This chapter is in the form of a manga, available at this URL:
http://www.angelfire.com/ar2/thierry/03gun01.html
I'm afraid you'll have to copy the link and paste it into your browser because FFN does not support html links. EDIT: I didn't want to include the text that I wrote to draw the manga on, because I could not include all of the ideas and feel of the text in the manga - but after reading Eri's remarks (thanks for reading, Eri ^_^) I decided I'll give you a choice - pictures or words, or both, so here it is.
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He will feel better once they leave this end of the city and go into the other. It is the same thing, he thinks, but it is also different. The smog and rubbish and concrete heaviness of this city-side is now associated with a sharp and bitter tang of gunsmoke, the screams of dying men, a thousand metal steps of a fire-escape down the side of a ferro-pillared warehouse, the briefcase in his hand, Spike's eyes going wide as a bullet takes off the unlit end of his cigarette. Lin has never seen Spike look so panicky before. But perhaps, Lin thinks, it is his last cigarette...
Spike smokes it now, and the smoke spirals from the burning end as easily and lazily as the words leave his mouth. In the car, the air is still and the sunlight shines thin and piercingly bright on Lin's face.
"You can put the guns away now," Spike says. "You did pretty well out there, today. You'll make less of a mess next time."
It is not Lin's first time. But it is the first time he has made a mess. He does not know how he should feel about it. At the very least, he thought, I have cost him an inch of his favourite cigarette, and he will not get another one until we reach home. My big brother, ge-ge, tai ko, Spike-san most respected.
"Don't worry about it."
Spike reaches behind him, searching for the box of tissue that sits there, patient, waiting for drinks to be spilled and noses to be blown and, in this case, a wound to be cleaned.
"Here," he says, "better clean yourself up..."
Spike hears a silence as still as the air. That's why I hate kids, he thought; they're either noisy-noisy-noisy or hush-hush-sssh. So full of extremes. But then again, he thought, that is exactly why they are so different from adults, and that's why we love them...
"Lin?"
He cannot see Lin's face; the boy is staring out of the window. That silence, he thinks. That and the blood dark and drying on the boy's white face. He forgets, for a minute, his cigarette, and its smoke curls away, wasted on the air and thrown out into the city.
"I can't let go." And Lin is looking down at the guns he still holds in his hand. Right hand tight around the black handle, left hand weak and the wrist wrapped in white, beneath it the flesh still stinging from the blade of a knife. They are so small, the guns, but so, Spike notices, are his hands. "If I let go... I won't be able to pick them up again."
A finger of ash burns and hovers, on the edge of Spike's mouth. He feels his lips to be glued together. He is seven years older than this boy. He should have something to say. But he is not used to speaking to someone whose future, it feels, hinges on his words. Lin's face is a cold thing now, locked away underneath the layers of whiteness bright-burnt by the sun. Spike wishes for there to be warmth in it again. He thinks of Vicious, who grows more and more distant by the hour, as though the whiteness of hair and skin were a frost icing over his friend's heart. My fault, he thinks. But since that has happened... there remains only to make the best of what else there is. And here is a little boy who does not know if he is growing up correctly...
He reaches out with his hand, the tissue in it. Tries to wipe the blood off Lin's face. It has dried, and some of it comes off in flakes.
"I know," he says. "I know. Sometimes it's hard to be sure you're doing the right thing."
Lin's left hand has relaxed; Spike wonders how badly the wound is hurting, but does not want to take the bandages off. He looks at the gun, a smooth and shiny thing, cold in the boy's hand, and says, "Guns... yes, they're bad. But in this world so full of evil--"
He remembers his cigarette, pushes it to the corner of his mouth. Ash falling, crumbling. Warmth and sparks on the fabric of his trousers.
"Sometimes," he says, and now he is talking to himself as well as to Lin, "a man needs a gun. And in good hands... a gun is not so bad. Understand?"
Gel stiff in Lin's hair. Lin thinks. Lin pale-faced and the guns still in his hands. Spike watches him, and for a minute his muscles twitch as Lin's right hand moves up, swift, the gun still tight in it, hand to head, gun gleaming. But it is only laid along Lin's forehead, the metal throwing a long-nosed shadow on the boy's face, and he hears Lin speak, sees the green eyes staring at him under the furrowed brow, feels the faith in the boy's voice:
"Then I will be your gun. Because you are a good man, Spike-san."
Smoke curls, reflected in the rear-view mirror of the car. Spike is glad it is on autopilot, that he is alone with only his reflection staring accusingly in the mirror, no one else to hear Lin's trust being laid so strong and sure in his direction. He cannot look at himself in the mirror. Cannot bear to see the boy's eyes, the gun raised so cold and close to the boy's young face. He puts out a hand, lower's Lin's arm. Lin looks as though he has woken from a dream.
"It's been a long day," Lin hears Spike say. "Sort our your shirt and we'll get us some food, okay?"
Lin is tired. He uses his left hand to pull his untidy collar down, flatten it to stand proper and neat around his neck, holds it where the button has been torn off at the neck. There was a gun in that hand, he remembers, but it is not there any more. He wonders what happened to it. Beside him, Spike takes a long drag on the cigarette, then puffs out a series of smoke-rings into the air, still and warm and sun-lit bright. They are passing over the end of the bridge that separates the two city-sides. I am Spike's gun, he thinks to himself, so I am not a bad thing. He still cannot smile. But it feels better, knowing this.
I would die for you / I would die for you
I would sell my soul for something pure and true
someone like you...
NOTE: Nothing evil is meant by the inclusion of those three beautiful lines from Garbage's #1 Crush (although you are free to interpret it as you see fit; my interpretation is, Spike is a good person to fight and die for, if you had to). It just sounded appropriate.
Also, if you're wondering, ge-ge is Mandarin for 'big brother'; ditto tai ko in Cantonese, although it can also be used to mean 'boss' when used gangsta-style. Cantonese is a delightful language. I need to learn it. Most wonderful is the phrase, "If you have enough ginger (courage), call your mother to come over here!" Heheh...