By: Panabelle
Chapter 27
Break Things
"Brat, get your hand off of my son."
Pan turned around, her quiet face growing cold and angry. She faced Vegeta without backing down, her nose inches from his, her eyes cold and mocking.
"Hello, Vegeta."
"Listen, ~Child~, the last thing I need is you mating with my son."
Pan had jolted backwards as if slapped.
"~WHAT?!~"
She was glad Trunks had voiced that, she didn't know where her voice was-it was somewhere in the midst of rage, and she wasn't about to try and find it. The last time she had spoken while pissed had been in California...and had landed herself in a jail cell for a night. Apparently there was something called "disturbance of the peace" in America...
"Brat, the bitch is in heat, and by the looks of your attitude, it has obviously turned you on."
Now she was pissed. Fuck everything she knew about common sense-this was the Briefs household, people were used to yelling and screaming and death threats.
"Where the hell do you get that from?!" she demanded, her eyes flashing green.
Vegeta smirked.
Dende, she was beginning to see that vindictive smirk a lot...him and his son...ugh.
"You've always wanted in his pants."
Pan shuddered with the rage running through her.
"Why the hell would I want in his pants!?"
Vegeta's smirk grew past vindictive, past malevolent ... now it was just plain evil.
"The son of a prince? We all know that under it all you thirst for power just like the rest of us, even though you do a good job of hiding it from that naïve father of yours."
Pan's anger, fueled by the events of the night before, of a life of being a girl respected for fighting, but not being able to be treated like a girl; anger from tired eyes, bleeding hands, shattered dignity, and stomped on pride had boiled to the breaking point, and she stood there, shuddering for a moment, trying to get a cap on it, trying to keep from killing the bastard Prince of Saiyans.
Her fists were clenched so tightly her hands visibly shook back and forth, even across the room, blood running down her skirt and pooling by her feet. Her eyes were green now, bright green, her ki flickering angrily about her.
Vegeta snorted at her display of 'power'. Then struck one blow too many.
"The last thing I would ever like to see, is a low class, never-amount-to-nothing, spawn of Kakarot, fighter bitch in heat such as yourself bonding with my son. I would rather he marry a human."
"Bastard!" Her rage had boiled over, tears streamed down her cheeks from his words. Her little box of emotions exploded, and she felt like she herself had exploded. "Bastard! There's more to life then your Dogdamned pride! The Saiyan race is ~dead~, do you hear me?! There's a whole ~one~ Saiyan left, plus four halflings, and me! You have no empire! No throne! You're no Dogdamned prince anymore-maybe back on Vegeta-sei you were, but not here! And where the hell do you get off saying I want your son? Ever heard of a ~friend~ Vegeta, obviously not, because the only friend you ever had was my grandfather, who you belittled at every chance you saw! And he's dead and gone!"
She was shaking. Tears flowed down her cheeks one by one, playing a slow and endless game of follow the leader. That was it. She would rather be reduced to angry babble, then cry in public. Stepping forward, she slammed her fist into the side of Vegeta's head. To her surprise, he made a hole in the wall, winding up on the lawn outside.
"And if you call me a bitch in heat, one more time, I swear to Dende, I will find someway to kill you! Even though you're stronger then I am! I'll-"
A quiet hand placed itself over her mouth, a restraining arm circled her belly.
"Panny, calm down."
Her father's voice brought reason back to her mind.
And she broke down and passed out, her anger gone.
Pan looked down at him, at the blob of purple resting on her feet. Her eyes
were blurry from anger, from hurt, from everything that she had hidden from
him all her life.
"Then how the hell did you mean it?" she growled, her voice throaty from the tears lodged in her esophagus. "What the hell did you mean by 'I thought you were someone else'!?"
He sighed, forced himself to look up at her eyes.
"Pan, look...I...you mean a lot to me, next to Goten, you're my best friend. I am-I was-am-closer to you then I am Goten though...you understand a lot better...the last thing I have ever wanted was to hurt you, was to use you the way I did...I don't know...I-" He was stumbling. He was falling in her eyes, and he knew it. She could see it in the dark and depthless sheen over his eyes. Eyes once so blue and now so black. "Pan, I wouldn't have-"
She stood up on the chair, stepping over him onto his desk, and hopped down on the other side, taking up his former position by the window and against the wall.
"Pan, I don't know why I kissed you...part of me doesn't regret it, but most of me does, simply because in doing so, I used you..." He trailed off, still crouched by the chair, his back to her.
As he had done before, she watched his reflection in the glass. Watched as he remained where she had left him.
"Pan, I'm sorry I treated you like one of the whores I used to take out. I didn't mean to. But if it makes any difference to you whatsoever, I treated you a lot better then I ever did any of them..."
She turned around. He was still crouched by the chair. He had his eyes closed, so he didn't notice as she walked around the desk and crouched next to him.
"I guess I just forgot who you were...and you can't blame me for that...I hadn't seen you, hadn't heard from you, in four years, and when I called you that day about dinner, I was expecting to pick up the same you that went away to college. I didn't want to admit to myself that you'd have changed any, didn't want to admit to myself that you weren't the same kid you were when you left. When I picked you up though, I got that all too nasty taste of reality-you ~had~ grown up, you ~weren't~ the same kid...hell, you're not even a kid anymore Panny...and for a while there, on the beach, I forgot that I used to baby-sit you, that for a year, I was the only source of authority in your life-Goku was literally too much of a kid...and even then I wasn't the best source of authority..." He lowered his head into his hands, eyes still closed.
"Normally I'd know exactly what to tell you, but I've forgotten who I am...I don't know how to explain myself then any better than I do now."