Disclaimer

Humiliation

ljv

AN: Oneshot

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

-Dorthy Parker

*****

So her soul is breaking into a million little pieces. That hardly matters, however. She'll get over it. She always does.

She wasn't sure what she was expecting when she married him. She cannot remember. The memories and dreams of the girl she use to be have somehow disappeared; faded into the background – a dissipation so gradual and so subtle she hardly noticed as her fire left her. She hardly notices it now.

As practicality would have it, she has laundry to do and dinner to make. Dwelling serves no purpose other than reawaken pain. She does not have the time for something so trivial as the hurt that burns her heart.

He does not love her, at least not any more than he loves every person on earth. She would be comfortable extending that statement to every being in the universe, and possibly the universes beyond that. Enemies and friends are indistinguishable objects to him; she is an indistinguishable object to him. Nothing is black and white with Goku, rather, everything is simply white and she finds she cannot fight this – it is a battle she has lost too many times before.

She remembers how he did not know how to respond to a kiss. So after the fifth frustrated try, she punched him. She could hardly comprehend one moment from the next as suddenly she was pinned down on the bed. In that startled confusion, she was more pleased than anything else. But as all things with him, it did not last long, because suddenly his hard gaze gave way into a cheerful grin.

"Geez, sorry Chichi. You surprised me. I just kind of reacted."

She tried to punch him again. This time he caught her fist.

"Wow, you must be really tired to be so grumpy. We should go to sleep. Sleep always makes me feel better when I get grumpy, that and…well… food." His eyes suddenly got very wide. "We should go to sleep, and then tomorrow morning will come faster and so will breakfast!"

Before she could respond, he grabbed the pillow from the bed he had her pinned to and grabbed the blanket at the foot of the bed before loosening her from his grasp and curling up on the floor to sleep. She lay alone in a large bed listening to his even breathing as the first light of morning touched her face.

She made him breakfast, just as she had every day after. Her life had become a steady routine. She found herself devoted to a man who was not at all devoted to her.

It was an eventual process, but he did finally become her lover. Or as much of a lover as his nature would allow.

Her pregnancy with Gohan had been hard and dangerous. Afterwards Goku treated her as if she were to break. She could hardly convince him to touch her after that.

"Chichi, you could get hurt." He admonished. "I don't want to see you hurt."

It was not a lover's concern but a childlike innocence that inspired Goku's distance. Chichi was not a fool enough to think otherwise.

News of his death by his brother Raditz had been brutal. She had taken the news in stride. Chichi was a mother. She could handle it, just so long as she had Gohan.

Gohan was taken from her too.

She had broken down then. Even now, years later, she had not completely healed from that.

Life had been relatively sane until the arrival of the Saiyans. Everything that Chichi thought she could control became so out of her grasp she could do nothing but stand in the sidelines.

She had thought, after her husband came home after his extended trip in outer space, that things would finally start to calm down.

Cell had ruined everything. But then again, so did Goku.

"He won't be coming back, mom. He wants to stay dead."

She had already been broken. She doubted her heart could be broken into any smaller pieces than before.

A/N; A little random and depressing, but it is what it is.