Nabiki looked at her little sister hunched over and crying in her chair. Akane looked so small right now. As she looked at Akane, she couldn't not see the little girl Akane had been not that long ago.
Akane was still trying to hold it together, but she could tell her little sister was just barely holding on. Her small frame was shuddering as she fought back the tears.
"Oh, Akane, come here!" She said as she set her plates aside and held her arms open for her.
Akane half collapsed out of the chair and half dove into her arms. Akane wrapped her hands around her waist and buried her face into her chest; then her little sister let go and cried harder than she could ever remember her crying.
After many minutes had passed, Akane whispered to her with her face still buried into her chest. "I've been trying ... I've been trying ... to not care. I've tried to get past it. I've tried to ignore you two. None of it's working. It hurts so bad, Nabiki! Why ... why are you doing this to me? Is it for money? Were you being serious back when you asked for money for him? I'll ... I'll pay..." Akane said in a weak voice. She had never heard her sister sound more defeated than she did right now.
Tears sprang into her eyes as she held her little sister and tried to comfort her.
What the hell do I tell her?
I promised not to interfere!
Should I give her advice to get him back?
Should I help her get over him?
Her thoughts crashed into each other as she tried to figure out what to say. A lot of jokes jumped into the front of her mind, but she ignored them. She didn't think Akane would appreciate any of them.
"I ... don't ... want money, for him, Akane." She said as carefully as she could.
Akane pulled back from her so she could look her in the eyes. Her little sister's makeup was smeared. Tears were streaming down Akane's cheeks, and her eyes were red. Akane's mouth was open as she gasped for breath while she sobbed. She felt terrible. She had never, ever, wanted to hurt Akane like this.
"W-what do you want, then? What is this all about? Why are you doing this to me?" Akane asked in between sobs as she looked into her eyes.
She swallowed hard and opened her mouth to answer Akane, but no sound came out. She tried again, and pushed harder, and still nothing. She took a deep breath and reached down into her core and grabbed hold tightly to her courage and tried again. "I'm not trying ... to do anything ... to you, Akane." She said as gently as she could.
Akane screwed her face up into an even worse cry and dropped her head back down, and bawled. She was extremely grateful that the nurse had locked them in the office together. The nurse had probably seen this coming, if she actually was a friend of Doctor Tofu's.
She honestly had no idea what to say to Akane, so she just held her and rocked side to side as she stroked her hair and rubbed her back. Eventually, Akane calmed down enough to ask another question.
"A-are you serious about him? Or is this just a big game to you?" She asked with her face still buried into her lap.
"I ... I'm serious." She said hesitantly. She knew the truth was going to upset Akane, but she had nothing else left to use. She had promised not to interfere. So she couldn't give her advice or coaching. But Akane deserved some answers, and the only way she could do that and keep her promises to Ranma would be to tell Akane the unvarnished truth.
"I... I don't understand ... why Ranma?" Akane asked as her breathing slowed a little. Her little sister's frame was still shuddering from the sobs trying to get out, though.
"It's ... hard to describe, Akane. I've kind of ... always ... had a thing for him." She said, embarrassed. She didn't like talking about her feelings with anyone except Doctor Tofu or Kasumi, and only when she was alone with them. Telling Akane her feelings made her feel more vulnerable than she could feel even if she was staring down a dozen copies of Kodachi while stark naked.
"But ... why Ranma?" Akane asked as she clenched her body in her arms and more sobs shook her as she let them out.
She stroked Akane's hair for a long while before she answered. "I ... can't really tell you why. I was very excited to see Ranma when Daddy first told us he was coming. The fact that he appeared to be a girl at first threw me off a little. When we found out about his curse, I kind of panicked."
"You and Kasumi said he should be engaged to me." Akane said weakly but insistently.
She nodded. "That's true, we did. And ..." she braced herself to tell the truth, "I have kind of regretted that almost since the day I said it." She said as honestly as she could. Akane didn't say anything to that, so she continued. "Ranma is ... very special, he—"
Akane interrupted her in a pleading voice. "But ... you're so beautiful, Nabiki. You're smart and talented and funny. You could have any guy you wanted—"
"Oh, Akane ... come on, you're just as beautiful, and smar—"
"Why does it have to be Ranma?!" Akane shouted as she pulled her head back from her and interrupted her. "Can't you ... can't you leave me Ranma? All I have is Martial Arts ... you can have whoever else you want ... please ... please, Nabiki ... please ... don't do this to me." Akane said in a strangled voice as tears streamed down her face.
She could tell Akane was beyond desperate. Akane seemed to be panicked, out of control, and completely adrift. She needed Kasumi, or Doctor Tofu, or even Daddy here. She wasn't equipped to handle this level of heartbreak.
"Please?" Akane whispered again as she buried her face into her chest once more and continued to cry.
Her heart broke.
She frantically scooted to the edge of the table, and moved Akane with her as she slid down to the floor with her as best she could. She rested her back against the base of the examination table. Then she wrapped her little sister up in her arms and pulled Akane's head up to her shoulder like Kasumi had done with her, and rocked with her as she whispered soft shushing noises to her as she sobbed right along with her.
I don't know what to do!
I don't know what to do!
I don't know what to do!
She would have given a lot for the nurse to come back and help her help Akane. Hell, she would even settle for Kodachi attacking again, at least that would distract Akane.
As Akane's sobbing quieted down as the minutes passed, she decided she was safe to tell Akane as much of the truth as she could. It felt like a white-hot sword was stabbing her in the heart right now. The dragon inside her was hiding.
She knew she was about to get very close to interfering with Akane and Ranma's relationship, but she had to help Akane. She couldn't live with herself if she left Akane as miserable as she was right now. She wouldn't tell Akane what to do about Ranma, so it would be minimal interference, and she would tell Ranma she had done it, and accept the consequences of the broken promise from him.
Even if that means he calls the whole thing off. She thought sadly.
She couldn't ... she just couldn't leave Akane adrift like she was. "Akane?" She asked softly as she continued to rock back and forth with her and stroke her hair.
Akane responded by nodding her head into her shoulder. She could feel her sister clenching her body and trying to control the tears as more squeezed out hot onto her neck and shoulder. Her dress was damp in multiple places now.
"Akane, listen to me, all right?" She said in her own shaky voice. Akane nodded again. "Did Kasumi talk to you about Mom's advice on boys?" Akane nodded. 
"Do you know?" She whispered.
Akane looked up at her and locked eyes with her and slowly shook her head back and forth, then stopped and nodded once, hesitantly.
"Well, the best I can tell you is, if you think he is the one for you, if you look at him, and you know he is for you, then you should ask yourself what you are going to do about that."
"But ... you're engaged to him, Nabiki." Akane whispered. Her little sister closed her eyes and shuddered as she tried to control her body which clearly wanted to continue crying.
"I don't own Ranma, Akane." She said hesitantly. She was about to tell Akane something that skated dangerously close to the edge of what she felt was absolutely private between just her and Ranma. "Ranma is free ... to choose you, or me, or Kasumi, or Ukyo, or whoever he wants." She said in a shaky voice.
Akane looked up at her with eyes shining with tears. "But, he's with you..."
She shook her head. "That stupid engagement thing Daddy came up with, doesn't matter. If you know, then you should ask yourself what you should do about that. I can't ... I can't tell you what to do." She said carefully.
"But ... I fight with him all the time. He can be so ... so ... careless, you know?"
She did know, but she didn't want to get into this with Akane. She felt that if she did, she really would start to interfere with Akane and Ranma's relationship. So, she smiled and nodded, but stayed silent.
"But, he can also be ... sweet, and he's so loyal, and and and ... " Akane broke down into tears again. She just held her little sister and waited.
"I'm sorry. Okay?! I'm sorry, Nabiki! I'm sorry I got mad and was immature and gave his engagement to you!" Akane said in between gasps as she cried in her arms.
"It's all right, Akane. It is." She said as she rocked her back and forth and whispered soft shushing sounds to her.
"I'm sorry ... I ... I didn't mean to ... can I ... can I have him back?" Akane asked, heartbroken.
If her heart hadn't already shattered for Akane, it would have again at that. She thought about bending her promise to Ranma even farther, and to give Akane some advice.
"I can't give him to you, Akane. He isn't mine to give. If you want him, you should think about how to make that happen. Is he even aware of how you feel?" She asked, carefully.
"But ... what about you, Nabiki?" Akane whimpered.
"I ... have already told him how I feel, Akane. I love you, but ... I ... think I love him too. I can't stop now. It was one thing when I was pretending not to like him before all this. But I've gone too far now to just simply stop." She said carefully. She hated doing this.
"But I ... I can't—" Akane protested weakly.
She interrupted her. "Akane, don't you have feelings for him?" She asked as she made up her mind about giving advice.
Akane nodded miserably.
Don't do it.
"Well, if you have feelings for him ..."
This is interfering, leave it alone.
"...if you have feelings for him, then tell him."
Stop, you're going to ruin everything.
"I don't think ... I can, Nabiki." Akane whispered sadly.
"In the end, Akane, in the end ... I won't hate you, or him, if he chooses you. And I hope ... I hope you won't hate me if he chooses me. But, Akane, if you want him, you are going to have to tell him. He isn't mine to give to you." She said quietly.
"But ... I can't..." Akane whimpered into her shoulder as her little sister clutched at her hard as the tears came again and she laid her head back down on her.
"Akane ... Mom told me something when I was very little." She said over Akane's crying. "I don't think I had even started school yet when she told me. It's helped me make decisions over the years, maybe it will help you." She paused and waited for Akane to look up at her, which she did a moment later with red-rimmed eyes. "She told me, Akane, to speak the truth, even if your voice shakes. I have never been one hundred percent sure what Mom meant by that, and I'm pretty sure she was quoting something. But, what I think it means is, sometimes, if something is worth doing, if something is worth having, then you have to take the risk, Akane. You have to force yourself to be brave and to do what needs to be done. Even though ... you may fail." She whispered to her.
"I'll ... I'll try, Nabiki." Akane said weakly as she started to cry again.
She held her and rocked with her for a very long time. She had no idea how much time had passed, but she knew it has been much longer than the quarter hour the nurse had told her she needed to wait before she left.
Slowly, slowly, Akane started to come back to herself. She stroked her hair and held her, and waited. Eventually, Akane pulled her head back from her and looked at her with very sad eyes. She could see in Akane's eyes all of the things that her little sister was too afraid to tell Ranma, or even herself for that matter.
She decided to try to distract her. "Akane, can you tell me something?" She asked gently. Her little sister nodded as she sniffled. She reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a tissue and handed it to her as she continued. "Why did Ranma have to hold you back from Kodachi? Why were you trying to hit her after she was down?"
"Ranma ... had to ... what?" Akane asked in confusion.
"Don't you remember?" She asked, curious.
"N-No. I was running towards you, trying to get to you before Kodachi hit you. I guess Ranma must have been coming from another angle, because I didn't see him until he appeared in front of you and stopped her right before I got there. Then ... I don't know, I have no memory of anything after that. I saw a lot of ... white. I ... everything is fuzzy. When I try to remember, it's like I have a memory of staring into the sun. I remember turning to you on the ground and going to check on you. But I don't remember anything between Ranma arriving and stopping the club, and when I went to check on you." She said in a shaky voice.
"Why ... do you think ... you can't remember?" She asked, very curious now. She made a mental note to ask Ranma and Doctor Tofu about it. Maybe it was something about the Art?
"I ... I don't know. I just remember being scared, and trying to get to you ... before it was too late, before you were ta..." Akane trailed off.
"Before I was what?" She asked gently.
Akane shook her head rapidly as she scrunched her face up into tears again. She sighed and pulled her back into a hug. Clearly Akane wasn't in the right frame of mind to talk about it right now. So she just went back to holding her. In the back of her mind, she was aware that her legs were going numb, and her back was starting to hurt, and her bottom was cold sitting on the floor. But none of that mattered right now. Akane needed her.
A long while later they both jumped when the end-of-school bell rang. They had been in the nurse's office for hours. Akane sat back out of her lap and looked at her with an expression that was a mixture of gratitude and sorrow.
She had no more words for Akane that would make her feel better, and she could tell Akane didn't know what to say to her. They both stood on shaky legs and looked at each other uneasily.
She was uneasy because she knew Akane wasn't better, and it was basically her fault. She knew Akane was uneasy because she was the source of Akane's pain, but she had also tried to help Akane. It was a strange situation.
She grabbed the cookies off the plate the nurse had given her, and handed half of them to her little sister. Akane looked down at them, then at her and sniffled before she was able to talk. "Shouldn't ... shouldn't you take them, Nabiki? The nurse said for you to eat all of them."
"No, the nurse said she wouldn't judge me if I only ate the cookies." She said as she grabbed a rice-ball and wolfed it down. Now that she was standing, she actually did feel quite hungry. She grabbed another and ate that one too and smiled at Akane. Akane smiled back and took the cookies.
"I love you, big sister." Akane said with tears in her eyes.
"I love you too, little sister." She replied.
They both made efforts to make themselves more presentable to the general school population, but it was a lost cause for both of them. Akane had red eyes and ruined makeup along with tear-stained clothes.
As for herself, she was dirty from her fight with Kodachi, as well as having red eyes and tear-stained clothing. She was sure her makeup was ruined too. Both of them were a mess; they'd probably scare people in the halls. She smiled at that. She liked the idea of the Tendo sisters both walking down the halls like badasses scaring people away from them. Of course, they would look more like badasses if they didn't look like they had been crying.
She sighed and put the cookies in her pocket as she walked with Akane towards the exit. Akane followed behind her by half a step. Akane didn't say anything else, or look up.
Poor Akane. She's probably trying to figure out how she can bring herself to tell Ranma how she feels. She thought. I wonder if she is going to try to tell him as soon as we get to her classroom? She looked sideways at her little sister and tried not to feel jealous. If Akane told him, then that would just give Ranma all that more of a fair choice. If, by some miracle, Akane told him, and he still ended up picking her over Akane, then she wouldn't ever have to doubt that he had just picked her because Akane hadn't seemed like a viable option.
She opened the door to the nurse's office, and froze for a moment. The nurse was standing there, across the hall, with her hands in her pockets as she hummed to herself. She had obviously been standing guard over the door. She felt a surge of affection for the nurse then.
As soon as the nurse saw Akane, she clicked her tongue in worry and hurried over to Akane and pulled her into a hug. It was a mom-hug. It was the kind of hug Kasumi gave, and that she remembered Mom giving.
Akane didn't say anything, but she did sink into the hug. After a few moments, Akane seemed to sag into the Nurse as she let something go. A few moments after that Akane buoyed up again and stood back away from the nurse a little taller.
"There now, that's much better." The Nurse said as she reached over and wiped a tear away from Akane's face then patted her on the shoulder. She smiled at that. She was glad someone could comfort Akane after the mediocre job she had done.
The nurse then turned and swooped over to her and pulled her into a hug as well. She couldn't explain it, but some power in the nurse pulled out some of the anguish inside her, and got rid of it. After a few moments, she felt lighter. She didn't feel like skipping through the halls and whistling, but she felt a little bit more like better times were ahead.
She leaned back from the nurse and stared hard into her eyes. "You're no ordinary nurse, are you?" She whispered. The nurse shrugged. "Do you know Doctor Tofu Ono?" She asked.
The nurse smiled slyly with only a corner of her mouth. "Maybe." Was all she said.
"Are you even a real nurse?" She asked.
The nurse grinned. "Let's just say, I can fill in for a nurse with no problem."
She smiled back softly. "What's your name?"
The nurse thought about that for a moment, then smiled again. "You can call me, Miso."
She smiled at that. "Well, Miso, thank you so much, for ... everything." She said softly.
Miso locked eyes with her, reached over and grasped her forearms gently as she rubbed them kindly with her thumbs. "It was my great pleasure." Miso's eyes shimmered with kindness as she put heavy emphasis on the word great.
She nodded shakily. She suddenly didn't trust her voice to speak.
Akane jumped in then. "Yes, thank you. Will ... will we see you again?"
Miso smiled kindly at them both as she stepped back. "You'll see me, if you need me. I have a great many debts to pay off yet. Don't worry. While you're here at the school, you're being watched over. Now go, I'm sure Ranma's waiting for both of you."
She and her sister both nodded, and bowed politely to Miso, then turned to head back to the main hallway that connected to the small hallway the nurse's office was located at. She could already see crowds of students in the main hallway.
She turned back to say something else to Miso, but nobody was there. She smiled at that. Just like Doctor Tofu. She thought to herself.
She walked with Akane hand in hand back towards Akane's classroom. They were heading against the flow of students streaming towards the exits. Nobody came within more than half a meter of them, though. She guessed nobody wanted to get involved with two tear-stained girls, one of whom was still dirty from rolling around on the ground earlier.
As they got closer to Akane's classroom, Akane drifted from right next to her, to slowly behind her. When they were only one corner away, she felt Akane stop. She turned and found Akane standing motionless behind her, still holding on to her hand, and looking down at the floor. The stream of students continued to flow around them, but she barely noticed them.
 "Akane...?"
"I ... I can't."
She nodded and let go of her little sister's hand. "See you at dinner?" Akane nodded again, then looked up at her and met her eyes. Akane had in her eyes all of the things she still couldn't seem to say. It made her ... very sad.
Without another word, Akane turned around, and melted into the crowd. She lost sight of her almost immediately. She watched the crowd for a few more moments after that and sadly tried to think of ways to make her little sister feel better. She couldn't think of anything.
With a sigh, she turned around again, and turned the corner into the hallway where Ranma and Akane's classroom was located. Ranma was standing against the wall opposite to the door of his classroom. He had his back to the windows and was watching the corner she rounded. She saw him notice her immediately. He smiled and bounded over to her quickly. It made her ... happy ... that he was so eager to see her. The crowd parted for him too. She didn't think it was for the same reasons they had avoided her and Akane. She was pretty sure the crowd stayed away from him because they both respected and feared him. Not to mention the fact that Ranma tended to get attacked all the time, everywhere. It was wise to keep one's distance from him.
She didn't want to be wise. She ran into his arms and tackled him. He caught her and swept her up into a massive hug. She laid her head on his shoulder and smiled. She knew people were gawking at them as he held her in the middle of the hallway outside his classroom. She didn't care.
"I'm so sorry, Nabiki. I didn't mean—"
"I'm sorry, too. Emotions and adrenaline, you know?"
"I know. I was just ... I was so scared. When that nurse person came and stopped me in the hall and told me I had to get to you right away, that you were in danger ... it was like the world stopped. I don't even really remember runnin' to you. All I remember was the nurse tellin' me ta get to you, and then stoppin' Kodachi. Everything else is a blur."
"I'm so sorry, Ranma. I promise, I'll yell in the future if I am attacked when I am alone." She whispered into his ear.
"You'd better ... not that I want to let you be alone again." He whispered back.
She smiled. She knew what he was really saying to her. Loyalty and guarding her were some of the ways Ranma showed how he felt.
As the crowds died down, she stayed in his arms. Eventually, she stirred and whispered to him again. "Ready to go buy ourselves some time?"
"I'll go with you anywhere you want, Nabiki."
She smiled radiantly at that and laid her head back down on his shoulder. "I may hold you to that." She said happily.
"Should we get going?" He asked softly.
She shook her head. "Five more minutes." She whispered. "It's been a long day."