each to his own home
or: I am still my father's son
When the dust settled and the fighting was through, and they knew that an ordeal of more than three years was over, they gave each other a long look – that look that said, let's all go our separate ways – and waved as Trunks departed for his own time. And then the silence returned, that awful, bottomless silence, and they each returned to their own homes.
They had mourned as a group, and when Gohan returned home he and his mother mourned as a family; the act of saying goodbye not once but thrice ate at him, stole his sleep and lived in his dreams. He returned to his books while his bones were still healing, and found that at some point he had developed a single-minded focus for even the inane tasks behind learning. He never grew quite comfortable with his open window, though, forever afraid that a spectre named Frieza in his father's skin was skulking outside.
His mother made house and grew pregnant with his father's second child, and Gohan made dinner when she was too tired and ill to do so. Hers was an easy pregnancy, much easier than when she had been pregnant with him, she said – but still hard, to carry a half-Saiyan in a human womb.
(He overheard Bulma, once, whispering to his mother that her husband had broken her wrists and shattered her pelvis, during the night that ended with Trunks, and that Trunks' body heat had left scar tissue in her uterus; that there were things that even a human woman could not do. Gohan wondered, how much had he hurt his own mother?)
Six months after his father had saluted them with a final goodbye, his mother handed him a sheet of paper and directions to head into the city. There were things that needed to be purchased. She had confidence in him to go alone. He was, after all, the man of the house.
He'd never been alone before, not out in the real world beyond the mountains. He'd always been with his father or mother or Piccolo, but he was thirteen years old now – twelve, if you asked his mother – and ready to do things on his own. He left the Nimbus under a bush as his father did, found the grocery store and bought milk and eggs and vegetables, found the butcher and bought a whole roast ham, and (with the little bit of pocket-money he'd been given, to buy himself a snack if he got hungry) found a jeweller and bought his mother a pin, in the shape of a fish.
A strange feeling came over him as he exited the jeweller's, and took a moment to rearrange how he was carrying his bags. His eyes lingered over the packed streets, full of people heading this way and that – and for a moment he thought he could smell their blood and name each of their fears, and the desire to reach out and strangle someone, really hurt someone, was so powerful it became overwhelming. The stump at the base of his spine ached with a deep, deep longing, and the fine muscles in his fingers started twitching.
He stood there for ten minutes, focusing on his breathing, before he thought he was ready to move. And when he did move, his feet carried him on automatic all the way to Nimbus, which he loaded up with his packages, and he asked it to follow him as he flew home. His mother saw the look on his face when he returned and became very quiet. She took the packages, thanked him for the pin, and told him that if he wanted some time on his own she'd only ask for him to be home before morning.
He took a pot with him, found a secluded spot by a river. He stripped to his boxers and caught and killed the biggest fish he could find, cooked it over a fire into a stew with wild onion and scrub carrot. When he was done he was still hungry, so he found a wild deer and roasted it whole. He ate it so fast he burnt his tongue, and that brought back a memory of training with Piccolo, eating fire-charred meat under the stars on another moonless night after a hard day of waiting for the Saiyans to arrive, mourning that same dead father. He started to cry, and when he was done crying he cleaned himself up and it was night, and there was a full moon among the stars in the sky.
His intention was to head home, go to bed, and put the whole day behind him. As he flew he noticed a cliff overlooking West City, and he took a seat at its edge.
He stared at the city for a while, felt its millions of hearts beating and powers like candles flickering, and then looked at his hands – the hands that had murdered Cell, and had failed to save his own father. Piccolo and Vegeta and Frieza had been left alive, to live or to die on their own terms; and why couldn't he have shown Cell the same pity, kindness, humanity that had come so naturally to his father? Why had he been punished so severely for his lapse of judgement? Why couldn't he change anyone, least of all himself?
"You're rutting," someone said, behind him. Gohan had been so wrapped in his thoughts he had not noticed the presence, but he felt it now – that cool and menacing pressure on his nerve endings that had a name.
"Vegeta," he said, turning around. "How long have you been there?"
The remark earned him a snort. "Long enough." Vegeta was still wearing Saiyan clothes, and it was a reminder to them both that even though he'd found a wife and had a son, he was still not, and never would be, human. He had been hovering a foot off the ground; he touched down, and stepped to where Gohan was sitting. "I trust that your fool of a father never taught you about us."
"My father taught me about being a good person, if that's what you mean."
"Then you're as much of a fool as he was." The past tense froze Gohan's tongue, and he looked away. "There is Saiyan blood in you, as much as Kakarot wouldn't care to admit it."
Gohan turned back to his hands. "Then tell me," he whispered, finally. "Tell me what's going wrong with me."
Vegeta was silent for a long time. Gohan thought he hadn't heard, or that he was choosing not to hear, but finally he spoke. "Saiyans mate as Oozaru, during the full moon. We desire to show dominance, and suppress those who are weaker. Even after the tail is gone, the drives remain."
"I guess you would know." Vegeta made a sound that was almost a snarl at that, and Gohan knew not to press the issue any further. He turned to face the sky, and thought of what the world must look like to Vegeta, the inextricable weave of life and death. And then he found his mind drifting into space, to a cloud of dust that was once a planet, and a man eternally a visitor with no home to return to. And it wasn't Gohan's home, Planet Vegeta, but he felt that sense of loss nonetheless.
Against his will, every inch of him that told him not to show weakness in front of that man, Gohan started to cry.
"Come off it, brat," Vegeta said. "Your father was a low-class warrior who threw himself into the line of fire, like his father before him. It was the best he could aspire to do."
Gohan balled his fists hard enough to draw blood, bit his lip to hold back the tears. "But it's my fault! My dad died because of me! Just like – just like Piccolo…"
I thought I had learned from that. The pink sky, and the long wait for Father to return, and the light – oh, Kami, the light –
"Hah." Vegeta stepped dangerously close, placed a hand on his head. "Your foolishness betrays your soft nature." It brought Gohan back to Planet Namek, that encounter where he had hid a Dragon Ball out of Vegeta's sight. The man had been an enemy, then; it was only a greater danger that had turned that into a tenuous alliance. And when it was all over, with nowhere else to go and no mission of revenge to go back to, Vegeta had come back to Earth, waiting for Gohan's father, and the only meaning left in his life. "Kakarot died without fear. That is the most we Saiyans ever want. As for the Namekian, that change of heart was your doing. And then you did the same – for me, and my son…"
There was silence, then, but for the soft hum of the stars, radiating energy from a hundred million miles away. Gohan tasted the electric-white of the night and knew that there were many things that only he and Vegeta shared, and Trunks in his swaddling-clothes, and the baby in his mother's womb, and the thought was almost unbearable. Almost.
A thought occurred to him. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because Kakarot is dead, and I'm the last Saiyan alive. And you have a part of that idiot in you. Because in our native language, create and destroy are the same words. That's why."
Gohan had never understood Vegeta completely and figured he never would, but on that night he felt as though the distance between them was bridged, if only for a moment. They sat in silence and watched the sun rise, until finally they parted, each to his own home.
I always feel awkward writing such serious things about a show that isn't meant to be taken seriously, but this is one of the liberties we take as fans, isn't it? During my pre-service teaching year I spent a lot of time thinking about parents and mentors, and this is one of the things that came out of it. Thanks for reading!