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The freight train was bumpy, uncomfortable, and terrible for sleeping. It was a marvel that Akane managed to sleep at all. Ranma sat on the on the other end of the car, too tired to move, but too awake to sleep. One of her knees wouldn’t stop bouncing up and down, the sound of the repeating motion being masked by the rattling of the railroad underneath. She was hyper-aware of the way her currently fire-red hair felt on her head, and the weight of soaked clothes weighing on her body.
This wasn’t the first time Ranma hitched a ride like this. With the old man, it was practically a given for long distances. They never had the money for a train ride, but all it took was some finesse and some sprinting to get you on board one of these cars which could get you close enough. It wasn’t a place for someone like Akane though, and Ranma knew it.
Akane complained the entire time they were at the train yard (How she missed that voice chastising her). She almost missed the final jump, and Ranma had to pull her up by the arm. She continued to serenade Ranma with complaints for a while, before her own exhaustion began to weigh her to the floor. That was how they got to where they are now.
Ranma Saotome, the Kami-Killer (she planned to keep that title), was hitching a train ride with her fiancee who came back from the dead just a few days ago. The wounds of Jusendo stung fresh in Ranma’s head. Akane came back to her, thank the Kami, but there was a moment where without a shadow of a doubt, Ranma held a dead weight. The corpse of her love. The adrenaline of her fight with Saffron, the exhilaration of herself nearly dying only to come back and end the deity that aimed to end her. The instant collapse as she noticed that Akane wasn’t coming back.
She wasn’t breathing.
Life in that moment ceased to matter. Ranma had killed to save Akane, and still failed. The despair was enough to undo her until by some miracle, the breathing came back. That moment played on a loop infinitely in her head. The sensation of Akane’s chest rising, her heart beating, and her hand rising to meet Ranma’s cheek. It felt like honest divine intervention. Through thick and thin, Akane Tendo made it to the end, and smiled back at Ranma with life back in her body.
Now there Akane was, fast asleep. She was in some clothes given to her by the Joketsuzoku, but most importantly to Ranma, the red silk shirt she used to cover Akane up. The Amazonian women offered Akane many other things, but she refused to give that shirt up. She wasn’t letting Ranma get it back either, leaving her in just her black sleeveless shirt and sweats. She didn’t mind that much. If it made Akane feel better, then that was all that matters.
Ranma found herself lost in the hypnotic pattern of Akane’s sleeping from afar. The gentle rising and falling of her chest with each breath. The occasional twitch from her nose. A rare sound of a sort of hum. Ranma was used to Akane’s sleep being much more violent and thrashy. Ranma hypothesized that the girl was just so tired that her usual active way of sleeping wasn’t in the cards.
Ranma could feel every muscle in her body cry for relief. Fighting a divine figure turned out to be tough on the body. She tried to not worry Akane about it, but she knew for a fact that she wasn’t going to swim back to China, even if Akane found her own way there. They would need to take a plane or a boat back to China. Ranma was certain that Akane would be excited at the idea of a boat ride. Despite being unable to swim, Akane loved the sea. Maybe if Ranma played her cards right, she could get enough money for them to have a nicer cabin in a real passenger liner that operated out of Shanghai. It wouldn’t be a vacation, but it was the least Akane deserved after everything.
Ranma’s attention returned to Akane. Rise, fall. Rise, fall.
Rise-
... rise? Where was the fall? Why was Akane not breathing all of a sudden!?
She wasn’t breathing.
The memory of dead weight hit Ranma like a bullet. The horrid peace that the corpse in her arms had on her face, while Ranma Saotome came undone. She could hear her own voice echoing in her head. “Akane! Please, please hear me! I love you! I’m sorry Akane! I can’t lose you! Not like this!”
Ranma dashed over to Akane’s lifeless body and immediately inspected it for a solution to whatever happened. The panic didn’t let her notice that Akane had woken up, and was looking incredibly pissed off about being suddenly manhandled. “Get off of me, dummy!” Ranma was shocked as she was pushed halfway across the train car by her fiancee. Her own breath became ragged and sporadic.
Akane was woken up by a manic Ranma. She was grabbing onto Akane for dear life, muttering something she couldn’t fully make out. The rush of getting suddenly woken up kicked in, and Akane pushed Ranma as hard as she could. “Get off of me, dummy!” The force sent Ranma sliding across the train car. Akane took a moment to breathe and get her bearings.
“Still on the train. Nothing seems to be here that wasn’t before.” Akane’s trademark frustration bubbled inside her, annoyed that Ranma just decided to lose it, and while she was asleep! Before Akane could muster another word, she looked at Ranma and didn’t see the usual snarl of defiance that the youngest Tendo was used to before they started a fight. It stopped Akane dead in her tracks.
Ranma was hyperventilating, looking towards Akane, but not at her. She still couldn’t make out the muttering on the redhead’s lips, but it appeared to continue. This wasn’t normal for Ranma. Something was wrong, and Akane didn’t have the faintest clue how to fix it. Was it some new curse? A possession? “Oh, if Ranma is the one now taken over by a doll or something I swear-”
The realization came to Akane. Ranma smothered Akane with what seemed to be no warning. Holding her like she did at Jusenkyo when-
She wasn’t breathing.
Ranma wasn’t even on the train right now, at least in her head. Akane slowly stood up, and quietly called out to her. “Ranma?” Nothing. Her stare didn’t change direction. “Ranma, hey. Can you hear me?” Not even her breathing shifted. Akane was close enough that she was beginning to make out some of the words Ranma was whispering to herself.
“I can’t lose you... I love you... I’m sorry Akane...”
They were the same words that Akane heard when she came back from the brink of death. The desperate cries of the person she loved, finally admitting the same as the dark emptiness of death was washed away by the light of the sun. Ranma was back in Jusenkyo, reliving what Akane imagined was one of the worst moments of her life.
Akane quietly got on her knees, sitting in front of Ranma. She was still muttering to herself. “Not like this... not like this... not like this...” Akane’s brain was telling her to leave Ranma alone, not to shock her the way she shocked Akane. Her heart was screaming to latch onto Ranma, drag her back to the light, remind her that Akane was alive and well.
The war in her body dragged on for a while, until an idea came to her. “I reached for her cheek.” Maybe recreating that would be a happy compromise? Akane prayed to the Kami for help, took a moment to steady herself, and carefully raised her right hand towards Ranma.
Akane cupped her hand over Ranma’s cheek, and in an instant, she was back. The muttering stopped, and the jewels in her eyes locked straight onto Akane. “It’s okay Ranma.” She quietly said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“K-’Kane...”
A moment of pure stillness held in the air, before Ranma grabbed onto Akane for dear life again. Akane was shocked into returning the desperate hug, as Ranma sobbed into her chest. Neither of them spoke. Akane just allowed the redhead to release all the tension in her body, unknowingly stroking Ranma’s hair as they both cried together.
When Ranma came to after who knows how long, she was still holding onto Akane in the train. She was okay. Akane was okay, she didn’t suddenly die on her, and was smiling at Ranma with a tenderness she hoped to get used to. “Feeling better?” Akane asked, still smiling.
Ranma felt like she had ran across the country, but managed a reply through the laboured breathing. “Y-yeah.” Ranma couldn’t let go of Akane now. Her own life depended on it.
“Do you want to talk about what happened, Ranma?” Akane’s question was sweet, like the liquid honey brown of her eyes. The only good thing about the last week’s events was that with their love out in the open, Ranma and Akane finally had the ability to express the affection both so desperately needed from each other.
“Ya stopped breathin in your sleep.”
“... what?”
“Ya just stopped breathin, tomboy. You were sleepin like a baby and then nothin. It-it scared the crap outta me, I didn’t even know someone could do that. I thought-”
“You thought I died for a moment.” Akane finished the thought for Ranma. Thank goodness for that, she worried that just saying it out loud would have. “Ranma, is there... is there something I can do to help?” Akane’s question stirred Ranma into thought. She had no clue how to even stop something like this. She couldn’t just- “Like, what if you held me when I slept? Would that keep you from panicking?”
A new panic came out of Ranma instead. An older one, one that she felt any and every time there was the slightest insinuation that she had any sort of feelings or desires for Akane. It used to be all consuming to the martial artist. The instigation for many a foot going into her mouth, or the catalyst for the lie she told her fiancee time and time again. What surprised Ranma now was that this was easy to laugh at now.
They loved each other. Ranma knew that. Akane did too. It isn’t unusual for people who love each other to hold the other while they slept. They weren’t breaking any laws or doing anything that would be a source of shame. And Akane was offering it freely. How could Ranma say no now?
“I think... I think that’d work, ‘Kane. If that’s alright with ya, of course!”
“Of course it’s fine dummy. I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t okay with it.” Akane giggled at Ranma’s silly act of chivalrous resistance. Akane was still smiling as she pulled Ranma close again, this time adjusting themselves to lie down on the floor. Ranma tried to be the big spoon, but being in this form, she wasn’t tall enough to envelop Akane. She seemed to sense Ranma’s confusion on the matter. “Yuka told me when the shorter person is holding someone, it’s called jet-packing instead of spooning. That’s what you are, my little jet-pack!”
The joke name made both of them laugh. Akane was warm in Ranma’s embrace. Despite the lack of a shower, relying on rivers and other waterways to get somewhat clean, Akane still managed to smell faintly of cherry wood and sea salt. Ranma would never say this out loud, but it had become her favourite scent in the world. It reminded her of the Dojo, of petty arguments. Of her.
“Kane?”
“Yeah Ranma?”
“I-I... I love you.”
“... I love you too.”
The two of them slowly fell asleep together. There was a moment where Ranma noticed that Akane seemed to stop breathing again, but the warmth of her body was there. The gentle thump of her heartbeat kept going. It did not take long for the breathing to return too, and that was all the reassurance Ranma needed.
She was breathing.