Torn Chapter 3 Thoughtless Words and Wordless, a ranma fanfic

Boy oh boy, this story is proving a challenge due to the format it bunches the paragraphs into one blob so leaves me with lots of work, but then what great challenge in itself is without its perks and rewards. -Zeltronica

As Promised chapter: 3 the very next day hopefully later today chapter: 4 will be launched.

I hope that everybody is having a good week and year so far, if not cheer up life will get better remember its always a storm before it will get calm.

Ranma 1/2: Torn Chapter 3:

Thoughtless Words & Wordless Thoughts

By Kit'ari

Monday, Akane returned home from her early morning jog. She loved the crisp cool morning air, which is why she had started running earlier and not because she wanted to watch that jerk and his father spar over the backyard.

On her way to the furo, she noted that she couldn't hear Uncle Saotome moving about, which meant that he and her father must have been out late again. Therefore she would have to get that baka up for breakfast this morning.

Sliding the door open to the changing room, she was surprised to find Ranma standing there, staring at the calendar that hung on the wall.

"Excuse me," Akane barked, as she moved past Ranma. "There are others who'd like to clean up this morning, you know." She grumbled since she was still slightly miffed with Ranma due in part to the jerk having avoided her all day yesterday.

"A year ago, today," was Ranma's only response.

"Huh?"

"Nothin'," Ranma said while shaking his head then left the room.

"What do you mean, nothing?!" Akane half-screamed, but he didn't respond.

XXXXX

The bell sounded for lunch. Students of classroom 1-F jumped up and dashed for their destinations. Most wanted to enjoy the nice day outside. Others were attempting to get to the juice and milk machines before the line was far too long.

Hiroshi stopped just a little before the classroom door. He looked back, shocked to see Ranma hadn't left his desk. Akane and Sayuri were standing at the front of the classroom waiting for Yuka to join them. Yuka hadn't even attempted to get up yet.

"Hey, man. That was the lunch bell you just slept through," Hiroshi called to Ranma with a grin.

"Come on Yuka, we need to talk," Sayuri barked, ignoring Ranma and Hiroshi.

Ranma took a deep breath and sighed. Yuka just stared at her desk.

"I'll catch up to you guys later," Yuka wavered.

"Come on, Yuka. You don't have to stay here with him," Sayuri huffed. Akane moved to sit down in one of the desks. "Not you too."

Ranma plopped his head on to his desktop. "Go ahead and go with your friends, Yuka," his muffled voice reverberated off the wooden desk.

Hiroshi blinked.

"You're my friend too," Yuka countered.

"How can you say that after what he did to you!" Sayuri shouted, taking Hiroshi by surprise.

"He didn't do anything!" Yuka cried.

"She's right, Yuka." Everyone boggled at Ranma. "I can't let you lose your mother or friends because of me."

Hiroshi blinked again. Apparently, he had missed a lot this weekend.

"I don't abandon my friends. And I'll say it again: You. Are. My. Friend."

"You can't be serious!" Sayuri replied incredulously.

"You have no idea what it's like to live without a mother or friends!" Ranma shouted, jumping up from his seat, continuing "I'm not gonna let you give all that up."

"You're not the one making me give anything up. They are."

Ranma walked over to one of the classroom windows and looked down into the schoolyard with a long while.

"Come on, Yuka. Let's go talk this over," Sayuri attempted.

"Fine. We can talk here." Yuka said as she glared directly at Sayuri. After a long pause, Hiroshi spoke up. "Just what happened this weekend?"

"We had a slumber party and..." Yuka began.

"And Ranma went? Cool, you sly dog! Why didn't you tell us?" Hiroshi interrupted only to find himself on the receiving end of four very cold stares. "Uh, right. Don't mind me." Silently he thanked his ancestors that looks couldn't kill.

"It's not like I wanted to go," Ranma said, breaking the moment.

"Ranma. You need to try to understand more what it's like to be a girl," Akane replied.

"Maybe I don't wanna understand," Ranma shot back.

"And what's wrong with being a girl?" Akane huffed.

"You have no idea what it's like, and you never tried! All you do is run to your friends and tell them how bad you've got it being engaged to some sex changing pervert!" Ranma took a deep breath before continuing. "Who do I have? No one! 'tween you and your sister, you've turned this entire school against me! You at least got to grow up with a normal life, with normal friends. All I have is a group of people who either try to kill me every time they see me or try to ra- force themselves on me like I'm some kinda' prize or something, anything but a person."

"Hey, thanks a lot" Hiroshi called from the doorway before Akane could bring up her retort.

"It's not that I don't mind you and Dai, and I know you try," Ranma spoke in a much softer tone. "But do you know how it makes me feel whenever we go out and I get splashed? I can't bear to look at ya when I'm like that, cause I know I'm gonna catch both of ya taking a peek at me." Ranma gestured to his chest for effect.

"Well, if you wouldn't pick on everybody, maybe they wouldn't want to fight you all the time!" Akane called out. She flinched at the hurt expression that crossed his face. She immediately wanted to take it back, to apologize; but like always, words abandoned her when she needed them most.

Ranma caught the pained expression on Akane's face. One he had felt on himself many times in the past. Genma had never been able to express his love with words. Indeed, Genma had never been very good expressing anything positive with words, but Ranma had long learned to seek out those hidden expressions. You couldn't get to Ranma's level without some ability to read people. He just had never learned how to apply what he knew.

He wasn't sure when Akane's unspoken feelings had started to mean more to him than his father's. But there was just too much that needed to be said. He never wanted to hurt anyone. Now the chaos that was his life was spreading too far, hurting even more people. He wanted nothing more than to set things right, but like always he had no clue how to do that. He needed to get away and think.

After the breathless pause between the two, Ranma turned and left the classroom. He didn't even look at Nabiki who had been standing next to the doorway the entire time.

No one moved or said anything in the classroom for the remainder of lunch.

XXXXX

After school, Akane found a panting and slightly disheveled looking onna-Ranma under a certain bridge. She hadn't been able to find him at lunch, once she went to look. And he hadn't returned to class afterward either. Unfortunately, by that time the teacher had walked in and she couldn't come up with a good excuse to go look for him.

"Ranma?" She called tentatively. Here and the roof were some of the few places they would both sometimes let down their guard. She was still slightly angry for earlier, especially when he just ran off; however, this had become a kind of special neutral ground, and she didn't want to lose that.

"Schools out already?" Ranma-chan called back, not even turning to face Akane. "What's wrong?" she queried with a look of concern.

"W- who said anything was wrong?"

"Ranma, you're a lousy liar and after what happened earlier..." "I'm sorry," Ranma said tersely.

Akane spoke up "Now I know something's wrong."

"Ha ha."

"Please Ranma. You can talk to me."

Ranma-chan turned around, her mouth open as if to say something. Akane watched as too many emotions to read played across the delicate face of her iinazuke. For a moment, Ranma's eyes flashed with such a depth of pain that Akane felt her chest tighten. It was the same look held by a certain red-head when she was dropped off by a panda almost a year ago. Then it was gone.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Ranma." Akane failed to keep her voice from growling. She was a hairs breath away from beating whatever it was out of the neo-girl when her stomach took that moment to growl.

"You're right, we should be getting back. Maybe Kasumi has something out we can snack on!" Ranma gave her confidant everything-is-okay smirk and took off, practically dragging Akane behind.

Akane sighed. 'Okay, skipping lunch looking for this idiot wasn't such a good idea. Once a Saotome gets food on the brain...' she left off with that thought.

XXXXXX

That night, Akane tossed and turned in her bed. For some reason, sleep just did not seem to want to find her. She rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling.

Dinner had gone normally, at least for this family. Akane thought back over the day and how Ranma had been acting lately. Not that she was concerned for the idiot. Akane got out of bed and slowly crept up to the Saotome's room. For a while there, it felt like they were getting closer despite their parents and all his iinazuke.

Carefully peeking inside, she saw Ranma's futon empty. Several months ago, Ranma had started backing off from her. When he suddenly announced he needed to go off to train against some technique Ryouga had discovered, she knew he was lying but didn't say anything. Two months after that, he returned and things almost went back to normal. Only, she felt there was something off with her errant iinazuke.

When she discovered him missing one night, she confronted him. That only led to a flattened Ranma. A few nights later, she again found him missing. She had considered going to uncle Saotome about this, but couldn't for some reason.

She had tried to follow him a couple of times, but following a fast moving, Ranma was just on this side of impossible. With a heavy sigh, Akane did what she always did on the nights she found him missing. She went downstairs to raid the ice-cream.

"Why me?" Akane thought aloud. "When did it become so easy to blame everything on him?" She knew most of it wasn't his fault. 'Not that he really helps things, but it didn't always start out as his fault,' she thought ruefully to herself.

Her life had always been filled with chaos. From getting lost in Ryugenzawa to having most of the boys at school attack her every morning for over a month and a half. If anything, Ranma had brought a little stability into her life. Sure, she still got kidnapped more than the average daughter of a wealthy tycoon in a movie, but Ranma was always there to save her. "And how do I repay him?' she said her thought out loud in a mere whisper.

'Maybe if he had come before that mess started at school.' Akane frowned.

She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Playing the 'What If' game. She had, had her temper before high school and still had her thoughts on the differences between boys and men... But she hadn't had to face the endless nightmare that was to become her morning routine.

No one had listened. No one had even cared. Nothing she said got through to those perverts. And they didn't even care about the pain she handed out each morning either. There she was, attacked by a mindless mob of hormones crazed boys every morning, and it would seem everyone acted like it was her fault.

Most of the girls were upset with her for 'stealing' all the boys' attention. The teachers were only upset that she had trouble making it to class on time. Her own sister merely timed how long the fights lasted not once attempting to put a stop to the chaos.

She remembered wondering how they would react if she had ever lost. Imagining the shouts of encouragement as the boys, heady with their victory, would rip her clothes off. Oh, the stated terms of victory were "permission to date her," but she had no illusions about a group of boys that had decided that "no" meant all they needed to do was beat her into saying "Yes."

As it became clear they weren't going to stop, she channeled that fear into a more comfortable emotion, anger. If they won, she knew, having her at the disadvantage they would have no reason to just stop there. And it was painfully obvious that no one from the school would even try to stop them. Everyone would probably just be happy it was over.

Akane wiped at her tears that had started to form. She had tried to put all of that behind her, but it still hurt her too deeply. Coming home to Kasumi, who would chastise her for fighting in school hadn't helped things at all. She knew Kasumi didn't know all of the details, but it still felt like she was betrayed by her family.

'Yeah,' she thought, 'I was just primed to meet my iinazuke.' '

Both of my sisters just pushing him on me was of no help. Being a boy that had just seen me naked hadn't been the best start. Nor did it help that he had already demonstrated that he could do anything to me, and there wasn't a thing I could do to stop him. Maybe I could have handled it better if he had let me think I at least had a chance.' She shook her head going on to think. 'No, probably not.'

Thinking back over all the times he had come to her aid or fought over her. Even when his pride made him claim to be other reasons when pressed, she always knew he really came for her. She thought back to the ice skating match. The reason he claimed for fighting was to pay the jerk back for kissing him. Yet he was already going to fight so she could get p-chan back, and he hated p-chan.

Yet she couldn't get that night out of her head. It was more of a nightmare to her. Waking up only to find Ranma practically pinning her to her bed. Akane shivered. She, of course, promptly tossed the pervert out the window. That she was able to do so didn't help her agitation at all. She felt he was just toying with her. There was no way she could have really stopped him.

Akane's eyes narrowed as memories of the next day returned. Instead of kicking them out of the house, her own father and Ranma's had given him their blessings for trying that. She didn't sleep a wink the next few nights out of fear that he would return. His attempts to sidestep the issue, saying there was no way he'd want to do anything like that with her were laughable at best. Especially since he couldn't give her any other reason for him to have been in her room.

'Still, he hadn't tried that again since.' She shook away the slight feeling of disappointment that thought elicited. There was no way she wanted him to sneak into her bed again.

With a wistful sigh, Akane put her empty bowl in the sink and headed back to bed. She was not going to get any answers tonight. Ranma just confused her too much. She wished they could talk, but knew that wasn't about to happen anytime soon. If only he would talk to her. But he was far too stubborn for that.

Notes: So I did some research and I don't plan to change anything with exception of formatting and typo/gram issues which I may still have some mistakes even I missed or made however if you read the word: iinazuke (It stands for Illegitament wife)