Author's notes: This is basically me completely ripping off one of Takahashi's plots, only instead of Akane its...Ryoga. Yeah.

I'd feel worse about it if I weren't ripping off her characters as well. At least no-one can accuse me of using her writing style...XD (I'm also using the shortened spelling of the names, as "Ryoga" takes less time to type than "Ryouga" and believe it or not, that makes a difference.)

Enjoy.

The Ocean and Truth

…

What are heavy? Sea sand and sorrow;
What are brief? Today and tomorrow;
What are frail? Spring blossoms and youth;
What are deep? The ocean and truth.

--Christina Rossetti
…

1: avidya (ignorance)

It was warm.

Ryoga opened his eyes. In noiseless exhalation the world drew away from him and coalesced into the color and shape of the sky overhead, achingly huge and empty. All around the trees bent their heads low. The smell of grass and flowers and dust surrounded him, and a hardness pressed against his spine and shoulders, hips and head. Spring was bleeding out slowly, but the air was dry, and he could hear birds.

He could see a face. He turned his head slightly to regard the features which at first were not those of a human being but merely a collection of assembled parts. Eyes, mouth, forehead, cheeks, nose...

He said, "I thought I was in the desert."

The features resolved. It was someone that he recognized.

"This isn't the desert." Ukyo squatted beside him and her expression was impossible to define. Ryoga smiled slightly. He didn't know why—the expression came from nowhere and tugged at the corners of his mouth, tugged his mind with an awareness of calm, of stillness, of the world at rest.

He sat up. Ukyo stood back.

"Where am I?"

Ukyo said, "This is the empty lot. You know? The one near my restaurant. How did you get here?"

Ryoga looked up.

"I thought...I fell."

Ukyo looked up too.

"You didn't fall, sugar," she said, not unkindly, "There's nothing up there."

Ryoga got to his feet and felt himself swaying slightly. The ground didn't seem to be quite under his feet. Ukyo looked at him again and her eyes widened.

"I fell," Ryoga repeated. But Ukyo was looking at something else. His bandana? Ryoga started to lift his hand.

"Ryoga!" The girl blurted, "Oh god! Your head!"

"My—"

"Your head! My god—my god, Ryoga, somebody put a hole in your head !"

But Ryoga didn't really hear her, because his legs had already given out, and he was falling, and falling, and...

..and...

--

white

...white...

Not the colors of the sky as they are, but the way in which they are perceived.

And the stars

The stars remained steadfast.

...white...

In a million years the arm of the galaxy shifts, turns from its place to a new position, and with it all the planets, the suns within it, the people on a tiny mote of dust in a little system somewhere far away from the violence at the center. In a million years things change, a world moves at a terrible speed and with agonizing slowness, beyond the comprehension of a human being, or a mayfly, or any other brief flash of light in the darkness. The light of the sun flickers in the water, a planet dies in the fires of its sun, lives are extinguished and in the crucible of pain new beings are born, hurtling outward from a dying giant to be the atoms and building blocks of a new life, somewhere else.

Yet in this place, the stars remain.

Steadfast.

--

"No," Ukyo said, shutting the door quietly and coming to join Ranma on the stairs. "He hasn't opened his eyes since."

"I don't understand. He just...fell over?"

"That's what happened. That...bandana thing of his, it was bloody, and then it sort of shifted when he moved and there was a sort of...shiny spot on his—I mean behind his temple. And a dark place...when I cleaned it I could see a...like a space. It looked like...like someone'd stuck a finger in his skull."

Ranma looked up at the ceiling and blew a sharp breath through his teeth.

"I just don't get this," he said, "You're telling me he dropped from the sky?"

"That's what he sai—well, he said he fell. But Ran-chan he didn't fall. There was no sign of impact and nowhere for him to have fallen from, unless you want to tell me that our alien masters have returned…"

"And Ryoga being, well, him, he shoulda left one big crater behind, anyways." He glanced up at the door. "Did he say anything else?"

"He said something about the desert."

"Do what now?"

"He said...he thought he was in the desert. And that he fell. He got up, he stood up, but then he just went...down again. I saw his legs...he just...collapsed. I thought that kind of thing only happened in B-movies."

"I'm going to get Dr. Tofu," Ranma said determinedly. "I'll be back as fast as I can. With the doctor."

"I'll look in Ryoga's things," she said, starting back up the stairs. "For some ID info. Something for insurance."

But she stopped when she slid the door open again. Because Ryoga's backpack wasn't here, after all. On some level she'd known that. She hadn't brought it back with her. It hadn't been anywhere around. Ryoga hadn't had it with him.

He hadn't brought anything with him.

--

It was the earth which had broken.

The stars in the sky remained steadfast.

--

He opened his eyes.

"Ukyo." His eyes flickered from side to side before he remembered to turn his head.

"Ukyo." He struggled to sit up, propping himself on his left elbow. He was lying in a futon. Ukyo was some little distance away. She had a soft, damp cloth in her hands.

"Don't you try to sit up," she cautioned.

"Why am I—" he winced as he turned his head; something twinged on the side of his skull, "Why am I—is this...your...?"

"We're above the restaurant," she said briskly, returning the cloth to the basin and getting to her feet. "This is where I live. You'd better lie back down. I'll bring you some tea." She padded out on sock feet and the door whispered shut. Ryoga gingerly lay back down, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling of the tatami room.

"I stood at the edge of the ocean," he said to no-one, "And watched the world catch fire..."

Ukyo returned after a few minutes with a tray, and helped to prop him up with some cushions. She settled herself beside the futon and quietly and unhurriedly poured tea for both of them.

"Ryoga," she said when he took the proffered cup from her, "What happened?"

He stared at her blankly, then cautiously sipped his steaming tea, eyebrows raised and eyes never leaving her face.

"I'm not sure what you mean," he said, flushing slightly—and not just because he was afraid of Ukyo and her fearful spatula. He gently turned the cup and watched his reflection shiver on the surface of the tea.

"Ryoga--!" She sounded exasperated already. That was pretty typical of any interaction with her.

"I'm serious, Ukyo. I don't know--why am I...in your...uh..." he blushed harder this time. Ukyo frowned.

"You don't remember being outside? Me finding you?"

Ryoga shook his head, and winced again, lifting his hand to touch the...bandages?

"Ukyo?" his voice sounded fearful to his own ears.

"You don't remember," she said flatly.

"Nn."

"Not being outside."

"No."

"Or talking to me."

"No."

"Or babbling about being in the desert—"

"Uh..."

"Or getting up and pitching flat on your face?"

"What...desert? What are you talking about?"

Ukyo plucked the teacup from his unresisting hands. She looked directly in his face.

"You don't remember telling me that you fell out of the sky?"

Ryoga's hands flopped into his lap.

A long silence fell. Outside came a brief rustle of wings and a small shadow flickered in the sunlight on the floor; a bird passing by.

Finally Ryoga said, "Are you sure you aren't talking about somebody else?"

Ukyo got up and opened a window. The smell of spring filled the little room.

"What's the last thing you remember, sugar?"

Ryoga shut his eyes and sank back on the cushions.

"What do you remember?" Ukyo asked again, softly.

"Sugi," he said slowly. "Cedar trees. And...yamazakura."

"Yamazakura..." Ukyo paused, "They bloom early...Ryoga, that was weeks ago."

He opened his eyes.

"Think harder. The sakura trees are already getting their first leaves. Ryoga! This is April ."

He exhaled, and closed his right hand around his left, but that didn't stop them from shaking.

"I don't—I remember the smell. Earth. Grass. Trees. I remember..." he inhaled a shuddering breath, "I remember the sun was coming up, and the frost was on the grass. There were...flowers..." he looked at her again, "Wild cherry trees."

Ukyo was still standing by the window, half her face awash in sunlight.

"You've lost a month," she said.

"No..."

"One month."

"No!" He shouted, and winced, leaning forward, hand flying to the bandages and the dull ache in his skull.

"What happened to me?" he asked helplessly.

"You have a hole," Ukyo said, "In your head."

Slowly he drew his hand away. He hesitated for a long, long time.

"Someone hit me?" he finally asked.

"No." Ukyo returned to the tea tray and carefully poured two fresh cups. "No. Somebody stabbed you."

Ryoga scrabbled at the futon, trying to throw it off, to stand, to get up, get up--his sudden burst of frantic motion startled Ukyo, but her face quickly hardened and she moved to grasp his shoulders tightly.

"What the hell are you doing, stupid?" she demanded.

"Doctor!" he gasped, "I need to see—"

"You've already seen one." Her steady voice belied the tension in her arms and shoulders as she struggled to remain steadfast in the face of his panic. "Dr. Tofu was here."

He hesitated. "Dr. Tofu?"

"Ranma called him. After I dragged you back here...I don't know. I freaked. I called Ranma first." She paused. "Sorry about that."

There was a moment where neither of them moved. Then, slowly, deliberately, Ryoga lifted his hands and closed them carefully around Ukyo's slim, delicate wrists. To her credit, she did not tremble, or draw back.

"I want to know," Ryoga ground through clenched teeth, "Why I am missing a month of my life."

"Then I'll bring him," Ukyo said simply, taking both her hands back and crossing her arms. "If you promise to calm the hell down and I mean now, goddammit."

For a tense moment, Ryoga thought that he might argue. Ukyo met his angry gaze with her own fierceness, though, and he felt himself settle back before he'd even decided to do so.

"Good," she said, nodding her approval. "I'll call Dr. Tofu. You , do not move from this spot. Get me?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said automatically.

"Good boy." She slapped him on the shoulder and stood, patting off her butt in a very unladylike fashion. Only when she was outside the room, with the door shut quietly behind her, did she gently massage her wrists, biting her lip.

She'd seen that edge of terrible, bottomless panic flicker on his face, at the moment that he touched her. She'd felt the tension in the bones and tendons of his hands and the vibrations that weren't there, as he leveraged the entirety of his self-control into that single instant in order that his grip did not shatter her delicate bones. She'd felt it, and she'd seen it in his face, and a terrible fear had arisen in her at that moment. Because Ryoga was strong. And it was so ridiculous to think that because everyone knew it. They knew it so well they barely thought about it.

They barely thought about it at all.

--

When Ukyo left, Ryoga squeezed his eyes shut. A breeze was blowing in through the open window, bringing with it the noises of another street, some distance away, the sounds of human voices distorted and strange. A bird sang again, and when Ryoga opened his eyes a yellow butterfly, the kind most commonly seen in the countryside, had found its way inside and was flashing its wings in the half-lit room.

Tears were running down his face.

Slowly his hand crept up to touch the bandages again. Ukyo had said...he'd been stabbed. How could something like...but that was a risk in a martial artist's life, right? It was always a possibility that any one of them—himself, Ranma, Mousse, even Shampoo or Ukyo—could be killed, or maimed, or even crippled for life. It was just that, up until now, Ryoga had never really imagined it could happen to him.

"Oh god," he breathed.

The door slid back. Hastily he wiped his face and eyes.

"He'll be here in a few minutes." Ukyo's voice was all business. If she'd noticed the dampness on his face, she didn't show it. "He said for you not to worry, and to lie still."

Ryoga stared up at her. His chest rose and fell. In the stillness of the moment, the butterfly flew back out into the street.

--

The stars remained steadfast.

He thought maybe he should recognize this place. He thought maybe that he'd seen it before. But a lifetime on the road had seriously eroded his capacity for wonder, and these days all places looked pretty much the same to him anyway. Standing at the edge of the desert he could think only how cold it was at night, how black and distant the void overhead, how small and bright the stars.

He thought of Akane. A thousand miles away, he supposed. Turning and looking back, there was little to see. The darkness of night, far from civilization, was something unfamiliar to most humans. Ryoga knew it, understood it's nature better than almost anyone else in this civilized age of technological marvels, but he couldn't help peering into the blackness anyway. Scrub and grasses were visible nearby, limned in moonlight, and on the horizon the dark shapes of hills rose against the sky and blotted out the stars.

He could hear the wind in the trees, and far away the sound of the ocean in its eternal unrest.

He dreaded to cross the desert at night. He feared to cross it during the day. Yet in the end he knew there was nothing else he could do, but go forward. There was never anything he could do, but go forward. Every place he came to was new, every place was the same. Nothing held any novelty, but nothing was familiar. Even in a place he'd visited a hundred times, even retracing his steps a thousand times, even backtracking on his own path in the wilderness or the city, it was impossible to get any kind of bearing.

He went forward because nothing was ever, really, behind him. Because there was no place to remember because he couldn't remember, not really. If he could he'd have found his way home by now, and stayed there.

Always, always, he was going forward.

He dropped his pack and sank to the ground. He thought vaguely about his bed roll, but he wasn't really feeling the cold, and no wind blew in this place. He looked up into the sky. The stars were like flowers, falling one by one.
--

Ukyo stood in the doorway and watched the doctor walk away. She remained standing where she was for some time after he'd disappeared around the corner. She felt at a loss.

The doctor had promised to do everything in his power to help Ryoga. He'd promised to pore through his books, both ancient lore and modern medicine, for any reference to circumstances similar to the lost boy's. Ukyo knew he had a better chance than any merely ordinary doctor at the hospital, and tried to feel heartened at the doctor's promise, but a sinking feeling in her gut suggested that her hope was probably all in vain.

It wasn't that she was particularly close to Ryoga. She knew him, she considered, well enough that he was more that a passing acquaintance, but nowhere near to what she could consider qualified him as a friend .

She went to the back and took some soup out of the pot she'd left on the burner, and prepared a tray. Really, she wanted Ryoga out of her restaurant and maybe back in his own home—assuming he even had one (Does he have one?)—or for some reason she could not quite define, perhaps at the Tendo's with Ranma. That place was the regular gathering ground for the weird and needy who seemed to congregate especially in Nerima for some reason beyond her philosophy to somprehend, so really it made sense, didn't it?

So why was he here?

Ultimately, it was because Dr. Tofu had asked her not to move him for a while. Ukyo was wholly irritated at the idea of being forced by circumstances to wait on the idiot boy hand and foot, but Dr. Tofu had such a subtle, gentle way of being really really pushy...

Balancing the tray in one hand, she gently slid open the door to the tatami room. The twilight silence within was a little eerie. She was again struck for a fraction of a second by the sense that Ryoga had brought something new and strange with him into her home. The young man was lying flat once again in the futon-- her futon, damn it all—chest rising and falling shallowly.

She scowled, at him and at the entirety of the ridiculousness that made up Hibiki Ryoga. It made absolutely no sense to her mind that someone so obscenely, inhumanly strong could lie there looking so helpless. Was it some kind of protective camouflage or something? Was it really, truly in his nature to be so weepy and fragile all the time? Because Ukyo couldn't remember having met another man who came anywhere near Ryoga's level of bizarre sensitivity. He was such a...such a...such a girl about things. And Ukyo really knew what she was talking about when it came to something like that.

Of course he also tended to be incredibly melodramatic about most things not having to do with girls, and was full of a kind of barely-controlled, pent-up anger that he only ever really unleashed around Ranma--which was fortunate, she considered, since anyone besides Ranma would not fare so well in a contest with Ryoga. In Ukyo's experience, though, when Ranma wasn't about Ryoga tended to be more or less a broody, day-dreaming idiot, defined entirely by his obsessive love for Akane. All that thick hair hanging in his face only served to exaggerate his permanent appearance of shadow-eyed moroseness.

Really the fact that he possessed the power to break rocks with his bare hands and blow buildings sky-high was almost incidental to his character.

Wasn't it?

She set the tray down with a clink. Ryoga's eyes snapped open and he sat up so fast Ukyo almost fell over. Her acid comment about doctor's orders died on her lips, though. Ryoga seemed to be staring at some distant point beyond the wall and his eyes were wide and unblinking.

Ukyo coughed delicately into her hand.

"Awake, I see," she said drily.

Ryoga's head turned. He blinked at her bemusedly, then croaked, "Uh...hi."

"Here," she thrust a bowl into his hands, nearly spilling soup all over him as he seemed at first unable to grasp what it was. "I made it," she informed him as, frustrated, she took firm hold of his wrist and forcibly closed his fingers around the bowl.

He looked down, then back at her.

"Why?"

"Because sick people eat soup!" she burst out, not wanting to go into the whole 'Oh, Ukyo, you're so unfeminine, you've never taken care of a sick person in your entire life' thing. "That's just how it is! All right?"

"Um," he looked down at the soup as if he'd never seen anything so exotic in all his years. "I'm not exactly sick..."

"You've got a great big hole in your head! What else would you call that? Huh, smarty?"

"A mild laceration?" he raised his eyebrows. "Dr. Tofu said it looks bad but it's just...superficial damage," he went on, flushing again (he seemed to do that a lot) and dropping his eyes. "It looks bad but it doesn't go deep...

It...what? Then why was he still in her bed?

Her eyebrows drew together as he started to set the soup aside, getting his legs under him in the same motion, preparing to stand.

Ukyo was faster. She shot to her feet with her fists clenched at her sides. The ends of her hair crackled with what was probably static electricity.

"You eat that soup right now you ingrate or by god I will chop you up into little tiny bite-size pieces and mix you into all of tomorrow's okonomiyaki batter, so help me!"

Ryoga's eyes widened at her outburst and he gaped at her for a fraction of a second before lunging for the soup and nearly inhaling it.

"Mm! It's good!" he squeaked. Ukyo gave him a grim smile and snatched the empty bowl from him.

"More, sugar?" she asked sweetly.

"Yes! Please!"

--

"Sauteed," she muttered to herself later on, "With garlic and onions…"

She'd shoved aside the boxes and piles of winter clothes she kept in the apartment's only other room, which she typically used for storage, and dragged the spare futon out of the closet. While she was on the floor having an asthma attack in the midst of the clouds of dust that exploded all around her like some sort of horrible Bomb Blast of Bad Housekeeping, Ryoga had wandered off aimlessly and Ukyo had to spend a good five minutes hunting him down before cornering him in the downstairs toilet. The unisex toilet—she didn't have room for anything fancier, and she just considered it a blessing he wasn't actually standing in the water. Only the fact that he'd seemed once again on the verge of panic and was sniffling alarmingly had stayed her hand, though it itched for the comforting, well-worn handle of her spatula.

"You were really born to be an invalid, weren't you sugar?" she inquired of the boy who was now sitting in the doorway as she squirreled her coat and kotatsu futon away in the closet. "Honestly, do you want me to lead you around by the hand for the rest of your life?"

"I've never been up here before, you know," he snapped from the doorway, shoulders hunched and looking miserable—something she knew damn well he spent too much time practicing. "It isn't like I always get lost everywhere , it's just that a new building is...hard.." he inhaled deeply, as if struggling to keep himself in check. "I mean, I hardly ever get turned around like that in my own house, or...or someplace I've been to a lot. I mean, outside is different but..."

"Oh yeah?" hands on hips, she turned fully to regard him. "Well, don't think you'll be here long enough to get to know this place that well."

"Why can't I leave now ?" he whined pitiably. Ukyo growled at him.

"Doctor's orders, I said. Do you not listen? Or is that famous Hibiki ability to only hear what you want to kicking in?"

Ryoga made a face. Ukyo considered that she was being unnecessarily cruel to him, but, well...it was just really incredibly annoying to have him here, in her way, meandering around aimlessly. A thought occurred to her.

"And you'd better not wander downstairs tomorrow during business hours and scare all my customers with your big gross head wound and 'I am an amnesiac, woe is me!' routine!"

"Yes, Ukyo," he said in a small voice.

"And don't pull that 'emotionally-abused fragile wallflower' crap on me either! I'm not feeling guilty as long as you're here eating my food and—and breathing my air!"

"No Ukyo." This time his voice was even smaller. Ukyo gave a strangled scream and stomped out of the room, lifting a leg to step over him and just resisting the urge to kick him for good measure—it wasn't like it would hurt him any. Only out of the corner of her eye, because she was very deliberately not looking at him, did she catch the faint trace of a smirk forming around the edge of his mouth.

"With soy sauce," she muttered as she stormed down the hall, trying really hard to ignore the boy altogether, "and hot peppers. Yeah. That's good home-cooking!"

Ryoga sat on his hands and watched her walk away. He knew he'd never be able to explain the exact reason for his phobia about being chopped into little pieces and eaten—or served whole with a piece of fruit in his mouth, more likely. Ryoga probably feared apple-sauce the most of any condiment in the whole wide world. Otherwise he wouldn't have been so cowed back there with the soup, and now...well, he was pretty sure Ukyo wouldn't cannibalize him, but in the last year or so the possibility of being actually devoured had suddenly entered his life in a really big way, and he could never afford to overlook the prospect completely.

Sighing, he got to his feet. His head twinged—every time he moved, in fact—but he wasn't about to tell that to Ukyo, or to the good doctor. He realized Dr. Tofu's heart was in the right place, and that he personally bore Ryoga no ill will, but being trapped in Ukyo's tiny apartment, surrounded by the ever-present smell of okonomiyaki, it was a little difficult to bear that in mind.

Japanese cooks put ham in everything.

He walked carefully into the room, one hand to the side of his head. No-one was around, so he allowed himself this small concession to his injury. Really it didn't hurt exactly, it just felt...weird. Like that side of his skull might pop open or something, finally giving his brain the excuse it'd been looking for to leap out and run away, never to return. A vague image of a lump of gray matter vanishing into the sunset (or sunrise? Perhaps some kind of Japanese western?), flickered briefly across his inner eye, as he peered blearily around his new accommodations.

They weren't bad. He'd certainly had worse. The futon was sinfully dusty, though, and Ryoga really, really didn't think he could bring himself to try sleeping in the thing—not unless he wanted to die from asphyxiating on clouds of dust. He walked to the window and pushed it wide open, and the fresh smell of spring rushed into the room. Cherry blossoms hit him in the face. Ryoga scowled as he picked them off his eyelid and cheek, then ruffled his hair. More of the damn things fell to the floor and he stooped to pick them up, and almost pitched flat on his face as the world suddenly canted and spun.

He sat heavily on the floor and put his head between his knees until the spinning went away. He stayed that way for a while, his hands laced behind his neck, head bowed, and worried. Because maybe, just maybe, he really did need someone else's help. Even if it was Ukyo—the violent-ist, most shot-tempered girl he knew. And that...well, that was really saying a lot.

He let himself sniffle a little, though he knew he was being silly. Of course Ukyo could be mean, and nasty, and violent, but...so what? It wasn't like she could ever do him any real damage. It wasn't like he was in love with her, after all, so even her endless stream of insults didn't pack a lot of punch. And she wasn't a friend, not really, so…what did her opinion actually matter, then? And sure, she might hit...a lot...but so did just about every other girl he knew, and after all he was Hibiki Ryoga, inhumanly strong and impervious to explosions and just about everything except being whanged in the head by Ranma—how much damage could she really do it him?

He sat up, cautiously, and leaned his head against the cold wall. The chill was soothing and he shut his eyes, exhaling a long, long sigh. He was still alive, he had a place to stay—for a day or so, and if Ukyo was a bit...over-generous in handing out the hard knocks, well, compared to some of the things Ryoga had endured and survived, really she might as well have been flailing away at him with a feather...or a soft toy...or some other equally fuzzy thing...

His lips quirked up in a smile at the image, Ukyo with her arm out straight waving something soft and white and fuzzy at him in a comical and ineffectual way. Heh. She was so ridiculous. As if anything she could do would ever seriously harm the great...Hibiki...Ryo..g...

The cherry blossoms and dust rose gently as he thumped softly against the floor, and then drifted down to settle all around him.

When Ukyo came upstairs later to check on him, she was astonished to find him sleeping on the floor, curled up under the window and surrounded by…well, it was too stupid to credit but there was a tree in the lot just behind her restaurant.

Sighing in annoyance, she fetched a blanket from the closet in her room and draped it over the boy's still form. He grasped the blanket in both hands and burrowed under it until only the top half of his head was visible.

In spite of all her best intentions, Ukyo caught herself smiling.

--

And moments pass, bright and alive, clear as the reflection of sunlight off a fragile surface, a moment in time. Millions of years pass in an instant to the heartbeat of the universe. All the eyes of the forgotten turn in the direction of the darkness at the heart of all things, and against the measure of eternity the time of the Universe is a moment, a flash of light reflected from a mote of dust as it drifts, gently, to the floor.

Only much, much faster.

In fact, it doesn't happen at all.