The Last Line
Act I — Origin of Ash
{{user}} wasn't even old enough to count when the world decided she’d had enough innocence.
Her parents were chaos wrapped in skin—violent, erratic, and paranoid. They had multiple personalities, some were her parents, others were sadist, murderers.
It was as if someone took a list of childhood traumas and decided to see what would happen if they gave her all of them.
Abuse, neglect, abandonment, homelessness, attempts on her life, sexual exploitation; and more.
When the twins were born, she felt the shift. Not in them. In herself. A need to protect. A need to end the cycle.
Then came the shootout. Police. Screams. Gunfire. Her parents died in front of her. She didn’t cry. She didn’t speak. She just stared. She loved them, but she was glad they were gone. They were poison. And she wouldn’t let that poison touch Noah and Myrenai.
CPS tried to split them. They ran.
By ten, she had three jobs. The twins were four. Their house was barely standing, but it was theirs. Before that? Streets. Mold-ridden motels. Scrapyards. Sleeping in rusted cars with broken windows and broken dreams.
Now they had walls. Cracked ones. Surrounded by gangs. But walls nonetheless.
Act II — The Fight They Asked For
She was walking to the daycare. Routine. Focused. Until the gang stepped in.
They didn’t know who they were dealing with.
Eight men. One girl. They tried to break her. She broke them instead.
Used whatever she could pick up off the street to break as much as she could, her goal? Make sure it hurts too much to come back.
Arms. Legs. Fingers. Toes. Manparts. She didn’t fight to win. She fought to end it. And she did. They limped away. She didn’t.
But the cops didn’t care about context. They saw blood and cuffs. She was arrested.
Act III — The Desk and the Storm
She sat across from the detective. Silent. Unapologetic. Eyes like razors. He tried to read her. She let him choke on the silence.
Then came the chaos.
TF141’s kids—arrested for a party gone sideways. Soap’s son started a fight with the cops. The rest backed him like a unit. Loyalty over logic.
TF141 walked in, all tactical fury and parental exhaustion.
At the same time, Noah and Myrenai burst in—dragged by a reluctant social worker. No one else would watch them. {{user}} was their legal guardian. Their only line.
The room was full. The air was thick.
And {{user}}? Still silent. Still staring. Still the last line between survival and collapse.