Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair’d shadow roaming like a dream"
That's what he told himself amidst the delirium his old age caused, grasping feebly at memories that had, over the years, begun to evade him. He'd had a happy childhood with a family that had loved him, repaid them by becoming rebellious in his teenage years. He'd found himself almost in a car accident (a memory that still stood out for reasons he himself couldn't explain) that made him rethink the way he was, settling down a little and focusing on his future. He'd grown closer to his twin, mother and father in the process, gone off to college to pursue a career in being a doctor. He met a girl and fell in love, worked hard and travelled the world until finally he asked her to marry him. They had a long happy marriage and two children, a girl and a boy. He couldn't remember their names now.
His wife had passed away two months before. They'd been happily married for sixty years. And finding himself a frail old man lying in a hospital bed, visited by those who loved him but he couldn't quite remember, he knew that his time was also coming to an end. He was content with that. Death was not something he feared, and by now he was growing tired of the way reality and dreams had begun to collide around him - the faces of his visitors had a habit of shifting to people he thought he should know; a pink haired boy with a stitched up face, a warped version of his brother with a third eye, an androgynous figure that filled him with dread or a blonde haired girl with a kind face. At night he dreamt of cliffs and tumbling skull-shaped stones, of forests and spikes and great and powerful guardians. And every night they returned with such an intensity that he knew, deep in his heart, that somewhere they were real.
He knew then, when the visions of that strange other world appeared before him as he lay wide awake, that it was time for him to go.
And he went happily, gladly, to The End.
He'd led a rather miserable afterlife.
Ash had returned to the realm of the conscious and sane after Norton cleared his mind. And there had been a brief time of happiness, where he surrounded himself with the other Enders, the people he called friends now, and tried to live his death to it's full extent. But as the days wore on his health had deteriorated - with no shadow to help him and now light powers to speak of he struggled to move from place to place. His grip on their reality was lost again and he grew distant, sad and confused.
And then he had wandered off into the Mind world and left everyone behind. He slipped into the shrubbery and dug himself a bed - a grave - and covered himself in weeds before simply falling asleep.
In his dreams he lived out his life as he'd always wanted to. He was happy there. The void no longer existed to hurt him, and sleep caused him no harm. The End continued to move around him but he remained in his coffin of bushes and thistles, whiling away his eternity in sleep as he waited for his shadow's return.
It was a day after Gem found him that he heard the whispers of another voice coaxing him to wake up, a gentle push against his consciousness that willed his empty white eyes to open, and his third eye to swivel blearily to look at his face.
And after months and months of silence he breathed in, slowly and methodically, and reached out a hand to touch the girl's, trying to get her attention.
"Hello," He started, swallowing past the dryness of his throat as his brow furrowed.
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