A/N: So, I don't want to say much, except for thanks a lot for the reviews and I'm sorry that it took me so long to update this story. I don't even know if the updates will become any faster in the next time, because I started on my job yesterday and I don't know how much time I've got left after than. Well, probably as much as after school, including the homework and so on, but I still don't know how exhausting it will be… So, please don't be angry, when an update takes again a bit longer… I do the best I can!
Chapter 5: Picking up the pieces
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Beep beep beep!
Trunks jolted awake, sitting straight up in his bed, when his deep and dreamless sleep was interrupted by the harsh beeping sound of his alarm clock. A tortured groan erupted from his throat and his hands wandered up to his face, trying to protect his eyes from the glaring light of the morning sun that was shining through his windows. At this moment he swore that he would never ever touch a glass filled with something alcoholic – less alone drown it.
Beep beep beep! the penetrating sound continued. He carefully removed the hands from his eyes and blinked a few times, trying to focus on the digital numbers on his alarm clock, before shutting it off and letting himself fall back into the softness and comfortable warmth of his bed. Seven o'clock! In the morning! Who had set his alarm clock to wake him at this time of the day? Oh yeah, he remembered. It was none other than himself. Two nights before, as he did every night, when he had to get up the next morning so that he wouldn't be late for work.
He knew, it was still the middle of the week and he had to go to his office. But he didn't want to. Not with this mother of all headaches. His prior thought after waking up and facing this hangover was to remain there in his bed the whole day and doing nothing – until this thought was suddenly replaced by another one, which seemed much more important.
He sat again up and almost jumped out of the bed, grabbing a few clothes on the way to his bathroom. How could he forget that? He couldn't stay in bed all day, not when he had to find a way to get Pan back, wherever she was. Right at that moment he didn't know which task would be more difficult to fulfill – finding her or convincing her to come back to him.
Not even fifteen minutes later Trunks left his room, walking down the corridors with the same determination his father would show in a fight against Goku. He walked into the kitchen to grab a small bite to eat, where he found his parents sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast. "Morning mom, dad," he greeted them quickly and made his way over to the counter, where a small bowl filled with apples was standing. He took one and devoured it within a minute, the whole time not noticing the looks his parents were giving him.
"Trunks," he heard his mother finally saying, but he didn't hear the hint of suspicion in her voice. His mind was occupied with ways to find out Pan's whereabouts. "When have you come home last night? We didn't hear you and your shoes weren't standing at their place."
"Uhm," Trunks stuttered. He couldn't tell his parents what had really happened the other night. He couldn't tell them that he had been so drunk that he had no memory of the night, or that Goten had found him in that bar and then decided to bring him home – through the window of course, since taking the door and then going through the corridor would have made too much noise. "I don't know exactly. Late, I guess, because I've lost the track of time. I didn't want to wake you and so I took my window instead of the door." That wasn't even a complete lie. But also not the complete truth. His eyes darted from his mother to father and rested on him, as Vegeta just huffed at him, showing him through his eyes that he knew more than the woman he called his mate.
Trunks eyes widened just ever so lightly, wondering if the light in the gravity room had been on, when he and Goten had come home. He concentrated on this question until his head started to hurt even more. He winced, causing Bulma to ask, "Are you okay, Trunks?"
"Sure," Trunks answered with a half smile. He took a quick look at his wristwatch and then exclaimed with fake surprise that he was late for work and disappeared through the door.
Bulma just sighed and shook her head, while opening the newspaper again, which had been lying so neatly folded on the table in front of her, to reveal a large picture of her son in the arms of a sexy redhead.
Trunks had decided to fly to the office. First of all the fresh air could help to ease the slowly decreasing pain of his headache and second, he didn't even know if the alcohol in his blood was already completely gone, allowing him to drive again. Well, the same could be said for flying, but at least he didn't endanger any people like this.
Just a few minutes later he sat down near his office building to walk the last few meters. When he entered the young woman at the reception desk flashed him a toothy smile. "Good morning, Mr. Briefs," she breathed.
"Good morning," Trunks responded slightly confused and continued on his way to the elevator that would bring him to his office. And he wanted to go there as fast as possible. He didn't know why, but every time he passed one of his employees, especially when she was female, he felt a pair of eyes in his back. Not that this wasn't something he was used to, but this time it was somehow more intense, just like the greeting of the young woman at the reception. Those looks felt like daggers in his back and he could've sworn that those female employees somehow just waited for a chance to throw themselves at him, when he wasn't looking.
So he was more than glad, when he finally stood in the safety in the elevator, took his fake glasses off and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. The headache was slowly becoming better, but even though it was a lot more bearable than earlier this morning, it was still a bit annoying. A short time later the elevator finally stopped and he stepped out, immediately feeling again many pairs of eyes on him. Trying hard to ignore this more than strange behavior of his employees, Trunks hurried down the corridor, past his secretary into the – at this moment – holy chambers in this building. His office. He closed the doors after he entered it and leaned against them, letting out a deep relieving breath. "Wow… that was… creepy," Trunks mumbled.
After standing like this for a few minutes, he finally walked over to his table, where he found the reason for everyone's weird behavior – the newspapers. He slumped down in his chair. There it was. Large and extremely colorful. On the first page. The picture of him and the redhead. "Oh shit." His face got pale and then took a deep crimson color. He wanted to fly out of the window, to the office where this article had been printed and destroy everything there. But luckily for those, who were working there, Trunks quickly calmed down again, remembering something he had told Pan not so long ago.
Flashback
"Calm down, Pia…" he had said then and hugged her gently. "Don't take what they
write too seriously. They just needed a new sensation for today and well, they
found us. Don't worry, in a few days everyone will forget about it, because
they found someone else to annoy."
End Flashback
Instead of tearing their office apart, he decided to do that with the newspaper and quickly discarded it into his waste-paper basket. There were now more important things to do.
He had just opened a drawer in his desk and wanted to take out the phonebook, when his telephone rang. A red light blinking on the display showed him that it was his secretary. "What is it, Rachel?" he asked, not being able to keep the annoyance out of his voice.
"Mr. Briefs," he heard her sugar sweet voice on the other side of the line, "a reporter of the Orange Star News wants to talk to you. He says it's about the article in the Satan News."
Trunks groaned. "Tell him that I don't have time for an interview or whatever he wants me to do," he said and put the phone back to the receiver.
The first time as someone from the press had called, the phone remained in one piece, after the second till fourteenth call, the phone started to vibrate, when being put back, first after the fifteenth call of some stupid reporter Trunks blew his top and slammed the phone back on the receiver, breaking it in the process of doing so. Even the desk cracked a bit under the brute force, but Trunks hadn't used enough strength to break it, too. He looked at his handiwork and sighed with relief. Finally – Silence.
Suddenly he frowned. But that also meant he couldn't call anyone. At that moment he regretted his decision of never buying a cell phone, even though being in possession of one would've meant that work could have followed him everywhere, especially when he wanted to take a day off. At least he could leaf now a bit in the phonebook, searching for numbers of people who could help him, until everything out there had calmed down a bit.
When he opened the drawer again and took out the thick book, his eyes fell on a picture, which was hidden on the ground of the drawer. It was one of him and Pan, taken by a photographer on the fair just a few weeks ago. While Pan got the huge teddy bear as memory, Trunks kept the picture to remember one of the best days in his life. It had been standing on his desk for two weeks, until Pan – no, Pia broke up with him. It was then that it had disappeared in this drawer.
And it was now that his feelings for her came back with full force. Of course, he had realized before that he wanted and needed her back, but now he realized the full effect of his behavior. If he didn't find her, he would never again experience a day like this - happiness like this. "Pan…" he mumbled, feeling tears in his eyes, while tracing the lines of her face with his fingers on the glass, as suddenly the door to his office was thrown open. Startled, Trunks quickly closed the drawer and jumped up, just to see Rachel, his secretary, coming inside. On the outside he could hear noises, as if many people were talking at the same time. "Rachel, what's going on there?"
"Mr. Briefs, there are reporters everywhere. There are even people from Z-TV, who want to interview you about the break-up with your girlfriend and last night," she told him.
Trunks groaned and rubbed his forehead. He knew he had to do something. They wouldn't stop bothering him until he gave at least one of them an interview. Of course! A press conference! That's it! This way he could satisfy all reporters out there and with Z-TV being there, this conference would be broadcasted all over the world and maybe, just maybe Pan would see it… That's what he had to do. "Rachel, send them into the conference room #1 and tell them that I'll be there in a few minutes to give a statement concerning those two things."
Rachel looked at him a bit bewildered, but reluctantly obeyed. "As you wish." Turning around, she left the room and closed the door behind her.
~*~
"Hey Pan, what are you doing?" Angela asked, as she came into their room. Her last class for that day had just ended and right now she needed something to take her mind of College.
Pan was sitting on her bed, again wearing the black shorts and white tank top, watching a bit TV. "Nothing, just trying to take my mind of the world out there," she answered, grinning at her roommate.
"Cool," Angela explained, grinning back and joined her friend on the bed. "What are you watching?"
Pan shrugged. "I don't know. I'm just channel surfing."
"I see. Then I'm sure it doesn't bother you, when I do this." Saying this, she snapped the remote out of Pan's hand, changing to another channel.
"Hey!" she protested and with this the fight for the remote began, causing the TV screen to show another program every few seconds. And even though Pan could easily overpower her friend, she didn't use any of her strength, just to have some fun with a good friend.
~*~
Trunks nervously wiped the sweat from his hand into his pants, as he waited behind the closed doors to go into the room. He didn't know exactly how many reporters were in there, but he supposed many, plus most-likely several stockholders, who were afraid that something happens to their precious stocks during this 'crisis' as he had heard one of the reporters call this whole situation. He shook his head. Losing his girlfriend had never before affected Capsule Corporation in any way, so why should it now? Maybe it was more because of his actions afterwards, but everyone gets drunk now and then, so that shouldn't affect CC either. Well, maybe they feared about the reputation of the CC, when the reputation of the President was damaged, even though this fear was completely and utterly unfounded. But try to tell them that. The reporters were just waiting for a good story like the predator for his prey. It would be hard to prove them wrong, but he had to try, and if he wasn't able to do that, he hoped that at least Pan would see it and maybe change her mind.
Taking one last deep breath, Trunks gathered all of his courage, opened the door and stepped into a blaze of flashlights. Trying to ignore them and the questions the reporters were asking him, he walked past them to the front of the room, where he stepped on a small stage, stopping in front of a speaker's desk with a microphone and cleared his throat. "Ladies and Gentlemen…"
~*~
Pan stopped dead in her tracks from trying to defend the remote that had currently been in her possession, when she heard this voice – his voice – and turned to look at the TV, seeing him standing in front of all the reporters, preparing to give a statement, of which content the girl had yet no idea. Angela used the chance to snap the remote out of Pan's hands, thinking that Pan would try again at any moment to steal it again, but when Pan didn't react at all, she also looked at the screen. "Hey Pan, isn't this…?"
"Trunks…" Pan mumbled, extremely out of it.
"Trunks Briefs, exactly. Wow, he looks even more handsome on TV than in the papers, even though he looks a bit distressed. Well, no wonder with just being left by his girlfriend and then having all the reporters breathing down his neck… I wonder what he's doing there…" she thought aloud and raised the volume of the TV.
"Ladies and Gentlemen…" they heard Trunks again say, trying to get the people in the room to calm down, what they finally did then. They sat down on their chairs, eagerly waiting for him to say something.
~*~
Trunks felt like he was suffocating and tried to widen the collar of his shirt with his fingers, without loosening his necktie. Now he finally had all the attention he wanted, but now he was at a loss of words. "Ladies and Gentlemen," he said a third time, trying to free his throat from this lump that seemed to press on his vocal cords. "I'm here right now to give a statement for what has happened to me in the last days and my behavior, especially last night. You all know that my girlfriend, whose name I won't mention here because of her privacy, broke up with me. But that didn't happen yesterday, like many of you would assume – no, that happened already a few weeks ago. She told me that she needed some time to sort some things out and I, being the complete jerk that I am, pushed her away. Yesterday someone opened my eyes and I went to her, to ask for another chance. However, under most unfortunate circumstances I found something out about her, something she would have rather told me herself, but I never gave her the chance. Because we both were and still are as stubborn as hell, we got into a fight about that thing I found out…"
"What was it you found out?" one of the reporters shouted through the room.
"That," Trunks said, looking him directly in the eyes, "is a thing between her and me. It's private." He broke the contact again and looked again at the whole crowd. "Whatever. In that fight I made the biggest mistake in my life. In my anger I told her to go away, to leave me, this city and maybe even this country behind. I told her that I never wanted to see her again and then left her apartment. It was first many hours later that I've realized my mistake and went back to her apartment, but at that time it was already empty. She had done what I told her. She left me, the city and maybe even the country and I have no idea where she's gone. That was the reason why I went to the bar. In my grief, sorrow and self-pity I did what probably most of you would have done too at my place – I got hopeless drunk, trying to forget all the pain in my heart and soul. I don't remember exactly what had happened last night and I'm sorry if I hurt her somehow, wherever she is, but I'm not sorry for going into the bar in the first place. My actions won't have any consequences concerning Capsule Corporation. To tell you this is one of the reasons why I'm now standing here – to give you a small idea of what had really happened. As I already said most of you would've done the same thing, so write whatever you want about me, as long as you don't bring her into this. She has suffered enough through my behavior in the last weeks and I don't want her to suffer anymore. Because I-I love her…"
~*~
Pan felt like she was torn in the inside. One side of her wanted to cry and the other to scream and destroy the TV. But on the outside she was still completely oblivious to everything that didn't concern the TV and the speech Trunks was holding. "… more than anything else," she heard him saying. "That is the main reason for me to stand here. I hope that she is somewhere out there and sees this." His eyes now searched contact with the camera in the room and it seemed to her as if his blue eyes locked with her dark ones through the screen. "I love you, I really do. I'm sorry for everything I did to hurt you and I hope that you could forgive me this time. You can't believe how terrible I feel after driving you away like this, but at the same time I can't imagine how terrible you must feel after leaving everything behind like this. Please, come back to me or at least call me. I miss you so much…" His voice cracked as he said this and he quickly hung his head, as if trying to hide something. A few seconds later he raised his head again and looked at the reporters. "Thank you." Without saying more, she saw him hurrying down the stage to the door.
Angela switched off the TV, taking a look at Pan, who still sat there, totally emotionless. She then also slowly turned her head to her friend and after Angela just mouthed the question 'Him?' Pan just nodded and then burst into tears. Angela quickly pulled her closer into a comforting hug. "Oh Pan…"
~*~
Trunks went straight ahead, as he left the room, trying hard to hide the tears that could and definitely would fall any moment and to avoid any people, who might want to talk to him. He directly closed the door behind him, after he left the room, when he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see Gohan standing in front of him, having a comforting smile on his face. He blinked. "Gohan? What are you doing here?"
"Bulma sent me to bring you this." He held up a basket. "Your lunch. She saw you on TV and thought that you maybe didn't want to go out today to eat something. She would've come on her own, but she had to keep your father from killing poor fangirls who are sneaking around your house, so she asked me." He chuckled lightly. "Your speech was really good. I'm sure I wouldn't have had the courage to open my heart to all those people out there."
"Thanks," Trunks said, taking the basket. He meant it both for the food and for Gohan trying to cheer him up. But got at the same time again a bad feeling in his stomach. Gohan, the unknowing father of the girl this whole speech was for, tried to help him and make him feel better. He didn't know how to react so sudden, so he just said what came first into his mind. "Gohan, I'm sorry."
"Sorry?" Gohan asked confused. "For what?" But Trunks had already disappeared in the elevator.
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Mmh, am I going back to the good old cliffhangers? I don't know… I think this is a good point to end this chapter… Or what do you think?
At least this is the longest chapter for a story I've written in a long time, so please feel honored. This chapter even ended completely different from what I've originally planned. This whole thing with the press conference came suddenly into my mind and I quickly found a way to add it to the rest of this story – just to add a bit more drama… Wow, I guess this whole story will become really long, but as long as I don't bore you, I keep going…
So, please don't forget to review!
Eternally yours
ChibiChibi
