Ash had been younger, 18, and always chasing the next high. He had a promising potential career as an artist ahead of him, recognized for his talent at a young age, but the older he got, the harder of a time he had finding inspiration, and the more he craved a rush of adrenaline instead of simple satisfaction in work.

The thing he'd found to be his greatest passion in his craving for excitement, was car racing. Being that the year was about somewhere in the fifties, there were horror stories abounding all around about terrible accidents. It wasn't an era of great safety. Still, Ash fell in love with the idea.

As promising as he was foolish, he quickly made a name for himself. He had a flair for dramatics, but still had a lot of skill, that allowed him to seriously compete with people far more experienced than him. He thrived that way for a while, until the day he finally crashed.

It was a horrible crash. The car had gone up in flames, and the door wouldn't open. Ash was running out of air. To the watching crowd, his death was certain. Until a bystandaer ran in, and pried the door of his car open. She pulled him out, saving him from the burning wreck. For this action, her hands were permanently scarred from burns, as a result of touching the hot metal.

That girl, was Angel.

Angel had always watched car races through television broadcasts, or listened to reports over the radio. Despite her love for the sport, she had no chance of seeing things live. Her family was dirt poor, and her parents were far from interested in spending hundreds to see some cars run around a track.

By some strange twist of fate, her neighbor, a mechanic who sometimes worked on race cars, had gotten two free tickets last minute. He’d offered one to Angel’s father as a favor, knowing how much she loved the sport. Her father, indifferent, had handed it to her without a second thought. "Go if you want," he’d said, as if it were nothing. To Angel, it was everything.

Excitement had turned to horror, as one of the cars spun out, and crashed. The fuel tank ruptured. Worst of all, the driver side door was stuck. She could see the driver panicking and struggling. So, she acted.

It kicked up a media storm.

There was no escaping the attention, even as she sat in the hospital, her hands covered in gauze. Her parents had berated her for the insanity of the action. How dangerous it was, how she was lucky she could still use her hands. It was a few hours into a lecture from her mother, about how she might never be able to do a button again or cook for herself, that a nurse came in, talking about a request that had been made. Someone wanted to see her.

They thought it would be the neighbour, or one of her uncles. A friend. A classmate. Maybe it would have been luckier for her if it was. Instead, the person asking for a visit from her was someone whose name none of them recognized. Putting two and two together, Angel realized it must have been the driver.

Always a bit anti social, and avoidant of attention, she didn't really want to go, but Angel forced herself to. It wasn't an extreme request to go to another hospital room, speak to someone for a few minutes, and dissappear back into her regular life in a few weeks, after the media lost interest.

When she finally stepped into his room, Ash expected a fearless adrenaline junkie, someone like him. Or maybe a fan of him, who had acted to save their favourite. What he hadn't expected, was a girl, around his age, who clearly did not want to be there.

The media seemed convinced that she was a great heroine. In truth, she looked more like she was someone caught doing something rather foolish, and she looked more like she expected a lecture than praise. It was awkward for the both of them, who despite the incident, seemed to be far too different. But the conversation had stumbled to the topic of why she'd been at the race to begin with, and they finally found something to connect over.

Ash was half delirious from the painkillers, and half delirious from something else. Love. Or at least the suspension bridge effect. Regardless, they wound up chatting for quite a while, and by the end of it, the two of them could hardly be convinced to separate. Least of all by their parents, who had to threaten to ground both of them to make them stop chattering about whatever came to mind.

Ash was extra miffed about that, but he didn't get to argue with his parents any more than any other highschooler, race car crash or not.

By the time they were both discharged, the media frenzy had only grown. Reporters hounded Angel’s family, asking for interviews, photos, anything to spin the story. Her parents, overwhelmed and irritated by the attention, became even more dismissive of her, complaining about the trouble she'd caused. Angel could hardly go to school without being badgered. By classmates, by reporters. Her small circle of friends were suddenly more like bodyguards, constantly trying to keep off the attention. It burned everyone out.

Ash, on the other hand, thrived in the spotlight. He gave dramatic retellings of the crash to anyone who would listen, embellishing details and twisting the truth a bit. Every retelling, he was closer to death, and Angel was more... angelic. But when the cameras weren’t rolling, he was usually on the phone. Sometimes with friends, sometimes with Angel.

Initially, Angel had started very conservative in how they conversed, keeping things focused on their shared interests, and sharing very little about her personal life. It was fun, though. Speaking about art, and racing, and all their random passions. Eventually, though, things did drift. And she admitted to her personal longings. Dreams of living like the bohemians she read about in stories. Dreams of being someone's muse. Dreams of escaping her dull life for a new one.

It was the fundamental similarity between both of them, that in the heart, they were both most certainly romantics. Ash especially, he promised her the world. His version of it, at least. When their late night phone calls turned into secret meetings at diners and parks, he sketched her on napkins, until his hands were well enough to do it properly. She'd laugh at all the crude ones from when he was still recovering, where he seemed to draw her with fish eyes that pointed in several directions at once, or the times he seemed to not know where noses belonged. She smiled, and sometimes stared in awe when they were good. Eventually, she began returning the favour.

She had never considered herself an artist, so her work wasn't very good, but she had an eye for it. An eye for replicating the way he did the task, and doing it herself.

Her parents warned her. They were clear that involvement with him would only drag her further into the public eye, and that it wouldn't end well. They warned her of how this all would ruin her. But it was rare in the past that they'd truly had her best interests at heart, so she couldn't bring herself to listen, even though they were right.

And really, the story would have died eventually if they didn't end up romantically involved. But the moment the reporters caught a whiff of it, that was the end for any chance of her life going back to normal.

When her parents realized there was no pulling her out of the spotlight, they decided that they would get her to lean into it. They told her to make herself a celebrity. To go out there and make a name, so that when they inevitably crashed and burned, she'd have her own things to hold onto.

So came the modelling.

It wasn't something she really wanted to do or had a passion for, but it was something she was good at, and it was what her mother pushed that she do. She'd always kept herself thin, and the camera loved her. The photographers loved cinching her waist, smaller and smaller, until breathing was barely an option. They loved the hollows in her cheeks. They loved the way she looked like a starlet, without any of the preparation.

'

Of course, that love wasn't quite unconditional. Her own fame came with her own rumours. Tabloids. And every day, they knew how to hit the insecurities. Just like her parents did. They knew how to make her feel inadequate beside the swans she shared the stage with.

Ash noticed the changes in her before anyone else did. The way she’d push food around her plate but never take a bite. The way her collarbones grew sharper, her wrists more fragile. The way she’d laugh off his concern. He tried his best to sit with it, but it became a frustration. As the years went by, that frustration became an argument. That she was going to kill herself.

An argument became a screaming match. Angel, usually so composed, had snapped back with a venom that startled even herself. It wasn’t the first time they’d clashed, but it was the first time it had ever gotten so truly out of hand. It snapped something in there, which could never truly be repaired. Ash stopped worrying for her health, and only became more reckless. With money, with his image, with his life. He wanted out of the spiral, but could only think of one escape.

They lived like that for years. They had their good times. As they both became independent adults, they finally began somewhat on those dreams. Those hopes of being artists who had no worries and could drift from place to place. Sometimes Angel would even get the slightest bit better.

But the cameras always caught up with them. And that was the end of it. She always feared she wouldn't be good enough for the spotlight she found herself in. Her mother was also always in her ear, warning her about how quick it might end. And in a way, it did end quick.

Their lives fell into decline eventually. Ash piled up injuries, and as the world of racing changed, he found himself being tossed aside. As Angel became only more skeletal, that positive interest turned to horror and revulsion, which only encouraged her, in a sick way. Seeing the concern. The fear.

The crash of their careers was inevitable, but neither of them had expected it to be as sudden as it wound up being.

Angel stopped being able to carry her own weight, and soon, her routine brain fog had turned into a lapse. She could hardly remember a thing. She could hardly focus. She slipped out words about what her family and the agencies had done to her, but that was rare, as it was rare she be able to speak without pain. Eventually, she was barely competent. She needed someone to handle even basic tasks for her. Ash refused to trust anyone else with it, and that was the end of his career.

Ash tried to reach out to her parents, but their response was "You broke her, you keep her." His own parents only responded with irritation that he was asking they clean up his messes.

As his career cratered, and Angel's already horrible condition only grew worse, Ash wound up paranoid. He took up residence in a hotel, and the two of them wound up shuttered in there. As the world outside lost interest, and the world inside became nothing more than just the two of them, wasting away their lives together.

In a way, they were content, until Angel found that key and sent them into the blood dream.