"Stop!" Pan cried in his ear. "Look!"

Trunks wheeled around and rose just high enough to see over the tops of the trees. Far off on the distant horizon two spinning fireflies of light winked out without warning. He frowned, scanning desperately an struck on the tiny, highly agitated speck of his mother's ki. "Kassan just knocked them out," he said.

They both sighed in unison, relief and weariness washing out of him, into her and back again. Our fathers almost killed each other…For the life of her, she couldn't tell whether the thought had been hers or his. The ripple of shock and unease that show on his face, that shivered through his thoughts, told her he had just realized the same thing.

"What--what's happening?" She said. "I feel like---"

"…our thoughts and our feelings are being woven together," he finished the sentence with her, and she saw in his mind the image of Goten's fumbling attempt to explain to him how it had been between her uncle and Bra, how it would always be now. She twisted around in his arms to face him, the sweet smell of cedar and maples bleeding sap into the hot night rising all around them. But above this heady aroma was the scent of the man who was now holding her. She felt every twinge and rhythm and tremble of his body. She felt his heart begin to flail in his chest in time with hers, felt his muscles tense, felt him grow hard against her. None of this infused her with anything like the terrifying mix of fear and longing his father had. Vegita-san was so dark and smoldering and violent, he was---

"---too grown up," they said aloud together, and he laughed softly in her ear. "Meaning I'm not?"

"You're…" She searched for the right words. "You don't scare me. You could never scare me. You're my friend and I love you."

Pan-chan…Pan-chan, we shouldn't. He didn't say the words aloud, but she heard them, felt the struggle within, saw the image of her father's bloody face. "I'm trusting you, Trunks-kun." And on its heels, another picture, clear and bright as a snapshot, of herself toddling unsteadily along the beach at Kame Sennin's, one chubby hand clutching the finger of a fourteen-year-old Trunks for support. The waves were splashing up, wetting the seat of her diaper, which was sagging halfway off her little butt.

"I'm not a baby anymore, Trunks-kun," she whispered almost angrily.

"You're not a woman either," his voice sounded anguished. What, she wondered, was it costing him to hold back like this? She slipped her hand between them, touching the hard muscles of his stomach, drawing slow circles, and he shuddered, his breath quickening.

"Most of the world would see me as a woman. Most of the girls my age in Ubu-kun's village are already married."

"Pan-chan…" She could feel his resolve pouring away like water out of a sieve, hanging on the threads of words like honor and decency, words that were becoming more difficult to define with each passing second. She kissed him full on the lips and nearly wept with the joy of having done what she'd dreamed of doing for so long. Where she found the nerve she would never know---she could not have conceived of being so bold two days ago,---but her other hand smoothed around his lower back and gripped his tail, gently squeezing. Bulma-san had been right! He cried out hoarsely, making her jump with surprise, which quickly faded into the warm burn of satisfaction, the first full sense of her power as a woman, of knowing that she, her touch alone, had done that to him. She drew her teeth along down to the juncture his neck and sank them in, and he cried out again, crushing her against him so tightly she thought her ribs would crack for a moment. A light breeze creaked the bows of the trees around them, warm against the bareness of her sweat-drenched skin and the damp, silky smoothness of his naked body in her arms. She raised her head, her mouth full of his hot, sweet blood. She didn't think to wonder where their clothes had suddenly gone, and then his fangs locked on her shoulder and she didn't think at all.

Everything inside her was on fire as they spun slowly above the forest floor in a revolving aerial waltz, her breasts under his hands, her skin scalding where his mouth touched her. Between her legs, searing upwards through her body all the way to her pounding heart, she was wrenched in an agony of desperate, aching need for him. A shaft of Tugol's pale, bluish light fell across his face, and she thought she'd die with the beauty of that image locked in her mind. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful… And still he made no move to take her, to burn though the last doorway of her childhood untouched by the battle, invasion, and struggle of the last two years. He continued kissing her, kissing every part of her, until she sobbed for some kind of release. He wrapped his tail around her waist, holding her close to him, and his hand found its way to her own tail. His other hand slid between her thighs, gently stroking, and she wound her legs around him and wailed aloud as it all broke apart inside her before building again to another climax under the soft pressure of his fingers. It was like dying and rising again with an unsated hunger for more that grew with each taste of what she craved. He gently lowered her to the green, fern-covered carpet of the forest floor, still exploring her with hands and mouth, his breath jagged and harsh with strain. … I will not…I will not hurt you…

She pushed fully into his mind, searching, and found a screaming inferno of doubt and guilt, of memories of pain and torture, of murder, obscenity and brutality on a level she had never imagined existed, memories of the time that never happened, that were nevertheless as real as last week's barbecue at Capsule Corp. She fought through the blazing hell of Tsiru-sei and the two lives now merged inside him, seeking frantically for the one thing she had not yet seen there---the one thing she needed more than her next breath of air. And she found it.

He loved her.

He had loved her all her life, as he loved Bra, as he loved Goten. He had come to admire her as they traveled together in space, envying her fighting spirit, her optimism, her fierce, unwavering love and loyalty---things he thought the forgotten undercurrent of Tsiru-sei's nightmare had crippled in himself. It had never occurred to him to see her as a man sees a woman until last night, and now…Love and friendship and respect had shifted with desire into the kind of love she wanted from him as naturally and easily as ice melting into water in the spring.

He was above her now, molded against the soft curves of her body, his hardness positioned against her. It would take only one brief motion and he would be inside her. And suddenly she felt a twinge of fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear that, while her reflector held madness at bay for her, his half Saiyan blood would overwhelm the collar he wore. Fear of the absolute finality of what they were about to do. He caught the run of her thoughts and a wave of horror washed out of him into her. He groaned and checked his forward motion with an effort of will she could only guess at, and buried his face in her shoulder.

"I'm sorry…" She breathed, her eyes filling. "I want you…Please don't stop! I'm s-s-sorry…"

He kissed her. "Shhh…" Pan-chan…Pan, if you love me…I am in pieces…I can't, I won't tie you to me for all time at fifteen. We both need time. Time for you to have lived more of your life, time for me to put myself back together. I can't give myself to you when I don't even know who I am anymore! If you love me…

"I do love you!" She sobbed.

"And I love you…too much not to wait for you."

They struck at the same instant, in the perfect physical sync of their mental bond, each striking the neural pressure point at the base of the other's skull, falling limp and undreaming into a lover's embrace.

Gokou couldn't move. One glance at Chi-Chi's frightened face told him the same was true for her. "It won't bring him back, you know," he said through clenched teeth. "Whatever you do to us, Frieza will still be dead."

The tiny boy hissed at him like a snake. "Hypocrite! Who the hell are you to lecture me about "accepting death" like a good little mortal when you and that blue-haired bitch were the ones who killed him? When, Son Gokou, in all your half-witted life have you ever accepted the death of one you cared about? No! You always had the dragon balls to make it all better again!"

Gokou opened his mouth to speak…and closed it. The child was right. He had always made it all end happily in the end, no matter what happened, with the dragon balls. It was doubly so now that he carried Shenlon's orbs inside him. He was sure the boy didn't have any idea of the current location of Chikyuu's dragon balls---not that they would be any help for months anyway. He was using every meditation technique he knew to fight what was growing inside him, the burning madness. He slowed his breath, stalling the galloping pace of his heart. "Could you undo what you've done tonight if you wanted?"

"Why would I want to do that?" The boy sneered, raking over them with his eyes in disgust. "Nasty animals!"

"Could you?" Gokou pressed. Whatever mental hold the Tsiru-jin had laid on him was tenuous, on the point of slipping. He still could not move a muscle, but he had the feeling that the boy had over-stepped the reach of his strength tonight without realizing it. If he could break the boy's concentration…

"I will release you," Gurasia said with a smile. "When you've lost just enough of your reason, when the "reflector" finally burns out in a short while. Then I'll watch you tear her into bloody pieces." He turned his eyes eastward, searching, and trilled with laughter. "The Prince of Vegita-sei will shortly be killing his wife, I think. Or she will kill him. Either way, I am revenged of them both, but it'll be interesting to see which way that little duel falls out." He shrugged. "I only wiped his mind for a few hours. Father said it would be no fun at all if he did not awake as himself tomorrow, having raped and murdered the first thing he ever loved." The too-large eyes turned back to Gokou. "He is not and never will be a stable fellow, I fear. My father's doing. I imagine he will self-destruct when he wakes to her dead in his arms, and take this rancid, vermin-infested blue world with him."

Gokou ground his teeth together, forcing down the anger. Think! Use the good mind he gave you against his father's plans. There had to be a way, as young as he was, to cut through the instinctive malice and xenophobic hatred of the Tsiru-jin race, through the poison of his parent's teachings, to the person, the soul that lay housed within that small body. Gokou could not believe it was not possible. "Tell me what you really want," he managed to say.

"What I want?" The little Tsiru-jin began to shake with rage. "I want revenge, you stupid monkey! I want to see my father triumph at last over all of you!" He choked, his high voice breaking. "I want…I want…"

And his hold over the Saiyan's mind slipped infentescimally, just enough for Gokou to tear lose of the paralysis and leap forward, gripping the small, frail child's body in a death hold. "Do it!" Sobbed the boy. "Killer! Killer from a race of killers! For all you posturing that you're better than me!"

Where he found the will he would never know, but slowly, slowly, he loosened his hold just enough for the boy to breathe, and asked one question.

"If you could have anything in the universe you wanted, what would you want?"

Gurasia trembled with fury and fear and hatred for this, his father's greatest enemy, but the words forced themselves out before he could stop them. "I want him back! I want my father!"

Limbs and branches and overgrowth snapped beneath them, slowing their fall just shy of terminal velocity. Vegita grunted in pain as they landed in a tangle, his body beneath hers, his grip on her ankle lost. The polarized brute ray had temporarily crippled his ki and his ability to power up in any way.

The tranks had rendered him groggy, weak and disoriented. But even in this deminished state, he was stronger and more durable than any human at full strength. She rolled off of him, and screamed as the cracked splints of her left femur ground together. Lucky girl! She thought, To have taken a fall like that and gotten off with only a broken leg. Why didn't she feel lucky?

"Bitch," he gasped weakly. She scuttled backward, out of his reach. "What did you do to me?"

"I stopped you and Gohan from killing each other," she muttered, fumbling for another clip of tranks. There was one left. Something told her that wasn't going to be enough. "I guess you're not going to thank me, hunh?" She stared into his bleary, hate-filled eyes and wanted to break down and cry like a child for all she had lost, for all he had lost. Somehow, he caught the edge of that thought and sneered at her.

"I'm not you're lap dog anymore, woman!"

"You never were." She wiped her face and began edging backward. "Vegita…I know you don't remember, and I also know it's hard think right now, but that boy lied to you."

"Did he?" He pulled himself up woozily to all fours and began creeping toward her painfully. "Tell me how to take this chain off my neck, bitch!"

"You came to Chikyuu to steal the dragon balls…" Bulma felt another stab of agony as she continued inching away. "You ended up destroying them when you killed Piccalo. Actually Nappa killed Piccalo."

"I'll buy that," he said smirking. "I've seen black holes brighter than Nappa."

"So…you went to Namek to find the Namekian dragon balls. We went too. Everyone ended up fighting together against Frieza. Frieza is dead, Vegita! Thirty years dead. There's no Tsiru-jin Empire for you to tear down, and no Frieza. You've had your revenge." His fingertips brushed the sole of her shoe and she scrambled back with a sob of pain.

"Not all my revenge," he rasped. "The brat said---"

"Frieza's son? You believe Frieza's son?! Baka! He's out to get us all for his father's death! He wants you to kill me because he knows it'll destroy you." She blinked rapidly against the tears. Tears had always enraged him when she'd first known him.

"So," he grinned, flanking her as she crab-walked to one side. He was closing in on her. "I killed Frieza and won the dragon balls. Was that when you betrayed our little "alliance"? When you put this leash around my neck and twisted my thoughts with your mind control machine and made me into your whore?" He uttered a guttural, choked snarl and lunged at her. She rolled back and he fell on his face, growling weakly.

"Is that what he told you?" She gasped. "Vegita, you are my husband. You have lived with me all these years of your own free will…and you love me."

"Ah…" He pushed himself back up again. "I could have ruled the galaxy, but I did not. I could have wished for immortality, but I did not. I could have left this stinking mudhole of a planet three decades ago, but I stayed. For you?" He spat, his tail sweeping from side to side like a big angry feline's. "You are a liar." The tendrils of his thoughts brushed hers and she inhaled sharply, nauseous with what she saw there. Murder and smoking carnage from a red, blood-soaked cradle. Pleasure in death, in destruction, in power and conquest. Joy in the thrill of each new battle and in the pride in his father's face. Pain and humiliation, torture and rape and gut-clenching shame at the hands of Frieza. Rising like a phoenix out of his proud, violent childhood to knowing only hate and rage and above all other things, the desperate driving need to be in control---never feeling in control of anything, never feeling safe. Self-respect hobbled and blown to dust each day of his life with nothing more than a soft sneering laugh and a curled ruby smile from the Lord of Tsiru-sei. There was murder and atrocity and sweeping genocide on an almost unimaginable scale…none of which would ever erase the sound of that sweet mocking laughter. She saw him laughing in the faces of weeping, pleading beings as he burned their worlds down around them.! Oh, godsgodsgods! She pulled back in terror and revulsion. She had never let herself think too long or too deeply about what the man she loved had been before she knew him. And now to see it all through his eyes as though it had been yesterday---

"What's wrong 'wife'?" He laughed softly. "Don't want to bond with me? Did you see something in my mind you didn't like? Why don't we just skip right to the mating then." He snagged her pants leg and pulled her toward him with a vicious yank, only to collapse screaming as she fingered the safety measure on the reflector controller at her belt. He swiped blindly at it and caught the tip of the device a glancing blow, sending it flying into the darkness around them. He froze as she set her chin and thrust her mind at him again. And this time she opened her own mind to him. "See the truth, Vegita…Let me show you your life." Defeat on Chikyuu, death at Frieza's hands in grinding pain and sorrow at having failed to avenge his race and his world. Resurrection and disorientation and the first seeds of his attraction to her, born in the same breath as his growing obsession to defeat Kakarott, to beat the life out of this common soldier who had attained the power of the Legendary first. Training until his bones split and shattered by day, making love, learning to make love, by night. Rejecting her and the child growing inside her with vicious, cruel words and desertion that she had known masked his terror of the emotions he was feeling. Mirai Trunks and Cell and life without Kakarott's very existence burning a hole in his brain. Peacetime, the first he'd ever known, grudging acceptance of the love she offered him with tentative, stilted, fumbling attempts to return it. Something like the first faint dawn of contentment, always broken by the constant fear that it could all be snatched away at any moment. "Poppa, teach me how to fight!" A little face that was a copy of his own painted in human colors. Death again, in the first completely selfless act of his life---that had not save the lives of those he loved from the events he had set in motion. Another rebirth and another chance… A hundred images, thousands and thousands. His face wrenched in agony weeks ago when he'd realized that he was going to see Chikyuu destroyed, as Vegita-sei had been destroyed, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. His look of edgy, half fear and wonder as he held a screaming, red, blue-haired Bra for the first time. His eyes burning into her, his body pressed hard and warm against hers in the darkest hour of the night, his voice, "I love you, Bulma…"

"Stop it! Stop!" He tore loose from the link and sprang forward, one hand locking around her throat.

"Can you do it or not?" Gokou asked through clenched teeth.

The booming, dark voice of Enma Daiou sounded put out and slightly nervous. How, Gokou wondered fleetingly, had he come to a place in his life where the Gatekeeper of the Dead was half-afraid of making him angry.

"I don't agree," Piccalo's disembodied voice muttered angrily and Gokou felt both Enma-sama and Gurasia flinch at the sudden sense of the Namek's presence. "If it were up to me, I'd drag the little bastard down here with me and shove him in the same cell with his Poppa…but I trust Son's instincts." His voice seemed to turn away from them. "Have you been listening to all this, asshole? Do you understand what's being offered to you?"

Frieza's voice sounded intrigued. "Life, rebirth…the death of my self…I would forget and be someone else…Who, may I ask, would I be?"

"Fatherfatherfather!" Gokou caught a spectral gust of Gurasia's passing, leaping into arms that were not physical, yet nevertheless enveloped him in a crushing embrace.

"If…" Gokou strained out the thought through the rising din in his ears. "If we do this, Frieza, Enma-sama's going to let you be reborn as Gurasia's child when he reaches maturity. He will leave the…anomaly of you love for the boy intact. When you're born, you'll be able to love him as much as he loves you. And he'll know it's you, even if you don't remember. But you have to humble yourself first."

A black, poison wave of hatred lashed out at him. "Stupid, arrogant, stinking monkeeeeey---"

"Fatherfather, please…Listen!" The Tsiru-jin child's tearful, pleading voice stayed his parent's bitter words.

"I cannot and I will not," Enma Daiou cut in huffily. "Send the soul of this monster to be reborn as his own son's son! It simply is not done!"

"Really?" Gokou said tensely. He knew he was not going to be able to hold onto his mind much longer. "Where is the soul of my father Bardock?"

Silence from the giant Gatekeeper.

"When they think you're sort of thick in the head," Gokou went on, "It's amazing what people will say right in front of you…even the gods. Bardock was cleansed of his sins and his memories and returned to life as my son Goten, wasn't he?"

"That was a special case," Enma-sama said defensively. "During his time here, we had a sort of technical problem…a kind of meltdown. Bardock did some things that saved the whole realm from imploding. Then he asked specifically to be reborn as your son."

"This is another special case," Gokou sent back privately. "It won't just save the lives of the people I love, it will help turn this boy away from the path he's on and save the galaxy the trouble and pain of having to put him down eventually…it could save his soul from damnation." He turned his mind downward to the dark presence wrapped lovingly around the bright spark of the boy's life force. "You have to decide now and for all time, Frieza, what you love more---your hate for me or your son."

There was a silence as deafening as the clashing armies of the gods in the Times of Chaos.

"What…" Came the soft, sibilant voice from the deepest pit of Hell, "What must I do?"

"Your son could have lived long and grown to rebuild you race and restore your world," Piccalo growled. "You drew him into your old war against the Saiyans and now, if Son or Vegita or any of their other kin kill someone they love because of this night's work, there will be nowhere in the universe that he can hide from them. Are you sorry?"

"Well, I certainly wish I had planned it all out better." A pause, then more softly. "If anything I have ever done in life or afterlife brings him to grief, I will be sorry." Absolute honesty.

"Say it, Frieza!" Piccalo said harshly.

A sigh, and one last trickle of malicious laughter as he brushed past Gokou's mind and saw the havoc he had wrought through his son, the boy still wrapped tightly in his arms…and love. So overwhelming and selfless and complete it left Gokou breathless and stunned in its wake. The Lord of Tsiru-jin held his only child close one moment longer…and then there was a washing away, of thought and memory and hate, like sand on a storm swept beach, until there was nothing but a brightly burning kernel of the integral soul of the being who had once been Frieza.

"He's beautiful," Gurasia whispered.

"He'll be waiting for you when you're old enough to give birth," Piccalo's rough voice said quietly. "Now hold up your part of the deal, Kid."

Gokou trembled with relief as the strength and searing need drained away, and his physical body collapsed with a harsh sigh in Chi-Chi's arms, unconscious.

"You will sleep until morning," said the pale child's spirit that hovered beside his astral body. He cocked his head curiously. "You could have killed me very easily, Son Gokou. Do you not hate me?"

Gokou considered the question a moment. "I am very, very, very angry at you right now, Gurasia. But I don't hate you. It's terrible to be alone."

"I killed the first person I ever loved, by accident. After that, I became sort of feral for a few years. I don't think I realized how lonely I was until later." He scanned earth and sky for his friends and family, saw Krillan lying hurt, though not badly, in the arms of a battered looking Juuhachigou. My friend, my dearest friend, it's not fair that you grew old while the rest of us are still young. They drifted on, to where Gohan moaned fitfully beside a frightened Videl in the hold of Bulma's flyer which had landed safely beside the lodge, even now trying to fight his way up through the layers of injury, drugs and Bulma's brute ray. A light touch from Gurasia and he sank back into deep slumber. He hovered close at the boy's shoulder as they flickered past where Goten and Bra clung to each other locked in the mindless throes of mating, brushing over the warm, green vale where Trunks and Pan lay unconscious, wound innocent and naked in each other's arms.

"I cannot undo what I did to them or you," Gurasia said slowly. "All I really did to you was a deep cerebral healing, and Trunks and Goten…Their old memories and personalities have merged with their current selves inextricably. If I take it back, it will be as though I tore out half their souls. I am not sure the half I gave them was not missing all along."

Vegita…

Oh gods, where were Vegita and Bulma?! Where---He saw them through the unerring radar of the boy's mental sweep. Vegita's hand locked around her throat, squeezing the life out of her. He buckled and lost his hold as she shot him again with her last clip of tranks. She tried to roll away but he snarled weakly, and caught her by the hair, dragging her back. Bulma drew a dull black pistol from her belt, as his clawed hands groped for another purchase on her neck. The look on her face was one that would haunt Gokou for the rest of his life. It was a terrifying mix of pain and grief and terrible, terrible love. "Vegita, my love, I will kill you myself rather than let you wake tomorrow with the memory of having murdered me…" Gurasia turned the key to the locked room if the other Saiyans memory, and Vegita screamed once, falling onto his back.

Vegita woke trembling and unable to move. He managed to turn his head just enough to see Bulma sitting a few feet away, running a bone sauter, one of her little medtech toys, over her leg. Where the hell were they? And what had---The moon!

"Bulma!" He croaked angrily. "What the hell are you doing out here, woman? I told you to stay…" He trailed off at the sound of her weeping, deep wrenching sobs of exhaustion and relief. She crawled to where he lay and set her head on his chest, shaking all over. His heart rose up into his mouth at the bruise marks on her neck. How close had he come to killing her? "Bulma," he said, his voice unsteady. "Did…did I h-h-hurt…?" He couldn't say the words.

"No," she said faintly. "I broke the leg when we fell out of my flyer."

"What…what have I done tonight?" He wasn't really sure he wanted to know.

"Nothing much."

"You are a poor liar, woman." He winced. It hurt to breathe. "Did you do this to me?"

"Gohan sort of tenderized you first."

"Dangerous woman," he grinned weakly.

She raised her head, gazing down at him, shaking her head. "Kami, Vegita. Only you would be pleased that I somehow managed to half kill you. You're one sick son of a bitch, do you know that?" She frowned worriedly. "Do you not remember anything?"

"No…yes…no." His grin widened suddenly. "I think I remember beating Kakarott unconscious."

"Well, at least someone had fun tonight." She leaned down and kissed his bleeding lips gingerly. "Can you get up at all?"

He chuckled, suppressing a hiss of pain as his ribs creaked and protested. He eyed her through slitted lids. "That depends on what you mean."

Her eyes trailed down his body and she burst into half-hysterical giggles. "Oh my," she said after a moment, more softly, her hand lightly brushing the length of his painful-looking erection. He groaned softly. "You are in rut, aren't you?"

"I think," he said hoarsely. "This is what Trunks and Goten refer to as 'blue balls' And I still can't move."

She flexed her newly healed leg experimentally, leaning down, so close her breath seemed to fill his lungs. "All helpless and defenseless, huh?"

"Thanks to you," he said softly. "I am at your mercy…"

She kissed him deep and slow, savoring his mouth, and another fresh surge of happy, relived tears streamed down her cheeks. He thought he had never seen anything so beautiful as the sight of her dirty, dishelved, soot-smeared face. "Good," she said.

Gurasia made a delicate noise of distaste, pulling back from the scene. Gokou followed him silently to a snow-capped peak, tranquil and cold, a place that existed only in the boy's mind. "She would have slain him rather than let him awake to her dead by his hand," the boy murmured after a moment. He drummed his tail pensively. "My folk are not split into two genders; we are sufficient in and of ourselves. This, my tutors have told me, is why we do not love. The act of…copulation is something pleasant to us, but we have always used the weaknesses and sensitivities that surround it to control and dominate lesser races. Perhaps…perhaps we miss something in the translation."

"Love takes many forms," Gokou said. "You'll find that out as you go along."

"There is only one thing that I love," the little Tsiru-jin said coldly, shaking himself out of his brief reverie.

"It doesn't work like that," Gokou shook his head. "Caring is insidious. It creeps into everything in your life while you're not looking." He stopped. It would do the boy no good to tell him things he was not yet ready to hear. "What will you do now?"

"I…" Gurasia hugged himself, trying to find comfort, trying to remember he would not always be alone. It helped the empty, hollow place inside---just a little. In spite of everything, Gokou felt a deep welling of pity for this little thing, still a child in so many ways, so utterly alone, alien even to his own people. "I must go home. My people need me."

"Come back if you want," Gokou said after a long silence. "Later, when we've cleaned up the mess you've made. It'll be hard, but I'll stop Vegita from coming after you somehow. Come back when I'm not so angry at you and we'll talk if you want. Maybe after Chi-Chi has the new baby."

The boy stood still and cold, arms wrapped around his thin chest, eyeing the Saiyan in disbelief and a little awe. "I don't need your friendship!" He finally hissed. He turned to flee, and paused, looking back. Indecision, anger, and something that might have been thoughtfulness played across his astral features. "But I am in your debt, damn you," he said finally. "So I will come if you wish it." And he was gone.

"I'll keep a watch on him," Piccalo rumbled in the distance. "For all our sakes…his included."

Gokou sighed tiredly and let his consciousness sink down to join his body in the deep waters of sleep.

Pan yawned and opened her eyes to morning sunshine pouring through the open window of her bedroom. He head ached, her shoulder ached…her arms were empty.

"Trunks!" She sat up I bed.

"He went home to check on his family, honey." Her mother was suddenly there, gentle hands soothing her. She searched for some sense of him, found the cord, an almost tangible tie from her mind to his, and touched him shyly. A quick mental caress…Pan-chan…A sense of his smile and warm hand on her face, and he was gone. She began shaking and trembling, eyes brimming, and her mother's arms were encircling her again.

"What do you remember, baby?"

"Trunks…I remember Trunks." She couldn't say anything else and Videl did not press, only sat rocking her.

"Momma," Pan said after a moment. "Did anybody…is everybody all right?"

"Everybody is okay," her mother said. "Your Poppa and Vegita-sa were in pretty bad shape, but we still had the last two senzu Krillan-san was carrying."

Her father's hushed voice drifted from the living room. "…don't remember a thing after my tail grew back," a soft chuckle. "The last thing I really remember thinking is that it hurt a hell of a lot more as an adult. Videl won't tell me a damn thing about last night either." Pan's own tail twitched in surprise. She looked at her mother in horror. How was she going to go to school this fall with a tail? "What about you?" Gohan's soft voice murmured.

The deeper burr of Vegita-san's voice sent a tremor of sense memory through her body, a half-remembered song of moonlight and the wild, burning taste of his blood. "Bits and pieces. Fighting Kakarott, fighting with you." His voice seemed to smile. "A good fight." Her father grunted at that, maybe in agreement. "Nothing real after that little bastard touched me. And my woman will say no more about what went on than yours. They have conspired against us in this." Another ripple of that quiet, deadly laughter. "Bulma managed to do more damage to me than you or your father, boy."

A question, asked so softly Pan could not make it out.

"Nothing beyond what amounted to very heavy petting, Trunks said." Her father's voice sounded both strained and relieved. "He kept his word, though I don't know how. But he said the telepathic bond thing is there between them anyway."

"That is not healthy." Vegita-san sounded startled and slightly worried. "It might have been better had they consummated, than to leave them hanging in limbo like this."

"She's not consummating anything at fifteen," her father snapped.

"You may have cause to regret those words soon," Vegita-san said cryptically. "The mate bond is forever. It cannot be broken except in death. You are only putting off the inevitable."

Her mother got up and closed the bedroom door.

"I have to see him," Pan said.

"You will," said her mother quietly.

His father flew into the hanger through sky light and set down beside the stack of supplies and provisions he had piled near the space ship's hold, watching him wordlessly.

"Long trip?" Toussan said finally.

"Maybe," Trunks said shortly.

"The girl will most likely follow you if you go."

"Gohan will stop her." He sat the box of Capsule ration meals he was holding down with a weary sigh. "It's not just Pan, Toussan. Bra wants to go to New Namek. An Goten and I have some things we need to do. There are a lot of worlds out there that are alive and well, but Goten and I have very clear memories of wiping them out. They don't remember us, but…we want to maybe do something for each of them. Maybe then we'll both be able to sleep at night…" He knew he sounded like an idiot, but his father nodded in understanding. The older man's face was suddenly bleak and withdrawn.

"You are fortunate to be able to make atonement for what you have done," Vegita said softly. There is no one living to whom I could ever make amends…

Trunks shivered in the warm room at his father's unspoken words. His face was grim and drawn, almost a mirror of his father's. Vegita slowly reached out and put one hesitant hand on his son's shoulder, gripping firmly.

"Go then," he said. "Your mother and I will meet you on Shikaji three years from this day…and we will bring with us your bride. Whether Son Gohan wishes it or not." He turned to leave.

"I love you, Poppa," Trunks said quietly, before he lost his nerve.

His father stopped and stood with his back to him for a long, long moment. "Ji'sattsu, Torahnksu," said his father in the language of his dead world.

She stood watching the servobots prep the ship in the muggy afternoon heat. He was not looking at her, not coming anywhere near her, though her senses were so attuned to him they could almost have been wearing the same skin. Goten hugged her, her father, and his parents brusquely. Obassan's face looked wounded and horribly worried at the sight of this grim-faced, frowning stranger who had replaced her sweet-natured, dotty youngest son.

Ojiisan gave him a crushing hug and whispered something in his ear that made Goten's face break into something that resembled his old easy grin.

Bra and Trunks, she knew without knowing how, had already said their real good-byes to their parents away from other eyes. They exchanged brief cursory farewells now with Bulma-san and Vegita-san, and Trunks turned to her at last. Her father, hovering at her side, was pulled away by the gentle, unyielding tug of her mother's hand. He leaned down, his forehead touching hers, arms encircling her.

"I am yours, Pan. And you're mine….nothing can change that."

"Yes…" She whispered. She had promised herself she would not cry, but it didn't seem to be possible.

He kissed her, holding her against the sobs that were tearing through her small body. "Trust me…trust me when I say I will see you again soon. I love you."

"I love you, Trunks." He smiled. Then he turned and was gone.

She watched the ship rise into the red evening sky, blinded by tears, not feeling or hearing her parents' comforting words and touches.

She sat silent and apart from everyone through the subdued conversation of dinner, not eating. Later, just before the sad little gathering at Capsule Corp began to break up, Vegita-san found her sitting listless and dry-eyed in the kitchen.

"Three years from today, come to Capsule Corp, and we will take you to him. By that time, your parents will not object." He turned and left without another word.

Three years…

A small, tremulous smile began to tug at her mouth. Maybe…maybe by that time, she wouldn't be so flat-chested. She got up and began to pick through the left-overs in the fridge.

"Our nest is empty," Bulma said softly, her head cradled against his shoulder. She had meant the words to sound light, but there was a catch in her voice.

"No."

"No?"

"No." He shifted her body, pulling her into both arms above him. "I gave you another brat last night. A boy."

"You what?!" She almost screeched.

"What the hell do you think the word 'rut' means, woman?" He frowned, eyes searching hers. "Do you want it?"

"I…yes. Gods yes! It's just…it was too late for more before Son-kun's wish. A boy…" She lay her head down on his chest, listening to the steady drum of his heart. A boy. "What do you think of the name 'Vegita'?"

He smiled in the darkness.

"He's not the same," Chi-Chi said staring up into the dark star-strewn sky. "My Goten-chan."

"He has to do what he's doing to have peace, Chi-Chi." Gokou put both arms around her shoulders as he stood behind her, following her gaze upward. He wasn't the same either. It was uncomfortable and painful to see so many things he had never given any thought to, but…he would not want to go back, anymore than he would want to go back to being a child again. She was silent, relaxing against his body, soft curves molding against him. He slid one hand around and placed it gently on her abdomen. "It's a girl," he said softly.

"Gokou-sa," she said in a patient, long-suffering voice he knew well. "You just spoiled my surprise."

"Oh. I did, didn't I," he grinned sheepishly. "Maybe I'm not so smart after all." He looked down at her pensive face. "Bulma said she and Vegita may leave Chikyuu to go visit them in three years. She was very mysterious about it."

Chi-Chi nodded. "She and Videl are planning a sort of wedding party for Trunks and Pan. Gohan doesn't need to know about it yet."

"Okay." It didn't feel right to keep something from Gohan, but maybe his son did need a little time to get used to the idea of his daughter and Trunks. "Do you want to go?" He asked her suddenly.

"Into space with a two-year-old slung across my back?" Chi-Chi laughed, but actually appeared to be thinking it over. "It is Pan-chan's wedding. Maybe. Maybe I would." He felt the strings of the link between them tug at his heart as the wealth of all she felt for him played on them like a song in his soul.

"Would you?" She asked almost shyly.

He grinned down at her and hugged her a little tighter. "Only if you would," he said softly. "I'm not going anywhere without you."

Dear Readers,

Before you began to write those indignant flames letting me know that the story is NOT finished, and still has several untied (and unconsummated in the case of Trunks and Pan) loose ends, let me assure you that there is a follow up to this, that begins three years from the end of Season of the Moon. If you're interested, read on to this sort of sneak peek Prologue of the third epic in this trilogy that began life as a one shot character study, and began to write itself.

SINS OF THE FATHERS

(coming soon)