"It's been eons since you passed, I fulfilled your wishes. Each and everyone of them. I'm standing over your grave even at this very moment, a beautiful location, an outcropping that hangs over the Santurce shoreline, so that your eyes may forever be upon the sea. She rests beside you, even in death, even beyond betrayal, it was as you would have it. Everything has come into the open and only one task remains incomplete. I had to wait for that opportunity and it has finally presented itself to me. Time runs ever so short, ever so close, before the future is unfolded for all to feast upon. From within the white light you surely must gaze down upon us all, and thus I ask but one question further, what must follow? Even after completion, I am scarred, Dana, Koji, Ken, they all keep you company where as I am alone save for the company of one you know quite well. Must life continue, a new beginning if you will? I pray that somehow these words reach your ears wherever you may be, just know that even as the longest night has passed, a heavy silence still holds, a gap in time where a convergence of man and mind that came to be known as Ranma Saotome once ruled supreme. Forever is but a word undefined, for is it truly as long as they say? The opportunity is at hand and a dying man's wishes shall in fact be completed. Goodnight and goodbye Ranma Saotome, may your soul find peace beyond the beyond."

(The Queen of Winter, once throned, belonging to the late Ranma Saotome has set her vigil upon that selected spot, perhaps to shine until she burns out with the earth's final goodbye to everything it has been. He has left the site of the gravestone, a piece of paper falling from his grasp.)

"I wasn't here."

(Or there? I never knew the kid stood atop my grave and spoke these words of time, fallen like snowflakes in the winter. Yet I see him standing there preceding resurrection. But he is naught, a palace once mine is Great Falls, Maryland, given to him and new life. Yet here I am, traveling without moving.)

"Would not hell be revisiting that moment?"

(But what is hell? Is hell repetition of our greatest failures, or is hell seeing that which may never be? I see not my gatekeeper, I stand atop long forgotten grounds, two graves that clasp each others hands tightly, never seeking to let go, knowing they made their mistakes. One grave is empty, one is not.)

"I am here now."

(My hair has gotten a bit longer. It grays, spectacles set upon my face. It's warm. Clad in a black t-shirt, blue jeans and black boots, the hedgestone has worn, for there is no man to see its upkeep. I gaze upon her name once again. There were many women in my life. There was some that existed to serve a purpose, some that were business arrangements, and one that bore me a son.)

"And yet...I was her undoing too."

(A man trained at my own hand, that would turn against me, and see life robbed from bastard son and mother. Yet this woman, she was was mine, body, soul, spirit. Even as she belonged to him, she was mine and I was hers. We were each other's undoing. I stand above her grave, and I hear a voice, shrouded in the mists, her ghost in the fog.)

"I would have bore you a son."

(I turn to set eyes upon her, and I see her, clothed entirely in white, her blonde hair flowing ever so freely. She is radiant, she is majestic, yet she's gone, yet here she stands.)

Ranma: You didn't.

(She reaches out for my hand, and coldly, I refuse it.)

Amy: Would you not take of your lover's hand one final time?

(I am past the point of tears. I am past the point of vengeance, I am past the point of everything and anything that involves emotion. I have become time devoured, a black hole that has devoured itself.)

"I have become the void. I have become nothing."

(There is time, there is space. There are moons, stars, planets and galaxies, but they have faded away into blackness. What does one become when they are beyond time and space?)

Amy: Can you imagine how different life would have been had it not been for that night? What if we had made different choices? What if the man that betrayed your father was not a man that I called husband before you and I became one?

(Beyond the olde english, beyond the riddles, beyond the world we had designed for ourselves, I had never truly had a conversation with her about that. I turn to face her and I slink down upon the ground, resting my back against her tombstone and laying my head upon it.)

Ranma: Amy?

Amy: Yes?

Ranma: I'm tired.

(She sits down at my side and motions for me to hold her. I welcome this. I take her head against my chest, caressing her hair. Tears once would have streamed down this ragged face, but they no longer do.)

Amy: We never had enough time, did we?

Ranma: No. We played a part for years. We were a performance for the masses. We were storybook reading for eager eyes. We are fiction. We don't exist. Everything that were were or ever could become was halted. I've had years to reflect upon my own misdeeds. I ask myself daily if you might ever forgive me...

Amy: But you can't forgive yourself?

(It's not even that. Every decision I made, was made because I opted to make it. Every tragedy that I wove, I chose to weave it. Every life I seized, I seized it because I made that decision. Even this penance that I pay now, I made that choice. To be jailed of my own hand, to be restrained by a gatekeeper that is indeed my equal.)

Ranma: Had there been a point in time where I could have gone back and chosen differently...

Amy: You would have chosen that night?

(Here is where "hell" begins.)

Ranma: I would have warned the kid and his friends.

(She raises her head from my shoulder, puzzled eyes, an expression of betrayal set upon her lovely face. I clutch her soft face between both my hands, setting a gentle kiss upon her lips.)

Ranma: We were always destined to be that tragedy Amy. I loved you, I truly, truly loved you. If we have but one opportunity to say that during that fleeting span of time we call life, is that not enough to call it a success?

(Tears flow freely.)

Ranma: The "gatekeeper" checks on the kid from time to time. The leg has healed. He'll never compete again, he doesn't want too. He married her...

Amy: My daughter?

(I nod.)

Ranma: Would that you could see beyond time and space.

(She turns away. She knew. She saw a moment of passion, pain, that echoed throughout the night. A banshee's cry so many years ago that saw devoured time in the arms of the daughter that was hers, with him. I chose wisely, like one who sipped eternal life frm the chalice of Christ. I turn her face back towards mine.)

Ranma: She would never have been mine. I had a choice, a decision to make. She had entered my life, not as a constant for her, but to find an introduction made, to one I had wronged.

(Somehow, someway, we are woven through the tapestry of night, to an image of their home, MY home, where they are raising two sons and a daughter. There is laughter, there is "movie night", there is a home-cooked meal and the picture perfect of family. Serenada is thriving under his hand, even in this modern world. He has taken care of communities, of the less fortunate. Together, it's as if they have conquered the world. Where I am time devoured, he has surpassed everything I was, am, or ever will be. Through my tragedy, I have seen him triumph.)

Amy: Ranma...

(Might it be the last time I ever hear my name set upon her lips? Would that I might chase her through the clouds of heaven or the fires of hell? Would a tortured eternity see me chasing her without the ability to catch her? Would that we might be able to be together once again. I rise from the grave, it's as if the ground splits and a pool of blood fills it. Clothed in white, she spreads her arms like wings and falls backward, submerging. The ground closes.)

"And just like that...it's gone."

(I can smell fresh coffee.)

Man: Oy, rise and shine.

(The "gatekeeper" raps upon the bars of the "cell". I summon the strength to sit up, wiping my eyes free of the night. I look towards him and he offers a coffee. I come to my feet and take it from him. A nod of thanks.)

Man: Sleep well?

(He laughs. A bastard to his very core, no humor too dark. He knows that as I attempt to sleep, I dream. I am trapped within the prison of my own thoughts.)

Man: You ready?

(A caged beast, to be trot out for the masses once every few years to appease those who would tell us that "we still got it", and once we find ourselves the victor, "we deserve it". They are lemmings who would follow one another from the bridge to the ground below. So too must Chris Page and I perform for these rabid wolves once again. Will they appreciate it? Does it matter? When might I finally rest? Is this my penance for so many crimes committed?)

Ranma: Let's go.

(And so we shall, for an "anniversary show" this go round. So many are overjoyed to be apart of this. I can no longer feel. It is Chris Page however, my "friend", no correction, my friend, in every sense of the word. I owe this to him. I will be there. I will compete, and then to the cage shall the beast return. When shall we see his end? Will tales of his undoing continue to unfurl, or at last, will he finally be allowed to slumber? He would seek her hand once again. He righted the wrong with the kid, shall he have his own opportunity to do so, with her?)