CHAPTER 25

It was February before Bulma had caught on to what Ada was planning.

They had seen one another periodically, as always, but never had much to say anymore. Some evenings, after Ada had finished with tutoring, the two women would sit at the kitchen table in the Brief basement, silently sipping lapsang suchong and listening to the nightly hour of classical music broadcast over the radio, when it functioned. And so the months had passed.

Until one chilly morning toward winter's end. Bulma had awoken from the few hours' sleep that she managed to get most nights. She'd slipped on her bathrobe, yawned deeply, and made her way to the kitchen to put the kettle on. The heiress had held her breath for a moment before flipping on the light switch. One never knew whether the generator would choose to take the day off; and its vacation time had seemed more frequent over the course of that brutal winter.

A grumble, a spark, and warm light flooded the room, the enormous underground generator humming as it awakened. Bulma smiled, wearily, and took a step into the kitchen before suddenly stopping. She blinked and gazed in bewilderment at what she found.

There, on her kitchen table, were five training bots. Five seared, smashed, and shattered training bots.

Bulma had not seen the old droids in almost a year, and her sleep-muddled mind took several minutes of deep, confused speculation to make sense of their mysterious appearance. When her eyes finally widened in understanding, she slowly sat down at the table. Bulma folded her hands and, elbows propped up, brought them to her lips. The woman surveyed the bots. The decision was hers. She could do nothing. She could throw them away, even. It was her move.

xxx

"I'm just worried about you, dear," Chi Chi insisted as she spooned up another bite of stew. Eyes furrowed, she looked across the table at her daughter.

"But you're not listening to me – there's nothing to worry about, Mama," Ada replied, staring down into her own bowl. She was pushing a carrot slice around with her spoon, not particularly hungry in spite of her exhaustion.

"There obviously is, Ada. I've never seen you this tired before, even when you were helping Trunks train. Doing a few hours of relief work and then some tutoring is hardly as exhausting as that, but here you are – nodding off at the dinner table."

Ada blinked, shaking her head slightly to wake herself, and quickly took a bite of stew.

"I just…" Chi Chi put down her spoon. "I know…I know how hard the last year has been for you. I know what it's like to…to remake your life when someone you care about is gone."

Ada looked up suddenly, her eyes narrowing somewhat. "What do you mean, 'gone?'"

"I mean…well…I mean losing someone, Ada–"

"I didn't lose him, Mom," Ada replied incredulously.

"I know that you didn't literally lose him – I'm just saying that life without him is difficult. But it's going to get easier, sweetie–"

"You don't think he's coming back, do you?" Ada interrupted, her eyes beginning to water. She clenched her teeth.

"Sweetie," Chi Chi said in a voice barely above a whisper, "it's been almost a year…" She faltered as she saw the shock trace itself across her daughter's face.

Ada said nothing. Her eyes were hard and unblinking at she stared at her mother.

"Ada," the older woman asked gently, "surely…you don't still believe that he's going to come back, do you?"

"Of course I do," she replied, setting her own spoon down on the table.

"Oh, Ada," Chi Chi said, face falling. "I know that it's hard to think about, hard to accept, but–"

"I don't know when Trunks will be back," Ada said firmly. "If the calculations are ten months off, there's no reason that they won't be ten years off."

Chi Chi, jaw slack, stared at her daughter.

"I could be seventy years old when he comes back. I could be dead," Ada said. "I have no way of knowing. None of us does. But he will be back someday, Mom. He's a man of his word."

Neither said anything for several minutes. Ada seemed completely and utterly convinced of every word that had come out of her mouth. And it broke her mother's heart.

xxx

"DAMMIT!" Ada shouted, falling to the ground. "DEACTIVATE!"

The bots lowered themselves to the floor in tandem, their sensors blinking thrice to signal that they were powering off.

Ada looked down at her right thigh. Blood was flowing so rapidly and abundantly from the wound that she could not even make out the gash from the bot's laser. She clenched her teeth and tore away the bottom half of her pant leg. Her fingers gently probed her thigh until she found the top of the wound, wincing at the touch. Blinking away beads of sweat, Ada wrapped the strip of fabric around the top of her leg, just above the point of injury. She tied it as tightly as she could and, her breath ragged and strained, waited a moment to gauge whether the makeshift tourniquet had staunched her blood flow.

Ada worked to stand, trying to keep her weight on her left leg, but she found herself back on the warehouse floor.

Tears began to gather in her eyes, and the young woman drove her fist into the floor, cracking the concrete.

Even if she was getting stronger – and she was, to a degree – it wasn't anywhere close to enough. She began to wish that she had spent some of her training sessions with Trunks working on her own body.

No. He needed my attention more.

As Ada thought of those exhausting, grueling months…as she thought of him…a small sob escaped her throat. She drove her fist into the concrete once more.

He worked so hard. Surely it was enough. It had to be enough.

Ten months, nearly to the day.

Back before dinnertime.

Ada felt a darkness creeping into her peripheral vision, and she glanced down at her leg.

Still bleeding. Too much.

The enormous warehouse began to tilt on its side. The shadow was creeping further into her eyesight.

Come back to me. Please.

Just as her head hit the floor and her consciousness began to fall away, she heard a woman scream. Her name? Maybe.

Come back to me.

xxx

Ada rinsed the suds from another plate, then passed it to the man on her left. He ran a dishtowel over the surface of the dish before setting it into the neat pile of squeaky-clean dinnerware next to him on the counter.

"You didn't have to help with the dishes, you know," she said with a coy smile before passing a casserole dish to him. "You're a guest."

"Says the girl who makes sure the kitchen is spotless every time she's over for a meal," Trunks replied with a smirk.

"Fair enough," Ada said, bumping him with her hip.

"Besides," he said, "I…I don't want it to feel like I'm a guest."

"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow as she handed him a handful of silverware.

"I mean, I'm not just inviting myself over. I didn't mean it like that," Trunks said with a slight stammer.

Ada looked over at him and smiled. There was a certain degree of shyness in Trunks that never seemed to go away, and it always made her grin. He never wanted to impose, or come across as rude in any way.

"Trunks," she said, then waited for him to look at her. When his eyes met hers, she recommenced: "Your politeness, your deference, your…well, gentleness…"

He looked away and reddened slightly.

"It's part of what makes you so winsome. But…" Ada searched for the right words. "I don't want you to feel nervous around me. Not ever." She absentmindedly passed him the dish she had rinsed at least four times. "I know that we haven't been…together…very long, but you know that you don't have to correct yourself, or clarify, or – or otherwise feel uncomfortable when you talk to me. Don't you?"

Trunks opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, placing the dry bowl in the stack. He could feel Ada looking at him again, so he turned to meet her gaze.

"It takes a little getting used to, I guess," he finally said. "It's not that I ever feel ill at ease with you, Ada. Not anymore. I've just…it's hard to explain."

"Will you try?" Ada asked, turning off the tap and pulling the sink plug from beneath the soapy water. He nodded, dried the final dish, and then handed the towel to Ada. She dried her hands and stole a glance behind her to see whether any light was coming from her mother's bedroom down the hall. Nothing. Chi Chi was almost certainly asleep, but…

"How about a walk?" she asked Trunks, who smiled at her knowingly.

"A walk would be great," he replied. He put out his hand, and she took it.

The night was unseasonably warm for October, and a harvest moon hung low in the sky. The two made their way toward the forest that abutted the Son homestead. It was a familiar route, oft-traveled when they headed to Ada's (and, more recently, Trunks' as well) favorite training spot.

"Alright," Ada said after a few minutes of strolling in comfortable silence. "You were saying?"

"When we were kids," Trunks said, "after Gohan died, I…was pretty horrible to you."

Ada smiled, trying not to laugh. "I don't think I was any better, Trunks."

"I don't know," he replied thoughtfully. "I had convinced myself – as stupid as it sounds – that I was closer to Gohan. That, because he trained me and not you, we shared some special bond that you and he didn't have. I know that that sounds ridiculous–"

"No," Ada said. "It doesn't. Trunks, we were both raised by widows. We both saw Gohan as…well, as something of a father, I guess. It makes sense that you would latch onto him."

Trunks looked at her in bewilderment. "You really think so?"

"Of course. Back then, I was so jealous of you that I wanted to smash your skull through a brick wall. And I acted like it, too. But now? I'm thankful that my brother could be something that you needed."

He stopped walking. "You mean that?"

Ada squeezed his hand. "Of course I do. But more importantly," she said, stepping toward him so that her bare toes touched the tips of his, "you shouldn't feel like you have to be extra polite because you were a little shit as a pubescent kid. You've got nothing to make up to me. Clean slate. Alright?"

Trunks raised a hand to her cheek, cupping her face with it. "Alright," he said. After a pause, he continued. "And – in spite of how I might come across – I've never felt like you were hard to talk to. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"Oh?" she asked quietly, letting go of his hand and lacing her arms around his neck.

"It's so…easy to be around you, Ada. I don't feel like…like I have to prove anything, or act any specific way. And that's…well…that's a first for me, I guess," he smirked slightly, moving his own hands to her waist. He let them rest atop the curve of her hips and gave her body a little pull so that she was flush against him.

"You know," she whispered, nose almost touching his, "I don't have any point of comparison, so this might sound strange, but…this feels like something different." Ada did not have to explain what she meant by 'this' – it was how both of them tended to refer to their relationship.

"It doesn't sound strange," Trunks returned. "I know what you mean."

"It scares me a little," Ada admitted with a frown. "I mean, isn't something like this supposed to…to take longer? Before it feels this way? This certain?"

Trunks kissed her, softly at first, and then with more fervor. It frightened him as well, the intensity of his feelings. He worried that his thoughts and emotions would make more sense if they had been together for half a year, perhaps – but only two months? Was it just passion? Would the feeling begin to fade as their relationship became more familiar and routine? That possibility frightened him even more. How was one supposed to know when a relationship was…well…significant? When there was, as Ada had said, something different about it?

xxx

Trunks stared, trance-like, across the barren waste of the desert. The shock of the scene that had just unfolded before him was paralyzing. As the dust settled, he began to process the ramifications of Goku's decision.

Two years in the Room of Spirit and Time. He had arrived in the past, prepared to fight a battle that would likely take mere minutes; a few hours, at worst. He had not been prepared for the rewritten history, for the third android, for Cell, for his own hasty decision to join his father for 365 days of torturous training. He had not been prepared for the strength that he had discovered within himself – strength greater than that of his father, even – and had not expected to emerge from the chamber either sane or alive. He had not been prepared for the devastation of Vegeta's decision to let Cell absorb Android 18, or, just prior, Krillin's decision to let the cyborg live. He had not been prepared to give yet another year of his life – this time, completely alone – for the sake of the twisted reality in which he found himself.

And yet, in spite of all of this, Trunks had arrived at the arena with the other warriors, ready to take on the perfected monster. Even in the midst of Goku's reckoning that he was not powerful enough to defeat Cell – and the realization that neither Trunks nor Vegeta could be any use if Goku himself was too weak – Trunks had remained strong. He had not let his mind wander, had not allowed the 'ifs' or 'buts' to plague his thoughts. He had considered only his responsibility to this reality and to his own; to his mother and to Ada. That alone drove him, and that kept him from breaking apart.

What Trunks had not prepared for was Goku's decision to sacrifice himself for the sake of them all. The demi-Saiyan had, after all, originally returned to the past primarily to keep Goku alive. Yes, he had wanted to warn Goku about the threat of the androids. The more important part of the mission, though, was delivering the antidote.

But Goku, in what seemed an instant, had chosen to die anyway. He had destroyed Cell. He had won, and he had perished without the possibility of returning to life.

They were free.

Trunks blinked and, shaking his head slightly, turned his gaze upon the weeping child just feet in front of him. Krillin was attempting to comfort Gohan, but what comfort could one give a child who has just lost his father?

As he looked around at the other fighters, all clearly heartbroken but – at the very least – pleased that Cell was finished, Trunks felt a deep shame burning in his chest. He was supposed to be happy; or, if not happy with the means, pleased with the end. Cell was gone. The Earth was safe. And yet, though relieved, Trunks found that he was…angry. He had wasted a year of his life for…for nothing. The first year in the Room of Spirit and Time, well, that had brought him the strength to destroy the androids in the future. But the second? The year of terrifying, horrific solitude? What had it won him? Why had he bothered?

Everything about the situation seemed utterly preposterous. It was–

Trunks' arms flew up reflexively to shield his face from the dust storm that had appeared instantaneously. He could barely keep his eyes open as wind and sand whipped around his head, blowing his hair wildly about his face.

What–

A ringing in his ear. Searing pain in his chest. The azure afternoon sky overhead. And then…nothing.

When he regained consciousness, Trunks felt the blood vessels in his head pounding. He could hear nothing but the coursing of his veins with every desperate heartbeat. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, and a shadow creeping into his field of vision.

The young man could feel a hot liquid gurgling up his esophagus, and he began to cough. The shadow moved in, slowly eating away at the sky overhead.

Come back to me.

An echo in his ears. A memory? He felt his thoughts slide away into oblivion. He would fail her. Had failed her.

I'm sorry.