A Place in Time

Chapter One; Aftermath of a Fated Tryst

Caelestis Kibeth

The last thing I saw was her frightened face hovering over me and my last thought, with sudden clarity, was that I was not ready.

I was not ready yet.

Briefs Household

( future timeline )

Pan groaned and rolled over in the crisp white sheets, attempting to escape the sun that shone insistently through the bedroom window. Her movements stirred the figure beside her, and a strong arm flexed tighter around her waist to keep her from leaving his side. She smiled to herself and obligingly buried her head into his chest, the muscles he donned quite skilfully doing the job of diverting the light from her eyes. It was at times like these that Pan really loved being as small as she was—whether it was the sun or a rambunctious toddler, she could always find a way to hide behind her husband.

Soon enough, the young woman found herself drifting swiftly back into her abandoned dreamland, allowing a happy grogginess to weigh down upon her eyelids—

"MAMA!"

Pan gave a disgruntled 'oomph' sound as the air found its way out of her lungs from the source of the little—little big, ugh Kami—voice that had just settled on top of her. She groaned as the invisible form wiggled and bounced upon her abdomen. Pan took a moment to silently curse several universes and deities before she threw the covers from over her head, and came face-to-face with a five-year-old, cerulean-eyed carbon copy of herself.

Looking absolutely delighted at the results of her wake-up call, the little girl stopped bouncing in favor of falling forward onto her mother, delivering herself in a warm embrace. "You're up!" the child exclaimed jovially, her voice chiming out in high, girlish tones.

Despite her mild irritation at being forced from what had been a very promising rest, Pan could not help but allow a smile to pull up on her lips as she returned the embrace. She shifted so that she could sit resting against the headboard and carried the girl with her, positioning her in her lap. "Good morning, Musume," she returned—albeit much less enthusiastically—before giving her a kiss on the forehead between disheveled raven locks.

"You and Papa sleep way too long, you know. I've been up for hours!"

As if just reminded of his presence, Pan gave a glance to the sleeping man beside her, and then turned back to Musume with a frown. "Hey now, why didn't you wake him up too!" she exclaimed. Clearly, she was being done a terrible injustice here.

Musume imitated her mother's frown, eyes darting back and forth between her parents for a long moment before answering. "But I tried to wake him up already. Papa didn't move!"

Pan sighed, realizing that she should have already known that answer. Trunks had always been a heavy sleeper—a trait that went hand-in-hand with his stubbornness—always adamant to never get up before he was damn well ready to. It seemed that not even his daughter's shrieks did the trick, something that Pan had found particularly irritating during Musume's infancy.

But then again, maybe it was a good thing that he had that ability under his belt. Kami only knew what kind of chaos the house would be in the mornings if Musume's younger brothers hadn't inherited it. With their sister sleeping in the room in-between theirs', and with her belief that once she had woken up that the rest of the household should wake up with her, the two of them would get even less sleep than Pan did on a normal basis.

Returning her thoughts to the present, Pan gently lifted her daughter and set her feet on the floor. "Musu," she addressed her fondly, "Go do your best to wake up Gohan and Vegeta for me. I'll find a way to wake up your dad."

Eager to accomplish her mission, the little girl nodded vigorously and skittered off into the hallway. Once she was out of sight, the raven-haired woman rolled over on top of her husband's sleeping form, lowering her mouth to nibble lightly on his ear. Trunks fidgeted at the sensations caused by her gentle bites and the feeling of her hot breath on his lobe, and she smirked as he rolled over onto his back.

Moving with him to hover over his chest, Pan trailed agonizingly slow kisses along his expanse of exposed flesh—up his collarbone, neck, and then, finally, to his lips. It took mere seconds before she felt his lips soften against her own, parting just slightly to respond groggily to the kiss. A pair of hands moved up and along her sides, caressing the curves there blindly and yet superbly, as only a person thoroughly acquainted with each nuance of her figure would have been able to.

Trunks was indeed acquainted with Pan's figure. Very, very well.

Moments later, she pulled back and watched his heavy eyelids slide open to take in the view of her contented expression. She was beautiful when she smiled, he thought, and sent fleeting thanks to Kami that he was alive today to take it in every morning. There had been such a long time when the idea that either of them would ever smile again seemed like cruel wishful thinking.

"I love it when you do that," Trunks muttered, a slight purr tinting his voice. Pan's response came in the form of a quiet laugh and one more soft kiss, just for good measure.

She leaned back slightly and allowed him to brush a few dark locks behind her ear, pushing them out of the way of his view of her onyx eyes. Those eyes, gorgeous in all their depth and darkness, were quite possibly the first thing he'd fallen in love with—and who would ever have guessed that they would become only the tip of the iceberg?

They shined now as Pan smirked playfully down at her husband. "I would hope so," she replied, in turn fingering his unique violet locks (which sorely needed a haircut, she noted). "I may have mothered three children, but at twenty-four I would hate to think that I'd lost my touch already." She bit her lip and looked away from his face then, as if remembering something. "You, however, have a birthday coming up… how old will you be again?" Pan teased. "Thirty-nine, is it?"

"Thirty-eight." He chuckled, extending a finger to nudge the end of her nose. "I'm not all that old, you're just too young to understand that," he countered lightly.

She shrugged off his response, her smile remaining positively wicked. "Do you think you can manage to get up and help me with breakfast now, or are you too aged and crippled to move?"

"Hey now!" Trunks exclaimed, although not sounding offended in the least. Pan smirked and rested her chin in hand, awaiting the next jibe to come about her youth—what she got instead was the unexpected sensation of being thrown up off her husband's warm body and into the air quite suddenly. She squeaked in surprise, not realizing what had happened until she felt two chiseled arms latch securely underneath her legs and behind her back.

It was Trunks' turn to look triumphant now as he made a leap off of their shared bed with her settled, momentarily paralyzed by her surprise, within his grip. "Now, what was that you were saying about—oh, what were the words? Aged and crippled, I think?"

Pan stuck her tongue out at him, as he carried her like a new bride out of their bedroom and downstairs into the kitchen. He did not let her go until he found a clear counter to set her down upon, and when he'd finally finished his show of masculinity and power, he stood back and regarded Pan with that frustratingly charming arrogant smirk of his.

"Yeah, yeah," she laughed, hopping down from her makeshift throne to lay a pair of slender arms lazily over his shoulders. "So I suppose you're not getting too old yet."

And really, who could deny Trunks Briefs when he smiled like that? He was a man of such attractive personality once he let it show, a surprising idea in the least when one considered the state in which she'd first found him. Even after that fated meeting, it had been a long, arduous task to break through the rock-solid emotional defenses he'd put up around himself. But once she had begun to chip away at the walls of that fortress, Pan had unearthed a person unlike any other—a person that she had found she simply couldn't keep herself from falling in love with.

She gave him a swift peck on the lips before the quick scamper of feet on the wooden floors above caused her to pull away from their intimate position, and Pan turned her attention to searching the contents of the refrigerator behind her. A mere split second later, Musume, followed by Gohan and Vegeta, burst into the kitchen at full force, the latter two boys already clad in full training garb.

The twins made a beeline for Trunks, each grabbing onto a leg of their father's baggy grey sleep pants insistently. The older Briefs male regarded his sons with a raised brow and confused expression, as if he didn't already know exactly what they wanted.

When it was apparent that they weren't going to elicit any further reaction from him, Gohan growled and tightened his grip on the soft fabric impatiently. "Come on, Dad! We were supposed to be out training five minutes ago!"

Vegeta nodded in solemn agreement, mimicking his twin brother's actions. "Yeah, come on, Dad!" he repeated. "Don't tell us you forgot! We train at seven on the dot every morning!"

Trunks continued to glance down at the boys curiously, and worried on his lip. "Huh… you know, that does sound kind of familiar," he muttered, barely able to hold back a laugh at the exasperated looks he got in return.

Of course he was only messing around with them. Since the boys had turned four a couple of months before, they had been deemed old enough to begin to learn how to fight, something that both had taken on with excitement despite the heavy and unnatural strain such a task was for children their age.

Neither Trunks nor Pan had ever wanted to teach their children to fight; they had, however, long ago resigned themselves to the idea that such a thing was, terribly, a necessity of life—at least in the world in which they were raising them. It simply wasn't safe, even out there in the seclusion of the countryside, and knowing that their children were learning to defend themselves was a small reassurance.

Musume yawned loudly and walked past her brothers, rolling her eyes visibly as she made her way over to Pan. Unlike was the case with the twins, Trunks and Pan's daughter had never shown any real drive to follow family tradition and become a fighter. It wasn't that she was gentle—because Kami knew that was the last adjective that one used to describe Musume Briefs—but rather generally disinterested in the subject. No matter how many training sessions she had engaged in with Pan, she simply couldn't be made to appreciate the idea of getting covered in blood and sweat and beating up another person.

After a year of trying, and of teaching her the basics of Saiya-jin combat, Trunks and Pan had finally decided to stop forcing her into it. Only once in a while did Musume actually venture out with her father and brothers to get some exercise, the rest of the time treating their obsession with combat training as she did just then—to be nothing beyond silly.

In the background, Musume caught her father finally relenting to Gohan and Vegeta's pestering and scoffed quietly, reaching into the refrigerator to hand her mother the items she needed to help prepare breakfast. She may not have liked to fight, but one thing that did excite her was being allowed to help with the cooking.

Pan set her daughter up on the counter and handed her a spoon and bowl as Gohan and Vegeta rushed outside to warm up in anticipation of their father's arrival.

So began an average day in the Briefs home. One of the last that—if all went well, Pan thought—their modest little countryside home would ever see.

Capsule Corporation

( present timeline )

"Trunks!"

A pair of voices whined his name in unison, causing the young president to glance down at the two girls that had very suddenly taken up attaching themselves to either of his arms. He paled a little—when had Pan and his sister managed to sneak up on him?—and gulped visibly. All he had to do was see that gleam in their eyes and Trunks could tell that trouble had arrived.

"Ah… yes?" he asked, cautiously.

Bra tightened her brow into a glare frighteningly similar to their father's, and shook his left arm in annoyance. "Don't play stupid, Trunks Briefs!" she demanded. "You said last week that you owed us a day out with you and we're here to cash in! You've got the nice car and the credit cards, so take us shopping now!"

"Excuse me?" he asked, looking incredulous. Of course Trunks remembered his earlier promise, but the little scream of exasperation Bra gave just then was worth the act. As if they would have allowed him to forget his promise in the first place. Ever since he had blown them off the week before in favor of sparring with Goten (hey, it was once in a lifetime when his best friend took time away from Paresu to do anything else), neither of the girls had stopped pestering him to find a day off to repay his debt. "Ohhh, oh right. Shopping with you and Pan… yes, it's all coming back now. All in a big ball of regret and dismay."

Pan smacked him—hard, good lord—in the side in response, causing his attention to lay upon the raven-haired Saiya-jin instead. He arched a curious brow at her. "Somehow I'm shocked that you would be so concerned about me taking you out shopping. Did you turn into a girl while I wasn't looking, or are you—fuck, ouch!"

She smirked, looking satisfied that her swift punch to his arm would leave a mark, and shut him up before he'd had a chance to say any more. Bra shot her best friend an approving grin and had just opened her mouth to commend her when another, very familiar voice decided to join the conversation. Bra's mouth snapped shut almost instantaneously.

"That's a good question. Why are you acting like such a girl today, Pan?"

Pan rolled her eyes, glancing over Trunks' shoulder to regard her uncle disdainfully. "It's nice to see you too, Goten."

You know, even if they were just joking, it made a girl wonder why she even bothered sometimes. Just because she liked to fight and didn't think flouncing around in pink and frills was the epitome of fun, she was forever doomed to be considered a tomboy. Just because she wasn't a carbon copy of Bra and Marron did not mean she wasn't a girl, and it frustrated her to no end that everyone just wouldn't let it go. Even as she had gotten older, had begun to grow more into her body, and had stopped being so squeamish and averse to certain 'girly' things—she wore dresses, she went out dancing with friends, she read girl magazines, damn it—no one had taken the time to notice. Even if they had, she had the feeling that she'd still be made fun of.

Goten smirked and ruffled her hair, causing Pan to give off an audible sigh.

"For your information, I'm acting like 'such a girl' because it's a sure-fire way to annoy this jerk here," she explained tiredly, throwing a thumb in Trunks' direction, "who most recently decided that it would be funny to dye my hair pink, simply because I played a small, harmless water balloon prank on him."

Her uncle snickered in amusement, lazily throwing an arm around her shoulders and glancing up at Trunks in surprise. "You really dyed her hair pink? Brave move, man."

Trunks groaned, using his now free right hand to run over his face. "I know, I know," he muttered with a sigh. Perhaps he had been a little too hasty in his thought process concerning his retribution that time—if he knew Pan, she was going to make today nothing short of unbearable for him.

"See, you'd think that after so many arguments and personal wars he would recognize the placement of The Line and stop foolishly crossing it," Pan sighed towards Goten. "But I suppose he's just as stupid as he always has been."

"And I suppose you're just as irritating as you always have been," Trunks returned with an impish grin, feeling a slight rush at the glare that elicited from Pan. Anyone else that look could send cowering, but not him. He knew her well—not to mention that he was completely used to her glaring at him like that. In truth, riling up the younger Saiya-jin like that gave him a bit of a rush.

Bra snorted amusedly from beside the group and crossed her arms over her chest. "That is such a lie, Pan." Her tone was matter-of-fact. "My brother thinks you're just great all the rest of the time. You should hear him at dinner after days when you two have gone out and sparred." Oblivious to Trunks' growing mortification, she continued. "You're all he talks about! I think Daddy's ready to burst with all this talk about 'Kakkarot's third-class grand-'"

Pan didn't catch Trunks' face, but if the swift, panicked movement he made to silence his sister was any indicator, he was probably blushing just as bright red as she was.

Goten, the single bystander to this conversation, crossed his arms over his chest, taking no measures to attempt to look as if he wasn't enjoying this thoroughly. He was pretty sure that his brother wouldn't quite agree, but it was so hard to not laugh when you really knew the full truth of Bra's words. It was hard to miss, the chemistry between Trunks and his niece—some days Goten could have sworn Pan was more Trunks's best friend than he was. It seemed like ever since they had come back from their journey in space together just over five years ago, Pan and Trunks were hardly more than ten meters apart at any time.

But that enough of that. Pulled out of his thoughts by the blue-haired Saiya-jin's muffled yells, Goten observed that if he didn't break in there soon, Bra was going to get her pretty little head ripped straight off her shoulders by an extremely flustered big brother of hers.

"So, where are you guys off to anyway?" he chimed in loudly.

All too grateful for an excuse to change the topic, Pan answered swiftly. "We're going to the mall, out to eat—the usual. You want to tag along?"

Her best friend's suggestion had been enough to give Bra the power to wrestle—excitedly—out of Trunks' grip. You just couldn't keep her mouth shut for very long before she found a way to open it again, it seemed. "Yeah, come on, Goten!" she urged him with a positively glowing smile. "The more the merrier, right?"

Sometimes Pan wondered why Bra was so adamant that she not whisper a word of her crush on Goten. The girl did such a good job of advertising it in the silly way she acted every time she got within ten feet of him. Of course, it wasn't as if Goten was ever going to pick up on it, no matter how blatant Bra was about her affections. He was just as oblivious as he had been when he was a kid.

"Sure, sounds like fun!" he exclaimed.

Bra wasted no time upon his response to grab Goten's hand and pull him off towards the waiting car. Out of her corner of her eye, Pan caught Trunks' smirk and returned it full-force, a look of strict confidence and knowing passing between them. He held out his arm a moment later, offering it to her.

"Well, I suppose this means we're leaving," he said, chuckling quietly as he made one more glance after his lovesick sister and completely naïve best friend. Finally satisfied with the sight, he turned back to Pan and bowed dramatically. "Shall we join them, milady?"

Pan laughed as well and, with a flourish, linked her arm in his. "I think we had better, good sir, before your sister has an aneurysm," she joked. All the tension from Bra's earlier comments seemed to be broken as they walked amicably arm-in-arm together towards his car.

This would be a good day, Trunks thought just then. He could tell.

Briefs Household

( future timeline )

"Come on, you guys! Breakfast!"

Musume pulled her head back inside the kitchen window and hopped lightly off the counter, jogging over to where her mother was currently laying out plates of food. It was only a few moments later—if the prospect of food couldn't get a Saiya-jin family's attention, nothing could—before Gohan and Vegeta came bursting through the front door and nearly flew into their seats.

Trunks came in after them, taking a much more sedate pace as he threw a towel over his shoulders. He smiled as he watched them dig into their food, despite his wife's half-hearted attempts to get them to wait until everyone had been seated.

Both of them were progressing well in their training, Trunks noted in his head. If they kept up like they were going, they could become the two youngest Super Saiya-jins yet. Gohan and Vegeta were turning out to be excellent fighters for a couple of kids not even half-blooded Saiya-jins—Trunks had a feeling that even his father would have been proud of his grandsons.

Hah, Vegeta pleased. Now that was a funny thought.

"Smells delicious, Pan!" he complimented, giving her a kiss on the cheek as she finished setting out the remainder of what seemed like a thousand dishes of food. He had to give it to his wife—cooking for five Saiya-jins wasn't an easy feat, but she pulled it off spectacularly day after day.

He pulled out his chair at the head of the table and sat down, immediately making it obvious where his sons had inherited their table manners from. Pan and Musume ate at a normal pace—it had to be something about female Saiya-jins—while giving the males at the table glances mixed between disgust and amusement every so often.

As usual, the whole spread took no more than ten minutes to vanish, and Vegeta was the first to jump up from the table, followed by Gohan only a split second later. "Thanks Mom, thanks Musu," they each muttered quickly as they made their way back upstairs to change into their normal clothes.

The twins' excitement and non-stop energy would have been in character any day, but today was a particular cause for excitement for the Briefs children. The family was taking a trip back to the city, to Capsule Corp., today. It would be the first time that anyone would see the old building since Trunks had witnessed its destruction six years ago—it wouldn't be an easy pilgrimage to make for the family, but the children didn't know any difference. All they knew was that they were going to see the place their daddy had grown up, and Trunks was happy to have it that way.

He'd carried enough burden for a thousand lifetimes. He wasn't about to pass it down onto his sons and daughter.

As Musume finished and rushed upstairs after her brothers, Trunks let out the deep sigh he had been holding in and leaned back in his chair. This was not a matter of strength any longer; this was a matter of necessity. He had to go back. He had to visit his mother's lab. He needed to search out the one thing that he knew could save his family, and no ghosts were going to keep him away when he knew what he stood to lose.

He just wished it weren't so damn hard.

Pan reached out a comforting hand, squeezing her husband's arm supportively. She truly admired the way that he had managed to not let on his troubled disposition to the kids.

The truth was, however, it was a skill the both of them had been forced to adopt. Trunks and Pan tried their hardest to make every morning as peaceful and normal as possible, but times were bad, and most days it was a battle. In the past six years, the world in which they lived and raised their children had only deteriorated from the dismal state in which it had already been. Androids, two more of them, had emerged since Trunks had last destroyed what he had thought was a leftover, and the harsh truth was that they simply couldn't afford to fight them.

They simply didn't have the power to take out these monsters, as hard as that was to accept. Even more than that, however; they had responsibility—three kids that needed them alive.

With nine-tenths of the population of earth gone and the rest dwindling rapidly, though, it wasn't as if they had much left to protect. Nothing much except for themselves.

Originally, they had fought. The two of them would listen to the radio for news of an attack and fly off to once more be beaten into the ground—it was futile, but they were still trying. In the midst of their concern for humankind, however, they had neglected their duty as parents to protect their own brood.

Tragically, this realization was only made clear—crushingly so—when their youngest daughter, Ume, only a month old at the time, had been killed, right in front of their very eyes. All because they had taken their attention away from her for a split second.

That had been the last straw, and the only persuasion they needed to realize that they needed to get the hell out of there, and as soon as possible.

Trunks had brought up the idea of the time machine almost instantly. It was the obvious choice—apart from building themselves a spaceship and fleeing to space, blindly searching for a habitable, hospitable planet, removing themselves to a whole other timeline entirely was the only option in front of them. Apart from the repairs they would inevitably have to do on the machine, it was quick. It was their best—and possibly only—hope.

Running a hand back through lavender hair, Trunks shut his eyes tightly as he attempted to mentally prepare himself for what he was about to do. For once, his bad day wasn't going to be the fault of an android attack—somehow, though, he wasn't quite thanking Kami for that.

"You ready for this?" Pan's quiet voice pierced his thoughts and he opened his eyes again. Wordlessly, he reached out for her hand and pulled her gently into his lap. She smiled a faint, bittersweet smile, and rested her head on his shoulder as he wrapped tired arms around her.

"I hope so… I think so," he replied, and squeezed her lightly, burying his face in her raven hair. He breathed in deeply the fresh scent of jasmine and cherry blossoms, for a fleeting moment in time felt as if things would be alright.

And they would be, as long as she was at his side—that was the one thing he had left to truly believe in.

"I am."