Keep your distance – by Shade-Duelist
disclaimer: - out there, in the Prologue. Go read, if you haven't already.
Chapter 9: You make me feel
The day after the incident with Trunks, Pan went to work with a heavy heart – though Mirai's presence soothed her incredibly. She looked at her boyfriend while he was driving and remembered the day before. They had stayed in bed for hours after that, not making love again but cuddling and talking – and just enjoying each other's presence and love. Smiling broadly at the memory, Pan could feel her worries ebb away again and she walked to Capsule Corp.'s HQ without anxiety.
To her surprise, she was met with a small card when she arrived at her new desk.
"Please report to the CEO at your earliest convenience. Office on the fiftieth floor."
She blanched: her anxiety returning full force, accompanied by a distant rage – though her anger was dulled by knowing that Bulma had set him straight and by her memories of the previous night again. Settling in quickly – and receiving the congratulations of half her co-workers both past and present – she then headed off to the fiftieth floor. She registered at the secretary's desk and was surprised to hear that she could enter immediately.
"Mr. Briefs isn't busy at the moment, just walk on in, miss Son. Through the double door and then to your left." Pan duly followed the instructions and knocked on the left door.
"Enter." Trunks' voice made her flinch momentarily, but she straightened herself again and entered as she was asked. Inside of the huge office, there were three desks – behind the farthest one sat Trunks, his chair turned to the window and so oblivious of her. When she cleared her throat, he turned around. "Pan..." His voice sounded sad and his smile was gone, she noticed. "Please sit down." His voice had humbled, Pan noticed, as well as his ego. He seemed somehow smaller as he had the day before. "I called you up here to apologise for my behaviour for yesterday – and the other times as well since you returned. What I did was way, way outta line and especially towards you. I should've known better and for that, I am sorry..." Pan looked at him, suddenly aware that he didn't look directly at her – out of shame, she guessed. "Besides that, I also want to apologise for something else. I know I can't turn back the clock and undo what happened all those years ago, but – please hear me out!", he said as Pan had risen from her seat, her eyes having narrowed, and walked to the door. The desperation in his voice caused her to turn around again and face him. "I can't justify what I did then, not even if I still knew why I did it. I don't want to justify it either. I broke your heart, and your hating me for years was my punishment. But I can't stand the fact that you don't acknowledge me when we're in the same room, or that you call me 'mr. Briefs' while you call your co-workers and friends by their first name." He said, his head bowed in shame but his voice bearing an anger towards her behaviour. Pan stepped forward slightly. 'I don't understand...', she thought as she eyed Trunks warily, 'Yesterday he harassed me, and now he wants us to be friends?' Trunks seemed to guess her thoughts and continued: "I don't want you to forget the past. I don't want you to immediately become friends with me again, either. I'm asking for us both to start with a clean slate again. What happened in the past should stay in the past and not haunt both of us in the present." Pan was speechless: not only did he appear to really repent his mistakes, he wanted them to get a fresh start.
"I don't know...", Pan hesitantly started, but as Trunks looked up at her, his eyes showing such sadness that she looked down in shame herself – ashamed of having seen into the depth of his heart. "I can't promise you that I can forget about the past... but you're right about it being wrong for the present to be twisted by it as well. I'll try.", she concluded as she looked up at him again. A quick flash of triumph crossed his eyes, which disappeared swiftly however: he smiled softly.
"Good, you'll make things much more easy on yourself that way, not to mention the others – Bra must get pretty tired of having to tell you if I'm coming when you want to visit her." He thought for a moment, and then added softly: "And maybe Marron would enjoy getting to know you, too..." Pan looked up at that, but then smiled softly as well.
"Maybe we can all benefit from forgetting about what happened...", she murmured as she stepped back towards the door. "Am I excused then, um..." She wrestled with what to call him now that there was no more hostility between them.
"Yes, just call me Trunks – or Sir, if you don't like to call me my first name as my employee here."
"Okay then... Trunks. Am I excused then?" Trunks smiled upon hearing her use his first name again – the sound of it coming from her sounding better than any other title he'd been called.
"Sure, go back to your new desk. I hope you'll enjoy your new job as much as you hope you will.", he said, receiving a smile in return as she went out and closed the door softly behind her. 'This'll go easy... she'll be easy to win over again, I think...', he mused as he turned back to the window.
That evening, Pan called Bra to ask if they'd go shopping that weekend – Pan's new job paid twice the amount that her last job had, and she found a change of wardrobe was in order to celebrate her promotion – and to tell her of the proceedings of that day and the previous. As she had expected, Bra was ecstatic to hear about her promotion as well.
"Good on you, girl!", she chimed, while in the background Goten clapped his hands for her, which her two nephews quickly followed. "Wow, it's the job you always wanted, huh?", she asked, and Pan happily babbled about what her new job entailed and how satisfying it had been that day to do something she'd wanted to be doing all through her school years. Bra listened attentively to her story and then remarked: "There's got to be more. You sound – I don't know – different somehow..."
"Oh, I probably am different now. I'm seeing someone, and he makes me perfectly happy!", Pan said, not willing to tell her best friend that she had gotten together with Mirai... yet.
"Ooh, now that is interesting...", Bra said – the background noise had fallen away, so Pan suspected Bra to have turned speaker mode on her phone off again, believing juicy details to be told over the phone. "Tell me everything...", Bra continued in a conspiratory voice, confirming Pan's earlier thoughts.
"I will do better – I'll bring him along when we go shopping on Saturday!", Pan said, quickly picturing how surprised her friend would look when she saw her and Mirai... "Unless you planned to get me to go dress-shopping with you for your wedding?" Bra's wedding was nearing rapidly, with only four months to go until her and Goten's big day. Pan knew her friend wanted her as bridesmaid through Goten, but dreaded the dress Bra would pick out for her.
"Well, yeah, but you can send him to a tearoom somewhere to have a coffee while we fit our dresses, can't you?" Pan shuddered, but responded with a smile.
"Sure thing. Okay, see you on Saturday then!", she said. "By two at the entrance, right?"
"You've got it. Now, I've gotta go put 'Sei and 'Yun in bed. Kids, it's baby-bedtime!", she shouted in the distance. "See you on Saturday!", she then said a bit more softly to Pan, who nodded and put down the receiver.
"Mirai?", she called into the kitchen, where her now-boyfriend was washing the dishes from their supper. When he poked his head around the corner, still wearing his apron, she continued: "How would you like to spend an afternoon at the mall with me this Saturday?"
That Saturday, Pan woke up later than she used to – a fact she could blame to the presence of Mirai next to her, which seemed to have an effect of the sort on her. As she shifted her position in his arms, he groaned and woke up as well.
"What time is it...", he asked groggily, and Pan chuckled softly before glancing at her alarm clock.
"It's half past ten, we'd better hurry up and get showered. We've got a busy busy day ahead of us!" As she felt Mirai encircle her waist, gently drawing her against him, she grinned. "Don't get any ideas, love. I said 'a quick shower', not 'a long shower'."
"Aww, and here I was hoping you'd immediately jump me...", Mirai pouted but then winked at her. "I'll go first and make sure the cold water is used up. You can still join me in there, you know...", he said with a smirk that Vegeta would have been proud of. Pan merely shoved him into the bathroom, laughing as he pouted again.
"You just go and make sure the cold water is icy enough. I'll be in there once you vacate the bathroom in more than a towel." Laughing as she heard him recoil from the freezing water, Pan got up and took a bit of underwear out of the closet before arraying a nice comfortable dress for herself on the bed. She could just imagine the look of surprise on her best friend's face already...
A/N: once again, I would like to thank all of you who have reviewed until now. You've brought a lot of smiles to me lately. And to answer the question that keeps popping up (whether Trunks will get what he deserves soon): depends on what you call 'soon'... I'll guarantee you he'll get what he deserves, though.
Thanks once again for your kind reviews and, um, enjoy the chapter!