"To Have and Not To Hold" by Madonna and Rick Nowels, part of the album Ray of Light. Lyrics and music copyright 1998 Maverick Recording Company.
Anime events and dialogue were rendered with necessary dramatic license.
Virtua Fighter is copyright of Sega and others.
KYU
Conclusion
Part 3 / To Have and Not To Hold
by GoddessBelili
I will never forget this night.
For as long as I live, and perhaps beyond.
It was the night I betrayed an act of pure compassion by exchanging self-serving greed.
She carried the soothing scent of lavender and traces of sweetness, like fresh cherry blossoms. Her now-unbound golden hair was spread out over the arm that she had bandaged mere moments ago. For the second time that day, she had fallen into my arms.
Asleep.
I had managed to sneak the needle out of my pocket without her noticing. She had been too occupied with my bleeding arm and dressing it with the soft scarf that she had removed from her hair. She had then looked at me with something like concern.
I had looked straight back.
And I had reached for her.
Then I had plunged the sleeping potion into her bloodstream by injecting the needle at the side of her neck.
For the precious few seconds that I had not thought of her as a captive awaiting delivery, I nearly fooled myself into believing that I was like everybody else. That I could be hurt and be cared for, that my heart could beat faster with one long gaze from those blue eyes, that I could touch someone because I wanted to.
Then I stopped.
For me, it could never be like that.
She could have had ran away when she had the chance. After we made it back onto the balcony, I had been fighting to remain conscious through all the pain in my arm and the blood loss. It would have been very easy for her to leave the room, run screaming into the hallway, and bring a horde of security personnel to arrest the bad man who had kidnapped the daughter of the rich Bryant family.
Yet she had chosen to stay, quietly showing her concern over someone who had done nothing but take her away from her brother and friends in exchange for a sum of money.
Before her eyes had fluttered close, she had looked at me with the slightest bit of surprise. No struggle, no accusing stare. I was certain she had expected me to do something to make her more docile.
Yet she had still helped me, rendering herself vulnerable to whatever harm her captor had in mind.
I knew she wasn't foolish enough to feel remorse for injuring a kidnapper, or grateful because I had saved her life.
She would have had realized I won't get my payment if she died.
She...
What had she felt then?
For a few stolen seconds, I wrapped my right arm around her slender body and brought her close, in a mockery of an embrace. She was breathing softly against my chest, as if she was merely a woman sleeping in a place where she thought herself safe.
I pulled back and looked down at her unconscious form. In the moonlight, she was an innocent angel with heavenly aura still gleaming, unaware of the madness that had made her its pawn.
If only things weren't the way they are now.
Sarah...
The words escaped my lips.
"I'm sorry. I have to do this."
To have and not to hold
So hot, yet so cold
My heart is in your hand
And yet you never stand
Close enough for me to have my way
If only...
The words lingered in his mind as he deftly swept her limp figure into his arms, ignoring the searing pain that shot up his left arm as he moved. As he went to his feet, blood rushed to his head and he felt like he wasn't in his body but somewhere else.
He wished it was so.
But no.
Not for him. Not ever.
Despite the strain of his injury, he barely felt her weight. She was as light as a piece of gossamer, her skin as smooth as silk to his touch. Her scent of fresh spring blossoms wafted to tease his senses and he felt purified.
She was the perfect angel.
Shiroi tenshi.
In the light of the moon and the uneven beams of city neon, she was a white angel.
So pale against his darker flesh, so untainted compared to his soot-colored soul.
He drew a deep breath and took a few tentative steps forward, testing his balance. He couldn't afford to feel pain or strain. Not when he was so close to getting the job done.
Durix had said over the phone earlier that the money was already in the bank. All he had to do was deliver the girl. Unharmed
That was all. There was no difficulty in it whatsoever.
Damn it to hell.
Why did he feel the slightest bit of hesitation trying to rear its head into his own thoughts? His thoughts, always so clear-cut, felt clouded and muddled. As if ugly black dye had been poured into clear pond waters.
The room was considerably darker than the balcony. He carried her to the bed and set her down at the center. He found himself pulling the covers over her body, thinking that her rather skimpy clothes would not do much to ward off the chill of the night.
She would get sick.
A slight flutter of bright red caught the corner of his eye as he straightened up.
Her scarf.
Darker drops of blood, starkly noticeable even in the sparse light, had seeped through the soft cloth. But, yes, he was certain that the bleeding had stopped, or at least lessened. His body felt more in control now.
He would tend to the wound later, after he turned her over.
After another step to completely selling his soul.
The helicopter would be arriving any minute. He had better don the mask. It wouldn't do if others saw him as he was now.
He looked down at the slight slumbering form on the bed, her steady breathing reaching his ears.
Please forgive me.
To love but not to keep
To laugh, not to weep
Your eyes, they go right through
And yet you never do anything
To make me want to stay
Dragon's wings.
I had heard stories of these creatures when I was much younger, how their evil incarnations could use irresistible flames to corrupt and steal souls.
The helicopter was still a good distance away from the hotel but I could already hear its cold steel wings slicing mercilessly through the night sky, making chugging sounds that blended into an incessant staccato at the back of my head.
I pushed the balcony drapes aside and watched the New Las Vegas skyline for a few moments. They still were not visible from the room. But they were coming. I knew.
I was ready to settle dues, in my mask, with the lingering ghosts of nine generations.
It was time.
I let the drapes fall back into place, causing shadows to once again overpower light in the room. I did not like having much light, just as I preferred working at night.
I was, after all, merely a shadow.
Kage.
Nothing more.
I walked to the bed and picked her up. It would not do me any good if I had to look at her longer than necessary.
So I ran for the roof, with the captive in my arms.
I ran away from whatever pieces of my soul that had sprang forth in that darkened room, in my short-lived moments of salvation on the balcony.
I ran towards the next step further into damnation.
Like a moth to a flame
Only I am to blame
What can I do?
I go straight to you
I've been told
You're to have, not to hold
Foolish boy.
It was funny, how such a sterling fighter on file could so easily be sent to the ground. He could still remember Akira's devil-may-care smile, bursting with rather misplaced confidence, when they fought at the park a few hours ago. He could even remember Akira's frustrated bellow; perhaps it was the first time the boy lost in a fight.
Pitiful fool.
After he had met Durix at the roof and turned the girl over, the brown-haired boy had burst into the scene, followed by a hack Koenkan fighter. Right before his eyes, Akira and the Koenkan man had fought.
The boy's Hakkyoku-ken technique was fascinating, a display of powerful close-range attacks that were devastating to the body's central parts. He had been tempted to go against such a novel style.
The boy had then chased Durix's helicopter and managed to hang on to it. This partial success at following the kidnapped girl had been ruined when the copter smartly tilted him off, straight into a fountain pool at a nearby park.
He saw his chance and challenged the Hakkyoku-ken boy.
He was sorely disappointed.
All brashness.
But was he that, too?
He was certain, although brash had never been used to describe him in the past. It was all so different now.
He had decided.
The icy midnight wind lashed against his body as he rode the motorcycle through the highways, alone. Beneath the helmet, black as the rest of his clothes, he felt his breath coming out in foggy puffs. The insistent throbbing of his damaged left arm made him clutch the handlebars even more tightly.
His booted feet pressed down the pedals with more force than necessary.
The black motorcycle responded in kind, purring with as much sadomasochistic satisfaction as an inanimate object could express. It hummed as it gained speed under its owner's ruthless, determined ministrations, cutting a razor-sharp path through the freeway.
Towards Salt Lake City.
Towards her.
To look but not to see
To kiss but never be
The object of your desire
I'm walking on a wire
And there's no one at all
To break my fall
I snapped.
Just like that.
They had all been dressed in white lab coats when they came to take her into the helicopter. With clinical, calculating moves, they had loaded her onto a stretcher, then proceeded to check her pulse, her heartbeat.
That was when I began to have doubts.
About Durix and her plans, her scientific minions, the madness glazed over her eyes as she spoke to me before departing for her Salt Lake laboratory.
I had the nagging feeling that the woman who had cared enough to tend to the wound of her kidnapper would never make it out Durix's hands alive.
I had always relied on my instincts. As far as I could remember, they had served as my unfailing guide in knowing and defeating danger.
Always.
It was no different with Sarah.
Sarah...
Her name tasted bittersweet, digging an even deeper hollow in me that had began to gape open the moment those white-coated rats took her from my arms.
This hollow, this seeming emptiness.
It was guilt.
I was no fool not to know it.
I found myself on the motorcycle, speeding towards Salt Lake City.
Sarah...
Her face, her look of innocent concern, flashed before my eyes like a burst of purifying flame. In that fleeting moment, I found my reason for fighting and living on.
I would not lose her.
Like a moth to a flame
Only I am to blame
What can I do?
I go straight to you
I've been told
You're to have, not to hold
Three days.
He had been waiting for three days, religiously, blending into the trees during the day, into the shadows at night. He lived and breathed the hours in the hope of finding her still alive when he saw her again. Durix Laboratories was an imposing sight from outside, as lifeless and synthetic as its mistress.
He never should have had accepted her offer in the first place.
If only he had known how much it would cost his soul.
If only...
It was too late for regrets now.
It was nearly midnight on the third day of his vigil when a sterile-looking white van exited the laboratory grounds, its headlights conspicuously lowered. For a vehicle going out into a lonely city outskirt road, its speed was suspiciously high. There were rarely any other vehicles, or people for that matter, that passed by the lab.
From his perch on the oak tree by the main gate, he felt a strangely familiar tug at his ki, the spirit-energy from which he derived his strength, will and actions.
His eyes took in the van's large size; most of the vehicles that made trips to and from the laboratory were passenger-size automobiles, not ones made for carrying much cargo.
This was different.
Sarah.
It took that one affirmation from the deepest recesses of his soul.
He had barely drawn a deep breath when he realized he had already leapt after the van. It wasn't as high as it had looked from afar, and he made it onto the vehicle's roof without difficulty.
The tug on his ki was stronger now. Much stronger.
He pressed his ear through the steel casing, straining, concentrating for the one telltale sign that she was there.
Even, whispery breathing assaulted his senses, making his eyes feel clouded. It still carried the sweet cadence that was uniquely hers.
He remembered it so well. As she had fallen into arms and succumbed to slumber.
His instincts were right. As they always have been. He smiled inwardly. At least, there was something he could still trust.
Something within himself, but it was enough.
All he had asked for...
She was so close.
Like a moth to a flame
Only I am to blame
What can I do?
I go straight to you
I've been told
You're to have, not to hold
On the way out of Salt Lake, the van passed by a similar-looking vehicle that was driven by Jacky Bryant. With him were Akira Yuki and Pai Chan. They were still traveling together. I had expected them to get here sooner.
But no matter. I pressed down onto the van's roof, melding as deep as I could into the bends and lines of the shadows. They did not see me. They did not stop either, just drove straight in the opposite direction where the van that carried Sarah was heading.
The three of them were headed for the lab.
Cows to the slaughter.
The van traveled straight until morning. I got off before it passed the border into New York State at around sunrise. The direction was clear enough for me. Durix had a Koenkan-funded halfway house in Manhattan. They would not be staying for very long there, but they would be stopping by.
Durix probably needed to make her progress report to Liu Kowloon before crossing the Atlantic, heading for Europe where she had most of her tinkering toys stowed.
Over the years, I had learned that work did not begin and end by studying the subjects of the task involved, but the clients as well. They proved to be more interesting, for the most part.
I went back to Salt Lake and gathered what little I always brought with me on the job. My clothes, armaments and the black motorcycle. Everything I could call my own in this world.
I backtracked the route, tearing down the highways, towards New York City.
Sarah.
I have nowhere else to go.
You're to have, not to hold
You're to have, not to hold
You're to have, not to hold
To break my heart