Gotta Get Thru This
by April CK
Dragonball Z characters, settings and items are all registered trademarks of at least Bird Studios.
"I've gotta get through this...I gotta get through this...I gotta take my, take my mind off you... Give me just a second and I'll be all right. Surely one more moment couldn't break my heart."
-quote from the song that inspired the title, Gotta Get Thru This by Daniel Bedingfield.
"It'll be okay. I promise."
The words spoken hours - or maybe days or weeks - earlier still echoed in ChiChis mind, becoming fainter with each repetition. She narrowed her eyes. Promise. Hmf!
He ALWAYS promised. And yes, in a way he had kept the promise. The Earth was safe. That much was true. But dammit... It wasn't the Earth that she was worried about. She couldn't worry about the Earth anymore. She'd learned to leave that sort of worrying to the people who could actually do something about any situation that threatened Earth. ChiChis worries were closer to home.
What about HER? More importantly, what about HIM?
Goku... She sighed in frustration, resting her chin on a knuckle. I wouldn't HAVE to worry about you so much if you'd just take better care of yourself.
He'd been dead for a whole year once. ChiChi didn't know if he'd eaten or slept at all during that time. Maybe dead people didn't need to eat or sleep but what if they didn't stay dead? And he'd gone straight to a battle when he'd been wished back. He always did. It didn't make any sense. How the heck was anyone supposed to survive a battle if they were tired and starving to begin with? Goku couldn't keep doing that to himself. One of these days, it would just be too much for him. He'd just collapse - never to get up or be wished back again. It seemed likely that day would come sooner than later. Goku was the sort of person who only recognized his limits AFTER he'd found them. And he hadn't found them yet. So he'd keep pushing himself.
Tears pooled under ChiChis eyes. Why'd you have to go and be so heroic?
She honestly didn't understand it sometimes. What had Goku ever gotten out of saving the world? Earth wasn't even his native planet. Even if it had been, it wasn't like he knew more than twenty people and actually, he didn't know half of them all that well. Why should Goku put himself through hell to save the rest of the population, a bunch of complete strangers? Why should - how could - anyone expect him to defend the planet? Why should Goku care what happened to Earth? He didn't even get thank you notes.
Home. That's all he got out of it really. A place to live and a family that loved him. Home. Not that he got to enjoy it.
ChiChi shook her head sadly.
There were pictures of Goku all over the house. Some were sitting in frames atop furniture, some were hung on the wall and more than a few were stored in bulky photo albumns. ChiChi had taken a lot of pictures of her husband. She'd always had the sinking feeling that he'd leave again someday. Goku just wasn't the type to settle down. Trouble had a knack for finding him. He was always being snared away by something. So that's what she had. Pictures. Just pictures. She could yell at them and draw on them and throw large battleaxes at them and... It wouldn't change anything. Because a picture couldn't hug her and a picture couldn't compliment her cooking. A picture couldn't accidentally put a hole in the ceiling or carry - fly - her into the city to run errands.
A picture didn't need her.
What many people didn't realize about the couple was that they were truly soulmates.
Goku had grown up in the wilderness, raised for a while by his adoptive grandfather. He'd lived in isolation for so long that he'd never been comfortable around crowds. His formal education had been limited to the basics of survival and the study of fighting techniques. ChiChi had lived a surprisingly similar early life. Her mother had died shortly after her birth and the single path to her family castle had been blocked off by a burning mountainside. As a result ChiChi had spent ten out of her first twelve years growing up in an isolated pocket of wilderness, raised in a mountain valley by her father alone. She'd become educated about the world by reading magazines - which is where her rather idealized perception of a 'normal' life had come from. ChiChis struggle for normalcy was her way of trying to give her children everything that she and Goku had never had: a childhood, a proper education, a chance to fit in.
Her control act was often a cover for her own shyness. Yes, ChiChi was shy but at the same time she couldn't stand to be overlooked or ignored. That's why she yelled so much. That's why she'd entered the 23rd Tenkaichi Budoukai in disguise. ChiChi couldn't be loud all the time because she was too timid for that. She really wasn't a loud person. She disliked giving that impression to others. Her outspoken moments came and went in emotional bursts typically caused by stress.
The only person in the world that ChiChi had ever felt safe confiding all this to was Goku because while he wasn't as shy, he could in fact relate. He understood where she was coming from. He hadn't ever made fun of her for not going to school or anything. Gokus kindness had always made ChiChi want to try harder to be the perfect wife that she felt he truly deserved. But there were days when ChiChi didn't know if she had the patience for it.
And then there were days where she sat in her empty house all alone, staring at the pictures. Wondering if Goku had ever really needed her.
It was one of those days.
If only there was someone to talk to...
Once, ChiChi and her father had been close. There had been a time when they would have been comfortable confiding anything to each other. But in recent years, they were drifting away from that. ChiChi would usually insist that things were fine even when they weren't. She didn't want to make her issues into problems for anyone else. She suspected that her father was grateful for her stoic tact. Ox King had always been very protective of his only child. If ChiChi had been married to a regular person, Ox King probably would have killed them by now for not treating his daughter in the best possible manner. But Goku was not a regular person. Ox King recognized that he could not defend anyone from Goku.
ChiChi hadn't needed to talk to anyone before as much as she did now though because back then, deep down, she had trusted herself. She had trusted her judgement. If Goku hadn't really loved her, if he didn't care... ChiChi had figured that she would have been smart enough to notice. She would have left a long time ago if she'd judged Goku to be bad for her.
That's what made it hurt so much. The uncertainty. If only ChiChi could be sure that Goku didn't care then walking out on him would have been easy. The marriage, the kids - without love, it wouldn't have been worth hanging onto. Days like this, sitting alone in the house, ChiChi could feel 99.9 percent positive that nobody in her life gave a damn. Everyone seemed so caught up in their own schedules.
And then she would remember that last smile.
Goku had never been terribly gifted in the verbal department. Somewhere between being an alien and growing up in isolation, his language skills had never gotten fully developed. It was unlikely that Goku would ever be fluent in any of the Earth languages. Which was all right. Goku didn't often need words, he had a vocabulary of at least five thousand finely tuned facial expressions. ChiChi had seen most of them. And in that last bitter smile of his... ChiChi had seen the worry, the pain, the fear.
When she'd been younger, ChiChi had always thought: 'Doesn't he realize the emotional hell he puts me through when we're apart?' But one look at that smile had made her think 'He knows. Because being apart is hell for him too.'
After all it wasn't like he was hanging out in nightclubs while she sat home alone. Goku was out in space somewhere now. Running around with Pan and Trunks and trying to save the planet. The older he got - even if he didn't currently look older than 12, he was still 48 - the more afraid he became. Because his best efforts never seemed to be good enough. The peace that Goku worked so hard to secure never lasted very long. Without fail, a new villian would arrive. And the villians were always getting stronger - not much smarter but always stronger. And less humanoid too, the villians always seemed to get a little less humanoid. It was disturbing.
The kids...the kids... ChiChi couldn't think of Goku without eventually drifting onto the subject of their children. She wasn't sure what to make of her sons anymore. Wasn't sure how to feel.
Gohan, the eldest child, was so bright and independant. He'd stopped needing her around the age of three. ChiChi hated to admit it because it made her feel bad for not having been there - but Gohan had turned out fine. Without her.
Goten, her youngest son, was a similar story. ChiChi could have asked any of their friends for money - who'd have ever guessed that saving the world wouldn't pay the bills? People were such ingrates - but instead she'd just asked them to babysit. So Goten had basically been raised by babysitters while ChiChi had gone to work. And he'd turned out fine too.
She'd been opposed to the boys fighting at first but that was only natural. What good mother wants to send her kids into life and death battles? Just because ChiChi herself had been witnessing death practically since she was born - it was strange how vividly she remembered her mothers passing - that didn't mean that she wanted her boys to get up close and personal with the concept. Trauma had a way of ruining childhood.
ChiChi sighed inwardly and flicked through the pages of a photo albumn. Her boys hadn't had much of a childhood anyway, they had grown up too fast. Gohan had been dragged into his first battle at age four and half. Goten had been age eight.
Privately, ChiChi wondered if there was any other parent on the planet that hadn't gotten to be the tooth fairy. Gohan had always set traps for mythical visitors while Goten had stubbornly refused to believe in their existance. ChiChi supposed that hanging out with aliens probably had that effect on people. Who needs Santa Claus when your best friend is a nine foot tall green warrior and one of your honorary aunts is an android? Who needs fairy tales when you've got a real live pet dragon?
And now her sons were older, stronger and more intelligent. More experienced. ChiChi knew that if worst came to worst, her boys would be able to take care of themselves. The question was...would they? Being able to battle and being willing to battle were two different things. Part of ChiChi was glad to see that her sons had chosen to live peaceful lives but at the same time, she was a little disappointed. ChiChi knew that if her sons trained more often then they could be a great help to their father. Perhaps they could have even replaced him so that Goku could retire and try to enjoy the last years of his life.
It wouldn't be so bad. Not if Gohan and Goten worked together. Between them, the boys probably exceeded their fathers power. Goku had essentially been shouldering the burden on his own for so long... It was unhealthy. Too much for one person to handle. Even if that person was the strongest Saiyan in existance. Besides, how were the kids going to get any stronger if Goku kept taking care of things? What would happen to them all when he was gone for good?
What if he was gone for good this time? They weren't ready...
He's gonna come back. ChiChi closed the photo albumn, stood up and made herself walk away from all the pictures. He always comes back.
There had even been a funeral for Goku once and like everyone else that had attended, ChiChi had stood over the grave just shaking her head because she'd known that wouldn't be it. She'd known that Goku would be back. It had taken seven years for her to be proven right but in the end, she had been right. Goku had come home. Again.
Seven long years.
Those seven years in particular had been a valuable lesson for ChiChi. By then the general public didn't worry about the fate of Earth anymore. There honestly wasn't much that the average person could do when the problem was named Perfect Cell. Earth had actually been that way for a while, the general public had been reduced to the role of spectator ever since Piccolo Daimio. So the appearance of evil monsters didn't even phase most the worlds residents anymore.
ChiChi couldn't avoid normal people. They were everywhere. The grocery store, the bus, the hospital, the schools... People who didn't fly or shoot energy beams. People who probably didn't even know what a Namek was. Oh, how she envied them sometimes. But ChiChi had stopped wishing that the rest of her family would be normal a long time ago. Because the fact of the matter was that if Goku had been just another human, the Earth wouldn't exist.
The attitude of the general public had gradually rubbed off on her though. ChiChi had learned that the universe being endangered never prevented life from going on as usual in most parts of the world. She felt that there was no point in putting the mundane stuff off. Laundry, for example, wasn't going to do itself just because some evil thing wanted its fifteen minutes of fame. If the world ended - oh well, it was nice while it lasted. But if the world didn't end, at least the clothes would be clean.
ChiChi glanced sideways at a clock hanging in the hallway, nodded to herself, removed a dark jacket from the hall closet and pulled it on. She paused to make sure the house was secure before she stepped outside. She locked the front door behind her then walked down the winding garden path to the sidewalk that ran alongside the nearest street.
A few blocks away from the house was a bus stop. ChiChi knew she'd be there early, she almost always was. Even in bad weather, she was usually early. The seating on the bus left a lot to be desired but ChiChi refused to drive a car since she enjoyed the chance to be around other people. She'd gotten a job for basically the same reason. It wasn't much of a job - she was just a cashier for a little store in Satan City - and certainly not much of a career but it was an excuse to get out of the house. Being around other people helped ChiChi cope. It took her mind off her troubles for a bit and reminded her that life went on.
One day at a time. ChiChi smiled at nothing in particular, tossed her keys in the air and caught them again without slowing her pace. She was almost forty-seven years old. ChiChi had survived twenty-eight years of marriage, two awkward childbirths and a few dozen heartbreaks. She'd lost count of how many times the planet Earth had been threatened in her own lifetime.
All things considered age forty-seven was a lot longer than she'd ever really expected to live and while her life could have been better, it could have been worse. The experiences had made her a bit tougher - mentally, emotionally and physically. There had been ups and downs but she'd stayed in good shape. While the force of ChiChis typical punch wasn't enough to do more than register in Gokus mind, it would have been enough to break a regular persons arm. Things weren't so bad really.
Of course things weren't bad. Goku had promised it would be okay. He always kept his promises. It might just take some time...
Maybe her husband did love her. Maybe he didn't. Maybe the Earth would explode before she found out for certain. No matter what happened, ChiChi resolved that she wasn't going to hold grudges anymore. Easier said than done, ChiChi knew, but grudges would just get in her way and she still had a few ambitions.
Maybe forty-seven wasn't so old. Life was bound to have a few twists left in it. ChiChi'd have to just deal with anything that came up when it came up and then life went on. Or death went on. Whatever worked. She'd get through it in the end, she just had to. What else could she do?
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