Sometimes it hurts

** Author's note - this rambles slightly. I'm sorry about that ^^ But if you read through to the end, you might like it anyway. **

I don’t understand love. Not in the least.

This lack of understanding isn’t due to a lack of effort – at least, not on the parts of others. Take Son, for example. He’ll sit with me literally for hours, trying in that bumbling way of his to find the right words. Toward the end of these lessons (for lack of a better description), he always falls to food analogies – a sure sign that dinnertime is approaching.

Idiot or not, I have to admire his resolve. He never gives up. Let me tell you, I rue the day when I let him overhear one of my conversations with Gohan. Little brat said he loved me. I asked him what he meant. And Son’s been trying to explain it to me ever since. Every day after sparring, he stays with me. Sometimes – far too infrequently – he’ll just sit there, quietly. Other times, he’ll ramble on and on about things that have no relevance to anything. I don’t listen, of course…and I’m pretty sure he knows that I don’t. That doesn’t stop him, though. Sometimes, I think a gag’s the only thing that will – which is an option that I’ve considered on more than one occasion.

Some of the time, though, he tries to explain this love thing. These conversations are arduous at best, and they usually end in one or both of us developing headaches. Take last time, for example. He asked me if I’d ever loved anyone. I asked him how I’d know if I had. He said that sometimes, it hurts. Love makes people act differently, do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do, say things that they wouldn’t say. Love, he said, makes people happy.

To which I’d asked how anyone could possibly figure out whether or not he was happy when he was acting like someone he wasn’t.

At that point, Son had put his head in his hands and sighed. That’s the only remotely tolerable thing about these ‘lessons’; they’re the only time when I get to see him really and truly frustrated. I keep making bets with myself as to how long he’ll keep this up before he finally snaps and starts launching chi attacks at me.

Hey, I can hope. Chi attacks make sense, which is more than I can say for most of what he does.

Finally, Son said that love has to do with feelings. When you’re around someone you love, or so he’d said, his or her feelings rub off on you. When they’re happy, you’re happy. When they’re sad, you’re sad. You would never consciously do anything to hurt someone that you love, or so he says, because when they’re in pain, you feel it, somehow.

And yet, feelings are a good thing to have. Of course, Son. Makes perfect sense to me.

I asked him once why he persisted in explaining things to me that I have neither the ability nor the desire to understand. He said that love was something that no one really understood. He said that maybe I did understand, and just didn’t know it yet.

Typical human logic, I suppose.

But I can’t help wondering…why am I still here? Why have I stayed this long? It’s not like me at all. Before, I used to move around a lot – the Tsumi Tsubris one day, Egypt the next. I’ve gone nowhere for the past six months…except with Son and Gohan.

Would you believe that, just last week, I’d made up my mind that I really was going to leave. I think…I think it was more to prove to myself that I could than for any other reason. Besides, the androids would come in only a few years, and I’d always trained best by myself. I didn’t need those people – those people and their stupid birthday parties and driving lessons.

Of course, Son would probably come looking for me as soon as he realized that I was gone – he’s paranoid that way, I guess, but he’d never find me. Not if I didn’t want him to.

I must have stood in the middle of that field for half an hour, telling myself all the reasons that I should leave. And I would. Any second…but not just yet…

I growled at myself, at whatever was holding me, and decided to concentrate on something else. Incongruously, I found myself thinking about how quiet the desert was at night. About how the only sound for hours on end is the whispering of grains of sand against one another. And then, for no reason at all, I thought about Son. About what it would be like to wake up in the morning and see no one come swooping in a full hour late for a sparring match. About how there would be no more of his asinine questions, no more flying tackles, no more long evenings of trying to devise ways to get him to shut up. Everything would be right with my life again. Well. Sort of.

That’s when Gohan found me. The kid asked me if I was coming in for dinner, of all things. He keeps forgetting that I don’t eat – or maybe he didn’t forget. Maybe he knew what I was planning and decided to cut me off at the pass. I wouldn’t doubt it. That brat knows me to well for his own good, or mine, for that matter. He asked me to walk him home. Don’t ask me why I agreed – it makes no sense to me, either.

Son came out to greet us as soon as we reached the yard – which really pissed me off for some reason. It was as if he’d expected me to come back – and no one has the right to expect anything of me. Worse, I think he actually guessed what I’d been about to do. He waited for Gohan to go inside, then he…he put a hand on my shoulder and asked me if I was all right.

I don’t let anyone touch me; he knows that. I tried to pull away, but he’d have none of it. He gripped me a bit more tightly, and I was astonished at the strength in his hand. I growled, told him to let me go.

“I’m worried about you,” he said, still preventing me from pulling away.

“Well, don’t,” I snapped back. “I’ve done fine without you for all these years, Son. What makes you think that I’d need you now?”

He let go of me then, and the hurt in his eyes did something to me that I didn’t – and still don’t – understand. I flew away as quickly as I could without looking like I was running.

And yet, I know I’ll be waiting for him tomorrow in the usual place. I know that I won’t try to kill him, no matter how much it may tempt me on occasion. I know that…if I lost him…funny, I can’t even stand to think of that anymore. It does…things…to my heart that I don’t like.

Those two, they’ve done something to me. They’re in my head all the time, even if they don’t both do it the same way. Gohan, I see behind my eyes whenever I think about doing something I shouldn’t do. Sometimes I hear his voice in my head…prompting me to be the person that he thinks I can be, instead of the person I’ve been, the one I am.

And Son Goku…Son…I see when I’m sleeping. It’s weird, but it happens sometimes, when the dreams get bad, or when I’m not quite asleep yet.

One of the first times we trained together, it started to rain. Not a spring shower, not even a downpour. I’m talking about rain – water falling from the sky so hard I couldn’t see a foot in front of my face, and neither could he. Flying got dangerous in a hurry. We ducked into a cave together, stumbling out of the wall of water like a couple of drunks.

“Well,” he said, hopping on one foot and tilting his head sideways, pounding lightly on the other side of his head – which was a damn stupid way to get water out of his ears if you ask me – “looks like we’re gonna be late for dinner again.”

I rolled my eyes. “Tragedy,” I said. And then my turban, which was heavy from all the water it had just absorbed, flopped down over my eyes.

I reached up and grabbed a fistful of cloth, slung the thing off my head so hard it hit the wall – and it was so wet that there was a little explosion of water.

To his credit, Son actually tried not to laugh – maybe for about ten seconds. Then he clamped both hands over his mouth and bent over like he was coughing.

I growled at him. “Not one word,” I said.

Predictably, the moron lost it. He doubled over, put his hands on his knees, and started laughing so hard I didn’t think he was ever going to stop. “I’m sorry, Pic,” he gasped out. “It was just…just…the timing…”
“Hmph,” I’d said as I pulled my cape over my head. And I almost did the sensible thing and put it down. But then I looked down at the wet material, then over at him, then down at the wet material. And then I detached it from the weights, dropped them, wadded the thing up, and pitched it at him.

My aim’s always been good. It hit him square in the face and draped over his head, hanging there…it even did the same little water-explosion. Then he looked at me like I’d taken up hula dancing for a full ten seconds.

I couldn’t help smirking. “Who knew. It actually was kind of funny,” I said, turning my eyes back to the cave entrance. “Now we’re even.”

Son Goku gave me that grin I KNEW meant bad things were about to happen. “Not even close, Pic,” he said. Then he tackled me out of nowhere. Usually, I don’t let him hit me, but I didn’t even see this one coming. It was enough to knock me over, and of course he came with me, as we both hit the cave floor in a heap.

We grappled after that – I think because neither of us can ever seem to let things go. But it wasn’t like our usual fights, and I don’t know how it wasn’t. We weren’t trying very hard, for one, not either of us…and Son kept laughing, and I had no idea what the objective was: submission? Tap out? Pin? Choke out? So what it basically amounted to was a lot of pointless rolling around on the floor.

It didn’t end normally, either. Because nobody got put into a submission hold; no one tapped out, got pinned, or choked out. I fell back against the cave wall, and he was about half on top of me, and maybe by mutual agreement we didn’t go on, just sat there, caught our breaths.

I didn’t know what to say. I don’t think he did either. So nobody said anything.

After a few minutes, he sat up, scooted a little bit away, and tucked his legs under himself to watch it rain. I did the same.

We kept right on not speaking until the rain started to let up…until it was almost time to try flying again. Then he spoke up: “Hey, Pic,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

I didn’t know if he meant “here” in the cave with him, “here” to help him train, or “here” in a more general sense…but that’s not the kind of question I ask. “Yeah,” I said. And we left together, and that was that.

But anyway, it happens sometimes, when I sleep. Right in those in-between places…moving into and out of other dreams…sometimes I find myself in that cave with him, the sound of rain filling my ears as we sit there side by side, shoulders almost touching, and watch the water come down.

And sometimes – it even hurts.