I don't own these characters. This little piece of joy was brought to you by the letters I, R, and E. Enjoy. Some of the weird spellings and snytax are intentional.

"Hello? Thissis Akane??"

Akane sighed. "Ranma?" She didn't want to hear his voice. She shouldn't have answered the phone. She knew it was him calling, but even still she answered the phone, knowing that he'd be on the other end. The sound of his voice released a flood of memories, a flood of emotions that she wasn't ready to deal with, that she didn't want to deal with.

Even after all this time, just the sound of his voice still caused her stomach to tighten. It was a complex mixture of loathing, longing, contempt, joy, hatred, and love. They had been happy once. Even if their happiness hadn't lasted long, she still looked back on that time with fondness. Sometimes, it was all that kept her going.

"HOwdy'ou know?"

"Nobody else would call me at this time, Ranma." She frowned as she realized something. "You're drunk again, aren't you?"

"No… I's isn't."

"Are you going to blame this on me too?" He had blamed his drinking on her at first.

Not without reason, she supposed. The problem was that neither of them had been ready for marriage when they had been forced to marry at the end of high school. They weren't a functional couple. They didn't know how to talk to each other; they didn't know how to interact with each other unless it was through insults, physical abuse, or neglect.

Ranma had never said he loved her, even after Saffron. Akane was too proud to admit that she loved him. So, she hadn't said anything. Sure, they had exchanged plenty of emotionally charged looks, but she had thought those would be enough to sustain them. It wasn't, of course. They'd both been young and foolish and full of too much pride to ever make it work, because that required compromise. Neither knew how to do that.

She remembered the look in his eyes when they finally got married – he had stood in the dojo, in a rented tux, twitching nervously, glancing at her sideways, giving her these sickly little half grins, but avoiding meeting her gaze for more than a second. It had been so endearing. She had felt like her heart was going to burst. After all this time, all the hardship, all the other women after Ranma…

He was going to be hers! Hers! Her husband. She won.

Looking back, Akane reflected that maybe that was the start of the problem. She had gone into the marriage to win, Ranma had gone into because he was honor bound, but neither had really decided if that is what they wanted.

Oh, they had been happy, at first. At least, after the initial stages of adjusting the fact they were married and expected to behave as a married couple. Akane still remembered the wedding night. Their first sexual encounter had been so awkward, so full of tension. It hadn't really been enjoyable for either of them. It had hurt, and there had been lots of fumbling and embarrassment as they stumbled their way through discovering sex.

They hadn't even kissed up until that point. For two people terrified of intimacy, jumping right into sex was a mistake. But eventually they found their groove, because despite all that, they had like each other, and had like having sex together. And it had been good. She hadn't known it then, but once she had the experience to make comparison, Akane knew that Ranma was probably the best lover she'd ever have. It probably had to do with the fact that Ranma knew a woman's body like no man ever could.

She didn't want to think about that. "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"Er… earlyish?"

Akane glanced at the clock near the phone. It was 3:37 in the morning.

"It's nearly four a.m. I thought I told you not to call me, Ranma."

It was the realities of life that caused their relationship to fall apart. Akane was mature enough to know now that they were both to blame, but perhaps she held more responsibility than he did. She could have done more, because unlike Ranma, she was raised in a normal environment. She should have been the one willing to bend, but her pride hadn't let her.

What surprised Akane was how little time it took for their happiness to collapse. Ranma just barely managed to graduate from high school. Happosai refused to give up the title of Grand Master of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts, and so Ranma wasn't able to take students on at the dojo. But there were still bills to pay, food to buy…

Ranma had to get a job. But he wasn't really qualified for anything professional. His education was terrible. He ended up settling for a job in construction, but this cut into his training time. Ranma was still the best, but he couldn't afford to train all day like in high school, and as a result he could never quite get that edge he needed to defeat Happosai and convince him that Ranma was ready for students.

Akane had gone off to college, coming back on weekends to spend time with her husband. For the first year they'd been happy. But slowly the frustration began to mount. Ranma was frustrated with his situation, with the fact that he was left at the dojo, unable to teach and unable to beat Happosai, frustrated with the fact that Akane was living away from him, frustrated with life.

Akane knew she hadn't helped any. She had teased him, the "great Ranma Saotome," about his inability to take down Happosai. His frustration had grown into resentment, and he started taking it out on her. She of course, gave back as good as she got, unwilling to allow him to talk to her that way.

There had been some nasty fights. But at that stage in their relationship, they still thought that all their problems could be resolved with sex. So, they'd had a lot of it. A lot of angry sex, a lot of passionate sex, a lot of sex hoping that they could use their bodies to express what they were feeling, rather than try and learn how to communicate like two adults, like the married couple they were.

"I knows, but… I loves you, Akane. I wanted to hears you voice."

"If you loved me so much, why couldn't you tell me that while you still had me, Ranma?"

"I stills haves you! I'm not signing the fucking papers."

His anger was clear. He had become so angry. That was her fault, mostly.

"Hmphf. As I thought. Don't call me until you sign the divorce papers."

There was a silence on the other end of the line, with only the occasional breath letting Akane know that he was still on the line. Finally, the silence stretched too long, so she moved to hang up the phone.

They never told each other they loved one another, never offered the support that makes marriages work. They were still two kids. They didn't know how much work it took to make a relationship work.

After that first year, however, the frustration turned into anger. His anger was directed towards her, towards Happosai, directed towards himself, the dojo, everything. Akane's temper had always been on a hair trigger, so the two tempers clashed. Every time she came back, they fought. They were loud fights, screaming at each other, followed by attempts to reconcile like they always had, through sex.

But sex isn't enough to fix a problem. Sex only works if you address the underlying issue, but they never did. They were too immature to address the real problem. They avoided it, like they had always avoided anything difficult in their relationship.

So the anger festered, and grew. Akane resented him for resenting her, for resenting her freedom, for expecting her to help him out. After all, she had her own life. They were married, but he couldn't expect her to drop everything she was doing just so they could work on his problems.

Akane made a life for herself at college. She took drama classes to pursue a career in acting. She started hanging out with other people her own age, normal people, people not involved in martial arts and magic. She started exploring life around her, to avoid going back to the anger, to the problems that plagued her and Ranma.

Soon, it was so bad that Akane couldn't stand to come back to the dojo on weekends. So she made excuses to stay at college, to avoid coming back ever weekend. First, it was every other weekend, then only once a month. By her senior year in college, she hadn't been back in over six months.

"Pleashe…"

Akane paused.

"What?"

"I… I'm so… lonely. I miss you so much."

For a minute, her heart went out to him. It really did. But after all the pain, all the suffering…

"If you're lonely, maybe you can call up one of your other women."

"I've never cheated on you once, Akane. You were the one who cheated on ME! I waited for you! Just yous. Always. Just you."

It was only logical that eventually she started exploring other people. She had never told people that she was married in college. She still went by Akane Tendo. The anger had made her want to hurt him, so she did it in the most effective way she knew how. Sex was the one thing they shared where there were few barriers.

By her senior year, she started to explore other men, other relationships. The sex was nowhere near as good, but she knew that it hurt Ranma that she was sharing it with other people. She only learned later that normal relationships are built on a willingness to communicate.

So when Ranma asked her why she wouldn't come home she told him. She told him to hurt him, to hurt him as much as his anger at her had hurt her. Ranma went ballistic, of course. He followed her one night. She still remembered his face when he walked in on her and her lover in the dorm that night. She'd only seen that face once before – during the fight with Saffron.

She realized that he'd killed for her before, and he was perfectly willing to do so again. It took everything she had to prevent Ranma from ripping her latest fling apart like a paper doll.

He started drinking after that.

He was a maudlin drunk. He'd weep and gnash his teeth, telling her all the things that he couldn't when sober. He kept begging her to come back, to talk to him. He wanted to go to counseling together, to fix the problems they had. He wanted to make it work. He said he'd stop drinking, get anger management therapy.

He'd even give up martial arts for her.

She'd had some hope at first that things would work out. But when they would talk when he was sober, he'd never admit to the things he had said while drunk. He never said he loved her when he was sober, either.

After a while, she gave up. She let go of the anger. It was too much to stay angry all the time. It broke her heart when she did it, but at the same time, it allowed her to grow up.

"Sign the papers, please. I don't want you to call me anymore, Ranma."

Maybe it might have worked if they had met later, or hadn't been forced into it. But there was too much pain, too much history now. She still loved him, and she could admit as much to herself now. But it just couldn't work. There was too much resentment, to many words said in anger, too much emotional baggage.

"Please…"

She thought she heard weeping on the other end. It didn't matter. Akane hung up, determined to go back to bed and forget this in the morning. She climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin, but was unable to find sleep again. Every time they talked, these feelings kept welling up. She gave it up for a lost cause and went to the kitchen, starting a pot of coffee. If she couldn't sleep, at least she could be productive.

It just might keep her from thinking about him. She took a sip of her coffee, hoping the liquid would help wash the bitter taste out of her mouth.

Wow, that was a happy little peice!

This came to me late last night as I was trying to go to bed. I ended up putting it down today. I could polish it a bit more, expand, make it into a longer story, but then I decided, 'fuck it.' I just wrote what I felt, and then posted it.

I hope you enjoyed it.