Part Three, Chapter Two: Surprises

Ranma stumbled back several steps, eyes wide in shock. He very nearly fell down, his mind not wanting to concentrate on anything, much less mundane matters such as balance.

Ryouga watched him worriedly as he literally reeled in shock. “Are you alright?”

Ranma stared at nothing for a few more seconds. “Me?” he said, incredulously. “Am *I* alright? Ryouga, what… what’s wrong with *you*?!”

She sighed. “I knew it, you’re misunderstanding…”

“Misunderstand? What was there to misunderstand? You kissed me!”

“It was just a peck.” Ryouga snapped back defensively.

“Just… just!?” True, it had only been on the cheek, but…

“Well, there goes that idea,” she answered bitterly. “I was hoping that I was wrong about how much of an asshole you were, but I guess I wasn’t after all!”

Ranma managed to bring his mind back to some semblance of order when he heard the pain in Ryouga’s voice, forgoing comprehension - for now - in favor of sympathy. “I… I’m sorry. I was… surprised.”

“Yeah,” she laughed sharply, angrily. “Ha! I could tell.”

“I didn’t mean… I just never thought…”

“Never thought what? Look, I kissed you, doesn’t mean I’m in love with you.”

“Oh.” Ranma felt that he ought to have been reassured by that – but he wasn’t. “So why-”

“Because I like you, idiot! You were nice to me, you never treated me any differently than before, you didn’t act like I was made of glass, you promised to help me and did your damndest to follow through, to the point of nearly getting *killed* - need more?” Her voice was shaking, now, and she was staring straight at the ground. “What I’m trying to say… is… when you’re not being a jerk… you’re a really nice guy.”

“Oh.” He didn’t know what to answer, but he was getting used to that. “I’m sorry…” he repeated, at a loss. Slowly, it began to sink in that this was serious.

“Sorry for being nice? That’s what I was talking about you being stupid.” Ryouga glared up at him through narrowed eyelids. “But it’s not an answer, not even really a reply.”

“An answer…?” Ranma was getting used to not knowing what to say by this point.

“Yea,” Ryouga snapped at him. “An answer. Just… something…” she trailed off, and when she picked up speech again it was in a murmur. “I shouldn’t’ve done what I did… and… you probably hate me now… but… I don’t want to dance around this, I just want to know… even if I don’t expect you to think of my as anything more than… someone to be ashamed of…”

“I… I… wouldn’t think that!” He said didn’t mean to say it so forcefully, but it just happened anyway.

She looked up, slowly. “What?” It was Ryouga’s turn to be disbeliveing.

“I don’t hate you.” he hesitated. “I just don’t know what I think…”

“I do…”

Ranma shook his head. “How could you?” He faltered for a moment, lapsing into thought instead of words. It was true – It’s not like I’ve ever considered… “Give me some time before you demand an answer, at least.”

“Time…” her eyes widened. “You’re actually thinking about it?”

Ranma fell back into the increasingly familiar feeling of confusion. “Don’t you want me to?”

“Well…” A pink flush started to creep up her cheeks. “I said I did, didn’t I… I just never thought that you would.”

“I’m not promising anything. But I won’t hate you. I just need… time.”

“How much time?” Ryouga sighed, suddenly realizing what this probably meant. His track record isn’t very good with matters of the heart… “How much time?” she repeated, weakly. “A year? Two?” her voice strengthened somewhat. I don’t want that! “I’m just going to be the fifth girl you don’t want, aren’t I? Look, just say no now and I won’t -”

“Do you want me to say no without knowing what I feel?” Ranma didn’t know where he was going with this, but he had to say something, had to snap her out of the depression that she seemed determined to retreat to like it was an old friend. Which it probably is…

“Do you think there’s a chance that you will ever answer anything other than no?” Ryouga countered harshly, bitterly as darkness closed over her eyes. “I don’t want to be hanging on your decision for years, Ranma.”

“If I just say no, then what’s the point in any of this?”

Ryouga stared at him. “I can’t believe you’re taking this seriously!”

Ranma was frustrated, confused, and tired - a bad mix. But stirred in with it all was a kind of fear that was alien and irrational. “Aren’t you? Did you kiss me when you weren’t serious? Because if you didn’t, then it wasn’t any different from Mikado!”

The redness faded off of Ryouga’s cheeks to be replaced by the fire of anger in her eyes. Anger was easy. “Don’t compare me to that idiot!”

“Why shouldn’t I, if you weren’t serious?”

“I was serious, I like you! Do you know how *hard* it was to say that?” Her eyes were wide, tears brimming in the corners, Ranma could see for the first time now. “I just don’t want to be given any false hope! Nothing’s going to come from this and I know it,” she finished, bitterly.

“How do you know that?”

All emotion drained out of Ryouga’s face, replaced by blank incomprehension. “I… I… how could anything…?”

Ranma sighed. “I don’t know what I feel right now. I haven’t even given the idea any thought. But you came to a decision, so I should too. Give me the same amount of time that it took you – since you returned to Nerima. That’s been… what, about a month?”

“But…”

“Why are you arguing? Aren’t you the one who started it?”

Ryouga didn’t understand how Ranma could sound so reasonable when her mind refused to grasp it. “I… I did… but I never thought that you’d actually think about it!”

“Of course I need to think about it,” he continued, still in that damnably reasonable tone. Little did Ryouga know that it was taking all the control he had to stop his knees from quaking. “There’s no way I could come to a real decision this fast. If I said no that wouldn’t be fair. But neither is if fair to ask you to wait forever – you’ve given it thought and told me how you feel. No one else has done that.” He paused, and thought for a moment. “Give me a month.”

“I – I never said I loved you,” said Ryouga, trying one last time.

“I know.” Ranma smiled. “To be honest, I’m glad you didn’t, because if you did, I’m not sure I would believe you. But I *can* believe you like me.” The smile turned into a grin, and before he could continue, Ryouga smacked him – gently.

“Egomaniac.”

“So you’re not angry?”

“I should be asking you that…” she answered quietly.

Suddenly there was a pressure on her shoulders, and she looked up, startled, to see Ranma standing in front of her, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders, his expression almost scared. Without saying a word, and moving slowly enough that she could get out if she wanted to, he drew her into an awkward, loose embrace.

Ryouga was frozen, unable to move or, indeed, able to do much more than stand there, aware of Ranma’s arms wrapped lightly around her. Her mind went fuzzy. Bubbles very nearly appeared in the background – but didn’t, of course, because that would be impossible…

Then Ranma let go, and took a step back. It hadn’t been very long, but Ryouga wasn’t sure if it had been moments or seconds that he had been holding her. Ranma stepped back, watching her carefully.

“I…” he started.

“If you apologize for that,” Ryouga found her voice in time to cut him off. “I will… hurt you.”

Ranma hesitated for a moment before continuing. “I think we should stop for the night. It’s late, and we did just get out of the hospital.”

Ryouga looked at him suspiciously. “Yeah, I’m sure you need your beauty sleep, Saotome,” she responded wryly.

Ranma let a befuddled expression slide over his face. “What?” Whether he was actually confused or not, Ryouga couldn’t be certain.

Ryouga sighed and waved absently, dismissing the statement. It was a stupid joke anyway. “Never mind.” She squinted into the forest that lined the road. “We could probably stop safely enough. But we need to get further tomorrow.”

“Right, right…” Ranma agreed. “We should try to get back to Nerima soon…”

“Yeah,” Ryouga nodded resolutely. A destination was always the best thing. It was something to concentrate on, even if you never got there.

***

There was a distinct feeling of embarrassment in the air as they set up a rude camp in a clearing not far from the road. The forest was very tame so close to civilization. Ryouga found herself a soft spot in the dirt and tried to get comfortable. She hated camping without proper equipment, although she’d had to several times before. It was uncomfortable, and usually a pain to get more supplies. But that was because I could never *find* a place to get the supplies. That problem, at least, I won’t have to worry about anymore…

She sighed and shifted again, this time onto her side. So much serious thinking while I laid there for a week, bored out of my mind, but… now it’s falling to pieces around me even while it worked.

The prospect of an actual relationship with Ranma was intimidating. While it had just been an abstract thought in her head it was a relatively simple idea – the feeling was so clear when it was just her and her mind. And darkened with hopelessness. But when he had actually agreed to give it some thought, it was as if the world and her ideas of it had shattered. She could tell how uncomfortable he felt with the idea – despite everything, and how she had no idea, but he honestly did think of her as a guy. It was gratifying, but she’d had a week with almost nothing to do but think about the harsh reality of being a girl forever, and she’d managed to come to grips with it, sort of.

It wasn’t an entirely happy prospect, but it wasn’t the end of the world, either, she had finally convinced herself. At least I’m human. Being P-chan forever… she shuddered. I would’ve just let someone have a roast pork dinner eventually – probably sooner rather than later.

Ryouga shivered, involuntarily. There was no help for it, but some part of her still screamed at the decision even though there were worse options.

She shifted again, managed to get more comfortable. She was exhausted, physically and mentally, to the point where even her thoughts started to slip away. She started to drift off… and was interrupted, much to her annoyance, by an excited shout from Ranma before actually managing to fall asleep.

***

Ranma was more befuddled than anything else, despite understanding that Ryouga was, indeed, somehow serious. If asked before what the most unlikely thing that he could think of to happen was, he would never have said Ryouga developing a crush on him, because that was too unlikely for his imagination to handle – even when he considered that Ryouga was a girl now, apparently forever.

He – she – what the heck should I think of him as? Oddly enough, that was the raging debate currently circling through Ranma’s mind. It’s Ryouga, I know that… but… boy or girl? Weird to think of him as a guy now, but weird to think of him as a girl, too. But… I said I’d give him – her? argh – an answer, which means I have to figure out my feelings on the matter in a month.

It seemed that the prospect of being the object of romantic affection from someone who he had, and to a certain extent still did, thought of as male should creep him out more than it was. And yet - it wasn’t the first time, even if every other time it had been his girl form that was the object of their ‘affections’. At least Ryouga knew who he was, curse and all, and wasn’t a total pervert. The fact that Ryouga had kissed Ranma, and not Ranma-chan, was slightly reassuring. He hated it when people liked his girl form, because that attraction was ever only physical. And not even physical to him – the attraction was to something that was just a curse. It really did make him ill, sometimes, but not because of the gender of the person who was attracted to ‘her’.

He wondered if that translated over to Ryouga. After all, the body that was now permanently Ryouga’s was also just a curse. But it’s not *me* that’s attracted… It was another reason *not* to consider her request, but he couldn’t take it back now and wasn’t sure he wanted to.

It was an interesting dilemma, but one that Ranma didn’t want to think about. He shook his head and grabbed the bag of Ryouga’s belongings, upending it on the ground. He needed something to distract him, since he couldn’t fall asleep even though he was exhausted, and never would if these thoughts wouldn’t leave him alone. It took a bit of shaking to empty out the bag, but after a moment a ball of what appeared to be tent fabric fell out and thumped heavily on the dirt. He began to unravel it, glad for something somewhat constructive to do that was mundane enough so hopefully his mind would stop whirling and let him sleep.

With a minor amount of difficulty, he unraveled the mass from the ripped section of tent. There were bits of the metal rods still attached to it, twisted and snapped at the ends. He tossed it away. Useless…

He found a random bit of cloth sticking out of the remaining unidentifiable mass and pulled. It came out with minimal resistance, revealing itself to be one of Ryouga’s shirts – one of the old yellow and black ones. Most of one, anyway. It was ripped and missing part of a sleeve, but wearable. He folded it and laid it to one side. We can fix that, won’t take too much work.

He pulled out another bit of cloth to find half of one of his old pairs of pants. He inspected it, but only for a moment - one the legs was entirely missing. He tossed it away and reached for another random item from the lump, but something had fallen out of the lump and caught his attention. It glittered in the moonlight. He picked it up.

And involuntarily shouted in surprise.

Ryouga rolled over to look at him through bleary eyelids. “What’s your problem?” she griped. “I’m trying to sleep…”

“I think you should look at this…” Ranma held out the find to her, and after a few moments of staring at it blankly she figured out what it was.

“What the-!” She rolled upright and scooted closer, now fully awake. “This is…”

Ryouga didn’t have to say what it was. It was quite clearly the broken-off spout of a small, and very ornate, teakettle.

****

“Ryouga, you’re wearing a trench in the dirt. Keep going and I won’t be able to get you out,” said Ranma, amusement fighting with worry and tiredness in his tone. Ryouga was currently pacing a circle around the two kettle fragments that innocently reflected the light of dawn from their spot on the ground. They had almost precisely half the kettle. There was the spout, of course, and also almost precisely half of the pot portion, smoothly broken right down the middle. They glimmered more brightly than the dim light could account for – even broken, there was something distinctly magical about it.

Ryouga stopped in her pacing to look at them, again. She sighed. “But… I don’t know what to do…”

Ranma shrugged. “We do what we were plannin’ to do in the first place. Go back to Nerima. When we’re there we can talk to the ghoul about the kettle. She might be able to remake the spell from these.”

Ryouga snorted. “Yea, in return for you marrying Shampoo…”

“We’ll deal with that when we get there.” He changed the subject. “Go to sleep, Ryouga. You haven’t gotten five minutes. I shouldn’t’ve shown you…” Ranma leaned against the tree he was sitting in front of and closed his eyes. “Besides, I’m tired.”

He heard the sound of Ryouga sitting down heavily, and obviously reluctantly if her exaggerated sigh was any indication. “Maybe we should go back to Horaisan and look for the rest of it.”

Ranma snorted, not opening his eyes. “We’d never find it. Besides, we’ve got no money, no food. We can hunt for a couple days, but I don’t want to be out here like this any longer than I have to.”

Ryouga sighed again, more resignedly this time. A heavy weight on his side startled him, and he opened his eyes to see that she was sitting next to him, resting her head on his shoulder.

“We could find jobs…” she tried, but her tone made it obvious that even she didn’t expect that to be a viable solution.

“Even if we did find them all we couldn’t put them back together on our own,” he answered, wearily.

Ryouga’s only response was a light snore. He looked at her, incredulously. Sure enough, she had fallen asleep, leaning against him.

Ranma didn’t move. Can’t exactly push her off… He shook his head. Do I have a girlfriend now, or what? It was highly confusing. I don’t know what he – she – gotta figure that out – wants of this. I said I’d give it a month to decide… but what do we do up ‘till then? He looked at her, her face finally gone peaceful in sleep. She was cute, he had to admit that. But still distinctly Ryouga. It was something in the face. Feminized, softer, but still the same. Cute though…

He blinked in surprise, still being careful not to move. Cute… now that’s a word I’d never have thought of using for Ryouga before… he sighed.

Ryouga’s reaction to the kettle pieces wasn’t surprising, but was slightly worrying. She wanted to go back to Horaisan, even if she realized that Ranma wouldn’t let her go no matter how much she asked.

The boy-turned-girl seemed to be constantly hinging on the edge of mental breakdown, and earlier had been worse than most. Showing her the pieces of the kettle had been a bad idea - he had known that the instant she saw them and her eyes widened in shock and hope so painful that it made the sympathetic pain ache in his throat again. He felt like he had slashed her open with a dull knife and rubbed salt inside the wounds. Pacing had done a lot to calm her down.

Our agreement is probably the worst thing, now. He’s got hope, even if it’s not much – but when he kissed me he was giving in to being female forever. And… I made the agreement for the wrong reasons. He had known it as he said it, and it was clearer now. How much of what I said was just because I was frightened of making a real decision or hurting him? It came as a slight surprise, but he truly didn’t want to hurt Ryouga. Personally, he wasn’t sure why, even though there were certainly reasons, not the least of which was to keep her from running away and getting herself killed.

I said I’d think about it and I keep promises. That was a certainty, but there were so many doubts stuffed in with the promise that he didn’t know if keeping it was even a good idea any more, or if it would just do the opposite of what he had hoped to avoid by making it in the first place.

Eventually, he fell asleep. Every now and then, for sanity’s sake, the body had a veto on the mind.

***

~Mordain

Next

Previous

Back to The Nest