The hallway is chocked with people and words of comfort but I look to my right, his whole tall frame seated on the bench beside me, I wonder if he even cares. I watched as he stared at the floor. I felt him shaking through the bench and reached out to touch his broad shoulder.

He jerked from my grasp and thrust his face into his hands; his shoulders were violently shaking beneath my tender grip. I watched him as he slowly turned to his right where his wife sat. Her dark brown eyes swam with unshed tears. I saw this woman I hardly knew with her face ashen with grief and my whole body ached for her.

"I Just..." He said but his voice was strangled and hoarse. I waited. He swallowed. His wife leaned into him with a sob. He wrapped his arms around her but turned looked over at me looking me right in the eyes. I winced and turned quickly away.

"I just don't understand, how he could do that to them!" I nodded glumly, still looking at the floor in front of me.

I clenched my eyes shut but I could feel it when he looked away. I peeked over my shoulder: He rubbed his wife's back slowly and carefully as she fell asleep in his arms but I couldn't say anything.

He sighed and I saw in him more of the man he was supposed to be at the age of 35 and less the naive wild-boy I met so many years ago. I looked down to the ground at my feet and stared there, twiddling my thumbs.

"Why? We could have brought them back...but now..." he whispered. My tears leaked down my face and hands and dripped onto the cold tile floor.

The next morning I sat down at the kitchen table and blearily rubbed the sleep from my eyes. My blue hair is a rat's nest on my head but the newspaper headline had pushed it from my mind along with the rest of my morning routine.

'Rape and murder" lay on the table in front of me in bold letters and I stared at them, not quite connecting them to last night.

"Mama?" rang through the silent kitchen as my young daughter pulled on my sleeve. I looked down at her narrowed eyes.

So much like your father,

I think dimly as a scowl spreads across her face. She harumphes at me and I shook my head to clear its fuzziness. She just rolls her eyes at me and I smiled.

"Yes sweetheart?" I say, and I am surprised that I sound so calm, not a single stutter.

"Mama, can you take me to the pawk? Twunks is twaining with Papa." She said, Her 7 year old head cocked to the side and her sparkling blue eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.

I stood in the doorway, but neither of them noticed I was there.

I was content with that. I watched as Bulla dragged her mother out the front door and chuckled softly as the door slammed behind them.

Seeing my mate, My Bulma, in so much pain almost physically painful but she has her pride and I respect that. I'll allow her space to grieve in her own way.

I looked around the kitchen and noticed she had left the newspaper on the table again. I walked further into the kitchen and pulled a chair out to sit down. My stomach growled but my mind was on other things.

I glanced down at the newspaper and I shook my head with a frown, though I cannot deny the headline's truth, I still find it somewhat unbelievable.

My Mate's Ex, the worm creature that he was aside, still does not deserve to have his name libeled in such a way. Especially if it upsets my mate in such a way. Granted, I didn't group the other victims as my friends either but their deaths, especially Baldy's...Baldy and his toaster girlfriend were one of the only members of Bulma's friends that could even admit that I somewhat... liked.

Even Baldy's brat... Marron, had grown on me…in her own obnoxious way.