In Which Ashe Is Given an Out

August 5, 1181

Ashe swallowed back his anxiety and raised a tentative arm to Rona's shoulder. Her mother had been a minute out the door when she could no longer look him in the eye, instead turning away and retreating to the room's center in a sobbing fit. She didn't shoo him away, but neither did she acknowledge his approach. Deian's warning must have had merit and for the thousandth time he wished he'd told her earlier, just whenever they'd had a moment, or whenever they hadn't, or in those odd little minutes in between--as long as he could have braced her for it. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" Her fingers dammed her tears and her arm shuddered as he touched it. It wasn't so much refusal as it was defeat. His heart spasmed and struggled against the constricting chain of thorns, each beat resulting in a fresh wound. "You're only doing what you're supposed to do, aren't you? It's not as if..."

She choked. He wanted to hold her closer but he wasn't sure if she wanted that. He wasn't sure about a lot of things. "I don't know if we're talking about the same thing."

"We probably aren't. You don't know any of it."

Then indeed, they weren't. "What's wrong, then?"

"I... I don't know how to talk to you about this!" She tipped back her head just long enough for him to catch sight of a burst tear streaming from her eye. "I don't know how to talk to you about anything! You never understand! But I can't be angry with you for it because you can't understand!"

Couldn't understand what? Not without a second's hesitation, Ashe shuffled a few inches closer. "Of course I can't understand if you don't tell me."

"Is there any point? And how would you even care? You don't even have feel--" She cut herself off with a half-forced sniffle, but enough of the word had slipped by.

"Wait... you think I don't have feelings?"

The distressed bounce of her blond curls could have been a nod, or it could have been the bout of crying. Either way it was a 'yes'. "Where would you get that from? You know I have feelings. You've seen all my feelings. Maybe a little too much of some of them."

"But they're not real!"

Ashe's heart hit another thorn and this one stuck, its sting anew with every beat. Real feelings. Why would she say that? What made a feeling real? He'd always thought a feeling existed upon being felt. "What?"

"They're just feelings you inherited from... from Aspen." Rona let her hands fall from her face, the pair of them, her lips, her lashes, all resigned to some alien state for which Ashe had no word. His fingers twitched at the sound of the name and he didn't doubt she'd noticed. "She's your template, isn't she?"

"Template?" Was that what she thought? That he was some semi-autonomous shadow, some semblance of Aspen but a far cry from the real thing? "Rona, the truth about Aspen--"

"No! Whatever you're going to say, it's not the truth!" He supposed he may have deserved that one. "Have you ever told me the truth once?"

"Yes." He dared raise a thumb to her eye and wiped aside a tear. He pulled it back when she tried to blink it away. "I tell you I love you."

He backed away, not sure what he'd do if she attacked that as well. But she just wiped her eye again, this time with the side of a fist. "Yes, well... it's just... I'm very confused. And I don't want to confuse you, if you can be confused. I--I don't even know if I should be telling you this, but you..." She swallowed. The thorny rope around his heart tightened. "You should know what you are. I guess I can't hurt you anyway, can I?"

If that was the case, he wanted to ask her what she thought she was doing right now. "I'm sorry I lied to you. And whatever I did to make you believe what you're saying, I'm sorry about that too. I didn't want to confuse you, I just..." I wasn't ready. I was still coming to terms with it myself. I didn't want you to think I was a freak. There were too many things he could have said, and not enough. "I was with you. You make the rest of the world seem like nothing. Even the truth didn't matter when I was with you."

"But it does."

So it did. He'd denied that for far too long. "You're right. Look, Rona... I'm not some kind of duplicate of Aspen, or some sort of proxy for her if that's what you think. The truth is, Aspen and I are..." He stared down to the toes of his boots. Aspen had hardly been the prototype of femininity, but she'd had such dainty, delicate feet. His own were so large and clunky and useless. "...sort of the same person."

He didn't need to look up to know Rona was looking him over. "'Sort of'?"

"Well... not 'sort of'. Really." He wished she'd say something. He almost didn't care what. "I'm sorry that I didn't tell you before. I didn't think you'd believe me, or you wouldn't react well if you did, or--"

Or what. He'd finally dared look up and she was as still and eerily silent as he'd ever seen her. "...That's what you actually believe, isn't it?"

Another thorn broke from the chain. "I was there..."

"Were you?" Why did she keep doing this? How much did she have to hurt him before she realized she actually could? "What if you just picked up where Aspen left off and never knew the difference?"

"That's not what happened. I'd swear it on... on anything. Everything!" But what difference would that make? Everything felt like nothing. Except something. "On my love for you, even."

"Ashe..." She didn't have to say it. Her tear-ridden eyes did the talking for her.

And whoever pulled the strings of thorns around his heart yanked in every direction, leaving nothing but messy chunks of bloody muscle. "You don't think I really love you, do you?"

"It's not your fault, but..." It seemed like hours before she finally finished. "...you're not a real person, Ashe. You can't love."

So came about the destruction of his entire life, dismissed and rejected in three small words any child knew. He wished she was right. He wished he was just some soulless proxy, some stand-in for the real Aspen, who'd loved strongly enough to will him into being but not so much as to grant him those feelings for his own.

Had he been just that, he never would have felt a thing.

"How could you say that?"

"I'm sorry! I just thought it would be better if--" She stopped. She stared at him again. He would have rather looked anywhere else but he kept looking back at her. He watched as her eyes widened, her lips fell open, a frightened breath near visible as it left her. As something inside her mind finally clicked. "...You're hurt."

Finally! "Do you think?"

Now he was the one on the verge of crying. She caught sight of it and approached, catching a few tears on the cuff of her lacy sleeve. "I'm sorry."

He took to drying his other eye. She was gentle again, at least outwardly, but something in her touch still carried a restraint reserved for wild animals. If she thought him a monster, then it was like one that he felt. It was the last thing he'd ever thought she'd make him feel. "Do you believe me now?"

Rona sighed. "I don't know."

"Then what will it take to convince you?"

"You don't need to convince me. I need to convince myself." Poor darling. She'd never mastered that in the positive sense, not that he was any better. Maybe that was why she thought he didn't love her. She didn't believe anyone could. "And... maybe that would be easier if you went away for a while."

Whatever remained of his heart fell a little deeper. He'd vowed to never leave her again and he didn't want to break that promise. But if space was what she needed, who was he to deny her that? "Where should I go?"

"Are Riona and Isidro still here?"

He nodded.

"Then go with them when they leave. It's safer to travel in numbers anyway. I don't want you to be alone."

He could do that. If nothing else, he'd cling to those last words as some sign of care. "All right."

"Will Lonriad mind if you stay with him and Asalaye until you leave?"

He shook his head. "He's going with Riona anyway."

"Good." She tugged at her sleeve where she'd wiped away his tears, as if their very essence made her skin crawl. "Ashe?"

"Yes?"

"I want my key back."

Her key. After all these years, he'd just stopped feeling the form of it, his body taking its presence for granted. He was all too aware of it now. "But I told you I'd--"

"I know. I'm giving you an out." She reached to the back of his neck and fiddled with the clasp of the chain. "It's probably not all that comfortable anyway."

But as she pulled it away, he was naked as he was that morning on the banks of the pond. "Rona..."

"I'm sorry. But I need this. And I think you need it too." The key disappeared into her clenched left fist. He wondered if he'd ever see it again.

"I'll start packing, then."

She nodded. "You'd best."

She'd made it perfectly clear that she didn't care to say another word, or to hear another out of him. If he could live with leaving, though, then he couldn't live with that. I'll start packing, then. Those could not be his last words to her. "Rona?"

She looked up from the hand with the key. He took hold of the other and raised it, as he had just before the start of the tournament. "Do you mind if I...?"

She sniffed. "I don't see the harm in it..."

He lowered his lips to the soft skin of her knuckles. It would have been so easy to linger, to hope time would stop, to keep kissing her hand until Death himself intervened. The most difficult thing in the world was to let go.

But she wouldn't have it any other way, and so it was the briefest kiss he'd ever given her.

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