Title: Psalms of Lovers

Disclaimer: I do not own anything even remotely related to DBZ

Spoilers: Well, if you don't already know the thing about future-Trunks, Gokou and the Androids, I suggest that you pretend you do. Messes with some cannon Cell things.

Warnings: If anyone is squicked at the idea of Bulma/Buruma with someone other than Vegita (who I love and adore), then you might not want to read. Also, I am totally screwing with a few of the characters--don't bother saying so-and-so is OOC or that so-and-so didn't do that/wouldn't say that, because I did it on purpose. For the most part. You know, artistic liberties and all that.

Foreword: FanFiction-dot-Net is messing with my formatting. Makes me mad, and if anyone cares to see how this should look, it's saved in my LiveJournal memories.

I. In Memoriam

Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some glorious nothing I did see.

"Air and angels," John Donne

If you could make one wish, what would you wish for?

Though she is young she knows that summer ends and so does love. But the summer is not over yet.

And she is definitely not in love.

So after they have gathered the balls and wished and wasted the wish and started again, there is sun and clouds and blue. It billows around the children and they revel in it, because regardless of what they'd done summer is still their natural element, like fish and water or birds and wind. They revel in the purity of season though these children are no longer really children, having all seen and done far too much to retain the vestiges of childhood's innocence.

But she doesn't care because she is selfish and young, though still older then him.

And it's nice, in a way, to have someone she can just hold and not worry what he's thinking about her, or not thinking about her (as the case may be), and he's grown so quickly it's like she went to sleep one night only to wake and find a beanstalk in place of a bean. He's taller than she is (almost) and gangly only not, because he is one of those sickening people who grow perfectly proportioned: all their arms and legs and torso always fitting together better then they should.

The romantic in her wants to find something to equate him too because the mathematician in her needs to reason out why looking at him makes her feel like she's looking into the sun.

But oh, what a sun it is. He is one of those boys that you just hear about; one of those boys who are sweet and good and warm, and who can be and just by being can illuminate even the simplest of things into something wonderfully grand. And one who can make even the direst of situations seem safe.

She thinks that she might be able to fall in love with him--except of course he's younger than her and he's goofy and he likes martial arts and he's totally not want she wants.

But that doesn't matter right now.

'Cause there are more important things to think of; like the sun and the sky and the sea.

This girl and this boy (who are not in love--no not even close--though entwined in dreams of hands and kisses) are tangle together like bits of ever-growing strings. She is partly awake, cheeks flushed, and thinks hazily that she might have a problem with younger men.

Coherent thought is far and distant from his mind, however.

Like any youth he is saturated with their combined warmth, and contentment radiated off him like light from a star. The girl might love him--or might not, because she's keeping her heart in wait for that silver-clad knight to come and sweep her away--but right now this small sphere of flesh and darkness was all that she wants.

A stirring of limbs and they slide together unconsciously, hip-to-hip (for though he is the younger, he's nearly taller than she now); fitting one another like pieces of a complicated puzzle. Her lips press to his collarbone. His hand, warm and large, splays against her ribs. Her shoulder nestles under his out-flung arm. His legs twine between and around hers, ankle locked on ankle.

They are inextricable from each other, and that is all right because right now it's July; a time of sun and night and heat and lovers.

The still semi-conscious part of her mind thinks that this is far better than endless amounts of strawberries, but this is something that she'd never divulge awake. She draws a little closer, presses a little tighter, and kisses his neck. This is something unique to her; he is something unique to her. Together, she and this boy (who are not in love, thank you very much) are some kind of new creature. Some beautiful, exotic hybrid of form and function, and she is astounded because she hadn't even considered this possibility when she'd seen the boy nearly an eon before.

The boy, in return, grips her almost painfully. His thumb rubs over her skin, and he sighs in her hair. She doesn't care how long this last because something like this will never be forgotten.

They are not in love--not even close to it--but it is enough.

Until, of course, the summer ends and school begins again and she goes back to her classes and her family and her (sort of but not) boyfriend. She tries not to dwell upon the dark-haired boy and the dark-veiled nights and everything that she shouldn't want because they were never meant for each other and anyway, it had been more than enough for her. He was her friend and she didn't want him like that—it was just a fling.

Her parents mention, during the first few months, a boy on a cloud stopping by and asking for her, but she's busy and she'll get back to him later because it's not all that important.

And she actually manages to convince herself of this.

Then he gets married.

Years have a way of slipping by and making it seem like just a trick of the mind. She wakes up one day and finds that she's one of those twenty-somethings, brilliant and wasteful, with a string of failed relationships trailing behind her as brightly as a kite's streamers. When she meets him again he is married, with child. Soon to be children. And so handsome and dark and achingly perfect that she can't help but fall just a little bit in love with him.

Not that that's a problem, 'cause he's too good to ever even think of her like that now, and she's not quite that bad as to try and seduce a married man. And, and--oh hell.

She is miserable because she misses him, and misses not just his heart and his warmth, but him. He was her friend and she was always so horrible to him and now she can never make it up to him. She hates to admit she is anything less than perfect, but looking at him and his dark-haired beauty of a wife, and his ebony-haired sprite of a son, she's so jealous that she thinks she's going to be ill.

Of course she masks it well, consummate actress that she is, and she blusters on about her own sorry love life, and the one man she'd thought she'd loved. And maybe she is telling the truth because otherwise it wouldn't hurt so much to think on Yamcha, would it? And can't her fixation on her sweet oldest friend be just a reaction to her own heartache? Because she had loved him, she knows she did, does. Whatever.

But then why does it feel like her chest is being shredded from the inside out as she looks at his ever-so-happy face? Why, why, why-she snorts and waves away Roshi's strange look. Why indeed? She's selfish. It's as simple as wanting something she can't--or shouldn't because she has this niggling little thought tucked away in the corner of her mind that if she really really tried to, she could make him fall in love/lust with her quite easily--have.

So she takes the clearest path and ignores these odd palpitations behind her ribs and tries to be happy just for happiness' sake. Funnily enough, it doesn't work too well.

Years later, when she falls in love with Vegita, she knows immediately that it's different than what she feels for Gokou. This feeling is at once brighter and at the same time less. She knows then that she will never stop loving Gokou but that it will be possible for her to be happy with someone else.

Well, maybe happy is an overstatement. Content, definitely. Maybe happiness will come later.

Of course, she's not in love with Vegita for purely altruistic reasons; she had slept with the sullen prince first because she was lonely and he was available and attractive and he was nothing like Gokou. But even so ... she had affection for the displaced man from the beginning.

Right after she stopped being terrified that he was going to turn on them and kill them all. And after she stopped being furious that he was here and Gokou was not.

And ... he reminded her (almost) of Yamcha, starting off on the proverbial wrong foot but, eventually, proving that while devious, and malicious and conniving he is actually not all bad. Just mostly.

When she finally lets herself fall in love with him, right after Trunks is born because anyone who could help her create something so magnificent deserved her love, she pretends that she doesn't know that Gokou disappears for a full day and returns only to be found with knuckles covered in weeping cuts and indigo bruises. Just like she pretended she didn't know that when she announced her pregnancy Gokou disappeared for a week straight and that when he returned he wasn't bloody and dirty and strangely morosely savage for days afterwards.

When she falls in love with the dark prince, just as she pretends to not notice things that she should not be noticing anyway, she knows he too is trying to pretend that that nothing has changed.

And it's kinda heartbreaking because she knows that even though she's sort of happy now and just a little in love, she will never get over him--despite there not being anything between them for her to get over in the first place.

She will never love any other person quite the way she loves him and that kills her.

When he dies she thinks that she's dead too, for a moment.

But death, she learns, like so much else in this world, is not impermeable. And when they bring him back for the first time she is so happy that she thinks she might die anyway, because there's no way in the world it's right to feel so much for just one person.

Then he dies again.

And again.

Each time he does she feels that terrible clenching of her chest and that horrible clogging desolation rip through her throat, holding back those wails of anguish she never-ever voices. And each time he comes back--well. Joy is not the right word to use for such a feeling. She almost thinks that such jubilation can make up for the small death she experiences every time. Almost. Meaning, not quite.

After the final death (a stupid fucking virus—it isn't fair), she isn't sure that her heart can take him coming back for a third time, even though she misses him so goddamn much.

There is so much she wishes (now that she is wiser, older) that she had said to him.

There is so much that she had wanted to explain to him, because she could remember some nights when it was just the two of them again and it was so hard to remember that he was married, and that she was living with Vegita and that--well--everything had happened.

But because she was older now and (slightly) less impetuous, she does what she has always done because one of them had to be the sensible one. She bites down hard on her tongue and strangles whatever it is that she hold half-formed in her throat.

She will not be the one to destroy him, though she can't say the reverse will be true of him.

--What would you wish for?

I'd wish--

Sometime between his second and his third, and final, death, they go camping with Gohan and Trunks because Chichi is busy and Vegita doesn't care. And it is normal to be invited because he is her best friend, and Gohan is closer to her intellectually than either of them would care to admit. And she is fond of the studious boy. And he reminds her of his father.

Just like old times.

Oh, there is so much wrong with those four words that she longs to correct. But she doesn't because there isn't a point anymore. She is in love (maybe) with the flip side of Gokou's coin—the dark, twisted, strangely noble side that had tried to kill her just as many times as he'd made love to her. And she has a son. And she is old. And he is clueless. And he is--is--

He is looking at her with a sad look in his eyes. She's never seen that look before, hasn't even known he is capable of it. He understands so much more than she, than anyone, gives him credit for. She is so stupid to think that this is normal, or to think that he doesn't notice what she feels. She is so fucking stupid--

However, she is proud and she is cagey, and she is still older than him goddammit.

This is my life you know, finding those silly baubles and wishing you back; she says lightly, feeling a little weepy. 'Cause I'll do it, you know, every single time. That's what friends are for.

She is gratefully that Gohan is pretending to sleep, and that her son is too young to understand. She is grateful--then--for the small fire and the shadows it casts because she knows for a fact that her chin is wobbling dangerously and if he says just one thing, just one more thing--

I missed you. Why did you leave that fall?

Fuck.

So fucking plaintive and so fucking innocent.

I--she wants to say something clever or cutting or just anything to get him to leave this line of questioning. I-I had school. And friends. And--

--Yamcha.

And there it is.

The quiet bitterness in that single word surprises her. It isn't the right answer, but she isn't going to be the one to tell him. So what if she broke his childish heart? He survived. And he is better for it. She'd convinced herself of this long ago.

Except it seemed he hadn't.

I adored you. Meaning he didn't any more. Except, if that is true, why is he looking at her like this? I love her, but I adore you. Oh god please don't do this to her.

I was just a kid. I was stupid--

But you knew what you were doing. I did too.

He rests his arm around her waist, and she slides into the crook of his neck. It is like two long separate puzzle pieces coming to rest together. Part of her wants to divorce herself from him because this was only going to end in heartache--not that it hasn't already--but the more reptilian part of her brain wants to crawl inside his skin and curl up like a cat around the warmth of his heart.

Buruma, I--

And maybe he feels something like that too because she is sure that he is holding her just a little too tightly and just a little too closely and would it really be so bad if she just gave up and kissed him right here--

Yes. Yes it would.

But she wants this so badly and she knows she can feel something unannounced trembling eagerly for release in him as well.

However, she is not going to be the one to release it.

Maybe he senses this resolve, or maybe she's just reading far too much into a friendly embrace, or maybe they've both just gotten wiser. Whatever the reason, he tries to smile (slightly successfully) and releases her, hand coming to rest loosely between them (slightly shakily). They both want this--whatever this is--to be all right and they both want this to just go away. Well, maybe her more so than him because she knows that he doesn't really understand the consequences because if he did then why the hell would he even think of risking any of it for someone like her?

I--And it's okay. Really. I just ... missed you, is all.

It's a gargantuan effort on his part, and it is almost carefree enough. Almost warm enough. Almost truthfully enough. Too bad he isn't able to convince either one of them.

If I die again, I don't want to be brought back.

Then I'll die along with you. All right.

Because sometimes, I just get so tired ...

Fuck you. I understand.

Don't just say that. Mean it; I don't want to abandon anyone, but I just--you ever had that dream where it's calm and quiet, and it's just you and the sky? Well, I have that dream and sometimes it's real hard to wake up from it.

I don't understand why you're doing this to me. Why not tell your wife. Or your son. Or your best fucking war-buddy. I ... I can't promise that I won't stop someone else from bringing you back. But I promise I won't.

That's why I'm asking you. To make sure that no one else does, I mean.

Why're you doing this to me? I don't want to make this promise. You don't know what you're asking. I--

Promise me you won't let it happen.

I--

You're the only one I'm asking because I trust you.

I--

Buruma, I'm tired. I want to be selfish. I don't want to be resurrected to save the world anymore.

I hate you. All right. All ... right.

The third time he dies she spends one entire day sobbing into her pillows.

She cries the aching tears of one shattered alive and she cries them until her body cannot weep anymore. The morning after--with her eyes still red and mawkish--she gets up and goes into her lab. Then, with resolute precision, she picks up her mini sledgehammer systematically smashes all her gadgets and gizmos, and everything and anything that she has ever put any effort into.

It's sort of pointless destruction, and she is well aware of it, because you can't wish someone back from a natural death.

But that's the thing; it isn't a fucking natural death. Nothing as simple as a disease should have been able to kill him. Gokou isn't supposed to be brought low by a heart attack, by some abnormal fluctuation of his pulmonary muscle. It's not natural. Not even close to natural.

And it's not fair that those stupid balls should dictate what a 'natural' death is. They (she) needed him.

So, because the dragon balls are bloody useless, she is destroying the instruments that they use to find them because there isn't a point to it anymore. And because she needs to tear apart something just the way the whole fucking universe is tearing her apart. It's a control thing; Yamcha has always called her domineering.

She has always thought that was sort of unfair.

But standing in the wreckage of her workroom she knows that (maybe) it isn't far from the truth.

She hates that she is powerless in this. Yes, Gokou had been to one to save the world again and again and again, but--goddammit--she was the one who had gotten him where he was. Without her, he'd probably just be living in some god-forsaken forest playing with the animals ...

But that isn't right because she knows that he would have saved the world any way because he's just that kind of man. If it hadn't been her, it would have been someone else. He is the kind of man that brings that out in people.

Or rather, he was.

With a shriek she lobs her hammer at the wall and, panting, spins to find something else to throw. She hates this; she hates it. She hates this subjection and this injustice and she knows that God can hear her because she's talked to him before and he cannot do this to her.

Are you done?

Sardonic and weary, her (husband? Lover? Mate?) something stands in the doorway. He looks black and angry, but then again he always does so there isn't much change, and she can feel a coiling of resentment well up in her throat because how can he be so unaffected by this? How can he just not give a fuck? Gokou is dead. And he is never coming back. Not ever.

Just the thought makes her quiver, and brings on an onslaught of tears that she thought she'd finished.

No.

She is not done, and she doesn't know if she ever will be.

I'd wish--

She never thought she'd like Chichi as much as she does.

Chichi has a kind of black, savage beauty that makes her think of spice and hidden citadels and moonless nights. Her admiration of the girl had begun when Gokou--wheezing with laughter--recounted how the girl had impaled old Roshi with her blade. She'd been envious of her immediately, even though she'd been utterly confident that there was nothing to fear.

And of course there was nothing to fear; the girl was just a silly girl, and Gokou was there with her. But she was a jealous girl, and these boys--Yamcha, Gokou, and even Krillin, to an extent--they are hers and not for sharing with anyone. But the older she gets, the more magnanimous she gets and she finds that she isn't able to begrudge the other woman for having the one thing that she had thrown away. She is even able to say that there is a sort of solidarity between the two, perhaps for being really the only females in the band of warriors or for being the bearers of half-blood children. So they are friends, sort of. And she prays every day that Chichi misses the little glances that she sneaks; oops, sorry--sneaked because, ha ha silly her, Gokou's dead now and never coming back--at her husband.

For though they are kind-of friends, she still envies Chichi. She wishes constantly (and only in the back of her head, however) that the tall dark man is gracing her bed and that the lithe, intelligent boy is learning from her, and that she is the one to run her hands through the thick dark mane of the young wife's hair.

She won't hesitate to admit that she is more than a little infatuated with the entire family.

And it's not that she isn't happy with her own, goodness no. It's just, well, she wants to see what it might have been like because if she'd been smarter and better and less of an arrogant girl, she might have been the one to give Gokou his sons and to give him comfort and rest and oh hell--she just wants with a nameless aching that scares her. She wants to see what Gokou chose over her. She wants to taste what she gave him up for because Chichi has to have been worth her happiness because that had been really the only thing stopping her from begging Gokou to just take her away from everything.

She likes Chichi more than she'd thought she would, but she still fucking envies her so much.

Two days after Gokou's third death she finds Chichi standing by her kitchen window, looking just as fierce and as proud as was befitting of the bereaved daughter of the Ox King, and in desperation she cups the dark-haired woman's face in her hands and kisses her. It's a selfish act, and a stupid act, and one that she repeats again and again because Chichi still tastes faintly of her husband's heavy musk and--having never tasted it before--she is afraid that she will lose him more than she already has.

Chichi is a smart woman, and a lonely one, and she knows exactly why she's kissing her and Chichi knows why she's kisses her back--because they both need this.

He is gone.

Chichi weeps in the frame of her hands. She is far lovelier than anyone else she has ever seen, and suddenly she knows exactly why Gokou had chosen her. This girl is a striking mix of rage and gentleness-something that she could never be. Chichi is like the earth: dark and rich and mothering.

Yes, he is gone.

If Chichi is like the earth then she must be the sea. Full of dark hidden corners and selfish drowning tides. Because while she is sad for Chichi, envious of Chichi, she is also pleased, as horrible as she feels to admit it; the girl in her is sort of happy that Gokou's dead because he was hers and it hurt to see him with anyone else.

The worst part is Chichi knows.

There is a glimmer of hate in Chichi's eyes (because a wife always knows) and the younger woman's face seems to say now you will never have him. Part of her wants to hit the girl because it isn't quite so simple and part of her wants to weep because it is so very true.

So she kisses her again. Silly child--I never had him.

Stupid woman, you just never knew it.

This bitter retort does cause her to cry again because her heart is too full with regret and fury and want, and strangely enough together it is almost just a little better so they stay like that for a little while, clutching one another in the kitchen of the dead man's house, and together they are a little comforted.

Chichi dies in a fall.

But not really because it was what happened before the fall that killed her and it was like watching Gokou die all over again. Because it wasn't suppose to happen that way. Chichi was supposed to die surrounded by extended generations of family, a happy old woman. Not an emaciated ghost. Not a shell of a girl, all glass-coloured skin and sharp bones.

Not like this.

It is a form of passive suicide. She sees it coming, but somehow can't bring herself to stop it. Not when her world is in disarray, and she can't stop choking up in the middle of making dinner because she suddenly remembers that the extra she's making is pointless and then it's all she can do to not breakdown right there--

See, this is the difference between her and Chichi.

She tries to function, even if it's just sort of piece-meal and crippled, and she carries her son and feeds her husband and works in her workroom and cries into her hands at night. Sometimes her husband, or lover, or whatever the hell he is, will come and fuck her, and she welcomes this because it's something that makes her feel. And she does love him, in a way, just as he cares for her, in a way. She's never doubted this because she knows that he would have left he if hadn't cared a little. And she has her son; her beautiful miraculous blue-eyed boy who has so much of what is good in his father.

Chichi has less. Chichi has her son, but her son is a miniature of his father and looking at him frequently causes her to weep. Chichi has her house, but her house is all but empty now for her son is away, training, and her husband is dead. There is no escape for her.

So Chichi just stops--stops living, stops sleeping, stops eating.

She scares Gohan so badly that the boy comes to her in fits of terror and begs her in tears to find a way to bring him back.

Gohan is just a boy, and he doesn't know what he asks.

He doesn't know that he makes her heart shrivel and slip into her gut, or that he makes her lock herself in her room for three hours trying not to cry and pick up her tools to do just what he asked. He doesn't know and that too makes her think of his father and then everything starts all over again.

If this is what Chichi feels when she see him, sees her son-not-husband, then the younger woman has her deepest sympathy.

And Gohan tries so hard. He does and it's heartbreaking because she can see the ending a mile away, plummeting towards them like a speeding train. When she has the time, she heads over to Chichi's house intent on making the other woman do something other than sit in silence, and sometimes she'll see Gohan there trying to cajole her into living. Always unsuccessfully. Always in tears.

When Chichi dies, she dies because she stumbles and trips and falls and shatters the already fragile bones around her heart. They crumble inward, pierce her pulmonary artery and she bleeds to death internally. It's very fitting; dying of a bleeding heart. She wants to be more upset about this death; but she can't help feeling, well, sort of envious because it doesn't matter how Chichi died, just that she did. She was going to anyway, either by self-infliction or by stupidity or by accident; the dark-haired girl makes her think of lovebirds. She's heard somewhere that when one of the pair dies the other soon follows, fading away because it can't cope without it's other half.

And it's sort of heartening in a way, because if Chichi felt so strongly about him, it must have been love. Yeah, so the lead in her chest can't be anything important. Because if she loves him, shouldn't she be more--

I want to die.

--Upset about the whole thing? Yeah, and besides she has responsibilities. And then there's Gohan. No one even thought about Gohan; where is he to live? Who is to feed him? She may have liked Chichi more than she'd thought she would, but that doesn't stop the anger she feels at the woman's selfishness.

So the day she learns of Chichi's death she does what any wife worth her mettle does.

She cleans the house and then makes dinner.

She has lost something she has never had.

The loss of it haunts her days, her nights and her waking dreams. The loss of this thing that she's never owned, never been able to buy, never been able to steal; the loss of this thing is magnificent and she learns of suffering and rage anew.

(If you could make one wish, what would you wish for?

I'd wish--)

She is a selfish woman. And she is a brave woman. And she is a stupid woman. She wants what she cannot have. She loves what is not lovable. She creates what is un-creatable.

And if she could have one wish, just one wish, she'd be horrible and she'd bring him back because she still can't imagine living without him even though she never really had him.

I'd wish for time.