You Sweet Fool

Ashe didn’t move, but her eyes watched her mother approach carefully. ”I’m still here though. I’ve still got you.” Scarred hands gripped tighter to herself at that, and she flickered her gaze back down to the ground. Why? she wanted to bitterly ask. Why, why, why did anyone want anything to do with her? She just.. Didn’t want to exist anymore. Didn’t want to be herself, didn’t want to be anything. Wouldn’t everything just be better if she vanished? She wondered if Vervain would still look for her daughter if she grasped the extent of the terrible thing Ashe was. Vai sat beside Ashe now, her arm carefully drawing around the assassin’s shoulders. At first she tensed, her breath stalling as she was drawn into the warmth of her mother. It seemed her weeks of isolation did her no favors in the progress she’d made. After a moment, though, Ashe let herself lean into her mother, allowed her head to rest against her. She shouldn’t have. She should have drawn away, shifted again, dashed into the woods. What happened? She happened. The small woman’s arms wrapped tighter around sharp knees - a sign of further progress lost. The wolf seemed to need a whole lot more protein than the original did, and in addition to being sick most nights and not bothering to hunt much… she let out a long breath and stared out into the trees. What had happened? Her husband left her, but her mother knew that. Did she know why Alistair handed Ashe’s soul back to her, told her he was a fool for believing she could be saved? She knew he was right - if she couldn’t save herself, no one could. And gods knew that trying to save herself was impossible. ”I can’t just be,” Ashe finally murmured. ”I never will. And I couldn’t… I should have never…” Never allowed anything to bloom between them, should have let him pine for her from a distance until he found a real woman to love, should have put him first. She took a deep breath and straightened, though she didn’t move out from under her mother’s arm. Still selfish. ”I run,” she started again, her voice quiet and near rasping. ”I wake up, and I can’t breathe, and I throw up, and then I shift and just… run. I have to run. Every night, mom, I ran. I never woke him. Never told him where I was going.” He didn’t understand what she was running from. He’d said it himself, that he could not fathom why she could not be at peace. At least when Master had been terrorizing her, she’d had an excuse. Now? Now it was just her, this twisted thing that had no concept of how to function in a world where terror was not a daily part of life. ”I can’t… couldn’t wake him. I was training with someone, I was exploring, I was… not there.” She fell silent, biting the inside of her lip harshly. Alistair said he wanted her there, that was all he had wanted. He wanted the girl that had laughed until she snorted on the floor of the kitchen. The girl that loved to paint, the girl that grinned at him, hunted with him… He had shown her a love that was more pure and clean and soft than anything she’d ever known. It felt innocent in the shadow of her life. She had tasted it, touched it, and she had poisoned it. ”He was right to leave.” Her voice cracked unexpectedly, her chest caving in as she had to fight against a sob that nearly came out of nowhere with the tears springing to her eyes. She managed to contain it, to shove it down with vicious force. Everyone would be right to leave. There was no coming back from what she was. ashetta it's live or die my way.