The Years After
Chapter nineThe final day came when Gohan told me he would take Trunks training with him for a few days. I was hesitant, but I nodded, knowing that Gohan meant he would be fighting the Androids. Smiling at me, he said,
"I will defeat those androids. I promise you, if not today."
I nodded at my grown son and helped him tie the sash of his gi. He dressed in a gi just like his father 's, but this one had long sleeves instead of none. The sleeve of his left arm was tied to hide the knob that was all that was left of his lost arm.
"You'll be alright," I said, lying to myself and to him. Gohan saw through this and laughed a little.
"Yeah…I got you as my mother, don't I?"
"Funny," I said sarcastically. Then Gohan stood up to his full height and hugged me with his remaining arm.
"I love you," he said. "Thank you for everything you have done for me."
I, like most mothers would, began to cry.
"Thank you, Gohan," I said softly, "Be careful and make sure Trunks is alright."
He drew back and smiled at me. I nodded up at him.
"You are your father 's son you know."
Gohan grinned.
"I know it."
Before he turned to leave he said to me,
"You and Tomoko will be alright. Promise me that you will."
I nodded, biting my lip to keep myself back.
"Mom?"
"Yes, Gohan?"
"When a woman named 'Videl' comes, greet her please, for me. Tell her that I am sorry."
I could only nod, perplexed.
"I love you," were his and my departing words.
When he took off into the air that day leaving Tomoko and me watching, I knew he would not be coming home that night. Quietly Tomoko retired to her room to read a book while I stayed downstairs and looked through photo albums for the next two hours.
When those passed I entertained myself with making my own food recipes and after three hours of that I sat out in my garden. I pulled out the last of my small harvest into a basket and wiped the dirt off of my forehead. I continued to dig when I struck something hard, and unknowingly I extruded a perfectly round stone sphere.
It was a dragon ball, long dead since after Kami died. Once again I cried and once again I tried to dry my tears. Gohan must've buried it the day Piccolo died.
No more tears right now, ChiChi. Not now.
I put the sphere in my basket also and carrying my vegetables inside I laid them on the kitchen table. I then began to chop relentlessly at a carrot and then at a tomato. Finally I had everything chopped and I tossed them into a pot and cooked them. When I was done I tasted it using the long wooden spoon that Goku would use to eat since his spoonfuls were so big.
The taste was odd in my mouth, a combination of every vegetable I knew of in one pot. I imagined that if my family were whole with Gohan and Goku still around, all of us would eat this together, savoring every bite. I would let Gohan taste test the food first, letting Goku suffer playfully for a few seconds.
"Aww, but ChiChi!" he would moan.
I would then let him taste and he would lick his lips satisfied.
"Hmmm hmmm good!"
This imagery kept me entertained for a while until I felt a sudden part of me grow cold and I shivered. I could sense deep down that my son had died just then suddenly. It began to rain outside, washing away the dirt, and the blood I knew flowed.
I didn't cry right away. I had no energy for it. I merely picked up the pot of food I had been cooking and dumped it on the floor. The hot water seeped through the cracks and the vegetables sprayed everywhere. I sat down in the mess I had made.
Gohan-chan.
Blood everywhere. My son's face, head down in a puddle of blood, his eyes opened wide and unseeing. Trunks scrambling towards him, the boy scratched and beaten. The horrific screams that followed shook the Earth. . Trunks looked up at the sky, bellowing in anger. His hair flickered gold, his eyes turned green, and for a moment the boy was surrounded by the golden aura that had once surrounded Goku and Gohan. The boy flickered back to normal and fell to the ground.
The vivid imagery of my son's death danced in my head like leaping flames and I fell to the ground, my muscles clenched in the anticipation to pounce on something.
I remembered my own memories of myself giving birth to him, pushing hard so that I would deliver a strong healthy child. I remember looking into his dark eyes for the first time, holding my baby tenderly in my arms. I remembered dressing his first major wound and soothed his tears by telling him a story of mystical dragons and how his father had saved the day many times by defeating those who threatened them. There was his first smile and how his father and I named him, for in theory, Gohan named himself.
There were the flashes of his first birthday cake, how he and Goku had stuck their hands into the cake 's frosty flesh and how Gohan would cling to his father's pant leg and say,
"That's my cake, daddy! My cake!"
The last memory I saw was their faces both of my Goku and Gohan, smiling together as they arrived home from Goku 's long voyage on Yadrat. Goku had put his hand on Gohan 's shoulder and told his young son of how proud he was of him and that I, his mother, would be proud of him too. Both their eyes were shining…dancing…leaping…then darkening. The image faded away.
The two men in my life were now gone forever.
It was then when my cinema of memories ceased and I let the burning, scalding tears come, dribbling down my face and onto my dress. I sat in the dark and the night until my tears ran dry. I began to sleep.
I had dozed for a short while when I heard the shrill ring of the telephone. I got up, staggering like a drunk. My head throbbed and my mouth was parched. I picked up the telephone and heard Bulma crying on the other end.
"I know, Bulma," I croaked. "I know."
Three days later we buried Gohan next to his father. Tomoko chanted soft prayers as she lighted the scented candles placed by his grave, making the tears on her face glimmer like diamonds. Trunks stood watching them slowly burn, his eyes expressionless. He had been the one to carry Gohan 's body home.
Bulma cried silently and I cried not at all. My grief was too far beyond tears. My father looked old and heart broken and he patted my hand absently and then went home once laying my baby into the ground.
"No parent should ever have to lay their children into the ground," he said, before the tears broke his voice.
A week later the great Ox King would be dead too, dying quietly in his sleep. He had been an old man who had been too tired to go on.
I cleaned Gohan 's old bedroom one last time, taking off the bed sheets and putting them in the storage closet. I wiped his desk where he had once studied many textbooks upon textbooks and gave his childhood penny collection the final polish. I took an old photo from the photo album of Gohan when he was eleven, smiling just weeks before his father 's death with left hand clutching a dragon ball and framed it on the bedside table. In this way people would know it was his room.
Tomoko, grieved by her brother 's death, spent her time with Trunks among my father's cherry blossom fields, telling him the stories about how their father 's had met and about the dragon balls. Trunks knew these stories from this from his mother but he listened to the lulling sound of Tomoko 's voice anyway, relaxing his head on her lap. One day while cleaning the windows of my father 's old house, I could see when the first tears fell from the boy's eyes, seeping down his cheeks and onto his neck. He got up and turning to Tomoko they wrapped each other in their arms.
It was now Trunks job, if he lived to see the day, to defeat the Androids. I clenched my fists and felt a sudden spark of hope. If not my son could pull it off the son of Vegeta might just be able too. With Tomoko 's support, Bulma 's genius, and my advice maybe we would form a hero out of him.
Faith that had frayed long ago was returned to me. I smiled in spite of myself.
Hate for the Androids kept me going for the next three years but love for the people around kept me alive. Bulma and I lost some contact after Gohan 's death but Tomoko and Trunks still continued to see each other.
I visited Bulma and saw her working hard on building a time machine.
"I plan to send Trunks back into the past to tell Goku and the others of what has happened in this future to see if we may change it!" Bulma declared to me. I believed it would work.
"Indeed we will."
Over the span of three years Trunks trained very hard physically and would only stop to visit Tomoko briefly. It was clear that by the ages of fifteen both were betrothed to one another, for both cared for each other deeply and openly in a way that I can't describe.
When he challenged the Androids only days after turning sixteen he was defeated easily and his body was bent inside out. The same day this had happened Bulma was nearly finished with the time machine. She contacted Tomoko and I and both of us hurried over.
Tomoko never trained but she had developed an enormous talent at healing. She would dig and plant certain herbs in our garden and come up with healing potions and pastes I could only imagine of creating. She brought a flask of her latest healing mixture and applied it to Trunks wounds.
"What are those?" Trunks asked weakly from underneath his quilt. He lay hurt and wounded on a bed in Bulma 's office. Tomoko said nothing and applied the paste to his wounds. In moment the swelling healed and Trunks sighed satisfied into his pillow.
"Thank you, Tomo-chan," he murmured. Tomoko smiled.