“B-chan….You’d do anything for me, right?” Tayhei asked Bra, as the two of them walked around the loading area outside the spaceship, dodging workers as they loading crates and other large objects into the ship. Bra’s tiny, white lace gloved hand was in Tayhei’s, and they were swinging their arms back in forth in time with their stride. Tayhei surveyed the area and saw Trunks leaning against a crate with Vejiita, talking quietly about something as they watched the movers put boxes into the ship.

Bra nodded earnestly and she looked up at her. “Hai! Anything, Tay-chan! I would even hit niichan for you, if that’s was you want.” She was so eager to please people at this age, so willing to do anything, just as long as it would make someone else smile, or make someone else laugh. And because Tayhei had been so mean to Trunks, whom Bra regarded as the ‘scum of the Earth’, it made her seem even more god-like in the little girl’s eyes.

Tayhei smiled. “Iie, we’ll save that for some other time.”

A confused look appeared on the little girl’s face, and they stopped walking. Tayhei bent down until she was eye to eye with Bra, still smiling at her, her green eyes twinkling micheviously. Bra looked up at her and wondered what Tayhei was so excited about. “Then what do you need me to do?”

Tayhei’s smile grew into a grin.

When ChiChi finally came to, she realized that she was no longer in the Saiya-jin infirmary, but back in her room. She also realized that while her body was aching, and she felt sick to her stomach, she could not feel the cold, just as they had promised. Lying in the bed of her room, where she had once been cold and had to curl up with the covers all around her, she was now perfectly okay, temperature wise. But the aching of her body was outweighing the discovery of this new-found joy, and she wondered if it had been worth it, the shots that they had given her.

She had vague memories of the incident there, but she did remember the almost kind doctor, Potuto, who had helped her out with the numbing and explained things to her. It would have been so easy for him to just ignore all of her questions and just shove the needles into her arm without concern, but he cared. He seemed to be younger than the woman Saiya-jin she had seen earlier, and if she had to guess, she would estimate that he was about in his twenties. Of course, since Saiya-jins never really aged, there was no way to know for sure, but he seemed like he would be around that age. He beared a striking resemblance to her husband, with the almost exact face of Gokuu when he had been younger, except for the large scar on his cheek.

She wondered if all Saiya-jins looked pretty much the same, but the woman Saiya-jin she had seen earlier was definitely different. Softer, more feminine than the other Saiya-jins. Maybe it was because she was the supposed wife of the ruler, or maybe it was just because she was a different kind of breed, kind of like how humans had different races. Koronu, that was her name, hadn’t been openly hostile to her, but she hadn’t been exactly nice either. If she were going to have a friend on this planet, it was going to have to be the doctor, Potuto.

As she thought about the doctor, and the shots she had been given, tears came to her eyes. She didn’t want to become a Saiya-jin, didn’t want to lose herself. Her worst nightmare was becoming the tyrant that Vejiita was, the menace that Sukuashi was being. How anyone could just steal another man’s wife and take her as his own was beyond her belief. It was almost as if it were part of a play, or one of the romance novels that her and Bulma would read together on Wednesday afternoons, sipping tea and lying in the lawn chairs in the backyard of Capsule Corporation. One of the stories where the evil man steals away the sleeping princess and hides her in her castle, where the young prince must find her and set her free, so that they could be married. It was all so familiar, and so ironic, that ChiChi almost had to laugh.

Except, my prince would never journey this far just to rescue me. She mused, and even though she felt no cold, she drew the covers up to her chin for assurance. Oddly enough, the only one that seemed to care about her at all was Sukuashi.

Speaking of….Where is he? She wondered, and she lifted her head off of her pillow to survey the room. If I am supposed to be his mate, wouldn’t he want to at least see me once in a while? Not that I want him to, but….

As if he had been reading her mind, her door was suddenly flung open, and there he stood, in full armor, with his long, blood red cape trailing behind him. She gasped and sat upright in her bed, not sure of what she was supposed to do, or how she was going to get out of this situation without getting herself killed. It wouldn’t have been that bad, but he had a terribly menacing look on his face, and his cold, hard eyes were locked on hers instantly. She wanted to run, but there were guards blocking the door now, flanking Sukuashi’s sides. He walked to her bed in quick, decisive strides until he was standing tall at her left side, and then reached down and lay on hand on her head. She winced as his hand touched her, thinking that she might be hit, or grabbed by the hair, but his touch was gentle, and his demeanor was now calm.

“ChiChi.” He spoke, in a regal, yet threatening voice, and he smoothed her long black hair away from her face, reveling in the softness of it. “I haven’t seen you since that first time. You must be curious as to what is going on.”

The feeling of his hands on her hair was painful, so unlike the way it felt when Gokuu ran his hands over the strands while her back was to him, cooking at the stove, or lying next to him in bed. It made her skin crawl to have a stranger touch her like this, so intimately. She carefully tried to shy away from him, drawing the covers of the bed closer to her chin. “Hai.” She answered.

An odd, half smile spread across his face, and the hand stopped stroking her hair and rested at the back of her head, still giving her chills. “I have taken you to Sukuashi. Very far from Earth. I am going through the difficult process of ridding myself of my mate at the moment, and when she is finally disposed of, you will become my new mate.”

He said it so simply, as if it were some everyday thing, and not the most horrible, terrifying, life changing event in all of her years. “Why me?” ChiChi whispered in a hoarse voice.

“Because you are different.” He answered quickly, and then the calm look on his face dropped into anger, and his eyes clouded over with rage. “And I have a score to settle with Kakkaroto. I hope he is suffering by now, knowing that I have you.”

With a swift movement, he was suddenly sitting beside her in bed. “In accordance to the rules of our society, you are not allowed to leave this room.” He paused, and fixed his black eyes upon hers. “However, you are not only a prisoner, but also my future mate, and I demand that visit me when I ask you to. Also, I heard you gave the doctors a bit of trouble yesterday. That will not happen again.”

She just sat there and stared at him with wide eyes, not saying anything. She wasn’t even sure if she was allowed to speak, because of the threat in his voice and the murder in his eyes. It was a situation like this that she was without an answer, and without hope, because it seemed that no matter what she did, it would end up the same: life was over.

“On the trips outside of your room, you will be accompanied by my guards, and will be subjected to any punishment they give should you try to escape.” He continued, and then grabbed her chin roughly in his hands and lifted her face so that she was staring straight up at him. “Is that clear?”

A deep hatred set in her then, a hatred for him and all he stood for. She lived to please others, to make people happy, but it was people like him, the ones that had no respect for anyone, that made it difficult for her to do so. And how dare he, who knew nothing of her, order her around as if she were a servant girl who needed no respect. ChiChi may have done anything that Gokuu may have told her do to, or her father, but it was different --- she loved them. Sukuashi held no place in her heart, and she could not bring herself to obey his orders, even if it meant pain, and certain death on her part. She held her ground and locked her jaw.

“Is that clear?” Sukuashi repeated, an angry edge appearing in his voice. When he received no answer from her small, delicate mouth, and no forgiveness in her eyes, he ripped his hand away and turn it backwards to smack her hard across the face. Cheek stinging, ChiChi looked up at him and tried to hide the pain that was settling into her skin as she put a hand over it.

“I will not follow your orders.” She whispered, and her black eyes hardened into certainty.

In one, quick fluid motion, he reached up and grabbed ChiChi by the collar of her dress, and pulled her up off the bed several feet. The covers slid off then, and landed to the cold floor in one smooth whoosh, and ChiChi dangled percariously from his hand above the blanket-less bed, still staring at him with a cold, and unyeilding expression.

“My orders will be followed!” He bellowed, yelling right into her face, so close that she could feel his hot breath wash against her cheeks and see the red in his eyes, a tangible anger. And then he threw her like she was a rag doll, off the bed and into the far wall, and she smacked against it with a sickening thud and slid to the floor. ChiChi’s arm flopped to the ground, stretched out above her head, and she closed her fingers into a fist, closing her eyes to fight the pain that was standing out all over her body.

“NEVER disobey me again! NEVER!” Sukuashi raged on, and he stomped toward her, his boots loud and crashing on the stone floor. She shook when he neared her, afraid of the kick that would follow, or the order for her to be killed. But when she cautiously opened her black eyes, she found him staring at her with a calmer expression, crouched down on the floor beside her.

“You’re too pretty to bruise.” He commented, and then swept the hair back away from her face. As his fingers brushed the cheek where he had hit her earlier, sharp pain stung there, and she guessed that he must have bruised her with the hit. The hand moved from the gentle curve of her cheek to her shoulder, and it stayed there, warmth radiating through her body from the touch. His touch wasn’t comforting or easy in any way, but felt like a trespasser on her skin, an enemy in disguise. She shuddered and closed her eyes again, pretending to faint away from conciosness.

He left the room then she guessed, and how long he had been gone before she opened her eyes, she didn’t know, but when she did, she saw the world in a whole new light. This wasn’t Earth, where you could stand up for yourself and be proud, be a leader. And this wasn’t Earth, with it’s sweet summers and the greenness of the springtime season. It was an entirely different place together, where the rules and logic of Earth did not apply, and the one you could count on was yourself. A world where the cold was perpetually seeping in through the walls, and the snow stained the ground white all year long.

She wasn’t able to move her whole body yet, because of the pain, but she could move her head slighty. She turned it to look to the right, towards the window, and closed her eyes quickly because of the brightness that it exuded. When she was finally able to look at it without wincing, her heart constricted in pain as she saw what the world was outside of her tiny, stone lined window.

Pure white snow, as far as she could see, covered everything, and it swirled in the air and fell softly to the ground, creating a new blanket over the already white, already fallen snow. It was such a shock compared to the darkness of the building, the darkness of her room, and in her heart, that it hurt her eyes --- all that white, and all hope of escape flew out her mind and into the blizzard that had taken her hostage. This was the end.

Numbness began to set in as she she watched the snow swirl outside her window, curled up in a ball on the stone floor, fighting off the pain. She had been lonely before, alone in her and Gokuu’s bed, but now, so far away, in such a strange and pain filled place, she felt lonelier than she had ever felt. The loneliness was so hard that it physically hurt her, and tears chased each other down her cheeks as she clenched the ground with her pale hands and thought of him.

“Oh, Gokuu-saa….I miss you so much.” She softly cried, and lay there on the bed for a very long time, watching the snow fall past her window.

Chapter 13
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