Phoenix: Reignited Edition

"G'night, girls!" Ranma waved until the door rattled shut as Mei and Izumi exited, leaving Yui and Ranma alone in the empty bar. It had been a long night, but a decent one. A few guys in nice suits had come in from some business event or other and spent entirely too much money on fried food and the bar's signature Dragonfire pineapple cocktails. 

Yui popped open a bottle of draft beer with a bottle opener dangling from her belt, straddling a stool on the customer side of her bar counter and sitting down. She was wearing a bright yellow long-sleeved men's dress shirt, unbuttoned enough to show a white camisole underneath, and black slacks. "Ugh. This is what I get for wearing heels to tend bar." She kicked her yellow shoes off, sighing with relief as she patted the brown vinyl seat of the stool to her left. "C'mere, Ran-chan. Take a load off."

Ranma leaned her pushbroom against the service bar, smiling wistfully. It was nice to hear Ukyo's old pet name for her, even if it had been from someone else. She wondered, just for a moment, whether Ukyo might be the only one back in the Nerima district who would have understood the direction her life seemed to be taking. She strode over to the table, slumping gently onto the stool to the left of Yui, careful to account for the borrowed black calf-length skirt she was wearing.

Yui stood barefoot on the brass bar that served as the counter's footrest, leaning over the counter to grab the soda gun and pouring Ranma a drink. She slid the still-fizzing pilsner glass over to her new sister like a beer in an old-timey American saloon. "Cheers." She held up her brown glass beer bottle, tilting the neck slightly toward the redhead. 

Ranma clinked her own beverage against it, smiling brightly. "Cheers!" She was grateful for some company. She was beyond appreciative for a place to stay, but when Hana and the girls went home for the night, it got a little lonely in the empty bar sometimes - especially when she'd gotten used to sleeping amidst the hustle and bustle of a subway station and, before that, in the endless chaos she'd experienced in the Tendo household.

"You've really been impressing Mama, you know."

Ranma blushed a bit shyly, her voice deflecting Yui's praise. "Yep! I'm so talented I can fill ice bins and work a broom."

Yui shook her head. "Not that, blockhead. Everything else. The way you've fit in here. How hard you work. The way you are with the customers. The way you helped Mei." She looked down at her bottle, swirling its contents a little. "You haven't talked a lot about what things were like for you before you came here, but it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out it wasn't easy. You're one hell of a tough cookie, kiddo. Just… it's important to me that you know you don't have to hide it if you don't want to. Me, Mama, all of us are here to listen if you want."

Ranma nodded slowly, using another draught of her soda to buy herself time to decide how to answer. "I appreciate that, Yui. I do. I just… some of it I doubt anyone could understand." You might have heard it all, Ranma thought, but I bet the idea of Jusenkyo would still curl your hair.

Yui sighed quietly, motioning to Ranma's arm with her beer bottle. "If I had to wager a guess, I'd say that scar on your wrist figures into the story somewhere."

Ranma set her glass down on the wooden countertop and covered her left wrist self-consciously with her right hand, looking down a little shamefully. "Yeah, I guess it does."

The blonde bartender nodded sagely, a sadness in her eyes. "I might understand more than you think, Ranko."

The redhead shook her head, her wavy hair prickling against the last remnants of her black eye. "I strongly doubt it."

Yui tilted her bottle back, draining the rest of it into her mouth before flicking the empty bottle over the bar into a waiting trash can. She hoped the extra mouthful of liquid courage would provide a little extra fortitude for what would come next. "Let me show you something." Her voice had lost a little bit of its trademark swagger. She reached to her left wrist with her right hand, unbuttoning the cuff of her sleeve. She then did the same with her left hand, and rolled up both her sleeves to the elbow. She turned her arms at the elbows, exposing the undersides of her forearms to the pendant light hanging over Ranma's seat at the bar. Running up her arms, from the wrist about halfway up her forearm, were a pair of long, angry, jagged scars.

Ranma tried not to, but a small gasp escaped her lips anyway, that she hid behind her hand. "What… what happened?"

Yui sighed. "I'm guessing something not too different from what happened to you." 

She looked off into the distance, wishing she'd not cast away her beer bottle and denied herself something to fidget with. "My dad was a senior manager at some fancy trading corporation downtown. He made good money, and our family did well. We spent a lot of time with the family of one of his fellow managers, the Shirikawas. I got to be really close with their daughter, Kimiko." She bit her bottom lip as the name escaped it, in an almost reverent tone of voice.

"One night, when I was seventeen, our four parents went out to a play, and Kimiko and I stayed at my place." She sniffled a little bit, her voice becoming more distant with each word. "My mother forgot the theater tickets, and they came home early, and found Kimiko and I… together… on the couch. My father was furious - all this talk about dishonoring the family, how it would ruin his career. There was so much screaming." Yui closed her eyes, raising her yellow-painted fingertips to her eyes and wiping gentle tears from them. "Kimi ran home. My father said he couldn't tolerate a… a freak like me in his house. He threw me out of the house that night, with only what I could carry."

Ranma's face was ashen as she listened to her new sister's story. She started to respond, but saw Yui inhale to continue speaking, and yielded.

"I walked for maybe three, four hours, and I didn't have any idea where to go. I thought maybe Kimi's parents would be more understanding, and maybe they'd let me crash there for a few days until I figured out what to do." She fidgeted idly with a coaster in her fingers, so as not to make eye contact with her companion.

"I called her house from a payphone, and her father answered. He said he'd just gotten off the phone with my dad, and he knew everything. I begged Mr. Shirakawa for forgiveness, but he told me he would put Kimi on the phone to say goodbye, because she'd never be allowed to see me again." She shivered a little, another tear starting to slice its way through her foundation. "He… he went to her room to get her, and…" She relented, letting herself start to cry. It wasn't a desperate sob, but the sort of quiet sadness that comes from a wound that had started, but not yet finished, healing. "He found her on the floor next to an empty bottle of her mother's sleeping pills."

Ranma gasped. "Oh, Yui…"

"I killed her, Ranko. I loved her, and I killed her as surely as if I'd shot her. And I… I couldn't live with it. I found a broken bottle in the alley right back there, and…" She held up her wrists to finish the sentence her words could not. "I should have died with her that night."

Ranma patted her arm reassuringly. "But Hana found you?"

Yui shook her head, trying to stop crying. "Ayako. She wrapped my arms with her scarf until the paramedics came. She saved my life. The doctors called my parents from the hospital, and they denied they even knew me. They didn't care what happened to me, or to Kimi. But Ayako stayed with me, and she and Mama brought me here when I got discharged."

Ranma was aghast. What could I possibly say to something like that? Worse, does Yui think that I did this scar on my wrist myself? That I tried to… kill myself? She supposed, in a sense, something of her did die that day. And, though she had not admitted it to any of her new coworkers and… sisters, strange as the word felt tickling the back of her mind, she could not deny that the thought had not occurred to her on many occasions as her money and options had dwindled while she lived on the street.

She reached across from her, putting her arms around Yui's shoulders as best she could without falling off the stool. "Yui, I'm so sorry."

Yui shuddered a little bit in Ranma's arms, beginning to re-button her sleeves. "Anyway." She spoke matter-of-factly, trying to force a clinical distance from her pain to regain her composure. "We all bear the scars of the worst days of our lives," she said as she smoothed out her cuffs, "... but we don't have to let them define us." She nodded resolutely, trying to will herself back out of the dark place she had allowed herself to visit. She reached over the bar, getting herself another beer from the ice well and popping it open with the tool on her belt. "Alright, kid. Your turn."

Ranma rocked back on the stool. How could she possibly follow Yui's story, especially when most of what she'd been through, she couldn't explain? She might not hold it against Ranma, but she doubted Yui would believe anything about the Full-Body Cat's Tongue or the cursed springs of Jusenkyo. She could prove it, she supposed, but the catharsis she'd get from sharing that experience wasn't worth the mental or physical agony involved with taking her male form again.

"Yui, I wish I could tell you everything. Believe me, I do. I… I really do feel like I can trust you. But, some of it… I just can't right now. Maybe someday, but right now it's too soon for me. But I'll tell you what I can."

Yui nodded. "There's no pressure, Ranko. Say whatever you want. Saying nothing is okay too. I just wanted you to know I'm in a position to understand, and maybe even help. We're all here for you."

Ranma took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Time for some really interesting tap dancing. She didn't want to lie to them any more, but she also wasn't ready to let the cat, or its tongue, fully out of the bag just yet. She wasn't sure she ever wanted them to know her real name, or the circumstances that brought this redheaded girl into existence.

"So, hell, where do I start? Well, I told you that my pop had me in an arranged marriage to his friend's kid. It turns out, he'd actually promised me to more than one person. So they all were fighting over who got to have me, and nobody stopped to listen to what I wanted - and I was pretty much always in the crossfire. Every time one of them would do something shady, the others would blame me, and so I was constantly getting in trouble for stuff, and getting jumped on my way to school, and getting… groped and kissed by random guys. I was just trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with myself, ya know? I couldn't really have friends, 'cause everybody I could hang out with either wanted to kick my ass for not picking their favorite person to marry, or to kick my ass because they wanted to date somebody I was promised to, or who just wanted me."

Yui rested her fingers comfortingly on the back of Ranma's hand on the bar counter, saying nothing and letting her continue to tell her story.

"Well, one of the other families I was promised to was big into this weird Chinese law thing where it was, like, really bad for their honor if I turned them down. And…" She swallowed her saliva, trying to find a way to explain that could keep both its vagueness and her composure intact. "It's not that I didn't pick them; I didn't pick anybody. I just wanted to be left alone, to figure out what the hell was going on in my own head before I worried about settling down with anybody. But that wasn't enough for them, and… they hurt me. Bad. To punish me." 

Discussing her challenges with engagements and relationships was getting really tricky without using names or genders, but she continued. "And it… it broke something in me - something that can't ever be fixed. After that, none of them wanted me anymore. Even my father was done with me because he couldn't sell me off for anything else, and because I couldn't carry on his precious legacy. I was damaged goods. My father and I were still staying with his friend's family, so I was stuck living under the same roof with the person I was supposed to marry, when we weren't gonna get married anymore. It was… awkward. Plus, they let their creepy old sensei stay there sometimes, and he…" She shuddered. "Let's just say grappling isn't the only way he likes to put his hands on girls." 

Yui cringed, saying nothing and letting the younger girl continue.

"I couldn't stay there and feel like the only one who wanted me there was an ancient lecher. I felt like a total freeloader when I couldn't keep up my end of the deal. So, I left. Almost no money, no plan, two changes of clothes, like an idiot, in the middle of the night. I got as far as Shibuya, and I ran out of money. Was living rough for six or seven weeks – I honestly lost count – sleeping in the park by the train station, applying for jobs and not having much luck, and then I found this place."

Yui sighed. Poor thing. The new girl hadn't said it, but Yui could read between the lines. One of the jerk suitors must have gotten jealous, and injured her in such a way that she couldn't have children anymore. It explains why her father wouldn't have his line continued, and all of her suitors would have given up on her. And then she must have tried to take her own life, like I did. Hence the scar. She hadn't said that part either, but Yui was pretty confident with her analysis. She wished the kid's father would walk into the bar right at that moment. She might not be half the fighter the new girl was, but she would gladly accept the opportunity to pummel the bastard's face in with the baseball bat she kept under the bar counter if she could.

Yui squeezed Ranma's hand tightly in her own. "We're glad you did find us, Ranko. So glad. I can't fathom why anybody wouldn't want you, but I know we do. Look at me. Listen to me. You are wanted. You have worth. You have people that care about you." She spoke slowly, forcefully and deliberately, enunciating each syllable for maximum clarity and precision.

Ranma scoffed and turned her eyes to the back wall of the bar, blushing dismissively. "I don't know about all th.."

The blonde released her hand, instead taking Ranma's chin firmly in her hand and physically turning her head until the pair made eye contact. "Say it."

The redhead blinked in surprise. "Say what?"

Yui repeated her words more firmly, still holding the redhead's chin and forcing her to look forward into her eyes. She was determined that her young protege would internalize her words - they had saved her life, and those of all of her sisters. They had been Hana's words to her, once, and she was committed to ensuring her family's youngest ward understood the lesson. She would see to it that her new sister would learn from her misfortunes. "I am wanted. I have worth. I have people who care about me."

Ranma blushed, considering the whole exercise to be more than a little silly. "Okay. Yeah. I know. I got it."

Yui shook her head. "Say it, Ranko. Out loud. You need to hear yourself say it. Saying it to me now makes it so much easier to say it to yourself, on the days when everything else in the world is lying to you. On the days when you need the reminder in order to believe it - because you can't ever let a day go by that you don't believe it. It keeps you going. It keeps you alive. So, say it."

Ranma's eyes widened. Man, she's frickin' serious about this! She lowered her eyes, a little embarrassed to be participating in the strange self-affirming ritual. "I… I am wanted?"

Yui nodded emphatically, giving the redhead's hand another squeeze. "Yes, you are. By all of us. We're so glad you're here. What else?"

Ranma's tentative, mouselike voice strained to maintain any semblance of conviction as she mumbled the next phrase of the mantra. "I have… worth?"

Yui nodded again, smiling reassuringly. "Damn right you do. So much more than you could ever know. And what else?"

Then, and only then, could Ranma voluntarily raise her eyes to meet Yui's. At least the third part of the repeated affirmation, the women of the Phoenix had managed to convince her was true. "I have people that care about me."

Yui reached across the gap between the barstools, pulling the slender redhead into a tight hug. "And don't you dare forget it, Ranko. Not fucking ever."