Ari
It is a warm, pleasant evening, the kind of night where the bright young things of Gotham head to the rooftops, where they indulge in Manhattans and martinis under the illumination of fairy lights and marvel at the expanse of skyscrapers that stretch to the horizon in every direction.
Tonight, at one such bar, a pair of ladies are whispering to each other about the young man standing alone by the ledge, dressed to perfection in a sapphire suit and sleek oxfords, his back turned to the crowds and his attention fixed instead on the glittering facade of the Empire State Building.
One of the women dares the other to go talk to him.
Her eyes linger on the young man’s lush dark locks, the chiseled profile of his face.
He has a bandaged hand. How had he injured it?
Had he gotten into a fight? She wants to know more.
The other woman refuses, giggling, too shy to do it.
“Sorry I’m late. Alchemy can’t fix the traffic.”
“Still in talks with Neuewelt. They’re playing hardball, but they know it’s a fair deal.”
“Where does he think you are right now?”
Isla shrugs. “Doesn’t really matter, as long as he doesn’t think I’m here with you.”
“I didn’t think you’d come.”
She tilts her head thoughtfully. “And yet, here you are.”
Ari smiles a little, even though he still doesn’t look her way. “I missed you.”
“Getting sentimental on me now? You must’ve had a rough few weeks.
” But he can hear the affection in her voice.
“I found out what you asked for. Reed’s guy in Gujarat is no longer keeping tabs on your family.
Rudra would still prefer you dead, but he thinks you’ve left the country, and he has little interest in wasting manpower on threatening your family. ”
Ari’s chest feels like it might collapse in relief.
His family is finally free of Lumines. From the depths of his memories comes the image of the first time he ever met Rudra, sitting under the fans of that open-air café in Surat, his laugh loud and clear.
Then he thinks of the night when the man attacked him, eyes bloodshot and lips curled into a snarl.
We should trust each other, he had said. You and I.
And somehow, Ari has to wonder if Rudra spared his family because, in spite of everything, they still share some common ground, understand each other in a way the others don’t.
“Thank you,” Ari tells Isla. “For telling me.”
She smiles into her drink, and for a while, they say nothing.
“So,” she ventures at last.
“So?”
“Are you going back to Surat?”
She’s looking at him now, and when he turns to her, he notices that there is a slight cloudiness to her once-clear blue irises, that even with her glasses on, she has some trouble focusing on him.
His heart twists for her. Every year, the side effects of her heavy sand use grow stronger. So it will go with all alchemists.
With him too.
He takes a sip of his drink. “No,” he replies.
She lifts an eyebrow at him. “Ari. Look at your suit. No fox pin now. No pin of any kind. You’re free, Ari, you could take a flight out of here tonight and head back overseas to find your family. Haven’t you been talking about this since you were a kid?”
He’s too ashamed for a moment to answer. She’s right, of course. And he had, once. Everything he’d done since he was a child was in deference to that world and the people there that he loved. He had performed his duty; his family was well.
But now, after all these long years, the people in Surat that he loved have become strangers in photographs.
He imagines himself walking up to a hazy memory of his mother and father, his sister and brother, and feeling nothing but a polite shyness, a dread at the awkwardness that is sure to follow.
Of them stiffly greeting an unfamiliar young man, of having nothing to say.
He would be trying to fit in where he no longer belongs.
He gives her a soft, sad smile. “I can’t even speak Gujarati anymore.”
Isla respects the loss in his words, lets them linger on the air for a moment. Then she says, “What about Sam?”
Ari finds it interesting that Isla uses Sam’s real name instead of her attribution, because she knows that the girl Ari loves is Sam, not Mozart.
At his pause, Isla continues, “I heard the news about Belle Epoque. Sam’s made her choice. But her reasons to stay don’t have to be yours.”
“Well,” Ari says, “why do you stay?”
When he looks at her, he sees her staring out at the city with a faraway smile at the edges of her lips. He realizes she has never spoken about her past, where she comes from and how she was recruited, who she was before Lumines, why she joined. Maybe he’ll never know.
“You shouldn’t be in Gotham for long,” Isla says at last. “Rudra’s left your family alone, but that doesn’t guarantee he’ll want to play nice if he finds you here.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Ari replies.
“Good. Take care of yourself.”
“You’re always worried about me.”
Isla draws nearer to him and touches his arm. “I mean it.”
He leans down to kiss her on the cheek. “You talk like I’m never going to see you again,” he says, and the possibility sends an ache through his chest.
She gives him a sober smile. “I hope I’m wrong.”
As she leaves, Ari turns back to the cityscape and thinks about a letter he wrote to Sam in his hotel room last night. Of course he has no good way of giving it to her, but he nevertheless folded it up and put it in his pocket, as if—should the occasion arise—he could hand it to her.
Now he takes the folded paper out of his pocket and reads it.
They say trees that grow against cliffsides are tortured, seeds brought there on a wayward breeze and forced to put down roots into stone and salt.
They must twist their trunks up at an unnatural angle to accommodate the doomed circumstances they’d been given at birth.
Yet they still fight to survive, contort themselves to stretch their branches up to the sun.
They grow and grow sideways like this until the day a storm finally tears their bodies apart.
And yet, hadn’t they lived wild and free?
Weren’t they happy, when they were here?
Can’t we be?
Are we still two kids who need each other?
All I think about is you.
You are my beginning and end.
He runs a finger across the last line before folding the letter away again.
Then he finishes his drink and turns away from the balcony, heads down the elevator and through the gilded hotel lobby.
As he goes, he leaves a ripple in his wake—curious eyes and subtle smiles, quiet giggles and shared murmurs.
Did you see him?
Who was that?
Where is he going?
Out on the street, Ari takes a deep breath and turns his boots in the direction of the sea, toward a city on the other side of the ocean. Toward Londinium.
Toward Sam.