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"You summoned me?"
Bra rolled her eyes despite her tears. "Don't say it like that." She sniffed.
"What else would you call it?" Uub slid the glass door open to join her on his top-floor apartment balcony. Dawn was breaking across Satan City, with pinks and low clouds painting the sky behind the distant mountains. The cold, damp air pressed to Uub's bare limbs and chest, and he suppressed a shiver. Bra's landing, swift and soft in sight and sound but ungainly in billowed ki had woken Uub from tense dreams. His fitful start had tempered at recognition of Bra, but there'd be no returning to sleep after that injection of adrenaline. "I don't believe you landed here to admire the view," he said.
As if to prove him wrong Bra returned to the sunrise, elbows on dew-dropped railing. Whatever had brought her here, she'd clearly been in a hurry. Bra was more than capable of maintaining ladylike decorum while flying in a dress, but Uub was still surprised to find her so well put together after a flight from the other side of the world. Her floor-length, deep blue chiffon dress appeared unscathed, her fingers still held tight to a matching clutch, and even with the stream of tears dampening her temples due to a headwind, her make up remained impeccable. Though, she was barefoot, and her clipped updo had not fared well - long and waved aquamarine strands had loosened and now brushed her bare back. Uub thought about grabbing a T-shirt to at least feel decently dressed beside her at the railing, his lurid green sleeping shorts not quite matching her elegance, but if Bra hadn't paused to throw a barbed comment she mustn't have cared much either.
"I take it you've seen the news," she said, and Uub hummed in the negative. His cautious answer was still enough to make the situation worse and she sobbed, just once, her head bowing low, before she stifled the rest with a deep breath and she raised her head again to the mountains, her fingers pressing on nails the only tell of this fresh grief. "Of course, you don't follow the gossip socials."
"I was asleep, is all." Uub dare not agree and risk calling the world of celebrity asinine. Bra was usually so unflustered by it all, often the machinator of great drama for petty personal gain or to alleviate boredom. Only one thing had been bothering her in recent times, a backfired plan of her own devising. "Don't tell me he proposed?"
"Hurachi and I have ended things," Bra said with all the dignity she could muster, dabbing at her eyes with a back of a finger.
Now that was a twist. Uub leant back against the railing, lost. "...Hooray? I thought that's what you wanted."
"I did. And I did it myself. On my terms."
Bra fetched her personal phone from her clutch, the one with the cluster of chipped and faded Hero charms, Uub's own likeness swinging along with the rest. She blurred through apps and posts, then turned the screen to Uub. He ducked to see clearer. A newspaper's social post proudly proclaimed to have "snapped Hurachi's side-girl", presenting two papped photos of a woman in her mid-twenties locking the door to an apartment. She wore wide sunglasses, her collar up, and a black cloche hat to cover her hair. Despite the disguise, Uub knew her better than Hurachi ever could have.
"Cold," Uub said, rederiving the exact steps of Bra's plan.
"He was cheating me, just not on me and not with Bran." Bra flicked through her phone, frowning at new comments. "He went against our agreement first by avoiding planning our break up, then refused to deny the rumours of a proposal. Bran's face in the wrong place gave me an understandable reason to leave him, and demonstrated his duplicitousness to the world."
Uub tried not to wince. Though the intended metaphor and poetic justice had landed, as with all plans Bra concocted when cornered it was somewhat short-sighted. "Someone will join the dots when the world learns of the fusion technique," Uub said, "then you and Pan won't be smelling of roses, either."
Bra shrugged, her chin jutted, but her defensive attitude crumbled under the weight of Uub's simple observation. "I wanted to wipe that smug look off his face, let him know he couldn't cross me unpunished. He was upset, and just as humiliated as I've been this past month when I accused him at dinner, but it felt… bad."
An unkind and dismissive 'you don't think?' came to Uub's mind; Bra's capacity for empathy continually surprised her. But he bit it back, searching her imploring expression for the real question. That to-and-fro was a conversation she could have had with any one of her family or friends, so why did she come to him? For sympathy? He had little, much like everyone else. To help Bra end it, Pan clearly thought little of this charade of a relationship too, and Trunks said from the very start that he believed the dual intent to boost Hurachi's company's profile and play up Bra's Earthling side over her Saiyan one was a pointless endeavour, with Mai only half-heartedly tempering his continual scorn. Even Marron and Goten had clearly formed less than favourable opinions of the faux relationship, Goten's jaw twitching and Marron smiling placidly whenever Bra raised the subject, both stressing she should be careful. Uub, for his part, had warned her in his wisest tones that she'd have trouble controlling the situation, and had been saddened to be proved right.
But now he was lost for wisdom. "Why are you telling me all this?" was all Uub could think to ask.
Bra spoke in a small, unsure voice. "I need to know - what happened when you and Daisy broke up?"
"When I who and what?" It took Uub a moment to remember who Daisy even was, so alien was the concept. He pictured shock slapped on Daisy's black and white face, her white wool standing on end in offense, horn-tips daring him. Uub near-enough laughed, though changed it to a clearing of his throat at the earnestness of Bra's question. She was pleading, searching for something like hope in his eyes. "Nothing happened," he said. "Papayaman and Queen Flock dated in the comics for a time, then they parted ways amicably."
"I know that. But didn't you feel something? Didn't either of you feel bad, or sad that it was over, even if it was fake?"
Oh. Uub took Bra's hand. She was warm, as all Saiyans were, and she squeezed his hand tight, nails nipping the back of his fingers. He let her do it, she needed to. "I think I know what you want me to say. But no. Queen Flock is older than Daisy, so we understood the writing choice, but in real life Daisy had not long graduated as my student. We barely knew each other back then. When Hero fans expected us to be together at appearances we asked the writers to change the story. We laughed at the sappy break up panels, nothing more. Your commitment to that fake relationship is commendable - nearly six months to our week and we wouldn't hold hands for the camera, let alone kiss. You were in far deeper than we ever were."
Bra nodded at the sincere compliment, but did not let go of his hand. "So, to feel awkward, you did think of it as a real relationship, in a way."
Something like pity welled in Uub's chest. Here was a grown woman seeking validation in her own narrative, frustrated to find she had deeper feelings after all. And whilst Uub could throw her a bone, it was best to keep his story simple, to allow Bra to understand the obvious truth of her situation. "I did briefly think on us, only to grimace. Daisy and I have no time outside of work to be interesting or date properly." And now for the dangerous part, what Bra really did not want to hear. "To be asking me this, did you fall for Hurachi?"
Bra dropped Uub's hand. "Absolutely not," she said," he was vile." But her acrimony quickly sank away when nuance resurfaced. She folded her arms, as though against the chill. "...He was a bland, rich man, pure and simple, trapped in the playboy act by focus groups. Like me, I guess, but he didn't have a choice in the act. Yes, I enjoyed his company, planning our next moves, stringing along the press, and part of me wondered how Dad would have reacted to me dating him, fake as his act was." She smiled to herself, before misery found her again. "But then he dragged out the whole thing by refusing to schedule the break-up in some horrid ploy to trap me, and I had to teach him a lesson."
If Uub had been hearing this second-hand he would have put his head in his hands. As it was, he dared not rankle Bra with such a gesture. "So if you're not feeling bad because you secretly liked him," he said, letting her denial slip past for the moment, "then the bad feeling must be you acknowledging that he actually liked you - the real you."
She snorted. "Bullshit did he, he was playing nice to use me."
"Or he was nice to a fault. Why else would he be so desperate to avoid the break up, even when knowing you aren't as sweet as you pretend? You tasted two seconds of intimacy with someone who could reject you, and you reacted by rejecting him first."
Bra wheeled on Uub and he instinctively stepped back, not to cower but to give her mind time. The clockwork in Bra's head did indeed tick over, memories reorienting in the new light Uub had offered, and her hand slowly cranked up to her mouth in horror. One step's gap had always been enough. "Why didn't he make his feelings plain?" she said.
"Maybe he was working up the courage. You weren't yet at the relationship's six month deadline, yes? In his mind he had time." In fact, if Hurachi had invited her to dinner, and the dress code was as formal as Bra's outfit implied, tonight may well have been the night he intended to come clean. Poor guy. "Congratulations, you heart-breaker."
"I'm a monster," Bra muttered, perhaps making the same deductions herself. Her cold shock was freezing her, and Uub could do no more than offer open arms. She gladly took his embrace, though didn't meet Uub's eyelight in her shame.
Uub rested his chin on the crown of her head. "If you were," he said, "you would have considered marriage out of convenience. You were confused and scared, with conviction so strong that even Bran couldn't see sense. Don't beat yourself up forever."
Bra pressed her face against his bare chest. "Thank you," she whispered. He held her for a long while. She'd made a mess, everyone else would pile onto her soon enough, but right now she needed compassion. Perhaps he had more sympathy than he realised, or was happy to make room for some. Bra was wild, a typhoon in strength and determination, but with a predictable path for the most part, and Uub had learnt to read her from miles away, to encourage that fizzle out..
Bra stepped back, eyes drier, but her eye makeup finally blurring at the edges, showing her tiredness. "How did you get to be so wise?" she said, and Uub laughed.
"I have my own problems, but it's not difficult to be better put together than the rest of you freaks of nature," he said.
"And you're not one?" said Bra, taking the jibe in her stride.
"Not publicly. You might be able to fly around nowadays, but my identity is still on lock down. I don't need nosey neighbours questioning what business a pretty woman has on my balcony so come inside, and we'll work out how to undo some damage. Have you eaten?" he added, feeling the first dozy pang of morning hunger.
"You think I'm pretty?" Bra's voice lifted with her gaze.
The patch across Uub's chest where her cheek had pressed burned, and Uub pushed her back to arm's length. "Are you so desperate for affection you'd make a choice this poor?"
"Right, I'm sorry, thank you," she said. "I'll help with breakfast." Sheepish, she untangled herself and brushed past him into his apartment, her lightweight dress flowing behind her like a waking dream.
Uub didn't deserve her full gratitude. He hadn't been completely forthcoming, knowing what Bra needed to hear and not his own messy truth. He had, in recent times, thought on the conveniently formed relationships between his friends, how finding a normal person had forever been out of reach for him too, and would not be on the cards for him any time soon. Daisy, with her Hero training and schedule, had been a name on his list of people who would understand him, and maybe, just maybe, something could happen. But Uub scratched her name out after some deliberation - they were too different in some ways and far too alike in others. And the people from his home island were too passive, and the police officer he'd met too political, and the martial artist at the gym too intense. And now, as he watched Bra pad through his apartment in exhaustion, watched her take out the toothed clip in her hair and shake her waves loose, Bra's name appeared in fresh ink at the bottom of the list. And the more he tried to cross it out, citing no other reason other than 'no', the more his mind underlined her name instead, his chest still burning and now his arms and hands where he'd touched her, the ozone smell clinging to her from her flight stuck in his nose.
He sucked through his teeth. Uub may have had sense to see through Bra's feelings, but that was no high wisdom. Wisdom would have been spotting his own loose feelings. How desperate had he been for affection to let her in, to soothe her like that?
"Not now," he told himself out loud, and not ever he voiced only in his head. This day's task was to be the friend he'd promised himself he'd be. The rest of the morning's apparition he would sleep on.