Ash Learns to Hold Water
Chapter 25: Ash Learns to Hold Water
( Fragmented Memories–II )
Irregularity would occurr in the cycles.
Someone.
Would prevent me from wandering between life and the void…before the world regressed again.
Would stop me from killing myself.
━━━━━━ʕ• · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·•ʔ━━━━━━
“–gh—”
Alive.
Unfortunately.
“You’re awake,” someone said.
I turned my eyes that way.
She sat in a chair beside the bed.
Her eyes—
They looked like someone seeing a recurring dream.
“…mhf,” I said around the gag.
“Right,” she murmured. “That must be uncomfortable.”
She leaned forward.
She didn’t hit me.
Her fingers brushed my jaw, carefully. She undid a buckle behind my head. The leather loosened, slid out of my mouth.
I spat.
She wiped it away with her sleeve.
“Who,” I began, voice cracked, “the hell are you.”
The corner of her mouth twitched.
“Today?” she asked.
I stared.
She smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes.
“It’s all right if you don’t know yet,” she said. “I remember enough for both of us.”
My throat burned.
“Let me rephrase,” I said. “Why the fuck am I tied to a bed. And why are you sitting there like you’ve done this a hundred times.”
“Because I have,” she said simply.
“Untie me,” I said.
“No,” she said.
“You planning to torture me?” I asked. “Interrogate? Experiment? Harvest my organs? At least be honest about the brand of crazy I’m dealing with.”
She flinched at crazy.
It was small. A flicker. A tiny, tightening around her eyes.
Then it was gone.
“No,” she said again. “I’m here to stop you from killing yourself.”
The words sat stupidly between us.
“…Why?”
“You heard me,” she said. “Last time, you managed to get the artery in your neck. Before that, you jumped into the core. Before that, you bit through your own tongue and choked. It’s… messy.”
Her gaze slid to my throat, lingered a moment, then came back up.
“You’re not very creative anymore,” she added softly.
I couldn’t tell if that was criticism or grief.
“Lady,” I said, “Stop getting in my way. How the hell do you remember?”
She inhaled like it hurt.
“Right,” she said. “We’re early this time.”
Her hand lifted.
I tensed.
She didn’t strike.
Her fingertips brushed my brow, light as falling ash.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You always hate this part.”
.
.
.
[♪♪♪]
The world folded in on itself.
Reset.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
I tried to drown myself.
“Breathe,” someone said. “Please.”
A hand slapped my back. Hard.
I spat the mouthful back into the cup I’d knocked over.
– cough, cough
My lungs burned as if they’d forgotten how to work.
I blinked through the tears stinging my eyes.
She sat there again.
Same robe. Same ash hair. Same sad eyes.
I slapped the cup out of her hand.
Water splashed across the rubble.
Her fingers tightened around the handle for half a heartbeat too long before it fell.
“…oh,” she said.
“Don’t ‘oh’ me,” I snapped. My voice came back faster this time. “What did I say about getting in the way.”
“You didn’t say anything yet,” she replied. “You just woke up.”
“Stop bothering me,” I said. “Get lost.”
Her mouth trembled.
Not in an offended way.
In a here we go again way.
“I can’t,” she said.
Something inside my skull scratched.
“Why?” I demanded. “Did the great mysterious voice in the sky assign you to babysit? Is that it? Are you my handler? My leash?”
She looked at me like I’d kicked a puppy. Then, slowly, she shook her head.
“No,” she said.
That made it worse.
Far worse.
“You’re insane,” I said. “Get out of my way.”
She smiled at that. It looked cracked.
“I tried,” she murmured.
[࿐𝄞𝄢℘]
The world jumped.
Same alley. Different angle.
The building that had been half-collapsed was whole again. The corpses on the street were breathing for now.
I knew this place. This moment.
I also knew what came next.
Monsters pour out. People scream. I fight. I die. The bells ring. Repeat.
It had been neat at first.
Clean.
“You,” I said.
She looked up.
Rain had just started. Thin drops. They clung to the ends of her hair.
“You’re early,” she said.
“I told you,” I said, walking past, “fuck off.”
Her hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.
She was faster than she looked.
“Don’t,” she said.
Her fingers shook around my skin.
“I don’t have time to play,” I said. “Move.”
“Then make time,” she whispered.
I wrenched free.
She didn’t try to hold on.
Her hand stayed where it was, fingers bent in mid-air.
“Every time you do this,” she said to my back, “you regret it later.”
“I don’t remember later,” I said. “That’s the point.”
“You do,” she said. “In the places that matter.”
I didn’t turn around.
Demonic Portals opened.
Monsters poured out.
I rushed them.
It was easier that way.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
[࿐𝄞𝄢℘…]
I didn’t stop killing myself, and neither did she stop.
The time I tried to jump, she pulled me off the ledge.
I remember the feeling of air under my toes.
Then a hand around my ankle.
The crack as my back hit the stone instead of the void.
Then, I slit my throat.
She held the wound closed with glowing hands, sobbing quietly while the world burned around us.
The third time, I swallowed poison.
She made me throw it up. Her fingers forced down my throat, nails scraping my tongue while I gagged and clawed at her wrists.
The fourth time, I bashed my head against a wall until my vision turned to static.
I woke up tied to the bed again, leather in my mouth, her eyes red.
“Why,” I croaked when she pulled the gag out.
“Because you don’t stop,” she said.
The fifth time, I got creative.
Fire.
– fwoosh.
She didn’t even try to put it out.
She just wrapped her arms around me and held on as the flames devoured both of us.
“See you in the morning,” she whispered in my ear, voice warm against the burn.
[♪♪♪]
Reset.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
I started killing her instead, then killed myself.
I killed her with a sword once.
It slid between her ribs too easily.
“I’m not sorry,” I said.
She coughed. Blood ran down her chin.
“Don’t be,” she managed. Her hand came up, weak, and patted my cheek. “At least you’re… trying something new.”
She died smiling.
[࿐𝄞𝄢℘]
Reset.
I drowned her the next time.
Held her under water in the fountain while people ran screaming past us toward the gate.
Her fingers clutched at my wrists for a while.
Not to claw me off.
To hold on.
When the bubbles stopped, I let her go.
Her body rose, hair spreading like ink under the surface.
“You’re persistent,” I told the corpse.
[♪♪♪]
She came back anyway.
Always with the same sad eyes.
Like she had known me for an eternity.
As if she had known me for an eternity.
I didn’t know her name.
or her face.
I… just couldn’t remember.
Over and over, we played.
The same stupid game.
She stopped me.
I stopped her from stopping me.
Bodies piled in the spaces between resets.
None of them counted.
Except hers.
Her deaths clung.
My memory. That was a shredded mess by then. Faces blurred. Places melted together.
But something under that… remembered.
Because every time I woke and saw her in the chair, my first reaction wasn’t anger.
It was exhaustion.
“Back already?” I sighed once.
She blinked at me.
“We didn’t even finish arguing last time,” she said with a weak laugh. “You skipped the part where you call me a lunatic.”
“SHUT UP!” I said. “I’m sick of you.”
Her smile hurt more than anything.
· ─ ·𖥸· ─ ·
It took… I don’t know how many cycles.
Hundreds. Thousands. Enough that counting became another pointless habit to drop.
At some point, killing her stopped being a release.
It became tiring.
Stab. Strangle. Burn.
Reset.
Same eyes.
Same apology.
Same hands tugging the knife away when I turned it inward.
It got old.
Like everything else.
So one day, when I woke up tied to the bed again, leather in my mouth, I didn’t bite down.
I stared at the ceiling.
Waited.
She appeared in my peripheral vision. Same robe. Same chair. Same eyes.
She reached for the gag.
Her fingers hesitated.
“You’re not struggling,” she said.
“I’m tired,” I answered when the strap came loose.
“Of…?” she asked.
“You.”
Her face crumpled.
I shut my eyes.
“…and me,” I added. “And this. And all of it.”
Silence stretched.
I felt her hands leave my face.
“You’re letting me go,” I said.
“No…” she said.
“You’re not going to stop me?” I asked.
“Will you try?” she countered.
I thought about it.
The only silence left.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“That’s a start,” she said.
She moved then.
“We have… a little time before it all collapses,” she said. “Enough to talk. Or sit. Or… breathe.”
“I don’t like breathing,” I said.
“Do it anyway,” she said.
We ended up on the roof.
We just kept walking until there were no more stairs.
The city lay broken below us. Cracks in the sky bled light down onto shattered streets. The portal in the distance.
Soon it would vomit monsters.
Then we’d play our parts again.
“Why do you? you care too much about me,”
She came to sit beside me. Close enough that our shoulders almost touched.
Almost.
“I don’t care enough,” she said.
“That’s a lie,” I said.
She laughed.
It was small and rough. It sounded like she’d forgotten how.
“If I cared enough,” she went on, “you wouldn’t have…. alone.”
“Yes, I am doing this alone,” I said. “You’re the one who keeps pretending we’re in this together.”
She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
“Why do you want to die so much?” she asked.
“Because nothing I do matters,” I said. “Because nothing changes.”
“You change,” she said.
I looked at her.
She was staring at the gate.
“The scars are in different places each time,” she murmured. “The way you look at me… shifts.
Sometimes you’re angrier. Sometimes you’re just… tired. Sometimes you make jokes. Sometimes you
don’t even bother.”
Her hands tightened on her knees.
“Sometimes,” she whispered, “you smile.”
“You are Delusional,” I said.
“Maybe,” she said. “But delusions are all we have until this ends.”
A chunk of sky cracked off in the distance and fell, dissolving before it hit the ground.
Wind tugged at her hair.
“I don’t remember you,” I said.
She flinched. Just once.
“I know,” she said.
“Then why bother,” I asked. “Why keep…. Why drag yourself through my bullshit when, for me, you’re
just some woman who shows up and gets in the way.”
She was quiet for a long time.
Long enough that the first rumbles from the gate reached us.
When she finally answered, her voice was thin.
“Because I love you,” she said. “Every version. Every stupid, stubborn, selfish, kind piece of you.”
“And that’s enough for you?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Even if I hate you?” I pushed.
“You don’t,” she said.
“How would you know,” I snapped.
“Because every time you kill me,” she said, meeting my eyes at last, “you cry after the rest.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
Maybe she was lying.
Maybe my memory really was that broken.
Maybe there were versions of me who weren’t so tired.
Her shoulder brushed mine as we stood.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s die properly…”
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