Torn Chapter 9 A House of Cards, a ranma fanfic

Notes: This chapter is deep... As promised chapter:9 a little early but sometimes Christmas comes early.

Ranma 1/2: Torn Chapter 9:

A House of Cards

By Kit'ari

A quiet yawn emerged from Nabiki's morning lassitude.

She watched as the two so-called adults retired to their shogi board. It hadn't even occurred to them that anything was amiss. They hadn't cared that none of their wards had any intention of going to school. They hadn't noticed anything was off with Ranma this morning. They hadn't even realized something serious might have happened last night while they were off drinking.

Not that she expected them to notice or react. All things considered, it was probably best that way. That, however, did not mean she didn't feel disappointed. Just once, it might have been nice to have a real adult around.

With a shake of her head, Nabiki dismissed those thoughts. Although she knew last night was over, there were a great many things she needed to think about. Pieces of the puzzle she hadn't even suspected before. Ranma and Akane had quietly begun gathering the dishes with Kasumi. Grabbing her things, she decided to follow the procession into the kitchen.

First off, Ranma. He, Nabiki reasoned, would probably mope for days about that fight. After all, there wasn't an opponent for him to return and triumph over. She hadn't returned home until after Akane and Ranma were asleep, but she was sure he would bounce back no problem. Ranma always bounced back she reasoned to herself.

She had to remember to confront him later about Dr. Tofu. Akane. Her little sister was still troubled, but that should only last until the first insult was thrown. That it hadn't happened yet, she felt, was due to the fact their fathers hadn't butted in yet. Part of her hoped this might last a little, giving them a chance to open up to each other. Another part just wanted things to get back to normal.

"Thank you," Kasumi spoke as everyone set their dishes in the sink. 'Kasumi,' Nabiki thought to herself. If breakfast this morning was any indication, Kasumi was still very shaken up. She didn't know what to do about that.

"No prob, Kasumi," Ranma replied with a brief smile. Then, as they watched, he grabbed one of the cups, filled it from the tap, and dumped it over his head.

Nabiki glanced at Akane while Ranma-chan readjusted her bandages. She had thought being hit by the stun gun was the worst Ranma took. Akane looked like she wanted to say something, but didn't know what.

"I'll be out in the dojo," Ranma announced. The now petit girl didn't wait for a response before stalking off. Nabiki felt a twinge of something. It was the same feeling that prompted her to take Kasumi's suggestion and stay home today with Akane and Ranma, only stronger.

Nabiki didn't miss school lightly, she wanted to get into a good university.

"You should go talk to him, Akane," Kasumi quietly suggested after a moment. "I'm the last person he'll talk to," Akane replied angrily. Wither the anger was at Ranma or herself, she probably didn't even know.

"Come on," Nabiki said, grabbing her sister's arm.

"B-but..."

"No but's. Come on." Nabiki didn't feel like arguing. To Nabiki, knowledge was power, and there was something going on that she didn't know. After everything yesterday, she didn't think whatever this was, was something these two should drag out any further. Akane didn't really offer any resistance as she was dragged off.

XXXXX

In the Dojo, they found Ranma moving through a beginner's kata. One that stressed form and accuracy without the high leaps and dodges that marked Ranma's signature. Nabiki cast glances at Akane while they both watched the neo-girl. Ranma seemed to have noticeable difficulty, even with what should be a relatively easy set. Akane winced at every turn and strike.

After a torture filled eternity, Ranma returned to the starting position. The small girl stood still, save for a small tremble or slight waver. Her pig-tail heavy with sweat hung limply down her back. Her breathing sounded halting. Nabiki knew that small exercise couldn't have tired her out. 'Just how badly was she hurt?' she wondered to herself. Just as Nabiki decided to break the silence, Ranma interrupted. "What happened last night?"

Akane opened her mouth like she wanted to speak, but nothing came out. Giving up, she turned to Nabiki, her eyes pleading for help. "Dr. Tofu thinks you lost control of your ki attack when one of them managed to hit you with a stun gun."

"A stun gun?" Ranma-chan replied emotionless, still facing away. "Yes," Nabiki continued, "a fun little device designed to short circuit a person's nervous system."

Nabiki noticed Ranma seemed to tense a little while Akane glared at her. Not understanding why, she continued, mostly just to fill the silence. "They're supposed to disorient as well as rapidly cycling the targeted muscles. It's made to stop a person by quickly overworking the targets muscles rather than rely on pain or anything," Nabiki lectured.

"Although I guess after a second, it might feel like you went a few rounds with Ryouga," Nabiki added as an afterthought.

Akane paled significantly. Nabiki shot her younger sister a questioning look, but the youngest Tendo was staring wide-eyed at Ranma.

"Luckily, we had already found Akane. She was able to finish off everyone you left," Nabiki continued. Nabiki wished she had had a video camera to record the fight. Not that it would have done much good in the available lighting. She probably wouldn't have thought to use it at the time anyway, but she didn't dwell on that. She knew that tape would have made a bundle.

Still, she would have to see later if Akane could remember how to throw any more of those ki blasts. 'I guess she has learned a few things from Ranma,' Nabiki thought to herself. Shaking herself, Nabiki pressed on in the silence her quick thoughts left. "The police and Dr. Tofu arrived shortly thereafter. They already took Yuka, Shiori, and my statement, but they'll probably still want to talk to the both of you," Nabiki concluded.

She noticed how Akane was watching Ranma and could tell how much she wanted to talk to him. "So, I'll just let you two be." As she turned to leave, she whispered to her sister, "good luck." Neither moved as Nabiki's steps echoed out of the training hall.

"Ranma?" Akane attempted once they were alone.

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Please."

"I'm fine, so just go."

"Look at me and say that!"

"Fine," Ranma barked while turning to face her. "Leave me alone!" Akane winced. "Do you hate me that much?" she begged.

"Wha-" Ranma sputtered.

"Why can't you tell me the truth for once?"

"Tell you the truth? You never listen anyway. So why bother?!" Ranma returned, angrily. The two stood there staring at the floor.

The silence cutting deep into Akane. "I promise to listen now," Akane said. "Humph." Ranma turned away. Akane's hand shot up to beat some sense into the jerk, but she held herself back. She had always told herself that she wished they could talk. It was quite clear that Ranma needed to talk. Losing her temper now would destroy any chance she had of that.

Recalling the image of Ranma laying in her lap after the fight helped to calm her down a lot. "Please, Ranma," she almost whispered.

"I've been sneaking off at night to see a girl." Neither reacted for a long moment. "I know," Akane spoke softly. She had said she wanted the truth. The pain in her chest felt like her heart was being ripped asunder. She remembered the nights she found his futon empty. She had hoped it wasn't another woman.

"You knew?" Ranma said turning to face her iinazuke. She winced at the pain in Akane's expression. "I woke up one night, and... you were gone."

"You were checking on me?" Ranma asked in a monotone. "I-I," Akane began, then just nodded. "Is she pretty?" she continued after a moment.

"Huh, oh yeah. She is the cutest little thing I have ever met," Ranma replied softly.

"D-do I know her?" Akane wanted nothing more than to run away as fast as she could, but didn't seem able to stop herself. Each answer stabbing a little deeper. Yet, each question forced its way morbidly out of her.

"No. You've never met."

"Oh." Akane shut her eyes. She tried willing the tears to stop, but they wouldn't listen.

"Do- do you love her?" The words just kept scratching their way up her throat.

"I-I tried hard not to," Ranma-chan began. Akane didn't need to hear the rest, but she said it anyway. "But yes, I love her."

"I'd like to meet her."

"What, so you could hit her with the nearest table?" Ranma regretted her words even as they were coming out. "I-I-I promise I won't." Akane wiped at the tears freely flowing down her face. Ranma spun and walked over to one corner, shaking. For a moment, only the sounds of labored breathing covered the soul-wrenching sounds of a heartbreaking.

"When I got cursed, I chased pops all over that place," Ranma-chan began hesitantly. "I was so..."

Akane took a few steps toward Ranma, then stopped herself. She had never wanted to hold him as much as she did at that moment, but she could only think on how she had lost that privilege. "I thought my life was over. I wanted... I don't know..." Ranma threw her hands up in the air, then let them drop lamely by her side.

"Anyway, at some point... I don't 'member how long we'd been at it. Pops pushed someone in my way." Ranma-chan reached up and began to fiddle with her pig-tail. "I kinda' bumped into him. Jumped off of him, really..."

"What happened to him?" Akane prompted as Ranma had paused there. "Pops got away from me. I-I wanted to go back... to check on 'em, ya know." Akane laid a hand on the smaller girl's shoulder. Ranma jumped and spun to face the taller girl, her eyes wide for a moment before she caught her breath.

"Ranma?" Akane said worriedly. She had never seen Ranma look this vulnerable before. Ranma looked down at the floor, unable to meet Akane's eyes.

"I-I was too spent. I tried to get up, but my body wouldn't listen."

Akane nodded, wiping her face with her sleeve again. Her heart was aching. She had lost him. She forced herself to listen and not dwell on the other things until she could get to her room and start smashing everything.

"Then these two naked girls showed up." "Ranma, you don't have to tell me this if you don't want to." She really didn't need to hear any more tales of Ranma's involvement with other women. "I-I tried to tell them about the other guy, the one by the cliff. But my mouth was so dry. I hadn't ate or drank nothin' in so long." Ranma forced herself to stop playing with her hair.

"One of 'em picked up some kinda' waterskin. She poured it over herself an'." Ranma swallowed loudly. "An' turned into a guy." "She was cursed?" "I-I d-didn't know how the curses worked then. I thought... I thought they had my cure." Ranma choked a little. Her small frame began to tremble as she fought to keep what little control she still possessed.

"Himiko, the girl I've been seeing. She's my daughter."

"Ho- What?!" Akane asked. 'He's been seeing someone else the whole time?' Akane shouted in her own head. Though there was something terribly wrong with that thought.

"I'd been havin' some dizziness and other... stuff for a couple o' months. At first, I'd thought it'd just go away. But it didn't." Akane felt the blood drain from her. Lightheaded, she barely focused on what Ranma was saying.

"At first, it was only when I was a girl. No problem. I'd just stay a guy as much as I could. Then it started effectin' me as a guy to." "Right..." Ranma took a deep breath. "Right before Dr. Tofu took off, I finally asked him about it. He said..." The entire time, she never once looked up. "He said I was eight months pregnant."

"H-how do you get to be that pregnant and not know it?" Akane asked incredulously.

"How was I sup'osed to know what bein' pregnant's like? Besides my guy-side hid it. And my clothes are loose fitting when I'm a girl."

"B-b-but..."

"I just thought I my girl-side was gettin' fat from all the ice-cream and stuff."

Akane opened her mouth to retort to that when the full implication slammed into her like one of Ryoga's punches. "They raped you?"

XXXXXX

Outside side the door, Nabiki had stopped to listen, in case she needed to stop her sister from beating on Ranma. She was currently sitting against the wall, one hand over her mouth while she hugged herself with the other. How could he have kept such a secret from them, all this time? She hadn't even suspected. Sure, he seemed a little scared of intimacy, but he also didn't seem to care about his girl form.

How many times had he played up against some guy like it didn't matter? Sometimes it was like he could care less what others thought of his girl body. Although she knew that wasn't really the case. Ranma was terrible self-conscious when she tricked him into picture shoots. The simple act of even kissing had been too much for him to deal with. She had always thought it was just the way he had been brought up.

'He hated, despised being a girl. And who wouldn't? Turned into a girl, then bam. Someone comes along and- and...' Nabiki shook her head. She thought back to that first day. When she had found out he was a girl, she had felt him up. She remembered him asking her to stop, but he had made no move to stop her. He just sat there. Nothing of the arrogant jerk they had come to know and love.

It wasn't until after he was a he again that he began to act like the macho martial artist he was. That wasn't quite true either. It wasn't until Akane started yelling at him, really. He hid. Underneath a mask of pride and confidence, he hid. He always was there to help, even his enemies. Was it because of his honor, or was it because he wanted, needed to feel worthy.

He wouldn't even let their fathers take advantage of the old lecher when he was weak. There was no real mistaking, that honor was a big part of who Ranma is. But there had always been other motives underneath. Ranma was a lot more complex than she ever took the time to look at. Shaking, she got up and made all of two steps before she couldn't hold back any longer and took off running to her room.

XXXXX

On the other side of the dojo, a piglet stared up at one of the windows. Ryoga had been hit by someone dumping their dishwater out the window without looking. Another thing to blame on Ranma. Then he heard barking and noticed a large dog baring down on him. The chase had been short. Leaving him on top of a stone wall. Walking along the wall, hoping to spot his pack from his vantage point, he spotted Akane and Ranma through an open window in the dojo.

It was obvious they were having another argument. As he thought of the things he knew Ranma would be saying to Akane, he leaped for the window sill. Unfortunately, he misjudged the distance slightly and his little hooves just didn't have the grab he needed not to slip. He backed up, getting ready to jump again when he heard Ranma talking about Jusenkyo.

Anger, depression, fear, and curiosity froze him in place as Ranma continued. When Ranma admitted to Akane about knocking him off the cliff, he felt himself grow cold. Ranma was going to tell her about his curse. He knew this day would come. He knew Ranma thought he held some sort of promise to him, not to tell. But Ryouga had always thought it was just another way Ranma used to tease him.

He knew if the tables were turned, he would tell Akane. All the same, he had come to rely on Ranma keeping his secret. He closed his eyes and waited. When Ranma said he had tried to go check on him, he had scoffed. Then he heard the rest. Ryouga refused to believe it. Then Akane asked that question. Ranma didn't deny it. Painfully, Ryouga thought back to that day.

He had been angry at Ranma and himself for getting so far out into the middle of nowhere. Then came the panda followed by, whom he later learned was none other than, Ranma. He remembered landing on the edge. He remembered the sinking dread as the edge gave way, and he was still too off balance from his landing to spring away. The fall took forever in his thoughts.

Yet all too soon, he landed in that pool. He remembered being trapped in his clothes. The struggle just to make it to the surface. The relief as he was lifted out of the water. The horror as he realized he was a small pig. Being carried away by a large panda. He couldn't remember at that moment whether pandas were meat eaters or not. Then he remembered the scream.

It had sounded distant, how far he couldn't tell. He wasn't even sure what it really was. But he thought it had sounded like a girl. He remembered renewing his struggle to get free. To try to find and help whoever it might have been. The panda just turned and started carrying him away. How utterly helpless he felt, being carried away like that. For that first month, every time he had to sleep as a pig, he awoke from that scream in his dreams.

The feeling of utter helplessness always overwhelming him. That was when his anger at Ranma bloomed into the hatred he felt for the pig-tailed boy. Convincing himself that it had been some strange bird that he had heard, he had thought to put the nightmares if not the feelings away. Ryouga wanted to deny everything he had just heard.

'It couldn't have happened,' part of him cried out in his thoughts. 'No one could do that to Ranma. It has to be a trick.' Yet that thought rang empty for the first time. There had been moments during some of their fights when his thoughts weren't so clouded in anger and Ranma had been in female form. Times when Ryouga had momentarily held the upper hand. Ranma would seem to panic, if just for a second.

A certain flash in her eyes or maybe her body would just freeze. Even times Ranma would turn and run. He had always dismissed it as part of Ranma's taunting during their fights. He opened his eyes and again stared at the window. He still thought he had the worse of the two curses. But maybe Ranma hadn't had it as easy as he always thought. His eyes narrowed as he spotted a duck slip out the window and quietly glide off. He wasn't the only one who heard.

XXXXX

Inside the dojo, Akane watched the trembling red-head as a maelstrom of emotions played out across her face. Her head was slightly down. Her eyes tightly shut. Hands, forced to her side, were now balled into tight little fists. Her breathing shallow and erratic. Akane couldn't take it anymore and stepped forward pulling Ranma into her embrace.

The petite girl stiffened like Ryoga's sword belt. Akane felt a tightening in her chest while the images of all the times she caught Ranma in the arms of the other iinazuke's flickered across her mind. Although Ranma would sometimes dodge, it had seemed far more likely that he would stand there and just let them. Then, if she didn't deliver him into unconsciousness, he would begin rubbing himself like a pervert all up against their bodies.

By the look on her face, she knew Shampoo enjoyed that. With new eyes, she began to imagine the panic he must have felt as they rushed to grab him. Then saw the struggle... the need to get away. 'But why girls?' She could understand if he was afraid of males. 'After all, her attacker had been in male form...' Akane trailed off at that thought.

He as a she, violated by a he, that had just been a she. 'How could a woman do that to another woman?' When Akane thought about how exhausted Ranma must have been, pictured him... her struggling just to get off the ground. All of his training, all of his skill useless when she needed them most. She had lived... was living Akane's worst nightmare. And Akane had always left her to it. Abandoning her in the worst way.

Akane started to let go of the smaller girl in her arms; when, without warning, Ranma fell limply into her. She had to quickly tighten her hold or risk dropping the smaller girl. Thinking that the red-head had fainted from the emotional stress, she took a step back and adjusted her hold so she could lay the girl down. Ranma tightened her hold on Akane and began shaking.

It took another moment for Akane to realize that Ranma was crying into her shoulder. Again, adjusting her hold, she began stroking Ranma's back while swaying gently back-and-forth and whispering calming sounds into her iinazuke's ear. Using skills she had unconsciously picked up from Kasumi all those years ago when her older sister would try to comfort her after their mother had died.

Two children, both in pain, one having to be strong for the other when all she wanted to do was cry herself to sleep.