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With the nightmare that startled him awake already forgotten, Ash claws at the blankets around him. They're too soft. They're too rough. Everything is just too—too—too much.
He doesn't even know what's bothering him. He doesn't—doesn't remember—
There was some sort of dream, but he just feels empty now. Just ... lost, in a way.
Longing for something.
Someone—
"Nightmare?" Eiji asks softly.
Ash swallows. Eiji's voice breaking the silence is sudden, but not startling. Eiji's starting to become a constant in Ash's life, for better or for worse.
Ash is starting to think it might be for better, but ...
"Didn't mean to wake you," Ash mumbles. His voice comes out raw.
"You didn't," Eiji whispers back.
He's a shitty liar.
Ash pants softly, trying to catch his breath. He stares at the blanket in front of him, trying to ground himself. He's not sure where his mind thinks he is, but—it's not here.
"You didn't answer my question," Eiji says. It's not accusatory, just a simple statement. Offering Ash the chance to change that if he wants.
Ash doesn't want to, though. Even if he remembered exactly what was going on in the dream, it's not Eiji's bullshit to deal with. It's Ash's, and his alone.
Eiji sighs. "I'm sorry, Ash."
Ash almost laughs. "What for?" Like Eiji, out of everyone in this world, has anything to apologize for. Like Ash shouldn't be the one trying to atone for—fucking everything.
"Something I said to you a while ago, actually."
Ash glances over at Eiji, who actually seems rather troubled. "What ... ?"
Eiji pauses, making eye contact with Ash and then looking away toward the window. "I told you once that your mother wanted your life to be beautiful, like a jade in dawn, and I think maybe that was not mine to say."
Ash blinks. "That's been bothering you?" he asks. And—why would Eiji bring it up now, of all times? "It's not a big deal. It doesn't make a difference to me."
"... Ash."
Regaining some sense of composure now, Ash hums. "Yeah?"
"You were crying out for your mother in your sleep."
"W-what?" Ash manages. "No." There's no way.
"You have done it for as long as I've known you, actually. Cried out for her."
"Eiji, that—that doesn't even make sense. I've never met her."
Eiji just looks sad. "I know."
"I'm not—I don't miss her," Ash says, suddenly feeling defensive. "You can't miss someone you've never met."
Eiji looks back at Ash, brows knit together and frowning just slightly.
"She literally left before I could even ..."
"I know," Eiji whispers again. "I'm sorry that I pretended to know."
"You don't need to apologize," Ash says quickly. He wrings his hands together on top of the blankets. "It just—I don't understand. I don't care. I—I believe you, but ..."
"Do you think you are crying out for the idea of a mother?" Eiji asks. "Rather than a specific person, maybe you just want the comfort that a mother could have provided you."
Ash shakes his head slowly. "I don't give a single shit about her," he tries, but his voice wobbles a little.
Maybe he's a shitty liar, too.
Eiji smiles sadly. "All parents are garbage? You said that, once, back in California. But ..."
"Why would I care?" Ash says. He means it like a challenge, but it comes off as more of—a legitimate question. Like he's really, really asking why?
"Why wouldn't you care?" Eiji asks, but his voice is gentle. Too fucking gentle.
"I—Eiji, she's nothing to me." Because I've always been nothing to her.
Eiji's watching him, and Ash shifts nervously under his gaze.
"You can't miss someone you've never met," Ash settles on again. He means it. There's no debate here, no decision to be made. It's just how the world works. She didn't want him, and he doesn't want her.
"What was her name?" Eiji asks softly.
Ash averts his gaze. "I dunno," he mumbles. "Griffin or Dad probably knew, but .... I never asked."
"Oh," Eiji breathes. "Oh, Ash."
"Don't act like it's such a tragic thing," Ash snaps. "If that were the worst thing that ever happened to me, it would have been a happy life."
Eiji seems to hesitate. "... But if she had cared enough to stay, the rest might not have happened either."
"Eiji," Ash groans. "You don't understand. It's not—I don't care. I don't. It's not that I don't believe you; I just don't understand why I would possibly be crying out for someone I don't know."
Sighing, Eiji shuffles over to the edge of his own bed, letting his legs dangle off and facing Ash's bed.
On nights when Ash can tell his nightmares will be bad, he and Eiji don't share a mattress. Ash used to wait until Eiji fell asleep and then slip out into the living room and sleep on the couch instead, but Eiji caught on and wasn't okay with it.
"Did you ever think about trying to find her?" Eiji asks softly.
Ash glances up at him. "My mother?" he asks, almost in shock at the very idea. "She's probably long dead."
"A grave, then?"
Ash almost laughs. People like her—people like Ash, they don't get headstones. They get public graves, or they get rotting on the side of the street until the trash collector comes by. They don't get funerals, and they don't get family looking for their gravesite.
Ash can't tell Eiji that.
He shrugs, instead. "Not really."
"Did you ever think about what she might have been like?" Eiji asks.
And—of course Ash has. Everyone's always praised his appearance, and he doesn't exactly have a lot of resemblance to Jim Callenereese. So of course he's thought about how attractive his mother must have been to men—men like his father. And what that must have meant for her.
Eiji continues, "Like—do you think she would have read you bedtime stories, if she had been able to stay?"
Startled, Ash blinks. Eiji didn't mean her physical traits? "I, uh—"
"Someone like Jessica, maybe, or Jennifer," Eiji says softly.
"... Jessica," Ash agrees distantly. "Someone like Jessica." He thinks he might be shaking, now, shaking almost as badly as his mother probably did when she fucking overdosed.
Ash has thought about it a lot. How fucked up he is. The shit their neighbors in the Cape said about him, about his mother. How Ash might have been more normal if only his mother had brought herself to stop.
But if she hadn't needed the drugs, she probably wouldn't have been with his dad to begin with.
Ash wonders how old she was. How old she was when she had him, or how old she was when she died. Ash wonders if he's going to live longer than she did ...
Ash wonders why he wants someone to save him when she was probably just a kid, too. How fucking selfish do you have to be?
"I think she probably was a bit like Jessica," Ash lies. "Like—the way she's so—you know. The way she's like me." He tries for a smile, for Eiji's sake.
Eiji smiles, too. "Jess would agree with you, you know."
"What?" Ash blurts, startled. "No way. She'd be pissed."
Eiji shakes his head, smile widening. "No. She'd be honored, Ash. Anyone would be honored to have you in their life, as their family."
Ash looks down. "You really regret what you said about my name?" he whispers, maybe a little out of the blue.
When Eiji speaks, his voice is a little more somber now. "I think that I should not have put those words to someone who was—is, rather—so important to you. I don't think that it was mine to say, to decide what she meant."
That hurts, a little. Ash has been clinging to those words. Beautiful, Eiji said. Like a jade in dawn. And, for once, he didn't mean beautiful the way everyone else meant it. He—Eiji, or Ash's mother, maybe—wanted Ash's life to be beautiful. Not him, not Ash, but Ash's life.
And he wanted that, too. He wanted it for himself, even if he shouldn't.
"Whose is it to say, then?" Ash asks. His voice is heavy, sticky almost. "If not hers, since she's—gone."
"I think that you are allowed to have your own interpretation of the life she wanted for you."
Aslan doesn't mean dawn, Ash almost blurts. Because it doesn't; it doesn't.
Aslan doesn't mean dawn. It was something Griffin told him about how his mother named him, and Ash never quite knew whether she really thought that—if she told Griff, or if Griff made it up for Ash's sake. But either way, it didn't take long before Ash learned that it was a falsehood, like so many other things that Griff crafted about his childhood. So many evils Griffin tried to keep from him, only to leave in the end, too.
But Ash has clung to that, too—to those falsehoods. Ash has clung to the idea that his name means dawn, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Because—isn't that beautiful? To be the dawn. To be the beginning of something, rather than the end. The dawn, rather than the dusk. The first flame, rather than the ashes left over.
And so he told Eiji, back then, the same lie that Griff told him. Dawn. Something beautiful; something that Ash wishes he could be. Maybe Ash was born at dawn. Maybe he was supposed to be the beginning of something beautiful, even if in practice, all he does is bring about end after end.
Ash clears his throat. "I think you were right," he whispers. Lies. "About my name, and about her. I think ..."
Ash doesn't believe it, of course. But he wants to, and maybe that's good enough. For Eiji's sake ...
Eiji smiles softly. "Okay, Ash."
And maybe Eiji's not so shitty of a liar, because Ash can't tell, here, if he believes him or not.
"I think she wanted the best for me." It's not true, because if she did—oh, if she did, why did she leave? She and Griff both left; the only ones who cared enough to stay were the ones who hurt him.
Maybe he was better off abandoned.
Ash smiles gently, speaking slowly—calm. "Thank you for reminding me of that, Eiji."
Eiji looks right at Ash, and—yeah. Lying has never been so hard before. But instead of challenging him, instead of calling out Ash's bullshit, Eiji just asks:
"Would you like me to sleep next to you tonight, Ash?"
"... I'll keep you up with my nightmares," Ash murmurs. "You won't get any rest with me here."
"I'd be happy to stay up with you, Ash. If it's you."
"Thanks," Ash breathes. "Then—?"
"Yes," Eiji interrupts. He moves over onto Ash's bed, and Ash scoots over to make room for him. "I'd be happy to."
Ash tries to lie still, tries not to bother Eiji. He thinks maybe he's still shaking a little, but Eiji doesn't comment on it.
Eiji doesn't touch him, either.
"... Eiji," Ash whispers after a couple minutes.
"Hm?"
"Do you think my mother would be proud of me?"
Eiji's breath catches, and then he takes a moment before he responds. Eventually, "I'm not certain that it's my place to decide, Ash, but I think that anyone would be wrong if they were not proud of the person you are. The person you have made yourself into."
"... Okay."
The person Ash made himself into. As though that person is good, and as though Ash deserves credit for that goodness.
But Ash isn't one to question a blessing. They're few and far between, those blessings, but there's one next to him tonight, and Ash won't push his luck.
Because maybe someone is proud of him, and maybe that's enough.