Maybe he was trying to pull something out of me. 

His words, on a loop, like an annoying song you hear everywhere you go, on the radio, the television, the morning alarm on your sister’s phone. Annoying, aggravating, just makes you wanna punch your hand through the wall or something.

‘Not doing enough’, he told me. Speaking so high and mighty in his nigh omnipotency, and yet refusing to practice what he himself preached… pouring salt to the open wound, kicking me down while I’m already barely able to stand, instead of pulling me up and dusting me off. 

But maybe that was the point. Maybe that was his way of offering a helping hand. That’s valid enough reasoning, isn’t it? For saying what he did? 

Deliberately piss me off, pour some gasoline to my withering, waning flame, maybe he was trying to spur me into pulling off a goddamn miracle. I’d like to think that. In retrospect, it does sound like something he’d do. 

Negative emotions were where my innate potential would thrive in most, after all. Like mother, like son, he had to be aware of it. But what does he think I’ve been doing all this time? All sunshine and rainbows in my head? I was already as sullen and incensed as I can be. 

But maybe that’s what he meant by ‘not enough’, properly I wasn’t properly negatively charged yet, and all he was trying to do back then was light the fuse… and if so, then the question stands… did it work? 

Hmph, maybe if I was as competent as he thought I was…

Even enraged, even after that, I still ended up the same way as with every other pointless attempt – gasping, choking, shaking – feeling the exasperation, the dread, as the once blue bright sky gradually turned to a dark startling shade of inky gray.

“No, don’t! Don’t,” I managed to say to Ash, feeling and seeing for the umpteenth time as she laid her hands on me again. “We’ll, we’ll take a break…”

A break. Now? In what could be considered the most crucial time, I’m taking five? I knew I don’t have the time, the luxury to be sitting around anymore, and she knew that just as much as I did.

Nevertheless, after a while, she drew hands away from me, and gave a bow. “Very well, Master…”

Secretly, I think she was relieved. For a brief moment, the senseless torture had stopped. After long hours of just watching me and only watching me.

I knew I was… even if I knew I shouldn’t be.

Ash helped me hobble myself over to the steps of the porch, where I collapsed, slumping, shifting my entire weight against a wooden beam.

“Master…” Her green eyes stared dim and dull. She looked like she didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. “Will you…? You will promptly proceed again, won’t you?”

I felt like I was lying, like I didn’t mean it, when I told her, limply, “Yes.” 

Was I?

Found it hard to even look at her directly. I was scared, I think. Because I knew that she still had faith, that she still believed in me without a doubt.

No, not scared. Just ashamed.

Ash gave a small tender smile, and she reached her hand out again, fingertips inches away from my cheek. I wanted so bad to turn my head away, I didn’t want her to touch me… not like this.

But then, to my surprise, she stopped herself… her hand falling slowly back to her side.

“Would you like some nourishments?” She suddenly asked me. “Surely you must be thirsty, Master.”

Anything. Anything to get her away from me now. I didn’t want her to look at me now.

“I guess…”

“Very well,” She immediately said, promptly taking her leave with a bow. “I shall soon return with your drink.”

I didn’t bother looking up to see her go. Quitely, I just listened to the sounds. The shuffle of her feet, the creak of the floorboards, the squeak of the door hinges opening, and eventually, the faint click of the door closing.

Except, I didn’t hear that last part. The door stayed wide open. Then, a few seconds after Ash had gone, I finally understood why that was.

“Not as easy as it sounded, is it?” 

Her voice gave me a start. I didn’t quite recognize it at first. Not when it sounded that stuffy, that raspy, but there was just no simply mistaking that round, bubbly, almost melodically gentle cadence of hers… in the corner of my eyes, Mom’s slender outline stood beneath the doorway, her kind eyes peering back at mine.

Now I know why Ash was so quick to leave the scene…

I promptly looked away. 

“I never thought it was,” I quietly replied. 

Another creak, another shuffle, and then I heard her give a sigh, sounding closer than before. “And yet, I’m sure you really did believe there for a moment that you could actually do it, didn’t you?” 

Something hot and bubbly instantly flared up within me, clenching my jaw, furrowing my brow. 

“I still do.” 

She quietly chuckled, and that feeling only intensified. “Of course you do.” 

My gaze turned back at her, and that’s when I noticed she was stuffed in the thickest, wooliest bundle of clothes possible. It seems it’s supposed to be cold now…

I couldn’t feel it.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Here? Why, I live here, don’t I? What rhyme or reason should I have first to be allowed to go where I wish?” She said wryly, before seeing the look in my eye, and properly giving an answer. “If you mean here, specifically, well, is it wrong for a mother to worry over her son’s welfare? 

“Oh, so, you’re worried?” I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Well, thanks for your concern, that’s really a load off my mind now…” 

“My, someone’s in a foul mood, isn’t he?” She formed a smirk. “Though I suppose it could work in your favor, provided you’re harnessing it properly…” Her eyes sifted through the emptiness of the front lawn, left to right, before her smile turned sympathetic. “But I suppose pain gets the better of all of us, doesn’t it?” 

Didn’t want her sympathy. It’s too late for that. 

“You never believed that I could do it, did you?” I asked quietly, staring blankly out into the same emptiness. “From the beginning, you knew I wouldn’t succeed.” 

“Well, of course you wouldn’t succeed,” She said so nonchalantly, so casually, it wrapped back around to being slightly unsettling. “Did you forget who it was that erected this barrier in the first place? You might be talented, so full of determination… but you can only do so much with both, you know?”

“So why let me do it? If you knew I’d fail, why give me the chance to even try? Why’d you let me hope that I could?” 

“Me?” Her head cocked to the side, bemused. “You were the one that gave yourself that chance, that hope, remember? Bragging, proclaiming, so confident and sure of yourself issuing this agreement… I only merely agreed with it, that’s all I did.”

“Then why agree?” 

“Because it doesn’t matter if I believed or not. If I had it my way, I’d make sure you never have to do this, that you’d see no struggle. You really think I want this for you? This pain? This burden? I don’t, dear. I don’t relish a single second of this. But you believed, you thought you could do it… and that was enough for me to think that you at least deserve a chance to prove yourself, to prove me wrong – that’s why I agreed.” 

Listening to her was… it was somehow more infuriating than hearing what Dad had to say. Unlike him, there was nothing I could hitch on, nothing I could grasp. I couldn’t be mad at her for this – everything she said was valid, sound, irrefutable, and true. I did this to myself. All this anger, this feeling of aggravation, no one is to blame for this except for me… I put this on me, I did this to myself.

The only armament I had in my arsenal was the fact she disagreed to ever help me in the first place, but that was the point rendered moot given her reasoning – that heavy risk – even if I did disagree with it. 

So what do I have really? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

No wonder Sammy was at such of a loss trying to deal with her…

“And you did try, didn’t you? As much as you could, as hard as you could,” She continued on. “To save this man’s life, going above and beyond what most would have done, even though the responsibility has never been yours to bear in the first place. Like a valiant hero in some sort of fairytale story… why I’ve never been more proud to have raised such a fine son.” 

I saw her smile, small and compassionate, heard a faint cough she tried to suppress… and felt her reach, gently stroking the top of my head.

“But now that you’ve tried, now that you’ve done all you can, dear,” She said, blinking with a slanted gaze. “Don’t you think that it’s finally time that you come back down to reality?” 

For a while, her question lingered in the silence, resounding like an echo in my head. I kept still, very still… and she spoke some more.

“There’s still time. A few hours. You don’t have to be there. I can go by myself, let me take care of this, hmm? And you… you can just rest. You tried, you didn’t fail… you just tried.”

Harry came to mind. That little talk we had while he was briefly himself. He considered this, he saw this coming, and he made me promise… to save him, whether I managed to bring him back or not. 

Doing this, allowing this, I was still saving him… his body wouldn’t be defiled anymore. Mission accomplished. That’s what everybody keeps telling me. Over and over again. That it’s not wrong for things to have to end this way, that there are just some things that are beyond control. 

Perhaps this was just one of them.

Except…

“No,” I said, rising to my feet, shambling down the steps. “Not yet.”

I didn’t believe that. Not for this.

With a wobble, I dropped my knees back down to the dirt, taking a deep breath, before raising my trembling arms out in front of me once more.

“I haven’t done enough yet.” 

Mom remained where she stood. A frail, slightly haggard figure by the porch, her usual smile devolving to a thin narrow line planted across a muted expression. 

“Then when is enough, dear?” She asked softly, a little dejectedly. “When it’s too late? When this entire ordeal takes a turn for the worse? This won’t end well for you. Choosing this, you’ll just be extending his suffering, extending yours. Except his will eventually end, yours, however… you’ll never let yourself see the end of it, will you?”

“And if I haven’t done all I can for him,” I replied, staring her dead in the eye. Then I really won’t see the end of it.”

“Still believing. Adalia did mention you wouldn’t listen to me, I’m sad to say that she was right.” She sighed. “It’s admirable, dear. That determination of yours, that heroic stance you refuse to see compromise with… I just hope that if not today, then someday, you won’t come to regret it.”

And with that, she turned away, slowly shuffling away towards the door, and finally, faintly – I heard the door click shut.