Author: Jessica (StarSapphireZ)
Rating: PG for mild language. Kinda sappy too. =P
Disclaimer: Does anyone really think a humble fanfic writer like myself owns DBZ? No. Has one ever been sued for writing a fanfic? Not that I know of... But I'll say it anyway... I don't own DBZ, so don't sue me! The only thing I can really give is my siblings, and wouldn't it be a pity if I lost them! O=) This story IS my hard work though, so please don't take it for any use without my permission. Also, I've seen most of Dragonball Z, but not all, so please forgive any inconsistancy.
Archive?: Maybe. Please contact me and ask first! I'm generally a nice person...
Summary: The remaining members of the Son family cope in the aftermath of the Cell Game.
Note: This was inspired by a song on one of my DBZ music collections, I don't have a translation or even romanticization of the name, don't know where in the series it's used, heck it's probably an image song and has nothing to do with this at all...but every time I hear it I imagine the scene: Gohan walking, reflecting...well, you'll see. As this is the first serious fic I've posted on fanfiction.net, please give honest feedback.
Also, feel free to visit my DBZ website: http://spirit__vs__spirit.tripod.com. I welcome fanfic and fanart submissions! (I re-uploaded this because I got my own URL wrong... how sad is that?!)
Chi Chi heard the footsteps that fell lightly on the wooden staircase. Purposely light, but not deceitful or sneaky; deceitful or sneaky would have been to just fly out the window. And even if that were the case she wouldn't have attempted to stop her son from his retreat, not this time.
Even though he was supposed to be studying.
She lifted her head from the pot of rice she was cooking as she heard him enter the kitchen. Rather than giving him one of those trademark mother's "just-where-do-you-think-you're-going?" stares, she just watched him quietly with her tired eyes, as if mirroring his footsteps in them. He moved slowly, his eyes on the floor, slender-muscled arms hanging limply at his sides. He didn't give her as much as a glance as he walked out the front door, shutting it softly behind him. He was gone just in time; her legs gave out beneath her and she collapsed to her knees in a fluid movement and buried her face in her hands, trying to muffle her sobs until Gohan would be too far away to hear them.
Gohan took no notice to the warm June breeze and the woods blossoming at their summertime pinnacle of life. He was filled with a scattered and detached feeling that he just couldn't shake. He didn't just how long it had been since the Cell Game; the days just flowed together as if they were some sort of dream, which began when his father had said, with his middle and index fingers to his forehead "Bai bai, Gohan." He had smiled then, a beautiful and loving smile that at the same time was deeply sad, and then teleported himself - along with the bloated self-destructing android - to Kaio-sama's planet. And that was the end of Son Goku.
Well, at least, the end of his family's life together as he knew it. Since Gohan was four, there was always some new enemy and Goku was in and out of his and his mother's life like the wind. But before the fateful battle, things were finally starting to return to some semblance of normalcy. Everyone was together, and everyone was happy. Then the happiness was shattered once again like the most fragile glass ornament clasped too tightly, the shards burying themselves in his small fingers.
His father made sure Gohan knew he wasn't completely gone. He had reached out telepathically with the aid of Kaio-sama to tell his son how proud he was, and to give him the encouragement he needed to defeat Cell once and for all. That final ki battle required all of Gohan's resources, both physical and mental. While holding back a blinding blue light that possessed enough power to destroy the whole solar system with only his right arm, he couldn't afford to think of what had just happened. He could act only on instinct. And once his objective was accomplished, he was still for a moment than adruptedly dropped to the ground, his hair falling back to black and he was out, panting, with a big relieved smile on his face.
That didn't mean things would turn out happily ever after.
The night after the Cell Game, Gohan had sat quietly in his bedroom. Downstairs, Chi Chi was sobbing uncontrollably as the Ox-King made one of his ever-futile efforts to calm her. Goku's words from when they had summoned the dragon echoed in his mind. "I'm having a good time here. I don't want to be wished back just yet." Why didn't his father want to come back? The guilt crept in slowly at first, washing in like gentle waves. But they beat stronger by the moment, overwhelming him, a taunting silent sound ringing harsh in his ears and mingling with the sobs from downstairs. Then the feelings surged, finally hitting him as hard as they had earlier that day on the battlefield. Despair rattled his young frame, making him want to cry out, but he didn't. Instead, a trembling Gohan began to power up and rocketed silently out his open window. He flew, his vision blurred with tears, into the night.
He sailed further and further away from his home and everything he knew, beyond the forests, away from it all and into the frigid air above a polar mountain range. He landed, oblivious in his undirected rage to the cold winds that were whipping through his hair. He quickly powered up to Super Saiyajin and reached further, trying to find that surpassing power that had awakened in him earlier that day. He clenched his teeth tightly, new transformations were never easy to call upon. But he let his pain surge and in a few minutes he felt the dam break and his ki swell around him, the mountains shaking and the ice cracking beneath his feet. He knew he had reached SSJ2 again. He swung out at the mountains with his fists, leveling them with ease. He wasn't totally aware of what he was doing; he just knew he needed to do something to calm the storm that raged within him.
The other Z-Senshi, relaxing in their respective homes, all felt the sudden surge. At Kame House, Kamesennin fell out of his chair. Krillin just gasped. "It's Gohan...I have to go find the others."
He was speeding fast towards the scene when a clawed green hand caught him mid-air. "Piccolo?" Piccolo said nothing. "Do you feel that, Piccolo!?" he asked him, frenzied. "Gohan's in trouble, we gotta help him!"
"We can't." said Piccolo, "it's too dangerous. He's not thinking clearly."
"He'll hurt himself!"
"Maybe so, but we can't stop him. Not at the level he's at. He's now the strongest person in the world, and by far stronger than us. We just have to put our faith in him, and let him deal with his grief...in his own way."
Krillin sighed defeatedly, knowing that Piccolo was right. "I'm glad Goku never did anything like this."
"Gohan may have surpassed Goku in power, but he is in still a child, facing far worse things than Goku ever had to at that age. And he's different than his father. Goku is a genius on the battlefield but when it comes to other things, he's so...naive. Gohan on the other hand is, perhaps too aware for his own good."
Krillin sighed again. "I hate being one step behind all the time. I hate not being able to help...you know?"
Piccolo merely nodded. "But I have the feeling he doesn't want us there right now. Would you want us there, if you were in his shoes?"
"Guess not." Krillin responded, a worried frown on his face.
Piccolo was right. Though not consciously aware of it, Gohan had gone to vent his pain and aggression where he hoped he would beyond the reach of hands that wanted to rest comfortingly on his shoulder, or stroke his hair as if he was a child a lot younger than the age of eleven. So many of those well-meaning hands had invaded his space since the battle, when he needed to be alone with his thoughts, more than anything in the world.
Mountains continued to crumble beneath the force of his punches and kicks, but as the hot tears streamed down his face, pain seemed an enemy he could not defeat. Hell, it was this very strength that caused him this pain, and with that thought he began to sling his body around violently instead of his fists, not stopping to think or even care that he could hurt himself. After about an hour of doing so, he was growing bruised and tired. His vision faded in and out and he staggered unsteadily, trying to keep balance. It was then that the intervention Piccolo had discouraged came, though not in a form that anyone expected.
Vegeta landed in front of Gohan, arms folded across his chest. "Having a pleasant temper tantrum, brat?" he asked.
"Who the hell are you to be talking?" Gohan growled in response. "What do you want with me? Haven't you tormented everyone enough lately?" Without giving Vegeta time to respond he attacked, but his physical strain and lack of rational thought showed. Vegeta sidestepped him, powered up to Super Saiyajin, and thumped him on the back of the head, doing no serious damage, but knocking him unconscious. The Prince's cunning served him well.
He flew to the Son family residence, the child dangling awkwardly over his shoulder until he placed him in the arms of a very surprised Chi Chi, then sped off into the night before she could say a word. Perhaps he felt like he owed the boy something.
Vegeta's intervention had served Gohan in other ways, reminding him that there were those in the universe who had...well...a lot more evil than he had, and also that he wasn't the only one responsible for the chain of events leading to his father's death. Hadn't Vegeta been the one who had allowed Cell to reach his perfect form? Hadn't Krillin destroyed the controller that would have allowed him to deactivate Juuhachigou? Hadn't his father himself even refused to hunt out Dr. Gero when they first received warning of the androids from the future, because of his desire to fight them? And of course, there was Gero, and there was Cell himself. There were plenty of factors.
Gohan didn't deny he was a factor. But it was helped to remember that he wasn't the only one. From that point on, he felt a lot better, but the change was still unsettling.
Gohan continued to walk slowly. He wasn't going off for another secluded rage. He just wanted to walk and clear his head; feel the ground beneath his feet, like some security in the recent chaos of his life. He walked to the lake in the vast woods surrounding his home where he and his father would often go to catch fish. He sat at the edge, almost afraid to look into the water, what he would see in his own reflection. After a few moments he gulped, crawled over and peered timidly in. He saw himself; young, sad and afraid, and he really didn't know what to make of it. White flower petals drifted over the reflection. He looked at them, then up at the tree which's branches hung low over the lake. It's springtime blossoms were falling, scattering everywhere, to give way to fresh berries.
In the branches of another tree, a young bird stood at the edge of it's nest, looking out at the world. It hesitantly flapped it's wings, seeming unsure it's own capability to take flight, then it stumbled and fell over the edge. Gohan gasped, not wanting it to get hurt, but it began violently flapping it's wings and a few feet above the ground it rose uncertainly, landing gracefully on a bush. It tested it's wings again, flitting from branch to branch. Things were changing in the world outside of him, much like they were changing in the world inside of him.
It brought back a vague memory of when he was taken from his mother to train in the wilderness by Piccolo. First he had cried and desprately clung to any normallacy he could. He tried to make friends, with a dinosaur and later a robot, only to loose them to a world that swallowed whole those who were too weak to stand on their own two feet, no matter how much he tried to prevent it. Somehow in the shadow of that world that world, he learned to fend for himself. He had crashed, burned and risen from the ashes, growing strong and flourishing, and now he was doing that again.
In another nest, some newly-hatched baby birds cried out for their mother. Babies. That reminded him...
Chi Chi had been coping with the permenant death of her husband...well, as well as Chi Chi could be expected to cope. She would cry and scream, and throw things sometimes when memories began to overtake her. And Gohan and Ox King would be on their hands and knees in an instant, devotedly helping to clean up the mess while reassuring her that it was going to be okay. Somehow, at the end of every day, the house was still clean, the dishes were still washed, and no one went to bed hungry. Though with Goku gone there was a lot less food to be cooked.
In the passing weeks, Chi Chi wasn't eating much breakfast herself. She would be in the middle of cooking when a wave of nausea would pass over her and she'd have to slip out of the kitchen away from the food. Her father and son thought her loss of appetite was due to her grief, but she quickly came to the realization that it was something entirely different. Her husband hadn't left her empy-handed, no! She would soon be bearing the fruit of that last wonderful week they had spent together before the Cell Game. She smiled to herself at the thought of another child in the household.
Three days ago, Chi Chi had been attempting to eat an early lunch with Gohan when she was overcome by the nausea again. She ran to the sink to vomit. It was the first time he had seen her do that. "Mom?" he asked, running to her side in terror, "Are you alright? You're ill!"
"No I'm not." she answered, provoking a puzzled expression from her son as she lifted her head. Her face was pale, but a big smile crossed her lips. "You're going to be having a brother or a sister soon."
Gohan blinked, in shock.
"You see..." she began, her grin growing wider, "when a man and a woman love eachother very much, they..."
An embarassed blush crept into Gohan's cheeks. He wished his mother would spare him the details. "Mom...Yamcha already told me about that."
Her smile quickly faded. "He WHAT!?" Gohan began to think to himself that maybe that wasn't such a good thing to have said. "Just WAIT until I get my hands on him!" Chi Chi shouted, madly flailing her arms.
"Chi Chi, what's wrong?!" shouted Ox King as he came rushing into the room.
"Goku's friends are corrupting my innocent little boy!" she screamed as he tried to quiet her. Gohan had taken the opportunity to retreat to his room.
He watched as two birds landed on the nest of babies, working in unison to feed them. His new sibling would be growing up without a father, he thought to himself. There were the times his father wasn't in his life - the first time he died, and after the explosion of Planet Namek - but this child would probably never even get to meet the great man who was Son Goku. The man who had done so much for the Earth, and for Gohan and his mother. He then realized the responsibility he would have to this child; to stand in Goku's shoes, and though he could never completely fill them, he would have to do his best.
He would take his brother or sister - whatever the case may be - out flying on the kintoun, maybe train them in some fighting techniques, help with their studies, and protect them from the wrath of Chi Chi when she was angry. He would tell them all about their father, that he was watching from the clouds...and he would be. Gohan was actually starting to look forward to it. He daringly looked into the water again. A lavender-winged butterfly fluttered past him. A slight smile played on his lips, if only for a moment.
Nearly six years had passed as Gohan was once again strolling down the path in the woods, calm and collected despite all the excitement that danced on the edge of his mind. This year was a frenzied blur of events for him, but he was enjoying the ride. He had begun to attend Orange Star High School in Satan City, making his mother prouder than ever. There he began fighting crime under the alias of the Great Saiyaman, and he had met a wonderful girl named Videl who had become one of his best friends in the world. He was training her to fight in the next Tenkaichi Budokai. The next Tenkaichi Budokai, which Goku had contacted Gohan telepathically to let him know he was coming back for a day to enter.
Gohan and his brother were entering, too. His brother Goten, who had just turned Super Saiyajin for the first time at the young age of seven. Goten was nearly a perfect image of his father - in personality and appearance, though he wasn't even aware of it - Gohan thought to himself with a smile. And they'd finally be able to meet. It was going to be wonderful.
Passing the lake, Gohan stopped to look in the water again. Seeing the white flowers
mid-bloom on the branches of the tree overhanging the water, he caught a vague memory of
that day only a few weeks after Goku had died. He looked at his reflection, and a grin spread
across his lips. A one-hundred-percent patented Goku grin. He liked what he saw.