… Someone said they thought this was a BAML… LOL like I'd ever write one! Misty is with no one but Ash. Ash ever dies off, she marries Richie. Misty ever dies off, Ash gets Duplica. That's my brain. Ok, baibai now… And lugia I hope this gets better again.

Ocean of Tears

Lyra Kamiya

Somewhere far, far away, Ash was laughing as hard as he could, rolling along the beach in a wrestling match. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten into the little fight, he only knew that he was quite enjoying it. With another chuckle, he threw all his weight to one side, sending them both tumbling again so that he ended up pinning her down. This time, however, she wasn't being to successful at rolling them back over. She smirked at him, pondering his next move. He smiled and lowered his face to his, gently setting his lips on hers and reveling in their sweet taste and softness. He pulled away briefly, smiling with a puppy-eyes stare at her before continuing the Growlithe impression by licking her nose before placing his lips back to hers. He felt her arms slowly envelop him…

Lugia, it was all so real… so why wasn't it? Was it only a dream, or some distant memory of life the way it'd been before they'd been stranded on this desert island. He'd only just met the girl, in this life as he knew it. But somehow he knew he'd known her before, or at least hoped it…

Misty turned slowly, feeling Ash's eyes on her back. She looked at the vacant expression on his face when she flashed a trademark smile at him… He was so, different, so… not him, it was unsettling. She sighed softly and lay on her stomach on the beach, finally allowing the tears to fall again. She'd found him, and hadn't died in the process… He wasn't dead! But now, it was like he might as well be… he remembered nothing, about her, them, their past, even himself. It was especially tragic to her to hear him stutter a confused 'what?' when she mentioned Pikachu. All night, she'd slept as he slowly rocked her in his arms, once she'd fallen asleep leaning against him. Little memories had returned to him, but not much yet… With any luck, if they could ever get back to civilization, other familiar things could bring him back. She turned back towards him slightly, careful not to let him see the sadness in her eyes, and studied the look on his face. Some how, it was the same old semi-clueless expression he'd always worn. He seemed just like the Ash she'd always known. And slowly, it hit her… It was the same Ash, minus his memories or not. She still loved him, just the same. It was almost disturbing to her to realize this, and it only made the tears flow master. Then, came what she was *definitely* not prepared for.

"Misty… what were we? What was I to you?" he asked calmly, like it was something people asked every day of their lives. Misty bit her lip, struggling not to loose all self control and start sobbing hard.

"Friends, Ash… j-just best friends," she said, her voice quivering as she was forced to bury her eyes onto her arm, gasping for breath as she silently cried more than she could ever remember doing.

"That's… what I thought. But not what I remembered…" Misty froze and turned her head to the windswept boy, so startled by the line that she forgot she was supposed to be crying. "I remember… watching you, late one night, when we were camping out, and you came over and laid down beside me, and fell asleep beside me… I don't know why I'd remember this, but… you smelled like raspberries that night. It was kind of strange, because it occurred to me that you normally smelled like the ocean…." Another tear fell from Misty's eye, and her lip quivered as she put her head back down on her arm for a moment, sobbing quietly, before sitting up and staring at Ash through blurry eyes for a moment. She wiped away the remaining tears from her face, staring off over the ocean again for a moment.

"You know what tears are made of?" she asked suddenly.

"Salt water…"

"And the ocean? What about it?"

"Salt water… so?" Misty turned back to him and just laughed once, lightly, and shook her head slowly.

"I don't know, honestly… but I'll figure it out."

**********

"I'm glad we managed to find you. If anyone can find Ash, it'll be you!"

"Laaaapuuuu!!!"

**********

Misty yelped as something cold hit her foot, and the sensation disappeared instantly. "Ash… come look at this, will ya?" she hollered, spotting something floating in a tide pool along the beach. He looked up and came limping over to her, struggling on his apparently stung leg, and looked to where she was pointing with her foot due to full arms.

"Looks like a Tentacool… well, a dead one…"

"that's not really what I meant… the water, around it… it's… strange," Misty concluded, not knowing any other way to put it.

"A bit metallic?" Ash suggested, shrugging and sounding more intelligent than his old self, who would have simply said 'shiny'.

"Yeah, I guess… but here, just put your toe or finger in it…"

"In the Tentacool?!" he demanded, squinting at her in hopes of determining her motives.

Alright, *that* was the Ash I know… "No, I mean the water," she rolled her eyes and watched cautiously as Ash bent over and stuck the tips of his fingers into the altered liquid… the coolness of the water hit him in a flash, and then… nothing. All sensation left his fingers, and quickly the rest of his hand, leaving him shuddering and attempting to shake it out, only to find that it took a moment or two for him to move his fingers again.

"What the?! For the love of Ho-oh!"

"I think it's because of the Tentacool's poison… Something punctured it after it died and the water got effected…"

"If that was diluted, I'd hate to be stung by that thing…" Ash complained, shaking his hand still and rubbing it slowly. He glanced up at the worried expression on Misty's face. "That's not the normal effects of Tentacool poison, is it?"

"Not where I'm from. Paralyzing, yes, but not to that extremity… only the strongest of Tentacruel would be able to do that, and at that only the strength of the diluted version. If the Tentacool around here are that strong, and I doubt that through some fluke only that one was," Misty gulped, going through her thoughts slowly, "I'd hate to see what one of the local Tentacruel could do. Wait."

"What now? My hand still doesn't feel right, I don't need to stick anything else in there," Ash whined, clenching his fist a few times.

"You said you thought you got stung by a Tentacruel, right? That's what happened to your leg, shoulder, and head, is what you guessed?"

"Yeah…"

"And I was out for what, a day and a half? After I got stung by a Tentacool…"

"Oh my Lugia… so you think that that's what caused it? The strengthened poison?" Ash pondered, catching on to the series of events.

"Exactly. It may even be what caused your amnesia, in which case the effects will eventually wear off, just like your hand came back from being numb."

"You think it numbed my brain?"

"Most of it… you seem, I don't know, a bit smarter than you used to be. So what I'm thinking, is that whatever isn't normally in use gets the opposite effect from whatever kind of poison this is."

"Which is why I'm suddenly aware of the fact that my fingernails cause pressure on my fingers?" Ash demanded, shaking his hand more extravagantly and whining randomly. Misty sighed, leading Ash back to their campsite, after shoving a piece of wood into the beach for a marker of that spot. The clues were falling together, one by one…

Ok, um, shortness, yes… this was actually supposed to be the last section of the previous chapter, but I wasn't sure if I was going to be online again this month so I posted that part in a panic. I'm trying not to make this a ripoff of the Flame Burns Deep (Kawaii AAML) or something else I read (it was a what if thing) -_- so SUGGESTIONS would be APPRECIATED *hint hint* ^_~ and rewarded with shoutouts, perhaps… Review at least, please!!!