"There are people who take the heart out of you and people who put it back in." –Elizabeth David
I put a hand, unconsciously, on my belly. It was the one part of my body that hadn't gone numb. I could feel it when the thing…the child…god there was a child inside of me…I could feel it when it moved. It would kick and spin as if it was trying to destroy me from the inside out, perhaps it was. I sighed as tears that I couldn't feel flowed gently down my face.
One of them came in, the woman with blue hair, the one who doctored me. Every time I saw her my heartbeat quickened, she looked so muck like…I thought they had come again. Every time she came in I shuddered, I couldn't help it, but I pretended it didn't happen and she pretended she didn't see so in the end we got along fine. The woman put the bowl she'd been carrying in my hands. "More mush today." She said sitting in front of me on the floor. "This has to be getting pretty boring by now, the same food everyday, someone should talk to them." I said nothing but ate the mush she had brought, the woman chattered at me through my meal, watching me with kind eyes.
When I had finished she took the bowl and set it on the table. "Check up day," she said, gently leading me over to the examination table. Obediently I lay down and placed my feet in the stirrups she'd folded out. With a gloved hand she reached inside of me. The woman talked to me softly, sometimes about what she felt, sometimes about nothing at all. I wondered if this was to take my mind off the pain, should there be pain? I wasn't sure, that part of me had been the first to go numb. "Everything seems fine," the woman said stripping off the glove.
"I wish it didn't," I murmured.
"I know," she said softly, coming to gently stroke my hair, "I know you do."
She stayed there, stroking my hair and holding my hand as I wept. When I had finished she placed a gentle kiss on the top of my head. "I'll be back later," she said, and then she was gone.
Slowly I rose from the table and settled myself back in my corner. I could feel it, by the foreboding in my heart I could feel the worst coming, the one I dreaded above all others, the memory of my betrayal.
I awoke in a small room, a room I would come to know horribly well by the end of my imprisonment. It was dark, there were no windows and the only light came from a single exposed bulb hanging from the ceiling by a wire. There was a bed with a dingy, hard mattress in the corner and I was chained to the wall.
For a moment I was pulled out of my memory by a movement in the room. Fear gripped my heart, but I could not focus my eyes on my surroundings, the visions were too strong to be pushed away.
I heard footsteps on the stairs and I looked to the door, waiting to see who would come through. It was him; he said nothing as he closed the door behind him. He walked up to me, jangling a ring of keys in his hands. For a moment I thought he was going to set me free, but I was wrong. He released me from the wall and immediately balled his had into a fist and pummeled me in the stomach. I dropped to my knees, gasping for air.
There was someone else in my room, now I was sure of it. They were slowly making their way across the floor, towards my corner, towards me; I could almost make out their form…
He beat me until I lay in a pool of my own blood, nearly unconscious on the floor. He then lifted me roughly up to set me by the wall and chained me again. I managed to speak two words to him through my swollen, blood-caked lips…
The vision was fading and mingling with the sight of my room. I could finally see whom it was who had entered. I nearly screamed when I saw his tousled black hair, but he looked at me with kind eyes.
"Trunks…why?"
"Mamoru?" I asked softly. "What are you doing here?"
Trunks smirked evilly. "The past effects the future effects the past." He said cryptically.
The vision finally faded entirely from the room and I looked into the eyes of the man I loved. "Mamoru?" There were tears in his eyes.
"Usako" he whispered, gently grasping my hand. Suddenly I could feel my hands again, I could recognize my name as my own. Cautiously, Mamoru lifted a hand up to my veil. "Usako?" he whispered again. I was terrified but I nodded slowly. Gently. He lifted the veil off my face and looked at the monstrosity that lay beneath it, but Mamoru didn't gasp or turn away, he looked at me intently. "Does it hurt?" he asked, reaching a hand up. I shut my eyes as he lifted his hand to touch my face. Did it hurt? No, it didn't, I couldn't even feel it anymore. But my eyes snapped open again. I could feel it, I could feel his hand gently caressing my cheek, I could feel it and it felt wonderful, I gasped softly.
Mamoru pulled his hand away, "I'm sorry," he said, "did that hurt?"
"No" I said, snatching his hand back and holding it to my cheek again. "It didn't hurt at all."
Mamoru smiled and gently pressed a kiss against my forehead. "God I've missed that smell." He sighed softly.
I couldn't believe this; I couldn't believe any of it. He was here, Mamoru was here, and perhaps more astonishing, I was here too. He made me exist again. I had a name because he had given it back to me, I had a face because he had touched it, I existed because here was there. I would have almost believed it all a dream but for the child, I would not have let the child into my dream. So this was real then.
"Usako," Mamoru said, taking my hands and looking serious, "tell me what happened."
I felt an arrow of fear shoot through my heart, but it quickly subsided, nothing could ever make me afraid of Mamoru. I told him my story, putting the pieces in order as best I could, failing miserably. By the time I'd finished he had wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tight into his chest, one of his tears dropped onto the back of my hand as I twisted my fingers into his shirt.
"Did
you try to reach us?" he asked softly, "did you try to contact the
scouts?"
"No,"
I whispered, "I'm sorry."
"Why?"
" I couldn't," I said softly "From the second I arrived there I could feel the danger, it was like electricity running through my veins, I didn't want to lead you there, I'm still glad I didn't, they could have killed you."
"They could have killed you" Mamoru said, almost to himself, "How did you get away, how did you get here?"
I sighed softly as the last of the memories took over my mind.
I was alone in the room, my room. I could not have said how long I had been there or whether it was night or day. By now the place stank of piss and sweat and blood and I could not remember how long it'd been since I'd had a shower. Slowly, softly the door opened and Gohan walked into my room. I could feel my body tense but I could tell that there was something different about him this time, something in the set of his shoulders, in the grim line of his mouth told me that the observer Gohan, the real Gohan, the gentle one was refusing to be forced down, that it was the animal that was watching from that place deep inside of him.
"Come on" he said softly, "We have to get you out of here." He unchained me from the wall and gently lifted me into his arms.
"Where are the others?" I asked weakly.
"They don't remember that you're here" he said softly "not until Trunks brings them down, after they leave they forget, they don't remember anything."
"And Trunks," I asked, "Where is he?"
"He's drunk" he whispered dangerously, "dead drunk."
His tone was ambiguous, he could very well have meant that Trunks was simply passed out in his room and would wake up in the morning with a terrible headache, but the glint in his eye suggested something more, something more sinister, I was afraid to ask.
Gohan carried me out into the forest before he set me down. We weren't very far from where I used to take my midnight walks, not very far at all from the blueberry sea, but I couldn't see the beauty anymore. I was as if my imprisonment had changed the way I saw the world, as if my imprisonment had changed the world.
"You have to go on by yourself now," Gohan said, his voice slightly strained.
"Why are you helping me?" I asked, not moving.
"Because I didn't forget, because I always knew…but I couldn't help myself, it was like something had taken over. We are good men, even Trunks, I swear when he showed up from the future for the third time I had no idea, but he…I can't explain it, I swear we're not usually like this. I'm sorry Usagi…I'm so sorry…I helped you because I fell in love with you…I don't know what-Oh god."
"What?" I exclaimed.
"Run" he said through gritted teeth, backing away from me, "It's happening again, Run…Now!"
I scrambled up and stumbled away from him as fast as I could on legs that hadn't walked in months, tears streaming down my horrid face.
Mamoru was silent for a long while. "How did you get back here then," he asked hoarsely when he was finally able to speak again "How did you even get there in the first place…what happened?"
"I'm not sure" I said softly, I had narrated my vision as best I could to him, but Mamoru had always known me better than anyone else, he knew things that I had never told him and I could see it in his eyes. "Sestuna said it was like a fold in time, I went forward in time a few years, how it happened, or how I got back we still aren't sure."
"There's more than that." He stated softly.
I sighed slightly, "I think I skipped dimensions, there is no way that world could have been this world, even in the future."
"You haven't told this to Sestuna."
"No."
"I don't understand," Mamoru said, holding me closer, rocking back and forth, "how could he possibly claim that they were good men after what they did to you?"
"I think he was right."
"What?"
"I
almost felt sorry for the boy, he couldn't have been more than nineteen,
I do think he loved me, it's just…I think his heritage was working
against him."
"What do you mean?"
I unwrapped myself from his arms and walked across the room, returning in a moment with a worn leather book. "My mother, Queen Serenity, brought this not long after I'd been brought back." I ran a hand over the rough, worn leather, glancing for a moment at the faded, gilded title, when the light hit it just right it read 'The History of the Moon'. I flipped carefully through pages that seemed just moments from disintegrating to a page the binding seemed to remember well and handed the book to Mamoru, pointing to a paragraph in the middle of the page. Mamoru glanced up at me before quickly reading the passage.
"Saiyans?" he asked softly.
I nodded slightly taking the book from him again and flipping to another over-read page, once again handing him the book and pointing to a passage.
"Characterized by a vast increase in ruthlessness accompanied with severe memory loss." He murmured to himself. He glanced up at me, confusion written clearly on his face.
I took the book from him a third time and flipped to the last well-perused page.
"Selene?" he asked.
I nodded silently, taking the book gingerly from his hands and placing it back in its place on the shelf across the room. She was the human embodiment of the moon, and I, being the last remaining Lunarian, inherited some of that so-"
"You caused the human embodiment of that?" he finished for me.
I nodded once again. "So you see" I whispered softly, "It was my fault, I was the reason for it all. That explains their eyes and the memory loss and it may perhaps explain Gohan, he was only half Saiyan…it was my fault."
"No!" Mamoru whispered fiercely, wrapping his arms around me again "None of that was your fault."
"It explains everything," I said as if he hadn't spoken "…everything except Trunks, nothing explains Trunks, he was the worst of all."
So, did I surprise anyone? I did promise that this wasn't your typical story. Sorry this one took so long coming out, I was just lazy, but government is over now so I should be able to get chapters out more quickly.
I hope I didn't scare anyone off with the apparently cliché beginning (especially you Sporanox, I hope your still reading this), but the point was to hide twists behind the cliché. Don't think I'm done yet though, I still have at least one more surprise hidden inside this seemingly overdone story.
I want to apologize again for the length (or lack thereof) of these chapters, that usually isn't my style; I'm not sure what happened this time. But never fear, I am already a few chapters into the next story I plan to post and that one promises to have much longer chapters.
P.S. if there is anyone who, after reading the three chapters I have posted today, does not understand what happened to the DBZ guys please do tell me and I will try to clear that up. (I think it's pretty clear, but I've also known what's been going on for the entire story).
-Niamh
