Be Yourself
by April CK
Dragonball Z characters, settings and items are all registered trademarks of at least Bird Studios.
"An' what is all comes down to, is that I haven't got it all figured out just yet. Coz I've got one hand in my pocket - and the other one is giving the peace sign."
-quote from the song that inspired the story, Hand in my Pocket by Alanis Morissette
A picture was supposed to be worth a thousand words. Goten would have settled for two.
Goten knew that when people looked at him, they saw his father. Goten could understand that. He'd seen all the pictures of his dad and the resemblance was so complete that it was disturbing. But what was more disturbing was that...when people looked at him, they didn't see him.
He was only five years old and already the pressures were settling in. Goten had a fairly clear idea of what people expected him to become. It had gotten to the point where Goten was sometimes slow to answer people when they actually called him by his name. Just because he was so used to answering to another name. His fathers.
His mother, friends of the family and even complete strangers... It seemed like everyone had called him Goku at some point. Sure, they didn't always mean to do it. But they'd done it. No surprise there. It was only to be expected. His father had been famous, so almost everyone on Earth knew who Goku was. Goten on the other hand - he was just a little kid, why should anyone know his name?
Goten had gone through all the various emotional stages. At first, he'd been surprised to think that his life was going to be so heavily influenced by someone that was dead. For a while, he'd been proud of his heritage. Then he'd been upset. Because it seemed so unreasonable that people should mistake him for someone he'd never even met. Now, along with resignation, Goten was just confused.
Everyone had always said that his father was a hero. But what exactly did that mean? And it wasn't just his father either. His brother had been a hero too. Even his mother and his grandfather had been warriors once.
What if he couldn't live up to the standards?
The trouble with photographs, as Goten was rapidly discovering, was that they didn't show everything. His dad looked like a nice enough person - but all that Goten had found were pictures of Goku sleeping or reading or fishing or giving the camera a peace sign. That sort of thing. There were no pictures of his father saving the world or doing anything else that could really be thought of as heroic. There weren't even pictures of Goku sparring - apparently, he'd moved too fast.
How am I supposed to become a hero if I don't know how? Goten sighed. He was painfully aware of the fact that there were a LOT of things he didn't know. He wondered if he'd ever be able to figure it all out.
The photographs were helping though. Goten spent every free moment he had studying the photo albumns his mother kept all over the house. Even if the pictures didn't show everything, they usually gave him a starting point.
Last week for example, Goten had found a photograph of his brother. The photo had been taken back when Gohan had been an infant. As a result of that particular picture, Goten had lovingly informed his older brother that being adopted was nothing to be ashamed of. Gohan had spent the next half hour denying that he was adopted and trying to explain that most Saiyans had tails when they were born. Of course Goten hadn't ever had a tail, Trunks couldn't remember if he'd been born with one, none of the pictures showed Goku with a tail and when asked about tails, Vegeta had just scowled and told Goten to get lost. So as far as Goten was concerned, Gohan was the only person on Earth who had ever had a tail.
Gohan had told Goten that if he ever saw a full moon, he'd probably get a tail. Goten had stared blankly at his brother for a while and had then asked what a moon was. At this point Gohan had ended the conversation by muttering something along the lines of "ask Piccolo, he's the one who blew it up".
Privately, Goten was still convinced that his brother was adopted. His mother had been too busy laughing to confirm or deny it.
Saiyan - there was another word that Goten didn't fully understand yet. As far as Goten knew, saiyan was just another word for 'strong'.
Trunks, who was also trying to figure out what exactly the word meant, had once recited a bizarre story about saiyans being aliens from a whole different world but then the saiyan planet had been blown up by some other aliens. Trunks had said that his mother had told him so. Goten had listened politely to his best friend without believing a word of it.
Goten knew Trunks well enough to know that the kid had a very active imagination. It was part of what made Trunks seem so smart - Trunks could explain anything because what he didn't know for sure, he'd make up. But a saiyan planet! That was just too farfetched. Trunks could believe that story if he wanted to but Goten couldn't. It didn't make any sense. His father certainly didn't look like an alien and nor did anyone else that had been referred to as a 'saiyan' in Gotens presence.
Namek though, that was a little easier to believe. Piccolo definately looked like an alien. Goten wasn't so sure about Dende - gods were entitled to look a bit different after all. In picture books about mythology, the gods sometimes had wings or eight arms or whatever. So maybe Dende wasn't all that alien. And maybe Nameks weren't aliens from other worlds, maybe they were just a different culture from somewhere else on Earth. Goten couldn't be certain. Both Dende and Piccolo were very tall and they always seemed so serious... Curious though he was, Goten hadn't yet worked up the courage to actually speak to them. Whenever either of the so-called Nameks made one of their routine visits to check on the Son family, he'd hide somewhere.
There were other people who visited the Son house as well. Some of them were easier to talk to. But none of them had been able to answer all of Gotens questions.
On the day that Goten had decided that 'saiyan' was just another word for 'strong', Krillen had been visiting and Goten had commented that Krillen was 'really saiyan'. Thus Krillen had ended up being as confused as Goten typically felt.
With Krillen especially, it was very very hard for Goten to believe that the person he knew was the same one that was in some of the photographs. Not just because of the obvious changes in height and hairstyle but because Goten had only ever known Krillen as being someone who was married. Goten found it kind of strange that there were pictures of Krillen that didn't also have 'Auntie 18' in them.
Goten understood that Krillen and Android 18 hadn't always known each other but it was just weird to think about. Kind of like the childhood photographs of ChiChi that Grandpa Ox had shown him a couple times. It was hard for Goten to imagine that his mom had been a kid once simply because he'd only ever known her as an adult. And no matter what anyone else said about Vegeta, Android 18, even Piccolo - yea, they were grouchy sometimes and serious and even a little scary to be around... But Goten couldn't bring himself to believe that any of them had ever been really evil. Nobody had told him directly that they'd been evil before but he'd overheard things.
Goten had overheard a lot of things during his life. He didn't understand most of them.
Sometimes Goten wished that he'd been born about ten years earlier. Just so that he'd be able to remember what everyone else seemed to. He felt that he'd be able to relate to people so much better if he just knew what a 'freezia' was. Or a 'tenkaichi budoukai' or a 'cell' or a 'senzu bean' or a 'dragonball'... The list went on and on.
Even though Trunks would usually deny his own ignorance, Trunks was the only other person around that shared Gotens frame of reference. He didn't understand any of it either.
The five year old leaned on his elbows and stared down at the open photo albumn in front of him, his expression caught in a perpetual sigh. There's so much I don't know... And this worried Goten deeply because he was fairly certain that, if alive, his father would have known. And people were expecting him to be like his father. And he really didn't know if he could.
A picture was supposed to be worth a thousand words. Goten would have settled for two: be yourself.
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