“Ashton?”
Imogen is behind them, and Ashton turns to her as they walk through the city streets.
They look around at the group. Dorian is pushing at Laudna playfully up ahead as she gleefully puppeteers Pâté around his shoulders. Orym and Fresh Cut Grass are chatting quietly about the newness of the city. The group has been getting closer, lately. Everything has been on the up and up.
“Yeah?” Ashton throws back to her, feeling a little carefree, a little breathless in the evening air of the Core Spire. He rolls his shoulders as he walks and tries to enjoy the evening.
“I had a question,” she begins, “and I apologize if it’s personal to you, but everyone we meet… everyone who knows you. They keep making these comments about how they’re so glad you found friends? It just seems like a really odd thing to say to someone.”
Imogen’s face seems to twist apologetically at Ashton.
The thing is, it is a really weird thing to say to someone who is obviously with a group of new people. They didn’t even give Ashton a week with these people before everyone is pushing his private business through the slats of his carefully constructed exterior. Very carefully constructed. With fucking gold.
“Yeah, you’d think they’d mind their own fucking business a bit more. Everyone likes to be all up in each other's shit here. I was solo for a while. That’s it.”
Ashton grits his teeth and keeps walking. Keep their cool, keep their cool. Ashton is not going to let the same thing happen to these people. It’s going to be different this time.
“Oh. Okay. Well, I know that other night when we were drinking you talked a bit about a group that left. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’m just making sure everything’s good, is all,” Imogen continues on.
“It’s. Good,” Ashton bites out.They can feel their fingernails digging into their palms.
“Okay, because it’s just that-” She is still continuing on for some reason. Can’t she just leave it? “-if they left because of something big that happened we should probably know about it? It just seems like a lot of people around here know something and I don’t want to be caught unawares.”
Imogen is going on, and Ashton shuts his eyes against the light of the sky, taking a deep breath in at her words, trying to regulate.
Everything that once was clear washes out dark now. It’s his fault. He feels something inside him break. They've ruined all of it.
“Who? The fuck? Do you think you are? Getting into all of this,” Ashton feels themself spit suddenly, teeth bared, “You think you understand? You think you can fix this?”
They hoist their hammer up towards Imogen's head. “You think you’re gonna get away with messing with me? You think I’m gonna let you get away with your fucking head intact?”
His head is spinning and the woman is trying to hurt them. She’s pushing and pushing. The colors don’t seem right as they look at her and there’s pain bursting through their sight.
Ashton finds themself pushing into this woman’s space, rage coursing through them, blind and frightening. I’m drowning .
“Ash…” a little shiny thing says. He feels himself respond unintelligibly, unable to to process what is happening, why this is happening. Their arms are heavy and nothing looks right. It’s all underwater.
“Ashton, what is this?”
Someone tall and blue is looking alarmed as he attempts to push Ashton to the side, away front he purple haired-woman, but Ashton is solid. He doesn’t budge. Their face never strays from the woman’s as their breath comes harsher and harsher. The woman shakes her head incredulously at Ashton. Why does she know me?
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” they growl, and everything is hurting.
The woman makes a noise at that, glancing quickly at the shiny thing before saying, “Sorry,” and pushing a hand out towards Ashton. Stinging blue light forces its way between her and Ashton, pushing them back and making them stumble over their feet, right onto their butt. They close their eyes and breathe harshly through their nose and try to force the spinning to ease.
“Something’s really wrong,” someone, a new voice says quietly, staring at Ashton as they begin hyperventilating on the dirt floor. This is pathetic, they think, go away. He can’t talk.
“Well no shit, Imogen, but what are we supposed to do with this?” blue guy says.
“Ash?” the shiny one says again, louder this time. The mismatched eyes that stare back terrify them. They’re full of confusion and fear. He’s scared someone and nausea builds in their body. It’s all happening again. They don’t know where they are, or who’s with him, or what might be happening, but the feeling of confusion that is now overshadowing the rage is a familiar one.
“Ashton?”
“Mm?”
A reply, a coherent reply. Somewhat. The shiny one deserves a coherent reply.
“Ashton, is this what Milo was talking about?”
“Milo,” Ashton says, frowning a little, rolling the name around in their mouth as if to rattle something loose from it. It’s more familiar than anything else and… Milo knows Ashton. They can put him in his bed and let him sleep off the rage and confusion and embarrassment, and they can talk their way around these people. Get them to go away.
A small man looks towards the shiny one and says with a quiet voice, “This isn’t something new, then.”
It’s somewhere in the nebulous space between a statement and a question, and Ashton feels their face flush and their brain stutter.
The purple one pipes in then, soft and unmoving at a distance, “Ashton? Do you know where you are?”
“Of course,” Ashton says, lying badly, he knows.
“Do you know who we are?”
His heart stops and Ashton holds their head in their hands. They’re still on the ground. They can feel the dirt underneath them. There’s a rock underneath one thigh and a damp patch of grass is bleeding moisture into their pants. Six sets of eyes are focused on them.
“Why are you here?” The voice is not his own. It is that of a child. It's pathetic and very small. “Just leave me the fuck alone.”
They place their palms over their ears and keep their head down, eyes shut tight
“Ashton, you know me,” the shiny one says insistently. They seem sad.
Ashton looks up at them, hard and scrutinizing.
“I know you.”
Their eyes focus in on the strange yellow being, and they smell greenery.
They must be taking too long, because the shiny thing looks even sadder and says, “I’m-”
“I know it. I know it. Don’t tell me,” they force out. Ashton shuts his eyes again and thinks. It’s like swimming through molasses, a slow indulgence of sorts and they are straining with the effort. He knows this- if they can just grasp it-
They can hear the murmurs around them as he tries.
He’s unsafe!
They’ve got a condition. You can’t abandon somebody for that.
That was dangerous, though. Incredibly so.
It’s pretty common with, you know, brain injuries actually. Rage, change in personality.
That’s-
Yeah.
Milo mentioned this once and Ash shut it down. I don’t think they wanted us to know.
Hm.
“- Fresh Cut Grass!” Ashton bursts out in triumph. Fuzzy memories erupt in their head of a group, but this figure, Fresh Cut Grass is the clearest of all of them.
They look around and the group is looking at them with eyes that speak of pity. They can feel the wave of shame crash over them before they forcibly compartmentalize it. Ashton breathes.
In. Out.
“I’m. I’m going home,” they manage to bite out. Imogen looks like she wants to argue with him, but Dorian holds out an arm to stop her.
Ashton doesn’t wait for the rest of them to respond before they stomp off. He knows that FCG will likely follow them, full of too many questions, but hopefully Milo will be home and take care of the actual answering part. Ashton is exhausted, and despair provokes a desperate desire to hide away.
This might be done. Over. It was very good while it lasted. A pathetic, what, four days? They just hope that the group doesn’t remember them too poorly after all of that.
As they trudge through the alleys and streets, they finally find the entrance to the familiar hollow that promises respite. Relief floods them.
Now that their bed is only a short climb away, they're determined to go pass out.
He’ll deal with fallout tomorrow.