A Farewell to Arms: part four

by Angela

5-8-07

Author's Note: This chapter has a ton of stuff that comes directly from volume 19 of the manga, including some word-for-word dialogue. Since these things happened in the story, I had to go through them here. Sorry if any of it seems redundant.

Ash was trying to read. He couldn't concentrate on anything, though, beyond the tick-clicking of his watch. It was Dino's watch, actually – the first thing he'd ever stolen from the man. Ash loved its platinum face and Italian leather band, and recently it'd gained significance as a kind of memento, to remind him of things he'd spent his whole life trying to forget.

That afternoon it was marking the time remaining before Eiji left him forever, and Ash found himself longing to record each last minute, as if the whole world was ending rather than this one small segment of his one small life. It felt a bit like holding his breath underwater – he had no choice but to do it, but the pain in his chest was getting more intense by the second. At first he thought it would be easier not to know the time, but after checking it six times in five minutes, he finally put the wristwatch on the table next to him.

He couldn't remember what New York felt like before Eiji had come, so he didn't know what to expect once he was gone. He didn't know if two o'clock was going to be his salvation or his end.

Other than the watch, one other object occupied his attention. It was a small vial of golden liquid. More than once he pulled it out of his pocket to study it in the light. It looked like olive oil. It had cost almost half of the money he'd given Nadia.

The old lady at the apothecary had weighed him, ordering him to take his clothes off for accuracy and tut-tutting over the half of a bagel he'd eaten for breakfast. She then measured his arms, legs, and head, poking and prodding him with cold fingers and barking in Chinese at a weary-looking girl Nadia's age who jotted whatever she said into a notebook. "Dosage must be perfect for body mass or you die," she told him. It made him appreciate the necessity of being buck-naked in front of her and the girl.

He and Alex then waited while the old lady and her assistant locked themselves in the back room. Nadia manned the shop and the boys went outside to smoke while they waited. After almost two hours, Shorter's sister came outside.

"I can't get the rest for at least a week," she'd said apologetically as she pressed the tiny bottle into his hand. "Probably longer. We wrote to Nainai's cousin in China, to see if he could track the other two parts down for us. We also sent a telegram to my auntie in San Francisco; she has a much larger shop and might have something there."

She'd given them a rundown of the Moonflower Sequence and its rules. The first dose, called 'Dawn,' effectively put a person into a dormant stage – like a frog or turtle in winter. It slowed the heartbeat to almost nothing and cooled the body, keeping only the most basic brain functions going. During that time, it would seem as though Ash were dead, as long as no one were given the chance to look too closely.

The second dose needed to be administered within twenty-four hours of the first. Without it, Ash's systems would simply slow to a stop and he would die. It was called 'Dusk,' and it slowly woke the body over a four- or five-day period. "You'll be very vulnerable during those days," Nadia told him. "So you'll need someone – Alex or me – to stay with you pretty much constantly." It had ingredients that weren't legal in the US, but strangely, wasn't fatally toxic like the other two.

The third dose was a bit of a mystery to Nadia and her grandmother. "There's not much written about it. All we can find is that the 'Moonrise' part of the cycle 'restores free will to the victim,' whatever that means."

Alex looked worried. "Victim?" he asked uneasily. "Why does it use that word?"

Nadia shook her head. "It's a translation," she explained, looking more than a bit ill at ease herself. "No one seems to know very much about this," she warned. "Different books say different things, and almost none of the authors seem to have firsthand experience." She looked at Ash for a long moment, her eyes soft with worry. "There's a very good chance that first dose will kill you," she told him seriously.

"You sure you want to do this, Boss?" Alex asked, looking at Ash with wide eyes.

Ash tightened his jaw in determination. As far as he could tell, it was the only way. He nodded.

Nadia sighed. "Will you at least let me hold on to that until we have the rest?" she asked.

He slipped the vial into his pocket. "I'd rather keep it."

Now he touched the cool glass. To be honest, the stuff terrified him. He didn't even know what the hell was in it. The book in front of him said that the flesh of the puffer fish had similar properties, but the term "Moonflower Cycle"or any Chinese equivalent didn't show up anywhere.

Ash took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The watch read 12:17. One hour and forty-three minutes left.

Forty-two minutes and thirty-six seconds later, Ash still couldn't concentrate. He'd found a book on Chinese medicine, but he couldn't push himself to read past the basics of pressure points and acupuncture. The Moonflower Cycle hadn't been listed in the index, but he thought he could find something useful if he could just focus. The words kept running together on the page and his mind wandered back to Eiji, wondering if he was really healed enough to travel, no matter what the doctors said.

To make matters worse, someone was watching him. Ash felt it like a cool breeze on the back of his neck. He looked up, sliding his glasses from his eyes.

Ash saw Sing right away. He looked even smaller, standing on tiptoe in the huge doorway of the reading room. His dark eyes scanned the bowed heads of the reading public before they met Ash's. The boy set his jaw in a determined grimace and hurried a weaving path between the long tables.

Ash closed the book he'd been reading and laid his arm over the title. Sing was a sharp kid – one look at that book and he'd be asking all the right questions.

The Chinese boy's expression got fiercer as he approached. "Ash!" he said in a normal voice as soon as he was close enough.

"Shh!" the blond hissed, glancing around. "Can't you tell we're in a goddamned library?" His voice was barely a whisper, but a few nearby people looked up, probably surprised that his polite façade slipped the moment he opened his mouth.

"I need to talk to you," Sing insisted, trying to whisper but failing miserably. "Eiji says you haven't been to see him and –"

Ash lifted a hand, silencing him. "Outside," he ordered. He didn't want to have this conversation, least of all with Sing Soo-Ling. He suspected the boy wouldn't shut up until he said his piece, but he sure as hell wasn't going to bother everyone else with it.

Sing swallowed the rest of his accusation, going slightly pale. Wordlessly, he followed Ash out the front doors. Ash passed through the arching doorways, his shoes clicking on the marble floor. He didn't adjust his pace, not caring that Sing had to take two steps for each of his long strides. What right did he have to question him about this? He had nothing to do with him and Eiji.

When they were outside, between the marble lions and beneath the overcast white sky, Ash turned suddenly. He was more that a bit pleased that Sing took a startled step back. "You have my undivided attention," he said in a voice harder than he intended. "So speak."

Sing thrust a white envelope into his hands. Dear Ash, the outside read in a hand he didn't recognize. His heart lurched. Eiji. He stared at it, trying to decipher whether or not the handwriting was shaky. He wondered again if it was okay for Eiji to fly.

"Why didn't you go see him, Ash?" Sing was saying, his voice loud again. "He's goin' back to Japan! He's leavin' today!"

Ash closed his eyes for a long moment. Eiji wrote him a letter. Those pages – he squeezed the thick envelope – were Eiji's thoughts. For him. "I know," he told Sing, feeling miserable and ashamed of himself. He could've written to Eiji, too, if he'd thought of it.

Sing gaped at him. "You knew?" he asked in a soft, startled tone.

Ash didn't answer. Why the hell was this so hard for people to understand?

"So how come?" Sing demanded, his hands balling into fists. "You guys're tight! He's your friend!" His voice was shaking with rage, and Ash wondered when he'd started to care so damned much.

"That's exactly why!" he yelled, determined to shut the guy up. He didn't need Sing to tell him what Eiji was to him. He didn't need anyone.

"I want him to go back to his world," Ash explained through gritted teeth. His hands were shaking; he closed them into fists only to discover that it wasn't just his hands. His whole body shook. "Mine's full of guns and death and I don't want him to have anything to do with that crap ever again!" He remembered how he looked, fragile and colorless on the floor of that goddamned crack house, his hot blood forming a dark pool around his shoulders. A wave of nausea made his stomach lurch. Never again, he promised himself.

Sing stared at him, his raging words apparently lost. Ash turned away. "Okay," the younger boy said dumbly. "But he's leaving today. Ain't you got stuff you wanna tell him?"

Ash didn't look at him. He couldn't. He recognized the desperation in Sing's voice. It was a hollow echo of his own feelings. So that's how it was. All this time, it never occurred to him that someone else might care for Eiji.

"Ash!" Sing barked. He'd never talked to him in that tone. "You got nothing to say to Eiji?" It was a challenge.

Ash didn't have any words. For Eiji or Sing or anybody. He closed his eyes, concentrating on breathing and not crying. The smooth texture of the envelope in his hand was the only thing grounding him. He felt like he was crumbling. If Sing pushed any harder, he'd cave.

Sing's breath came hard, like he'd been running. Or fighting. "Jeez!" he screamed like a little kid. "You stubborn asshole! I've had it with you!"

Ash didn't turn around, even when he heard the slap of sneakers on the marble stairs. He stared at the blue-white paper in his hands. He was afraid of what was in there. Eiji's thoughts. His feelings. Whether it was a farewell or a plea, Ash wasn't sure he could deal with it. His own emotions were simmering inside of him – adding Eiji's might make them boil over. He collapsed onto a nearby bench and summoned his courage.

His fingers shook as he opened the envelope. A thick, dark blue paper slid out. Ash looked at it, his brain hardly registering what he was seeing. It was a plane ticket to Japan.

One way.

Ash stared. He understood what Eiji was saying. He remembered the request he'd made of Eiji that night a million years ago, imagining it in his friend's soft accent: stay with me.

He slid the ticket back into the envelope, unsteadily fishing out the thin pages of stationery tucked inside. Eiji's writing was clear and strong. He hardly misspelled anything. Ash read it slowly, absorbing every nuance of every word. He studied the way the ink flowed from the pen, the way the pen left soft ridges he could feel through the back of the paper. He read certain phrases over and over. I always wanted to protect you. You can change your fate. My soul is always with you.

The realization of what this meant hit Ash suddenly. How could he let Eiji leave? How could he live the rest of his life, pretending he never felt this way? Knowing Eiji felt the same and suffered for it?

It wasn't possible.

He lurched to his feet. He had less than a half hour to get to the airport. He needed a taxi, and even that might not be fast enough. But even if he missed Eiji's plane, that didn't mean he couldn't follow. Ash ran down the heavy marble steps, already planning out what to say to him.

Ash barely noticed the person passing on the street. A cab was headed toward him, and he was hurrying to the curb, already beginning to lift his arm to hail it. The person was no one – just a random passerby of no consequence.

His mind barely registered the bumping of shoulders, the familiar scent of the cologne popular among the guys in Sing's set. His abdomen was on fire. He remembered this feeling, remembered Arthur's knife connecting, slicing.

Eiji!

Ash grasped Lao's shoulder – because it had to be Lao, no one else made sense – bracing himself as his knife dug deeper into the soft flesh of his belly. The pain. The pain was intense. Ash was instantly out of breath.

"Why?" Lao demanded in a shocked voice. "Why didn't you see me coming?" He sounded angry, and Ash wondered if he maybe hadn't planned on succeeding. "You ain't never let your guard down before. What the hell happened to you?"

Gun. Ash reached painfully behind him, his fingers fumbling on the pistol tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He shoved it against Lao's body and pulled the trigger before the Chinese boy had any chance to react.

Lao staggered back, pulling his blade with him. Blood gushed from Ash's wound; he put a trembling hand up to staunch it. Sing's brother looked terrible, like he hadn't slept in a week or more. Blood blossomed on his shirt, turning the white cotton dark red.

"You missed all my vital organs, you idiot," Ash ground out through clenched teeth. He'd gotten a major blood vessel, though. So instead of dying immediately, he'd have to suffer through a painful bleed-out first. He suddenly hated Lao with a passion he hadn't considered possible. His future with Eiji was gone. The boy in front of him had stolen his most precious thing.

Lao leaned back against the library building. "So did you, asshole," he gasped. "Good enough, though. Neither of us is gonna make it."

He closed his eyes, taking a staggering breath. When he looked at Ash again, his face was calmer. "Sorry about this," he said in a fading voice. "But I just…couldn't let you…kill Sing."

Ash couldn't feel the gun in his hand. Sing? Hadn't he settled things with Sing? He was confused. Getting light headed. He watched Lao slump, unconscious, against the wall.

The sound of blood splattering on paper made him look down. Eiji's letter. It was sprawled obscenely on the ground, gathering droplets of blood from Ash's dripping wound.

That letter was the only proof he had that anyone had ever loved him in his whole life.

He fell to his knees, desperate to save Eiji's words. Eiji's thoughts. He clutched at the pages with his bloody fingers. The wind picked up and the envelope and ticket skittered away. Ash strained, but it was out of reach. He couldn't catch his breath. He looked at the pages clenched in his fist. Three. He had them all. The ticket was useless now, anyway.

Where was the gun? In his coat pocket. Ash climbed to his feet. He needed a hospital, but it was too late. They'd never get to him in time. The library, then. He climbed the steps with great effort, leaning against one of the lions as he caught his breath at the top.

He forced himself to think, to clear his mind and focus. Was there anything he could do? Any way to survive this?

The vial.

Ash fished it from his pocket, cursing the moments he wasted just trying to bend his arm the right way. The glass was slippery and he almost dropped it. He curled his damp fingers around it and went into the library.

Once inside, Ash struggled to walk upright, to not draw attention to himself. The pain was unbearable – his vision went dark twice before he found his favorite seat in his favorite reading room.

With fumbling hands, he unscrewed the cap and looked at the stuff. Dawn. For a moonflower, dawn meant death. He would definitely die without it, so the risk didn't seem nearly so great. If it slowed his heartbeat enough, he might not bleed to death. The odds that Nadia would find him in time, that she'd even be able to get the next round, were astronomically slim. But a chance was a chance.

Ash hesitated just a moment before drinking. It looked vile. He found himself ridiculously hoping that it wouldn't taste bad.

The solution was to down it like a shot of whiskey. It burned, but the taste was vaguely herbal. The vial slipped from his fingers and rolled beneath the table.

Not knowing how long it would take, Ash arranged Eiji's pages in order on the table in front of him. He'd spoiled the perfect lines with his blood and sweat. His vision blurred, but he kept trying to read. You are not alone, Ash, Eiji said. I am with you. My soul is always with you.

He didn't realize he was crying until tears splattered the words, mingling with the blood to form watery pink stains. Eiji had the most beautiful soul. Ash could almost feel it beside him. He didn't feel lonely at all.

A plane roared overhead. Ash looked up through the window. It probably wasn't Eiji's. It seemed too soon. He read the rest of the letter, ignoring the way the letters swam before his eyes. You are my best friend, Ash.

When the darkness closed around him, Ash didn't know if he was dying or just passing out. He didn't know if the stuff Nadia had given him had worked. Or if it'd just managed to kill him before Lao's knife could. Either way, the blackness was welcome. The darker the world became around him, the less pain he felt.

And Eiji was always with him. Ash smiled.

(to be continued)