Revenant from the Past

Tarbel Village was as quiet and peaceful as it ever had been. The denizens therein went about their daily lives as if things had always been this way and always would be. Standing on the outside looking in, a lone figure watched the simple life unfold before her. She stood in silence, unable to step forward. The weight of her own thoughts and feelings stayed her feet.

Is it right of me to just waltz back into the lives of my family after so long? They've no doubts believed me dead and gone for almost two decades. Things here seem so peaceful and carefree compared to the life I lived. Will they be happy to see me after so long? Or will they be angry that a total stranger came back wearing the face of someone they loved? Even though I am Celeh, I'm not the same person they remember. How can I be? I struggle to remember myself... Doubts, hesitation, and fear swirled in her mind; The fear of the only people she had left to call family rejecting her, of being truly alone.

Come on, Celeh. You can't stand here forever. And if they do hate you for being gone so long, it just means nothing changed from when you first woke up... A heavy sigh broke the stillness around her. The crunching of parched dirt followed suit as Celeh stepped forward at last. Her gaze dropped to the small piece of paper in her hand that had the address and name of her last living relative scribbled on it. It was the name of her half sister, Silba. She stepped up to the door and knocked after tucking the paper into her hip pocket.

The door to the small, but cozy home creaked open slowly. A youthful looking Saiyan man was standing on the other side of the doorway from Celeh. He looked her up and down with a guarded, curious gaze. "What'dya want? We didn't order any deliveries, and you're not dressed like the guardsmen." He snapped with a feigned annoyed expression.

"I'm looking for Silba. Silba Lamiace." Celeh kept her reply short and to the point. She couldn't tell that his annoyance was only feigned, so she didn't want to poke a potential bear by prodding him. She was more focused on finding her sister, if she was here as Celeh had been instructed.

"And who the hell are you to come looking for her by name?" He crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame while he eyed her.

"I'm her-"

"Celeh!?" From down the hall inside the house Silba's voice called out in utter disbelief. Her face was one of shock and pale from fear.

Celeh's head tilted and she flicked her gaze down the hall as her half sibling came rushing forward to the doorway. "Silba! It's me! It's been so long..." She looked away and down at the ground outside the house. Her words trailed off. In truth, Celeh had no idea how to breach the topic of her extended absence without sounding absolutely insane.

"There's no way you can be Celeh! It's been over twenty years! She went MIA at the start of a Tuffle attack on the front lines. We all thought she was dead!" Silba was borderline shouting. Her voice cracked out of a combination of anger and some small sense of lingering grief at old wounds being opened after all this time.

The young man in the doorway stood upright and brought his hands down to his sides, but curled them into fists. He remained silent while Silba and Celeh spoke.

Celeh couldn't help but wince when the sharp tone of her sister cracked out of anguish. "Silba, I..." She reached out a hand instinctively out of desperation.

The young man in the doorway smacked her hand away. "What kind of psycho uses someone's deceased family to try and manipulate them?"

Celeh clenched her own fists and gritted her teeth upon this cruel accusation. "What the hell do you know!? You think I'd try to torture and use my own family with the memory of those who fell during the war?! I did fall in battle! But someone saved me. I-I... Don't remember everything. I just woke up from being frozen for the last two decades..."

Silba stepped in front of the Saiyan man and nudged him back into the house. "You were in frozen sleep for twenty years? You expect me to believe that? Who saved you? How did you survive the destron attacks if you were in the lost metropolis at the time it happened? Do you take me for a fool? This sounds like total nonsense!"

"Ma, don't waste your breath on grifting trash like her." He piped up more out of an attempt to keep his mother from getting more worked up than she already was rather than to deter Celeh more.

"Silba, please? I know how absurd this sounds. Do you think I don't know?! All I remember was taking a hit to the head from a Tuffle ambush. Then the next thing I know, I'm waking up in an underground lab that's been out of use for who knows how long! I've got no job, no home, no direction! So I go looking for anyone I can reconnect with. Any family that might have survived the war. I know we're half sibling, but we basically grew up together! I'm even wearing my armor. You can see how old it is. It's even got my iname etched inside the collar!" The fears she had before knocking on the door were growing. The lithe woman hastily pulled her armor off and held it up so that Silba could see inside to where her name was engraved.

"This is... how did you get this? It doesn't make any sense." Silba's anger wavered for just a moment as the possibility that Celeh WAS who she claimed to be set in.

"It was there when I woke up." She pulled the armor over and slipped it back on. "I saw the memorial. With all the names lost at the metropolis. Not just my name. Our brother, Rocatt, and our uncle, Leparss, too." She let her hands unclench and stepped back from the doorway. Celeh turned her back and sat down on the edge of the porch.

Silba stepped out onto the porch, as well. She didn't sit down beside Celeh, though. "Don't. Just... don't. I don't know how or why this happened, but... I can't deal with this. Talking to a ghost about other people who have been gone for years... I just can't. Please, leave us alone. Jin will be home soon, and I don't wanna have to explain things to him. I-I..." Silba started to get choked up.

Celeh believed for a moment that she had a glimmer of hope. A shred of a chance that she might be able to connect with what little remained of her immediate family. But a lump formed in her throat and her hands clenched on her lap as Silba's words crushed that hope. The other saiyan woman got choked up as she pleaded for Celeh to leave. To be gone from their lives so that the scars of this loss not be torn open and made fresh again.

She jumped up and whipped around to face Silba and Dagga. "So that's it, then?! I'm supposed to walk away from all the family I've got left?!" Now Celeh was the one who was angry. She felt abandoned and hurt. Even if she could understand why Silba might feel this way, it didn't make it hurt any less. Her temper flaring caused a little of her energy to swell out from her.

Dagga stepped forward and shoved Celeh back. She stumbled a few steps backward due to being caught off guard, but Dagga was the one who was truly shocked. His expression was confusion and fear as he glanced at his own hands, then back up at Celeh. "She said you oughtta-W-what?! What are you? You feel so... cold! It's not natural!" He exclaimed as he backed away from Celeh slowly.

Celeh's breath was visible. Dagga's was, too, because he had been close to her. The rising tide of her emotions made her fractured spirit unstable. That caused more of the grisly chill of her ki to ooze out around her. The air grew chilled around them as her energy leaked out more and more.

"Are you some kind of revenant? No living person has such cold and unsettling energy! The real Celeh wouldn't raise her energy against her own family!" Silba was shouting now.

Dagga slowly backed into the house and tried to pull his mother to do the same. "Come on, ma. Something's wrong here. We can't..."

"Get out of here. I don't know who or what you are, but nobody threatens my family!" Silba took a fighting stance on her porch in between Celeh and the house. "I won't say it again!" She inched closer while keeping her guard up.

Celeh held back tears. They wouldn't believe her explanation even if she tried to tell them. Pain and fear completely overshadowed any reason they might have. Her own anger and grief at her remaining family members treating her like a bad omen, a foul memory, and a monster left her heartbroken. She couldn't hold it back any longer.

"RRRRRRRAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" She howled in sorrow and anger as her energy erupted around her in a flash. The deep, numbing cold that they felt before spread rapidly... and then she rocketed off through the sky like a frozen comet.

And so Celeh left her sister and nephew. She flew away with tears trickling down her face and that accursed, biting chill suffused through her entire being from this fracture in her essence. Rejected by the only family she had left.