Taz tried to rise to his feet toward Bulma, but the world tilted sideways as if gravity had gotten bored and decided to change its mind.
His body pulsed where the wound was—dull and hot at the same time—and a wave of nausea rose from his stomach and crawled up his throat.
He heard Bulma saying something urgent, but the words came through like they were trapped underwater, slow, warped, and far away.
His body swayed once, and the floor rushed up to meet him with a soft thud that he barely felt.
THUMP!
Everything went black, and the silence was so complete that it felt like dying all over again.
......................
When his consciousness returned, it did so slowly, like a candle being relit in a room filled with fog.
Taz's first sensation was warmth wrapping around him from every direction, as if he had been buried in a hot bath.
His second sensation was sound, a steady mechanical hum that vibrated through his bones in a way that felt oddly comforting.
HUMMMM.
He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids were heavy, and when they finally lifted, the world appeared distorted through a greenish blur.
Tiny bubbles drifted upward in front of his face, and he realized with a jolt that he was submerged in liquid.
Glug… glug… glug…
Taz's heart kicked hard in his chest, and he instinctively tried to inhale, but his body did not panic, as if it already knew how to breathe inside this strange environment.
He raised a hand, but it moved slowly, and he saw the glass wall of a tank only inches away, curved and thick and covered with thin lines of light.
…Right, so he was in some sort of… pod?
…A healing tank?
Specifically, a Capsule Corp healing tank, the kind he had seen in games, fan art, and random internet debates that always ended with someone shouting about 'zenkai boosts'.
The thought would have made him laugh in another life, but right now it only made his chest tighten with disbelief.
His gaze shifted, and he saw Bulma outside the tank, sitting on a stool with a toolbox open at her feet, her face tense and focused as she worked on a small gadget that looked like a half-built scanner.
A monitor beside her displayed lines of data, and a pulsing waveform that rose and fell in steady rhythm, as well as a small number counter that kept ticking upward.
Beep… beep… beep…
Bulma's eyes flicked to him the moment he moved, and her whole posture changed in an instant, like someone had released a breath she had been holding for hours.
"Oh thank goodness!" she exclaimed with joy, her voice full of relief even though her eyes were still wet from worry.
Taz tried to speak, but his mouth opened awkwardly, and only a faint sound escaped, muffled by the liquid and the glass.
Bulma leaned closer to the tank, pressed a hand against the surface, and forced a smile that was too wide, too eager, too determined to be real.
"You're fine, you hear me? You're going to be completely fine, I've seen worse wounds than that and I've fixed worse problems than this!" she reassured him quickly, as if saying it fast enough would make it truer.
Taz blinked slowly, and his body calmed a little because something about her voice carried certainty, the kind of certainty only geniuses had when they refused to accept failure.
He nodded once to show he understood, and his eyes stayed on her hands because they were still working even while she talked, tightening a bolt here and reconnecting a wire there.
Taz felt guilty for making her worry, even though he knew it was not his fault, and even though he knew this world had trained her to worry the way people in peaceful worlds trained themselves to sleep.
Bulma tapped the monitor, checked the numbers, then pointed at the waveform like she was talking to a stubborn engine.
"Your vitals are stable. The tank's already repaired most of the damage, and the fluid is feeding your body everything it needs, so stop trying to look so serious like you're going to crack your face." She joked with a laugh.
Her attempt at humor landed strangely, because it sounded to Taz like old Bulma for a second, the Bulma from a brighter timeline, before the ruin had warped her into something else.
Taz wanted to tell her that he was not trying to look serious, that he was just confused and bewildered by his reincarnation, but he only nodded again because he did not know how to say it.
Bulma watched him for a moment, then her smile softened, and she leaned back with a long breath that trembled at the end.
"I thought I lost you. I thought… when the time machine vanished… I thought you were gone too." She admitted quietly, with relief, yet harbored lingering fear.
Taz's chest tightened as he felt something twist inside him, because this was the exact moment he was having trouble dealing with in regard to Bulma.
How to tell her that the truth was that her son had actually died and that in reality, everyone forgot about her, her timeline, and how she would deal with that loss on her own.
He opened his mouth, then closed it, and he chose the softest response possible, the kind that did not add weight to her already heavy shoulders.
"I'm here, Mom." He said, and his voice finally came through the tank's speaker system in a sharp tone that sounded more like Trunks than Taz.
Bulma's eyes widened as if she had not expected him to answer so calmly, then she nodded quickly and wiped at the corner of her eye like she was angry at herself for showing weakness.
"Good! Stay here and heal, and when you're out we're going to talk, because something happened today that should not have been possible." She said gently.
Taz sighed as his gaze drifted to the ceiling above the lab, because he could not keep looking at her without feeling like a problem.
He had been thrown into her son's body that should have been dead, and every second he stayed silent was another second the lie rooted itself deeper.
A strange quiet settled in him, not peace, but the calm that came before a storm, and in that calm his mind began to turn inward.
Taz stared at his hands floating in the green fluid, hands that looked so familiar yet felt like they belonged to someone with a lifetime of violence carved into his muscle memory, and he questioned what he even was.
Who he even was.