Lost on Titan

{Part 7}

~Videl~

Back in her private quarters, Videl felt wave after wave of emotions crashing over her. So many, she could hardly identify them all. A few of them overshadowed the conglomerate, namely relief that while Sienna had been upset by the news, the sympathy she felt for Videl's situation outweighed her own feelings on the matter. More importantly, she wasn't upset at  her, but rather upset for  her. 

Another dominating emotion was the utter hopelessness of it all. As she looked around at her humble little space, she couldn't help but feel like she was encroaching on someone else's home. That she was an intruder who would soon be caught when the true owner returned. Though she knew the moment wouldn't come  - that the real  Videl had vanished, leaving only an impostor. She was stuck with the guilty, anxious trepidation, regardless.

The other emotion that grappled for the top spot was a deep confusion. She had the overwhelming need to understand how she had come to hate  someone like Kane. It didn't make sense to her - nothing about him seemed particularly odious or worthy of such a level of dislike. If anything, she felt drawn to him, despite his steely, unsmiling demeanor. She felt shame wriggling in her heart, knowing the real  Videl would surely be tossing in her figurative grave at the traitor who resided in her body now.

Videl realized that she'd begun to separate the two selves in her mind as if they were two different people altogether. The Videl of the past being the real one, and she was V, someone new that formed the moment she stumbled out of Cryo-Level 3 like an alien landing on a strange planet and commandeering a host body. And much like the simile of the alien, she felt as if she were unbearably alone in her new world, desperate to extricate herself from the terrible loneliness. The emptiness of her private quarters echoing too well the emptiness inside her, Videl forced herself to tread into the bedroom. 

Resolute to ignore the twinge of guilt, she threw herself on the bed and cried. For everything, for nothing. She must have cried for hours, her tears soaking the pillows until the reservoir ran dry. Still, she sobbed - tearlessly, soundlessly - for a while longer. She didn't know what else to do with herself. At some point, she decided it was enough. Her eyelids were swollen, her throat sore from the hard lump that choked her up, and her head pulsed with a mounting headache from all the tears. She had cried all she could cry, and then some. She forced herself to get up, and sure that it was now well past lunch, she made her way to the refrigerator. Before her hand went to open it, she remembered there had only been bottles of water inside. 

Videl must not have wanted to return from Cryo to find molded food, and cleared everything out,  she thought to herself. Still holding out hope, she checked the freezer, then the cabinets and the pantry. Not even frozen meals or non-perishables?  Just another thing that didn't make any sense. Her stomach growled loudly like a tiny beast that was enraged at the prospect of not possessing a single scrap of food anywhere in the kitchen. Videl rubbed her puffy eyes and whined pitifully. She didn't want to go to the Cafeteria again and risk running into Sienna or Kane. She knew that they would most likely need some space to process everything, feeling sure that this was much like the death of someone that they had known for a long time. 

To her, the real Videl was a stranger, and the loss was still hard to even comprehend. But Sienna? She was certain that it could be awhile before Sienna could bear to see her "friend" again. And Kane? Although they had not been on good terms by any stretch of the imagination - considering the memory of his piercing glare the moment she had first seen him with Lars - she knew that it still had to be strange to lose someone that he had history with. Not to mention what a slap in the face it must be to feel the death of someone, only to see them walking around, living and breathing, like a zombie that had lost all sense of who they were before. Videl felt more deflated at the thought, if that were even possible.