Disclaimer: A disclaimer like "I do not own Dragonball Z" is no legal protection against having some company suing your sorry hide into nirvana, or so I've heard. However, there would be something missing at the beginning of this story if it weren't included. Don't you think so, too?
Author's Note: Well, here we go again. Another DBZ, One Shot, Character introspective, Bulma on Vegeta, yes I know people find it boring but I can't help it... whenever I have a random idea for a fic it eventually turns out to be DBZ, B/V. If there's a doctor in the audience... can you help me?
A towel
A towel is all that remained behind the day you left and stepped out of my life; a towel – nothing more.
I had to move it, hide it away from my mother's probing gaze to make sure it would be spared the gruesome fate of being washed clean. Your towel; you dropped it onto the floor that day. Do you remember?
Once, this towel had been fluffy and soft to the touch. It could have stayed like this for many more years to come. It didn't. Now, many washes have made it rougher.
The towel probably never knew what it was destined for before it met you; before it was just a fluffy white towel – soft to the touch. Your touch changed that. You don't like your towels too soft, do you? I remember the first time I handed you a towel when you asked for something to wipe the sweat of your brow. Well... demand is more like it. You stared at it and your face scrunched up in disgust as you touched it, as if the soft material was an insult, more then an insult – an attempt to weaken you. But it wasn't.
I am hiding a towel in my closet; your towel. It's dirty and stained – just like me. I often take the towel to remind myself of the way you lived your life here. Would you have ever thought that a towel – a dirty one nonetheless – could serve someone to remember you? A towel, a plain, dirty, rough towel, your towel, is my most valuable possession. At night, when I am most vulnerable and loneliness catches up on me, I take the towel out of its hiding place. I caress the cotton. It used to be sort of fluffy and soft to the touch but now its rougher. I like it that way. When I stare into my bedroom's shadows with my eyes half-closed and your towel on my lap I can almost see your silhouette, rough against the white of my bedroom walls, and I know every second now you'll detach yourself from the shadows, your towel around your neck, to stand in front of me. You'll drop the towel. You'll look into my eyes, bemused that after all these nights I am still trying to find out how to read you.
A towel, your towel, is the only thing you leave behind when the sun rises to lure you away from me. I cannot compare to its light, nor can I make you find those powerful rays of gold less attractive than me. A towel, a dirty towel that you used during the harsh hours of your training to wipe the sweat off your brow, is the only assurance I have that we did join at all; your dirty towel that the sun can't take away from me.
I keep saying the towel is dirty, but that's exaggerating it. The towel isn't dirty in the truest sense of the word, but it's no longer clean either. One can see the traces of usage on the fabric. That's not exactly dirty, is it? Isn't it funny how everything that's been used once is dirty in our eyes and needs to be cleaned? A towel used once immediately turns into laundry.
The laundry. That's where this towel would have gone, too, in the morning following the night you came to my room and dropped it onto the floor. I would have washed your towel without a second thought. I've never thought of myself to be cruel but the sheer thought makes my blood run cold like ice water. Cold – I am so cold without you.
Do you recall our first night? I complained that my bedding was too small for the both of us – and now I feel so lost in its widths. At night, your body was the limit I pushed myself to reach. But now there are no limits to reach and I do not know what I should do with myself. All by myself in a bed, that is too large for me, with only your towel to keep me company. I am longing for so much more. Yet the towel will have to be enough.
And when the sun rises, I scold myself for clinging to you, the memory of you, the towel, like that. As if I were weak and incapable of continuing to live without you. Although I promised myself I'd be strong. So strong, that should you ever return, I would not fling myself into your arms and thank the gods for allowing me to see the day. So strong, that in the meantime of your absence, I would live my life. But I don't. I do not live. I exist, but that is all. And if it weren't for your towel, I would have stopped to exist the moment you left.
Often, I wonder.
While you are off in space, while you are off on your own, without me, do you, sometimes, perhaps only for mere seconds before you drift to sleep, or maybe only when you set coordinates for your next destination, relived of having left earth behind, think of me?
Do you sometimes stare into the nightly sky of whatever planet you are currently staying on and remember the feel of my skin on yours? When you are moving in the same rhythm we moved, an alien woman under you, do you take the time to remember me?
Because I think of you all the time; I remember every movement, every gesture of yours; every scowl and frown, every smirk and every raised eyebrow. I can recall the feel of your hands on me; the feel of your arms wrapped around my body, your chest pressed against mine; the sensation of your lips, softer than even my own.
How can a man, such like yourself, a warrior, a killer, a murder, a monster, have so soft lips?
I remember all this, recalling it with ease, feeling the ghosts of my memory whispering over my skin, when I am holding on to your towel. Would you mock me if you knew this? You most certainly would and you would be rightly doing so. I am only betraying myself when I pretend to be strong, when I pretend not to miss you, when I pretend not to care. Because we, you and I, know how weak I am, know how much I miss you because of how much I care for you.
While you are somewhere, where only the stars and your memories can truly keep you company, while you are chasing and hunting your demons, while you are pushing yourself to obtain the strength you have been hungering for all your life, I am here, keeping a firm hold on your towel, awaiting your return. Waiting for the day you will return and demand me to do your bidding; longing the night you will claim me as yours again.
But while the time passes, with you so far away, all I do is holding on to a towel, your towel. You dropped it into the floor that day, do you remember? And when you left, it was only the towel that you left behind for me, taking my soul with you in exchange. But you did leave the towel behind. A towel – nothing more. Many would say that I was fooled, cheated or scammed.
However, what you took with you is like the towel you allowed me to have. It isn't exactly stained. Not truly dirty. No longer shiny, new and fluffy. It does show heavy traces of usage. No other man could possibly appreciate it or even stand to look at it longer than for mere seconds. But no other man would want it that way, either.
You do want it that way, don't you? You don't want it to be any other way, right? Because like your towel, it cannot change, cannot adapt to what one would want it to be. It is what it is.
Like the towel that is all that remained behind the day you left and stepped out of my life; a towel – I wouldn't want it to be any more.