A/n: While searching through my folder, I found this Liley I started writing a long time ago for hilmiley but never did anything with (I'm pretty sure this story was for her birthday too...). I have mixed feelings about this one as the plot is very strange and partially dangerous but I figured I'd let the Liley community make a judgment on this before I decided what to do with it. I've never written a Liley before so this is a very new experience for me! It's kind of exciting. Anyway, I hope some one enjoys this! I am always very grateful for reviews :)

Maybe it was always supposed to be this way.

The tick of the clock, the hum of the air conditioning, the drip of the faucet. The smell of your favorite soap, the distant tinkling of the wind-chime on the porch, the pain that consumes your entire being. It was all supposed to correlate in perfect harmony in this one moment.

You were supposed to hurt, honey. It was your destiny. Does that make it sweeter? Don't you just want to drink it up? You always found comfort in the fact that there was something higher in this universe; something to control everything. Are you still comforted now? Are you still pleased there is a God, even if his ultimate plan for you was…pain?

There is no bad and there is no good. It all mingles together. Things are only good when you are happy. Things are only bad when you are unhappy. You are unhappy. I know. I know. But I can't do anything about it. I'm sorry. I wish I could. But I am stuck here and you are there and there is nothing to bridge the infinite gap between us.

Don't do it.

You can't do it.

You won't.

You were meant to suffer and live with the pain. You were not meant to escape from it. It is an artist's fate. You are the singer. It is your art. When you look at a cool, Autumn day you see lyrics and hear music. It has mutated your entire world. It pulled you away from everything and everyone, especially me: your best friend and eventually something more. I could not see the lyrics…I couldn't touch them as you could. I couldn't hear the music…I couldn't sway to them as you did. And you slipped through my fingers slowly…lyric by lyric, note by note, until I was grasping onto your shadow as you slid away from me, toward a truth only you could see.

Put it down, Miley. Let it rest on the white, ceramic side of the bathtub. Let it conduct the heat from the sun shining feebly through the open window above the tub. Let it reflect you in it so maybe you can see what you have become.

But please don't cry…

I am here.

I don't blame you for what you are.

You were supposed to be this broken person. I was supposed to be your best friend. I was supposed to be the person you leaned on, the person you trusted with everything. And then, naturally, I was supposed to become more. I was supposed to be your girlfriend. We were supposed to be in love and, together, create within ourselves a song that we could both sway to, a song that both of us could see…

You were supposed to be happy. I was supposed to be happy. But I was also supposed to get sick. You were supposed to retreat inside yourself, into your art, to protect yourself from the pain and worry. It was a place I was supposed to not be able to reach. I was supposed to die within a month of realizing I was ill.

Because that's what I am, honey. I am dead. You just started to accept it recently, even though I've been expired from the Earth for a few years. It has destroyed you. Maybe it wouldn't have shredded you apart so finely if you would have had someone. Every morning you wake up and you feel the pain and you think as soon as I talk to Lilly I will feel better.

But then you realize that you will never talk to me ever again. You will never see me. You will never talk to me. The one person who could make this tragedy livable is dead. Gone.

Although I am not gone. I sit here and I watch you and I try my hardest to guide you down the path that was meant for you but it hurts so badly. All I want to do is let you escape.

But it was meant to be this way.

You were supposed to sink into depression. You were supposed to stop singing. The voice was supposed to fade mid-note, just as my life had. It was all part of the plan that will help teach future people.

And now, as you sit in the bathtub, your one, true escape gripped in your hand, I have to make you do the thing that will hurt you the most. I have to make you endure this.

(NOTE TO THOSE LISTENING TO THIS SONG:

This is the tragedy of the singer who loved and her guardian angel.

Please, don't read any farther; your heart will break. Nothing in this world could be more gruesome than the pain of losing your world. The pain of watching your world in pain. The pain of not being able to talk, to see, to touch the person you love. This life of ours is and will continue to be all about pain.

If you dare: watch me make her suffer. Watch the lyrics crumble. Watch the music die. For it is what has to happen and it is my duty.)

You hold the exit tighter in your hand. And all the sudden the wind chime sounds so much like a song you know, a song that makes your body rigid and your eyes burn. You think of me and you know this isn't what you should do at all.

Let it go, Miley.

Breathe.

Remember that all things come to an end in their own time.

You will come to an end eventually.

But until then, you will endure.

You will breathe every few seconds.

You will dream.

You will remember.

You will hurt.

We will do this together. Take my hand. Grasp it. I will help you by hurting you. I will lead you down a dark path that just happens to be the right road. Trust me.

You throw it and the residue of your former spirit is picked up by the passing wind of me. It soars a few inches into the air and then I am gone and it falls back down to the ground where it settles with the other particles. You cry. I cry. The sky cries. Must we all cry? But of course.

After all, water is and has always been the provider of life.

Go ahead and drain the bathtub, Miley.

Your water is dripping out.