Chapter 25: Changes Pt 3

"I'm… sorry…" Scarlett choked out, the words a ragged whisper. More to herself than to him, the apology hung heavy in the air, a confession of a mother who felt she'd shattered the very foundation of her son's world.

"..." Asher remained silent, letting her cook in her self-made misery. It served him right.

"Maybe you're right," she whispered again, her voice cracking with despair. Maybe she had failed him in ways she couldn't even begin to comprehend. "Maybe… I wasn't the mother you needed." The words scraped against her throat, raw and unforgiving confession.

"… No… I don't…" He mumbled a reply, barely audible, yet each word a shard of ice piercing the fragile hope that had flickered to life within her. "I don't… know."

Scarlett's body froze for a moment, it wasn't the answer she craved, the desperate plea for reassurance a mother seeks from her child.

More than that 'Was this even his voice anymore?'' She couldn't recognise him at the moment.

Scarlett strained to see the boy she knew reflected in his eyes, but they were clouded, distant. Desperation clawed at her.

She needed to feel him, the warmth of his body, the familiar scent of his hair - anything to ground her in a reality where he wasn't a stranger living in her son's shell.

'Maybe if I play along a little, it'll fuel the flames a bit more.' He stole a glance at Scarlett, his gaze lingering on the deepening lines of worry etched on her face.

Grief had aged her, stealing the vibrancy that once shone in her eyes. A twisted kind of satisfaction bloomed within his chest.

"But Mom… it wasn't your fault," he said, the words devoid of conviction, a hollow echo that mocked her yearning for comfort. His silence afterwards spoke volumes.

"..."

"If I wasn't here…" Asher started, his voice barely a whisper, "you wouldn't be like this…. Elysia wouldn't be…" He trailing off before the accusation could fully form. Yet, it hung heavy in the air, a suffocating weight.

Scarlett understood.

"No! No, no, no!" A strangled cry escaped Scarlett's lips. The memory of that fateful day flooded back – the terror in his young eyes, the deafening silence that followed. It was suffocating.

"NOOO!!!" She almost screamed. "It wasn't yours… if only that… day… if only…" The horror of that day, and his terrified expression, the silence of her son. It was suffocating.

She forced a deep breath, trying to calm the storm raging within her.

Tears streamed down her face, hot against the chilled skin of her cheeks.

"No, Ash," she pleaded, her voice thick with tears. "Elysia doesn't know… she wasn't there." She tried to explain.

Elysia was a little girl, who just lost her father at the time, she wasn't able to comprehend what had happened, she only knew last time her father was together with Asher.

How could she possibly understand the complexities of that day?

"No mommy, Elysia… is right. She says I killed Dad," Asher said, his voice flat, a monotone devoid of the childish lilt it once held.

"Because… of me, he's gone."

"No!" Scarlett's denial ripped through the silence, a desperate attempt to tear down the walls he'd built around himself, a desperate plea for him to understand.

"It wasn't you! You were just a child… a little boy who didn't… who couldn't understand." Each word was an attempt to shield him, with a wish to rewind time and erase the burden he carried, to protect what little innocence remained.

"But Elysia says…" he started again, his small hand clenching into a fist.

"SHE DOESN'T Know what she's talking about!" Scarlett cried, her voice cracking with a mixture of anger and despair.

The anger was a fleeting spark, quickly extinguished by the overwhelming tide of grief.

"You are not responsible for your father's death! It was… it was…" The words died in her throat, choked by the weight of her own guilt.

Asher looked up at her, his eyes hollow and emotionless.

"Then who?" he whispered, the question a dagger to her heart. "Elysia says and wishes it should be… me… Not Dad! Didn't she?"

"No," she rasped, the word a desperate plea. "It wasn't yours. It wasn't yours to carry. Why couldn't you understand? What could you have… done at that time? You were just… seven… I… should have better… to protect you." Scarlett's voice choked with emotion.

"Yet, by the… time I knew… he was dead!"

Afterwards, Scarlett could only stare back, the enormity of her failure reflected in his vacant gaze.

It was a mirror reflecting a truth she could no longer deny: she had failed him, and the cost was a son lost in the abyss of grief.

"I'm so sorry, my Ash! My baby… you didn't do anything… It was I who couldn't do… anything for you?" Scarlett clung to him tighter, her heart a leaden weight in her chest.

Tears kept streaming down her face, hot and relentless, blurring the world around her.

"You know, Mama… loves you. It wasn't your fault… but all mine." Her voice choked on a sob, each word a ragged plea for forgiveness for a debt she could never repay.

"I wasn't able… to decide… What to do. But I can't see you like this! It hurts, it hurts… it hurts so much to see you like this… I'm sorry… for the time I couldn't do anything… Please…" She whispered, her voice cracking with a mixture of fear and desperation.

"Maybe… we can think of something else…" Her voice choked on a sob, each word a desperate plea for him to understand, for him to feel something – anything – besides the emptiness in his eyes.

A heavy silence reigned over Scarlett's office. And Asher remained motionless in her embrace…

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Then, a whisper, barely audible, broke the oppressive silence.

"Start again," he murmured, his voice laced with a bitter anger that twisted the knife in her heart.

"Like those games we used to play… pretend it never happened." His voice held an edge, a distortion of the innocent child who once believed in happily ever after, crumbling her own desperate wish, where they would be together, their family of four yet.

"Me, Aur… and you…" he continued, his voice firming slightly.

"I can't… Elysia…" The name hung in the air, a bitter whisper, a single word that shattered the fragile hope that had flickered, however briefly, within Scarlett's chest.

"I don't care," he said, a flicker of something akin to defiance in his eyes. "Just Mommy. That's all I want."

Scarlett's heart ached with a love so fierce it threatened to consume her.

She longed to hold him tighter, to shield him from the world that had taken so much, but she knew it was a futile wish.

The walls he'd built around himself were made of a grief she couldn't reach.

"We can't change the past, Asher," she whispered, the words tasting like ashes in her mouth.

"No. We can't." He nodded slowly, a chilling acceptance in his eyes. "But, it doesn't matter."

'It does matter. It matters so much,' the words screamed in her mind, a silent plea lost in the storm of emotions.

The accusations that clawed at her throat, the desperate need to explain, to make him understand – all died there, choked by the weight of her own failings.

Scarlett slowly lowered her head, her gaze meeting his emotionless eyes. He was right. The past couldn't be changed.

'Asher… my baby boy… you have changed so much just within a few days,' Scarlett couldn't utter those words.

Asher's were the same eyes, yet different. A chilling emptiness resided within them, a void where the vibrant and bright child once resided.

"You can't change the past, Mom!" he repeated in the whisper, his voice laced with a hint of what could be mistaken for sadness.

Then, in a gesture that surprised her, he cupped her face in his small hands, his touch surprisingly gentle.

He looked at her with an intensity that sent shivers down her spine.

The tenderness and adoration in his eyes… He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a possessive murmur.

"Mommy… you are suffering," he whispered, his breath warm against her cheek. "It already happened… it can't be changed anymore." He squeezed her hands gently, his touch both comforting and warm.

"I want you… to be there for me, only me. Standing beside me…" he continued, his voice trembling slightly,

"I can't let you suffer any longer… because your suffering hurts me…"

"I don't want you… to suffer…"

"I don't want you… to love anyone else but me…" Slowly, he brought her face closer to his, their foreheads touching.

Scarlett felt an inexplicable calmness wash over her, a horrifying sense of being lulled into a dangerous acceptance. This wasn't right, but she couldn't explain why, she felt it was the right thing to do.

Yeah! She was suffering. From the so-called 'Family'. She tried all she could to hold the family together. Yet, no matter what she tried she couldn't hold everything together.

A single question came to her mind, 'What should I do?'

"So let's move on, Mom, together. Just you, Aur and me." Asher, sensing her hesitation, spoke again, his voice a seductive murmur.

He lifted his head, looking directly into her bright and puffy blue eyes.

"It's time to move on~" With a tenderness, he slowly brought his face closer to hers, his lips hovering just above hers, His breath mingled with hers, hot and sweet.

"There is only us, Mama. Always has been, always will be." As he leaned closer, his breath warm against her cheek, Scarlett felt a primal tug deep within her.

She braced herself, expecting a kiss, her eyes closed, a desperate need for his closeness. Her heartbeat, a frantic drum solo against the sudden silence of the room.

Scarlett waited and waited and soon his lips brushed hers, a feather-light touch that sent a jolt through her.

The world around her stopped. As she stared at Asher.

For a moment, adrift in a sea of conflicting emotions, Scarlett surrendered.

She clung to him, a drowning woman grasping at a life raft, even if it meant being dragged under the current.

The warmth of his body, the familiar scent of his hair, was an anchor to a past that no longer existed.

"You're mine, Mama," he whispered near her ears, his voice low and silken, sending goosebumps erupting across her skin.

"And I'm yours. Just us, forever."

"So… be there for me… together…"

The possessiveness in his tone sent another tremor through her, a horrifying mixture of fear and a dark, twisted yearning.

She saw him. He wasn't her son anymore, not entirely.

He was a stranger wearing a familiar face, but there's tenderness and love in his eyes, of the same boy she once knew.

Scarlett realised. Those emotionless eyes, they weren't just a reflection of her failures, but a window into a future she never wanted, the cost of her inability to protect him.

The cost…. The cost of not making a choice.

And it wasn't just between Asher and Elysia – it was between protecting her son from the darkness or succumbing to the monster he was becoming.

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Asher smirked underneath, while holding Scarlett's head against his chest. She buried her face against his chest.

'Gotcha,' he thought, an amusement flickering behind his eyes. 'I just gave you the choice… choice to choose me.' It wasn't a kiss, not in the romantic sense, but a claim. A brand imprinted on her flesh…

'Those weren't my feelings, oh naive Scarlett,' he mused, in the memories of the previous Asher, he saw something amusing.

The old, sentimental Asher, wishing he wasn't such a colossal screw-up. Pathetic.

'I wish I wasn't born!' These thoughts were of Asher, Ah, but then there was the other half, the venomous part that hissed, "If that damn Elysia hadn't waltzed in, we could've been a picture-perfect family! Even without that deadbeat dad of ours!" The idea was intoxicating, a forbidden fantasy of a life where 'Asher' had Scarlett all to himself.

In Eternal Heroes, She'd chosen, but the choice came too late. The family she craved was already a pile of smoking rubble, and her precious Asher was teetering on the edge, his "love" extinguished faster than a roach motel.

"Finally it's ending, I was getting tired." This was one of the lines of Asher Agnes.

Elysia was fighting him tooth and nail, but Scarlett? A goddamn disappointment. One. Simple. Decision. And it all went tits up.

Scarlett. She was the real failure… she finally picked a side, but like a toddler at a buffet, she knocked everything over on the way.

Her "heroine's mother" title was about as useful as a chocolate teapot in this situation. Millions were toast, their bond was about as strong as wet toilet paper, and Asher's love for her had curdled faster than milk left out in July.

'One side,' he thought, the thought trailing off into a scoff. 'Just one freaking choice, and everything could've been different.'

But this was far from over, for now, he had 'his' mother exactly where he wanted her – trapped in a web of his own making.

Except, the game was far from over. For now, Scarlett was trapped, a fly caught in his meticulously woven web of deceit and lies.

And Asher? Well, Asher was just getting started.