She immediatly bent down to get them, and when she stood straight up again, her face was inches apart from Trunks' face. She took a step back, trying to find something to say. It had been a week since she had last saw him, since they had kissed on the beach.
"What are you doing here?", she asked, looking over her shoulder to see if Sean was coming out. She didn't want both of them seeing each other, her uneasiness was too obvious.
"Hello to you too", he said, smiling like if nothing had happened.
"Hello...What are you doing here?", she said, sounding irritated.
"I need to talk to you."
"No", she said, walking past him and going to her car. She climbed in and unlocked the doors, which allowed him to climb in next to her. She sighed, comtempling her own stupidy, than cried out,
"Get out of the car, Trunks!"
"No, I need to talk to you."
"And I don't want to hear what you have to say."
He looked at her straight in the eyes, and he didn't have to say anything. She knew that she would listen to him, and she knew she needed to talk to him too. Angst was something, love was something else. Since he had come back, it had all been about angst, but they still loved each other, and it didn't matter if that love was impossible now, they needed to be true to each other.
"Okay...We'll talk. I need to sign some papers for mom's last will, and then we'll talk."
"I'll come with you"
"Okay"
She started the car and they left the driveway, rolling towards the city.
"I wanted to tell you...I love your hair that lenght.", she said, taking a rapid look at his short hair with gel. He smiled, nodded, then looked at her.
"Same for you. I think it's never been that long."
"Yeah, I know. I'm gonna cut it soon."
"Why?"
"Because it is in the way. Allison's a puller."
"That's you daughter?"
"Yeah."
"You wanna know why I cut mine.", he said, wanting to change the subject.
"Yeah, why?"
"It was so long when I finally escaped. I wanted to pull it out. So I shaved it", he said, giggling.
He eyes went huge as she imagined him with no hair, and she started to laugh.
"Oh, my god!", she said, stopping at a red light.
"It was so...I couldn't look at myself in the mirror."
"I can imagine."
"Honey, what are you doing?"
"Comtempling my awesome body", a voice replied from the bathroom.
She smiled, opening the door and finding him in the bathroom, shaving.
"Well, let me tell you a little secret... Not so awesome", she said, leaning against the doorframe.
"What?", he said, standing straight, looking at her.
She laughed as he came to her, putting his arms around her hips.
"Come here and I'll show you how awesome my body is.", he said, bending down to kiss her. She tried to push him away.
"Trunks, you have shaving cream all over you face!"
Suddenly, the phone rang and she used the occasion to escape him. She picked up the phone, looking at him with a teasing smile. He rapidly finished shaving, washed his face, in superspeed, then went to her, before she had time to say anything else.
"Hey, Marron, could you tell Trunks to get his ass here."
"Hello Bulma, how are you doing?", she said, as Trunks wrapped his hand around her waist from behind her. He snuzzled in her neck, then kissed her behind the ear.
"Hello, not so good."
"How come, what's wrong?"
"Well...things...Anyway, please, come fast"
"Okay"
She hung up, and turned around in Trunks' arms. He was looking at her, and she could read in his eyes that he was worried about what Bulma might have said.
"I think something's wrong."
"What?"
"I don't know..."
"Well I hope something's not too wrong, because the marriage's tommorow."
"Yeah...I know...I'm sure it's nothing."
They were in a café, where they had been sitting in silence for 15 minutes or so...It was weird...In the car, when they were just being themselves and having fun, not thinking about everything that had happened, everything was alright, but now that they knew they had to talk...It was all different. The weight of the years they had passed far from one another was hard on them now, and it was forcing them to silence.
"So...tell me about you...Got a job?"
"Yeah and no...I'm writting books. I've been published twice, I'm writting the third one."
"Wow...books about?"
"Novels."
"Cool."
"Yeah...I've discovered that writting helps to deal with your emotions... And god did I have to deal with them."
"I'm sorry I couldn't come back."
"I understand."
"I know you do", he said, looking at her in the eyes. She caught up with his eyes for a moment, but it became too hard and her eyes dropped to her hands, which were holding her coffee cup, just over her knees.
"I'm sorry", he said, starting to stand up. Her arms suddenly stroke the air and she caught his arm, stopping him.
"No."
He looked down at her, but she didn't let go of his arm.
"I don't want us to go this way, that's all...I'm married, happily married...but that doesn't mean I totaly want you out of my life...We were friends once, good friends.", she said, looking up at him.
"I..."
"I know...You feel I betrayed you...but I didn't, just like I always thought that you were dead...You may not be but our story is. We need to move on, but not apart."
"Marron, I don't think I can do that"
"Trunks...sit down ok.", she said, letting go of his arm. She put her cup of coffee on the table and she put her hands together over the table. He sat down with a sigh, looking at her in silence. He still found her so beautiful...it was incredible, it moved him inside.
"You're gonna start by explaning to me all that happened to you while you were gone..."
Marron rolled on her side to face him, a smile on her face. He was looking at her in the warm summer night, while they layed on the bed of the beach house they had rented to celebrate their engagement.
"I love you so much", she said, looking at him in the eyes, caressing his face with her hand.
"I love you too", he said, putting his hand around her hips and bringing her closer to kiss her.
"You asked me to tell you that I'd love you forever...I will love you forever if you promess me that you'll never leave me..."
He giggled in the dark and she frowned, turning her back at him.
"Marron...That is ridiculous..."
"What?", she said, sitting up and turning her face at him, pulling up the blanket to cover her nudity.
"I don't think that you have to ask to know the answer to this question...I love you so much that being unable to see you or touch you for more than a second kills me...I will never leave you...not in this life, nor in death"
She smiled, looking down at him.
"Now that's better."
"I...I don't think you want to know", he said, his eyes dropping to the floor.
"I need to know...I need to help you to deal with it...It's the least I can do, after everything that we shared.", she said, a certain passion in her voice that made him look up at her in surprise.
"Marron...I need you...Help me", he said, raising one hand and caressing her cheek as she smiled.
Lord make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
And where there is sadness, joy.
***
"So...After we fought, and lost, they found me...I think I heard them say something about me being the only one left...I started to panic, hearing that...And then I blacked out. When I woke up, I was tied up to an bed, and they were all around me...For a moment..."
He giggled, leaning his head on his fist, his arm leaning on the arm of the sofa. She frowned, wondering what was so funny.
"For a moment I thought I was having a bad X-Files inspired dream...The wake-up call was a bitch though...When I felt that knife cutting right through my flesh..."
He stopped, closed his eyes. She could see he was reliving the whole thing, by the way he was pressing his teeth together, as if in pain.
"Trunks..."
"It's okay...It's just that...it's the first time that I've told this story since I escaped...and it's hard..."
"I'm sorry."
"No, it's fine..."
"Okay."
"So...They kept me for a long time...They wanted to know everything about my race. When I escaped...I still don't know how I escaped...It just seemed that somehow, I could. And I did. I remember killing one our two of those sons of bitches, and running away...I took an escape pod, and here I was...I landed in Danemark and flew here. And I found no one...No one at Capsule Corp., no one at our apartment, no one anywhere. I thought that you were dead too."
She close her eyes, trying to fight back the tears. But it was useless.
She sat on their bed, washing away her tears. She turned her face and looked blankly at his empty spot...And she wanted to die, die and kill this fucking pain, kill this loneliness that was eating her.
She stood up slowly, knowing that no matter how much it hurted, she would do it again. She stopped in front of the door and opened it. And once again, she gasped. It was so utterly beautiful...and it would never be worn. She leaned forward and took her wedding dress out of her closet and she layed it on top of the bed. And she just stood in front of it...and she cried...For it represented everything she had lost; Trunks, her love, her life...her only hope of ever being happy in this world...She had lost everything.
She heard knocks on the door and quickly grabbed the dress and put it back in her closet before closing the door, before the other one opened to let in her mother.
"Marron, honey...Do you need any help for packing the stuff of this room?"
"No...I'm ok, I can pack up my own clothes...I'm not that incapable"
"No...I meant his things", her mother said, looking at her daughter with caring eyes. She was deadly pale and she looked tired. C-18 knew her daughter hadn't slept since Trunks had died, and that she probably wouldn't for a long time.
"Oh...I", Marron said, turning around to look at his closet. She stopped, then went to the closet and opened it. She slowly took one of his shirt with a shaky hand. And she close her eyes and breathed deeply, not caring that her mother was watching.
And as her face was burried deep in the shirt...she broke. She burst up in tears, holding the shirt against her chest, falling sitting on the ground. Her mother went to her, putting her arms around her as they both wept, both morning their lost love.
"Nooo...", Marron moaned through her weeps.
"No...Don't cry...", he said, leaning closer and holding her in his arms, rubbing her back, trying to make her stop. But violent weeps were shaking her now, and she held him close against her body, not wanting to let him go, as she let go of everything she had felt all those years and had never let out. How she had cried in front of the mirror on her wedding day, because she remembered her other wedding dress, how she had cried back in her room after she had first slept with Sean, because her skin had been touched by someone else, and how she had cried when she had learned she was pregnant with Allison, ...because it remembered her of the baby she had lost after Trunks had dissappeard. She'd never told anyone. She had found out after going at the doctor a week after all the deaths. She had been torn between being sad and happy. The baby would never have a dad, but it was the last piece of him she had left. But on the day of the funerals, in front of all those tombstones, it had been just too much. She was hurting and she had cried and cried and cried, in front of her lost friends, four empty coffins...Trunk's body hadn't been found, neither Bra's, Goten's nor Videl's. They had assumed they were gone, Bra killed as the building she was hidding in collapsed. The next morning, she had woken up in bloody sheets.
"Shit, Marron, don't cry...", he said, crying too, rocking her, trying to comfort her.
"It's okay, it's...just everything.", she said, her voice weak, as they held each other, crying.
And she remembered, that the night after that, she had entered her bath with a knife in her hands...Ohh, how the water was so red , all around her as she had slashed her wrists, sobbing...And how her mother had screamed and cried, when she had found her, laying there, looking numbly at the ceiling, laying in the red water.
They were still there, the scars on her wrists, the scar in her heart, the never healing pain in her soul.
And he cried too, holding her against him, wanting to go back in time and have her as his, wanting to kiss her freely, wanting to be able to make love to her. He remembered seeing her, sitting by her husband's lap, sunglasses on, laughing, her hands on her huge belly. He remembered that he had turned away, repeating in his mind that it was all a dream, that it wasn't Marron, or anyway, not his Marron. She hadn't seen him, she hadn't felt his presence...And as he had walked away, he had heard her laugh. And it had broken him...Forever.
O divine master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to
console;
to be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive-
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
And it's in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
~Prayer of St-Francis
~Sarah McLachlan
~Surfacing, B-side
Part five: Two Lost Souls
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