In a building as large as Capsule Corporation, there were many places for a little girl to go, and many things to satisfy a youthful curiosity. Unfortunately, Bra had already become bored with life there, and had grown accustomed to the long corridors and hidden hallways. What once held a fanciful feeling of happiness and intrigue now just seemed grotesquely large and unnecessary. She didn’t understand why all of the offices and rooms had to be there, or why there had to be so many people there with them at all times. Yes, most of the offices were on different floors and far off sections of the building, but it still felt as though there were strangers roaming around her house at times. When she had been younger, she had enjoyed it thoroughly, but now that her mother was gone, now that she was older, Capsule Corporation had lost its magic.

That was why she was up so early in the morning, in search of some sort of company. It wasn’t often that she had someone to play with or someone to talk with, and during confusing times like this, she definitely needed someone. Tayhei was usually around, but most of the time she had job responsibilities that kept her busy, and Trunks only played with her when he was feeling particularly childlike and immature. Her father didn’t mind having her around, but he usually didn’t talk to her or acknowledge her unless it was to show her one of his power tricks. Besides, she wasn’t allowed to go into the gravity chamber anyway, and that was where he spent most of his time. Everyone was always too busy to pay attention to her, or listen to her childish demands for company. When her mother had been alive, she had allowed Bra to crawl into her lap as she typed at the computer or talked on the phone. But she was gone now, and there really wasn’t anyone else that could keep her entertained.

She had dressed in one of her best outfits that morning, carefully selecting the cherry red dress and matching shoes, and had fixed her hair on her own. Her ponytail was lopsided, of course, but she was somewhat proud of the fact that she had done it herself. Her plan was to look as endearing as possible --- if she looked cute, then everyone would be more apt to pay attention to her.

Her first conquest would be Tayhei, but seeing as though the older girl was not in her room, she had probably already begun to work, or was already gone from the house. In that case, she would find her brother and be as charming and polite as possible. Most likely though, Trunks would tell her to leave him alone, so she would go off in search of their father. She knew that Mirai Bulma and Mirai Trunks were in the house as well, but she didn’t feel comfortable enough to bother them with her presence. Mirai Trunks had been kind to her when they first met, but she had seen the mean looks that had been shot between him and her brother. That made her a little scared of him, and she decided that he probably wouldn’t want to pay attention to her anyway.

And she wasn’t nearly ready to face Mirai Bulma yet. The woman was so much like her mother that it frightened her. They looked the same, smelled the same, talked in the same voice. Bra still hadn’t completely come to grips with her mother’s death, so it made it very difficult for her to look at Mirai Bulma without her heart aching. She tried to remember what Tayhei had told her before --- to think of Mirai Bulma as a completely different person from her mother, like a grandmother or an aunt instead. But when she stared at the same kind turquoise eyes and soft turquoise hair that she had seen countless times before, it made it hard to distinguish one Bulma from the other. They were melding together in Bra’s mind, and sometimes it felt as if the strange woman from the future was nothing more than a ghost of her mother.

Bra walked down the long, tiled section of the front entry way, her shoes clicking softly on the floor. She planned on cutting through the kitchen on her way to the laboratory. She wasn’t allowed to be inside now that the jinzouningen were there, but she could jump up and look through the small window in the door just to see if Tayhei was already working. It was always a good idea to stop off in the kitchen on the way down to the lab to see if anyone had made cookies the night before. She didn’t think anyone in the house would be in a baking mood --- everyone had seemed particularly prickly lately, but maybe one of the staff members had made some. Even if she wasn’t able to tear Tayhei away from her work, at least she would have something to munch on as she searched for someone else.

She was so intent on cookies and the laboratory that she didn’t see Mirai Bulma at first, sitting at the table and sipping a cup of tea.

When her mind finally comprehended the fact, she wavered in the doorway for a moment, then turned to walk away, hoping that the future woman hadn’t noticed her. She just didn’t think that she had the courage to talk to her; it already made her sad just to see the woman there, drinking out of one of her mother’s favorite coffee cups. Part of her felt happy to have her in this kitchen, drinking out of that cup, but the other half of her felt almost as if a crime had been committed. This wasn’t her mother, and she didn’t really belong here. Bra felt positively wretched for thinking of the situation that way, but she couldn’t change the way that her heart felt. She didn’t know what to say to the future woman, didn’t even know what to think about her. It was best to just avoid her all together.

Mirai Bulma saw the tragic look on the little girl’s face, and it broke her heart. She hated the way that she brought those tiny hands up to her chest and backed out of the doorway so quietly, as if she had the ability to disappear, the ability to be unnoticed. It made her feel horrible to know that she had caused the look of fear and distress in Bra’s deep blue eyes. It had been done unintentionally of course, but she had scared the girl anyway; just her presence was enough to make Bra’s eyes well up with tears. She felt bad for the little girl --- she knew what it was like to lose someone. She was going through something similar with Vejiita now; she wasn’t sure whether she should be happy that she was seeing him, or frightened of what had happened and frightened of what was to come. It was the uncertainty and confusion that made everything so difficult, and she guessed that Bra must be suffering through it much more than she was. After all, the girl was so young, and yet she had already been giving so many difficult situations to face.

Before Bra could make it back out of the doorway, she set her cup of tea down and gave her a warm, wide smile. “You look awfully cute today, Bra. That’s an adorable dress that you’re wearing.”

If she truly is my daughter, Bulma theorized, she couldn’t possibly turn down a compliment, or resist an opportunity to talk about clothes. She had already seen a lot of similar traits in the girl, and the love of clothing and personal grooming was one of them. Bra was young, but she was already taking a sharp interest in clothing and colors and other matters of appearance. Bulma didn’t blame her; when she was her age, she had already begun wearing eye shadow and perfume. Beauty and charm were just two of the traits that had been passed down through every generation of females in her family. She couldn’t think of a single relative on her mother’s side of the family that was anything less than gorgeous and well-manicured.

Just as she suspected, Bra turned a bit and moved slightly back into the kitchen. Huge blue eyes stared at her from under a fringe of bangs. “Thank you. I bought the dress that last time that I went shopping.” She brought a little hand up and absentmindedly patted the knot of her ponytail, high up on her head. “It came with a hat, too….But I decided to wear my hair up in a ribbon today instead.”

“Do you go shopping often?”

The little girl nodded her head. “Tayhei takes me shopping whenever she has free time, and Mama and I….” She trailed off, her voice disappearing as she looked down at the hem of her dress, paying close attention to some invisible speck of dust, brushing with her hand and angling her head.

Again, Mirai Bulma’s heart went out to her. She was obviously trying to ignore her feelings of grief, probably because she was simply too young to deal with them. When a child so young loses an important, close family member, it’s always difficult. It could be particularly traumatizing if everyone around her chooses to ignore the grief as well, and never talks about it. It could have an impact on the little girl’s entire life, and those hidden problems would only become deeper and more complicated with age. She knew that it was important for the whole family to come together and discuss everything that happened, and she was pretty certain that that hadn’t happened here. It was expected. No one could ask Vejiita to sit down with a counselor and talk about his feelings, and Trunks wasn’t much better. That meant that Bra probably hadn’t been able to talk about those feelings with anyone, or get any of her concerns out in the open. For such a young girl with such a fragile heart, it was probably very damaging and very distressing for her to have to keep holding everything inside.

“You miss your mother, don’t you?” She asked the girl as gently as she could, and tried to make her face as compassionate and open as she possibly could.

Bra didn’t answer at first. She kept fussing with her skirt for a moment, then gave up and slowly turned her head to the side, her eyes growing glassy with a sheen of tears. When she spoke, her voice was so small and timid that Bulma could barely hear it. “Hai.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The little girl shook her head no, but didn’t leave the kitchen. She kept her eyes steady on the floor, and none of the tears gathering in those deep blue eyes had spilled over yet. Bulma noticed that her tiny hands had been clutched into fists at her sides, as if she were trying her hardest to control the emotion that was running through her. Although she looked sad, and although she had said no, she hadn’t left --- hadn’t even moved. Bulma took this as a sign that even though the little girl wasn’t ready to talk, she might be ready to listen. Bulma wasn’t any kind of a counselor and didn’t even consider herself to be much of a good listener, but she was a good conversationalist. If Bra just wanted to listen, then that was fine with her.

She gave the girl a sad smile and nodded her head. “You know, back in the future world, I used to be just as sad as you.” That caught Bra’s attention, and though her head didn’t move, Bulma could see her eyes flick towards her slightly. She continued speaking. “I had lost everyone that I ever loved. All of my friends, Vejiita….And there were so many bad things going on everywhere --- so much destruction and fear….It made it hard to breathe sometimes. Without everyone that I knew and loved, I was just a little lost. I was lonelier that I’d ever been in my life. I had no one to talk to about any of it, and no one ever offered to help me, so I just kept all of those things to myself. I pushed back all of the fears and all of the grief and simply ignored it; sometimes I’d just pretend that none of it had ever happened at all.”

Mirai Bulma paused for a moment to stare at Bra. The little girl’s eyes were locked on hers now, and she could tell that her words were at least touching her heart. A lone tear was slowly working its way down her cheek.

“Instead of dealing with all of the problems in my heart,” She continued in the same, comforting voice, “I tried to fix all of the problems in the world. I threw myself into my work and spent every waking moment in the laboratory and the workshop, trying to find some way to rid the world of the jinzouningen. And it worked. I built a time machine, sent Mirai Trunks here, and he came back stronger --- powerful enough to destroy the jinzouningen…..And it was all over. I had nothing left to work on and nothing else to concentrate on. I had put so much hard work into defeating the jinzouningen, spent all my energy and all of my time on the project. And when it was over, I felt horrible. I felt even worse than I had when the androids had first appeared. Do you know why?”

Bra shook her head.

“I felt horrible because all of the pain that I had felt when everyone died, all of the grief that I had gone through --- was still there. It had never gone away because I had never let it. I didn’t give myself a chance to work through the pain and grow stronger; I just pushed it away in hopes that it would disappear.” She told the little girl gently, and titled her head to the side, giving her and understanding look. “I know that it’s hard to think about those kinds of things --- they aren’t pleasant, and they can make you sad sometimes too. But they are never going to go away unless you have the courage to face them now. The pain will follow you around forever if you don’t let it go.”

Another tear rolled down Bra’s cheek, and her chin began to tremble violently. “He promised me….”

“Who did?”

All at once, the little girl burst into tears, her breath coming out in heaving sobs as she stood in the doorway and clutched the collar of her dress. “Papa! He promised me that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. I knew that something bad was going to happen to her, I could tell that she was going to get hurt. And I asked her not to go, but she said she had to; she said it was her duty. So I asked Papa to protect her, because I know that he’s strong. But none of it worked because she’s gone. I should have made her stay here, I shouldn’t have let her go….I thought that Papa could protect her, but he couldn’t.”

Bra shook her head again, her turquoise ponytail lashing back and forth across her face and in her eyes. “He didn’t keep his promise and she died!”

Before she even knew what was going on, Mirai Bulma found herself down on her knees, with the little girl wrapped in her arms. It felt strangely natural to hold the little girl this way, and for some reason, she didn’t feel quite so alien in this world when she had the girl in her arms. She felt almost at home, almost at peace, as if this was exactly where she was supposed to be at the moment --- as if this were the entire reason that she had come here, just to comfort this little girl when she needed her the most. Bra clung to her tightly, crying heavy sobs into chest, her tiny body shaking with the effort.

“I know that I can’t blame Papa. Trunks said that he did he best to protect her and keep her safe. It’s my fault for letting her go.” Bra sobbed. “I should have made her stay. Every time I threw a fit before, she would always do what I wanted….I should have made her stay here instead of going off in the spaceship.”

“It’s not your fault, Bra.” Mirai Bulma told her softly. She rubbed the little girl’s back in a comforting, circular motion, ignoring the rough, scratchy feel of the dress beneath her fingers. “The only person you can blame for your mother’s death is the person that killed her. Everyone else --- you, your father, Trunks….you all did the best that you could. It wasn’t your fault at all.”

“Then why did she have to die?” Bra whimpered pitifully.

Mirai Bulma wanted to tell her about what she had felt when everyone else around her had died. It was the only thing that had gotten her through those deaths, and the only thing that made her stop asking those kinds of questions. Bra might be too young to understand it and too young to let it touch her heart, but Bulma had a feeling that she would get through to her. At the moment, the two of them seemed so close and so connected that it was actually as if they really were mother and daughter. Bulma felt that anything she said now would have a serious impact on Bra’s life, whether it be right this moment or years later.

“I don’t know, Bra.” She told her. “I don’t think we’re supposed to know. Life and fate have plans for all of us --- plans that we can’t even begin to comprehend. But I don’t believe that death is ever the ultimate end to that plan. Along with death comes many things, not just the pain and suffering, but also open doors and new horizons. There is growth and patience and perseverance….And with every life that ends, a new one can begin. The good things are often very hard to see because of the glaringly obvious bad things, but they are there. And if you only let your mind rest on the things that are painful and distressing, you’ll never heal. You have to force yourself to be open to the good that can come out of tough situations. I don’t believe that life and fate are completely cruel….later on you will be granted a shade of happiness, and with that will come acceptance.”

“When did it happen for you?” Bra asked timidly, while roughly drying her eyes with the back of her hand.