Trunks and Goten Chapter 2
Written By: EndlessTrinity
Goten entered the compound quietly. He was hoping that no one would notice him, but that was not possible. Bulma found him before he did.
"Where is Trunks?" She asked. Goten felt really bad now.
"I don't know…we sorta had a fight. I might have said something that hurt him."
Bulma knew what had happened. She put her arm around Goten.
"You see…Trunks has had a hard life. And sometimes he gets really upset. You just have to let him go for a while. He will come back. This is just the way that he blows off steam." She said walking him to the building. "I just wished that he would have picked a better time. I am up to my knees in work and he is my strongest worker." She added.
"Well, he is not the only half Saiyajin you know. I can make up for his absents."
Goten said spryly. Bulma all unconvinced, or at least seemed that way.
"Oh come on Miss Bulma, I can do it put your faith in me." He said trying to reassure her. Bulma smiled as Goten ran into the Building.
"Thank god for my quick wit." She said looking into the sky
"Thank you mother for you quick thinking, now I don't even have Goten! Why do these things happen to me. Why was Vegeta my father. Why did I run away from Goten?"
Trunks roared facing his empty apartment. He fell on the couch face first. He could smell Goten on the couch. "God I hate my self!" He said weeping into the couch cushion. Trunks was facing for the first time being alone. Before Goten he had some guy here to keep him company. But none of them mattered now. He couldn't even remember their names. All that mattered now was making everything in his life simple. Things had become too complicated. Maybe the best thing for him was time alone. Time to reflect on everything that was happening.
He knew that Vegeta was behind all of those "Terrorist attacks". He had to be. Everywhere these attacks happened were all locations that meant something to Bulma or Him. The first came shortly after the breakup between his mother and Vegeta and it was a place that the two of them had frequented. Then there was the Chi-Dojo, a place that Trunks liked to train at when he was younger. Then came the lookout that Bulma had turned into a landing station for Convoy ships that came through the system. These places had been timed when there was no one there. There had been no casualties. This last attack was the first to have human casualties. He must have picked such a heavily populated building for that purpose alone. This must have been some kind of warrior tactic to bring their attention. "But what does he expect us to do. Confront him so that he could exterminate us. Why bother us coming to him, why not come to us. Surely he knows where I am." Trunks thought.
A Couple of night passed with Trunks sitting in the living room thinking, sulking and brooding over everything. He didn't want to go to Capsule Corp. There was something inside of him, pride maybe that made it impossible to go to Capsule Corp. Though he really missed Goten.
He went out to his balcony. From there he could see the small community that he lived in. He could see his high school that he had not been to for 5 months. They must have thought he was dead or something. He could feel the cold night air. The stars were bright and shiny. He longed to see the Moon. "Damn Piccolo." He said softly. But where could he have been all this time. Was he on earth? Or maybe he was flying around in the borrowed ship for Capsule Corp. He might have only come back every once in a while to reek havoc. Maybe all of these attacks were some form of stupid tantrum. Who could read the mind of Vegeta.
Trunk's thoughts were racing. Then an idea came to him. It was something Goku once told him that all Saiyajins could do. He closed his eyes and shut out everything. All sounds all thoughts but one. He become so silent that he could hear the low rhythm of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. He repeated the thought over and over. Vegeta…Vegeta.
It came in a blinding rush. Like he was moving a thousand miles a second. It was something like being in a tornado if a person could survive such a thing. Then it was gone the feeling and sensation completely gone. Trunks opened his eyes to see that he wasn't no his balcony anymore. He looked around to see that he was standing on a ledge looking over a city. It was -THE- city where Capsule Corp was located. He could actually see Capsule Corp from here. Trunks walked up to the edge, and looked down. What was he doing here? He thought. Suddenly he heard a rustling from a far bush. Trunks immediately hid behind a stand of brush next to where he was. He could see the bushes where the sound was coming from. Then a person immerged from the bushed. Trunks almost gasped when he realized who it was, but he didn't nothing could make him make a sound now that he knew who it was. Trunks watched Vegeta as he staggered away from the bushed zipping up his pants. He could smell the beer wafting from Vegeta. Trunks was holding his breath. He couldn't believe that Vegeta was standing there. Then he heard his drunken father clearing his throat, and scratching his face. He did need a shave. His face was all scruffy.
It worked. Trunks used instant Transmission, but now he wished that he hadn't. As he watched his father he could see that he wasn't looking very good. In fact he looked sick. His eyes were drooping and his face was sunken. His clothes were so tattered and torn that they hung from him like rags. He was a bum. Nothing like Trunks had remembered of his father. If fact Vegeta was having a hard time even standing up straight. It wasn't long before he actually fell over, but Trunks didn't dare help him. He didn't dare move from this spot. Not even to make a move. Vegeta hoisted himself to his feet. He was standing again. God he looked only a shadow of his former self, he thought. Trunks was having a hard time looking at him now. He clamped his eyes shut and squeezed them tightly. How terrible! This was not the way he pictured his father being. He thought. Vegeta is not supposed to be some vagrant bum on the street, he was supposed to be conquering, and ruling as the prince of Saiyajins or something. But what am I thinking. This is a good thing…right. What would mother think if she saw him this way. What do I really think?
Trunks opened his eyes suddenly when he heard the raspy, dry, slurred voice of his father asking "Who's there?!" Vegeta was looking around trying to find someone in the dark. He was squinting badly. "I know someone is there!!" He wheezed. Trunks was frozen stiff from fear. He knew that Vegeta had heard him, or sensed him in some way. Vegeta began to cough wildly, doubling over with the cough. Then he vomited. Trunks was mortified. He thought
That can't be my father, he couldn't be. My father would never let himself get this way. Something was wrong.
Vegeta was vomiting uncontrollably. He cleared the entire contents of his stomach with the first few heaves, but the gagging wasn't stopping. Trunks was feeling something that he had not felt for his father in ages.
Worry…Compassion. Those words were foreign to him when it came to Vegeta. He had never known Vegeta to be compassionate or worried about anything. Trunks had learned to not feel those things for him too. After all that had happened between the two of them. But there were those feeling, right in front of him. But did he dare come out of his hiding place? Did he go to his father and help him.
The answer came to him when he saw Vegeta lunge face first off the edge of the cliff.
Trunks rushed from the bushes and dived off the cliff. He roared downward till he was in reach grabbed Vegeta by his foot and stopped his decent. Trunks carried him back up to the top of the cliff and dropped him in the soft plushy grass. Vegeta appeared to be unconscious. Trunks came down beside him. Trunks could smell decay on Vegeta. He could smell the death in his lungs. Vegeta was dying. Oh this just cant be." Trunks whispered. "I don't like you but I didn't want you to die, not like this." Trunks was terrified now. He looked up into the sky.
"What should I do? What could I do to help you?" He asked the sky.
"Tr..unks…." Came a low whisper. Trunks looked down to see that Vegeta's eyes were open and though blood shot they were focused on him. "Co..uld, it be?"
"Shhh…don't talk, save your strength." Trunks said taking his hand. Vegeta closed his yes again and was out again.
"I know your going to hate me for this Bulma, but I have to save him.
Bulma was working in her study after a long day of helping and caring for the wounded. She was pleased by her progress at rehabilitating many of the victims. 50 people in the last 3 days had been released and returned to life as it was. What really surprised her was how helpful Goten and Videl were. Both of them helped in care of the wounded. Changing bandages, administering lotions and, helping the people ho could walk, move around. There was so much to be done and they were doing a wonderful job at doing it. Though her son had not come back, she came to realize that Trunks was right. He knew they would both help to the best of their ability. Goten's father was all about that. Videl, well she must have come from good stock somewhere down the line. She had grown fond of the two of them as if they were her own children. She knew that Trunks was not likely to come back any time soon. He is just to damn stubborn she thought.
Bulma was writing a transfer report when she received a knock at the door.
"Come in." She said setting her pen down and turning to the door. The door swung open to reveal Goten.
"hey Goten." she said. "What's up?"
"Oh nothing much." he said coming through the door to sit in a chair next to a book self. "I just wanted to say hi. The last of our patients have gone to sleep. We gave them the sleeping pills as you ordered, they will be out for a while.
"Good. Thank you."
Goten sat for a few moments looking at the ground.
"Ok, what's wrong." Bulma asked
"Nothing much I have just been thinking about stuff."
"What kind of stuff."
"Oh I don't know. Videl tells me that working with these people is good for me, but.."
"But your kinda creeped out about the whole thing right?"
"Yeah, how did you know?"
"I have been alive longer than you have it is a good bet that I know a little bit more. Believe me I understand about creepy things. I have seen my share of creepy things.
"I have heard stories of you and my…"
"I know, but the important thing is not to let those memories bring you to a place that you hate to be. The trick is to use those memories as guides and rules to follow your own path."
"I know you right." Goten said "Thanks for talking to me."
"Well it was my pleasure, come back any time you need to, I'll be here for you." Bulma said swiveling back around to her desk. She went back to writing the transfer from when she realized that Goten was still sitting there. She turned back to him.
"Why did you really come to me?" She asked softly though she knew why before he even said anything.
"Trunks, I really miss him."
"I know you do. I know that he misses you too, but he has too much of a stubborn streak, he is too much like his father."
"What about his father. What happened to him and his father. That is what the fight was about."
Bulma sighed deeply before saying "Well no wonder you guys had a fight. Trunks and I have really grown to hate Vegeta over the years. There is a lot to this and it gets complicated"
"Why, how could you hate him, he is trunks father. Trunks wouldn't tell me."
"If trunks didn't tell you then I can't either it has nothing to do with you. It's about us, and the only way that we can deal with things that had happened in the past. Don't worry he will come soon. He always shows up when no one thinks that he will. Trust me. If anyone knows him it would be his mother."
"Well what did he do to you that made you hate him?" Goten asked
Bulma was shocked, she hadn't expected him to press harder, he must have truly been interested.
"There were so many things. I know that somewhere in my self I don't hate him, but the things he did made me want to hate him. I really can't tell you, as much as I want to, I think that it would be Trunk's place to tell you." She said urging to him about the importance of this to him with her furrowed brow. Goten hung his head again.
"I guess I just can't understand, my father would never do anything to hurt me. I don't know how any father could." He said standing up. He began to leave when bulma grabbed his hand "Do you really want to know what he did?" She asked. Goten nodded. "I can tell you this." She said, "There is nothing you can do worse to a mother than to take away her child."
Goten left that room with a better sense of understanding. He felt for the first time in understanding of what Trunks must have been feeling. He knew that he had to find him somewhere, but where could he be? Where in the world would a wounded Saiyajin go?
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Trunks lay his father down in a bed. Vegeta was wheezing and coughing trying everything that he could to catch his breath. Trunk's father was not drunk he was dying. He had never seen his father in this condition. It was frightening to look at him and even more frightening to think how he got this way. What did it have to take to bring this titan down to his knees? Trunks was locked him confusion. He had so many questions to ask his father, but he knew that Vegeta was in no condition to talk right now. He was drifting in and out of consciousness.
"Oh god, how can I help you, what could be done for you?" he whispered to him half crying. No matter how hard Trunks got, no matter what hideous things Trunks ever saw, he had always yielded to his father.
Hours passed as Trunks watch his father slowly get worse. Vegeta would get to coughing so hard now that he would cough up blood. It ran down his cheeks out of his mouth in rivulets. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he lost all blatter control. It was too much for him to bare. He had to do something for his father.
"Father wake up, open your eyes." Trunks said shaking Vegeta. "Come on father wake up!!" He shouted shaking him some more. It took several seconds, but Vegeta opened his eyes.
"Focus father, you have to hear me. Look at me, let me know that you hear me." Trunks said
Vegeta's eyes moved to meet Trunk's eyes. He nodded his head ever so slightly. Trunks understood that his father was listening.
"I am going to get something that will help you, but you have to promise me that you will stay alive long enough for me to get it." Trunks said. His father frowned a bit. "No, you have to promise me Vegeta!! Promise!" Trunks shouted. There were tears streaming down his cheeks "Promise!"
Vegeta looked at his son for a moment with no expression, but then with a nod only Vegeta promised. Then went into a fit of coughing that he just couldn't stop. There was an expression of Hurry on Vegeta's face, and something else that Trunks could not understand. Something that he had only seen in Vegeta's eyes one other time. Even then he didn't know what it was.
It was all Trunks needed to Race off. He left the motel room though the window. Rose above the high building was now in route of his apartment with speed that he had never used before. He was flying so fast the wind was stinging his face, ears and eyes so bad that he had to cover them with his arms. Below him there was a blur that might have been land or ocean, he couldn't be sure, all that Trunks knew was that he was going in the right direction.
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Goten walked into the empty apartment room. Somehow he though that Trunks might have been here, but it was evident that he wasn't. He couldn't even smell him in here. The lonely apartment looked so empty now. As if there had never been anyone living here. How lonely Goten felt all of a sudden. He was about to leave when something made him stop. It was a picture sitting on a nightstand just right next to the balcony door. It was Trunks Goten and Videl posing on the Balcony. Trunks had Goten in his arms and the two of them were standing on the banister at the edge of the balcony. Videl was standing under them looking up at them with a smile. Gohan had taken this picture. The last time he had come over to see them. It was the last time that he saw his Brother.
"What a fucked up way for them to die!" He thought. "How could my father and Brother die in an explosion. It just wasn't possible! Gohan was stronger than anyone that he had ever met. And my father Goku was one of the strongest men in the world, hell in the universe. Even though this explosion took a planet I still find it impossible that me father could not have survived it, but they told me his and my brother's body was found in the wake of the explosion. They said that there was no way that there could be life in these bodies. Its just not right!!"
Goten was in tears, but he tried to banish them. He had enough of crying. He was tough, just like his father! He put the picture back in its place and went out to the Balcony.
He was going home. He was going back to his mother Chichi. He didn't care if she told him that she didn't want him to return. HE was going back to her. He would tell her that she was his mother and nothing could break that bond and there is where he would be.
Chichi after Goku's death, had fallen in a deep depression. She had told her remaining son that he was never to come back. That the way she was now was not the way that she wanted him to remember he by. She didn't want him to know her as dependent on him. She didn't want him to care for her when she couldn't care for her self. She wanted him away. So when Goten left his house he felt as if he had lost his mother too. Trunks was there, luckily to take him in. Though Goten protested, Trunks insisted that he could to stay with him. Videl was already. She was too, stricken with Grief and the world that she knew was not hers now. And so now she could never be a part of what she had before, or at least that is what she told Trunks.
Goten was on the Balcony, nothing was going to stop him from going back to his house. Not even his own mother's words. He was tired of being alone. He climbed up onto the banister he looked over the small town that he lived, and then looked back to the empty apartment. With a sudden blast of power blazed into the sky.
Trunks opened the door to his apartment and Ran in. "Geeze this room just reeks of Goten. He thought as he raced for his bedroom. He threw open a closet and Grabbed a black box with a big pad lock on it. "Shit where is the key?!?" he searched frantically for the key then thought "aww fuck it!" he said tearing off the lock from the wood. He opened the box and grabbed a pouch. He untied the draw string and checked its contents. "Good, I still have it." He said returning it to the pouch and securely tying it shut. "Hold on father. I am coming." He said racing to the balcony. Suddenly Trunks paused at the balcony for a second. He flt something strange as he stood there, but he quickly admonished it and took off from the balcony.
It took Trunks about an hour to reach the window of the apartment, and when he came to it he heard the bitter sweet wheezing of his father. Which meant that he was still alive. But the sound of his breath had become so erratic that trunks couldn't call it breathing but more like gasping for his last breaths of air.
"No damn-it your not dying, not before I can ask you a few questions."
He said coming into the room where Vegeta lay in a blood stained bed. He had bled so bad now, there must have been a coupled of pints of blood on the bed. Trunks tilted Vegeta's head and, then opened the pouch. Inside of it was one Senzu-bean. It fell onto Vegeta's chest. Trunks grabbed it and literally forced it into his father's mouth. But Vegeta didn't know that Trunks was there, he was all but dead, and not conscious. The bean rolled out of his mouth. "Damn-it Vegeta, Wake up!" He shouted laying a slap to Vegeta's face. This woke him, or at least his eyes opened. Trunks put the bean in his mouth. "Chew it damn-it damn Chew!!
Vegeta's eyes rolled around in his head, but after a few seconds he began to chew. The magic of the Senzu bean took affect immediately. He wheezing stopped and his breath restored to normal. The blood stopped coming from his mouth. And without warning Vegeta moved his lips to say "Thank you Trunks."
He was alive. And recovering, but even Vegeta knew that he dare not move. For the Senzu bean could not work miracles. He would have to gain back his strength before he could move. Still the Senzu bean worked. Trunks was about to Cry but he knew that his Father would not like that so he curbed the intense imotion. "I would expect you to do the same thing for me." Trunks said as he walked away. "Trunks" Vegeta called. "Trunks I need to speak with you." He said venturing to move his arms.
He couldn't ove at all.
Trunks came back into the room. "Fine, but I must ask you something first. Something that you must be honest with me about."
Vegeta nodded
"Did you destroy Grandpa's hotel and Casino? Did you kill all those people?!"
…
