Trunks had never felt such an urgent need to scrape out his insides lest he throw them up.
None of this was supposed to happen. How could it have happened? The very first cry that had crawled and clawed it's way from the now lifeless body in his arms sat heavy in his stomach, and the more he tried to block the ghost of that sound from his mind, the more it manifested in his ears. He hadn't even known that the androids could cry. And now, against all reason, against all the plans and fantasies of what he would do if he ever managed to beat the creatures of death that had plagued his world for as long as he could remember, he was blasting through the air faster than he ever had, one of the monsters cradled tightly in his grasp.
Before the android had done so much as begun to spring forward on his feet, Trunks hit the button of the remote. After weeks of studying the blueprints he'd brought back, after helping his mother between sleepless and hungry nights in building the shut-off mechanism that she insisted was safer to use despite how much stronger he'd gotten, he had what would be the triumph of his world in the pocket of his jacket. What exactly they'd done wrong to get the half-baked result was anyone's guess, but instead of simply falling limp as a corpse, 17 stumbled in his attempted take-off. The look of shock on his face slowly turned to an agony and grief Trunks had only ever before associated with his own reflection the days following his teacher's murder. But instead of molding into determined anger, the expression went further into panic. Even without ki to sense, Trunks could see 17 trying to fly. And before he could even begin to wonder what went wrong in his plans, how the android was able to move, the sound of bone smacking hard into the wall that, just a moment before, had been intended as a springboard resonated through the mid-morning air.
"No," 17 had said as he began hitting harder, harder, harder. Such a soft-spoken, simple word, and yet the more it came from him, the more frightening it sounded. The crack of quickly bruising, bleeding knuckles made Trunks's body move of its own protective accord, but the feral, guttural wail of terrified fury was what made his brain catch up.
Trunks remembered how, the moment he'd touched the other in an attempt to save his hand, the free arm had flown at him in a failed attempt at a punch. The soft, painless "thud" it made on Trunks's chest surprised them both in a very final, stomach-turning moment of clarity, and it was at that instant 17 had crumbled before the demi-Saiyan's eyes.
Trunks was no stranger to screams of pain, but never had one chilled him so completely, shaken him so violently. Even as he touched down at the door of his ruined home, the fresh memory of it made his knees go numb, his hands cold. Something in it drove him to this illogical act of helping the monster he'd set out to kill in the first place. It would be so easy, even now, to just incinerate him, to remove half of the Earth's violent cancer in one swift blow. But somehow, that felt wrong. Sounded wrong. Everything about it, no matter what way he fought to justify the situation in his head, was so warped and ugly. His head spun. He felt so ill, so filthy and conflicted. Even as his mother yelled at him, demanded explanations, for a sign that he hadn't completely lost it, the best he could do was fight through a teary plea for help. All that made sense was damage had been done in ways he wasn't aware were possible. And if they weren't fixed soon, he was certain that the only remaining truth was swift and certain catastrophe.
Trunks was vaguely aware of the realization that he'd never seen either of the androids bleed before as he watched his mother distrustfully bandage the damaged hand on their impromptu patient; certainly not self-inflicted, absolutely not because of something as easily breakable as a brick wall. The thought was fleeting however, his mind wandering in an almost drunken stupor. He still couldn't wrap his mind around what had just happened. There was absolutely nothing to stop him from doing the job he'd inherited at 14. Why didn't—couldn't—he just break the weakened creature?
Broken, he realized, was exactly the word, the reason. He had already broken his prey.
A new wave of acid roiled in his stomach, making the exaction of his circumstances all the more painful. Despite the reality of his world, the only way he could see what he had done was as a crime mirroring their own. Why couldn't he justify this? He wanted so badly to believe this was barely a taste of the rotting medicine they deserved, but every time, it fell back in his gut and drove him nearly mad with horrified guilt. A quick painless death was the only virtuous way to end the nightmare, despite his desire to throw the hurt back in their faces, and now he knew all too clearly what ignoring that ultimatum entailed.
Trunks reacted almost mechanically when Bulma finished with 17's hand, bringing the blood-soiled wipes and left over tape to their place in the garbage. He woke from his daze only to stare back helplessly at his mother when the android burst into a fresh onslaught of shuddering sobs on the table. For the rest of the long day and well into the night, Trunks stayed guard at the door to the workroom, with only the pain-wracked cries of his captive to keep him company.