Chapter 8: So Close and Yet So Far

"I'm sorry Ranma, but the cure you are looking for is gone."

Gone.

Cure. Gone.

The Captain's words kept echoing in his head. It had been hours since their conversation had ended and she had fallen asleep. Too many hours and yet, he could not make himself fall asleep after her confession. How could he even think of sleeping at a time like this? Here he was, thousands of miles away from home, trapped inside a cave, probably being hundreds of feet below the surface, with a busted back, holding secure one of his closest enemies who looked like the woman he loved and lost, and he was stuck being a half a man for the rest of his life. "Well, this was the wonderful fucking vacation I've always wanted."

"I'm sorry Ranma, but the cure you are looking for is gone."

Gone! Cure. Gone! He knew that now! Why did his mind insist on replaying her words as soon as he forgot about them?He growled closed his eyes, attempting to ignore the thoughts he knew were going to force him to jump off a cliff, or worse, forcing both of them to jump off a cliff, or in front of a train, or in the ocean with an anchor tied to their feet. Was it even worth finding a way to get out of this cave? He could just end her life and his right now with a simple Breaking Point. This entire place would collapse on them and they would both die in an instant.

"The noise of the cave collapsing might wake her up."

OK. Change of plans. Maybe he could snap her neck where she lay, she would die in her sleep, and then he would make the cave collapse on them, knowing he took one of his enemies with him. That would do it, wouldn't it? Ranma sighed deeply. "What am I thinking? I'm just full of it right now! My ears are dripping piles of…"

He stopped his thought short. Why was he mad again?

"I'm sorry Ranma, but the cure you are looking for is gone," his mind politely reminded him.

"Oh, yeah, that's why. Maybe I can drown her in her sleep…" Ranma's inner dialogue continued.

"I can't do that! She hasn't done anything to me!"

"How about lead you on, Ranma?" his mind asked him. "How about making you believe there was a chance Akane was alive?"

Ranma shook his head. "She never let me on! I wanted to believe it! I saw what I wanted to see! She never walked up to me and said: 'Hey! I'm the reincarnation of your girlfriend. Remember which one? The one you treated like shit before she died for you?'"

"But she didn't have to show up looking like Akane! She still tricked you! She is the reason Akane was brought to her death here in Jusenkyo in the first place! She tried to fool you before, remember. She fooled you once…and now twice…shame on you!"
"She didn't fool me," he whispered, trying his best not to stir the slumbering woman in his arms, but could not help remembering when Kiima had posed as Akane in the bathtub, totally tricking him into believing he and Akane would...

"Why are you holding her so dearly, then? You are enemies! Sworn enemies! She is the reason Akane is DEAD!"

Ranma found it more and more difficult to ignore the voice inside his head. He had traveled all this way for absolutely nothing. He had accomplished absolutely nothing. And he would leave with what? Oh, yeah…absolutely nothing!

"I'm sorry Ranma, but the cure you are looking for is gone."

Ranma growled louder now.

"The hell with the cure!" All he wanted was to get out of here and go home. Home to the place where his fiancée had been born, and laid to rest. Home to her, and by default home to him.

"Ok, let's say you go back to Nerima. What are you going to do there? Prance around like the little girl you are, and will always be because, in case you forgot, the cure is gone? Are you gonna come back to Nerima as you did last time? Empty handed. The only difference is that now you wouldn't be returning with a dead woman next to you."

"I'm sorry Ranma, but the cure you are looking for is gone."

"Yes, I know," he whispered before he sighed.

He was done.

He had nothing else to do but return home. He was not going to listen to that crazy voice inside his head, which he did not know where had come from. He was not going to spend another moment pretending he did not know what the right thing to do was, anymore. He was going to get the Captain and himself out of there, safely. He was not going to strangle her, drown her, or snap her neck while she slept, or anything of the sort. He would say goodbye to her like a man, (half-man, his mind reminded him) and leave as soon as he could. There was nothing else here for him here in China. Nothing at all. No turning back.

"Ranma?"

The Captain had finally woken up after who knew how long she had been asleep. How she had not woken up when he was arguing with himself, he had no idea. How she had fallen asleep in such a predicament, he also did not know. He had not even noticed she had been asleep until she stopped responding to their conversation. He figured her headache got the best of her. His back had stopped hurting as much as her head a while ago, as well. He slowly removed his arms from around her, disgusted by her façade. "She doesn't remember! She doesn't know!" he kept telling himself.

"Are you ready to get out of here?"

"I was ready yesterday," she replied.

"OK. Let's see where we are, first."

Ranma extended his arm above them and created a ball of ki big enough to bright up a few feet of the area around them. He slowly lowered it closer to them and he saw he had enough space behind him to stand up. He slowly turned around and stood up, praying the ground would not give out just yet. Once he felt he was standing on firm ground, he guided the ball of light to show the ground around the Captain. When she saw there was ground around her, she stood up only to quickly fall on her behind, again.

"Ouch! I guess I did fall on my ass, after all, uh?"

Just a few moments ago, Ranma would have run towards her and made sure she was all right. Knowing that she was not who he thought she was, changed his perspective. He simple asked her, from a distance, if she was OK. She responded that she was all right, but that it seemed she had twisted her ankle with the fall. He rolled his eyes at himself as he ended up walking up to her anyway and allowing her to hold her weight on his body while she found her balance again. "Let's see what else is 'round here."

He lifted the ball of light and made it go around the cave. The top of the cave seemed to be pretty far up, but the cave itself was small in comparison to its height. He made another round of the edges of the cave before he stood in the middle of the room after he made sure the Captain could hold herself up without his help. He made his ki bigger and explored every single part of the cave he could. His ki illuminated a part of the wall, which was covered in what seemed like water, and he walked up to it. "At least we won't go thirsty."

"Let me see," the Captain said as she slowly walked towards Ranma, with her own ball of ki in her hand. Ranma quickly lost interest in the dripping water and he returned to the middle of the cave. He aimed the ball of light up again, hoping that a bigger source of light would help him see better but the top of the cave was still nowhere to be seen.

"We'll need to find a way out through these walls," he began, "Otherwise we'd have to…"

"Grow wings."

Ranma froze at the voice. His ki reduced itself to a small dot until it dissipated as he lost the concentration needed to manipulate it. He stood there in the middle, exhaling slowly but deeply enough it made his mouth dry. He could not bring himself to create a new source of light to illuminate the area around him. He knew that voice; he despised that voice, and he did not want to see the face of the owner of the voice. He had heard that voice saying something to him before, something he wanted to forget.

"Thousand wings of sea bird attack!"

A ball of light traveled close to him, and its creator walked, no –flew, behind it. Ranma looked up to see the Captain's Kiima Phoenix form stand –glide, in front of him.

"Want a lift?"

"No, I think I'll just stay here and die," he did not mean for it come up as a joke, but it sure sounded like it to her when he heard the Captain laugh. "Don't be silly, Ranma. Let's head out." She pulled him closer her, to his displeasure. He looked away from her as she began their ascent. The Captain noticed how uncomfortable he looked and tried to ease his mood. She had hoped that his anger would have disappeared by now, but it did not seem diminished at all.

"I didn't know the great Ranma Saotome was afraid of heights."

"I ain't."

"You're not? What's wrong, then?"

"YOU FUCKING KILLED MY GIRLFRIEND! THAT'S WHAT'S WRONG!" he thought of telling her, but he ended up shaking his head. "Nothing, I'm just hungry and tired, and want to go home."

"Ditto."

The Captain began flapping her wings faster when she saw a ray of light at the end of the vertical tunnel. "We're getting out of here, today!"

"About time!"

She sped up even more, or as much as she could while her wings could still flap in the quickly narrowing space. Once she reached the surface, she used the Breaking Point technique to make their escape route bigger and used another one to finish collapsing the cave on its own. Ranma looked down at her action and then back at her with a questioning face.

"We can't leave that open for someone else to fall into. I don't think they'll be lucky enough to have wings."

Ranma stared at the prison that held them captive for hours as it disappeared behind clouds of dust. The Captain continued to fly towards the forest and, after a few miles, she landed on safe forest ground to rest. She carefully dropped Ranma on the ground before resting her back against a tree.

"I'm sorry. I was getting tired."

"It's OK. I can walk back home from here," he told her, but his mind said, "Yeah, walk back straight to Nerima, that is."

"Are you crazy? It's dark and you must be tired as well. Just give me a few minutes here and I will be able to get us back to your cabin."

"That won't be necessary. I can…"

SLAP!

Ranma was not able to finish his sentence. He turned back and faced the Captain, who had just finished slapping the hell out of him. "What was that for?!"

"You're acting like such a child! What happened? Are you mad at me or something?"

Ranma scoffed. "No, of course not. Why would I be mad at the person who just told me I'm stuck with my curse forever? And then slaps me for reacting like a normal person would!"

"Ranma, I'm sorry, OK? I thought you should know the truth! If it were up to me, I would have given the cure to you by now! I mean, if I had known you were looking for it, I would have told you the truth sooner."

"Sure, yeah right. Are you dense or just plain stupid?"

"Excuse me? Watch your language, landling! I will not let our friendship make you forget where you stand!"

Ranma laughed aloud. "Friendship? Really? What kind of friend makes you lose your sword or your backpack full of supplies?"

"My sword?" she asked as she patted her hips searching for it. She had lost it back in the cave. It had collapsed with his backpack and there was no way they were ever going to find either item again. Ranma felt the smallest hint of regret when he saw her frantically looking for her sword. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell…"

"No, it's OK. It's just; my Lord gave me that sword when I came to after my accident."

"Accident?"

"Forget it," she waved her hand dismissively. "It's not important. I'm sorry I burst your bubble. I just wanted to be honest with you. And thank you, for saving me."

Ranma shrugged. "You'd do the same for me."

"Yes, but only after I'd killed the bastard who tried to kill you."

Ranma's fists clenched. He knew that response. He had used it with her a few days ago, and he had meant it, but only because he saw Akane in her. This had been the response that had caused him to lose his senses and press for a kiss. A kiss she had not stopped him from trying to steal. She. Had. Not. Stopped. Him. Moreover, as opposed to the moment it had almost happened before Masara interrupted them, it bugged him now that she was willing to be kissed by him. If she were in her Akane form right now, would he jump at another chance to kiss her? Her comment returned to his mind, bringing back all the anger it really entailed; the implications of what he meant. The hidden meaning that he would have tended to Akane's wounds after he had made certain the cause of them was no longer on this Earth to attempt them again.

He took a step closer to her and looked at her straight in the eye before he made his response.

"You would kill your own Lord?"

She took another step and covered his cheek with her hand. He did not know why he allowed her to touch him, but he did.

"If I had to, I would."

Ranma stared at her, looking for the slightest hint of a joke or a lie. He could not find either. He knew that if she were in her Akane form, she would have been much easier to read than in her Kiima form. However, something in the way she had said those words and the seriousness of her face made him believe that she had meant them. He raised his own hand and pulled hers from his face.

"I don't think it will come to that," he finally said. "I wouldn't let it."

"I know," she finally said pulling her hand away from his. "Are you ready?"

"I've got…a lot to think about. Mind if I walk…alone?"

The Captain nodded in understanding. Her presence was not needed now, but she would return later to see how he was fairing after he had calmed down. Before she changed her mind, she tried her luck by flying towards him and softly kissing his cheek. He was too shocked to react and allowed her to walk away from him, unharmed.

"I'm sorry about your fiancée," she whispered to him before she flew away from him. Ranma lowered his head and allowed the Captain to be far away from him before walking again, and taking his time to return to his borrowed cabin.

xxxXXXxxx

Lord Saffron in adult form walked towards the deepest, least used part of his castle; the part that held his dungeons. However, at the moment, the dungeons held more than just dust, death and disease: they held Lord Saffron's Captain –or, what was left of her. He stood in front of the metal doors, awaiting his servants to open them. Once the creak announced the passage was opened, he walked in, pushing the door shut and asking his servants to lock it tightly.

"We don't want our Captain escaping before I have a word with her, now do we?"

Lord Saffron turned back and examined the living quarters of his Captain. She was lying on the floor in her mortal form, shackled and with her wrists held by chains attached to the walls. Her clothes were dirty, bloody and torn in some places. She sported a few bruises and cuts, and a slowly recovering black eye. He walked up to her and did not waste any time in kicking her in the stomach to gather her attention.

"Is that how you like it, darling? Rough?"

The Captain coughed a little bit of blood from a wound she had just reopened by biting on her tongue to prevent letting out the scream she knew would please her Lord. "Are you now going to tell me the truth of your whereabouts for the two days you did not bother reporting to me?"

The Captain coughed again before speaking. "My Lord, I have told you. Me and the landling got caught in a rockslide and spent the night inside a cavern, too injured to move."

Lord Saffron walked back to her and slapped her with the back of his hand. "Do you think I'm a fool? I know you're plotting against your Lord!"

"I'm not…I did nothing that you had not already asked me to do!"

"SILENCE!" he said as he slapped her again.

"How much longer do you plan on spending here, Kiima? One more week? Two more weeks? Or do you plan on dying here?"

How long had she been here, anyway? She remembered returning to Mount Phoenix only to find Masara urging her to hide from their Lord. She remembered her ignoring him and walking up to her Lord to provide the new status of his plan when he ordered for her to be thrown in the dungeons. She spent two days wondering what she had done wrong and on the third day, her Lord had showed up at her doorstep.

She had been so happy to see him until he began asking her where she had spent the last two days since she left to guard Ranma. When she told him of hers and Ranma's misfortune and their accident, he scoffed and had asked her again, this time accusing her of being a traitor. When she insisted again on her story, he beat her until she could not move anymore.

He had finished his visit by telling her he would return in three day to see if she had changed her mind. Here he was, three days later, making it seven days since the last time she had any food or water. Her throat was raspy and her wounds had not been cleaned, so she was feeling the nasty after effects of an ignored infection. She was sweating not only due to the lack of cold air in the dungeons, but also due to the fever she felt was burning her body to ashes. Her ankle had also been bothering her, but after her Lord had beat her up, the pain in her ankle became minimal compared to other parts of her body.

"My lord, please…"

Lord Saffron laughed. "Please what? Kill you? Put you out of your misery? I wish I could and would have done so the moment you came back here, but you have something I need, and I want it now!"

The Captain's eyes filled with tears. "Lord, I need more time. I still have not been able to take what you require from the landling."

"You've been seeing him for months now? What have you been doing all this time? My patience is running thin, Kiima! I should have left you dead like my servants found you!"

"My Lord, I am so close. He trusts me now, completely. I can get what you need. Just give me another chance, please."

"Another chance for what? So that you can roll around with him one more time, you whore?"

The Captain shook her head. "Lord Saffron, I have never…"

Lord Saffron shut her up by slapping her again. "How dare you lie to your Lord? Do you expect me to believe you have spent all this time with him just talking? Where is what I asked you to get?"

The Captain coughed several times, unable to respond due to the cough attack and pain that surrounded her body. When she did not respond, Lord Saffron walked up to her and lifted her in the air by her throat. The Captain tried to pull his hands away from her but the chains kept her arms at a great distance away from him. He raised her higher so that the chains holding her wrists tore at her skin. Tears began running down her cheeks, making Lord Saffron squeeze harder.

"I should kill you right now, you know? You have failed me, Kiima. I saved you, and you fail me. What kind of payback is this? Didn't you swear loyalty to me? Why do you keep me from reaching my goal?"

The Captain closed her eyes, feeling herself slowly lose consciousness. Seeing this and feeling he was not over with her suffering, Saffron finally dropped her unceremoniously on the ground, flipping her over onto her face with his foot. The Captain felt air fill her lungs again as she slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position. "I'm…sorry…my Lord…I don't….deserve your mercy."

Lord Saffron chuckled. "Of course you don't," he said as he pulled an old, hard piece of bread from his sleeve. He threw it at her on the floor, where it picked up dirt and perhaps leftovers from dead bodies that surrounded her. She did not care what kind of disease the bread had; she was starving. She held the piece of bread closer to her and when her Lord did not attack her again, she began desperately biting on the bread and chewing it down, not stopping until it was gone.

Saffron walked away from her and rested his back on the wall opposite to where she was kept chained up to. "What is the landling doing here?" he asked once she was done eating the stale piece of bread.

"He is looking for the cure to his curse."

Lord Saffron laughed. "Did you tell him his search is in vain?"

"I did, my Lord. He was very upset."

Saffron laughed again. "Oh! Of that, I am sure. What else did he tell you?"

"His fiancée, the Tendo girl, he believes her dead."

"Even after seeing you?"

"He thought I was her, but now he doesn't."

"Why? I thought the plan was to mislead him until the end?"

"I thought it wise to inform him of this to make it easier to get from him what you need."

Lord Saffron motioned her to continue her explanation, as he did not understand how revealing such an important piece of their plan to their enemy worked to their benefit.

"You see, Lord Saffron, when he thought I was her…he could not harm me. He would spar with me, but he refused to bring me any harm."

"So?"

"So, in order to force him to give me what we seek, he must be able to attack me. Only then can I trick him into giving it to us."

"I guess it makes sense. Though, I would have preferred to just knock him out and take it. However, I must say that breaking his spirit like that by telling him she is gone after he believed she had returned to him is so much better –more devastating to him."

The Captain nodded, remembering his face of betrayal and sadness when he derived the same conclusion. "It was, my Lord; it really was."

"Good. I guess I still have some use for you, my dear Captain."

The Captain nodded and did not attempt to find anything to say that would please her Lord, as she was afraid he would change his mind. She resorted to bowing to him and keeping her head firm on the floor. She heard him walk to her and stand close to her. She waited for another hit from her Lord.

"You get one last chance, Kiima. Fail me again and I may not be so merciful to you again."

The Captain did not dare to respond to him and just bowed her head again. He responded to her bow by planting a good kick to her head, knocking her out for days to come.

xxxXXXxxx

Ranma rested his hand on his bent arm as he went through yet another book of the history of Jusenkyo. Ever since the Captain had told him the springs were no more, he tried desperately to find an alternative to curing his curse. Since the day they were able to escape from the cavern, the Captain had not returned to the cabin for over two weeks now. In truth, he had not expected her to return after the first set of three days from their last training, but he did expect her to show up on the next set of three days, but she did not.

Needless to say, he was angry with her when she had confessed to not being Akane, and to telling him the Nannichuan was no more. Now that he had had the time to think about it, he realized that she had solved his dilemmas for him, albeit without knowing he had any. He had walked into their last training practice with the intention of clearing things up, but he had not expected to find out the way he did. He thought he had been ready for anything, but seeing his dreams shatter like that proved to him that he had been indeed not ready for whatever was to come.

"I hate reading. Fucking useless books," he said as he turned another page. At least he had struck some luck in the books having a Japanese translation on the back of each page. Otherwise, he would have had to ask Cologne or Ryouga for help to translate them. He had often thought about Ryouga, and Mousse and Shampoo, and his dad in the past few days. He would have to tell them the bad news about their cure being gone, at some point. They had to know that they would have to learn to live with their curse, just as he was trying to assimilate living with his.

Then again, did they really hate it? Ryouga was with Akari because she loved pigs for some oddball reason. Shampoo had never showed any dislike for her curse, and seemed to enjoy using it against him to make him do things he did not want to do. Mousse wanted to be a full man to please Shampoo, but now that he had her, he probably did not care anymore. And his dad, well, he would love to continue using his panda form to get free food or avoid any other responsibilities that came his way.

It seemed that, at the end of the day, he was the only one that had a problem with curse, but it had only been because he had wanted to be a man for Akane. Now that Akane was gone…

"It doesn't make shit of a difference, that's what, Ranma!"

He sighed as he bookmarked the page he left off, being unable to keep his mind from thinking about other things. He looked around, trying to find something else to do before leaving. The cabin was clean. The refrigerator was stocked. His bags were made. Other than reading the books to find a cure that, the more he thought about it, he did not really need, he had nothing else to do. Here he was, staring at himself in the mirror, thinking about reasons why he should leave, and reasons why he should stay.

Just over two weeks ago, he thought he would leave after he determined if the Captain was really Akane, and then found his cure. Now, he knew that the Captain was the Captain, and that his cure was nonexistent, and yet here he remained. Why had he not left already?

"Oh, yes! I wanna say goodbye to the woman who broke my heart, three times."

Ranma poked his closed eyes in desperation. "This ain't working, is it?"

He stood up and walked to the open door, watching the sun setting for the night. "She didn't come again."

He walked outside and stared around him, hoping to see her hiding behind the trees, unsure if he wanted to see her. He hoped she knew he did. Even after the eye-opening revelation of knowing the woman he had spent months with was the reason why Akane had been placed in such danger in the first place, he had still spent some good time with her.

"I guess Kiima wasn't so bad…when she wasn't chasing us or throwing stuff at us."

His bonding with the apparently amnesiac Captain had helped him get back in shape, learn more about himself, prepared him to become a sensei when he returned to Nerima, and make peace with his loss.

"All for the low, low price of giving me hope my fiancée was still alive."

Ranma kicked a pebble before returning to the cabin. "She may've brought Akane here, but I pulled the trigger. If I'd been more careful, she'd have not felt the need to save me. If I'd been stronger, I'd have been able to prevent this entire crap from happening. If I'd been wiser…I would've never fallen into these shitty springs and the Phoenixes' plans would have never affected me in the first place."

Bottom line, he had pulled the trigger, and perhaps he would not feel as guilty if his trigger had not been aimed at other people, as well; her family, her friends. Overall, if he had told her how he felt before she died, he would have had a better coping mechanism. However, she did not die knowing because he was too much of an immature kid to tell her the truth.

He sat down at the table again to try to continue reading the book but after an hour of trying, he could not concentrate at all. He finally stood up and walked towards the door, with a clear destination on his mind. He closed the door behind him and took a deep breathe of clean, mountain air.

"If the Captain doesn't come to me, I will go to the Captain."

And, with that thought in mind, he began the long walk to Mount Phoenix to say goodbye to the only friend he had willingly made in a long time.


A/N: Ok, you can kill me now. It all goes downhill from here. As with all my stories, a song inspired me to write this one as well. The song that inspired this fic is "What hurts the most," by Rascal Flatts. What do you think? Does the song remind you of this fic?