Ashton Enchanted » [cashton] √

2.1

He wasn't sure how long he waited on the roof, the tears still pattering down in small collections each time the realisation hit him. Then he would think he was OK, ready to try and stand, and another wave of emotion would hit him. He could feel his back pocket buzzing over and over again, and that's what finally brought him into the present. He took a deep breath and answered the call.

"Hi," it came out as an exhale, he had intended to seem less deflated, but his exhaustion got the better of him. 

The panic in Crystal's voice was apparent as she responded instantaneously, "Ashton, don't kill yourself!" it was a declaration, and he felt a tug in his stomach, but it ended there; he supposed it was already working? "did it work?" she asked just as quickly as the command had come. 

"it's okay; I'd already stopped. How'd you know?" he asked, a disassociative feeling hanging around the edges of his mind, ready to take him the moment his mind wandered.

A relieved sigh came from the other end of the phone, "Angela from Bio told me that some guy told you to go kill yourself, and you just walked off. I knew it had to be the curse making you, so I just panicked. I didn't know where to look for you. Who ended up stopping you?" 

"No one," he paused, already exhausted, "I-I was crying, and I thought this was it and then, well I just collapsed, and I could move on my own again,"

There was a long pause as Crystal seemed to grapple with the concept, "You mean- you stopped yourself? How did you manage that?" 

"It seems that way; I don't know how but there was no one else there, so it had to be me, didn't it?" 

"Where are you? I'll come find you," 

"I'm on the roof," 

"Oh god," she choked out a sob, "it was going to make you jump, wasn't it?" the hurt in her voice confirmed everything he'd worried about as he climbed the stairs; Crystal would have had a hard time dealing with his death, and a sadness came over him again as he realised that in making friends he had also made a group of people that would have to deal with the consequences of the curse should a day like today come and the outcome be dire. 

He went to speak but the words caught in his throat. She didn't talk either, but he could hear her breathing; she was still on the other end. They stayed silent like that, just listening to one another breath as they wrestled with what exactly they were supposed to say at a moment like this.  

Then finally, he heard the roof door open, and the call ended, his head snapped up to see her coming out onto the roof, and as soon as they made eye contact, she quickly closed the distance between them.  Dropping to her knees and engulfing him in a tight hug, slowly, he let his arms come up to circle her shoulders. It was precisely what he needed to keep him in that moment, while his head buzzed with what this all meant and how he was supposed to go on, knowing this might happen again. 

After a long time of just holding one another, she pulled back, "so why do you think you stopped? Do you think maybe it won't let you hurt yourself?" she asked, letting her hand slide up and down his arm in as comforting a manner as she could. 

"It's made me hurt myself enough times for me to know that wasn't it, and even then, it wouldn't have worked at all. I would never have gotten this far. Maybe- maybe it just overwhelmed my body, the adrenaline was too much?" he ventured. 

"Or..." Crystal trailed off for a moment, "Maybe it was that you didn't really want to do it; I mean, if you think about it, the only times it hasn't worked, you've been really worked up. Like when you told me; you thought you were going to die and you just had a moment of complete clarity, it came out reflexively?" she finished her sentence with an inflection like it was a question she was posing to him. 

"But what about the Calum thing? I wasn't overwhelmed at all; I wanted it to work," 

"Consciously, you wanted it to work, but subconsciously you knew exactly what you wanted," She was smirking as she spoke, sure she'd worked it out. 

He sighed, "but even then, I can't control it. I have to be so over-emotional to stop anything from happening; I can't live in that constant state of overwhelming distress,"

"Maybe it's going to take some time, but this is more than you've ever known about this curse in seventeen years. Once you move away for uni, you'll get more opportunities to push the limits of this," 

Ashton cut her off, "There's no moving away, Crystal, if, if I go to university, it'll be here and I'll live with my mother, I can't leave, something like this will happen again, and I might not break it in time." she went to speak again. He cut her off, "all this has managed to do is make me more determined that I can't have any of the things I want. I'll just go back to what I was doing before and leave everything the way it was," 

"Ash," she said, her voice full of sadness, "that's no way to live," she told him, taking his hands in hers. 

"And living like this is the better alternative? I've nearly died twice in the last few months."