Author's Notes: This story was written for the Inspiration book quote challenge. The link is in my biography if you wish to check out the site and participate in future challenges. Thanks to Alison for her help editing.

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I'm talking about that love which used to feel something like optimism, benignity... Where did that go? I just seemed to have run out of steam somewhere along the line. I ended up disappointed with my work, and my marriage, and myself, and I turned into someone who didn't know what to hope for. (Nick Hornby - How to Be Good)

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Love Like

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She could remember being sixteen and head-over-heels in love with him. It hadn't been the happiest time of her life, not with the other fiancées and the struggle within herself, but it had the moments she'd come to cherish the most.

- - -

Akane sat on the couch, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, the edges clutched tightly in her hands, and stared blankly into the darkness. She jumped, startled, when Ranma flicked on a lamp. He blinked.

"Akane? What are you doing?"

"Just thinking." She paused and looked around, feeling disoriented. "I hadn't realized it had gotten so dark."

Ranma frowned slightly before shrugging and heading toward the kitchen.

"They didn't have kind of soup you wanted, so I didn't get it, but..."

Akane let Ranma's voice fade away, her eyes unfocusing as her mind fled again.

- - -

The day Ranma had looked her in the eye and told her he loved her, Akane'd cried harder than she could ever remember crying before, not even when her mother died. This time it was years of grief and anger and frustration all giving way to relief in a single moment. She collapsed into him, her arms winding around his neck, and cried on his shoulder, sobbing that she loved him too over and over.

- - -

The sound of rhythmic thumps echoed throughout the house from the dojo where Ranma's martial arts class was in full swing. Akane stood at the sink and listened, the sound hypnotizing her. She didn't notice the water grow cold, or the bubbles dissipate. Underwater, her fingers pruned.

"Akane?"

She started, splashing water across the counter. "Ranma! Don't do that!"

She was unreasonably angry, but at times it felt as if she'd been born that way. She struggled to control the urge to hit him as she shook water from her hands and snatched the hand towel he was proffering.

Ranma stared at her, his eyebrows furrowed together slightly. He didn't say anything though; Akane hadn't expected him to.

When she put the towel down on the counter, he said, "Class is over. Do you want to eat out?"

- - -

Their marriage had been a spectacular affair, complete with crying fathers and fiancées. Ranma's eyes had shined as he looked down on her, and Akane could remember thinking she'd never seen anyone look so happy.

She remembered thinking she'd never felt so happy.

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Dinner was stilted. Ranma kept trying to talk, but Akane found herself answering in only murmurs and sighs. Eventually, he quit trying.

The walk home was silent.

They lay in bed, side-by-side, and didn't touch.

The next morning, he was gone before she ever woke up.

- - -

They'd had a good marriage. They argued a lot, but it lacked the anger and bitterness that had been underneath before. In bed, Akane found him to be as proficient as he was with his martial arts. The compliments that had been few and unintentional before were now common, and she found herself responding to the change in him by changing herself.

She listened and sat and talked with him. She stopped feeling like she was in a war and started feeling like she was in love.

- - -

That night at dinner Ranma didn't try to talk to her. He hadn't talked to her at all today, and Akane waited.

It happened after dinner. He came into the kitchen with her, helping her as he had in the first months of their marriage. Akane waited.

"Akane?"

She looked up at him. He seemed at a loss.

"I don't know," she whispered, looking down at the plate in her hands. She watched soap bubbles slide across the surface, leaving a sheen behind.

"Akane?"

She shrugged. "I don't know." She let the plate disappear beneath the bubbled surface of the water. Tears started to form in her eyes, and for the first time in a long time, she felt something.

"I...

I need to get away, Ranma."

- - -

The hardest thing to adjust to was having him go away on training trips. The sight of his father started to send her into panics, ones she'd try to hide, her fists balled tightly beneath her skirt, her breathing controlled. Ranma always knew though, and he'd pull her aside and hold her and whisper in her ear, and when she calmed he told her he wasn't going to leave.

And he didn't. Not for the first year anyway. Then she had to get used to sleeping alone again, his promise to return her only comfort.

Now, it was his turn, and Akane found she couldn't even make the same promise.

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The End