She heard the snap of taut rope first. Then, the crashing and cursing that came after.
Ashe let herself into Crow's office–the damn fool couldn't be bothered to lock the door–and watched the broken man drunkenly try to stand back up from the ground. He swore again under his breath, nearly slipping in the stack of files that littered his floor. Crow's entire desk had been cleared, including a bottle of beer that spilled out onto the floor, ruining the documents that he was too slow to save. Ashe doubted they were that important anyway.
As she crept forward, Ashe noticed the broken rope dangling from a hook on the ceiling. The rest of it lay discarded on the floor, poorly tied into a noose that was both too wide and frayed from age.
"I thought you stopped doing things like this," she said quietly, picking up the rope. A stack of worn photos lay underneath, each one with folded creases and worn edges. Ashe knew the photographs as intimately as if they were her own. She'd caught Crow thumbing through them countless times, wistfully tracing the lines of Alice's heart-shaped face as he searched for something her still image could not provide.
Crow tried to snatch the photos from her, but his movements were sluggish. He stumbled forward instead, forced to grip his desk for balance.
"Give them back," he demanded. Ashe scoffed. He was in no position to be demanding anything–but she slapped them onto the desk, out of reach from the beer. Alice smiled up at her through the photograph, her blue eyes alight with the kind of unbridled joy that felt foreign to Ashe.
For as often as she was compared to her, Ashe couldn't have felt more differently. What allowed that woman to smile like that? How was she so carefree, her heart so full of happiness that she looked even brighter than the sun? There was a reason Crow mourned his wife and Charien obsessed over her. Alice had been a light, and the moment she was extinguished, there was nothing left to keep out the darkness.
Crow stumbled to his chair, worse for wear than she'd seen him in a long time. Ashe didn't know what set it off tonight, but suspected the photos had something to do with it. He tucked them away into his drawer, the same one he kept his pistol locked and loaded and left to mold with everything else in his life.
X was a parasite, and Crow was its favorite victim. He slouched at his desk, the chair fitted to him as ivy to brick. Ashe had watched him descend over the years, folding into himself and his office like a fungus that needed the mourning to thrive.
She knew deep down that if she did not fight, this was what she would become. Every touch from Charien rotted her, chipping at her armor until the mold could settle in and end her for good. Crow didn't realize the power he had, and Ashe almost pitied him. It's a lot easier to fight when there's nothing left to lose.
"Why aren't you asleep?" Crow mumbled, his voice scratchy as he turned the TV on. As if nothing had happened. As if she hadn't just walked in on him failing another attempt on his life.
"Why are you trying to kill yourself again?" she snapped back. At least this time the rope had snapped for her. Some of Crow's previous methods had not gone so smoothly, and Ashe was in no mood to wake Norma.
"Why do you care?" Crow shook his head, but there was no bite to it. Even the flicker of his gaze was slow. Sullen. He didn't deserve her pity, but Ashe felt it nonetheless, combatting it with her own frustration. Didn't he know what would happen to her if he died? Why didn't he realize the power he had against Charien? Why didn't anyone?
Swallowing hard, Ashe pushed back her emotions and held up the tape: Moonlight City.
Crow squinted at the title. Realization dawned on him at an agonizingly slow pace.
"What the–that's mine, you little thief! What's wrong with you? Stealing every fucking thing that's not nailed down to Aroth's floor…"
"Knight's asleep, and Sav won't let me in her room," Ashe pushed. He didn't snatch the tape right away, which she took as a good sign. Even his anger was subdued, little more than the same grumbling discontentment he shared when his favorite sports team was losing. "C'mon. Put it on. You have to watch something else besides sports–no wonder you pass out all the time."
Crow glared, but after a moment, gestured toward the TV. Ashe kicked manilla folders out of her way as she scrambled to put the tape in.
A dark, gritty street appeared on the old television screen. The picture was grainy–more than it was on Sav or Knight's TVs–but Ashe didn't care. She watched closely as the detective began his narration, his voice overlapping shots of degenerates in shady alleys and sketchy clubs. Cigarettes were slung in their mouths, smoke dripping from their lips, and pistols holstered at their hips. They were soldiers loyal to the only thing more corrupt than the crown: kraks.
Detective Clyde Marcioni slunk onto the screen, his face obscured by the dark shadows of his hat. A lone saxophone played, the music crackling through the old speakers as Clyde introduced his audience to the dark, gritty world he lived in.
He led the audience to his office, where his famous femme fatale leaned against his desk with a black eye. She eyed Clyde up, her gaze both pitiful and cunning as she searched his face.
The plot was typical for what was expected of noir–the woman's husband was cruel but powerful, and she needed Clyde's help to escape–but Ashe ate it up like a kid with candy. The episode flew by, ending with a corrupt politician escaping arrest only to find himself stabbed in the back by his wife after she ratted him out to the cops. Credits rolled, and the next episode began.
"I'm surprised you like this so much," Crow said, opening up a bottle of beer from his stash beside the desk. He offered her one. After tonight, Ashe was glad to take it. "It's old."
Ashe snorted a laugh. "So are you."
The next episode began, but as a slinky blonde strutted onto the screen, Ashe's attention was drawn to the photographs on the desk. She plucked one from the pile.
It was one of the most recent of the photographs by far, but no less worn with age. Crow was fifteen years younger in the photograph, but somehow managed to look even more youthful and alive. He grinned at the camera, his handsome face devoid of wrinkles aside from a dimple on his left cheek, and there was no gray to be found in his slick black hair. He was a stark contrast to the man sitting next to her whose alcohol-parched skin had faded and withered with whatever was left of his soul.
Alice stood next to him in the photo, clinging to his arm with a love Ashe had only read about in fairytales. There was something ageless about her, made even more apparent by the knowledge that she'd died too young. Her beauty and youth were forever suspended in time, left only in the permanence of photographs and the fogginess of memories long after she was gone.
There was something tucked in Alice's arms. Sav–just a baby–was bundled in her mother's grasp, clueless to her parents' hopeful love. Her little face was scrunched up with irritation, and Ashe nearly laughed. She'd seen Sav make that exact face just last week.
Crow snatched the photograph from her hand. When Ashe tried to reach for it, he cradled it to his heart and slapped her hand away.
"I mean it, Ashe," he said, his voice sharp. Serious, more so than she'd ever seen him. "Stop taking my stuff. You're getting too old for this shit to be cute anymore."
"I wasn't going to take it," she huffed. "I was just looking."
"Bullshit. You take every goddamn thing you can get your sticky hands on." Ashe rolled her eyes. "Fucking photos, tapes, my stash–"
"I'm only taking what's mine!" Ashe slammed her hand onto the desk, nearly tipping their beer bottles over. "If you don't like it, pay me. Get me a contract. Give me a job." Crow looked away. "I can't stand it here, Crow! It's like I'm in a coffin–I can't breathe! He won't stop. He's not going to stop touching me until I'm dead. He's killing me!"
She could feel it, too, even now. The phantom whisper of his skin against hers left her sick with raw emotion. She was strong–she had to be strong–but Ashe couldn't ignore the cracks in her walls. The shadows in her dreams. Ashe was crumbling, and there was only so much she could do on her own to stop it.
Crow sobered a little, nursing the beer in his palms. "You know why I can't do that, Ashe. You know how he is."
"Coward," she muttered. It was the same excuse. The same old routine, played out again and again.
Ashe turned her attention to a drip in the corner of the ceiling, the water pooling into a tin cup that was left on top of a rusty filing cabinet.
X was rotting to the core. It wasn't just Crow that was affected. Apathy rooted itself into their culture, tearing away from the aging mystique of legends gone by. Loyalty was a forgotten concept to a syndicate that traded its members for contractors that cycled through by the week. Ashe rarely passed by the same men in the tunnels. The rot of X was apparent to all that walked through its doors, and they were eager to take their pay and leave.
Ashe wished she could do the same.
"You're not the only one who's lost someone," Crow said. He stared at the family photograph between his calloused fingers, his gaze faraway. "You're not the only one who suffers here, Ashe."
"And you're a coward for that, too!" Ashe jumped to her feet and slammed her fist onto the desk. Do something! She wanted to scream. Do something to fix this!
Crow ran his ragged face through his hands, discarding the picture with the rest. He stayed that way for a long moment, as though he could hide from her accusations. When he lifted his head and took a sharp breath, there was a look in his eyes that Ashe rarely saw.
"I get it," he said. "I'm a piece of shit, but we'll get you another contract. Charien's been in a mood since you brought that boy around, but I'll figure something out."
Ashe grinned. A tiny weight had been lifted from her shoulders. "You like him, though. Spade's a great killer, huh?"
"So was Rath," Crow said, and her smile dimmed. "But they're not good enough–and they're stupid. I'm sick of dealing with what happens when they get involved with you."
So was she. But what was she supposed to do about it?
Ashe settled back in the spare chair, listless and fidgeting. She didn't want to talk about Spade anymore–definitely not about Rath–or any of her other doomed relationships. Neither was she ready to leave. Ashe stared at the TV screen and tried to get lost in the episode.
"These diamonds don't come cheaply. You should see the ones he brings home–have you ever seen a diamond the size of your fist, detective?" Edna asked on the screen, her dark hair creating a curtain over the left side of her face.
"I can't say that I have."
"When he wins, we're happier than you could ever imagine. When he loses…" She paused, tracing her fingernails over a file on Clyde's desk. "He loves a high stakes gamble. Money, cars, businesses… women." Her voice caught, her nails digging into a picture of her husband's face on the desk. "It's not so much fun when I'm one of those women, detective. Can you imagine being woken up by your husband in the middle of the night only to be told you have to sleep with a stranger? You can't say no–no, no, that's not an option–but it changes something in you. Your relationship is never the same after that. You're… never the same."
Clyde's stoic expression softened on the grainy television. He reached for Edna, then thought better of it. "You're safe here, Mrs. Weiss."
Safe. Ashe glimpsed at Crow out of the corner of her eye. His attention was drawn to the show, but there was a heaviness to his gaze that surpassed his eternal exhaustion.
Was he thinking of it, too? The time he had wagered her to a group of sailors on the dock–and lost? Does it eat him up inside the same way it does her? Does he remember it late at night, when the distractions are gone and the bottle is empty, and cry in his shame?
There was no one to tell her she was safe. Not then, not now. Jason had told her for a short time, his strong arms holding her close while he promised change he could not bring. She believed him, even knowing it was a lie.
Ashe's hands balled into fists as she watched the scene play out. She didn't know what it was–the spilt alcohol, the water dripping from the corner, the files scattered on the floor–but the office suddenly felt suffocating.
"What would Alice think?" she spat the words, knowing they would sting deeper than any hit Crow would take. His teeth clenched.
"Don't go there, Ashe."
"Why not?" Ashe sat up, gesturing around the room. "What would she think? Would she still love you if she saw you like this? If she knew what you did–what you let happen?"
Crow's eyes remained glued to the screen, Ashe saw their shine as emotion welled up inside of him. "I don't have to think about it. I know she's screaming at me from wherever she is."
"Then how can you let him hurt me? Why do you let him do this?!" She was screaming now, on her feet again as frantic energy ran through her.
Do something! Do something!
Fix this! Fix this!
Help me! Help me!
Ashe grabbed his arm, ignoring the clench of his fingers as he tried to pull away. "He took everything from me. Everything. And you just let it happen. You did this to me, too."
Crow flinched. Ashe let him go, her ire a burning flame inside of her heart.
"I'll never forget the way Jason died," she said. "The way he looked. What Charien did to him… It was inhumane."
"He did the same thing to Alice." Crow's voice was soft. "Murdered her. He… You couldn't even tell who she was."
Ashe stared in shock. She knew Charien had killed Alice–everyone knew–but the specifics had always eluded her. For the first time, she saw the true depth of Crow's sorrow–the horror he had endured. At the hands of his brother, no less.
She never imagined that Charien had been so brutal. Everything of Alice's was cherished with such tender care that Ashe had wondered if he had killed her at all.
The truth was much more sickening.
"Charien is always pretending that I'm her," Ashe breathed. "But he doesn't know a thing about her, does he?"
"No, he doesn't," Crow replied through gritted teeth. "Alice might have come from a rich family, but she rejected all of that for my poor ass." His laugh was bitter and wrought with emotion. "I was her scoundrel."
"She called you her scoundrel?" Ashe bit back her amusement. She was supposed to be angry, but the picture of a youthful Crow and his wife flashed in her mind, the photograph somehow endearing.
"From the day we met, until the day she died." He shrugged helplessly, his face downcast. "She thought it was cute."
Jason had made his own nickname for her, too. Blondie.
The memory squeezed her heart until she couldn't breathe. Crow was a horrible man–Ashe knew this in her core–but something shifted then. An ache of sympathy, of understanding, that brought a sob to her throat. No one else in X understood what Charien had taken from her. What a hollow shell of a person he'd left behind.
No one except for Crow.
She didn't know what compelled her to do it, but Ashe found herself wrapping her arms around his neck and sobbing into his shoulder, ignoring the heavy stench of alcohol that clung to his skin. He would never understand–not truly–what she'd been through, but they shared something. Someone shared something with her, and for a moment, that was enough.
Crow did not move. He stayed frigid, allowing her to sob, before roughly grabbing her hands and pushing her away.
"Enough," he said, his voice coarse. "Go, Ashe. Get some sleep."
"I can't sleep," she said, wiping tears with the back of her hand. The rejection stung. All she wanted was a shoulder to cry on–didn't he owe her that much? "Please. Don't push me away. I'm sorry. What did I do?"
Crow shook his head and wheeled his chair away, grasping for another bottle of beer from the floor. She reached for him again, but Crow didn't look at her, his gaze locked on the amber liquid.
Slouched in on himself, Crow never looked smaller. His mind, so full of ghosts that he couldn't see what was in front of him. Who he hurt. How to step up to fix his own mess. He'd surrendered to his demons long ago, watching the world pass him by through numb sedation.
Ashe did not have that privilege. What gave him the right to collapse in on himself when she needed him? When Sav needed him? When X needed him?
"Look at me," Ashe demanded, desperate. "I'm right here! Look at me! Help me!"
Crow did not. Even when she pushed herself into his line of vision, screaming an inch from his face, he found somewhere else to look. Somewhere to hide.
That was the difference between them; Ashe had no pleasant memories to hide in.
"Fuck you," she spat, letting the tears flow freely down her face. "Fuck. You."
Ashe slammed the door as she left. She couldn't do this again. Fighting Crow had taken everything out of her, but Ashe knew Charien would come lurking around the corner soon.
Her breaths came heavy and fast as she paced down the hall. She couldn't go back to his room. She couldn't. She couldn't.
But if she didn't, he would hunt her down and drag her back himself.
Her limbs shook as she slipped through the halls, each step more frantic than the last. Just one night. She needed one night away. Somewhere. Anywhere.
Ashe pounded on Sav's door, hardly able to breathe. Her fist banged in quick succession, nearly knocking Sav in the head when she swung the door open. She must have been dead asleep; her black sweatpants and baggy t-shirt were rumpled, and Ashe could see half of the sheets had been kicked off the top bunk behind her.
"Ashe? What the fuck–" Sav started, but stopped. Concern etched her features as she saw Ashe's pitiful state.
"I can't go back." Ashe's voice shook. She didn't even care that Sav saw her cry. "I can't. Please. Don't make me."
Sav opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. She glanced down the hall, then–mercifully–ushered Ashe inside.
"The spare bunk is yours," Sav said. She removed some of the stuffed animals that had taken over said bunk, tossing them onto a beanbag in the corner of the room. Ashe stopped her from emptying the bunk entirely–she would need something to hold onto tonight. Sav frowned, but moved to the dresser. "Let me get you some pajamas."
Ashe didn't bother to crack a joke about Sav's size–they were close enough in clothes anyway, even with Sav being short enough to still fit into children's clothes if she wanted. The familiar scent of Sav's citrus detergent brought a comfort she hadn't expected to find. Ashe held the baggy band t-shirt up to her face and breathed in deeply. She counted the seconds until her heart rate slowed.
A knock on the door sped it back up again.
Ashe met Sav's panicked glance with her own. Then, almost on instinct, she shoved herself behind a stack of milk crates on the floor that held up Sav's TV. She'd done the same hundreds of times over, back when she and Sav had shared this room, angling herself so that her body was hidden behind the thick bookshelves on the other side and the stuffed animals that littered the floor.
She couldn't see Sav open the door, but she heard the disgust in her voice when she said, "What do you want, Charien?"
"I'm looking for Alice." Ashe's stomach lurched when he spoke. She tried to peek through the holes in the milk crates, but with the stuffed animals in her way, she could only see the back of Sav's head.
"Then why the fuck are you at my door?" Sav snapped. "Do I look like Ashe?"
"Certainly not." Irritated leaked through Charien's voice. A chill ran down Ashe's spine. "Perhaps you have some insight into her whereabouts, though. I have spoken to everyone in X, yet I have failed to glean anything useful."
"And that's my problem… how?" Sav snorted, which Ashe could not decide was brave or foolish. Pissing off Charien was a beloved pastime of Ashe's, but she knew how to read his mood better than anyone. Sav didn't bother with such things. "She's not here, if that's what you're getting at."
"Is that so?" He sounded doubtful. Closer, even. Ashe remained frozen in place, but she could hear his soft footsteps over Sav's rug as he barged in and examined the room on his own. "You won't mind if I take a peek, then."
"Do you fucking mind?" Sav snapped. "Yeah, I kind of do mind, since I'm trying to sleep."
"The light underneath your door was on, so I assumed you were already up."
Sav was quiet for a moment. Then, "I fell asleep reading. You got a look, and she's not here–so can I fucking go back to sleep now?"
Charien tsk'd, and Ashe stopped breathing entirely when his leg passed by the hole in the milk crates. If he merely peered over the TV, he would find her. Her exposed back felt like a beacon that pulled for his attention.
"Very well," he finally said. Ashe nearly gasped from relief as he walked back toward the door–away from Ashe. "I must say, Savannah, your attitude leaves much to be desired. I would expect my niece to behave as a proper young lady. It is a shame to see how your father has failed you."
Sav stiffened but didn't take the bait. "You done?"
"I suppose I am. Goodnight, Savannah. Do let me know if you see your cousin anywhere."
Sav slammed the door in his face. Even when she heard the locks click into place, Ashe didn't stand–not until Sav came around the TV and helped her up.
"He's gone," Sav reassured her. Ashe climbed into the bottom bunk, and Sav hesitated for a moment before crawling in beside her. Ashe breathed a sigh of relief, curling against her side. "You're safe here. I won't let him in."
Safe. Nothing was safe, but Ashe let herself believe her, just for tonight.
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