Title: Cycle
Rating: G
Summary: Gohan angsts. Set 3 years after Cell Games.
A/N: Unbeta'd drabble.
It's a warm sunday, with soft breezes and softer clouds in an azure sky and Gohan thinks it's kind of ironic how calm the world is. How peaceful. His father had bought that peace with his life and no one on earth remembers it. There seems to be no worry in the world, no war that Gohan knows of, no problems except for the question whether he will have to do any homework today or not. Closing his eyes, Gohan feels the grass tickle the back of his neck, his palms, the tender skin of his ankles and he breathes in the heavy smell of the earth and knows he's alive because of his father's selfish sacrifice. It sickens him.
It's been three years to the day since Goku died and Gohan's having nightmares again because of it. The kind where he wakes up suddenly, frozen to the spot, heart racing faster than humanly possible, while the hollows of his knees are slick with cold sweat and his night shirt sticks to the small of his back. It's the kind of nightmare where his eyes are blinded by horror and the darkness of a room he only recognizes as his own after his brain sluggishly catches up with reality. It takes seconds or minutes (or days) for him to regain his breath and when he does, he feels like crying. But he promised himself to never cry again, and what would Mr Piccolo say if he ever saw him like that? Had he not gotten over it yet?
He feels like such a disappointment, a little coward (because he knows he was, should have acted quicker, better, not played around) whom the sun and the birds suddenly seem to mock. He's not supposed to enjoy himself. So he rolls over in the grass to get up, soiling his knees (and his mother will be furious, these are his best pants), to go into the house and hide in his darkened room or in a cave. Maybe a hole would do, too. He'd hide until this day is finally over; until he can forget about his nightmares and the guilt and the loss and not cry at the peace, but laugh.