Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ.
Warning: Yaoi.
The first time he returns, his mother looks at him, her eyes glinting with either tears or memories, and says, "So?"
He looks at her, a small, tired-looking woman in her overalls and her tool belt, the sharp glare of her immeasurable genius dulled by years of fear and exhaustion and despair, of watching those she loves die one by one.
And he can't say anything.
"Trunks?" She pulls back a little, wary, always wary. "Trunks, what happened?"
He wants to tell her everything is going to be fine. Everything will be fixed, he's accomplished every one of his goals—the medicine dispatched, the threat exposed, the warning delivered. The mission couldn't have been more of a success if he'd found and killed Dr. Gero and destroyed the androids' blueprints himself.
But she can see as well as he can how nothing in their reality has changed.
That leaves him with very little to say.
"Oh, Trunks." His mother smiles, a faint, weary smile. "We knew what the odds were. I did all the calculations myself, remember? We knew the machine might not be able to stay within this space-time continuum. It's all right. At least we stopped them somewhere. And who knows? Maybe in their victory, we can figure out a way to defeat our own enemies."
He knows that. That's exactly where his own thought processes jumped the second the probability waves faded and he realized where he was. Besides, he is used to disappointment, to outcomes he didn't expect and doesn't know if he wants. That's all well and good.
That's not what hurts.
"I saw him," he says. It just comes rushing out, he's helpless. "I...I saw him."
His mother's face softens, and she sighs. "I know. Your father always did make an impression—"
But she stops, then, just stops with her mouth open, and she's staring at him, and he thinks that the pain in his gut must be plain to see in his face.
"He was great," says Trunks, and now he's stammering. "Really great. I mean. He just—he wasn't really anything like Gohan. He was—he was really different. He—he smiled all the time, you know? It's like you can't imagine him being serious, but then he turns around and—and just focuses, on, on whatever, and it's like—like he's a whole other person? But still the same, because he—he just, he never gives you the feeling that you should be scared or nervous, even though he's Saiyajin and he could destroy the world with a thought if he wanted to, he's just—he's just nice, and you can tell, you can tell how kind he is, and when you're standing next to him, you feel like nothing bad could ever happen again—"
He's talking uncontrollably now, he can't stop himself. His hands are shaking and he clenches them into fists, and he knows he should say something about meeting his father for the first time, except who cares, his father was exactly how he'd expected him to be, and anyway he should say something about Gohan as a child and seeing all of her other friends, and seeing her, his mother, as she was more than twenty years ago—he managed to hold himself together this far, he should be able to keep doing it, just until he can get away from her—
"—and—"
Her hands come down on his arms.
"Trunks." She's crying. No, she's trying not to cry, but the tears are on her face. "Oh, Trunks. It's all right. It's all right, baby, I'm so sorry—"
She puts her arms around him, holds his head to her shoulder like he's still a child, and he lets her because he doesn't want her to see how angry he is. How furious.
His eyes are hot and his face is damp, but those are her tears on his cheek. They must be.
"Baby, I'm so sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry, I should have—I should have—"
Should have what? Gone herself? Impossible. Told him not to do something stupid, like fall in love? Possibly, but doubtless he wouldn't have listened, much less taken her seriously.
Come on, it's Gohan's father, Trunks remembers saying her to her, once. It'll be like meeting my dad.
It wasn't. It wasn't.
You should have warned me, he wants to say, wants to yell, wants to howl. You should have warned me! How could you let me go to him, without even warning me—
He holds his mother close, with enough pressure that it must hurt. She doesn't say anything.
If only the man had been nothing like the stories. All those stories, from Mom, from Gohan, from the last few to survive long enough to leave vague memories of a long-dead hero in his young mind, memories all second-hand. Stories of a brave young warrior as kind as he was beloved, killed not in battle but by a sickness in a shocking—dooming—injustice.
If only Son Goku hadn't been exactly how Trunks had expected him to be.
In a small, childish, shamed voice, in the same low whisper with which Trunks had once confessed to having nightmares, he tells his mother, "I want to see him again."