Chapter Text
It goes like this.
Ash turns seventeen years old. His life for the last year has been more of the same. More killing, more drugs bought and sold, more of Dino fucking him whenever he pleased, more disappointment as he comes to accept Griff ain’t never getting better, only worse. His brother has started to have episodes. Seizures and fits of hysterical fear and panic. He garbles out mostly unintelligible nonsense when this happens, and Ash can’t make no sense of it. Can’t take him to any hospitals, either, ‘cause then Dino’ll find out about him, and so all he can do is get medicine from Dr. Meredith to try and help calm Griff down. The shit doesn’t really work. It’s not meant for extreme cases of what Ash thinks is drug related PTSD or somethin’. It’s more of a preventative medicine, but it’s the best Ash can do.
And so this is his life. Prostitute turned gang banger and drug dealer, and still Dino’s sex toy, and whoever he tells Ash to sleep with for his benefit. There wasn’t no getting out for Ash. He knows that. Had always known that. Looking ahead, and all he can see for himself was this same, endless hell.
He works to keep his boys out of Dino’s sights, keep their operation separate from him and the Corsican mafia as best he can. Still, he takes odd jobs for his crew from Dino, collecting payments from businesses’ for protection, and transporting goods, giving ‘em all a bit of extra cash, but he tells Dino not to touch his boys, not to pull them into anything outside his own say so, and Dino tells him he won’t.
It carries on until it can’t.
Two members of his gang have gone behind his back to work with Dino, and he can’t let it stand. Not without risking other members doing the same. Dino’d promised him not to interfere in his activities, not to use his boys to do his dirty work. Whatever killin’ he needed done, Ash’s told him to come to him and him alone. Wanted him to leave Alex and the others outta’ it, and Dino had agreed.
But Dino was a fuckin’ liar, and the boys in his crew were fuckin’ dumb, and now Ash had a problem.
Skip tells him he heard Arthur was involved, and big fuckin’ surprise, he thinks. Dino and Arthur had been working together for the last year, from what Ash had heard, and Ash hadn’t done anything much about it, since Arthur wasn’t someone he particularly had much contact with, these days. Couldn’t give a shit about Arthur and who he involved himself with, letting him be to run his own operation out of his own turf. Ash’d thought that doing so might keep the fuck from making any more grabs for power. But he guesses then it was his fault, for not paying more attention to the bastard. For not holding him to the same standards as the rest of his boys.
The two morons kill someone for Dino on Arthur’s word. Ash had been tailing ‘em, so he knows, ‘cause he comes across the scene in the midst of it all. Fuckin’ sloppy, stupid idiots. They’ve shot the guy in the stomach, and he’s bleeding out, slow and painful. Ash tries to help, but he already knows it’s too late. Still, the guy tells him something. He tells Ash, right before he buys it, to go see banana fish in LA, and gives Ash a necklace pendant, and Ash recognizes the words immediately. Banana fish… the same words Griff was always muttering to himself, over and over.
It freezes Ash up, for an instant, because he knows, then… he knows in his gut, that Dino is involved in whatever it is that turned his brother into a god damned vegetable. He doesn’t know how, or why. Doesn’t know if Dino even knows about Griff being alive, though he wouldn’t be surprised if he does. It’s got his brain working a mile a minute, paranoid and illogical, about just how involved Dino’s been in all of it. In his whole fuckin’ life. None of it makes any sense, though. There wasn’t any reason Dino would’ve known about him and his brother, back in Cape Cod, before everything. Dino wouldn’t have left him on the streets of New York for a full year before sending Marvin after him, if he’d set the whole fuckin’ thing up. He can’t think like that. Can’t get crazy.
He goes to see Dino about it, to ask him why he dragged his boys into his bullshit, ‘stead of just asking him to do it, like usual, and Dino brushes him off like he’s still some idiot kid who don’t know any better, and it all but confirms for Ash that Dino is up to some shit he don’t want him knowing about.
He realizes, then, that this is it. This is it, for him and Dino. The end of the line. Wasn’t no going back, after this. Wasn’t no more pretending.
Couldn’t pretend, anymore. Couldn’t bear it.
Shorter follows him out to New Jersey, something he’s started doing any time he hears Ash is headed up there. Overprotective idiot. He knows by now Ash can take care of himself, but he keeps pushing. Ash hates him coming around Dino’s compound, even hanging around outside of it. He’s told him so more times than he can count, now, but the dumbass just won’t listen, and Ash ain’t gonna’ tell Shorter what he can and can’t do. Dino’s got to know about him, but if he does, he hasn’t made mention of it, and that just makes Ash more nervous.
Next time, he’ll have to make sure Shorter don’t find out about him going up to Jersey.
The pendent contains a substance, Ash discovers after. A drug, he’s sure. A drug. His mind works again, his gut telling him it’s got to do with Griff. What that guy’d said, Dino having him killed, Dino giving him the run around. Ain’t no way it’s not all connected.
Had to deal with his boys first, though. His idiot crew. The two fools who’d done the hit for Dino, they were gonna’ get killed by him. None of ‘em understood Dino. Didn’t understand how dangerous he was. Them hanging ‘round here, after Ash’d caught ‘em in the act, it was gonna’ do nothin’ but put a giant target on their backs now. Dino’d kill ‘em for sure.
So he lines ‘em up against a concrete wall in the middle of nowhere, and scares the living shit out of ‘em. Makes sure his whole, main crew’s there to see and learn, Arthur included. Takes some skin off with his .357 and tells ‘em to split and not come back. They beg and cry, and Ash ain’t hearing it. They’re too dumb to listen to him about Dino, so it comes down to this. If they’ve got any working brain cells, they’ll listen to him and disappear. He don’t have a lot of faith in ‘em, though.
When he turns around, he sees Arthur there, smirking at him, and so he smirks right back, sends him a not-so-subtle warning that he’s on to him and his involvement in all this. Doesn’t matter, anymore. It was all turning to shit, fast, and whatever Arthur was planning, Ash was just gonna’ have to deal with it as it came.
Later, he brings the substance found in the pedant to Meredith, asks him to analyze it. It ain’t dope, whatever it is. Ash’s sure of that. Whatever it is, it’s worse than all that. He’ll find out. He’ll find out, and then, if he’s right… if Dino’s had something to do with Griff being the way he is now…
He was gonna’ kill him. He was gonna’ kill Dino, and blow his whole, shit fuck operation out of the water in the process. He swears to God…
Didn’t have much to lose anymore, anyway.
Ash doesn’t think he even feels anything, anymore.
Doesn’t feel scared. Doesn’t feel guilty. Doesn’t feel angry, or sad, or relieved. Feels nothing at all. And so Dino can’t do nothing to him, no how. Not him. Because Dino was nothing to him, now. Dino was nothing.
And Ash couldn’t keep living this life.
End