Mother Time IV
A Fiveshot by Allison Illuminated
The moment that Kasumi walked in the dojo door, a bouquet of lovely summer flowers cradled in her arms, Ranma jumped out of her seat and ran over to greet her. "Oh, my!" Kasumi exclaimed when Ranma threw her arms around her waist, pulling her into a tight hug. Shifting the bouquet into the crook of one arm, Kasumi returned the hug with her other, pulling Ranma in close.
"'Sumi," Ranma breathed, nestling into Kasumi's shoulder.
Kasumi offered Ranma a gentle smile. "Hello, little sister," she said, laughing softly. "I see you've been waiting for me."
Ranma yawned; her sister-in-law was socomfortable, and putting Keiko down for a nap always made Ranma sleepy too. Kasumi was just so nice, and lovely, and wonderful, and Ranma hadn't had any students today, which meant she'd been a little lonely. "Missed you."
"You did, didn't you?"
"Mm."
Maybe Ranma could close her eyes.
"Oh no you don't," Kasumi said, twisting her way out of Ranma's embrace, much to Ranma's consternation. Ranma had to catch herself from falling, and she groaned in Kasumi's general direction when Kasumi went to put the flowers in a vase. "I came here to spend time with you, Ranma-chan, not so you can fall asleep on me. Why don't I make us a nice pot of tea, and you can have a little sit on the couch while we wait for the water to boil."
Grumbling, Ranma wandered over to the couch and plopped herself down with a scowl, watching as Kasumi wandered toward the kettle. "I still ain't used to actually using the teakettle to make tea," she said.
Kasumi hid a giggle behind her hand as she turned the stove on. "Neither am I," she called back. "Neither am I."
Strange truths in their lives had a tendency to go unspoken. It was almost trite to point out the absurdity of Ranma's situation – that Ranma had a curse, a real magical curse, that could change her back and forth from a boy to a girl, and that impossibly it had ceased to be a curse at all. Shifting forms was an everyday fact of Ranma's life for so long that, when Ranma had finally settled down in a form, she'd almost failed to notice – it was habit, it was instinct, to assume that she would change, constantly, unstoppably, the very mold of her being caught in a state of flux. But it wasn't. Shewasn't. And maybe she had never been.
Had Ranma even noticedwhen her curse had settled? Had there been some moment of inversion, a flashbulb point? She'd just… slipped from boymode to womanhood. Ranma could recognize the signs now. She could see the ways that boy had been brittle at his core, drawing inward, twisting himself up into knots; the dysphoria would have built, grown and warped and cutuntil inevitably hewould have come to a breaking point. The boy who had been Ranma Saotome would have just… shattered. If Ranma hadn't had the curse, hadn't become a woman by natural progression, feminized by Genma's profound idiocy, but rather had been left to lay claim to her transsexuality without aide or magical assistance… How could Ranma have chosen to become a woman when everyone in her life had fought so violently against it? How could that shrouded woman have survived?
The thought was disquieting. Ranma sank into the corner of the couch, curling into a ball, and found herself still staring at her knees minutes later when Kasumi came back with the tea.
Warm steam rose from the teacup. Swallowing, Ranma stared down at her wavering reflection in the green waters, hyper-aware of the fact that a simple tip of her hand could bring that boy – the boy she didn't want to be any more – back to the surface.
With his bulky shoulders. With his flat chest, with his height, with his narrow hips. Boy Ranma wouldn't fit into her nice dress, and she would have a-
Abruptly, Ranma found herself shoving the teacup back into Kasumi's hands.
"Ranma?" Kasumi asked.
Ranma swallowed, shaking her head. "I don't want it," she said. "I don't- Don't give it to me yet, alright? I don't want it 'til it's cold."
Clutching the mug in her hands, Kasumi watched Ranma for a long moment, her head tilted in curious contemplation. Ranma felt a little too seen under her gaze. Something softened in Kasumi's gaze, though, and Kasumi walked over to the far side of the couch, where she settled the teacup down in her lap and offered Ranma a quiet smile.
"You have something on your mind, don't you?" Kasumi said. "I can practically hear your thoughts bursting. I'll listen, if you'd like."
Staring at her small hands, pressed into the fabric of her dress between her knees, Ranma swallowed. "You don't have to," she said. "I ain't gotta- I don't gotta be weak cause of all of this, 'Sumi. I'm a- a big girl. I can keep my thoughts to myself. I ain't gonna bring dishonor-"
"Ranma."
Ranma looked up, anxiety stirring in her heart.
"You are a remarkably honorable young woman, Ranma Saotome," Kasumi said with a gentle solemnity that sent shivers down Ranma's spine. "I feel so very lucky that I have gotten to watch you blossom into such a beautiful and loving girl, and even luckier to call you my sister. I love you."
A small noise of discomfort escaped Ranma's lips. "You can't just say that."
"Why not?" Kasumi asked, her lips twitching.
"Because!"
Kasumi shrugged, running her hands around the base of the teacup. "And why not?" she asked simply. "Nothing that I said isn't true. You're my sister, you're beautiful, and I love you." Ranma made a strangled noise. "And you're a woman, evidently. And you're trans. There's no law that says we can't say our true feelings to each other. I love my beautiful sister-in-law, and I'm happy that she's finally found the bravery to admit as much to herself and her wife."
Why did hearing all of that make Ranma want to cry? Ranma hadto protest, didn't she?
"But- but-"
"No buts," Kasumi scolded, cutting her off. "You have thoughts, Ranma-chan. Important ones. I want to hear them."
Ranma fidgeted in discomfort, feeling like a scolded teenager again after she'd earned herself a lecture for putting another hole in the dojo wall. Kasumi's chastisement was gentle but firm. There was no way around it, no way that Ranma could tell herself a tall tale to dance her way out of the spotlight position. There were two options: honesty or silence. And even though part of her wanted to share her thoughts with Kasumi, her beloved older sister-in-law, Ranma couldn't find the strength, or perhaps the words within her, to speak.
She opened her mouth. She closed it again.
She withdrew into herself, shying away from Kasumi's patient glance to shelter herself in nook of the couch's arm.
What was there to say? What could she say? Kasumi already knew that Ranma had already arrived at a truth self-evident for so many years – that Ranma Saotome, once the most masculine of presupposed men, had fallen straight into the jaws of the destiny that had awaited her all along and had become a woman, not just in mind but in her spirit and soul. That Ranma was a woman. A transsexual. That she could be at home in Ni-chome, even though Ranma had chosen a more domestic route. Ranma had finally admitted it to herself; that the person she was and had chosen to be had more in common with Kasumi than Akane, forget one of the men like Ryoga that Ranma had once considered to be among her peers.
It was scary to admit such forbidden truths to herself, even in the privacy of her own thoughts. It felt, even though Ranma could admit to its illogicality, as though Kasumi knew Ranma was feeling such feelings, such terrible, treasonous, queer feelings. Ranma was in form and content no different than a biological woman (albeit one whose situation could rapidly change with a splash of hot water) and yet sitting there on the couch, tucked away into the cushions where she didn't have to speak, where she could remain, paralyzed but safe, in the comfort of her social ambiguity, her skin began to crawl with the ache of all the things she had left unsaid. She let them linger in the air. Stain her skin like berry juice, or the traces of old makeup at the corners of her eyes. She could wear her cursed form like cosmetics, and so long as nobody said it, said that dreadful word that started with a T and had some very pleasurable lesbian sex in the middle of it, then her body could remain just that. Something other than her own being. A comfortable glove, but one she could slip off in the warmth of her own mind.
"Take your time," Kasumi murmured.
Ranma didn't want to take any more time. Hadn't she taken long enough already? Glancing up at her sister, Ranma stared at Kasumi with a desolation in her heart, unsure of why she suddenly felt so upset, or how she could harness such a wellspring of hidden misery when her darling little girl laid asleep in the next room over. Ranma had taught herself how to be strong for Keiko, yet somehow she had never learned how to be strong for herself.
("Aren't you strong enough yet, boy?" Genma had shouted at him once, after Ranma had gone down hard during a training session and hadn't gotten back up again. "Haven't I given you everything? My whole life dedicated to teaching you the art, just for you to lay there like a pathetic little girl?! Get up!" he had barked, sharp enough that Ranma had flinched and curled up a little in the dirt. "When are you gonna stop lying down and learn to take a hit like a man? The Art's not done with you yet!"
Ranma had struggled to her feet, bleeding from a cut on her temple, and grit her teeth against her blurry vision, raising her hands into shaking fists. "I ain't giving up," she had managed, and almost made it sound macho. "I ain't done yet, Pops."
Genma's eyes had softened ever so, and Ranma caught a brief glimpse of the father who loved him, just before Genma hardened his gaze and raised his fists for another round. "Good," Genma had harrumphed. "Prepare yourself!"
And Ranma had taken it, taken another swing, taken it again and again and again until she didn't know how to stay on the ground anymore. She leaped into the sky. Her father loved her – her father had taught her how to fly.)
Her hands trembled. Ranma forced herself to stay there, to remain tucked away on the couch with her toes dug violently between the cushions, fighting with her whole being not to run away from Kasumi's gentle demand. Kasumi had taught her how to talk about her feelings; how to treat her partner right; how to cook her daughter's food, and how to do her wife's laundry, and Ranma trusted Kasumi, dammit, she loved her, she cherishedher. Kasumi had given Ranma everything. She had given Ranma things that Ranma hadn't even know it was possible to have. Not her lousy parents, not Soun, not even Akane. Kasumi was the closest thing Ranma had ever had to a real mother.
God, and wasn't that unfair.
Ranma closed her eyes, because it was easier to linger in her quiet grief for the Tendo matriarch, the mother that Kasumi and Nabiki and Akane loved so dearly whom she had never gotten to meet, than it was to face her own feelings. Kasumi shouldn't have had to mother them all. She should have gotten a girlhood, one that hadn't aborted itself in its early teens. She should have had a mother before she'd been forced to become one.
She should have had a mother.
Kasumi's kindness wavered in her blurry sight. Ranma lifted a silent hand to her cheek to brush at her tears. She looked away.
"It felt like waking up."
"I had a concussion; that was all I knew at first," Ranma whispered, her gaze trailing across the room to look at the koi pond outside. "Everything felt hazy, and I suppose my instincts took over; my real ones, the ones underneath all the bull about the art, and I was too disoriented to know better. I don't think I even realized I was acting like a girl, or how upset it was making everyone. I didn't draw that connection. I thought they were just mad at me, like they always were. It was- It was excruciating, 'Sumi. I needed the hospital and everyone wouldn't stop looking at me and prodding me and asking all these questions, and I just wanted a moment of peace, y'know? I wanted them to stop fighting over me. I didn't want to fight ever again, not if it meant getting my skull bashed in three times in a row in the koi pond, twice by my- my-" Ranma swallowed, staring at her hands in shame. "My own fiancee."
"So I was just me. And everyone else hated it, and they kept- they kept yelling, and hitting me, and acting like I was some kinda pervert, and I think that was the day that I knew I would never get to be a woman, not really, not as long as everyone around me still saw me as a man."
Silently, Kasumi reached over to the table beside the couch and handed Ranma her tea. Ranma took it and sipped. Perfectly lukewarm.
"Thank you," Ranma said.
Kasumi gave a slight nod. Her back was rigid, her gaze fixed ahead, features stony, and a casual passerby might not have been able to tell, but Ranma knew what her sister-in-law looked like when she was upset.
"I thought you had forgotten that day."
"I did," Ranma said softly. "I went back to sleep. Sometimes I wish I'd never recalled."
"I see."
"I meant it when I said I wanted to quit the art." Ranma locked eyes with Kasumi, but there was too much pain there, too much regret, and she quickly looked away. "It wasn't the whole truth, but how was I supposed to ease off when every single part of my life was trying to push back? I had this moment, this moment of clarity, where I was finally acting like me, had these little flickers of happiness, and I thought to myself, do it now or it'll never ever happen. So I tried not to fight, and look at where that got me." Ranma gave a bitter laugh, taking another long sip of her tea. "I got my head smashed in on a rock, and for what? What was my crime? Being a girl when everyone else wanted me to be a boy? For one day I got to wear a dress at home, and- and-"
"You don't have to continue," Kasumi said. "I didn't mean to drag up old wounds, Ranma dearest. I only wanted to make you feel better, if I could."
"But I gotta, don't I?" Suddenly irritated, Ranma pushed herself upright against the arm of the couch. "It ain't like I got a choice when I got a concussion and started acting all girly girl, all like- like-" In disgust, she lifted the hem of her dress and let it fall again. Kasumi swallowed. "What the hell's wrong with this family?" Ranma demanded. "Why the hell can't we talk about our shit before it escalates to a fight? Why's it always gotta be kicking and punching and screaming anytime anyone does a thing wrong? I didn't have nothing wrong with me – I was a girl, in a girl's body, and I got kicked around by people who're supposed to be my family! Nobody else got their head bashed in whenever they started embracing themselves for a day! Huh? What's that about, huh? What's the damn problem – I'll tell you the damn problem, it's that I'm a girl! I'm a woman, and everyone else decided one day that I wasn't supposed to be and treated me like shit cause of it! Like I was on top of the world when I did what they wanted me to do, and like I was crap when I didn't! Well, I ain't what they wanted me to be! I- I'm a mother, and a wife, and I…" Ranma's rage trailed off as fast as it had come, and she found her stubborn tears return. "And I like it," Ranma said rawly, her voice cracking on the pronounced. "I- I'm happy now, 'Sumi. It ain't like I chose this. It ain't like I wanted it. Hell, I don't think I even noticed it happening until it was already done. But- But I like it. I'm happy now." Ranma made an emotional noise, swaying in her efforts to contain her shameful outburst. "I'm happy."
Kasumi let out a short breath. "Little sister…"
"And I just don't understand why, Kasumi." Ranma looked at Kasumi with haunted eyes. "Why didn't I get to be a girl? Why didn't I- Why didn't-" Breaking off, Ranma held the emotion in her throat, hugging her knees to her chest. "Why didn't I get to be me until everybody else stopped paying attention?"
"Oh, Ranma…"
"I didn't want much," Ranma whispered. "I didn't even want to be a girl. I just wanted to wear a pretty dress and to look nice sometimes, and to sleep at night and eat enough in the morning, and maybe have Akane look at me every once in a while without wanting to hurt me. Why couldn't I have that? Why did it always have to be about being a girl or a boy? Cause I ain't- I ain't- All I wanted was to be enough. Why wasn't that enough, Kasumi? Why wasn't I enough?"
Kasumi closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. Ranma sat in silence as she collected herself, taking a shaky little breath, and reached across the couch to take Ranma's hand. For a moment, Ranma thought about pushing the hand away; but she didn't, and she took it, and Kasumi squeezed her palm in support.
"I should have done more," Kasumi said.
Ranma sat back in surprise, their hands coming loose. "Eh? Kasumi, no, that's not- I'm not looking for pity or sympathy or nothing, I-"
Kasumi shook her head to cut Ranma off. "I should have done more," she said again forcefully. "I could have. But I didn't. I let it all happen right in front of me."
"'Sumi…"
"I'm sorry," Kasumi said. "I'm very sorry, Ranma-chan."
Though she was seated and could not bow, she still dipped her head in grief and deference, hands clutched on the fabric of her dress. When she looked back at a stunned Ranma, Kasumi held her gaze with an angered grief and sorrow, her lovely features hardened into sincerity.
"Can you forgive me?"
"It's over now," Ranma said softly, all of a sudden tired beyond belief. "It's over. Please don't bow to me, big sister."
"But, Ranma-"
Her tone was firmer now. "It's over."
When silence fell over them like the peaceful lull of Keiko's nursery, it was not Ranma who slumped back against the couch in exhaustion but Kasumi. For a moment, the brief sorts of moments that Ranma only rarely caught, Kasumi let herself unfurl, shoulders slumping, ponytail bunching up against the back pillow, staring up at the ceiling. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Ranma kept her mouth shut, quietly grateful to bear witness to such an intimate vulnerability; she knew how rare such gestures were for Kasumi. When Kasumi sat up and collected herself, Ranma hid her fondness behind a quiet hand.
"Can't you be a girl now?" Kasumi asked, a quiet hope in her voice. "Isn't there something-" Ranma shook her head. "Anything?"
"Kasumi-nee," Ranma said in a gentle tone.
Kasumi blinked away her emotions, trying to smile.
"It's over. I'm a woman now. I have my daughter, I have my wife, and I'm happy." Drifting peacefully through her melancholy, Ranma met Kasumi's eyes with all the quiet affection she didn't know how to voice aloud. "I've made my peace with the things I'll never get to have. With the things I know our family isn't capable of giving me. I'm never going to get to be a girl, Kasumi. Girlhood…" Ranma's gaze drifted away. "Girlhood isn't a thing that's meant for me."
"It's not right," Kasumi said quietly, fiercely. "It's not right. You deserve the world, Ranma Saotome."
Ranma shook her head again, content in her own body, and held back her wistful smile. The way she held herself now, the way she talked – she took pride in it. She sat the way she wanted to on her own couch. There was an art to it still, a hidden kata that wove through even the smallest interaction; she still was Ranma Saotome, master of the Tendo-Saotome school of Anything Goes martial arts, and secure in her knowledge that in this – not the art that had been passed down to her, but the one she had chosen for herself – there was not a soul in the world who knew it better than she. Kasumi couldn't recognize it – she had never learned how. Akane, Ukyo, even Konatsu, they only knew it sideways. But Ranma could swim through like a koi in the koi pond. It sustained her. She was free.
"I've made my peace with it," Ranma said softly. "And I don't expect that to ever change, not really, or that I'll find my way back to where I was before. I gave up looking for miracle cures a long time ago. I don't need to be a girl, Kasumi; I've got a little girl of my own now, and she's counting on me to be her Mama. I might never have the girlhood I wanted for myself, but that doesn't matter as long as I can go to sleep at night knowing that I've made her smile."
"I wish we'd given you more than that," Kasumi said with suspiciously shiny eyes.
Ranma smiled sadly at Kasumi and rose to her feet at the first sounds of Keiko waking up, her pretty yellow dress falling around her calves. "It's alright, sis," she said. "I never asked for very much, and heck if I ain't happy with what I've got now. It's not so bad. I'm happy, really I am. All I've ever wanted to be, all that I've ever been… It's all for her now. And she's worth it. For her, I'd give up my whole world."
In a moment, Kasumi had swept to her feet and strode across the room, pulling Ranma into a fierce and tight hug. It was as easy as breathing to hug her back. Kasumi was so very wonderfully comfortable.
"I love you," Kasumi said.
Leaning into her sister-in-law's shoulder, Ranma let her eyes drift shut. She felt warm inside. The hollowness, the clawing discomfort, it had all blown over like the glassy ocean after an impossible storm. And it was so simple, at the end of it all. Simpler than the Art. Simpler than speech.
She knew.
The train was quiet on a Saturday morning, gliding through Tokyo bright and clean, colorful handles swinging from their metal bars. Ranma and Akane sat side by side next to the car door, jostling together with each turn and bump. Akane had their tote bag in her lap, wearing a cute t-shirt and a nice pair of shorts; Ranma knew they were going shopping, so she'd opted for one of her newer pairs of overalls, which were easy enough to shuck on and off in a pinch (which had saved her a few times back in high school, when she'd been playing around in Akane's closet and hadn't paid enough attention to when Genma arrived home). There weren't many other people on board, and they had a spacious amount of room – alone on their little row of seats, it felt as though they had the entire train to themselves.
When they rounded a bend, Ranma bumped into Akane's side and stayed there, leaning into her side. She rested her head on Akane's shoulder, listening with closed eyes to the rise and fall of her wife's breath.
Their hands touched.
They wove their way through the station and out into the Ikebukuro daylight, where the sky was a vivid clear blue about them and the skyscrapers caught the glint of the sun. The department store was only a pleasant few blocks away. Ranma smiled at the shop attendant by the door as Akane grabbed a basket and dragged her off toward the woman's section – a place that Ranma was more than passingly familiar with, yet had her own hangups that kept her out of racks as of late. Shopping used to be a grand old game – find the best disguises, the ones where nobody would ever think that Ranma Saotome, manliest of men, could be that cute little girl on the street corner, or in the restaurant booth. But Ranma didn't want to wear disguises anymore. So she found herself dragging her feet.
"Hey," Akane said, slowing down when Ranma faltered at the edge of the dresses section. "What's wrong?"
Ranma wasn't quite sure. It wasn't insecurity, hadn't been for a while. Woven into her body, though, beneath the overalls, beneath the clothes, was the memory of a time when the mere idea of entering the side of the department store which stood before her, the rows of nice fabrics, would have been utterly taboo. There was an invisible line of patterned carpet floor. "Are you sure about this, 'Kane?" Ranma asked softly, turning to Akane in worry.
Rolling her eyes, Akane grabbed Ranma's hand and pulled her across toward the racks. "We're all women here," she said. "So come on. You need more clothes, and I don't want you to have to keep doing laundry twice a week so you can wear your favorite dresses."
"But… Akane."
Ranma pulled back on Akane's hand, forcing them to stop. Akane turned, then faltered. She knew she must have looked pathetic, but she couldn't just walk over and pick out a whole wardrobe. Ranma didn't get new clothes, she didn't get to choose what she wanted, she didn't get this-
Another soft hand fell over hers.
Letting out a little breath, Ranma stared up at Akane with wide eyes. They stood there in the middle of the department store, alone together. Their quiet pause was patient. Akane offered her a little smile, squeezing her thumbs, and took another step closer, close enough that their hips nearly touched and Ranma could have kissed her. She wanted to. She trusted her.
"Breathe," Akane whispered, her gaze as gentle as Ranma had ever seen it.
Ranma smiled tenuously. "I don't know where to start."
Akane drew Ranma closer and brushed her hair behind her ear, pecking her on the forehead. "Then just follow my lead. It'll be fine, Ranma. We don't need that many things anyway."
She gave a confident smile before dragging them off toward the undergarments section, and somehow Ranma believed her.
Ranma didn't need many things, truly. Between all the costumes and disguises, the ill-begotten periods of girlmoding and the odds and ends she had picked up over the past few years, her wardrobe was already robust. She had a grand collection of statement pieces and subculture styles – what she needed was everyday wear, staples more appropriate for a young housewife than the pageantry of a showboating teenager. Ranma picked out a few soft cloth bralettes and a few extra sports bras, some nice dresses to wear around the house, t-shirts and cute shorts, and some simple underwear so she could finally do away with her panties: boring clothes, the exact sort of wardrobe that Ranma's certain she would have freaked out about three years ago. Once the shopping finally began, it turned out that she already knew exactly what she wanted, and twenty minute later, their cart was full, so they headed to the changing rooms to try it all on.
Ranma came before the mirror with uncertain eyes, her reflection small and wary, and for a brief moment, she was startled to find a young redheaded girl staring back at her. Some part of her still expected broad shoulders and the striking black of her old hair. She didn't want to get out of her overalls. But Akane came up behind her and gently eased the straps off her shoulders, and gave her a quick little kiss on the neck, and handed her a dress: something plain, something simple, and she murmured, "Try this on."
Ranma did.
And she looked like herself. How else would she look? There was no magical curse to chance her appearance, no grand scheme to kit her out in the most ridiculous getup possible – Ranma had chosen for herself a wonderful and appropriate wardrobe for a nice young lady (Thanks, Ma), with all the sensible style learned from touchups and compliments and tips with the other young neighborhood housewives, the ones Ranma spent time with in the park when Keiko was crawling around in the sandbox or wrestling with pitbulls (Genma always said that it built character), while maintaining enough chic that Nabiki wouldn't completely write her off as a homebody. Ranma might have led an unconventional youth, and her lifestyle was rather progressive, but at the end of the day, she still came from a deeply traditional family, one which placed a good deal of value upon custom and honor. Even now that she lived openly as a lesbian, Ranma still gravitated toward the comforts of her youth rather than the modern styles of Konatsu and Ukyo's crowd: simple fabrics, simple fashions, and the wife and child that she had always been promised waiting for her at home. She had united the schools. She had become the master of the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts. Ranma stared dazedly at her reflection, dolled up as she was in a little white t-shirt and an adorable brown skirt, then smiled at herself, first timid, then with as much cuteness as she could muster; popped her hip, stuck out her tongue a little, and flashed dual peace signs at an indulgent Akane, who held her hand up in front of her mouth and giggled.
God, she looked cute.
Maybe her family's traditions and her genderbending proclivities had never been in conflict after all. Being a transsexual hadn't changed the blueprint for Ranma's adult life; the way Ranma lived now wasn't so different from Nodoka's youth, nor her grandmother's, nor any of the women who had come before her. She had brought honor to the Saotome clan – she simply hadn't done it as a man. Male Ranma had been an inconstant, arrogant, thoughtless, hubristic jerk. But as a woman-
Ranma shot herself one last watery smile in the mirror, and then bounced off to her next outfit before Akane could notice.
They made short work of the pile. Akane knew all her sizes – she'd been measured more than enough times for whatever humiliating reasons, down to the exact size of her breasts and the curvature of her hips. Everything fit. Before she knew it, Ranma was back in her comfy overalls, standing awkwardly in the center of the changing room as her wife collected the clothes. Akane stood up and flashed Ranma a reassuring smile.
"C'mon," she said. "Let's go."
Her wife walked to the exit and ducked out through the curtains – Ranma trailed behind, unsure of her own hesitancy. She faltered in the dressing row aisle and came to a quiet halt. At the archway exit to the rest of the department store, Akane glanced back when Ranma didn't follow.
"That's it?" Ranma asked in a soft uncertain tone, shying into her overalls, thumbs catching on the corduroy straps. Her voice so feminine. A violent transition, nearly complete.
Chuckling, Akane turned back in full to meet her eyes. Ranma swallowed.
"Is there anything else you want?" Akane asked.
Ranma didn't know why, but something about the tone in which she said it, lower than her own, filled her with butterflies. She didn't know the answer. For once in her life, Ranma didn't have any questions left, didn't have any grand unsolved mysteries, any looming obligations, any crippling existential failures, she had- Well, she had a very nice stack of clothes that Akane was probably using Nabiki's sketchy blood money to buy. She had Akane. Ranma had Keiko. She had her family. She had so much. More than she had ever dared to hope for. More than she ever could have expected.
Trying to fight the moisture building in her eyes, Ranma commented, "I thought there was supposed to be more to it."
Akane gave her a simple smile. "Haven't you done enough?"
Almost a full week later, Ranma stood in the center of her room, staring down at the mess of clothes on her bed. Through closed windows came the mid-afternoon sun, the light in slats, her stomach in knots, bare toes worming their way into the hardwood floors. Dispassion settled on her heart. It was the dullness of obfuscated speech, of words that sat on the tip of her tongue; what remained to be said, when thoughts had once spun so freely through her unquestioning mind, seemed entirely alien to her. She was supposed to know who she was now, wasn't she? Everyone else did.
To the left, Ranma had folded her new clothes from her shopping expedition together with her preexisting feminine wardrobe. On the other side laid the last remnant of her male wardrobe: boxers, gis, pants, all tucked into barely a third of the space that her girl clothes took up. Together, they made an intimidating mess on her bed.
She'd taken several days to unpack all the things she'd bought from their shopping trip. The point of the exercise was to empty out her dressers to make room for her new clothes, and winnow down the ranks of the old – but she wasn't doing that, now was she? No, Ranma was paralyzed in the center of her bedroom, unable to perform even the simplest of household tasks, the most basic of adult functions; her family had somehow procured the bewildering expectation that Ranma could simply alter the way she dressed, the way she kept her things; as though she could pluck out the old and replace it with the new, then declare herself a woman, but Ranma knew better than anyone that that wasn't how it worked. There was a psychic threshold, an intangible warning sign, some condition unfulfilled, an action untaken, and womanhood laid beyond it, somewhere where girls could have boobs withoutmagical interference and female friends without engagements and insecurities without the abuse that proved them merited – Ranma wasn't that kind of wasn't feminine. She was an uncute tomboy, a stupid brute, a pigheaded jock, an inconsiderate, unkind, good-for-nothing, freeloading idiot, and she deserved it, she fucking deserved it when she got her skull bashed into the koi pond-
Her knees bucked against the mattress. Breath hitching, Ranma leaned down and picked up one of her Chinese silk shirts, unfolding the red fabric and holding it up before her. It was just a shirt, hanging from her hands. She stared at it with a wobbling lip.
Why was she wasting her time with clothes? She needed to leave the house in two hours, she needed to get ready for the weekly Tendo sister dinner in Daikanyama, not- not-
Ranma broke away and marched to the bathroom; went inside, and turned on the tap; it was hot, not because she needed it, she didn't, she hated it; and yet she stood by the furo and waited until the water began to steam. Piece by piece, she began to methodically strip off her clothes – her dress crumpled at her feet, and her fingers lingered on her bra strap before undoing the clasps and tossing it away. In nothing but her panties, she shut her eyes and tried to breathe, but she couldn't, so she ripped them off and hurled them after her bra as hard as she could (Happosai would have been so disappointed, the old lech). Then she was nude. Nude as a woman. Nude as herself. But not for long.
She stepped into the bathtub and changed.
The wrongness came as a near-immediate assault. How had she ever liked this? No, how had she ever thought this was okay? Ranma whimpered and curled in on herself, perching her cheek on her hot wet knees; she could feel her maleness where she was supposed to have a vagina, where she could cling to the illusion- And had it only ever been an illusion- that she could truly be Keiko's mother; that Ranma could have birthed her, could have breastfed her, that her claim to motherhood was anythingmore than the curse-fueled confusion of a one-year-old girl. Her cheeks were wet too. Ranma rocked back and forth; she couldn't do it. She couldn't let Akane see her, not like this; couldn't reorganize her stupid clothes in her own damn room; couldn't be a mother. How was Ranma supposed to be a womanwhen she had only ever been half a girl?
Keiko. She needed Keiko.
Ranma needed to know that her daughter was okay.
The thought consumed her; Ranma had stood up in an instant and bounded out of the bath, barely pausing for long enough to open the drain, then strode out into the hall, dripping wet. She toweled herself off as she walked. Burst into her bedroom. Threw on boxers, gritting her teeth through the dysphoria. But there wasn't time to slow down. Wasn't time to change back. Keiko deserved nothing less, no matter her damned preference for Ranma's female form. Keiko deserved to know who her 'mother'truly was.
Struck by a sudden calm, Ranma walked across the hall and stepped silently into the nursery.
Golden sunlight shafted from the window. It pooled on the nursery floor, idle dust motes drifting through the air to the invisible melody of a lullaby. In the corner, the rocking chair settled on its arches. Ranma stepped into the room, looking around at the painted yellow walls as though she had never seen them before. In the corner, a giant panda guarded a pile of smaller stuffed animals, including a cute black piglet which sat atop a little blue kitten (There had been a great rush to give cursed form plushies for Keiko's baby shower – Akane had taken great pleasure in burning all of them except Ryoga's and Shampoo's). But it was the crib which held Ranma's attention – the beautiful cedar crib which stood proudly in the afternoon light and held her daughter, who was not sleeping as Ranma had anticipated, but rather was quietly playing with another stuffed animal.
Ranma stood in the center of the room, entranced, and let out a shaky breath. She stared at Keiko, struck by the sudden understanding that she had made her, this- this marvelous little human being who was hers and had come from her (and Akane!), and found that her eyes had begun to well with tears. The smallest noise escaped her, and Keiko perked up, tumbling upright to give Ranma a wide-eyed stare.
She laughed in disbelief, or awe, or grief or sorrow or some nameless emotion beyond her comprehension, and drifted toward the crib, eyes locked with her daughter's. She was male, dripping wet, bereft in some way she barely understood; a terrible fear had gripped her, and yet she found herself helpless to resist its temptation. Unaware of her great inner turmoil, her little lips parted in confusion, Keiko blinked innocently up at Ranma. She grabbed at her toes with her chubby fingers. Even as she shook with the weight of unshed tears, Ranma tried her best to smile. She submitted herself. Her long fight was over. She laid herself bare to her daughter's judgment.
"Mama?" Keiko asked.
Like the first peals of thunder after a many-year drought, Ranma let out a low, painful sob.
Keiko looked upon this development with a great deal of alarm – which made sense, Ranma thought through her tears, given that she had never cried in front of her daughter before, not even during the long nights of her infancy. Ranma tried to voice a reassurance, but it came out as a bawl. "Mama?" Keiko said again, crawling to the side of her crib with a single-minded urgency. Ranma scooped Keiko up into her arms before she could get more agitated.
"Shh," Ranma whispered between sobs, drifting back from the crib and sinking down into the rocking chair. "Shh. Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh." She sobbed again, giving up any pretense that she was the one giving comfort, and tucked Keiko tight against her flat chest.
Squirming, Keiko wriggled free of Ranma's arms, seemingly uncaring of her toned bust-free chest, and repositioned herself so she could see her mother's face – Ranma was too lost in her emotions to do much more than watch her in heartwrenching wonder and cry. Keiko looked intently at Ranma, then reached out with a chubby hand to touch her cheek. Ranma laughed a sob when Keiko half-fell over trying to reach her and held up a hand to hold Keiko's in place, earning herself a giggle. Ranma tilted her head forward to gently touch Keiko's.
"Mama," Keiko said. "Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma."
Ranma giggled through her tears, sniffling when Keiko smiled at her, and shook her head, fresh tears springing to the fore. "Really?" she whispered, gently stroking Keiko's hand with her thumb. "Even when I'm like this?"
Keiko gave the most serious nod of her life. "Mama," she said forcefully, though she might have just been babbling to herself.
"You mean me?" Ranma whispered, smiling as wide as the sun.
"Hai!" Keiko exclaimed.
Maybe it was the joy, or maybe it was the unconditional trust which Ranma felt towards her daughter, but Keiko's little affirmation was the last straw she needed to carry her over the edge.
Ranma cried, and cried, and cried some more until Keiko began to sniffle beside her, and she had to fight her emotions back under control to avert a total meltdown. "Oh, hey," Ranma murmured when Keiko began to cry too. She stood up with Keiko and began to bounce her, rocking her around the beam of golden sunlight which glowed in her soft downy hair. "Hey, hey, darling, shh… Shh… It's alright. It's okay, Mama's here."
Keiko let out a tired wail, maybe a hungry wail, and Ranma felt something settle within her.
"I know," Ranma cooed, pecking Keiko on the temples as she went to find cold water. "I know, baby. We're gonna go see Aunt Nabiki, alright? We're gonna go to Aunt Nabiki's and get you really yummy food."
"Bi?" Keiko asked, her eyes beginning to droop.
Ranma awed. "That's right," she praised.
But the only answer that greeted her was the first steady breaths of Keiko's snores.
It only took a few minutes to change back into her female form, throw on a nice dress, touch up her makeup in the mirror, and get a gently snoozing Keiko settled in her sling. Nerima was quiet as ever (considerably more so than the height of the Wrecking Crew years), and Ranma used the riverside walk to center her spirit, breathing in the peaceful city around her on her way to the train station. The trip from Nerima to Daikanyama took over an hour; in motion, her emotions eased to a restlessness, a wistful melancholia that caught her attention on bike tires and cumulonimbus clouds in the lush blue sky; Ranma stared skyward, her sunhat shading her from the light, drawn out of her own body and into the world around her.
The bus station was on a quiet block, with few people waiting; a quiet bench, a vending machine; right on schedule, the bus drove up to the curb, its doors sliding open with a mechanical hiss. She boarded, found a seat, and settled in for the long trip downtown. The route wound through the outer wards before heading downtown; Ranma rocked Keiko as the cars rushed by and stared at her yellowed reflection in the bus window, taking distorted measure of the woman she saw there; even when she switched to a more crowded bus to pass through Shibuya, nobody encroached on the woman with the baby. Theyall saw her as a mother, didn't they? Ranma laughed to herself, letting her forehead tilt against the glass. How blind she was. How blind she had always been. Or maybe it was how blind she had taught herself to be.
Thought is such a funny thing, Ranma pondered, unsettled from prolonged exposure to her own mind. It was discomforting to see herself, to allow herself to be known – to know that it was her natural state to avoid such things and that the moment she stopped paying attention (perhaps no sooner than she stepped off that bus), she would return to the place of ignorance where she could simply exist(a mother, a woman, a wife) without any sort of consciousness at all. She had transitioned with that same unthinkingness, the same automatic adaptability with which her father became a panda, or Ryoga a pig. Was that the true curse? Her denseness, her thoughtlessness? Or was that merely the reason that had brought Ranma and Genma to Jusenkyo, the same piggish recklessness that had sent her tumbling into the waters of the spring? Was that who Ranma was? A woman so oblivious that she could change her gender without so much as noticing?
And in that moment the thought seemed to consume her, yawned up inside of her and revealed that her mind was like a desert, a barren ocean of trauma and ki, and when she attempted to set sail to the heart of it, the towering fortress behind which she had kept hidden truths which seemed so self-evident now, a fortress with walls as high as mountains and guarded by feral cat, ridden with the scars of battle, remnants of old concussions, impossible denials, fights and wounds and abuse, she found that she could not go inside; alone on that evaporating sea, Ranma stared into herself and tried to mount the battlements of her psyche, not frozen but still in her seat, fingers idly stroking through Keiko's downy hair. A terrible seal laid upon the iron gates, the kind of seal that could entrap a Grandmaster or strip a grown man of his powers (a woman, her soul). Ranma stared at nothing; the streets blurred before her eyes. What laid beyond the event threshold of her perception? She didn't know – couldn't. For assuredly some entity stood within the fortress, a challenge yet to be defeated, an enemy to be fought; for if the seal had locked her out, Ranma reasoned, fingers pressed to the cool glass, surely – surely – it must have been there to protect her. That was it! She had entrapped a demon in her psyche, and held it there under threat of her own death – the Neko-ken, perhaps. That was it. That hadto be it. Because why else would the fortress be there if it wasn't to protect her?
Ranma stared at the flashing pavement with bleak eyes, and wondered why she needed protection from herself.
The bus pulled into Daikanyama. She got off.
Looming over the picturesque neighborhood stood a tall apartment building, its balconies statuesque against the fast-graying sky. It was of no more remark than the city around it, save the fact that its residents could remark upon their prime view, a sweeping vista of Shibuya with Northern Tokyo and even Nerima unfolding in the distance. Ranma kept the tower in sight as she approached, eyes fixed upon the glossy upper windows. Its shadow fell upon her, the late afternoon yet settling around her. Nabiki lived on the seventeenth floor.
Inside, the doorman greeted her, gesturing her toward the elevators. Ranma took a deep breath, holding Keiko to her side, and stepped inside when the doors slid open. She was going to where Akane was; she would see Akane, and Kasumi, and this would all blow over like a dream, once remembered in feelings, quickly forgotten. The apartment was at the end of the hall – Ranma went up to the door, and with a gentle knock pushed her way inside.
"Tadaima!" she called as she took off her shoes.
It was quiet inside. Ranma padded inside and frowned at the empty apartment that awaited her. Nabiki had a taste for luxury and the income to fund it, and her newfound wealth showed in every square inch of her home; the western-style furniture, the fancy leather couches, the glass coffee table, the contemporary art hanging from the walls. She had a stylish kitchen with an island for food prep, and though she rarely used it herself, Ranma secretly preferred cooking in Nabiki's apartment to the dojo, which had none of her modern amenities. The dojo had no dishwasher. Ranma felt like sitting cross-legged between the closed steel door and staring mesmerized at it every time she ran a load.
The most personable element of the main living space was the small corner which Nabiki had dedicated toward her niece, a lovely little playpen with a soft mat floor and oodles of toys that had clearly come brand-new from a nearby supershop. It was a sweet gesture for all that Nabiki's continued financial presence in their life made Ranma uncomfortable, and Ranma knew that Nabiki loved Keiko dearly. Ranma gently set Keiko down in the playpen, where she promptly crawled off toward a toy xylophone, then nearly jumped out of her skin at the sight of Nabiki sitting behind her at the island, watching her with a slight quirk of her eyebrow.
"Looking for your wife?" Nabiki asked.
Ranma placed a hand over her racing heart. "Nabiki!" she exclaimed. "The hell- Why didn't ya say anything?!"
Nabiki wore a little smirk, lounging back against the granite. The last few years had been extremely kind to the middle Tendo sister, who had stepped out of high school and into the business world with remarkable ease and never looked back. Now Nabiki's hair had a sharp perfection to it that all her high school grooming had never quite managed, and her skin had the soft luster of expensive skincare products, the kind of beauty that could be bought with a high salary and the kind of savvy business acumen that had rendered Nabiki rich at the tender age of twenty-one. "You're so cute when you're startled, little sister."
They were apart from each other, broad windows over Tokyo stretched between them, and there was an odd tension in the air. Maybe the tension was only in her head. Ranma took a step forward then faltered, her other hand rising to clasp before her. Nabiki reclined with an easy smile, stretching catlike, and Ranma swallowed when she realized Nabiki was waiting onher- Her confusion, her silence. Her recompense.
"I thought they were here already," Ranma said.
"Oh, they were," Nabiki agreed, waving an amiable hand. "Then Kasumi realized that I forgot to buy any food – silly me – so the only thing in the fridge was baking soda, half a pound of bologna, and a six-pack of beer, so she had to go to the market. Akane went with her, of course – I'm ever so forgetful, you see, because there was no way she could have carried it all alone-"
Ranma scowled. "You didn't have to corner me."
Nabiki rolled her eyes and pushed out the next chair at the island with her foot, gesturing for Ranma to sit down. "You run away from me whenever we're alone in a room together. One time you even pretended you still had the Neko-ken, so you got down on all fours and hissed at me, and you didn't even break character when I sat you down on the bed and started petting you. That one was inspired, really. I can tell when my own sister-in-law is scared of me, Ranma-chan. So come here and talk to me, or I'll do something really drastic."
"Oh yeah?" Ranma crossed her arms over her chest to hide her embarrassed blush. "Like what?"
An evil look crossed her face. "I'll take you on a luxury spa retreat," Nabiki said. "All expenses paid."
Ranma gasped.
"God, will you just sit down already?" Nabiki asked, exasperated.
Sullenly, Ranma sat.
They remained there in silence. Nabiki inspected her nails with a bored expression as she waited for Ranma to speak. The longer they sat there, the more that Ranma's reluctance bled into shame; Ranma loved Nabiki – she did! It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to her. It was just… Every time Nabiki got Ranma alone, it was like she made another deal in her favor, as though merely coming into proximity with her was enough to lose Ranma the fight. So over the years, Ranma had learned to keep her distance.
There had been times in high school where it had felt as though Nabiki could see directly into her soul. If Ranma were honest with herself, she'd been terrified since the moment she'd stepped into the Tendo dojo of what Nabiki might find inside.
"I didn't need all those clothes," Ranma said, unable to meet Nabiki's eyes.
"Yes, you did."
"You didn't have to buy 'em all for me. We coulda afforded them, we could-"
"With what money?" Nabiki raised another probing eyebrow, and Ranma glared, receiving only an idle shrug in return. "You're a housewife and Akane's a full time student. You're making maybe enough money between the two of you to keep the lights on and eat rice for dinner seven nights a week. I'm rich, Ranma-chan, and Keiko needs more than that. It does me no harm to support our family."
"I don't wanna be a freeloader-"
"Ranma, stop." Nabiki sighed, rising to her feet and walked a few paces, forcing Ranma to swivel in her chair. Standing before her view of Tokyo, Nabiki thrust her fingers into the pockets of her slacks and raised her gaze skyward.
"Look, I'm sorry, alright? I was… harsh. On you, about money. When we were teenagers." Nabiki tilted her head irritably, then turned back to look at Ranma. "My priorities were mistaken. I… No." She scowled at herself. "They were wrong.I was wrong. Selling photos of you, staking my hustles on your disaster of a romantic life: I know better now. You were never the freeloader; it's not your fault that your father is a lazy, good-for-nothing piece of shit. You've more than proven yourself different, Ranma-chan."
Ranma shrank into herself.
"That makes you uncomfortable, doesn't it? Receiving apologies?"
"I ain't gotta answer that."
Nabiki held her gaze with sympathetic eyes. "You don't have to deflect. I understand."
"Why's everybody apologizing to me now?" Ranma demanded, clenching her fist in an attempt to keep herself from running away from the conversation. "First Mom, now you andKasumi. I hate it. Makes me feel like I'm some kinda pity case. 'Kane's never felt the need to apologize for nothing-"
"Is it that she hasn't apologized?" Nabiki observed. "Or are you two good enough at silent conversation that she never has to say it?"
"That doesn't matter-"
"Of course it matters, Ranma-chan." Approaching her with an unyielding intensity, Nabiki snapped a finger, never breaking eye contact. "I know you better than you know yourself; all three of us do. You've never been very good with words – you put your foot in it, you say things you don't mean. What goes unsaid means more to you than a million words, cause when you were a little kid, people made a million promises to you and aboutyou, and then they broke them all. You got taught to obey honor by a bunch of honorless bastards, and now there's no honor in words for you anymore. Am I hitting closer to the truth?"
"I-"
"But you know exactly why all of the apologies are coming now, don't you?"
"Nabiki-"
"None of us have whatever you've got going on with my little sister, Ranchan. Hell, I'm sure glad that I never got stuck in an engagement to you. But I bet you know why we're all using our words again, don't you? We don't talk about your shit anymore unless you give us the language."
"Shut up!" Ranma shouted, bursting from her chair. Nabiki took an abortive step backward, eyes wide. "Just shut up, Nabiki! God, don't you ever know when to stop prying?"
Their conversation had been accompanied by the obnoxious overture of Keiko's xylophone playing, which came to an abrupt halt at the sound of Ranma's raised voice. Ranma cursed internally, and both she and Nabiki turned to look at Keiko, who was staring at them with wide eyes. Keiko looked at Ranma with concern. Ranma managed a weak smile for her daughter, and Nabiki gave her a wink and a little wave. Keiko giggled.
"Don't go over there, Ranma," Nabiki said in an undertone as they worked together to keep Keiko from freaking out. "You know as well as I do that this conversation isn't over. Now's not the time for Anything Goes Running Away."
"I'm not running," Ranma snapped. "You made sure of that, didn't you, sis?"
Nabiki pressed her lips to a thin line.
Keiko resumed her artful xylophone concerto, and Ranma and Nabiki both breathed a sigh of relief. With the danger passed, Ranma sank back down into her chair, feeling far too exhausted for a woman of twenty-one. It had gotten dusky outside. Nabiki lingered by the island, staring at Ranma like she wanted to say something but couldn't find the words. Ranma pressed her lips together. But nothing came of it. Shaking off her moment of uncertainty, Nabiki walked across the room and turned on the apartment lights, then went into the kitchen to fetch a bottle of wine.
"Want a glass?" she asked.
Ranma groaned, burying her head in her arms on the island. "Please."
The wine was tart, and Ranma took great pleasure in downing half the glass like a savage, much to Nabiki's consternation. Nabiki huffed and sipping on her wine, leaning back against the island near Ranma and looking away out the window.
"That's a ¥12,000 Cabernet Sauvignon," Nabiki said snottily.
Ranma downed the rest of her glass and scowled at her sister-in-law.
"What did you really want to say?"
"About what?"
Nabiki sighed, softening her gaze as she swirled the wine around her glass. "You were crying," she murmured. Ranma fought the sudden urge to check her makeup. "You never cry, Ranma. I know how you look when you're biting back what's really on your mind."
Of course it came back to that. It always did. Ranma had known she wasn't getting out of this talk as soon as Nabiki had cornered her alone in a room. Nabiki never knew when to leave well enough alone. Ranma set her empty wine glass down on the counter and pushed it away, looking down at her hands. She didn't feel the same devastation she had felt earlier; no, this was something different, the quiet heaviness that came after a much-needed meltdown, where nothing had changed but it all felt different, somehow. So she gave up. She stopped fighting.
Ranma Saotome laid down her call of arms and surrendered to the truth she had spent her whole life denying, an inherency she had only ever learned how to flee.
She was a woman. Always had been. And there was absolutely no way left for her to avoid it.
"How long did you know?" Ranma whispered.
Nabiki offered her a gentle gaze, and said, "Since the day you walked into the Tendo dojo."
The pronouncement settled in her gut with a heavy finality, and Ranma felt a sudden strange peace wash over her, as though the last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. She was utterly unmoored; and yet, for the first time in her entire life, she felt a completeness, like all her life she had occupied this illusion, and for the first time, she had a being, a substance of her own.
"It wasn't right away, Ranma-chan," Nabiki said, and it was gratifying to Ranma, the way her words seemed to carry the gravity the moment deserved. "In fact, I don't think I ever noticed any one tell that made me certain, not even the curse. It was in the shower that night, when I was… going to sleep, and I was thinking about how lucky I was, to have avoided getting entangled into Daddy's stupid marriage scheme. But I found myself thinking about you in feminine ways. And any time I thought about us girls, I always included you." Nabiki huffed a laugh and shook her head. "Confused the hell out of me every time, but it felt right, somehow. My gut wanted me to see you as a girl, and I'm not in the business of ignoring my gut. And it got to the point where I was thinking about you as a girl even in your, well, your 'ordinary' form, and I suppose things unfolded from there. But subconsciously? You were a girl to me from the moment you walked into our home, sopping wet from the rain, and Akane asked you if you wanted to be her friend."
"Oh," Ranma said.
Nabiki smiled. "My sister doesn't like boys, Ranma. She never has, and I doubt she ever will. But she liked you from the very beginning, whether she wanted to admit it to herself or not. It was pretty obvious once you saw that."
Ranma let out a breath and allowed the simple fact to settle in her mind. It seemed momentous, and yet so obvious that it barely bore mentioning, the truth in it self-evident. Of course Akane had always known who she really was, underneath it all. She knew her wife.
"Why was I the last one to know?" she asked.
The question hung between them for a long moment, and Nabiki seemed to take it seriously, frowning in idle thought. Her gaze fell upon Keiko, and Ranma followed suit. Keiko had gotten bored with the xylophone and moved on to her blocks, which she moved around without rhyme or reason, focused on her task with utmost severity. When Ranma glanced back at Nabiki, her heart melted at the little affectionate smile on her lips.
Nabiki sombered when she seemed to come to a conclusion, though, and looked past Keiko to some indeterminable point on the wall beyond.
"If you listen to the way we talk about people, you'd think that you know better than everyone else about who you are and why you do the things you do. Other people ask you all the time to tell them who you are. And we try to answer, most of the time." Nabiki let out a dry laugh, shaking her head. "But you're not. Nobody is. You don't just decideto change, Ranma. People aren't nearly as flexible as they think they are. We all get these ideasabout who we are, who we want to be, who we're supposedto be, and we try to becomethem, those ideas of ourselves. But it takes convincing before our brains can catch up. The spirit isn't half as malleable as the mind. So people spend all this time telling themselves stories about the people who they want to be, not because they want other people to know but because they're trying to… shape themselves. Change, if that's a thing we're even capable of. And if you're like me, then at some point you stop asking for stories, details, juicy gossip – blackmail material, I'm sure you're thinking – and start listening to the stories they're already telling about themselves."
"So I listen. When I ask a question, I don't demand information I could find out myself. I hold up a mirror to the people around me; parrot back the things they've said, ask for clarification. I look for the stories they want to tell about themselves, cause that's the secret, isn't it?" Nabiki asked, wearing a lopsided smile. "The secret to business. You give people what they haven't realized they want yet. The stories they're trying to tell their conscious mind. And let me tell you, sis, people will do anything for you when they think you've discovered some secret lifehack, some secret about the human psyche, but there aren't any secrets, no tricks. Nothing's new or original about the deals I cut. People will do anything for a desire, but the lies people tell about themselves, the impossible stories, the one that will never come true, those are the ones that let you twist the knife. Find a baby transsexual girl with an abusive father and convince her that she's a woman? Impossible task. But if you tell her that if she takes a few photos, fights a few challengers, then she'll become a man-among-men?"
Nabiki shrugged. "Then she'll do anything for you. Cause deep down, she knows that impossible fantasy of being a man can't come true. But when someone else promises tomake it true, that they can change her, fix her…"
"We don't know who we are. We can't. Cause when we try to come to terms with ourselves, we can't cling to those false fantasies anymore. No illusions, no tricks. Just who we are at the core, in spirit, and the hard mechanical calculus of the real labor required to change the parts of ourselves we don't like." Nabiki laughed as her gaze fell on Keiko. Ranma shivered at the sight of her daughter. "Kids don't tell lies about themselves. They haven't learned how, yet. And they don't care who we think we shouldbe; they listen, just like I listen, and all they care about is who the people around them are. We're not meant to know ourselves, Ranma. Nobody makes it to adulthood without telling themselves a few lies to ease the way. But we can know other people. That's empathy, or business savvy or whatever you want to call it. And when you know someone for long enough, you start learning which of their stories tell who they are but can't express yet, or haven't figured out how to actualize, and which of their stories are about who they want to be – or who they've been told they're supposed to be. You learn which stories are theirs, and which stories came from other people. And if you listen for long enough, you start to recognize other people's stories within your own mind. You untangle the threads."
"And maybe," Nabiki concluded, "you find yourself on the other side."
As the sun sank below the horizon, Tokyo began to glitter with light. Nabiki sank back into her chair, exhausted but satisfied from her rant, and took a long sip of her wine. In the play area, Keiko had abandoned her toys and rolled onto her back, playing with her toes as she stared in wonder at the ceiling; white paint and light fixtures, finding some invisible fascination in the smooth surface above.
"Keiko calls me Mama," Ranma said.
Nabiki laughed under her breath, and placed a comforting hand on Ranma's shoulder. "Then I guess you're her Mama, aren't you?"
A warmth crept over Ranma at the thought. Everything was so simple now when only an hour or two earlier it had seemed hopelessly complicated, and Ranma had despaired that she would ever find solace in it all. But solace was there. And Ranma was struck by the sudden certainty that this warmth, the one that crept up on her any time she stepped into a pretty dress or saw her daughter smile, would stay with her for the rest of her life.
She was sure of it.
"Yeah," Ranma said. "I guess I am."
And with one last firm squeeze to her shoulder, Nabiki smiled.
[A/N] About a year ago, I lost my own mother after after a long fight against brain cancer. When I started this fic, it began out of a simple grief – knowing that I would never get to have these kinds of tender moments with my mom again, and wanting to externalize that impossible onto the page, with all of the love and longing it entailed. But it morphed into something much more profound once I began to write. Mother Time is about loss and grief, yes – grieving a childhood, a gender, lost time – but it's also about motherhood. It's about families and how they change as time marches on. It's about human consciousness and how the strange thing we know as being trans just so happens to push around the edges of it. And, I think, it turned from a fluffy fic I began at the greatest depths of my grief in the hopes of making myself smile (and maybe cry a little too), into what I truly feel is some of the best fiction I've ever written. I feel honored that so many of you have come along on this journey with me, and for all of your patience while I've written this healing story.
So to my Mom, and to all who've lost a parent (and still found the strength become one too) – this fic is for you. I know she'd be proud of me for this one.
This was one of the most difficult and technically challenging chapter that I have ever written, fanfiction or original work alike. I had to do a huge rewrite that completely overhauled both the last scene and the dramatic structure of the chapter, and all together, I spent almost two straight weeks of nonstop work getting this behemoth written. This chapter wouldn't have been half of what it is now without the help of my phenomenal beta team, so a million thanks to NobleHeroine, en_passant, and Korra for all of the work you did on this chapter with me. Your support and encouragement means the world to me.
I'd apologize for writing an 11.5k chapter, but something tells me that y'all won't mind :P
Thank you so much to everyone who has read, commented, and supported this fic that has become such a positive force in my life. Thank you especially to Caimano, Lukkai, Ozzallos (Oh my god I love your work so much eeeeeeeee), RhapsodicSongbird, Diana Bialaska, Scotty_WolfRaven, Foxoftheasterisk, Beedok, irisvirus, JaquiK, neveyleh, alysongreaves, Witch_Of_Chickens, Sucy_Manbavaran, aceina, Cromalin20, Mablefruit, Stenrik, RoxyArietis, AkiBlossom, Mizuno Tenshi2, scrimblo bimblo, Jack Lemmon, and one guest for commenting and reviewing! I honestly think I fangirled more over the comments on the last chapter than I have on any of my fics in a while.
I'd love to hear your feedback. Let me know what you thought!
I'll see you all next time for the fifth and final(!) installment of Mother Time, which will definitely be out before the end of summer.
With all my love,
Allie
