Waters Under Earth

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum - harnums@hotmail.com

All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakugan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.

Hi.  This is not my first fanfic, but it is my first attempt at
posting something to the FFML... due to the limitations of
Hotmail, I am unable to subscribe to the FFML, so if any C&C
could please be directed to me privately at my e-mail address,
I'd be grateful.  I'm posting this fic in the hope that I can have
comments on it to help me make it as good as possible before
posting it to RAAC, so any comments are not only encouraged but
very much appreciated.  

Chapter 3 : Divided Duties (3/3)

     "Hey Ryoga..." Ranma said hesitantly.

     "Yeah?" Ryoga answered, licking his lips and sighing
slightly.

     "HAPPO GO-EN SATSU!"

     And then there was nothing at all.

**********

     He came awake slowly, from dreams which he would have no
memory of when he woke.  He was in a bed, white sheets and white
mattress.  White seemed to be the general motif of the room; any
space on which paint could be slapped was white, a white that
seemed too bright, that hurt the eyes to look at.  

     Behind the bed, the unshaded window let the sunlight cast
itself across the too-white walls.  The bed and the chair beside
it were divided from the rest of the room by white curtains.

     "I see you're finally awake," a voice said.  It was
familiar, although it took him a moment to place it.

     "Nabiki?" Ranma croaked, surprised at how his voice sounded.

     "Give the man a prize," Nabiki said from where she sat in
the chair next to him.  There was a newspaper open in her hands,
and her quick dark eyes peered over the top of the page at him.

     "What're you doing here?"

     "Aren't I allowed to have some concern for my future
brother-in-law?" Nabiki said, folding the paper with a rustle and
putting it on the floor beside her.

     Ranma gave her a flat, silent look.

     "Akane wanted to check on Ryoga, but she didn't want to
leave you alone," Nabiki said with a slightly defeated sigh.

     "How much did you charge her?" Ranma groaned.

     "A freebie," Nabiki said softly, turning her head to one
side so that he only saw her face in profile.  "Hey, I've got
something for you."

     "You've got something for me?" Ranma said incredulously.
"What's that gonna cost me?"

     "Another freebie," Nabiki said.  She leaned over in the
chair, a few stray wisps of hair dangling over her ears and
catching the sun in highlights of deep brown.  Ranma pushed
himself up to lean on his elbows and looked at her more closely.

     "There you go," Nabiki said as she straightened back up,
laying a white-covered book in his lap.  It was one of the
wedding albums she'd put together, the ones she'd been selling
two days ago.

     "I don't want it," Ranma said.  "And I told you not to make
any more of them."

     "I didn't," Nabiki said quietly, in a tone of voice softer
than her normal one.  "There's about a dozen more in a box here.
I bought back as many as I could from people I sold them to
before you showed up."

     Ranma blinked, a slow, surprised motion.  "Why'd you do
that?"

     Nabiki half-closed her eyes, and turned her head back to
face him again.  "Because I'm not made of stone, Ranma.  I can
understand when I might have gone a bit too far."

     Ranma gave her a slow nod, then smiled hesitantly.
"Thanks."

     "No problem," Nabiki said.

     "Where's Akane?"

     "A few beds down, checking on Ryoga.  Hinako-sensei gave the
two of you a pretty serious energy drain."

     "Good thing too," Ranma said with a sigh.  "We were really
gonna go at it."

     "From what I hear, you guys had just stopped from really
going at it," Nabiki said.  "You stopped dodging all of a sudden,
Saotome.  You got a death wish or something?  Ryoga could've
really hurt you."

     "You almost sound as if you care," Ranma said.

     Nabiki stiffened.  "Maybe I do."

     "Sorry," Ranma said a bit uncomfortably.

     "It's alright," Nabiki said.  "I'll go get Akane, okay?"

     Ranma shook his head.  "I'll get her myself."

     He sank back suddenly to lie on the pillow, surprised to
find he had no strength.

     Nabiki smiled sardonically at him. "As I said, Hinako-sensei
gave you two a pretty serious drain.  I'll go get Akane."

     Nabiki stood up, and swept the white curtain aside for a
moment as she stepped out into the main area of the school
infirmary.

     Ranma lay back, and gazed up at the featureless white
ceiling of the room, with its long banks of fluorescent lights.
It all seemed too bright.

     When Nabiki returned a minute later, Akane was following
behind her, hesitation written all over her body.

     "What happened?" she said to him immediately.  "Neither
Ryoga or Ukyou will really give me a straight story.  Is it true
you nearly got creamed with that umbrella of his because you just
stopped moving all of a sudden?"

     Ranma nodded his head slowly.  "Kinda," he said with a weak
smile.

     "Are you insane?" Akane snapped.

     Nabiki smiled and slipped out.  "I'll leave you two alone.
I've got some business to attend to."

     "Are you insane?" Akane repeated, more gently this time.
She took a seat in the chair beside the bed, rested one elbow on
the edge of the bed.

     Ranma winced.  "I think I might be."

     "Oh, Ranma, I'm sorry, I was just-"

     "It's alright," Ranma said slowly, reaching out and touching
her hand.  Her fingers closed around his, and did not let go.

     "What's wrong?" Akane said softly.

     "I'm scared of myself, Akane," Ranma said hesitantly.  "I'm
worried."

     "Why?" Akane said.

     He pushed himself up to lean against the metal headframe of
the bed.  "I'm worried I'm gonna hurt somebody."

     "Ranma, you..." Akane said.  "You don't hurt people.  That's
not the kind of person you are."

     "It isn't?" Ranma said slowly.  "No, it is.  I hurt people,
and it isn't always with my fists.  I don't do it on purpose..."

     He struggled with the words, not sure how to put them.
"But... just recently, it's like there's another part of me.  A
part that wasn't there before."

     Akane looked at him noncomprehendingly, and gave his hand a
gentle squeeze.  Sunlight played across her face, sparkled in her
eyes and caught the colour of her hair.  "What do you mean?"

     "It doesn't worry about hurting people," Ranma said.  "It's
not... cruel, or anything like that.  It's like a machine, a part
of me that just started coming out.  Two days ago, when I got in
that fight with Kuno, and today with Ryoga.  It..."

     He shook his head slightly.  "I'm gonna hurt somebody,
Akane, if I don't get it under control.  I..."

     He looked at her, into her dark eyes.  "I might hurt you."

     Akane's face tightened, and she brought her other hand up
and put it over his, holding his one hand between both of hers.
"Ranma, in all the time I've known you, I've never, ever been
truly afraid that you would hurt me."

     His face softened.  "Akane..."

     Then his eyes snapped back, looking around on the walls for
a clock.  "What time is it?"

     "School's over in a few minutes," Akane said.  "Why?  Do you
need to get home for something?"

     "Akane... you know what I asked you this morning on the way
to school?"

     He saw her face go slightly flushed.  "Yeah.  What about
it?"

     "There was kinda a reason for it..."

     And once it began, it did not stop.  Not until he had told
her everything from the meeting with their parents to his talk
with Ukyou and his fight with Ryoga.  There was only one thing he
left out, and that was how Ukyou had kissed him, because he told
himself Akane wouldn't have understood exactly what it had been.
Not that he really did either.

     At the end, Akane looked at him, and there was silence
between them for a few short seconds that seemed like minutes to
him.

     Then, hesitantly, she spoke.  "Do you... do you want to
break it?"

     He looked up at her, at the vulnerability shining on her
face, the secret heart he so seldom saw, and he put his hand over
hers, and held both her hands in his.  "Oh, Akane.  Never.
Never, never, never, never."

     Her eyes closed, dark lashes fluttering slightly, and her
hands tightened on his.  "Me too.  Never."

     "Come on," Ranma said slowly, rising out of bed with careful
footsteps.  "Let's go tell them together."

**********

     Cologne watched Shiso fly away from where she stood on the
roof, leaving the small box he'd brought in her hands.  There was
no time for conversation now; the streets were crowded with
people, and a talking bird would have surely drawn attention,
even atop a rooftop.

     His black form sped over the rooftops towards the harbour,
and she saw how each strangely disjointed movement of his wings
propelled him half a hundred feet, and it was only a few seconds
before he was away and out of her sight.

     She'd closed the restaurant after lunch, sent Shampoo and
Mousse on a long shopping trip for a list including several
ingredients that didn't actually exist.  That would keep them
away long enough, she hoped.

     She went back down to the second floor of the Nekohanten,
slowly advancing down the wooden hallway.  Two shuffling steps,
the click of staff on wood.  Through the open door of her room,
and swing it closed behind her with her staff.

     She was already packed; she'd packed last night, the bare
essentials of what she would need, right after Shiso had come for
the first time with Samofere's message.  The small cloth bag lay
on her bed.

     Cologne sat down at the desk, propped her staff against one
side, and opened the box.  A small vial of water and a long,
handwritten note.

     She read the note first, and then read it again when she was
done, scanning over and over the words written in Samofere's
precise, neat hand.  Than she put it aside and ran her withered,
shrunken fingers through her long white hair.  The length of it
was the last remnant of her youth, the last memory of how she had
once been.

     She took a piece of paper from the desk drawer, a pen from
the jar in front of her.  She dipped the pen in the open ink-pot,
and stood there with it poised above the paper.

     <My dear child,> she wrote.  <Know that what I do I do
because I must...>

     When she was finished, she read the note, then crumpled it
up and left in on the desk.  No hint.  No explanation.  That was
the way it had to be.  There could be no indication that there
was anything beyond what there appeared to be.

     But oh, the price of it.

     "Oh, child," she whispered as she put Samofere's note and
the crumpled note Shampoo would never read back in the box and
picked up the vial.  "Oh, child, one day may you find it in your
heart to forgive what I must do."

     She shed her clothing, the shapeless green robe she wore,
and tossed it in a crumpled heap upon the floor of the room.

     Then she uncorked the vial and upended it over her head.

     And she felt the change.  Perspective warped, the blurring
that had been at the edges of her vision for years vanished now,
and all of her senses were sharpened beyond what she had thought
possible.  Stiffness and the lingering, eternal pain of old age
disappeared, as her flesh shed itself of wrinkles and became
clear and smooth, as her limbs expanded, as the thin shape of her
body grew curved and rounded in places.

     There were no mirrors in the room; she bore them only when
she had to.  But she knew what she looked like now; the image was
ingrained in her mind a hundred thousand times over.

     A slim, shapely figure, athletic without being too muscular.
A slender, well-formed and pretty face with big dark eyes.  Hair
long and silky and black as night.

     She walked slowly over to the closet, a strange lightness in
her step after so many years of fighting the weakness of age,
fighting it with every ounce of herself until she had overcome
it.  From behind her rack of similiarly shapeless robes, she
pulled out one far too large for the shape she had been before, a
robe of green silk, close to translucency it was so fine.  The
sleeves and hem were a darker green than the rest of it, and tiny
white flowers were embroided there.  She slid it over her head,
and it fit her body like a glove, cloth caressing youthful skin
like the familiar touch of an old lover.  Then the black silk
belt, tightened around her waist, with the rest of the robe going
down to her ankles, slit up the sides from the bottom hem to a
little above her knee to provide mobility.

     Over that she threw a cloak of pale grey, the fabric faded
from age, but still without holes or tears.  She gathered up her
hair in one hand and pinned it back with a antique wooden and
jade clip that had lain in one of the pockets of the cloak for
decades now.  She tugged the hood of the cloak up to hide her
face; the overgarment fit as perfectly as the robe had.

     She glanced back, at the shapeless, thick robe on the ground
behind her like a discarded skin.  A staff that would not have
served as more than a walking stick for her now lay nearby.

     "Water from the Spring of Drowned Young Girl," she whispered
softly, voice gone from the creak of age to the light music of a
girl of no more than eighteen years.  "Taken from the Chisuiton
of the Musk Dynasty."

     She crossed in one stride a section of floor that would have
taken her six strides minutes earlier, and grabbed up the bag
from the bed.  Inside, the numerous treasures of the Joketsuzoku
that she might need rattled together slightly.  She'd left most
of them behind in the closet; Shampoo would know what to do with
them.

     She took the box from the desk and put it in the bag with
the other objects.  Then she slung the bag over her shoulder and
went back to the closet.  She had need of her stick no more, but
there was still a need for a weapon.

     Leaning against the wall, seemingly forgotten, she found it.
A long-handled rake, taller than she was, with the steel tines
glittering sharply.  The handle was heavy and worn smooth in
places by countless hands.  A weapon, not a tool, though a
strange weapon; she'd used it as a girl, and as a woman until her
hands had grown too withered and her height too small to wield it
effectively.

     She took the rake out and looked at it with a strange,
half-sad, half-amused smile.  "I suppose I am the swine.  Who
then, is the monkey?  Who the priest?  And the dragon..."

     She rested the rake against her other shoulder, and headed
out.  Down the hallway, feeling for the first time in decades the
incredible youthful ease of walking.  Down the stairs, quickly,
not with the scuttling quickness she'd had before, but with the
quick, easy steps that came from being young, and in the prime of
health.

     She could never hope for understanding for this, because if
she were to explain her actions to anyone it would defeat the
entire purpose of them.  Not even forgiveness could be hoped for,
if truth be told.  There was little she had to hope for now, she
realized.  But she had known this day would come since she had
gone down into the caverns under Jusendo with Samofere.  She had
known that one day, she would have to do this.  It had been done
before by her, or someone like her, and it would be done again.
Not in the same way, or under the exact same circumstances, but
it would be done.

     Destiny was like a boat in swift-flowing rapids.  While you
might change your course a little, you could never truly change
the direction of your flow.  What ocean her river ran to in the
end, though, she didn't know yet.

     "Woodchips in the stream of time," she said softly, and she
stepped out the door of the Nekohanten for the last time ever.

End Part 3


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