The small hours. That brief period in between the late night club kids and the early risers. Where even the crickets and cicadas find pause in the still clarity of a twilight world. For the chosen few wandering about in such a night, senses heighten in a response to an unusual lack of input. Suddenly the world seems alive in a much different way, as if some abstract core is being given a stage to speak for itself.
Subtle voices on the wind, normally masked by the tidal forces of waking life.
Subtle voices in the mind, whispering strange truths in the dark.
A world for dreamers.
A world of dreamers.
Ranma stood, clad in yellow pajama shorts, considering himself in the bathroom mirror.
The house around him was silent save the occasional creak, groan, or buzzsaw-like exhalation from his unmistakably transformed father. But down here, even Genma's all too familiar snore was dampened. It made him feel alone with himself in a way his life seldom allowed.
In that moment.
He felt his mind clear as he noted the bags under his eyes.
He had the features of the chronically fatigued; the black smudged sunken look of a man whose face is trying to collapse in on itself. He knew it wasn't as simple as his father's snoring. Ranma had long since learned to sleep through that.
It was a world weariness. An over encumbered mass being crushed into an immobile state.
He tried to remember the last time he had real control over his own life. Control had always been something won, a victory from some conquest. Had it ever been more than fleeting? More than deception?
What he wanted and what he needed, he had no idea. He had too many balls in the air, and new ones kept getting thrown in from different angles. It wasn't even about if he wanted to juggle, it was about how much could he juggle. How fast could he go.
No one considering how dangerous the chainsaw or the flaming pins could be.
No one considering the man underneath the spectacle.
His eyes narrowed, blue slits pooling under spilling black void. His hands clenched and unclenched raggedly on the edges of the sink. He watched his bottom lip rise, he watched all of this, detached. Somehow behind his own eyes.
Ranma let out a quick sigh of hot air from somewhere deep within his chest, the mirror fogging, obfuscating the man among men within its confines. The man among men, among women, of woman, as woman.
Suddenly the door to the bathroom slid open. One Nabiki Tendo, clad in oversized pink pajamas, stared groggily into the bathroom from the darkened hall.
"Saotome, I know you all lived outside, but here in polite society we lock doors so this doesn't happen twice a day."
"Well maybe a polite society should learn to knock before throwin' doors open outta nowhere all the dang time." Ranma threw back.
"Sides, I wasn't doing nothing you'd wanna see in here anyway."
Nabiki cocked her head lightly, but otherwise continued into the room. "It's late, I'm not fully involved or invested right now. A lady just needs to pee and lay back down. So if you'd so kindly do nothing I'd wanna see elsewhere."
When he didn't immediately find his way out of the bathroom she ushered him with a exaggerated shooing gesture.
Ranma huffed a bit at that. Truthfully he was content to remove himself, the midnight spell over him now broken. The sanctity of the space somehow compromised even here in the fragile hours before dawn.
"Night Tendou."
Nabiki softly padded down the hallway back to her room, humming to herself the idiot songs of those more half asleep than half awake. Dust hung in the air around her, alit by pale blue moonlight and warm orange street lamps. A starfield of skinflakes twinkling in the abyss. She was for a moment a fairy queen, clad in flowing pink silks, dancing among the stars.
She passed their living room, a spot usually so full of life and drama.
But now.
Inert.
Illuminated by darkness.
The reality of the space laid bare.
And there, the star of the show laid sprawled on his back, blue eyes piercing twin holes in the ceiling.
She was for a moment a moth to a flame.
Ranma didn't turn when she approached. He was as if a fixture of the room.
Nabiki rocked back into a seat, the patient eyes of a curious naturalist resting on the back of her hand.
They sat like that for a lifetime, the observer and the observed. Silent save the rhythmic ins and out of two breaths, occasionally syncopating, twisting in and out of harmony. Two souls in a helix, spinning down and down and up and up alongside one another.
The fairy queen seeking the riddle of the twin sapphires.
"What are you doing Saotome?"
Nabiki cut through the silence, careful on some subconscious level to keep her tone hushed, subdued. To save the sanctity of the space. To keep the thin bubble of the dreamworld from bursting.
"Being quiet." Ranma answered back with equal caution.
"I can see that." She said, turning herself in the plush seat into a reclining position. "What's on the ceiling?"
Ranma only shifted slightly at the remark, content to return to the previous moment.
The room shook as a panda tried to emulate a subwoofer tied to the front of a train.
Nabiki cocked an eyebrow.
"Can't sleep?"
"NO."
Ranma's eyed remained fixed on the ceiling, but his ears opened to the sound of Nabiki sliding from her seat. He could hear the scuff of her feet against the floor as she moved alongside him. A hand found its way to his chest as he felt the tickling sensation of Nabiki's hair falling on his cheek.
"Nabiki what're you," Ranma found himself cut off as hot breath entered his ear, sending an electric jolt through his body in a crashing wave down his spine.
"Cause if you can't sleep, maybe there's something I could do to help?" Nabiki hushed into his ear.
He felt himself shiver involuntarily, her words seeming to touch him as if by a light feather somewhere deep down inside his mind.
Ranma shot up and to the other end of the room with unprecedented speed. His hands shot up in a reflexive warding gesture as his mouth moved to speak, but found no words amidst his muddled brain.
Nabiki eyed him from his previous spot, a smirk hovering in the dark by way of moonlight falling through the window.
"Jeez Mr. Man among Men, the witching hour got you spooked?"
Ranma's hands relaxed, but he remained subconsciously pushing himself back into the corner of the room.
Nabiki's form was fragmented into geometric patches by moonlight into an abstract painting of the girl who descended a staircase.
"I wasn't joking Ranma." She said flatly, her emotions betrayed only by her smile hovering in the night air in front of him. "I've got just what you need right now."
"For a price." he finished for her.
She leaned forward and the light raced across her features. "You look like crap Saotome. You looking like crap this past week likely has something to do with you sitting up all night. And now I'm sure there's a correlation between your attitude and Akane's equally abrasive response to it. Let's call this one a trade for some peace and quiet around here in our waking hours."
Ranma leaned back into the wall, his face masked in a dark fog. He let out a sigh from deep within himself.
"I don't think you have anything I want Nabiki."
"Just follow me up to my room Saotome." She moved herself over in his direction. Her hand playfully tugged at his pigtail as she passed.
Ranma paused as he listened to her ascend the steps in a delicate shuffle. For a moment he simply stared out the window at the hazy orange form of a streetlamp, it's dying bulb pulsing out an SOS signal in morse code. He padded lightly up the stairs, slipping through the night air. The fairy queen was cocked impatiently at the far end of the hall.
Nabiki rummaged through a small chest of drawers off to the side of her bed. The tangled, recently vacated sheets stood in contrast to the tidiness of the rest of her space. The only source of light in the room was a small desk lamp, emitting a sharp white cone of light downward, casting the surface of the desk in harsh fidelity, but filling the room with only a cool grey glow, it's soft expanse stretching out to just beyond the doorframe, where Ranma posed disinterestedly.
"You can come in you know." she said over her shoulder.
Ranma snorted just loud enough for her to hear.
"You should know well as me. I step into another girls room after dark, and I'm getting knocked through the roof before I can get a decent explanation out to your sister."
"Oh but Ranma, I'm so infatuated with you." Nabiki mocked.
"Ain't bout how it is, it's bout how everyone always takes it." he muttered as he quieted into her inner sanctum.
"You know, even on this side of the house, that stupid Panda can keep me up at night on occasion." Nabiki began. "And sometimes it's like you're trying to outdo him in your sleep. I swear it's like fighting with each other has to be a 24/7 activity for you two."
She held out a small plastic packet the size of her palm. Inside were two soft cylindrical objects.
"So I always keep something like this around. Cause you never know when an important night's sleep is going to count the next day."
Ranma made no move to take the offered package. She looked up at him in her usual flat stare, but he could see a hint of expectation there. Her eyes reflected the moon back at him from the window over his shoulder, her pupils becoming piercing white orbs dancing over shimmering liquid.
Nabiki sighed in mock exasperation. "They're ear plugs. For your ears. They cancel noise. We use these so we don't hate each other in the morning for what we do during the night."
"I know what they are Nabiki. Like I said, you ain't got anything I want."
As if on cue, the panda cut through the fog of night, and about a dozen layers of drywall. She held up and finger and returned to the drawers.
"I guess it would be a lot worse at the epicenter right, hold on I've got something else." Nabiki turned around beaming, holding an outrageously large pair of safety earmuffs.
"You can even use both at the-"
"It's not the damned panda Nabiki." He paused.
"Mostly. Whatever. Thanks anyway."
Ranma extricated himself from the room, leaving a confused Nabiki Tendou to watch his back lumber down the hallway. Not toward his room, she noted, but back in the direction of the living room.
She closed up the drawer and her door and slid back under her sheets, content to let Ranma's problems be Ranma's problems. Fitfully she tried to unburden her mind and return to the peaceful land of relaxation she luxuriated in as much as time allowed.
But sleep would not come. The world outside her bed seemed so loud, itchy, hot, distracting. Hellbent on keeping her from escaping from it. She tossed and turned and kicked off her pajamas and tangled with the sheets and readjusted her pillow, but still her vision remained a black wall behind her eyelids whose veil wouldn't lift into the land of dreams.
She had been gone the past year from the drama and dynamics of Nerima's constant chaos. Had thought herself removed from the equation, able to come back as nothing more than a temporary observer. A fly on the wall, no longer seeking the rewards that came from catalyzing and orchestrating the misadventures of those around her. Perspective had given her new worries and challenges, personal projects that had nothing to do with a ragtag group of idiot pubescent super humans.
Her work, for her.
Somewhere in the house a faucet dripped.
A clocked ticked.
A panda snored.
"Goddamnit Soatome."
She found him again, on his back on the table, staring up at the ceiling, unfocused eyes watching the ceiling fan turn round and round in a lazy rhythm. He was lit by moonlight streaming in from the windows, a cool blue only occasionally interrupted by the warm orange of a malfunctioning street lamp bouncing between life and death.
"Nabiki just quit it okay?"
His voice cut through the quiet of the night like a whip. His eyes never left the ceiling.
She was unwavering.
"Are you aware of what a cry for help is Saotome?"
To that she received no reply save a minor shifting of his body.
"Because right now, that's what you're doing. Maybe to you you're just staring off into space in the dark in the middle of the night, but to any thinking feeling human being you're sending off a red flag yelling 'help, somethings bothering me!'"
Ranma audibly scoffed as she made to sit by his side on the table.
"Since when does the Ice Queen give a damn about anything that ain't tied to dollars and cents? You wanna talk about someone acting weird?"
His words bit at her, although she knew she couldn't exactly blame him. She'd spent most of the time they'd known one another exploiting him in one way or the other, and although she had certainly justified her reasons, trust was the last thing she expected from him.
"Look, I know how the dynamic between us has been with us, and I know a lot of it has been my fault-"
"A LOT of it?"
"Most of it."
He titled his head slightly, giving the barest of nods in her direction.
"Let me be real. I don't know if a full apology is something I'm capable of. Keeping this house afloat and saving for college when no ones working and we've got two freeloaders literally tearing the walls down every other day." She sighed. "Maybe, well maybe I had to compromise my sense of morals or ethics."
Ranma snorted out a laugh. A sick unnatural thing.
"Maybe you got off on it."
She could feel the contempt in his voice. Here SHE was, trying to console HIM, irony of ironies.
"...maybe I did." She said in a small voice, just barely enough to carry the few feet between them in the empty room.
Her words seemed to hang in the air, floating through moonbeams among the star fields of dust and panda fur. For a moment Ranma's blue eyes just pierced through her, unblinking.
"Who are you and what have you done with Nabiki Tendou?" There was a measured level of exhaustion in his voice along with the statement. If he'd meant it as a joke she wasn't reading it.
"Excuse me?"
"My words, not yours. What's your angle?"
"What makes you think I've got an angle Saotome?"
Ranma was looking visibly irritated. "PLEASE, just once. I got nothing ya can wring out. Let me have the night and we can start the usual crap in the morning."
She frowned inwardly. This was, ultimately, warranted.
"Ranma, let me tell you a story." She began quietly.
Ranma slowly sat up and moved to exit out the back door.
"Please." She watched his back tense as he stopped and leaned against the frame.
"I think if anyone knows what it's like to be a big fish in a small pond it's you. Because I've watched you. Over and over in your martial arts bubble of the world, you've risen to and surmounted every challenge thrown at you. All these big fish and not one has ever been bigger than you."
She collected herself, running through her first semester at university in her mind.
"Well, I know that feeling too. In my own bubble world, I was the big fish, the queen bitch of Nerima ward. Even in all this chaos I always felt in control, safe. Over the years, I'd gotten my hands on all the strings I could pull, and it was like I could play this place like a puppet."
He shifted to a sitting position back on the table, facing away from her.
The fan above hummed in a slow steady rhythm. It joined the faint ticking of a clock in the other room and the deep sound of the boy breathing next to her.
"I guess, here at least, there really weren't any serious challenges for me, not in my bubble." She let out a hollow chuckle. "I'd never even considered that there could be."
"The school of business was full of people just like me. All of us sure we were there to run the joint. All of us used to running things. I'm sure there were many with more perspective than that, a lot of people fell in line into subservient roles pretty quick, but some people" she tapped the table with the knuckle of her index finger, "some people were too bullheaded to back down right away and fill the roles they were meant for."
She paused to collect herself, watching his back rise and fall in a lazy night rhythm.
"Those were the ones that got hit the hardest by the people destined to take hold." her voice caught just ever so slightly, and maybe it was the stillness of the night, but somehow it failed to escape the attention of a seemingly distant Ranma Saotome.
"You finally got gamed, didn't ya?" He twisted his body toward her, settling into a cross legged position on the table. His face was an impassive mask.
"Yeah."
"Hard."
Her face gave away more than the words she couldn't form.
"It hurts don't it? When someone abuses your trust?"
Somewhere in the distance came the sound of a train, likely the last run of the night.
"Ranma I-"
"Didja get em back?"
She leaned heavily over her knees, her bangs hanging over her eyes.
"At first, I thought...I thought I did. I was Nabiki Tendou, ice queen, I didn't lose. I controlled the flow of the world around me."
She knew she was being intentionally vague. She knew Ranma, as naive as he was, still probably held reservations about believing her.
"Listen, when I go back after the break, if I go back after break. I think I'm leaving the school of business."
"WHAT!?" Ranma erupted and then quickly darted his head side to side scanning to be sure he hadn't destroyed the careful sanctity of the night.
More quietly he followed. "Nabiki what the hell happened?"
She considered spilling the whole story. How she'd learned first hand what it meant to violated and sold to the highest bidder. How it had felt like fighting against the sea, and with each passing week she lost the strength to keep her head above water.
How she'd eventually drowned in shark infested waters.
"Ranma. I found a black mirror, a whole hall of them, that finally allowed me to see myself for who I truly was. How everyone back home must have seen me. And I didn't like it…"
Even in the dim twilight of the room her eyes stood out wet and glassy.
"And I didn't think mom would like it." The choke in her voice was almost masked by the backfire of a passing truck, but it was there.
She'd spent a lot of time evaluating the lessons her first semester away from home had taught her, initially trying to remain detached, calculating, cold. It wouldn't do to show any emotion in the face of her new adversaries, and she could never know when they were watching.
It felt like they were always watching.
Waiting for the chance to exploit a momentary weakness in her guard.
Her routine had become an exhaustion of convoluted movements, paranoid thinking and extreme isolation.
She had come eventually to view her brief time away from the school of business fulfilling her 'wasteful' gen ed requirements as a sort of sanctuary. For a brief few hours of the week, across campus in the school of arts, surrounded by lax and carefree peers processing photo negatives, she felt relief. She could fill her hard edge, dial down her paranoia, laugh and lean on others without having to tense for the impending drop when they pulled out from under her.
But then it was back to the dorms and the school of business. A repeated and voluntary leap into a shark tank. Where she had to put on a mask and move through the halls alone. To pretend she couldn't feel the stares or hear the snickers at the girl who had tried to lead so hard that she wasn't now deemed even fit to follow.
She hadn't allowed herself to speak much of the pain of the experience out loud, and she doubted she ever would. Certainly she never anticipated to address even this much with Ranma of all people. All the while she sat there running through it all in her head, she hadn't felt him come up next to her. Hadn't felt the hot tears slide slowly down her cheek as she stared emptily at the weaving of the mats on the floor.
She felt a strong arm encircle her and looked up to see piercing blues looking sympathetically down at her. His free hand brushed a tear from her cheek and he held it up to his face, cocking an eyebrow at her.
"It don't freeze to your skin now does it?" A playful grin.
Without thinking she encircled his chest with her arms, laying her head against it, her face turned down away from his. "No Saotome, I suppose they don't." She breathed into him, feeling the hot liquid now streaming down her face, soaking into his tank top and dripping rhythmically from her chin onto her own pajama bottoms.
For a time they sat together in silence, two silhouettes against a blue grey room, it's background only occasionally giving way to a heartbeat of amber light.
Slowly.
After an immeasurable amount of time.
Nabiki felt her composure begin to return to her.
"I thought you were terrified of women Saotome." A statement, an observation of his uncharacteristic proximity to her female form.
"Psssh, no! I ain't scared of nothin'." And yet, despite his quick protest, she felt his entire body suddenly stiffen. Felt his hand lift up off of her shoulder to hover several inches above it.
"I suppose you'd rather I believe that you have the self control of a saint." She untangled herself from his rigid form and watched bemused as his tension almost instantly released.
"I'm not dead inside either you know. It's helpful to put up a front sometimes. Ain't it?"
She affirmed the statement with a nod, then cocked her head to signal him to continue.
"Back on the road I definitely used to think bout what it might be like to uh...be with a girl or whatever. Just we didn't really meet too many, and when we did it didn't last long fore Pops got us chased outta town. Sides, Pop never wanted me ta have any distractions from the art. Till we got here that is."
Nabiki chuckled at him. "So you do like girls Saotome? I'd have never guessed." Truthfully she'd had money on it at one point, but he'd certainly left enough room for doubt to get a pool going.
"Course I like girls!" He started, then quickly seemed to fall into himself. "It's just...it's like it's this whole, I don't know how-"
"It's complicated isn't it?"
"Right like-"
"Being attracted to women AND men?"
"What!? No damnit that's not-"
She waved her hand dismissively and doubled over herself laughing. "RELAX Saotome, I'm just messing with you. I know what you mean, at least I think I do."
He glared at her, but deflated quickly. "I ain't never had an opportunity to try and like, be with a girl or date or all that stuff. Heck! Wasn't even something I really learned how to handle."
"Then you came here and-"
"Blam! Straight to marriage. And of course it had to be more than one. Just to make things interestin." Absently he rocked back onto the table to stare at the eternally spinning fan again.
"So outside of what I'm already well informed about the past year and a half, you've never?"
"Nope. Prolly spent more time with my own girl form than I had any chick my own age." He paused. "Guess Ukyos the exception, thought she was a guy at the time though, and I was a kid so I'd never have thought bout any of that stuff."
"Just what stuff do you think I'm talking about Ranma?"
He regarded her seriously. "Ya know, like holding hands or kissing and junk."
She almost fell over from the sheer force of his naivety. "That's a start. You really were sheltered weren't you?"
"Christ Nabiki I know what s-se...sex, I know what sex is. Shampoo alone probably did better than health class to fill me in. Plus, I got all the parts, wasn't hard to work things out."
Even in the dim light she could see him blushing head to toe, as much as he was attempting to maintain a nonchalant posture to his body.
"What about now? Have you...done anything? With any of them?"
She heard him sign deeply, saw a eddy of dust motes roll through the air above him.
"No. I mean sometimes they try and maybe that counts. Specially to Akane. But, it ain't really the same if it's forced on you. If you don't feel like you can do nothing in response."
"And what's to stop you from...responding?" She accented that last word with a wry smile.
He regarded her with a dumbstruck look. "You're not serious? Cause I do anything that sends a positive response to one of 'em, immediately they got marriage bells ringing and I got a half dozen people out for my head."
"But you would right?"
He leveled her with a flat stare. "Nabiki, you gotta promise to hold this, cause I don't need no more drama alright?"
She nodded, holding her pinky out to his. He grasped it with his own.
"I'm surrounded by girls with almost as much training in the thing I love most in the world as I do. Every single one of them is a knock out in their own way. Yes. I would. With any of them."
Nabiki let out a low whistle. "Wow Saotome, you really do have some serious self control."
"But I can't act on crap, and I can't go looking round for some other chick with less hang ups either less I wanna get a whole bunch a people hurt. Not the least of which is me."
"I can't believe you're almost eighteen and still so inexperienced. I just figured, you know, you'd figured something out secretly. There were always quite a number of girls buying the shots of Ranma-kun." She ran her eyes up and down his prone form. "Such a waste."
Ranma bristled at the mention of the voyeur pictures she'd always seemed to have an infinite supply of. "Oh what, like I ever saw you getting all handsy with some dude."
"A lady doesn't kiss and tell Ranma-kun." She winked.
"What really? But you were always so...um so-"
"Cold? Here in Nerima sure. But I had my fair share of experience away from prying eyes." She gave him a look and finished huskily, a humorous contrast to the lumpy pajamas attiring her. "Certainly more than you could ever dream of."
He seemed to consider her for a moment, debating within himself.
"What does...what does love feel like?"
She laughed involuntarily.
"What!? I'm serious. I mean I know, or like I think I know but-"
"I have no idea Saotome. Truly."
"But you just said,"
"No see, here is the problem with the lot of you. Do you think the rest of us just spot one another on the street, yell out 'I love you, you will be mine!' and then rampage around the city trying to get someone to bend to our will?"
His silence was more answer than she'd ever need.
"Oh my god, you do, don't you!?"
"Well what the hell do people do then huh?!" He was cute when he was put on tilt like this, she had to admit.
"First step, I'll lead alright." She smiled inwardly. "Saotome-kun I think you're cute, do you think I'm cute?"
"What!? No! I mean sure, but not like-"
"Just play along, god. Don't burst a blood vessel. So that's step one. Then I say something like 'maybe we should spend time alone together doing something fun.' and you say."
"Sure?"
"And after we do that we decide, mutually, whether to engage one another physically. From there it's just escalation. That's it."
"So when do you fall in love."
"I don't know."
He face faulted.
"So you've never?"
"No, but I've certainly enjoyed the company of a man for an extended period of time."
"What's the point then?"
She leaned forward and knocked him lightly on the forehead. "The point is you enjoy the journey dumbass. And IF it gets to that point you let it, but if it doesn't it's no big deal so long as you had a good time."
"And they did too?"
"Ideally. But not everyone's a winner."
"You make it sound so simple."
"IT IS simple Ranma. It's the whole Wrecking Crew that's got it all twisted. You all go from zero to one hundred with just about everything you do. You're all so preoccupied with the end goal you forget to even have the damned adventure that gets you there."
"Even if you're right-"
"I am."
"It's not really a way I can be anyways. S'all been decided for me already."
"Oh yeah? And I suppose that means you've made a decision?"
"I thought I had."
"Akane?"
"I thought maybe I was ready to just do it, get married. Thought I…"
"Loved her."
He nodded. "But after it all went to hell," she grimaced at her part in that fiasco. "Well, we kinda just went back to the way things were. After everything we been through. It still just don't feel like the trust is there, and I feel like maybe that's important."
Nabiki laughed and lay down on her back next to him, catching sight of the fan behind moonbeams. "You're not as dense as you look."
"You're not as hard as you look."
"Touché."
Up in the night sky a patch of clouds moved to obscure the moon, filling the room with dark shadows. Two voices whispered in the void, their forms only briefly alighting under the amber glow of an unsteady streetlamp.
"But I been thinking. Bout love I guess. Like I hate Pops, but I love him too. I know what that feels like. I know what loving moms is like. It's like, is how I feel about Akane any different? And if it's not, what does that mean?"
"Ranma, as far as I'm concerned, the only major difference between platonic love and romantic love- and by the way that's what you're getting at -the only real difference is if you want to get in there pants too."
She heard him croak next to her. She could swear she felt the heat from the blush overtaking him.
"But what if you feel like that for more than one person?"
"I don't know, you're probably querying the wrong source. BUT, I'd say you probably just go for the one that feels the strongest and hope for the best."
"Hmmm"
"This is why most people play the field and let things develop organically by the way."
"Maybe I oughta just let mom go through with that damn seppuku pledge..."
Nabiki found herself hovering over his face in an instant.
"Don't you dare talk like that you moron!"
His hands flew up in a warding gesture. "Relax, I'm just kidding. Just feel...stuck, is all."
She couldn't be sure how far Ranmas warped and overwhelming sense of honor could really take him, but she certainly didn't find the line of thought entertaining.
"What if you could start over Ranma? If you had all the opportunities you have now, but without all the honor and laws and, frankly, utter bullshit hanging over it all?"
The clock chimed lightly signaling the passing of another twilight hour. Crickets played against the sound of light traffic somewhere far away.
"I'd live my life. I don't know how I'd live it, but I'd live it for me."
There was no doubt to the sincerity his voice carried through the darkness.
"Maybe there's something I could do to help."
"Yeah?"
She clasped his hand in hers, surprised again to find he didn't immediately recoil or tense in response. "Yeah Saotome. I think I owe you one."
He eyed her with childlike curiosity all of a sudden. "Do you really think I'm cute?"
She was momentarily taken aback by the sudden change in gears. He was full of surprises tonight.
"I don't know Saotome, do you really think I'm cute?" Turnabout was certainly fair play.
He responded without his usual blathering knee jerk, rather cooly fixing eye contact with her. "I do."
It was her turn to be put on tilt. Suddenly she was all too aware of their physical proximity, her hand in his, her face hovering over his, the way his blue eyes shone through her even in this dull twilight world. "And if it weren't for all the nonsense running your life...would you?"
"Start over with a fresh slate. Try and see something new in people I didn't see before."
She felt herself as if getting pulled into him, descending down. Her hand still gripped his, but it was now held in a position over his head as she shifted her weight toward him. She felt a hand brush the small of her back, felt his slow heavy breath brushing against her cheek.
Felt the crash as a half drunk, half asleep ball of panda fur careened down the steps after miscalculating it's lumbering journey to the kitchen.
Ranma and Nabiki found themselves staring at one another from opposite sides of the living room, eyes racing back and forth between the once again unconscious panda and one another's bewildered faces.
"I think it's time for me to go to bed."
"Yeah right, me too."
She manuevered herself cautiously around the furry stinking form at the bottom of the stairs. She watched Ranma prepare to vault his way on to the overhang below his room. His eyes were warm but intense as they met hers one last time.
"Hey...Nabiki?"
"Yes?"
"Thanks. Really."
"Right back at you Ranma-kun."
Notes from the author:
Thank you so much for reading! This is my first attempt at Ranma fanfic, although I've certainly read a lot of them. Reviews and all that are appreciated. I'm not 100% sure where this is going yet, but I do have two more chapters already written following this one that I can clean up.