Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Pan smiled to herself as Trunks whimpered.
They hadn’t been lying there long, maybe an hour.
She snuggled closer to him, pushing her nose into his while shirt. He smelled like sweat and ice cream. The thought brought a faint smile to her lips as she finally put words to his scent—she been trying for 14 years to do so. It would never matter how long he worked in that damned office, he would always smell like sweat—and not the stinky kind that made your nose curl up in disgust and made your eyes water. The sweet kind, the way you smell after working outside on a warm summer morning, with dewdrops on your clothes and the lazy June breeze in your hair and on your cheeks.
“Dende, save me,” Trunks breathed, his body stiff and tense, his arm crushing her to his side.
She smiled.
When she’d left for California four years ago, Trunks and Bra and Goten had been happy for her, but all firmly stated that they wanted her here—at home—for college. Her father had been pissed as hell, she remembered his tail spontaneously regrowing when he’d learned she’d applied to a college over 3000 miles away, without his permission. But once she’d explained to him that it was a good school offering her a full tuition scholarship, he’d complied, on the condition that she come visit as often as possible.
“I will, Daddy, don’t worry.”
Then she made a complete turn around.
“Pan!” Bra cried. “You can’t stay over there!”
“And why not?”
“Pan, four years? Without coming home?”
She sighed. Her blue haired friend just didn’t get it.
“Bra, my dad allowed me to stay on the spaceship even after I shanghai-ed it into space. Didn’t have much of a choice, but he allowed it, and was proud of it in the end. This is the same deal. I’m not staying there indefinitely, just long enough to find myself.”
“What do you mean ‘find yourself’, Panny?”
She froze, hearing Trunks enter the room.
“Don’t you knock?!” Bra yelled, glaring at him, her contempt enough to make even Vegeta flinch.
Trunks ignored her. “Panny?”
She felt her cheeks turning pink despite her efforts not to blush. She lowered her eyes to Bra’s bedspread, picking at a string in the quilting. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. She’d had a crush on him for so long, that it was almost too much to bear any longer. How could she tell him that she was leaving to find out how to live without him?
“Panny?” he repeated.
She sighed, then spoke, her voice quite and strained.
“I just don’t feel like I belong here—I-I mean I do, but…Everyone sees me as a little kid—‘Kakarot’s brat’s brat’, ‘Gohan’s little girl’. I’m not allowed to fight simply because I’m a girl, and yet, no one treats me like a girl except for my dad…Mom does, but frilly pink dresses belong on Marron, not me.” She sighed again, pulling off her bandana and picking at the now fraying hem. It was so old, that it was a wonder it hadn’t fallen apart yet. “I don’t know. For the first time in my life, I’m lost—utterly and completely. I just…just need to figure out who I am because right now I’m a bunch of jumbled up pieces that refuse to pretend to fit together any longer.”
“Oh Pan!” Bra cried, throwing her arms around her. “You know that’s not...”
Trunks gently cut in between the two, pulling Pan to her feet and wrapping his arms around her in a small, brotherly hug. At first she thought he understood, but then he opened his mouth.
“Panny, you don’t have to move to the states to figure out who you are, I know—”
“No you don’t!” She whirled away from him, turning back and fuming at both Briefs, standing her ground almost as if in battle. “You don’t know! Neither of you! I can’t stay here! Too many—I can’t—promises can’t be kept—I—can’t forget—too much—leaving to forget—to—”
She was almost on the verge of hysterics. Bra sat on the edge of her bed, her back straight and shoulders stiff. Trunks had only nodded though.
“You’re leaving to find out how to live without Goku, right Panny?” he whispered quietly, his eyes sad and dejected like a child who’s been told no cookie until after dinner.
Pan’s shoulders slumped. No you idiot, to find out how to live without you.
“Yeah, I guess,” she whispered, knowing that neither would ever understand.
Two days later at the airport, she’d said good-bye to each of them in turn, each wishing her the best of luck in her searching, each expressing regret at her departure.
“Dende, please let me survive this.”
Pan’s smile grew broader and she tried to conceal it in his chest.
But she hadn’t had to leave at all.
Have you ever felt like a part of you had been kidnapped and held for ransom?
Trunks had felt the same way she had—or at least seemed to now. When he’d kissed her...
When he’d kissed her, her whole world had been turned upside down and inside out—everything she’d thought she’d found back in California had disappeared as quickly as dandelion seeds on the wind. She’d though she’d found her individuality, her own feet to stand on, she’d thought she’d found herself.
But she hadn’t. She’d found who she thought she could be: a young fighter, fresh and beautiful, able to wear whatever the hell she wanted, no matter the occasion, able to keep her head…able to live without Trunks by her side, without him as her someday-love, with him as nothing more then a brotherly best friend.But with that kiss, all of that fell down like a house of cards in a thunderstorm, and she’d found what she’d wasted four years looking for.
Herself.
Of course she’d found her individuality—but she’d always had it.
Of course she’d found her feet and steady ground—but she’d always had those too.
And of course she’d found out that she could live without Trunks as her mate—but she didn’t want to.
“Dende, I know you haven’t always liked me, but please don’t let Gohan kill me!”
It was too much, she had to laugh this time. He’d been praying for over an hour, at first silently, but now out loud, and hearing him only helped to prove the ridiculousness of his prayers.
“Pan!”
Sitting up, she covered her hand with her mouth, rather useless really, with as hard as she was laughing, pushing stray hair out of her face.
He looked so hurt as he propped himself up on his elbows, so abused, dejected, and lost that it only made her laugh even harder.
“Pan, it’s not funny!”
She smiled through the tears squeezing out the corners of her eyes. “Y-yes, it—it is!” she gasped.
He seemed to take that as a personal affront to his pride, because his cobalt blue eyes narrowed and his face darkened. “No, Pan, it isn’t.”
Swallowing her laughter (and nearly choking on it in the process), she met his glare and blatantly mocked him. “Yes, Trunks, it is.”
Almost without warning, he launched himself at her, pinning her to the ground, his fingers playing lightly over the sides.
“You want something funny? I’ll give you something funny!” he cried, tickling her, both of them rolling and tumbling in the sand, laughing and horsing around.“Tr—Trunks!” she laughed, the pain in her sides almost unbearable, but sweetly so. Damn him! He knew exactly where to tickle her to get the best reactions! “Trunks, stop—stop!”
Abruptly he did, and a heavy and unfamiliar weight wedged her between itself and the sand. As the tears of laughter cleared from her eyes, she saw Trunks’s face, his cheeks pink, his eyes wide. She caught her own face catching fire again as he quickly pushed himself off of her and turned to face the ocean.
Pushing herself up with her elbows, she studied him. That hair of his had always lead him victims to many a prank, and many more jokes. But no other hair color would fit him—not blue, not black. And besides, with Bulma and Vegeta, it made perfect sense. Bruises were black and blue, but they weren’t the really painful kind unless they were black, blue, and purple. Laughing at the thought, Pan pulled herself forward and ducked under Trunks arm, leaning against him.
Only to have him stand up and dump her into the sand.
Confused and hurt, she pushed herself up and looked after him. His back was straight, his neck tight. He walked stiffly, as if he were about to do something he didn’t want to do.
Or had already done something he regretted deeply.
Pan froze.
She’d seen him like this a few other times, always when he realized how big of a mistake he was making. Every time, it tore him apart, and she always felt elated, simply because there was one less bimbo in her way—although she had felt a little bit of sorrow in Marron’s case…but this time, she was the bimbo.
He stopped at the base of the dune where they’d watched the stars, where she’d let him see the darkest and tortured depths of her soul. He looked up at the sky, in the general direction of Dende’s lookout, and whispered something to the stars.
Pan ground her teeth, hating herself for allowing herself to think that they could really overcome the age difference, that he could really overcome himself...the damned womanizing bastard.
He knelt, then fell back onto his rear, dusting off his feet, then shaking the sand off of his socks.
Mentally, she kicked herself, kicked herself for being so stupid as to think he had changed, to think that he’d be mature enough to see what she’d grown into, to think that he’d be mature enough to take a relationship seriously. Physically, she clenched her hands into fists inside of her overly-long sleeves, ignoring the pain as her nails popped through her flesh.
“Trunks?” she called, hurt, but not letting it show. If he heard her, he didn’t respond. Time seemed to slow, she watched as each grain of sand fell from his sock and joined the other grains on the ground, all of the other poor schmucks that Trunks had left in his wake, all of the other poor souls she knew she was joining.
“Trunks, what’s wrong?” she braved. But she didn’t move, didn’t cross to him—didn’t trust herself to stand without sobbing.
He shoved his feet into his sneakers, his fingers fumbling with the laces.
“Trunks? Seriously, what’s eating you?”She swallowed thickly, ignoring the sticky ball of tears that had wedged itself in her throat, ignored how she couldn’t feel her heart, couldn’t hear it pounding. She knew that it was dead now, there was no doubting it.
Still, he ignored her, succeeded in tying one shoe and grabbed the laces on the other.
“Trunks?”
Now his head jerked up, now he heard her, now he realized why she was just sitting where he’d left her, half tumbled in the sand, her bandana gripped in a tight fist, her hair falling over her face. She must have looked pathetic, her eyes terrified and wide, the tiny muscle under her right cheek twitching as she tried not to cry.
She cursed her weakness, she hadn’t meant to let her voice betray her. She didn’t want him to realize how much this was killing her, she just wanted to know why.
Their eyes locked, and, though paralyzed as she felt, Pan pushed herself up.
I’m sorry, his eyes seemed to say. I’m sorry to have to do this to you—believe me, tonight wasn’t supposed to have turned out this way at all.
She understood. Quietly, she stood, gathering her shattered dignity and tarnished pride about her, and walked to join him, quietly picking up her shoes and her socks, not bothering to put them on as she started through the sand to the parking lot.
Trunks stared at her, watching blood drip down her fingers and onto her snow white socks, stuffed inside her tattered sneakers.
Pan blinked back the tears, not about to cry in front of him, not about to give him that satisfaction.