Son Goku opened his eyes.
For a second, he was sure that he was still in the desert. He wasn't sure how he got there or why, but he'd been there; he could almost still feel the sand on his face, the painful dryness in his mouth. And Gohan had been there, and Piccolo, and they'd both been torn up and bloody, and they'd needed him, and he'd been there, but sort of like a ghost, or like one of those dreams where you can see them, but they can't see you.
It was all jumbled around in his head somehow – but he closed his eyes again and took the time to piece it out. That's right. They'd been hurt somehow, in some kind of fight . Well, to rephrase, Piccolo'd been hurt, and Gohan was mostly worn out and scared – and he'd gone to help them. He'd been helping Gohan find a plant, or…something like that.
But something wasn't right. Goku didn't feel hot, or sandy, or even uncomfortable at all. And the sky wasn't hazy white-blue like the desert – it was pink, and there were a whole lot of Kintoens floating around.
Oh yeah, that's right. He was dead.
Goku sat up, feeling more like he was in a dream than he had when he was sleeping. He looked around at the weird arches and loops of Snake Way – even went so far as to touch the razor-sharp edge to make sure he was actually awake. He was. Or at least as awake as you can be when you're dead, which was a question he made up his mind to ask Kami just as soon as he got back. Right along with, "If I'm dead, why am I hungry," and, "how is it that I still fall down when I trip?"
"So…was I dreaming?" he asked out loud. He found he was talking to himself more and more lately, mainly because there was absolutely no one else to talk to except the occasional street-sweeper.
"I must have been," he answered. "Dreaming, I mean." As if the air needed clarification, he thought, and realized that his brain was starting to replicate Piccolo-esque sarcasm, which was probably a bad sign.
He sat back, drew his knees up to his chest, and thought about that some more, but couldn't come up with any kind of good argument in favor of the dream not being a dream. "Right. It sure felt real, though."
Goku rocked once or twice, thought some more.
"…I should really stop talking to myself," he said.
Goku made himself stand up. "Right," he said. "So I'll do that. Man, if the guys could see me now, they'd think I'd gone off the deep end for sure."
Of course, he hadn't. That was one of his few advantages in this weird, pastel-colored place. He had lots of practice with living for months with no one to talk to but himself; after his grandfather died, he kept himself alive for years on end with no one to chat with but local predators. So, the way he figured it, if he hadn't gone crazy then, he wasn't going to now.
Unless he really HAD gone crazy back then. In which case, he sure didn't have anything to lose now, except maybe his lunch if he ran any more loop-de-loops at full tilt.
Goku stretched his legs carefully. No, he decided, that's not completely true. Every time I even look at this road, I just get so…I get really tired. I've never been this tired, and it just keeps going. It feels like it's sucking something out of me every day. I just…I'm not sure I can do this.
He shook his head and smirked to himself as an imaginary Piccolo appeared, looking for all the world like he wanted to drop-kick him for even thinking "can't." Like "can" has anything to do with it anyway. I have to.
Somehow, that made it easier.
"Okay, then," he said out loud. "Let's do this."
And, being Goku, he didn't even worry about the fact that he was now talking to himself in the plural first person.
Gohan was starting really worry about Piccolo.
It wasn't just that his teacher was hurt, or that he was hurt bad, or that there were no other grownups around to help. It was that Piccolo was acting really, really weird.
Case in point – when he'd made his way back to Piccolo with the plant, Piccolo had laughed. Outright laughed, and Gohan had NEVER heard Piccolo laugh before, ever. He didn't even know Piccolo COULD laugh, and once he heard it, he decided it was probably good that he didn't laugh very often. It was a little bit scary. Not a lot scary, like with Cymbal, but a little bit.
"Uh, sir," he said. "It's…um…"
"I know what it is," Piccolo said. "I know exactly what it is."
"So it's okay if I…"
"Yes," Piccolo said. And lay back, and let Gohan tend to the worst of his wounds.
Gohan had never SEEN real wounds before.
They weren't like his textbook said they should be. They weren't like his own little cuts and scrapes that had seemed so ugly and horrible at the time. No. These were real, and deep, and they smelled like something that should hurt, copper and ozone. He could still see them, sometimes, behind his eyelids when he stopped in his patching to wipe his hands off – great rips in the skin, the edges pulled back like an orange peel from the meaty fruit underneath. It would, he decided, probably give him nightmares forever.
But when he finished, and Piccolo didn't immediately tell him to get lost, he settled down beside him and put his head on Piccolo's shoulder. And Piccolo didn't push him away, yell at him, say anything. He just put his hand on his back and closed his eyes like he was sleeping, even though he wasn't.
Gohan started to think he really was dying.
"Sir," he said.
"Hm?"
"Are you gonna be okay?"
Piccolo looked down at him. And Gohan realized that Piccolo had never looked at him like that before. Like for once, he didn't know what to say. "As okay as I ever was," he said.
Gohan's brow wrinkled. "What does that mean?" he asked.
"It means…" Piccolo closed his eyes again. "Forget what it means," he said.
"Can I do something else?" Gohan asked.
"Yes."
"Like what?" Gohan sat up. "Do you need water? Because I can go get water. Or food, I know where there's lots to eat, I mean, if you don't mind berries and mushrooms because that's all I can really find, but some of it's pretty good, and…"
"Kid," Piccolo said. "What you can do for me is be quiet. I'm very tired."
Gohan blinked. "Oh," he said. "Oh. Sorry, sir. I'll be quiet. But if there's anything else I can…"
"Gohan," Piccolo said. His lip twitched, almost a smile. "Shut up."
Gohan stared at Piccolo in quiet shock. "You called me Gohan," he said.
Piccolo opened one eye warningly.
"Sorry," Gohan said. He lay back down next to him, half expecting Piccolo to shove him off, but he didn't. He just lay still, kind of sighed.
Gohan tucked himself a little closer. He decided he'd better not sleep because Piccolo was going to be sleeping, and one of them should probably keep watch. He made himself comfortable as best he could, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes like Piccolo did when he was meditating – quiet and still, but somehow knowing exactly what was going on around him at all times. Gohan figured he could do worse than try it.
He must have fallen asleep without meaning to, because when Gohan opened his eyes, it was because he was on the ground. Piccolo wasn't. Or at least, he wasn't totally. He was kneeling, one hand resting on the scorched-up sand, and it looked like he was thinking about standing up.
Gohan jumped to his feet before he finished thinking about it. "Mr. Piccolo," he said, too quickly, he knew. "Maybe you shouldn't, sir, it's…"
"Shh," Piccolo said, calm as he'd ever been.
"But…"
Piccolo shot him that warning glare again. Gohan obligingly shut up.
It took him a few minutes. But finally, Piccolo seemed to decide that he could do it. He stood up slow, like Gohan's grandfather did on cold mornings when his arthritis was bothering him, but he stood up, his face pulled together with the strain.
"What now, sir?" Gohan asked.
Piccolo shook his head at him. "I'm going to look around," he said. Then he started limping back toward where the worst part of the fighting had happened.
Gohan followed.
The section of desert where the actual fight had happened looked like the scene of a bizarre natural disaster – something between chain lightning and a tornado. At the epicenter, the sand was fused to black glass, slick like a polished car. All around, the once-white sand was blackened to soot. Scorched foliage that might once have been scrub brush waved silently in the wind.
Piccolo eyed the devastation and wondered if he really wasn't cut out for raising children. In fact, he wondered for a brief moment or two if he'd be better off to send the boy to a more competent guardian. Like his father. In the afterlife.
But the time for that was past, and he knew it, so Piccolo took a deep breath and let it out through his nose to clear it of soot. "Damn," he said to the boy who, he realized, was standing behind his leg, clutching at his gi-pants and staring at the scene with obvious horror. "You sure know how to end a party, don't you."
Gohan buried his face in the back of his leg. "I didn't mean to," he said. "I didn't. It just happened."
"Sure did. And it looks like it happened everywhere," Piccolo said. He prodded at something black with his foot. A mangled rock? No...less solid. He prodded it again, and it unfolded itself – and only his years of experience with gore and unpleasantness kept him from reacting.
It was an arm.
Specifically, it was an arm about the size of one of Piccolo's – scorched almost beyond recognition, still glowing a little at the fingertips, which were almost, almost ash. Scorched remains of familiar, fingerless gloves fluttered as barely-there-embers against what was left of the skin.
Piccolo recognized it right away. It was Cymbal's arm – the one he'd been using to hold the boy, no doubt blown clear off his body with the force of the outward push. He looked around, but there was no sign of the rest of the body; Piano and Drum, sure, he recognized them as the twisted, black heaps on either side of the blast zone, landed sprawled like crash-test dummies. But they had been farther away.
"Walk with me," Piccolo said, and when the kid didn't immediately let go of his leg, he picked him up and settled him in the crook of his arm, beginning to pick his way around the blast zone. He didn't think he'd find anything alive, but hard experience had taught him to make sure.
All told, he spent half an hour looking. He went from the glittery, glass edges of the blast all the way to a nearby cliff, peering over the edge, eyeing the water below for any of the familiar colors – indigo, black, green.
Nothing.
He stood still for a long moment at the edge of that drop, feeling the wind push against his back, no doubt frosting his gi with tiny black particles that might once have been part of his older brother. He struggled briefly with an unfamiliar rise of nausea, but that, like everything else he'd been feeling lately, went into the category of don't-have-time-for-it and was promptly shoved as far down into his own awareness as he could push it.
"Say this much for you," he said to the boy he was still holding, who had buried his face in his uniform and was apparently trying his best NOT to see any of it, "you're thorough."
Gohan made a bizarre whimpering sound and said nothing.
Piccolo snorted. "Buck up, it had to happen sooner or later," he said.
Muffled, against his shirt, "I don't like to hurt anyone. Mom says it's wrong, and Dad says…"
If there was anyone Piccolo did NOT want to hear advice from at that moment, it was Son Goku. "Yeah, well, they had it coming," Piccolo interrupted matter-of-factly. Then, more quietly, "Do you think you could do it again?"
Gohan looked up at him. "I don't want to do it again," he said, eyes wide.
"Yeah, well, it's an unfair fact of life, kiddo. If you hadn't –" Piccolo gestured to the blackened forms of Drum and Piano, "you and me, we'd be the ones looking like a couple of birds that sat on the wrong power line."
"That's terrible," Gohan said.
"Yeah, well, it's…" Piccolo trailed off, feeling a familiar prickle in the back of his mind. He turned his face up toward the sky and squinted against all the brightness, able to pick out a distant, small dot – and he made a mental note to kick the old turtle hermit next time he saw him. Why anyone would think bright orange was a good color for a fighting uniform was sure to Hell beyond him. "Great," he said. "More company."
"…company?" Gohan asked.
"Your dad's pet midget," Piccolo said.
"Krillen!" Gohan said, his small face lighting up.
Piccolo decided he didn't have the heart to tell him that Krillen wouldn't be coming out to see them with good news.
