Home àComing
By gelfling
Commentsà gelfling8604@yahoo.com
Gohan POV, in his teenage years. Around-ish Buu saga…somewhere…it's not real important where exactly.
ArchiversàMore than welcome. A simple email so I know where it's going though…I can send you more stuff that way, right? Right!
"One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a
statistic."
Josef
Stalin
"Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Transienceà state of being transientà passing especially quickly into and out of existence
I awake with a bunch of thyme pressed flat to my cheek, and my cheek was even damper because I had been drooling. I was outside and everything was wet because it had been raining, or I had drooled all over it.
I got up to my feet and slipped twice; my center was off, like someone was switching gravity from 0g to 100g. I wanted to throw up, and my head was sloshing around like bad beer. The smell of wet mint drowned everything. I got to my feet, but there wasn't anything to lean against so I couldn't stand so I almost fell before Vegeta caught me.
He held me up by my arm so I sort of dangled, and I wondered why he was taller. He smelled like rosemary. Then he punched me in the mouth.
When I looked, it was night again, but I was dangling from his hand in fog. I was 10 years old.
My hands were sweaty, and he sniffed my hair and I pulled back. He grabbed my hand, let go of my shoulder, and sunk his teeth in deep above my wrist. I wanted to struggle, but I forgot my other arm.
Time passed; he let go and looked down on me, his hair standing straight up, dressed in Frieza's uniform.
"Blood begets blood. Life goes on, you make it do what you want or it kills you. It doesn't matter how powerful you are if you don't fight back. If you don't care."
His voice was deep. He looked—quiet…sad. I wanted to speak.
"You make your own hell*. You're only a monster if you believe them. Acting sweet never said anything. Coward…Do you hate me?"
My voice.
"No."
"You should. You shouldn't be stronger than me. I'm Saiyan; you're not. I hate you."
"How long?"
Vegeta looked thoughtful. "Just a hybrid. A while probably. Why?"
I thought.
"I like it better when you're angry than when you're sad. You shouldn't be sad. You're too good at it." I thought more. "Why did you bite me?"
"To taste mixed blood. Tainted."
"Can I taste pure blood?"
"Why?"
"I haven't met many humans. One's that count, I mean. I don't act like them very well: I think I care too much. They take it all for granted. Like children. Dad died to protect them. Keep them innocent."
I looked as his dark eyes, Vegeta's face painted with my blood.
"I don't think I would."
"Are you Saiyan, boy?"
"Don't know…I don't know what that is."
He looked lonelier, looked at the ground, then looked at me. The fog was cold and wet.
"Neither do I."
He put me down, and was wearing a jacket.
"Blood begets blood. Go, blood of my blood. It ends here with you. We will not return, you understand?"
"No."
"Death is easy, and comes for anything. State of being. Thought. Simple transience of the moment. I have fought. You can fight. And then you smile…just like that. Life's a beach, and then you die.** Do you understand?"
"No."
He grabbed my chin with his naked hand and put his lips on mine.
He was warm and dry, a burning midday heat red like murdered copper. Hungry, eager energy, a sense of time, of wealth, suffused roiling reliable rage, a tang of ambition and sliced bone of right. A taste of radiated home. Belong. Unsafe. Home. Eternal.
I opened my mouth…
"Go deep, and you will find the bones. They cannot lie. Do you understand? It's over. You would have been great. Here, you're just hybrid country trash. You could have been great. There."
He looked sad.
"I can still-"
"Are only trailer trash. [Pop] Coward. Wasted potential here. [Losing weight is easy with] That's the way it goes. And then you die."
The fog ate him, and chewed my eyes. [from 5 to 9 Honda is]
[the 74 to Ridge is backed up until]
Wait.
[you hit the 16 going East, and then go straight to highway 56 and you've got a bit of a fender-bender there]
Vegeta. I needed…Dragging me up…Something…Clawing, fighting…Red lights glowed at me. My cheek was wet. I need to do something, damn it! Augh. Something important…It was already fading away. I hate it when that happens.
But I think…I think it was about a guy talking about beaches.
A/N:
You make your own hell*.
Taken from the Sandman comics, written by Neil Gaiman. Death says that line.
Life's a beach, and then you die.**
Taken from Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett. A goddess says that line. The goddess was a bit of a bimbo.
This was originally written for Xero Sky's first time contest, by I got mixed up and wrote with the Drabble parameters, minimum of some 500 words. Strange thing, but my computer counts 727 words, but I think it's counting the quotation marks and periods too, because I was looking at the other Drabble entries and their length and it doesn't look quite right. Err…I don't think I'm violating the rules but…ah well. Since I wrote it for one contest in accordance to another, I'm going to enter it in *both* contests, and have it at that. There's no law against that right?
I normally don't like dream fics, because the endings are always such cop offs…in accordance to human nature, I have now imitated what I dislike. Although I do like dream-lemon scenes when the dreamer wakes up with a raging hard-on and reality and much angst, so, I don't know…anyway, it's all good, right?