Piccolo-ness! With Piccolo!

OS: Rainy Knight

You'll only understand this if you've played XenoVerse. (T'was amazing!)

----
She has always told me how much she loves the sound of rain hitting the roof. It
is her "favorite noise in the vast and expansive history of 'Every Noise Ever.'

So, naturally, I find her holed up in the room with the most windows, which happens to be mine, holding the back of her neck, rubbing it as she scribbles furiously in her notebook.

"How are you feeling?" She asks, sliding her pencil into her bun and stretching out her back.

I smile slightly, knowing that even after a few weeks, after the 'The Incident', she still asks if I'm alright.-

"I'm okay, and you?" I tentatively put a hand on her shoulder, fully expecting her to tense up and recoil with an apologetic look.

The tension is still there,  but she doesn't pull away, much to my absolute shock.

She pulls me down, a wet fierce look in her eyes. As she begins to speak, I wrap my arms around her shoulders, the way I always did when she'd write and tell me her troubles.

"I don't want to be afraid of you anymore, she says softly, leaning into my chest.

I close my eyes, feeling wind drift in from the open window, where the rain gathers on the sill.

"It's just...I know it's not your fault, and I know you would never, and I mean, it wasn't you, it was Demigra, and I know that so I don't know why it bothers me so much, it just does. I wish it didn't because all I want is what we had. I don't want to tense up in fear every time out fingers touch.  I mean, you're not like that, and I know you'd never..." The rain grows heavier, and she takes a deep breath of the fresh water smell. "I was just so afraid that one of
us was going to to kill the other, and, well, I was prepared to die, because I could never try to seriously hurt you. I just couldn't. But then, Trunks and Goten were there, so I had  to, and with every attack you- Demigra made, against me, I knew that this was supposed to hurt, and it was nothing like our sparring fights.

"So, I guess now every time we touch, I subconsciously think back to that, and....kinda tense... But I really hate that."

I sigh, listening to the howling wind. "I am filled with regret for something I couldn't control. Imagine me waking up, bloody and beaten on the Lookout's floor, and I glance over at my girlfriend, hands and knees on the ground, coughing up blood. My first thought is "I swear on my own grave that who ever did this will pay severely. She's coughing harder and harder and there's more and more blood and I could tell that she's fighting with everything she's got left just to breathe. But it hurts her. She's visibly shaking, ever so slightly. You push yourself up, ignoring every ounce of pain, because in this moment, she's the only thing in the universe that matters.

"When she looks up at you and smiles, her teeth are bloody, along with the rest of her, but that's not what you not notice.  What you notice is the look in her eyes. She tries to hide it  as best she can, but you've seen that look before. You know it too well. You simply can't place it. Then, you realize, it's the way she looks at bats and spiders. The way she looked at the man who destroyed her home. The way she looked at the man who tried to destroy her new home. She looks at you with fear. As you slowly piece this information together, you begin to comprehend what happened, meanwhile, her young nephew  yells at you, screams at you, tells you he'll kill you if you even look  at his Aunt (Y/N). She begins to tell him off, but she just coughs up more blood. She knows, right? You start to speak, but as her not even ten-year-old nephew helps his aunt up, you wonder, 'Is she better off without me? I couldn't save her from myself. How could I protect her from anything else?'

"As the kid and the uh....love of your life," I feel my face grow red, and she smiles and giggles. "disappears, you curse the past mistakes you have made, for allowing you to be controlled. For hurting her.

"You are left with a single word running through you head. One that hasn't been used to describe you in a while. You haven't been called a monster in forever, and there you sit, using that word to describe yourself."

Her voice is low, and scratchy for a woman's, as she holds back angry tears. "D-demigra owes you his life...n-no one s-should have the power to create such an obscenity, to mess with another's head. Y-you are NOT a monster. And I know, I KNOW you will never be. Do you understand me, Piccolo?" She is now on her knees, sinking into the mattress, holding me tightly by the shoulders. I sit, staring at her, completely fixated by the wild fire of rage and pure hatred in her eyes. She lets the rage induced tears go, not bothering to wipe them away.

"Do you understand me?" She asks again, more forcefully.

"Yeah...." I say, wiping away her tears.

"Good. I love you." Her fingers find their way behind my neck, and I pull her in closer as she gazes up intently at me. Hoping it's not too soon, I close the distance between us, and I can feel her smile under our kiss, and the tension falls away from her shoulders.

"It's okay. Everything's okay again." I feel she says this more for her benefit than mine.

"I knew it would be."

She smirks. "Oh really? You seemed a bit nervous to me."

"I know everything."

"Whatever you say, Dear." She picks up her notebook, and the pencil she named Elanor, and leans back into my chest.

I brush the hair off her shoulder, watching as she writes, her hand flowing over the page in fluid graceful motions.

I rest a little easier, knowing that even though Demigra hasn't been defeated, I still have her.