Disclaimer: Do not own Dragonball Z or any of its characters.

AN: This is a little something that came to me out of nowhere. It started out as a way to vent some frustration that I had been feeling. It is written in second person format, if any of you are familiar with it or not. I'm a new writer so this is not up to the level I know it could and should be so…whatever.

In addition, this story is completely AU and will feature Bulma and Vegeta as well, cannot leave those two out. All type of feedback is welcome, good or bad.

Title: Story of My Life

Summery: A young Yamcha tells the tale of love gone wrong and the opportunity to gain true love slipping through his fingers. Will he gain what he has always wanted or forever fall short of his desires?

So many problems around me

Dammit won't they just go away?

Every night I pray, yeah

Lord won't you come my way

Won't you come and rescue me

Help me see the light

What do you do when your water runs dry?

When your greens and your blues turn to black and white

It's the story of my life

When the fires get out, can you turn 'em off?

Can you turn 'em off?

Story Of My Life – Frankie J

Prologue: What Happened To That Boy?

For as long as you can remember you've been one of the people that have tried their hardest to keep things together for as long as possible. Like a small child growing inside of a sheltered womb you've grown secure in the confines of the world around you. You don't want to enter the reality, don't want to think of the things that went wrong because that makes everything so painfully real. Somehow you've managed to convince yourself that it never happened, you look back on it with the haze that lingers in the morning after a dream. The more you chase it the quicker it fades…its just as well too. People say you don't need to remember it and you want to listen to them. But when you're alone, as you are now, the memories are so strong…

As much as you try to keep your mind off of everything that has happened in the past few months you can't. Most days you find yourself sitting up in bed the way you are today, thinking back and swimming in a thick pool of regret. Often times you drown in it, stuck under the water and above the ground with scarcely enough strength to breathe. Shame is nothing ever goes as you initially planned. Now the memories that once offered you a bit of clarity, even some type of solace, have become the demons on the lonely nights you decide to sleep.

You remember a time when you were happy, when even though you were not the most successful person alive, or the richest, you had something that mattered; a family. Yet now, you look around and you see a mockingly cold shadow draping over your life reminding you that what you have now is only half of the glory. There are goods in your life, as of course there are bad things, but regret is the emotion that rises highest over everything.

On this very day, a particularly smoldering hot in July, much hotter than accustomed, you lay up in bed trying as hard as possible to retain some type of coolness in your body. You feel a small droplet of sweat tricking down your neck at first and then somehow it has made its way to your chest, and it slides to the plain of the stomach you know you should work out more. Small bangs of your wire-like black hair that has not been combed since maybe two days ago mashes to your forehead like a second layer of skin. Your hand pushes the strands away and for a moment the cool air of the fan kisses your forehead. But the hair falls right back to place the minute you let go. If only the rest of your life could fall into place like that.

Through china black eyes you watch the blades of the wood fan above you swirl around and round repeatedly, without end in the same manner that your days have turned into one big downward spiral. Monday feels like Tuesday, Tuesday feels like Wednesday and so on…or maybe it's that the days have lost all feeling.

Slowly, because it hurts to think too much; it hurts to do a lot of things lately, your mind begins to remember a time when everyday held a new feel to you, offered new prospects and gave hope to a life that had settled comfortably in being so mundane. You could never really stand that, you recall. Mundane was something that was never good enough for you. You wanted it all…and the worst part is you had it and lost it.

There is a bitter taste that loiters in your mouth but it is not from any substance you have taken in. In order for that to be so you would have had to have eaten something within the last 48 hours and you haven't. Food no longer appeals to you as it once did. A time that seemed millions of years past you would have feasted down on any food until your body lay gorged. On these days you've lost weight, most of it lost in the time you spend in rehabilitation, the rest lost now that you were out because you simply refuse to nourish yourself. You see no point. The depression sucks most of your time, energy, and will to do anything lately. It is only a matter of times before others realize what you are going through is not a phase. For you it is a way of life.

Now, lying in bed on what feels like the hottest day of the summer, you feel as if you've even lost the will to complain, as often is the case with those who at one point or another held the entire world in their hands. Complaining will do you no good, will not keep you company at night, will not bring back the wife and family you held so dear…the family you changed your life for.

A baby cries in the distance, a boy, a son, your son. He has a loud set of lungs on him you muse while willing yourself out of bed slowly. He always had such a force to his voice, even on the first day he was born. A painful memory snaps under the pale flesh of your nude chest. Everything lately has become a painful memory. You remember taking your son into your arms for the first time, staring down at eyes that then had been a light mixture of brown, blue, and green; the color of moss growing on a tree in the deepest parts of the forest. He had his mother's eyes, his mother's hair, his mother's skin tone and was named after you. The only thing of you he took on…your name. The only thing left of the past…him. The rest has managed to somehow slip through your hands like sand, leaving you only to derive comfort from your mocking memories.

The tiny little cherub in the next room crying loudly from inside his wooden crib was the single most painful reminder of the life you left behind. Of the woman that though flawed you did love more strongly then you even knew was possible for you. She opened your eyes to a world you had always seen from the outside in and now you find yourself trapped inside the eyes of a stranger, looking out on the world as if for the first time.

You cross the open threshold into the next room even slower still than at the pace you had been carrying on while getting there. The wave of heat hits you full on like a truck speeding down the highway without any regard for anything and you just happen to be an animal on the road. Dauntingly you make yourself into the room fully where the source of the crying is. As you step in the crying grows louder and slams into you like the heat.

Looking down in the crib you see your son, he has somehow worked his foot into his mouth and is chewing in a fevered frenzy, cool tears rolling down his soft brown cheeks. A combination of the flu you two share currently, the teething that has just begun, and the heat is wreaking havoc on the poor 9 month-old boy. For a brief instant he stops crying, glances up at you with eyes that have now darkened completely into deep brown orbs, and stares at you as if he's known you his entire life, as if you were always there. That was not always the case…

There was a time when he had been ripped form you and you felt as if your soul could not be still without him. It had been bad enough his mother had left you, but she had made it a point to take him with her. She wanted to stomp on your heart with her tall stilettos then come back only to wipe your own blood over you. The wicked bitch had done a good job at that. You feel the familiar rush of hate overwhelm you when you think of her, yet somewhere in the back of all the odium you posses for her there is a trickle of love left in what you assumed to be an empty bottle.

She was the only woman who openly loved you and that did include the mother of the other child you had. A daughter, four years old with a head of the most beautiful brown curls you had ever seen in your life. You rarely see her or her mother Tiffany. You make a mental note to call Britney, your daughter, at a later time; though you are sure that in a few hours the mental note will be tossed into a trashcan somewhere. Years of inflicting illegal substances had caught up with you, even after you sought help in March.

With a shake of your head you push all other thoughts aside. That is your problem, or one of them. Quickly you can become very side tracked and were it not for the crying that had began in your son you would have stayed distracted.

You see so much of his mother in your son every time you see him it hurts you, feels like a knife being lodged in your heart. You're scared if you pull the knife your heart might stop beating all together. The pain is the only thing keeping you alive. The pain, and of course the loneliness.

When you take your son up into your arms he stops crying for good. His little body seems to fit in your arms almost as perfectly as his mother had once done. You must stop doing this to yourself, you remind yourself, because the only thing it does is add more pain to a dam that is hardly standing. It is only a matter of time before the dam breaks on you and you find yourself unable to breathe again.

The two of you have a seat on a small chair closest to his crib. It is the very same chair that you have fallen asleep in night after night when watching him lately. His cold will not allow him to sleep peacefully until the wee hours of the morning and it is all the same to you. You never sleep anyway. With a soft chuckle you ask yourself, what is this sleep you speak of?

The little creature in your arms stares up at you with his eyes filled with amusement, admiration almost. He coos softly as you run one of your hands down his skin that is softer than any material man can make. It is amazing how a human being can love another with such a force that you feel if you let yourself dwell in it that it might kill you with its dynamic concentrated power. The love you felt for your son was different than the love you had for his mother. You always had subconsciously known down deep that there was always the possibility of letting her down, making her leave. But with your son something stronger ties you both together; blood.

Women are trouble, you whisper down to your son ever so lovingly, gently before leaning down and kissing his forehead moist with mixed sweat from the fever and the heat from the outside.

Trust no one, you add after a few moments of picture-perfect tranquility. You are thankful for the moments you can have with your son. They are the small rays of darkness that make their way through the darkness of your life. It is the sun after the eternal storm of your life subsides, that however, never lasts for long.

Your best friends will stab you in the back. You will hurt the one you never wanted to. You will lose everything, and still somehow find a way to live. Your son coos softly anew and you wish that you could spare him of the pain in your life. You've seen the worse; you have to have by now. At your nearly 21 years of age you have seen things before your time though no one will ever know. Your big black eyes show nothing of the wisdom you retain. You've deceived everyone around you into buying the false façade you have spent so much time—20 years to be exact—perfecting. Everyone has pegged you as a certain person and their naivety is both a gift and a curse. They will never know the real you.

The one thing that you wish to spare your son of is the same treatment. Things in your life went so bad that there was a point you were sure you would slip under into a comatose state only to awaken when the world was right again, that was of course, if you were lucky. If not…then death was awaiting you shortly. You wanted to do all you could to spare the young boy, so innocent, so free. For a second you miss being so young, with no care in the world.

At the same time you are glad to have the experience that you currently exemplify. Life can no longer take advantage of you and if anything, you can take advantage of it. There is a strange sense of seniority about you and you contemplate the fact that you aren't even half way don't with you life. Even if you've come so close to death you two have locked eyes…

He gives off a small laugh then he becomes wrapped up in a small sliver chain you always wear with two identification tags hanging from down on your chest. His small fists take them into his hands and bring them to his lips where he softly chews and gurgles something in no language, yet you two understand each other completely. That moment in time is the embodiment of a true bond of a father and a son.

What happened to the boy you use to be, before your son, before your wife, before your world was kicked off of its axis. Were there any lingering traces of him? Was his body sprawled out somewhere, off the side of the road, and bleeding to death? Was there any way to resuscitate him?

For what feels like the millionth time that day alone you begin to replay tiny little fragments of shattered glass of a time before things went wrong. A time when you were happy, a time when you were complete. There had been such a time when the sun shined so warm on you and you never felt so alive. But now you were cast out, a bastard child to the world. All you want now is to make the memories of your happiness a reality.

AN2: Should there be another chapter? Let me know. Review, all is welcomed, good or bad.