Lost and found
Chapter 2
When he woke up, quietness was all around. Actually, everything was so calm that, at first, he didn't know where he was. But suddenly he remembered it brightly. He had travelled back to the past... he was in another world... landing hadn't been as he had imagined, but, despite of all, he felt relieved. He was alive. That thought hit him, making him shiver. He was alive! He was alive!!
He moved his head a bit, in order to get an idea of his situation, and he felt sick. The spaceship had remained on a strange position, laying on its side, and if he had removed before the safety belt, he wouldn't be still sitting down on his seat and he would have gone down with the cabin free objects, which had pounced down the back wall. He sighed, closing his eyes. He had a headache and all was turning round him. He remembered, confused, hitting with the box and he rose his hand to his face. The contact with his forehead made him open his eyes suddenly. He had a wound, between his eyes, just above his nose. By the touch, it seemed more or less healed, but the skin around it was sticky, and only grazing it with his fingers made him shiver with pain. He closed his eyes again and rubbed them. He felt his head heavy and he felt like vomiting. But he had to do something... something with the spaceship... at least, to guess where he had landed! He sighed deeply, bent in his seat being careful because he certainly didn't want to fall on his side, and looked at the computer's screen. Before being able to see anything on it, he had to bright his sight twice. His heart was beating bravely again, but the message he received from the computer made him smile with huge relief that even made him forget his headache for a bit. Yes, there were problems with some of the spaceship's mechanisms, and he would have to spend a lot of time repairing it, and maybe he would have to buy some new spare parts. But both of the co-ordinates and the date were extremely reassuring; the date still was the same that the one he had introduced there, in his world, when he had entered in the machine, and the co-ordinates only were moved a little, nothing important. So that, instead of all, the essential had worked properly. He had travelled to the past and he had landed. He had done that! He was in the past, and alive!! He allowed himself a little feeling of satisfaction. He hadn't been kept as a time prisoner... he could get out of the spaceship... he remembered the strange ideas which had crossed his head the last moments and he shivered, although he was already save. Black holes... energy jails... all the rest of his life captured in that totally unknown uncertainty! He shook his head, trying not to think that he would have to repeat that journey, as a minimum, if everything worked properly, once more. Sometimes he hated having that imagination.
He thought about what he had to do next. First of all he had to get out of the time-machine, and get and idea of the place where he had arrived. A past world... he had thought about it during all the journey, trying to imagine how that world would be. Gohan and mother, again. Did he notice it? There they would be still alive. And himself? He would be seven years old. Seven years old, did he notice it? It was too much time... a whole life had gone after that. Being a seven years old child, he still believed that the world was quite nice, despite of the Monster. He still saw Gohan and mum as a kind of gods, and he adored them. He still retained the child's innocence, he still hadn't had to face up, completely alone, the life.
He shook his head, annoyed, scolding himself. That moment wasn't the best to be sorry for himself, and as he had learnt many years ago, doing so didn't solve anything at all.
Who else would be alive? Obviously, his objective. Gohan's girl.
In that point, he had more advantages than his mother had had. She only had wanted that the guy had a baby with someone, that is because her plan didn't work. But he knew more.
He knew with whom Gohan wanted it.
And he also knew, if he hadn't had a mistake with his calculus, that in that world, there was already a girl with the humankind's rescuer growing in her womb.
Trunks didn't understand it. What did Gohan mean by the Monster killed the mother? His master had never had a girlfriend. What the heck was he talking about?
-But, Gohan... – he started to ask, but the guy interrupt him.
-Have you finished your breakfast? – he asked, sharply.
The boy, surprised, nodded without a word, and Gohan got up, starting to clear away the table. He put the plates in the sink, filled the mugs with water and gave the table a wipe over. When he finished, he stared at the boy.
-Don't you think you should finish dressing up?
Trunks had followed him with the eyes during all the time he had been cleaning the kitchen, still.
-What are we going to do, Gohan...? – he asked finally, feeling shyness.
-What are we going to do?! We're going to train, that's evident! Or what did you think?
-But...
-You'll study when your mother come back – since the boy kept still, he made an impatient sign with his arms. – Come on! What are you waiting for to dress up?
Trunks jumped down the chair and ran to his room, with Gohan's words and his strange behaviour stuck in his mind. Dressing up himself with his training gi, he decided that, afterwards, later, if his master recovered his good mood, he would talk again about that topic.
They trained on a mountain field, far away from Cc, for a lot of time, until Trunks, exhausted and hurt, let himself fall on the grass, with arms crossed and breathing heavily. Gohan flied down, floating slowly, until he remained standing up at his side. Then he sat down and looked at him while the boy was restoring.
-I-I-I... will n-n-never... turn into it...G-gohan... – he stuttered, puffing.
-You will certainly do it. When you liberate all your fury, you'll do it.
-And w-w-when will be that? I-I'm...tired of you al-always telling me the same again... and a-again...! I-I-I wanna b-bump Him off right now!!!!!
-You know you can't. I can turn into it and I can't either. And don't make me tell you the same thousands of times, Trunks. I think you're old enough to understand the situation.
-But i-i-it's... in-infuriating, Gohan!!!!!
-Then concentrate that fury in freeing the energy and don't waste it chatting!
The boy kept in silence, and watching the sky, he recovered his breath little by little. When he was a bit calmer, he sat down and looked at his master with shyness, rubbing his jaw, hurt because of a punch he hadn't known how to dodge.
-Anyway, am I improving...?
Gohan smiled, but just a bit.
-You could always improve.
-Yes, I know, but have I improved since the last time you told me that I could always improve?
Gohan smiled widely, wrapping an arm around Trunks's shoulders and hugging him.
-Yes, you're doing much better.
Trunks felt satisfaction, despite of his hurt body. His master's congratulations were not very usual.
There was a nice smell, of wet grass, and a fresh draft was blowing, moving their hair. There was still snow on the mountains, although spring was already finishing. It was so tempting to believe that nothing was happening, that all was in peace. But both of them knew that the threat did exist and that the region that the Monster would chose was a lottery. He could appear there, at any moment, and blow everything up before they had time to get up. He was always there..., a danger waiting wherever. Trunks could not imagine another reality, as he had always lived with that fright, with that nearly destruction, and Gohan, who was twelve years old when everything started, could hardly remember what his life had been like in peace. It was a long time ago. Too many things had happened since then.
Trunks rose his sight for a moment, just to look at his master. He looked down again, staring at a white flower, and decided that the guy had recovered, at least a bit, his good mood, since he had even smiled to him. During all the training Trunks hadn't been able to move his thoughts away on what he had told him while he was having breakfast. Gohan had had a child!!!! He had to know how it had happened, if mum knew that, why hadn't they told anything to him. Everything was too strange. And Gohan's behaviour just after he had told him, angry, brusque, had upset him even more.
-Are you not angry with me any more? – he almost whispered.
He felt Gohan's eyes on him, but he didn't look at him.
-I wasn't angry with you. Why do you say so?
-You looked as if you were.
-Well, I'm not.
Trunks rose his head and stared at him.
-You looked as if you were... after you told me about your child.
That words made Gohan changing his face. His eyes got dark and he turned away. He removed his arm of Trunks's shoulders, bent his legs against his chest, and with his chin on his folded arms, put on his knees, he made his look distant.
Trunks felt insecure. He didn't know what to do at all.
-I didn't want... – he started, but he stopped himself. What did he not want ? – Gohan...?
-Do you want to know everything? - the guy asked, with a voice that didn't seem his own.
The boy had wanted to tell him that only if he wanted to told it to him, but finally he only nodded.
-Swear you will never tell anything to anybody.
-I swear it.
It wouldn't be so difficult. After all, he only spoke to Gohan and mum.
-Of course, neither to your mother. – Gohan added.
The boy shook his head, serious.
-Neither to mum.
Then, Gohan started to talk, without looking at him, always in a whisper.
He opened his eyes slowly, while he was rising a hand and caressing the wound between the eye, or at least what was lasting of it, because the scab was beginning to loosen, and a white mark was taking the place of it.
That was enough.
He knew himself. He was slowing down the moment of getting out of the spaceship. He was running away.
He had to stop thinking about his travel. Of course it was so much easier just to enjoy himself feeling relief because the journey had finished...! But that already belonged to the past.
He shook his head, trying to erase his travel's memories; Gohan, mother, Videl, all of them..., and his hair, too long, waved in front of his face. He remembered what Gohan had told to him. "When you go home", he had recommended to him, "make an effort to think about it like a dream...". He had told him that, if he didn't do that, all that memories could mean to him an important psychological confusion.
Trunks smiled a bit. "A psychological confusion", Gohan had told him, with a serious face, worried, embracing Videl with an arm around her shoulders.
The guy remembered his childhood's years, when Gohan, his master, used to told him, in his good mood moments, that if there wasn't the Monster, he would have studied Medicine, and he would have become a great doctor.
Maybe in that world he would have managed to do that. If everything had worked properly, of course.
He bit his lower lip lightly. His ex – master was right, he knew it. He had to stop thinking about that past world or he would get crazy – what Gohan named euphemistically an "psychological confusion". But seeing it as a dream was not so easy. Everything was too recent yet. He needed time. Time to forget that he had slip himself through the time grids and that he had seen things he was not supposed to see. And also done things he was not supposed to do, although that didn't belong to his time-line, to his fate, to say it in some way. But he didn't believe in fate... or maybe he did?
He realised, surprised, that in a few minutes, when he decided to go out of the machine, which for the moment he saw like a protecting capsule, he would be the first person who would know if destiny is certainly a real item and if it could be changed. The first person...!!!
If he opened the door and found a half-ruined laboratory, if he went out of the laboratory and didn't see anybody, if his mind was flooded out by that dreadful ki which had went with him as long he could remember...
Then, he would know that fate is something fixed, immovable, and that everything mother and him had done wouldn't mean anything at all. He would return to his house, to the bunker, and his empty and hated life would be waiting for him, ready to renew, after weeks of abstinence, that never-end nights, lying down on the old bunker bed, with his eyes widely open fixed in the ceiling and remembering the good old days, when he woke up and heard the radio; remembering when it was still broadcasting something, news bulletins, regularly, and music... instead of that static sound which took the broadcasting's place a long time ago...
And searching, almost indifferently, some reason for not letting himself die, simply.
On the other hand, if he opened the door and the laboratory was not ruined...
If there was people working...
If he felt Gohan and mother's ki again...
If he felt, that time much more intense, liberated of its mother's womb, Gohan and Videl's ki mixed in a new person...
And, of course, if he didn't feel Him...
Then he would know he would had changed fate.
It was not necessary that all that things happened. Only that everything was different. Maybe not everything, just one part. Whatever.
Was he playing God? Wasn't that so?
Mother had already thought about that. She told him that in the CD. She wondered, when she was building the time-machine, if she really had any right to do what she had planned to. And finally she came to the conclusion that she did not aim so high, that she was not playing God. She only was "playing" to obtain a better future for the person who she loved the most in the world. That was to say, him.
But, and him? Was he playing God?
Actually, he didn't know exactly why he had continued his mother's work. Only that, one day, after thinking about it without any relax, he knew, he felt he had to do that. A bit because he had a debt with his mother. She had sacrificed herself to save his life, although, in that moment, he hadn't understood it.
Another bit for Gohan. He had to take revenge on him. Gohan had been his master and who most similar to a father had been. During his childhood, he would have killed for Gohan. But the Monster was who killed him finally. He would get the Monster for killing Gohan and not allowing him to take revenge on the girl who he loved and on the baby who was growing inside her.
Another bit for those who he didn't ever meet. His father. Gohan's parents. His grandparents. And for all the people, all the inhabitants of the world, for those who had lost relatives, friends. For everybody who had lost their lives. And for those who had killed themselves, trying to fight against Him or, simply, giving in.
And also for himself. It was true that he hadn't known another life. But Gohan and mother had told him how life was before the Monster. And he had also imagined. His imagination had been his floating table, what had kept him sane through so many years of loneliness. Those worlds he had imagined were terribly better than that, where he was living. And He had stolen them to him.
But mainly because a deep and strange feeling that he didn't know how to explain but that controlled him... A feeling that was repeating, tirelessly, "do it, do it. You must do it."
Simply.
He had done what he had done because he had to do so. Something inside him was telling him to, with a confident voice, a voice which didn't want any buts.
He shook his head again. Sometimes he exasperated himself. He was running away again. And he didn't have all the time in the world, despite of being in a time-machine. He had to centre on what he was doing, because he had another unknown world in front of him again. He bent his head a bit and looked at the exit door. He wondered what would be behind it. He didn't know anything. He couldn't know anything. And he had no option, he had to open the door. Open the door and see.
Slowly, almost like a zombie, he removed the safety belt and got up. He looked at the computer for a while, checking the co-ordinates and the date one last time. "Another way to put off the moment, um, Trunks?", he asked himself. Rolling his eyes, he switched the computer off definitively. Then he turned round and started to get his things together, with movements suddenly growing faster and faster. He wanted to stop once and for all with that distressing. He had to get out of the machine, hadn't he? So, it would be better to do it at once and stop as fast as possible with that distress that was eating him away...!!!
He put all his personal objects in one bag, the one that had gone with him during all this trip, and he hung it on his shoulder. The other things, at the moment, would stay in the machine. If... if everything went properly, he would return and he would clear them up. And then he would do what mother told him in the CD.
He stopped himself in front of the door, and his fast movements frozen. He just had to drive a mechanism placed near the door and then it would open.
As simply as that.
When he finally do so, the door started to open, making a sound of compressed air.