Disclaimer: No! You can't destroy Japan! It's just not right! Bond, what kind of good guy are you, don't just stand there!
A/N: About the disclaimer...that was the jist of the feelings when a group of friends and I went to see Die Another Day a few weeks ago...that movie was no Bond movie...and it was a complete anime rip off. *shudders*
*pouts* They tried to blow up Japan...*sniffs*
Anyways, no, I did not forget or get behind...for some reason, ff wouldn't let me upload last night...This is tonight's and last night's chapter.
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Petrified Tears
chapter 101
"You almost ready yet?"
Drumming aqua blue fingernails on the arm of her la-z-boy, Bra fidgeted anxiously. She'd spent a good hour on Pan's hair and make up, doing her best to keep her best friend looking as natural as she usually did, being extra careful to keep the Pan on the outside and intermingle the beauty of the Pan on the inside-the loyal, innocent beauty that made Pan Pan. She'd shoved her behind a dressing screen just minutes ago, supplying nylons and slips as necessary. All that remained now was the dress, and then she could show off her best friend to the world-the real best friend that few really ever got to see.
"Almost," came the muffled reply, sounding very much as if Pan had her head lost in her shirt. Sure enough, the red tank came flying over the top of the screen a moment later, knocking well-worn khakis to the ground. "Hand me the dress, would you?"
Bra nearly rocketed out of her chair, but moving like that in tight polyester pants was a big no-no-especially if the pants zipped up the back and one sits in a shag-corduroy chair. Any number of embarrassing things could happen.
Grabbing the dress from the end of her bed, she drew her fingers across the embroidered dragon as he flew along the bottom hem; his body would undulate with the power of his wingless flight as Pan walked, his kingdom would be a blue to match his mistress's eyes. With a smile, she handed it over top the white screen.
"Thanks Bra."
She smiled and pulled the khakis from where they'd slumped onto the floor, turning to fold and set them with the rest of Pan's belongings. As she turned, however, she couldn't help but notice the red and white playing card spiraling lazily towards the floor. Crouching, she pulled it from the ground, turning it over curiously.
"What's this? 'Super Monkey demands your presence at the corner of Baka and Onna'," she read aloud, khaki's draped over her arm as she walked to her vanity.
"Hmm? What's what? What are you reading?" Pan's voice was slightly distorted and Bra could easily see her contorting her body to get at the zipper at the back of the dress. The image brought a quirky smile to her lips.
"I don't know exactly," she replied, setting the card on the edge of the dresser top and folding the khakis, head turned to read the words written in blue ink once more. "It's a playing card that fell out of your pocket. Looks like the ace of-"
A very distinct and very horrible sound from the other side of the screen confirmed the fact that yes, Pan had been trying to zip up the back of her dress. The pants fell to the floor once more in a heap, Bra moving as fast as she could to the other side of the screen. Two sets of blue eyes met each other in a terrified staredown before the lighter pair came to its sense.
"It can't be half as bad as it sounded," Bra started, slowly walking towards Pan as the other stood with both hands behind her back, torso at an awkward angle, backing into the corner nervously. "Someone here might be able to fix it…and even if they can't, the party doesn't start for another half hour. It can't-"
Pan shook her head fervently, swallowing thickly and flinching as she backed into the wall. Bra suppressed a shiver and held her hands out towards her friend, palms forward in an offering of amenity. Reluctantly, Pan gulped and turned around; wincing at the sharp intake of air through her friend's teeth. Bra's aqua blue eyes widened in something between horror and incredulity as the damage came into view: somehow, Pan had managed an eight inch rip, right along the zipper.
When she neglected to say anything, Pan turned back around, slowly, like a child who fears a spanking, tightly hugging her arms and the top of the dress to her chest, eyes wide and slightly fearful.
"How bad is it?"
Bra blinked and forced herself to close her jaw, but more importantly, to breathe. With a tight cough, she shook her head, making a mental note to destroy the reputation of Tamako for her shitty merchandise. It wasn't necessarily the money, she had more than plenty of that. No…this had meant a lot to her. Raising her gaze to the indigo-midnight eyes of her companion, she croaked out a response.
"We need ChiChi."
"I'm telling you ChiChi, it's a clean rip…don't tell me it's bullshit. She did it."
Bra sighed and shook her head, heal of one hand pressed firmly against her forehead as she paced the length of the room, phone pressed to one ear. Pan sat on the edge of the bed, delicately tugging at the zipper while holding the front of the dress in her teeth to keep herself decent. Bra's vehement refusal to help her was unsettling, but Pan figured she was focusing her attentions on not killing someone-be it her or the seamstress, she wasn't sure she wanted to find out.
"I don't know what to tell you, ChiChi, it's perfectly clean, no frays or anything, right along the zipper seam as if no one had sewn it yet." From the look on her friend's face, her grandmother was considering the situation; a moment later, Bra missed a step and stumbled, her face several different colors. Pan sniggered quietly; her grandmother was blunt and moody as it was, but menopause was only making her a loose cannon.
"Shitty seamstress?! ChiChi! …" Bra breathed a sigh of relief, "You seriously think you can fix it?" She turned and beamed back at Pan with triumph before a muscle under her eye twitched and she turned abruptly away. Pan blinked in confusion-what the hell was going on here? What had gotten into her? Pan had assumed she'd be laughing her ass off at the irony of it all or trying to kill something. Looking like a terrified child, she'd assumed not. Dende that look was familiar…
Fidgeting a little to get a better grip on the zipper, her fingers slipping once or twice before she could get a good grasp on it, Pan leaned a little farther forward, listening to Bra.
"No…she actually didn't destroy it this time…and not at all on purpose or anything; this dress thing was actually her idea."
Purchase found, she tugged, and was rewarded with that terrible ripping sound from before…only now it sounded like the dress was screaming in agony.
Bra whirled and Pan sat up instantaneously, grinning around the fabric clenched in her teeth, pushing her knees together and grabbing a fistful of comforter beside her as she scratched the nape of her neck through her hair.
Bra sighed and turned away, rubbing at her eyes. "Scratch that…she just obliterated the damn thing."
Pan watched her, swiftly struck with the face that normally accompanied Bra's current actions. It had been bothering her since Bra had gotten on the phone about ten minutes ago, but now it was all too obvious. Her deflated stance, the defeated mien in her eyes, the slump of her shoulders, the way she rubbed her forehead and temples…but it was the way Bra's blue eyes refused to light on anything longer than they needed to that made it all clear.
Their personalities would never match and could never be mistaken for the other's, but at that moment, Bra very much resembled her brother. If Pan didn't know better, she'd say she was in a room with Trunks. If Trunks's hair were bluer, longer, and curlier, she wouldn't dispute it.
"Don't worry too much abou…you have another dress? Um…alright…ok…I'll send Goten over to get you right now…Bye ChiChi. And thanks."
Bra hung up and set the phone on the dresser beside her door, looking back at Pan.
"I'll be right back. Just…just grab a tee shirt out of my closet for right now or something." Without another word, Bra turned and slunk silently out of the room, quite loud in her black and blue plaid pants and the small black vest she claimed was a shirt.
Completely baffled, with a hundred ways to explain her friend but not willing to use any of them, Pam squirmed her way out of the remains of the dress and snagged her bra from the top of the dressing screen before moving to the closet and pawing through the clothes, settling on an oversized red tank, watching in wonder as the hem settled a few inches above her knees. Tugging absently at the collar, she shook her head.
She felt guilty as all hell, but she wasn't about to tell Bra how she'd managed to ruin her welcome-home gift. Seeing her khakis on the ground where Bra had dumped them, Pan knelt and picked them up, folding them slowly and setting them on the vanity. Her eyes landed on the back of the red and white playing card, and she picked it up. She'd completely forgotten about it, and when Bra had started to say 'ace of spades', the entirety of the last week had rushed back at her, leaving her unable to do anything but jerk to attention.
Turning the card over, she again read what Jack had written.
"'Super Monkey demands your presence at Baka and Onna.'"
"I was going to ask you about that…" Pan turned, seeing her blue haired companion standing in the doorway, twirling a ringlet around her fingers.
"You ok, B?"
She waved it off with a pass of her hand and a shake of her head, moving into the room where she dropped into her la-z-boy, dangling her legs over an arm.
"First tell me what the hell that means."
Pan chuckled quietly and dropped down onto the window sill, pushing her feet up against the opposite wall and hugging her thighs, the card resting on her knees. "I don't know how the hell I got it, but it's a message system that Jack, another friend, and I used to use back in California. Jack has this thing about playing cards, so he always has a deck on him. Because he's such a moody bastard, Molly-my friend-and I decided to turn the deck into a way to read him. Basically, each suit has a meaning, and aces are usually used in cases of immediate attention."
She paused and lifted the card, showing Bra the suit.
"Spades deal with personal problems. The ace of spades is the 'I own your ass/you owe me big time" card…it's a long story I really don't want to get into. In essence, it all boils down to the fact that I haven't really been telling him the truth the few times we've talked since I left, and he's had enough…at least, that's what I think he means."
Bra nodded, but still looked incredulous.
"But 'Super Monkey demands your presence at the corner of Baka and Onna'? Pan, the guy's calling you a stupid bitch."
Pan shrugged and set the card back on her knees.
"He isn't fluent and he's not your father…plus I suppose he has every right… Anyways, it's just his way of saying he still wants to meet me tomorrow morning like we'd planned."
She shifted under Bra's intense and skeptical gaze, watching out of the corner of her eyes as she nodded with a shrug. Somehow, Pan got the impression she knew about what had happened the night before, but didn't press. They fell into silent contemplation, Pan wondering about Bra, and Bra trying to regain her composure. Below, out on the lawn, people scurried; the sun was dipping towards the horizon, painting the sky all shades of purple and blue and pink. Scanning those below, Pan caught her uncle pulling a beer out of a cooler beneath a table, her father talking to Bulma nearby. Her uncle joined Trunks near Vegeta, the older half-saiyan fidgeting as Goten said something.
"Pan…about Jack…what is he?"
Pan blinked, pulling her gaze from the scene outside to meet the blue eyes of her companion. "Huh?"
"I mean, what is he to you? Seriously."
Pan shrugged again. "Nothing really, just a really good friend." Bra raised an eyebrow, a silent allusion to the fit over the photograph earlier. Pan sighed. "I'm serious! He's just a really good friend. It's just different between me and him and me and you because he's not family." At the unconvinced look on Bra's face, Pan struggled. "I mean, well, I'm close to him in a way I could never be close to you or Trunks or Marron, because I've known the three of you all of my life. I only met him a few years ago…how do I explain this?" Swinging her legs to the ground and gripping the edge of the sill, she stood and paced, clapping the card lightly between her palms.
"I mean…ok, you and I. We've known each other for forever, right? We know practically everything about each other."
"Doubtful," Bra muttered, but blushed and waved her hand as Pan hesitated.
"Um, ok…what I mean is there isn't much to wonder about between us. We know each other's families inside and out. We know each other's quirks, the way we both think-in certain situations, and there aren't really any stories from either of our childhoods that neither of us doesn't know. That sort of thing, right? But with Jack, it's not like that because we haven't known each other half that long. We had to do that whole get-to-know-each-other thing and trust the other enough to talk about our respective lives and not embellish them."
Bra quirked an eyebrow, and Pan shook her head, wandering towards the dresser.
"I don't know how to explain it! I mean…You're family to me. Your brother's family to me. Jack isn't. It's just an entirely different repertoire between me and him then me and Trunks, differently loyalties with Jack then with us, you know?" As Bra continued to look skeptical, she gave up. "It's just one of those things you either do get, or don't get. I can't find the words to describe it…sorry Bra."
Bra smiled and shrugged lightly, watching her as she looked at the photos on the dresser.
"I'm sorry too, Pan. I'm just…"
"Is this going to be the part where you tell me what's bothering you?" Pan interjected. All she received was a flat stare, so she grinned outright and turned back to the photographs.
"I'm just finally starting to realize that you were serious last week; your feelings for my brother really have faded into oblivion."
Pan smiled half heartedly. "As much as I hate to admit it, I was just upset last week."
"About that 'something' you still haven't told me about."
"And that I never will," Pan confirmed, her gaze lingering on certain photographs:
The two of them at graduation, skinny legs sticking out from the bottom of closed gowns, caps at rakish angles and their arms around each other, acting cute and childish even though they were officially adults.
Goten and Trunks pretending to tango across the living room together on a night that had been especially hard on Bra, the two boys caught in mid-dip, Goten throwing his head towards the ground and kicking his leg into the air as they stood on the couch, Trunks with a face so red with contained laughter his head seemed about to explode. Pan smiled and lifted the frame, recalling the way she had sprinted across the house to snag a camera and return just in time to take that picture; about ten seconds before Trunks dropped her uncle if she remembered right.
Setting down the frame, her eyes drifted to a picture that had been taken when she and Bra were sixteen, Goten carrying Bra, Pan carrying Trunks, Marron falling over in hysterical laughter in the background. Even now the expression of horror on Trunks's face was priceless.
"I still like him, Bra, against all better judgment. To tell the truth, he's done a pretty decent job of endearing himself to me over the last week."
A bright smile split Bra's face, her eyes lighting with that same spark of mischief that had dared Pan to head into space eight years ago, even without Bra saying a word.
Pan glared.
"If you even think of setting me up with your brother, I'll kill you here and now."
Bra grinned and shook her head, blue ringlets bouncing around her head.
"No…I was just afraid that you'd ripped the dress on purpose. It's not like you haven't done it before."
Pan shook her head with a light and assuring smile. "No, I promised I'd be your doll for your birthday. And I must say, that's a shitty excuse for the way you were acting on the phone just now."
Her companion paled slightly; Pan was amazed at how easy it was to manipulate Bra once she knew how to read Trunks…even one week ago she'd thought Bra was completely in control of all manipulating to be done.
It was almost creepy the way the two resembled each other.
"Let's leave it as both of us have changed drastically since I left, Bra," Pan continued. "I'd have worn a shirt with it, but that's something I would have worn, and you'd be the one in the dress," she added, pointing at the black vest and plaid pants. "And I know something's bothering you. So spill."
Bra sighed and tugged at another shoulder length ringlet. "Alright, so I play for both teams now-forgive me for not trying to make you feel uncomfortable."
Pan fell over with a squawk as Bra's words, coupled with her actions, defined themselves. Bra ground her teeth with a wince and a bitter laugh. "Funny. You get me when both of our families and everyone else needed it drawn out in crayon for them…Krillin still doesn't understand. He's locked Marron away from the world, as if I'll reach her through some cosmic link and 'corrupt' her, too."
Pan picked herself up guiltily; she hadn't meant to, but the shock of Bra no longer chasing men-the very act that had defined her throughout high school-had been greater than she'd have ever expected.
"I've been living in California, Bra…there are more…well…things are pretty liberal over there." She shifted awkwardly, not quite sure what to think quite yet. Bra looked just as uncomfortable, if a little more relaxed now than she had before. She relaxed back into her slump between the chair arms, legs kicking the air on one side, ringlets swaying towards the ground on the other. "So wait…are you…"
"I honestly couldn't tell you," Bra finished with a shrug. "Not really sure where I stand quite yet…it's a little hard when Mom started wailing about how she's never going to be a grandmother when I told her and Daddy disowned me for a few months. Trunks is the only one not giving me a hard time about it, but I know he doesn't believe me…sometimes I can't help but think that he knows me better than I know myself, but I just can't trust that thought right now."
"So have you-"
"Dated girls?" she put in bluntly. Pan nodded dumbly. "Yeah. Nothing remotely serious…I'm still a little queasy about the thought to tell the truth, but I'm just as queasy around guys right now, so I really don't know anymore. I'm still getting used to this myself. But it's…guys just don't do anything for me anymore. Sure, there are a couple of great guys out there, but my mind wanders and I have an easier time getting close to and staying in the moment with my girlfriends. I guess I just burned myself out on guys when we were younger, or else I've come to terms with the fact that all the decent guys see me either as unreachable, unattainable, or a complete slut. I guess I just haven't met that guy that makes my pulse race and my heart do that roller-coaster thing. Hell, one that can hold my attention. Haven't found a girl who does that for me yet either, but at least they keep me in the now, and I haven't been looking long in that arena anyways."
Pan smiled empathetically.
"Your Mr.-or Ms.-Everything?"
"Define 'everything'."
"That one person who makes your eyes light up and makes the world feel a little more friendly?" She paused as Bra nodded sadly, turning her head to meet her eyes. Pan's tone turned soft, dreamy even but not quite; there was a hint of finality in her voice that made it clear she knew the difference between dreams and reality. "That one person who can make you laugh on the best of days and the worst of days, who makes you happy just to be around them…that one soul who makes the dark seem safe and the rain feel like magic, whose eyes speak straight to your soul and who seems to have a special smile, just for you. That person who makes your chest flutter and your heart swoon with even the slightest brush of fingers, makes your heart race at the thought of his name and your insides shiver whenever he looks at you. Whose scent smells like heaven? That one person you could love like no other…if only they would let you?"
Bra sat up slowly and nodded solemnly. "You sound like you've found your Mr. Everything."
Pan nodded, looking down at the card in her hand before moving slowly back towards the vanity.
"Jack's him, isn't he?"
Pan laughed silently, shaking her head as she reached the vanity, pushing the card into a pocket on her khakis and pulling out the torn picture of Jack. She walked back to Bra and handed it to her, motioning for her to turn it over. Taped to the other side was a picture that Bra hadn't noticed earlier. It wasn't really recent, but in a way, it was. She recognized the picture as one that had been taken right before Pan had left, when the two of them, Goten, Trunks, and Marron had gone out to the beach to watch the sunset. What should have been there was her brother and Pan; he was supposed to be holding her around the waist as he said his real goodbye, but all that was there was Pan, staring forlorn and dejectedly out at the sea.
"He's your brother. These last few days."
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A/N: Anyways, here's your really long 2-chapters-combined-into-1 update.
Oh yeah...anybody interested in that challenge? (see the end of chapter 99...I'm too zonked to link my forum - WHICH NO ONE USES!)
-Panabelle ;P
All will be answered in time and time is coming to an end. Literally! *ducks as meteors shower around her*