"Here's the day you hoped would never come
Don't feed me violins, just run with me"

-Imogen Heap, "Speeding Cars"

/-/-/

Well, he had his arm back.

Gohan couldn't help but marvel at the ease with which he was able to move his left hand. Couldn't help but awe at the fact that it was actually there, connected to his shoulder and not just some figment of his imagination.

Bit late though. It would have been really useful say, ten minutes ago? When he'd still been alive? Yeah. Well, better late than never. At least he'd have it for all eternity, right?

Gah. Eternity. How was he gonna explain this one? Trunks was alone now. Vegeta was gonna kill him. No, kill was too light a word. (And, y'know, there was the rather obvious fact that he was already dead.)

No, Vegeta wouldn't kill him. He'd eviscerate him; fillet him like a fish and then mount him of the wall of whatever hell Vegeta made home. Shown off as a warning to all others that you did not mess with the offspring of the deceased prince of a dead race.

There was irony in there somewhere.

"You IDIOT!" The blow came out of nowhere, ripping Gohan out of his thoughts, throwing him off his feet and into a rough landing on his back. For a moment, the man was stuck just staring stupidly up at the gray sky, wondering how he'd been hit. After all, the hybrid noted, he'd passed straight through the rubble and the pouring rain was falling right through him without so much as a plop; his soul wasn't a solid thing.

But he knew that punch.

"Piccolo? What're you doing here?" Because there he was. Just…standing there. Like Gohan had never found that dead body, charred and torn almost beyond recognition and wedged under a building.

The man didn't get an answer, only a green hand fisting itself in his (now repaired) shirt, dragging him to eye level. Yep, same old Piccolo. Violence was always the best way to show you cared. Deep down. Somewhere.

"Just what do you think you're doing dead? Didn't I teach you anything? Of all people, I thought that you would be one to think before pulling a stunt like this!" Hey, he had thought about it! Sometime between sighting the androids and throwing the first punch, he'd remembered that this was his first actual fight one arm down, and that if he wanted to live, maybe this wasn't such a great idea.

And then he'd remembered that there were people for him to protect. That the longer he held out, the more people could evacuate the city or hide in the shelters below so that they could live that much longer and maybe, just maybe survive until the day when the androids were gone for good.

He'd remembered that Trunks was unconscious only a little ways back, and that if he wanted him to live, to grow, to possibly unlock that golden nugget of power they called super saiyan, then this might actually be a semi-good idea.

So there. He'd put some thought to this.

"You know," Gohan casually observed in lieu of an answer, "I'm almost as tall as you now." Even though Piccolo had pulled him up so that they were at eye level, the hybrid's boots were dragging on the ground; a pretty big improvement from all those years ago when eye-level had meant hanging in the air with a good meter or two till the ground.

Moments passed.

Piccolo still didn't let him down. Gohan figured he was too busy having a glaring contest with the empty air around them to notice something as minor as his student's discomfort at being near-choked by his clothes.

"Look, I didn't mean to…well, I didn't mean to die. Sort of. Mostly. I mean, those last few seconds? When they got my other arm but before they got my lungs, I was just going damn I'm gonna suck now. At that point, yeah, ok, death was looking pretty nice. So I mean, it's not for the better, but it might be?"

No response. Nothing. Not even a twitch of the eye. He probably wasn't making much sense, Gohan realized, and so he tried again.

"Trunks knows all I can teach him. He'll be missing a sparring partner, but think it's a small price to pay. I mean, if I let it go on any longer, the kid was just gonna burst like a balloon." The image was morbid and horrible, but an accurate description of his fears.

"Kids these days. They're so used to this world that a thousand casualties is like the blink of an eye. He needed something bigger to transform, there was no other way." The man laughed hollowly, finding no humor in his words.

Apparently, Piccolo didn't think it was funny either.

"No other way?"

Oh crap.

"No other way?"

Gohan knew that tone too.

"No other WAY?"

He was so very screwed.

And it was probably the feeling of being so very screwed, or the knowledge that he was dead anyway, that spurred on Gohan's next words.

"Yeah!" He challenged suddenly, chin rising in some semblance of defiance. "No other way! That's what I said!" Piccolo may have been surprised by Gohan's sudden willingness to talk back, but in no way did it deter him from arguing right back.

"How can you say no other way? There's always another way! And so you use that head of yours and find it!"

"I think I've been down here long enough to know when there is no other way! What else was I supposed to do?" But that was a rhetorical question, because there was no way Piccolo could understand what it had been like to be so powerless for so long.

"So were you just giving up? Because that's what it sounds like!"

"I was trying to be productive! To help make this nightmare end! Thought you'd be proud of me or something. Son Gohan the coward, actually giving up his life to help someone."

"I fail to see," Piccolo growled, "how throwing your life away is productive in any way, shape, or form!"

"Would you listen? I just told you! I did it for Trunks!" Gohan yelled, and continued on even as Piccolo opened his mouth for a rebuttal.

He was on a roll here.

"When I was five, and Nappa fired that blast at me, it would've been better if you'd let me die. You would've been more help against Vegeta, and you would've done better on Namek. You wouldn't have let Vegeta live, and then Freiza wouldn't have known about the dragonballs and so many lives would've been saved! But no! NO! You threw your life away to save a worthless brat!"

Dimly, off in some corner of his mind, Gohan was aware of the grip on his clothing falling slack. But mostly, all he could see was the same scene flashing over and over again before his eyes. Blinding white static, then a very Piccolo-shaped shadow and oh so much screaming.

And he can remember thinking, Not like this. Not for me.

"That's exactly what I just did! I just gave Trunks the tools he needs to survive these androids! Maybe I didn't have to die, but if my death ensures that he lives, then I'm happy to have given my life!" At some point, Gohan realized, he'd hit the point of near hyperventilation. At some point, Piccolo had let go and now they stood almost eye to eye. But he wasn't done. Not yet.

"And all the innocent people in this city! Every second that I lasted against those androids was another life saved! The longer they have to hide or get the hell away from here, the more of them live. I don't want the glory of fighting these monsters, it's not some great challenge, and I hate the fact that it's so hard! That's not what I did this for, Piccolo! I wanted to save people, nothing else!" His breathing was ragged now, and his face flushed red from the effort of yelling. And his mentor couldn't manage a single word.

"So don't…don't say that I gave my life away needlessly. I didn't. I traded it in so other people could live."

Finally, blessed silence.

Moments passed, but the hybrid didn't look away. No, he couldn't. To do so would be to back down from his point, and he refused to do that. He was happy to have helped Trunks, dammit. He knew what he'd done.

"You've changed." Piccolo finally spoke, softly this time, and without the extraneous exclamation points that his argument had featured.

Slowly, slowly, the hybrid let himself calm down. It was over. Breathe in, breathe out. Just like that. He had to calm down.

It was so weird to just watch the rain pass right through him.

Eventually, Gohan couldn't hold back the chuckle that rose to his throat. "You haven't been down here, Piccolo. Of course I've changed. Hell, I'm almost as old as dad was when he died. What'd you expect?"

The namek didn't actually give a verbal answer, but it hung heavy in the air nonetheless. What Piccolo had expected was to return to a Gohan who still worshiped the ground he walked on, who absorbed his advice like it was the answer to life itself, who accepted critique without complaint or attitude, who was still utterly terrified by the concept of death.

If only.

"I couldn't stay nine forever." The hybrid sighed at length, absentmindedly scratching his newly-returned arm.

Piccolo chuckled lowly. It was the sound of reality sinking in. "Yeah, I kn-"

"Well, I guess, I could have actually. Physically at least? I dunno, when you die, is your mental state preserved? Cuz then I really could have been nine forever? Huh. Piccolo? Am I older than you now?"

There was a pause where Gohan could practically hear the gears in his mentor's head struggling to turn.

"I, uh, I mean, well, yes, but no! But I mean, no that's–argh, don't ask such stupid questions!" It was refreshing, at least, that he still had the ability to fluster Piccolo. Even if it was over something stupid like this.

"Maybe I should have died at nine. There were days where I wondered if it would've been better if I'd just died that time. Maybe the androids would've gotten bored without me there. Maybe I could have avoided drawing this out, if I'd died when everyone else did. Without anyone to fight, they might have settled down." He could've gone on for hours about his theory on placating the androids.

But Piccolo looked about ready to punch him again. Gohan was quick to put the conversation back on a lighter track.

"Hah, but I would've hated to be short forever." Ah, a smile. That was good. It was a weird thing, being almost as tall as Piccolo. Gohan doubted that his hair would ever be ruffled again.

"Now you know how Kuririn feels."

"Ouch. That's low."

"And that was a horrible pun."

"What? No it wasn't!"

"It's the truth. I thought you liked it when I told the truth?"

"It was a beautiful pun. You just don't have any appreciation for wordplay." Gohan sniffed, mock offended by the attack on his literary skills.

Oh, hey. That was his body over there, wasn't it. He hoped Piccolo hadn't noticed him staring. Because how often did you have to watch your dead body slowly be consumed by a puddle? Trunks wasn't here yet. Idly, the hybrid wondered if he'd hit him a little too hard when knocking him out. Brain damage was a Very Bad Thing.

"What're you doing down here anyway?" Gohan questioned. It felt like a fairly safe topic to breach; nothing messy like why people had bothered dying for other people and whatnot.

"Community service." Piccolo grunted. "The flow of souls to and from Earth is too heavily weighted in the favor of souls leaving. Upstairs doesn't have the time to take care of a lot of the ghosts who're left lingering on the surface, so I come get them. Sometimes force is required, and a lot of the ogres are just pencil pushers these days."

"I'm a lingering ghost?"

"You aren't going to leave until Vegeta's brat finds your body, are you?" Piccolo intoned.

"Of course not!" Because it wasn't right. It wouldn't be fair to die and then leave Trunks there to mourn on his own. The least he could do, Gohan figured, was watch the transformation play out, and be there in spirit for his student. It would be little comfort, but it was the only comfort he could give.

"Congratulations, you've just answered your own question." Returned the namek with a slight grin.

"Oh. Hah. Right." Gohan frowned as another thought came to mind. "Geeze, it must be getting full up there. What's happening to all those souls?"

"We reincarnate. Mostly. There's a long line of humans who can't come back because they don't deserve to be put through this hell."

"That's a shame." At Piccolo's questioning look, "I mean, it's a shame that I couldn't stop the androids from wrecking the world. I mean, bad enough that it's throwing a wrench in the cycle of reincarnation? That's…that's horrible."

"It's a mess." Piccolo agreed. "But if you start moping and blaming yourself after you just tried to lecture me on how happy you were to give up your life, I guarantee that you'll wish the androids still had you when I'm done."

Which, in Piccolo language, meant something along the lines of, "There was nothing else you could have done, you tried, you failed, and I'm proud of you anyway, even if you're a self-sacrificing idiot." So it was understandable that Gohan found he suddenly couldn't stop smiling.

Though, Piccolo wasn't smiling anymore. He was focusing on the sky above.

"He's here." The namek announced suddenly.

"Who-?" But the hybrid didn't get a chance to finish his question. Because there, only an arm's length away, stood Trunks.

Good. He hadn't hit him too hard. Wasn't that a relief?

It was time.

"Oh no. No." The purple-haired boy mumbled, lurching towards Gohan's dead body as if he was in a trance.

And try as he might, the hybrid couldn't get an image out of his head from thirteen years ago, where he was the boy moving brokenly towards the body of his teacher. The body that couldn't be a corpse, not yet, not now, even though it was burnt and broken and bleeding and ohgodwhy-

"Oh god no. What'd they do to you Gohan?" Trunks seemed to repeat. Like he couldn't believe that this was real. In the background, Gohan could hear his memories echo, screams of disbelief, cries of anguish, the whole nine yards. He'd never forgotten, but suddenly those memories seemed so close.

"You were my best friend. You were everything to me. Everything!"

Piccolo remained silent, the very picture of a neutral observer. Except no, that wasn't right. Because thirteen years ago, Gohan had to wonder, had Piccolo been the lingering ghost then? Watching his student scream and cry and beg and finally transform from pure anguish? Had he been the one watching his penance play out?

"This just isn't fair. Gohan! Gohan!"

Trunks had been cradling his body as if he could push life back into the dead husk out of sheer force of will. As if all the time and energy that Gohan had devoted to training him could be given back and exchanged for life. But, having found that method hopeless, the boy stood and grabbed at his hair in torment, leaving the too cold body on the ground.

"GOHAN!"

It was a horrible sight.

The way Trunks screamed, Gohan was afraid the younger boy would burst from the agony that was pouring out of his mouth. Rain sizzled into vapor and parted around him, as if it too was afraid of his rage.

"I hate watching this." Gohan whispered, and almost turned away, but no, no. Doing so would be disrespectful to Trunks and the pain that the boy was now feeling. The least he could do, the hybrid figured, was watch what he'd wrought play out.

"It's not even natural." The man continued, watching muscles bulge and veins surge. This was the body's last ditch attempt to stay intact amongst the torrent of rage and power that saiyans could muster up. The rubble passed straight through him as it was blown back by the force of Trunks's aura. At least, being a ghost, he didn't have to worry about any random rubble-related concussions?

And then it was done.

There Trunks stood, aura visibly golden and bleached hair standing up on end. The tears running tracks down his face were evaporating before they had a proper chance to drip off his chin. He remained there for a moment, frozen in shock, before he began to scream again.

He screamed and broke the earth with his fists, and Gohan knew then that the Earth was in good hands. Plural. Because Trunks had two, and that was more than Gohan could have given. The Earth would be safe, entrusted to this boy who'd lost something so dear. This boy who would never let himself lose someone so dear ever again.

It was wrong to leave the fate of the world to a boy, but they were out of options, now.

"Come on, you've got some people who want to see you." They were the first words that Piccolo had spoken in a while, and they caused Gohan to jump. He'd almost forgotten that his mentor was there too.

The man nodded in agreement. They could leave now. Trunks…Trunks would be fine. With time. He would heal, he would emerge victorious where Gohan had failed, and one day they would meet again and maybe, just maybe, he might be forgiven for dying.

I'll be watching, Trunks.

Deleted this a while ago because I didn't like it. Now re-upped because I've had time to go back, rewrite and salvage the parts I actually liked.

So…DBKai. I'm really liking it. A) because now I have a valid reason to watch the whole series through again. And B) because of the updated English dub. Maybe I'm imagining things (hopefully I'm not…) but Gohan's new VA seems to be doing a really good job. More emotion? It just seemed to me that Piccolo's death scene was so much more of a tear-jerker this time around.

The new uncut English dub is pretty awesome methinks. But that just might be because of people using damn instead of darn, and Goku actually calling people bastards for killing his friends. Wooo.

…But seriously? Blue Popo?

Um, anyway. Future Gohan. I'm sad we never got to see him partying it up in heaven. Random plotbunny is random. I've got a lot of other random theories about Future Gohan and how he survived for 13 years against the androids without managing to beat them. But I'll cover those another time. For now, thanks for reading.