“Pan? Sweetheart, what happened to you hands?”
Pan looked up, all too aware of her mother’s worried and speculative gaze. Pan quickly stuck her hands under the hot water of the kitchen sink and scrubbed the blood off of her hands and fingers, pushing up the sleeves of her stolen shirt and scrubbing her arms.
“Panny!”
“It’s nothing Mom,” Pan said hurriedly, knowing that if she didn’t come up with some lie—and quick—that her parents would buy, she’d be explaining the previous night’s events, and her father would be out for blood. She didn’t want that, this was her fight.
“Nothing!? Honey, your hands are—”
Pan quickly dried her hands and slid in to her chair at the table. “Mom, I just—well, Trunks and I got to talking about Grandpa last night, and I guess I’m still to proud to cry.”
“Pan,” Videl scolded. “You have known Trunks your whole life, I would think you wouldn’t be ashamed of crying in front of him.”
“Especially over something that struck him just as devastating blow,” ChiChi continued, discretely blinking away the mist that had settled over her eyes. “Goku hurt all of us, even that stuck up bastard Vegeta, I wouldn’t doubt to think that he shed a few tears over it himself.”
“Mom?” Gohan cried, taken aback by his mother’s words. “What’s gotten you so temperamental this morning?”
ChiChi turned to snap a response, but Videl quickly intervened and dropped a heaping plate of food in front of her husband, who nervously and slowly picked up his chopsticks.
“Something saiyans don’t go through. Now shut up and eat, Bulma’s picking us up in a couple hours, and I have to help Pan get ready.”
Pan choke on her pancake. Sputtering and choking over the evil pancake, she finally gagged it down and swallowed.
“What!?” she cried, staring at her mother, trying not to notice the fact that she had broken one of her chopsticks and that her hands were bleeding again. She’d completely forgotten about that night’s dinner party—Bulma had mentioned it two weeks ago, as a belated welcome home, and also as a celebration for CC’s new and improved, patented, super-compact capsules.
Videl grinned, her smile almost envious of the dumb and goofy, yet ever warm-hearted and lovable Son smile that Goten, Gohan, and Pan had all inherited from Goku. Immediately, Pan translated the intention and the reason for the smile.
“Well, Pan, we figure that you might as well get a new dress and a makeover, especially since you and Tr—”
“NO! Wait, Mom!” Pan cried, holding out her bleeding hands to stop her mother, her cheeks erupting into a crimson fire. “MOM!”
Videl shut up, but took the opportunity to snatch Pan’s hands and inspect them, nearly dragging her across the table in the process.
“Mom, Trunks and I are just friends, ok? It’s nothing like—like—” her mind fumbled for the word. Finally, cursing herself, she relied back on Trunks “speech” from the night before. “Like—that!”
Videl face faulted, knowing that her daughter was lying through her pretty white teeth.
“Now, Honey, after all—”
“Remember why I wanted to go to college in Cali?”
Videl promptly closed her mouth. Across the table, Gohan glowered.
“Daddy, breathe… Breathe in, nice and deep, good…let it out—slowly! Good, Daddy…again…”
While Pan coached her father back down to a marginally safe temper-level, Videl got a good look at her daughter.
She was taller then she’d been four years ago, her hair was much longer—more like ChiChi’s when she let it down. Her once blue eyes had grown black over the years as she had lost her innocence, but still held an elusive and mysterious blue sheen to them. Her skin was still pale, the perfect contrast to her hair and eyes, as Videl had known it would be. She was so much like her father—so innocent, so loving and understanding, usually—it was a wonder that Pan had shown any feminism at all.
California had obviously been good to her.
But to think that Pan all of a sudden had no intention to mate with Trunks? That was going too far. Ever since Pan had turned 8, Videl had known, with that clever and never-entirely-wrong mother’s intuition that she had learned to use without thinking, that her daughter was deeply infatuated with the heir to Vegeta’s “throne”. And now, all of a sudden, after that big stink that Pan had thrown yesterday about where her sneakers were, her blouse, the iron, all of these things, Pan suddenly had no personal interest in the lavender-locked semi-saiyan?
If that was true, Videl’s father did defeat Cell.
“Pan—”
“Yes Mom?” Pan asked, yanking her hands back and picking up her demolished chopsticks, holding them as if to use them, but playing with the end of the broken and useless one.
“Pan, how was last night, anyways?”
Pan shrugged slim and strong shoulders. “It was ok. We went to dinner—oh, yeah, by the way, I’m not allowed at Juno’s any longer, we kinda have a lifetime banning ‘cause we ignored our previous salad-bar-banning, and ate the whole salad bar. So I’m not allowed to go there any more.”
Videl laughed and nodded, Gohan snickered, remembering his own banning from Juno’s…after that, he and ChiChi had remembered to never take Goku dining in public again.
“What’d you guys do at dinner?”
“Ate.” Videl face faulted again, and Pan elaborated. “He caught me up on what I missed while I was gone…how he and Marron gave it one last try, and then said to Hell with it, and went back to being friends. Oh, and how come no one ever told me that Bulma finally talked Vegeta into taking anger management classes? I would have flown home for that!” She gave up on her broken chopstick, tossed it back onto her napkin, and started stabbing her food with her one surviving utensil. “I told him about Holly and her crazy stop-go-animations, and about that one guy who walked me too and from my dorm every morning so that ‘I wouldn’t get hurt on my way to school’, even after he saw me get hit by a drunk driver, and get up with only a bruise and a temper. We just caught up, that’s all.”
Gohan laughed, though a bit disturbed about the car part. He dimly remembered her saying something about it, so therefore couldn’t say anything on the subject, but that didn’t mean he was happy about it.
“Well?” ChiChi urged. “What about after dinner?”
Pan swallowed a mouthful of food and continued. “Well…I wanted to spar, I haven’t had a decent sparring partner since I left, and training by myself is boring—”
“See, if you had come home every once in a while, that could have been reme—”
Videl kicked her husband under the table, and motioned for her daughter to continue.
“—but he didn’t want to, something about not wanting to have to pay to rebuild the country. Anyways, after that, we agreed to go to the beach. We just walked for a little while, talking a little more about old times I guess, then after a while we sat down.”
She shrugged, her voice losing its enthusiasm, her eyes losing their twinkle, and as her gaze drifted to the corner of the kitchen farthest from Gohan, she set down her chopstick, seemingly having lost her appetite.
“That was when Grandpa came up. We were just looking up at the stars…and there was one star…I couldn’t help but bring Grandpa up. After that, we were…” she struggled here, the memory of the kiss too strong, she didn’t want her family to know… “We just sat…both of us, quiet…then we came home. I guess I was so preoccupied with thoughts of Grandpa, and of all the times that happened up in space, that I…I was trying not to let it get to me…and I guess I dug my nails in too deep.”
ChiChi and Videl nodded, understanding about digging your nails in too deep…it was hard not to instantly fall in love with Goku…he was everything a man should be, even if he was a little slow in the head sometimes.
Gohan reached over and rubbed Pan’s shoulders, hearing the unspoken “That’s all I feel like telling you” that his wife and mother missed. “It’ll be alright Panny. Now, come on, eat, and maybe we can get in some sparring time before your mother and grandmother try and wrestle you into a dress.”
“Daddy! You’re not on my side here!” she cried, looking at him with wide and beseeching eyes.
He shook his head. “I don’t have a choice.”
“WHY!?!”
Laughing, Gohan nearly choked on his chopstick, but instead merely snapped it in half. Curiously setting aside the broken one and stabbing his food with the other as his daughter had done, he answered her. “You willingly wore a skirt yesterday of your own accord. You try and tell them you hate anything but jeans.”
Pan had to laugh as well. Hungry again, she beat Gohan to the last pancake, spearing it and quickly retreating to her own plate, where she rolled it and took a bite. “I guess I did bring this on myself.”