodged up her ass.

I rub my face with my hands and blow out air through my mouth.

Patience give me patience.

"A lawsuit isn't going to get you redemption, Luke. It's only going to get you media and questions and pissed off fangirls." Mackenzie says, not so quietly.

"Do you need a microphone? Can you be any fucking louder than that?" I snap at her. There were people next door and even the walls had ears these days.

She moves closer to me on the couch and puts a hand on my knee. "They are bound to find out sooner or later. You can't keep all of it to yourself. These people around you? They are your family. You can trust them."

"I don't trust anyone. You know that very well. I can't believe your pathetic ass found out either." I'm going to have to take an oath from my lawyer, to keep his bloody mouth shut at all times unless I say otherwise.

"I have my ways, Luke. But when they find out, and they will. It will get ugly very, very fast."

I couldn't care less. No one can fix this. No one.

I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, turning to look at her. "I want redemption for me. If I don't do this, I won't have peace with myself or anything else, ever."

"There are other ways Luke. You know that this is a bit too extreme." She reasons.

"There is no other way! I can't think of any other way except otherwise murdering someone!" I shout at her.

"This is not you talking. You will regret this Luke. Drop the lawsuit. It won't take your pain away."

"Yeah well, a loss is a loss, Mackenzie. It can't be watered down or the pain lessened so I have nothing to regret and nothing to lose."

Her strict facade cracks and her eyes soften. "I might be your therapist but we both know you boys are like my little brothers. I hate to see you this way. I know what it must feel like but this is not the way to go."

"It is the way to go. People like her, I have seen people like her since our band became a thing and I have let them run over me and order me around and take things away from me."

"This won't fix it! This is a personal matter. It will only cause mayhem." She silences her phone when it starts to ring loudly.

"Bullshit." I stand up from the couch, dragging my nails through my hair.

"No it's not—" she grumbles but I cut her off.

"Enough. This is enough." I start towards the door and pull it open. I need to feel some kind of physical pain right now.

"You will regret it." I hear Mackenzie say as I leave.

I'm already locked and loaded with regrets.

---

I stand up and stretch my strained limbs out, stuffing all the papers between the pages of my sketch pad. I move through the quiet tour bus. The band is fast asleep and so is Montana. Addy stormed into the bus straight after the show and got into Ashton's bunk bed and didn't come out for anything. Ashton tried to coax her out to come have dinner but she snapped at him too.

I see the trees moving by outside in the dark as we drive to Berlin. I can't sleep in a moving bus because I feel like if I close my eyes for a second something bad is bound to happen. I walk to the back of the bus, passing the bunk beds. I hear light snoring and think of checking on Luke but I don't know which bed he is in so I refrain from pulling back the curtains and peeking in.

He needs the rest. I don't think he has slept in days. They all do, the bags under their eyes are getting hard to cover.

I walk towards the huge mirror at the end of the row of bunk beds and look at my dishevelled appearance. My hair looks like it hasn't seen a comb in days so I push all the hair back from my face and tie it with the hair tie around my wrist.

There. Much less scary.

I massage my wrists a little, they hurt from sketching for two hours straight. I've been working on the boy's new costumes for an award show with Montana but she started nodding off fifteen minutes into our planning so I let her go to sleep and put the ideas down on paper myself.

Clicking the button next to the mirror I yawn as it slides to the left, revealing the room behind it. There is a long leather couch that runs along the side and a mini fridge with a television and an Xbox. This area of the bus has half a clear roof, kind of like a sunroof but bigger and you'd need a ladder to reach it if you wanted to pop your head out the top.

The room is dark except for the illumination from passing streetlights and the full moon. A figure is laying down on the couch, an arm thrown over his face.

"Sierra?" Luke calls groggily.

"I thought you were asleep in one of the bunks," I say, moving towards him. I feel my cheeks heat up when our conversation from yesterday in Oslo comes to mind.

Significant other.

"Tried to, but Michael has a cold and he's snoring too loud." He complains and it comes out as more of a whine.

"I'll leave you to get some sleep in here then." I turn and start towards the door.

"No, come here." He reaches out for me and I stop in my tracks, contemplating what to do. He should really get some sleep and I would only be distracting him.

I shake my head at him but then he probably can't see me in the dark. "You should sleep, Luke."

"I sleep better than I ever do when you're with me." He says truthfully and my heart leaps into my throat. The last time he slept next to me things didn't turn out so well.

My tired body protests, craving his touch so I give in. Pressing the button on the wall from inside, the mirror door slides back into place, the snoring from the other room cutting off.

I see Luke adjust on the long seat as I walk to him. He motions for me to lay next to him, his face lights up when the bus passes under a street lamp and I see the corners of his lips lifted in a smile. The seat is wide enough for the two of us but it will be a tight fit. I lay across, facing his body and he faces me, his back pressed against the cushion.

"Hmm." Luke hums under his breath when I move closer and his arm slides under my head, the other wrapping around my waist so I don't fall off.

I snuggle closer to him, breathing in his cologne. I was never able to pinpoint what he smelled like exactly. I don't know how to describe it. He smelled like early mornings, the laziest and comfortable mornings. If that even had a scent?

His warm breath fans against my forehead. "What are you thinking?"

"That I want to sleep like this forever."

He chuckles at that and I feel every single muscle in his body that moves against mine. "Me too. But in a bed and without Michael's snoring."

"Leave the poor guy alone," I say, smiling into the hollow of his neck. Everything was quiet except for our breathing and it is the most peaceful I have ever felt.

"What are you thinking?" I ask.

"I got my tattoo today. A year ago." He sighs quietly and I raise my head a little to look at him. His head is cast upwards and he's looking out the transparent roof.

Since the day I saw his tattoo, I've been curious to know what it meant but I never got a chance to ask him. He doesn't have any other tattoos either.

"What does it mean?" I whisper even though it's just the two of us in here.

Luke doesn't answer for awhile, just stares out the rooftop with his fingers twirling my hair slowly.

"Loss." He finally says.

Loss.

Loss of who? Did he lose someone like I did? Someone like Heath?

I close my eyes at the sound of his name in my head, taking a deep breath.

"There will always be loss huh?" I ask him. I remember the dead leaves that turn into a trail of birds on his back, so small in their size but so beautiful.

"I have felt so much of it, Sierra. It haunts me at night and even when the sun is up. So much suffering for even the tiniest of hearts..." The bus passes under a couple of buildings with light up signs and I see his face clearly for a second, his blue eyes are almost black in the dark with a shiny sheen to it.

Tears.

I tighten my arm around his waist.

"Can I tell you a story?" I ask, keeping my voice steady. Anything to get his mind off whatever it is that he is thinking of right now.

"Sure." His head turns, chin resting on the top of my head.

"There used to be this boy on my school bus. I always knew there was something about him. I gave him candy once for my birthday but he didn't take it," Luke tightens his arms a little when the bus passes over a bump on the road.

"—he always ran home the second the bus stopped near his house. People would laugh at him all the time. Until later, we didn't know that it was because he was running to make sure his sister hadn't killed herself while he was away at school." Luke draws in a breath.

"I thought this was going to be a happy story." He groans.

"Shush. Just listen," I say and he groans again.

"He didn't show up to school one day but he came back a week later and when the bus dropped him off, he didn't run."

"His sister died. Didn't she?" Luke asks me, his voice strained.

"Yes. She passed away. But you know a month later, his face started losing that expression of deep sadness, he started talking to people around him. He started talking to me more and we became very close. He became my best friend," I drift off and Luke raises his head a little, his way of urging me to go on.

"He loved to design just as much as I did. He came out in our junior year and everyone loved him for who he was. No one insulted his sexuality like they usually would have because they loved him."

"Troye..." Luke whispers.

"Yeah. Troye. So you see Luke. We will always have losses. Great loss actually but—but we live with it. Troye decided to be happy and go on with his life, you got a tattoo, I went bat-shit crazy..."

"You're not crazy." He butts in.

"You haven't seen my full crazy yet." I laugh a little and kiss his chin. The light stubble there pricks at my lips. I love the feeling of him against me that it soothes my thoughts of crazy days and I'm not as anxious as I usually am when I talk about them.

"I'm sure I can deal with your crazy better than you can deal with mine." The bus jumps a pothole again and I almost fall off the seat but Luke pulls me even closer so that I'm halfway on top of him.

"Loss is something we can't stop. But we can learn to bear it. We can become strong enough to hold it together."

He looks at me in the dark. His eyes shining again. "I know."

The question of who or what he lost lingers at the back of my mind but I don't question him. There was so much you could take for three in the morning.

I lay my head on his chest and we finally drift off to a peaceful sleep to the lull of the moving tour bus.

A/N:

That story about the boy with the sister was in a magazine once and for reasons beyond my control it touched my heart greatly and I needed to share it.