"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"

-"The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats

xxx

"Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child

Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,

He set the jug down slowly at his feet

With trembling care, knowing that most things break."

-"Mr. Flood's Party" by Edwin Arlington Robinson

xxx

CHAPTER 10

Bulma Brief had never been more exhausted in her life, and that, she thought, was really saying something. In the last two days, she had buried her best friend's young son, had been driven completely from her sleep by nightmares of the most horrendous sort, had kept a watchful eye on Chi Chi, who seemed to be silently coming undone, had tried to coax the hopeless woman's daughter into eating just a little or speaking the slightest word, and had attempted to comfort her own disconsolate child, all while pushing away the grief that was threatening to destroy her collectedness. It did not help that the gloom of the Son house seemed to be pulling her down inch by inch, choking her with its pervasiveness thickness.

She mindlessly pulled from the microwave a large glass dish of steamed vegetables and gave them a few stirs for good measure before dividing them up onto five different plates. After adding the other components of the leftover-comprised meal, Bulma set the table.

"Dinner!" she called, and her thirteen-year old son half-heartedly made his way into the Son house after spending the afternoon skipping stones across a nearby pond.

"Glad to see you back, kiddo," Bulma smiled at her boy before planting a kiss atop his lavender head. "I hope you're hungry. And I didn't do any of the cooking – it's all leftovers from the funeral – so you don't have to worry about food poisoning." Her attempt to lighten the mood fell terribly flat; Trunks did not respond to her but instead silently took a seat at the table. Bulma frowned as she poured him a glass of water. The kid hadn't spoken in days. That, however, wasn't what worried Bulma. Rather, it was that he seemed unresponsive to everything. He had been heartbroken after Gohan's death but since then had refused to show even an iota of emotion. Bulma knew nothing of what was going on inside of Trunks' head, nor did she quite know what to say to comfort him, which frightened her.

"I know how you like chicken…so I warmed up some of that," Bulma said, pushing Trunks' plate closer to him. As he gulped and began to slowly put food into his mouth, the gargantuan Ox King entered the room, leading his daughter by the hand. He mustered up the best smile he could and threw it Bulma's way before showing Chi Chi to a chair.

"This looks great, Bulma. Thank you so much for your help," he said. "You've been a real lifesaver these past few days." Ox King took a seat for himself and then tucked a napkin into his shirt collar. The old man had to be absolutely beat, Bulma knew; he had not left his daughter's side since the fit she had after seeing Gohan's destroyed body lying limply in young Trunks' arms.

"I'm happy to help," Bulma replied shakily, picking at her fingernails as she returned the weak smile. "Let me know if you'd like anything else – wait a sec…where's Ada?"

"Oh…she's probably still in her room. Hasn't really left it all day," Ox admitted with a frown as he gulped down some water. "I doubt she'll be down to eat."

Bulma made no reply but instead looked over at the staircase and chewed on her lower lip. "I'll be back in a minute," she said to no one in particular and began walking toward the stairs. Trunks hardly seemed to notice what was going on around him, while Ox simply shrugged and began kindly coaxing Chi Chi into eating a little.

The disheveled inventor made her way up the staircase and into the darkened hallway of the Son home. The door on her immediate left – the one leading to Gohan's room – was shut, and she got the feeling that it would be so for some time. Bulma's target, however, was the door at the end of the hallway, also closed tightly. She approached the entrance and gave it a meek knock. After getting no answer, she tried again. Nothing. She took a deep breath, blinked rapidly several times, and turned the doorknob.

Sitting on the floor with her back against the wall was Ada, her hair thrown back haphazardly into a ponytail, her face sallow. Bulma, closing the door behind her, felt a glimmer of hope after the girl looked up from her lap and over at the older woman.

"Hey girlfriend," Bulma said softly. "Mind if I sit?" Ada merely looked at her feet in silence. Better than a 'no', Bulma thought as she took a seat next to the child.

"Your grandpa says you haven't really been in the mood to eat, but there's some dinner downstairs if you're hungry," she mentioned, looking over at Ada curiously. After sitting in silence for several long minutes, Bulma took a deep breath and put one of her hands on the girl's arm.

"Ada," she began, "I know you're probably really, really tired of people saying all sorts of nice things that just seem like empty words…and you probably feel like no one could possibly understand what you're feeling right now…"

Ada turned to look up at Bulma, her eyes hollow and watery. Noting the response, however small, as a good sign, Bulma continued.

"I'm worried about you, girl. And of course I don't expect you to suddenly feel better, or be social, or be able to put up with your mom right now…I just want you to know that I love you," she sighed. "So, so much. And so did your brother." Bulma noticed that Ada was starting to cry very quietly, and her heart broke for the girl. No person, she fumed to herself, let alone a child, should have to lose someone so important to them. How would a thirteen-year old girl know how to deal with that kind of pain?

Bulma slowly put her arm around Ada, who, to her surprise, began sobbing inconsolably. She pulled the girl to her, brushing Ada's hair with one hand, and the child laid her head in Bulma's lap.

Feeling a veil of tears coat her own eyes, Bulma held Ada tightly, saying, "Eventually, things are going to be alright again. It's just hard right now…I wish I could take it all away, but…sometimes, life just…deals you a really shitty hand. Sometimes…things fall apart."

xxx

"This…this is really…amazing," Trunks stammered, leafing through the papers in his lap. "I mean, seriously, Ada."

"Don't make fun," she responded, not even glancing up from the book she was reading.

"I'm not!" he cried. "It's really incredible; it's professional-caliber stuff. I just can't believe I didn't know that you wrote."

She looked over at him shyly, tucking some hair behind her right ear and allowing a pinch of blush to paint her face. "A little bit every night before bed…or almost every night, at least…since I was a kid. I've got boxes under my bed of nothing but half-finished stories."

"So why haven't I read any of your writing before?" he inquired, shifting his weight away from his wounded leg.

"I don't like to talk about it, I guess. Besides, Mom's always said it's a waste because it's impractical in terms of real-life career skills. You know how she rather favors the sciences," Ada smirked, glancing around Trunks' room at the various disassembled machine parts, computer innards, and half-finished blueprints.

"I guess I can't fault her for that," he returned with a sheepish grin, himself surveying the scraps that cluttered his dresser and shelves.

Ada suddenly hardened her eyes and turned her intent gaze upon him. "Listen…this is going to sound terribly childish, but I've never let anyone read my scribbles before…probably wouldn't even have let you if you hadn't brow-beaten me into it…"

"I'm glad I did," Trunks interrupted with a smile, putting down one sheaf of paper and pulling another from the worn leather portfolio that he had thieved from Ada only a half hour before.

"…right, whatever…just don't say anything to anyone, alright? It's kind of embarrassing."

"What's embarrassing about it?" he asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"I suppose…my mother's kind of right, you know? It's impractical. Besides, I'm almost twenty years old, Trunks. I'm supposed to be doing…" she grimaced and put on a mocking tone, "…grown-up things...not writing fairytales." Ada shook her head and turned her eyes back to her book.

"If you really think writing is so useless, then you must think sketching out blueprints for things that will never be built is even more so."

"No!" she blurted out. "I mean, if it's something you like to do, then what's it matter?"

"Exactly," Trunks stated simply, smirking as he leaned against the headboard of his bed and began reading another of Ada's stories. She opened her mouth in reply but, feeling soundly beaten, closed it again and rolled over onto her stomach, resuming her own reading.

As Trunks started delving into a longer piece about an old man who started seeing strange figures in the lake near his house, his mind wandered to the girl lying at the foot of his bed. Ada had been helping with the clean-up in West City for the past three days, rising at six in the morning and finishing the day's work at nightfall. She would arrive at the Brief home terribly sweaty and covered in dirt, her hair sticking up in every direction and more than a few scrapes and bruises about her legs. Doing such work was no easy task when it meant having to suppress one's strength enormously so as not to attract extra attention, and the girl had climbed into Bulma's shower each evening absolutely exhausted. Thrice now had she sat on Trunks' bed for hours and talked, read, napped, or merely sat about enjoying a moment's peace. Naturally, he had asked her more than once why she wasn't simply going home to get a bit of rest for the next day's trials. Ada quickly threw up her defenses and explained that Trunks had been near death only days before and deserved to have someone give him company (or at least, she smirked, pity him) while he was still being forcibly bedbound by his mother.

Not that he minded, of course. Rather, Trunks felt that he had been on a permanent high for the last several days and was contemplating faking a prolonged injury even after he healed.

"I was thinking about the androids," Ada said suddenly.

"What?" Trunks blinked. "Where did that come from?"

"Nowhere, really. I've just been mulling that last incident over, and I think I've got an idea."

"Oh yeah?" he asked, part of him genuinely curious, part of him angry that the monsters had such a complete hold on their existence as to infiltrate every conversation.

"Neither of us is strong enough to beat them head-on, obviously, at least not now. Sheer strength doesn't necessarily designate the victor, though. What if we found…" she struggled with the right words, "…some way…to trick them? To outsmart them, maybe?"

"How would you propose we do that?"

"Don't you think that there has to be some way to suppress your ki enough to get within blast range of them without their noticing? And couldn't you…couldn't you just–"

"Just what? Find some way to shoot a ki blast that would go undetected long enough to actually hit one of them?"

Ada sighed. "I don't know…it's just wishful thinking, really…but I can't help but feel like we can do this without the help of my father or Vegeta or anyone else from the past. It seems like we're throwing in the towel, doesn't it? Like we're admitting we aren't good enough to finish the job on our own…"

"Ada," Trunks replied incredulously, "how can you talk like that? And you're always on my case about pride…Does it really matter how we destroy them as long as they're gone?"

"Yes," she frowned. "If your mother had the ability to knock up a time machine all along, then how many thousands of lives were wasted while we dawdled and tried to convince ourselves that if we trained just a little bit harder our luck would turn around? How many people might have been saved years ago?"

"Is it really going to help thinking that way now?" he said, trying to fold his arms before wincing and gingerly fingering the bandaged one.

"I know," she sighed, "but sometimes…it's just hard to keep those thoughts out of your head."

"Yeah, it is," Trunks nodded, looking sympathetically at the girl lying across the width of his bed. "So why not think of something cheerier? How about…" He searched his thoughts quickly, looking for any change of subject that would bring a smile back to Ada's face. "How about this…what's life going to be like if we destroy them? If I actually find out something useful about the androids when I go back to the past?"

"'When'," Ada corrected, the slightest grin dancing about her lips.

"Huh?"

"'When' you find out something useful. 'When' we destroy them," she said.

"Son Ada, the Amazing Incurable Optimist," he mocked with a smirk.

Only when you need me to be strong for you, she thought.

"So then, when this pesky android problem is done with, what will life be like?" Ada asked herself as she rested her chin atop the now-closed book lying in front of her on the bed. "Well, I suppose we'll have normal lives and do everyday things…have jobs, go out for drinks with our friends on Friday nights."

Trunks detected a slight twitch in Ada's lip as she said these things, a movement like there was a nasty taste in her mouth but she wanted no one to know. "Real jobs…like people used to have…" Trunks mused, folding his hands behind his head. "If you could pick any job, what would it be?"

"I suppose," Ada blushed, "I would write…if I could…if people wanted to read it. And I would help put things back together as much as I could. And you?"

"I would get my mom's company back on its feet," he replied immediately. "Just think about it! Capsule Corp. used to be one of the top home manufacturers in the world, and that's what people are going to need when this is all over. And besides – I would get to spend my time in a real lab with the right tools to make things happen."

Rarely had Ada heard Trunks speak so passionately about anything. His two great loves seemed to be training and technology, but the former had overtaken the latter so as to make it almost obsolete to him.

"I think," she smiled, "that that sounds wonderful."

"Do you think you'll come to live in the city when it's more than just rubble? When it's thriving again?"

The question caught Ada off guard. She considered for a moment before setting her eyes on him. "No. The capital is wonderful, really; I'm sure that restoring its loveliness will make it even more so. But I don't think that I could live here. I would miss the air, and the mountains. Out there," she breathed, "one has no constraints. You can sprint through the forest, or skim across the tops of the trees…and there's no one there to question you, to think it strange. The feeling is just…liberating."

Trunks pictured the eastern forests older than humanity itself and then imagined, in the shade of one of the trees, Ada napping, strands of hair dashing playfully about her face.

"You know," Trunks admitted, "I think it sounds nice, being out there. I think I could live there, even, and enjoy it." He then closed his eyes and allowed his mind to wander speculatively across the future and did not stir from the daydream for some fifteen minutes.

When he again opened his eyes, Trunks found that his exhausted sparring partner had drifted off to sleep at the foot of his bed. The young man smiled as he watched her stir slightly, then settle her head into a more comfortable position atop her folded arms. Trunks reached his hand across the bed with the intention of waking her softly – he grudgingly assumed that she ought to be getting home to a more comfortable bed – when he froze. Ada shifted again, the movement this time drawing her tee shirt up no more than an inch from her waist but still revealing a ribbon of porcelain skin. Trunks saw, peeking out from below the hemline of Ada's shirt, an irregular, henna-like stain that, tint aside, resembled a patch of skin after a burn.

Like Trunks, Ada had been born with a tail. Like his mother, Ada's had made the decision to have it removed for the safety of the general population. The two half-Saiyans were left with very similar marks in the center of their lower backs, scars that would never heal, two final, permanent – albeit almost insignificant – handprints of an eradicated race.

Trunks wondered how long ago it had been that the young Ada had decided never to show her bare back for fear of being considered different from other children. Had she been seven years old? Eight, maybe? Had she even worn a swimsuit in public since then? She had been hiding it obstinately for years. Someday, Trunks knew, someone would see it again. A future boyfriend, perhaps (the boy frowned for a reason he did not want to comprehend), would be taking in her lovely, fair skin and notice the roundish brand on her back. What excuse would she make up? What lie would she feed the man to keep his curiosity in check? The unknown man would suspect nothing unordinary about Ada until she accidentally lost control of her strength and shattered a mug or broke a doorknob. Then, she would tell him that the object in question was defective. It would keep happening until one day Ada would be forced to reveal herself, and, whether her lover accepted her or not, would still find no relief because no mere human could truly understand her.

Trunks blinked and realized he was gritting his teeth and grasping his comforter angrily. The story, however ridiculous it might seem to someone on the outside, would be the reality of Ada's situation – as well as his own. It upset him terribly that, if they defeated the androids, he and Ada would begin their lives anew as ordinary citizens, would dilute the warrior blood in their veins out of necessity, would 'settle down'. He gulped and exhaled. He needed to wake Ada. Letting his mind wander was, apparently, both dangerous and disheartening.

xxx

Only twenty minutes later, Ada, despite her yawns, was saying her goodbyes for the evening and preparing to fly east. Bulma had nearly finished hugging the girl and telling her, as she had done every day that week, to give Chi Chi her best, when an urgent rap resounded on the basement door.

Bulma and Ada stiffened, looked at each other, and then waited for another knock. It came. Bulma cleared her throat and, silently praying that the androids would not bother knocking, said loudly, "Who is it?"

"It's me!" came a muffled voice from the ground level. Bulma rolled her eyes in irritation.

"Am I supposed to know who 'me' is?" she muttered before again raising her voice. "Who?"

"Louisa! I'm here to see Trunks!"

Bulma's face contorted in confusion. She looked at Ada, who was unabashedly grimacing. "Wait, that girl who Trunks was going out with? I haven't seen her in weeks…"

"Can I come in?" called Louisa from above.

"Not a very patient one, is she?" Bulma whispered. She then called out, "Go ahead," and in mere seconds the tiny blonde, clad in a rather revealing pair of shorts, was bounding down the stairs and into the kitchen.

"Hi, Ms. Brief! How have you been?" she asked brightly, squeezing Bulma to her in a tight hug as the older woman, apparently unaware that their relationship had progressed to a physical level, left her arms hanging limply on either side of her.

"I've been…alright, I guess," she replied after being released. "It's…nice to see you, Louisa. You haven't been around in a while."

"Oh, I know! After that android attack last week, my dad said I couldn't go out, plus I just kind of got busy and couldn't find a time to drop i–" Louisa fluttered her eyes a bit as she noticed the other party in the room. "Why, hello! You seem to be here every time I am!" she giggled.

"Well…I guess I tend to come here pretty often…" Ada replied, wondering what it was about Louisa that drained people of the ability to hold intelligent conversation. Before the raven-haired young woman could finish, Louisa appeared to have lost interest. She looked around the room intrudingly.

"I suppose you know why I'm here," she bubbled. "Where's my Trunks?"

"He's…in his room…down the hallway," said Bulma after she tossed a fleeting glance at Ada, who was chewing on her lower lip in general irritation.

"Thank you so, so much!" Louisa chirped in reply and then frolicked down the hallway and through the door of the injured man's room.

Somewhere between overhearing a few squeals, an I missed you so, so, so much! and an Oh no! You're hurt!, Ada decided that she needed to leave for home. As fast as possible.

"Well," she said weakly, "see you soon." With that, Ada was gone, but not before catching one last high-pitched squeak from the home below: "Don't you worry, Trunks! I'm here now, and I won't leave you in here all alone!"

xxx

Postscript: I got four reviews last chapter! Happiness abounds, folks. I wish I could adequately describe how cheery your reviews make me. I hope the story continues to inspire you to write them. A few things: the first poem quoted at the beginning is also piece from which the title of Chinua Achebe's famous novel Things Fall Apart is drawn. I certainly recommend reading it if you haven't. The second poem quoted is long but absolutely worth finding on the internet and reading in its completeness. If you like it, then read the rest of Robinson's stuff. He's fantastic, and this poem in particular is really very moving. So that's enough pushing of my literary preferences on you. I'm beginning to sound like the fic authors that use their stories to gush about their favorite bands and all of the awesome songs they write…Anyway, as always, thank you for your loyalty!