Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Sing No Songs ❯ The immediate concern ( Chapter 11 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Chapter eleven

The day they buried Bulma had been strangely calm, almost as if the ritual had made the time stand still. The next day, though, things had happened very, very fast.

“It would seem like the threat is over, now that the ship is gone,” Gohan said, his steady, thoughtful voice drawing everyone's attention. It had quickly been decided that they would launch two of the space capsules, to find some answers to the questions that the aliens had left behind. After the capsules had been readied, they had gathered in Trunk's living room, to discuss the situation at hand.

Gohan was standing up, his back to a wall-wide glass cabinet filled with books, and Pan was next to him, a somber, concentrated look on her face. Goten sat on a thick rug, Veta and Sada snuggled up on either side of him, while Trunks, Miranda and Levi occupied the large, emerald green couch. For some reason Bra had chosen a chair by the far wall, some distance apart from everyone else.

“It's still imperative though, that we gather more information,” Gohan continued. “If you stop to think about it, we don't know anything except for what the captain told us. Perhaps this so-called `Galaxy' has as many resources as he says, and perhaps it hasn't. We have no way of knowing. But that is going to change... we will not be caught off guard one more time!”

“Hear, hear,” Bra muttered under her breath. It was an ironic mutter. She was not in the best of moods.

Gohan glanced mildly in her direction, before going back to what he was about to say, “What we have to decide is which of us are going. Much as I'd like to go myself, I'm afraid that I just can't leave Earth until we have confirmation that the danger has in fact passed.”

There was a round of nods. Gohan's had already made it clear that his first responsibility lay with the Earth.

“I'll go.” Goten raised a hand.

“Me too,” Pan said, and her voice was as unbending as iron.

“And I.” Bra did not hesitate, she was going, it almost went without saying. “I just hope, after all this talk about `gathering information', that you're not forgetting that we're also looking for my father.”

“Why yes, of course,” Gohan said, adjusting his glasses and clearing his throat. “That is definitely our most immediate concern.”

There was an extended moment of silence, and the air was thick with things unsaid. Trunks was the first to speak up, leaning back in the couch and laying one leg across the other.

“Well, you can count me out. I'm going to stay here. With my wife and my son.” The silence, after that, was even more tensed. Miranda nodded slowly and reached out to take his hand. Levi, who was sitting next to his mother, opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it again.

Later, Bra would berate herself for not trying to talk him out of it. She knew very well that there was a lot keeping her brother from leaving, but she was pretty sure that she could have made him change his decision if she had put some effort into it. Now she found that she couldn't say a word. She got to her feet and left the room.

It was just that she had had enough, she reasoned as she carried a small bag into the capsule. She had assumed that she and Trunks would be travelling together, looking for the ones that had taken their father.

Yet she shouldn't be surprised, she thought bitterly. In the past, hadn't Trunks disappointed her again and again when she had suggested that they should go somewhere together? When she had once laughed and hinted that he could use some time off, he had become impatient, patronizing. `At least one of us is doing something important and productive,' he said, `instead of just aimlessly traipsing around the world'. He had apologized afterwards, said that he was sorry, and they ended up spending the weekend together, talking about old times. Come to think about it, though, she had never asked Trunks to go on a trip with her ever again.

Bra dropped the bag on the floor. Bulma, who had been the one to equip the capsule some twenty years ago, seemed to have thought of everything, but there were still a couple of personal things that Bra wanted to bring. She looked around, letting her eyes linger on the few objects in the room. So this was it. A small circular chamber with two padded chairs, a metal table and several consoles and screens. A ladder led down to the sleeping alcoves. Oh, she could go nuts locked up in here, no doubt about it.

A timid knock startled her, she hadn't heard anyone approaching. She whirled around and found herself staring into the face of her nephew, less then an arm length away. The color of his eyes was striking, really, bright like the sun-lit tropical sea. Just like, Mom's. She actually had to look away for a while, steadying herself with a deep breath, before turning back to the boy. She hated this, this unholy haste; she needed to grieve, she needed some time to grieve.

“Er... hi!” Levi took a small step backwards and gave her a tense smile. He was wearing a very large backpack, as wide as the door, and higher then the top of his head. Padded straps weighted his shoulders. It almost appeared to heavy for his relatively slender frame, but he was carrying it without any visible effort.

“Levi...” Bra said slowly. “Is that a backpack you have there?”

“Yup.” He gave her another tense smile, daring, and filled with hope. His blue eyes pleaded with her.

“That's what I thought.” Bra frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well,” she said after a long pause, during which the boy had visibly started to wilt. “In or out, either way I'm closing that door.”

Levi practically jumped inside, and the door whooshed shut behind him.

The course of the diminutive space ship had already been set. All they would have to do was to press the large, red button that had the word `go!' written on top, and they should be leaving the Earth's atmosphere in a matter of seconds.

Bra raised one eyebrow at the boy. She then turned and walked up to the console with stiff, even strides. She slammed her fist down on the button and the engines roared to life.

All in all, it was not one of her most well-considered decisions.

---

In a way, it was actually pretty funny, Bra mused. To say that the boy's parents hadn't been happy would have been an understatement, but now they almost seemed to have gotten used to the idea. The other day, when she had talked to Trunks, he hadn't yelled at her once. Of course, the fact that nothing dangerous - or anything else for that matter - had happened yet, might have something to do with their amazing composure. It had been five days now, five days on this ship, and they hadn't come any closer to finding Vegeta.

Bra pushed her hair out of her eyes and sighed. Leaving her place by the screen, she walked up to the small, round window of the capsule. She found the deep silence oppressing. Levi was asleep, she was alone in the brightly lit room.

It was black out there, the myriad of stars did little to disperse the darkness in between. For years she had longed to see the stars like this, but now she felt almost ashamed to take this moment to enjoy them. Well, a part of her enjoyed them, another part found them thoroughly and utterly frustrating.

The problem with space, Bra mused gloomily, was that it simply had too many directions. To find something, if you didn't even know where to begin, was like the annoying needle in the haystack all over again. The stars only underlined the point: Too many directions.

She had been working by the computer 24 hours straight, trying to find a trace, a clue, anything that might tell her where the aliens were taking her father. In the beginning of their search, every little transmission that the computer had been able to pick up had sent her heart beating in hope and excitement. Now... looking at the glinting stars... she felt the first tendrils of bitter defeat. She refused to give up though, and she reminded herself of the other capsule, going in the opposite direction. She was not alone in this.

When the alien ship had disappeared, she hadn't really considered that they wouldn't find it again. Everything had happened so fast, so unexpectedly. Her mothers passing, the aliens' threats, the stone shattering the window, the ruined ground where East City had once lain. It all felt connected somehow, as if it were one single event. It couldn't just... end there, could it? Yet that was exactly how it had felt, like everything had come to an end.

They buried Bulma the day after, Trunks taking care of all the details with amazing speed.

Leaning even closer to the round window, Bra slowly exhaled and the glass in front of her mouth misted over. Hastily, before the mist disappeared, she painted with her finger an unsmiling face. Thinking of the funeral wasn't all that hard, really. It actually brought her a sense of comfort, albeit it was a melancholy kind of comfort.

She had gotten her wish. Bulma had been buried under the branches of a tall tree.

Bra looked down at the smooth surface of the white coffin. She was holding a handful of earth, feeling the small pebbles press against her palm as she closed her fingers around the soil. She noticed the patterns that the long branches cast on the coffin, uneven stripes of shadow and sunlight. A gentle gust of wind made the leaves of the tree whisper, and the patterns shifted slightly, a dance that she found strangely restful.

Her father should have been here, she though as she let go of the earth and watched it rain down upon the white wood. It wasn't right that Vegeta wasn't here for this.

She heard a flutter of wings and raised her head to see two birds take flight from somewhere within the highest branches of the tree. Sparrows, she believed. They circled each other for a fleeting moment, swift and graceful against the empty sky. And she thought, as she watched them circle, that she should tell her father about this. Just tell him... about the birds.

Well, Bra thought, as she left her place by the coffin and pulled her jacket tighter around her body. Well, we search for meanings in the most curious of things.

“I miss you, Mom,” Bra said, leaning her forehead against the cool surface of the window. “I really, really miss you.”

---

Bra padded over to one of the cushioned chairs, the soft slippers she was wearing making little or no sound against the grid-like surface of the floor. She sat down sideways in the chair, her legs dangling over the armrest.

Without changing her position, she reached out to press a sequence on a nearby keyboard, and the large screen in front of her flashed to life.

“What?” a voice said. “Oh, hello Bra.” Pan was sitting in a room that was an exact mirror of Bra's. The other woman's back was very straight, and, Bra noticed, she was wearing heavy military-type boots.

On the edge of the screen, she saw Goten on the floor, doing pushups. He looked up and gave her a wave, before resuming his pushups one-handed, a deeply focused expression on his face as he went about his training.

“So have you found anything yet?”

“For the tenth time, Bra...” Pan glared at her, and Bra got the feeling that this was how she used to talk to her children when they were doing something that wasn't exactly wrong, but still extremely annoying. “If we found anything, anything at all, we would tell you.”

“I know.” Bra swung around in the chair, sitting cross-legged on the seat. “I know. It's just...” She sighed and leaned her chin in her hand.

“Listen,” Pan said, her demeanor softening. “How long has it been since you got any sleep? You look beat.” Again Bra was reminded of how the other woman must have talked to her children.

A few days earlier, Bra had, mostly as a joke, asked her why she hadn't taken the two girls with her on the ship. In all seriousness, Pan said that, sure, she had been meaning to bring them, but at the last minute Gohan had talked her into leaving them with him and Videl. It seemed like his insistence that it might be dangerous hadn't impressed Pan nearly as much as the fact that it might get boring, locked up in the ship for who knew how long.

“Actually,” Bra said, smiling slightly. “I am kind of tired. Bed sounds like a really good idea right now.”

“Okay, guess we'll hear from you later,” Pan said, a hint of dry amusement in her voice. “Sweet dreams,” she added, as the screen went blank.

“Thanks.” Bra yawned widely and rubbed her eyes. “I suppose you can't compromise with sleep,” she said with a mock-fatalistic sigh.

Touching a switch on the wall, she turned off the light. The soothing darkness made her aware of just how tired she really was, and she could feel her eyelids drooping as she walked across the room. Slowly she climbed down the first steps of the ladder. She couldn't go to sleep just yet, though. Not without glancing one last time out of the window.

The stars appeared unchanged, immovable, even though she know for a fact that the ship was soaring through space at an incredible speed. It was totally silent around her, no sounds from the engines, not a whisper out of the waiting screens. It was eerie, dreamlike. Just the dark, the ladder she was hanging on to, and the distances on all sides.

Were they going anywhere, were they getting any closer? Or were they just standing there, suspended in space like a dream?

Father, she thought, staring into the emptiness. Father, where are you?