Hey Again,



Wow, part six  *grumbles*  This means that you guys have almost caught up to
the stuff I've prewritten...curses!  *Hunkers down in front of keyboard* 
Well, I'd better get crackin' on part seven!



Oh, just as a note, to those of you who are more familiar with the canon
manga than I am *blush*, when you reach a certain part in the story (trust
me, you'll know what I'm talking about when you get there), there is a date
of birth issue that I'm not too certain about.  I would really appreciate if
anyone would be able to tell me what the actually birthdate, or at the very
least, birthyear of Ranma is.  The one I have written into the story is very
tentative, and I just basically tapped something out which is wholly and
insanely wrong.  To anyone who *can* help me, thank you in advance!!



-Linda



^*^*^



FRAGMENTS



^*^*^



What's happened so far:



Ranma and a girl named Yuki are dead, but a man named Soichi and a woman
named Kimiko do exist.  Ryoga and Akane are engaged.  And somewhere in a
hospital, a boy named Naka lies on the precipice of death, not knowing that
when he wakes up, he will yearn for what the doctors fought to save him
from.



For previous sections, please email me privately. =)



^*^*^



Kimiko sat silently in the exam room, her shapely legs swinging slowly to
and fro from the edge.  Her arms were bare, and gooseflesh raised all along
her back, paper hospital gowns weren't the warmest things in the world, but
this degree of sensitivity to cold was not characteristic of a trained
martial artist.  Her eyes were downcast and her face was pale.



"Ms. Yoshida?  Are you all right?"  Sanii Aiko looked at the woman before
her in deep concern.  In her years, no one had ever quite reacted that way
to the news she had just shared.  There were tears of joy, tears of horror,
shouts, yells, happiness, and shame.  But never just plain silence.



"I'm fine," Kimiko murmured, her legs still swinging.  "Just confused."



"Confused?" Aiko asked softly.



"I," she started softly, "I was told that I could not conceive years ago. 
It's, it's kind of a shock."



Aiko smiled, "Had you and your husband wanted children?"



Kimiko shied away, and turned to face a wall, painted rosy pink in an effort
to be cheery in the gloomy surroundings of a hospital.  "We, we always
wanted children, desperately, but we knew we couldn't have any," she
stopped, "and even if we had been able to conceive," he voice tailed off,
"we had a delicate family situation."  Kimiko looked up, her expression much
happier now.  "I'm sure that my husband will be thrilled."  She coughed,
"Is, is the pregnancy why I blacked out?"



Aiko sighed and clasped her hands together, "Actually, Ms. Yoshida, the
reason you passed out is from the extremely low sugar content in your
blood," she eyed the other woman for a second, "had you skipped a couple of
meals, ma'am?"



Kimiko blushed, "I had a lot on my mind."



Aiko raised her eyebrows, "I'm sure you did.  Be sure you don't do that
again.  The little one might not be too happy about it."



"H-hai," Kimiko said, a pretty blush coloring her face as she looked down
once again, and finally glancing back up at Aiko, she asked, "Can I get
dressed?  I know that Soichi would be worried out of his mind by now."



"Sure, let me write out some prescriptions for prenatal vitamins while
you're doing that, okay?"



^*^*^



"What's wrong with her?  Please, God, just tell me, I can handle it,
really," Soichi demanded.  He was damn near ready to get down on his knees
and beg the doctor to tell him what Kimiko had come down with.



And for half a second, he shuddered at the thought that if he threw a few
tears into the equation, he would have been exactly like Tendo Soun.



Dr. Takano Aiko only shook her head at the man before her, his eyes watery,
his hair wild, and his face pallid in terror that something might have been
off with his lovely, wonderful wife.



Sometimes she wished that * her * boyfriend was like that.



"Nothing is wrong with your wife, Fujikara-san, in fact, according to what
she's told me, it seems that everything is right for the first time in a
long while," Aiko smiled, "Have you two ever thought about having children?"



Soichi looked confused for half a beat, "Well, yes, a long time ago, but we
couldn't get pregnant," Aiko smiled, she'd spent years upon years hearing
men say that their woman couldn't get knocked up, it was nice to hear a 'we'
and 'pregnant' somewhere in between all the chauvinism.



"Well," Aiko commented mildly, "it seems that you've finally succeeded,
congratulations, Fujikara-san, you're going to be a father!"



* THUD *



"Fujikara-san?  Fujikara-san?  Oh, Kami-sama, can someone get me some
smelling salts, please?"



^*^*^



Kimiko was in line at the hospital pharmacy, her coat and prescription slip
clutched tightly in her hands.



She couldn't believe it.



She and Soichi had wanted children so badly when they had gotten married. 
They had tried everything, from special fertility clinics to Shinto
Priestesses.  After hundreds of sleepless nights, endless hours of crying
into pillows so Soichi couldn't hear her as she wept, she'd finally
surrendered to the reality that they'd never have a child.



But, now, they had another chance!



They were going to have a baby!



She almost laughed out loud from the sheer joy of it, and she wondered how
Soichi would react.



"SHIT!  HE'S CRASHING!" someone cried.



The panicked sound of surgeons and the wheels of a hospital gurney being
rolled quickly along a tile floor interrupted Kimiko's joyful wanderings.



Sound is second only to smell for bringing back the most vivid of memories,
it's no wonder that Kimiko was suddenly pulled through her years back to
another place, where there was the heavy, distant sound of wheels far away,
acting as a backdrop to a very important conversation.



^*^*^



Nerima

13 years 9 months previous



"Conics," Yuki sighed in disgust, "stupid, useless, hateful conics.  Whoever
came up with these ought to be shot."  She kicked a rock viciously along the
sidewalk and glared at the sky, glowing a fiery red that was doing a fair
job of copying the color of her hair.  "Kami-sama take me now," she added, a
fatalistic tone in her voice.



"Come on, Yuki, it's not that bad," Ranma muttered, balancing carelessly
atop the fence.



She scowled at him, "Maybe not for you, Ranma-kun, but the teacher likes
you, and for some forsaken reason, you can zip through math like a whiz."



"Well," he started arrogantly, "some of us are gifted, and others just
aren't."



"And some of us are passing English," Ranma glared down at her as she spoke,
"and some of us aren't," Yuki added smugly, crossing her arms more tightly
across her chest, warding off the cooling winds.  "Hey," she said,
bemusement in her voice, "why are you walking with me today?  Don't you and
Akane usually go home together?"



All she got in response was a mumbled:



"Stupid kawaikunee tomboy, stupid mallet . . ."



Yuki raised her brows, "Never mind."



Ranma's eyes stared towards something far away, but his mind was further
still.



Things were not going well at the Tendo Dojo.



It wasn't that he wasn't accustomed to being blamed for any and everything
that happened to go awry during the day; it was that he wholly disliked the
oppressive feeling of guilt.



Especially since his logical mind knew he had nothing to feel guilty about.



It had all started out with Akane's curry nearly three months ago, about two
days after he had first met Yuki.  His fiancee had decided to try out a new
recipe, one that sounded fantastic in the magazine and looked great in the
photo, but turned out to resemble something more like nuclear waste.  So
naturally when he'd declined to consume it ("BAKA!  Kawaikunee tomboy!  Who
in their right mind would eat that steaming pile of garbage?"), Akane had
gotten upset ("RANMA NO BAKA!  I can't believe you!  I spent all afternoon
making this for you!  Can't you at least * try * it?), so Ranma had decided
to give her a reasonable excuse ("HELL NO!  Besides, Yuki and I went to
Ucchan's and ate already, okay?  Feed it to P-chan or something!"), to
which, there was a rather unpleasant reaction on Akane's part ("YUKI?  WHO
IS YUKI?  DID YOU GET * ANOTHER * FIANCEE YOU JACKASS?").



He didn't understand.  Was there something terribly wrong about having lunch
with a friend?  Was it a capital crime to enjoy someone's conversation? 
Kami-sama knew it had been too long since he'd been able to sit down and
talk to someone.



And after that, it had just been downhill all the way.  He didn't even
bother to talk to Akane anymore.  Just straight to his room after school,
and straight to bed after homework.  There was no explaining things.



"But Akane!  She's my friend!  We've got a lot in common!  There's nothing
wrong with having a girl for a friend!"



"BAKA!  I knew it!  Shampoo, Ukyo, Kodachi, and me aren't enough, you had to
go and get another girlfriend!  PERVERT!"



"SINCE WHEN DID I SAY SHE WAS A FREAKIN' GIRLFRIEND?"



"YOU DON'T NEED TO SAY IT, I CAN ALREADY TELL!"



He frowned to himself.  When did it become this way?  He remembered the
first time he had ever met Tendo Akane, a funny, smiling creature with
bright eyes and a forgiving heart, quick to welcome and friendly.  Then
she'd realized that he was in fact a 'he'.



But even then, there were moments of tentative romance, the fumbling motions
of two people forced into intimacy at an age where they didn't know what to
do.  Times where they had almost kissed, times when she'd say something, or
do something that just screamed of her devotion, or her love.  And he had
been so sure, so terribly certain that he loved her back that he was willing
to lay down his life for her if she so much as hinted.



There had been times when he had wanted her so badly, wanted to kiss her and
embrace her as one lover holds another, and to whisper quiet words in her
ear.



But those moments had grown fewer and further in between.



There was an undeniable chill in the air wrought by the onset of winter, and
he shivered lightly, clenching his teeth.



"Hey, are you okay?"



An all-too-familiar voice broke him out of his deathly calm.  Ranma looked
down from his place on the fence to Yuki's concerned face, her eyes narrowed
and her brow wrinkled.



He shrugged, and kept on walking.  "I'm fine, Yuki, don't worry about it."



He could feel the smirk on her face, "Of course not, Ranma-kun, because Mr.
Super-kick-ass-Martial-Artist isn't vulnerable to emotion."



He did his best to frown at her.



And she just grinned back up at him.



It was a well-known throughout Nerima by then that Tanakawa Yuki did not
know how to be unpleasant.  In reality, that was not the case, but it was
true however, that it physically pained her to be angry with anyone for a
long time, she was naturally bubbly, happy, reconciliatory.



"Aw, come on, Ranma-kun, just tell me what's up, please?" she flashed him a
cute expression that Ranko had used on more than one occasion to get free
food, "Aren't I your friend anymore?"



Ranma growled and shook his head, hopping off the fence and landing
gracefully next to her on the sidewalk, falling into step, he muttered:



"That's not fair, Yuki."  He closed his eyes for a beat and said, "I'm
worried about me and Akane."



Yuki drew to a quick stop, grinding her heel into the ground as she spun
back to face him, "Oh, Ranma-kun, why didn't you say so earlier?"  She
grabbed his hand, "Come on, I'll take you out for noodles, we'll talk over
food!"  Her eyes were bright and she was nearly breathless with excitement
over * something * that Ranma didn't quite understand, "Oh, maybe Elder
Cologne will have found something about why we look alike, too!"



She started running, dragging Ranma behind her at a steady pace.



It was at this moment that he realized something that would hold deeply
important in his soul for the rest of his life.  With all the women who
chased him, out of all the girls that flocked towards him, he'd always in a
roundabout way reached towards them for love, for understanding.  That
all-important, nonjudgmental emotion that doesn't bind and doesn't guilt. 
Yuki was the only one who had ever bothered to reach back and take hold.



Albeit, it was by his hand, but it was a far better thing to grab his
fingers than his hair, as Akane often did.



"Ooo!  I remember now!  I heard they're introducing a new noodle dish, fried
spicy beef strips and veggies tossed over cold ramen!  I can't wait!" Yuki
giggled, still running towards the Nekohanten.



He rolled his eyes as he was tugged along by the small, redheaded girl,
'Man,' he thought, 'a woman after my own heart.'



^*^*^



Kimiko was almost broadsided by a nurse running after the gurney, and she
frowned until it passed by her, finally allowing her to see the poor soul
lying atop it.



Her breath caught in her throat.



"Naka-kun," she whispered, and reached out a trembling hand after the
doctors and nurses had disappeared behind the doors of the surgical ward.



Her heart fluttered in her chest the way a contained butterfly flapped its
colorful wings against the sides of a jar ^� painfully.



She knew what Naka meant to Soichi, she could see his personality and his
self-confidence bloom under his watchful eye, and over the period of nearly
two years, from a confused, unhappy boy sprung a smiling, pleasant man.



Though he still had his fallacies, Naka had changed a great deal from the
sullen child who had accidentally knocked her over the first time he'd ever
visited Dr. Fujikara, not even muttering a 'sorry' as he bolted from the
office.  But he had grown, and she had grown to love him.  Though she'd only
heard stories about his actions and antics till very recently, she'd started
thinking of Naka as a little brother, or perhaps even a child.



"Oh, Kami-sama," she murmured, "please, watch over him for me.  For Soichi. 
For us."



Numbly, she slid the thin prescription slip to the pharmacist, and with a
wavering hand, she received the white, waxy bag the bottles on bottles of
vitamins were in.



Kimiko walked unsteadily towards a plush chair near the doorway of the
surgical ward, and laying her head against the back of her chair, she
waited, a deep, trembling fear filling it heart like water from a broken
dam.



She had lost many people in her short lifetime, and she would wait to see if
she would lose yet another.



^*^*^



"Ohiyo, Ranma-kun, the weather is lovely, isn't it?"  Saotome Nodoka spread
a soft blue blanket over the bright green grass before the grave, and
motioned Akane next to her as she sat down.  "I've a surprise for you today,
son!  I brought Akane!"  Nodoka cast a sidelong stare at Akane, a steeling
look in her eyes.  "Go ahead, he can hear you."



Akane stood before the headstone, perhaps three feet from where Nodoka sat,
her eyes trained on the epitaph:



"Saotome Ranma (1980-1998)



"He who was loved and cherished

He who slept and dreamed

He who was wise and childlike

He who was more than he seemed."



She remembered the verse from somewhere, from someone who had once
remembered it and grinned as she recited it to her.



And her memory suddenly clutched it, that whisper of something that wrenched
her from the present and flung her towards her past.



^*^*^



Nerima

13 years 8 months previous



"Akane!" a voice cried, "Akane!  Hold up, wait for me, please!"  The
dark-haired girl furrowed her brow, this voice was familiar, irritatingly
so, but the words and their tone were not.  Usually, when she heard that
lyrical voice, the words that tumbled in its sound were rough, formal, and
very much grammatically incorrect.  And if not that, at least they were
mean.



She turned towards the source and saw a redheaded girl sprinting towards
her, a shy smile on her face her bookbag flying by its straps behind her.



"Ano . . . Arigato, Akane-san!  For a moment there, I didn't think you were
going to wait for me!" the redhead smiled brightly, and closing her eyes for
a brief moment, she inhaled deeply, cold weather cleared the air, and it
tasted deliciously crisp that day.



Akane scowled, kicking a rock as she continued to walk at a brisk pace,
feeling a hint of anger as the redhead fell into step without so much as an
extra breath.



"What do you want today, you pervert?" she yelled, "And why the hell are you
dressed up like a girl, anyway?"



The blue-eyed girl was, for once, wearing a sky-blue Furinkan High School
uniform, a dress jacket over it, indicative of the cold weather.  Her hair
was pulled into a loose ponytail and bound with a sky colored ribbon.  The
whole ensemble was topped off by white tennis shoes and lacey ankle socks.



'Yes, indeedy,' Akane surmised grumpily, 'there is definitely something
wrong with Ranma today, maybe he accidentally ate something that Kodachi
gave him.'



Instead of a snide remark or inelegant stuttering as he tried to explain why
what he had done this time * wasn't * wrong, Akane got instead:



"Who're you calling a pervert?  And for your information, I * always * dress
like a girl because that's what I am," the blue eyes sparked with anger,
"And I'll have you know that it's * not * polite to verbally accost someone
you've never met before!"



Akane stared at the redhead and blinked.  'Yep,' she thought to herself,
'Kodachi's back to using the hallucinogens.'



"Ranma," she started cautiously, touching the redhead's forehead, "are you
feeling okay?  You didn't eat anything Kodachi gave you, did you?"



The girl sighed in frustration and her shoulders slumped, "Geez, Akane,
that's what I'm trying to tell you.  My name is Tanakawa Yuki."



Akane raised and eyebrow, "Yeah, that's it, Ranma, come on, I'll take you to
Tofu-Sensei's, he's gotten pretty good at dealing with stuff like this by
now-"



"Akane, listen!  I AM A REAL GIRL!  A real girl named Tanakawa Yuki, I just
* look * like Ranma's girl-side!"



"Sure, why aren't you walking, move it."



"Fine," the girl huffed, "I'll prove it."  Slipping off her bookbag, she
pulled out a little floral satchel, and tugging a few tampons from inside
it, she proceeded to explain in painfully embarrassing detail about how
exactly to use them.



"Are you satisfied, Akane?  Ranma would rather die than to even look at
them, much less touch tampons."  Yuki crossed her arms over her chest, and
grinning, "I could talk about menstrual cramps, too, you know."



Akane felt confused, who was this girl, where had she come from, was she who
Nabiki had been yelling about for the past month?  Kuno's pigtailed girl,
the one who had finally escaped the grasp of the 'foul Saotome?'.  The new
martial artist in town?



"H-Hai, Tanakawa-san, Gomen nasai, it's just that-" she was interrupted by
her new aquaintence.



Yuki waved a dainty hand in the air between them, making a fish face with
her mouth, "Eh, it's all right, happens, it * is * sort of odd situation,
right?" she paused for breath and continued at the still-stunned expression
on Akane's features, "Oh, you're wondering about the look.  Well, it's not
as if stoplight-red hair has become all-of-a-sudden more common, it's weird.
Elder-Cologne thinks it's something about reincarnated souls or some junk
like that, but she's not sure yet, so Ranma and I are just waiting it out. 
And I'm trying to stay out of Ryoga and Mousse's way."  The girl sighed,
"You wouldn't believe how violent those two are," she muttered unhappily.



Akane smiled thinly.  So, Ranma had been out cavorting with some girl while
she was alone at home, cooking dinner for him.  That bastard.



And then, the little voice in the back of her mind finally broke through the
wall of hatred she'd built up around it.  'BAKA!' it cried, 'Ranma was * not
* out cavorting!  He probably met Yuki by accident, they look * exactly *
alike, hell, if it were you, you'd be freaking, too, they're just trying to
figure things out!'



Yuki grinned, nearly exuding pure and gentle friendliness, and Akane was
shocked by the warm sensation that built up inside her.



'No wonder Ranma spends so much time with her nowadays,' she thought
morosely, 'she's pretty and nice * and * the friendliest person alive.' 
Akane looked at Yuki, who was still smiling her thousand-watt smile and
sighed to herself.



"Akane, I think we need to talk, badly.  It's important, okay?" Yuki
whispered, glancing around her, "how about the bridge?  Ranma showed me a
great spot down there."



Akane turned red.



"Hey!" Yuki cried out in surprise, "Cool!  Your face matches my hair, how do
you do that?"



^*^*^



And in that familiar explosion of anger that had ended the peaceful
afternoon, so, too, did it end her memory.



Akane lowered her head slightly and whispered, "Ohiyo, Ranma-kun," her voice
shook like a child's.



Graveyards were not pleasant places, she did not like them.  Her first
memory of them was shortly after her fifth birthday, a year after her mother
had died.  All she recalled was the soft green grasses below her feet, the
unhappy, looming headstones, and the pretty flowers that had been laid on
the ground.  She had not understood that it was the resting place of the
dead.  She had not understood that it was where her mother was buried.



"Mother is here, Akane-chan," Kasumi had explained tearfully,
eight-years-old and bravely holding her younger sister's hand.  "Mother is
under all this lovely grass you're standing on, her life is feeding the
beauty of this place, do you feel her, Akane?"



The five-year-old Akane had then finally realized something truly
horrifying: they had put her Mother under the * dirt *.  They had covered up
her shining eyes and her smiling face and laid her under all that earth and
mud.



She'd dropped onto her knees before her Mother's grave marker, and with her
chubby hands wet with tears running down her flushed-red face, she had
started dig through the soil, yelling all the while, "Mommy!  I'm sorry! 
I'm sorry!  I'll get you out of the mud, Mommy!"



And then it had started to rain.



"Akane-chan," Nodoka interrupted softly, "Akane, please, feel free, talk, he
can hear you, I promise."



Her eyes focused and the memory cleared.



This was not the cemetery where her mother had been buried; they had closed
the doors to that one long ago, having filled the ground with the souls of
the dead.  This was a relatively old place, one that was quiet and catered
the to the likes of ancient titles, with wide, expansive plots reserved for
each family.



Ranma had once joked about the place:



"Hey," he had laughed as Ryoga missed him by a mile, "P-chan, if you ever
get the best of me, just promise that you'll bury me at the old Garden
Cemetery," he had ducked just in time for Ryoga's kick to miss decapitating
him, "on second thought, never mind, the place is huge, you'd never find my
headstone!"



Ranma probably liked it there.



"Gomen, Ranma-kun.  My mind wanders," she started.  Slowly lowering herself
to her knees before the headstone, and she began to speak, to tell him of
things she'd denied herself, and to unlock the secrets of many years passed.



"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" she paused, "I apologize for not coming
to visit you more often, but I'm told that Ryoga drops by every once in a
while," she smirked, "turns out that he doesn't hate you so much after all."



Nodoka stifled a sob and chose to leave, never noticing that Akane didn't
even bother to look as she ran from the cemetery.



Akane glanced up towards the blue sky, a nearly slate-blue shade that
evening, a sad imitation of the color of his eyes, eyes that had danced with
humor and filled with determination.  Eyes that had entrapped her and bound
her to his side, eyes that told her things his lips could never say.



"Did your Mom mention it?" she asked softly, letting her fingers trace the
inscription on the headstone, "We're getting married, Ryoga and I."



She stopped, hearing the footsteps of a ghost behind her.



Her dark head whipped around to see a familiar face, one frozen forever in
her memory as an eighteen year old man, with a teasing grin and a deadly
touch ^� when he wanted it.  His hair was still bound in a braid, and his
arms were crossed over his chest, his blue-cotton Chinese shirt doing
nothing to hide his musculature.



And she could see straight through him across the street.



There was a low, sad whistle as the wind threaded through the brush, and the
rustle of dried, dead leaves fluttering in the early Winter cold.  The
sounds of life in Nerima did not stop.  The car horns still honked, children
still cried, and the sound of bicycle tires and bells didn't mute.



They faded ever so little.



Ever so little.



And then they were gone.



And so was the outside world.



She was frozen in place of fine slate-blue, headstones, and wandering, a
place were the dead could rise and smile, where the living could disappear
from life and dance with the Kami above.



'Or,' she reasoned to herself, still staring at the ghost before her, 'I've
just lost all perspective on reality.'



"Aw, Akane," the ghost said, his voice echoing in the dead silence of the
graveyard, "cheating on me with pig-boy?"



"You're dead," she murmured; hand still on the cold surface of his
headstone, grasping it as a tether to the Earth.



The ghost shrugged, "Of course I am, Akane," He was quiet for a moment,
"You're really marrying Pig-Boy aren't you?"



"Yes," she said clearly, firmly, "why do you call him that?"



The ghost stared at her hard for a moment, "You still don't know, do you?"



"Know what?" she replied, breathless, mindless, without conscious thought or
logic.  She didn't believe in ghosts, she'd never seen one, she'd never
spoken to one or touched one, and she'd given up on the concept of blind
faith years ago.  She knew he was dead, she knew he could not be speaking to
her.



But in her years with him, she had seen too much to write this off.



The ghost rolled his eyes and cocked his head to one side, "Never mind,
Akane," pausing, it added, "You miss me, don't you?"



"Yes," she answered, too quickly perhaps, "Yes, I do, every day, every hour.
I guess I'm just making up for lost time, ne?"



"Well, you did spend an awful lot of time hitting me, you know," the ghost
smirked, "I hope you feel really shitty about it."



Akane scowled, "Jackass, you're dead and you're still being a jackass."



'I'm insane,' she decided, 'I've become a total fucking lunatic, I'm nervous
about marrying Ryoga, and I've turned inward towards some mad psychological
manifestation to satisfy some deep guilt-complex that I haven't yet dealt
with,' she sighed silently, 'dammit.'



The ghost didn't look guilty; he just looked translucent, as all
stereotypical ghosts tend to do sometime or another.  "The sad truth of the
matter is, Akane, you still love me, don't you?"



"You aren't him, he can't even say the word love without stuttering, and no,
I don't," she replied angrily, her fists clenched.



"I am Ranma, and you do love me," the ghost insisted, "I've grown up, I've
changed, no one ever stays the same.  I mean, look at you and Ryoga, he used
to have a nosebleed every time he saw you less than fully dressed."  The
ghost trailed off, and in a much softer voice, asked, "Do you really love
him?"



Akane opened her mouth to say 'yes'.  And closed it because she knew it
would be a lie.



"I'm fond of him," she finally decided, "We get along well together, we'll
have a nice marriage."



The ghost shook his head, "That's not enough though, is it, Akane?"



"No," she whispered, her eyes intent on the ghost's face, "No, it's not
enough, because- because I still-"



"STOP, Akane." The ghost commanded harshly, "You can't have me, and it isn't
because I'm dead, either."



She hesitated, studying the stony expression on his face, "What do you
mean?"



So consumed was she in her conversation with a dead man, she did not hear
the rumble of thunder, but she did see the rain.



As the water fell and drifted through the ghost, it reshaped and resized,
growing thicker and thinner and curvier until the man became a woman with
faint, damp, red hair, pale blue eyes, and a hinting expression.



"You always doubted, and therefore, you always knew," the onna-ghost
whispered before disappearing.



By some unseen force, a dripping wet Tendo Akane pushed herself from the
soggy ground, and brushing her bangs from her face, she followed the line of
her heart towards another cemetery plot not so far away.



Towards a gravestone set underneath a large, shady tree.  Towards a secret
that desperately wanted to be revealed.



^*^*^



Hope you enjoyed it!  All feedback is appreciated and worshipped more than
is psychologically healthy.





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