Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ The Colours Within ❯ Proposal ( Chapter 11 )

eleven. proposal.

 

Bulma never bothered to tell Yamcha about what disaster had befallen Vegeta in space, nor how she and her father had worked to save him. She suspected he would take it the wrong way and never see her father's reasoning or logic. So she kept it to herself and secretly hoped he had reached Madan-sei.

 

It had been nearly three weeks since the incident and she guessed that if Vegeta had used his Ki to propel the gravity room it shouldn't have taken him more than five days, provided he didn't run into any trouble. Though, of course, no asteroid or comet, and not many aliens either, would be able to withstand the full force of Vegeta's blasts.

 

Dr. Briefs had suggested they try to contact Vegeta to see if he had reached his destination safely, but Bulma had talked him out of it.

 

“He won't appreciate it,” she'd said, “he'll only get annoyed that we're bothering him. Isn't that why he destroyed communications in the first place?”

 

“I just want to ensure he made it so that if he didn't we can try something else.”

 

“I'm pretty sure he did, and frankly, what else can we do? Look… if you want to contact him, be my guest, but I'm not going to. He's a Saiya-jin after all, not a child.”

 

Dr. Briefs had relented, but not before suggesting Bulma begin work on a new and improved gravity room. He suspected Vegeta would return to Earth before too much longer, and he didn't trust the old model anymore.

 

Despite her unwillingness to check up on the price, she nevertheless hoped that Madan-sei had been able to provide what Vegeta needed to repair his engine. She also hoped he would return soon before his ship completely fell apart. And she realized with a sinking feeling in her stomach that she was thinking about him again, worrying about his wellbeing, and hoping he'd come home soon.

 

Tonight, though, her mind wasn't on Vegeta. Yamcha was coming to visit and it had been a while since she'd seen him last, both having been consumed with post-Christmas work. She was looking forward to a relaxing night with one of her closest friends in front of the tube. Not only that, but her favourite movie was coming on pay-per-view.

 

Yamcha arrived shortly after dinner, looking tense and anxious.

 

“What's wrong?” Bulma inquired, but he dismissed her concern, saying he was tired. He did look tired, Bulma had to admit, and had no choice but to accept his explanation.

 

Yamcha sat uncomfortably on the couch. It wasn't that the couch was uncomfortable, for the leather was plush and expensive, nor was it the company that put him ill at-ease. It was the thought of what he would have to do later; it made him antsy and tense, and he kept placing his hand briefly over the pocket of his jeans. The problem wasn't that he didn't want to do it, because it did. He desperately did. But he was understandably nervous and kept replaying the would-be scene in his mind as he tried to focus on the movie. He doubted he would be able to even make it to the end of the film as anticipation bubbled in his chest. He felt jumpy and energetic and eager, but he was still. His arm remained loosely draped around Bulma's shoulders.

 

By nine-thirty she looked bored, and Yamcha doubted it was because of the movie. It was her favourite. She'd prattled on about it all evening.

 

“The Sound of Music?” Yamcha had asked, withholding a groan.

 

“My favourite!” she'd gushed. “It's so romantic! Maria has already devoted her life to something else but she charms the rebellious children and their arrogant father and finds herself in love with him! Oh! And then poor Liesl is absolutely rejected by Rolfe because he's a stupid kid who thinks the Nazis will give him what he wants.”

 

“Way to ruin the plotline,” Yamcha had said blandly, but Bulma either hadn't heard him or hadn't cared and promptly launched into the details of her favourite parts.

 

So now she was bored, and Yamcha deducted that it had to be because of him. True he had been rather quiet that night, rather withdrawn and focused on his own thoughts. Okay, he conceded, he'd been boring. But that was only because his mind had kept wandering to his plans for later that night.

 

Well, why not now? Although it was smack-dab in the middle of her favourite movie she didn't appear that interested in it. Besides, she would always be able to associate The Sound of Music with Yamcha afterwards and the movie would have sentimental value. Yamcha smiled to himself, his hand falling on his pocket.

 

He shifted on the couch so that he was sideways, facing Bulma. She turned away from the TV to frown at him in confusion. “What is it?” she asked.

 

He smiled at her and leaned forward to place a kiss on her forehead. Then he stood, jammed his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small sky-blue box. He turned his gaze from Bulma to the box and completely missed her body go rigid as her eyes fell on the box. He dropped slowly to one knee on the floor beside her and looked back up. He grinned nervously.

 

“I know that I probably could have done this more romantically,” he said, “but I didn't want it to be some glamorous, public affair, and where is more private than your own home? But anyway…” He took a deep breath and cracked open the blue box. “Bulma Briefs, will you marry me?”

 

Inside the box, embedded in the protective cloth with Tiffany & Co. written on the inside of the lid, was a ring: White gold with three square-cut diamonds, the largest one in the middle with the two smaller ones on each side. Bulma stared at it, still sitting stiffly on the sofa. She swallowed hard and exhaled deeply several times in a row. Yamcha took her silence for speechlessness.

 

“Try it on,” he said softly, plucking it out of the box.

 

He reached for Bulma's left hand and she let him pull it towards him. She gazed at the ring, completely entranced. He wanted to marry her? He had finally decided to commit wholly to her and spend the rest of his life with her? Her heart felt fit to burst.

 

Except, she realized, it didn't. She didn't feel overwhelmingly happy. She didn't feel the excitement she'd always expected to feel when she was proposed to. Instead she felt nauseous and panicked, and she could feel a sweat breaking out across her forehead and the back of her neck. She didn't need previous experience to know that this wasn't what she was supposed to feel.

 

And she didn't need anyone to tell her that she shouldn't be thinking about whether or not Vegeta reached Madan-sei at that particular moment.

 

She wrenched herself away from him with such force that she almost sent herself toppling off the couch. Yamcha blinked up at her, thoroughly confused. She stood and backed away, stumbling into the arm of the sofa, before plopping herself down in the matching recliner a short distance away. Yamcha pulled himself to his feet and stared at her. She had a pained expression on her face.

 

“Don't you like it?” Yamcha asked stupidly, his voice heavy with hurt.

 

Bulma looked at him for a few moments, then at the ring in his hand, then at the box in his other hand. Her shoulders began to shake and it wasn't long after that the laughter exploded forth. As her chuckle became a laugh which became hysterics Yamcha looked more and more confused. He wasn't sure if he should be relieved by her laughter or offended. He stood awkwardly between the couch and the coffee table as he waited for Bulma's mirth to subside.

 

It did, finally, and she looked apologetically at Yamcha. “It isn't the ring,” she said.

 

He looked hopeless. “Then… what? You're not ready?”

 

Bulma sighed, curling herself up in the chair. “Yamcha… Listen. It means a lot to me that you would propose to me and that you think you care enough for me to want to spend the rest of your life with me. It really does. I didn't know you felt so strongly, considering all the problems we had. But I… can't. I can't marry you.”

 

“You can't?” he echoed. When she shook her head he asked, “Why?”

 

She paused, then opened her mouth to speak, and then hesitated. Finally she said, “I just don't… I'm not… I don't think…” She closed her mouth again, gathering her wits and thoughts. Then she started again:

 

“I realized that you're not the one that I want to spend the rest of my life with.” She paused here to look Yamcha in the eye and assess his reaction. His expression didn't change, nor did he speak, so she plowed onwards. “I know you're going to say that I should have let you know and not led you on, but I didn't know how to tell you. And we weren't having any problems right now, so I figured I would just leave it alone. And… I don't know. It's not that I don't want you to be part of my future, because I do. I just… don't… want to be with you. I don't think I love you anymore. I mean, I do love you. You're an amazing friend and a great person, and I love you more than you can possibly know right now. But I'm not in love with you. This was a good thing, just not the thing. And I think that you know it too, deep down. I think that you only want to marry me because it seems like the next logical step in our relationship. But our relationship had reached a stand-still and it's not going to go any farther—”

 

She stopped suddenly as she realized she was rambling. Yamcha's expression remained etched onto his face. She sighed, dropping her face into her hands.

 

Her voice was muffled when she spoke next. “I feel really guilty. I feel like I've led you on. I guess I did, but I didn't mean to. I wish I'd known you felt this way. I wish you had let me know.”

 

Yamcha's expression changed rapidly now, making up for the time it had spent frozen in place. It went through disbelief, heartbreak, confusion, and rage in quick succession, before finally coming to rest in some contorted mixture of all four.

 

“You mean you won't marry me?” he asked dully, picking through his words slowly as though he were speaking a new language of which he had limited knowledge.

 

“I can't marry you,” Bulma said, lifting her face from her hands. “That doesn't mean I don't care for you, though. I do, Yamcha, I do. I've known you too long and been through too much with you to simply give you up point-blank. You helped me to grow up, but now I need someone who loves me for who I've grown to be, not someone who thinks he loves me for the little girl I used to be. We're both very different people from who we were when we first met but we're living under the delusion that we're exactly the same. I think that's why you're constantly having affairs. You're looking for something that you used to find in me but because we've both changed, I can no longer give it to you. We're through that point in our lives when we do the most changing and now we both need to find someone who can be fulfilled by what we've changed into. It's hard to explain. Do you understand?”

 

“No.”

 

“You will. Right now you're just upset and pissed off.”

 

“Do you love someone else?” he asked. He didn't name any names, but Bulma knew who he was implying.

 

Bulma shook her head. “I don't love anybody.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yes, Yamcha, I'm sure.”

 

“So… you won't marry me?”

 

And so the conversation went around again until Yamcha finally lapsed into silence. He was sure he should feel something: anger, misery, confusion, anything, but he didn't. He couldn't.

 

Bulma wouldn't look at him afterwards, opting instead for either the far wall or her hands, and finally he got up and left silently. He left the box and ring behind on the table. He was shaking by the time he walked through his own front door. Puar had already gone to bed and the house was dark and still and lonely.

 

He wasn't sure if nausea counted as a feeling.

 

Bulma, meanwhile, stayed up most of the night in the living room, feeling her heart break bit by bit as she thought of everything she had just thrown away. Tears stung her eyes and salted her cheeks, and she wondered repeatedly if she had done the right thing. If so, why was she so aggrieved? If she didn't love Yamcha then why was her heart breaking?

 

She was still awake when the sun lit up the far wall and illuminated the drops on her face. Her father came down the stairs already in his lab coat and took only one brief look at her before smiling sympathetically.

 

“I feel so broken,” Bulma croaked to him.

 

“It's been known to happen. Heartbreak has that affect on people.”

 

“Have I done the wrong thing?”

 

“That's for you to decide,” her father said gently.

 

“But what do you think?”

 

“Ahh,” he sighed. “I don't want to influence your feelings one way or the other, so I think it best to not saying anything for the time being. Perhaps when you've made your own decision I'll let you know my sentiments.”

 

“Did you like Yamcha?” she asked after a moment.

 

“Not particularly. He hurt you a lot. Did you like him?”

 

“Well I went out with him for most of my adult life, didn't I?” she pointed out.

 

“That doesn't mean anything. I've been maintaining this business for most of my adult life, but I hate the entire goddamn corporation.”

 

This statement startled Bulma so much that she forgot for a moment that she was upset. “You do?”

 

“Of course I do! I devoted so much time into it and it took me away from my family. There are so many things I would have liked to do if I'd only had the time to do so. I became so wrapped up in making a life for myself and my family that I forgot to live life. Never forget to live life, Bulma. You only have one, after all. That's my one regret.

 

“Did you like Yamcha?”

 

Her mind still swirling with her father's confession, she tried to think seriously about his question, which she saw that he intended to be taken seriously.

 

“I think… I think I did at first. I think I still do, but not in the same way. Well, I know it's not in the same way. He hurt me a lot, and I tried to forgive him but I don't think I ever managed to completely.”

 

“What is your limit of forgiveness?” Dr. Briefs asked.

 

“What?”

 

“How far can someone go before you won't forgive them?”

 

“I don't know. I've never thought about it before.”

 

“Or been put in that position before.”

 

“I guess not.”

 

“I'm going to make an assumption here that may or may not be true for you, but is generally true for the majority of all humans,” he said scientifically, and Bulma braced herself for a statistic.

 

Instead he said, “The measure of your capabilities to forgive depends entirely on who it is who requires forgiveness. I know that I love your mother with all my being because I don't believe there is anything she could ever do that I wouldn't be able to forgive her for in the end. Did you know she was unfaithful to me once? This was before we were married. But I forgave her because I knew there was nobody else I could love as much as I loved her.”

 

“So you're saying if I truly loved Yamcha I would have been able to completely overlook the fact that he cheated on me?”

 

“Essentially, yes. Not at first. Everything takes time.”

 

“Maybe all I needed was more time, then,” Bulma said. She was desperate now, trying to cling to anything that still made sense.

 

“Maybe,” Dr. Briefs acknowledged. “But what do you think? If you waited your entire lifetime do you think you'd forgive him then?”

 

Bulma just shrugged as her emotions came flooding back and clouded her judgment and ability to think. Sensing this, her father patted her shoulder consolingly and headed off to the lab, as Bulma recently discovered, that he so loathed.

 

A few minutes later her mother entered the room and offered the sympathetic shoulder Bulma needed, devoid of all logic and reasoning.

 

Yamcha was, meanwhile, taking out his frustration on poor Krillin in a heated sparring match.