Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.
Had a muse, wrote it down, don't ask, flames understandable.
One more night.
If she could make it through to another tomorrow, everything would be fine. If the sun rose and none of her blood had been spilt, she would have been a success. The problem was, the words were beginning to sound hollow. She was beginning to wonder exactly when the tomorrows would stop coming, when she would be able to enjoy the moments she was in, instead of just hanging on.
Just getting by. She was really, really tired of just getting by.
Just another training trip, he'd said. Just another reason to feed the muscles that ran rampant over his mind and his heart. One more training trip, and another, and another, and another, and then he would be strong enough. Strong enough for what, she had no idea. He was already the best.
Some people might think it was for her. But… if it were for her, why was he always leaving her behind?
The days after the failed wedding had turned to weeks, to months, and at last he had knocked on her door one morning, intending to say goodbye.
Just for a while, he'd said.
And she, like a fool, had believed him. Three months ago, she had believed him. Now, she was pretty sure he was either dead, or somewhere making babies with Shampoo. Pretty little babies with purple hair. His letters had stopped arriving, around the time they got to her village.
They. See, Shampoo wasn't too weak, too much of a clumsy little tomboy to take training. Feh. Yeah right.
Maybe she wasn't giving him enough credit—but then again, he was gone. And had been gone. So, really, the reasons for that were irrelevant.
Everything looked like him, tasted like him, smelled like him. Every inch of every sidewalk wherever she went was an argument, a smile, a curious glance. She could still call to mind his face, every little dip and imperfection in it, and she was far enough away from him now to admit she loved every single one. The funny way his jaw curved into his cheek. The way his eyes seemed to change color with his moods, almost glowing when he was aroused.
She knew that face because she still saw it in dreams. She still could smell him every time she walked into the furo, as though he'd just stepped out of there. The koi pond kept threatening to reveal him floating on the surface, face down. She kept checking. Even though she knew. . .
He just wasn't going to be there.
She hadn't been able to eat ice cream for a month, after he left. Then, every Tuesday, because that was the day he used to crave ice cream the most (quiz day in French class) she would go down to the parlor and order a parfait. For him. In fond memory of him.
A ritual. She suspected she would be doing so until the day she died. Long after she found someone else. She fully intended to find someone else—that was a task for one of the nameless tomorrows.
Listless, she flopped down on the floor of the dojo, falling onto her back and spreading her arms wide. If only she were tired enough for sleep.
That was the other thing—she didn't sleep as well, now. She tried to work out in the dojo but that, of all places, held the most of him. He'd shed a lot of blood there, little cuts and scrapes staining the wood. She could almost taste the smell of his sweat there.
She could admit, now, that she loved him. Loved him more than her own life. She had wanted so badly to spend that life with him. That was, in the end, what made her realize how deeply the emotion went.
She had gone to visit Sayuri, whose sister just had a baby. Before Ranma left, she'd loved Sayuri's little niece, but now. . . the child was just a nuisance. Sayuri had made some comment about it, brought her attention to the discrepancy. Why was that, exactly?
She'd finally figured it out. She had planned on marrying him, having his children—all the infants she'd imagined herself having came out with pigtails and bright blue eyes. But now, she couldn't imagine being married at all, to anyone. To having any children. Because, her brain had informed her smugly, she loved him dearly. Needed him, to live her life out the way she had planned to.
Need. More than love, need will mess you up. Love can be quiet, you can love someone and watch their happiness with another person every day, going slowly mad, but never bother them about it because it would upset them. To need someone . . . watching their happiness is not nearly enough. You must be beside them. Helping them. Having them help you. Screaming at them, laughing with them, fighting beside them
She had needed Ranma. She still did need him.
He was the voice in her head. Telling her to turn out the lights, kick higher, faster, brush her teeth and all that. Just the voice in her head. Urging her on.
Would that ever, really, go away?
Maybe she would sleep down here again, on the floorboards soaked in his sweat, and let the sun rise yet again on her pulsating corpse.
She felt a board shift beneath her, and looked up. There he was, sitting with his eyes closed as if meditating. Of course. She talked to him in her head, why wouldn't she see him, too? No reason not to. Already crazy.
"Ranma," she sighed, rolling into a sitting position. "I wish I could hate you for leaving me. You'd think it would be easy—love, hate, all the same thing if you get down to it. Except, even if I hated you, I'd want you here now. So I could yell at you. So I could beat the living hell out of you, call you back for more. And you'd take it, like always, and we'd fight and then maybe I'd sneak into your room and tell you how I really felt while you were gone. There is no light here, without you. No sun. No warmth. There's no purpose to anything and even at the dinner table, surrounded by people who love me, I feel alone. Even if you hated me, I can't imagine you wanting me to feel the way I do right now," she whispered, eyes closed against the tears running out of them. When she opened them, my hallucination was watching me, tears in his own eyes.
"Akane. . ." he croaked out, but didn't get any further. She flopped back down on the floor, letting out a big puff of breath as the tears rolled into her ears. There was a shift in the boards, and a warning sign went off in her head. A warm hand touched her shoulder.
"Holy fucking shit shit SHIT you're real!" she screamed, jumping back away from him. He stared at her in shock.
"What did you think I was, a ghost?" he asked, crossly. Akane reached out and poked him, apprehensively. Solid as a rock. She tried, very hard, not to faint.
"I. . . what the. . . where in the bleeding hell have you been?" She settled for that at last. He sighed, elaborately.
"Jusenkyou. You know those guys take their curses very seriously, took us a while to get them to tell us which pool was which. Where the hell did you think I was going? Where ELSE would I go with all the rest of the Jusenkyou curse victims?" he snapped. Akane blinked at him in confusion.
"But. . . you took Ryouga, too. I thought it was just another training trip," she blurted. He gave her a hard look, then closed his eyes.
"Ryouga had his reasons for wanting to visit that area," he said, his tones clipped. "But I think we're skirting the real issue here."
"Your tendency to abandon me, then scare ten years off my life?" she retorted. He leaned toward her, until he was roughly an inch from her face. He didn't exactly smell like the road. More like. . . her shampoo.
The bastard took the time to shower before announcing his presence. As if after three months, he couldn't care less about when he saw her.
"The real issue here, Akane, is what you were saying when you thought I was a figment of your diseased little brain. You like me, don't you?" he asked, smug, confident. She regarded him in silence for a moment.
He thought he could just waltz right back in and claim her, huh? No fanfare, no winning me over, nothing. Waltz out, waltz in. Nothing easier. He took her for granted, he took her for a joke. Hell, she didn't even know that he wasn't just trying to validate his own self-image like that time when he tried to convince Shampoo to say she loved him.
He never has admitted it.
He's been possessive, sure, but she's not a possession.
"Ranma, to be perfectly honest, I love you," she said, slowly, carefully. A gloating sort of light broke in his eyes. "I've loved you for a long time, and I think I'll continue loving you for the rest of my life. But," she looked him dead in the eyes, saw him pull back a few inches when she said that word, "that doesn't make up for the fact that you've been a real jerk to me. I'd like you to leave again, and this time. . . don't come back."
He stared at her in utter shock for a moment.
"No, no, no," he said, in the tone of someone speaking to an ignorant, inquisitive child. "That's not how the story ends. You and me get married, chase off all the other fiancés and suitors, settle down, have a couple of kids who eventually get together with the kids of our friends. Simple. Efficient. Easy."
"No, no, no," she corrected him right back, feeling more in control of her life than she had in years. "See, there was a time when I would have done anything for you—helped you in any way I could. But sometimes, the only way to make a person change their ways is to make them realize what they did was wrong. And that, more often than not, means leaving them."
Akane rose to my feet, offering him a hand up. He was staring at her with such shock that she thought his eyes might bug out.
"You're. . . you're dumping me?" he asked, incredulous. He rose to his own feet, wiped his hands on his pants. "But I. . . Akane, don't you know that I. . . " a blush rose in his cheeks. Maybe it was just revenge, for feeling her world shatter around me. Maybe it was that she finally saw how bad they were for each other. Maybe she was just tired of the endless cycle of trespass and forgiveness, regardless of who was at fault. But she knew, no matter what he said, that she wasn't going to back down this time.
Maybe it was the simple fact that, for her, it was already over.
"I love you," he finally got out, and looked her in the eyes. She rose to my tiptoes and brushed his lips with her own—not even a kiss, just a goodbye. Their first and last kiss.
"And I love you. You'll make someone very happy when you're finished learning from this," She said. She could see the start of tears in his eyes, and turned away. "Go on, get out of here."
Akane heard him leave the dojo, heard the door shut softly behind him.
Love does last forever, sometimes turning into a daily dose of poison that twists the heart, sickens the soul. Sometimes the only cure for the poison is to cut your own heart out.
Feeling quite heartless, Akane stood once more in the dojo and tried to think of a reason why tomorrow would be better. Then realization hit her like a ton of bricks.
"Oh, come on, that was just dumb!" she moaned to herself, and ran after him.