"And when despair tears me in two,

who can I turn to but you?

You know who I am;

take me as I am."

-"Take Me As I Am" from Jekyll and Hyde

xxx

CHAPTER 8

When Ada awoke early the next morning to the sound of the radio, she found herself wrapped in several layers of quilts, apparently having slept rather comfortably for being on a cold tile floor. She looked around the entire kitchen, rubbing her eyes and stretching, before realizing that Trunks was gone. Only then did her groggy mind tune in to the intermittent high-pitched beeps and flustered verbal warnings of the emergency alert system.

"– only beginning to delve into the wreckage of Pepper and West City from yesterday evening's attacks. Information filtering in this morning reports today's android activity as having commenced shortly after dawn – about thirty minutes ago now – in suburban West City, about ten miles south of Route 43T. Local residents believe up to one hundred people, as many as thirty of them children, are missing from their homes."

Ada's breath came out in spurts, sharp like shards of glass and almost as fragile, as she squeezed her eyes shut for several moments to gather her thoughts. She was here. Trunks was gone. The androids had come back for round two. Trunks was gone. Her mother and Bulma were asleep.

Trunks was gone.

She threw the mess of blankets away from her and stood, her feet sliding a bit on the kitchen floor as she began racing to the Briefs' coat closet. Ada threw open the door and began picking through hangers. No jacket. No sword.

"Fuck," she muttered, beads of sweat now sprouting up across her forehead. Ada, shifting into panic mode, lunged for the laundry basket sitting in the hallway and began tearing through it, searching desperately for anything to put on over the camisole and light, tiny, cotton shorts Bulma had leant her the night before. She flung away several pair of boxers, socks, and jeans, as well as a few tee shirts, before finding a baggy old Capsule Corp. sweatshirt. Less than a minute after hearing the radio alert, Son Ada was stampeding up the stairs from the Briefs' basement and sprinting out of the dilapidated main building of the CC complex and into the heart of West City.

Ada ran as fast as she was able, mentally cursing her inability to fly thanks to the smoke and debris floating above the city. Between the sirens and shouts, Ada could hardly hear herself think. She realized as she passed Gohan's old middle school that she had no idea where she was going or how she planned on finding Trunks. As things were now, his ki was too faint to follow. She reckoned that he could be anywhere; hiding under a destroyed car, bleeding to death in a back alleyway, at the bottom of a heap of building rubble. Such thoughts coupled with the ash and dust in the air triggered a sudden torrent of tears from the young woman, and she began to sob furiously as she had not done since her brother's death.

The explosions signaling the androids' rampage had gotten farther and farther away; Ada assumed that they had returned to the suburbs on the other side of the city. At least, she thought, their being gone already meant one less thing to worry about. All she had to do was find Trunks.

She ran faster, pumping her legs until her feet began to burn, only vaguely aware of the myriad people dashing past her in the other direction. Ada heard, as if from miles in the distance, the shout of one of the people leaving the city.

"You're going the wrong way!" the middle-aged man burst out in anguish, clutching his young daughter to his chest as he rushed away from the hellish inferno engulfing what little was left of downtown West City. Ada ignored him, attempting, in spite of the situation, to quiet her mind and channel her ki; without it, she would never find Trunks. The girl focused in on his rapidly-draining energy, trying desperately to gain even the slightest knowledge about his location.

"Please…" she breathed, teeth chattering. "Just give me something, Trunks…please…"

He did.

For only a moment, Ada felt a miniscule burst of channeled energy, one silent, final plea sent out on the winds of the maelstrom. It was enough.

Sprinting blindly, Ada turned down a side street and jumped over the remains of what had been a rather large corporate headquarters before the android attacks of several months ago. Swerving to the right, she ran around the back of an old parking garage and onto 35th Street, a deserted thoroughfare in the center of the main West City shopping district. Now, the few buildings that were still intact had not the latest designer handbags but plywood boards in the windows.

It took Ada only seconds to spot Trunks, who was lying face-down on the roadway. She ran to him and, after taking his wrist in her hand to check for a pulse, listened for breathing. He was alive. She sat beside him, more relieved than even she could fathom at that moment. Ada turned him over and gulped, holding his limp body with one arm and using the hand of the other to assess his state. She ran her fingers gently along his face, wiping away the semi-dried blood and dirt around the lesions on his forehead, cheeks, and chin. As Ada removed his blue Capsule Corporation jacket, she saw the damage done to one of his arms. The worst injuries came from his legs, but even those were not broken. Trunks' wounds, though, were deep and many, and he was losing blood quickly. Ada picked up his fragile body, set him gently across one of her shoulders, and headed for the Brief residence.

xxx

"How could you possibly be so stupid?" Trunks heard someone muttering angrily. The voice was close, he could tell, but exactly where, he had no clue. It seemed to echo all around him, from every side, every angle. When he slowly opened his eyelids, the fluorescent light that flooded into his dilated pupils caused the sensation of having a particularly sharp ice pick shoved through his skull. Trunks squeezed his eyes shut once more, his throbbing head unforgiving of the mishap. As the young man began to regain consciousness, his brain flipped into overdrive while it tried simultaneously to ask and answer questions about the circumstances he was in. A slideshow of memory snippets ran through his mind at what seemed like the speed of light: events, faces, scents, sounds. None of them made a bit of sense. Trunks couldn't even call to mind where he had been before falling into what his body seemed to think was a very deep sleep.

"Have you decided to return to the world of the living?" That voice again. It was bitter, upset, frustrated…but relieved. Perhaps even happy. He could not tell. Trunks decided to try opening his eyes a second time. For a few moments that seemed to him like blind hours, he could see only white light. Then, shapes began to appear: something spinning on the ceiling, the outline of a figure next to him. He blinked slowly, his piercing headache becoming a dull pain somewhere next to his right ear. It took only moments for him to realize that the hurt in his head was nothing compared to the stinging sensation that seemed to be coursing through his right leg, or the pain that came with his first sharp intake of breath.

Trunks started to panic. He was injured, he began to understand, although the 'how' and 'why' parts were still unclear. As his yet-unfocused eyes darted around the blobs of color in what he assumed must be a room of some kind, his heart started to race. He attempted to lift his head but felt a soft force pressing it gently back to the pillow.

"Not so fast," came the voice again, this time almost in a whisper. "You're in no condition to sit up yet." As his ears closed in on the source, he turned his head to the right. His vision having returned to normal, Trunks looked at the girl sitting next to him. His heartbeat slowed.

There was Ada, sitting on the edge of his bed with his arm lying limply in her lap. She was blotting away at a relatively large gash on the inside of his forearm, disposing of bloody gauze pads in a small trashcan beside her. After picking up another large pad, she grabbed a white bottle from the bedside table and placed the pad on top of it. Holding her thumb over the top of the bottle, she tipped it upside down until the gauze was soaked through with clear liquid. Ada's other hand, lightly holding Trunks' arm steady from underneath, tightened its grip somewhat as she gently pressed the gauze pad onto the open wound.

Pain shot through Trunks' veins, numbing his nerves and shaking his bones. He involuntarily jerked the wounded arm out of Ada's hand and pulled it to his chest, his teeth grinding against one another furiously. Startled, she gasped and dropped the bandage she was holding.

"I know it hurts…but alcohol's all we have here…and we can't risk going out right now…" She spoke quietly, her expression pained as she placed the back of her hand on his forehead. "It's only this painful because the wound is so deep. As long as nothing gets infected, though, we haven't got anything to worry about." She was trying to smile at him, to give him some kind of reassurance, but her eyes were red and watery and, Trunks noticed as he surveyed her for the first time since coming to, she looked terribly disheveled.

"Please…" she pled, touching his arm again. His muscles weakened when she turned her intent gaze upon him, and he let her take his arm. She laid it carefully across her thighs and pressed another gauze pad onto the gash to collect the pus and blood emitted when Trunks had jerked away. Ada then began brushing the tips of her fingers along the palm of his hand, and he felt himself yielding to her touch. After letting go, she commenced bandaging his wound. As she worked on it, she frowned.

"You're smart enough to have figured out by now that there's no point in trying to be noble. And," she added, "as much as it might be part of who you are, you ought to just run the other way when your pride is urging you to do something. I would rather have you sulking around with a wounded ego than dead because of your arrogance." She paused, putting the finishing touches on the bandage. "Well? Aren't you going to say something? You haven't spoken since you woke up."

"Wounded ego it is," Trunks replied with some effort, his throat dry. That, he noted with inner glee, had worked a smile out of Ada, albeit a weak one. Letting him take his arm back, she pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them. He only looked up at her curiously, in a strangely meditative mood for having just regained consciousness. Then again, he tended to feel that way after narrowly escaping death.

"How is it," Trunks asked her, some of the usual shyness creeping back into his voice, "that you always seem to catch me at my worst moments? When I'm hopeless, or weak, or angry, or…" He surveyed his body with distaste. "…broken? And you're still sitting next to me in spite of it?"

"Because if this is what you call your worst," she said softly with a playful smirk, "then it would be foolish to stay away." He looked at her warily, as though she were attempting some kind of flattery. Ada continued. "Hopelessness is a result of caring deeply about something, isn't it? And weakness is relative, especially in terms of human frailty. Anger is part of being passionate…" She delicately laid a hand on his chest, bruised from the blows that had broken his ribs. Trunks noticed for the first time that he didn't have a shirt on and was completely naked beneath the blanket resting just above his waist. In spite of his characteristic modesty, the thought didn't bother him at all. As he looked up at the girl whose touch made him tremble with a kind of ecstatic anticipation and yet simultaneously relaxed him, Trunks realized that her every gaze seemed to strip him bare of all pretenses, physical and mental, no matter what. Instead of being on edge, he was at ease.

"And brokenness," Ada continued, "is fleeting. I suppose it's a side effect of courage." In the silence that followed, the two merely looked at one another. A million questions were exploding in both of their minds, and as a result, Ada found herself wanting to blurt out several things at the recovering man. She stood from the bed and combed a strand of hair behind her ear.

"I should go – you need rest," she said simply, mustering up a smile and grabbing the wound dressings from the bedside table.

"Wait –!" Trunks said, rather more loudly than he had intended, as he pushed his palms into the mattress and began pulling himself up into a sitting position. Ada looked at him and blinked, surprised that he had regained any semblance of strength so quickly.

"I told you, Trunks- you're supposed to be resting!" she told him, irritated at his blatant disregard for her advice.

"Just-" He winced only slightly after finally leaning against the headboard of the bed- his bed, he noticed. Trunks realized only then that they were in the basement of his home, in his very room. The sheet and blanket began to slip from his waist until, reddening, he grabbed them and pulled them back up. When he looked up again, he saw Ada still standing near the foot of the bed. He was surprised to see that she looked a little nervous.

"You really should get some sleep…to heal up," she said, the slightest hint of panic in her voice. Trunks wondered at the change in her demeanor and assumed that it had to have come from his sudden determination to talk with her.

"I'm fine," he told her, smiling. "How long was I out, anyway?"

"Well," Ada replied, looking at the clock before embarking on a few mental calculations. "We brought you back here at six-thirty yesterday morning, and it's almost nine a.m. now…about twenty-three hours?"

"Then I think I have the stamina to stay awake for more than ten minutes," Trunks said plainly, the look in his eyes playfully daring Ada to say otherwise. She succumbed, sighing softly before reclaiming her place on the bed. Trunks gingerly moved to one side, silently inviting her to come nearer to him. Ada kneeled, sitting on her feet, mildly unnerved by her face being a mere twelve inches from that of the injured man sitting before her. The startling proximity coupled with her state of mind after a great many sleepless hours by Trunks' side drew out of her unparalleled audacity.

"What were you thinking?" Ada asked him suddenly, her lips pursed and breathing staggered.

"Ada, don't do this," Trunks replied, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Can't you just…wait until later to badger me?"

"No," she stated simply. "You must be absolutely mad if you think I'm just letting this go. You almost got yourself killed. And what about the plan, huh?" He turned his head away from her, pretending to busy himself by reaching for the glass of water on the table.

"Answer me!" she demanded as she softly grabbed hold of his wrist. "What about going to the past to try to learn something about the androids first? What about the time machine? And your mother? Would you waste all of that by throwing yourself away?"

Trunks leaned forward and drew his arm away from her. "Is that what this is about? You're not upset because I almost died; you're just pissed off at me because my getting blown away would have spoiled everything?"

"How could you possibly say something like that to me?" Her voice dropped slowly into a whisper and then took on a sarcastic, bitter tone. "Or maybe you're right. When I found you lying out in the middle of the road, I just knew that I had to bring you back and make you all better so we could ship you back to the past."

Found me in the road? Only then did Trunks realize exactly why he hadn't lain across the filthy asphalt and bled to death. Did she come looking for me? And now she's…she's bandaging me… It even crossed his mind that Ada could be looking particularly rough because she'd sat with him all night, in the same spot where she had been when he awoke. Just like in the movies… At which point Trunks promptly decided that thinking such things was ridiculous and vain and that he needed to stop doing it at once.

"I…I'm sorry," he stammered, watching her rub her tired eyes.

"Don't be," she said with an exhausted frown. "I just…wish you wouldn't have challenged them. They could have killed you if they wanted."

"Doesn't it bother you to go on hiding like this? Don't you ever just want to end it?"

"Every damn day, Trunks." Ada sighed and began twisting the end of her low ponytail. "But I'm also smart enough to know that, as much heartache and trouble as I've caused my mother in my life, if anything happened to me…" She shook her head and began chewing on her lower lip before setting her onyx eyes on Trunks again. "And it's no different with you, as invincible as you may feel sometimes. If something happened to you, there are…people…in your life who would be crushed. Tell me you're listening to me."

"I'm listening," he returned, taken by surprise as back into the pit of his stomach crept that familiar feeling of tumultuous lightness.

"Now promise you won't do anything else foolish," she huffed in exasperation. Trunks, now feeling sufficiently childish and small, merely looked at Ada before turning his eyes away again. He nearly fell out of the bed with shock when he felt Ada's fingers tenderly brush a lock of lavender hair from his eyes.

"Hey," she whispered with a smile. "It's not that I don't believe in you, alright? But no one lives forever."

xxx

"Hey you two!" At the familiar sound of Bulma's voice, Ada instinctively got up from her seat on the bed and, in the blink of an eye, began nervously heading for the door. The genius flashed Ada a sly smile as the latter made her exit.

"Hi, Bulma…I was just…going to go whip up some breakfast." A mere ten seconds after speaking her last sentence to Trunks, Ada was gone, a monstrous blush cascading down her cheeks. She felt like she had been caught in the middle of…well, she hadn't even been doing anything, she reasoned.

Just caressing – wait! Don't use 'caressing'! That sounds so…so…ugh! Ada pushed her thoughts back into a mental safe and locked them there, attempting to set her mind on scrambled eggs and rice with milk.

Upon Ada's leaving, Bulma placed her hands on her hips and eyed her revived son with a curious smirk.

"Glad to see that you're finally awake, dear," she said, her intonation cluing Trunks in on what he feared would be an outpouring of biting commentary about his personal life.

"Thanks, Mom," he replied, sipping the glass of ice water sitting on his bedside table.

"So?" Bulma inquired with one eyebrow raised, taking a seat in what had been Ada's chair.

"What?" Trunks feigned genuine curiosity as best as he knew how.

"Don't give me that, young man! What in the world is going on between you two? I saw how close you were! And the way you look at her when you don't think anyone else is watching…puh-lease, kid. I wasn't born yesterday, you know."

"Listen, Mom," he began, a stammer creeping into his voice. "I don't know what you're talking about, and I'm…I'm exhausted. I think I'll just rest some more."

"Ugh!" she huffed crossly, folding her arms. "What is it with you men? I swear, Trunks, if you were any more secretive about this sort of thing, I would have to start calling you Vegeta."

As he lay back down, Trunks furrowed his brow. When he was younger, he delighted in comparisons with the father he never knew. There were some he didn't mind hearing even now: his appearance, his strength, sometimes his fighting style. Yet, any mention of similarities pertaining to his actions, his speech, his personality traits, or his…emotions…made his blood run cold. That was the part of him of which he worked tirelessly to cleanse himself. Trunks realized, of course, that his genes did not dictate his future or the man he hoped to be; still, something in the back of his mind panicked every once in a while. Fate, he feared, would condemn him to grow into a bitter man without real concern or love for anyone other than himself, without check on the bloodlust within him that continued to grow with each battle…without hope.

He would fight that possibility endlessly, Trunks decided as he listened to his mother gather up in her arms the various bandages, creams, and solutions next to his bed. He could never let himself become that man.

"I understand if you don't want to talk about it," Bulma conceded some time later, her voice now kind and even. "But Trunks…"

He looked up at her, his mother, who was now smiling knowingly at him. She turned out the lamp on his bedside table.

"You can't let this one get away," she said quietly. "I know you've got a lot on your plate right now, kid, but if your actions around Ada are any indication of your feelings about her…you've gotta follow through with them." And with that, the facetious but sage Bulma Brief departed, leaving her son alone to his thoughts.

xxx

Postscript: On some advice from Draquia, I've decided to allow anonymous reviews. If you've been reading but haven't dropped me a line yet, this is your chance. I really, really value others' opinions, and I would love to hear from you! Oh yes, and I've been tossing an idea around in my head about perhaps writing a single chapter in first person and splitting it between Ada and Trunks. If I do indeed decide to do that, don't freak out; it's just a one-time thing. I believe that's all of the housekeeping I have for now. Thank you, as always, for reading!