Waters Under Earth

A Ranma 1/2 Fanfic by Alan Harnum 
-harnums@thekeep.org
-harnums@hotmail.com (old/backup)

All Ranma characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, first
published by Shogakukan in Japan and brought over to North
America by Viz Communications.

Waters Under Earth at Transpacific Fanfiction:  
http://www.humbug.org.au/~wendigo/transp.html
http://users.ev1.net/~adina/shrines2/fanfics.html

Chapter 36 : And Let the Dark Come Down

     ""

     ""

     ""

     She yelled anyway.

     ""

     ""

     A voice, fading away into the darkness.

     "" Mengyua said quietly from at
Shampoo's shoulder.  ""

     Shampoo let out a soft moan of despair, as Mengyua slipped
away down the corridor, and slumped back against one wall.  ""

     Shengxyan leaned his hammer against the anvil.  ""

     Before Shampoo could ask anything more, the door opened
again, and Mengyua walked in next to a human-sized figure dressed
in a black tunic and red pants.  His dark hair was short, and his
beard was neatly-trimmed to a point.  Despite the size 
difference, he closely resembled his father.  In one hand, he
held a slim walking staff.  
          
     "" Mengyua said.  Lougui raised his hand
and half-heartedly waved.  He didn't look very happy.

     "" Shampoo said.
     
     "" Shengxyan 
said.  ""

     From Lougui's expression, he didn't seem to think that this
was the best thing at all.  Not exactly sullen, but something
close.  His eyes had anger in them, a thing that she'd seen
nothing of in his parents.  He looked around, at her and then at
his mother and father.  ""

     Shampoo got up and picked up the sword from beside her.  
""  There was an underlying
tension in the room, and she wanted to give the three of them the
privacy they obviously wanted.  Even as she closed the massive
door behind her - with some effort - she heard Lougui begin
speaking, though it was not in Chinese, or any other language she
recognized.  Mengyua answered calmly, in the same language - the
syllables seemed to flow naturally into one another, and it was
soothing to the ear.  Hesitant, and then judging that it wasn't
really eavesdropping if she couldn't understand what they were
saying, Shampoo stood outside and listened to the sound of the
voices that she could barely hear through the door.  It went on
for a few minutes; Lougui got angrier, and his parents stayed
calm.  She barely heard his footsteps in time to move away from
the door as it swung out into the hallway.  

     Lougui regarded her reservedly as he stepped out of the
sitting room.  ""

     ""
     
     "" he said again, and walked away down
the hallway.  Mengyua and Shengxyan came into the hallway just as
he disappeared around the corner.  

     Shengxyan sighed.  Mengyua looked down at Shampoo, eyes red
as if from crying.  ""

     Shampoo stared down the way Lougui had gone.  ""  
     
     "" Shengxyan said wearily.  ""

     "" Mengyua said.  She reached
out and lightly touched Shampoo's brow with one massive but
delicate hand.  ""

     It had the air of ceremony to it, and thus Shampoo returned
it.  The old Joketsuzoku words of parting were reserved these
days for friends one did not expect to see for a long time; she
suspected that this was true here.  ""

     She turned and walked away down the green carpet.  The lamps
high upon the walls were in the shape of women holding balls of 
flame above their heads.  Lougui was waiting by a tall doorway at
the end of the hall.  The heavy iron door was swung open, 
exposing a long earthen tunnel.  

     "" he said with grudging courtesy.  Shampoo
walked by him without a word, and heard his footsteps follow her.
Behind them, the door slammed closed, and they walked in silence
through the dark.  

**********     
     
     Fang Shi stalked down the trail, an honour guard of twenty
of the finest Joketsuzoku warriors surrounding her.  From the
last runner Bi Shou had sent back - well over an hour ago - the
outsiders hadn't even been smart enough to take the shortest
route between the Joketsuzoku village and Phoenix Mountain.  It
wouldn't be hard to find; the servant from the Circle had given
her a number of landmarks by which to locate it, all of which she 
recognized.

     Behind her on the trail, the Joketsuzoku walked in a long
line beneath the shadows of the mountains.  Travel had slowed
since the hole had opened in the sky a few minutes ago; she had
sent a scouting group back to Jusenkyou to see what was going on.
Vaguely, she realized that she had probably sent them to their
deaths.

     Next to her, Gao Chao walked sullenly.  There had been no
actual evidence to implicate him in the escape of the prisoners,
but she wasn't intending to let him out of her sight, even if she
couldn't legitimately punish him as a traitor.

     "" he asked
suddenly.  ""

     Fang Shi frowned.  After all those years of being about the
closest a man could come to being perfect, Gao Chao had grown a
spine.  He was also coming close, dangerously close, to her own
fears.

     "" she said finally.  ""  It was a
worthless retort, the kind used when she had no useful reply, and 
she knew it.  
     
     Gao Chao shook his head.  ""

     The women around them were beginning to take an interest
now, though they were trying to conceal it.  Fang Shi gripped
the haft of her weapon tightly and tried to think.  "" she said in her
most conciliatory tones.  ""

     Gao Chao stiffened with rage.  Accuse me, she silently urged
him.  Give me an excuse.  A part of her was disgusted; how low
she had sunk, using the memory of the man's own daughter to do 
this to him.  But that was nothing, she realized, compared to 
what she had done before.  There was no going back from this.  No
climb out from the pit.  But he didn't say anything in the end, 
and so they kept on walking silently beside each other, as the 
Joketsuzoku marched to war.     

**********

     The first conscious sense after the long fall through
darkness and cold was the smell of smoke.  Nabiki opened her eyes
a crack, and looked up into a nightmare.  The sky was an endless
smoky haze, shot through with licking tongues of fire.  Clouds
the colour of blood boiled thickly above her, forks of black
lightning occasionally shooting from one to another with
thunderous sounds.

     There was a continual moaning, and a sound of flesh sliding
over flesh.  Propping herself up on her elbows, Nabiki looked
around.  She was on what appeared to be an elevated plateau, 
rubbled and cracked in places; there was no vegetation of any
kind to be seen upon the barren rock, and it did not look as 
though there had ever been any.  In the distance, black mountains 
jagged as knives clawed at the scarlet horizon.

     "I'm in hell," she said softly, and laughed hysterically.
She stood up and took a few steps towards the edge of the 
plateau before turning her gaze up at the burning sky.  "What
next?" she shouted, filled with a suddenly foolish bravery.
"What are you going to do to me next?"

     Then she looked down, and words left her.  Below was the sea 
of the dead; hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands.  They 
writhed endlessly, nakedly, over one another, and each lifted 
its voice in a wordless dirge.  Bloated and pale as worms, they 
swarmed like maggots, tatters of skin sloughing off as they 
rubbed against each other so that raw red muscle showed beneath.  
Men, women, children, so many that they filled up all of this 
place, stretched to the mountains that bounded the wasteland on 
all sides.

     Nabiki staggered back, fell to her knees, and vomited.  Or
tried; she hadn't eaten in a long time.  But she brought up what
she could.  It was too much, and she had no more strength left.
Now she would lie down here, and give it up.  No more fighting.
No more anything.

     She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and walked
back over to the edge.  The rock was hot, and stung her bare 
feet.  The plateau she stood on was atop a narrow spire of stone
that rose high above the seething dead.  In the distance she
could see a scattered number of formations like the one she was
on, but all of them appeared to be unoccupied.

     Kasumi and Kuno.  Where were they?
     
     Her gaze went down towards the sea of corpses, and she
received one answer.  Near the base of the rocky spire, a single
face she recognized occasionally emerged from the sliding dead
like a swimmer drawing desperate gasps of air.  Kuno's mouth was
open, but any sound he was making was lost amidst the moaning of
the dead.  His hands tried desperately to grasp the rough surface
of the stone, but whenever he got even a tentative hold he would
be drawn back beneath the writhing mass of the bodies, who seemed
to thwart his efforts with a mindless malice.  

     Horror and sickness almost overwhelmed her.  What in God's
name _was_ this place?  But she'd already answered that, hadn't
she?  It was hell.  Or something so like it that any difference
was one of semantics.

     After a long time, Nabiki managed to draw a shuddered 
breath.  The air tasted of smoke.  She looked down again, and saw
for the first time the handholds carved into the stone.  And the
tiny ledges, barely a foot wide, that interrupted them at odd
intervals.  One was so close to the sea of the dead that if 
someone were to climb down there, and stretch out their hand...

     She couldn't do it; yet another thing that she should do 
that was beyond her.  Even though she was in good enough shape, 
the handholds were tiny.  She'd slip and fall, into the sea of 
the dead.  Better to stay here, she told herself.  Leave him.  
Leave it all.

     Cursing Kuno, this place, and everything else she could
think of that had any connection to her current situation, she     
turned around and stretched her leg down to find a hold for her
foot.  And so she began the descent into the pit of the dead.

**********

     "There."
     
     Akane examined the bandage wrapped around her arm and nodded
a grudging thanks.  Cologne sat back, legs crossed, and stared up
at the sky.  Nearby, Ryoga talked to the king of the Phoenix,
telling him what he could of what had happened.  Bai Ling and Bi
Shou were both under a heavy guard; both looked sullen and angry,
though Bai Ling was shooting the occasional glance to Ryoga with
a strange expression on her face.  Mousse was nowhere to be seen,
or maybe he had just faded from being easily noticeable; he
seemed to have a tendency to do that lately.

     "That will be numb for a few hours.  You're lucky it was a
clean wound."

     "Wonderful."

     "Why isn't Shampoo with you, Akane?"
     
     Akane looked up.  Despite all the anger she felt for
Cologne, she suddenly felt a terrible sorrow for the woman.  
"They said the Phoenix ambushed the Council.  They said Shampoo
died in the fighting."

     Cologne bowed her head.  There were no tears.  A long,
full-body shudder broke across her.  "Why was she there?"

     "She was the Maiden," Akane said.  "They chose her.  Because
of what happened at Jusenkyou; she fell in, and was cured."

     "Oh, child," Cologne whispered.  "Oh my darling child."  
There was an intermingling of love and pride and pain in her
voice that hurt to hear.

     "We don't know that she's gone," Akane said after a moment.
"Fang Shi must have been lying.  There's a chance--"

     "If I had been there, none of this would have happened."
     
     "But you weren't."  
     
     Cologne looked suddenly tired, ancient even in that young
body.  She folded her hands in her lap and drew a deep breath.
"What is done is done, and cannot be undone."
          
     Off in the distance, the black pillar stretched from earth
to sky like a malignant sore, a cancer in reality itself.  Akane
wondered what it was, and if Ranma had anything to do with it.

     "I thought it was the only way, you know."
     
     Cologne's voice was calm, detached.  Controlled, in a way
that made Akane think of something hard but brittle.  She looked 
at the other woman levelly.  "Do you think that makes any 
difference at all to me?" she asked.  "Any difference at  all?"

     "No, and I don't expect it to.  I can't justify what I did
to you.  But I'm not going to go out of my way to apologize,
Akane Tendo.  It was what I thought was the right thing to do at
the time."

     The question rose, against her will.  She didn't want to
talk to Cologne right now, or to anyone.  But there was no
holding it back; she had to have an answer.  "Why?  Why did you
take him?"

     "I didn't take him," Cologne said.  "He chose to come with
me."

     Akane closed her eyes.  It was all that she'd feared, all
that she'd wanted not to believe.  "To get away from me and
everything else, then."

     "No."  Cologne's voice was surprisingly compassionate.  "No,
child.  Have you spent all this time believing that?"

     Akane laughed; softly, bitterly.  "I've spent most of the 
time blaming you.  But I couldn't help but wonder if... if it was
more than that."

     "It was," Cologne said.  "But not in the way you think.  It
isn't my story to tell, Akane.  Ranma had his reasons, which I'm
sure he'll tell you."

     "Why would he do that?" Akane murmured as she stared at the
ground.  The wind was softly blowing through the pass, making the
leaves in the trees rustle and stirring up dust from the trail.
"Why would he tell me anything?"

     "Because he loves you, idiot girl."  It was said with so 
complete a certainty that for a moment it left Akane speechless.  
Cologne smiled benignly and shook her head.  "The young are so
clueless about the most obvious things."

     Coming from Cologne, who now looked slightly older than her,
it made Akane laugh.  It was true, she realized; everything she'd
hoped for.  The doubt, the worry, had somehow all been banished
by Cologne's affirmation of what she'd known in her heart for the
longest time.

     Suddenly, she heard Ryoga let out a great shout of joy, a
sound of almost pure happiness.  Looking up, she saw three 
figures, two tall, one short, walking up the trail from the 
north.  A child, a man, and a winged woman.  The way the sun
struck them as it poured down from above the mountains, it took a 
moment for her to recognize all three.  Longest to recognize the 
man; he looked to have lost a lot of weight, and some change
deeper even than that had taken place.

     Ryoga caught Ranma up in an embrace, still shouting as he
lifted him from his feet.  Ranma yelled and smacked Ryoga on the
shoulders.

     "Put me down, you idiot!  You're crushing me!"
     
     Ryoga was laughing, tears running down his face.  Akane
stood up, on shaky legs that didn't seem capable of supporting
her.  Her heart beat like a drum as she walked slowly towards
them.

     Kima came to meet her, stepping past Ranma, who was still
beating ineffectually at Ryoga's embrace but had fallen into
laughter himself.  The winged woman looked poised and elegant as
she walked, the gorgeous white wings folded like a cloak about
her body.

     Akane could think of nothing appropriate to say.  For a 
moment, she was on the verge of letting angry words burst out; 
that was easy, and familiar.  But a look into the blue eyes of 
the older woman stopped her; she realized that there was the same 
thing there, that Kima had no words either that were correct.

     They stared at each other for a long time, stock-still, as
Ryoga and Ranma's laughter continued in the background.  Kima was
the first to look away; only for a moment, to throw a glance to
Ranma.  She looked so sad as she did that for a brief second, 
Akane's heart went out to her.

     When Kima turned her head back, there still wasn't anything
to say.  Words seemed to have fallen away, until there was only
in the end the meeting of their eyes.

     "Ryoga, put me down, damn it!  I wanna see Akane!"
     
     Those words broke the spell; perhaps only the sound of her
name from his lips would have been enough.  Kima slowly smiled,
and took a step forward until the two of them stood facing each
other with a tiny distance between them.

     "So," she said, with the lyrical accent that Akane 
remembered, "we meet again, Akane."

     "I saw you," Akane said.  "I dreamed.  You and him.  Except
that you were me."
     
     Kima looked back again at Ranma.  "No.  I had your form at
times."  Her voice was wistful, matching the sad smile on her
face.  "I wasn't ever you."  Slowly, she nodded her head almost
respectfully, and walked by Akane.

     Akane didn't watch her go.  Ryoga had let Ranma go, and was
talking to Plum.  Ranma stood a few steps away from her; he must
have moved up silently while she was speaking to Kima.

     His shirt was ripped and bloody.  Her original thoughts
about his weight looked to be correct; he didn't look exactly
thin, but there was a noticeable sharpness to his features that
hadn't been there before.  His eyes looked the most different;
even though they were bright to match his smile, back behind that
brightness was something terribly weary and sad.

     She wanted to shout at him for leaving like that.  That
would have been the easiest way to deal with the emotions running
through her right now.  She wanted to yell at him, and have him
insult her, and have everything go back to the way it had been in
the beginning, when there had been none of this danger, none of
this fear and death and black tears in the sky.

     Mostly, though, she simply wanted him to hold her like he
had those few times before he'd gone away.  Wanted him to hold
her, to let her hold him back.  

     Ranma looked down at her bandaged arm, and frowned.  "What
happened?"

     "Arrow wound," she replied. 
     
     "How?"  He sounded angry, concerned.  
     
     "Long story.  What's that?"  She pointed to the north, to 
the blackness arcing straight up across the horizon.     
     
     He shrugged.  "Kinda a long story too."
     
     Then, against her expectations, he stepped forward and put
his arms on her shoulders, and drew her into a hug.  Only for a
moment, she hesitated, and then she wrapped her arms around him,
holding tight as she could to him, as if she would never let him
go, even though it made her wounded arm throb with pain.  She was 
crying, he was too.  His hands were clasped together on her back; 
she could hear his heart beating as she rested her head against 
his chest.  It didn't matter that there were other people around, 
that there was darkness seething in the sky, that there was a 
cold wind starting to blow across them.  They were a world apart 
in that moment from everything.

     And at last, again, after so long a time, after division and
parting, beyond the passage through darkness and light, under 
stone and under sky, beneath sun and stars, rivers join again, 
into a single river, into Oceanus, into the ocean river, flowing
down into the depths of the sea.

    Source: geocities.com/tokyo/pagoda/4361

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