Chapter Text
Calum placed a gentle hand on Ashton's shoulder. "Would you like to say a few words about your mother, Ashton?" the priest offered, looking at him with remorse in his eyes.
"Uh, y- yeah, sure," Ashton stuttered. As he walked toward the older man, Calum's hand dropped from his shoulder. A slight breeze nipped at his neck as he planted his feet aside the priest's, and he shivered.
It was June, eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and Ashton was cold. He was numb. He felt empty and his heart was masked with a solid, icy sheet. Nothing, for the past four years of his life, had been pleasant. He only needed one hand to count the good times, but all of them were when he was with his mother. He'd never forget the laughs he'd shared with her.
Especially the ones he'd had with her when she was in the hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness.
Ashton kept his stare on Calum, knowing he was the only person of the group he could find solace in. Next to Calum was his soulmate, Michael.
Michael was crying, and Ashton didn't question it. He'd only met Ashton's mother once. Though Ashton understood Michael's tears. They were much like his own when the doctors told him his mother's heart stopped beating while she was in a coma. They both wouldn't get to see her again.
Ashton didn't get to say goodbye to her before she took her last breath. Of course, he'd known that there was a zero-percent-chance he'd leave the hospital with his mother in his arms. He hated to admit it, but he had said his goodbyes to his mom every single day.
Day-by-day, Ashton had expected his mother to call it quits. Despite his telling her that she would live, it was her choice. She had the power to keep up the fight she was losing or surrender to what had already won. He wished she hadn't made the right decision.
When she'd confessed to him that she had stage four lung cancer, he had cried. He'd cried and cried. After comforting him, she had spoken over his tears, "Your father, Ashton."
"W- What about him, Mommy?" Ashton had whispered. Her heart had jumped when his words rung in her ears. 'Mommy,' the word she'd only hear whenever her little boy wanted her attention.
"He had lung cancer," she'd informed, a tsunami of emotions weighing her down. She had hugged her precious son tighter in her arms. "A- And if your soulmate gets injured-"
"He died of lung cancer," Ashton had blurted, cutting off his mother mid-sentence. She'd sighed heavily. It was one the few questions he asked that he could confidently answer by himself.
"He did, baby, and I'm sorry. I knew that I would have cancer, too. I- I was too scared to tell you. If I could have, I would've never told you," she'd said. Ashton was hurting. He was hurting because he was still in his mother's womb when his father died. He was hurting because the cancer took years to control his mother. He was hurting because his father would be the inevitable kickstart to his mother's death.
He didn't want to tell her that. Instead, he'd promised, "You'll get through this. You will beat this cancer, and you'll be alive to meet my soulmate."
Ashton's soulmate was the root of her happiness. She was looking forward to meeting his lifelong partner, seeing Ashton happy.
She had always known how reluctant Ashton was to meet his soulmate. Ashton hated (and probably always will) how empty the meaning of love had become. Love was too generalized. Love, to the world as a whole, was doing what was told of them to be accepted into society. It was waiting for a timer to reach zero and freeze.
To Ashton, it was believing his mother would beat cancer and meet his soulmate. It was driving to his mother's house and making her spaghetti after her chemotherapy. It was squeezing his mother's hand while they sat in silence in the hospital's waiting room. It was staying in her room for weeks and weeks as she slipped into an eight-month coma.
Now, he didn't have any love. He was out of love. He had no one to love.
Ashton inhaled a shaky breath, the infamous salty liquid building up at the waterlines of his tired eyes. Because of subconscious habit, Ashton tugged at the sleeves of his collared shirt to hide his wrists. "She was the best mother a boy could ask for. I was a curious child. I was always asking question. If I ever had one, I'd learned to turn to her. She never invalidated anything I felt or believed. She loved my questions. When I was younger, I'd realized why no one liked asking questions. People believe that a timer is something that smooths out flaws. They think a tiny little clock is all they need to live their life, their supposedly perfect life.
"I've never believed that a timer is something I need to make my life seem important. I never believed that because I had my mother. She was the most important thing in my life. She always will be, but now she's gone. I'll miss her." There was so much more he wanted to say.
He wanted to mention the day she saw the scars on his wrists and hugged him. He wanted to say her exact words when she ran her thumb over the pale lines, "Your soulmate needs you as much as you need them."
He shuffled back to Calum, looking at the people who knew his mother. They weren't crying over what he'd said, but rather over what he hadn't.
As the casket lowered into the ground, some of them went to Ashton and hugged him. He forced himself to hold his tears back in their presence.
Once the casket was lowered completely, Ashton, Calum, and Michael, waited until everyone else left, including the priest. Finally, with them gone, Calum trapped Ashton in a hug.
Ashton broke down.
He sobbed into Calum's shoulder, the tears barely staining the button-up shirt because it was black. The tears weren't as noticeable. Ashton only cried harder.
"Fuck, why me, Calum? Why me?!" he shouted.
"I'm so sorry, Ash. So fucking sorry," Calum mumbled, his voice cracking. Ashton didn't need to see him to know that Calum was crying.
"Don't be sorry." Ashton was struggling to catch his breath. His cries morphed into hiccups, and he refused to leave his best friend's grasp. "If I can handle my soulmate hurting, I can handle myself hurting."
Calum and Michael were both aware of the cuts on his wrists. The past four years, more cuts had appears on his arms. Both wrists were decorated with his soulmate's story.
The last thing he had to do was hear the whole story face-to-face, not blade-to-skin.
Ashton finally pulled away. Michael smiled weakly at him, and he returned the favor. It wasn't much, but it was a start. "You guys can leave. I'm going to walk around, clear my head."
Obliging to their mourning friend's request, they hugged him goodbye. Alone completely, he examined all the gravestones surrounding him. All the names were so different and unique. They made him wonder about their lives as well.
"Mommy..." he whispered under his breath. The farther away he'd walked from his mother's casket, the colder his wrist became. It felt as if the blood in his veins was freezing.
A sharp pain struck through him, wrist to heart.
Skeptical and slightly worried, he lifted his arm. Previously covered by the cuffs on his shirt, his timer was exposed, followed by rows of white lines and an incomplete story.
His timer read: 00:00:04.
He continued walking, the gravestones behind him counting down the seconds.
00:00:03.
One more step. He'd passed another gravestone. He quickly looked up, wondering if his soulmate was visiting a deceased one as well.
00:00:00. His timer froze. He took one last step.
He turned his body to face the gravestone next to him once he saw no one nearing him.
The last sentence of his soulmate's untold story was resting in front of him.
"Luke Hemmings. July 16th, 1996 to May 30th, 2015."