Hey there, guys -

Yeah, another long haul; my apologies to anyone who
has already read Fragments, and perhaps "Water" and
"Wanderlust," because in the general scheme of things,
"Asymptotes" comes first.  It won't hurt your
understanding of the story, or confuse you, but it
will irk you that I'm writing this thing out of order.
 Sorry!

For "Fragments," or the other two epilogues, go to:

http://ling.anifics.com

Here we go:

DISCLAIMER: Ranma 1/2 is property of Rumiko Takahashi,
its use in this work of fiction generates no profit
and no infringement is intended.  
 
ARCHIVE: Phu, Reddeath, and Rakhal have my express
permission; everyone else, please ask at
lifebounce@yahoo.com.

RATING: PG-13

^*^*^

[Nerima: Asymptotes]

^*^*^

I wish that I knew what I know now,
When I was younger.

And I wish that I knew what I know now,
When I was stronger.

^*^*^

Ranma, Yuki, and Naka left Nerima two days after the
confrontation.  
The entire affair was muted, awkward.  What exactly
were two-supposedly 
dead people supposed to say?  Sorry for the
inconvenience, but we've 
got to get home; you see, we have lives, alternate
existences, a 
presentable front to keep up.

Ranma knew that everyone in Nerima half-expected him
to abandon what 
he'd created in Tokyo for what he had once had,
instead.  That, he'd 
realized, was not an option.  He had a business, a
secretary, even!  
Yuki was also Kimiko, a woman who did advertising
layouts for a living, 
and had a small, flourishing business that employed
five other people, 
all of whom depended on the existence of said woman in
order to earn a 
living.  In addition to all of this, there was Naka, a
responsibility 
that, though unexpected, wasn't unwelcome or
bothersome; his friends 
were in Tokyo, his school was there, and he did not
belong in Nerima, 
did not need to drown in their past.  'Besides,' Yuki
rationalized, 'I 
have an obstetrics appointment in a week.'

Yuki had very little to stay for.  Her parents hadn't
even been alerted to her arrival.  Last she heard, her
father had packed up the entire household (or what
remained, anyway), and moved them out to some obscure
part of Okinawa, far away from ugly memories.  Some
part of herself longed to go back and comfort her
mother, to give kindness where she could give no
resolutions; but another part, louder, more primal and
more dangerous demanded that she stay as far away as
possible, to do any and all things, to go to any
length to keep her child safe from her past.  After
all, what would Grandfather say but awful things?  Her
father would just revel in it, seek ways to pinpoint
her weaknesses and break her there: "What are you
talking about, 'true love'?  Don't you know about your
mother and *the man* before your God-forsaken father?"

And Ranma could not dispel the fabrications of his
imagination.  What if they did stay?  What would he
do?  He'd loved Akane when Yuki had taken him to Tokyo
at first, and though it had faded, maybe it hadn't
gone away completely.  He'd never admit it, never in a
million years, but he was as frightened as Yuki. 
There was no doubt in his mind (though it was covered
by liberal and lifesaving denial) that both he and his
wife had woken up before, covered in perspiration, the
memory of another lover's hands on their most private
thoughts.  It was the nature of emotion to be
monogamous, not the body itself.  They would stray in
daydreams, but it was the staying at heart that
mattered.

There was too much, Ranma decided, in Nerima that
tempted.

^*^*^

Nabiki was outside chainsmoking when Ryoga emerged and
stuck out his hand, motioning to be offered a drag or
a cigarette.  Nabiki curled up her lip at the thought
of sharing any kind of bodily fluid with Ryoga and
handed him the pack of menthol lights and a lighter.

"God, *girl* cigarettes," Ryoga muttered, taking a
hesitant breath.  He hadn't smoked in years, but the
nicotine still seemed comforting.  He'd tried it
(along with alcohol) first when he was around
seventeen, having seen the latest advancements in
Ranma and Akane's 'relationship.'

Nabiki rolled her eyes.  "Noted."  She glanced off in
the distance.  "So, are we bonding?" she asked,
vaguely amused.

Ryoga scowled in return and huffed silently.

No one knew exactly what to say.  

"They don't," Ryoga started awkwardly, "they don't
*seem* like soulmates."  He didn't know whether Nabiki
would understand, or if she'd think he was saying it
out of spite.  But no one else in the house seemed get
it, and he did *not* want to discuss the issue with
Akane.  Nabiki was safe ground, neutral territory:
they disliked one another with great passion, but
withstood each others' presence out of deference for
family; that and the fact that murder rendered tatami
mats unfashionably bloody, and it would have upset
Kasumi.  They had a tentative relationship based on
monetary gain and loss, sniping at each other over
breakfast (when Nabiki was in town), and occasionally
they'd sit around smoke like fiends in silence.  It
was the first time he'd ever initiated conversation.

Nabiki smiled ruefully.  "Appearances can be
deceiving."  

Ryoga brooded over this for a moment before saying,
"Yeah, but - "

And they were interrupted by the sound of footsteps
and quiet words, polite laughter with a vague tone of
longing.  They both fell to silence and watched as
Ranma emerged from the partially opened doorway to the
dojo.  His arms were crossed and he looked pensively
to the heavens, not noticing the bystanders just
around the corner, peeking voyeuristically.

"Did you remember everything?"

"There's nothing to remember; we came on a whim. 
You're not even wearing your own underwear right now."

There was the sound of irate shuffling.  "Where's your
cell phone?"

A long, awkward silence and then, "Shit."

Ryoga and Nabiki leaned forward just a few more inches
and caught the silhouettes of Ranma, Yuki, and Naka
cast against the side of the house.  The first
unforgivably tousled, looking as if he'd just stumbled
out of bed and into the first set of mismatching
clothes he could find; the second gloriously pregnant
and annoyed; the third half asleep against the wall of
the dojo, his eyes drifting open and shut
sporadically.  

Ranma was now patting down his pockets for the second
time, frantically doing anything in his power to make
certain he wouldn't prove his wife right.  She, on the
other hand, just watched him with faint disgust, as if
observing a small insect.  The tableau lasted a minute
more before Yuki took pity and reached into her own
pocket, handing Ranma a small, black phone.  "You're
pitiful."

He narrowed his eyes at her but didn't say anything.

The visit, Nabiki surmised, was taking its toll on
everyone.

"Are we going home?" Naka asked, his voice groggy.

Ryoga saw Yuki's eyes glint dangerously just before
she muttered, "Only us, Naka.  Dr. Saotome here is
*leaving*."

The two watchers winced simultaneously.  Ranma just
gaped.

At least until he grabbed Yuki's arm, much more
harshly than he would have allowed himself to do if he
were in a better state of mind, and pulled her close
enough to him that they were nose-to-nose, pressing
into one another's territory.  "What is *that*
supposed to mean?" he hissed, looking slightly manic.

She didn't back off an inch.  "Why don't you admit why
you're in such a goddamn rush to get away, Ranma?" she
spat in his face.  "Having trouble sleeping?  Wet
dreams about people you're not married to?"

It must have struck too close to home, Nabiki decided,
because Ranma threw her arm away from him and took
three enormous steps back, his face a study in
horrified shock and Yuki's closed over, eyes a
practiced gray.  Naka seemed to wake more at the
tension on scene, he stood nervously back from the
situation, shifting his weight from one foot to the
other, wringing his hands, looking at if he wanted to
act but couldn't decided which party to petition.  

Yuki stood silent for a second before heaving an
enormous sigh and murmuring, "Forget it.  Forget all
of it."  She headed for the car, throwing over her
shoulder, "Forget it, just forget - "

And in a blink, she was silenced, her face buried in
Ranma's chest, his pressed in her hair.  Nabiki would
remember the moment in wonder for years to come: the
image of the great Saotome, fighting back sobs, cut to
the quick by a tiny woman.  The three of them were
still for a long time, Ranma's arms tightening with
greater desperation about Yuki's chest, and Yuki
allowing her hands to reach up and around, to encircle
his waist.  It was grudging, affection and desperation
and the wonderful ugliness of love: loathing someone
and still needing him or her.  Yuki and Ranma could
scream and rave and cry until they were hoarse, crazy,
and blind, but they would still reach out fingers
across the void, to seek that same connection that had
propelled them to Tokyo and toward an uncertain future
so many years ago.  

That was not in question.

Naka seemed to see this and breathe a sigh of relief,
slipping quietly into the backseat of the car and
laying down lengthwise across it, presumably asleep,
while his guardians still clutched at each other.

"W-why," Yuki managed, tears audible in her voice, "is
it so hard?"

Ranma didn't trust himself to answer, just to breathe
another kiss into her hair and stroke the length of
her back: what he could manage then.

Ryoga felt a weight settle into his chest at the
scene.

It felt wrong now to be watching this from the
shadows.  

But he stayed still, like a spectator to a horrible
accident, staring wide-eyed as Yuki's knees buckled
underneath her.  She started sobbing in earnest,
consumed by tears so thick and fast she could barely
catch gasping, hitching breaths as Ranma gathered her
back up into his arms.  "I'm so sorry," she whispered,
her voice shaking.  "I'm so sorry."

Ranma didn't meet her eyes, but carried her to the
car, opening the driver's side door, and setting her
in.  He kneeled at her side, stroking her cheeks, her
hair, her shoulders, and showering kisses over her
tear-stained face, silencing her pleading apologies
with his mouth until she fell finally silent, looking
so very small against the night. 

"It's going to be okay," he assured her, his tone
sounded thin.

"How do you know?" she asked. 

'Well,' Nabiki thought, 'she might as well have said,
"Lie to me."'

So Ranma did.  "Because it's always okay."

And the two stared at one another for a long time.

It wasn't, Ryoga was starting to understand, like the
books and movies said: there were no breathy
declarations of faithfulness, nor did they fall
impassioned to silken, rose-strewn sheets and make
love until the wee hours of the morning.  Soulmates,
he was finding, shared something more real, less
packaged, and far rarer.  Commitment, despite the
jokes was a dime a dozen; sex even more common.  To be
able to expose the ugliest parts of oneself, those
most fractured and dirtied pieces and have someone
smile and worry and care anyway...

That was more.

And they were not faultless lovers: Yuki and Ranma got
tired just as anyone else.  They grew short-tempered
and cruel and spiteful, they were people who had found
something incredible in the space of a universe, with
the help of chance, and a healthy dose of serendipity.
 What they had was envied, wanted, almost impossible
sometimes.

They had no idea the treasure which they cradled.

This not-perfection was second-nature to them; the
rhythm of their love was a steady, low beat that had
been playing as long as they'd known one another: they
had no idea they lived a miracle.  

"That's why it works," Ryoga murmured.

"What works?" Nabiki asked, distracted.

"Them," the Lost Man replied.  "They work because they
don't know."

^*^*^

Kasumi was in Tokyo for the day.

"For shopping," she'd told the household.  "Yuki's
home," was its understood translation.  But it was the
polite fiction: Tendo Soun's heart could only take so
much more excitement.

"What about the School?" the elder woman asked,
observing Yuki.

Genma had written into his will that Ranma would have
no rights to the Saotome family dojo unless he
divorced his wife, rejected the child, and returned to
Nerima humbled.  Nodoka, now determined to outlive her
husband, had written it into her own will that Ranma
would be given the dojo, allowed to remain separated
from the family, and stay in Tokyo, as long as she had
been able to hold her grandchild a few times while she
was still breathing.  Their son, to his credit, had
taken this information with good-natured grace, as it
had come in the form of an angry three-way phone call
at half past four in the morning one random day in
October, with no warning nor end.  To the best of his
knowledge, his parents remained married only in the
hopes that one or the other would eventually acquiesce
to the other's wishes.

Yuki had simply rolled her eyes and gone back to sleep
at the news.

The redhead stroked her swelling stomach and brushed
some hair out of her eyes, murmuring, "Ranma doesn't
like talking about it much."  She turned back and
smiled impishly.  "*But*, he is teaching Naka Anything
Goes, which worries me sometimes."

But even Yuki could not sleep through the
deathly-quiet phone call she'd gotten a month later. 
"Ryoga's gone," Kasumi had said, almost reverently. 
"He wrote Akane a note, something about not knowing
whether or not they were in love and not being able to
marry her because of it, and left!"  The two women had
been silent for a long time over the phone before Yuki
had muttered, "You know Tendo's going to end up
blaming *us* for this."  Kasumi had raised her voice
and cried, "Even *I* blame you for this!"  Nabiki
claimed to have gotten a letter from the Lost Man
about a week after his disappearance, asking for
money.

Almost as unexpectedly, Yuki had received a letter,
too.  It had been scrawled in Ryoga's almost-illegible
handwriting, water-marked from rain (or...tears?) and
crumpled.  "What's it like?" Ryoga had written.  "How
does it feel to be in love?  To have your soulmate
there with you every day and every night?"

Yuki had solemnly shown it to Kasumi as soon as she'd
arrived.

It was not, both women knew, Happily Ever After, but
Happily Ever After was overrated anyway: all the
Disney sequels had sucked.

"I wonder why he's asking me," Yuki mused.

"Because you know?" Kasumi ventured.

The redhead cocked her head curiously.  "Do I?"

Kasumi raised her eyebrow and took another sip of tea.
 

^*^*^

/Asymptotes

^*^*^

All feedback welcomed!  Thanks for reading.

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