Chapter 1, A Twist In My Story.


'Hi, Chi-Chi, I'm home!'

She didn't hear the door open, but she imagines that it must've burst open in the exact manner that her heart did, when she heard her husband's voice.

The normal and natural thing to do in this situation, would be to remove her chin from both of her palms, leap out of her chair and then dash to the door to meet her husband in an excited welcome. That would be the natural thing to do, and yes, she does want to do it. In fact, she's internally struggling with herself not to do it as she wants to, but the end remains that she simply can't.

It's for the sake of her heart, it's this day, it's what's going to happen, that has her unable to react appropriately.

Fortunately, from the cheerful ring in his voice, she knows that whether she meets him at the door or not, he will not be bothered. If she knows him, at this very moment, he's too happy to be back, to expect a reaction from her. She can't quite explain it as simply as pointing out black from white, however, she can think that in that regard, Goku has always, in a special non-malicious way, been selfish.

Whenever he returned home, (and the same could be said about when he suddenly felt the urge to leave) he didn't factor other people's reactions to it. It's never been that he doesn't care what they think or feel, it's just, well, it's always been a Goku thing. It's the same reason now that she knows he doesn't mind coming to her, like she senses him doing.

In less than a second, he appears next to her. She turns her face to him, to find him like she thought she would. The big child-like smile and eyes shining with excitement, are all on his face like she imagined they would be.

'Hi, Chi-Chi,' he repeats, the same excitement as before in his voice.

It breaks her heart.

How can a grown man, someone with a heart of purity and nobility, be so blind? How can her great husband, the strongest (in several ways) man that she knows, not sense that from the minute that he burst the door to their small house open and she didn't spring up to meet him, that her heart burst as well? And how can he not read her face, to see that something is wrong?

'Hi, honey,' she chokes out, trying to swallow a stubborn solid lump down her throat.

Her heart is breaking. It really is. His sudden appearance and presence, have burst her heart open to a sea of pain and love, and now she feels overwhelmed by it. She didn't think that this day would come today.

'Hi,' he greets back, lifting his hand in a wave this time. 'I'm home.'

Chi-Chi tries her best to convince herself to smile, or at least to get up and touch his cheek with her hand, but she fails. Her burst heart has crippled her ability to move, it seems. Besides, smiling and touching him would be deceptive of her.

'It's so good to see you,' he cluelessly continues. 'Man, I missed all of you.'

He missed all of them. He didn't specifically say that he missed her, he said that he missed all of them. She's his wife for goodness sake, not a part of the collective that is his friends!

Slowly, she gathers the strength to get up and show him a faint smile as she stands before him. It's that she feels the last thread of hope break apart, resulting in a now gushing heart. If he'd held out his hand for her to stand up for a welcoming embrace, perhaps this last thread wouldn't have broken.

'I'm sure you must be starving,' she quietly says, 'I'll make you something to eat.'

'Thank you, Chi-Chi,' he sincerely agrees for the meal to be made, placing his hands on her shoulders.

As though stung by a large enough bee, she stiffens from the tip of her hair to her last toe.

It's not the contact that surprises her, it's the fact that she didn't prepare for it in her head. Goku has touched her before, especially when he thanked her, so she should've known to prepare for his touch. But she didn't.

She swallows with difficulty, 'You're welcome, honey.'

'I'm going to see the others, okay? I'll be right back,' he says, letting his hands drop from her shoulders and somehow he's already halfway to the door.

'Goku,' she calls to get him to turn back.

He turns back to her, 'Yes, Chi-Chi?'

Amazing, she thinks. He's as naïve as he was when they first met. Even now, the devilmite beam wouldn't do him any harm. She's suddenly remembering that little piece of information that she heard from old man Roshi, because he's making it blatantly clear that no evil dwells within him.

She was going to ask him if he loves her, but she changes her mind to say, 'Don't come back too late, okay?'

'Sure thing, Chi-Chi,' he promises, 'Bye.' And then he flies off.

She blinks twice to clear the image of Goku standing near the door, from her head. And then, she succumbs to the tears of her heart.


26Chapters


Ever since she finished preparing the food that she promised her husband, and she laid it out on the table for him to find ready, she's been standing by the door with her purse in her hand.

It's been around an hour of standing, but she doesn't feel the effect of standing idly for an hour. It's probably because her mind is filled with a single thought; she's painfully closing a book of her life. After all these years, she's leaving.

Just then, the door opens and Goku appears.

'I'm back,' he announces as though to say that he kept his promise.

Robotically, she turns to him to tell him, 'I'm leaving.'

She doesn't expect alarm to come from him, because she knows him. He's Goku after all, and Goku doesn't automatically assume the worst at the first piece of information that he receives. Unless in the case of fighting and earth being threatened, bad news has to be literally spelled out for him, otherwise it'll just be a series of questions, as he tries to get to the meaning of the first hint.

'Oh,' he's innocently surprised, 'are you going to see the Ox King?'

'No,' she sniffs.

Apparently perplexed, but not yet alarmed –far from it-, he frowns. 'Uh… are you going to visit Gohan?'

The idea apparently suddenly excites him and he gets boyish excitement smeared all over his face. Where it would've been endearing in the past, it just tears her inside brutally now.

'Please, please Chi-Chi, can we go together?' he begs, 'I promise to eat as fast I can. I'm dying to see Pan.'

This man, she looks at him with pained wonder, this man will never stop to amaze her.

Chi-Chi sighs heavily. 'No, Goku,' she gently tells him, 'I'm not going to see Gohan or Pan.'

'Then…' he frowns again, 'where are you going?'

In the past, she would've yelled the answer, but today, she doesn't have the capacity to. Calm and wounded, is the only way that she can do anything today.

'I didn't say I'm going anywhere Goku,' she tells him, 'I said I'm leaving.'

'Oh,' is all he says.

Interpreted correctly, she knows that he has no idea what she means, neither does he know what to ask next. It's up to her to make him understand what she means, even if it will shred her apart to say aloud.

'I love you, Goku,' she decides to spell it out for him, putting all of her shattered heart into the words that will come out of her mouth. 'I really do, and I believe that I will love you until I die, but as from this moment, I am no longer your wife.'

Confused, not understanding what she really means, he scratches the back of his head. 'Huh?'

'I know it seems cruel and vindictive to leave just when you've arrived…'

When Goku's friends hear about this from him later on, one of them is bound to think that she waited for him to arrive, so she could leave and he would feel the pain of being left indefinitely without a proper goodbye. That's honestly the furthest thing from the truth, because she would never intentionally hurt Goku; she loves him.

'And when you go over it in your head, you might come to think of this as my way of punishing you, but honey –she still thinks of him this way- I'm not doing this to hurt you or pay you back for the many times that you left me without a single hug.'

'But I don't understand, Chi-Chi,' he tries, 'Are you saying that you're leaving like I left?'

The way he asks that, though, grinds her shattered heart into a pile of ash ready to be blown away by the wind. It's exactly telling her that he doesn't mind her leaving if she feels like she needs to leave. His tone says that he thinks it's perfectly okay for her to leave for a cause; he wouldn't want to keep her back from doing what she feels is right in her heart.

How can any wife not be destroyed by that?

Every woman wants her man to cherish her, while every man never fathoms the idea of being away for longer than a month from the woman that he loves. Heck, even stone-cold-exterior Vegeta never leaves his wife the way Goku just ups and leaves.

'Yes…' she starts, resigning to the fact that she can't begin to explain her leaving to him.

'Okay,' he gently accepts, 'You'll come and visit, right?'

'No,' she says as two tears from her respective eyes.

Experiencing this with him right now, she realises that this is how it must be with him whenever he decides to leave or stay away from home. In his head, he probably always sees their reactions from his own point of understand. He must truly believe that everyone accepts decisions they way that he does.

'Goku...' What does she say next?

She will not come to visit, because it won't be good for her. She understands that what she's doing is not right, and that she can't mend years of waiting, with leaving and hoping to find peace, but what else can she do? If she stays, it will only be a matter of time, before Goku decides that he needs to leave again and then she will be all alone all over again.

All throughout the years that they've been married, that she's been loving him, Goku unfortunately, never mastered the art of being the adequate family man. He mastered the art of training and he excelled on all levels of fighting, but he sadly never got to understand that a man, a married man, was truly needed at home.

Goku didn't ever learn that two heads in a household, made better than one. He didn't fully capture the essence behind two hearts, and that one heart, couldn't love itself, it needed to love another. And, sadly, even the carnal part, he didn't give extreme importance to. Where any man would give his time to have sexual pleasure, for Goku, it wasn't something that he necessarily required. While he did thoroughly enjoy intercourse with her, he apparently never grasped the importance it had in sustaining a marriage.

'What do you mean no?' Goku wonders, 'Do you want us to come visit you instead?'

He's died three times, he went away for year periods or he chose to stay away for as long as he liked, and all the while, she waited for him. Yes, she yelled and screamt at him when he was home, and yes, she was harsh, but that was how she endured the absences. When she was all alone and her son and husband were off in battle, and her heart was racing with fear of whether or not they were still alive, reminiscing on all the ways she yelled and lost her temper, kept her sane. She knew that once they were back, she wouldn't have them with her for very long and having happy memories, would only eat away at her and bring her longing, added onto the anguish that she felt in their absence. It's a coping mechanism that many wouldn't understand, but it has worked for her.

'I'm sorry, Goku,' she chokes, wiping her tears away, 'but you will never see me again.'

With that, she brushes past him and steps out of the door.

'Chi-Chi,' he calls after her.

She bravely ignores him, keeping her steps in check. This is one of the times that she wishes she could fly.

'Chi-Chi, please wait,' he calls desperately. 'I don't understand.'

Now he is beginning to worry, she thinks. It's not something that she can revel in, neither does she want to, but it's a fact. He's starting to feel that something is wrong.

She feels a pair of large hands take hold of her from the back before Goku appears in front of her.

'Tell me,' he pleads with his eyes more than he does with his words, 'what is going on? Why won't I ever see you again?'

She lets out a breath, dying inside that he's feeling lost like this. She's not supposed to be doing this to him. He's a good man, the man that she loves, she shouldn't be the reason for his sorrow.

In attempt to at least feather away some of his lostness, she cups his face in her hands.

'I'm not doing this to hurt you, or make you feel what I felt every time that you left,' she sobs out, 'but Goku, if you love me-'

'I do love you,' he protests as though he suddenly feels accused that he doesn't.

'Then let me go,' she softly pleas her request. 'Don't stop me, just let me go. Please.'

If she's ever craved anything more in her life from him, it's nothing compared to now. Right now, she desperately, with all of her soul and her barely existing heart, needs him to let her go.

'Please, Goku,' she begs with defeat, 'Let me go.'

Before his hands drop from her body, a light dies in his eyes and the confused incomprehension that had been on his face, transitions to a pale mask. She can't allow herself to see his true expression, when he realises (which will happen shortly, as he is in deep thought) the meaning, so she steps to the right and heads for the car, so that she can leave right away.

She doesn't know what she's going to do next, she only knows that the one thing that she's excellent at, she can't be anymore. She used to be the understanding, bearing and patient wife to a Saiyan man, but from today, she knows that she's only going to be hurting like hell.


Chapter 2, Before.