Nothing Left
by Contrail
Disclaimer: Dragonball Z was created by Akira Toriyama. The American translation is done by Funimation. I am not either one of them.
Author's Note: This is set in the future timeline that Cell travelled back in time from, where Cell killed Trunks and stole his time machine.
Bulma could remember the exact moment her careworn heart finally shattered completely. She'd felt such relief and bitter satisfaction when Trunks told her that he'd finally defeated Gero's androids, who had been terrorizing the planet for so long. He had wanted to use the time machine to tell their counterparts in the timeline he'd changed the good news. That even though his journey back in time didn't alter the conditions he faced in his time, the training he had received there had enabled him to defeat his timeline's androids. She'd seen no reason why he couldn't go. Now she wished that she had had some objection, although the end result might have been the same regardless.
She hadn't even gone to watch him leave, just sent him off with a kiss on the cheek and an admonition to be careful, turning back to her latest project when the door closed behind him. She'd heard the sound of the time machine leaving, and that was when an uneasy feeling started to settle into her mind. Part of her just knew that something had happened to Trunks. After a few minutes, she couldn't take it anymore. She headed outside towards the place she knew Trunks planned to leave from. The time machine was gone, and laying on the ground was a still figure... in a familiar Capsule Corp jacket.
"NO!!!!" she had cried out. She still couldn't remember crossing the distance between them, just kneeling down and lifting her son's body into her arms. As she shifted Trunks, his head lolled too far to the side for his neck not to be broken. It was then that her heart shattered. The only son she'd ever have, the last person in the world she'd truly cared for, was dead. Chichi had simply faded away after Gohan died, and all of the others had been slain by the androids. Now she knew how Chichi must have felt when Gohan died.
It had been two years since that day. Humanity was trying rebuild what the androids destroyed, as much as that was possible. Bulma had managed to pull herself together enough to oversee the reformation of Capsule Corporation, and to write her book. She'd lost count of the times she'd broken down crying while working on it, but it was something she'd felt needed to be done. Now that almost all of those who might have been harmed by the truth being told were dead, she would tell it.
The ones she had loved deserved for the world to know how much they had done them, how many times they had saved it. Only a handful of people still lived that knew them and what they had done. In time, their stories would have been lost to time. So she wrote a book telling them, as a last memorial to those she'd travelled with, fought beside, and loved. She wanted them to be remembered centuries from now. She'd called it 'The Dragonball Saga', for it started with the search for them, and somehow their adventures always seemed to relate to them in one way or another.
But her book was finished and printed now. She'd put her affairs in order, made sure that Capsule Corporation was in the best hands she could find. That was why she was sitting near the graveyard behind Capsule Corp headquarters, where all her friends were buried. One of the advantages of being a technological genius was that if you needed a quick and painless way to kill yourself, you could make yourself one. All she needed to do now was push a button.
She took a deep breath and looked at the world around her. The crystal clear blue sky above her, and the soft green grass beneath her. It was the last chance she'd get to see it. It was time she joined her friends and family. They'd been apart too long all ready.
She pushed the button.