Love's Labours Won: a Love Story, part two
Very often, things don't go as we wish; and when that happens, we have a choice in how to deal with them. We can fuss, panic, fume, throw things, curse, and generally behave in such a way as to thoroughly embarrass ourselves. Or, on the other hand, we can think them through and work at them until we find a decent solution.
Vejiita, naturally, chose the former.
"Like hell she is," he said, and took another bite of potato. No way he was losing this one. No way.
Bulma calmly poured gravy over her steak and mushrooms, not really bothering to look at him; her expression was somewhere between amused and flustered. "Vejiita, there are some things a young woman has to have. Freedom is one of them."
"Like hell it is," he reiterated, and took another roll. They had been talking like this the entire dinner; thrust, parry. Point, counterpoint - although too often the counterpoints lacked more than a little logic. Bra, meanwhile, ignored them both and stood at the sink, doing the dishes. She was humming Beethoven's fifth.
"Bra, dear," Bulma said distractedly, not quite looking at her. "Wear gloves or you'll get dishpan hands."
"So?" Bra asked, her voice still retaining the childlike lilt of questioning.
"No man will want you if you have dishpan hands, dear," Bulma answered, giving the shallow and not very serious reason that her own mother had given her.
Bra looked down at herself. "If any man wants me, mom, I don't think it'll be for my hands."
"Bra!" Bulma said, not shocked at the statement but rather who had said it - this was her daughter, after all.
"You see? You SEE?" Vejiita exclaimed, triumphant. "She's not mature enough to handle what's coming after her!"
Bra giggled and stuck her chest out as far as it would go. "See what?"
Bulma sighed. This really wasn't helping.
Trunks sat in his room on the bed, leaning back against the wall with his arms behind his head. He could hear the occasional shouting, of course, from where he was, but he chose to ignore it; unlike most homes, he understood that the arguments were actually healthy here. If his parents weren't arguing, then something was definitely wrong; besides, afterwards they usually made up by having very wild, very loud sex. That part, he just left alone.
For once, though, this particular argument concerned him; as lightly as he'd spoken to Cumber, the weird fact of the import of Bra's age was hitting him more and more as the evening wore on. To be truthful, he was surprised that Bra hadn't made a fuss about that; "eligible for marriage," indeed. What that meant to Vejiita, exactly, had yet to be explained; he almost acted like it meant any man could just swoop in off the street and take her as a "bride."
Well... as long as Bra didn't go into some sort of deranged rutting season, this all SHOULD be all right eventually... hopefully. He thought.
Trunks looked up as Bra walked past his partially open door, on the way to her own room. Her casually teasing smile was nowhere to be found, and her eyes seemed to be focused on something other than the rug at her feet. He had seen her look like this before - when she took exams, entered into debate club challenges, or did anything else that was really, really serious. It scared him; that look meant that Things were happening.
"Hey," he said, sitting up on the bed.
She paused outside the door. "Hey," she said back, waiting for him to say whatever she was going to say. Her eyes were cold; but that was not surprising. Her eyes were always cold when she was being analytical - it was an odd trait that appeared on neither side of the family before her, but Trunks was used to it by now.
"You okay?" he asked, ignoring the louder-yet arguing from the dining room.
Bra smiled, eyes still cold. "Of course," she said. "Why are you asking?"
Trunks shrugged. "Lots of weird things happening here, is all," he said. "This new thing of papa's - do you think he's serious?"
Bra snorted, not quite bitterly. "Is he ever NOT serious?" she said, and looked down.
Ho, boy, Trunks thought. "Did he ever explain exactly what it meant? She looked at him, questioning. "I mean... you're not going to g... to do anything weird, are you? I mean... no... strange... um, urges, or..." Trunks' face was growing more and more red with each spoken word. Bra laughed, low and throaty.
"You mean am I getting any powerful, uncharacteristic urges to go jump somebody?" she asked, all pristine and proper; her eyes had not lost their coolness, but at least now they seemed amused.
Trunks's blush deepened at least three shades; this was his sister, for kami's sake. "Yeah. Something like that."
"No. Not a one," she assured him, finally softening a little. "I think dad's just upset because it means that - in his mind - I COULD just... run off and get married now, without his consent. At least, I'm guessing that." She chuckled softly. "He never did quite get the concept that we're more human than Saiyan."
Trunks nodded; he knew what she meant. "So then it's just... what? Needs to blow over?"
Bra stayed silent for a moment, eyes unblinking and expression unreadable. For some reason, Trunks found her gaze disconcerting and had to fight not to look away. "I think," said Bra, "that I am going to have to figure out what this means on my own - and that means that dad and I are going to be butting heads more than usual. I also think that Cumber just might get himself killed." With that, she turned and walked down the hall.
Trunks blinked. "...Cumber?" He hopped up and jogged to the door. "What do you mean? What about Cumber?"
Bra's door was already shut; she wasn't answering.
Cumber stared at the hallway for a moment, mouth open and mind ablaze. Cumber? Then... what, he had been groping her? Oh, come, now; this was CUMBER; Mr. Naive and Soft Spoken himself. No way he could have... would...
Great. Now, he didn't know what to think. Sighing and running his hand through his hair, Trunks shut his door on the sound of his parents arguing and tried to get some sleep.
After dinner at the Son house, Cumber went home to bed. It was a simple thing to do: undress, bathe, pull up the sheets and go to sleep. He was full from Chi Chi's cooking, his ears rang from the combined chatter of Gokuu and Goten, and his shoulders ached from a Gohan-glad-to-see-you-again hug - which was only expected, since Gohan had been in the Ukraine for months. All in all, it had been a very satisfying evening.
The problem was, he couldn't sleep. He lay on his bed, looking at the patterns on the ceiling and wondering what he was meant to do about everything he had seen. After the things he had been through, it was impossible for him to believe in chance anymore; it was very obvious that his actions in this case had already been preordained.
It just really would have been nice to know what they were ahead of time.
He eyed the shapes he had carved into his ceiling; of all the Kyuujinshu, he had been the only one to maintain certain arts of ceremony, and having forms of stars and other things above one when one slept was one of them. No one else had cared, when they'd been alive; they had laughed at him for continuing these traditions. It was almost pitiful; but Cumber was not going to lose his habits. Whatever they'd become, whatever monsters they'd mutated into, they were still Kyuujinshu and had a glorious past. Cumber was never going to allow himself to forget it.
He rolled over on his side, thinking; Dende had, several years ago, said some very strange things to him regarding the child, Bra. Cumber had not accepted these things, and instead, had gone on with his life and pretended they'd never happened. Well, really, what else was there to do? Chive had been the last woman he loved, yes, but Bra was not Chive. That's not how it worked. Bra may have taken on some of Chive's traits when she "ate" her - like dough will take on a slightly spicy flavor if you add nutmeg - but there was no separate entity of Chive in there. Chive had been absorbed. Chive was gone.
He missed her.
Of course, the fact that she would not have missed him did not escape him; he knew she'd never loved him. She'd been... ah, more than nice to him to get what she wanted, and when she didn't need anything, had taken brusqueness and snippiness to a new level to make him go away. But he still couldn't help loving her; her intelligence, her logic... the way she was always cool under pressure, always in control... Even the way her eyes flashed when she was taking somebody down. Everything about her was beautiful to him, and when he thought about the time she'd given so much more that just promises to him, that time that he'd honestly been trying to win her and she'd willingly given herself to him and he'd thought...
...he'd thought it would be forever. As she'd moved beneath him, above him, against him - he'd believed that she WOULD be with him, his, in his arms, and that had made it even better. He had given his heart completely to her that night, without reserve, believing that since she was acting on his many hints and hopes and promises, that she believed in them too... only to find that she did not. The very next day she was back in Ru Sa's bed, and seemed to have nothing to say to him at all.
Very few wounds Cumber had experienced had come even close to that.
Almost in defense against the new waves of pain these memories brought, Cumber closed his eyes tightly and forced himself to sleep. He wasn't expecting to be flooded with strange dreams; he merely needed an escape and was taking the only one that was allowed him, temporary though it may be.
It didn't really help that all night he dreamed of a woman's soft, warm body in his arms; a woman's body, yes - but of Bra, not of Chive. He dreamed of Bra sleeping next to him, growing old with him, living together and bearing children together and discovering their first grey hairs together and doing all those things that "normal" people had always done together all around him - and had forever been denied to those of Cumber's people. He wet his pillow with tears, unwaking, because none of these things would ever, COULD ever, be. Not to Cumber; not with Bra. For Cumber, sleep ceased to hold sanctuary from pain.
Near dawn, Dende observed the earth and contemplated his next move. "Are they both asleep?" he asked, not turning to face Reep directly.
"Check check!" said Reep, bounding in the air.
Dende shook his head. "Are you SURE we should be doing this? It seems awfully..."
"Silly? Romantic? Aphrodite-inspired?" Reep suggested, leaping clear over Dende's head to bounce on the other side of him.
"Invasive," Dende replied, mentally watching the earth with his eyes closed. "Are you sure we're supposed to do this?"
"Saa, you already asked that, oh kami mine!" Reep announced, and stopped bouncing. "It IS necessary! The result will be good, and important for continued livings!"
Dende chuckled softly. "Livings? Well. We do want those to continue." He concentrated for a moment, drawing the necessary power together to do what Reep insisted had to be done. Truthfully, Dende wasn't sure of the "why" of this; he wasn't even entirely sure of the "how." However, he'd learned from long experience that when Reep insisted on something, it was best to follow that insistence - no matter how silly it seemed.
Placing his hands gracefully together in front of him, Dende concentrated his ki, focusing on two individuals down on earth who were completely unsuspecting and unprepared for what was going to happen.
Trunks had trouble getting to sleep that night; of course, he had no idea that his late insomnia actually limited what Dende could show him in dreams, so he really couldn't be blamed for cutting short what was to follow. He was very concerned about his sister; Bra had been... acting oddly, somehow, in some way that he couldn't quite place. There was nothing blatantly abnormal in her behavior; rather, it was something in her attitude. It seemed that lately, she'd been slipping more and more easily into cold, calculating mode, whether or not said attitude was required. She'd done it tonight, when he'd asked her about their parents.
It worried him; pulling crap like that had gotten her into trouble as a highschool student simply because she'd scared the daylights out of all her teachers, especially in debate club. It was very odd; if Trunks hadn't known any better, he'd say that that attitude - that cold detatchment, the sharpened ability to take people apart with nothing but words - was almost foreign. It didn't seem to be something Bra had possessed the ability to do before that whole mess with the Black.
The part that scared him the most, however, was that he didn't know why she did it. Maturity aside, something was very, very wrong with his sister, and Trunks had the unnerving feeling that he was the only one close enough to see it. Bra, as a rule, had no close friends.
Well. This would have to be contemplated later. Trunks had classes in the morning, and staying awake like this, mulling over things, was certainly not going to help. Resigning himself to stress and ignoring the sick feeling in his stomach, Toronkusu slept - and awakened in another world.
Trunks became aware that he was very uncomfortable, which was at least in part explained by the fact that he was somehow sleeping on the floor. Irritated, he sat up - and found himself not in his room at all.
This looked like the room of Spirit and Time. Blank walls and seamless floors, all purity of white about him with no delineation whatsoever. He blinked. Confused, he stood up, trying to get his bearings.
Across from him, sprawled out as he had been, lay Cumber; only it was not Cumber as Trunks knew him. Cumber was lying on his side, curled into a fetal position, and he seemed... ageless. Soft but wrinkled skin met with salt and pepper hair; yet the shape of his face and the condition of his hands belonged to those of a young, young man - but there were tears on his cheeks. And as Cumber shifted and began to wake, it seemed to Trunks that this oddly young/old quality reversed itself: black hair, young skin - but tired eyes, tired lips, the hands of an old man. And then Cumber awoke, and both impressions were gone; the Kyuujinshu man regained his normal appearance.
"What in the world?" Cumber said as he sat up, wiping his face to remove traitorous tears, and something about the way he moved jolted Trunks into the fact that this was not a dream. He was really here, as was Cumber; they were genuinely, consciously present. However they'd gotten here, they were here, in reality; and therefore it would have to be dealt with.
"Um," Trunks said weakly, running his hand through the lavender hair he'd inherited from his mother's side and trying to ignore the racing of his heart. "I don't know."
Cumber blinked at him; eyed Trunks' elephant-pattern pajamas with a raised eyebrow, looked at himself, and stood. "This is... different," he said somewhat shyly, hands in his pockets as he looked around. "I guess this is... some dimensional something or other? Maybe where you met Jouten?"
Trunks gave him an odd look. Cumber seemed to be taking this awfully calmly. "You're acting like this has happened to you before."
"It has ," said Cumber with a shrug, looking around with deferential curiosity. "But I'm Kyuujinshu; we always walk when we dream."
Trunks said nothing for a moment; walk when you dream? Dreamwalking? Oi... now this was sounding New-Agey. "Um... oh," was all he could say in response, and, unconsciously mimicking Cumber's posture, put his shaking hands in his pockets and looked around. "Well, this is pretty new to me," he said, trying to adopt Cumber's casual attitude and wondering where the door was IF such a thing even existed here. "I mean, I did something like this with Jouten, as you said, but that's really not the same. There's not the same... overwhelming...ness here."
Cumber smiled softly. "Overwhelmingness? Did the great professor Briefs just make up a word?" he teased, trying to put Trunks at ease, and that's when the voice spoke.
"Gentlemen, if you would please direct your attention to the far wall," it said, and both men jumped slightly.
"What the - " Trunks started, and abruptly the room went dark. About twenty feet away from them, one wall - which had previously been invisible due to the unbroken whiteness - lit up like a movie screen, and suddenly, there was Bra. A six year old Bra, with a light green, pretty aura, in what was to them the horrid and detestable act of swallowing Chive's soul whole.
Trunks gaped, while Cumber made a choking sound and stumbled backwards as though physically hit; due to the bizarre characteristics of this place, they could actually SEE Chive's soul. They saw it, drawn like azure silt from Chive's body, flowing directly into Bra and disappearing - and making that girl's aura light up with a brilliant, cold blue. They saw Chive slump to the floor - completely without any hint of soul at all, no aura, no life - and Bra begin to cry. Enveloped in her father's arms, she was obviously very frightened for what she'd been made to do - and her aura remained... altered. It contained a magnificent blue now, a blue too old for this little girl; the blue of ageless icebergs, monoliths in the heart of the sea.
Trunks and Cumber stared, one sitting, the other standing; and just as suddenly as the film (or whatever it was) had begun, it disappeared. Silence and darkness reigned for one bizarre moment, and then the light - such as it was - returned.
"Gentlemen, I think you see the problem here," said the voice, and oddly enough, Trunks began to think he knew the owner.
"...Dende?" he asked in disbelief, the unreality of the situation washing over him like cold water.
The voice cleared its throat. "Not important," it said, sounding slightly embarassed. "What IS important here is that Bra's absorption of Chive was not done with training, nor has it been balanced by any kind of control over the last twelve years," Dende continued, speaking before either of the men could comment. "Taking in another person's soul is very serious business; now that she herself is reaching maturity, what there is of Chive in here is going to... ah... take form."
"WHAT?" shouted Trunks, and immediately wished he hadn't. The sound reverberated back and forth in this room at horrifying decibel levels, causing both men to cover their ears for few solid moments of pain.
"...ow..." Trunks said apologetically.
"Please don't do that," Dende said, and continued. "What you must understand is that Chive was much, much older and much, much stronger than Bra was or will ever be, because she's simply not going to live that long. This means that as she reaches further maturity, Chive's self will manifest more and more until Bra herself disappears entirely. Think of it as reverse absorption."
Utter silence greeted this. Perhaps they didn't believe him, or perhaps they were in shock; Dende wasn't sure, and didn't have time to ask. It was almost daylight down there now, and the moment they woke up, this little jaunt would be over. "If you would prevent this, something is required," he said, and finally got a response.
"Re... required?" Cumber asked in a low voice, trying not to think of the dreams he'd had that night in conjunction with this abrupt weirdness. They couldn't be connected - surely.
"I only say this because it's important she survive," Dende stated calmly, lacking the time to be subtle. "She must be persuaded to love you and bond with you as a Kyuujinshu."
Cumber gaped, eyes huge. "She..." he started, when hideously bright light abruptly flooded his mind, accompanied by a loud cacophany that sounded like voices. He cried out and gripped his head - and the pain disappeared. Suddenly enough that the transition dazed him, Cumber found himself back in bed, looking blearily at Gokuu - who for some reason was standing in his doorway, talking about sparring at the crack of dawn and completely unaware of what he'd just interrupted. Unreality washed over him.
What in bloody HELL...
Cumber leapt to his feet and raced past the confused looking Kakarotto without so much as good morning, flying for the Capsule Corporation as fast as he could go. What had just happened? It was too abrupt to process, and Cumber felt the need for confirmation. Had that really happened? WHAT had really happened? Trunks has to remember. Trunks was there. Trunks... oh, gods, please, don't let me be going crazy...
With this panicked thought in mind, Cumber flew away, leaving a very confused Gokuu behind him.
Gokuu stood where he was for a moment, watching Cumber go. Cumber's panicked departure didn't seem to strike him as odd in the slightest. "Oh, well," Gokuu shrugged. "Hopefully he'll be back for lunch." And with that, Gokuu went home and thought about it no more.