Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Sing No Songs ❯ Looking back ( Chapter 9 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Kimmy Jarl 
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Suspense / Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 05.01.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.2K | Visits: 879 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Suspense / Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 05.01.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.2K | Visits: 879 | Status: Work In Progress
Chapter nine
It was like nothing Bra had ever seen before. Where East City once had been there was only a reach of scarred land, a shallow crater so wide that the other side touched the horizon. All she could do was stare, the beating of her heart loud in her ears. The wind blew unhindered across the bare land. In the air she could smell sand and dust and fire and burning.
Though she was aware of Gohan standing by her side and Goten, Pan and her brother not far away, she felt completely alone. It was as if the emptiness in front of her filled her up - the same emptiness, the same dust and the same burning.
She had lived in East City on and off for many years, and she had several friends there. She had her favourite restaurants and her favourite place in the park.
The city had been evacuated, she remembered with an almost sickeningly strong wave of relief. People had still been killed, though. She thought of the military tanks she had seen on the TV-screen.
"I can't believe father did this," she whispered.
Yet there was no doubt. They had all felt it when Vegeta had let go of the power, known it when the power had reverberated through the ground. To Bra it had felt like a sudden pressure in her chest. An ache. Standing there before the overwhelming sight, she felt the ache take a deeper hold.
"Why would he do this?"
In a sense, she did not really care why. Not right now. A treacherous voice whispered in her mind: Would he still have done it if the count of people had been millions?
She would have said it was impossible, that her father least of all had wanted something like that to happen. She would have said, "I know this, not only because I love him, but because I know him."
---
Oh, love was a big part of it. When she was a little girl she loved her father with a kind of unconditional adoration. Whenever she could she hung on his hand and climbed into his lap, wanting to tell him everything on her mind, everything of her. All the hurtful times that he walked away from her, those were instantly forgiven the next time she saw him. "Daddy," she would scream out and run to him. In her eyes he could do nothing wrong.
When she became older, things became less easy. She started to compare him to the fathers of her classmates, perhaps, and she noticed that he was not like them. He did not have a job, was not interested in her homework, never wanted to play a game of cards. He kept his words to a bare minimum, never laughed or joked and hardly ever smiled.
She became aware of a tension, of thousands of things left unsaid. Or perhaps that had only been her, ashamed of her thoughts, of her doubts, of the new distance she felt.
Once she came home from school just in time to see Vegeta come out from the Gravity Room. He seemed totally exhausted, almost leaning against the wall to keep himself upright. Large patches of his clothes seemed burned away and with vague shock, she thought that... yes, he was bleeding. Small red trails ran down the side of his face. His ear seemed covered in blood and he raised his hand to wipe at it with a gesture of indifference. Slowly, his head down, he started to walk in the direction of the showers. He did not see her, or if he did he did not let her know.
She had got so used to her father's training that she had never really asked herself why. Why was it so important to him? Why hour upon hour with punishing his body under gravity hundreds of times that of Earth's. She knew he was fighting, dealing out strikes and lunges that were lethal to any enemies. But there were no enemies. He was alone, going through the old movements again and again.
Sometimes he could lock himself away for days at a time. Only seldom would he come out to eat and then he rarely talked to anyone. Bra smiled at him and was ignored, or he might look up and say something that just did not make any sense, something that had nothing to do with her. Bulma always amazed her with her patience at those times. Her mother, she had just... been there. Not too close, not insisting upon anything, just there.
Sometimes Bra thought she could get a glimpse of her parents' contentment in each other. Looking at them, Bra would think that they understood each other: that they shared something that went beyond words. She would never doubt the reality behind this notion. It made sense to her, and it made her feel safe.
In her early teens Bra's attitude to her father changed to a kind of impatient attention. She sat him down to listen to her music, joined him when he was alone in the kitchen or the garden and nagged him to drive her to places and to come shopping with her.
She had taken to ask questions about his past, not really interested at the time, but well aware how much it provoked him. She hated indifference, and perhaps this was an attempt to hold on to the feelings of her childhood, even as she could feel them slipping through her fingers. But her efforts had done little to change him in the way she wanted. Her attempts became aggressive from the start, expecting rejection, letting every little bit of disappointment hurt her.
One day she lashed out at him, without any particular provocation, just feeling the need to. She roused from the dining room table and pushed her chair back so hard that it fell on the floor and broke, screaming things she did not know she had thought or felt.
"You don't care, you don't care about anything. You just walk around like some kind of ice-statue! What's with this self-centered act, why can't you just get over yourself? I hate you!" Her voice became low and venomous, as hissed the last words. "You're such a fake, Daddy."
He did not answer. He just looked at her, absorbing her anger and spite as he had used to absorb her gushing affection. Taking it all in.
She fell silent then, feeling like she had done something inexcusable. Why wouldn't he argue back! But no, he just stared at her, seemingly accepting her every word. In a way, it was like kicking someone that was already down.
Still, she was angry and her anger stayed with her as she left home for the university. She called her mother several times a week, and they had long conversations about anything, lightly and effortlessly understanding each other. Vegeta she seldom spoke to. They did not have a lot in common after all and besides, she thought, she was an adult now. Growing up meant that she could leave whatever confrontations with her father behind and just get on with her life. It was a kind of relief, she told herself.
Years later, though, she found out that she still had some growing up to do. After a series of disappointments she came home in a sort of deliberate journey of self-discovery. Wanting to make sense of it all, perhaps - she did not know, she just felt like there was something missing.
It was good to be home again and she discovered that the tension and the hurt did not have to be there after all. She visited her parents regularly after that. She learned to talk to her father without putting any unspoken pressure behind her words, to be completely open and to let go of any expectations. In time she managed to find a plateau of peace. Even if it meant that she had to keep a certain distance, it did result in moments of stillness when she felt completely content and accepted.
Strange, that she had taken to treating her father as if he needed such casual gentleness. Well, she told herself, perhaps he did. When they were alone, or when she saw him together with Bulma, she got to see sides of him that she had never seen before. She saw a... unassuming kindness, a honest will not to cause any harm.
And she loved him all over again.
---
Bra could hear someone behind her and she turned around, feeling like her thoughts were slowly waking up. Trunks, Goten and Pan walked towards her, rising small clouds of dust with every step.
"Why would father do this?" Trunks said, echoing her former question.
The five people looked at each other, but no one had an answer. There was a prolonged silence and then Bra heard Gohan sigh by her side.
"At least they are gone now," he said, as if that was all that mattered.
"What do you mean?"
"The aliens. They are gone and so is the immediate threat against the Earth. The only cost was one city that was as good as empty. I suppose it will be rebuilt again."
There were so much wrong in all that that Bra did not knew where to start, but then she noticed that his voice was distant and his eyes were wide and shocked.
"Listen," Pan said. "You said something earlier about Vegeta surrendering to this galactic police or whoever they are?"
"Yes," Gohan said, drawing a hand through his hair. "He didn't say that exactly, but I believe it was implied. If you think about it, it was the best way to handle the situation. Starting a battle might have been disastrous, considering the risks."
"How can you say that!" Bra was close to tears and she did not know if it was from anger or sorrow. "What about my dad!"
"I don't think he's in a terrible amount of danger," Gohan said uncertainly. "Let's not forget who he is."
"Don't patronize me!" Bra said heatedly. "He's in the hands of fanatical people that are determined to see him dead. They hate him, they think he has committed all these terrible crimes and, and..." Her voice trailed off.
"Bra," Gohan spoke gently, hesitatingly. "Your father did a great thing, a noble sacrifice, when he choose to give himself up. But..."
"Oh, I have heard some of the stories," she almost spat out. "I know his youth was... very violent, but that was before, before he came to live on Earth. He's nothing like that anymore!"
All Gohan did was to raise his eyes to take in the sight around them. He did not say anything.
"Wha-" Bra stared at him.
"It's kind if ironic," Gohan finally said in a low voice, "that he would leave the planet the same way he had came."
"Wha-" Bra breathed again. She turned her gaze to Pan, and then looked incredulously at Trunks. "You're not listening to that, are you?"
No one seemed quite willing to meet her eyes. There was a long moment of silence before Bra found anything to say.
"I used to believe in a lot of things that turned out to be a lie." She took a deep shuddering breath and her voice become loud and insisting. "But if it's one thing I know, one thing that I'm absolutely certain of, it is that my father would never willingly hurt anyone!"
Her words were taken up by the emptiness around them, without even leaving an echo.
It was like nothing Bra had ever seen before. Where East City once had been there was only a reach of scarred land, a shallow crater so wide that the other side touched the horizon. All she could do was stare, the beating of her heart loud in her ears. The wind blew unhindered across the bare land. In the air she could smell sand and dust and fire and burning.
Though she was aware of Gohan standing by her side and Goten, Pan and her brother not far away, she felt completely alone. It was as if the emptiness in front of her filled her up - the same emptiness, the same dust and the same burning.
She had lived in East City on and off for many years, and she had several friends there. She had her favourite restaurants and her favourite place in the park.
The city had been evacuated, she remembered with an almost sickeningly strong wave of relief. People had still been killed, though. She thought of the military tanks she had seen on the TV-screen.
"I can't believe father did this," she whispered.
Yet there was no doubt. They had all felt it when Vegeta had let go of the power, known it when the power had reverberated through the ground. To Bra it had felt like a sudden pressure in her chest. An ache. Standing there before the overwhelming sight, she felt the ache take a deeper hold.
"Why would he do this?"
In a sense, she did not really care why. Not right now. A treacherous voice whispered in her mind: Would he still have done it if the count of people had been millions?
She would have said it was impossible, that her father least of all had wanted something like that to happen. She would have said, "I know this, not only because I love him, but because I know him."
---
Oh, love was a big part of it. When she was a little girl she loved her father with a kind of unconditional adoration. Whenever she could she hung on his hand and climbed into his lap, wanting to tell him everything on her mind, everything of her. All the hurtful times that he walked away from her, those were instantly forgiven the next time she saw him. "Daddy," she would scream out and run to him. In her eyes he could do nothing wrong.
When she became older, things became less easy. She started to compare him to the fathers of her classmates, perhaps, and she noticed that he was not like them. He did not have a job, was not interested in her homework, never wanted to play a game of cards. He kept his words to a bare minimum, never laughed or joked and hardly ever smiled.
She became aware of a tension, of thousands of things left unsaid. Or perhaps that had only been her, ashamed of her thoughts, of her doubts, of the new distance she felt.
Once she came home from school just in time to see Vegeta come out from the Gravity Room. He seemed totally exhausted, almost leaning against the wall to keep himself upright. Large patches of his clothes seemed burned away and with vague shock, she thought that... yes, he was bleeding. Small red trails ran down the side of his face. His ear seemed covered in blood and he raised his hand to wipe at it with a gesture of indifference. Slowly, his head down, he started to walk in the direction of the showers. He did not see her, or if he did he did not let her know.
She had got so used to her father's training that she had never really asked herself why. Why was it so important to him? Why hour upon hour with punishing his body under gravity hundreds of times that of Earth's. She knew he was fighting, dealing out strikes and lunges that were lethal to any enemies. But there were no enemies. He was alone, going through the old movements again and again.
Sometimes he could lock himself away for days at a time. Only seldom would he come out to eat and then he rarely talked to anyone. Bra smiled at him and was ignored, or he might look up and say something that just did not make any sense, something that had nothing to do with her. Bulma always amazed her with her patience at those times. Her mother, she had just... been there. Not too close, not insisting upon anything, just there.
Sometimes Bra thought she could get a glimpse of her parents' contentment in each other. Looking at them, Bra would think that they understood each other: that they shared something that went beyond words. She would never doubt the reality behind this notion. It made sense to her, and it made her feel safe.
In her early teens Bra's attitude to her father changed to a kind of impatient attention. She sat him down to listen to her music, joined him when he was alone in the kitchen or the garden and nagged him to drive her to places and to come shopping with her.
She had taken to ask questions about his past, not really interested at the time, but well aware how much it provoked him. She hated indifference, and perhaps this was an attempt to hold on to the feelings of her childhood, even as she could feel them slipping through her fingers. But her efforts had done little to change him in the way she wanted. Her attempts became aggressive from the start, expecting rejection, letting every little bit of disappointment hurt her.
One day she lashed out at him, without any particular provocation, just feeling the need to. She roused from the dining room table and pushed her chair back so hard that it fell on the floor and broke, screaming things she did not know she had thought or felt.
"You don't care, you don't care about anything. You just walk around like some kind of ice-statue! What's with this self-centered act, why can't you just get over yourself? I hate you!" Her voice became low and venomous, as hissed the last words. "You're such a fake, Daddy."
He did not answer. He just looked at her, absorbing her anger and spite as he had used to absorb her gushing affection. Taking it all in.
She fell silent then, feeling like she had done something inexcusable. Why wouldn't he argue back! But no, he just stared at her, seemingly accepting her every word. In a way, it was like kicking someone that was already down.
Still, she was angry and her anger stayed with her as she left home for the university. She called her mother several times a week, and they had long conversations about anything, lightly and effortlessly understanding each other. Vegeta she seldom spoke to. They did not have a lot in common after all and besides, she thought, she was an adult now. Growing up meant that she could leave whatever confrontations with her father behind and just get on with her life. It was a kind of relief, she told herself.
Years later, though, she found out that she still had some growing up to do. After a series of disappointments she came home in a sort of deliberate journey of self-discovery. Wanting to make sense of it all, perhaps - she did not know, she just felt like there was something missing.
It was good to be home again and she discovered that the tension and the hurt did not have to be there after all. She visited her parents regularly after that. She learned to talk to her father without putting any unspoken pressure behind her words, to be completely open and to let go of any expectations. In time she managed to find a plateau of peace. Even if it meant that she had to keep a certain distance, it did result in moments of stillness when she felt completely content and accepted.
Strange, that she had taken to treating her father as if he needed such casual gentleness. Well, she told herself, perhaps he did. When they were alone, or when she saw him together with Bulma, she got to see sides of him that she had never seen before. She saw a... unassuming kindness, a honest will not to cause any harm.
And she loved him all over again.
---
Bra could hear someone behind her and she turned around, feeling like her thoughts were slowly waking up. Trunks, Goten and Pan walked towards her, rising small clouds of dust with every step.
"Why would father do this?" Trunks said, echoing her former question.
The five people looked at each other, but no one had an answer. There was a prolonged silence and then Bra heard Gohan sigh by her side.
"At least they are gone now," he said, as if that was all that mattered.
"What do you mean?"
"The aliens. They are gone and so is the immediate threat against the Earth. The only cost was one city that was as good as empty. I suppose it will be rebuilt again."
There were so much wrong in all that that Bra did not knew where to start, but then she noticed that his voice was distant and his eyes were wide and shocked.
"Listen," Pan said. "You said something earlier about Vegeta surrendering to this galactic police or whoever they are?"
"Yes," Gohan said, drawing a hand through his hair. "He didn't say that exactly, but I believe it was implied. If you think about it, it was the best way to handle the situation. Starting a battle might have been disastrous, considering the risks."
"How can you say that!" Bra was close to tears and she did not know if it was from anger or sorrow. "What about my dad!"
"I don't think he's in a terrible amount of danger," Gohan said uncertainly. "Let's not forget who he is."
"Don't patronize me!" Bra said heatedly. "He's in the hands of fanatical people that are determined to see him dead. They hate him, they think he has committed all these terrible crimes and, and..." Her voice trailed off.
"Bra," Gohan spoke gently, hesitatingly. "Your father did a great thing, a noble sacrifice, when he choose to give himself up. But..."
"Oh, I have heard some of the stories," she almost spat out. "I know his youth was... very violent, but that was before, before he came to live on Earth. He's nothing like that anymore!"
All Gohan did was to raise his eyes to take in the sight around them. He did not say anything.
"Wha-" Bra stared at him.
"It's kind if ironic," Gohan finally said in a low voice, "that he would leave the planet the same way he had came."
"Wha-" Bra breathed again. She turned her gaze to Pan, and then looked incredulously at Trunks. "You're not listening to that, are you?"
No one seemed quite willing to meet her eyes. There was a long moment of silence before Bra found anything to say.
"I used to believe in a lot of things that turned out to be a lie." She took a deep shuddering breath and her voice become loud and insisting. "But if it's one thing I know, one thing that I'm absolutely certain of, it is that my father would never willingly hurt anyone!"
Her words were taken up by the emptiness around them, without even leaving an echo.