Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Fathoming Love ❯ Chapter 34 ( Chapter 34 )

I turned another page, seeing that the next entry was several months later, the handwriting looking more concentrated yet messier, as though written by a younger person.

 

 

Another day of trying. Trying trying trying. I guess that's all there is to do. Try. Try fail try again. That's all he tells me. My rock. Yeah, he hates when I say that. My rock, my enemy, my love, my torment, my triumph.

 

I fell today, like I fall every day. I tried to get towards the bathroom, leaning on walls as my legs refuse to work. The tumor operation was in one opinion, a complete success, in my opinion, one great big obstacle.

 

I've begun the task of learning to walk again. And to write again. And to try, try always, again. The others see me now in the precise way I never wanted them to see me; breakable. The insurmountable Bulma Briefs, KOed by cancer. They don't know it but when I look at them, I see just one word: failure. I have failed them. I have failed their idealistic version of me and in that, failed myself.

 

Vegeta might have pushed me down just for talking like this, only to gain some amount of sick pleasure as he watched me try to get up again. But I talk badly of him and I don't mean to. He is my coach, and though the job was never exactly offered, it seems he's taken it and taken it seriously.

 

Despite the looks of pity that melt into everyone's eyes, Vegeta never shows mercy, never even compassion, unable to let me fail.

 

Today I bawled, screaming and wailing away, begging him to lift me, begging him to hoist me to my feet. I threw my fists clumsily against the ground, angry that carpet dulled the aggravating sound my attempts might have unleashed.

 

“I have to throw up,” I pleaded, voice harsh from vomiting, harsh from screaming. “I can't, I won't do it here.”

 

“And I can't and I won't pick you up,” He said coldly, glaring down at me.

 

“You could if you wanted to.”

 

I gazed in fury at him, sobered only by the oddest glow behind his pupils, a solemn look plastered on his features. He never voiced a word yet I saw them in his eyes. Yes, he could pick me up if he wanted to….. but not if he loved me. Not if he cared for me.

 

So instead he sat quietly, watching in patience as I groaned and snarled, scratching my way to my feet and step by step, leaning against the wall for balance. It was a small victory yet left an impression large enough for me to slowly but surely write it here.

 

I've probably cried out the word “can't” a thousand times in the last few weeks. But for that number, he has coldly replied “can” at least a hundred times that.

 

 

The documents ended there, the bottom ripped and words lost. Yet they'd made their impression, my hand going to rub my temple.

 

“I haven't been totally straight with you,” Vegeta groaned the next day, cigarette perched between his lips. “I've thought about a hundred ways to say it, to say it nicely, to say it medically, to say it honestly. I've wanted to sugar coat it, I've wanted to spit it out laced with curses and the like, but I guess I'll just say it in the most mature way I can think of; Bulma had cancer.

 

“Yeah, she had cancer. I don't know why I would think she would tell me right off and I don't know why it damaged me so that she didn't. Weeks went by where she drifted further away, her image like a shadow in the crease of a wall. She was there, yet she wasn't. She remained yet faded, unnoticed.

 

“I was so stupid. I know I say it a lot, but I was just fucking stupid. I thought it was something so mundane, some human characteristic that made her heretically pull away from me for no apparent reason time and time again. I was so hateful towards her, wondering why she was losing weight, why she insisted on piling on makeup, so much so the very pores of her face became caked over with paste. I couldn't understand why her hair looked so very dismal one day and then this ugly, gaudy pile of blue curls the next. I couldn't grasp why her eyes, which had once shined, looked far away and lost so often.

 

“Had I been a better man, I might have just come out and asked her rather than playing some God awful game she didn't even realize she was involved in.

 

“In fact, it wasn't even until the day I nearly killed myself training that it even dawned on me that something very real was going on. Bulma was always the lightest sleeper, her bright eyes dashing open even if I'd merely twitched a finger within her vicinity. Yet when I'd awaken, stirring the tubes and machines connected to me, she'd laid absolutely still. I stared at her, happy for the time allowed to do so without my usual, cold nature kicking in. But I wasn't happy at what I saw.

 

“Her eyelids appeared sunken into her face, rough lines appearing where pretty, soft flesh previously had been. The skin beneath her makeup was gray, dark circles beneath false lashes. Eyebrows were painted over bald skin and I caught my own breath in my chest when it dawned on me that all of my hatred, all of my carelessness was being directed towards to wrong thing. Bulma was sick. Bulma was…. so sick.

 

“After while, there was no hiding what was happening, as the same time every day became the hours of concealing herself in the bathroom, the same hoarse groans and wretched heaves coming from within. She never knew it,” His eyes became softer. “but I sat outside the door every day, my finger tracing the knob just in case she might need me.

 

“It wasn't long after that that I began to find her, passed out in her own vomit, the loads of radiation taking their toll. The oddest thing to me was her reaction, her strange conclusion that I would somehow be ashamed of her or something. I swear, the woman's grasp on my character was overwhelmingly off. Yet it seemed that in all the world, I was the one person within it that she never wanted to find her.

 

“And while I was never ashamed, never sick with her, I became oddly enough, increasingly so with myself. I became a child Tazial. I felt like a fucking child every day. Helpless, worthless, I just watched her getting sick, sicker, every fucking day. I would sit over her bed and count the ways I had failed her, failed at making her better.

 

“I could destroy the universe, I probably would have if it only meant there was some hope of saving her. But I didn't even have that. I only had empty hours of watching her puke, watching her heave, holding her tiny body when all she could unload was acid and blood.

 

“I've never felt so alone in all the world, the day they took her in for the operation. It was like I was saying goodbye to my very best friend.”

 

He choked up for a minute, standing up and tossing his cigarette against the wall.

 

“I just remember how sad and scared she looked, how I would never have imagined she could look. This tiny, tiny little lady, holding tiny little fingers over the rests of her wheelchair. I remember watching them shave what little hair she had left, wanting to scream, wanting to rant and rave and blow something the fuck up.

 

“But I couldn't.

 

“All I could do was stand there and act strong. Act like I'd be working out in the meantime while they cut her, while they sawed her skull apart and prodded her mind. I can act every day like Bulma's dashing good looks were what brought me to her but really, the thing I adored the most was what lay at stake, the beautiful mind that was poisoning her.

 

“Frieza and his entire army couldn't have pulled me away and I mean that in the most literal sense. I stood outside the operating room, my heart beating like it was me underneath those brutal fluorescent lights. I crossed my arms over my chest, hands over my elbows so tight.

 

“Kakarot had come eventually, his words of encouragement like the irritation of a gnat buzzing in my ear. I was entirely inconsolable. His hand on my shoulder hardly registered, the words “strong” and “tough” and “fighter” coming from just about everyone. Yeah, sure. I was strong, I was tough, I was a fighter… yet there was nothing either one of us could do to change this.

 

“I don't pray and I don't know if I did pray to any certain force. I know I threatened a good deal, made cruel promises to whatever creature controls this universe. I know I whispered a few “please”s and “fuck”s here and there. But really, all I recall was talking to her. Talking her through it, talking as though she was standing right next to me, watching herself force her body to continue on.

 

“ “You can do this,” I said to no one in particular, either directing it to her or to myself. “You've gotta do this.”

 

“When the doctor told me she pulled through just fine, I actually hugged the bastard. I probably hurt him with the force, yanking him to me by the back of the neck.

 

“ “I could kiss you,” I spat, laughing when he insisted it wasn't quite necessary.

 

“From then on, I forced myself to be hard, to be cold. When she fell, I watched her through uncaring eyes. When she puked on herself, I nonchalantly tossed her a rag. I wouldn't be soft for her, couldn't be. I understood, in a language unspoken, that she needed it. She refused to be pitied and I refused to give her that. She refused to fail and I refused to watch her.

 

“There were days when she could hardly speak, others when she couldn't walk, and many others where her hand could barely hold the base of a pencil. She had to relearn everything, like being reborn during her mid twenties.

 

“I know she got frustrated, throwing things in tantrums that became a norm. I knew it enraged her to see pity reflecting in those around her. But I also knew that in one way or another, she appreciated that I gave her no mercy, gave her no room for giving up.

 

“One day came along, her strength returning to her yet her body exhausted by the day's efforts of impressing me. She lay on her side, soft, thin strands of blue finally beginning to peek out of the rag she wrapped around her head. Her eyelashes had returned, thick and black and I remember just trying not to smile like a complete goon when she gazed up at me, proud of herself and beaming with a healthiness that comes only after defeating some incredible foe.

 

“Her hand was beneath her head, lying on her side as she patted the bed, wanting me to lay beside her. I gave up the charade for the time being, crawling beside her as I sighed away the depression and the fear I'd been feeling every day for months. I let her gently hold my hand, saying nothing as we just stared at each other. There wasn't that awkwardness that came from silence, merely a strange, unspoken language. An unspoken triumph and an agreement that we'd beaten the big bad yet again, together.

 

“ “I love you you know,” She whispered, lids heavy over her eyes as she began to drift off. “I love you more than anything.”

 

“She yawned, bring the back of my hand to her mouth and softly kissing it.

 

“I love you more than anything Vegeta,” She whispered again. “I love you more than sunshine.”