Kasumi awoke at the foot of her mother's grave.
The sun had long since disappeared, obscured by pitch-black storm cloud.
But for the lightning, it was as good as night.
She coughed and hugged herself, cold, wet, and numb and dazed from an
uncomfortable sleep.
In the distance, a clock bell rang six times.
"Oh my!" she gasped, bringing her shivering form to her feet.
She ran hurriedly through the streets of Nerima, scolding herself for having
been so careless. A thousand reproachments came to mind, foremost among them
being how late dinner would be and how everyone would be with her, though she
knew no one would ever tell her.
Concerned, irritated faces. She could see them.
Running soothed the cold.
In the darkness, she made her way until she saw the her home across the
street, illuminated by a flash of lightning.
Encouraged by pleasant thought of warmth and light, perhaps a hot cup of tea
and a warm towel, she ran into the street...
... and never saw the truck coming.
Lightning blazed the sky over Nerima, and thunder physically wretched the
earth underneath.
* * *
"Baka! Come on! Aren't you already drenched enough as it is?" Akane cried
above the roar of the thunder and furious crash of actual sheets of water
impacting on the ground.
"Hey, you didn't have to knock me into the gutter!" Ran-chan retorted, the
feigned irritation in his voice masking the relief he felt seeing Akane back
to normal.
Akane giggled devilishly. "I didn't! You threw yourself in!"
"Well, okay," she conceded. "Its hard when you get blinded by lightning and
thunder shakes the whole ground under! You try running on top a fence like
that!"
Akane belched over in a new round of laughter. "Baka! Come on. You'll
kill me with laughter."
"Kawaikune," Ranma-chan muttered to herself, thankful that Akane couldn't
hear her over the rain.
They saw siren lights blazing as they came closer to the house.
Akane stopped, looked down and saw what she was standing in.
Red water.
Blood.
Words could not begin to convey the horror that clouded her face as this
realization dawned on her. Her stomach turned, making her queasy. Her
senses turned dull, numb with realization, knowing that this was someone's
blood, the blood of a living, breathing person as real as herself or Ranma.
Something in her constricted on itself, shriveling then dying.
Like a flower in a winter storm.
Slowly, mechanically, she backstepped to the curb.
Ranma was now by her side, equally aghast by the sight of blood flowing over
the pavement.
A river of blood, churning with the runoff.
So much blood....
Some distance away, there was a white shroud over a a mangled heap. Weighed
down under the rain, the form the shroud embraced was terrible, broken and
contorted in every conceivable form. Even now, the blood continued to gush
out from under the shroud, making more and more of the sick soup that covered
the street.
Akane had never seen so much blood. Silently, she prayed that the poor
person was already dead. Wordlessly, she grabbed a passing police officer
and, untrusting of her voice, silently questioned him with her eyes.
"A young woman was hit by a truck as she crossed the street."
Ice settled over Akane.
"Let me see the woman's face," she said quietly.
"Miss, I -- "
He stopped as he met her gaze.
"Let me see the woman's face."
The officer led her and Ranma-chan to the shrouded mass, her fantastic dread
increasing tenfold with each step they took through the bloodied water.
"I should warn you, Miss, it's not a pretty sight."
Akane nodded, not really hearing the words.
The officer withdrew the shroud, exposing a pale, contortioned face, its
long hair waving in the cold, uncaring wind. It's wide eyes bore into her,
filled with insatiable longing, screaming in death for the thing it radiated
so richly in life. It's pale, parted lips, forever whispering what could
never be heard. Anguished lines marred the flawlessness of the cold,
inanimate face, forever frozen in agony. Cold decried its loneliness, its
eternal desire for warmth.
For love.
"Oneechan...," Akane whispered, her hand trembling as she closed her
sister's eyes for the last time. "Kasumi-oneechan, what have I done...?
Please -- please wake up."
The chill of the night wind answered her, scalding her cheeks as it blazed
by.
"Oneechan...!" she pleaded, her hands caressing madly over the cold, twisted
lines of her sister's face, giving warmth to the pale, drenched, frozen skin.
It was not enough.
In a fit of mad despair, she gathered the broken body into her arms,
smothering herself in its cold blood, sheltering it from the cold, the evil,
the darkness.
"Kasumi-chan, speak to me! Speak! Tell me this is a dream! Tell me! I'm
begging you!
"I'M BEGGING YOU!"
Tears mingled with blood and anger mixed with despair. The world became
incoherent, lonely.
An enemy.
Hands. Voices. The were against her.
Black. Red. These were the colors of the world now.
She could not let them take her sister away.
Never.
They were gathering now, a pack of wolves silhoutted in lightning, thunder
roaring for them.
"No! I won't let you take her away. Never!"
They came, undaunted. Slowly, steadily they came.
"Oneechan. Please don't leave me. Not like this. Not with these animals.
I won't let them take you. I promise."
A hand fell on her shoulder.
She screamed.
She turned and saw Ranma staring back at her through the haze.
Courage.
Hope.
"Ranma, help me. Please."
"Akane.... She's gone."
Her heart shattered again -- another death.
Alone.
"Traitor!" she howled, kicking him hard in the head, throwing him into
bloody water. "She would've done no less for you! For betraying her once, I
hate you. Twice....
"I pray you burn in hell!"
She retreated further into the darkness, only to come up hard against the
wall.
"Akane, stop this!"
Nabiki.
She turned and looked up into her sister's eyes, the fire dying as she lost
herself there.
"Nabiki...," she whispered.
"Akane. There's nothing you can do for her."
"No!" she hurtled. "There is everything, Nabiki! I failed her. In my
dream, I saw this. Please, Nabiki. Go get Dad. Please...."
Nabiki's resolve was undaunted, her face hauntingly stern.
"Kasumi's gone, Akane. Dream or no dream, there's nothing you could've
done. It was over before she knew it."
Akane trembled, feeling the sister in her arms slipping, washed away with
the blood, the life, the love, the hope, the heart. She collapsed to her
knees and cried softly to herself, almost praying that she would drown in the
rain.
"Let Kasumi-chan go, Akane," Nabiki whispered in her ear.
"The dream...," she insisted.
"You couldn't have done anything, dream or no dream."
She turned from the living to the dead. One last time, she studied Kasumi's
beautiful features, unmarred even in eternal anguish and rest. She
remembered how she often wished her face could be like that, always so
gentle, warm, glowing.
Even now, she realized.
She kissed her sister, then offered the broken body to waiting arms.
Nabiki took Akane's bloody, trembling hands in her own and helped her
younger sister to her feet.
"She's all alone," Akane whispered.
"She has Okaasan now," Nabiki answered.
Akane sighed, deriving some small measure of consolation from that truth. A
new desire arose in her, so strong that it became a need as it emerged in her
bosom.
"I want to see Dad."
Akane felt her sister turn cold.
Almost as cold as Kasumi had been.
"Nabiki...?"
Nabiki stopped, placed cold hands on Akane's shoulders and gazed deep into
her sister's eyes.
Nabiki was fighting tears now, struggling for what little courage she had,
angered by the duty that she was now charged with, bitter at the one who had
bestowed this terrible duty upon her, even angrier with the weakness her own
tears betrayed, finally sagging under the weight of sorely-needed love and
the inevitable.
What she told Akane left her younger sister unconscious on the blood-soaked
pavement.
"He... passed on too when he saw Kasumi."
* * *
Chapter Three:
Akane groaned as she came to her senses, the hooves of caribou prancing on
her head as she fought back the nausea. She was relieved to regain
consciousness, the nightmare now over.
Her hazy vision focused slowly, and she looked up to see Ranma.
He looked very tired, drained not just physically, but emotionally as well.
Lines of fatigue made him look so old, so different to her, a stranger whom
she knew so well, yet could not begin to know. Yet, it was not these lines
nor the sadness or concern in his eyes not caught the focus of her
attention, but rather the large icepack he kept pressed to his head as he
knelt over her.
Then, she knew that the nightmare was real.
The heartache from the nightmare returned, dull and heavy, a dead weight in
her bosom.
"I'm sorry," she said to him, struggling to vocalize the words.
His face softened, warm now, as he took her hand and squeezed it in his.
She tried to smile, but faulted and began to sob instead.
"My fault. All my fault," she muttered to herself over and over.
Ranma put aside the ice pack and silently retucked the sheets around her,
unwilling to accept his helplessness as he watched his fiance convulsed by
hard sobs. Not wanting to upset her anymore, he tried to withdraw his hand
from hers, but was ambushed by the fantastic force with which Akane retained
his hold, clutching it like it was life itself.
They remained like that for quite some time, Akane holding Ranma's hand to
her check, wiping her tears against his knuckles, Ranma watching her, lost,
confused, dazed by the weight of his feelings, hurting even more as he was
forced to watch Akane helplessly, unable to do or say anything that would
assuage her grief, forced to admit that it was impossible now. Suddenly,
nothing mattered more than making Akane happy, to make the tears stop, to
take away her pain.
He was ashamed to find that he did not even know where to begin.
That was when Nabiki came, carrying a bowl of warm soup which she offered to
her sister.
"Is-is -- ?"
Nabiki shook her head, forcing a wry grin to further calm her sister.
"I made it," she said quietly.
Akane accepted the bowl and uncaringly downed the steaming liquid without
comment.
"Arigato," she uttered distantly as she handed to bowl back to Nabiki.
Nabiki obliged her sister with a polite nod. "I used to make it all the
time when you were little."
"You cook, Nabiki?" asked Ranma.
Nabiki turned away, unwilling to let anyone see the anguish in her own eyes.
"I did once," she said, a faint edge of terseness in her voice, but enough
that Ranma said nothing more about the subject.
Silence hung over the room, empty, maddening to the three of them.
Like death.
Except death was more.
Akane turned away from Ranma and her sister, unable to bear to compassion
she saw on their faces and felt in their somber eyes.
"My fault...."
"Akane," Nabiki called gently, brushing her hand lightly across her sister's
face.
"All my fault, Nabiki. If I had only listened to my heart and not obeyed...
her."
"Akane, please. Please don't do this to yourself."
Akane faulted, amazed to hear Nabiki beg.
"You did nothing wrong. Nothing, Akane. Nothing in the world could've
stopped this from happening. Even dreams, omens, and our best efforts."
"Nabiki, please, don't be so kind to me. Both of them... gone. I...."
Her voice trailed off into silence as sleep ambushed her.
Ranma gave Nabiki a cold stare.
Nabiki sighed. "I had to put it in the soup. She needs rest. There was no
other way she would've gone to sleep otherwise."
Ranma's relaxed, though it was still clear that he disapproved.
Nabiki was bothered by that.
"Look, Saotome, I can't let myself give in to my feelings right now. I know
my sister and I have to do what is best for her. Her mind isn't clear.
She's likely to say and think things that won't help her tomorrow."
Ranma sighed uneasily.
"Trust me, Saotome."
Ranma looked down and saw Nabiki's hand over his own...
... and for the first time, he trusted her.
Nabiki smiled. "Thanks, Saotome. I know we haven't always gotten along."
"You're Akane's sister and you're.... That's enough."
Nabiki looked into his eyes, her own betraying deep sadness. "I'd like to
think that somewhere along the line before this, we were also friends."
Ranma smiled.
"Arigato, Ranma," Nabiki said quietly, grateful for his unspoken answer.
She then turned to her sister one last time and did something she had never
done before.
She kissed her sister.
* * *
So many things to do.
Greedy sleep....
She was meticulous.
Every blade in the house was gone.
* * *
Kasumi's smile.
Menacing, musing over the misfortune of their house.
Akane's tears.
Otoosan, his eyes wide with pain and unspeakable suffering, dying on the
cold, hard pavement.
Nabiki watching, helpless, begging the kami, holding her father in her arms.
The silence when he left her.
Akane's pain...
Akane's tears....
Akane's madness....
Echoing in her mind.
Kasumi's smile.
Silent laughter in the darkness.
In a barbaric rage, she snatched it from her desk and smashed into the
floor.
"Witch!"
The shattering of the glass.
Not enough.
Her fingers tore into the wreckage, ripping out the damnation, tearing it
into little pieces.
These she burned with sake and old newspaper, hurtling it through her window
with all her might, watching it burn and settle in the pond below, the flames
dancing across her face as she swore her vengeance by the night.
"I will make you pay, Kasumi. I swear it."
Thunder clapped in the distance as it began to rain once more.
* * *
Chapter Four:
Akane found Ranma sound asleep on the floor. In spite of herself, she was
still unable to smile, feeling and believing that she could never smile or
laugh again.
She sighed to herself, attempting to return some coherance to her aching
brain. Her eyes, she struggled to focus, seeing everything now in dark
shades, the light of the world dimmer, all the shadows bolder now.
Kasumi. Otousan.
Okaasan.
Faces appeared to her mind's eye, her wretched heart twisting in her bosom
as they came.
"My fault...."
Fire in her heart. Mortification that was too great to swallow, courage
which she could not find, only augmenting her shame. Pain that would not go
away, which she prayed would go away and which she prayed would stay with her
forever. Madness raging in her mind, wanting peace, yet knowing that any
such blessing was unmeant for her and would never be hers again.
Madness....
A agonized groan ambushed her.
She looked down and saw her foot crushed into Ranma's stomach.
The pain in his eyes....
She dropped to her knees and said something to him. The words did not
register to her.
Ranma forced a sickly smile in spite of himself, his eyes distant, hazy.
The pain in his eyes....
She ran from him, tears burning in her eyes, stumbling down the stairs
numerous times, tearing through the house like a caged animal.
Nabiki at the table writing, a mess of papers in front of her.
She stopped.
She looked up when she heard Akane.
"Ohayou, Akane," Nabiki said quietly, her voice weary, raspy.
"Ohayou, O-Oneechan." The tremor in her voice betrayed her. It was strange
addressing Nabiki as 'Oneechan;' that had been Ka -- well, it had been
someone else's title.
Nabiki put the pen aside and rubbed her eyes. "Sit with me, Akane.
Please."
Akane obeyed, taking the place opposite her sister.
Opposite Kasumi's place.
A long silence elapsed, the sisters unable to meet each other's gaze, Akane
wordlessly sobbing to herself, Nabiki crushed to hear and see her.
Nabiki came behind her sister and enveloped Akane in her arms.
"We will go through this together, Imouto. Always together from now on."
"It was my fault, Oneechan," Akane said.
"Akane -- "
"Oneechan, I -- "
"AKANE!"
Akane stopped, stunned by the anger in her sister's voice, betrayed and
abandoned.
"Akane, come with me," Nabiki said firmly.
Akane, too weak and apathetic to resist, allowed her sister to drag her
through the house to Kasumi's room. From Kasumi's desk, Nabiki picked up a
piece of paper which she handed to Akane.
"Read."
... After all this time, I still want to die. What is my life worth? Every
day, I look about me and I wonder, feeling more and more that my curiosity
has become the only thing that keeps me alive. Homage and servitude have
become mundane, agonizing parts of my life. Happiness, joy -- these are
foreign things to me. I grow weary of my suffering, and even more so when I
see my sisters and realize that one day soon they will leave me. I cannot
even begin to imagine the loneliness that will come, the emptiness and the
envy I will feel, seeing them basking in what I can never have, what I can
only have in my nightmares. More and more, the dreams come now, terrible
visions of my misery, my loneliness, my envy, my shame. I cannot bear these
nightmares much longer, but I dare not share these things with my sisters or
my father. They can never understand, nor would I want them to. They would
look on me with scorn and anger for my ingratitude, or they would pity me and
smother me with sorry affections that can never heal the emptiness inside of
me.
My helplessness tears at me. At least in death, I will find peace.
Kami, I pray that I may die soon, soon before the day comes when my family
will leave me.
Tendo Kasumi.
Akane was still now, paralyzed with horror.
"It wasn't your fault, Akane. It was what she wanted."
Suicide.
Kasumi had committed suicide.
Her knees were weak now, her awareness fading.
Cold.
Darkness.
Unspeakable sorrow.
Akane hugged her knees to herself, longing for warmth in this eternal
vacuum, a world of unending night that did not know light or hope, did not
know peace, did not know mercy.
"What is our world now, Nabiki? What is our world now?" she lamented.
Nabiki did not hear her.
* * *
Chapter Five:
It was raining again.
Everyone was gone now.
Akane regarded the three graves with a deep, respectful bow.
The three graves stared back at her through the silence.
Tears came again, their faces haunting her once more.
Nabiki wrapped a protective arms around her sister as Akane wept. Nabiki
herself could not cry, no matter how much she wanted to. She still
remembered Otousan in her arms, his haunted eyes staring at her,
incomprehensible feelings screaming to her as his vision clouded over and he
came to rest, the cold of his body crying for warmth, for love.
From his eldest daughter....
Nabiki wondered if he even saw her, if he knew that she loved him. She
yearned to hear him say that he loved her the way he loved his other
daughters, to know that he understood her and that he was proud of her as he
was proud of her sisters. He had never seemed impressed by her intellect,
her resourcefulness, her achievements.
Emptiness....
Nabiki shuddered.
Respectful, acknowledging of her gifts, yes, but not much more. The chance
to know him more, to be able to talk to him without the sarcasm, without the
wit that Kasumi's curse compelled her to exude -- Nabiki had always longed
for these things.
Now, she would be left to dream forever.
Madness....
Akane's warmth soothed her.
Nabiki held her sister close.
Akane was the only person she had -- the only person she had ever had.
Akane was everything now.
Nabiki looked down at the sister in her arms, sadness clouding in her eyes.
She had not always been kind to Akane, treating her as any older sister
would. Yet, Akane knew how to forgive, always clinging to her older sister
with admiration and adoration when no one was looking. Her innocence had
always been the rock that had grounded Nabiki when the bitterness and the
anger became unbearable.
Now, more than ever and far more than she could admit, Nabiki needed her
sister.
* * *