backwards » lashton

1

Waking up on the morning of November the 11th the felt especially hard for Luke.

The inability to get out of bed was something that by now Luke had gotten used to, but the thought of the events that were going to happen in that day made Luke want to shut off his mind and skip ahead the seconds, minutes and hours that he was about to face.

But nonetheless, he knew he couldn't avoid everything and everyone like he wished he could, so he got out of bed and put on his black suit and tie before styling his hair.

He looked in the mirror in front of him, looking at the noticable signs of tiredness in his eyes and the noticable signs of weight loss where his trusty suit hung loose on his thinning frame. He breathed in deeply as a tear fell from his eye, knowing that today would be one of the hardest of his life.

He left his house in a hurry, getting into his friends car whilst wishing he was doing anything else but what he had to do today.

The car journey was silent, either boys refraining from speaking because they simply didn't have the courage or the ability to speak to each other without feeling like they were about to burst into tears. The journey was also short, and they soon had arrived at their destination. Luke froze in this position, his breathing becoming more frantic as the seconds ticked by. His friend, Michael, placed his hand on Lukes knee and gave it a reassuring squeeze in an attempt to calm the boy down.

"It's all going to be okay Luke, I promise"

Luke nodded his head as he got out of the car, taking a deep breath of the fresh air.

Most of the day then became a blur.

One minute he was speaking with his family and friends, with most of the people (many of who he had never even met) sending their sorrys Luke's way and giving him hugs and handshakes. In many of their eyes, he probably was just the boy whose boyfriend was taken away from them. When really, Luke had been taken to.

The next minute, he is standing in front of over a hundred people, about to say the hardest words of his entire life. And even though he was only a 21 year old lad with arguably harder events to come, nothing in his eyes could be worse than this very one.

Luke opened his mouth to speak, and lost all the words he wanted to say as the people looked onto him in hopes of a beautiful speech that would bring them to tears and quantify his sadness for the older lad laying beside him. He looked down at the unfolded speech before placing it back in his pocket and standing up straight in preperation to speak.

"The many of you here today, all saddened in your own specific way, will have your own wonderful little stories with Ashton that you treasure in your own special way. But for me, Luke Hemmings, the day that we met to the day that he left us was just one long story that I never wanted to end."

"Ashton gave me a feeling of belonging that I had never had the privaledge to feel before we met. I have no words that can describe my feelings for him. I cannot put the amount of love and admiration I still feel for the boy, who I was so lucky to be able to call my boyfriend, into words."

He paused for a second, thinking of the words that could sum up everything he wished he could say in the little time he had.

"Before I met you, Ashton Fletcher Irwin, nothing in my life made me want to wake up, nothing wanted to make me face the day or go to sleep at the end of it. I felt like I was engulfed in a darkness that would never ever go away. But then I met you, and suddenly all the darkness I was trying to navigate was accompanied by a slowly growing light that gave me some hope a that I would be okay."

"And everything was okay. It was more than okay. Everything was the best it's ever been, and I cannot count the amount of smiles, laughs and tears that the boy caused me. There is no quantifiable measurement for the butterflies and the fireworks the boy gave me, and there is no way I can justify his beauty, both externally and internally."

"People say that I was asking for too much from life, but I didnt want the world, I just wanted to feel like i belonged in it and then the world brought me you, and for that moment everything felt okay"

"Everything felt more than okay. Everything was amazing Ashton, more amazing than I think you realised. But then, but then you left me and it felt like the chance the world gave me to be happy had been ripped away from my fingertips and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It felt like the happiness, the light I had craved for so long had been burnt out and I was once again left in a darkness that no amount of crying and comfort could ever heal. I believe in life that everything happens for a reason, but I can't help but think that on that night the wrong person was taken away from the earth, because the world needed you more than I did."

"I love you Ashton. Nothing I can say will ever emphasise the feelings I felt for you and nothing anyone can say to me will ever make me feel any better that I'm stuck in this shitty world and you've been taken away and gone to another place. I will not go a day without missing you and I will not go a day without wishing I could've loved you even more than I already did. Thank you, Ashton, for being you. I'm just sorry that you had to lose your life trying to save mine. I love you. Thank you."

Luke then was full out crying as he returned to his seat.

The rest of the day was a complete blur.

The rest of the day was full of his tears and heartbreak as the casket lowered into the ground and the idea that Ashton was never coming back settled in.

The rest of the day was full of screaming and shouting because of the complete emptiness and heartbreak that wouldn't go away.

By the time he was on his way back home, he wondered what a life without Ashton was going to be like.

He knew he'd start finding out.

He didn't want to start finding out.

He walked, and walked, and walked until he was lost in his thoughts and lost in a city he'd never been to.

He sat, in the middle of a random pavement in a random street, wishing that the thought of being alone for the rest of his life didn't hurt so much.

He looked, up at the stars, at his surroundings and wished that everything wasn't continuing when he felt like his entire world had just stopped.

He knew he didn't want to live a life without Ashton, he knew he couldn't.

Without another thought he was walking towards a bridge he saw off in the distance.

He reached the top of the bridge, seeing the cars race past him, and jumped over the railings without a moments thought.

He loved Ashton and needed Ashton more than he needed oxygen, food, water, survival.

He was jumping and nothing in that moment could stop him.

He felt pain, he heard screams, he saw his life flash before his eyes.

Then he felt nothing at all.