Hopeless Love (☆Scott McCall x OC☆)

Fight, Asher

✯ACT THREE-PART ELEVEN.2✯

Death. the action or fact of dying or being killed; the end of the life of a person or organism. Afterlife. Life after death. Resurrection. the action or fact of resurrecting or being resurrected.

Everyone gets told about death. Everyone is curious about what happens after. Some believe in Heaven and Hell, others Valhalla, some believe people are reborn, and some even believe in eternal nothingness.

Before, when asked, Ashton would always brush off the question. His mother and father believed in Heaven and Hell, so did his grandparents. His aunt, on the other hand, did not. But Ashton never truly picked or found what he believed to be true after a person dies.

So, when he felt the life slowly draining out of him, the cries of Ethan, Aiden, and Aspen growing distant and quiet, feeling his heart slow in his chest- that was the last question on Ashton's mind.

'Where will I go?'

Then it was nothing but darkness. Like an endless sea of black space and time. A sea that there was no shore too, no bottom. No beginning, and no end. He was just floating, waiting almost. What he was waiting for- he didn't know. But he knew something was coming.

Or someone.

Hands grasping at his arms, his back, his neck- everywhere, he felt them everywhere. Pulling him through the harsh tides, guiding him above the levels of water until the darkness- wasn't so dark anymore. Just getting brighter, and brighter- until white hit his vision. A blinding white, powerful and almost painful.

But it was so warm, so welcoming. So familiar. That Ashton let himself reach, and reach for it, until his hand disappeared into the light awaiting him.

For a moment, when the white started to envelope everything, Ashton felt nothing but relief. There was no pain, no longing to return to his life, no worry of what would happen- nothing but relief. Ashton wasn't suicidal, he didn't want to die. But he wasn't so sure he wanted to keep living either. Not like this. Not with the constant pain, the constant feeling of loss, the constant tight rope of tainting.

In death, none of that mattered. None of that existed. Because he wouldn't exist. That thought...was oddly compelling, and oddly comforting.

"Fight, Asher."

It was like a force pulling him back, back into the water with a silent echoing splash of impact. Then his eyes were snapping open and he was-....in his childhood home. Before LA, before the hunting, before the Hale fire, before Beacon Hills.

It was the exact same. Allison's shoes still laid carelessly on the floor, his fathers blueprints from work on the center table, his mothers cooking books on her favorite chair, his aunts jacket hooked onto the wall. All of it was the same. The exact same. It was like a moment captured in time, never changing.

"You shouldn't be here. Not yet."

Ashton's eyes widened as he heard the familiar voice. A voice he'd nearly forgotten. Forgotten the sweetness of it, the silken honey it could be when it wasn't full of venom or malice.

"Mommy?" Ashton whispered as he turned around, sitting himself up from the leather bound couch and rushing over to the woman who'd given him life.

Arms wrapping tight around her, her arms tight around him in return. Just holding onto each other in the moment. Forgotten all the pain, all the arguments, the disappointments, the differences. Because he could see her again, she could hold him again.

"My sweet Ashton." Victoria breathed, and her voice was like a soothing balm to all his woes as she held him tighter, and pressed her lips against his temple in a kiss he'd almost forgotten what it felt like to receive.