Disclaimer: Dragonball/Z/GT.
A/N: *ducks under desk and presses Upload Chapter button*
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Petrified Tears
chapter 48
"So much for getting out of here early, wouldn't you say, Panny?"
"I think Bulma was just waiting for the last minute to give us this insane amount of paper work that needs to be postmarked tomorrow morning."
"Yep, that's Mom."
She sighed, rubbing her temples.
A hand reached from above her to console her, but had to pat around to find the top of her head. Once found, it contented itself by combing its fingers back through her bangs.
They lay on the top of Trunks's desk, because now that the monitor had met with an undeserved and untimely demise by Trunks, the CPU had been barbarically destroyed by Pan, and the two semi-saiyans had played scrabble with the letters from the keyboard, it was entirely possible to lay down on it.
Trunks was using Pan's right shoulder to pillow his head, and she was using his to pillow hers. His legs hung off the desk from the knees down, the heels of her feet balanced on the edge of the desk, her knees pointing at the wall.
"I don't want to be here."
"I know, Pan."
"I want to be home."
"So do I."
"I want to go try on that dress and see if it still fits."
"What!?"
Pan felt color raging up her neck and into her face, and was thankful for their positions so that he couldn't see.
"Nothing," she answered, a little too hurriedly, unbelieving that she'd actually said that aloud. Truth be told, she wasn't even aware she had.
Trunks was staring at the ceiling, his eyes wide from a statement he'd never thought he'd hear her make.
"That's…that's funny, because for a minute there I thought I heard you say you wanted to go home and see if a dress still fit you," he laughed nervously.
Pan felt her face roar into a fiery inferno.
"That's because…um…because…I…did…"
Had they not been supporting each other, he would have fallen off the desk.
"What?!"
Pan bit the inside of her cheek, crossing her eyes at the ceiling in exasperation.
"So sue me Trunks. I want to go home and see if a dress still fits me. I wear skirts every so often, what's the difference between a skirt and a dress?" she snapped, tilting her head to glare back at the curve of his face.
"Something you've always been pretty adamant about, Panno. You tell me," he snapped back, tilting his head in turn.
Nearly eye to eye, they both narrowed their eyes, shooting daggers at each other in an all out staring war. To which growling was a secret weapon. Gnashing teeth and clenched fists won battles in themselves.
The war would have rocketed to thwaps on the head, had the phone next to Pan not rang.
With a grumble, she turned away and answered it after the seventeenth or twenty-ninth ring.
"Hello, Capsule Corp offices. Some chick speaking on behalf of the gay guy."
"Pan!!" Trunks cried, throwing his arms back in attempt to get the phone away from her. "I am not gay!"
"'Some chick speaking on behalf of the gay guy'? Pan?" came the voice on the other end of the line. She could almost hear him raise his eyebrow.
"Hey Daddy. Yes. 'Some chick speaking on behalf of the gay guy'."
"Pan! Give me the phone!" Trunks roared, arms flailing behind his head and above hers in attempt to grab the receiver away from her, only to have Pan knock his hands away with her own.
"I think that 'gay guy' you're working for is unhappy with you, Panny," Gohan chuckled, hearing the disgruntled and exasperated squawking of her lavender-haired best friend.
Pan shrugged in response, despite the fact that the person she was responding to was on the phone.
"Eh. His problem. So what's up Daddy?"
"Just wondering when you're going to be home."
Pan removed the phone from her ear, held her hand over the mouth piece, and screamed.
"Gah! Pan! Tone it down! Tone it down!" Trunks screamed in response, gripping the sides of his head as the scream reverberated in their elaborate cage.
"Today was that bad, I take it?" Gohan offered meekly, his own ears aching, when he heard Pan put the phone back to her ear.
"Like you helped!" she cried.
There was nothing but silence on the other line as Pan switched the phone to her other ear, letting Trunks listen in.
"What's that supposed to mean?" her father offered weakly.
"I don't know. Why don't you tell me what the hell triggered that 'release valve' this morning?" she snapped.
"Don't give me that tone of voice, young lady," Gohan snapped back.
Pan growled.
Gohan growled back.
Trunks started sweating.
"Pan," Trunks hissed, poking the top of her head, pointing at the phone.
"Daddy," she warned.
"You tell me, Pan."
Her eyes grew wide and she too broke out into a sweat.
"Daddy?!"
There was a pause while Gohan recollected himself, then, "Pan, I miss my daughter. You've just spent the last four years in California doing Dende knows what, and out of the 7 days you've been back home, all of them have been with either Bra or Trunks, or so depressed you won't even let me know what the hell is going on!"
Pan swallowed.
"Daddy, is that…"
"Yes Panny. I want my daughter back. All I've seen of you in the past three days is zombie-Pan. I thought you promised me you'd killed off zombie-Pan after high school."
Pan sighed, rubbing her head. "Daddy, you know as well as I do that this wasn't my idea."
"Is Bulma paying you to be there?"
Pan sighed again, pulling her hair.
"Daddy, would you want to cross Bulma?"
There was a pause, then a reluctant, "Good point."
"You have no idea how hard the two of us worked today in order to get everything done before 5 o-clock. Only to have Bulma and her lackey stop us in the hall with more paper-work then the two of us could even lift as we tried to leave."
"That's why you use the window," Gohan told her.
"It's called a 'security check'. Bulma instigated something or other that required a generator shut down, and steal doors to clamp over the windows."
"Why didn't you just blast through them?"
"Ever wonder what happened to that spaceship I shanghaied?"
"Oh."
Pan grumbled inaudibly under her breath before continuing. "Daddy, we're gonna get back to work now. I'll try and be home before 1 am, alright?"
"Alright."
"And you wait up for me so that you can explain this whole thing to me because I doubt 'zombie-Pan' triggered that need for release. If I'm not home by 2, I've probably crashed on the couch here at the office."
Without saying much more, she hung up.
"You know," Trunks said as she settled back against his shoulder, adjusting his own head as well, "we did get a surprisingly large amount of work done, today…"
"Yeah, especially for not having a computer," she added with a laugh.
The silence started to grow ominous as they lay there, both trying not to fall asleep as they ignored the stacks of papers that barricaded them in the office.
"What's wrong, Pan," he whispered, reaching back and combing her bangs again, not having to grope around this time.
"Nothing's wrong…"
"And nothing's right. Explain."
Grumbling, Pan lifted her hands and pulled the bandages from them, studying the wounds.
"I'm just wondering why these won't heal…I mean, most of the wounds from last night are barely dangerous anymore, and these are…I don't know…still fresh?"
Trunks didn't buy it.
"I know that's not what's got you so quiet Pan. We've both learned the hard way that self-inflicted wounds heal slower. We all have. What's eating you? Seriously."
She shook her head.
"Nothing's eating me, really."
"Oh."
The silence pressed on them again.
"Trunks?"
"Yeah?"
"What's your deepest, darkest secret?" she asked quietly.
His hand paused in her hair, and he sat up, disrupting her, but not caring.
"Pan…"
"Really, I want to know. I mean, really. You said 'no more secrets'. Why not take advantage of this while we have the chance?"
He laughed, looking back at her. She tilted her head back to look at him.
"Why not?" he wondered aloud. "It's been a long time since we've had a real heart-to-heart."
"Excepting Monday."
He nodded in agreement.
"Excepting Monday."
"Well?" Pan asked. "What's this deep dark secret of yours?"
Trunks laughed.
"Why do I suddenly feel like my sister?"
"Like I actually spill anything to other females," she laughed, rolling over onto her stomach and laying her chin on her crossed hands. "We're known to gossip. Besides, you're evading the question."
"I'm terrified of being alone," he said simply, staring deep into her eyes.
Pan's eyes bugged out of her head and her jaw dropped.
"What?"
He nodded.
"I hate being alone. It's not the whole 'will I ever meet her' thing that I have a problem with. I don't need to find her, hell, I've got a fanclub full of possible and willing hers…I just don't like to be alone. At all."
"But…but…"
He laughed, rubbing the back of his head in a manner picked up from too many hours of his life time spent around a Son.
"Hey…I thought…well, I also said no ridicule the other day too…I-"
Pan laughed.
"I just never actually thought that would be it," she replied, her cheeks slightly red. "But, what do you mean alone, if you don't mean romantically?"
He smirked half-heartedly.
"I just don't like to be alone. I like to be around people."
"But I still don't-"
"There's a reason that the Sock Puppet of Smelly Death exists, Pan."
"Oh." She grew quiet, studying his face, everything about him suddenly pulling together to make perfect sense. Why he was always around someone, be it her or her uncle, sometimes ever her father, just "talking" about business and the past. Why he avoided training alone in the gravity chamber at all costs. Why he hated his job so much. And why he disappeared out the window to 'kidnap' her every chance he got before she had left for college, or to go goof off with Goten. But then…
"Trunks, that doesn't explain why you blew us all off a few days ago."
He dropped his head, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he pushed himself off the desk to his feet. Bulma had never sent anyone after clothes for either of them, they were still in their tattered clothes from yesterday.
"Pan, I don't know why I did that. The only explanation I can come up with…well…that I was afraid."
She blinked, completely shocked by the confessions coming from the son of Vegeta.
"Afraid?"
He nodded, almost shame-facedly. "Afraid."
"Afraid of what?" she asked quietly, her face concerned and comforting.
He looked back at her, meeting her eyes with pain that she could hardly bear to witness.
"I was afraid of myself. Of what I'd lost."
Pan blinked, then blushed, then ducked her head.
"Trunks…"
"I do that when I'm afraid," he hurried on, a blush of remembrance creeping into his own face. "I pull away from the rest of the world. I distance myself. I've been doing it a lot lately…if you hadn't gone to college so far away, or if you'd come home every once in a while, you would have noticed I was doing it and probably beat some sense into me before I got as bad as I did last weekend."
That explains this morning when he blew of Bulma…
She looked up at him confused. "Why didn't Uncle Goten or Bra or Marron or Daddy knock you around until they got through to you? Or even Vegeta or Bulma?"
He shrugged. "My parents were oblivious to it…well, not true. If my dad noticed, he didn't do anything about it, same with my mom. Actually, it seems to be hereditary…like pride in a way. Bra hasn't really been around too much lately; boyfriends take up her life. Marron and I haven't really spoken since we hit the jagged rocks at the bottom of the well about three years ago; she wasn't around to stop me."
"Well, what about Uncle Goten?"
Trunks's face fell into a sheepish smile that even he seemed to want to slap off of his face.
"I've spoken to Goten once since you left for college."
"What?!"
He nodded.
"I'll tell you about it another time…we still have one more night in this hellhole…maybe if you're good, I'll tell you tomorrow."
She laughed, but the tiny worm of curiosity was burrowing its way into her brain.
"Ok." She waited for his sheepish form to relax, her eyes glued to the clock, and then, "Ok, you wanna tell me yet?"
He jumped, diving across the desk to grab her and shake her.
Her laughter broken into jerky starts and stops by his fervor, she pointed at the clock embedded in the wall above the doors to his office.
12:01 am
Disgusted, he dropped her and laughed.
"You really want to know?"
Gingerly holding the fingers of one hand to her head as her world settled, she nodded.
He sighed and sank back down onto the desk, laying the back of his neck onto the cross of her ankles for support.
"It's a long story, so I'd suggest making yourself comfortable."
Pan smiled down at him, pulling the capsule that ChiChi had thrown her that morning out of her pocket. Tossing it straight up and off to the side of the desk, it opened landed as a small card table bowing under the weight of all the food within arm's reach.
"Please be courteous and quiet during the show. Refreshments are available at the snack table."
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A/N: One by one, the penguins steal my sanity.
-Panabelle ;P
Shrine of the Saiyan Squirt *giggles*