Nobody
said it was easy
Oh it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm going back to the start
~ Coldplay, 'The Scientist'
Rain and Blood
When he came to awareness, he was battling to the death with the Silver Terror. Power, more than he ever contained before, crackled around him. He had not even known that he was fighting, it had been instinctive. His mind had simply blanked out and he had lost himself in pure rage… the sort of rage he had never felt before. It still filled him to the core of his being, pulsing as bright as his ki around him.
Pain, rage and the image of Marrons sweet tear streaked face kept him going.
His defenses were lower now, but he found himself connecting countless more times with the silver armor of his opponent. Strike, blow, dodge, smack in the face. Blood flecks in his spit. Never mind. Pain, lots of pain. Somersault away, kiblasts. Final Flash. Kicked in the head. The fight kept going and going as if they'd fight forever, but Trunks was sick of it. He wouldn't have it… he decided he'd go out with a blast. He'd give that Terror the fight of its life. His fists were raw and bloody, but he did not care. There was more blood upon him, more than was probably healthy, but at this point Trunks did not care that much about health anymore.
Rage and pain were the only things that mattered in his world.
Marron's bleak expression as she stared into the campfire.
Kami, the pain was too much to bear. She had been just a girl. An insanely sweet and lovable and brave and smart girl. Why did this have to happen?
Flashes of his mother and Bra. Bulma teaching her daughter to swim in their pool in the backyard.
Vegeta, coming out of the Gravity Room, a towel around his neck and with a fatigued yet content expression on his face.
Goten, lying in the grass, looking at the stars on a summer evening. A drink in his hands, his usual happy-go-lucky smile on his face.
Marron, all dressed up for a party for one of her friends.
Sweet little Pan showing him her first bike.
All gone. All dead. NO!
He screamed again, desperately seeking something to channel his pain. He could not. The battle was simply not enough, he could not contain his rage enough to channel it all out. The Terror was breaking him apart from the outside, and his pain from the inside. He was fairly sure he was losing his mind…
It wouldn't be long now.
The blows he received grew harder and harder, and his vision was getting blurred and dark around the edges. He had to fight dizziness. It was over, completely and utterly over. In a way, he was glad to see that final blast coming at him. He had barely time to spread his arms as if to embrace it…
***
The rain awoke him. Cold water was splattering in his face, chilling him where he had not been cold before. His awareness brought the inner and outer pain back immediately. Trunks could not make out whether the wetness he was lying in was either blood or rain. Maybe both. It felt as if it had been raining for quite a while now.
Slowly, he opened his eyes. It was late in the night, in the east the sky was already coloring grey with the promise of dawn. He rolled over on his stomach, to try and get up, ignoring the blood that ran over his arms as he pushed himself up. The pain exploded all through his back and shoulders, but he was a Saiya-jin prince, dammit, he would not let himself get down. Some idiot up there had decided he would live, and so he would.
Even
his tears were bloody, he thought, for a moment lost in the color of the tears
that fell on the charred ruins of the Research
Center. His mind was clouded by
pain and despair, and he felt himself distracted by everything. It was a fight
to stay even conscious.
The Terror…It left me here to die. Am I dying? Kami,
I hope so…
After what seemed an eternity he was back on his feet. He swaggered a few steps. His sense of balance was totally off the scale, knees on the verge of buckling. Yet he managed to assess the situation; it was obviously raining, cold water drenching his ragged clothes. The Research Center had been mostly blown apart, puddles of rain between heaps and bits of concrete. Marron…
Marron was lying only a handful of feet away from him. Staggering, he made his way over to her. She was lying on her belly now, having clearly been caught in some explosion that had tossed her over. Kami, she was really dead. She was lying face-down in a puddle of rain. One short, (almost) coherent thought (didn't he know this scenario…?) crossed his mind before he began to cry hysterically, calling her name over and over again as something deep inside of him seemed to snap.
"Marron… please Marron…. No… No…this is not fair… MARROOOOOON!!!"
If he thought he was losing his sanity before, he really felt like doing it now. Blood and tears and rain mingled on his face, as he called out to the heavens, cursing the injustice of it all. Ki quickly filled the emptiness and the rage within him. He powered up and up, taking in more energy than he ever had before. More and more, until something else snapped inside of him – a feeling he recognized from before. Power. Yet it was ever more intense and MORE than he ever would have dreamed of. Super Saiya-jin 3. He had achieved two levels within a week, and yet it would not be enough. It would never be enough…
As the raw power surged through him, he decided there was only one way to end this all.
One way to maybe prevent it. One slight, slim chance to do it. He gathered the shreds of what was left of his mind and cradled Marron in his arms. There was not much left of her pretty face, yet he kissed her nonetheless. "One last kiss goodbye," he whispered. "One last kiss… I'll see you on the other side, but you won't love me. Yet. You will be a little child, devoid of worries and pain, and I'll see the innocence on your sweet face, Marron. That alone will be worth it. I'll see my parents and my sister again. And Goten, he will be alive too. Don't worry Marron…" He began to sob again. "I'll make everything right again. I love you."
It tore his heart apart to lie her down again, alone in the rain. "Kami…" he groaned, unable to tell himself she was up there in Heaven, unhurt and alright. He just could not see it, gazing down on her mutilated corpse. It was just so unfair…
He ignored the trail of blood he made as he made his way to the time machine. Why it had not been blown up he did not know – it was probably fate. Fate, or some Kai, had wanted this to happen to him. As it happened to Future Trunks. The parallels with his own situation were screaming at him; Marron's death, the time machine, him reaching a new level, everything. Standing in a bloody blue coat, holding a piece of coal in his hand, scratching the word 'Hope' on the side of the Machine. In the Future, his mother had done so, yet here, she was dead.
Still, he felt an indescribable urge to draw his own parallels with the Future. He decided that in some sick, twisted way, this was the way things had to be. And when Future Trunks had gone and changed the past, Life had tried desperately to put things right again. Life had tried to follow its predestined pattern. And it had succeeded.
"Why me?" Trunks wondered, leaning against the Time Machine, covering his face in his hands. He ignored his pain once more, ignored his drenched clothes. He most certainly did not want to look at it, not wanting to know whether it was blood or rain wetting his jeans and shirt. "Marron…" No, he would not look at her again.
He would turn his back on this world, and step into a new.
But there would be one major difference: unlike Future Trunks, he would not return to his own time again. He refused to, flat-out. He would see Marrons young innocent face and his own almost-innocent happy eyes, and that would have to be enough.
Maybe life would be merciful and he would not even survive the trip to the past. Bulma had always said one would have to be in top shape for it, because a weakened system could do 'things' with you. Maybe it would take the last shreds of his sanity away. Or his life.
Yet, judging from the dirty tricks life was playing on him now, he was fairly sure that he would survive and arrive in the past. Three years in the past. He looked at the coordinates and laughed roughly. Another parallel with his future self. It was almost funny.
He seated himself in the time machine, blearily looking at the blood stains he made on the panel while uploading the last data into its computer while a new and eerie thought crept into his mind.
If Life wanted to return to its predestined pattern, would something similar not happen again in the new timeline he'd create? Even worse, would he see his loved ones die all over again? Or would his past self, in the new timeline, experience something similar?
Would Life not just trick him again, torturing him over and over again?
"I… I don't care…" he heard himself say, his voice sounding old, tiny and broken. "I just… I just want…"
To the east, the first rays of sunlight crept over the horizon. The rain had stopped.
A new day dawned on a dead world.
"I just want to get out of here…" he whispered. "Marron… I will see you again…"
And with that, his fingers found the power button.
~End of Part 1~
