DISCLAIMER: Ranma 1/2 is property of Rumiko Takahashi, and its use in 
this work of original fiction garners the author no profit, and no 
infringement is intended.  All original characters, however, *are* 
property of the author, and not to be used without her express consent.

ARCHIVE: Reddeath, Phu, and Rakhal have my express permission, everyone 
else, please ask first.

RATED: PG-13/R (fer cussin' and fussin' and sexi - oh, nevermind, 
that's the *next* part)

ALL COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS ARE WELCOMED

^*^*^


Nerima 
13 years 4 months previous

There was just no other way about it.

Tanakawa Yuki was going down, and she was going to go down *hard*.

Hibiki Ryoga didn't take crap from anyone, least of all some 
sadomasochistic twit nursing a growing affection for his mortal enemy 
and rival for Akane's love.  

After a three-week hospital stay, he was more than prepared to get 
even.  Hell, even *Ranma* had gotten out of the hospital earlier than 
he had!  And that was with considerable trauma and a minor skull 
fracture!  The doctors said that he had extensive soft tissue damage 
(bruises) and if he moved around, they couldn't guarantee that his ribs 
would set correctly.  He had spent the entire time wrapped up in 
bandages staring at the endless monotony of the hospital ceiling, 
thinking up increasingly violent ways to ruin Yuki.  He'd come up with 
no less than a thousand ways to make her bleed, no less than a million 
to make her regret ever crossing paths with him, but had finally 
decided to do something that would make a lasting impression.

He'd paid Nabiki an exorbitant amount of money for a deep background 
check; he'd commanded that she tell him anything and everything, 
regardless of how inane.  He'd hoped that she'd turn up something good, 
he had not anticipated something as good as what he held in his hands.

Nabiki however, had looked wary.

"Did you read the information?" he had demanded, and to her negative 
reply, he had grinned.  "Good, I want this to be a surprise for 
everyone."

"Ryoga-kun, I know you're angry at her, but this," she had paused, 
"this isn't going to be forgivable if you go too far.  I don't know 
what's in that folder - I haven't looked for myself, but please - don't 
do anything stupid."

Ryoga had only sneered and taken the papers, muttering something about 
things in general that were unforgivable.  

So it came down to this: a photocopy of a doctor's report retraced with 
a black, felt-tip marker so every word jumped off the page.  It came 
down to this piece of paper being Xeroxed, and then being taped to 
every bulletin board in the school, distributed to every teacher.  And 
the final act of cruelty, leaving it on her homeroom desk, folded 
neatly into three parts, pressed into a plain, white envelope, with 
only the word 'Tanakawa' written across it.

He had waited for what seemed like hours for the school day to start, 
hidden impatiently in the eaves outside her classroom, unrepentantly 
angry.  He heard the first bell ring, and students started to file into 
the school, some of them glancing causally toward the boards, and their 
eyes catching on the paper there, suddenly fascinated by its words.  

The whispers started.

Ryoga grinned, congratulating himself.

Just as the tardy bell rang, he observed from his perch that Akane and 
Ranma, headed off by Yuki were bolting into the schoolyard.  Lucky for 
Yuki, she took the second set of double doors and was in her homeroom 
just as the bell rang, barely on time.  Unlucky for Ranma and Akane, 
their homeroom was right in the middle of the hallway, and they missed 
catching the bell by a few scant seconds, and were relegated to the 
hall with buckets.

It took a moment, or maybe two, for Yuki to sit down and calm herself 
enough to notice the envelope on her desk.  Her brow furrowed as she 
looked at it, feeling its weight in her hands, biting her lip in 
curiosity and an odd sense of dread.  With steady fingers, she tore 
away the flap and pulled the sheet of white, computer-printout paper 
from the envelope, looking all the more mystified as she unfolded the 
top third, and pulled open the second and last.

Ryoga stared from his spot, now with his face pressed eagerly against 
the glass.  

Yuki's teacher sat stunned at his desk, a piece of paper held up before 
him, his face a mixture of disgust and pity, and his eyes were glancing 
at his redheaded student, frozen in place at her desk.  His mouth 
opened and closed like a fish, while no words would come out.  

The students sat together, laughing and joking, their end of the hall 
didn't have a bulletin board, they didn't know.  One of them called out 
a cheerful greeting to Yuki, only to be ignored, completely and 
totally.

Ryoga grinned; this was perfect.

Tanakawa Yuki sat at her desk, hands trembling as she held the document 
in her in fingers, and an expression on her face that Ryoga had never 
seen before.  Her entire body shook like a leaf, and she had turned 
white as snow.  She didn't make a sound.

But it was her eyes that said everything.  That brilliant, immutable 
blue that glowed so carefree in the sunlight, and that turned so dark 
in sadness.  It was no longer blue.  Instead, it had morphed into some 
black chimera of color, mixing grays and browns and dark until it 
reached an indescribable hue, one only known by misery, one personified 
by despair.

Shame.  Humiliation.  Disbelief.

Ryoga narrowed his eyes and grinned, whispering to himself, "Ruin."

And that was what this was to her.

Yuki was still motionless at her seat, and her friends started to swarm 
about her, concerned about her unusual silence.  But she didn't notice 
any of that, she saw only the worn words on that crisp sheet of paper, 
and her mind only screamed silently as she realized what it was.

-----------------------------------------------------------

HOKKAIDO MEDICAL INSTITUTE – EMERGENCY WARD

PRIVATE HOSPITAL USE ONLY!  FILE SEPARATELY!

Exam Rm: 6a
Date/Time: 10/16/87 – 5:56 pm
Exam Nurse: Y. Mameha
Exam Doctor: H. Tozikashi

Patient: Tanakawa Yuki
Category: PED  Age: 9  Gender: F
Guardian(s): [Unknown - EMS]

Complaints/Symptoms: 

Mild concussion, small cut on the back of head.  Sustained dementia, 
possible psychosis.  Various bruises and cuts.

Vaginal tearing and bleeding, complete penetration of the hymen, 
extensive bruising of thighs and vulva.  Torn sphincter, and extensive 
tissue damage to all parts of female genitals.

Prognosis:

Unfavorable, girl is psychologically unstable, unable to maintain 
extended periods of conscious or logical thought.

Treatment:

[See 'Rape Trauma' handbook.]
pap-smear, blood test, (no early menstruation, pregnancy test not 
necessary), X-ray for possible broken wrist.  Early HIV test, and 
required six month, one year, two year, and three year HIV screenings 
thereafter.

Notes:

See attached police report.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Yuki suddenly slammed the paper face-down on the table.  

This was her darkness.  This was what the black place inside her soul 
was filled of, memory upon aching memory of what had happened that late 
afternoon.

Her eyes scanned the room wildly, searching for a pitying face, looking 
for someone who dared to regard her with disgust or sadness.  She 
finally settled on the expression of her teacher, so repulsed and at 
the same time, feeling so terribly sorry for her.  She suddenly heard 
the whispers of some student behind her, talking in a lowered, 
disbelieving tone, "Yeah!  I saw it when I went to the bathroom a 
second ago.  They were posted up all over the school, I can't believe 
it?  I mean, rape?"

"Poor Yuki-san!  I can't believe it!"

"You mean...she's not a virgin anymore?"

"At nine?  What a whore!"

And the dam broke.

It didn't really surprise Ranma when he saw his friend barrel down the 
hall, tears in her eyes, a horrified scream on her lips.  It didn't 
really shock Akane that Yuki had slammed into the two of them, 
overturned their buckets, picked herself up, and kept running.  After 
all, they had been standing in front of a bulletin board during their 
punishment.  After all, Ranma had seen that paper, and had proceeded to 
tear it fiber by fiber apart.

"YUKI!  SHIT!  YUKI, WAIT!" Ranma cried, wet and female, started to 
chase after her friend.

All the while, Akane just knelt down to where the bits of paper were, 
taking a handful of the white stuff in her hands, she looked up and out 
the window, just in time to see a redheaded girl collapse in the 
schoolyard, and her identical friend enclose her in a deep embrace.

For the first time in ages, Akane felt a tremor in her heart.  One that 
started as a waver and ended as a storm, made up of doubt and fear and 
subliminal jealousy.  Akane had known of Yuki for more than three 
months, but for the first time, she feared that she didn't know the 
girl, the competition, that lay beneath that quiet exterior.

For months on months, Ranma had been hers.  Her protector, her friend, 
her fiance, her man.  Even as she grew angry with him for the arrivals 
of Shampoo and Ukyo, Kodachi and the endless other assortment of girls 
that he seemed to attract in swarms, she'd never felt threatened.  
Because she was his strong fiancee.  The uncute one, the girl who 
didn't take his lip; Akane knew he liked that in a woman, of this, 
Akane was reasonably certain, and definitely justified.

But who was this fragile creature?  The broken girl who wept in public 
and shattered when struck?  This mere child who had captured his 
interest and stolen his good intention?  With her red hair and blue 
eyes, words and easy-going smile?  Was that what he wanted?  Was that 
what he yearned for?

Akane stood there in that hallway, a buzz of whisper and gossip 
floating in the background, and a rumbling inside her, watching as 
Ranma rocked Yuki's shaking body back and forth.

Somewhere on the roof of Furinkan High School, Ryoga's lunacy started 
to wear off, just enough so he could see the scope of what he had done.  

She'd broken a few bones and embarrassed him.  

He'd pulled her apart, fiber by fiber, flesh from flesh, and left her 
naked and unguarded, her past in full review where any person could 
cruelly dissect her...  Taunt her, ridicule her, hurt her.  Guilt 
reared its ugly head.

Ryoga stood there atop the school, eyes stinging from the unrelenting 
wind (or was it the unkind self-realization?) as he watched Ranma and 
Yuki down below.

Down below where Ranma held her and did what she could to comfort her.

^*^*^

Ryoga shook as the memory subsided.  

Yuki narrowed her eyes and hissed, "Here's how it's going to work, 
Ryoga, I'm going to ask you a question, you're going to nod for 'yes', 
and you're going to shake your head for 'no'.  Is that clear?"

Ryoga nodded slowly, in no hurry to bring more flesh closer than 
absolutely necessary to that razor sharp edge of the knife.

"You didn't find this place on your own, did you?  Someone sent you 
here, right?"

He nodded again, eyes trained on Yuki's cool expression.

"Was it Nabiki?"

Ryoga hesitated; he'd learned from past experience that to cross Nabiki 
was a dangerous practice, also.  In his brain, a horrible struggle 
ensued, to betray Nabiki and be bankrupt for several years, or to 
irritate Yuki, and be confined to a hospital bed, or, if he allowed 
himself to think in that direction, a grave, for an indefinite amount 
of time.

He decided his finances could take a hit when he saw the redhead start 
to tense the hand that held the knife.  He nodded.

"Alright, I was worried for a second that you weren't going to answer 
me."  She paused for a moment and tapped her finger against her lip and 
frowned.  "Why did she sent you instead of coming herself?"

Shake.  No, he didn't know.

Kimiko scowled.  "You're useless, do you know that, Ryoga?"  All she 
got in return was a glare.  "Fine," she sighed.  

Yuki pulled the knife away from his throat and relaxed just a little, a 
dangerous expression on her face.  "You want to know a secret, Ryoga?" 
she asked quietly, and leaning down toward him, one delicate finger 
millimeters away from touching his forehead, she whispered, "I never 
forgave you."

And with that, she pressed her palm to his brow and slammed his head 
against the refrigerator door, wincing as she saw the dent the impact 
had made.  She untied his unconscious form, propping him up in the 
elevator.  Once they reached the lobby, she settled him into a cab 
headed toward the Tendo Dojo in Nerima.

^*^*^

"I've got the caterers on hold, they still want to know how many 
chickens and how many tunas they need to have on hand!" Nodoka said, 
she sounded entirely serene, altogether much to calm for a woman who 
was throwing together the last few threads of a wedding that was to 
occur in exactly eight days.

"Akane!  Oh, Akane!  Stop running around in that!" Kasumi called 
helplessly, watching her baby sister spring around the house in her 
insanely expensive wedding kimono, arms flailing and her eyes flaming 
with panic.

"How am I supposed to stop?  People keep telling me to go to different 
parts of this house!" Akane yelled in frustration.  

How did she know that a wedding was so much trouble?  The last one 
she'd been involved intimately in all they'd needed to do was hire a 
priest and try to avoid the insanity that trailed her and her fiance.  
While they'd been able to get a hold of someone to perform the 
ceremony, they hadn't succeeded with their second deed.  But even that 
didn't seem so bad in comparison to what plagued her now, now it was 
beyond words. 

There was utter chaos at the Tendo Dojo.  There were decorations half-
hung, lighting fixtures partially installed and hanging onto ceilings 
by a cord or two, and sometimes, they fell.  On top of people.  The 
seventy-five chairs and thirty-five tables they'd rented had arrived, 
the only problem was that there was too much stuff in the dojo (women 
throwing things, bridesmaids with their sanity on hiatus, etc.) to fit 
them all in, so they sat out on the lawn.  Twenty-seven yellow rose 
corsages were lying around the kitchen counter, and much to Kasumi's 
chagrin, she had been forced to cook around them, being forbidden to 
touch them at all.

It was actually a comical sight. 

Saotome Nodoka, in her eternal and inexplicable calm sat in between a 
pile of ribbons and fourteen boxes of tealight candles, a phone in her 
lap and a phonebook balanced precariously on a paper lantern, one of 
many that would have been hung up if people had remembered the Tendo 
dojo didn't afford them trees to hang string from, and therefore no 
string on which to hang the lanterns.

Kasumi was on her knees in the middle of the pile of ribbons with a 
pair of scissors, tirelessly curling them one by one by one, and then 
tying them to the small, pale yellow gift bags that they were handing 
out to the guests.  Her hair was sticking up in every direction and her 
eyes her glazed over from the lack of sleep.

Yuka and Sayuri, Akane's two bridesmaids, were standing in their 
dresses, being hissed at by the tailor who was desperately trying to 
hem the skirts even as the two of them tried to run and capture the 
raging demon that was their friend.

Dr. Tofu was ensconced in the thirty yards of white banner-cloth that 
was supposed to be tied up and tucked into pretty, flower-shaped 
bunches at the corners of the dojo.  And try as he might, he couldn't 
seem to untangle himself.  

Nabiki was driving in the day after the next, having been detained at 
work because of a recent stock slump, apologizing profusely at about 
not being there for her sister.  

Tendo Soun had been sitting quietly in his room, offering a smile to 
whomever felt the courage to venture into his domain.  

Genma had declined to go to the ceremony, citing that he had a 'frail 
constitution,' and felt terribly ill, not well enough to celebrate 
Akane's marriage.

"Well, at least it's a winter wedding, we don't have to worry about 
people being allergic to flowers and stuff," Yuka murmured helplessly, 
throwing up her hands in disgust, finally surrendering herself to the 
dressmakers threats.

Sayuri threw an unhappy expression toward her friend and leaned over, 
whispering, "Didn't Mrs. Saotome go insane at the florist's?"  Both of 
them turned toward each other and winced in tandem.

"GOD!" someone cried.  "No one ordered a cake?"

And when it seemed like nothing more could go wrong, there came a 
dreadful noise from the front doors, "HEY!  ANYONE HOME?  I'VE GOT AN 
UNCONSCIOUS MAN WITH A BIG CAB BILL HERE!"

^*^*^

There is an inherent difference between a woman, and a woman with 
child.  A woman possesses curves; a pregnant woman is round.  Her 
breasts grow larger, fuller, and her entire shape changes to mimic that 
of the Earth itself, whole and full and bursting with life.  A woman 
can grow emotional; a pregnant woman is a walking time bomb.  
Sometimes, she wants to cry, and sometimes, she wants to laugh, but she 
can't ever predict her mood swings, and no one else can, either.  A 
woman shines; a pregnant woman glows.

And as Soichi watched Kimiko wander into that hospital, changed into 
dark blue pants and a gray t-shirt, he sighed in new appreciation.  
She'd always been a beautiful woman, someone who, in his eyes, could be 
mud-soaked and bedraggled and still remain radiant.  But now, she was 
beyond words.  It was the way her cheeks flushed pink when she saw him 
staring at her, the way she lifted her palm to try and hide the 
redness, and how she grinned shyly at him...

It didn't matter - none of it did.  Not their past, not what happened 
in their future.  It didn't matter what the fathers would try to do, it 
didn't matter if Nabiki tried to drag them back to their old lives.  It 
didn't matter if Akane herself walked into that room and started 
screaming at the top of her lungs.

Because...because...

Even after all those years, after all their tears, after every time 
he'd broken her heart and she'd broken his, they still had this.

Because love is not a certain, constant companion in a relationship, it 
is a momentary gift, one you have to fight to keep, a feeling that 
everyone yearns for, but not anyone can have.  Because she'd fought 
him, long and hard and brutally for the right to love him, and he'd 
fought himself for years, learning to let himself love her back.

Because they had wanted it so badly.

Because when everything else fell apart, it was all they had...

So when she reached him, the blushing smile still on her face, he 
kissed her, long and hard and in front of everyone in the Intensive 
Care Unit, not caring what those who watched them thought.

Because it was love, pure and simple.

Purely beautiful, simply indescribable.

Holding her still in his arms, Soichi felt a sort of freedom that he 
had never truly known before, a weightlessness that filled him with 
joy.  As he looked into her happily confused blue eyes, he smiled 
again.  "Everything's going to be fine, I promise," he whispered.

She believed him because Saotome Ranma had never broken a promise 
before.  And neither had Fujikara Soichi.

He'd promised to take care of her, when it seemed that everything was 
going wrong, he'd made it right, somehow.  She trusted him to do it 
again, just as she would for him.  Time and again, over and over, 
without fear or hesitation, he would walk through fire for her, and she 
would do the same.

Because he had made her his very first promise thirteen years ago, and 
he'd kept it to that day.

^*^*^

Nerima
13 years 4 months previous

She refused to cry anymore; she'd cried for too long already.  Her eyes 
were red and swollen from her tears, and her cheeks were cold white 
from her misery.  She didn't move, she just lay there on her bed, 
curled up in a little ball, her cheek pressed against Ranma's thigh, 
and her hair fanning out over his stomach, her fingers tightly wound in 
between his, as if to break contact was to die.

It had been three days.

Three days since someone had posted those papers all over the school.  
Two days since Ranma had rampaged through the school, shredding every 
sheet posted or possessed by anyone, telling everyone in no uncertain 
terms exactly what kind of death would befall them if they chose to 
ever bring it up again.  One day since he'd snuck in through her 
bedroom window.  One day since she'd started clinging to him, unwilling 
to stop crying, and later, swallowing her tears and bottling her 
hatred, she was unwilling to start.

"Yuki," he started softly, his free hand stroking her hair delicately, 
"Yuki, please, cry, scream, yell," his voice gave out for a moment, 
"anything but this."  She was silent still, but her watery gray eyes 
turned upward to meet his own briefly.  All he could see in them was 
her humiliation, how broken she was, her hopelessness.

Taking a deep breath, he tried a different tactic, one that his father 
had once inadvertently stumbled upon shortly after his Neko-ken 
training.  Saotome Genma may have been a dishonorable cur, but he was a 
dishonorable cur who loved his son very deeply.

"Do you want to hear a story, Yuki?" Ranma started, his voice low and 
soothing.

There was silence, but then again, he hadn't really expected a reply.

"Once upon a time, there was a very unhappy prince.  Oh, sure, he was 
incredibly handsome and perfect in every way, including his martial 
arts," he paused, quickly formulating more in his mind as he still ran 
his fingers through her scarlet tresses.  "But he was unhappy, his 
heart hurt."  She was looking at him now, eyes opened wide, still numb, 
still saddened, still helpless.  'God,' he thought, 'please, let this 
work; I can't bear to see her like this.  This isn't Yuki – this is, I 
don't know what this is.'  

"Ever since he'd been a very young child, he'd never really had a 
friend.  He'd met someone he'd liked very much a long time ago, but it 
had not turned out like a friendship should."  Ranma stopped, biting 
his lip, eyes still focused on Yuki's bland expression, hoping against 
all hope and reason that this would work.  That a stupid, childish 
fairy-tale would help her in a way that no amount of time could.  'If 
only I could get a hold of some magic, Yuki, I'd go back and I'd fix 
everything, I'd make it so that no one ever hurt you, so that no one 
could ever hurt you,' his mind whispered.

"So when he was old enough to get married, his father started 
introducing him to many girls that he'd been engaged to, each one 
prettier than the last."  She shifted a little in his lap, so that his 
face was now directly in her line of sight.  'Your eyes are so sad,' he 
mourned silently.  "But while he *liked* several of the girls, he 
didn't really love any of them - "

"Why not?" she interrupted, her voice so soft that it was barely 
audible.  Her eyes glimmered briefly, and Ranma steeled himself against 
a wave of rage and sorrow, angry that someone had shattered her 
strength like this, grieved because he could not change her past.

"Well," he started slowly, moving his hand away from her hair and 
touching her pallid cheek, "because all the girls were very nice, but 
he didn't really know any of them.  He couldn't love a girl that he 
didn't really know.  Besides," he added, "he guessed that love was more 
than being good friends with someone, he just didn't feel that way 
about any of the girls.  Not even the one that he liked very, very 
much."

She stared at him, a hint of blue returning to her irises, and Ranma 
unconsciously crossed his fingers.  "I thought the prince *did* feel 
that way about the girl he liked very, very much," she whispered, a 
desperate hush in her tone.

He swallowed hard.  "He did, a long time ago, he did.  Back when things 
were better between the two of them, back when he still thought she 
trusted him, he did love the girl, a lot," he breathed the last part 
quietly, his fingers absently brushing Yuki's cheek.

"Oh," she whispered, and pausing, she asked, "What about that friend 
the prince had always wanted?"
  
He smiled kindly at her; staring into her eyes he touched her face, 
tracing the line of her jaw with familiarity, with reverence.  "When 
the prince thought that his heart couldn't hurt any more, when he 
thought there wasn't any hope that he'd ever love anyone, he met a 
girl."  His voice echoed off the walls of her room loudly, bouncing 
back and flooding his own ears with sound.

"What was she like?" Yuki asked softly, a faded azure seeping into her 
eyes.

He grinned.  "Well, she was very smart, and very quick, and she never 
made fun of the prince about the things that everyone made fun of him 
about.  She always listened to him, and she always trusted him."

'Please smile again; your lips are made for smiling,' he thought.

She rolled her eyes, but just a little.  "I meant what she looked 
like."  He blushed, and leaning back into her pillows, he murmured:

"Well, she had this soft red hair, and she let it grow long until it 
touched her shoulders."  He glanced down to her face briefly, just long 
enough to see the faintest hint of a smile on her lips.  "And well, she 
always had this glitter in her eye, like she was planning something 
great, and you'd just have to sit still and bite your nails until it 
happened, and those something greats always did when she was around."

Yuki raised an eyebrow.  "She sounds wonderful."

"She *was* wonderful," he confirmed and continued with his story, 
"Anyway, the prince found himself talking to her more and more often, 
and telling her things that he'd never told anyone before.  Like the 
story of his mother."  Yuki winced, and tangling her fingers between 
his with renewed passion, she pressed herself a little closer to him.  
"And the story about all the little cats."  She growled, low and deep 
and angry.  "And about how he thought he loved a girl, or at least, had 
at some point or another."  She just stared at him, an indescribable 
expression on her face, a cross between mourning, hope, and subdued 
happiness.  There were no words for how her eyes bored into his soul at 
that moment.

Ranma cleared his throat, and starting once again the slow, comforting 
work of stroking her hair, he murmured, "And slowly, the prince found 
himself discovering that he needed this girl, this friend, more than he 
had ever needed anyone in his entire life."  A soft, shy smile bloomed 
on her pale face.

Yuki's eyes were wide.  "Did he promise to take care of her?"

For just the barest moment, he felt a sob rise in his throat as he 
realized what she was begging for, what she needed from him.  'A 
promise, oh God, a promise.'  How many times had promises gotten him 
into trouble?  How many vows had his father made?  Only to escape them 
and dump them onto his son?  How many years of childhood had been 
destroyed because of unwise promises?

But the way she'd said it, how her voice had shaken as she'd whispered 
the word...  It would not be a promise he would regret.

"Yes, he promised," he said, comforted by the flood of life that 
returned to her eyes.  "Because she was part of him by then, because 
when she wasn't there, it didn't feel right.  But when she was, he felt 
warm inside." he finished, his voice barely a whisper.

Her eyes were trained on his now, an unreadable gray color, sad and 
serious and laughing all at the same time, that confusing mix of 
emotions that had painted her features had receded to her eyes, and 
they continued to watch him, to drink him in.

"And - " Ranma choked out, mesmerized by her, trapped by their 
closeness, intoxicated by the way her skin felt pressed against him, 
how her hair was silky in his hands.

'Oh, God,' he thought darkly and in sudden shock, 'I want her, God, I 
want her.'

The sudden need to be away from her, the need to run as far away as 
possible from that endless expanse of blue eyes and soft skin before he 
did something he *wouldn't* regret overwhelmed him.  He abruptly rolled 
off the bed, letting Yuki's head fall to her pillow with a thud.  He 
stood there, bent over, hands on his knees, panting hard, eyes averted 
from her face as he tried to regain his self-control.

His skin was alive, it screamed and it called and it craved for more of 
her against itself.   

'But,' his mind argued loudly, 'she's hurt!  She's sad!  She's as close 
to broken as you can get!  God, how the hell can you be thinking with 
your goddamned dick when she's in this state?'

"Shit," he whispered aloud, eyes rising to meet Yuki's surprised 
expression, "shit, I've gotta go.  I've gotta go, now."

He made a lunge for her window, intent on getting out of that room, 
removing the temptation.

But her voice stopped him.

"WAIT!" she yelled, a desperate tone coloring the word.  He turned 
back, gasping for breath and trying to force the raw heat in his body 
down.  She was perched on the edge of her bed, legs uncrossed and 
flailed quickly across the edge, the shirt of her dark red pajamas 
bunching upward to reveal a band of pale, cream-colored skin, flawless 
to the eye.

"What is it, Yuki?" he asked slowly, tearing his gaze away from her, 
begging himself to just leave and take a cold shower.

"Ranma," she started, her voice soft but firm, "how does the story 
end?"

His eyes opened wide at the question, and he whipped back around 
momentarily to see her standing now, one hand tucking a hapless strand 
of red hair behind an ear, and the other reached out, her fingertips 
almost touching his arm.  And biting her lip, she stretched just a 
little bit more, pressing the pads of her fingers to his flesh, 
wrapping them round, and holding him fast, anchoring him to her.

Until he told her how the story ended.

The electric flame that started where her skin touched his refused to 
be doused, and it spread with savage speed through him, making him 
dizzy from the heat of that small, insignificant contact.

He opened his mouth, and finally, in a strangled tone of voice, he 
whispered, "It hasn't, not yet."

And leaped from her window into the comforting cold of the night, safe 
from the wanting that burned in his soul.

^*^*^

He hugged her tightly, standing there under the fluorescent lights of 
the hospital, amidst their fearful surroundings, she felt safe in the 
haven of his arms.

Because he *was* right.  

The story hadn't ended.

Not yet.

^*^*^

"Ryoga-kun?" 

The soft, familiar voice floated down from above him, and through the 
haze of blurred objects and fractured images, he opened his eyes to the 
too-bright room.  "Oh!  See, he's coming around!" cried another voice 
happily, he recognized the vague, female-shaped blobs before him, and 
he whispered:

"Akane?  Kasumi?  Where am I?"

His eyes cleared.

He was lying on his bed, head turned slightly to stare at where Akane 
and Kasumi were looking at him in deep concern.  In the background, 
Tofu puttered about, content to make himself useful only when 
encouraged.  Akane raised an eyebrow, and brushing her fingertips 
tenderly along Ryoga's forehead, wondering at the bruise there, she 
asked, "You're home, Ryoga, at the dojo, how are you feeling?"

Ryoga blinked hard, and groaning, he murmured, "Like I got slammed in 
the head by a cement block, how long have I been out?"

Kasumi shook her head helplessly.  "We're not really sure, Ryoga-kun, 
some taxi-driver had brought you here from the city.  He said that a 
nice lady had put you in the car and told him where to take you."  
Kasumi frowned, "Ryoga-kun, you *must* be more careful when you get 
lost."

In that moment, the fuzziness in his thought processes disappeared, and 
he remembered everything.  The apartment, the photograph, the strange 
man, and ... YUKI!  Yuki with the knife, Yuki and her smile, Yuki and 
the memories that she had made rush him, like hungry waves that ate 
away at the peaceful life he led.

"Ryoga?  Ryoga?  Are you okay?  You blanked out there for a moment!" 
Akane asked loudly, a slight tone of worry in her voice.

Then Ryoga remembered the other things.  The coffee cups in the 
kitchen, how they'd been more at home with each other than he and 
Akane, how much he'd wanted to be that mysterious man – because at 
least he knew who he loved, truly loved.  

Gasping loudly, he pushed himself up from the ground, a determined 
expression on his face.  

"Someone get me a phone, I have to talk to Nabiki, now."

^*^*^

"Kimiko-san?"

The redheaded woman looked up from the phone book, her blue eyes framed 
by reading glasses that she used from time to time, a surprised 
expression on her face.  The shocked 'o' that her lips had made widened 
into a smile.  Reaching out her hand, she brushed his cheek softly, and 
whispered, "Naka-kun!  You're awake!"

The boy lying in the hospital bed grinned raggedly.  "Yeah."  He 
paused.  "And you wouldn't believe the nightmare I had about you," he 
shuddered, "your hair was awful."  His voice was hoarse, his throat 
having just been liberated of the respirator that he'd been fighting 
even unconsciously.

Kimiko bit back a secret smile as her face grew solemn, and Naka 
frowned.

He hadn't ever really spent time with Kimiko, in earlier years, he'd 
mostly ignored her, though he knew enough about the woman from comments 
that Fujikara-sensei had made and from intuition to know that she 
rarely looked solemn.  She always laughed, she always smiled, and she 
never remained too serious, believing without a doubt that to do so was 
to waste a good portion of one's existence being edgy.

She released a shuddering breath, and reaching toward him with shaking 
fingers, she clasped his hands, whispering, "Naka-san, I have something 
very important to tell you, okay, please listen to me before you say 
anything else."

His muscles tensed.  Sign number one that something was wrong was the 
honorific that she had chosen to use.  Naka-san?  He'd never heard that 
come from between her lips before.  Secondly, she was shaking.  There 
was a deep and careful *knowing* that promised him one thing: Yoshida 
Kimiko did not shake.  "What is it, Kimiko-san?" he asked quietly.

There was only a deft brush of darkness in her eyes as she said the 
words, a talent learned after years of hearing sad things, feeling sad 
things, knowing sad things.  Becoming sad things.

"Naka-san, do you remember why you're in the hospital?"

The memories of twisted wreckage and flashing lights roared back into 
his mind.  "Yeah," he whispered, "just a little."

"Naka," she paused, "your parents, they didn't - "

She didn't need to finish her sentence.

^*^*^

"Hello?" Nabiki muttered into the phone unhappily.

It wasn't often that someone threw their temper tantrums in her face, 
and even less often that the person was a male.  'Then again,' she 
thought, 'Kuzio-kun has always been special.'  

Who'd have thought that through all the spineless terror he exhibited 
at the slightest hint of the illegal, he'd have a bitch-factor worthy 
of a Tendo.  He wasn't talking to her.  Actually, he wasn't even 
picking up the phone when she called him.  Nabiki had even tried faking 
him out by calling his home number instead of his cell phone.  It 
hadn't worked.  'Damn caller ID,' Nabiki thought hatefully.

"Dammit, Nabiki, are you always in a bad mood, or do you get yourself 
extra-special mad for me?" the voice on the phone asked cautiously.

Her eyes opened wide.  "Ryoga?  Back from Tokyo already?"  There was a 
meaningful pause.  "Well, what'd you find?"

Ryoga replied, a growl in his voice, "Other than that Yuki's as fucking 
terrifying as ever?  Dammit, Nabiki, I can't believe you - "

"Can't believe I what?" Nabiki interrupted.  "I told you what you were 
getting into, now, tell me, what *did* you get yourself into?"

She leaned heavily against the back of her chair, eyes staring hard 
into the opposite wall of her small, cozy office.  It was colored in 
hues of mahogany and green, dark and rich like money in her hands.  It 
was what she had fought toward since she was a child, the one thing 
that she'd truly wanted, truly ached for: power, control, the ability 
to manipulate and change, to make things bend to her will.

She wasn't going to lose all of it because of a ghost from years 
passed.  She would fix all of this; she could do it.  With the right 
information and a little bit of tugging at one or two strings, she 
would make everything right; she could set it straight.  And then, 
Akane could get married, Kasumi could go on happily in life, and she -

She could let go of what had happened.

There was a long groan over the phone line.  "Well, she did give me a 
pretty severe concussion, Nabiki."

She snorted.  "Kiss my ass, Ryoga, spill."

He sighed.  "Nice apartment, really high class stuff in that place.  A 
couple of interesting notes and letters, nothing really important.  But 
there was a photo."  He paused.  "She was just standing there, hugging 
this *guy* and beaming."  He laughed.  "I forgot how pretty she was."

"Ryoga," Nabiki murmured, rolling her eyes, "I hope you're not 
forgetting that you're promised to my little sister."

He laughed, softly, bitterly.  "Of course not, Nabiki, I've always been 
promised to her, one way or another."  There was an odd tone in his 
voice, and Nabiki found herself frowning at the sound.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Nothing at all, Nabiki, nothing."

^*^*^

Kasumi stood there in the kitchen, her hands pressed against the aged 
countertops, her eyes far away, haunted, lost.  She had 'accidentally' 
picked up the phone when Ryoga had called Nabiki, and she'd not so 
'accidentally' replaced the receiver.

'She's still alive,' Kasumi thought softly, a hushed awe flowing 
through her, 'after all these years, she's still alive.'  She chuckled 
softly to herself, 'I should have known.  She wouldn't have gone down 
without a fight; well, a better fight than that, at least.'

She looked around the room slowly, to the comfortable blue of the tiles 
and the warm, familiar way the light fell as it had since she was old 
enough to remember.  This was her center, this was her core, this was 
what sustained her through her mother's death, through her teenaged 
years, through Ranma's arrival, through the insanity that followed.

Through her friend's death.  

It was what kept her going, the peace that she knew in the kitchen.

She smiled softly, touching her cheek as she watched the sun set 
slowly, dipping its glowing red into the black line of solid land, 
disappearing bit by bit until only the peak survived.

Something finally occurred to her, something that she'd noticed about 
the nature of Yuki's relationships, or at least, one in particular.

"Yuki," she whispered, "you aren't alone, are you?"

^*^*^

Nerima 
13 years 4 months previous

She had heard him run into the dojo, slamming the door behind him, 
panting hard, like he'd been sprinting for miles.  At first, she 
thought that he'd been hurt, and bolting out the kitchen door, she had 
only slid the dojo door open a fraction when she saw the reality of the 
situation.  There was a dark flush on his face, a harried expression in 
his eyes, and if someone who knew how to read aura's had been around, 
they'd have blushed bright red at what his was screaming.  Loudly.

Years of reading medical books had given Kasumi a little insight 
regarding exactly what was going through Saotome Ranma's mind.  There 
were a couple of things that not even extremely skilled martial artists 
could hide.  She'd blushed and backed away into the shadow of the 
doorway, wondering how to approach him, what to do to help him.

She sighed as she watched him sitting there, his eyes screwed shut, 
content to collapse against a wall and breathe heavily, trying to force 
down the arousal that still welled up inside of him.  

She had a vague idea of what put him into this mood, and she'd been 
suspecting something for a while.  Even as Yuki and Ranma had laughed 
together in nearly childish innocence, Kasumi found herself worrying 
that something was building between the two, something that would make 
Akane cry.  Kasumi knew that even though Akane fought her engagement 
tooth and nail, she had started to like Ranma, maybe even more than 
like; it had just become something more than a childish fascination.  
It was a tentative, fragile place in their relationship, and she was 
certain it would not stand up to, well, whatever Yuki and Ranma shared.

She noted with concern a flash of red from the corner of her eyes, and 
silently groaned as she heard a back door open in the dojo from her 
vantage point at the front.

"Ranma?"

Kasumi's eyes grew wide at the sight.  It was Yuki, dressed in a pair 
of dark red pajamas, her hair tied up in a pigtail, blue eyes simmering 
with unnamed terror.  "Ranma," she started, "please, please tell me 
what's wrong.  Why did you run off like that?"

'Why indeed,' Kasumi wondered.  'And why is she dressed like that?  
They weren't...were they?  They haven't...have they?' she thought with 
increasing panic.

There was a soft, soughing sound of cloth against wood as Ranma wrapped 
his arms around his legs and slowly rocked back and forth against the 
dojo wall, pleading, "Yuki...Yuki please, leave me alone, I can't see 
you right now."

"What do you mean?" a slow, heart-aching tone in her voice.

"I mean," he muttered through his ragged breathing, "I mean leave me 
alone, Yuki, you can't be here right now, not with me."

Kasumi's eyes grew wide; Ranma was right: it wouldn't be in her best 
interests to be around him at that time.  She'd watched the boy fight 
back his desires and push away his want to couple on endless occasions, 
biting back something and wandering off somewhere to be alone, knowing 
that doing *anything* would have either earned him the disfavor of his 
fiancees or lend more credence to the universal 'Ranma is a pervert' 
campaign.  But he was at his breaking point now, with his face red from 
heat and his body shuddering for the sweet mercy of release.

But Yuki didn't know this, how could she?

So Kasumi watched as she knelt down at Ranma's side, her bangs falling 
into her eyes, the dark red locks contrasting sharply with the paleness 
of her skin.  Yuki's hands trembled as she cupped Ranma's face, 
brushing her thumb along his cheek.  And with a soft cry she whispered, 
"Ranma, please, please don't push me away; I need a friend right now.  
Ranma, please, forgive me, please."  Her voice broke into shuddering 
sobs.  "I was little, Ranma, I couldn't stop him!"  She pulled herself 
away from him, and Kasumi watched, silent still.  Horror dawned in 
Ranma's eyes as he listened to her babble.  "I'm so sorry!  I'm so 
sorry!  If you're disgusted, I'll understand, God, please, I'm so 
sorry!"  Her shoulders trembled and she crumbled, her hands covering 
her face as she cried, her fingers slick with tears.

Kasumi gasped softly, realizing for the first time exactly what Yuki 
was apologizing about.  
 
Ranma reached out to her, and grabbing her roughly by the shoulders, he 
hissed, "Did someone tell you that this was *your* fault?  Did some 
bastard tell you that?"  Ignoring his words, she kept sobbing, her 
voice growing softer and softer with her exhaustion.  The dark flush on 
Ranma's face grew darker, angrier, and suddenly pulled Yuki toward him 
and held her, crushing her to him.  He whispered loudly, "Dammit, Yuki!  
I don't care who says it, or how many times they say it!  *It was not 
your fault*!"  He loosened his grip and stroked her back in slow, 
circular motions, his eyes pooling with tears.  "You were just a kid, 
how could it be your fault?"

"Didn't - didn't stop!  'M martial - artist, shoulda' stopped him!" she 
gasped out from between sobs, hiding her face in his shoulder.  "Nobody 
lo-loves me 'nymore, nobody, not good 'nuf."

Ranma felt his heart break, just as it had when he was a child being 
pulled away from his mother, torn from his friends.  But this new pain 
was so much sharper, tart and seemingly endless.  He wanted to kill the 
man who had raped her; he wanted to kill whoever had ever said that the 
horrible things that had happened to her were her own fault.  The depth 
of his hatred frightened him; he'd been angry before, he'd never been 
filled with bloodlust, had he?  'Not before,' his mind whispered 
slowly, 'not before you met...Akane.'  Then what, if anything, did he 
actually *feel* for Yuki?  He knew well enough to know that lust was 
not affection, not really; yet if he was able to find parallels in the 
way he felt for Akane, *had* felt for Akane (maybe still felt for 
Akane), and what filled him in that instant...

He pushed away from her, one hand clasping her wrist, and the other 
touching her cheek so gently, in such a soft, worshipful manner.  His 
blue eyes darkened into a thick, stormy gray, and in a quiet whisper, 
he said, "Yuki."  And when she didn't listen, Ranma lifted her chin so 
her eyes met his.  "Yuki," he whispered again, his voice raspy.  He 
gasped as he saw the depth of her soul, the wounds there, and the hope 
she felt she had lost.  Drawing his finger along the curved line of her 
face, dipping it down to trace her collarbone, and circling the 
delicate hollow there, eyes still locked with hers, he whispered 
hoarsely, "Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?"

She was perfect, exquisitely, painfully beautiful, flawless.

Her skin was the color of a pearl, and her cheeks flushed pink like 
cherry blossoms.  Her flaming hair always fell in soft waves at her 
shoulders, and her small, wine-colored mouth smirked in time to the 
smile in her eyes.  She had long, tapered fingers that flew from place 
to place as she talked, always pantomiming or brushing against her 
lips, and on rare occasions, teasing his own hands, touching his face.  
There was a great fullness to her beauty, dark and soulful and rich, 
vibrant and shimmering.  Something much more substantial than a pretty 
face, than what his other fiancees showed.

'Other...fiancees?' he thought in a strange, surreal tone, his eyes 
still captured in her own.  'Since when has she been one of the 
fiancees?  When did she - ?!'  In that moment, he realized that she'd 
always been one of the fiancees for longer than he'd ever imagined.  
Hers was the face he saw in the mirror when he was in girl-form, her 
smile was the one that sometimes made him stop and look at 
himself/herself for an extra moment.  She was the strong one, the 
unbreakable one, the one who was always there, forgiving and 
understanding.  

She who had never wanted to hurt him, but who ended up being the cause 
of everything.

"R-Ranma," she whispered in reply, a few more teardrops slipping from 
her eyes to land with soft splatters on the folds of his Chinese shirt.  
"What - what are you saying?"

He breathed hard, and shuddering, he continued, "You really don't know, 
do you?"  He paused, pulling her hand upward so that it was pressed 
against his own face.  "You don't know how beautiful you are, how, how 
perfect."  

He took her other hand, and holding it open toward the sky, he pressed 
his lips to her palm, inhaling the scent of her as his mouth lingered 
there.  An embrace, a touch that was so deeply sensual, more intimate 
than a hug, darker than lips against lips.  It was a kiss of reverence, 
as a follower hazarded to a goddess.  Her eyes were wide, and her mouth 
opened and closed, gasping for air.  Ranma lifted his head from her 
hand, feeling the electric jolt of sadness at the loss of that contact.

"No matter what anyone ever says about you or your past, Yuki," Ranma 
murmured, sinking into the endless blue of her eyes, "I do."

'I love you,' he thought, 'I love you more than you'll ever understand, 
more than I'd ever let you know.  Never feel like no one cares.'

There was silence in the dojo, not a sound save for the world that 
continued to turn and move and live around them.  

But it was enough; Yuki knew, she understood.

Perhaps the lightness of having professed his feelings without 
faltering in his words gave him courage; maybe it was just the way she 
was curled up in his embrace, but whatever made him brave in that 
moment, it made him brave for the rest of his life.

He leaned down to her face, losing himself as he kept gazing into those 
endless azure pools of color, leaning so close that he could feel the 
heat of her skin against his own, so close he could smell the light, 
female scent of her.

And he kissed her.

At first, it was just a brush of skin against skin, the most innocent 
and comforting of embraces, deft and barely there.  But as he broke 
that initial contact, those gentle fingers that he'd placed on his 
cheek pulled his face toward her own again, this time their mouths 
meeting in a heated, endless kiss.  Breath mingling, souls melding, 
hearts beating.

And she kissed him.

He was lost in the satiny smooth feel of her lips against his own, how 
her body fit perfectly in the curve of his, how his hands felt so 
naturally at home tangled in her red hair.

And they kissed each other.

The way that the first lovers on earth had kissed each other, with 
wonderful curiosity, raging passion, guiltless want, and love.  Because 
they'd been bound at the soul and now, they'd be bound at the heart.

Kasumi tore her eyes away from the scene, tears bubbling up and a 
hacking sob rising her in her throat.  She turned, and slammed her back 
against the wall of the dojo, sliding down to the ground, feeling her 
legs shaking.

How could this happen?  How could she have let this happen?

Her little sister or her friend?  The sister she'd raised nearly as her 
own child, wiping away her tears and singing her to sleep, or the girl 
who smiled and understood, who listened to her talk and made her laugh?  
They both loved him, they both loved Ranma like no one ought to love 
anyone else, with the darkest passion and the deepest loyalty.  But 
only one of them had earned his trust, his respect.  Only one of them 
had touched his soul.  

She slapped her hands over her mouth, hiding the sound of her cries.  

Deep in her own heart, she knew who she wanted Ranma to be with, and 
Kasumi didn't like the answer, she didn't like that she'd betrayed.  
She didn't like that she'd choose Yuki.

It was then that she heard a muffled yell and the sound of a struggle 
in the dojo.  Yuki's tear-soaked voice floated through the window, "NO!  
Ranma- I can't- I can't- Akane- I have to go, I have to go!"

There was the sound of rapid footsteps, and then the uncomfortable 
silence of the aftermath of sin.

^*^*^

Hours passed, and the heavens started to weep heavy, splattering 
raindrops.  And while the staff of nurses and doctors grew ill of 
hearing the near silent sound of a child's heart falling to pieces, 
Kimiko stood her ground.

She held his hand, never breaking the contact, knowing that although 
his fingers were rigid and cold, that if she loosened her hold on him, 
his last tether to the earth would be gone.

He needed her right then, and she needed him to get well, needed him to 
grow up and old.

Not because he was her child, not because she was his sister, but 
because...

Because she saw so much of Soichi in him.

Because she recognized that dark rage that fluttered in his clear, 
brown eyes, and she knew the casual grace with which he walked.

Because she loved what he made her remember.

^*^*^

Nerima 
13 years 2 months previous

"How *did* you get out of the house for the weekend?" she asked, 
looking around herself in concern, for the moment terrified by the 
taboo possibilities of someone finding them together.

Ranma just rolled his eyes.  "Yuki, I told my dad that I was going on a 
training trip, I didn't even finish telling him where I was going 
before he yelled: 'Good son!  Train hard!' and left.  Akane and Ukyo 
looked sort of pissed off, and I saw them tailing me until I reached 
the train station."  He shrugged and said, "I figure since they saw 
that I was alone it was okay."  He looked at her in a sidelong glance, 
"I'm surprised your family didn't say anything."

A dark expression fluttered across her face.  "Let's *not* talk about 
that right now."  She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the train 
platform.  "Come on!"

The masses of people turned their heads at the sound of feet slapping 
against the aged floors, a few of the older patrons smiled at the 
sight.  A pretty, spirited, redheaded girl laughing as she tugged her 
companion, a tall, handsome young man toward a train.  From a distance, 
they seemed filial, the type of love that brothers - under all the 
resentment over childhood spats - hid for their little siblings.  At 
closer glance, a certain heat pulsed through them, passion.

She'd made him promise that he'd never love her, that he'd never betray 
his engagement to Akane again.  "Because," she said quietly, holding 
his hand, "because regardless, she loves you, I know, Ranma, she loves 
you."  She had looked up at him, eyes dark and filled with tears, "I 
couldn't take you away from her."  So she'd hugged him, crying softly 
into the cloth of his shirt, whispering the whole time, both mourning 
and reminding herself of what she was to become.  "Friends," she'd 
said, "friends."

But she'd recovered.  And he'd numbed the ache inside.

And now... 

Her eyes flashed nearly silver as she turned toward him, the flushed 
happiness coloring her features.  In her spare hand, she clutched a 
small duffle, and she carried her sleeping bag like a backpack.  He 
looked intently toward her, one of those slightly confused, 
inexplicably charmed expressions on his face, fascinated by the way she 
ran and moved.

And who wouldn't be?  She was stunning.

Their little trip in Japan's public transport system had garnered more 
than a few men vicious glares.  Yuki had no conscious idea how 
beautiful she was, and so she did nothing to hide her loveliness, 
letting her eyes shimmer, her hair fly in the breeze, and her clothes 
did nothing to hide the curvature of her body.  Of course, while Ranma 
was used to her receiving the catcalls and the extra-long looks, it 
didn't mean he had to be happy about it.

He laughed as he ran plopped down into their seats, watching Yuki 
settle herself directly across from him, a curious expression on her 
face.  "What's so funny?" she asked.

He raised an eyebrow, and taking one of her hands, still wrapped in 
bandages and healing salves, he murmured regretfully, "After you were 
covered in burns and bruises, this didn't seem like such a great idea 
after all."

Yuki smiled softly, and touching his face gently, she whispered, "Hey, 
I made the choice.  After I saw you and Ryoga fight, I realized that in 
an all out battle, I wasn't nearly in your league without any good ki 
attacks.  I got bruised and burned at my own discretion."

Ranma frowned at her.  He knew damn well that she did what she wanted 
when she wanted and how she wanted at her discretion.  No one was going 
to keep her from doing what she pleased, they might have posed a slight 
obstacle, or even delayed her, but in the end, she'd get what she'd 
been fighting for.  He didn't want to teach her the Kachu Tenshin 
Amiguriken.  He hadn't wanted to teach her the Mouko Takabisha, and 
he'd most definitely had no intention of teaching her the Hiryu Shoten 
Ha.

In fact, knowing her penchant for talking him into and out of things, 
he'd expressly avoided using those attacks in her presence.  But a few 
days ago, Ryoga had decided to show up again, newly filled with some 
unknown angst.  Though, had Yuki or Ranma known that it was Ryoga who 
had distributed those flyers all over the school, it wouldn't have 
merely been property damage.  Needless to say, in the wake of all the 
fantastic displays of ki ability, Yuki had gotten excited.  

She'd pouted, she'd pleaded, and in the end she'd just demanded it.

"Why do you want it so badly, anyhow, Yuki?" he asked softly, watching 
her dig through her knapsack, a mystified tone in his voice.  "I mean, 
I understand that being a martial artists means challenging yourself, 
but why, Yuki?"

She raised an eyebrow at him.  "You did it."

He sighed, "That's different, Yuki, and you know it.  I've devoted my 
life to the art, I'm going to grow up and *live* the art."  He shrugged 
his shoulders.  "You want to draw for a living, Yuki."

"Would 'curiosity' appease you?" she tried hesitantly.  And groaning 
softly as he shook his head, she whispered, "Alright, I'll tell you, 
but if you breathe a word of it to another soul - " 

"I wouldn't ever betray a confidence, Yuki," he replied, his voice 
deathly serious.  And smiling softly, he grabbed her hand in his own, 
realizing for the thousandth time how small she was, how fragile she 
looked.  "Come on Yuki, tell me the truth."

"Ranma," she started slowly, pulling her fingers away, *carefully*.  
They still hurt.  "I will tell you, but you can't interrupt me at all 
okay, not for anything."  He nodded, and comically, he zipped his mouth 
shut and grinned brightly at her as she smiled in return.

"After I was raped," she started, and automatically, she slapped her 
hand over Ranma's already-opening lips, as if she knew that he wouldn't 
be able to resist.  She tried again.  "After I was raped, my parents 
were very angry.  Angry at the world, angry at the police, angry at 
me."  She tightened where her hand was clasped over Ranma's mouth, 
preparing herself for the worst.  "They wanted to know why the future 
heir to the Rising Phoenix School of Martial Arts couldn't fend for 
herself."  She glanced upward furtively, watching Ranma's impassive 
face.  And with a sigh of relief, she moved her hands.

Not half a second passed before:

"I CAN'T *BELIEVE* YOUR PARENTS!  HOW DARE THEY CALL THEMSELVES HUMAN 
IF THEY-"

The hand was back where it needed to be - over Ranma's mouth.  Yuki 
sighed sadly.  "Ranma, please, let me finish, alright?"  He nodded 
sullenly.  With her voice much lower, she said, "After the rape, I went 
through three months where I couldn't do anything, I couldn't practice 
the art, I couldn't study, and I could barely eat.  And finally," she 
breathed deeply, her eyes clouding with a thick, black haze, "one day, 
while I was sitting in the dojo, with my father trying to get me to 
spar with him, I saw," she paused, struggling with the words, "I saw - 
saw *that man's* face on my father."  She released a deep sigh, and 
turning away.  "That's how I got good, Ranma.  That's why I want to 
learn more.  That's what's gotten me through all these years."  She 
glanced up at him.  "Hatred.  Bitterness and regret and shame."  

He frowned, feeling that same, low ache in his chest as she stopped 
speaking and let that heavy silence fill the air. 

And strangely enough, he whispered, "I think I understand." 

"Good," she said, hard and final, as if she was closing the topic to 
further discussion.  Settling down in the seat across from him, humor 
sparkling in her eyes, she propped her feet up on the seat next to him 
and buried her face in a book.

He stared at her for a moment, biting his lip in concern.  He was quite 
certain that she'd survived the aftermath of her rape, that she was a 
strong enough person that she'd fought her demons and won the battle.  
But he sometimes doubted that her heart had completely healed, because 
on occasion, when he'd tease her with a grin or brush her hand, he'd 
see the cracks beneath the exterior, the fear of growing close to 
someone.

She glanced upward at him and said, "It's 100 yen for every three 
minutes to enjoy the show."

He rolled his eyes and leaned back into the seat, letting his gaze 
wander away from her and toward the city buildings and rush of land, 
screaming past the window as the train peeled away from the station.  
Dozens of young girls still in their school uniforms stood on that 
platform, waving their hands to their sweethearts on that train, going 
away for the weekend to their mothers' home, or for family business.  

'Family,' he wondered slowly, 'family honor.'  In a world of modern 
conveniences and thoughtless betrayals, a place where divorce was 
simple, accepted, forgiven, the social status in Japan seemed strange 
to him.  Sure, he'd grown up in the withering shadow of the all-
important giri, but he'd never been able to explain it well.  

Giri wasn't merely family honor, it was understanding and *being* that 
person and fitting into the place to which you were born.

But what had he been born to?  He never knew what his mother had 
expected of him, he knew of his childhood promise, to be the man 
amongst men, and failing in that, he hoped that maybe she'd have wanted 
something else, something that he *could* do.  He knew what his father 
expected, for him to be the best martial artist in the world, to marry 
a Tendo daughter and join the two lines of Anything Goes Martial Arts.  
And someday, in the far distant future, perhaps to rid them of the 
terror that was Happosai, once and for all.  

He glanced at where Yuki was reading some gaijin book, filled with 
strange words, only a fourth of which he could pick out and understand.  
The cover was a pale lavender frame, and in the middle, a mockingbird 
flew toward a tree hollow, a sickle moon in the background.  The book 
was well-thumbed and tattered with age.

She glanced up at him, her blue eyes breaking his concentration for 
just a moment, and her voice disrupting the hum of the train.  "What's 
the matter, Ranma?"  He shook his head and grinned, saying:

"You're reading it again, Yuki."

She raised her eyebrows and said, "Well, if you'd paid any attention at 
all in English class, perhaps you could be reading it with me."

He smirked.  "What's it about?"

"Loving people for what they are instead of what society sees them as."  
Her voice was clear, as though she had no idea the implications of her 
words, she merely smiled at him serenely and turned back to the comfort 
of those letters, lost in the poetry of those words.

'My family and duty, or the one thing that I've ever wanted more than 
to learn the art?' he murmured to himself, 'No one can make that 
decision.'  

He hadn't meant for it to happen, it wasn't his fault.  After all, no 
one intends to fall in love, and if they do, it rarely happens.  'It's 
insanity,' he reasoned, 'lunacy.  This is stupid.  Who falls in love 
with their curse?'  He bit his lip at the thought, and berated himself 
for calling her that.  It was not Yuki's fault he had fallen into that 
pool in Jusenkyo, and it wasn't her fault that her ancestors had 
accidentally left their ki in those cursed waters.  

How could he love her?  How could he love her when he was just sixteen 
years old, foreign to the entire concept of devotion?  And yet, he knew 
it in his heart without the slightest doubt that he loved her.  

But - but there was always Akane, just in the background of his mind.  
The rare occasions when she smiled at him burned into the surface of 
his memory, the way her eyes twinkled when she was happy.  He thought 
that maybe he still loved her, maybe just the slightest bit.

You didn't just fall *out* of love with someone, did you?  

"Ranma?  Ranma, snap out of it, we're here."

He glanced out the windows of the train and saw that they had, indeed, 
returned to Nerima.  

She'd been right, it had been a lovely weekend.  And for all the fears 
he had that she'd end up driving him to do something stupid and selfish 
- strip her down, make love to her, run away and marry her, etc. - he'd 
had a good time.  They'd gotten on the same train two days earlier, and 
before he knew it, he was standing on a peaceful stretch of meadow near 
a stream.  He had watched Yuki knee-deep in its water, soaked to the 
bone and laughing, trying to get him to join her in her fun.   

The next two days had been blurry for him, recalling only certain 
moments.  He remembered trying to explain the concept of the Mouko 
Takabisha, only to hear her laughing about how he was the *only* person 
in the entire world who could turn his ego into an actual physical 
attack.  He remembered how she'd smiled at him when he'd changed when a 
sudden shower had caught them, whispering, "I like your girl-side, 
Ranma, it makes me feel like I'm always with you."

She'd called a cab and gotten them to her house, knowing that if she 
were to drop him off at the Tendo residence, someone would see them 
together, and there would be hell to pay.  

He walked her to her front door, and waited until she was halfway into 
her house before he stopped her with just a touch of his hand.

"Yuki," he whispered desperately, "you have to promise me something."

Her brow furrowed in concern.  "What, Ranma, what do you need me to 
promise?"  She could never deny him anything that she could give.  If 
she was able to help him, hold him, love him, for as long as she 
breathed on that planet, she'd do anything for him.  She'd long since 
given up hope of breaking her ties to him; separation was agony.

"I," he started weakly, staring at the ground, "I have a lot of things 
that I've been promised to do in life, Yuki."  He looked back up just 
in time to see the pain flash across her face.  Yuki wasn't stupid; she 
knew the reality of their relationship.  Stolen moments, she knew, were 
all they'd ever have.  He took a deep breath and continued, "And things 
being the way they are, there's the very real possibility that, that I 
won't be able to be with you much longer."

"Ranma - "

"Let me finish, okay?"  She nodded in response.  "Just promise me that 
if it does happen, if I end up marrying someone - " 

'Not if I end up marrying someone *else*, if I end up marrying 
*someone*,' she mused to herself painfully, watching him struggle for 
the words.

"If I end up marrying someone, promise me that you'll forget me," he 
finished, his voice barely above a whisper.  He couldn't possibly say 
it any louder; it hurt him to even think it.  The idea of Yuki smiling 
at someone else, kissing someone else, being claimed by someone else 
made it hard for him to breathe.  

There was a long silence.

All she said was, "No."

She wasn't holding his hand, and she wasn't near enough so that he'd 
miss the loss of her presence if she left.  So he didn't know that 
she'd closed the door until he heard the dull thud of wood against 
wood.  He cursed softly, looking upward to stare at her window; he 
should have known better.

He stared at the heavens, a hopeless, aching expression on his face 
that cold night.

And silently, he begged the stars their blessing.

^*^*^

"Nothing is hopeless," Kimiko whispered, gently touching Naka's face, 
"I am a monument to that."

In the background, the sound of the clock grew louder in the silence of 
the room.  And Naka started to breathe a little deeper, comforted by 
the voice of someone who had been able to stay.

^*^^

Somewhere far away from the humming drone of hospital rooms and the 
gray drab of recovery, Kasumi still stood in her kitchen; eyes staring 
toward the darkness that engulfed the city, drinking in the ebony 
blanket that had covered all the scars of daily life.

That was when she felt the first pangs.

A low ache that made no sense.

And without warning, her world collapsed inward as she felt a horrible 
black agony building in her stomach, and pain, and sudden emptiness.

She felt a hot liquid dripping down her legs, metallic and unfamiliar 
and wrong, horribly *wrong*.  She screamed into the hollow dim - 
clutching her abdomen.  Her middle that had been so full with her 
smiling pride, the secret she'd held carefully in her heart.

Kasumi felt herself doubling over, felt the life draining from her.

Her secret was dying.

^*^*^

One week later

^*^*^

Her initial reaction was to turn right back around and close the door, 
walk down to the elevator, take three deep breaths, and try again.  
Instead, she just stared.

It was one thing for a father-to-be to be excited, it was quite another 
to be obsessive compulsive about it.  The "What to Expect When You're 
Expecting" books had not fazed her, the cute little baby toys had given 
a thrill, and the maternity-wear shopping spree he'd gone on was sweet, 
in a way.

But this, this was beyond normal.

When he'd said that he was going to drop by the grocery store and pick 
up a few things that she would need, she'd never bothered to give it a 
second thought.  Perhaps she should have.  

The doctor had said that she needed to load up on carbohydrates, take 
her vitamins, get gentle aerobic exercise, eat healthy, and drink 
plenty of liquids.   Soichi had obviously taken this as an invitation 
to buy four loaves of eight-grain bread, five varieties of family-sized 
vitamins, a new "Mommy and Me" exercise machine, and two gallons of 
juice in addition to ten grocery bags that were stacked around her 
kitchen.

Her head hurt just thinking about the credit card bill.

She sighed dropped her purse on the free space of the counter and 
walked across the room to pick up the handset phone.  Dialing a 
familiar number, she didn't wait for the a greeting on the other end 
after the phones connected to ask, "So are we feeding an army?"

There was a familiar, low chuckle on the phone, "Aw, come on, Kimiko, 
the doctor said that I had to take care of you!"

She rolled her eyes and glanced furtively at the bags on bags of 
groceries stacked in her kitchen, taking up counter-space, and then she 
glared at the 'Mommy and Me' exercise machine that took up her floor-
space.  They would exchange words regarding *that* when he got home.  
"I'm eating for two, not four hundred."

"I am well aware of that, Kimiko, but you I haven't told you the other 
good news, I talked to the social worker, they're releasing Naka in two 
days, he's coming home with us."

There was a momentary trill of terror in her belly, one that that was 
quickly replaced with nervous excitement.  Even as she feared she 
couldn't help Naka, couldn't make him learn to live on after what had 
happened, she rejoiced that she had an opportunity to try.  Biting her 
lip, she remembered what it had been like to face uncertain days and 
nights, knowing deep in her soul that she needed to survive, not only 
for her sake but for - but for someone else's as well.  She never 
wanted any other child to have to live through that.  She never wanted 
any other child to doubt their deepest wishes, and their most sacred 
dreams.  

"That's great," she said softly, and looking back up, she smirked, "I'm 
sure Naka will just *love* his 'Mommy and Me' workout equipment."

"Cute," Soichi laughed.

She sighed, balancing the phone between her ear and her shoulder, 
"Still, that's only three people actively consuming food, how on earth 
are we going to get through *ten* grocery bags?"

There was a long, awkward pause on the line.

"Well," Soichi stuttered, sounding agitated, "we'll manage."  Two 
seconds after they'd ended the phone call, he found himself dialing the 
number of the grocery store, hoping against hope that he could cancel 
the order for the *other* five bags before they got the apartment.

^*^*^

Akane stared at the walls of the room, eyes drifting from object to 
object, but always with the same question in her mind: why white?  Why 
would a medical facility choose the universe's most blindingly painful, 
achingly stark color to paint the walls?  

Why not Easter yellow or pale pink or robin's egg blue?  They were 
soothing hues; colors that made people's heart rates slow.  Or at the 
very least, why not pick something *interesting* to put *on* the walls.  
Maybe some pretty photographs of places far away from the city and near 
an ocean, or even a simple design.

She turned back down to where her fingers were tightly intertwined with 
Kasumi's, that one, insignificant touch the only thing that reassured 
her that her oldest sister was still alive.   Kasumi's face was the 
color of the walls, and her hair lacked the shining luster that is 
usually held, even her eyes were dim, dirt-colored, staring straight at 
the ceiling.

Akane winced as she heard Kasumi moan, the low, sad keening of a mother 
grieved.  'No one should ever have to lose their children,' she thought 
slowly, and brushing a sweaty-strand of hair away from Kasumi's face, 
she added, 'especially not if you've never kissed them and told them 
you loved them.'

And oddly enough, though Akane would never know, that was what 
terrified Kasumi the most - that her baby had never known love.  That 
she and Tofu had created a child, but that the baby never knew how much 
Mommy and Daddy had loved her, never knew how much she would have been 
cherished.  

Nodoka had gone back to the dojo, bubbling with some unnamed emotion, 
promising to look after Tofu, in her own words, "making sure he doesn't 
do anything that we'll regret letting him do."  Soun was sitting in the 
conference room of the hospital, his face pale and stricken as he heard 
the doctor's words.  Nabiki was on her way.  She'd promised. 

Akane sat there in the glooming whiteness of the hospital room and 
prayed for her older sister.  Prayed that she'd survive this, as she 
had survived everything else that life had so carelessly doled out to 
her fragile heart.  After all the ages of reassuring herself that she 
was strong, after all the years of wrapping herself in a thick cloud of 
carefully constructed blissful ignorance, the truth of reality and the 
depth of life had caught up to Kasumi in the cruelest way.

'It doesn't matter,' Akane thought, 'none of it does, not in the end.  
You can't protect something that you can't control.'

And it all came rushing back to her, memory after cruel memory.  
Berating and teasing and taunting, telling her over and again what her 
heart had denied for so long.

^*^*^

Nerima
13 Years Previous

Akane stared absently into the backyard, wincing slightly as she saw 
Yuki stomping her foot in frustration as Ranma yelled, "You're going to 
learn it, Yuki!  One way or another!  You're going to learn it!"

The anger on Yuki's face disappeared and she released a sigh, replying, 
"If there's a way to make me learn it, I'm sure you'll figure it out!"

Akane knew exactly what he was talking about.  For two weeks, ever 
since Ranma had returned from his training trip (one that he took, 
thankfully, alone - she and Ukyo had followed him all the way until he 
actually sat down in the train), he'd been lolling about with Yuki, 
trying to teach her advanced technique after advanced technique.

Growling, Akane nearly tore her blouse off, stomping over to her closet 
and reaching for a dark jumper to change into.  "Stupid Ranma," she 
muttered aloud to the empty room, "Bastard, wastes all his time 
teaching darling 'Yuki' techniques, and never gives a thought to even 
*sparring* with me."  Releasing a frustrated sigh, she stopped in front 
of her mirror, a strange glitter in her eyes.  Cupping her hands before 
her, she concentrated on them, hoping against hope that her ki would 
gather.

She'd seen Ranma do it hundreds of times, in and out of battle.  
Sometimes he'd do it in school, idly tossing it at different 
classmates, usually inciting a scream of surprise or a giggle.  
Somehow, he knew how to control the effect of it even when he had left 
his touch.  More recently, she'd seen Yuki do it, snapping her fingers 
and creating a casual, lavender sphere of energy.  But when it came to 
attacks, Yuki was still lacking, even though she tried, it was a much 
harder process for her.

Knowing that Yuki was having a rough time of it was the only thing that 
kept Akane from going mad with jealousy.

Akane stared for nearly five minutes at her empty, useless hands before 
screaming in anger.  What was wrong with her?  She was a martial 
artist, wasn't she?  She practiced kata's in the dojo, she could break 
cement blocks like an old pro, she used to beat up Kuno, the best in 
Furinkan, constantly.

'But,' she thought sadly, pulling on the jumper, 'I can't lay a finger 
on Yuki, and she has to go all out to lay a finger on Ranma.'  

"Akane!  You promised to help me clean out the attic today!  Daddy 
really wants to find the old family registers!" Kasumi's voice floated 
down the attic steps and into Akane's room, somehow, at the perfect 
pitch and tone to render any argument of the chore utterly useless.  

Akane zipped the jumper up along the side, and running up the steps and 
toward the attic, she yelled, "I'm coming, Kasumi!"  

Saotome Genma and Tendo Soun were packrats at heart, and both of them 
used the attic to harbor anything that they a: didn't want their 
children to see, or b: couldn't bear to throw away.  As it happened, 
this bad habit proved to be useful for once.  Something about a 
lawsuit, and how their ancestors were owed money, but they had to prove 
they were, indeed, related to them before they could claim any of the 
settlement.  Both Genma and Soun came from proud, warrior clans, the 
settlement most likely applied to both of them, but to be sure, they 
still had to find their family registers.  

Finally hitting the last step, and raising a cloud of dust with her 
heavy foot, Akane coughed, waving her hands before her to clear the 
air.  Her eyes grew used to the dark in a few seconds, and she gasped 
as she looked around the attic.  It was enormous.  It was dusty.  It 
was filled from top to bottom with everything that she'd never thought 
the Tendo's had owned.  

She sighed deeply, and kneeling down in the layer of dust, she began 
sifting through an old box when she heard Saotome Genma's exclamation, 
"Tendo!  I didn't know that Nodoka stored *our* family records here!"

Kasumi answered the question before either of the father's could, "Of 
course, Saotome-kun, she wanted them to stay safe."  They both looked 
at each other with an expression of skepticism, Akane knew exactly what 
they were thinking: 'Nodoka thought this place was safe?'

Akane walked over to where Genma, her father, and Kasumi all sat, 
flipping slowly through the ancient Saotome family register.  Genma's 
face lit up like Akane had never seen before.  She raised her eyebrows, 
though, in retrospect, she decided that she should have known that the 
only thing Genma (excepting food, of course) held dear in his whole 
wretched life was family.  

"The best thing about this book," he started, "is that our ancestors 
kept track of just about everything that happened to our family - 
births, deaths, marriages, acquisitions.  Just everything."  He turned 
all the way to the beginning of the book, and pressing his forefinger 
against the paper, he exclaimed, "See!  Look!  One of my great-great-
great- um, someone wrote this!  'Fujiwara Tozikoshi was killed by his 
fiancee's family, the Yings, a Chinese clan."  For the moment, Genma 
looked thoughtful, and murmured, "I remember that story from when I was 
a young boy - my Grandmother told me about it one night."

Kasumi smiled and asked, "What was the story, Saotome-san?"

"Well," Genma said dramatically, "It was said that Jin Yin, the 
youngest, most beautiful, and most intelligent daughter of the Ying 
family was betrothed to Tozikoshi at the age of five.  Tozikoshi was 
raised in China near his fiancee, and they grew to love each other."  

Akane frowned.  Genma's story sounded suspiciously familiar.  

"Anyhow, according to legend, Jin Yin was taught martial arts by 
Tozikoshi her entire life, and one day, they decided to go train at 
some lake."  Genma shrugged.  "She fell into a deep part and drowned.  
When her family found out, they blamed Tozikoshi, and drowned him in 
that same lake."  His face hardened into a frown.  "It started a feud 
between the families."  Taking a breath, he thought back a while before 
continuing, "Eventually, the remaining daughter in the Ying family 
married into another Japanese clan, the Yamato's, but after that, the 
Ying's just fell apart at the seams from all the bloodshed and 
bankruptcy of keeping a feud alive."  Slowly, he turned the page again, 
and scanning the names, he stopped on the second one from the bottom, 
the characters circled with a faded crimson line.  "See, that's the 
sign that the family member died in a feud struggle."

Akane heard a squeal in the backyard, and rising from her spot on the 
dusty floor, she made her way toward the small, gray-tinged window.  
Pressing her hands to the shaded glass, she squinted as she looked down 
into the brilliance of the afternoon sunlight, staining everything a 
painful, stark white in its glow.

And down below, she saw something that made her ache.

Yuki held an inexplicable magic, something that seemed to make Ranma's 
unhappiness disappear, and his slow, dull-witted exterior fall away 
from his deep, laughing charm.  She could bring out the best in him, 
and forgive the worst.

In that streaming sunlight that late afternoon, Akane started to 
realize why.  

There had been hints, there had been inklings of understanding, and 
there had been fevered dreams of red hair and blue eyes, mist-filled 
places where the one thing she treasured and didn't dare to love was 
taken away from her.  For all of that, Akane had never truly seen what 
Yuki was.

Now, it was clear as the light that filtered through the treetops and 
fluttered so gently to the damp skins of the people lying on the grass.  
It was an unseasonably warm day, absolutely beautiful.

Yuki was lying on her back, head at Ranma's feet, hands cupped above 
her, shooting off little circles of ki, sometimes purple, sometimes 
blue, but always beautiful.  The sparks of energy rising up into the 
sky, flashing in the light, like miniature fireworks.  Her bare legs 
made such startling contrast with the green of the grass, and her black 
t-shirt seemed to bring out the red of her hair. 

"What makes clouds?" Ranma asked, a tone of wonderment in his voice, 
his hands idly brushing the grass beside him.

Ranma lay flat beside her, eyes opened wide to the heavens, a peaceful 
smile on his face, hands linked together and making a pillow for his 
head.  There was a certain sense of serenity about him, a simple, open 
happiness that Akane hadn't had the pleasure of experiencing often, or 
for that matter, coercing from his usually mercurial temperament.  His 
dark pigtail was flailed carelessly to one side, and his blue eyes 
shimmered in the light.  The wind rustled his clothing, and his left 
foot tapped out some soundless beat in the air.

Akane smirked, thinking, 'The weather, stupid.  Condensation in the 
atmosphere gathers.  Gosh, don't you listen *ever* in class?'

Yuki smiled down below, and replied in a soft voice, "Well, according 
to textbooks, it's something to do with condensation," she paused, and 
giggling, she said, "but what I *really* think is magic."

Ranma laughed.  "You think magic makes clouds?"  The grin on his face 
was as wide as a mile, pure, unadulterated, containing no malice or 
sarcasm.  

"Why not?" Yuki asked, defensive amusement in her eyes.  "You've had no 
less than three curses at any given moment in your lifetime, and you've 
been constantly attacked by mythical creature after prince after 
monster, and you laugh at magic?"

The sun passed over a little, changing the shape of those shadows 
across their chests, and making the trees rustle ever so slightly.

"Peace, Yuki," he said slowly, a smirk on his face, "I didn't say I 
didn't believe you," he shrugged, "it's just nice to hear someone say 
something like that for once."

"Always glad to be of service," she commented.

She smiled without being teased, and gave freely what she had, without 
pettiness, and without cruelty.  Yuki had unlocked her heart, and given 
Ranma the spoils without a second thought.  

"This is nice," Ranma whispered, closing his eyes.

Yuki sighed, and rolling from her place on the ground to a standing 
position, she started to walk away, a gentle expression in her eyes, 
and her hair flying in the breeze.

Without rising from his place on the ground, Ranma said, "Later, Yuki."

And without turning back, she waved over her shoulder.  "Yeah yeah 
yeah, see you in detention."

And for some reason, their laughter echoed in the evening.

Akane slowly sunk to her knees, her numbed fingertips drawing a clear, 
clean streak against the gray dust of the windowpanes.  She couldn't 
feel her legs; she swore that she could feel nothing but the hollow 
ache in her stomach, and nothing but the burning jealousy in her soul.

But what could she do?  

What could she give him?  Her heart?  Her soul?

She had no real claim over him, just a agreement between two flawed men 
with warped minds, just a series of broken promises and crushed hopes.  
She had nothing to offer but herself, but would Ranma even accept her?  
The engagement was official, but what if the feelings weren't?  For a 
span of time in their somewhat odd courtship, Akane had been very 
nearly certain that he had feelings for her, even if they only bordered 
on mild interest, and that had fueled her.  That had made her strong.  
No one could tie down the wild horse, not Seven Lucky Gods, not 
incredible feats of magic and martial arts; if Ranma didn't love her, 
no engagement would change that.  Not even honor and its implication 
could make him want her.

She had hurt him so many times that he'd become numb to her anger, 
ambivalent to her pain, and more or less frightened by her happiness, 
seeing it as merely a prelude to his punishments.  There was no penance 
now that could right that, not when there was someone else who had 
never placed scars across his heart to begin with.

Yuki was everything to him.

She was beautiful and fresh and wild and free.  Open and honest, 
simply, impossibly, wonderfully beautiful.  He delighted in her 
happiness, and smiled when she was content because it made him calm.  
She had reached into his beautiful blue eyes and brushed the soul 
beneath.  First shy caresses, and now, she was deeply woven into the 
fibers of his heart, the very center of his being.  She didn't care if 
he was stupid or rash: she could forgive; she could love.

Akane felt herself slump against the wall, ignored by her father and 
Mr. Saotome as they quietly snuck downstairs to avoid the oncoming 
storm, and carefully watched by Kasumi.  

And while she wanted to cry, she instead felt angry.

'Yuki,' she thought hatefully, 'he's mine, Yuki.  You can't have him.  
I don't care about whether or not you're happy.  He's mine.  And I'll 
make you see it - one way or another.'

^*^*^

Akane winced at the memory.

She had been angry.  Angry enough to do something that would shatter 
the punctuated calm of her existence, and bring her more pain than 
anything else she would ever know.

She slowly turned her thoughts back to her sister.

'I'm so sorry, Kasumi.  So terribly sorry,' she whispered silently, her 
mind's voice so heavy and thick with her sadness.  'Because, you see, 
though you'll never believe me, I know what it feels like to lose 
something you wanted so desperately to possess.'  She bit back the sob 
that made its way to her lips.  'Because I know what it's like to see 
happiness, and then watch it die.'

^*^*^

Ryoga was lost.

Though, for the first time ever, not literally. 

He'd finally realized what life had been subtly telling him all along.  
He didn't have the foggiest idea what love was.  He hadn't even come 
close to touching the surface of true devotion, never even breathed the 
thick, opiate smoke of possession, never felt honest, unyielding lust 
for the flesh and mind and soul of another.

He'd convinced himself that a crush was enough.

The seed had been planted when he'd seen the apathetic way Akane had 
responded to their wedding, it had germinated when she forgot things, 
and it had grown in the shadows of his own self-doubt.  

He growled softly, berating himself for being so selfish that he'd 
worry about his own happiness when Kasumi had lost hers.  She was a 
sister, a friend, a confidant. The one person who had helped him keep 
his curse a secret from Akane.

She hadn't wanted to, but she'd weighed her options.  Tell the truth 
and watch Akane's heart break, again, or keep it secret, and live a sin 
in return for a moment of happiness?  Naturally, Kasumi, being Kasumi, 
had chosen the latter of the two.

Slowly, he picked up the phone in the dojo office; he started dialing 
the number of the caterers, his mind whirring quietly for the familiar 
digits belonging to the priest, the florist, and the band.

The wedding needed to be cancelled. 

^*^*^

She always talked so colorfully, giving everything a shimmer and a 
taste and a scent.  She made things come alive with her words, brought 
into the dull hospital room dragons and fairies and inept cab drivers.  
Parading them one by one through the doorway of her eyes and mouth and 
had them reenact their stories before his very eyes.

Naka supposed that he was one of those rare, lucky individuals who had 
someone who persisted on caring even when he'd given up trying.  Even 
as he ignored her and did not give response to her questions - she kept 
talking, kept telling, kept hoping.  Hers was the kind of optimism that 
did not extinguish itself.  

Fujikara-sensei was otherwise detained as of late, for some strange 
reason that Kimiko-san refused to tell him.  But whenever she mentioned 
it, there was a twinkle in her gaze.  "He's working on some official 
business, Naka, don't worry, he'll be back soon."

And now - something had caught his eye.  The corner of something she 
was working on, something dark with pencil lines and gray with dirty 
fingerprints.

"What are you doing?" Naka asked, seeing that for the fourth day in a 
row, Kimiko was bent over a sheaf of papers, sketching and erasing and 
redrawing.  She looked up toward him, a smudge of gray-silver from the 
pencils on her face, giving her a childish, innocent appearance, a 
little girl who had just been broken of her reverie, uncaring of how 
she looked, covered with her fingerpaints and mud.

She gave no indication that she was even a bit surprised that he was 
breaking his many days long silence.  She looked down to the pad of 
papers, and grinning, she replied, "I'm just working on something - 
would you like to see it?"

He nodded and she held the pad up carefully.

He gasped.

It was a stunningly detailed pencil sketch of an enormous house.  With 
lines and angles shaded with a sort of casual familiarity, as if she'd 
seen it a million times before.  Though Naka didn't know how it could 
have happened - there weren't houses like that anywhere in urban Tokyo.

"That's beautiful, Kimiko-san," he whispered, "Did you grow up in that 
house?"

She turned to stare at it for a moment, an odd, mournful expression in 
her blue eyes, "No, Naka-kun, but Soichi did," she hid the ages-old 
pain behind a mask and smiled brightly at the boy, "Maybe you could ask 
him about it later."  She cleared her throat and set the paper aside.  
Pressing her hands flat against the tops of her thighs, she glanced 
furtively toward him over the tops of her glasses.

"Naka-kun," she started slowly, "I have a proposition for you."

^*^*^

Nabiki tapped her finger on the edge of her desk and frowned, there 
were things to do, words to say, and actions to be carried out.

Kasumi had been taken into the hospital a week ago, suffering a 
miscarriage.  A baby that she'd kept secret from Tofu, hoping to tell 
him on their anniversary only two days away.  Her sister was 
heartbroken.

And all she could think of was how this could help her appease her 
conscience, pay the debts of her past.  Nabiki sneered in disgust at 
herself, glaring into the Tokyo skyline, staring distantly at one large 
glass and metal building.  A building that, on the twenty-second floor, 
possessed a secret that would destroy the calm of Nerima, free her from 
the guilt she'd carried with her for a decade, and one that could 
soothe Kasumi's soul.

Startling her out of her reverie, the phone rang, a shrill, impatient 
noise filling the room and making her jump at the sound.  She lunged 
forward toward the handset, and quickly pressing the 'talk' button, she 
gasped out, "What's wrong?" her voice was urgent with worry.  Could 
there have been another complication in Kasumi's condition?  Had 
something else gone bad?

She was met with silence over the line.  And after half a minute of 
this treatment, a voice replied, "I have the information that you 
wanted, Tendo-san.  And I'm calling to set up a time to meet and 
exchange papers."

At first, she was confused.  No one who she regularly contacted for 
information was this formal in their speech, hell, half of them 
couldn't speak in a complete sentence - having been holed up with their 
computers hacking their way into the United States Department of 
Defense files for half their life.  Her mind whirred through her mental 
archives, desperately trying to place the voice with a face.

And she finally hit upon something that wouldn't necessarily be right, 
but couldn't possibly be any more wrong than her other guesses.

"Kuzio-kun?" she whispered strangely.

There was a nervous cough over the phone line before, "Tendo-san, 
please, don't address me in such an informal manner," he paused, and 
now, with renewed derision and a hint of bitterness tainting his soft, 
mellow tone, he said, "After all, you pay me to do the work, I haven't 
got any right to anything, least of all earning your respect and 
admiration."

If Nabiki could have kicked herself with looking like a total ass at 
that moment, she would have done it.  She sighed darkly, and in as 
remorseful and as humble a tone as Tendo Nabiki could muster, she said, 
"Kuzio-kun, I apologize for the way I treated you earlier.  It was 
unfair of me to talk to you in such a low manner, you deserve more than 
the respect I afford you," she winced as she heard herself go on, ego 
slowly shrinking as the words kept flowing from between her lips, "and 
you have done more than enough to earn my admiration in these years we 
have been in contact."

Then there was silence over the phone line.

Moments later, she heard Kuzio laugh boldly into the phone, "I *knew* 
it!  I just *knew* it!"

Nabiki felt her hackles rise and her face turn dark red, "Knew what?  
And why the hell are you laughing?"

In between inextinguishable chuckles, he managed to choke out, "It was 
*so* easy once I realized how to get to you, Nabiki!  All someone has 
to do to drive you insane is to *ignore* you!  A week, maybe two, but 
being disregarded drives you up the wall more than any kind of yelling 
or pestering could ever do!"  She heard him laughing again as she 
crossed her arms hatefully over her chest, her heart thumping wildly in 
humiliation and muted fury.  "At any rate, Nabiki, I forgive your 
little tantrum."

For a moment, her eyes sparked, and opening her mouth, she was about to 
bark about how she didn't *need* his forgiveness, and that she *didn't* 
mind being ignored by him, not at all! - when Kuzio's voice stopped 
her.

"I missed talking to you," he said softly, shy now, "I hate to admit 
it, Nabiki, but for all those flowery declarations of love that I spout 
at you all the time, and all those rejections you so eloquently hand 
back," he fell silent for a moment, and started again, his voice barely 
above a whisper, "I realized that I missed hearing you tell me that I 
didn't have a chance."  She could hear his rueful smile over the phone.  
"Strangely masochistic, isn't it?"

Nabiki took a deep breath.  She turned her head to glance out the 
window, at the slowly setting sun, a liquid red sphere that dipped 
itself lower and lower into the jagged skyline of urban Tokyo.  

It was undeniable now; there was no way she could avoid it.  There was 
something in her that refused to be silenced, and after all those years 
of focusing on money and on power, she'd stumbled upon what she could 
not sway nor purchase with the power of the yen.  Kuzio wasn't some 
perfect prize to be jumped at, and neither was she.  They both had 
their flaws, too sarcastic, callous, and thoughtless in their actions.  
They could hurt each other so badly, but they could also bring such 
joy.

She'd never taken a chance on something she didn't know for sure would 
turn out in her favor -

But there was a first time for everything.

"Kuzio-kun," she said softly, idly running her fingers through her 
hair, "could we talk over coffee?"

^*^*^

On the east side of Nerima, near the docks, a trill of voices went up 
in the night.  One old, one new, and one very, very solemn.  None of 
them sounded too happy.

"[Great-Great-Grandmother-]" whispered a small, purple-haired child, 
her eyes the color of autumn leaves.  She clung to the old woman's 
hands, the contrast between her tender, sun-soaked and golden flesh 
making the skin on elder so much more tired.  The girl couldn't have 
been any older than eleven years old, bright and filled with a 
inexhaustible energy that only children and a few, lucky adults manage 
to possess.

"Call me 'Grandmother,' child, and remember to speak in Japanese," the 
elder cautioned, lovingly bopping the child on the crown of her head, a 
smile on her aged face.

"It's important that you learn another language, Orchid, it will prove 
useful in your adulthood," the lavender-haired matron reproached.  She 
stepped quietly just under a beam from a streetlight, the nearly-neon 
light falling gracelessly to her face and hair.  She must have been 
beautiful in a past life, in her youth; she would have been stunning, 
the bright eyes, and curved red lips, and her pale, porcelain skin, the 
smoothness of her figure, and the curve of her cheek.  

The old woman snorted derisively, "Says the woman who spent nearly a 
year of her life referring to herself in the third person."

The woman scowled, and in a winsome tone of voice, she muttered, 
"Shampoo no appreciate that."

The young child laughed, and clapping her hands, she giggled, "Mom, 
you- you talk funny, really talk like that, long ago?"

Shampoo gave barely a glimpse of a smile before ruffling the child's 
hair, "Yes, I did.  I didn't bother to study my grammar very much," she 
paused, and looking serious, she asked, "But you will, right?"

The child pouted.  "Yes."

"That's my good child," Shampoo whispered happily.  "My wonderful 
miracle."

For that moment, Cologne watched Shampoo, standing there in the 
lamplight with her daughter, and stared at the color of Orchid's eyes.  
They were a strange gray, cool and blue and wonderfully deep.  They 
were so strangely familiar, and at that same time, so wonderfully 
impossible. 

And she started to remember a piece of some broken memory, long buried 
in hopes of numbing the pain that came with it.

^*^*^

Nerima 
12 years 11 months previous

Mousse was confused.

He was *positively* certain that Tanakawa Yuki hated him, without a 
doubt.  Why wouldn't she?  He'd spent the first two days he'd known her 
attacking her, *convinced* that she was another one of Ranma's horrible 
ecchi ploys to steal Shampoo's virginal innocence away from its 
rightful owner, himself.  

So why was she being nice?

"Stupid Mousse," she murmured, wrapping a bandage around his arm and 
shaking her head, "why do you always throw yourself at her to be beaten 
when she's in a bad mood?  I mean, if you're trying to cheer her up, 
buy her punching bag instead of being one yourself."  And tucking a 
strand of red hair behind her ear, she sighed and leaned back on the 
chair, surveying her handiwork.

She had discovered him a quivering, bleeding, bruised mass in the ally 
behind the Nekohanten - a victim of Shampoo's bad humors and 
indirectly, Ranma's insensitivity.  And with a long suffering sigh, 
she'd dragged him into the restaurant, half-carried, half-pulled him up 
the steps, and dropped him down into a bed.  

But that wasn't enough for her, it seemed.

So she had stayed, making him some tea and bandaging up a few hard to 
move places, spraying him with bactine as kindly as anyone could, and 
chattering happily in his ear.

"Look, Yuki-san," he said, his voice confused, "I don't mean to be rude 
but," he paused, "why are you helping me?"

She looked confused for one moment, her eyes curiously blue in the 
afternoon sunlight.  She was holding one end of a roll of medical tape, 
and tugging off of lengthy strand, she tore into it with her teeth, 
ripping it from the roll.  And with it still hanging from her lips, she 
asked:

"Vah vu oo ween?"  And taking the tape from her mouth, she blushed 
shyly and repeated, "What do you mean?"

Mousse fought the urge to twiddle his thumbs, and said slowly, "Well, 
to tell the truth, Yuki-san, I haven't really been very nice to you 
since I met you," and listening to her laughter in the background, he 
continued, his voice somber, "so why are you being so nice to me?"

Yuki frowned, and grabbing his other arm, she started to bandage up a 
cut he'd sustained when Shampoo threw him out a window.  She sighed.  
"That's the thing I don't understand about this city, before I moved 
here, I used martial arts exclusively in the dojo, and on rare 
occasions, I used it to break up fights."  She gently dabbed the wound 
with rubbing alcohol, apologizing softly when he winced.  "Since I've 
moved to Nerima, I fight *at least* once a day, whether its because of 
Kuno or Ryoga or one of a million other reasons."  With the utmost 
care, she carefully placed a folded piece of gauze over the cut, and 
started wrapping the tape about his arm.  "And ever after all the 
carnage I see you guys deal to one another, I can't stand to see anyone 
hurt."

Mousse looked at her for a beat, an expression of respect in his eyes, 
an amused smile on his face.  He needed a friend.

And smirking, he asked saucily, "Even Kuno?"

She stopped, and raising an eyebrow at his expression, she grinned, 
saying, "Well, maybe not Kuno."  And they both laughed, comfortable in 
each other's presence at that moment.  As her giggles subsided, she 
asked, "Why'd she beat you up this time, anyhow?"

He rolled his eyes.  "Why else?  I asked her on a date when she was in 
a bad mood."

She stared at him for a second.  "And you say you love this girl?"  He 
nodded, vehemently, and Yuki whistled softly.  "I don't understand the 
masochism here, either."  She let her eyes drift out a window, a dark, 
longing expression in them.  "They come, they go, and sure, they're 
beautiful, but the way they treat people, it's inexcusable.  Sometimes, 
I think it's because they love them too much, others, I think it's just 
cruelty."  Her voice was soft.

"Who is 'they'?  And who is 'them'?" Mouse asked.

Yuki looked surprised that he didn't know.  "Why," she said, "the girls 
and boys of Nerima, of course!"  She laughed ruefully.  "Starting off, 
there's Kuno, who just couldn't get a clue about the 'pigtailed girl' 
or Akane if his life depended on it.  And then there's you," she 
paused, "who could beat Shampoo for her hand in marriage but loves her 
too much to hurt her," he found himself blushing as she whispered, "and 
Ranma."

Mousse bit his lip.  He wasn't as dense as most people took him for; he 
knew that Yuki loved Ranma, or at the very least, liked him a great 
deal.  He knew that it hurt her to see him with his fiancee, especially 
a fiancee who didn't appreciate him.  'I know how you feel, Yuki-san,' 
he thought quietly.

She laughed sadly and whispered, "Ranma who loves Akane too much to - " 
she cut herself off abruptly.  Forcing a smile and standing up to go, 
she said, "Sorry, Mousse-san, my mouth has run away with me."  She 
grabbed her bookbag, and standing up, she said, "Sorry, I'll - I'll 
leave you alone now."

Mousse found himself saying, "Wait!  Hold on!  Lets just talk a little 
longer."  Whether it was because he was lonely, or he felt that she was 
lonely, neither really knew.

For some strange reason, his request that they talk a while became an 
afternoon of conversation.

"Are you sad here, Yuki-san?"

"Not sad, Mousse, maybe regretful."

"Why regretful?"

"You know what it's like to want something, and know you can't have it 
no matter how hard you try."

"And yet I hope."

And oddly enough, that grew to include the occasional phone call.

"Look, either tell me whether or not you're going to deliver my ramen, 
or else I'm going to hang up."

"Just one more question!"  

And lots of walks.  

"Mousse!  Watch out, that's a-"

"OW!"

"...Never mind."

Midnight meetings on rooftops to compare notes on the latest Nerima 
fight.

"So Ryoga fought Ranma again?  Who won?"

"Well, wonder-boy pulled the Saotome Secret Technique the first time 
around until he figured out how to perfect his latest Thunderfist."

"Right, so it was a draw and neither will dignify it?"

Learning techniques.

"Look, I like my t-shirt."

"How are you going to hide chains in your t-shirt?"

"I don't *want* to hide chains in my t-shirt!  I just want to learn 
another speed technique!  I'm not very big, so speed is going to be 
what I depend on!"

"But- but- chains, knives, grenades!"

"NO!"

And throwing things at each other during spats.

"OW!  Didn't you say you weren't going to hide chains?"

"And *that's* for throwing my words back in my face!"

For some strange reason, Mousse became her friend.

"Why don't you try talking to her instead of proclaiming your love all 
the time?"

"You think that'll work?"

"Do you even know what a woman *is*, Mousse?"

While Shampoo and Cologne weren't looking, things changed.  It was 
subtle at first, the feeling that something just wasn't right, that 
something was missing.  First the glomps and embarrassing attempts to 
win the lavender-haired Amazon's affections disappeared.  Mousse 
started wearing a new pair of glasses, ones that didn't look quite so 
goofy.  He grew quieter, and smiled more.  Shampoo's rejections stopped 
being so terribly painful to him, and her affirmations grew sweeter.  
Somewhere in between Shampoo ignoring him, Mousse had grown up quite a 
bit.

"What Mousse doing?" Shampoo asked quietly, watching him with a curious 
expression in her eyes.  He was reading a book, endlessly slowly, he'd 
been at it for days, and he was barely past page ten.  He glanced 
upward at her, the light from his gray-blue eyes catching her by 
surprise.

"[Shampoo, speak Mandarin when Cologne isn't around, no one is going to 
punish you for being Chinese here,]" he said, his voice matter-of-fact 
and confident.  

She frowned.  "[Since when did you grow a backbone?]"

He shrugged, blushing slightly as he turned back to the book, 
murmuring, "[I'm a very different person than who I was when I first 
came to Japan, Shampoo.]"  He paused, looking up at her quickly.  "[Do 
you think that I've changed a lot?]"

She raised an eyebrow and sat down on the side of Mousse's bed, 
directly across from his desk and chair where he always slaved over the 
book.  Smirking, she said, "[Well, you don't grab me anymore, and you 
got a new prescription and new glasses that you'll wear, so you don't 
grab other people anymore, either.]"  Mousse had the good nature to 
blush bright red.  And laughing, Shampoo continued, "[I find not being 
manhandled rather pleasant.]"

"[I do apologize for my previous actions, Shampoo. In Yuki's words, I 
was being an ass.]"

Shampoo looked solemn at that.  "[You two seem to be spending an awful 
lot of time together, Mousse.  You and Yuki, I mean.]"

He smirked.  "[Jealous?]"

"[Of course not!]" she stuttered, bright red at the very thought of 
being jealous over *Mousse*.  "[I was simply inquiring about your new 
friend, nothing more.]"

Mousse nodded, a sad smile on hi face, "[I know you're not jealous, 
Shampoo,]" he paused, "[but it would be nice if you even pretended, 
just one time.]"  Shampoo felt a stabbing pain in her heart at his 
words, and tentatively, she reached her hand out to his, and brushing 
lightly against his knuckles, she whispered:

"You be surprised, Mousse, how jealous Shampoo be sometime."  He looked 
up at her in surprise.  "It hard to say in Chinese, strange, no?  I can 
say in Japanese, but not own words."  She stared down at her feet, 
murmuring, "Mousse always weak around Shampoo, make me shame, did 
Shampoo make you that way?"  She lifted her chin and stared at Mousse's 
face, tears welling up in her eyes, "Then Shampoo see Mousse with 
Yuki," she sighed softly, "Mousse strong with Yuki."

She stood up, walking quietly across the room; she hesitated at the 
door, turning around slightly to ask, "What book Mousse read?"

"It's called 'To Kill a Mockingbird'," he answered, his voice oddly 
dreamlike, confused by her words, and shocked by the sincerity of her 
tone.  She'd never spoken so honestly about her feelings before, much 
less spoken so honestly about her feelings to *him*.  He'd never known 
that he'd seemed weak in her eyes, his fumbling proposals and requests 
had always been made with the best of intentions, and warmest 
affection, how could he have known that they would have come off...so 
unattractive?

Shampoo smiled wanly, her hand on his doorframe, "Yuki tell you read, 
yes?"  He nodded.  "What it about?"

Mousse's throat went dry for half a beat before he replied, "A very 
strong man," nearly choking on the irony of the statement.

Shampoo turned away.  "Maybe that her secret."

She left, abandoning Mousse to a thousand questions wrought by a 
tortured mind.  They screamed through the cool, gray-blue of his eyes, 
strange and mystical and singular, leaving in their wake sparkles of 
light.  The answer came shortly, 'I think,' he thought, 'I think I have 
a chance.'

^*^*^

There was no explanation save for magic as to explain the miracle of 
Orchid's birth.  Shampoo was not married, and as far as Cologne knew, 
none of her lovers had eyes quite like that.  

Orchid's father by public recognition was Mousse.

How it could be, no one quite knew.

Mousse died in Nerima, years before Orchid was even born, years before 
Shampoo became pregnant.

But Cologne had long since stopped asking Shampoo questions her great-
Granddaughter didn't want to answer, and she'd nearly forgotten the 
strangeness of Orchid's existence.  

Being in Nerima made her curious.

^*^*^

"This is your house?" Naka asked softly, an awed tone in his voice, 
looking around at his lush surroundings.

Kimiko laughed, tossing her jacket onto the sofa.  "Don't be fooled, 
Naka-kun, we're not wealthy or anything.  It's sort of a bargaining 
thing."  She paused.  "I do all the advertising layouts for Sakura 
Towers, and we get this apartment rent-free."

Naka raised his eyebrows.  "Pretty sweet deal, Kimiko-san."

She smiled.  "Isn't it?"  She took Soichi's hand, and helping him limp 
into the bedroom, she said over her shoulder, "Naka, could you just 
wait out here for a second?  I'm going to help Soichi to bed, and I'll 
be right back out."

Soichi grimaced and moaned, "If you were *really* going to help me to 
bed you'd do lovely, ecchi things to my poor, abused body."  Naka 
laughed out loud.  Kimiko slapped Soichi upside his head, a smile on 
her face.  Soichi smirked, muttering, "How you got knocked up with that 
sort of attitude toward me, I'll never know."  He winked 
conspiratorially toward Naka, and submitted to Kimiko's attempts to 
move him.

The limping husband and the redhead wife disappeared into the doorway 
of the bedroom.  The sound of cloth rustling was heard, and the soft 
sound of bedsprings being depressed.

"Come on, I'm sure he won't mind getting his sex education now..."

"Would you just shut up and go to sleep?"

There was a soft chuckle, and then Soichi's voice, low and solemn, "I 
love you, you know that?"

"I never doubt it."

Moments later, she reappeared in the living room, greeted by Naka's 
surprised question, "You're pregnant?"

She blushed prettily, and tucking a strand of dark red hair behind one 
ear, she took Naka's arm, keeping him steady as she walked him toward a 
room down the hall.  "Yeah," she said, her voice warm.  "Sorry we 
didn't tell you earlier."  She stopped in front of a closed door, and 
fumbling with the doorknob for a moment, she apologized:

"I hope you like the room, Naka-kun.  It's the best I could do with 
such short notice."  

And she pushed open the door.

A double bed was pressed against a wall.  Opposite that, a slanted, 
flat, design desk, and a bookshelf full of hundreds of markers, pens, 
inks, pastels, papers, paints, and endless other art supplies was 
behind it.  There was a small bureau and an open door revealed a tiny 
closet.

But what caught Naka's attention was the view.

It was incredible.  One entire wall was an enormous picture window.  It 
had wide, vertical blinds that were all pushed to the far right side.  
Through that spotless glass was the most amazing cityscape Naka had 
ever seen.  The neon glow of Tokyo was lit in all its electrical glory, 
purples and pinks and greens and yellows spelling out words and 
lighting up buildings.  Endless pinpoints of glowing light were 
scattered across the vast blackness of night.

For a moment, he was so caught up in the swirl of light and dark and 
life that he forgot that his parents were gone, something as painful 
and real as the stark, cruel ebony of the midnight sky.

"It's beautiful," he gasped.  Kimiko smiled gently, helping him toward 
the double bed as he just stared out that window.  He eased himself 
down slowly, wincing as he felt his ribs ache, but that pain was still 
overshadowed by the awe he felt at the sight before him.  

Kimiko sat down on the bed next to him, her hands pressed flat against 
the bed, propping herself up, an enchanted expression on her face.  
"Isn't it?"  She paused, quiet for a second, "This used to be my 
office, Naka, and I used to come in here late at night, sit at that 
desk, and just stare out at the lights."  Her face grew serious for a 
moment, "It makes you realize how absolutely gorgeous it is, doesn't 
it, Naka?"

"How absolutely gorgeous what is?" he asked.

She shrugged.  "Everything."  And turning to him quickly, she said, 
"Alright, enough with my nostalgia.  Come on."  She stood up and ran 
out of the room, returning in a few seconds with his duffle bag and 
suitcase.  Throwing open the suitcase, she dug through it for a few 
moments and found his pajamas.

Naka turned bright red as she came at him with the clothes in her 
hands.  "You're - you're not going to dress me, are you?"  She raised 
an eyebrow at his facial expression.

"Naka, you're recovering from three broken ribs, you've got a ten 
stitches in your right arm," she smirked at him and crossed her arms 
over her chest, still holding his pajama top in her hands, "and you're 
honestly protesting a little help?"

He sighed miserably and closed his eyes, "Fine."

Kimiko rolled her eyes, and started pulling at the hem his gray t-
shirt, commenting softly, "Did you know, Naka, that I lost my parents 
when I was your age?"  With a quiet apology, she tugged it up and over 
his head, easing it down his bruised arms.  She helped him put his arms 
through the sleeves of the pajama shirt and didn't meet his eyes as she 
continued to talk:

"It was strange, and scary, and it hurt," she whispered.  "I didn't 
know what to do, I was all alone.  I didn't have any older brothers or 
sisters.  And I had to take care of a friend," her voice died for a 
moment, "who was very, very sick."  

She told him to lie back in the bed, and tugged off the soft, worn 
sweatpants he was wearing.  Smiling gently at his embarrassed 
expression as she helped him put on the pj bottoms.  Sighing, she 
continued:

"I didn't think I'd make it.  No one would take me in, and no one would 
help me or my friend."  She sighed, throwing open the covers and 
waiting until he slid under them before tucking the sheets back around 
him, warm and safe.  She stroked his hair as she sat down on the bed, s 
soft, watery look in her eyes.  "But you know what, Naka-kun?"

"What?" he murmured, his vision blurring with exhaustion: the combined 
effect of days without real sleep, grief, and the soft, wooly covers.  

His last memory that night as his eyes fell closed was the sight of 
Kimiko, framed with the dazzle of a Tokyo night, her red hair dark and 
lustrous in the dim light, the kind expression in her blue eyes, and 
how her palm felt against his forehead.  And her voice as she said, "I 
*did* survive, Naka, and so will you; I promise."

^*^*^

When he awoke, the immediate strangeness of his surroundings assaulted 
his senses, sending him into a spinning panic.  He threw away the 
covers, bolting up in bed and then gasping for breath as the searing 
pain in his chest overwhelmed him for a brief moment.

Wincing, and slowly opening his eyes to the gray light of early morning 
once again, Naka looked around the room, finally recognizing where he 
was and why he was there.

'Mom,' he thought, 'Dad, oh, God -' he shook himself without moving his 
chest too much, an effort in and of itself, and gasping again, this 
time in a vain attempt to stop the tears, he whispered, "Why not me, 
too?"  Covering his face and ignoring the pain, he moaned, "Why leave 
me here all alone?"

It had been easier to wake up in the hospital.  He was always assured 
that upon each dawn that Kimiko would be sitting by his bedside, either 
looking like hell with her hair in the most horrific fashion, or 
looking like she normally did, kind and gentle and soft.  But she'd be 
there.  And later in the afternoon, Fujikara-sensei would sit with him, 
distracting him and talking about a million different things.  
Baseball, basketball, why it was wrong to deny teenaged boys 
pornography.  Any of a hundred strange and wonderful, funny and 
heartbreaking topics, things that the hospital reminded him of, things 
that Naka would mention.

He was never left alone with his thoughts.

Never alone with his fears.

He wanted desperately to pull himself into a small ball, and to be safe 
in the tiny confines of his breathing space, slowly dying of his grief.  
To be with his parents instead of stranded here - somewhere south of 
heaven and north of hell.  He wanted nothing more than to grieve.

But he couldn't do it.

And though the tears would come, and the pain would make him dizzy, he 
couldn't grieve.  He wasn't accepting their death; he was simply 
reacting to their disappearance from his life.  'Who'd have thought,' 
he wondered, tears running down his face and a fist in his mouth to 
stop the despairing noises from escaping, 'that I'd be praying for more 
misery.'

And he sat there for a moment more, wrapped up in the grayness of his 
middling anguish until the first chords of a song struck him.  Strange 
and hypnotic, playing softly somewhere in the apartment.

Naka rolled softly out of the bed, shuddering as his bare feet pressed 
against the cold, wooden floors.  The apartment was chilly, and he 
carefully rubbed his hands together, trying not to upset his broken 
ribs.  Walking quickly toward the door, and easing it open, Naka heard 
the music grew louder.  With one hand pressed against the wall, he 
edged toward the source of the sound, still without a clue as to what 
the lyrics of the song meant.  And finally stopping at the entryway to 
the kitchen, he saw something that made his heart slow it's panicked 
beat for just one moment:  

Kimiko and Fujikara-sensei - they were *dancing*.

Naka sighed quietly in appreciation, his eyes trapped in the haze of 
bare light and spidery shadows.  

Kimiko suddenly opened her eyes, as if someone had sent a chill through 
her, and trained her slate-blue irises on him.  For a moment, Naka was 
terrified that she would be angry with him for intruding on her private 
moments.

Without a word, she pressed her hands to Soichi's chest, separating the 
two of them, and grinning upward at him, silently asking something.  
Her husband smirked and stepped back, easing himself down into one of 
the breakfast table chairs.  

Naka furrowed his brow in confusion; at least until Kimiko turned back 
to him, blue eyes bright in the soft light.  She held out one hand, 
beckoning him to her side.  He pointed at himself, raising his eyebrows 
in surprise, and seeing her nod, he shook his head rapidly.  Laughing, 
she took three steps forward and wrapped her fingers about his hands, 
tugging him back toward the middle of the kitchen.

Without a word, she took one of his hands in her right, holding it out 
to their side, and placed the other on her waist, her lips slightly 
parted, and her hair wild.  Naka opened and closed his lips rapidly.  
Panicking, he looked to Soichi for help, silently drooping his 
shoulders.

Soichi shrugged, hiding a grin behind his hand, ignoring his patient's 
unhappy scowl.

At first, his motions were jerky, and then they were slow, cautious.  
But her smiling face, her silent encouragement edged him toward that 
greater end that she wanted.

And for the first time in forever, he felt freedom in that loose 
embrace, feeling the cool air of the room brushing by him as the music 
pulsed and moved, as she laughed, and as they twirled, watched by 
friendly eyes.

He found himself smiling the barest amount, and felt the tiniest spark 
return to his eyes as she pulled her fingers away from his shoulder and 
twirled away from him, extending their held hands, throwing her head 
back dramatically, red hair gleaming.

When she looked back up, she flashed her husband a wink before rolling 
herself back into Naka's arms, giggling and laughing, free and alive.

And suddenly he felt dizzy, wrapped up in that flurry of tiny, happy 
moments.  Shaking his head, he let go of her hands, laughing and 
retreating from her twirling, dancing form.  Setting himself down on a 
chair as Soichi once again renewed his position - hand in hand with his 
wife, cheek to cheek with half his soul, smiling all the while.

She didn't say a word to him, just quietly held Soichi with her soft, 
white arms, warm and welcoming, like a fire to a weary traveler.  

Naka watched in fascination as Soichi bent his head to his wife's, 
pressing their foreheads together, and closing his eyes.  They seemed 
so content to revel in that tiny contact, so deeply in love, and so 
connected by that brevity.  There were no feverish kisses, no heated 
groping, just gentleness, the surrender of control to something larger 
than them.  

She'd didn't push, and he didn't pull.

There was no longer any question in Naka's heart about the nature of 
love.  He didn't need to ask Fujikara-sensei how he would know what it 
was, or how to sustain it.  He'd learned everything he'd ever need to 
know about love that morning, just watching two people dance in their 
kitchen, bathed in the soft light of morning.

He remembered asking Fujikara-sensei what he thought love was, once a 
long time ago, and he recalled what he thought was a strange answer at 
the time.  "Love is motion, love is rest, love is comfort, and love is 
hate."  The doctor had grinned, raising his eyebrows.  "Love is 
everything that you'll never be able to control, and everything you'll 
desire to subdue.  Love is lust; love is gentleness.  Love is 
everything, Naka."  He had smiled.  "And one day, Naka, you will find 
*your* everything."

He'd been skeptical at the time, "That's rather ambiguous, isn't it?  I 
couldn't ever say you were wrong."  Fujikara-sensei had merely chuckled 
and shook his head.

"I could lecture you about love and all of its painful and joyful 
facets for days, Naka, but we haven't the time to explore that," he'd 
paused, "but I will assure you one thing."

"And what is that, Fujikara-sensei?" he'd asked.

The doctor had smiled, clasping his hands together and leaning forward 
in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees.  "I can promise you 
this: When you love something, or someone, Naka - you'll feel the worst 
pain and the greatest joy you'll ever known, and you'll remember that 
for the rest of your life."  He'd looked satisfied by that revelation.  
"And that is how I know you'll look back on this and see the truth of 
my words."

Naka closed his eyes as the music slowly faded from the room, feeling 
that bubbling mixture of hatred and sadness and joy fill him all at 
once.

Fujikara-sensei had been right.

Love was everything.

And that everything included grief, it included lust, it included 
happiness and loss and depression.  It was all-consuming and always 
distantly unattainable.

He opened his eyes again, to see Kimiko stand on her tiptoes and plant 
the gentlest of kisses on Soichi's lips, separating after a moment of 
contact.

'God,' he thought to himself, 'how do you survive *falling* in love, if 
loving itself is so painful?'  He didn't worry about it too much; there 
would be questions later, and Fujikara-sensei would answer them.  

This grief that wouldn't come was just part of loving his parents, part 
of growing up.  One day, he'd understand it, for now, he'd just listen 
to the reasons why.  

^*^*^

"Kasumi?" Tofu asked, his voice grave.

It had been a week of near-silence now.  She didn't say a word, just 
sat in bed, listless and pale.  He feared the worst, but hoped for the 
best.  Stroking her dark hair, he murmured, "Kasumi, please, come back 
to me.  Please, please, you can't leave me here, Kasumi."

For the first time in her life, Kasumi closed her eyes to him and 
disappeared into the endless black comfort of memory, desperately 
seeking some happier moment in her life rather than to face her 
reality, to survive her loss.  She met with resistance, her minds eye 
flooded with images of fire and hatred, of tears and of finding two 
people clinging to one another on the brink of their destruction.

"I," Kasumi whispered slowly, her voice hoarse, "I can't even remember 
nice things."  Her husband looked up in time to see her close her eyes 
again, surrendering to the darkness that contained the nightmares and 
horrors of a decade of secrets.

Akane watched from the other side of the room and wondered of what did 
Kasumi dream in that strange place halfway between death and sadness.  
Did she remember their mother's death?  Did she cry over Yuki's death?  
Or did Kasumi remember the same things that bubbled in her own heart?  
Terror of self-realization, and the beginning of loss?

Akane cursed herself, 'Why do we only remember sadness in sad times?' 
she thought, 'Shouldn't we remember what is happy?  What we hold dear?'  
Her heartbeat thudded thin and dull in her chest, like the distant, 
tired rumbling of a drum.  And the helplessness ran through her, 
filling the hollows of her soul and flooding her doubting heart.

Helplessness that had been a visitor in the turbulent spaces of a 
haunted mind before, helplessness that she'd earned through months of 
distrust, and one broken afternoon of snow and anger.

And though she feared she wouldn't survive...

And though she worried that she'd never stop...

Because her heart demanded it...

Akane sunk into the painful chill of a white-colored day, and felt 
herself drown in the memory.  The recollection of an afternoon that had 
started everything.

^*^*^

Nerima 
12 years 11 months previous

There hadn't been any significant snow in a decade and a half, so when 
the first dustings of the powder-white stuff had come down, the entire 
city had rejoiced.  Everyone took the day off from work or school or 
whatever troubled them to sit around in the blustery air and admire the 
lacy flakes that fell from the clouds.  

"Isn't this awesome?" Ranko said dreamily, her hands clasped under her 
chin in a manner that would have driven even the most hardened of uber-
kawaii-haters to smiles.  Akane scowled at the sight, while Nabiki bit 
the inside of her lip to preserve her reputation.

It was mostly Auntie Saotome's fault.

When the Saotome matriarch had visited, Ranma and Genma had done their 
usual 'Panda-chan', 'Ranko-chan' routine.  And after some initial 
fumbles and badly thought out lies, Nodoka was informed that while 
Genma was out unhappily repaying a debt (something she'd readily 
believe, considering how many debts her husband had accumulated) Ranma 
was somewhere in China, no doubt being 'manly' with many women, maybe 
even many women at the *same time*.

Nodoka nearly swooned with joy at that revelation.

While, on the other hand, Ranko-chan seemed to have a terribly hard 
time breathing thereafter.  Then again, it wasn't hard to understand.  
The idea that Ranma, her (most certainly) manly son doing something 
carnal could knock the breath out of *any* girl.

The point was this: when it had started snowing, everyone had 
immediately tumbled outdoors.  Whereupon the *strangest* thing 
happened.  Nodoka wasn't too clear on the exact sequence of events, but 
she knew what her own two eyes had seen:

There had been a flash of red hair, unbound and hanging freely, the 
same color but not the same style as Ranko's.  This was followed by a 
muffled shriek, the sound of bodies being dragged away, and then almost 
immediately, Ranko popped up again in front of her, newly dressed in a 
completely feminine outfit and hair down.  She spoke more politely, and 
for once, she seemed to be civil, if very cool toward Akane.

Needless to say, Nodoka had been delighted.  

Ranma on the other hand, back in hiding behind the house, was being 
forcibly restrained by Soun and a Panda, yelling, "NO!  NO!  Look at 
what she's doing!  The people in this town know I'm a man!  SHE'S 
SKIPPING!  YE GODS!  My reputation!"

"Quiet, son, take it like a man and let that girl make the town think 
that you're the girliest girl that ever lived!" hissed Soun 
desperately, fretting over what would happen to the dojo if it fell 
into anyone's hands *but* Ranma and Akane.  The Panda "Growf"ed in 
agreement.  

Meanwhile, Nodoka watched Ranko with an expression of surprised 
happiness, and said, "Why, Ranko-chan, you seem so changed from the 
last time I came to visit you!"  Winking girlishly, asked, "Have you 
found yourself a boyfriend, Ranko?"

"Auntie Saotome!" the girl cried, scandalized, holding a hand to her 
blushing cheek.  "Of *course* not!  Gosh - how could you even - gosh!"  
She was so flustered that Nodoka found herself laughing again even as 
she apologized to her for being so invasive.  

Akane stood at the side, watching with quiet loathing as Nodoka 
lavished attention on the redhead, wondering what had changed the 
situation so much that the Saotome matriarch would completely forsake 
her future daughter-in-law.  Nabiki tossed Akane an annoyed expression 
and whispered, "Akane, cut it out!  If you glare at her any more, 
you're going to burn a hole in the back of her skull!  And that just 
*won't* look good!"  Akane ignored the advice and continued to stare 
hatefully at the pair.

Not that they seemed to notice.

"Now, honestly, Ranko.  Why *is* it that you haven't had a boyfriend 
yet?" Nodoka pressed.

Ranko blushed again.  "Auntie, it's just that with school and martial 
arts and - " she paused, throwing up her hands in defeat, " - oh, what 
the heck, the truth is, I haven't found the right boy yet."

Nodoka smiled softly, "What kind of boy would you like?"

'Someone like my fiance,' Akane thought darkly, watching Yuki play off 
the masquerade a bit too convincingly.

"Well," Ranko said slowly, drawing the 'l' out into a long, soft sound, 
her eyes carefully studying the ground, and occasionally darting from 
side to side in nervous excitement.  "I'd want someone smart.  He'd 
have to be kind, and happy.  It would be nice if he knew martial arts, 
or if he was handsome," she blushed, "but those things aren't really 
that important to me."  She looked down shyly again.

"All very reasonable demands, Ranko-chan.  Any truly manly man - "

"Like Ranma," Nabiki interrupted, grinning.

" - Right, Nabiki-chan, like Ranma, would possess these 
characteristics," Nodoka said seriously.  She leaned down to the 
redhead, and throwing a not-too-subtle glance toward Akane, she 
whispered, "You know, Akane does not seem too fond of Ranma - so if 
that doesn't work out, *you* can always marry my son."

There was a deathly quiet where Ranko started to stutter some sort of 
protest, Nabiki winced, and Kasumi closed her eyes in frustration, 
Akane bit her lip so hard that she could taste the blood that flooded 
her mouth.

"Why - Why, Auntie!  I couldn't - Akane's his rightful fiancee," Ranko 
managed to choke out.  "I - I couldn't do that to her!"

Nodoka rolled her eyes, saying, "Pish posh!  It's an engagement between 
children, they're only teenagers, not likely to have built real 
feelings yet, and from what I can tell, Akane isn't keen on marrying 
*anyone*, right?"  She looked expectantly at the girl.

"Uh - um.  Right," Akane finally forced, feeling the irritation that 
she'd held in for the past three hours bubble to its height.

"See," Nodoka grinned triumphantly, and seeing the pallid expression on 
Ranko's face, she giggled and said, "Oh, child!  This is all just 
talking!  If we were to ever *officially* transfer the engagement to 
you, there'd have to be all sorts of things done, and we'd never make 
you marry someone you didn't love!"

'Shut up,' Yuki thought desperately, 'stop talking about it, I can 
practically *see* the anger rising off of Akane!  Don't talk about it!  
It'll only make it worse!'  And as if a prayer had been answered, 
Nodoka dropped the whole subject, and turned to admiring the house 
cloaked in snow.

The morning festivities drew to a quiet close, and as they waved 
goodbye to Nodoka, already barely a dot on the horizon, Yuki released a 
sigh, muttering, "That was close."

Ranma's fiancee scowled darkly, turning to the uncursed redhead at her 
left and saying, "Yeah, well it wouldn't have been close if *someone* 
hadn't decided to show up."

Yuki merely rolled her eyes and bore it with good-natured civility, 
content to stand there in the still-drifting snow and enjoy the 
coldness of the world for what it was.  Refreshing in a cruel, strange 
sort of way.  "Ranma's mother is wonderful."  Turning, she smiled 
brightly at Akane, saying, "Well, I'm gonna get going, I've caused 
enough chaos this morning."  But as she turned to leave, the youngest 
Tendo grabbed the girl's hand, yelling:

"WAIT!  I want to talk to you."

Yuki turned back, a curious expression on her face, and nervously, she 
started, "Well, talk then."

Akane looked around, just to make sure that no one else was there.  
Realizing that there wasn't, whipped back toward Yuki, reared her hand 
back, and slapped the girl soundly across the face.  The redhead was so 
stunned that for half a minute, she couldn't even talk.

When she gathered her breath, she became quite vocal.

"What the hell was that for?"  The only response she got was Akane 
gearing up for another strike, only this time; her hand was balled into 
a tight fist.  There was nothing like the prospect of loss to make a 
Tendo woman angry, and nothing like anger to make a Tendo woman 
dangerous.  Yuki was ready, and she had no qualms about beating up 
girls.  With a heavy hand, she caught Akane in the gut, knocking all 
the air out of her and landing the girl on her bottom in the snow.  
Panting slightly and rubbing her cheek where Akane had gotten her the 
first time around, she asked, "What is wrong with you?  I do you all a 
favor and sit in as 'Ranko-chan' and I get *beaten* for it?"

Akane stood back up, gasping for breath and hissing with deadly tone in 
her voice, "Keep away from Ranma, Yuki.  I'm not pissed off at you 
because you helped, I'm pissed off because you showed up in the first 
place!"

Yuki narrowed her eyes, and crossed her arms over her chest and said, 
"Who I visit on my own time is my own business."  Seeing Akane seethe, 
she threw in a grin just to drive the Tendo girl insane.  "I can 
understand if you're jealous, Akane," she smirked, "Ranma does have 
some very," she lowered her voice until it became very nearly lewd, 
"*very* attractive 'assets'."

Akane screamed.

Just as the two girls charged each other, the reason for the argument 
arrived on the scene, very concerned by what he saw before him.

In the grand scheme of things, the resulting events were mostly Yuki's 
fault because it was cruel to have teased Ranma's fiancee with things 
like that.  But it was virtual lunacy for Akane to try and go up 
against Saotome Ranma's best (only) student.  It wasn't Ranma's fault 
that he had horrible timing, but it probably would have been smarter 
just to back away and pray that nobody died.

Whatever the prelude, the end was the same:

Ranma, disoriented and in pain, was being slowly dragged away by Yuki.  
All the while, the redhead tried not to wince overmuch from the dull 
ache that originated from the bruised ribs she'd earned.  And Akane was 
slowly being carried toward her room, sore and utterly incensed.

She'd made phone calls afterwards; she'd called for a dramatic action 
to *do something about Yuki*.  She hadn't thought about the 
consequences of it.

Meanwhile, somewhere further away, in the pleasant setting of Yuki's 
bedroom, Ranma was being tucked under covers by gentle hands and hushed 
by soothing words, neither of the two realizing that the stage was set 
for the last months of their existence.

^*^*^

Akane closed her eyes, feeling the tears roll down her cheeks, and 
swallowing the sadness that rose in her throat.

Now wasn't the time to feel sorry for herself.

And opening her dark eyes once again, she walked to Kasumi's bedside; 
shaking Tofu, and leading him from the room to get some much needed 
rest.

She had never realized how much something like this could affect a 
family, never truly understood the ramifications of a death.  It didn't 
hurt just one person, it hurt everyone, and the pain it caused didn't 
fade in days, it lasted for as long as people persisted on loving, 
persisted on living, and persisted on remembering whomever they had 
lost.  She didn't want that kind of agony for her sister.

Only...Akane feared that Kasumi would never forget.

^*^*^

"You're late," Kuzio said nervously.  

Nabiki stared at him for a whole minute before sitting down opposite 
him at the small cafe table, and then finally said, "Um, I'm early, 
according to my watch."  

He looked at the napkin holder intently, "Oh."

She coughed quietly, and called out, "Can I have a mug of Jamaican Blue 
Mountain?  No cream, no sugar, but a little honey."  Kuzio, 
reflexively, as he had every single time he'd ever had coffee with 
Nabiki, sneered in disgust at her order.  Blue Mountain was already 
pompous enough, but to add *honey*, there had to be laws about that.  
Nabiki ignored his expression, having already grown used to annoying 
lengthy arguments about the purity of caffeine with Kuzio.  Somewhere 
in the background, there was the sound of coffee being poured and 
served, the ceramic of the cup clinking against the art-deco metal 
tables.  

This was the cafe where they had first met, a strange, confident 
creature searching for someone to find information, and then to fade 
into the background.  She wasn't an insider trader by any means, 
preferring to rely on her on intuition, but sometimes, it was nice to 
know a little extra about the companies she was investing in than they 
told in their publicity brochures.  And it was that order that had 
sparked their first conversation.  

"Jamaican Blue Mountain, eh?"  Kuzio smirked, continuing, "Wanna know 
why it's 'blue' mountain?"  He paused, waiting for her response.  She 
grinned at him, feeling the tension slowly start to dissipate.  

"Because," she started, "the Alps wouldn't put out."  She rolled her 
eyes.  "That joke's as stupid today as it was years ago."  

And their laughter filled the afternoon.

Two people clueless as to what to do together.

But terrified of what it would be apart. 

Nabiki gulped down her coffee.  She didn't feel dread very often, not 
in her line of business: one needed not only to present a visage of 
fearlessness; you need to live it.   She'd only been this frightened 
three times in her entire life.  The first, when her mother passed 
away, the second was the fateful day she watched someone start to die, 
and realized that she was the one who had facilitated her murder, and 
the third was the morning she'd seen it all end in a fiery explosion of 
hate and shame.

She bit back a sigh as her mind tugged her slowly toward the second of 
those fears.  It caressed and it teased and it promised that maybe, 
maybe if she recalled, the ending would be different.

^*^*^
	
Nerima
12 years 10 months previous

"I only really started letting myself think about it a couple of days 
ago," Yuki said softly.  She was sitting on the edge of the Tendo's 
porch, her legs dangling off the side.  Her eyes were far away, a pale, 
gray color on that freezing afternoon.  She looked sad and sorry all at 
the same time.  It made Nabiki's heart ache to look at this girl, but 
she couldn't move.  Her guilt cemented her to the spot.

Turning around, Yuki stared straight through Nabiki's eyes and into her 
soul.  "And it occurred to me that whoever posted those flyers around 
school would need information," she pushed herself up and walked three 
steps forward, now no more than inches from where Nabiki was frozen in 
place.  Her eyes were cold.  "I'm not going to do anything to you, 
Nabiki, because you gave out the information," she laughed bitterly, 
"for all I know, you just handed over a folder and never read the 
contents."  She broke her gaze and looked down at the floor, "I just 
want to know who did it."  She breathed in and out softly, barely 
making a sound, waiting for Nabiki's response.

Nabiki coughed.  "W-Why do you think that I could tell you that?"  Her 
voice was trembling; she could hear it so loud in the echoing silence 
of the dojo.

Why today of all days?  Why did Kasumi and Akane and Ranma and the 
fathers leave the house?  Why did they abandon her at the mercy of 
guilt and retribution?

She had suspected after the posters had been found all over the 
schools, she'd had the tickling fear that it was her folder of 
information that had led Ryoga down the primrose path to an ultimate 
cruelty.  She's spent three sleepless nights worrying, and then, she'd 
tracked the lost boy down, and asked him herself.  His reply had made 
her scream.

But she wasn't prepared to admit her part in the sin.

Yuki stared at her, eyes cold.  "Because if you don't, then what people 
say about you is true; then you'll have proven that you don't have a 
soul."  She took a deep breath.  "Because if you don't, then I'd be 
ashamed to claim that you're a woman, that you're like me, Nabiki."  
She paused.  "You *know* what that was like for me, you should know 
what it would be like for you."  She turned and stared away.  "I just 
want to know who did it."

Nabiki swallowed hard, and realized that she had reached a crossroads.

Before this day, she'd never thought to betray her clients, and she'd 
never, ever given a second thought to any of a million amoral things 
she'd done for the greater good of her finances.  'But,' she thought 
mournfully, 'even I think I went too far - do I tell her, or do I keep 
to my ethics?'

And she almost laughed, standing there inches away from someone she'd 
helped break, she almost burst into fits of giggles.  It was strange 
that she'd use the word 'ethics' to describe her business standards, 
because that's what they were based on, weren't they?  Or at the very 
least, a *lack* thereof.

"Don't you ever look at yourself in the mirror, Nabiki?" Yuki asked 
softly.  "Don't you ever wonder, 'What have I *become*?'"  Yuki 
stopped, staring at the Tendo girl for a moment longer.  "For once 
wouldn't you like to be able to answer, 'Someone good'?"

The wind whistled outside, capturing in its coldness the last leaves of 
autumn past, and the barest traces of the recent snowfall.  And while 
the world outside kept turning, everything had stopped in the quietude 
of her mind.

Looking at the road signs on either side of her choices, Nabiki bit her 
lip, thinking hard.  To choose the easy way out, to swallow the secret 
and consume her shame, ignoring it as it left her, or to expose it and 
suffer, letting it leave scars where she'd point to one day, citing it 
as a lesson learned?

"Yuki," Nabiki whispered, "if I tell you must never tell anyone else."  
The redhead nodded, saying:

"I wasn't planning on it."  She paused.  "I have no desire to exact 
revenge on whoever did this, Nabiki.  If I try, Ranma will find out, 
and if he knows, then there will be consequences."  She bit back tears.  
"I just can't sleep if it keeps going like this."  It was sick 
curiosity, futile passion for knowing something that could hurt her.  

'She has to know,' Nabiki thought softly.  'God, she actually *has* to 
know.'

In that afternoon, the secret was broken, the silence of a darkness 
withheld shattered, and the ends, for once, justified the means.  While 
Nabiki sat sill in her room, running her forefinger across her lower 
lip slowly in thought, Yuki wandered out into the street, falling into 
step next to a familiar, dark-haired boy.

Her secrets her own, and Nabiki's no longer.

There were things Yuki would never tell anyone.  And there were things 
that Ranma would never know.  But Nabiki understood that; she respected 
it.  For the first time, she respected herself for breaking a trust.

^*^*^

Nabiki sighed as the memory left her, filtering away in the scent of 
good, strong coffee, and the soft, nearly undetectable smell of panic 
and earth on her companion.

She smiled softly, looking up to meet Kuzio's eyes.

She'd learned something that afternoon long ago - that secrets kept 
were not necessarily good, and that telling someone something that 
wasn't theirs to know wouldn't necessarily end in disaster.

'Who knows,' she thought to herself, still smiling at the man before 
her, 'maybe it's time I tell him a secret of my own.'

^*^*^

"I don't want to talk about it," she said firmly.  Her back was turned 
to him, and all he could see was her flame-red hair and the color of 
her pajamas.  Her shoulders were tensed, and Ranma found himself 
frowning at her.

Sighing, he asked, "Why not?  It's not like I'm asking you to remove a 
body part!  It's just a prenatal check up."

There was such a thing as the maturity factor in their relationship.  
It was constantly in flux.  While on the whole, Kimiko found it 
delightful to be frivolous and fanciful, giggling and acting like a 
teenager, she couldn't.  And while on the whole, Soichi would have 
liked nothing better than to tinker with his computer all day and 
practice katas, he couldn't do that, either.  But for both of them to 
be horribly stately and reasonable on a consistent basis, there would 
be necessary divine intervention.  And sometimes, Soichi feared that 
not even the archangel Uriel would be able to make a good decision.

So they took turns.

Sometimes, Kimiko would be the one who dragged him away from the newest 
Playstation 2 games display, and sometimes, it was Soichi who would 
literally have to tug her step by step from the frosted, sugary, candy-
store window.

It was a matter of situation.

'Obviously,' Soichi thought darkly, watching his wife's shoulder's 
tense again, 'it's my turn to be the grown-up.'

She whirled around to him, eyes shadowed.  "Look, I don't want to fight 
with you about this, okay?  I'm just not going.  That's final."  She 
was certainly serious about it, the way her face was set, how her mouth 
had been drawn into a fine, pale pink line, and how her hands grasped 
the edge of the counter hard enough to snap it into pieces - all of 
these things promised an argument if he pursued it.

But - but this was a *baby*.  This was *their* baby.

How could he *not* pursue it?

He growled, "How can that be final?  It's a necessary medical and natal 
health procedure!"  She stared blankly at him as he continued, 
"Thousands of women all over Japan get them every day.  It's a visit to 
a damn doctor!"  He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him gently, 
"Look," his voice much softer now, "I don't know why you're so dead set 
against this, but-"

She looked up at him, blue eyes watery.  "Please, I don't want to go."  
Her voice was hoarse, and filled with tears that she didn't want to 
shed there in that kitchen.  Taking a deep breath, the ugly, violent 
side of herself rising, she whispered, "And you can't make me."

Soichi probably would have sighed and let the subject drop for the 
morning if only she hadn't added "And you can't make me."  He probably 
would have bitten back whatever response was planning on falling out of 
his mouth and walked away; content on deeply exploring why his wife 
would be so against the doctor.  She didn't seem to mind her physician, 
but the gynecologist, what was the big difference?  

He probably wouldn't have said something cruel and stupid.

But then again, Kimiko said something dumb, too.

In the grand scheme of things, it was probably destined to happen.

"I can't believe you!" he yelled.  "What the hell is wrong with you!  
Don't you love this baby at all?  Or are you so fucking prepared to add 
another chapter of melodrama in your life because of a miscarriage?"  

He gasped as the words left his mouth, and she gaped at him in wide-
eyed wonder.  'Oh, fuck,' he thought to himself in horror.

She would have cried, but she couldn't breathe, and she couldn't gasp 
to get the tears out.  She would have screamed, but she couldn't talk, 
she couldn't see to shout.

She stood there in trembling silence for a few moments more, frozen by 
the darkness in his accusation.

^*^*^

Naka ventured out of his room for the second morning, yawning, a faint 
smile on his face as he remembered what he'd come upon the day before.  
'What's up for today?' he wondered briefly, 'Giving each other flowers, 
love poems?' he chuckled under his breath.

As he walked toward the kitchen, he heard a splash of water and a woman 
yelp in surprise.  Grinning, he stopped to listen - hoping that he 
wouldn't intrude again.  
 
"You asshole," Kimiko's voice hissed, tear-soaked and heavy with anger 
and frustration.  "How could you - how could you ever say *that* to 
me?! "

Naka's eyes grew wide.  'Crap,' he thought, 'they're having an 
argument.'  He winced.  'And from the sound of it, a bad one, too.'

There was another space of quiet before a slap echoed throughout the 
apartment, the sound of a palm against someone's cheek loud and 
splintering in the morning. 

Though, not as loud as the sound of a woman's scream.

Naka's mouth fell open.  'Oh, no - Kimiko-san,' he thought in a panic, 
and taking three rushed steps forward, he was just in time to see the 
redheaded woman run from the kitchen, tears streaming down her face as 
she bolted down the hall, into the bedroom, and slammed the door 
closed.

He stared down to where she'd run for a moment before a hiss of a 
steaming kettle distracted him again.  Turning back, he saw Soichi 
standing in the kitchen and staring out the window, his face was 
pensive, guilty.

And then his blue eyes brightened in that false light as he looked at 
Naka.  Sighing softly, he glanced at the ground.  Without a word, he 
passed by the boy in the hallway, not meeting his gaze as he wandered 
toward the bedroom door.

The slap still echoed in Naka's mind, shadowed by Kimiko's scream, and 
haunted by the expression on Fujikara-sensei's face - that frustration, 
the muted guilt, and the anger that still simmered underneath it all.

^*^*^

"Kimiko," he started slowly, easing the door closed behind him.  
"Kimiko."  He took three steps toward the bed, toward the curled up 
shadow of red hair and swollen eyes, toward a beautiful woman.  'Yeah,' 
his mind hissed angrily, 'and you with all your fucking bastard 
eloquence made her cry because you lost your damn temper!  You're a 
*psychiatrist*!  She worked three jobs to put you through school so you 
could learn to listen.'

His only reply was silence.  "Kimiko," he murmured again, "please, I 
was wrong - just, just talk to me.  Tell me why you don't want to go to 
the doctor."

There was another pause before she sniffled,  "I..."  Her voice was 
thick with tears, heavy with shame, and he felt the smothering weight 
of guilt descend upon him.  She whispered, "I *can't* go to the 
gynecologist, he's the one who - " she paused, gasping, "he's the one 
who told me I could never have our baby in the beginning."

He sighed and bit his lip, sitting down on the bed, stroking her red 
hair softly, and closed his eyes.  It was an irrational fear.  Not 
every gynecologist would mean bad things for her, and intellectually, 
Kimiko knew this.  While she might understand that she was acting 
unreasonably, emotions still ruled a large part of her.  Learning to 
work in this delicate balance was what Soichi had spent years in 
college trying to do.  While he could sooth the fears of his patients 
and calm their hearts...he could offer his wife - *his own wife* - no 
comfort, no reprieve from her terror.  The stark truth of this cut far 
deeper than he would have anticipated. 

He lay down beside her, and by instinct, with blue eyes wide open, she 
turned to bury her face in his chest, breathing him in deeply, wrapping 
her arms about his neck as she said, "I'm just afraid, Soichi.  What he 
might tell me, " she paused, tearful, "I don't know if I could take 
it."  Kissing her forehead, he murmured:

"Remember that promise that I made to you, Kimiko?"

She nodded.

"I intend to keep it, and I swear, not hell nor high water can make me 
do anything that would hurt this child."  

She nodded again.

"So when I say I want you to go to a doctor, and definitely not the 
doctor you went to *last* time, I mean that I want you to go so the 
baby can be healthier.  The moment you feel uncomfortable, we'll leave 
and find a different one.  Is that okay?"

She didn't say anything, just breathed in and out, safe in the comfort 
of his embrace, scarred and sad, but forgiving and forgiven - life 
revolved, and love continued.  She hated him just as she loved him, and 
she needed to run just as she needed to stay.  But the in-between 
place, the silence that existed only in the calming presence of his 
touch, it was where she was at peace, it was where she could stop, and 
gather herself before venturing out again.

"It was just like today, Kimiko," he murmured, "where I knew what to do 
to keep you safe, and there was no way for me to do it."  He closed his 
eyes.  

"You aren't angry anymore?" she asked.

"Not angry.  Just frustrated, that takes a while to fade," he replied, 
and sighing, he continued, "Sometimes, you remind me of a wave."

She blinked, turning to look at his face, "A wave?"

He smirked, stroking her hair, "Yes, a wave."  His mouth curved 
downward into a frown.  "A crazy, stupid, unhearing wave, huge and fast 
and frightening.  So caught up in your own sound that you can't listen 
to anyone else - or you refuse to."  She was silent - no one liked to 
hear their own flaws, it was worse coming from his lips.  "And I feel 
like I'm standing on the beach, watching you ram toward the sharp rocks 
there, knowing you'll hurt yourself if you don't slow down and smooth 
out."  He sighed, hugging her closer.  "And sometimes, you overwhelm 
me, like water rushing over stone, and I just let it go."

She bit her lip and pulled away from him a little.

"I didn't know," she said, "that I was like that."

She could see him forcing down a smile, and he replied, "I know that 
you don't notice it.  A lot of times, I can just change your mind from 
doing something stupid, sometimes I have to yell."  He shrugged.  "I 
don't like yelling at you."

She frowned.  "And I don't like being yelled at."

"I noticed," he answered wryly.  And there was a pause before he added, 
"I shouldn't have said what I said today."

She nodded.  "No, you shouldn't have." She paused.  "Those were very, 
very cruel things you accused me of."

"I know.  And I apologize.  I didn't mean it," he said, "It was a 
moment of frustration."  She turned to stare at him, eyes big and 
watery in the dim light.

"Then I hope I don't frustrate you often," she whispered.  Standing up, 
she headed toward their bathroom, wiping away at the tears that still 
glistened on her face.  Her small, white feet making soft, padding 
noises across the floor, a quiet sort of 'frushing' sound every time 
she brushed again the wood.

"Kimiko?" he asked suddenly, voice too loud in the room.  She stopped 
for a moment at the door to the bath - not turning around to meet his 
gaze.  "Are we going to be all right?"

He could see her shoulders loosen, and the tension start to unwind from 
her form.  "We will be," she answered softly.

^*^*^

"You kept this place, after all these years?" Shampoo said in 
bewilderment, staring at the cobwebbed corners of the old Nekohanten, 
the dusty chairs, still neatly stacked from their last, aching 
afternoon in Japan.  She still remembered that restaurant, still 
remembered sitting in the kitchen, leaning against the stove, with her 
face covered to hide the wracking sobs that had taken her body.  She 
remembered curling up into a ball when she realized that for once - 
Mousse would not be there to see how she was.  "But, how did you pull 
it off?  The rent must have been horrible!"

Cologne shrugged, and herding Orchid into the store, she smiled gently, 
closing the door behind them.  "It wasn't that bad.  With Nerima's 
infamous wrecking crew, realtors were glad for any stores that would 
keep paying the rent and staying in town - so they let me have it 
cheap."

"Mom, this where you work as girl?" Orchid said, a tone of awe in her 
faltering Japanese, and Shampoo couldn't help but to smile as the 
memories rushed through her.

"Worked?" Cologne snorted good-naturedly. "I'd say more like wreaked 
havoc."  The old woman grinned at her great-great-grandchild.  "Your 
mother was the hell-raiser to shame all hell-raisers.  You think your 
cousin Jade is bad, you should have seen your mom in her younger days."

"Great-Grandmother!" Shampoo hissed, scandalized.  "Would you stop it!  
I was not a hell-raiser!"  Orchid giggled.  She so rarely saw her 
mother flustered - she had to admit, it *was* funny.

"You most certainly were!  Think of how many times this poor restaurant 
suffered because you and Mousse-" Cologne stopped her words at the dull 
fade of light in her great-granddaughter's eyes.  She kicked herself 
mentally for having mentioned it.  Sometimes, it was too easy to 
forget, too easy to think that he was just out of town, or still back 
in the village, or something.  His presence pervaded Shampoo's 
existence.  

The lavender-haired woman forced a smile for her daughter's sake, and 
said cheerfully, "Anyhow - that's not the point."  She turned to 
Orchid.  "Go take your things upstairs, my room is the second one on 
the left - and unpack, take a nap, I know you're tired from the trip."  
The girl complied, seeing as she didn't want to be in the quiet, too-
tense room any longer, and that her mother's prediction was right, she 
was tired.

The two older women waited until Orchid was out of hearing range before 
turning to each other again, two pairs of eyes dark and turbulent.  
"Why did you want us to come, Great-Grandmother," Shampoo asked softly, 
her voice low, "what do you want with Nerima again?"

Cologne sighed.  "Child, it's a matter of honor."

"Honor?" Shampoo whispered, her voice incredulous.  "Honor?" she 
repeated, mind whirring back to the wretched month she had spent locked 
away in the Nekohanten after what had happened a decade ago.  She 
couldn't stop the images from flooding her mind.  "FUCK HONOR!"  
Shampoo slammed her hand angrily against a desk, and Cologne winced at 
the sound of voices and wood echoing around the room.  "I wasted years 
and years of my life mourning the results of this sick, twisted ideal 
of *honor*.  I'm not willing to ruin my life again for something that 
isn't worth it!"

"Ranma isn't worth it to you?" Cologne yelled in reply, feeling her 
frustration rise.  As soon as she said it, she regretted it.  She had 
not meant to bring up that old wound; in fact, the existence of the old 
promise wasn't even the reason that she'd wanted to come back to 
Nerima.  That was not the honor that was at stake.  There were far 
greater sins than a misbegotten marriage, and Cologne knew she had 
committed one very long ago.

Shampoo felt the tears she didn't let herself cry rise.  "I wanted 
Ranma; I wanted honor," she gasped, "and I helped break him, Great-
Grandmother, I helped ruin him."  She stopped; voice low, "Honor killed 
him."

"He's not dead, did you not hear?" Cologne asked, annoyed that her 
great-Granddaughter didn't seem to understand the concept.

Shampoo ignored her.  "Honor ruined two people, it destroyed two lives, 
don't you understand?"

And then she couldn't stop it, the flood of voices and sounds and light 
from the afternoon she spent facilitating the downfall of two human 
beings who hadn't deserved to be crushed.  "You weren't to blame," 
Mousse had told her so many years ago, "You didn't know."  

"But neither did she, neither did they," she had replied, "no one did - 
they were safe, don't you see, I killed them, I started it when I 
translated those texts for Akane."

Blame and guilt, feud and fight, the spark that started it all, just 
because she had agreed to help.  She couldn't escape what her memory 
refused forget, and she couldn't outrun what didn't chase her.

^*^*^

The hospital waiting room was a familiar sight now.  Drab and boring 
and painful to look at.  They'd been there for the past weeks, always 
there, waiting at a faithful vigil, worried and scared for a woman who 
had always loved them as children.  

Tendo Soun had fared much worse, his fragile mental state finally 
snapping when he realized that his beloved daughter had to be taken to 
the hospital in critical condition.  He'd refused to eat, refused to 
drink, refused to sleep, and was eventually dragged into ER by Ryoga.  
He was passed out somewhere in a familiar wing of Nerima General 
Hospital, comfortably numb.

Akane and Ryoga sat across from one another, still and serious, waiting 
for word on whether or not Kasumi would be well enough to go home that 
day.  No one was asking the real question: had her fractured mind 
returned?

"You know, Ryoga," Akane said softly, "if I didn't know any better, I'd 
say that something cosmic and great is trying to keep us from getting 
married."  She laughed bitterly, shallow brown eyes looking upward to 
meet his endlessly dark gaze.  "The first time, you get lost for three 
months, the second time, your mother died, and now," she paused, 
"Kasumi's baby is gone."

Akane stared down at her fingers for a moment, eyes drawn by the way 
the early morning light fell upon her pearly skin, how it nearly hid 
all the calluses and cuts and scars from a lifetime of breaking bricks 
and breaking hearts.  

And then she turned to her side, looking over at Ryoga's sleepy-eyed 
form.  She supposed that he was handsome, what with his sloppy bangs 
that sometimes ducked low enough over his face to get into his dark 
eyes, and his rakish half-grin, half-sneer.  She liked the way that he 
always woke up before her, and how he always asked her if she liked 
him.  She enjoyed sitting around and talking to him, because with him, 
she didn't feel as if something was expected of her.  She liked holding 
his hand, feeling the sun-browned heaviness of his fingers twined with 
her own delicate palms.  She liked kissing him on the cheek and then 
stepping back to see his eyes twinkle.

She liked him.

Did she love him?

Several months after Ranma had died so long ago, she had mustered up 
enough courage to ask Kasumi what love was like.  Not family love, not 
loving a pet, as she loved her P-chan, but what loving a man was like.  
Her sister had stared at her for a moment, eyes strangely watery.  "Why 
do you ask this, Akane?" she'd whispered.  Followed with, "I'm not 
sure, I've never been in love.  But I suppose that it's wonderful, I 
suppose that it's like feeling free and safe and scared and happy all 
at once," and paused, "all the time."

Did Ryoga do that?  Make her free and safe and scared and happy all at 
once and all the time?  Akane bit her lip, staring at her fiance.  He 
reminded her of a tornado, wild and strong and angry, but once the 
perfect conditions were taken away, he faded into the background once 
again - but the presence always there, warm and kind and pulsing 
against her heart.  She had been right earlier - they were comfortable 
with each other - they'd achieved the familiar loving acceptance that 
most tumultuous couples yearned for.

But where was their passion?  Where was their tempest of emotion and 
lust and love and tears?  Where was their moment of excitement and 
fear?

"Kasumi's stronger than we give her credit for, Akane," Ryoga said, his 
voice low and gravelly, eyes turned toward a window.  "She'll make it.  
She'll be fine."

Akane cocked her head to one side.  "You think so?"

"Of course," he reasoned, frowning at her.  "No one can forgive and 
survive as much as she has without being strong."

Akane laughed.  "Forgiveness does not mean strength, Ryoga."

He glanced at her, a faintly worried expression in his eyes.  "What if 
I wished that it did, Akane?"

"Why would you wish that?" she asked.

He shrugged.  "Then I'd know that regardless of what you found out 
about me - you'd forgive me."

She smiled softly at him, wrapping her own hand about his.  "Ryoga, 
I've known you for over a decade; I know everything about you, I accept 
everything about you."  She hesitated before continuing, "That is what 
a good relationship is built on, that is why we get along so well 
together."

He looked at her strangely, and intense, fearful expression in his 
eyes.  For the moment, she was reminded of another pair of eyes, blue 
instead of brown, that had borne the same shades as Ryoga's did at that 
moment.

So Akane was torn for the quiet monotony of the hospital waiting room 
to the first time she saw her life clearly, and the first time she'd 
ever understood.  Tied up in a whirlwind of jealousy and confusion and 
hatred and joy all at the same time.  Free and safe and happy and 
scared - she'd come to see what her life was - what *she* was.

And all of this excitement stained by a black omen, the promise of 
disaster that was yet to come, the whisper of something darker just 
over the horizon.

^*^*^

Nerima 
12 years 9 months ago

Akane's plan had gone badly.

The challenge had been issued and accepted, and four girls had met at 
an empty lot, prepared to have three one on one matches on three 
successive days.  Unfortunately for Yuki, Akane, Ukyo, and Shampoo, 
none of them had patience, and all of them let loose a few inflammatory 
statements.

Their only saving grace was that Ranma had heard the screaming and 
cursing and dropped by to stop the cat-fight.

But as they were being dragged to their respective homes, Yuki and 
Akane, still sputtering with anger at each other, had decided to finish 
the fight with words.  The Tendo girl had cried:

"You're going to get yours, you damn hussy!"

And Yuki had answered, "Not fucking likely, you cow!"

To which Akane had replied with a string of nearly unintelligible 
curses involving increasingly creative and anatomically impossible 
things that she wanted Yuki to do in the privacy of her own home.  The 
whole long tirade ending with, "I challenge you to another match!  No 
special attacks, no tricks, just plain martial arts!  Loser *never* 
sees Ranma again!"

Of course - Yuki, being Yuki, and rather bullheaded at that, agreed 
with enthusiasm.

And in the aftermath of that heated afternoon, Akane had started 
feeling a low dread in the pit of her stomach.  

Engagement was such a heavy word, formal and public.  Something that 
everyone respected and acknowledged.  While on the other hand, love was 
entirely different.  Affection was so sneaky in its ways, so quiet in 
its onset, but so terribly painful not to see.  For all the mindless 
denial that drove the three fiancees, for all their heartbreaks and 
jealousy and rivalries throughout the time they had known each other - 
they'd never been faced with something like Yuki before.  

She had no legal claim to him, and didn't desire to make one.  She had 
no romantic aspirations for him - or so she said - but she had him 
wrapped up in her hands.  She was flawed and she was used, but he still 
wanted her presence.

It could not be accepted - Akane all knew that something had to be 
done.  Shampoo and Ukyo both adamantly refused to get involved, 
mentally shuddering at the memory of Ranma's visits to them earlier 
that week.  His eyes had been the color of ice, and his tone had been 
even cooler, and in no uncertain terms, he had instructed that if they 
were to touch one hair on Yuki's head without the deepest and most 
loving intentions, he would make them regret it.  Kodachi was a 
different story.  Threats wouldn't have worked on her.  Thankfully, an 
exorbitant bribe given to the doctors and nurses and the Nerima 
Psychiatric institute had brought upon her a new round of medication, 
and she was too dazed to do anything when she heard news of the match.

Akane - well, Ranma really couldn't do anything about Akane.  Not 
really.  Sure, he could say stupid, boneheaded things and convince her 
that he hated her and make her believe that he was cheating on her 
(which he wasn't - not anymore, at any rate), but he preferred to 
survive the next few days with as little rancor as possible.  "Akane," 
he said respectfully, catching the full attention and curiosity of the 
entire Tendo/Saotome household.  Cautiously ignoring their expressions 
and focusing on his fiancee - who was *still* radiating a dangerous 
blue aura - he continued, "Do you really think this it's a smart thing 
to do?  I mean, fight with Yuki?"

She scowled.  "Look, if you're going to protect her, do it during the 
fight, you're not going to change my mind about battling with her, not 
just because I - " she cut off her sentence abruptly, and Ranma, 
momentarily, wondered what she'd wanted to say.  Like so many times 
before, and so many other half-finished phrases, there were meanings 
behind meanings, clarity that they disallowed themselves.  They were 
too shy; it was too early; it was too much to ask such young people to 
do and speak of emotion as people would if they were adults.

Sometimes, Ranma thought about this.  The difference between being an 
adult and being a child, was it simply age?  Or was it something more, 
something substantial?  It seemed very foolish to him that two years 
could change their maturity and their outlook on life like no 
experience or wisdom could.  Would he become a grown-up if he told 
Akane how he had felt, and when he had felt it?  Or had he already done 
his part?  Was it that *Akane* was the child?

"I'm not trying to protect her, Akane.  She can take her falls like any 
other martial artist, but you haven't been training as intensely as she 
has, you might get hurt," he reasoned, easing himself down next to her 
at the breakfast table, eyes lowered to the wooden surface, unwilling 
to meet her gaze.

He could feel her stiffen next to him.  "And why do you think I'm not 
being trained as intensely, Ranma?"  Her voice was low, almost sad, and 
he couldn't help but to look up to her endless dark eyes, filled to the 
brim with tears that she wouldn't cry in front of him.  "Why do you 
think that I haven't improved my martial arts since you've come here, 
since Daddy stopped training me?"

"Akane - " he started, but did not finish because his fiancee raised 
her tone and lowered her eyes.

"Because you won't train with me, Ranma."  She looked up at him again; 
tears flowing freely down her pale cheeks, and the hands that were 
shaking.  "Because you don't take me seriously, because you don't want 
me to win this damn fight!" she cried.  

He felt anger boil in his stomach, and ignoring the warning bells that 
rang in his mind, telling him *not* to rise to the argument, he roared, 
"NO ONE can win this fight!  Not you, and not Yuki!" 

There was an echoing silence in the room for the moment when Ranma 
stopped to take a breath, flames still burning in his eyes and logic 
and sense still taking leave of his mouth.

"What do you think will happen if someone gets the upper hand?  Hell, 
if *you* lose, your father would throw a damn fit, and you'd just sniff 
and say that you were my official fiancee, embarrassing Yuki, yourself, 
*and* me!  If Yuki loses, she gets banished to her damn family!" he 
cried.  "They're worse that our fathers, do you understand that, Akane?  
Can you even begin to think what it would be like if she wasn't allowed 
to have a friend?"

Akane's tears came faster as the sinking desperation overwhelmed her.  
She couldn't lose him, not when she was nearly sure that she loved him, 
not when she wanted so much out of the possibilities he held for her, 
not when she wanted him to keep her safe.  "Friend?  Is that what 
you're calling it?  DAMN IT, Ranma!  I'm your fiancee!"

"THEN ACT LIKE IT!" he bellowed.  "You never give me the benefit of the 
doubt, and if you aren't ready to love me, then at least be my friend!"  
He paused, breathing hard, "It's all in the maturity, Akane!"  He stood 
up from his seat at the table, eyes not leaving Akane's stunned face.  
"You want to be my fiancee and yet you refuse to treat me with the 
basic decency and respect that *I* more than deserve!"

"I treat you with all the respect I treat everyone!" she answered in 
return, standing to meet his gaze, eyes flashing with pain.  "But 
you're such an ass, too, Ranma!  Sometimes I just can't help it!  Think 
of all the times that you've said horrible things to me, all the times 
you've ignored me, didn't take me seriously!"

"I'm not saying I'm perfect," he answered quietly, his tone surreally 
peaceful in the explosive atmosphere.

It seemed as if the two teens had entirely forgotten that they had an 
audience: the fathers, Akane's sisters, and anyone within hearing 
range.

He looked at Akane hard, eyes lowered so that they were pupil to pupil, 
speaking with a harsh honesty that they'd never dared to allow, and 
with force that no one had ever seen erupt in between the two of them 
before.  There was a simmering passion beneath the annoyed exteriors of 
these children, and the people surrounding them only feared that the 
passion that bubbled and boiled was not one that would lead them to 
each other - only apart.

"I know I'm a mess-up, Akane," he said quietly, "I am aware that my 
grades in school aren't good.  I know that I could do better if I 
tried.  I know that I'm a knucklehead and that I say mean things and 
don't think before I act."  He stiffened.  "But I also know that I am 
an honorable person, that I'm not cruel, and that I never hold grudges.  
I know that I have enough good in me to balance out the bad - do you 
know who convinced me of this, Akane?"

She didn't speak; she didn't want to know.

"It should have been you," he whispered, blue eyes shimmering black, 
"It should have been my fiancee, the girl I would marry and love and 
take care of.  But you only reinforced my faults, you only convinced me 
that you hated me."  He laughed bitterly, "God, Akane, didn't you 
know?"

"Know what?" she asked tonelessly.

"All I ever wanted was for you to tell me that it was okay," he 
whispered, "you know, me being *me*.  Redheaded or not."  He smirked at 
her.  "I never got that, Akane."  He breathed deeply.  "But Yuki was 
forgiving, she was my friend, she told me that it was all right.  I 
can't let you hurt her.  It's like when you protect Ryoga, it's because 
you," he seemed to choke on the words, "because you care about him.  
It's the same, Akane - I can't let you hurt her."

She was spiraling.  Akane could see all the flashes of light and dark 
and color and sound that she'd hidden from her mind's eye all those 
times.  She could finally remember all the cautious touches, how happy 
she'd been in his rare embraces, and how she'd stopped being the 
flawed, inadequate youngest child of a mother who had left her when she 
needed a mother the most.  She saw all those times her awkward words 
hadn't been enough to convey to Ranma that she had accepted him, liked 
him, God, maybe even *loved* him for who and what he was.  All that 
time, all the arguments, all the hatred and misunderstanding and 
jealousy - all of it came down to a simple fact:

They'd never had clarity.

She wouldn't lose him now - she knew how to love him, knew how to make 
him love her in return, she couldn't abandon her future's happiness for 
the sake of past mistakes.

"Ranma," she said, her throat constricted by sobs, "I *will* win this 
fight."  She felt the tears roll down her face as he closed his eyes in 
weary defeat.  "I *will* prove that I care, I *will* prove that I - " 
she paused, "prove that I accept you for you.  I'll make up for every 
time we didn't understand each other."  

^*^*^

"But what," Ryoga's voice interrupted her reverie, "but what if I *did* 
have a secret, a very bad one - would you forgive me - or would you 
leave?"  

She wanted to tell him that she'd *never* leave him, not for anything 
or anyone or any opportunity in the world, she wanted to say that she 
could give it all up so she could be near him, that the loss would be 
worth it.  

But in the end, she decided to stay silent, willing instead to lie by 
omission rather than to shatter his fragile heart.

^*^*^
   
Soichi frowned.  

It was slightly disconcerting to see one of his best patients, the one 
who seemed to like him the most, glaring at him as if he were some 
strange, offensive, mutant scum that had attached itself to the bottom 
of his shoe.  And considering Naka had held that rather upsetting gaze 
for half an hour, Soichi decided that something had to be done.  

"Naka," he started, "Is there something about me that's upset you 
today?"

"Not me," the boy growled, "but Kimiko-san, maybe."  

Soichi raised his eyebrows.  'Damn,' he thought to himself, 'kid must 
have heard the fight this morning.'  Clearing his throat nervously, he 
said, "It's okay, Naka, I'm touched that you're concerned, but it's 
really sort of a private thing-"

Of all the reactions in the world that he was expecting, nothing of 
this magnitude ever came to his mind.

Naka sat straight up in his chair, eyes flaming, and yelled, "YOU 
ASSHOLE!  'PRIVATE' MY FOOT!"  Soichi just stared as the boy continued 
on his rant.  "I can't believe you, man!" he yelled hatefully, "I used 
to - I used to think you were the best damn person in the world - the 
coolest.  My *role* model!"

"Hey!" Soichi yelled, he was certainly used to insults, but this was 
unwarranted, "Look, Naka, I know you really like Kimiko, but you've got 
to respect me a little, too.  Married people have fights."

"Not fights like this they don't!  And if they do, they shouldn't!  
It's just wrong!" Naka cried.

"It would be creepy if married people didn't fight!" Soichi reasoned, 
his tone loud but still calm.

"But it's creepier when a husband hits his wife!"

And silence flowed throughout the room.

Finally, Soichi gathered up enough oxygen to talk, "You - you - you 
think that I - " he paused, gasping for breath, "You thought that I 
*hit* Kimiko?"

Naka felt the lightest bit of tension rear of his in his chest.  From 
what he knew, Fujikara-sensei was a very good martial artist, one who 
(at least, according to his actions that morning) had a very bad 
temper.  Maybe it hadn't been the smartest thing in the world to piss 
him off.  But in a fashion of overwhelming, unthinking stupidity and 
rashness that would have made even Saotome Genma proud, he continued 
his diatribe:

"Yeah, you!" he said.  "I don't believe you, she's pregnant, with your 
child, and you *hit* her, have you no soul?"  He stared straight into 
Soichi's stunned eyes.

Soichi growled, standing and glaring down so he was at eye-to-eye level 
with Naka, "Look, kid, I don't know what you're ramblin' on about, but 
I don't hit girls, got it?  I got more honor than that."

Naka blinked, hard.  His therapist didn't say things like 'ramblin'', 
and he certainly didn't use such bad grammar.  Fujikara-sensei had 
always been the upstanding totem of good language and eastern, 
meditative philosophy.  But this was all glossed over for the greater 
good of his main cause.

"Look, Fujikara-" he paused, and continuing without the honorific, he 
yelled, "I *heard* you two yelling at each other this morning, and I 
heard someone slap *someone*-"

"How the hell do you know she didn't slap me?" the doctor asked in 
return.

"Because then I heard a woman scream!"

To the boy's surprise, the intense, angry expression on his therapist's 
face melted into one of understanding, and then contorted into one of 
utter amusement.  And then he burst out laughing, holding his abdomen 
and slapping his knee, trying not to double over from mirth.  

The door to Naka's room flew open, and Kimiko ran in, her hands filled 
with his lunch tray, and a panicked expression on her face, "I heard 
yelling," she paused, setting the tray down and staring at the scene 
before her.  She raised her eyebrows, "And now I see the cause of it."

"He," Soichi gasped between chuckles, "he thinks *I* hit *you* this 
morning!"  And he collapsed in yet another round of laughter, breathing 
hard.

Kimiko blushed a color akin to a beefsteak tomato, and Naka cried, "I 
don't see what's so funny about abusive husbands!"  Much to his 
consternation, Soichi just laughed harder, saying:

"What about abusive wives?"

Kimiko just turned a darker shade of vermilion as she yelled, "All 
right, stop it, Soichi."
  
"Aw - Kimiko, you ought to watch your tone, I might," Soichi paused to 
laugh harder, "*hit* you or something."

She narrowed her eyes and sighed in defeat, ignoring her husband's 
guffaws as she turned to Naka.  "I know that you must be incredibly 
confused about what happened in the kitchen - we are talking about what 
happened in the kitchen, right?"  The boy nodded dumbly, far past the 
point of argument.  Kimiko sat down on the edge of his bed, directly 
facing both Soichi and Naka as she murmured:

"There is something very, very important about us that you must know, 
Naka-kun.  I apologize for not telling you earlier, we had hoped to be 
able to keep it a secret - so you wouldn't be burdened," Kimiko said, 
her eyes serious.

Soichi interrupted, "Don't worry, Naka, we're not axe-murderers or 
anything, just a little low-level magic."  His wife glared at him as 
his patient just stared in bewilderment.

"At any rate, Naka - first off, Soichi *did not* hit me this morning in 
the kitchen, and he has never struck me in anger, and he will never 
strike me in anger, understand?"  Naka nodded again, deciding that 
silence was his best bet.  "What you saw - probably a hand slapping a 
woman who looked like me, or something like that - was a function of a 
curse."

"Jusenkyo," Soichi supplied, his face stoic, "a valley of magical 
springs in China.  I went there as a young boy on a training trip, and 
I fell into the spring of the drowned girl - I came out looking like, 
well," he pointed at Kimiko.

The two of them waited expectantly for a reaction.

Which they got.

Naka blinked twice - and decided that Fujikara-sensei and his wife had 
been replaced by alien drones.  Probably earlier that day, because the 
*real* Fujikara-sensei wouldn't ever hit his wife, and was even less 
likely to make up the fantastical lie that he'd just been fed.  He 
blinked again, and decided that it was impossible, because alien drones 
were too smart to come up with such a crappy story.

"Jusenkyo," he said tonelessly.

"Right," they replied.

"Cursed to look like Kimiko-san," he added.

"Correct," the redheaded woman said, a smile on her face.

There was a short silence.  

"You're fucking with me," he concluded, eyes angry once again, and arms 
crossed over his chest.  "First off, there's no such thing as curses, 
secondly, how the *hell* would that explain what happened this morning?  
And third - that was the *absolute worst lie* I have every heard in my 
*entire* life."

Kimiko looked at Soichi and they both rolled their eyes.

"Oh, come on, Soichi, this could be entertaining," she said, handing 
him the glass of cold water that had been on the tray.  He gave her a 
positively hateful stare and said:

"Yeah."  He took the glass from her hands, "like a mild case of 
dysentery."  He sighed, raised the cup and said, "Cheers."  He started 
tipping its contents over his head.

"I still don't know what you guys are trying to pull, because it is 
such *absolute* crap that you'd be - "

Naka suddenly lost his voice.

Because in front of him stood two Kimiko's.  One with long, feminine 
hair dressed in khaki pants and a navy-colored sweater.  The other with 
mannish, wet, and very short locks, dressed in a familiar pair of jeans 
(now awfully loose) and a black t-shirt (the equivalent of a sweatshirt 
on the tiny form).

He might have been able to retain consciousness had they not asked him, 
"Well?" in perfect unison.

^*^*^

Two weeks had passed since Kimiko and Soichi had broken the news of 
their little secret to Naka.  And being tolerant people with plenty of 
access to both hot and cold water, they'd let the boy experiment on 
poor Soichi for nearly an hour before telling him to stop before his 
therapist became violent.

He believed them - what else *could* he believe? 

And after a day of nervous tension, Soichi's easygoing attitude and 
Kimiko's smiles had dissolved the awkwardness surrounding the whole 
situation.  And now, all three shared a wonderful, if sometimes 
irritating secret.

"Doesn't it get on your nerves?" Naka had asked, curiosity in his eyes, 
"It would drive me nuts."

Soichi had laughed, "Imagine having it at *your* age when gender and 
distinction is so important."  He had paused, adding, "Actually, I'm 
grateful.  With this curse, I know more about myself and about women 
that most men will ever be privy to," he grinned in a leering fashion.  
"Besides, if Kimiko is ever out of town on business, I can *still* see 
her naked."  Naka had turned bright red and the woman in question had 
stuck her head into the room, a scowl on her face, saying:

"Fujikara Soichi, either you stop telling ecchi things to that poor 
child or I'm going to kick your ass."

And it had gone on like that, pleasant mornings where they'd eat 
breakfast together in the kitchen - now that Naka could hazard the trip 
every morning - and then Kimiko would leave for her office, citing her 
recent absences as something that would weigh on her under-worked 
conscience.  Soichi would drive Naka to the physical therapy center, 
and then leave for his practice.  Five hours later, Soichi would pick 
him up and the two of them would share a late lunch.  Naka would be 
returned back to the apartment, and either watch tv, catch up on his 
homework, or nap until six, when Kimiko would burst through the front 
door, reading something interesting out loud from the newspaper.

And their lives fell into a calm, familiar swing.

Much of her firm was away in Hokkaido for a conference, and she'd 
demurred from joining in on the traveling, preferring to take the 
opportunity for a needed rest day.  

She was on the sofa, bowl of chips perched on her slightly rounded 
belly, and the remote control in hand when Naka walked in through the 
front door, barely a limp in his step, a beaming smile on his face.  
He'd laughed at the sight of her slacking off, mentioning that it was 
the first time he'd ever seen her in such a state of disarray.

Nothing out of the ordinary - everything was fine.

Which obviously meant that something horrible was brewing.

^*^*^

Liking was very different from loving.  Every turbulent child remains 
to love their parents, but can honestly say that they don't like them.  
The key to a good marriage is to be able to claim both, or at least one 
of them 60% of the time.  The other 40% is filled with children and 
work.

Soichi and Kimiko had a strange balance.  Whereas they did work, and 
hard, they hadn't had children to fill 30% of the void, and had either 
to like each other, or fight.  More often than not, they did the latter 
and then made up.

The whole thing was cyclical, sometimes they've be in love, other times 
in like, and on the best of days, they'd have both, and be deliriously 
happy with one another.

Tonight, they were very firmly in like - with very, very vague 
underpinnings of love - more rooted in Soichi's odd, almost 
inexplicable feelings rather than any steadfast emotion.  Kimiko 
watched her husband warily as he stared back at her, his blue eyes 
flashing with something she couldn't quite name.  Had she been paying 
more attention to all the times she'd laughed with other men, or hugged 
them, she might have been able to call it petty jealousy.  

"*What* is wrong?" she asked finally, placing her hands on her hips and 
pursing her lips.  She might have made a threatening figure had she not 
been dressed in oversized men's pajamas, with her dark red hair tied in 
two pigtails.  As it was, Soichi only smiled at her, saying:

"You're going to make a wonderful mother," and pausing, added, "you've 
already given all of yourself to Naka - and he's not your biological 
child, I can't wait to see how you raise our baby."  Kimiko stared at 
his honest, solemn face for just a beat before smirking and muttering:

"No, that's not what you were going to say."  

He looked surprised.  "Well then, would *you* like to tell me what I 
was going to say?"

She grinned.  "You were going to say that I was spending too much time 
on him, and projecting, pushing myself off as a mother figure, and as 
such, you were probably feeling neglected."  She raised an eyebrow at 
him, "Am I wrong?"

"Yes," he said stubbornly.  "The words 'mother-figure' and 'neglected' 
never came into play.  Merely 'mother' and 'abandoned'.  Completely 
different."  He watched her sigh in amused frustration at him.

"You've backed off recently," Kimiko said a moment later, an odd 
expression on her face, "you've cut the number of your sessions, you've 
stopped obsessively seeking him out to talk - what's going on?"  Soichi 
smiled at her in return, murmuring:

"There's something they *don't* teach you in psych school, and that's 
sometimes a patient would rather have a loving woman than a concerned 
man caring for them.  I think you're good for him," he leaned back 
against the pillows of the bed, "Besides, he needs the experience with 
girls."

His wife threw a pillow at him.

^*^*^

Nabiki was doing something strange on that late winter's day: standing 
in her living room, dripping water out of her hair and reading 
something with rapt attention.  This wouldn't have been so terribly 
unusual except that the day was perfectly fair - not a drop of rain - 
and that she was dressed only in a towel.

But then again, the words on paper were enough to make just about 
*anyone* stop in their tracks.

She wanted to shriek, she wanted to ask how *anyone* could have gotten 
away with it - but most of all, she just wanted to laugh.  She wanted 
to laugh and call Akane and tell her that her broken heart could mend.  
She wanted to call Kasumi and tell her to cheer up - that her little 
sister had the perfect cure to her heartache.  She wanted to call Genma 
and Nodoka, to tell them that they hadn't lost anything.  

She wanted to make it all better.  

And now, finally, she could.

She grinned, silently thanked Kuzio, and picked up her phone, dialing 
an unfamiliar phone number for a 22nd floor apartment somewhere in 
Tokyo.

^*^*^

"Moshi moshi?" Kimiko greeted, holding the phone between her shoulder 
and ear, cutting a deck of cards with her fingers and smirking at 
Naka's crestfallen face.  It was their third round of blackjack, and if 
the potato chips they had played for equated actual money - he'd be in 
the hole several hundred thousand yen by that time.

"How did you pull it off, Yuki - I mean, how could you get away with 
it?" whispered the awed voice over the line.  "You could have run, and 
you could have hidden, but *him*!"  The woman laughed, "How did you do 
it?"

Kimiko's eyes grew wide, and all the cards fell from her hands.  
"Nabiki?"

"I mean, *if* it was humanly possible to survive that death-blast, 
you'd still have to drag him to the nearest hospital, convince the 
authorities that it was okay for you to leave, and *then* get a name 
change!  That requires bribes, Yuki!  *Huge* bribes!"

Kimiko sighed, the sudden shock wearing off, and groaned, ignoring 
Naka's worried expression as she said, "Nabiki, who have you told?  Who 
else knows?"

"No one, of course," the Tendo replied smartly.

Kimiko closed her eyes angrily, "Of course - because you want me to do 
something in exchange for that information staying secret."

Nabiki became solemn, "Nothing harmful, I assure you, Tanakawa Yuki - 
and don't try that "I'm Kimiko" garbage with me now."  Kimiko bit her 
tongue and flashed Naka a reassuring expression, whispering:

"Don't worry about it, kiddo, just an old friend, why don't you go get 
ready for your session today - the doctor told me this was your last 
time."

"New boyfriend, Yuki.  Cheating on Ranma?"

"Fuck you, Nabiki," she said seriously, trying not to watch Naka's eyes 
grow as wide as saucers.  "Now tell me what you want and leave me and 
mine the hell alone."

"It's easy, Yuki," Nabiki said matter-of-factly, "Kasumi's suffered a 
great deal in the last months, she's not quite well."  Her declaration 
was treated to silence.  'About time, Yuki,' she thought, 'you've been 
running for twelve years, it's about time you started paying your 
dues.'  "I want you to go back to Nerima, you knew you couldn't avoid 
it, that it would happen eventually."

"And what will you do if you don't?" Kimiko asked, her eyes very blue 
in the afternoon light.

Nabiki merely took a deep breath.  "Everything within my power."

^*^*^

"Kimiko-san!" Naka cried, wincing as the redhead jerked him toward the 
parking garage where her car was parked.  It *was* her car - on some 
select days, Soichi chose to drive it.  But since Naka could make his 
way to and from the physical therapy center on his own - and preferred 
to do so - he'd gone to taking the subway again.  "Kimiko-san, please, 
just tell me where we're going!"

"To Nerima," she said loudly.  Not turning back at him, she ran to her 
side of the car and opened the door in a rush, motioning for him to get 
in.  As he hesitated, she yelled, "Get in the car, Naka!  I don't have 
time for this!"

And he complied, casting her a terrified expression as she ducked into 
the drivers seat, and forced the car out of the garage with a 75 mile 
per hour screech.

^*^*^

Soichi frowned.  His last patient had just vacated the office, and even 
the secretary was gone.  It was raining outside, and he had no desire 
to attempt getting to the subway without being splashed by water.

He had called, knowing that Kimiko would have her cell phone wherever 
she was, and wanting to ask for a ride.  

She wasn't picking up her phone.

Which was strange and worried him. 

'Maybe she accidentally turned it off,' he thought glumly, staring at 
the sheets of rain that poured out on the city street.  Sighing, he put 
on a rain slicker, grabbed his umbrella, and readied a thermos of hot 
water.

Fujikara Soichi was going to venture out into the wetworks.

^*^*^

She couldn't take it any more.

What with her miscarriage and her father's subsequent breakdown, she 
was more commonly lightheaded than grounded, and the worry and fear 
overwhelmed her.  

She just wanted a little time.

Time to feel, time to cry, time to mourn.

So she'd watched carefully as her family member's filed out of the 
house one by one early that morning in the gray light.  Giving Tofu a 
soft kiss and a promise not to do anything irrational as he stepped off 
the Tendo family property.  And as soon as they were all out, she'd 
shut the door with a chilling finality.

Kasumi had wanted for just a day's peace away from the vibrant colors 
of life and fast pace of living.  There were too many sounds in the 
dojo, the loud yells of students, their giggles and calls of triumph 
that used to draw smiles to her face making her want to scream.  The 
familiar footsteps of her family made her think of pattering feet, and 
their hollow absence.

With Akane, Ryoga, Soun, Nodoka, and Tofu gone, she leaned against the 
cast-iron doors and slid down to the ground sobbing, finally free to be 
sad.

It was hard to describe what she felt.

There weren't words for the type of agony that continued to burn inside 
of her - that utter unending blackness of failing in her role as a 
woman, as a mother.  She couldn't help but believe that it was her 
fault that her child had died, that she could have done something to 
make sure that the baby would have been safe.  There was a hole where 
there should have been a glowing beam of light, of life.  Instead, she 
felt the blank where her child should have been.

Would the baby have smiled at her?  Would the baby have been a girl or 
a boy?  Either would have been welcomed with open arms, arms that 
yearned to hold a soft, giggling child filled with the hopes and dreams 
of a new generation.  Would the baby have loved her?  Of course the 
baby would have loved her!  The baby would have loved her mother, 
looked up to her mother, letting her eyes spark with that indescribably 
wonderful and altogether unattainable beauty that came and went with 
the passing of a childhood.

She'd spent a lifetime taking care of people, nursing their illnesses 
and wiping away their tears.  She'd helped her family survive a death 
while mourning by herself in silent.  She had been strong enough for 
everyone.

How had she lost her child?

How had she failed the one person who depended on her the most 
desperately?

It was unthinkable.

And sitting there with her back pressed against the door, she hid her 
face, covering the blotches from hours of crying, and hiding the 
redness of her eyes.  

^*^*^

Nabiki had never disliked Tanakawa Yuki until she'd killed Saotome 
Ranma.  She had found the girl intriguing, admired her strength and 
wondered at how she was able to live day by day with such heavy scars 
across her heart.  And deny it as she had, Nabiki had *despised* Yuki 
for taking Ranma's smile and good will away from the Tendo's.  He'd 
been their friend, a fixture in their otherwise common existence.  
Without him, so, too, went the excitement and money-flow.  His absence 
left their bereft of funding *and* friendship. 

So of course, Nabiki had loathed Yuki for her crime.

But that was no longer an option because neither Tanakawa Yuki nor 
Saotome Ranma were actually deceased.  

Nabiki stepped onto the train from the platform - non-stop service to 
Nerima.  There were things to do back home, and disasters to avert.

She knew what would happen when Yuki barreled her way into a past that 
she'd forsaken, and she also knew all-too-well that Ranma would 
inevitably follow her back.  Hell would break loose.  Property damage 
that Nerima hadn't seen since the Wrecking Crew broke apart would run 
rampant.  Her father would drown in his own tears.

She frowned at the thought.  Tendo Soun had been sent to the hospital a 
few days ago, citing wooziness and general unnamed discomfort.  He was 
spending more and more time there lately, and thought she loathed to 
admit it - Nabiki thought that maybe this was going to be a good thing 
for the Tendo patriarch.  It would force him to face reality, instead 
of spending ninety percent of his days in a haze.

She had to get to Nerima, she had to get there before Yuki did, and she 
needed to create the calm before the storm.

^*^*^

"Kimiko-san, where are we going again?" Naka asked pitifully, hands 
clutching the dashboard so hard that his knuckles were white from the 
exertion.  "Please, just tell me?"

She turned to her side, slowly easing the car back down to normal 
speeds and feeling slightly cruel for having frightened him so with her 
previous tirade.  "Like I said, we're going to Nerima, I have an old 
friend there that we need to see."

Naka frowned at her, "You grew up in Nerima?"

"Well," she said cautiously, changing lanes and exiting off of the 
highway onto a quiet, mostly desolate interstate that would take them 
straight to the Nerima district.  "I spent most of my childhood on the 
outskirts of Tokyo - so I wouldn't say grew up there, but I *would* say 
grew into myself there."  She smiled at him thinly.  "I met some 
interesting people."

Naka's memory suddenly clutched a figment from his martial arts classes 
that triggered a smile on his face, "Kimiko-san," he said in a rush, 
"did you know Saotome Ranma?  Like, in person?"

For a moment, she almost drove off the road.  But when her heart rate 
returned to normal, and Naka stopped staring at her as if she was 
insane, she replied in as steady a voice as possible, "Why do you ask, 
Naka?"

After a moment's pause to catch his breath again, he murmured, "We 
studied him in my advanced kempo class.  My teacher told us how he was 
once one of the world's best martial artists.  He said that he'd once 
had the honor of seeing the kid at a competition, fifteen years old, 
and whipping ass."

Kimiko smirked, trying to imagine her husband's face if he heard that 
previous sentence.  "'Was'? 'One of'?  You're looking at the CURRENT 
World's *BEST* martial artist, baby!  Avert your eyes before you go 
blind from the glory of my skills!"  She tried not to laugh as she 
replied, "The best?  You've never heard of a man named Happosai, or of 
a woman named Cologne, have you?"

He looked confused, "No.  But what does that have to do with anything?"  
He saw Kimiko bite back a smile.

"Absolutely nothing," she said studiously.  "But in answer to your 
question, yeah, I knew him."  His eyes grew wide and he fell speechless 
as she continued, "In fact, Naka, I have a great story to tell you 
about him."

Her eyes focused on the road as her mind focused on the past, and words 
tumbled from her lips.  Anecdotes and intimate secrets about a girl 
named Yuki and a boy named Ranma.  She spoke of his fiancees, and of 
his heartbreaks, about how the girl was broken, and that Ranma had made 
her whole again.  

And all the while, she tried not to drown in the memory, tried not to 
die from her fears, tried not to lose herself in her past even as the 
wheels of the car and the road led her closer and closer to the deep 
end.

^*^*^

Nerima
12 years 8 months previous

"BOY!  GET AWAY FROM HER!"

Yuki and Ranma both whipped around at the sound of Genma's enraged 
voice, and their eyes grew wide at the sight that was presented to 
them.  Tendo Soun, Saotome Genma, Akane, and Nabiki with a video 
camera, ran toward them at ungodly speeds, all of them looking furious.

The two teenagers looked to each other again with an 'oh shit what did 
we do' expression.

But the moment only lasted briefly before Genma tore his son away from 
Yuki's side and shoved her roughly to the ground.  "Pop!" Ranma cried, 
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"  And he stepped forward to 
try and help his friend up from the ground.  His attempt was stopped 
when Soun placed an iron grip on his shoulder.

"I wouldn't do that, Son," the man said stonily, "do you know who this 
girl you've been associating with is?"

Yuki looked annoyed, and pushing herself back up into a standing 
position, she muttered, "He's well-aware of my name, Tendo-san, I wish 
you'd just tell us what this is all about."

Genma looked horrified, and pulling his son further away from the 
redhead, he declared, "Have you no mind, girl?  Has your family not 
educated you in your clan's history?"

Yuki's annoyed expression became angry.  "I damn well know everything 
about my clan's history, you talking tub of lard!"  She took an angry 
breath, and Ranma smirked as she yelled, "So think carefully before you 
accuse, you dirtbag." 

Genma's face grew red, and barely restraining his fist from making 
full-contact with Yuki's nose, he yelled, "You have no right, Tanakawa, 
if it wasn't for your family, the Saotome line would not be in misery!"

Silence abounded throughout the scene until Yuki blinked twice, and in 
a mystified tone of voice, asked, "What are you talking about?"

Genma pointed at her dramatically, "Your ancestral clan is the 
Yamato's, do you deny it?"  Yuki turned a strange shade of red, and 
Ranma started to frown, memory upon memory of his father's late night 
history lessons impacting upon his present like bombs.  Words and scars 
and poorly reasoned logic, things that his father had mentioned about a 
feud, about bloodshed, flooding his mind.

"I do not!" Yuki yelled in return, "They were one of the most famous 
Samurai families in Japan, I've nothing to be ashamed of!"

For one sudden blink of infinity, Ranma willed her to stop talking.  
For every time he'd prayed that her soft voice would continue endlessly 
into the night and his memory, and that her song would echo forever - 
he was desperate for her to stop.  He wished for just another moment of 
guiltlessly wanting for her.  Because he was starting to piece things 
together, remembering the circles of red in the Saotome family 
register, and the horror stories of brutal murders and confrontations 
by which he'd been enthralled.  The images and sounds of a thousand 
different things that the Yamato clan had done to the Fujiwaras falling 
from his deep-buried conscious into his present like rain from a 
watershed, spilling loudly against the rusted tin and muddying the 
earth around it.

Genma looked triumphant, yelling, "Only you've forgotten the one thing 
that makes the Yamato clan one of the most interesting families ever to 
exist in Japan!  The Yamato clan's feud with the Fujiwara Samurais - 
the most famous blood spilled created the most famous feud ever!"

Yuki didn't notice the color that drained from Ranma's face.  In the 
corner, Akane smiled with a dim satisfaction, and Soun looked worried.  
Stamping her foot, the redhead bellowed, "I am well aware!  The 
Fujiwara clan's son killed his fiancee, the most beautiful and talented 
daughter in the Ying family.  The feud was started.  The Ying's other 
daughter married in the Yamato's, they've continued the feud ever since 
- but the Fujiwara clan disappeared a hundred years ago, the last 
anyone heard of them, they'd gone to China, too cowardly to fight." 

Genma smiled darkly.  "That's what you think, Tanakawa."  He paused and 
said, "Yes, the Fujiwara's have disappeared, but it's only because the 
last descendant of the line married into the Saotomes - and we honor 
the feud, girl."

Her eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open, unable to speak as Akane's 
solemn tone filled the shocked quiet.  "I was researching your family 
school for our match, I wanted to see what exactly I was up against," 
the youngest Tendo girl grinned, "Your family name reminded me of 
something - and I checked the Saotome register," she shrugged, "that 
was it."

Yuki's eyes narrowed, and in a strangely panicked tone of voice, she 
said, "No - Saotome is one of the most common names in Japan, it could 
be any of a million families."

"But it's not any other Saotome," Akane said calmly, she walked over to 
her fiance, still motionless in shock.  "It's Ranma."  She placed her 
fingers on his shoulder, the brief, ineffectual touch making him shiver 
and sending a wave of nausea through Yuki.  "Blood feud, Yuki, do you 
know what that entails?"

And in the flash of an instant, everything rushed her.  Yuki's blue 
eyes grew black in the horror of realization.  Every single smile, 
every doubt, every whisper of fear that she'd felt when she'd seen 
Ranma smile so brightly at his rightful fiancee, the girl he'd admitted 
to loving at some point, and perhaps still did.  She relived every dark 
knife of jealousy that had rendered her weak in the knees and made her 
heart race in anger.  She remembered all the times she'd wandered past 
the two of them sitting together during lunch on the Furinkan high 
school grounds.  On good days, he'd be smiling at her, and on very good 
days, they'd be smiling at each other - two beautiful people destined 
to be.  Both of them forgetting the strange mirror image of a curse 
that would stand watching their happiness, feeling hollow like a shell.  

Akane had won.

Was there ever really a competition to begin with?

Akane was his betrothed, an agreement decided at their birth and then 
honored at their first meeting.  "I think I loved her," Ranma had told 
her once late at night, "I think I really did - I might still like 
her," he'd shaken his head, "But it's just hard if she doesn't try."  

She was trying now.  

She was everything now.

Yuki had always known deep in her heart the reality of her situation.  
Not only was she blocked by honor and the fact that Ranma deserved more 
than her - she'd always seen Akane out of the corner of her blue eyes.  
Tendo Akane was one of those girls that you'd look back upon later in 
life and wonder at even in the wisdom of your age.  She was beautiful 
and she was effervescent.  Her intellect and her charm seemed to 
sparkle, and her temper seemed to spark.  She was a domesticated rose, 
beautiful as she was fragile, always drawing admirer after admirer to 
shield her from the cruel world about herself.  

Yuki knew that her own overt and unintentional cruelties made Ranma 
frown.  She knew that her tendency to hold a grudge and impatience for 
both slightly-slow-witted and too-intelligent people made him roll his 
eyes.  She knew that he'd hidden more than one ghastly expression when 
he thought back to what had happened to her on one sunny afternoon when 
she was nine years old.  She knew that she couldn't ever be all that he 
deserved.  But until then, she'd had hope.

It wasn't even the feud that weighed on her mind.

It was the loss of his presence.

"Blood feuds, Yuki," Akane said softly, like a cat toying with its 
prey, "involve the shedding of blood - he's supposed to kill you - "

"Akane.  Shut.  Up."  Ranma said.  With a quick hand, he removed her 
fingers from his shoulders, and turning to look at her, he hissed, "Did 
you and Pop make up this crap?  All these stupid lies just so you can 
get me to abandon my *one* and *only* friend?"  

Akane's eyes grew shocked, the pain bubbling up at his accusations, and 
she protested, "NO!  Ranma, I'd never lie to you!"

"Bullshit!" the boy cried in return.

"This is all true!  Shampoo translated the ancient text for us!   You 
are Fujiwara Tozikoshi's descendant, just as she is the last daughter 
of the Yamatos!"  Akane grew angry, and grabbing Ranma's hand to get a 
hold of his attention, she cried, "I'm doing this for you own good, 
Ranma - do you want to dishonor your family line?"

And it was quiet once again.  

Yuki chose that moment, that agonizing second where the man she loved 
and the woman he was meant to live with touched each other and spoke of 
her doom, and she started to run. 

She didn't care where, and she didn't care how far.  

She didn't listen to the echoing voice in the background, and she 
ignored the painful threading of her heartbeat.

Because what had been held was all she'd had left - and now, even that 
momentary glimpse of happiness was taken away - her fragments stolen 
from her fingertips.

^*^*^

Kimiko's voice died and the car was filled with the comforting, 
familiar hum of the road and the wind for a moment, absent of people 
and life.  Naka was silent, and finally mustering his courage to speak, 
he asked:

"How do you know this?"

Kimiko laughed harshly, "Everyone knew this, Naka.  The Nerima crew's 
business was everyone's business."  She paused.  "The one thing that no 
one ever knew was how much the girl, Yuki, really loved Ranma.  No one 
ever believed her, or if they did, they thought she shouldn't have."

"Why not?" Naka probed, a curious glint in his eyes.  

"Because she wasn't one of his fiancees, that's why.  Because she had 
no right to him, because she was used material, because she was the 
daughter of his foresworn enemies, faceless, yet hated nonetheless."  
Kimiko sighed, and turning briefly to watch Naka's intent expression.  
"So, what do you think?"

"I think," Naka said quietly, "I think you should tell me more of this 
story, Kimiko-san."

And after taking a deep breath, she did.

^*^*^