Lesson #8: Dreams of Torment

The darkness, an eternal darkness surrounded the poor girl as she sat in a ball and cried. Videl watched as this little girl's tears flowed down her cheeks. Videl wanted to go up and hold her, tell her that everything was going to be okay. She knew it wasn't going to be, for she knew the little girl too well. It was a younger Videl. Videl didn't take notice as the darkness around her dissolved into the room she had spent the last few years of her life in. She couldn't believe that she was reliving the most painful moment in her life, the day she was no longer human.

It had only been a day at most and suddenly she was no longer Videl Satan, she was the daughter of the champ. An object owned by the most powerful man on Earth. Everybody wanted to be near her, they all wanted to be her friend but she knew that all they wanted was to have a friend who had the same name as the champ. Videl was crying now, both her present and former selves. A brief talk from the nearby radio informed its audience that the city would be renamed to honour the champion.

Videl watched her former self go into a fiery rage and pick up the radio before hurling it at a wall and watching it smash into a thousand pieces. That was what her life felt like at the moment, a thousand broken pieces. Her identity had been broken and scattered across all corners of the town, she was no longer a human but an object, a prize to be won. Videl hated that feeling, not knowing who to trust and who was faithful to her. Anybody who talked to her no longer called her by her first name but by her title, 'Miss Satan' as if she was royalty. She hated that, why did this have to happen to me. She just wanted to be a normal kid but it was her father who had put himself in danger and fought Cell. Now it was her burden to bear as Videl watched her former self scream as tears flooded from her eyes.

Gohan sighed as he dabbed Videl's forehead with his wet shirt. She was burning up something fierce and sweat continued to pour from her brow. It had been almost thirty hours now since Videl had slipped into her fever and her condition looked no better. Every few hours Gohan would give her some water which her body would drink yet her mind would not wake. For privacy reasons, Gohan had relocated their campsite to another part of the woods where he hoped that none of the other students would find them. It's not like he didn't trust the boys who had been with them the day before, but questions and suspicions would begin to arise when Videl hadn't turned up to their chi lesson today.

Gohan had thought about taking her to Dende so that he could heal her but if she woke up and the first thing she saw was the guardian of the Earth things wouldn't go down well. Gohan would then need to explain everything from his heritage to his life story and that was something he wasn't prepared to do. While he knew that Videl had learnt about his abnormal amount of chi, he had never told her of where it had come from and thus he was safe in that department.

Gohan knew that Videl was strong, she would survive this ordeal and return stronger than before. When she would wake up however would be determined by her own will power. How much he wanted her to wake was unfathomable. To feel her lips against his once more would be wondrous but he couldn't bring himself to do it when she would not feel the same feelings.

The times when he hadn't been caring for Videl were spent on gathering resources and building a proper shelter. Unlike their last shelter which had only been a roof, Gohan had taken the time to build a proper three walled hut. He had picked a spot next to the side of a small cliff where a steady stream of water trickled down like a waterfall. He could also sense that there were several burrows of small woodlands animals not too far from where they were located but his stomach could wait. It was a torture to starve himself, but it would be even more of a torture to be separated from Videl.

Eating what small berries and nuts he could gather from neighbouring trees, he quickly ate what he could before placing himself on the ground next to Videl. With a few fingers he brushed a few small hairs behind her ear. His stomach growled at him for not giving it its daily intake but he cared not. He leaned in and lightly kissed Videl on the cheek before trying to go to sleep.

"Please wake up Videl," he whispered as sleep overwhelmed him.

Videl walked with her other self down a small sidewalk. Everywhere she went she could feel the ever present stare of the society she lived in and how she was expected to hold her head up high and to be proud of being the daughter of the champ. The way she walked and talked showed that she was confident with whom she was but inside she wanted nothing more than to become invisible. She was sick and tired of the way that people treated her, she longed for the days when she was normal but those days were long gone. She missed the feeling of just fitting in instead of sticking out in a crowd.

The world dissolved around her and once more she was in darkness. Once more images formed around her and she found herself within her class room. No longer was she with herself but she was in her natural position in the classroom with Sharpner and Erasa on either side of her. She looked around; everything seemed like a normal day, she knew everybody around her. She looked out to the front of her class as the teacher was introducing a new student. The person stood there in plain and casual clothes, their face was hidden behind a mask of her father. Oh how she wanted to destroy that face. She got out of her chair, not noticing that the only two people in the class were her and this mysterious person.

She walked down the stairs, each one shattering into dozens of pieces when she stepped forward. The background around them dissolved leaving only the two people standing there, Videl and the one person in the room who she didn't know. Slowly, she reached forward and grabbed the mask and took it off to see her own face. Videl looked into the mirror image of herself, the one person in the room she didn't know in the room. She blinked and now she found that she was looking into a mirror, only the image would not respond with her movements.

She stared into the mirror and saw a figure walking towards her reflection. A well chiselled body, with only khaki pants on. His hair sticked up defying gravity and his eyes pierced through the mirror at her. The mirror Gohan placed its hand on the mirror Videl's shoulder and the real Videl felt a hand on her shoulder. She reached up to touch the firm fingers but when her hand got there she felt nothing except her own shoulder. She looked behind her and couldn't find anything. She then returned her gaze to find that the mirror was gone. The only two people she didn't know in her day to day life. The two people who mattered in her life and she had no idea who they really were. A scream pierced through the darkness.

Alright, chapter done with a dark twist and I'm trying to build on the unknown history of Videl. As always please review.