Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Phoenix ❯ Chapter 11 ( Chapter 13 )

Standard Disclaimer: See Chapter 1 for the Disclaimer.

Marx's eyes shot open. He always had a problem with sleeping too lightly someplace new. And even though he was in his childhood home, he hadn't been there for the better part of six years. His eyes scanned the dark room, taking stock of where he was. There's the family room ceiling. I'm home. But where's Ranma. He could hear an odd dialect of Mandarin being spoken quietly by Ranma on the phone. There was a click as the phone was set back in the receiver.

Ranma climbed back into bed, and snuggled up next to her husband. "I'm sorry, my love."

"Why," Marx asked quietly.

"I just spoke to Balm, my old mentor from that Amazon village I spent close to a year in."

"Oh, and how is she?"

"She's fine. Pregnant again with their third child."

"I'd like to meet your surrogate family sometime. But with the way the PRC is, it'd probably be sometime.

"So what did you need to ask Balm about?"

"I…I wanted to know about the effectiveness of Jusenkyo as a cure for cancer."

Marx sat up at that. "What did she say?"

Ranma sighed. "She told me that the inherent magical properties of the Springs could be a cure for cancer, but only in the early stages of the disease."

Marx sighed. "I see." When his father was diagnosed a few years ago, it was already too late for him-M Stage prostate cancer. Medication kept it under control, but it came back with a pure vengeance.

"I'm sorry…" Ranma was about to apologize, when Marx placed his fingers over her mouth. "You tried," he said. "Modern medicine tried. But…I've come to accept that when it's time to go, no amount of kicking and screaming is going to prevent it." He ran his hand along his wife's swollen belly. "Sure, I'd love for my father to meet his grandson or -daughter, but I grew up not knowing my mother's father. And we lost Dad's mom when I was just starting high school."

"Yeah, but my father's in jail," Ranma said sarcastically.

"It's his fault that he kidnapped you, love. But I'm glad he was caught. I'd hate to think of you being railroaded into another marriage."

"No, I just got railroaded into a different marriage," Ranma teased, as she playfully kissed her husband. "But I'm glad you found me, and offered me the opportunity that you gave me."

Marx closed his wife's eyes. "Get some sleep. I have the feeling that it's going to be a long day tomorrow."

The next time Marx cracked open his eyes, Ranma was curled up next to him, snoring away. This time, it was the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway that woke him as a car pulled out and headed up the street. Deciding sleep was far from his mind, Marx threw a t-shirt and shorts on and headed outside. The backyard was, in the middle aged captain's mind, always peaceful-a refuge from the insanity of the outside world. As he grew up in this yard, it became even more so, especially when the pond was added.

He sank down, a little less than gracefully, into a lotus position, and cleared his mind. As Ranma taught her husband the family school, she took a different approach than her good for nothing father. Instead of showing him once, and berating him if he didn't, Ranma showed Marx that meditation first to clear the mind of distractions, was a method of learning the Art.

The bubbling of the waterfall, the occasional splash as one of the koi broke the surface of the pond, the chirp of a bird all focused his meditations. Slowly he rose up, and began the very first kata his wife had shown him. He performed it slowly, not for any lack of familiarity, but to focus his attention away from distractions. As he shifted into the next kata seamlessly, he began to pick up the pace and increased his tempo.

Ranma had, by this time, come outside, and was going through her own warm up katas. At some unknown signal, the couple began to spar, gentle pokes replacing full body hits, especially when Marx managed to sneak through his wife's defenses. The spar lasted a full ten minutes of Marx on the defensive; before his wife got a good, yet short, kick in.

Marx sat up in the deep end of the pond. "What did you do that for?" Ranma smiled cutely at him. "Uncute tomboy," he muttered.

"It was just such a perfect opportunity," she said, as she helped him out of the pond. "Besides, the last time I knocked someone into water was in China." There was a big grin, as she remembered knocking Xian Pu into the village water supply while they sparred.

Her husband rolled his eyes at her. "Remind me not to take you down the street to the brook. I'm going to go take a shower."

"Can I join you?" Ranma asked brightly.

"Well…" Marx flipped his wife into the pond. "Now you can."

"That wasn't nice," she said. "Perverted jerk."

He helped her out of the pond. "Pervert, I am. Jerk, I'm not."

They headed inside to get cleaned up, leaving a trail of water from the pond.

"Chris!" He heard his mother call several times, as the hot water in the shower pulsed between to couple.

Marx sighed, and climbed out of the shower, throwing his robe on, and headed downstairs. "Yeah, what's up?" He asked, before he noticed the tear streaked eyes on his mother's face. "What happened?" His tone changed significantly.

"Your father…died last night," she said with as much composure as she could maintain. Son pulled mother into a hug, as they shared the same feeling of pain. "His last words to the nurse were 'I want to go home.'"

"I'm sorry, Mom. I wish there was something that I could have done."

"I know. I know," she replied.

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The days following the death of his father were hard for Marx and his family. Funeral arrangements were finalized; family members were flying in from all parts of the country. Ranma began feeling some pain in her abdomen, but thought it was their child just sensing the tension in the air, and "sparring" with her stomach.

For the family, the day of the funeral was a very somber one; even the weather conspired against them with low clouds, drizzle and cool temperatures. The Captain's grandfather had tears streaming down his cheeks as he said good bye to his eldest son, and for the eldest Marx, and indeed the whole family, this was the second time saying good bye to a father, an uncle, a brother, a son, and now a grandfather.

Marx stood at the gravesite, his Class-A uniform getting spotted by the rain, with his arm around his wife, as the minister said a few words before concluding the ceremony. The emotions they were sharing were indescribable feelings of loss, Marx for the father he'd known, and Ranma for the father in law that treated her like a daughter. The couple stayed there, for a while after the family began to walk back to their cars.

As they walked back to the rental, Ranma felt a sudden sharp stabbing pain. Marx looked at his wife grimacing in pain. "You all right?"

She grimaced again, as another contraction hit her. "No, I'm not. I think it's time…" She tightened her grip on her husband's arm. "And we're early, too."

"We're not far from a hospital. Do you want to go?"

She nodded. "I think my water broke." Marx inwardly grimaced as they got into the car. The hospital in question was quite literally up the road, but since the street was a one way, and they were already past the hospital, they had to take a five minute drive around the block to get back to the emergency room.

As Ranma was being rushed up to the labor and delivery suite, her husband was being buried under an avalanche of admissions paperwork, which got deeper as the military admissions forms were dusted off.

Finally released from Admitting, Marx rushed up to the delivery room, two or three steps at a time. The clerk at the nurse's station directed him to the room, but he really didn't need her help. Her mezzo-soprano voice could be heard down the hall, cursing her father, her husband, Jusenkyo in Japanese; all in one loud sentence that she repeated. Concerned as he was for his wife and child, Marx couldn't help but chuckle at how the voice that had so teased and seduced him at various times sounded worse than a sailor right now.

Taking her slim hand, he placed his hand on her head. "Just relax, and let the doctors do their job," he told her in quiet Japanese

"Relax?" She bellowed in the same language. Her comment was cut off by a grunt, as she pushed. "You did this to me!" She looked at the doctor, and loudly proclaimed that her husband's parentage was of questionable origins.

The medical staff, used to listening to such abusive behavior, ignored her comments. One of the nurses looked at Marx, standing there incongruous with a surgical smock covering his Class As. "First time?"

Marx nodded as another contraction was transmitted from his wife to through her hand to him. The pain caused him to grimace. He thought he heard bones cracking as his wife squeezed…hard. The doctor, looking for all the world like Johnny Bench kneeling behind home plate, announced: "I see the head. Just a few more pushes Mrs. Marx." She complied, sharing the pain with her husband. "Ok, one shoulder's out. That's the hard part…" The delivery room was filled with the sound of a baby crying after a few more minutes. "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Marx. It's a boy." The unmistakable snip of scissors was buried under the child's cries. The doctor placed their child in Ranma's arms.

The couple smiled at the wrinkly bundle in the former Saotome's arms. A tuft of downy red hair showed he was Ranma's son. Marx bent down and kissed his wife's forehead. "Congratulations, Mrs. Marx."

Ranma smiled at her husband. "Congratulations, Mr. Marx." She looked down at their son, then back at her husband. "What's going to happen when September rolls around? I still have two years of school left, anata."

"We still have a few months to figure it out, my love. We'll think of something."

"So, what did we decide on?"

"Why not honor your grandfather and my father. Saburo John Marx."

"I like it," she agreed. She closed her eyes, as the nurse from the nursery came in and retrieved their son.