Ashe was not good at making friends. She was even worse at keeping them. Sav used to joke that there wasn't a caring bone in her body, before they too fell apart. But Ashe did care. She simply wasn't good at showing it.
Well, this time she would. Ashe gripped the Moonlight Detective tapes in her hands as she sought out Spade's room, a bag of chips tucked under her arm. Spade had been confined to bed rest and light exercise for three days now. If Ashe knew anything about that boy, she knew he was restless. A distraction was just what he needed.
"Dear girl, where are you going?"
Ashe's chest tightened. She came to an abrupt halt, the bag slipping under her arm, and turned to meet Charien with an impassive disposition.
"I'm looking for Sav." The ease at which she lied belied thousands of ones that came before. She kept her tone innocent, light, as sweet as the picture of Alice in his head.
Inside, Ashe was terrified. It was no coincidence that Charien had found her seeking Spade's company. Again. Such occurrences happened more frequently now, and Ashe suspected he'd taken to stalking her. How many eyes did he have in the tunnels? Who had he paid off for information on where his protege was going–and who she was with?
His suspicions had chased her into corners, isolated her away from every boy her age that dared show interest. Ashe had worked hard for what little freedoms she had in X. If she gave him any ammunition, such freedoms would be snatched away.
The faulty overhead light flickered, stretching his shadow against the wall. She imagined it swallowing her whole, drowning her in darkness. Ashe cringed against the thought. Charien's patience had grown thin as of late; how much longer until he couldn't stand it anymore and kept her locked in his room like some trophy?
"You and Savannah are on good terms, then?" Charien asked doubtfully. Ashe struggled to meet his gaze.
"Yeah," she said. "We made up."
"That's wonderful news." She could hear it in his voice that he didn't buy it for a second. "I'm afraid the timing is inopportune, though. We have yet to begin your training lesson for the evening."
"We trained yesterday." It came out as a whine. A plea. But Charien was not an easy man to persuade.
"Dearest, you're not so skilled that one session is enough," Charien chided her. He stepped toward her, and Ashe let the bag of chips fall to the floor when he pulled her under his arm.
"What's the point of all this training if you won't let me have more contracts?"
Charien patted her head with all the condescension of a small child and shepherded her to his office.
Ashe hated the room, hated its faux regal interior, hated the musty smell that accompanied the water stains on the wallpaper. Mostly, she hated that there was nowhere to sit that didn't accompany the vile memories of Charien's touch.
She settled for the chaise, kicking her legs awkwardly over the arm while her hair spilled out over the cushion. There was no point in curling up in a corner as she used to, limbs flailing when he approached. It didn't work then. It wouldn't work now.
Charien removed his blazer, revealing an emerald green vest with a brocade design. It was fraying slightly at the shoulder, but the material was thick. Expensive, or had been once. Two years ago, Ashe had rampaged through his room with a pair of scissors, cutting every pricey piece of clothing he owned in her rage. Many scraps were tossed, but the green vest had survived. Ashe noticed he wore it often around her, a constant reminder that she had failed to wound him or his pride, as she'd failed so many times before.
"Occasionally, your contracts may require you to fit in with the upper class," Charien said, plucking a leatherbound book from the bookshelf. He held it aloft so she could read the title: Etiquette and Civility: The Guide to Proper Young Ladies and Gentlemen. "This necessitates learning and sophistication. I won't have you acting as a dirty little harlot. Worse, I won't have it said that you are ignorant."
Ashe grimaced. She was intimately familiar with the lessons written in that outdated book; she'd been forced to read it even before X. Charien treated it as a sacred text, one that he made every effort to make Ashe follow.
She didn't see the point, but Ashe didn't see the point in most of his lessons. Charien fancied himself as her teacher, a role he took quite seriously. Hours of her life at X were spent in lessons on literature, arithmetic, culture–all which Charien believed to be of supreme importance for the perfect assassin.
Ashe thought the lessons on knife throwing and shooting were more useful. Charien, however, believed illiteracy and ignorance to be the worst of crimes. This being the opinion of the man who earned the moniker Charien the Executioner, Ashe had no room to protest.
He placed the book on her stomach and ran a finger across its olive green cover with reverence. Disgusted, Ashe shoved the book onto the floor. It landed with a thump on its spine, pages falling over onto themselves.
Charien bent to pick the book up and smoothed out the creased pages. One hand elegantly placed behind his back, he returned the book to her stomach. Ashe considered tossing it against the wall this time, but her resolve withered under his warning glare.
Grumbling to herself, Ashe sat up and their lesson began. It was a standard set of lessons–posture, social interactions, grooming and dressing. Nothing Ashe found remotely interesting, and even less useful. Perhaps that was why Charien emphasized these ones so much.
"Very good," Charien said after the better part of an hour, and returned the dreaded book to the shelf. He plucked another one in its place, this one with an elegant golden etched scrawl on the cover. "Let's observe these lessons through text. Why don't you read the first paragraph for me and explain the metaphor of the cottage?"
Ashe nearly gagged at the romance novel he placed in her hands. It was one of the few texts he'd drilled into her over the past few years. A constant in his collection of repetitive lessons. Her eyes glazed over as she read the first page, catching on incomplete phrases and words. It was only three paragraphs in that a group of sentences caught her attention: The ribbon in her hair waved like an invitation, beckoning him from the well-worn path that wound deeper into the woods. He sensed that this was to be his respite for the night.
"There's nothing here," Ashe decided, slapping the book shut. "It's just some stupid romance."
"It's not some romance," Charien said. "It is a classical work by Agnes Due. It's been studied by literary scholars for nearly a century–"
"Some rich guy falls in love with a peasant girl, and she dies." Ashe dropped the book onto his lap carelessly, internally pleased when he winced. "I just summarized the entire fucking book."
"It is far more than that, and you know it. We've discussed this, Ashe." Her glee dimmed. Charien over ever called her by her real name when she truly upset him. "The cottage. What does it represent?"
"You mean symbolize," she muttered.
"Something that stands in for something else, yes,” he replied. “You’re not stupid. You’re capable of appreciating my lessons. You simply must stop resisting, Alice.”
Ashe recoiled at the sound of Alice's name in place of her own. Ashe imagined the dead woman's face superimposed on her own: both of her eyes clear blue instead of Ashe's mismatched oddity. Her usually sharp cheekbones softened, her long nose pinched back into a cute little button Ashe saw in paintings. Was this what Charien saw when he looked at her? Or did he think that calling her by the wrong name enough would make her change?
"You're stalling, Alice," Charien said.
Ashe had been through this lesson before. Many times. With a sigh, she dully recited Charien's memorized speech, her downcast gaze dimming with each mumbled word. "The encroaching night is his loneliness bearing down on him. He wonders if he will ever find his way out of the forest. The cottage is a refuge from the long journey… and from his loneliness."
She knew the recitation was correct, so it didn't make sense to her when Charien frowned, tapping his long fingers impatiently against the book's cover.
"What? Am I wrong?" She shouldn't have been, but Charien's moods were as fickle as the sea. She never knew what would bring in a storm.
"No, you're not," he conceded with annoyance. "But you aren't invested in the story at all. You ought to be spending more of your time reading instead of watching those old tapes."
He gestured vaguely to the video tapes at her feet. The ones she couldn't bring to Spade.
"I like reading just fine," Ashe snapped. "I just hate the books you pick out. This isn't the kind of stuff I want to read."
"You are lucky you're allowed to read at all," Charien said, his gaze narrowing. "Most girls your age do not have the privilege of studying literature in the same way you do."
Lucky them, Ashe thought bitterly. As if reading her thoughts, Charien scowled and put the book away.
"If we were all allowed to learn the way we wished, the world would be filled with idiocy," Charien continued. "Merely look at the Gate. Laziness. Incompetence. They cannot be bothered to learn the hard things in life, simply because they are just that. You have potential, and I will not see it wasted."
Potential. He said it often enough that it must be true, right? Then why did Ashe feel as if every opportunity that had been presented to her was squashed in his fist like ripe fruit?
Their lesson over, Charien reached for his vest and unfastened the buttons one gold piece at a time. Recognizing his pattern, she curled up against the chaise and steeled herself, clutching her aching gut as if she might vomit.
"No! No! Can't I have one day without this shit?!" She wasn't sure what overcame her this time, but the pain of watching him undress- the disgust that had been building up in her under his increased attention- left her desperate and aching. "I want to leave! I want to be done!"
Charien did not so much as look at her. "Quiet yourself, Alice. Screaming will only hurt your voice."
"I'm. Not. Alice!" Ashe howled. Tears pricked her glaring eyes and her head spun. Long held-back screams filled her lungs, waiting to burst. "My name is Ashe! Ashe, you delusional fuck!"
"You think I'm delusional?" Charien paused at his collar shirt, his cold and unfeeling demeanor shifting to amusement. As though she'd made a clever little joke. Ashe wanted to claw his face off. "That's not true at all. I'm no madman."
He joined her on the couch, half-dressed and smiling. Ashe dug herself further into the corner as he sat beside her with all the ease in the world. The last time she'd run, he'd grabbed her ankle and dragged her back. If she attacked him, he would do something worse. He always did. How was she supposed to win?
"I know I'm a monster, Ashe," he whispered, twisting a strand of her hair around his finger. She trembled, a cold fear holding her in place at the sound of her name on his lips. "I know what I do to you. Does that scare you?"
He turned into a smudgy blur between her tears, an incomprehensible mess not unlike the feral, desperate cries that dragged from her throat.
Yes, she was scared.
"It always comes back to you and me, Alice," he sighed, moving closer. Ashe tried to push him away, but it was like fighting a collapsing building. She was trapped. "You will have your rebellion. The endless suitors that promise to save you. But it will always come back to you and me."
Charien was right. He'd killed every boy she'd gotten close to. No matter how she fought, she always wound back up in this office. It always came back to Charien.
Ashe broke. She broke into a million tiny pieces, the shards of her soul embedding themselves in dangerous cuts along her heart. Her lungs. Everything. She was nothing more than skin covering the fragmented pieces inside, too clumsy not to cut herself on the way down.
"Why? Why me?" She blubbered nonsensically, only a few comprehensible words making their way through. Charien brushed the hair from her face, his touch gentle compared to the cold steel in his blue-eyed gaze.
"Would you believe me if I told you that you remind me of myself?"
It was harsher than a blow to the gut. She inwardly reeled, fighting back the nausea that built in her throat. Charien was adept at mind games. He stole pieces of her with his cruel offhand commentary, eroding her sense of self into dust. But there was a genuine look in his eye now, and she hurt all the worse for it.
"We're both monsters," he murmured, stroking her hair, and Ashe was too afraid to push him off. "Killers and degenerates. "You have a cruel lesson to learn, my dear, at the end of all this. It’s the same lesson we all have learned. When you are broken and there is nothing left, you will truly know what you are. I wonder if you’ll like what you see."
+++
It was past midnight when Ashe left Charien's office. She stumbled down the hall in a haze, numb and aching. Her knees shook until they gave out two hallways over. Ashe slumped against the wall and pulled her legs to her chest like a shield–but she couldn't protect herself from the onslaught of tonight, or any night before. Charien's touch brought with it a slow death, his caresses spreading the rot of his desire across her skin.
Jason hadn't felt like that. Each moment with him brought a little more hope for a future without Charien in it. A hope for a future together.
We'll leave the Gate, he'd promised between tangled sheets and giggling kisses. I'll save up enough kraks, and we'll get the fuck out of here. Together.
There was a problem with Jason's promises, though. He cut through his spending just as quickly as his contracts. The money was easy, and he'd always assumed there would be more. He spent it on cars, clothes, booze, gifts, and with Silas's help, gambling. They could've left years ago, if he'd saved it. But that just wasn't who Jason was.
Ashe scrubbed her eyes, surprised by the bitter memory. Usually her thoughts of Jason were clouded with romantic memories or the harsh reminder of his death. When did she start to resent him? Did she resent him?
Anger was becoming a common presence in her life. These days, she found a simmering hatred where her sadness and fear used to live. She woke up with anger and went to sleep with it, its companionship closer to a lover than any man. She nurtured this hatred like a child, seething at every injustice. Dreaming of death row for every bastard.
Every day, this anger grew.
Ashe looked at her feet, surprised to see that she'd carried the Moonlight Detective tapes off when she left Charien's office. She picked one up and stared at the cover: the lead detective, Clyde, with one of the recurring femme fatales, Edna, turned away from him in a slinky dress with a gun in her hand. The detective was always knocked down–physically, emotionally, mentally–but took it with a shrug. He isn't good, and he makes bad decisions, but he never stays down.
Ashe knew what she had to do. She had to get up.
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