Escape the Pain
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Vegeta watched his son go.
He couldn't find the right words to tell his son, that he was sorry for putting everything on him. He had not even thought about the fact that his son had watched his own mother die. He did not even know that he suffered but realized that he did envy his son for still having a woman's arms to take solace in.
The vigor that he felt after sleeping back in his own bed, with her smell, was gone. His moment of peace was shattered.
It felt good to be back in the house that he had called home for the last while. He thought that memories would hurt but the comforted him. He remembered how many long nights they would spend in bed together and there had been many of those. Those memories did comfort him as he lay down in the bed that they had shared. It allowed him to sleep, surrounded with soft memories of there past.
He may never have told her that he loved her but he knew that he showed it to her in those tender moments, where it was only the two of them. Where there was no one else around to give him a wry smile or a shocked look.
He still wished he told her and wasn't so harsh on her other times. She did not deserve the coldness that he sometime gave her or the harsh yells he would give her at other times.
He was lost in thoughts of HER when he heard Trunks. He wanted to get back to his pleasant thoughts and drive the horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach away. But he saw that flash of anger appear in his son's eyes as he talked and the flash of pain that crossed his features as he talked about all that he had done.
He had the right to feel the way that he did.
He did not know how tell his son that he was sorry that he couldn't be there for him.
He did not know how to be like Kakarott.
As he walked out of the bedroom, he missed her terribly again. She would have known how to handle the situation and diffuse it. She always did that. The few pleasant memories that the rooms held for him could not make up for her absence. They never could. It only momentary filled the void that had been created by her death only to empty and leave a seemingly even more painful absence than what was there before.
He knew that he was being selfish again. That part of him was defiantly coming back in full force and he didn't want to push it back.
He walked to the one room in the house that he hardly ever went into. It was her room. Her lab. He was hoping that he could find the way to stop the empty feeling in there. He was pretty sure that he could find it. Maybe even an escape from the pain that he was feeling.
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"What the hell?" Goten whispered as he walked back into what he thought was his own house. It was totally rearranged. Totally.
"Soyna?"
There was no answer. It took him a little while but he found her. She was not in the training room as she usually did in the middle of the afternoon. He was almost shocked to see her sitting in her favorite chair and sleeping. There was cleaning stuff spread throughout the room and it looked like she changed the den as well.
"Soyna," he said and shook her gently.
Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled at him.
"Are you okay?" he said.
"Fine dear," she said and yawned.
Dear? When the hell did she start calling him that? He tried a pet name once. He just called her Honey and she gave a look that could kill and a smart slap on the arm and said to never call her one of those silly names again. She never called him Dear or Honey or Sweetums or any of those cutesy things. She was not a cutesy type person.
"I was just cleaning house," she said. "I must have fallen asleep. It sure is a lot of work to clean up after those kids."
"We have bots to help us with that," he said. She cleaned house before, but they weren't neat freaks. It was near impossible with 5 kids running around in the house.
"No more bots," she said. "Real mothers don't use bots," she said and stretched now. Damn, she had to do that. Her shirt lifted up and showed her smooth belly and he couldn't help but want to grab her and take her upstairs. But he had to address the lack-of-bot issue.
"We have 5 kids here, we need those bots," he said.
"Real mothers don't use bots, so I can manage the household without there help," she said simply and stood now.
He didn't like where this is going. "Soyna. You are a real mother. What are you talking about?"
She just smiled at him, "things are going to be better around here."
Better? "Things are just fine the way they were," he said.
She gave a little chuckle and wrapped her arms around his waist. She was purposely trying to distract him and she knew exactly how to do it too. "They will be better now. I will concentrate on the kids more."
"But what about training?" he said.
Her eyes flashed a moment of pain but that smile came back. "If I need to train, I will make sure that the kids are not around. I don't want them to see their monster of a mother."
"What about the kids training then? You are the one that shows them stuff, more than anyone else?" he said. They always wanted mom to show them a new attack or help them with new ones and they all wanted to become a supersaiyian. She did not push them hard. Not like he remembered being pushed at a kid to learn how to fight, but then, they didn't have a monster looming over his shoulder. She never even encouraged them to train, but they all did. Well, everyone but Benot now.
"You can or Gohan, your dad, or Trunks," she said with a smile. "There are plenty of other people that can do it and I can just be me."
"But." he started but her lips cut off his words as she kissed him deeply.
"I have an hour to kill," she said in the sexiest voice in the world with the most wonderful tilt of the head to show her neck to him.
He knew that he shouldn't have been lulled by it, but how could he not! He knew he should be trying to talk to her about this change that she was doing to herself and them. He knew that he should be trying to understand why she was doing it. He knew that he should be saying that she just couldn't switch gears like she is. He knew that he should be encouraging her regular routine. He wanted her to be the woman that he married: Strong and so confident in herself. Hardly the monster that she thought herself to be, but the kiss carried those thoughts away as quickly as they came.
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Benot couldn't believe what his brother told him. "Mom was acting like that?" He could not imagine his mother as cheerful. He had see her happy but not cheerful or bubbly. Those were just words that did not describe his mother.
Legen nodded his head. "Yeah, it was almost scary," he said as they sat down in class. "You are coming home tonight, right? You can't still be that mad at her."
"She hit me!" he said and looked in amazement at his brother.
"Yeah, well, I would rather have her hit me than have such a weird mom. I liked our cool mom better." Legen said and pulled a book out of his bag. "I mean, it was like she was someone totally different."
He thought about it for a minute. He must have really shook mom up. He knew that he was certainly still upset with her. He did feel a little bit better now that he talked to his read dad a bit. He wasn't sure if he was ready to see him mother yet. He had a couple of nightmares about mom turning into that monster that was out of control that he did not remember for the day of Oma's funeral. He still did not remember seeing mom like that, but he sure heard a lot of descriptions of it from everyone that had been there.
"You better come home," Legen said. "I don't think I can deal with that alone."
"It couldn't have been that bad," Benot said.
"She was humming Benot. Humming. Have you ever heard mom hum once in her life and she kept calling everyone 'dear'. I would rather have her give me that silent stare of hers that you know your in trouble, that have her go all bubbly and call me dear!" Legen said. "Here. You don't need to get a detention on top of all the other weird stuff going on around here."
His homework. "Thanks." He was grateful. Sometimes, he didn't get a long with his brother. It all started with his wish, even though, he now forgave him for doing that. He just wanted a father. He couldn't be upset about that and Goten was a good man.
It was just too bad mom didn't wait a bit. He could have known the man that could have been their real father. Looking at his brother, he could see that he was going to look just like Brennen. Just like him. They could have been the twins! He looked nothing like his twin brother.
"What?" Legen said and rubbed his check. "Is there still lipstick on my cheek or what?"
"Lipstick?"
"Oh, yeah. You missed that to. Mom was wearing lipstick and she made sure she gave everyone a kiss before we left. Man. That really freaked me out!" Legen said.
"Mom doesn't wear makeup," Benot said.
"Well, she does now." Legen said still scrubbing his cheek. "You are not going to make me endure that alone."
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"DAD!"
Trunks just about jumped out of his skin. He was used to Gem yelling all the time and could almost block her out but he did not remember a time when Crystal yelled for anything. Anything at all.
He quickly turned to her and saw that she was looking angry. A look that certainly was different for her and she had that older look to. She must be close to going gold, from the look of it.
"What?" He said clutching his chest. Damn, his heart was not slowing down.
"You were just supposed to talk to him! Talk not yell!" she said the angry look melting to a sad one. "I just know he is going to leave now."
"If he does leave, he'll come back. We are family," he said. He didn't want to tell his daughter that it was probably best if he did leave for a little while to give everyone a break from each other. So he wouldn't see his wife in everyone face.
"But dad. You don't understand. It will be bad if he leaves!" she said and stood right in front of him. "We need to stay together."
"We will always remain a family. You know that sweetheart," he said. "Everything always works out in the end. This is just a difficult time for your grandfather that is all. He will come around."
She looked as if she were going to start to cry.
"He did look better when I went to talk to him," Trunks said as he tried to comfort his child. "He may be coming around."
"He's going to leave!" She said in a whisper. "Leave!" Her voice was so sad. "I wished I had seen this coming."
"Why are you so sure that he is going to leave?" he asked his daughter. A question that he should have asked her a while ago. She was just so determined in the fact that he was leaving. "Did you touch the silver ball? Did it show you something?"
"No," She gave him a look that startled him. It was a look that Soyna gave him once. A look that meant, 'are you stupid or something'. It was like he was missing something obvious. "Why would have to touch that ball?"
"How else do you know that he going to leave?" he asked.
"Because I dreamed about it," she said. "I used to dream that they would fight all the time and it wasn't like the sparing and that came true. At least you didn't get hurt because I made you stay with me."
"What?" he said and stared at his daughter in amazement. Was that why she was afraid of them all the time before and suddenly wasn't? "You dreamt about Vegeta and Soyna fighting, like they did the day of your grandmothers funeral?"
She nodded. "I dreamt about it for a long time," she said. "I didn't realize that it was going to come true. The dream doesn't tell me when it happens." She came and crawled onto his lap, something that she did not do very often anymore. It was rather nice. "I would have said something if I would have known. That is why I am trying to make sure Vegeta doesn't leave. The dreams are all different now and confusing but I know that if he leaves, things will not be that nice around here."
"Can you tell me anything else," he said. "Do you know why it won't be so nice around here?"
"We won't be a family anymore," she said and hugged him. "We all loose each other and when earth is attacked again, we don't have any defense. I know that much."
"The silver ball hasn't shown any of that," Trunks said. Had anyone touched it in the last while? He defiantly was going to check that out. "We always go on."
She just sniffled and cuddled close to him. "Make sure that we stay together. We have to stay together. I couldn't bear to loose you. I don't want things to change. I like things the way they are."
He hugged her fiercely as back as she cuddled close to him. He defiantly had to check the silver ball out to see if is showed him anything like what she was describing.
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Vegeta opened up the small case. It was in here.
He had gotten over his feeling of dread of walking into her lab, her place, and a place that he seldom ventured into. She was a different person in the lab. Her mind on all the machinery that was around her and she would be so intent on fixing whatever she was working on.
She always repaired everything.
He knew that she had worked on things that looked impossible to repair and had done it. He had always been forced to listen with great boredom to how she connect this to that and how it had miraculously worked or failed.
This was where she kept it. He was certain of it.
He opened it and looked at the capsules. Well, there was only one way to be sure about it. He felt a flutter in his stomach. It took him a little bit to realize what he was feeling. He was nervous. He had never been nervous before in his life.
There were a lot of new things that he was planning on doing. This was the first time in his life that he ran. Really ran. He could think of no other way to escape the pain.
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Vegeta watched his son go.
He couldn't find the right words to tell his son, that he was sorry for putting everything on him. He had not even thought about the fact that his son had watched his own mother die. He did not even know that he suffered but realized that he did envy his son for still having a woman's arms to take solace in.
The vigor that he felt after sleeping back in his own bed, with her smell, was gone. His moment of peace was shattered.
It felt good to be back in the house that he had called home for the last while. He thought that memories would hurt but the comforted him. He remembered how many long nights they would spend in bed together and there had been many of those. Those memories did comfort him as he lay down in the bed that they had shared. It allowed him to sleep, surrounded with soft memories of there past.
He may never have told her that he loved her but he knew that he showed it to her in those tender moments, where it was only the two of them. Where there was no one else around to give him a wry smile or a shocked look.
He still wished he told her and wasn't so harsh on her other times. She did not deserve the coldness that he sometime gave her or the harsh yells he would give her at other times.
He was lost in thoughts of HER when he heard Trunks. He wanted to get back to his pleasant thoughts and drive the horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach away. But he saw that flash of anger appear in his son's eyes as he talked and the flash of pain that crossed his features as he talked about all that he had done.
He had the right to feel the way that he did.
He did not know how tell his son that he was sorry that he couldn't be there for him.
He did not know how to be like Kakarott.
As he walked out of the bedroom, he missed her terribly again. She would have known how to handle the situation and diffuse it. She always did that. The few pleasant memories that the rooms held for him could not make up for her absence. They never could. It only momentary filled the void that had been created by her death only to empty and leave a seemingly even more painful absence than what was there before.
He knew that he was being selfish again. That part of him was defiantly coming back in full force and he didn't want to push it back.
He walked to the one room in the house that he hardly ever went into. It was her room. Her lab. He was hoping that he could find the way to stop the empty feeling in there. He was pretty sure that he could find it. Maybe even an escape from the pain that he was feeling.
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"What the hell?" Goten whispered as he walked back into what he thought was his own house. It was totally rearranged. Totally.
"Soyna?"
There was no answer. It took him a little while but he found her. She was not in the training room as she usually did in the middle of the afternoon. He was almost shocked to see her sitting in her favorite chair and sleeping. There was cleaning stuff spread throughout the room and it looked like she changed the den as well.
"Soyna," he said and shook her gently.
Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled at him.
"Are you okay?" he said.
"Fine dear," she said and yawned.
Dear? When the hell did she start calling him that? He tried a pet name once. He just called her Honey and she gave a look that could kill and a smart slap on the arm and said to never call her one of those silly names again. She never called him Dear or Honey or Sweetums or any of those cutesy things. She was not a cutesy type person.
"I was just cleaning house," she said. "I must have fallen asleep. It sure is a lot of work to clean up after those kids."
"We have bots to help us with that," he said. She cleaned house before, but they weren't neat freaks. It was near impossible with 5 kids running around in the house.
"No more bots," she said. "Real mothers don't use bots," she said and stretched now. Damn, she had to do that. Her shirt lifted up and showed her smooth belly and he couldn't help but want to grab her and take her upstairs. But he had to address the lack-of-bot issue.
"We have 5 kids here, we need those bots," he said.
"Real mothers don't use bots, so I can manage the household without there help," she said simply and stood now.
He didn't like where this is going. "Soyna. You are a real mother. What are you talking about?"
She just smiled at him, "things are going to be better around here."
Better? "Things are just fine the way they were," he said.
She gave a little chuckle and wrapped her arms around his waist. She was purposely trying to distract him and she knew exactly how to do it too. "They will be better now. I will concentrate on the kids more."
"But what about training?" he said.
Her eyes flashed a moment of pain but that smile came back. "If I need to train, I will make sure that the kids are not around. I don't want them to see their monster of a mother."
"What about the kids training then? You are the one that shows them stuff, more than anyone else?" he said. They always wanted mom to show them a new attack or help them with new ones and they all wanted to become a supersaiyian. She did not push them hard. Not like he remembered being pushed at a kid to learn how to fight, but then, they didn't have a monster looming over his shoulder. She never even encouraged them to train, but they all did. Well, everyone but Benot now.
"You can or Gohan, your dad, or Trunks," she said with a smile. "There are plenty of other people that can do it and I can just be me."
"But." he started but her lips cut off his words as she kissed him deeply.
"I have an hour to kill," she said in the sexiest voice in the world with the most wonderful tilt of the head to show her neck to him.
He knew that he shouldn't have been lulled by it, but how could he not! He knew he should be trying to talk to her about this change that she was doing to herself and them. He knew that he should be trying to understand why she was doing it. He knew that he should be saying that she just couldn't switch gears like she is. He knew that he should be encouraging her regular routine. He wanted her to be the woman that he married: Strong and so confident in herself. Hardly the monster that she thought herself to be, but the kiss carried those thoughts away as quickly as they came.
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Benot couldn't believe what his brother told him. "Mom was acting like that?" He could not imagine his mother as cheerful. He had see her happy but not cheerful or bubbly. Those were just words that did not describe his mother.
Legen nodded his head. "Yeah, it was almost scary," he said as they sat down in class. "You are coming home tonight, right? You can't still be that mad at her."
"She hit me!" he said and looked in amazement at his brother.
"Yeah, well, I would rather have her hit me than have such a weird mom. I liked our cool mom better." Legen said and pulled a book out of his bag. "I mean, it was like she was someone totally different."
He thought about it for a minute. He must have really shook mom up. He knew that he was certainly still upset with her. He did feel a little bit better now that he talked to his read dad a bit. He wasn't sure if he was ready to see him mother yet. He had a couple of nightmares about mom turning into that monster that was out of control that he did not remember for the day of Oma's funeral. He still did not remember seeing mom like that, but he sure heard a lot of descriptions of it from everyone that had been there.
"You better come home," Legen said. "I don't think I can deal with that alone."
"It couldn't have been that bad," Benot said.
"She was humming Benot. Humming. Have you ever heard mom hum once in her life and she kept calling everyone 'dear'. I would rather have her give me that silent stare of hers that you know your in trouble, that have her go all bubbly and call me dear!" Legen said. "Here. You don't need to get a detention on top of all the other weird stuff going on around here."
His homework. "Thanks." He was grateful. Sometimes, he didn't get a long with his brother. It all started with his wish, even though, he now forgave him for doing that. He just wanted a father. He couldn't be upset about that and Goten was a good man.
It was just too bad mom didn't wait a bit. He could have known the man that could have been their real father. Looking at his brother, he could see that he was going to look just like Brennen. Just like him. They could have been the twins! He looked nothing like his twin brother.
"What?" Legen said and rubbed his check. "Is there still lipstick on my cheek or what?"
"Lipstick?"
"Oh, yeah. You missed that to. Mom was wearing lipstick and she made sure she gave everyone a kiss before we left. Man. That really freaked me out!" Legen said.
"Mom doesn't wear makeup," Benot said.
"Well, she does now." Legen said still scrubbing his cheek. "You are not going to make me endure that alone."
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"DAD!"
Trunks just about jumped out of his skin. He was used to Gem yelling all the time and could almost block her out but he did not remember a time when Crystal yelled for anything. Anything at all.
He quickly turned to her and saw that she was looking angry. A look that certainly was different for her and she had that older look to. She must be close to going gold, from the look of it.
"What?" He said clutching his chest. Damn, his heart was not slowing down.
"You were just supposed to talk to him! Talk not yell!" she said the angry look melting to a sad one. "I just know he is going to leave now."
"If he does leave, he'll come back. We are family," he said. He didn't want to tell his daughter that it was probably best if he did leave for a little while to give everyone a break from each other. So he wouldn't see his wife in everyone face.
"But dad. You don't understand. It will be bad if he leaves!" she said and stood right in front of him. "We need to stay together."
"We will always remain a family. You know that sweetheart," he said. "Everything always works out in the end. This is just a difficult time for your grandfather that is all. He will come around."
She looked as if she were going to start to cry.
"He did look better when I went to talk to him," Trunks said as he tried to comfort his child. "He may be coming around."
"He's going to leave!" She said in a whisper. "Leave!" Her voice was so sad. "I wished I had seen this coming."
"Why are you so sure that he is going to leave?" he asked his daughter. A question that he should have asked her a while ago. She was just so determined in the fact that he was leaving. "Did you touch the silver ball? Did it show you something?"
"No," She gave him a look that startled him. It was a look that Soyna gave him once. A look that meant, 'are you stupid or something'. It was like he was missing something obvious. "Why would have to touch that ball?"
"How else do you know that he going to leave?" he asked.
"Because I dreamed about it," she said. "I used to dream that they would fight all the time and it wasn't like the sparing and that came true. At least you didn't get hurt because I made you stay with me."
"What?" he said and stared at his daughter in amazement. Was that why she was afraid of them all the time before and suddenly wasn't? "You dreamt about Vegeta and Soyna fighting, like they did the day of your grandmothers funeral?"
She nodded. "I dreamt about it for a long time," she said. "I didn't realize that it was going to come true. The dream doesn't tell me when it happens." She came and crawled onto his lap, something that she did not do very often anymore. It was rather nice. "I would have said something if I would have known. That is why I am trying to make sure Vegeta doesn't leave. The dreams are all different now and confusing but I know that if he leaves, things will not be that nice around here."
"Can you tell me anything else," he said. "Do you know why it won't be so nice around here?"
"We won't be a family anymore," she said and hugged him. "We all loose each other and when earth is attacked again, we don't have any defense. I know that much."
"The silver ball hasn't shown any of that," Trunks said. Had anyone touched it in the last while? He defiantly was going to check that out. "We always go on."
She just sniffled and cuddled close to him. "Make sure that we stay together. We have to stay together. I couldn't bear to loose you. I don't want things to change. I like things the way they are."
He hugged her fiercely as back as she cuddled close to him. He defiantly had to check the silver ball out to see if is showed him anything like what she was describing.
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Vegeta opened up the small case. It was in here.
He had gotten over his feeling of dread of walking into her lab, her place, and a place that he seldom ventured into. She was a different person in the lab. Her mind on all the machinery that was around her and she would be so intent on fixing whatever she was working on.
She always repaired everything.
He knew that she had worked on things that looked impossible to repair and had done it. He had always been forced to listen with great boredom to how she connect this to that and how it had miraculously worked or failed.
This was where she kept it. He was certain of it.
He opened it and looked at the capsules. Well, there was only one way to be sure about it. He felt a flutter in his stomach. It took him a little bit to realize what he was feeling. He was nervous. He had never been nervous before in his life.
There were a lot of new things that he was planning on doing. This was the first time in his life that he ran. Really ran. He could think of no other way to escape the pain.
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