The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz

my daddy's bones

Four and a half years old and Gohan's daddy is dead. He finds out when his head hits water and the thing looming over him, a demon, a green man, tells him outright. Until that moment Gohan's life had been very very small: the words and numbers in his books, the gifts from his grandfather, his father's strong arms holding him up to the sun. Now he's alone and the Saiyans will be here in a year to kill them all and Gohan's daddy is dead, and Mister Piccolo says, stop crying and survive.

So he does, because he knows no other way to live. He cries until he can't anymore, goes hungry until he doesn't, is cold until he isn't, is alone until he makes a friend in the heart of a dark black night: a brontosaurus, dead by the next evening. Life is crueler than his algebra books ever made it out to be. He stares at white bones bleaching in the late afternoon sun, recalls against his will the scientific name of the vultures (Aegypius monachus) picking at its corpse, and wonders if it died because he wasn't strong enough to protect it. He'd been knocked out by a hungry beast looking for easy prey. The sun sets. Night falls. Something inside of him grows older.

Years later he recalls all those months in the woods with an almost absurd fondness. "It was hard, of course," he'd say, when she asks him about it; he says that about most of his childhood. When Piccolo sacrificed himself to save me and my father wasn't back yet, it was hard, of course. When Recoome beat me up til I was all messed up on the inside it was hard, of course. When Cell looked at me and I knew everyone I loved was going to die if I didn't do something -

"But it was nice," he continues. "You know, it made everything really simple. A month or two in and all this stuff about Saiyans and college admissions seemed really far away. I wasn't training to save the earth, I was just kind of - living."

There were days when he was genuinely happy waking up in the morning, suntanned, eager to face the day. He'd romp through the treetops for breakfast, go fishing in clear streams for lunch, mend his clothes and furs and blankets in the evening. The woods were kind to him. Despite everything, Piccolo had taught him what it felt like to rely on his own strength. Strength is okay. Being strong for oneself is okay.

Videl doesn't really understand how he just kind of lived. What did he eat? ("Berries, a lot of berries. And I killed things for meat.") How did he stay warm? ("I started a fire.") How did he start a fire? ("I dunno. I really wanted one, and it was - well, it was there." He blinks at her a few times, surprised. "Oh, come to think of it, that must have been the first time I used my energy.")

Piccolo is reluctant to talk about it. "I'm not proud of who I was back then," he says, when Videl pushes. "But I'm proud of who he made me."

Six years old and Gohan's dying on Namek, still waiting for his father. It's a strange place, blue grass, green sky, the wind that tickles his feet warm and damp. The sky is relentless, a soupy green and there's no night, no night at all. Gohan wonders if the Namekians hung stars in their Dragonballs because they were nowhere else to be found.

Gohan knows the earth like he knows his own eyes and this planet makes no sense to him. It's beautiful here, but dangerous; there are monsters and wind-storms to contend with, and an endless pressure on his energy-sense from an unfathomable evil that makes him restless, steals his sleep. He hasn't slept well in six days, as the clock tells time. Krillin's the same way. Bulma's been antsy since they got there, but Gohan doesn't know if that's just from the endless trouble they've been having. He had been given so little time to mourn what had happened on earth on the day the Saiyans arrived - and now there's all of this.

(Vegeta waiting outside, ready to kill.

Frieza right behind him, genocidal, as heavy as death.

Guru touching him on the head saying, there is a great power within you.

"Thank you," Gohan murmuring, because his mother told him to always be polite to strangers. He's not sure what this whole business of unlocking potential actually means; there's nothing hidden in him but the earth's woods and his father's bones. But then there's a wall of white noise and static electricity that slams into him, a surge of anger and emotion that comes up and out, something as old as time pounding in his ears, and he's screaming: his blood! It's his blood! There's bright red blood in him after all!)

And hours like weeks later it's all for nothing. All that strength in him, all those trees and bones, and still he hears his neck splinter from the force of Recoome's kick. His vision goes white. He's going to die on Namek without ever having returned the favour to Piccolo. Is death a green place? Are there trees in the afterlife? He should have asked his father. Someone's screaming. Someone's laughing. He wants to say something, maybe cry a little, but living and breathing are hard, so hard.

"And I was lying there, thinking that I would never prove to Mister Piccolo that I was worthy of being his pupil, or to my dad that I was worthy of being his son, when suddenly there was a hand on my cheek. Someone was giving me a senzu bean." Pan's eyes are wide. She's not even six, perhaps too young to be hearing this, especially as a bedtime story; Videl's leaning against the doorframe to her bedroom, trying not to smile.

Pan can't contain her excitement. She's heard this story so many times, and she always asks for it, regardless. "Who was it?"

"It was your grandpa," Gohan says. "He'd arrived on Namek, just in the nick of time."

Gohan has nightmares about Namek, sleeps with his window shut tight for fear of Frieza slithering in. He should be stronger than this, he knows, but Piccolo had once shown him that it is not a sign of weakness to fear something that is stronger than you. Those had been happier times, warm nights and waiting for the Saiyans.

Sometimes he dreams instead of his father under a blood-red sky, a planet on the verge of destruction, gold hair and bright green eyes. Something had snapped in his father and rose up and out of him, a white-hot pressure that seemed to fill Gohan's mouth and rattle his bones - and Gohan's afraid that there's something like that in him, too.

Seven years old and Gohan's father comes home at last.

(Ten years old and Gohan's father dies - but that's a story for another time.)

"Well, I mean, there's no script for what a father's supposed to be like," Gohan says, his hands tucked behind his head.

"Tell me about it," Videl says. They're sharing an ice-cream cone, sitting on a rooftop, avoiding the paparazzi. Below them the city hums with the brute force of a hundred thousand individual dreams; nothing's the same since she learned how to fly. "My dad's kind of an over-the-top guy, but, well, he's my dad. As long as they love you."

"Yeah." When had Piccolo changed? There'd definitely been a moment - yes, when he'd found his way back to his mother after six long months, standing on a hill overlooking his home, and Piccolo had said, what do you choose?

For Gohan there has never been an easy way out: either you stand up to the Saiyans or you don't; either you go to Namek or you don't; either you're brave or you're not. You sit on that bluff overlooking a village as Frieza's soldiers commit murder and you have to make a choice between doing something and doing nothing.

It's hard to believe in a warning from the future, but there was such an ease in Trunks' bearing as he picked Frieza apart that the future must be a terrible dark place indeed. An ordeal of three years is over; an ordeal of five years is about to begin. This time when Gohan emerges it will be with his father's blood on his hands.

And - well - Gohan doesn't want to say it's easy training hard all day and studying hard every night - a week and he's already tired right down to his bones - but it's good. Three years to prepare is a lot easier to stomach than one year, and having his father and Piccolo together with him, eating dinner every night, it's nice. He feels cared for. It takes a little getting used to. After all that trouble with the Saiyans and on Namek, things finally start feeling normal. There are driving lessons to watch, and there is wilderness to explore. Three years and Gohan is falling back in love with being alive.

One night they sneak him out of his room through his window, take him to a bluff overlooking the ocean. Piccolo starts a fire. Goku catches a fish. Gohan chops wood. The world is deafeningly silent, the stars out in full force. Somewhere out there are a few chunks of rock floating in space where the Saiyans used to live.

"It's not our world," Piccolo says, while the Saiyans eat. "But it's a good world."

Words force themselves into Gohan's mouth. "I want to protect it," he says.

Goku turns to him, surprised - then his features soften. "That's my boy," he says. Gohan feels his heart jump into his throat. "Look at you. So brave, and so proud."

"You deserved better," Piccolo mumbles.

Gohan doesn't understand what it means, to deserve better than the whole world. It isn't until he meets Videl that he begins to understand what it means to live for oneself, the beauty of living selfishly, foolishly. Eight years old and all he can hope for is a future with the earth below his feet.

"Hey, Gohan," Videl says, one afternoon, visiting after school. "Listen, I, uh, I have something, something you might want to see."

There's something clenched tight in her fist that she doesn't reveal until they're inside, in the living room, with the door shut and locked and the curtains drawn. "Can't be too careful," she says, as she pops the item in her hand - it's a tape, an old-school recording, not even in a capsule - into their tape deck. "Dad's onto me, and I'd hate for him to see us and then have to say something to the police."

She fast-forwards through the opening bouts. Videl has gotten her hands on a copy of the raw, unedited footage of the Cell Games: four hours from start to finish, highly classified, extremely illegal for civilian viewing. Gohan's skin crawls as the play starts unfolding. Suddenly he's twelve years old again looking at the monster from the time machine, at his father standing proud and confident on the field of battle, nobody knowing how the day will end.

He's visibly disturbed when the camera catches the boy - barely recognizes himself. There's a resoluteness to his cold green eyes, a firm belief in his father's abilities.

"We went into a time sink called the Hyperbolic Time Chamber when Cell was still imperfect," he murmurs, not taking his eyes off the screen. Goku says something, points to Gohan. "Time moves much faster on the inside than it does on the outside. A year passed in there for my father and I, while a day passed out here." The boy takes off his cape - the cape Piccolo had given him. "Cell absorbed Android 18. He announced the Cell Games. We came out of the chamber after months and months of nothing but training, and that power that had felt so familiar, like everyone I loved at once, was suddenly this huge, thick, ice-cold thing pressing down on me."

There's a place inside Gohan just like that hole in time: blank, white, hot, dry, endless. They keep track of time by scratching lines onto the wall, next to Trunks' lines, day after day - each a struggle to survive, fighting with his father, fighting with himself. Two months and he starts to recognize the outline of a wall he's built inside himself. Another month and he realizes the wall is shaped like Raditz's shadow. One more and he stares up at his father, angry and ashamed, and whispers, even if it kills me.

(Gohan stares death in the face, not for the first time. It's white-hot and roars like the ocean. He'd faced the full power of his father's own energy at him once before: the spirit bomb, intended for Vegeta. His father had said then, it will not hurt you. This time he says, the power came to me in a time of need. You have to create that need. Use the pain of loss.

and Gohan thinks, but father, I'm not like you.

and Gohan's father says, that's why it has to be you.

and Gohan thinks, it has to be me. there's nobody left to be strong for me.

In the centre of himself he finds that enormous, unyielding emptiness, the pain and the loneliness, the boy locked in the spaceship, the great suffering that had been the story of his life and the ways it could have been undone if he had just - if he had just been strong enough to protect the people who cared for him -)

On screen the boy steps forward. Cell grins broadly. The lens goes out of focus, comes back to Satan and his entourage. There's a scuffle, a disagreement, sounds of fists colliding, Gohan screaming out in pain, Android 16 bodiless and leaking engine fluid begging someone to take him back to the battle. Gohan knows what it means to make a choice to be brave. On the reel, Hercule elbows his way through the throng, picks up 16, exchanges a few whispered words, tip-toes off.

"I'm sorry about my father," Videl says, into the air. "Honestly, he's an okay guy, once you get to know him. The bravado's all an act. He spent so much time in the ring that the kayfabe kind of took over his personality. Then it became his only way to protect his legacy. - Protect me."

"It's okay."

A tinny sound far from the camera, but unmistakable: it's 16, moments before death. Gohan finds himself unable to breathe, moving his lips along with the words: it is because you cherish life that you must protect it.

And then - yes, it could only be him. The rough, broken voice of the boy he had once been, crying out from unbearable pain -

Gohan's soul is green as a birch tree, green on the inside. He looks at the shards of metal where someone who had loved birds had once been and goes very, very numb. It's happened again. All those months in that stupid time hole and someone has died at his feet again.

Another fighter you could have saved, Cell says. He has no idea. There's his father in him and he still has no idea. I can't do this, Gohan thinks, dumbly. I can't watch this anymore. He's losing control of an ecosystem. Something's slipping. There's cracks in him and something's surging. He's surging. All his trees are bursting into flame - suddenly he's outside himself, looking in. Is he eleven years old? Is he twelve years old? Is he a boy anymore? Somebody's screaming, is it him? Of course it's him, it had been him all along! There's nothing in him, no hidden potential, no world-shattering power, nothing but a forest he grew himself, roots and leaves and his father's bones, bleaching in the late afternoon sun!

Videl insists on doing things for herself, even when she knows Gohan can do it faster. He adores that about her, that fierce, unyielding inner strength, that passion and that drive, that refusal to be conquered that is so uniquely human. Watching her Gohan wonders if the Saiyans would have been successful in their original plan for the Earth, if Trunks' future would ever end in complete human annihilation, or if something persists even in the face of death.

She chops wood, a rhythmic thunk, thunk, thunk. Gohan prepares venison for a stewpot. It's a cool weekend morning in late fall, a perfect day for the last cookout of the year.

"You sounded so sad," Videl says, splitting another log.

"Saiyans' bodies - our bodies - react instinctively to a hopeless situation." He puts down the cut he'd been slicing. "We're born survivors, not born fighters. It just so happens that the easiest way to survive something like that is to kill it yourself."

"I'm sorry."

"Me too." He looks up, to the sky. Gohan's father is dead. "I came down from this wild rage just in time to see my father about to take Cell with him. It's hard to say in the two seconds you have left I wish things could have gone differently."

"Do you, though?" He looks up. She's stopped chopping.

"Do I what?"

"Do you wish things could have gone differently?"

"Well -" Does he? All that business on Namek had been hard, but through it he'd earned Piccolo's respect. Gohan's father had come home and they'd made a family, Piccolo and Goku and Chi-Chi and Gohan, eating dinner together and celebrating his birthdays. They'd even had a cake and presents to make up for the birthday he'd missed in the time chamber.

He'd had to fight a lot through his childhood, but that was just his luck - and everyone on earth's a fighter, if you back them into a wall. It's what makes you human, knowing that there's no use giving up. Gohan's human enough. There's more to him than bones. There's a human woman who waited three years before demanding an answer, and a Namekian whose purpose had been killed in battle, and there's that boy who cried as he killed Cell.

They retire to bed that night and there's a bit of a chill in the air. Videl smells like wood smoke and crisp mountain air, a little green, a little burnt. It's a nice smell. Maybe it was worth it for small happinesses like this. Maybe that was what his father was thinking, lying there broken and bleeding next to Piccolo, that you work so hard and suffer so much and in the end you find something, or someone, that makes it all worth it.

(Twenty-two years old and Gohan becomes a father.)

"He's so small," Goku says, looking at the newborn with - wonder? Excitement? Joy?

"Of course he's small. He's a baby." In the dark of a day well spent Chi-Chi nurses their child, and all is quiet in their corner of the world. They've built a little home for themselves by the ruins of the place old Gohan used to live. Piccolo was thoroughly defeated, wasn't he? The world's a smaller, safer place than it used to be. No reason for their baby to grow up to be a fighter like his parents.

"Hold him for a little, will you? I'm going to go grab another blanket."

Goku takes his son, gingerly. Chi-Chi hoists herself up and ambles towards the door, to the laundry line. Goku watches her go, a little haggard and no less beautiful than the day they were married, and he finds himself smiling a little. In his arms the baby squirms and gets a little pinched in the face; he's so red! And so strong for his size. Surely he's got his daddy's bones.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.