Chapter Text
Ashton can't sleep.
Of fucking course they can't sleep, not after yesterday, not after how horribly they fucked up, not after everything that went wrong. Whenever he closes his eyes he just sees bodies, sees rubble, sees his parents, sees nothing. He's tired— he's so fucking tired— but he can't sleep, so he drags himself from the room he was given on Xandis' airship in search of some alcohol to knock him out for the rest of the night.
He doesn't find alcohol. He finds one of Xandis' crew keeping control of the ship, and he finds Imogen, splayed out across the lower deck. She looks dead, and he's running before he can think better of it, heavily dropping to his knees beside her.
"Imogen," he says, shaking her by the shoulders. His hands are shaking. "Imogen, hey. Wake the fuck up." She groans sleepily, shifting closer to them, dragging an arm up to block her eyes as if it were bright out. They release a breath they hadn't known they were holding. She's alive, and moving, thank fuck. He's not sure they have enough materials to drag one of their own back from death a third time— a fourth time, a fifth? How many times have each of them died, only to spring back up again?
It catches his eye, then, that the purple lines running along her arms have spread, growing now past her inner elbows, webbing up her forearms. They're nearly as long as Ashton's own marks, gold splitting his skin into fractals. Something about that makes him sick, a terrible swirling feeling in their stomach. They don't think about it.
He shakes her again, gentler now that it doesn't seem like she's a foot in the grave. "Imogen. Come on, you've gotta get up. What are you doing out here, anyway? You coulda rolled off the fucking ship like this. Wake up, let's go," they insist, but she just turns onto her side, nearly in their lap now.
"Go back t' sleep, Laud," she mumbles tiredly, muffled by the fabric of his trousers, and Ashton has never frozen so fast.
Fuck. Fuck, they really should've expected this. Those two girls were attached at the damn hip, so much so he'd bet good gold that they'd even bathed together. They've always slept in the same bed, practically curled around each other, so of course Imogen would think, in this particular situation, that he's Laudna. But he's not Laudna, he's Ashton, brutish and hardy and very much alive right now, and Imogen is asleep and starting to wake, and he is not Laudna.
He remembers his encounter with her only days ago, shouted through the sandstorm that loomed over Bassuras. You and I, we're broken on a visual level, she'd told them, and they'd sniped back, yeah, a fundamental one. Because they were. Because they are, he thinks, he thinks of Laudna's broken corpse beneath rubble, of Orym sliced into bite-sized shreds, of Fearne slashed into fucking ribbons, of all the times his own body has been torn apart and stitched back together, and it feels so goddamn hopeless .
But that's okay, because they'll fix this. They're broken people, that's great, Ashton can work with broken. They'll fix it the same way Milo did, with some molten gold, some shitty slag glass, and a fuck ton of hope.
He takes a deep, shuddering breath.
Ashton has never been good with touch— though maybe that's not true. They're reminded suddenly of kind, saintly eyes, a press on the shoulder and a kiss to the head just before everything shatters, and everything's always shattering, isn't it? Everything's always fucking shattering— but they aren't good with touch now, and that's all that matters, because Imogen is clinging to them and they really need to do something.
Getting her to go back to sleep seems like the best option. In her current state, they don't trust themself to pick her up without completely waking her, and he has no idea how she'll react to seeing him instead of Laudna.
They move to sit with their legs crossed, and then they carefully pull her head full into their lap. Her hair is bright against the dirty reds of his outfit, fanning across the clasps and stitches he dons. He brushes it out of the way, and the remaining tension in her body melts away at the touch, making him pause, dumbfounded once more.
But it makes sense, given Laudna's tendency to play with her own hair. They can imagine her doing the same to Imogen's.
It feels intimate. Feels wrong, doing this, because it should be Laudna combing fingers through her hair, but he does it anyway, ridding of knots and specks of dirt where he finds them until they're passing through smoothly, and Imogen is softly snoring, the faintest of smiles on her lips.
His own exhaustion hits him when he sees how relaxed she looks. He can't remember the last time he slept. That's a realization that weighs heavy now, like an unbearable weight spread across his shoulders, forcing him to bow. He doesn't like it.
They stand and gather her limp body in his arms, one arm beneath her knees while the other goes behind her back, pressing her chin over their shoulder. When she's steady in their grip, they turn and make their way back into the chambers, nudging open the door to her room with a foot and pushing it closed behind him.
Her bed isn't made. It looks like the opposite, actually— the sheets are entirely out of order, blanket left a heap on the floor tangled around a pillow or two. Sighing, he sets her on the mattress and picks everything up, lifting her head to set a cushion behind it before he goes around tucking everything in, muttering reassurances to himself and to her the whole time. Once they're done, they finally spread the blanket over her, tucking her in. Then they stand, watching her chest rise and fall with the steady beat of her heart until they feel assured enough to turn and leave.
But a hand suddenly catches their wrist, and a tired, aching voice says, "Stay. Please."
"I'm really not the cuddly type, Imogen," Ashton tells her, looking back. Her arm sticks out from under the covers, latching onto his. He tries to pull away, but she doesn't relent, so he suggests, "I can go get Fearne or somebody, if you want."
Imogen shakes her head firmly. Her eyes are half-lidded, held down by tiredness, but they're glassy in a way that makes his chest hurt, guilt rising like bile. "Please," she begs again, "just stay."
In one harsh movement, he rips his hand from her grasp. Imogen wears an expression of utter betrayal, like she had been burnt.
Then her chin's wobbling, and she's gasping for breath, saying, "I can't! I can't sleep without her, I keep— I'm gonna have another fucking nightmare, I know I will, and she's not gonna be here, but you're here and I need you to stay , Ashton, please."
She's so desperate, so genuine in the way she cries, and Ashton remembers Laudna, her face a blur in the midst of the sandstorm but her voice clear as she told them, but if we could give them the life we never had..
Ashton thinks of broken things like himself, like Laudna, like the Nobodies, and Ashton thinks of the things not broken but fractured, like Fresh Cut Grass, like Imogen, like just about everything else in his fucking life, one good hit away from shattering into unrecoverable pieces.
So, inevitably, Ashton breaks, just like he has so many times before. Always broken, always breaking. Begrudgingly, hesitantly, Ashton stays, toeing off their boots and hastily climbing into bed beside her. As soon as he's in reach, she's diving into his arms, hiding her face in the shoulder of his vest as her body is wracked with tremors.
"I'm so sorry," Imogen sobs, and Ashton holds her tighter.
No more broken people, they vow. They've had enough.