A/N: Shounen Ai warning. That means a male/male pairing, and don't flame me over it. I plan on keeping this story clean, but if any citrus scenes come up, they'll be done tastefully. I'll leave a note in the chapter if and where it happens. I also want to note that I may take a while to finish each chapter because of school and stuff. I don't have a lot of time online(it took me awhile just to get this up :P), so please be patient with me ^_^
Changed Body
Episode 1: The Crash
"Ah, crap. The engine is stalling again!" Gohan complained over the blaring stereo as the engine in the hovercar sputtered. He pulled off the highway, turned on the emergency lights and climbed out to pop the hood. Piccolo stayed where he was, head bowed and arms folded, exhausted from a long day of training.
Now that he and Gohan were living together, they decided to move to the city. He didn't like the idea of being in a place full of people, but he was willing to for Gohan. Especially since their relationship had taken an…interesting…turn.
His thoughts were interrupted when his student jumped aside, just in time to avoid being crushed by an out-of-control car that came out of nowhere and slammed into the vehicle he was sitting in. The impact shoved the small hovercar back several feet, jarring the Namekseijin and shattering the windshield.
Piccolo felt the seat-belt break from the force of his large body being swung forward and back. His head hit the crushed dashboard, doing more damage to it than it did to him. Effectively startled, he stared at his lap in attempt to figure out what the heck just happened.
"Piccolo!! Are you OK!?" Gohan screamed over the still-blaring stereo while the driver of the other car started screaming a haze of cuss words.
Dazed, shaking all over, Piccolo lifted his head to find the hovercar was crushed like a tin can. Safety padding lay shredded, seats were broken and the engine had finally decided to start. "Yeah…I think so…" Then he looked up and saw the jack-knifed semi that sent the other car spinning out of control. It was sliding along the road so fast sparks were flying off the cab, and it was headed straight for the two crippled cars. "Oh sh-"
Screeching metal and an explosion. That was the sound Piccolo heard during the impact, and it hurt his sensitive ears. He felt his body being jerked into wild contortions, pain overpowering every conscious thought, and the world spun wildly. Lights flashed as they passed by. The ground rushed by in a blur of tar black and grass green. Every impact jarred him further, tossing him around inside the broken vehicle like a ragdoll, until all was stillness. His body tingled and went numb, leaving him stuck beneath the hot metal with his scraped cheek pressed hard against pavement. His vision blurred on images of twisted metal, fire and leaking gasoline.
The other car, the one that had made the first impact, was gone. All that remained was the seat and the charred body of the driver. The driver of the semi that had jack-knifed, who was suffering a badly broken arm and a mild concussion, immediately called for help over his radio system. Then he used his good arm to climb free of the cab and rush to Gohan's side.
"Sir? Are you all right!?"
The young dark-haired man was in a panic when he saw his hovercar lying in a twisted heap in the ravine that ran the length of the highway. "He's still in the car! Piccolo!!"
"I've radioed for help…" Was all the driver had time to say before Gohan had run to the edge of the ravine.
Piccolo was still in a complete daze and his head was swimming. He no longer knew where he was, having lost all sense of direction after being spun so wildly. All he knew was his body was numb, his head ached and the angle his neck was twisted made it impossible for him to breathe. He could hear the sound of water trickling on cloth somewhere, his numbed body not letting him realize it was his bladder emptying itself.
"Piccolo!!! Hang on, Piccolo! Help is on the way!" Gohan's voice spoke from far off across a distant tunnel, followed by the sound of shoes scraping dirt and gravel. Feet plodded down heavily behind the twisted car and the metal groaned as the young man started to move it. The movement quickly stopped when it proved too dangerous. "Piccolo!?" Gohan dropped to his knees beside the crumpled car, able to see his lover's face and the angle in which his neck and body were twisted. He watched the green man's glazed eyes flutter vacantly. "Piccolo, can you hear me? Don't move, whatever you do, don't try to move."
Piccolo couldn't breathe to reply, even when he tried, and panic began to give way to stupor. All faded into darkness as his eyes fluttered shut and went still.
"Piccolo!!!" Gohan screamed. He scooted under the crumpled heap of the car when he felt his lover's ki flicker and laid a hand across the back of his head, in a panic because it was too dangerous to attempt CPR. "Piccolo, you can't give up! Try to breathe! TRY!!! Please!!!"
He wanted to breathe, to live. But his body did not. It was too wounded and in too much pain to continue. Too broken to function.
"Come on…" Gohan was nearly in tears as two minutes became five, and five became ten. He could tell Piccolo had stopped breathing and knew his heart had probably stopped. "Hang in there, Piccolo…" The tears began, "You have to hang on…"
A red light flashed at the end of the overpass, and with the flash came a flicker of hope…
Piccolo heard the distant sound of sirens, but they'd never make it in time to save him; his brain had been deprived of oxygen for too long.
That was the last thought he had before feeling incredible suction against the top of his head, and vivid flashes of his past began to erupt against the backs of his closed eyelids like dreams. No, more than dreams. He was there again in those moments. Seeing Gohan first learning to fight, growing and becoming stronger than he ever imagined. He saw him defeating the most powerful enemies they ever came across. He felt the softness of their nearly-forgotten first kiss and the intense sensations of physical love. Then all faded to a smoky gray mist that swirled intermittently and condensed in on itself.
The next thing Piccolo knew, he was rising through a narrow gray tube that glowed dully at the other end. It felt like sitting on a roller-coaster being cranked up a big hill, only there were no tracks and the ride was smoother. The anxiety of the unknown quickly faded from his memory, replaced by a calm sense of peace. Nothing mattered anymore.
Flashing lights and sirens signaled the approaching fire engines, ambulances and police. Gohan tried to keep a cool head while the truck driver signaled that someone was still in the car. He had yet to realize a wound on his head was bleeding profusely onto his shirt and staining the white material a brilliant red.
"Down there!"
The first ambulance came to a screeching halt next to the ravine where the hovercar had tumbled after the impact. A helicopter was called while several paramedics and firemen climbed down into the ravine. One of them grabbed Gohan and pulled him away from the wreck while a fireman used the Jaws Of Life to cut the mangled wreck away from Piccolo's broken form.
From that moment on, everything was cacophony and chaos.
"Don't move him! I think his neck may be broken!" Gohan cried.
"Sit down now, son. Let them handle it." Said the truck driver.
"I need a neck brace and a backboard!" Called a female voice.
One of the paramedics touched Piccolo's twisted neck, "I can't find a pulse!"
"No choice then. Move him with EXTREME CARE! Get that neck brace on him!" Called the male paramedic.
The woman reached up to catch a neck brace that was tossed down. She wrapped it carefully around Piccolo's neck to immobilize it while two more paramedics slid down the hill with a backboard. As soon as the wreckage was cut away, they rolled him over onto it and began aggressive CPR.
Gohan got a good look at Piccolo when they rolled him over. The front of his gi was all wet and clinging to his skin, his eyes were closed and his lips parted, tainted only by a single streak of blood where his fangs had cut the inside of his lip during the impact. He looked strangely peaceful, which struck Gohan as odd because he had thought Piccolo would be in pain.
If only he had known what his beloved mentor was going through right then…
Wham! Piccolo was plunged through the dull glow and into a twisting watery blue vortex. Each time he zoomed around a curve, the color would change. Green became blue, blue became purple, and purple became red. Faster and faster, the turns kept coming more rapidly until he was slammed through another wall of dull light.
He was ejected over a bizarre landscape of odd colors and illogical objects. Crystalline islands rose above a fuchsia sea, reaching towards a rainbow sky filled with dancing multicolored spheres and cubes. One of the spheres engulfed him, and he found himself passing over an even more surreal landscape where everything shone in rainbow colors. The only break between "ground" and "sky" was the horizon, a blackness beyond existence.
When he passed through this blackness, all movement seemed to stop completely. There was nothing; no sound, no light, no sensation, and no sense of self. The person he once was no longer existed, as it had become an experience without the experience-er…
"One, two, three! Breathe!" The female paramedic performed chest compressions while one of the men squeezed an Ambu bag. A third man was busy hooking up monitors and an IV line. Equipment was being passed, speech chattered constantly and various people began to surround the fallen Namekseijin.
One of the men used his thumb to pull one of Piccolo's eyelids up and shined a light onto his eyeball. He did the same with the other, then to both. "Pupils are fixed and dilated, no response to light."
"I'm getting good breath-sounds bilaterally, no pulse yet. He's hypoxic…intubating now." The paramedic placed a laryngoscope into Piccolo's mouth to depress his tongue and open his throat until she could see his vocal cords. Then she used her teeth to rip open a packet, extracted a clear plastic tube and pushed it down his throat, between the relaxed vocal cords. Putting the laryngoscope aside, she attached a different Ambu bag, "Hyperventilate him and continue CPR!"
"Where is that helicopter?"
"ETA about ten minutes!"
Gohan gave up and sobbed quietly against his hands, unable to summon the strength to fly as one paramedic helped him up the side of the ravine, "Piccolo…don't die. I need you, don't die! Don't die, Piccolo!" He kept shouting until he was pushed to sit, had a bandage wrapped around his head to slow the bleeding and received a mild sedative to calm him down.
Just when Piccolo thought he had finished his journey, he realized a single line of light was waiting in the distance, and he was quickly slammed through another twisting vortex ending with wispy white tendrils made of pure light.
Now he was gliding through a narrow corridor with multicolored walls made of odd shapes. It felt like standing still while the walls rushed soundlessly by, missing him by millimeters and giving off no wind. His speed increased as another dull glow appeared in the distance, stretching up and down into forever.
Beyond the light was a corridor even more illogical than the one before; controlled chaos in fast forward. It was a thin, pockmarked rainbow spiral moving against the blackness. It wound twice, plunged him into one of the many openings on its surface and sent him through another identical spiral. The spiral undulated twice more before he entered another tunnel that led into blackness.
The blackness didn't last long. He was thrust into a horizontal corridor with a cloudy red floor and a bright blue-green ceiling. Occasional streaks of other colors would shoot by and be forgotten, only to shoot by again.
Chop-chop noises could be heard as the helicopter approached. A spotlight shined down on the swarm of people surrounding Piccolo's unmoving form. The wind began to pick up, noise grew unbearable and the paramedics started shouting louder to hear each other over the mess.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, the helicopter managed to land.
"Report!" Someone screamed. Someone else shouted the garbled reply.
It all seemed like slow motion to Gohan, who was now holding a bandage and an ice pack over his wounded head. He watched helplessly as even more people surrounded Piccolo, and he was soon in the helicopter, out of sight.
Whoosh! The horizon became a distant feature amidst a fiery sky and a sea of evenly-spaced reflective spheres. Each sphere bore many reflections within reflections of the landscape, like two mirrors across from each other. Occasional flashes of lightning jumped across Piccolo's path or between the odd sea and sky, but he still didn't feel any fear. In fact, he had the urge to laugh with glee! This was fun!
Lightning flashed in his path to thrust him towards a seemingly featureless wall. As he got closer, he realized there were endless patterns interwoven within the single color. They bled outwards like cracks or veins that changed hues as he approached. The closer he got, the more intricate, colorful and beautiful the patterns became. Streaks became swirls, or swirls became streaks that changed color and folded in on themselves. Color here, color there, color flowing everywhere!
The ambulance arrived at the hospital in record time, though the helicopter had long since landed and taken off. Piccolo had not regained a pulse the whole time they transported him; he had been clinically dead for over an hour by then.
Gohan was taken into the hall and behind a curtain across from the trauma room where Piccolo was still being resuscitated. He could do nothing but watch in silence, his stomach sinking down into his toes and twisting in against itself.
Metal cups were attached to his lover's strong green pectorals, leading to a monitor that repeatedly drew a straight line across the screen. Strong hands pressed down on his breastbone while another pair squeezed an Ambu bag to fill his lungs with air.
Through everything, Piccolo's eyes remained closed and did not offer the slightest twitch in response to the rough treatment being administered.
"I need an Epi, stat!" Called one of the ER doctors. He turned quickly towards a machine with two black paddles and grasped the devices by the handles. Then he placed one on Piccolo's left pectoral and the other a bit lower, forming an L shape. "Charge to two hundred! Clear!"
Everyone lifted their hands away from Piccolo's green form, and his entire body jerked as the shock was delivered to his heart. The monitor above his bed jumped wildly before showing an uncoordinated wavy line. They waited for a moment before resuming CPR.
"He's fibrillating. At least that's something." Someone commented from off to the side.
Another doctor intervened with a long needle, sticking it through the Namekseijin's chest and into his heart. "Charge to two-fifty! Clear!" The paddles were placed again, everyone took their hands away and another shock was delivered. The doctor touched the side of Piccolo's neck and looked up at the monitor, "No pulse! Continue CPR!"
Piccolo had lost all sense of direction when his forward motion began to decrease. He finally reached the end of his colorful journey after a long period of non-existent time, and another splotch of blackness awaited him. Rather than being slammed into the dark, he was aware of gently drifting through, and found himself floating towards an even more bizarre place.
It was a spherical cavern, or perhaps even a room. The walls were constantly interweaving lines of pale light in various earth-tones, much more mute from the barrage of rainbows that were flying by before. Every second that passed made the moving lines shift slightly, and he spent several moments just watching them dance as his forward motion came to a gradual stop.
At the other end of the odd room, there was an aperture with white tendrils of light waving gently about in a welcoming manner. Beads of light would flow through the walls and into those tendrils, feeding them their beautiful glow.
"Get me another Epi!" Called the trauma doctor in charge. He held out his hand while a clean syringe was slapped against his palm and made another injection, "C'mon… OK, resuming CPR," The heels of his hands returned to Piccolo's chest and pressed down to pump his heart. "Charge to three-hundred!"
"Charging!"
The doctor grabbed the paddles and positioned them on Piccolo's chest, "Clear!"
ZAP!!!
"Piccoloooooo," A familiar voice rang out dreamily, echoing on itself several times.
Piccolo looked straight ahead to see Goku in the form of a translucent naked figure that appeared to be little more than shimmering mist in the shape of a body. He was walking towards the aperture with an arm outstretched, beckoning, a smile on his face.
"Piccolooooo…" His musical voice called again as he seemed to vanish, "Seeeeeee yaaaaa…"
As Goku disappeared, a Namekseijin materialized. He was young, probably not much older than Nail had been, and he seemed strangely familiar. Someone whose name was just beyond the realm of recollection. The Namekseijin figure didn't say much when he began walking towards the aperture. In fact, all he did was look over his shoulder with a radiant smile to say one musical word.
"Kataaaaaaaaat…"
As soon as the Namekseijin disappeared, the white tendrils of light blew inwards like an opening gate, and Piccolo drifted through. The place he found himself in was similar to the previous, though the colors were even more mute than before. Shimmers of light still ran along the walls and converged in an unseen location.
He was moving forward along with the shimmers, towards a fantastic corridor made completely of the same wavering tendrils he just passed through. They seemed to be waving him onward towards an even taller aperture with brighter wavering ropes of light.
"Charge to three-fifty!" The doctor ordered, then placed the paddles accordingly, "Clear!"
Again, just as before, Piccolo's limp body jerked when it received the shock. One of the technicians touched his neck to search for a pulse. "No pulse. Should we call it?" She looked up at the doctor's determined expression and placed her hand back on the Ambu bag.
"Not yet. Charge again." The doctor placed the paddles back into place. "Clear!"
Piccolo's flaccid body jumped as the shock was delivered. The doctor looked up at the monitor and placed two fingers on the Namekseijin's neck to seek out a pulse.
Piccolo had just drifted through the massive aperture and into a blindingly bright white room, which was made entirely of interwoven lines in constant motion, when one of the wavering tendrils suddenly floated forward to bar him from continuing. He still felt the forward pull while the tendril resisted. There was a flash of light as two more filmy streaks of light barred his path. He felt a tingle, looked down to see a misty outline of his own arms and legs, and became suddenly aware of his own existence.
All at once, he was sucked backwards through a vortex of shifting colors ending in a dull grayish light. He was slammed into the light to find himself floating above a decrepit green body, lying on a table with people working all around, while Gohan watched from across the hall. Distorted voices reached his ears to mix with the sounds of beeps, clicks and hisses.
He was spun face-up and slapped back into his body. As if he had just dove into water, he felt himself sink away from the bright lights and people surrounding him until consciousness was just a point of light in the distance.
The line on the monitor wavered unsteadily before showing a spike. The resounding beep was followed by another, and another, and another. Hearing the monitor beeping again was like hearing the first cries of a newborn child, and the doctors who were working so intently to bring Piccolo back cheered.
"Normal sinus rhythm!" Called the technician working the Ambu bag.
"All righty then. We've got him back, but he's not out of the woods. As soon as he's stable enough, I want chest and abdominal X-rays and a head CT to rule out the severity of his injuries. Then I want a CBC, a Chem7 and a blood gas. Get to it," The doctor pulled his gloves off and finished writing on his chart before charging down the hall to handle another trauma.
"You heard the man!" Chirped one of the nurses as she prepared the proper equipment for transport.
Gohan grimaced a little as the nurse finished stitching up the nasty wound on the side of his head. It wasn't that the numbness was wearing off, but the fact that the rest of his head still ached. Another problem that seemed to be killing him more was that nobody around was giving him any news on Piccolo after they had gotten his heart beating again.
The worst the wait had done was allow him to go through the accident in his mind.
Just before the crash, they had been discussing their relationship, and how close at had gotten. He was so upset that his mother had refused to accept his loving Piccolo, especially after they had been caught in bed together. His own mother had told him to choose his family or Piccolo.
He'd chosen Piccolo…
"OK, you're all done there. The doctor is going to write up a prescription for you and then you can go. You should consider yourself lucky, young man. Getting out of that car saved your life." The nurse's words cut into Gohan's thoughts.
"Gee, thanks." Muttered the man as he settled back in his seat. He waited for the nurse to leave before reaching up to touch the dressing she had put over the stitches.
After five minutes of an eternity crawled by, the door opened and an older man wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope slung over the back of his neck stepped in. He paused a moment to check his clipboard before writing something down and looking to Gohan, "Your chart says you're well enough to go home now, but I recommend bed rest for a few days so you can heal up."
Gohan lifted his head to peer at the doctor with slightly double vision, "Dr. Toriyama, how's Piccolo? Nobody is telling me anything around here! Is he going to make it?"
The doctor sighed and pulled up a stool to sit. His body language was enough to tell it was bad, as did his serious tone, "Your friend's seat belt broke… he appeared to have been thrown around inside the car like a ragdoll. Though he suffered a minor concussion, the X-rays show a severe C-5 fracture that crushed his spinal cord."
Gohan blinked, "He's…?"
"…never going to walk or have full use of his arms again." The news dropped like a bomb, "He's in surgery now, having the bone fragments removed and replaced, but we won't know the extent of his sensory loss until he regains consciousness. We have him on a ventilator because of some swelling, but he'll be able to breathe on his own once that goes away."
"Can…I see him when he comes out?"
"Yes, but then I want you to go home and rest." Dr. Toriyama noted sharply.
--Two hours later--
Who was that stranger lying there with the halo traction device holding his neck and torso still? Who was the person lying unconscious with tubes in his mouth, arms and between his legs? Who was the creature that seemed perpetually melded to monitors by wires attached to cups on his chest or cuffs on his fingers? Where was the cool, calculated man that had been talking to him earlier?
Seeing Piccolo lying there like that was utterly wrong. As wrong as it would be to draw a circle and call it a square.
Tears welled in Gohan's eyes as he approached the bed and picked up one of the lifeless green hands. It was cool as always, though the usually flawless skin was lined with cleaned scrapes and bruises. When he realized he was holding a hand that might never feel again, he burst into tears.
"Oh Piccolo…I'm so sorry…I shouldn't have taken the car out when it was acting up…" He sobbed softly, "I'm sorry…" His head rose as his hopes of a response came up. They were dashed when he was met with the motionless closed lids showing beneath naturally frowning brow ridges. "…Piccolo? Can you even hear me?"
No response but the beeping monitors and the hissing ventilator. Each time it hissed, Piccolo's chest would rise and fall. It pained Gohan to know that his friend, mentor and lover depended on that machine to live. The pain worsened when he tried to picture him in a wheelchair…because he couldn't.
With his eyes, he followed the ribbed tubes from the machine where they entered the Namekseijin's mouth, held in place by clean strips of cloth tape against his upper lip and cheek. The white tape stood out against his dark green skin.
"OK…" Whispered Gohan. He brought the fragile hand up to his lips and gently kissed it, "Take your time…then come back to me, Piccolo." He dared to lean up and touch his lips to the Namekseijin's green cheek. It, like his hand, was cool to the touch and smooth like leather. "Aishiteru, Pikorro-kun."
"I'm sorry." Dr. Toriyama interrupted gently by poking his head through the door, "But you have to leave now so we can run some more tests. I'll call you if there's any change. Go home and get some rest. Make sure to keep the area around those stitches clean too."
"I will." With that, he left the hospital and called a cab to go home.
Piccolo rose like a soap bubble towards the distant light known as consciousness. The first thing he heard was the sound of beeping monitors and the hiss of a nearby machine. He was also aware of a tube in his mouth that stretched down his throat and forced him to breathe. Though he couldn't seem to move his body, he could move his eyes from side to side.
He saw silver bars extending down either side of his face, attached to something wrapped around his upper body. The topmost parts were attached to a metal halo that prevented movement from the neck up. He also saw various IV lines entering his muscular green-and-pink arms, filled with various liquids to keep him alive. Another tube ran out from under the sheet to a bag hanging off the bedrail. Thick ribbed tubes, one aqua and the other clear, extended from a machine like two coiling snakes that joined back into one and entered his mouth.
Last he remembered, he was drifting into a place filled with light…
No, it was too painful to stay conscious now. His eyes fluttered shut and he drifted back into the soundless void, still unaware that his life had been changed forever.
