Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Silent Vow ❯ The Right Thing ( Chapter 2 )

Title: Silent Vow

Author: Killarri

Email: killarri@yahoo.com

Rating: R (Will go to NC-17 in later chapters)

Warnings: Language, violence, and major Yamcha bashing. This is a major AU! If you don't like AU's then run the other way now! hehehe

Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ. Akira Toriyama, Toei, FUNimation, and a whole bunch of other people that I do not know own it. I'm borrowing the characters without consent and absolutely no money will be made from this.

AN: Special thanks to nsbvegeta, DarkBulma, Gansta By Nacha for your reviews! I'm glad you guys liked the last chapter and I hope you'll like this one as well. I read through it three times before posting, but since I still don't have a beta reader, there will probably be some errors I missed. I'm pretty bad at catching my own errors. That's why I'm desperately seeking a beta reader. If anyone's interested, please e-mail me or let me know in your review. Now on with the story!

Silent Vow

Chapter Two: The Right Thing

Goku thought of quite a few different scenarios to explain his friend's state during the long hours of her surgery, but the reality of it was one that he hadn't even come close to considering. Yamcha did that to her?! He couldn't believe it. The Yamcha he'd known always seemed like a nice, smart guy, not a monster that would almost kill the woman he professed to love. What happened? How long had he been abusing his best friend? And why didn't she tell him?

Once the shock finally wore off, protective rage set in. His first thought, I'm going to kill him. His fists clenched and his teeth ground together, and he had to stop himself from running out of the room to go find Yamcha and kick his miserable ass. The only thing that snapped him from the rare moment of fury-driven bloodlust was the doctor, who could probably pass Dr. Briefs' twin except his hair and whiskers were a snow white, as he began to address Bulma.

"Well, Miss Briefs," he sighed, "your guardian angel must have been working overtime because you are very lucky to even be alive. When the paramedics brought you in, they'd already had to resuscitate you once, and you were taken into emergency surgery. There was a lot of internal bleeding, so much so that I didn't think I could get it to stop." Pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose, he continued, "Your heart stopped during the surgery, and it took us several minutes to bring you back."

Bulma gasped, wide-eyed, apparently realizing just how close to death she really came. "Am I going to be okay?" She asked in a shaky voice.

"Well, barring any post-operation complications, you should make a full recovery."

"How long until she's released?" Dr. Briefs questioned.

"We'll have to keep her a few days for monitoring. If everything checks out, she should be home by the end of the week." He regarded Bulma with a deep frown. "You're going to have to take it easy for a while. Until those broken limbs heal completely, you'll need someone to help take care of you, and I don't want you to return to your normal duties until I give the okay."

Bulma laughed lightly, wincing slightly from the pain the small movement caused, "No objections there."

He smiled. "Well, I have other patients to see. I'll be back to check up on you later." He turned to leave the room but stopped short to address the others in the room, "And don't get my patient too excited." With a wink at the woman in the hospital bed, he quietly left her to her friends and family.

"Bulma," Goku began, anxious to finally hear the story, "you said that Yamcha did this to you?" At her nod he continued, "Was it the first time?"

She shook her head and opened her mouth for a reply, but her gaze drifted to the wall where Vegeta was standing. "Ok, no offense, but who the hell are you?"

"He's my cousin, Vegeta." Goku answered quickly. His cousin had a pretty short temper and Bulma's question came off more than a little snooty, even to him.

"Oh."

"So this wasn't the first time?" He asked pulling out the small wire bound notebook that he used for notes and a pen.

Again, she shook her head. "Let's see," she mumbled, closing her eyes, "the first time was…. probably about a year ago. Some girlfriends from work invited me along on a girl's night out. I got a little tipsy and did a little harmless flirting…nothing really, I had no intentions, but he saw and we had a huge fight about it….and he hit me. After that I refused talk to him for days, but he apologized and promised to never hit me again." She paused a moment to draw a shaky breath, "And I was stupid. I believed him. Time and time again I took him back when I shouldn't have."

A year? He'd been beating her for a year? Why didn't he see it? How could he have missed that his best friend was in an abusive relationship? "Bulma," the tall officer sighed, raking a hand through his wild ebony hair, "why didn't you tell us? We could have helped you."

"I know Goku, I know." She replied softly as her eyes filled with tears again. "I know I should've gotten out the first time he hit me after he promised that he wouldn't but…" she sighed heavily as the water spilled from her eyes and down her cheeks, "At first I stayed because I loved him and I wanted to help him get past his alcoholism. He promised to quit drinking a few times and even went to A.A. for a while, but he never stayed sober long. Everything went to hell when he lost his job a few months ago. He didn't even try to look for another job, and his drinking went from monthly binges to everyday. By then I was absolutely terrified to leave him."

"What happened last night?" Goku questioned gently.

"I-I was getting ready for bed when he started banging on the door. He was drunk and I didn't really want to let him in, but I did anyway. He was already pretty upset and he said that he saw me flirting with someone at work. I tried to reason with him, but he wouldn't listen, and just started hitting me…" she trailed off burying her face in her hands. "I-I-I couldn't do anything b-but scream." She sobbed.

Never one to refuse comfort if a friend needed it, he sat the pen and paper down before sitting on the bed and drawing his sobbing best friend into his embrace. "It's going to be okay now, Bulma." He murmured in a soothing tone. "You can get a restraining order that will make it illegal for him to come within a thousand feet of you."

Her sobs slowed and in a small voice, she asked, "Really?"

Goku nodded. "Everything's going to be alright now."

Bulma stopped crying and with her good hand, wiped any lingering tears from her eyes. "Thank you, Goku." She whispered sincerely, managing a small smile with it.

"Of course," he replied, "Chi Chi and I are always here for you, Bulma." Her smile grew a little wider at his comment, and Goku couldn't resist the urge to grin, despite the somber mood, relieved to see his friend in good spirits, especially considering the hell she'd been through.

And now that he had all the necessary information, he needed to pay Yamcha a little visit. "I hate to go," Goku sighed, rising from the bed, "but there's a certain someone that I'm just dying to arrest."

Bulma chuckled lightly. "Just don't do anything that you could get in trouble for."

Goku snorted. As tempting as the idea of seriously hurting him sounded, Yamcha Sanzoku was not worth his job. But then again, if he resisted arrest it was a whole different ball game. And so after promising to return before going home, they left Bulma with her parents, and for the first time in his life Goku found himself hoping that this next arrest wasn't so routine. If there was an opportunity to do so within the law, he was more than ready to get a few hits in for Bulma.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

He was startled out of a sound sleep at sudden banging at the front door, and grumbling under his breath, he stumbled from the small hide-away bed in the living room the few feet to the door, yanking it open angrily. "What?" He hissed at his landlord, a short, middle-aged, balding man with just about the biggest nose that he'd ever seen.

"It's the fifteenth."

"So?"

"Where's my rent? You're already two weeks late on it."

"I don't have it yet," he began until he was cut off.

"It's either in my hand by 5:00 today, Mr. Sanzoku, or you're out. I'll have the cops here at 5:01 if I don't get that money." He didn't even give Yamcha a chance to reply, turning on his heel and headed back downstairs to where the leasing office was.

"This is just fucking great." He muttered, shutting the door with a little more force than was necessary, but he didn't care. After all most of his neighbors were old busybodies and he didn't give a shit if he was disrupting them.

Yamcha flopped back onto the bed, and sighed. A quick glance at the clock on the wall told him that he had three hours to come up with $350. How the hell was he supposed to do that? The savings account was long gone, and the credit cards were already way over their limit. The only option left was selling his own drugs, but the small amount of pot, acid, and crank probably still wouldn't be enough to get that much money. Well, that and he didn't want to be without the one thing that kept him going.

Life had always been hard, sometimes unbearable, and illegal drugs as well as alcohol were the only things that made it bearable.

Born to a cracked out prostitute, he was also addicted to the stuff right out of the womb. Coupled with the fact that his mother hadn't seen an obstetrician during her pregnancy, and actually hadn't even known she was pregnant until in labor, his life literally began on a fucked up note. Social services weren't nearly as good at removing children from potentially harmful homes, and thus, she was allowed to keep her baby, and return to the streets.

There was never enough food; most of the household's income was spent on crack, heroine, and various other drugs. Yamcha began stealing at a young age, first just things like food to survive, but soon onto valuables like TVs, stereos, and jewelry, things that could be sold at a pawn shop for a decent amount. At nine, he ran away from home and survived the frigid winter months on the streets, digging in trashcans for food when he couldn't steal or scrounge up money, but he was caught by the police and sent home. He ran several times, each time lasting longer and making more friends and allies in the neighborhood, and by the time he was thirteen he'd already been "beaten in" to a gang.

The final time he ran he lasted nine months before the police found him, but instead of taking him home, they took him to juvenile detention. Juvie, as it was most commonly called, was considerably tougher than the inner-city ghettos called home, and in order to survive, you had to be able to talk big and back it up with lots of friends. In the month he spent in Juvie while waiting for a foster home placement, Yamcha picked up quite a few things from the other kids. By the time he was fifteen, he could steal a car in thirty seconds and rob a home of its more expensive valuables in less than five minutes.

He couldn't remember the first time he smoked marijuana, the first drug he ever experimented with. It was probably before he ran the first time, so he wasn't even ten at the time. Though his mother mostly smoked crack, she usually had a little stash of pot, hidden in her sock drawer but she also left the roaches from the joints she smoked in the ashtray. With so many different drugs at his disposal, he tried every one and found something that could release him from the hell that was his life.

Another loud knock jolted him from his thoughts, and he went to answer it, checking through the peep hole first. He was happy he looked first because on his door step were two uniformed police officers, and not even taking a moment beyond registering the fact that they were uniformed police officers, he bolted for the far window and the metal fire escape.

He was down the first set of stairs when he heard his front door smashed in and then heavy footsteps on the metal right behind him. Yamcha poured on the speed once he was off the staircase and headed down the alley, throwing boxes, trash cans, anything that he could get his hands on behind him to slow the cops down. He didn't waste any time glancing back though and instead concentrated on getting to a populated area, somewhere he could lose them.

Rounding the corner onto a busy sidewalk, he knocked several people to the ground as he whizzed by. He threw a small newsstand to the ground, and finally spared a glance backward. There was only one chasing him now, a shorter guy with dark flame like hair, and he almost laughed. I've taken guys twice his size. Then he noticed that the cop was gaining ground. Damn, this pig is pretty fast, he thought running across a busy street. Cars swerved to avoid him and crashed into each other, but remarkably, Yamcha got through unscathed. He could only hope as he ducked into another alley that the pile-up slowed the cop down as exhaustion was beginning to settle in.

Yamcha never heard a thing; one moment he was running along and the next something plowed into him from behind and his body roughly hit the pavement. He spun around, limbs flailing wildly, to meet his attacker and froze.

"Goku?"

"You son of a bitch." The tall officer hissed dangerously, fists clenching at his sides. "I should beat the hell out of you. See how you like it! Even then, it still wouldn't be what you deserve."

"Goku?" Yamcha asked again, completely baffled. "What's your problem?"

"You want to know what my problem is?!" Goku screamed. The expression on his face was murderous, and Yamcha began to back away, suddenly afraid. "My problem is that you've been hitting my best friend."

"What?! I would never hit Bulma." It was a blatant lie of course, but he was willing to try anything to get out of this mess.

"Don't fucking lie to me!" Goku grabbed the collar of his shirt, and yanked him closer, until just inches separated them. The other hand, balled into a fist, was raised and about to deliver a blow when another voice in the alley called out.

"Kakarott!"

Goku turned, and in that second Yamcha sprang into action, nailing him with a blow to the side of the head. The second the vice grip on his shirt eased, he kicked at Goku's leg, making the still off-guard cop fall to the ground in pain, and then the newly freed man took off running, desperate to get away from the scene while he still could.

His freedom was short lived, however, because seconds later he was shoved into a brick wall, banging his head before falling to the ground with a grunt. The cop wasted no time and took advantage of his disorientation and before Yamcha could even mutter a protest, he was in handcuffs.

"Yamcha Sanzoku, you are under arrest for the attempted murder of Bulma Briefs." The short cop stated, pulling him to his feet, and then went on to the Miranda rights, something he'd heard more than a few times already. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in a court of law; you have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you."

"Good, you got him." Goku said once he'd caught up to them. He smirked and grabbed Yamcha's arm. "Come on, Yamcha. We're going to have a nice little talk."

As he was lead away, hand-cuffed, tired, and dirty, he thought to himself, what a shitty day.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Hours after Bulma's final visitor left for the day, and night had fully settled on West City, she lay awake in bed, anxiousness keeping her from slumber. Had she done the right thing? She'd known for a while that there was something wrong with Yamcha. He was unstable at best and recent events spoke of his worst, but until Goku returned to give her the details of the arrest, apparently she hadn't known the half of it. In addition to being an alcoholic, which she did know about, Yamcha was also a drug addict. Goku said that they'd found a half ounce of marijuana, a couple drops of acid, as well as small amounts of crack cocaine.

It was shocking to her; she had dated the man for over five years, and there was never any indication of more serious problems than the alcoholism. And then she realized that even though she'd been with Yamcha for a long time, she still didn't really know him.

Had she ever known him?

She'd met Yamcha during her sophomore year of college. There was a small coffee shop a few blocks north of West City University's campus, a very popular hangout for the students. Bulma and her friend, Chairity, spent long hours there loading up on the Mocha Lattes while cramming for finals. Shortly before class adjourned for the holidays, he started working there and after two weeks of intense flirting, they were dating.

In the beginning, everything was perfect. Yamcha was the sweet, attentive, caring boyfriend that she had always wanted. He was always there, always smiling, taking her to nice restaurants, the amusement park, dancing; they did everything together.

And for the life of her, Bulma still couldn't figure out when it all changed.

But gradually, over the course of a few years, he became more critical of her appearance, openly insulting her when she chose to go out wearing tight, skin-revealing outfits. It wasn't like she wore indecent clothing. They were all sexy and tasteful, leaving more to the imagination that revealing openly, but it didn't really matter. To placate him, and more than a little sick of his bitching, she stopped wearing miniskirts, tank tops, and just anything that he deemed "slutty".

He became prone to fits of jealousy, flying off the handle whenever she so much as talked to another man. At first she found it somewhat charming that he would get all bent out of shape simply from jealousy, but it quickly began grating on her nerves. She had always been very independent; as the only child of the great scientist, Dr. Briefs, she was given a lot of leeway as a child to explore the world around her. Her parents offered advice and guidance, but they preferred to stand back and let her make her own decisions about her life.

Regardless of the nagging voice in the back of her mind, she made the changes necessary to please him. She told herself that he wasn't being irrational. She loved him and wanted to make him happy. After all, sacrifice was a part of love, just like compromise and honesty.

Unfortunately the latter two qualities were in short supply.

"God, I am so stupid." Bulma grumbled under her breath, into the dark, empty room. And she was. If she'd listened to her instincts and gotten out of the relationship when the domestic violence started, she wouldn't be lying in a hospital bed right now.

But still, had she done the right thing?

What was the alternative? Even if she hadn't turned him in, the abuse probably wouldn't have stopped. There were already half a dozen or so promises, all broken, and there was no reason to believe that one would ever be kept. He said he loved her, but it wasn't love. It was the need to completely dominate her. He wanted to possess her, keep her from friends and family and totally to himself. It was an insane obsession, one that wouldn't be satisfied until he either succeeded at completely isolating her from society or she was dead at his hands. There was no future in a life with him, only death.

She'd made the right decision.

Feeling better about herself than she had in years, Bulma allowed a small smile to settle onto her face. Her eyelids fluttered shut as she finally let exhaustion take her into a deep, peaceful sleep.