Disclaimer: Unfortunately, Ranma and Company do not belong to me, I am only borrowing them and I promise to return them in like new condition when I'm done. (What do you mean that dent wasn't there when I got them?)
Nightmares
Something had broken inside her during the fiasco of an attempted wedding five months ago. That was the conclusion Akane Tendo had come to as she shivered in her bed night after night, awakened by nightmares full of burning heat and pain and death, her throat raw from the strangled cries that had awakened her.
She had felt cracked and fragile after the events in China, not quite broken, but definitely not whole. Being dehydrated, shrunk down to a doll, and fighting for her life as Ranma desperately battled to defeat Saffron in order to get to the water that would return her to normal could have that effect on a person. However, the damage was complete now, and she felt as if she had no hope left. Akane moved through the days, pretending to be her usual cheery self, but she no longer snapped at Ranma when he was being a jerk, and Kuno barely cleared the school when she punted him away from her.
Akane had managed to fool everyone so far, but the people who knew her best were starting to notice the changes. Kasumi had begun to watch her with the slightest hint of a frown, while Nabiki hadn't tried to extort money from her for at least a week. Then there was Ranma – he'd been watching her with worried eyes since they'd returned from China, and she had the most unsettling feeling that he had noticed the carefully hidden shadows under her eyes and her slowly dropping weight as she steadily lost her appetite.
The worst part of it was that she couldn't understand what he wanted. At least with Kasumi and Nabiki she knew that they loved her and were concerned by her out-of-character behaviour, but Ranma had made it quite clear that he didn't love her when they had been talking in her room before the wedding. He'd been acting so sweet, but had vehemently denied the words of love she could have sworn she'd heard as she fought her way back from death for his sake. The cracks had spread in that moment, bringing her close to the shattering point, and she'd responded angrily, trying to hide the pain radiating through her entire being. The bombs Ranma's other fiancées brought to the wedding had managed to finish her off.
The faint sound of quiet footsteps stopped at her door and she bit her lip. It was the same thing every night. Ranma heard the screams that had pulled her from her nightmares, and came to check on her, hesitating outside the door, but never entering, leaving her cold, terrified and alone in her room. It was killing her, his studied indifference. She had loved him for so long, had fought to keep him close to her in every way she could think of, but he had told her flat out that he didn't love her. Now she had to stand by and watch him choose someone else while she slowly died inside, because, like it or not, he was still her best friend. Akane didn't know how much longer she would be able to keep this up; the nightmares were getting worse every night. She sniffed and choked on a sob.
Suddenly her door cracked open and Ranma peeked tentatively around the edge, his nervous blue eyes meeting her teary tormented brown ones in the dark. She gasped at the unexpectedness of his appearance, but her breath caught in her throat and it came out as a sob instead. Ranma was at her side in a heartbeat, tentatively brushing back the strands of sweat damp hair from her face. Akane found that she was no longer able to hold back her tears, and they trailed down her cheeks as she stared up at the young man sitting on the edge of her bed.
He watched her with an anguished expression on his face before carefully gathering her up into his arms, pulling her close and rocking her gently. "Shh, 'Kane, it's alright, let it out," he whispered hoarsely.
Akane pressed her face against the soft material of the tank top covering the broad sculpted muscles of Ranma's chest and sobbed, great heaving cries, as her hands scrabbled desperately at his shoulders and arms, too tired and worn down to hold in her feelings anymore.
She didn't know how long she cried, but when she finally managed to pull away, blushing and tear streaked, Ranma's tank top was soaked and his upper body bore scratches inadvertently inflicted by her fingernails.
"Feel better now?" he asked, avoiding meeting her eyes.
"Yeah...uh, thanks. Sorry to mess you up so much," she mumbled thickly.
"Ah, you couldn't mess me up if you tried 'Kane," Ranma muttered, poking her forehead teasingly.
"Jerk," she snuffled, punching weakly at his shoulder and dropping to curl on her side, pulling the blankets up over her head.
"Hey Tomboy, I'm just teasing you. C'mon, c-can't we just t-talk for bit? After all, you did wake me up."
Akane emerged from beneath the covers, red-faced, her hair stuck to her wet cheeks. "I'm tired Ranma, can't we do this later?"
He snorted in frustration and raked his fingers through his bed-mussed black hair. "No, because you keep coming up with reasons to be somewhere else every time I try to talk to you. C'mon, your excuses are so lame that it's obvious you're trying to avoid me. I-I just wanna know what's wrong. Was it something I did? How'm I supposed to fix this if I don't know what I did? I miss having my b-best friend around. It's been five friggin' months since the wedding and you've hardly said a word to me in that whole time." He scowled in annoyance as she smiled weakly at his stuttering.
She punched his arm roughly, and found herself sighing as he looked at her sheepishly. "Why is it that you can be so damned sweet when you want to be? Couldn't you just be a jerk all the time so I could just hate you and not hurt so much?" She pulled her knees up to her chest and buried her face against them, angry with herself for being so vulnerable. There was something about the dark intimacy of her room in the small hours of the night that brought her defences down and destroyed her ability to stay strong.
"What are you talking about Tomboy?" Ranma demanded, hurt.
"Never mind," she growled, angry with the way his pain made her want to protect him from anything that might hurt him. "Let's just talk about something else, okay?"
"But..." He broke off at Akane's narrowed eyes. "Fine," he huffed, "but you still haven't answered my first question. What's wrong? You ain't sleeping right or eating right, and something's...off about you lately."
"It's just nightmares Ranma. Things have been so crazy and weird over the last year that my head is just in a funny place and I can't seem to shake it off right now." She picked at a worn spot on her pyjama pants so she wouldn't have to look at the boy sitting cross-legged on her bed in front of her.
"Bull," he stated flatly, startling her into looking up at him. "This stuff's never made you lose sleep before. Besides, you don't yell at me anymore – ever. I ain't saying you yelled a lot before, but even when Shampoo glomps me, you don't say a thing, and when I'm being a Class A jackass, you just smile and walk away." He sighed and hung his head. "D-do you...h-hate me?" he asked forlornly.
Akane's head snapped up and she stared at him in surprise. Clearly Ranma was also feeling the effects of the dark intimacy of a midnight chat in her room, because he was opening up way more than usual. She reached out a hand and grabbed his, making him blush slightly. "I could never hate you Ranma. There are some days when I want to hate you, but that's just not really an option."
Ranma sighed in relief and squeezed her hand. "Then what's wrong?"
Akane growled slightly under her breath at his refusal to give up. "It's just...it's China and what happened and then the wedding. Apparently, it was all too much for me." She watched grimly as Ranma's face tightened and paled at the mention of Jusendo and what had happened. "I was dealing when we came back, it was tough, but I was managing. Then our dads just messed everything up and our friends came after us with bombs...and I guess I'm just not as strong as I like to think." She closed her eyes in defeat and laid her head on her knees.
"That ain't true 'Kane, you're one of the strongest people I know," he rushed to assure her, blushing brightly. "Things have been so messed up lately, and I've come so close to splitting, like a million times, but I keep hanging around 'cause of you."
"What are you talking about Ranma?" Akane asked tiredly.
Ranma rolled his eyes when she looked up at him. "Geez Akane, you are so thick sometimes. Do I really gotta spell it out for you?"
Akane sat up straighter and looked hard at Ranma, trying to read his eyes. "Y-you can't mean...you said you didn't...before the wedding..." she stammered.
"I told you I didn't say it, not that I didn't." He bit his lip, unable to meet her gaze. "Well...I mean, you never said anything about how you feel, you just asked me if I did. What was I supposed to do?"
Akane blinked at him for a minute. "I threw myself in the path of Saffron's blasts to save you, without knowing what it would do to me, how could you not..."
"Yeah, but you throw yourself into danger at the slightest hint that the neighbour's dog might need help," Ranma muttered, tossing her a frustrated frown.
"You say I'm the reason you stayed, well, did it ever occur to you that you might be the reason that I put up with all this ridiculousness?" Ranma looked at her in confusion and she shook her head. "I have so many options Ranma. I could have run away, I could have gone to stay with one of my aunts, I could have taken up with the first boy that came along." She ignored his jealous growl at this suggestion. "The point is, I didn't. I couldn't, not if it meant loosing you."
"Really?" he asked plaintively.
"Really," she assured him, sliding across the bed to tentatively cup his cheeks in her hands.
Suddenly Ranma let out a joyous laugh and sprang to his feet, taking her with him as he wrapped his strong arms around her waist and twirled around the room. Akane giggled in surprise, staggering dizzily when Ranma finally came to a halt. He steadied her with strong hands on her hips, and turned her slightly, so the light from the window illuminated her face. She swayed closer, captivated by the elated look in his eyes.
"I think I'm gonna kiss you now," Ranma noted in a husky voice. "What do you think you might do about that?"
"Mmm...I don't know? Want to try and find out?" she asked, placing her palms against his chest.
"You just can't make things easy, can you?" he asked rhetorically, pulling her close.
Akane smiled and closed her eyes as he pressed his lips to hers, melting into the kiss. After several long moments, Ranma pulled back, brushing a thumb over her cheek.
"I've wanted to do that for a very long time," he muttered, almost to himself.
"Hmm, well it took you long enough Baka," Akane replied, a challenging gleam in her eye.
"Ha, you're one to talk Tomboy."
"Shut up," she growled teasingly.
"Make me," he dared.
Akane rose on her tiptoes, sliding her arms around his neck and kissing him. Ranma deepened the kiss as Akane moaned and buried her fingers in his hair. The kiss went on and on, neither willing to end the moment, until Akane finally broke away, gasping for air. Ranma took a deep breath and recaptured her lips. Akane decided that she wasn't going to let him have the upper hand and jumped, wrapping her legs around his waist without breaking the kiss. He huffed in surprise, but Akane tightened her grip on his hair, keeping him in place.
The longer the kisses went on, the more Akane felt the broken parts of her soul were slowly knitting back together. She knew that finding out that Ranma really cared about her was not a miracle, she had a long road back to her normal self, but something important had been healed by Ranma's actions and she knew she could lean on him now when things got too tough to take on her own.
Ranma slowly made his way to the bed, unwinding Akane's legs from his waist and lowering her back into the nest of blankets regretfully.
"You have to get some sleep Tomboy," he sighed, running a hand down her side to mould to the curve of her hip. He placed a soft kiss on her forehead and stood to go back to his own bed.
"No! Don't go...stay here tonight?" she asked, reluctant to let him go now that she knew he was hers for real.
"You've got a lot of faith in my self-control," Ranma groaned, unable to deny her.
"Ha! If you try anything I'll just knock you flying pervert. I may know how you feel now, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you get away with stuff like that," she stated smugly, sliding over to make room for him.
Ranma groaned again as he slid in behind her, manoeuvring carefully to keep his hips away from her. "Gods, you just love to torture me, don'tcha Tomboy."
"Mm...Guilty as charged. 'Night Ranma. Thanks...you know, for..."
"I know 'Kane. Sleep well, you need your beauty sleep after all this...oof!"
"Jerk," she muttered, pulling her elbow back from his gut and lacing her fingers through the large warm hand that lay over her ribs.
She cuddled closer to her fiancé, listening to him settle himself, feeling his warm breath in the back of her head and realized that she actually felt sleepy for the first time in months.
AN: So...it's been a while. RL got a bit crazy - new job, a healthy dose of chaos, and the return of an old (rather serious) injury kind broke my creativity and need to write for a while, but I seem to be in recovery now. I promise that I am still working on Moments in Time - I am trying to get another chapter written before I post the next one to keep myself on track, but we'll see how that goes. This one has been sitting on my harddrive for a while, and I have finally managed to convince myself to post it. Please review and I'll send you virtual cookies and ice cream - plus, it definitely helps the creative process!
~Tomboy