The words rung in Ashley's ears, but they weren't heard.

"Wait. What do you mean, Larry is dead…"

She had only been home for about an hour since her date of sorts with Sal, and she was in a loopy state the moment she arrived. Rainy weather always made her disoriented, so she was very much out of it when she got the call from her close one. But she prayed that her tired state of mind trapped her in a nightmare when Sal shakily said those three words. Larry couldn't be dead. Not her inseparable childhood best friend!

"I mean, he's dead! He's gone! He not here anymore, Ash!" Sal cried over the phone. It broke Ashley's heart to have Sal be so upset, but she couldn't blame him, of course. This was his stepbrother and the first friend he ever made since moving. Ashley paced around her room, fingers grasping her shortly-cut hair.

"Look, Sal. C-Calm down, it's going to be okay! Look, let's call the police and maybe-"

"No, no, Ash, don't!" Sal screeched through the phone, so loud that she had to rip it from her ear so her eardrum won't be damaged. There was strength and a mild chill in his voice. When she brought it back, the volume decreased a little but it was still panicked. "Ashley, don't you dare call 911! You can't trust them!"

"What- can't trust them? Sal, c'mon! We have to let them know what happened! If Larry is dead because of suicide…" she swallowed thickly, the image swirling thick in her mind. "If you won't call them, Sal, I will. C'mon, work with me!"

"They're not going to help us, Ash! Look, just don't call them. Please, Ash, I am begging you!"

Ashley sunk, her back against the door. The rain poured harder now, as if the situation at hand had controlled the horrible weather. She felt so desperate and confused. She had to call! What else would there be to do? Her friend is dead and Sal is a wreck.

She took a deep breath. The images of Todd and Sal and Larry's face whenever the police were mentioned flew by, almost as if they had the haunting idea that the county department were part of something more sinister…

"Okay, Sal," she spoke, her voice resigned. "I won't call. But you have to tell me what's going on!"

"Can you ride over here? I'll be able to explain it better there…damn cultists…"

"Cultists?! Sal-"

The line went dead. He must've hung up.

Ashley blew on a short strand of hair, and she stood up. Her leather jacket, once dead upon the carpeted floor, was swung over her shoulder and fit snuggly on her body as she had worn it previously this afternoon. She rushed past Benjamin, who was eating a late night bowl of cereal and ignored his yells of confusion as she mounted on her motorcycle and drove away.

oooOOooo

By the time Ashley had arrived, she was soaked. Only her head was dry, and even the tips of her hair, which was still long enough to poke out under the helmet, had gone damp. The life of her motorcycle was switch off, and ripping her bike helmet from her head, she swung a leg over and mounted off.

She parked herself at the front of Addison Apartments, which looked as strange and ominous as she had always found it then and now. Due to her many get-togethers with the boys, she knew where the treehouse was. After all, Sal allowed the specific fact to drop that the treehouse was the place Larry had passed. But she forced her mind to muddle away the image for the second time that night.

Ashley had made it to the treehouse, and there he was. The shadow of Sal Fisher, and she slowed her rush to tenderly approach him. His wet body was turning back and forth on the grass, shoulders tense and slumping in running thought, and hands flying everywhere. His words were muttered as she came closer. If she was to be honest, Ashley had never seen him so disturbed like that.

"Sal?" Her voice was hesitant.

His head snapped up, and it might have been the rain, but Ashley swore that his one good eye twitched when he heard her voice. He came closer to her, hands shaking. "Ashley," he breathed, tone cracking.

Ashley swallowed down her doubt. "Okay, Sal. What is going on? You promised me an explanation! What do you mean cultists? And what does that have to do with Larry?"

Sal was still jittery, and his hands still shook. His wild blue hair was soaked and it curtained the sides of his masked head. It made him look insane, and Ashley remembered that this was her friend grieving. He would definitely be upset, despite the chills down her spine at the sight of him.

"Larry…" he repeated, as if the memory was still fresh and haunting. "Larry…he's in the treehouse. He's in there…dead.."

Ashley reached out a hand and Sal flinched at her tender touch of her hand on his shoulder. It made her sad, but she didn't have to time for that. He needed comfort, and they had to deal with the problem head on. "I'll go check it out," she said softly, goosebumps prickling her skin each step she made toward the treehouse ladder.

Every board she climbed made her stomach turn. Every board was a board closer to seeing childhood friend dead. She remembered seeing him laugh, seeing him grieve the disappearance of his father. She taught him art, she was introduced to the blue-haired prosthetic-wearing remarkable individual at the bottom of the treehouse by him, the three of them along with Todd have discovered a dark side to the school lunch meat along with a shady old temple.

They have been through so much because of Larry, and Ashley almost wanted to let go of the actual wood of the solitude tree. Maybe fall out of the ladder and die, or lose consciousness at the very least. She took a deep breath to gather her nerves, and hoisted herself up so she can take a look.

But there was nothing.

She was worried over nothing.

Ashley looked around some more, focusing as hard as she could. She didn't know if Larry was dead or if Sal had lost his mind, perhaps on the thought that he had forgotten to take his medications, but Ashley needed something. Maybe there was an object that she had missed.

And then she saw it…

A booze bottle.

She brought her legs up on the wooden floor and crawled over to it, picking it up by the neck. There was no liquid inside, but it smelled like simple alcohol with no other substances inside it. Ashley's breath hitched in her throat. The entire place was empty, Sal was anxious and making no sense, there was a bottle completely chugged down…

Holy crap.

She clutched the glass bottle tighter, fearing that she will break it and the glass shards puncture her bare fingers. The conclusion made her fear for her friend, and she remembered that shuddering conversation she had with him. How his family always had some sort of addiction problem. Henry was proof of that. Sal knew he was trying his best all those years. He knew that he needed to be there for his child, no matter how much it hurt.

But he ended up trapped in the metaphorical alcoholic cage anyway.

The addiction pattern was the cause of that.

Ashley made her way down, careful not to fall because of the bottle still in her hand. She was still out of it, and the cold rain pierced through her clothes and stuck into her skin like needles. Sal greeted her on the ground. "Did you see him…Ashley?"

Ashley looked up at him and his expectant face. "Sal, there was nothing up there. There was just this." She held the bottle up. Sal took it and she heard a stressed wheezing from inside his mask. She feared for him suddenly; all the wheezing and gasping made it appear as though the straps from his mask were cutting off blood circulation and he couldn't breathe. All the quick breaths sucked in the mask close to his face.

She feared that he would suffocate if he had kept this up.

Before Ashley could get another word in, Sal pushed her out of his way. He flung himself to the boards and he hastily climbed up, only his legs poking from the hole into the treehouse once he reached the top. His body was shaking and tensed and Ashley parked herself under him, ready to catch him over the chilling fear that he will fall.

As fast as he came up, Sal practically threw himself down.

His demeanor, if anything, had only gotten worse. He was uptight. He was cut off from reality. His good eyes was indecipherable to read, throwing all of Ashley's growing ability to understand the emotion through that good eye out the window. Her stomach had a hole of ink just looking at him; it pierced through her heart, her chest, her organs, her being. She felt afraid.

She hated being afraid of her best friend.

Not during a time of need.

He was muttering again. Ashley knew that she was trembling. She blamed it on the rain. "Sal, what is it? Look, Larry isn't there. Are you sure that was what you saw?"

Sal's head snapped at her and he looked intensely as if he was staring into her soul. Her filthy, fear-ridden soul. "A-Ashley, c'mon. It's me. I saw him! Are you seriously taking me as a liar right now?"

Ashley immediately felt guilty. Sal wasn't a liar. At least, not to inflict pain upon others intentionally. He was horrible at lying, and only would if it was for someone's own good.

"Sally, of course not! I don't take you for lying to me! This is just…" she stumbled over her words. Why is this so hard to say?

"What? This is what?" he pressed, his grip finding her wrist and squeezing it tight out of nerves and anticipation.

Ashley shook her head. "Please, Sal. Let's go inside. I want you to tell me everything, but just calm down. Take a breath, please!"

Sal broke himself away from her grasp. "What is so hard to understand, Ashley? This is the work of that same impending evil, the work of the cult. Ash, this is something that has to be dealt with. If neither me, Todd, or Larry do this, no one else will! If you really want to help, please help me take this out."

"Sal, listen to yourself! Impending evil? Cult? This in insane! It's absurd! Sally, you have no idea how much I want to help you through this, but you're speaking in a language I don't understand. You're talking about things that don't commonly exist!"

Ashley was breathing heavily and the rain boomed from above them. Was this really happening? Was she arguing with Sal Fisher right now? It felt so unreal. So untouched. Her feelings of anxiousness were surfacing and hitting Sal with harsh force.

He was quiet for a minute before he said, "I thought you trusted me."

Her heart broke.

He sounded so angry, so betrayed, so hurt, so sad.

Ashley gasped in an effort to bring out words, but nothing worked, of course. She sounded like she was choking instead. "Sal, I do! I trust you more than anyone."

Then why? Why are you taking this so lightly? Why would you say that, like I'm some sort of crazy lunatic? You make it sound like I'm an idiot! Ashley, you know me! Please, trust me!" His voice rose. His eye glistened with tears of hurt and protest. Disbelief.

That eye made her feel like utter shit.

"And I do!" she shouted, fists forming at her sides and shaking in tense emotion. "I don't want to get in the way of your goals. I don't want to ever get in the way of WHATEVER you need to do, or WHATEVER you need to be, just…"

She took a breath.

"This topic is just too hard to take in and understand! I want to help you so much, but I don't how I can if you can't muster that sense of reality. Don't take whatever this is on right now. Please calm down. Please come inside! Just…"

Sal remained silent. His hair covered the lower half of his face as he tilted his forehead over. Her intake of a breath was shaky. Guilt penetrated her body, and her hands were so close to squeezing, she was holding him so tight.

His hands held her wrists again.

He practically yanked them off.

His voice was soft. "Ash…please go."

The wind was knocked out of her. "Sal-"

"Please?" It rose a little bit. "I can't…deal with this right now. Just…go."

Ashley bit her lip. "I hate leaving you alone," she said, voice equally soft.

"It's better this way. Please?"

Her heart beat rapidly in her chest and she wanted so badly to rip it out.

"Fine. If you need anything else, please call. I do want to help you, Sal."

He didn't reply. But she swore that he did a little shrug of his shoulders.

When she finally mounted her bike and drove back home, she caught one last glimpse of Sal's electric blue messy damp hair still standing by the treehouse. She didn't miss that he was staring at her, watching her go.

She hated leaving him alone.

He deserved comfort.

She wanted so badly to give him that.

But things have appeared to be getting worse.

Ashley prayed to the heavens that things for him could never get any worse.

oooOOooo

So I got into Sally Face during the quarantine as well. Sweet! AND SO F***ING SAD!

Since watching and crying over Episode 4, all I could think of was during Ashley's statement to testify against Sal, and how she mentioned that the two had an agreement after hearing Larry's death. I tried writing arguements, but this felt to lex. You can critisize it in the reviews, I might use those tips in future works.

But honestly, I don't hate Ash. I understand that she isn't a fan favorite, and you can have that opinion, it's not my right to judge opinions, but I loved Ash from the beginning to the final episode of the game. She was a very good friend to Sal and Larry and Todd, and was willing to help them in this misadventures despite not believing in ghosts. Plus, despite her testimony, Ashley tried for THREE YEARS to get Sal off death row. And while the agruement can be said with having the picture of Larry's ghost be the first idea, let's be honest: if you had a friend on death row and that was the story they told, would that have been your first idea?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

All in all, Ashley is one of my favorite Sally Face characters and I genuenly love her. So I was also testing my love for both characters writing this. But it was still interesting and I liked how it turned out.

Like, Favorite, and Review. I'll see you soon! Wash your hands, and stay safe.

-Deximon