Epilogue 2 - Silverblue

 The smell of hospitals in winter and the feeling
 That it's all a bunch of oysters and no pearls
 All at once you look across a crowded room
 To see the way that light attaches to a girl
 And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
 Maybe this year will be better than the last
 - Counting Crows

	It's been ten months since the day Ranma went inside.

	I'm going there now, riding the bus from one hospital to 
another. One for the body, one for the mind. Both with 
supposedly hopeless cases that I still hold a great deal of hope 
for, because both are fighters.

	Today was my day to visit Nabiki. One of my days, 
actually; I have two days, Kasumi has two, and Daddy has two. 
And Koji has taken Mondays. I wonder how strong their bond 
really was... he says it was just friendship, but every Monday 
for five months is quite a lot, even for the best of friends...

	She hadn't moved a muscle since the accident. She just 
lies there and breathes, staring at nothing as I tell her about 
my day, about what I've been doing and how I've been feeling. 
She just lies there, and I don't know if she can hear me or not. 
I think perhaps she can.

	The people who know about such things - the doctors, the 
specialists, the nurses - say that she'll probably never wake 
up.

	They also said that she wouldn't last the night, that she 
had no chance of living beyond the week, that it was just a 
fluke that she lasted a month... so what do they know? I think 
that Nabiki will come back to us, in her own time. I think she'll 
laugh at me again.

	Ukyou won't. He... she... is buried in Kansai, on a hill. I met 
her father, and again I thank fate that my own father is who he 
is, and not a madman like Kuonji Shin, or a thing like Genma. 
Genma has not returned. I doubt he ever will. Ukyou should have 
killed him.

	And Shan, poor Shan, she is buried next to Ukyou. We 
could not send her body back to China, not without provoking a 
responce from the Joketsuzoku. So her grave, marked by a plain 
stone that bears no name, stands by Ukyou's. What happened 
between them? Never mind, enough, let it go. Ukyou died trying 
to help Ranma and me, and I will never forget that. Shan taught 
me, and without her teaching I could not have stood before 
Ranma in the tower, not long enough to force him to his choice. 
I would have fallen, and he would have left, and it would have 
killed us both, sooner or later. Let them lie there together, 
both with my thanks and sorrow.

	It is cold, and I shiver as I board the bus. Winter is not 
my favorite time of year, unlike my rival. Mariko loves the 
snow, the rain, the sleet. She fights with an umbrella, after 
all.

	She said she would see me again, and I thought she just 
meant the terrible days after Gunkanjima, when those of us 
who survived tried to put ourselves back together. I let them 
see Ranma, from the gallery. They called off the bloodfeud. I'm 
still not sure if it was from pity, guilt, or delight over the hell 
he had found himself in. They told me that it was over, and 
then vanished. I never expected to see them again.

	Two months later, Mariko showed up. Apparently she was 
a bit upset over having lost our final duel.

	She had spent the two months learning the 'Gekihou'. I 
vaguely remember her smirking as she blasted me through the 
dojo wall, just before I blacked out.

	We had lunch, and then she left again, satisfied.

	She wasn't so satisfied five weeks later, when I had 
learned the Dispersion Blast from Tofu-sensei. I was the one 
smirking, and she was the one who finally passed out.

	Of course she showed up again, and defeated me. I 
studied, and returned the favor. Koji's stopped by to complain; 
apparently his sister's begun using him as her test dummy, and 
she's passed him in skill. He thinks, perhaps correctly, that 
she's found something new to obsess over now that Ranma is 
no longer there.

	Maybe I'm obsessing, as well. Tofu-sensei is getting a 
little irritated over my constant badgering to reveal his 
secrets, just one more technique to beat Mariko... I'm still 
amazed that I ever had a crush on him... but then, that was 
before I could see his ki.

	It is a deep purple, with shafts of black sunk through it, 
which frightens me somewhat. He looks in his early twenties, 
but he's let it slip that he studied with Homase Jiro. Who died 
in 1941. I'm no longer certain that he's completely human.

	I've come to tell what most of the colors mean, and I've 
studied all of those closest to me. Kasumi, alternating therapy 
with housework, a scarlet pink bleeding into powder blue. 
Father, white fading away all but the edges of a once-brilliant 
sky blue. Nabiki, with nothing at all. Mariko, vibrant red and 
yellow slicing back and forth. Koji, a deep, uniform, tranquil 
hunter green.

	Myself. Sky blue. And a disturbing taint of ugly yellow, 
and an even more troubling streak of black-crimson.

	And, of course, Ranma. Jet, ebony, midnight black, save 
for a small, almost nonexistent dot of stubborn silver blue.

	It was worse. It was worse when they brought him in the 
first time. God help him, I think he might have chosen to kill 
me if he had known exactly what he was doing when he dropped 
all the controls he had built, piece by piece, over eight years. 
He didn't just drop them. He smashed them into bits.

^_-

	"GET OFF! GET THEM OFF, DAMN YOU, GET THEM OFF, MAKE 
THEM GO AWAY, PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT 
STOP..."

	"Ranma, it's okay, please, there's nothing on you..."

	"YOU! KILL YOU, AKANE, KILL YOU, KILL YOU, YOU MADE ME, 
YOU DRAGGED ME DOWN, GET OUT, AKANE... KILL YOU AND GET 
OUT, WHORE, KILL YOU KILL YOU KILL YOU KILL YOU..."

	"Ranma, it's okay, there's nothing on you..."

	"KILL YOU, GET THEM OFF, AKANE, MAKE IT STOP, PLEASE, 
PLEASE, MAKE THEM STOP, PLEASE, GET THEM OFF..."

	"It's okay, Ranma. It's okay. You're not in the pit..."

	"KIIL YOU! TEAR OUT YOUR EYES, TEAR OUR YOUR EYES, 
AKANE, KILL YOU! KILL YOU!"

^_-

	I almost left him to the doctors after the first week.

	How he managed to build such a shell over his madness, 
I'll never know. He must have spent every day terrified that his 
control would slip. Because the pit was always around him, and 
the things were just waiting to tear him apart.

	After the first week, I was sure he hated me. He would 
alternate pleas for mercy with abuse, threats, horrible 
promises... I don't think there was a way of slowly killing me 
that he did not describe, eyes burning like suns, before 
breaking back down into the screams and cries to help him.

	I wanted to just leave.

	But I told him that I'd come with him, back in the tower 
on the seawall. He was here because he refused to let himself 
kill me, and now he was in a personal hell that he had been 
fearing all his life. And I was going to leave him because his 
words made me want to die?

	Almost a month later, he began to slip back out of the 
nightmare. Not often, and not for long. But he made it out.

^_-

	"Akane?"

	"I'm here."

	"Akane, they're gone... make them stay away..."

	"I'll beat the snot out of them if they come any closer, 
Ranma."

	"Akane, I'm sorry... I'm sorry, please don't leave, please 
don't let them get me... they're scared of you, please don't 
leave..."

	"I'm not leaving. I'm right here."

	"I'm sorry, Akane... I wanted to do it, some of it... the pit 
makes you hate everything... Akane... please don't leave, I don't 
want you to leave..."

	"I'm right here, Ranma. Hold my hand. I won't let them 
hurt you."

	"I didn't want to hurt you... I told myself that I needed to, 
I thought I wanted to, but when I did it hurt me worse than the 
pit... Akane, please don't leave, I love you, please don't leave 
me..."

	"I love you too. I won't leave."

	"Akane... Akane, they're coming back... they're coming 
back, don't leave me..."

	"I won't. I'm here."

	"They're coming back.. no.. NO! NO! HELP ME! GET THEM 
AWAY! AKANE! MAKE THEM... NO! NO! MY EYES! KILL YOU, AKANE, 
KILL YOU! YOUR FAULT! KILL YOU!"

^_-

	Weeks would past, and he'd scream and scream, and he'd 
only crawl out of the pit for a few brief minutes.

	Then for a few hours.

	It's days, now. He spent almost a week free of it.

	And I've come to know Saotome Ranma. Who I love.

	How? How can I love the person who played with me like 
a toy, lying to me as he pushed my sister to her death? How 
can I stand to look at him, much less love him?

	He didn't lie to me.

	The person I fell in love with - the one who I laughed 
with, the one who drank tea with me, fought for me, cared 
about me, comforted me, taught me - that was the real 
Saotome Ranma.

	The psychotic killer who tried to murder Nabiki is the 
lie. It was a lie he told himself for eight years, a lie that he 
came to believe. Almost. At night, asleep, he would scream in 
horror over what was happening.

	He believed it for so long that it became a part of him. It 
will always be a part of him. He'll never completely destroy it, 
not with a thousand years in the hospital.

	But every day I see more of the truth, and less of the lie. 
I see the person who I love, who is arrogant and blunt and kind 
and stubborn. And the lie vanishes, slowly, month by month.

	One day it will be the one screaming in the night, 
powerless.

	He is waiting for me at the hospital, perhaps wanting to 
talk, perhaps screaming and full of hate. Either way, I will 
stay for a time. Because I love him, and he me, and that is 
stronger than any lie.


 	I salute you. There is nothing I can give you which you 
 have not.
 	But there is much that what I cannot give, you can take.
 	No Heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in 
 it today.
 	Take Heaven.
 	No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this 
 present instant.
 	Take peace.
 	The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet 
 within our reach, is joy.
 	Take joy.
 	And so, I greet you with the prayer that for you, now and 
 forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
       -Fra Giovanni, Christmas Epistle