To reply, post publically or e-mail the author at <echonymph@msn.com>


The FFML Refugee List

To all the readers out there:

My deepest apologies for the wait that you've put up with for all this time.
=)  I've been on a rather desperate hiatus, and the reasons why are long and
convoluted.  I write an average of one chapter a week, every week, which,
all things considered (school, work, sleep-deprivation) is pretty intense.
I was starting to lose teh will to work on this fic entirely. =)  But no
worries, I've ridded myself of that!

So, now I present to you Fragments 13.

For all previous chapters, go to:

www.crosswinds.net/~echonymph/fragments.html < - been updated! New Yuki
version...

FRAGMENTS:

^*^*^

^*^*^

"Ryoga-kun?"

The soft, familiar voice floated down from above him, and
through the haze of blurred objects and fractured images,
he opened his eyes to the too-bright room.

"Oh!  See, he's coming around!" cried another voice
happily, he recognized the vague, female-shaped blobs
before him, and he whispered:

"Akane?  Kasumi?  Where am I?"

His eyes cleared.

He was lying on his bed, head turned slightly to stare at
where Akane and Kasumi were looking at him in deep concern.
In the background, Tofu puttered about, content to make
himself useful only when encouraged.

Akane raised an eyebrow, and brushing her fingertips
tenderly along Ryoga's forehead, wondering at the hand-
shaped bruise there, she asked:

"You're home, Ryoga, at the dojo, how are you feeling?"

Ryoga blinked hard, and groaning, he murmured, "Like I got
slammed in the head by a cement block, how long have I been
out?"

Kasumi shook her head helplessly, "We're not really sure,
Ryoga-kun, some taxi-driver had brought you here from the
city.  He said that a nice lady had put you in the car and
told him where to take you."  She frowned, "Ryoga-kun, you
*must* be more careful when you get lost."

In that moment, the fuzziness in his thought processes
disappeared, and he remembered everything.

The apartment, the photograph, the strange man, and . . .
YUKI!  Yuki with the knife, Yuki and her smile, Yuki and
the memories that she had made rush him, like hungry waves
that wished for nothing more than to eat away at the
peaceful life he led.

"Ryoga?  Ryoga?  Are you okay?  You blanked out there for a
moment!" Akane asked loudly, a slight tone of worry in her
voice.

And then Ryoga remembered the other things.

The coffee cups in the kitchen, how they'd been more at
home with each other than he and Akane, how much he'd
wanted to be that mysterious man - because at least he knew
who he loved, truly loved.

Gasping loudly, he pushed himself up from the ground, a
determined expression on his face:

"Someone get me a phone, I have to talk to Nabiki, now."

^*^*^

"Kimiko-san?"

The redheaded woman looked up from the phone book, her blue
eyes framed by simple, silver reading glasses that she used
from time to time, a surprised expression on her lovely
face.

And then the shocked 'o' that her lips had made widened
into a smile.  Reaching out her hand, she brushed his cheek
softly, and whispered:

"Naka-kun!  You're awake!"

There was an ethereal happiness in her eyes, and Naka
momentarily wondered what fueled her day to day, what kept
her bouncing and smiling and breathing when she expended so
much energy in being so interminably beautiful, in being so
alive.

The boy lying in the hospital bed grinned raggedly, "Yeah,"
pausing, "and you wouldn't believe the nightmare I had
about you," he shuddered, "your hair was awful."  His voice
was hoarse, his throat having been just recently liberated
of the respirator that he'd been fighting even
unconsciously.

Kimiko bit back a secret smile as her face grew solemn, and
Naka frowned.

He hadn't ever really spent time with Kimiko, in earlier
years, he'd mostly ignored her, though he knew enough about
the woman from comments that Fujikara-sensei had made and
from intuition to know that she rarely looked solemn.

She always laughed, she always smiled, and she never
remained too serious, believing without a doubt that to do
so was to waste a good portion of one's existence being
edgy.

She released a shuddering breath, and reaching towards him
with shaking fingers, she clasped his hands, whispering:

"Naka-san, I have something very important to tell you,
okay, please listen to me before you say anything else."

His muscles tensed.

Sign number one that something was wrong was the honorific
that she had chosen to use.  Naka-san?  He'd never heard
that come from between her lips before.

Secondly, she was shaking.  There was a deep and careful *
knowing * that promised him one thing: Yoshida Kimiko did
not shake.

"What is it, Kimiko-san?" he asked quietly.

There was only a deft brush of darkness in her eyes as she
said the words, a talent learned after years of hearing sad
things, feeling sad things, knowing sad things.

Becoming sad things.

"Naka-san, do you remember why you're in the hospital?"

Stuttering, the memories of twisted wreckage and flashing
lights roared back into his mind, "Yeah," he whispered,
"just a little."

"Naka," she paused, "your parents, they-"

She didn't need to finish her sentence.

^*^*^

"Moshi moshi," Nabiki muttered into the phone unhappily.

It wasn't often that someone threw their temper tantrums in
her face, and even less often that the person was a male.
'Then again,' she thought, 'Kuzio-kun has always been
special.'  Who'd have thought that through all the
spineless terror he exhibited at the slightest hint of the
illegal, he'd have a bitch-factor worthy of a Tendo.

He wasn't talking to her.  Actually, he wasn't even picking
up the phone when she called him.  Nabiki had even tried
faking him out by calling his home number instead of his
cell phone.  It hadn't worked.  'Damn caller ID,' Nabiki
thought hatefully.

"Dammit, Nabiki, are you always in a bad mood, or do you
get yourself extra-special mad just for me?" the voice on
the phone asked cautiously.

Her eyes opened wide and she grinned, "Ryoga?  Back from
Tokyo already?"  There was a meaningful pause.  "Well,
what'd you find?"

Ryoga replied, a growl in his voice, "Other than that
Yuki's as fucking terrifying as ever?  Dammit, Nabiki, I
can't believe you-"

"Can't believe I what?" Nabiki interrupted, "I told you
what you were getting into, now, tell me, what *did* you
get yourself into?"

She leaned heavily against the back of her chair, eyes
staring hard into the opposite wall of her small, cozy
office.  It was colored in hues of mahogany and green, dark
and rich like money in her hands.  It was what she had
fought towards since she was a child, the one thing that
she'd truly wanted, truly ached for.

Power, control, the ability to manipulate and change, to
make things bend her will.

She wasn't going to lose all of this because of a ghost
from years passed.

She would fix all of this, she could do it.  With the right
information and a little bit of tugging at one or two
strings, she would make everything right, she could set it
straight.  And then, Akane could get married, Kasumi could
go on happily in life, and she-

She could let go of what had happened.

There was a long groan over the phone line, "Well, she did
give me a pretty severe concussion, Nabiki."

She snorted, "Kiss my ass, Ryoga, spill."

He sighed, "Nice apartment, really high class stuff in that
place.  A couple of interesting notes and letters, nothing
really important.  But there was a photo."  He paused.
"She was just standing there, hugging this *guy* and
beaming."  He laughed, "I forgot how pretty she was."

"Ryoga," Nabiki murmured, rolling her eyes, "I hope you're
not forgetting that you're promised to my little sister."

He laughed, softly, bitterly, "Of course not, Nabiki, I've
always been promised to her, one way or another."  There
was an odd tone in his voice, and Nabiki found herself
frowning at the sound.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Nothing at all, Nabiki, nothing."

^*^*^

Kasumi stood there in the kitchen, her hands pressed
against the aged countertops, her eyes far away, haunted,
lost.

She had 'accidentally' picked up the phone when Ryoga had
called Nabiki, and she'd not so 'accidentally' replaced the
receiver.

'She's still alive,' Kasumi thought softly, a hushed awe
flowing through her, 'after all these years, she's still
alive.'  She chuckled softly to herself, 'I should have
known.  She wouldn't have gone down without a fight - well,
a better fight than that, at least.'

She looked around the room slowly, to the comfortable blue
of the tiles and the warm, familiar way the light fell as
it had since she was old enough to remember.  This was her
center, this was her core, this was what sustained her
through her mother's death, through her teenaged years,
through Ranma's arrival, through the insanity that
followed.

Through her friend's death.

It was what kept her going, the peace that she knew in that
house.

She smiled softly, touching her cheek as she watched the
sun set slowly, dipping its glowing red into the black line
of solid land, disappearing bit by bit until only the peak
survived.

And something finally occurred to her.

Something that she'd noticed about the nature of Yuki's
relationships, or at least, one in particular.

"Yuki-chan," she whispered, "you aren't alone, are you?"

^*^*^

Nerima
13 years 4 months previous

She had heard him run into the dojo, slamming the door
behind him, panting hard, like he'd been sprinting for
miles.  There was a dark flush on his face, a harried
expression in his eyes, and if someone who knew how to read
aura's had been around, they'd have blushed bright red at
what his was screaming.

Loudly.

Years of reading medical books had given Kasumi a little
insight regarding exactly what was going through Saotome
Ranma's mind.  There were a couple of things that not even
extremely skilled martial artists could hide.

She sighed as she watched him sitting there, his eyes
screwed shut, content to collapse against a wall and
breathe heavily, trying to force down the arousal that
still welled up inside of him.

She had a vague idea of what put him into this mood, and
she'd been suspecting something for a while.  Even as Yuki
and Ranma had laughed together in nearly childish
innocence, Kasumi found herself worrying that something was
building between the two, something that would make Akane
cry.

Because Kasumi knew that even though Akane fought her
engagement tooth and nail, she had started to like Ranma,
maybe even more than like - but it had just become
something more than a childish fascination.  It was a
tentative, fragile place in their relationship, and she was
certain it would not stand up to . . . well, whatever Yuki
and Ranma shared.

She noted with concern a flash of red from the corner of
her eyes, and silently groaned as she heard a door open in
the dojo from her vantage point at the window.

"Ranma-kun?"

Kasumi's eyes grew wide at the sight.

There was Yuki, dressed in a pair of dark red pajamas, her
hair tied up in a pigtail, blue eyes simmering with unnamed
terror.  "Ranma-kun," she started, "please, please tell me
what's wrong, why did you run off like that?"

There was a soft, soughing sound of cloth against wood as
Ranma wrapped his arms around his legs and slowly rocked
back and forth against the dojo wall, pleading, "Yuki- Yuki
please, leave me alone, I can't see you right now."

"What do you mean?" a slow, heart-aching tone in her voice.

"I mean," he muttered through his ragged breathing, "I mean
leave me alone, Yuki, you can't be here right now, not with
me."

Kasumi's eyes grew wide - Ranma was right, it wouldn't be
in her best interests to be around him at that time.  She'd
watched the boy fight back his desires and push away his
want to couple on endless occasions, biting back something
and wandering off somewhere to be alone, knowing that doing
*anything* would have either earned him the disfavor of his
fianc�es.  But he was at his breaking point now, with his
face red from heat and his body shuddering for the sweet
mercy of release.

But Yuki didn't know this; of *course* she didn't know
this, how could she?

And so, Kasumi watched as she knelt down at Ranma's side,
her bangs falling into her eyes, the dark red locks
contrasting quickly with the paleness of her skin.  Yuki's
hands trembled as she cupped Ranma's face, brushing her
thumb along his cheek.  And with a soft cry she whispered,
"Ranma-kun, please, please don't push me away - I need a
friend right now, Ranma, please, forgive me, please," her
voice broke into shuddering sobs, "I was little, Ranma, I
couldn't stop him!"  She pulled herself away from him, and
Kasumi watched, silent still.

Horror dawned in Ranma's eyes as he listened to her babble.
"I'm so sorry!  I'm so sorry!  If you're disgusted, I'll
understand, God, please, I'm so sorry!"  Her shoulders
trembled and she crumbled, her hands covering her face as
she cried, her fingers slick with tears.

Kasumi gasped softly, realizing for the first time exactly
what Yuki was saying that she was sorry about.

Ranma reached out to her, and grabbing her roughly by the
shoulders, he hissed, "Did someone tell you that this was
*your* fault?  Did some bastard tell you that?"  Ignoring
his words, she kept sobbing and pleading for forgiveness,
her voice growing softer and softer with her exhaustion.

The dark flush on Ranma's face grew darker, angrier, and
suddenly pulling Yuki towards him and holding her as
tightly as he could without crushing her, he whispered
loudly:

"Dammit, Yuki!  I don't care who says it, or how many times
they say it!  IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT!"  He loosened one of
his hands and started stroking her back in slow, circular
motions, his eyes pooling with tears, "God, you were just a
kid, how could it be your fault?"

"Didn't - didn't stop!  'M martial - artist, shoulda'
stopped him!" she gasped out from between sobs, hiding her
face in his shoulder.  "Nobody lo-loves me 'nymore,
nobody."

Ranma felt his heart break.  Just as it had when he was a
child being pulled away from his mother, torn from his
friends.  But this new pain was so much sharper, tart and
endless and hateful. (1)

He pushed away from her, one hand clasping her wrist, and
the other touching her cheek so gently, in such a soft,
worshipful manner.  His blue eyes darkened into a thick,
stormy gray, and in a quiet whisper, he said:

"Yuki," and when she didn't listen, Ranma lifted her chin
so her eyes met his, "Yuki-chan," and gasping as he saw the
depth of her soul, the wounds there, and the hope she felt
she had lost.  Drawing his finger along the delicate line
of her face, and dipping it down to trace her collarbone,
and circling the delicate hollow there, eyes still locked
with hers, he added, "Do you have any idea how beautiful
you are?"

And she was.

She was perfect, exquisitely, painfully beautiful,
flawless.

Her skin was the color of a pearl, creamy and translucent,
and her cheeks flushed pink like cherry blossoms.  Her
flaming titan hair always fell in soft waves at her
shoulders, and her small, wine-colored mouth smirked in
time to the smile in her eyes.  She had long, tapered
fingers that flew from place to place as she talked, always
pantomiming or brushing against her lips, and on rare
occasions, teasing his own hands, touching his face.  There
was a great fullness to her beauty, dark and soulful and
rich, vibrant and shimmering.  Something much more
substantial than a pretty face, than what his other
fianc�es showed.

'Other . . . fianc�es?' he thought in a strange, surreal
tone, his eyes still captured in her own, 'Since when has
she been one of the fianc�es?  When did she-' and in a dark
moment, he realized that she'd always been one of the
fianc�es for longer than he'd ever imagined.  Hers was the
face he saw in the mirror when he was in girl-form, her
smile was the one that sometimes made him stop and look at
himself/herself for an extra moment.  She was the strong
one, the unbreakable one.  The one who was always there,
forgiving and understanding.

She who had never wanted to hurt him, but who ended up
being the cause of everything.

"R-Ranma-kun," she whispered in reply, a few more teardrops
slipping from her eyes to land with soft splatters on the
folds of his Chinese shirt.  "What- what are you saying?"

He breathed hard, and shuddering, he continued:

"You really don't know, do you?" he paused, pulling her
hand upwards so that it was pressed against his own face,
"You don't know how beautiful you are, how, how fucking
perfect."

He took her other hand, and holding it open towards the
sky, he pressed his lips to her palm, inhaling the scent of
her as his mouth lingered there.  An embrace, a touch that
was so deeply sensual, more intimate than hug, darker than
lips against lips.  It was a kiss of reverence, as a
follower hazarded to a Goddess.

Her eyes were wide, and her mouth opened and closed,
gasping for air.  Ranma lifted his head from her hand,
feeling the electric jolt of sadness at the loss of that
contact.

"No matter what anyone ever says about you or your past,
Yuki," Ranma murmured, sinking into the endless blue of her
eyes, "I do."

'I love you,' he thought, 'I love you more than you'll ever
understand, more than I'd ever let you know.  Never feel
like no one cares.'

There was silence in the dojo, not a sound save for the
world that continued to turn and move and live around them.

But it was enough, Yuki knew, she understood.

Perhaps the lightness of having professed his feelings
without faltering in his words gave him courage, maybe it
was just the way she was curled up in his embrace - but
whatever made him brave in that moment, it made him brave
for the rest of his life.

He leaned down to her face, losing control of himself as he
kept gazing into those endless azure pools of color,
leaning so close that he could feel the heat of her skin
against his own, so close he could smell the light, female
scent on her.

And he kissed her.

At first, it was just a brush of skin against skin, the
most innocent and comforting of embraces, deft and barely
there.  But as he broke that initial contact, those gentle
fingers that he'd placed on his cheek pulled his face
towards her own again, this time their mouths meeting in a
heated, endless kiss.  Breath mingling, souls melding,
hearts beating.

And she kissed him.

He was lost in the satiny smooth feel of her lips against
his own, how her body fit perfectly in the curve of his,
how his hands felt so naturally at home tangled in her red
hair, grasping her hips.

And they kissed each other.

The way that the first lovers on earth had kissed each
other, with wonderful curiosity, raging passion, guiltless
want, and love.

Because they'd been bound at the soul - and now, they'd be
bound at the heart.

Kasumi tore her eyes away from the scene, tears bubbling up
and a hacking sob rising her in her throat.  She turned,
and slammed her back against the wall of the dojo, sliding
down to the ground, feeling her legs shaking.

How could this happen?

How could she have let this happen?

Her little sister or her friend?  The sister she'd raised
nearly as her own child, wiping away her tears and singing
her to sleep, or the girl who smiled and understood, who
listened to her talk and made her laugh?

They both loved him, they both loved Ranma like no one
ought to love anyone else, with the darkest passion and the
deepest loyalty.  But only one of them had earned his
trust, his respect.  Only one of them had touched his soul.

She slapped her hands over her mouth, hiding the sound of
her cries.

Because deep in her own heart, she knew who she wanted
Ranma to be with - and Kasumi didn't like the answer - she
didn't like that she'd betrayed.

She didn't like that she'd choose Yuki.

It was then that she heard a muffled yell and the sound of
a struggle in the dojo.  Yuki's tear-soaked voice floated
through the window:

"NO!  Ranma- I can't- I can't- Akane- I have to go, I have
to go!"

There was the sound of rapid footsteps, and then the
uncomfortable silence of the aftermath of sin.

^*^*^

1: My apologies regarding the POV in this section.  There
was no logical way that I could have Soichi have a
flashback at that moment, immediately after I'd had Kasumi
discover the secret.  And there was no way this would work
if it wasn't in Ranma or Yuki's point of view.

^*^*^

Hours passed, and the heavens started to weep heavy,
splattering raindrops.  And while the staff of nurses and
doctors grew ill of hearing the near silent sound of a
child's heart falling to pieces, Kimiko stood her ground.

She held his hand, never breaking the contact, knowing that
although his fingers were rigid and cold, that if she
loosened her hold on him, his last tether to the earth
would be gone.

He needed her right then, and she needed him to get well,
needed him to grow up and old.

Not because he was her child, not because she was his
sister, but because . . .

Because she saw so much of Soichi in him.

Because she recognized that dark rage that fluttered in his
clear, brown eyes, and she knew the casual grace with which
he walked.

Because she loved what he made her remember.

^*^*^

-linsan/echo
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                     desaix@sysnet.net
Sir Desaix, member # 116 of the Knights of the True Fiancee
              anime  fanfics available at
  http://www.geocities.com/zednik.geo/fanfics.htm

	     .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'