Chapter 34 - The Girl Who Never Lived

We've reached 100 votes again on QT: No to Bad Boys this week! So another extra chapter today (What!? That didn't happen before!)

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Four years later...

"Ashton, can't you see!? They're destroying our relationship!"

"They're destroying our relationship? They're my fans, Sid! They love us, they love us being together!"

"And that's the problem! We can't even be together without someone following us around, asking for a selfie. They say we're the best couple when we're barely one yet!"

"So what do you want to do?" Ashton took her hand, trying to calm her down by squeezing it. "Do you want to take a break? We could take a trip somewhere far from the crowd, somewhere where we could take time just being lovers, like you said."

"We did so many of those trips already, Ashton." Sidney pulled her hair. "I need... I need to break free from this industry.... The spotlights..... It's making me go blind....."

"Then we'll have your eyes checked! I know a good ophthalmologist---"

"Not literally, okay!? I'm starting to forget myself from all these acting and pretending I'm someone else I'm not!" Sidney finally spoke what was on her mind.

She has been hiding it for four years from Ashton. All these four years they've been 'together'.

But she has been hiding it long before that.

She was a child actress, her mother is a showgirl who failed to achieve her dreams to be a diva, to be shown on the big screen. And so, she transferred her dreams to her only daughter born from one of her clients, and raised her by herself. She and little Sidney would stay outside in the cold streets just so she could be early in auditions for everything: reality shows for cooking, dancing or singing, dubbing cartoons, kid's movies and series, toothpaste advertisements..... Everything!

And it paid off, eventually. Sidney had become one of the greatest actresses of the decade, because of her mother's greatest advice to her.

"Forget Sidney, you are your role. Even outside the stage, you should always be the role. You are nothing else besides it."

Sidney took it to heart ever since the age of 5. She had always been 'the role', no matter what it was. A bitchy prima ballerina? She would act like that even when ordering donuts and talk with a Valley Girl accent while wearing a tutu. A tough fighter against aliens? She'd spend her free time in arcades or indoor shooting ranges and never smile for anyone.

Her real self was buried deep into these different faces and voices, that she thought it may not have even existed.

When she met Ashton, she thought she could finally get a glimpse of who she truly was. The Sidney behind the masks, bathed in the sunlight and not the many flashing lights of cameras on set.

The more she loved him, the more her acting skills deteriorated. Ashton confronted her about this, though gently, asking what is wrong. She didn't make any problems for a while and they go on dates like she suggested, but she soon learned that she could never escape the role even with doing so.

"Oh my god! Is that Ronnie and Julie!?"

"Mom, that looks like the couple from TV! The one from the new version of 'My Fair Lady'! Let's take a picture!"

"Isn't she that the new superhero, Ultragirl! She's so cool!"

They couldn't even drink a cup of coffee and eat croissants peacefully in a Paris without being spotted, couldn't eat hotpot in China without people asking for autographs and pictures and asking them intrusive questions.

It's making her go mad. The only thing she waited for.....

Is for Ashton to save her from this life by pulling out a ring.

But when he did, it was in front of a crowd in Ibiza! And their managers even planned the wedding to be live broadcasted on every channel, making it so extravagant to even rival the Royal Wedding in the UK itself!

She can see Ashton is being blinded too, blinded by the glamour and worship he was receiving from his fans. She is famous, but her gap with Ashton's popularity is worlds apart. Even after all these years, he just got more and more fans, beloved no matter what country and no matter the language. His face was as youthful as it was when he was released into the big screens, and she had become more haggard. At this rate, people might even mistake her for his mom.

Yet he couldn't understand what the industry is doing to him! He still took it all in, both the good parts and the bad parts, with the wonder of a child!

"I don't understand what you mean, Sid." Ashton looks visibly confused, frowning with his pink pouty lips. "How could you forget yourself? You're Sidney Lane, a two-time award-winning actress with 30 million followers on Yourtube!"

"Is that all that I am to you!?" Sidney is becoming more and more exasperated the more she tried to explain things to Ashton, pulling at her own hair. He..... He thinks like a little boy, it's frustrating!

The boy just blinked his bright blue eyes at her. "Of course not! Don't be mad, I didn't mean it like that. I just..... I couldn't understand what's causing you to be so distressed these days. The directors had sent me letters already, asking me why you're always late on set, and when you're there, you would act like an amateur who's never acted her whole life! And I can't believe them, until I saw it for myself!"

Ashton took out his phone, where he recorded a video of his fiancee speaking the lines exaggeratingly, just like how kids act in a school play. "You were horrible, Sidney!"

"Exactly! And it felt so good, Ashton!" Sidney cackled, and it deeply scared him. "Them knowing that it was all just smoke and mirrors, that the woman on stage is just a regular woman, and not some genius detective, or a superhero! It's exhilarating, the funny look on their faces is priceless!"

"It's not funny, Sidney.... I..." Ashton took a step back. "I can't find what's so funny about it. You're not acting like yourself---"

"I am! That's what I'm doing, I'm finally acting as myself!" She retorted. "Ashton, I'm so done with it! I'm done with it all! Let's get married and move to a tropical private island, we have the money to afford it, right!? We could live all alone there, just being normal people and planting and farming our food to eat, raising sheep and cattle, having our children ride horses and play the fields-----"

"NO!"

This is the first time Ashton raised his voice to her, to anyone.

He was hyperventilating, the fear evident in his eyes just from the image she presented to him. It was so vivid, so clear. Kansas, the very same Kansas he escaped...

And this woman is suggesting to him to go back to that country life again!?

"I..... I couldn't." Ashton shook his head. "Hah..... hah..... I couldn't....."

He fell down on his knees, shaking. Sidney calmed down a little, putting a hand on his back.

"Hey..... What's wrong?" Sidney asked. "What's---"

He pushed her away!

Ashton stood up coldly, wiping the tears in his eyes. "If you want a life in dirt and mud with pigs and chickens, good for you! You can have that life! But don't drag me along with it."

"I have hundreds of millions of fans who will miss me if I suddenly go off the radar! People who believed in me, whose hearts I earned through hard work! I can't leave them all behind for a simple life of a farmer!"

"I thought you were one of those people. I worked hard all day because I thought my acting made you happy, and that we share one passion." Ashton gritted his teeth. "I was wrong."

"There's only one man who believed in me when no one could... It was to him that I should be thankful for. He made me into who I am today. Not you." He regarded Sidney with eyes full of disdain, a complete turn-over from his love for her.

"I can't be with someone who is willing to destroy my own happiness, my passion."

It was because this had long been simmering to come to this, for him to hate the very woman he loved. Her actions, his doubts, it cumulated to this moment, reaching its boiling point. Her mentioning a life in the countryside isn't the cause, it is just the final straw.

He left, slamming the door at this house they once called home.

"Ashton!" She called out. "I take it back, don't go! Ashton!"

But he never even turned his back, directly hailing a taxi to an address he had long not visited this past 4 years.

Sidney broke apart and screamed, feeling like she had just lost everything.

She dialed a number on her phone, her tears feeling like acid burning her skin and the smoke of it suffocating her. She needed someone. Anyone.

"H-Hello..... Doctor? Doctor, can we talk?"

"Sidney, dear. You sound like you're crying? What happened?"

"Dr. Wotsil...." She sobbed, face dirty from the mascara that bleed down her cheeks. "I think Ashton had just broken up with me...."

"Oh, that's terrible!" The man's sweet and gentle voice on the phone consoled her a little. "You can tell me everything, dear. Don't hold back."

She went on to recount the events, thankful that she at least have this psychiatrist as a friend. She has been seeing Dr. Harry Wotsil ever since she felt the show industry slowly eating her from inside out, and as fate would have it, she saw his flyer and decided to give it a shot. Ever since then, Dr. Wotsil gave her solid advice, and introduced her to the truth she had been hiding from all along.

He was the one who suggested for her to try not method acting for a bit, just doing what she wanted on stage, and seeing how it feels. And he was right, he is always right.

He listened to her patiently, calmly prodding her when she would break apart. Told her to take deep breaths..... And when she was finished, he took a moment to consider everything.

"I understand what you're going through, Ms. Lane. I experienced being left behind myself, that person was my entire world." The hurt was candid in his voice.

"Sometimes, there are just people in our lives who never see through us, you know? They are good people, yet they can't see the things we have kept hidden, and because we love them, we want them to be the only person who could understand us completely. But that's just fantasy, my dear, projected to us by media that all love is perfect."

"Perhaps all you need is time. If you try to talk to him again, maybe you can mend this tiny setback to your relationship."

"I don't think time can fix this, doctor.... sob...." Sidney hugged her knees close. "It was time that changed us. That made things for the worse."

"I see. Well, if all actions are void..." Dr. Wotsil lowered his tone. "Why don't you just give up?"

Sidney stopped sobbing, her pupils dilating. "G-Give up?"

"Sometimes it's good to give up, dear. When life has become unbearable, why continue fighting it? If you keep being crushed by the waves, why not just join its flow?" He said, and he makes perfect sense.

Still, she can't be easily persuaded by this. "But I love Ashton....."

"Yes, but from what you told me, I'm starting to doubt if Aston ever even loved you. The real you." The doctor on the other side of the phone adjusted his rimless glasses. "You once told me that you feel like you're always wearing a mask, and it's suffocating you. Ashton wouldn't leave you so easily behind if he could see through that mask. So what he loved... Is that mask, not you."

These words struck her life a hammer hitting a nail in her heart.

"So it's better to give up on such a fruitless affair. You have a life ahead of you besides such a person-----"

But she couldn't hear what he was saying anymore.

The only thing that registered is that Ashton never loved her, and that she should give up. No, she doesn't have a life beyond Ashton, because she is just the role without him. And now, she realized that even he only see her as the role.

She saw the many bottles of perfume on her vanity table. She wore different scents for different occasions. Different scents for different masks.

And now..... She's going to wear them all. Dr. Wotsil is right, if she couldn't escape, she should just give up.

Live as the role, die as the role.

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