The muted greens and browns and grays of the forest seemed to laugh at Hibiki Ryouga as he stumped through them, frustrated, the colors swirling green-and-sunlight when the chilly breezes of middle autumn rustled the branches of the firs and pines and deciduous hardwoods, each gust of wind claiming a few more of their leaves. Seething at the futility of traveling by foot with a sense of direction such as his, he determinedly pressed onward through the never-ending trees and sparse underbrush, his destination calling him onward, making him restless and sleepless when his body ached and told him to stop. He was almost there, or so he told himself: just a couple more days, and he would be there, would see the lights of Tokyo rise out from below him, drowning out the stars and the moonlight in their arrogant brilliance. And he would know that he had, once again, at long last reached the Nerima Ward.
But the town he came upon was not Tokyo. His long-traveled instincts told him that it was too cold to be Tokyo; it was not late enough in the year yet. This realization drew a bitter sigh from his lips.
"Lost again," he murmured, trudging disconsolately into the outskirts of the town -- possibly even city. It was hard to tell how populous it was, as this section of it stood a bit higher than the surrounding forested lowlands, the trees thinning out a great deal as the town encroached upon it.
The town was like any other in this increasingly cosmopolitan country. This sameness would not have bothered Ryouga if not for the difficulty it caused him when he needed to orient himself, to figure out where he was. It was a blessing that his destination was in Japan, and not on the Asian mainland, where greater perils than endless forests awaited lost travelers.
"Where is this?" he asked the first person that he passed, a young woman in well-tailored business clothing.
She looked at him. She was not particularly attractive, but her smile was pleasant. "This is Fukaura. Are you lost?"
Fukaura was at the northwest edge of Honshu. "Lost" was an understatement.
"It appears so," he replied stoicly, burying his disappointment. It wasn't as if he hadn't been expecting to be lost, after all... "Thank you, ma'am."
She smiled again, and her eyes seemed to follow him as he walked into the town. With what emotion, he couldn't have said. Hibiki Ryouga was not a man who could easily tell a person's thoughts, even his own, jumbled and confused as they often were, as they were now. Especially now.
Akari was sick. When he was lost, he would call the pig farm at least once a day, just to talk with her, the kind, wonderful girl who said she loved him. But five days ago, she had complained of a fever, and it had gotten worse. Two days ago, she had barely been able to rouse herself from her bed to answer the phone, and he'd convinced her to check into a hospital. She'd been reluctant, her distaste for western medicine rearing its head, but he'd pressed her and she'd acceded to his wishes. She was considerate, if nothing else.
Ryouga had been unable to contact her since then, as he'd been lost in the deep forest, with no way of reaching a telephone. Finally, he'd come upon civilization again, and within short order, his eyes alit on a public telephone. Punching in a long-memorized calling card number, he phoned the Tatsushita Memorial Hospital, on the outer edge of the Nerima Ward, the only hospital within reasonable distance of the Unryuu pig farm.
The phone rang twice, and a receptionist answered. "Tatsushita Memorial Hospital," she said. She had the polite, crisp tone shared by receptionists worldwide.
"Hello, yes, my name is Hibiki Ryouga. You have a patient there named Unryuu Akari. I need to speak with her."
"Are you a family member, sir?"
"Yes. I mean, no. I'm her fiance, you see. I'm...out of town and can't make it in person, but I need to just make sure she's okay."
"Of course, sir. Just a moment."
There was an agonizing wait of maybe fifteen seconds. Ryouga heard her hands clack efficiently across a keyboard, pulling up Akari's profile, no doubt.
"Sir..." The voice sounded uncertain.
"Yes?" he said, impatient.
"Sir, I don't know how to tell you this, but...I'm sorry, sir. Unryuu Akari died last night. I'm very sorry."
Ryouga was numb with shock. "Dead..." He stared blankly at the brick wall before him. "I...I see. Thank you, miss..."
He hung up the phone, sat down on the public sidewalk, and began to cry.
Overhead, the oblivious sun blazed on cheerfully.
/-/-/
The Rivers of Babylon
a Ranma 1/2 fanfic by
George P. Masologites
14 January 2002
/-/-/
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.
-- Psalm 137:1
He smiled at him, his oldest enemy, his oldest friend. "You've come. I knew you would."
The other man sighed, shaking his head sadly. "Why does it always have to come down to this?"
"That's just the way it is, Ranma. The way it has to be."
Ranma's lips curled into a slight smirk, and he clenched his fists. His enormous power made the chill air shimmer around him.
It had begun. At last, at long last...
/-/-/
Ryouga awoke the fourth morning to the sound of a soaring hawk's fierce war cry.
He sat up in his bundle, shaking his head to clear the slumber from his mind. His eyes strayed upward, catching sight of the great hunting hawk for a fleeting moment, hundreds of feet overhead, before it disappeared beyond the thick forest cover.
It was early November, but the coldness of the weather suggested that autumn should have progressed further. A brisk wind bit at his weatherbeaten traveling garments, and he shivered in spite of himself as he gnawed on a piece of crusty bread that was this day's breakfast. He took a small draft of water from the leather canteen he kept in his burdensome traveling pack, careful not to spill even the slightest drop of the cold liquid on himself, and shivered again.
He looked at the sky once more. It was cold; too cold. The wearisome gray clouds hung thickly in the somber sky, and he wondered if the winds might bring an early snow this year. He shook his head, shouldered his pack, and began walking, happy to once again get his blood moving and drive out the cold.
He thought about Akari. Her funeral would be held sometime soon, and he knew he should attend. But how could he, the lost boy, unable to even find a great city such as Tokyo?
But he would try to attend. He owed her that much. That much, and so much more, so much more...
/-/-/
Time did not pass here as it did in the outside world. Here, the river of time was dammed, dried up, flowed backwards, swirled on and on and endlessly into the darkness. Space, there was. But time was incomprehensible, and its whirls and eddies spun around and around, burning through his mind and plunging him into their cool, cool depths, down, down, descending...
He shook his head, and stared ahead. The stars shone down on him, faint and white and impossibly ancient, and the breeze of the deepening twilight was refreshing and cool. His eyes turned to the distant, eternal night behind him, and he suddenly became afraid. Afraid of the things that lurked in the far darkness, afraid of the shadows that lurked in the depths of his mind, afraid of his own weakness, driving him once again into relentless grief...
The breeze was colder now, and the darkness pressed upon him with greater urgency. Driven by his nameless fear, he began to run, his powerful legs carrying him far and fast, across the endless dusky plains...
/-/-/
The fifth day brought a solemn snowfall, and the sixth, a bitterly cold rain, slashing and hard.
Ryouga continued his relentless march onward, stopping only to rest for four or five hours late into the night, and setting off again before daybreak. His pack held skillfully drawn maps and atlases, but for a man with a sense of direction such as his, these tools had next to no use at all. He used them exclusively for the location of landmarks, so that he might chart a general course to lead him to Tokyo.
The cold rain would have battered a lesser man insensate, but Ryouga scarcely noticed it, protected as he was by his broad bamboo umbrella and a ki shielding technique he had worked out several years ago to guard against the rain. He only paid it mind because it made the ground a churning sludge of melting snow and mud, and he was forced to fight at times to keep his footing on the treacherous earth. His ki shield would not protect him if he became immersed in water. He trudged on, his frustration deep and angry, silently cursing the ill fortunes that besieged him at every turn, giving him a moment's happiness, only to snatch it away again.
Akari... Her name whistled through his mind like a knife, sharper than all of nature's icy winds, echoing in his thoughts again and again, forlorn and distant, filled with pain. Akari...
He heard a sharp cry from overhead, and saw that the hunting hawk was once more soaring far above him, braving the storm to find an elusive meal. Was it the same hawk...? Even his sharp eyes could not tell at this great distance, but something in his heart told him it was.
It cried out again, the shrill ferocity of its call defying the slashing wind and rain, and then it was gone again, over a solitary snow-capped crag in the distance, its fastness somber and regal.
/-/-/
He had been running for an eternity, but he knew, somehow knew, that he was not fast enough, that he must run faster, that the unnamed shadows of his fear that chased him were faster than he was, that he would soon fall victim to them...
The stars glared down, cold and white and merciless, unblinking as they watched the terrified runner cross the boundless plains of night, their judgement as harsh and unyielding as their cruel cold gaze.
The years fell away from the runner, in this place, far, far beyond the reaches of the river of time, his careworn face shimmering and reverting slowly to the face of a child, smooth-cheeked and thin, but the terrible nameless fear that burned through his mind did not abate, and he ran, ran, ever faster, tears streaming down his face, desperation searing his soul...
The cold breeze now came in frigid gusts, and the darkness swathed the runner like a cloak, and on and on he ran...
/-/-/
A month passed before Ryouga found himself in Tokyo once again, and winter had now begun in earnest.
The brisk wind and the lightly falling snow filled the solemn gray morning, and Akari's gravestone was crowned with a layer of soft snow when he finally stumbled upon it.
He gazed at it, his heart bitter and his eyes sad, and shook his head. It was not right that she be buried here, under the glowering hardness of Tokyo's brilliant lights. Her family's custom was one of cremation, and the ashes were to be strewn over the soil of the Unryuu gardens. But she had died young and unexpectedly, and had not left instructions, and she had no family members left to speak on her behalf. So the last surviving member of the once-proud Unryuu clan was buried here, in an unnamed, snow-laden graveyard four miles from Tatsushita Memorial Hospital.
He kneeled down before it, his eyes closed. He held a small string of wooden beads in his hand, clenched tightly, his head bowed. Slow tears rolled down his unshaven cheeks, ruddy from the cold.
"Akari," he whispered, his voice tight, filled with grief. "Akari..."
By the time he had left the cemetery, his tears spent, he felt that he had no strength left in him. His grief roiled deep within his chest, and any thoughts that flittered into his darkened mind he cut off, discarding them as worthless, as rubbish.
Nothing mattered. Not anymore.
The austere noontime sun peered disconsolately through the thick cloudbank to cast its bleak rays on the snow-brushed graveyard and the despairing wanderer, slowly trudging through the old iron cemetery gate, oblivious to the world.
/-/-/
The shadows finally reached him.
The child's legs gave out, and he collapsed to the dark, formless earth, sobbing in terror and bitter rage.
Behind, a kind laughter reached him, and he looked back, his large, dark eyes tearful, but hopeful.
He could see nothing. He wiped at his eyes. The wind was picking up again; it felt cold, like it did in the beginning, but not unbearably so.
The laughter seemed a little less kind, now, and a vaguely mocking note had found its way into its mirth.
He shook his head, willing the laughter to be kind again, but it was fading, fading, along with all the warmth that had ever been in the wind.
The laughter became cold and biting, and the shallow hope in his fearful eyes fled before it.
Tears began to leak out of his eyes once more, and his small body was wracked with terrified sobs.
The darkness gathered behind him. Frozen wind turned his tears to crystal before they left his cheeks.
And the laughter was hollow, as empty and ancient as time itself.
/-/-/
Ryouga sat up abruptly in his bundle, covered in sweat.
He shuddered, wiping the sleep from his eyes. A slight rain was falling, but he had trained himself well enough that he reflexively shielded himself with his ki even while he was asleep. The rain was cool, but not cold, in odd contrast to the two inches of snow that blanketed the ground. It was cold enough to make him shiver, though, and he cast the nearly soaked bedroll from him, sighing. It was only an hour or so until dawn; there was no sense in returning to sleep for so short a time, especially with the dark dreams that had been plaguing his sleep of late.
He shook his head, tying his bedroll to the top of his heavy traveling pack. He cast back with his mind, but came up with nothing. His nightmares were intense, he knew that much, but he could not for the life of him recall them.
He sat down heavily in the rainy pre-dawn chill, half-heartedly eating half a piece of hard bread; his customary breakfast. He found he had little appetite this morning.
It had been almost eleven months since he had visited Akari's grave. The new year had dawned much the same as the old, and the winter was a bitterly cold one. Ryouga traveled on, as he always did; immediately following his visit to her grave, he could not muster the will to travel, but, after he had cried himself dry and let the sharpest part of his grief run its course, he had one morning shouldered his great pack and walked into the drizzling snow. He had not been back to Tokyo or the Nerima Ward since then, and found that he had no desire to return. There was nothing left for him there.
He had wandered aimlessly for a long time on the islands of Japan, and had found himself in the port city of Nagasaki one sweltering day in late June. He had found work on a ship before, as a young man chasing an enemy to China, and had no problem demonstrating his competence as a simple deckhand once again. He had decided to seek passage to China; rumor told of great masters of the Art that still resided deep in the mountains of rural China, and he found that, aside from his never-ceasing training, he lacked any kind of direction at all. And he also desired to once again seek out Jusenkyou's cursed waters, deep in the Bayankalas of far Qinghai, and try to find a cure for the affliction that had lain heavy on him for the past eight years of his life.
"No..." he murmured. Today was the sixth of November. "No...nine. Today's my birthday." He cracked a slight, quickly passing smile at that, the first time he'd smiled in a long time. Alone, in the wilderness, deep in mourning and sorrow, smiles were hard to come by. "Imagine that...me, twenty-five years old..." His face reverted back to its well-worn expression of solemn impassiveness, and he paid the thought no more mind.
Though he did not will it, before he had finished his meager breakfast, his mind once again drifted back to Akari, and to the other misfortunes that still lingered in his mind. Akane. Ranma...anything involving Ranma. They had been allies at times, rivals at others; he had even defended him once, when Ranma had lost his strength. But he had never found it in him to have any true affection for the other fighter, and the anguish that Ranma had visited upon his life he had never put out of his mind. The years he had spent making his ki shielding technique effective were a testament to Ranma's lasting impression on him.
He had harbored some vague hope that if he left all remnants of his life in Nerima behind him, he would gradually forget it. Years had passed, now, but the old grudges and mixed hatreds remained in his mind, stagnating, embittering him, and his grief for Akari was still fresh.
Taking a sip of his water, he stood up, banishing the thoughts and his feelings from his mind angrily, and began to train. His training was the only thing that remained to him, and he embraced it with all the passion that he had during his great rivalry with Ranma, years ago. He was simply a wanderer, now; he had no destination that needed traveling to, no direction to his endless journeys. The only things he did were train and walk, train and walk, train and walk. Some days, he just trained. He had remained at a single camp in excess of a week, once, training unceasingly from before daybreak to long past dusk. It was a life that suited him well. He was stronger and fitter than ever before, and his skill in the Art had become enormous. He was a skilled hunter whose knowledge of the wild places made the night that he went hungry a rare one, and his tremendous power assured that any potential bandits did not trouble him. He had not yet found Jusenkyou, nor any of China's storied kung fu masters, although he never had given up his search. His should have been a proud, fearless life.
Deep in mourning, he cast the blame for Akari's death squarely on himself. If only he'd stumbled upon Tokyo sooner, if only he'd been there to help her, if only he wasn't him, if only, if only, if only...
The mighty warrior began his training with a sad and heavy heart, his dark eyes reflecting the gnawing shame and bitter regrets that ate away at his soul.
/-/-/
Another year had passed, and Ryouga's journeys had carried him deep into the heart of the wilderness, high in the thickly forested mountains.
The winters were colder here, and the air thinner. He knew he was no longer in China, although he did not know where his wanderings had brought him. The people here had pale skin and fair hair, and spoke in guttural tongues alien to him. But the region was sparsely populated, and his encounters with other humans were few and far between; he found no need to teach himself their language. November had come again, and nearly gone, and the winter here was more savage than any he had yet experienced. The sudden, torrential blizzards arose with no warning, and the ice of the wind sliced through even his powerful constitution like a knife.
He had not trained for the past week; all his energy was depleted merely trying to keep warm in this frozen land. He had realized his error in traveling so far north, and had slowly begun to make his way south, but he feared that he had gone too far into the land of winter, and that the ice would claim him before he found a path out of the thickly wooded passes of this endless mountain range.
His step was a slow one, and he was hunched over against the howling wind and snow and ice of the great blizzard that had arisen at dusk. A thick oaken staff was clenched in his gloved hands, and he stumbled occasionally as he walked, gasping for breath, struggling and staggering. His battered body screamed at him for rest, for a brief respite from the endless cold and pain, but he knew that he could not rest until he found some kind of shelter. Those who lay down in the snows did not rise again.
Though he could see almost nothing between the night and the driving storm, he somehow managed to make out the faint outline of a deep fissure in the mountainside ahead. It was not much, but it was probably the last chance he was going to have to save himself from the ice.
He faltered once, collapsing to one knee, but he forced his aching body to stand up again and walk, and, victorious, fell down on the rocky soil inside the fissure, thankfully shielded from the snows by a low overhang, and succumbed to the cold and his exhaustion, crystal tears on his face, wanting nothing more than to hold Akari again...
/-/-/
But then the darkness drew back before the child, dissipating and dissolving, like an ephemeral mist in the morning sunlight. Shapes began to materialize out of the desolate twilight, and he saw a grassy plain laid out before him. But it was surrounded by great walls on three sides, towering over his small, thin form, and behind him lay a small, one-lane road.
"I...know this place..." he said softly, gazing about him in wonder. It was the empty field behind his old home. This was the place where his life had begun to come apart.
Before him was another boy, of the same size and build, with a small black ponytail.
Ranma.
Then they were children no longer, but grown men, mighty warriors, masters of their Art who could annhiliate anything that stood before them, men who had once defeated a god.
/-/-/
Ryouga awoke in the gloom of the cavern, freezing. The great blizzard was still howling and shrieking mightily outside in the deep forest night, but the chill it brought no longer pierced him so badly. He shivered and curled up in his bundle, tried to fall asleep again.
After a moment, his well-honed instincts felt a presence behind him. He flipped over quickly and looked up, all traces of his slumber gone instantly, but there was no one there.
"Ryouga..."
Alarmed, he turned around again, but he could see nothing in the lightless cave.
"Ryouga..."
I know that voice, he realized with shock.
"Ryouga..."
"A...Akari?" he asked, tentative and quiet, not daring to hope.
There was no answer.
"Akari?" he asked again, his eyes darting around frantically. "Am...am I dreaming?"
She stepped out from the shadows, smiling, her face as kind and beautiful as he remembered it. Her step was slow and graceful, almost as if she glided above the rocky earth. But there was no shadow in the cavern, because there was no light.
"I'm dreaming," he answered himself, and he began to weep.
Akari's slender fingers brushed against his lips, and her smile was heart-rendingly pure. "You are," she said, kissing his forehead gently.
He held her tightly in his great arms, crying unashamedly, the warmth of her ghostly form driving out the frigid darkness...
/-/-/
He smiled at him, his oldest enemy, his oldest friend. "You've come. I knew you would."
The other man sighed, shaking his head sadly. "Why does it always have to come down to this?"
"That's just the way it is, Ranma. The way it has to be."
Ranma's lips curled into a slight smirk, and he clenched his fists. His enormous power made the chill air shimmer around him.
It had begun. At last, at long last...
END
Author's Notes:
Can a person find catharsis and closure in dreams? I think, perhaps so. Whether I have succeeded or failed in conveying this idea, only the reader can decide.
Comments and criticism are welcome!