Ashes to Ashes.

It starts as most things do, with a couple looking into a child

The perfect child, that’s what they want.

Which is why everything goes wrong with Ashley - as it would with any child because children aren’t dolls, they have wills and thoughts of their own.

But these two, looking for the perfect child, perfect heir, for their beloved family business, the empire they’ve built upon the backs of others - they don’t heed this truth, they take their new child home and make their plans.

She will be perfect, she will be beautiful, she will have the voice of an Angel, she will be everything they want her to be because that’s what they ordered.

Ashley is a bright child, but she isn’t allowed to be - she’s put in the finest clothes and paraded in front of a thousand flashing lights and cameras, she tries to hide away but her mother pushes her to the front, puts her on stage

Smile and sing sweety, the world is watching you!~

It goes like this for years as she grows from child to pre-teen, paraded through so many events in the city - the darling of her parents eye, singing for them and the world to see.

It’s such sweet lies, but Ashley knows better

Her parents are cold - oh they say the right things but their attention is fleeting and feels as porcelain thin as the figurine they make her out to be - forced into clothes she hates, forced to sing and she hates it, she hates her beautiful voice so much, she wishes she were mute some days just to stop, just to finally be able to do what she wants, a world where she doesn't have to sing sing sing

She hates everything her ‘family’ is - how as soon as the camera is gone, her parents leave her alone like a doll upon a shelf, left to collect dust in her gilded cage of a room - how they never hug her, never have time for her unless a camera is in front of them.

she hates her room, a room full of things that mean nothing, just to be pretty - like her she thinks.

She hates her name, She likes the shorter Ash better as her guards started calling her (she likes some of her guards, she knows they can't do much for her but they are nice, kind to her - a girl starved for any little scrap of familial affection and attention) - Ash - it just feels right and she doesn’t have to hear the sugary sweet after tone of her mother’s voice dragging out the ‘Ashlee’ as though she cares beyond what a picture perfect image they must paint.

One day she cuts her hair herself, chops it short and ragged, covering her eyes and sticking up everywhere - it looks wild and messy and Ash loves it.

Her mother does not

It’s the first time her mother strikes her - and it’s not the last - and Ash didn't think her life could be worse than the aloof detachment,

Ash hates her mother - She hates her father too but she never sees him anyway so it hardly matters - she hates her shrill voice, her caustic remarks, her vicious pokes and prods as she dresses her for their next big event - her strikes when she talks back because Ash just can't stay quiet, shes forced to sing so sing she will, but her mother doesn't like these songs.

She thinks maybe if she was their good daughter like they wanted the sentiment might hurt more, but it just makes her angry.

She sneaks out once with the help of some of her more sympathetic guards - she never sees those guards again of course, she regrets the trip out it in the end, only because she worries something awful happened to them nothing to do with her fucking parents - but she snuck out and spent a long evening out in the city lights, for once hidden among the masses, enamored with all the sights she wasn’t allowed to see outside the stage she must perform on - she loves it

She gets tattoos like one of her guards has, asking around for the right shop, she gets them for herself - and because her parents will hate it - its her biggest act of rebellion yet, it almost makes her giddy, it of course can't last though

They go ballistic when she’s found, they’re so angry

Her father breaks her wings

and then she’s left in her room to ‘think about what she’s done’ the guards are all drone replacements now.

They don’t come back

She thinks something must have happened while she tends to her limp useless wings, Then she thinks they’ve simply forgotten - Then she thinks they’re doing this on purpose to make her sweat, make her finally break and be the perfect child they want

But still they don’t come back

 then the food stops being delivered and not even the droids that replaced her guards come in anymore.

They’ve decided she’s broken goods then - she should have known, they’d always been careful not to hurt anything that would show for the cameras - and her broken wings definitely would have.

Ash tries not to panic but she doesn’t want to die in her room, her gilded cage - especially not a slow painful death, it’s too much.

It takes her a long time, but eventually she cracks the window and loosens the bars

She’s small and skinny enough now to slip through, her healed now flightless wings lying flat enough to not hinder.

Then, she runs

and runs and runs and runs

Till she can’t and her breaths heave in the cold night air - she has no idea where she is, probably the underlevels given how dingy and dark the street is - and rationally it’s not safe but it’s safe

So now what.