[Fic][Ranma] A Mother's Smile
Jul. 17th, 2011 15:59![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leasspell_daelTitle: A Mother's Smile
Characters/Pairings: Kasumi
Rating: T
Last Revised: 2005/10/01
Word Count: 1900
Status: Tentatively complete, see Note at the end.
Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 is the property of Takahashi Rumiko, Shogakukan Inc, and VIZ Media. I don't own it, nor do I pretend that I do. Even if I did, the army of lawyers that would come after me would make me change my mind.
A Mother's Smile
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfiction
By Jade Dixon
Kasumi watched as the young man turned into a young girl and thought, 'No. This is too much to ask.' Even so, she felt slightly guilty as she pushed forward her youngest sister as the "perfect" candidate. For years now she had tried to protect her sisters, shelter them, be the mother they could barely remember. It felt like betrayal, as if she were shirking her duties. But she only had so much strength, and she knew that if she took this engagement, she would break.
Akane was young. Akane was strong. Akane would adapt and survive.
And Kasumi never even thought that perhaps she too would be young enough to adapt and survive. The three years that separated them felt more like a lifetime. She was beginning to tire.
Kasumi quickly realized after Ranma arrived that she was going to have to learn to adapt, even if they weren't engaged. Strange things happened one after the other, and she couldn't keep up with it all. Eventually, she just took everything as normal, no matter how strange it seemed. Her family had grown, there were more people to take care of now. She knew her role; the one she had taken up of her own volition when their mother had died. She was the new mother, the one who cooked the meals, cleaned the house, and kissed scrapes better. And like all mothers, she was not seen as a person, but as an idea. She created an island of stability in the middle of chaos, and as long as that island remained, everyone was happy.
And Kasumi could live with that. For it was an idea that was loved and cherished, even if rarely expressed beyond a quick thanks in their whirlwind lives.
She could live with that, she thought to herself, smile fixed firmly in place.
Nabiki had brought home college applications the other day. She discussed them enthusiasticly with Akane, gauging her chances at acceptence here, figuring out the forms for there, pondering if she could afford to live in residence, or if she'd be better off attending something local. It was an excited babble in the dining room that filled Kasumi's heart with wistfulness and she washed the dishes.
Two years ago she had brought home college applications too. They had been tucked secretly in her bag, and poured over with a sense of the forbidden after everyone else had gone to bed. She'd had dreams of becoming a doctor, of helping more people than just her family. And while she worried of what her family would think, of how they would survive without her if she went away, she dismissed it. She would be an adult soon, and it was time to start planning for her own life. But she had kept the applications secret, nonetheless.
Her hopes had been crushed when Akane had gotten sick. A flu gone out of control. There was no time to study, and she missed the entrance exams. By the time her youngest sister was on the mend again, she was exhausted. She held the note from the doctor, which she could attach to the form requesting a deferred examination. Her hands shook, and the paper rustled audibly from the movement. Her entire body ached with the desire to rest, to just lay down and forget about these silly dreams that could never become reality.
And with her hands still shaking, she ripped the papers to shreds, and with it her hopes for the future. She cried well into the night, but by the time she got up the next morning, her smile was fixed firmly in place again. A mother's smile, meant to comfort her children, and mask her despair.
When the house became too oppressive, when the thought of never living her own life became too much, she went to visit Doctor Tofu.
She remembered when he had first set up practice in Nerima. He had started off doing a work term with the local chiropractor, and wound up taking over for the old man when he had retired.
She had been charmed by him. He was young, driven, intelligent. He was doing all the things she had hoped to do when she got older. She wanted to talk to him, to learn about the trade, of what was required, but she was too shy. She was always arriving with her accident-prone sister in tow, and felt too embarrassed to speak up.
His behaviour had changed subtly at first. From blushing, to blushing and stammering, to blushing and stammering and clumsiness, more and more until she never saw the intelligent young man who had arrived, but a love-struck fool.
And she saw him as a fool. For he didn't love *her*. He didn't even *know* her. She had been too shy to communicate with him. But he had let a crush grow out of control, had created a perfect woman from the few things he did know about her. The woman he loved, that he made a fool of himself for, was nothing but a fantasy. A fantasy he was trapped within, and couldn't make his way out of to learn the truth.
And so someone else had turned her into an Idea rather than a Person.
She visited him and borrowed medical books, the closest she would ever get now to reaching her youthful goals. She smiled kindly at him, and pretended not to notice that he made a clown of himself. It was the least she could offer to that intelligent young man she had glimpsed briefly, long ago. Internally she mourned what had been lost. Perhaps if they had actually *talked* to each other in those early days, this could have been avoided. Perhaps then they would have had the possibility of something more.
Instead, she visited, smiled, borrowed books, and left, all without ever meeting the wonderful Doctor Tofu that everyone else got to see. But still she came back, for hope that one day he would be there.
Every now and again, she broke.
She was careful about it, though. Never when people were around, never where people could see. In public she was Kasumi, Eye of the Storm, Mother to the Masses, and Ideal Woman.
But in the storage room, she was just Kasumi.
She searched through boxes, covered in dust, for something *anything* that might have belonged to their mother. But it couldn't be something she had already found, that would be cheating. But finding something new, it gave her strength. It reminded her of why she did this.
Her mother's weak smile as the illness ravaged her body. Weak, and getting weaker every day, she had asked to talk to Kasumi while Akane and Nabiki were sleeping, and her husband was fetching something elsewhere in the house.
"They'll need you," she had whispered softly. "They'll be lost and broken, and they'll need you to look after them, just like you're doing now." She had stroked her daughter's hair softly, a sad look in her eyes. "And I know it's not fair, to ask you to look after them when you will be hurting too, but they'll need you." It was a contract, a desperate plea to save her family after she was gone. "And once they've started to mend, then you can take the time to be lost and broken, too. And they'll have the strength to look after you." The conditions of release, clearly stated. And young Kasumi could do nothing but nod her acquiesence. Relief had spread across her mother's face, and a strong, genuine, *happy* smile had formed. "I knew I could count on you Kasumi. You've alwasy been so strong." The smile grew sleepy, and her mother began to doze, worn out by her own emotions.
Her father came back then and sent her to her own room to sleep, but she had remembered. She never forgot.
But her mother had been wrong.
Akane never mended. She continuously got into fights, and her temper raged and flared unpredictably. Kasumi was constantly forced to calm it, to exact promises she knew would only be remembered for a short while.
Nabiki never mended. She grew cold and calculating. She took advantage of her classmates for her own gain whenever she could. Kasumi lectured her about ethics and fairness, and hoped that that at least kept the blooming mercenary from going too far.
Her father never mended. He rarely taught anymore, and tears started with the least provocation. She had to prompt him some mornings to attend his classes, and knew that he constantly struggled to remember that she was his daughter, and not his wife. He never actually expressed his confusion, but she could see it sometimes in his eyes, or the way he stumbled over her name, as if he was about to say someone else's.
Perhaps she had been strong when her mother had made the request, but the intervening years had worn her down. She knew she wasn't supposed to break until the others were okay, but she hoped these concealed episodes weren't breaking her mother's trust too badly. Whenever she thought of the sick woman's final smile in the conversation, she felt guilty for her failure. She could only keep trying.
But she was only human.
And so she searched for some keepsake of her mother's, something to lend her strength for the next stretch.
Her hands found a mirror. A small, ornamental mirror that had seen better days. She traced her fingertips over the cracked surface and wondered who had earned the seven years of bad luck. Perhaps it had been herself, although she was sure she would have remembered that.
She clutched it to her chest and climbed onto the surface of a trunk in the back corner of the room. Dust had accumlated since her last visit, but whenever she got like this she didn't care. She would leave the caring for after, when it was time to rejoin the rest of the world. She rocked back and forth, still clutching at the mirror. The tears started slowly, but accelerated rapidly. She muffled her sobs on her arm and wished and wished for an end to all this, an end to the mockery that was her life.
Broken dreams. Broken hopes. Broken family. Broken emotions. Broken soul.
And suddenly she had the fierce desire to look into the mirror's fractured surface, to see her own face broken into pieces like the rest of her life was.
Her eyes were puffy, her face red. Tears had made pale tracks against her cheeks. She looked hideous, and her tears started anew. Her hands tightened around the frame and she snarled.
There was no smile on her face now.
"Why can't I just disappear? Disappear to a place where no one knows me, no one expects anything of me... Where I can been a person who people can love or hate me as they will...? Please," she begged. It wasn't a plea to anyone in particular, rather, it was just a need to get it out so that it would *exist*. "Please, I want to go to a place like that." And she curled in over herself, mirror held directly under her face. When the tears started again, they fell directly on its surface.
When the light faded, only the mirror remained.
Note: Originally, this was merely the set-up for a larger Fullmetal Alchemist crossover idea. As it doesn't look like it's going to actually get written at this point, I've down-graded it to an open-ended Ranma one-shot. Should I get inspired down the road, who knows? Maybe I'll get to write the original story. This is it for now.
Characters/Pairings: Kasumi
Rating: T
Last Revised: 2005/10/01
Word Count: 1900
Status: Tentatively complete, see Note at the end.
Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 is the property of Takahashi Rumiko, Shogakukan Inc, and VIZ Media. I don't own it, nor do I pretend that I do. Even if I did, the army of lawyers that would come after me would make me change my mind.
A Ranma 1/2 Fanfiction
By Jade Dixon
Kasumi watched as the young man turned into a young girl and thought, 'No. This is too much to ask.' Even so, she felt slightly guilty as she pushed forward her youngest sister as the "perfect" candidate. For years now she had tried to protect her sisters, shelter them, be the mother they could barely remember. It felt like betrayal, as if she were shirking her duties. But she only had so much strength, and she knew that if she took this engagement, she would break.
Akane was young. Akane was strong. Akane would adapt and survive.
And Kasumi never even thought that perhaps she too would be young enough to adapt and survive. The three years that separated them felt more like a lifetime. She was beginning to tire.
Kasumi quickly realized after Ranma arrived that she was going to have to learn to adapt, even if they weren't engaged. Strange things happened one after the other, and she couldn't keep up with it all. Eventually, she just took everything as normal, no matter how strange it seemed. Her family had grown, there were more people to take care of now. She knew her role; the one she had taken up of her own volition when their mother had died. She was the new mother, the one who cooked the meals, cleaned the house, and kissed scrapes better. And like all mothers, she was not seen as a person, but as an idea. She created an island of stability in the middle of chaos, and as long as that island remained, everyone was happy.
And Kasumi could live with that. For it was an idea that was loved and cherished, even if rarely expressed beyond a quick thanks in their whirlwind lives.
She could live with that, she thought to herself, smile fixed firmly in place.
Nabiki had brought home college applications the other day. She discussed them enthusiasticly with Akane, gauging her chances at acceptence here, figuring out the forms for there, pondering if she could afford to live in residence, or if she'd be better off attending something local. It was an excited babble in the dining room that filled Kasumi's heart with wistfulness and she washed the dishes.
Two years ago she had brought home college applications too. They had been tucked secretly in her bag, and poured over with a sense of the forbidden after everyone else had gone to bed. She'd had dreams of becoming a doctor, of helping more people than just her family. And while she worried of what her family would think, of how they would survive without her if she went away, she dismissed it. She would be an adult soon, and it was time to start planning for her own life. But she had kept the applications secret, nonetheless.
Her hopes had been crushed when Akane had gotten sick. A flu gone out of control. There was no time to study, and she missed the entrance exams. By the time her youngest sister was on the mend again, she was exhausted. She held the note from the doctor, which she could attach to the form requesting a deferred examination. Her hands shook, and the paper rustled audibly from the movement. Her entire body ached with the desire to rest, to just lay down and forget about these silly dreams that could never become reality.
And with her hands still shaking, she ripped the papers to shreds, and with it her hopes for the future. She cried well into the night, but by the time she got up the next morning, her smile was fixed firmly in place again. A mother's smile, meant to comfort her children, and mask her despair.
When the house became too oppressive, when the thought of never living her own life became too much, she went to visit Doctor Tofu.
She remembered when he had first set up practice in Nerima. He had started off doing a work term with the local chiropractor, and wound up taking over for the old man when he had retired.
She had been charmed by him. He was young, driven, intelligent. He was doing all the things she had hoped to do when she got older. She wanted to talk to him, to learn about the trade, of what was required, but she was too shy. She was always arriving with her accident-prone sister in tow, and felt too embarrassed to speak up.
His behaviour had changed subtly at first. From blushing, to blushing and stammering, to blushing and stammering and clumsiness, more and more until she never saw the intelligent young man who had arrived, but a love-struck fool.
And she saw him as a fool. For he didn't love *her*. He didn't even *know* her. She had been too shy to communicate with him. But he had let a crush grow out of control, had created a perfect woman from the few things he did know about her. The woman he loved, that he made a fool of himself for, was nothing but a fantasy. A fantasy he was trapped within, and couldn't make his way out of to learn the truth.
And so someone else had turned her into an Idea rather than a Person.
She visited him and borrowed medical books, the closest she would ever get now to reaching her youthful goals. She smiled kindly at him, and pretended not to notice that he made a clown of himself. It was the least she could offer to that intelligent young man she had glimpsed briefly, long ago. Internally she mourned what had been lost. Perhaps if they had actually *talked* to each other in those early days, this could have been avoided. Perhaps then they would have had the possibility of something more.
Instead, she visited, smiled, borrowed books, and left, all without ever meeting the wonderful Doctor Tofu that everyone else got to see. But still she came back, for hope that one day he would be there.
Every now and again, she broke.
She was careful about it, though. Never when people were around, never where people could see. In public she was Kasumi, Eye of the Storm, Mother to the Masses, and Ideal Woman.
But in the storage room, she was just Kasumi.
She searched through boxes, covered in dust, for something *anything* that might have belonged to their mother. But it couldn't be something she had already found, that would be cheating. But finding something new, it gave her strength. It reminded her of why she did this.
Her mother's weak smile as the illness ravaged her body. Weak, and getting weaker every day, she had asked to talk to Kasumi while Akane and Nabiki were sleeping, and her husband was fetching something elsewhere in the house.
"They'll need you," she had whispered softly. "They'll be lost and broken, and they'll need you to look after them, just like you're doing now." She had stroked her daughter's hair softly, a sad look in her eyes. "And I know it's not fair, to ask you to look after them when you will be hurting too, but they'll need you." It was a contract, a desperate plea to save her family after she was gone. "And once they've started to mend, then you can take the time to be lost and broken, too. And they'll have the strength to look after you." The conditions of release, clearly stated. And young Kasumi could do nothing but nod her acquiesence. Relief had spread across her mother's face, and a strong, genuine, *happy* smile had formed. "I knew I could count on you Kasumi. You've alwasy been so strong." The smile grew sleepy, and her mother began to doze, worn out by her own emotions.
Her father came back then and sent her to her own room to sleep, but she had remembered. She never forgot.
But her mother had been wrong.
Akane never mended. She continuously got into fights, and her temper raged and flared unpredictably. Kasumi was constantly forced to calm it, to exact promises she knew would only be remembered for a short while.
Nabiki never mended. She grew cold and calculating. She took advantage of her classmates for her own gain whenever she could. Kasumi lectured her about ethics and fairness, and hoped that that at least kept the blooming mercenary from going too far.
Her father never mended. He rarely taught anymore, and tears started with the least provocation. She had to prompt him some mornings to attend his classes, and knew that he constantly struggled to remember that she was his daughter, and not his wife. He never actually expressed his confusion, but she could see it sometimes in his eyes, or the way he stumbled over her name, as if he was about to say someone else's.
Perhaps she had been strong when her mother had made the request, but the intervening years had worn her down. She knew she wasn't supposed to break until the others were okay, but she hoped these concealed episodes weren't breaking her mother's trust too badly. Whenever she thought of the sick woman's final smile in the conversation, she felt guilty for her failure. She could only keep trying.
But she was only human.
And so she searched for some keepsake of her mother's, something to lend her strength for the next stretch.
Her hands found a mirror. A small, ornamental mirror that had seen better days. She traced her fingertips over the cracked surface and wondered who had earned the seven years of bad luck. Perhaps it had been herself, although she was sure she would have remembered that.
She clutched it to her chest and climbed onto the surface of a trunk in the back corner of the room. Dust had accumlated since her last visit, but whenever she got like this she didn't care. She would leave the caring for after, when it was time to rejoin the rest of the world. She rocked back and forth, still clutching at the mirror. The tears started slowly, but accelerated rapidly. She muffled her sobs on her arm and wished and wished for an end to all this, an end to the mockery that was her life.
Broken dreams. Broken hopes. Broken family. Broken emotions. Broken soul.
And suddenly she had the fierce desire to look into the mirror's fractured surface, to see her own face broken into pieces like the rest of her life was.
Her eyes were puffy, her face red. Tears had made pale tracks against her cheeks. She looked hideous, and her tears started anew. Her hands tightened around the frame and she snarled.
There was no smile on her face now.
"Why can't I just disappear? Disappear to a place where no one knows me, no one expects anything of me... Where I can been a person who people can love or hate me as they will...? Please," she begged. It wasn't a plea to anyone in particular, rather, it was just a need to get it out so that it would *exist*. "Please, I want to go to a place like that." And she curled in over herself, mirror held directly under her face. When the tears started again, they fell directly on its surface.
When the light faded, only the mirror remained.
end
Note: Originally, this was merely the set-up for a larger Fullmetal Alchemist crossover idea. As it doesn't look like it's going to actually get written at this point, I've down-graded it to an open-ended Ranma one-shot. Should I get inspired down the road, who knows? Maybe I'll get to write the original story. This is it for now.
