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Everyone:

[looks around nervously]  If I said I fell off a cliff into the cpring of
the cowardly fic-writer....would you all believe me?  [Ducks from the
various rotten fruit people are throwing]  I'll take that as a 'no.'

Alright, sorry about the long delay - well, at least to the three people in
the world who were following 'Fragments' - Gomen!

If you'd like past chapters, please email me privately.

All feedback is welcomed and appreciated. =)

PS - Confession: I arbitrarily pick places to break this story into
chapters, and they aren't originally marked in the word file I write to, so
I'm not entirely certain if what I'm posting is where I left off, more than
likely, it's too far back, so if anyone how *does* remember where this story
stopped being posted, I'd appreciate it *so* much if you'd email me.

^*^*^

What's Happened So Far:

Ranma and a girl named Yuki (who looks *exactly* like his girl side - it
will be explained, I swear) perished in a battle twelve years ago.  Flash
forward.  Nabiki, Akane, and Kasumi have moved on with their lives.  Akane
is engaged to Ryoga, Kasumi and Tofu are married, and Nabiki is a
stockbroker in Tokyo.  Similarly, a man named Soichi, who used to braid his
hair in a pigtail, and a redhead named Kimiko live on the 22nd floor of a
Tokyo apartment, living normal, quiet lives.

Now, imagine that Nabiki sees something that *convinces* her that maybe,
maybe Yuki - the girl who killed Ranma in the first place - isn't dead.

And imagine that Akane sees something that *convinces* her that maybe, maybe
Ranma isn't dead, after all.

The chase is on.

^*^*^

Soichi rolled over from his side of the bed and through squinted eyes; he
looked at the clock on the nightstand.

'Geeez,' he thought, 'It's three in the morning!  What the heck is Kimiko
doing?'

He rolled around again towards the piercing brightness of the bathroom light
and saw his wife bent over the sink, shoulders slightly shaking.

'Shaking?  Kimiko doesn't shake!'

And in one broad leap, he jumped out of bed and towards the bathroom.  He
crouched down next to her still trembling figure and stroked her back
gently, murmuring, "Ki-chan?  Are you okay?  Do you feel sick or something?"

"I-I-Oh, shit!"

She bent her head over the sink again and threw up (for, what Soichi would
later discover, was the sixth time that day).  She coughed, running the tap,
wiping the sick from her face; she turned towards her husband weakly.

"I'm fine," she said, breathing softly, "I probably just caught the flu or
something."  Stepping carefully, she started towards the bed again, but only
made minimal progress before her legs gave out and she almost ended up
sitting on the floor.

"Aw, man," Soichi said softly, "you really
* are * sick," picking her up carefully, he carried her to the bed, and
tucking her under the covers, he said:

"This is probably stress related.  It * has * been a messed up couple of
days."  He frowned, "Though, this degree of negative reaction is weird, for
you anyway."

Kimiko frowned from where she was snuggled deep in her pale blue down
comforter.  "And what is that supposed to mean?"

Soichi shrugged, and sitting Indian style next to her on the mattress, he
answered, "Nothing really, just that you usually handle stress pretty well,"
he paused, "is there something going on that you're not telling me about?"

Kimiko looked deep into his eyes, and evaluated her options.  She could tell
him about Nabiki's unwelcome exploration of her life, she could warn him
that the most volatile of the Tendos was on the warpath and would probably
find some way to prove conclusively that Saotome Ranma and Tanakawa Yuki had
not died.  She theoretically could mention that she was still scared witless
about what would happen if the Tendos or the rest of the Saotome's
discovered them.

But seeing that underlying peace in his eyes, the deep, unquestioning
happiness and calm, she couldn't bear to break it.

And breathing in deeply, she replied:

"I've got a confession, So-chan," the words were said softly, and Soichi
started to worry, "I-I-I'm having an affair with the Mikoru, you know, the
priest from that anime, Inu-yasha?  I know, I know, I always say that you're
the only person for me, but, he's just so delish."

And she waited for a reaction.

Which she got.

"MIKORU?  WHO THE HELL IS MIKORU, WHY, I'M GOING TO KICK HIS ASS!  I'LL KILL
HIM, I'LL KILL H- wait.  Did you say 'anime'?"

"You're SO adorable!"

"THAT IS * SO * NOT FUNNY, KI-CHAN!" He paused, looking to where his wife
should have been laughing still.  "Ki-chan?  KIMIKO?  Are you okay?  Kimiko?
WAKE UP!"

^*^*^

Tokyo General Hospital was deathly quiet at nearly four a.m. that morning,
and save for the yelling voices of one terrified male and one irate woman,
everything else was calm.

"SOMEONE!  Someone help!  Please!"

"Goddammit!  Soichi, I passed out for a little while, calm yourself!  I was
probably just dehydrated or something!"

"SOMEONE PLEEEEEAAAAASE!"

"Oh, Kami-sama, if you embarrass me any more, I swear-"

^*^*^

As it happened, the calm was broken by two events that night.  Approximately
two hours after Kimiko and her nearly spastic husband were carted into the
hospital, an ambulance screamed down the circle and the doors were thrown
open.

"SHIT!  What the hell happened?" Sato Hiroshi had been an emergency room
surgeon for nearly six months, and he had seen all sorts of tragedy, but
he'd never seen this much blood so liberally draped all over a person
before.

"Auto vs. bus.  Three people in the car, two were pronounced on the spot.
This one's got extensive lacerations and probably a couple of broken ribs.
Collapsed lung.  We tubed him on the spot," the EMT yelled, still holding a
pressure bandage on the boy's leg.  "He's holding pretty steady."

The other EMT ran alongside the stretcher as they hoisted it up the ramp and
into the hospital, "Yeah, betcha he's going to wish he was on the road to
terminal though - both parents are dead, pretty shitty reality to wake up
to."

Hiroshi bit his tongue and tried not to hate Takano, the EMT who wouldn't
know tact if it crawled down his pants and bit him on the butt.  He was a
bastard, a heartless, insensitive, weenie-dicked bastard, but he was also
the best EMT in all of Japan.

Hiroshi was determined not to say a word.

But then Takano came up with, "Damn, looks like one hell of a recovery,
that's a fucker, from the build, bet he plays some kind of sport, gonna have
to shit that away, too."

"Fuck you anyway, Takano, just because you don't get any doesn't mean you
have to be a piss to everyone else who isn't dead," Hiroshi seethed.  "We'll
take it from here."

The two EMTs stood stunned behind a set of swinging doors.

Hiroshi looked down at the unconscious boy on the gurney, and almost as an
afterthought, he looked up towards the medics still outside, and called:

"What's his name?"

And the one who wasn't an asshole, replied:

"Yomada Naka!"

Hiroshi looked down to his patient, and with a
more-confident-than-he-really-was smile, they ran through another set of
doors.

"You're going to be just fine, Naka-kun."

^*^*^

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?"  Sato 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," her voice trailed 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. Sato 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.

^*^*^

Thanks for reading!

-Linda/echo

www.crosswinds.net/~echonymph/fragments.html


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