"Pan, I think there's a couple of things we're going to need to…you know…talk over." Trunks finally said to me after a solid five minutes of silent driving on the way back to Capsule corp. "If we're ever going to make this work, we have to be honest. Alright?"
The car pulled up beside a traffic light. I turned my attentions away from the window and focused on him instead. He was staring at me unblinkingly and with deepest sincerity, but also with a sense of love and admiration. It was then that I realized for the first time that there was a rather profound connection between us. Eventually I nodded, allowing him to continue.
"First of all, I'm not a virgin." I was surprised when he did not blush or stutter when he told me this, but said it as if it were a normal affair. Perhaps it was for people when they came to be his age. But his hands did seem to grip the steering wheel much more tightly when he turned back to the road. "You're not the first woman I've ever had in my life. Before you I've been with two others, but I've only slept with one of them and that was when I was twenty six. Does that bother you?"
Of course it didn't bother me! I'd always expected as much from him. When I was much younger, my uncle would tell me stories from his high school years, about Trunks and how popular he had been with the ladies, although strangely he hadn't dated until he'd graduated. I firmly shook my head, causing him to smile in what appeared to be relief.
"You also need to understand that it's going to be hard. With the age difference and all. A lot of people won't be so willing to accept it. I know my mother will have a hard time coping. Not that she has anything against you." He added quickly. "She just might be worried that maybe…well, let's just say I might want to do things that you're not ready for. What she doesn't understand is that-"
"You'll do your best to make sure that won't happen, I know!" I exclaimed with frustration, irritated by the manner in which he addressed me. It wasn't as if he acted like I were no more than an insolent child, but he did manage to make me feel beneath him in some way, and it made me uncomfortable. "God, Trunks, you have to stop treating me like some little kid. I'm almost seventeen, after all. If you want this to work then you have to treat me like your equal."
I knew that to have a good relationship of any kind, those involved needed to be honest and trusting. But honesty proved to be much more difficult than I had thought it to be. How could I tell him how I felt when there was always a chance that I could offend him in some way? It occurred to me then just how much I needed to learn about relationships.
"Sorry." He said quietly, and I was relieved to see that he was smiling when I finally gained the courage to look him in the eye. "I didn't mean to…I mean, I didn't think…"
"No, it's ok." I replied as the car turned into the next street. I watched as Trunks guided his vehicle towards his house with expert ease. "I guess it's gonna take some getting used to."
"Yeah." Trunks sighed as he pulled the car over outside Capsule corp. and stared out the window passively, his sky blue eyes clouded with thought. Eventually, he turned back to me, a wide smile spread across his face. "Do you think we should tell them?"
There was no need for me to think through my reply. "Not yet. They'll freak."
Trunks laughed, reaching searching and finding my hand, then clasping it in his. "They'll have to know sooner or later."
"I'd rather later than sooner."
"Me too." He jerked his head towards the large complex ahead of us. "Come on. Let's go inside."
I didn't sleep at all that night. It was impossible to, with uncontrollable emotions bubbling inside of me that I was unable to avoid. I knew I was acting stupid…knew that I was betraying my pride to my heart. Throughout the course of my entire life, I had abided in the same principals: love was something that made you weak. When you allowed your emotions and feelings to take control of you, then you lost your inner strength and your will to fight. My mother had been a living example of that.
But I didn't feel weak. I felt stronger than I ever had before. The power of two was far stronger than the power of one. I would never need to feel alone again…to shut myself away from the world and retreat to my own private thoughts whenever something would go wrong. I had Trunks now. Trunks would be there, so I wouldn't have to face the tragedy that had fallen on my family alone. Elijah would not be the end of our family's suffering. Life was not perfect…sooner or later, some other terrible event that I had never expected could occur just as easily as it had done this time. But when it did, I would not just have to pretend to be strong, because I would have him for my strength. Always. He had promised me that it would be for always.
I knew that I was acting childish…sappy…love-struck. For once, I didn't care. Trunks once told me that I made excuses not to feel, and pushed my emotions as far down as I could because I was afraid of the weakness I believed they symbolized. But my emotions were not weakness, but strength instead. Weakness was to deny yourself of your emotions, because it meant that you were running from what you truly felt and believed. I wanted to be strong. Emotions were strength. I needed to feel.
Not only that, but the feelings were good…
(o)
Keeping the relationship between Trunks and I a secret from the rest of the Briefs' household was fun for a while. It was as if we were being rebellious, and breaking some sort of unwritten law, although the only reason we refused to tell anyone about us was because we were simply afraid of their reaction.
Even if we were in the same age bracket, and there weren't any reasons why we should be separated from one another if any of our relatives found out, I still would have preferred the excitement of a secret relationship to parading it around the place like they do in idiotic soap operas. During the day, we mostly avoided one another. A bland smile from across the room…a single, placid nod when passing in the corridor…a brief and disjointed conversation about something as pointless as the weather during mealtimes. But in the evenings, after dinner had been eaten and everyone else had resumed their regular routines, Trunks would meet me in my room. Work would leave him bitterly exhausted, frustrated and angry, but usually I managed to put him in a good mood quite quickly.
Some nights, we sat on the floor or on a bed, his hand clutched in my own as we talked about nothing in particular. Other times, the atmosphere was more intimate. I am not ashamed to admit that more than just occasional kissing was involved, though it never went too far for my liking or his own. And then there were nights in which we barely said anything at all, simply enjoying the comfort of the other's company after a day of troubled thoughts and the unwanted burden of work. After a while, we would part so that we would be able to sleep, though we both knew that the other rarely did. Most nights I would lie awake, wishing that I had gathered enough courage to ask him to remain with me all night. I knew that he wanted to, and I needed his companionship during the lonesome hours of the night more than ever.
After a while, the excitement of having a secret relationship began to ware off. It would have been much easier for the both of us, and it wouldn't have been a great tragedy if anyone found out. Trunks was a grown man, and even if we were forbidden to be together, he would figure out a way to escape them all…allow me to live with him somewhere else, perhaps.
In my darkest moments, I would daydream about this in order to keep myself from thinking of Elijah, or some other unpleasant thing. I would image that my parents discovered our secret relationship, and we were forced to flee to a distant country where we could live together peacefully. He would be a famous musician, and I would be a professional fighter. Sometimes the others would hear about us on the news, but otherwise there would be no word from us. Perhaps we could find the cure for Elijah's disease, and then he could come to live with us as well. Or maybe when we returned with the cure, our families would be ready to accept our relationship, and we could live with them again. I didn't know if I could stand being parted from my parents for so long. Already, having not spoken to them for a mere two and a half months had obliviously been tearing at me from inside.
As time passed, I found myself having to daydream this same thing over and over again, so that I could block out any unpleasant thoughts or feelings I was suffering from. But even that began to fail, so that the thoughts took complete hold of me and I simply couldn't keep them away at all.
It's family that makes all the difference, you know, when a person is dying, especially with young children. It is the love of the family that ensures that the child will die happily, knowing that they are going to a better place. Can you imagine what it would be like for a child that young to die alone…?
The words the nurse had told me the day I had visited Marron and her new baby daughter in hospital had become fixed into my head so that I could no longer block them out. I thought about Elijah: thin and sickly…white as a skeleton…dying alone in a hospital bed. Goten and Marron had left for a short while to tend to their baby. No one else was there except for a handful of strange nurses and doctors he did not recognize. He didn't know them, and that made him afraid of them. He longed for a familiar face…just one. Anyone. His breathing would slow and then it would come out in long, rasping gasps. Finally, it would stop altogether. The blood beneath his pasty skin would become stone cold. A nurse would lift the blanket up and over his head, hiding his face from the world…
Each time the words of the nurse would find their way into my thoughts, I felt like crying, but managed to control myself. Elijah wouldn't want me to cry…not for him. He often told me that I was one of the toughest people he knew (not that he had a chance to meet many). If he knew that I had been crying, it would only make him more afraid of the unknown that lay ahead of him. But it was hard to hold it in, even for someone like me. With the dawn of each new day, I woke from a restless sleep with the fear that this morning may very well be his last.
Soon, it got to the stage where I couldn't bring myself to come down to meals. I sat alone on my bed, staring out the window with my arms wrapped around my legs tightly. I was focusing very hard on keeping my body numb, so that I could stop the tears from spilling. I could feel them brimming in the corners of my eyes…
"Pan?"
I peered behind me at the sound of my name, only to see Trunks standing frigidly in the doorframe, watching me with an expression of confusion. I couldn't even face him today…couldn't face anyone. Just wanting to be alone, I turned back to the window again, hoping that he would go away.
He didn't. I listened to the sound of his footsteps approaching me as he came to my bed, stretching out a hand and gripping my shoulder. A warming sensation suddenly flooded through my entire being, and I felt the tension in my muscles melt away into nothingness. Slowly, he began to massage my shoulder with his hand, fingers pressing into my skin. I closed my eyes to the sensations, glad that I had not told him to leave me in peace. My thoughts of Elijah had distracted me so much recently that I had almost forgotten how good he could make me feel.
"You miss them, don't you?" He asked me quietly after a time had passed. "Your family?"
I nodded, stopping his hand with my own and then turning back to face him once more. His face was stern as he lowered himself onto the bed, enveloping an arm around my waist and pulling me against him so that I could rest my head on his shoulder.
"Dad told me he'd noticed something different in you. He thinks you're heading for a state of depression." He whispered into my hair. "It's not very often that he takes the time to notice change in someone, and if he does, he usually keeps his thoughts to himself. He must have been really worried about you to tell me."
Of course, we hadn't told Vegeta anything, but somehow I thought he knew about my relationship with his only son. It didn't matter if he knew, as I had never expected him to have any trouble with handling it. I supposed that if he believed that if Trunks must be with anyone, he was glad it was someone with some Sayian blood in them.
"I just want to go home." I whimpered in a voice that wasn't my own. "Elijah's dying, Trunks. Dying! There's nothing I can do to stop it, I can accept that now. But if he is going to leave, then I want to be with him. I don't want him to die without me. He needs me, Trunks, I know he does."
Trunks was silent, clearly thinking deeply. I wondered if I had hurt him somehow…made him think that I was using this as some lame excuse to get away from him. It wasn't long before I was reassured. Of course he understood how I felt.
"If it were Bra that was dying, and I was sent to live with your family, I don't think I'd be able to handle it half as well as you can." Trunks answered ponderingly. He was gazing at me intently, as if trying to understand the expression written on my face. However, he must have interpreted it incorrectly, for he turned away from me soon after, eyes lowered to the ground. "If you want to go home, because…well, I understand. You don't need to pretend that-"
"It's not you, Trunks." I replied hurriedly, clenching his hand in my own. "If I didn't have to worry about Elijah all the time, I would gladly stay here with you for the rest of my life, as long as I wasn't completely cut off from the rest of my family like I have been for the past two and a half months. I miss them all, and I need to be with them right now. I need to be there for Elijah. You can understand that…can't you?"
Trunks remained still, and for a brief moment, I feared that he didn't believe me. But I was reassured when he turned his head to smile at me properly, chancing a quick kiss to my lips.
"I understand. Mum and Dad will too, once I explain it to them. Make sure that you're ready to leave first thing tomorrow morning. It doesn't matter if Mum doesn't allow you to, because either way, I'm going to make sure that you get home."
I grinned, letting go of his hand and throwing my arms around him delightedly. He laughed softly, holding me against him tightly. Soon, I was laughing as well, although I didn't really know why. It just felt so great to be loved in this way, and to be so easily understood. More than that, it felt good just to let go and feel for once.
Though once he was gone, and I was left to sit alone in my room once more, the happiness washed out of me. I remembered Elijah, and wondered how I could be so carefree and joyful when he was dying only a short distance away from me. I tried to comfort myself by thinking that soon I would be going home, and that soon I would be there with him to help him in his greatest hours of need. But that only helped me for a while.
Even after Elijah was gone, there would still always be someone, somewhere out there who was suffering in the way he did. How could anyone not be ashamed by their happiness whilst knowing that? But then I began to wonder what those that were ill and dying thought about to keep themselves in high spirits. I imagined that they were comforted by reminding themselves that somewhere out there, someone was having a great time. Someone was living their life to the full. Someone was fit and healthy and fulfilled. Somewhere, someone was happy.
(o)
A/N: Thanks for reading, please review! Two more chapters of this story left to go!
