Title: Unconventional
Disclaimer: If I owned DBZ, I would spell Videl's name correctly in the English version of the anime.
Rating: PG ( K+ ) – for a bit of angsty brooding and some seriously sad relationships.
Spoilers: If you haven't seen anything post-Cell Games, RUN! RUN NOW!
Summary: OneShot. She had been carried away with her wandering thoughts, exploring all the reasons why it was so hard to get close to Son Gohan and his abnormal family. Mild GhVi.
And you thought your family had issues.
Videl's fist hovered inches away from the door, trembling with indecision. She was early by an entire hour and, though she was sure the family within wouldn't mind a little extra time in her presence, Videl wasn't entirely sure that she could handle them. And, in the off chance that the person she was there to see wasn't even around, that would mean that she would be with them. Alone. For an entire hour.
The thought alone was enough to pull her hesitant fist back another couple of inches.
It wasn't that they were particularly hostile or irritating, but with a fifty-fifty human-to-alien ratio they were a little...unconventional. Her super heroic classmate aside (who, in his own right, deserved to have his picture in the dictionary next to the word "weird"), the family consisted of an alien warrior father, a frying pan-wielding mother descended from martial arts royalty, and a younger brother that was a nearly-too-perfect clone of the alien warrior father. She didn't even want to attempt to describe the family friends that occasionally hung around...Seriously, that was an unhealthy shade of green, otherworldly or not.
And, on top of the absurdity of the family dynamic, she would probably be spending her extra hour with his mother who, out of good motherly intentions, would try to persuade her to join the madness in holy matrimony. Dear heavenly beings, she was expected to mother hoards of quasi-alien babies before she became properly of age! Who wouldn't reconsider flying home to cower under their bed in the face of such pressure?
Granted, she was very fond of Son Gohan and his family. They were incredibly accepting people (major understatement alert) who had been nothing but warm and open with Videl, but learning that your could-be, hopefully would-be, boyfriend was part alien was more than a bit unsettling. What was more unsettling was that his mother was prompting her brainy, out-of-this-world child to breed like his sexual maturity was on some sort of short-lived cycle...
It wasn't, right?
Okay, so the fact that Gohan used to have a tail and (reportedly) morphed into some giant were-ape under the influence of the full moon still didn't sit right with Videl. Still, she was here, wasn't she? She still looked forward to picking that enormous brain of his every Saturday, didn't she? It was just at this point, standing at the front door to her fate, that she happened to have second thoughts about the entire thing. Videl was getting better at it, though. Two months ago, right after the disastrous tournament, on the day of her first "study session" with Gohan, she had spent nearly two hours hiding just out of sight in the woods, figuring it might be easier if someone simply came out instead of forcing her to take initiative and knock on the door. Of course, when Goku had appeared out of thin air directly behind her, that was nearly enough shock to make her scream. Almost. After all, she had recently found more worthy things to scream about.
Needless to say, since then Videl had felt that the direct approach was the best. So, there she stood, time ticking away with the hands of her watch, as she gathered the courage she needed to take that initiative. This was the only hard part and, once behind the door, she knew that time would pass much quicker. If she had to wait around, she certainly wouldn't be without company. Chi-Chi would probably insist on fixing her something to eat, Goten would bring her phobia-worthy creatures to identify, and Goku would...probably not be around.
Sometimes Videl got the feeling that he was more uncomfortable around his family than she was and that caused a pang of sympathy within her chest for Gohan. He had never really felt comfortable with confiding in her, never being the type to do so, but Videl could see the pained distance between father and son, separated by seven years worth of experience. The boy who, by all accounts, had hero-worshiped his father as a child and beyond couldn't seem to get close to his role model.
Chi-Chi, who seemed to feel that secrets shouldn't be kept from "family," had been more forthcoming with information on Gohan's supposed emotional states. According to the all-seeing and all-knowing matron of the Son family, Gohan had always kept a wall of formality up between himself and his father. While he addressed his mother with familiar title, Gohan would always opt for the more reserved "Otou-san" ( 1 ) for Goku. Though he did tend to keep up formal titles for everyone else, including herself, Videl had the feeling that he did it more out of effort to keep everyone at arms length.
He seemed to be most comfortable with his green mentor, Piccolo, but used a formal honorific with him as well. Gohan always said "Piccolo-san" with a hollow cheer as though he had crashed headlong into his wall of politeness, coming away each time with a new bump. Chi-Chi speculated sadly that Gohan only called Piccolo "-san" out of respect for Goku, who officially held the title of "father."
After his infamous win at the Cell Games, Gohan struggled even more under duress. He had briefly dropped all use of formalities when the absolute power within his body corrupted him and, by the time he had come back to his senses, Goku had already died in the explosion on Kaio-sama's ( 2 ) tiny planet. Since then, Gohan had spent less and less time with his green, outer-worldly mentor and, instead, paid his tribute to an estranged father by raising the son that Goku had never had the privilege of meeting.
The hands on her watch ticked away insistently as they attempted to alert her to the time. Ten minutes gone and past since arriving on the Son's doorstep and she had made very little progress in the way of getting herself into the house. She had been carried away with her wandering thoughts, exploring all the reasons why it was so hard to get close to Son Gohan and his abnormal family.
With a deep breath and a prayer, Videl pulled back her fist to knock.
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Authors Notes: This is something that's been sitting in my computer since last fall sometime. Un-beta'd.
There was originally supposed to be a lot more to this story (a bit of fluff, some humor here or there, even a touch of nudity), but I started going off on random tangents as soon as Goku entered the equation. I guess I wrote all of this excess to vent my frustration about the father/son relationship that Goku and Gohan SHOULD have...
Oh well.
For those of you waiting for me to finish KitF, I'm still working towards getting back my enthusiasm for it. That, and I'm changing the ending and climax significantly in order to shorten it to a more manageable length. I figure if I do that, there's more of a chance that I'll get around to finishing it one day.
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Footnotes:
( 1 ) Otou-san – father. More formal than 'Tou-san (which would be roughly equivalent to "dad" or "daddy"), which would be what Gohan would call Goku in a perfect canon universe.
( 2 ) Kaio-sama – King Kai (for those of you who haven't read the manga and/or seen the subtitled edition of DBZ).
Ms. Videl Son
– Who's your daddy? GohanVidel.