I have no idea what has come over me, but it feels really good. You may pint your fingers at Dever 101 who has given me some great inspiration and ideas. So thank-you, as always!

Chapter 4

Pan woke abruptly to the sound of her alarm going off like a gunshot the next morning. Heart racing, Pan clutched her chest and realized that she was sweating. Her legs were twisted this way and that in the sheets, duvet lying on the floor. After a few seconds to allow her heart rate a chance to slow to average speed, Pan leaned forward, resting her head in her hands, and desperately tried to remember what exactly she had dreamt that had caused such a violent reaction.

Darkness: that she remembered, as though she was blind. A complete loss of control – it was exactly what she feared most. After letting her life run away with her for the past few months, Pan found herself desperately clutching at straws.

Trunks. But he was in all her dreams lately. She was pining for him, she knew, her mate. But usually the dreams of him were happy ones. Reunited at last, they would allow themselves a cliché as they would run to each other, although often the dream would then cease to be cliché and would turn carnal. Clothes ripped, desperate, raw, their pleasure would reach new heights that they had not reached since their original mating. Pan would wake up feeling flushed, sweating as much as she was now.

But this sweat was different: cold. Something was wrong. Chuckling bitterly to herself, Pan knew that so much was wrong. It just tormented her that she had no answers.

Focusing again on her dream, Pan struggled to remember more of Trunks. She remembered his whispers. 'Be safe'. As always, he was thinking about her when he should have been focused on his immobility.

Starting, Pan realized that she remembered every detail. The unfamiliar female voice, the forced compliance, the plan. The plan. Shaking her head, Pan finally untangled herself from her sheets and stood. Ignoring the uncomfortable rush to her head from having stood too suddenly, Pan padded across her room to the adjoining shower.

Today she was going to start her life up again. She was going to Capsule Corp to help Bulma out in the labs, improving the gravity machine, and then she and Bra were going to take Gogeta to the park. A bit of normalcy was exactly what she needed. After doing nothing but training for the past 3 weeks, Pan felt more like herself than she had in a long time. Of course she wasn't Pan without Trunks. He was so much part of her identity, as was the case with all Sayain mates. According to Vegeta anyways.

He had been watching her closely, and Pan hadn't questioned it. It could have been so many things. Perhaps he was worried, although she doubted that Veggie ever felt such emotions towards those who were not directly related to him. He had been known to watch people with the same look he had been giving her: analytical. She knew that he would tell her what was going on if it were really important.

Stepping into the warm spray of water, Pan took a deep, calming breath and allowed herself to close her eyes. Reaching for what seemed to be the millionth time that week for her link to Trunks, Pan knew that nothing had changed. There was the connection, but whatever was on the other side was quiet, dormant.

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Having sent Pan to the gravity machine to make the updates they had brainstormed, Bulma sat down to her biggest computer to search the heavens. It had become a habit since Trunks had not been called back with the others. She searched for a sign of him: a Capsule Corp ship, anything. So far she had been staring at a vastly empty sky, her searches futile.

Closing her eyes and rubbing her temples, Bulma resigned herself to failure once again. Letting out a deep sigh, she went to close the camera view from her satellite.

Taking one last lingering look at the machine, Bulma moved her cursor over the exit button.

There was a flash of while light that caused Bulma to shield her eyes to the screen. It was gone as suddenly as it had come, and opening her eyes again, Bulma found herself no longer looking at an empty abyss.

"Vegeta!" She yelled once, knowing that he would hear her because Pan was working on the gravity machine. Sure enough, there he was at her side before she had finished typing in the code to calculate the ship's trajectory to the earth. Taking one look at the screen and mentally jotting down the coordinates, Vegeta squeezed Bulma's shoulder.

"Gather everyone who cannot defend themselves. One of your ridiculous parties or something. Only we can know about this." His tone was so serious that she dared not refuse him nor complain about his use of the word 'ridiculous'.

"I'll gather Goten, Gohan, and Pan. We will meet them."

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Lounging on a rock by the river, Pan smiled softly at Goten frolicking in the water. A father and a husband, if was reassuring to know that Goten would never grow up, not even in the face of danger. They had been waiting for an hour. From the moment they had arrived until now, Vegeta and Gohan had taken up posts on either side of the clearing, staring up at the sky.

Refusing to leave her husband, Videl sat somewhat hidden in a tree above Gohan's head. And always the optimist, Goten had jumped into the cold water after only 15 minutes of waiting. And of course no one blinked an eye. They all wished that they could be more like him: so carefree despite all that they had faced. But that was just it, wasn't it? They had all been through so much. The only thing they could really do was treasure the happy moments, stay optimistic, and always be ready for a fight on a moment's notice.

Even Gohan and Videl had gone back to training regularly. Having been caught off guard one too many times to disastrous consequences, Pan's parents where going to do all they damn well could in order to stay together until old age took them.

All too soon the wind picked up, and, looking up, Pan saw a large ship descending towards them. Always the same, Goten spoke the obvious.

"They're here."

I think I deserve some love. Can you imagine if I keep this up?