Once in his room, he slammed his hand into the wall, his entire body shaking, before collapsing down on the floor, his back to the door and against the side of his bed. He looked up at the window, at the sunlight streaming though it.
A moment later, his door was shoved open and slammed shut.
He winced, bringing up his knees to hide behind, clutching the back of his head with his hands as he rested his elbows against his thighs.
Quiet footsteps moved across the carpet, 6 of them, and Bulma sat down beside him, gently forcing him to take his hands down, and then gathering him into a hug, letting him cry into her shoulder.
“Shh…there there…it’s alright,” she soothed, rubbing his back, amazed that her 34 year old son could still be as helpless as a 5 year old. But then…being Vegeta’s son as well, she shouldn’t be too surprised.
They sat there like that for a few quiet moments, his tears and her words repairing the damage his attitude had caused the day before.
“Now,” she said quietly, pushing him back against his bed and turning to face him. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”
He shook his head, his eyes on his hands as they rested in his lap.
“Not really,” he mumbled.
She nodded, and made herself comfortable.
“Care to explain why you blew up yesterday, then?”
He shook his head again, his eyes dark and brooding, but not as sheltered as they’d been before. They were still lifeless, like his father’s, but if she made him look her in the eye, she could read exactly what was wrong. But she respected him more then that.
“Alright,” she allowed lovingly, understanding perfectly. He’d tell her in time, he was too much of his father’s son. All it would take would be one careful word and he’d bar his soul.
“I…I know I owe it to you, and everything Mom…but I…it’s the same thing…and I…I really don’t want to talk about it…” he whispered to his fingers, to where he held them on his leg, his right thumb rubbing the side of his left index finger.
She nodded.
“I understand, Trunks.”
A few more moments of silence passed, before he looked over at her, shyly, like he once had when he’d only be a little boy…not her little boy, but a little boy of 8 who had just gotten into a fight with his best friend, or who had been chastised by his father for tormenting his little sister.
“Mom?”
“Mmm?” She looked over at him, opening her eyes and turning her face from the warm sunlight, letting it bathe only her cheek rather then the whole of her face.
“Father was in the kitchen, wasn’t he.”
She nodded, smiling.
He laughed, but half-heartedly, his lip curling in what might have one day been a smirk, but now was all the happiness he could muster.
“Thanks.”
She nodded, studying him as he blinked back misery, keeping something inside of him that he was ashamed of, that he didn’t want the rest of the world to know about. His hair, although it probably hadn’t seen a brush since his shower before the banquet, was disheveled—he usually resorted to finger-combing it when he couldn’t find a brush…but now it was wind-blown, careless, his part lopsided on his head. His face was pale like it’d been when he’d come home the day before, his clothes rumpled, the shirt buttoned in the wrong button holes.
Her baby boy was falling apart.
He swallowed, feeling her eyes, and raised his face to look out the window.
“If Father weren’t outside sparring, I’d have gone out onto the roof,” he mumbled, just to cease the silence.
She smiled. Even if he looked like Vegeta, and acted like him, he was still her son.
“I used to go out there a lot when I was younger, before you were really ever old enough to take care of yourself.”
“You mean you still go out there every night?” he mumbled, laughing bitterly at his own joke.
She shook her head.
“I haven’t been up there since you were five…that was the last time I went up. That was when I learned to cope with the fact that my husband is a bastard, his ego clashes with mine, he wants to run my son almost to the verge of death, he’ll never show he cares for me in ways that any sane human being or semi-human being could comprehend, and that despite all of that, I love him dearly.”
Trunks sighed, staring through the window pane, out at the clouds.
“I wish I didn’t take after him so much,” Trunks grumbled miserably, his eyes threatening to break. He didn’t allow them to; squeezing them shut and jerking his head to one side a few times, trying to keep the floodgates intact.
Bulma settled back into the side of his bed, closing her eyes again.
While she wanted him to trust her, she didn’t want him bawling…she knew enough about pride to know it’d shatter his. She decided she’d try a different approach.
“Trunks…you never did tell me how your night out with Pan went,” she yawned, snuggling back into the square of warm sunlight.
Her eyes were wrenched open by the most painful sounding, gut-tearing sob she had ever heard in her life—coming from her son.
Immediately she came alive, crawling over and cradling her baby against her, mumbling into his hair as she buried her nose into the top of his purple head, holding him against his own demons and monsters, rubbing his arm, his back; had he been any smaller she would have pulled him into her lap. She rocked him back and forth, forcing back the tears that his pain was bringing her.
He gripped at her shoulder, his touch, usually so strong it would nearly break bones, barely strong enough to hold on. He huddled against her, no longer the mature, sophisticated, all grown-up man he was by age and right. He had no dignity left, had only pain, pain that was eating him from the inside out.
The only thing keeping him together now was pride, pride between him and the rest of the world, pride to prove to himself that he was the son of a prince and a genius, and the rest of the world had better kiss his ass…pride that right now was the only thing keeping him from trying to kill himself.
Bulma held him tighter with this realization, and for once it seemed that the mother was physically stronger then the child, for he shuddered under her arms, his hand slipping from her shoulder.
“Trunks, Trunks, what’s wrong? Huh? Sweetie? Please, tell me!” Bulma strained into his hair, her voice tight, tears streaming down her cheeks now. “Please, sweetie…Mommy’s here, don’t worry…just tell me what’s wrong!”
“I used her, Momma,” he mumbled hiding his face against the soft flannel of her shirt. “I used her, and she knows it!”