Kapitel 212: Crutches
"Might as well give in and come to grips with your fate! Once you heard the bass drop, it was already too late!"
Akane sang along with Ranko's voice in her headphones, a skip in her step as she walked down the sidewalk from the train station. Under her leadership, her team had just completed one of the most improbable comebacks in recent collegiate volleyball history to secure a berth in the championship tournament weekend. Ranko's new album was days from release, and judging by the advance copy in her portable CD player, it was fantastic. In less than two weeks, the school year would be over, and she and Ranko would have a whole month together to work on the wedding. After performing Freak and having two more sessions with Fred (and Starlight), Ranko had finally started to tiptoe her way out of the depression that had consumed them both for most of the last few weeks.
It was a good day.
With a wide grin, Akane placed her hand on the brass bar that served as the handle of the Phoenix's glass door. She pulled, blinking in confusion when the latch did not open. What the? Hana almost always has the door unlocked for us by now. Oh, well. I'll try the back.
Akane hummed through the bridge of the song in her ears, turning up her CD player's volume to drown out the sound of the garbage truck in the alley repeatedly shaking the dumpster in the air with a large steel cranelike arm. They seemed to be having trouble getting the dumpster's lid to dislodge and empty its rancid contents into the back of the truck. She grabbed the doorknob of the steel door that led into the back of the Phoenix's kitchen, turning it, but the latch would not engage on the employee entrance either.
Alright, this is weird. Surprise party? I guess they could have been listening to the game on the radio and heard we won. Grinning cockily, Akane pulled her keys out of her pocket, opening the door as silently as she could. You think you're gonna surprise me, Ranko? No chance. I'm gonna get you instead, silly girl.
Stopping her music as she entered, she looked around the kitchen, finding no one. Akane peered carefully behind every door and counter, also peeking up the narrow stairway that led to the apartment that had been Ranko's home once. Makes sense. More fun to hide in the main bar, anyway.
Akane crept to the blue saloon door, peeking over it with an expectant smirk. She held her breath, ready to jump out at anyone who sought to surprise her. To her shock, she saw Ranko sitting in plain sight at one of the tables, flanked by Ayako and Hana. Okay, I'll bite, Ranko. What the hell are y…
Ayako sat back in her seat, giving Akane her first clear view of her lover's face from her position hidden behind the half-door.
Ranko's lavender dress was torn around the neckline, and her right eye was swollen shut.
All color drained instantly from Akane's face at the sight of her battered fiancee. Her breath abandoned her lungs as if she'd been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. No! Not now! Not when I couldn't be here to protect her! Fuck! Fuck! I'm so sorry, baby! I'm gonna make it right. I'm gonna make it right, right fucking now. Just you wait, Ranko. I'll find him, and I'm going to end this for you once and for all.
The raven-haired girl spun on her heel and stormed back through the kitchen, throwing the steel door to the alley open hard enough to loosen it slightly on its hinges.
"Aya, baby," Hana said quietly, looking up at the saloon door suspiciously as Ranko looked up. "Stay here with your sister a minute."
Hana crept warily through the blue slatted door. Finding no one in the kitchen, she took the handle of a large, sturdy wok in hand, brandishing it as she crept carefully out the back door and looked around.
I could have sworn I heard…
Noting that the dumpster was now open and empty, Hana redoubled her caution, stalking ever so slowly around to the front of the building. There, she found Akane, still in her black Ranko and the Dapper Dragons tee shirt and a pair of red gym shorts, pacing furiously by the bus stop. Her daughter's fiancee likely would have been sitting on the provided wooden bench, were it not scattered in olive green splinters over nearly a square meter around her feet.
Hana lowered the cast-iron cookware in her hand, approaching cautiously. The last time she saw a look like that in someone's eyes had been when her youngest daughter had nearly killed a figure skater in the same back alley. She didn't claim the slightest understanding of all of the martial arts challenge-honor mumbo-jumbo Ranko and the people she knew from her past all seemed to be into, but she knew danger when she saw it, and Akane's eyes looked like those of a feral, rabid animal. The girl's body was moving, but anything resembling a soul was entirely absent from her berserk, distant stare.
"Akane, honey?"
Akane whirled to face her future wife's mother, her face contorted in rage, guilt and hatred all at once. "WHERE IS HE?! I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL HIM!"
Hana spoke softly, making no sudden moves. She set her wok down on top of a public mailbox near the sidewalk, approaching ever so carefully. She held her hands up non-threateningly as if she were preparing to approach a starving tiger. "He's gone, baby. Ranko took care of it."
"You… You tell her, Hana! That son of a bitch isn't going to see the FUCKING SUN RISE! I promise her. You tell her for me!" She turned to face in a random direction, down the street away from Hana. She roared at the top of her lungs, spittle flying from her mouth in her fury, paying no attention to the passers-by on the sidewalk who had stopped to stare in some combination of trepidation and morbid curiosity. "YOU HEAR ME, SAOTOME?! FACE ME! I'M GONNA TEAR YOUR FUCKING HEART OUT!"
Hana sighed, stopping her approach just out of arm's reach. She doubted Akane would deliberately hurt her, but she had little hope that the seething teen was even fully conscious at the moment. She kept her voice soft and soothing, in stark contrast with the volcanic tempest brewing in her future daughter's eyes. "Akane, sweetheart, I want you to listen to me now. She's okay. She's banged up pretty good, but she's alright. Physically, at least. Come on, baby. Come inside."
Akane shook her head forcefully, the red headband holding her hair in place sliding down around her neck. "No. I won't… I can't… I can't look at her like that. Not while I know the cocksucker that did it to her is still walking around breathing! I'm gonna fucking END him, Hana! I'm gonna bring Ranko his FUCKING HEAD in a box!"
A green-and-silver bus slowed in the street, pulling up to the metal signpost indicating its proscribed stop. As its pneumatic brakes hissed, the driver pulled the handle on her right toward herself, swinging the double-hinged door open to the roar of Akane's vengeance. Not a second later, she pulled the door lever closed again and accelerated out of the intersection as the confused riders behind her shared concerned glances at each other. Fucking nope, the driver thought as she made the right turn toward her next stop. I don't know what's going on with that crazy chick, but they don't pay my ass enough to deal with it.
Hana sighed. I know the feeling, kid. "Akane, I need you to listen to me now, honey. I know you want to rip Ranko's fa…" Hana couldn't stomach letting the word past her lips. Her daughter's assailant didn't deserve it. "... that man's lungs out through his asshole, and believe you me, girl, you better make sure I'm there with you if you do. But right now, he's not here, and he doesn't need your attention. Ranko does."
Akane's pacing stopped, but her face still seethed with venom as she stared at the barkeep that had saved her lover's life. "She'll be fine. She's got you and the girls. I've got work to do." She glared in the general direction of her father's home, despite it being kilometers away. "He dies tonight. I swear it."
Swallowing hard, Hana took a step forward while Akane's eyes were averted, putting her hand firmly on the girl's shoulder. She knew it was a risk, but she had to break through to her. "Don't you dare, Akane! I forbid it!"
Akane snapped her gaze back to the taller woman, and Hana had to summon all of her courage not to back away from the threat roiling in the teen martial artist's eyes. "Look. I care about you. I do. I know you're Ranko's mother. But with all possible respect, who the fuck do you think you are to forbid me to do anything?"
This time, Hana's voice rose to meet Akane's. "Like you said, I'm Ranko's mother. And for the last two hours, I've tried to hold my little girl, but I can't, because she can't stand to be touched anywhere! I've tried to take her to the hospital, get her some medicine, an ice pack, something. Anything. She won't let me. All she is asking for is you. So, put aside your anger! It'll be there when you need it, I promise. Right now, my daughter needs you. Akane, your wife needs you! And, so help me gods, I will get her what she needs, even if I have to drag your little ass back into that bar myself."
"I…" Akane's eyes began to glimmer with just the smallest shred of humanity beginning to return to them, but the only emotion visible in them was shame. "I can't look at her like that. I can't face her! I was supposed to protect her! I fucking promised her, and because I wanted to go play in a fucking volleyball game, he…"
Hana nodded. "I know, baby. I know. I was scrubbing a gods-damned sink not twenty meters away while it was happening, and I didn't notice it until it was too late either. But we can be here for her now. We can pick her up, together."
The barkeep took one more step forward, grabbing Akane around the back of the neck firmly with both hands and pulling her close. She knew grappling at Akane was dangerous in her current state, but that nothing but human contact was going to cut through the inferno in Akane's soul. "You listen to me, girl. We're going to go back in there together, you and me. When we're in there with her, we're fucking titanium. Both of us. We're her two crutches until she's back on her feet physically and emotionally, and we don't break, and we don't bend, and we don't slip for a second, or she falls."
Akane felt a tear drip onto her shoulder from the eyes of the taller woman.
"But out here, where she can't see us, we can admit to each other that seeing her hurt like this is killing us, too."
Akane buried her face in Hana's shoulder, muffling an anguished wail as her lover's mother engulfed her in her arms.
~~~
"Akane? Is that you?" Ranko was fairly certain the silhouette entering the darkened, empty barroom was her fiancee, but her vision was still a bit blurry in the one eye she could still see out of. Most of the house lights were off, as her probable concussion was making her quite sensitive to bright lights.
Akane forced herself to smile despite her tear-reddened eyes. "Yeah, Ranko. It's me."
Ranko groaned loudly, sitting up a bit on the padded bench from her lean against the side wall. "Did you win?"
Shaking her head, Akane couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah, we did, princess. But, you can barely sit up, and you're concerned about my volleyball game?"
Ranko nodded, very gingerly. "I'm so proud of you. I wish I could have been there."
Akane bit her lip grimly, surveying the damage her battered lover's father had done. "I bet you do, baby."
"Oh, this?" Ranko gestured to her bruised, swollen face slowly, cracking the tiniest of smiles. "This is just from the algebra lesson."
The older girl couldn't help but chuckle quietly. "Yeah, I think I had a few math classes that did that to me, too, come to think of it." She slid gingerly into the seat opposite Ranko in the corner booth. "Do you… want to talk about what happened?"
Ranko grinned weakly, pride in her eyes. The sight was off-putting to Akane, considering only the left side of Ranko's face seemed to move. "Mom cold-cocked his ass. You shoulda seen her, Akane. Laid him flat!"
Her fiancee laughed heartily, stifling it as she saw Ranko recoil from the loud noise. "I bet she enjoyed that." Akane reached across the table and ever so gently rested her fingertips on the back of Ranko's hand. She looked down at the diamond engagement ring on Ranko's third finger, still smeared with a tiny reddish-brown splotch left behind from her father's blood. After checking over her shoulder to ensure Hana and Ayako were still over by the bar, she lowered her voice to barely a whisper. "What have you told them? Did he say anything?"
Ranko shook her head almost imperceptibly slowly, speaking under her breath. "Nothing they didn't already know. He raised me as a boy, I ran away and took your name, and he wanted to force me to come home with him."
"But, you beat him?" Akane's eyes still traversed her lover's body, continuing to assess all the injuries she'd have to help her fiancee heal from. The ones she could see, anyway.
"Barely, but yeah." Ranko leaned back again with a quiet grunt, fear and relief vying for dominance in her unfocused stare. "He had me, Akane. If it hadn't been for Mom…" The redhead trailed off. She honestly didn't know what would have happened, but she was grateful to have not found out.
Akane sighed sadly, stroking the back of Ranko's hand softly with her fingertips. "I know, beautiful. I'm so, so sorry I wasn't here. I should have been."
"I don't know about beautiful, Akane. I haven't seen a mirror, but if I look half as bad as I feel…" She tentatively probed at her swollen eye, wincing at her own touch and inhaling sharply through her clenched teeth.
With a soft pat on the back of her hand, Akane smiled as widely as she could manage into Ranko's swollen face. "You will always be my beautiful girl, Ranko. And you're going to be my wife."
Ranko nodded, barely perceptibly. "You're damn right I am. We fought for us, and we won." By the hair of my chinny-chin-chin, but who's counting? "I think I get it now, what you've all been saying. Like, he tried to tell Mama the truth about me, and she just… it wasn't like she didn't want to hear it, it was like it didn't matter. Like, there was nothing he could've said that would have made her think different about me or made them want me less. You should have heard the things she said about me, Akane. Nobody but you's ever had my back like that."
Akane patted her future wife's hand gently again. "It's called unconditional love, baby, and it breaks my heart that you didn't know what it meant until now. I'm glad you finally see it, Ranko. We're a family, all of us. A real one. You, me, my dad and sisters, your mom and sisters. You can't get rid of us that easily. I've been trying to tell you that all along."
"I'll hold you to that," Ranko mewled weakly. "I'm just glad it's over with him."
"Yeah, for now, but…" Akane growled. "It's not over for me, Ranko. Not yet. I'm gonna snap him in half for what he did to you. I swear. As soon as you're back on your feet, I'm gonna go to my dad's and I'm gonna…"
The redhead put up an open hand. "Just stop, baby? Forget him."
"How the hell am I supposed to forget it?! He hurt you. You're my whole world, and he hurt you! I promised you I'd protect you, and I wasn't here when it mattered. At the very least, I'm going to avenge you." Akane balled her fists, her fury returning. I let him hurt you. I promised you I'd protect you, and I failed. Some martial arts master I turned out to be.
"Akane, do you want to hurt him because you're mad at him, or because you're mad at yourself?"
Akane blinked. "Huh?"
Ranko leaned back in the booth, gingerly resting her battered head against the back of the bench with a little grunt. "I love you. I love that you want to look out for me like this. It's really sweet, and you have no idea how special it makes me feel. But I don't want you to blame yourself for this, Akane. It's not your fault, just like it wasn't mine, or Mom's."
She reached out her left hand, taking Akane's in her own again and giving it a weak squeeze. "I didn't fight him today because I wanted him dead. I fought him because I wanted him gone. And he's gone. If he ever comes back, if he causes trouble for us again, by all means, put him through the fucking floorboards. But every minute you spend thinking about hurting him is another minute he's fucking with our lives. It's another minute he gets what he wants."
Ranko managed a sneer, on the half of her face that still moved correctly, anyway. "You want to hurt him? I mean, really hurt him where it counts? Don't hit him. That shit heals. He knows how to deal with that." She reached out for Akane's hand. "Marry me, instead. Make me your bride. Keep making me the happiest girl and wife who ever lived. He'll hate it. It'll haunt him every day forever."
Akane nodded slowly, a small simper creeping across her face at her lover's words. When did you get so chill, Ranko? Perhaps the empty shot glasses on the table in front of her fiancee had at least a little to do with it. Hana did say she had to resort to extreme measures because she was in so much pain, and after the whole thing with Kuno, it makes sense she wouldn't want to use strong medicine.
"I… I can do that, Ranko."
"Did he say anything about your mom? Your birth mom, I mean?" Akane dipped a white paper napkin into a glass of ice water that sat unclaimed on the lacquered cherry table, ever so carefully wiping the blood from her betrothed's diamond solitaire engagement ring.
Ranko frowned, shaking her head softly in the negative. "Ooh." She stabilized her head in her hands, wincing sharply. "Maybe I shouldn't do that right now."
Akane nodded, clenching her left hand into a fist under the table. "Well, if she shows up, we'll be ready for her. All of us."
Ranko rubbed her temples with a quiet whimper. "One problem at a time, babe."
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