Chapter 3

"Bulma…"

"Hey…" Bulma tried to keep the tremor out of her voice as she tilted her head to see him better. The mighty Saiyan's appearance was sunken and sallow, black circles burying eyes that had no fight in them. No fight at all. And his once-sturdy frame seemed half the size, and as rickety as an old bridge. As she looked at him now, Bulma thought she could see where the lines on his face would be when he was eighty. Oh, Goku…

It took every bit of restraint she had to keep from collapsing on him in sobs. He didn't need a bleeding heart. Krillin had gone that route and it hadn't worked. Taking a deep breath, Bulma put on a tougher hat. "Now what's all this depression nonsense?" she said, trying her best to sound gruff.

"I haven't…been myself lately," he choked out, and then doubled over again in a coughing fit. Each of his spasms just did that much more to weaken her resolve.

"No, you haven't," she sighed heavily, forcing good nature into her tone. "Though that's not going to stop me from whipping your ass back into shape."

He looked at her, and she thought a faint smile creased his eyes. "Krillin will be glad," he said weakly. "I don't think he can handle much more."

"Well," she puffed, "He's a little more empathetic than I am. Personally, I'm not about to let the strongest man in the universe waste away due to an every-day tragedy. Understand?"

He snorted, and then buried his head in his arms. Several seconds passed as his pitiful attempt at banter eroded under the weight of his misery. Bulma watched his hands clench in white-knuckled fists as a frustrated growl resounded in his chest. He spoke out without looking up.

"I've trained my body almost every day of my life. And I've won every battle," he began, his shaky words muffled in the sand. "But I never thought to prepare my heart…for something like this!" his voice cracked, and he faced her with anguished eyes. "I can't fight this!"

Her maternal instincts jumped into overdrive, and she found herself leaning over him, wrapping her supportive arms around his angst-ridden frame. "YES. YOU. CAN, Goku," she insisted. "You're a fool to say otherwise."

He rambled on as though he were already inoculated against her words - as though Krillen had already used them a thousand times. "The worst part is that I can't blame this on some foul evil, or elusive brainwash," he stammered, bowing his head again. "It's my fault. I should have stayed. And now my family belongs to Piccolo…"

What a horrible thing for him to come back to, she thought, but dwelling on it was killing him. Not to mention the effect it had on those people who loved him. She heard rasping breaths coming from his buried head, and realized he was crying.

Her breath caught in her throat as a memory of the last and only time she saw him in tears flitted across her mind. He'd been a boy, and his dead grandfather was pulled from the afterlife to fight him in one of Baba's psychotic games. The reunion of the two reduced the emotionally impermeable child to great hiccupping sobs. Bulma remembered it like it was yesterday. She had been there. She had always been there.

"Listen to me, Goku," she said through her teeth as she grabbed his chin with her hand and yanked it up until their eyes met. "I've gotten you out of ruts before, and I'm sticking with you until you lick this, got it? And you WILL survive it," she said forcefully. "Suicide is a coward's way out."

His eyes widened slightly as if she'd just pulled his darkest secret from his mind. She shook his face.

"Got it?"

His visage was still unbearably sad, and after several strained seconds of unbending will on both their parts Bulma finally stood to her feet. "I mean it, Goku. We'll see eye to eye when this is all done." With that she did her best to storm off, meeting Krillin on the inside of Roshi's doorway. His face was drawn tight with worry.

She released the tension in a great shuddering breath, and shook her head. "He's broken," she said. "That dolt has taken more hits in the head than there are sands in the ocean; yet one emotional crisis pops him like a balloon," she huffed. "Well, he's not going to bring me down-"

She stopped abruptly as Krillin reached a hand up to her face and pulled it away, showing her the tears hanging off his fingertip. She gasped. He flung the betraying drops to the floor. "Don't you start lying to yourself, too, Bulma."

She brought a hand to her mouth and squinted away the rest of the moisture in her eyes. He was right. You can't help him like this, Bulma, she told herself. Practical. Think practical… She suddenly recalled a handful of Capsule Corp's employees who had been pushed too hard, and how they had ended up. It wasn't too difficult to draw the parallels.

"He's on a path to self-destruction, Krillin," she whispered, feeling her bottom lip quiver. She angrily bit it until the gamy taste of blood wet her tongue. "I need you to go collect the dragonballs with Eighteen and take them to the Lookout."

His pained face shifted to confusion. "You think the dragon would be able to lift him out of the depression?"

She shook her head. "No. But he's unstable," she answered. "And anyone as powerful as Goku is can't risk instability. They're too dangerous. I just want to be prepared." She could almost see the mental checklist in Krillin's head of all the monsters they'd fought that were maddened by their power.

"You think he might-"

"I don't know," she said, cutting him off. "But if he digresses any further then something may snap. I just want to be prepared."

He slowly nodded, and pursed his lips in agreement.

"Go on," she coaxed. "I won't leave his side. Besides, Master Roshi is here. The dragonball radar is in my copter."

As Krillin flew upstairs to relate all this to his wife, Bulma peeked outside to find the spiky-haired Saiyan in the same spot she had left him, and in the same state. She dug her nails in the flesh of her palm until the pain made her stop.

You'll make it through this, Goku. I swear it!