Today was, well I'd love to say it was better, but honestly it was the same as every tedious day since she left. Every hour, every minute, every second has dragged on, like they would never end. It was as if it took an hour for every second to pass, a day for every minute, and an eternity for every day, and every single one of them hurt like hell.

When I woke up the next morning Ash was still asleep. I couldn't help but stare at her. She looked so peaceful, something I hadn't seen in a wile. What I didn't know then was that this peace would become increasingly rare, only to appear a few more times before she was gone.

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Spencer laid there for a good 20 minutes before Ashley began to stir. She watched as the brunette softly mumbled something along the lines of "wuh…what? No, please don't pet the pizza." After drawling out this nonsense statement the girl rolled over and protectively draped her arm over her girlfriend's stomach. She held onto Spencer tight, as if this act would the blonde from her unseen predator. Soon after this unconscious act of affection the brunette quickly threw her arm up into the air, only to have gravity defy her, causing her arm to come careening down to earth and meet her own face with a full force. A startled and newly awaken Ashley shot up with a confused and shocked look on her face.

"What the hell?" Ashley mumbled, rubbing her stinging forehead. Spencer, who had already been thrown into a fit of laughter, could no longer contain the tears that were threatening to drop due to her hysterical uproar. Ashley, just having noticed the blonde in her bed, jumped off the bed with a squeal and a priceless face. Her mixed facial expression read somewhere in between "You just scared the living shit out of me!" and "Oh my God, I can not believe she just saw me do that."

Ashley's reaction only fueled the blonde's laughter. She had reached the point where her face was bright red and her laughter had become silent due to the lack of oxygen in her lungs. It was then that Ash realized that her girlfriend found nothing but extreme humor in the situation. She then decided to give the blonde a little situation of her own.

Before Spencer had a chance to react she was already being tackled off the bed and toppling onto the hard wooden floor. They both continued laughing, Spencer now laughing with Ashley rather than at her…okay so maybe she was still laughing at her, but Ash didn't have to know that.

"So Ash, you plan on telling me why the hell you were petting that pizza?" Spencer asked, still giggling.

"Huh?" Ashley was left still incredibly confused as to exactly what Spencer had witnessed prior to her laughing fit.

"Before you slapped yourself…" Spencer chuckled as Ashley began to recall the events, bashfully hanging her head in her hands, "you were mumbling something about petting a pizza?"

"Oh my God, Spence! That was the scariest dream ever!"

"Are you serious?" Spencer was not sure if she should be relieved, disappointed, or a little worried.

"Umm…yea." Reacting to the incredulous face that the blonde was now giving her. "Hey, you weren't there, don't you judge me…he was one fucking bad ass pizza."

"He?" The blonde managed to get out amidst her own laughter.

"Yes, all villains are guys," the brunette stated in a rather blunt tone. "I thought you would have realized that after over two years of being with a girl."

"Alright, Ash, whatever you say." Spencer finished with an amused sigh.

"Glad you see things me way." With that the brunette smiled, kissed her girlfriend on the forehead and rose to her feet. "So what do you want to do today?"

"Umm…eat. What do you want for breakfast?" Spencer now noticing the rumbling growing in her empty stomach, having not eaten since before the incident on the beach the previous night.

"Eh, I'm not eating."

"Since when?" Spencer asked shocked, she had never known Ashley Davies to turn down a meal…ever. The girl attacked any food in front of her like a shark attacking its prey, hell she would probably beat out the shark.

"Whoa, down girl! Not for good, I just don't feel good right now."

"…Alright, but if you don't eat lunch again I'm force feeding you." Ashley just laughed and shook her head, reaching out her hand to help her girlfriend off the floor. The brunette was starting to worry Spencer with her eating habits. She had been skipping breakfast because she insisted that it "made her stomach feel like shit for the rest of the day." She also would sometimes skip lunch, blaming it on the stomach pains, saying that if she even looked at it she would be sick. Spencer then remembered her phone call with Ashley's new doctor. "Speaking of not feeling well, I called your doctor."

"Oh yea?" Ashley asked, feigning interest.

"Yea, he said you could go in at 10:00am tomorrow morning."

"Alright." Ashley blandly stated, as she began nervously picking at her nails.

"Hey, Spence?" Ash managed to get out after a few minutes of silence.

"Mmm?" Spencer responded vaguely, having been mildly interested in the small thread hanging from the hem of her shirt. The nervous tone of the brunette's voice eventually caught her ear, causing her to lift her head up and meet worried brown eyes.

"You think you could go with me tomorrow?" Ashley quietly pleaded, her nervousness now fully showing.

Now more than slightly concerned Spencer answered, "of course, babe," kissing her forehead. "I was planning on going anyway; you couldn't get me to leave you alone if you tried." She added, smiling.

"Oh believe me; I'm not putting up a fight." The brunette stated, now also giggling. "Though, you are soooo damn sexy when you're angry." She purred into the blonde's ear, arching her right eye brow.

After recovering from the shivers that were sent through her body, Spencer wittily replied. "And you are soooo damn cute when you're acting dorky." "Fortunate for you." She added the last part with a laugh.

"Aw thanks…hey wait, what's that supposed to mean? Fortunate for me?"

"Oh don't worry, it just means that you're cute 24/7."

"Oh! Okay" After thinking about the blondes statement for a little longer, it's true meaning finally sunk in. "Hey!" She shouted, throwing a pillow from her bed at Spencer, hitting the blonde in the face.

This, of course, instilled a full out pillow fight, ending in both the girls laying back in bed exhausted, just like they were only 10 minutes earlier.

---------------------------------------- End Flashback ------------------------------------------------

I miss those days; the days were we would laugh at anything and everything. There seemed to be less and less of them as Ash's disease progressed.

I still remember going to the doctor's office the next day. When we arrived at the office the doctor was waiting with the specialist. After analyzing the situation, both the doctor and the specialist agreed that Ash had, in fact, inherited the family disease. The only thing left to confirm the disease was the test results. Really though, the only thing the test results would provide was the ability to get medications. Medications which would be changed at least 20 times before they settled on her last prescription 1 year later. The results would not provide closure, and they would not provide comfort, we all knew that it was looming there, you could feel it in the air; the sense of the many painful years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds that awaited her. We all knew that Ash had Chron's Disease before we even got to the office; God knows how long Ash knew.

I remember leaving the office. Ash was so composed through the whole meeting. Her expression never faltering, almost stoic. But as soon as we got into the car, her strong walls crumbled and her defenses failed. One look into her eyes was all that it took for her to completely break down. She collapsed into my arms, her tears now flowing freely.

That was the third time that she had broken down in front of me, in my arms. The first being when her dad died, the second on the beach, and now this. Once again she was totally open and vulnerable; once fragile but now broken. With the knowledge of the disease came the looming sense of mortality. Knowing that one day it would all become too much pain for her body to handle. Her body would reject the medication, and perform a mutiny on her own will. She would try and struggle and fight as hard as she could with all the strength in her fragile body. This was out of her control though. She had seen it all before, watched her mother slowly deteriorate until she became nothing more than an empty, feeble skeleton. Lifeless, rendered totally helpless; lying in the hospital bed which looked to be about 3 times her size.

Spencer soon became the one watching the decline. She would watch her love, her angel go through the same devastating and painful process as the elder Davies woman. She knew that she wasn't prepared to handle that, but she also knew that she had to. She had to be strong; she owed it to the brunette. If Ashley was no longer able to carry on, or no longer believed that she could or even wanted to; Spencer would carry her. She would keep her vow to protect Ash. She would not let her slip away, not just yet, she was too strong to fail herself and everyone around, too strong to let the world beat her. Let her critics believe that they were right, that she was nothing more than an act, that she would never be able to make it on her own and carry her own weight.

Spencer needed her to stay strong too; she needed this heaven on earth, which was only attainable when she was with Ashley. She needed her angel, and her angel needed its guardian. They became one, one machine, one body; filling in the empty spaces of the other, fueling their shared body and forcing it to carry on.