Oy, vey

Standard warnings/possibles: angst, OOC bishonen running around, kawaii little chibi-people, easily amused OC running amuck with explosives (but that was fun!), and a deranged authoress who just wants sleep!  But that would mean being unlazy enough to go to bed…  Nah…  OH!  And I totally screwed up the Saiya-jin timeline.  I know it, and I don't care!  Also, as this is an AU, you're just going to have to take a couple of things on faith.  *g*

I disclaim already!

If Tomorrow Never… - Ch. 7 - Yume

Any time, Day or Night,

Don't care if it's Wrong or Right,

I'm still on your side.

~Still on Your Side, BBMak

He didn't know why they couldn't come.  There they were, just beyond his reach.  Snarling, trying to snare him.  Something kept them back.

Something wouldn't let them take him.

And he didn't know whether to hate that force or not.

Still muddling his way through these feelings, he didn't notice the nightmare demons dissipate, and he descended into a black, dreamless sleep.

***

She sat back, still trying to catch her breath from the invasion.  This one's dreams were worse than Vegeta's!  The teenager's nightmares were the ones that drove you to madness, the ones she had experienced at the hands of… monsters all those years ago.  Tears almost pricked at her eyes, but she fought them, determined not to show weakness.  Thank the kami she hadn't been old enough then to fully understand what they wanted with her.

Mind firmly reset to her main concern, Trunks, she didn't notice the beast of a man walking over to her until he thrust a mug into her hands, saying only, "Drink."

"Mm," she accepted the cup but set it aside, knowing it held something to make her drowsy.  She couldn't drink it now.  She had to think.

Vegeta's dreams were expected, mostly memories of actual events with a sprinkling of guilt thrown in.  Considering the way his life read, the girl was honestly amazed that they weren't worse.  A few sleepless nights before she found him, some tears, a close bond to his son, a new relationship with a good friend…  That was what came from his dreams.  Overall, the good balanced, if not outweighed, the bad.  To her, anyway.

But, dammit, she was still jealous of that brat!

'Oh, this is getting me nowhere,' she thought with a frown.  That frown deepened as she realized two more people had been able to sneak up on her.  Suddenly her frown gave way to a giggle.  'At least these two aren't real people!  If they were alive, I'd be a disgrace!'

The two un-real people sitting next to her looked at each other.  And back to the uncontrollably giggling girl.  And then over to the tall, dark-haired man in the doorway.  Three voices rang out in the otherwise silent room, agreeing for once: "It's time for bed, missy."  One of the un-real people, a teenaged boy with shoulder-length black hair, reached over and picked her up as his companion, a girl with pale blonde hair, grabbed the lightly-drugged tea.  The three went into the larger of the two bedrooms and quickly got the smallish girl changed into her PJs before forcing the tea down her throat.

Once finished, she smiled serenely at the duo and climbed into bed peacefully.  Believe it they may not, but she knew she was out of it.  Sleep hadn't come easily these past weeks.  Involving herself in Vegeta's dreams had dredged up memories of her childhood better forgotten, leaving her to deal with her own nightmares, plus the problem of actually having to be awake to dreamwalk kept her sleeping schedule irregular in general.

While a drugged sleep tended to leave her cranky in the morning, she welcomed the dreamless slumber.  Even if she did dream, she never remembered.

***

Trunks walked around the blackness trying to find something, anything in the room.  It had to be a room, he decided, but he couldn't decide why.  A voice joined him in the void, and he spun toward it.

"Oi, Dream Boy, chill.  You couldn't take me even if you weren't a figment of my imagination."

"Figment of ­your imagination?!?  Excuse me, this is my dream."

"Well, then, that does present us with an interesting situation," the girl drawled, and as she drew closer Trunks took the opportunity to examine her.  She was shorter than he, he could tell that even from this distance, long dark hair, likely black, his age, maybe younger, the grace and eyes of a panther.  An alert, hungry panther.

He gulped.  "Um, hi.  I'm Trunks."

She stepped to him, nearly close enough to touch and peered at him.  Her hair was indeed black, and he could see the color of her eyes now, bright green like the stone in his mother's favorite necklace.  He didn't know the name of the jewel, but it matched.  "You're Trunks."  She smiled, and suddenly seemed a lot less threatening.  "I wondered what you looked like.  You don't feature in your father's nightmares, and I couldn't see you when I stopped yours.  I'm Ana."  She gestured for him to sit and made herself comfortable.

"Nightmares?  You?  So this is your fault?"

She looked around, a frown replacing the cheerful smile.  "No, I'm a dreamwalker.  I don't do this.  When I'm awake, I can find dreams, nightmares mostly, and go in them. Usually the dreamer has some kind of psychic tendencies.   Sometimes I can change things, usually if the dreamer accepts me.  But I have to be awake.  I'm not.  'Ji-san let my nursemaids drug me 'cause I was acting funny."  She pouted cutely and asked, "Can you believe that?"

He fought the urge to laugh and knew this girl was one he wanted as a friend.  "So, how'd we get here?"

"I don't know.  This doesn't just happen, you know.  Someone had to join our minds.  Anyone asking a favor of the kami, the kami, half the species of the universe…  An almost limitless supply of suspects.  Doesn't matter to me, though.  Why don't we just talk while we're here?  Tell each other about ourselves."

Trunks hesitated, not particularly wanting to tell his story.  "You first."

Ana saw his hesitation and decided to make hers long.  She knew time passed faster in this realm and wouldn't make him talk if he was uncomfortable.   "Mm.  Where to start…  I was a genetics experiment gone awry."  Trunks looked at her in shock, mostly that she could sound so calm about that, but a little because she looked so normal.  "A group of scientists on my planet were trying to make the perfect being.  Like that would come out of a lab.  Anyway, my genes come from three people: my father, who had the most potential out of any of our warriors in possibly thousands of years; the man I call 'uncle,' one of the scientists; and a third I never knew, supposedly a great psychic.

"I and the other children in the experiment were taken before the king and prince.  The prince supposedly fell in love with the 6-month-old version of me and adopted me.  A few months later, he found out that he was, genetically speaking, my father, and he and the king declared me his heir, while keeping my 'birth' secret."  She looked up from her careful examination of her hands.  Noticing she had his full attention, she continued her story.

 "My name, Eriana, was chosen for some reason beyond me.  I heard once he said that since my eyes were so unheard of for our people, he chose a non-traditional name to make me even more special. He met a princess of another people with the name, and it stuck…   I'll never know unless I ask him, though, will I?  But he thinks I'm dead, and from what I've seen in his dreams, I have no inclination to tell him otherwise.  I don't know how he'd take it.

"Anyway, soon after my second birthday, they tested me for various aptitudes.  My scores were odd, and not necessarily what they wanted.  I'm very much mechanically and technically inclined, and my mental skills are off any planet's charts.  I'm an exceptionally strong telepath-"

"The dreamwalking.  That's why you can do it."

Ana nodded, continuing her monologue, "I also have decent telekinetic abilities, an extreme rarity for my people.  But when it comes to fighting…  I'm weak.  I've heard of many species that could beat me in hand-to-hand.  The only thing that saves me in fights is my ability to draw ki from other sources.  I think it's somehow a part of my telepathic abilities, though.  I can drain my opponent of their entire lifeforce if given the time."  She looked Trunks in the eye, hoping to convey how serious she was.

He got it.  And he also understood that she must have had a heck of a time growing up with those powers.  And being told she was a failure, a bad experiment...  He could somehow sense an aura of loneliness around her.  Not the kind of loneliness that comes from solitude, but the kind from being truly alone, no friends, no one to understand you.  He recognized the feeling as one of his own after Gohan's death.  His mom was great, but not exactly what he needed.  He knew what Ana was lacking, and it took him less than .05 seconds to make up his mind.

Ana saw his serious face and knew he was reflecting on the story she told.  She also felt one of them slowly being pulled from the dream world and didn't want him to leave feeling worse.  Quickly, she sent out a bit of her influence to each of them, burrowing them both deeper in sleep for a few minutes more.  "Hey, Trunks?"

"Yeah, imouto-chan?"  Now Trunks was the bearer of the evil smirk.

Ana double-blinked before asking, "Imouto?"  Quickly recovering from her shock, she shot back, "As I recall, you're an infant!"

"Well I may be from the future, but I bet I'm older right now than you are right now."

"Kisama.  You have a point.  You are currently older than I am."

Trunks thought for half a second about being shocked at her vocabulary but having been around stubborn people like his dad and Goku, he realized it just wouldn't do any good.  "Hey, don't sound so glum, sis.  Now you have me."  He reached over to pull the girl into a hug.  "And I won't ever call you a mistake, 'k?"

Ana thought through the ramifications of allowing this charade to continue, of not telling him the truth, but realized she didn't have time to do otherwise.  "Ok…" She could tell he was still bothered, though, and decided she could do something about that.  "Trunks, I know a neat trick."

"Is it a dumb thing to do?"

"No!  Come here."  Once he was close, she concentrated her telepathy to duplicating two of her favorite languages and implanting them in his head.  "To you, 'nii-san, I bestow the gift of language."  She pulled back with a grin at Trunks' confused expression.  "You'll get it later."

Trunks didn't know what she had done, but somehow he felt Ana was trustworthy and hadn't done anything to hurt him.  "Thanks, I think."  A panicked look spread over his face as he noticed black fog obscuring his vision.  "Hey, you're fading!  How will I find you?"

"I don't know.  Maybe we'll meet in our dreams again.  Don't fight it, Trunks.  Trying to stay here will make your head hurt."

She watched him disappear and grinned ruefully to herself.  "So this is how it feels to be on the other side."

***

Soon enough, the drug wore off and the refreshed girl returned to the land of the living.  She stretched out her senses and saw everyone in what passed for their den.  She could feel strain in the air and frowned a little.  Stumbling out of bed, Ana went to find out what was wrong.

"'Morning."

"'Morning, brat.  Come look at this."  Ana's guardian had laid out some of the plans they had stolen from the lab.  This particular set was printed from the information she had stolen on the most recent project, the one they had destroyed.  "What do you think?"

"It's not finished, not complete.  The power supply is all wrong.  It couldn't function without-  How?"

"These are the final plans.  Look at this, and this over here."  The man pointed out some of the finer points of the machine that concerned him.

"It's to absorb machine parts."  She turned unbelieving eyes to meet his after reading more of the symbols on the large paper.  "Shimatta, it's supposed to take a pre-existing fuel supply!"  The two living beings turned their attention to the Androids flanking the Saiya-jin girl and the redhead sitting on the couch across from them.  "But we destroyed it."

"I hope so, but now that I've seen this, something feels wrong."

Having been saved more than once by her uncle's "feelings" and noticing a peculiar unease in her own stomach, Ana immediately agreed with his next statement:

"I think it would be wise for the three of you to stay in the apartment for a while.  Ten, I want you to start going through the rest of the files for any more surprises."

She gathered the plans from the other Saiya-jin and moved to the computer against the wall.  "Hai.  Juunana, wanna help?"

***

Trunks morning was different from his recently-adopted sister's.  He woke immediately after the dream to find himself still dressed and sleeping on a rather soggy pillow.  "Blech."

After a quick shower and change, he went downstairs for breakfast.  He wasn't really paying attention to anything or anyone.  His mind was too busy going over every part of last night's dream.  Was any of it real?  Was she somewhere out there?  And what was it about her father's dreams that made her want to stay hidden?  Stay alone?

The others watched Trunks, concerned that he seemed so unaware of his settings, especially after the fit he'd pitched the previous night.  Even Chibi-Trunks was watching him.  And doing something with his food that was not eating, which caused Vegeta, who happened to be sitting between him and Mirai Trunks, to find himself covered in mashed… something… and utter a string of colorful phrases in his native language.

Mirai Trunks stopped cold.  He understood every word his father had said.

@@@

Now is the time I expect everyone to run for the hills, shouting behind them, "Get a life, Dreamer!  You suck!"  When I first wrote this, I thought the same.  But when I reread it, it almost made sense.  Go figure.

So, has everyone figured everything out yet?  Methinks I gave away all my secrets.  L  I like secrets.  Oh, wait.  Maybe I do have one or two more…  After all, who connected Ana and Trunks?  Or why I put things in the "warning/possibles" that actually happened in previous chapters?  That's a really good question…

Can someone please remind me which was the first town Cell attacked?  The one where he killed everybody?  Ginger Town in the dub or something, maybe?

To the best of my knowledge, this is definitely past the halfway point.  Which is good!  Me go seepy now.  J