Moon drunk monster

beautiful and strange

howl your melancholy question

and tell me which you dread more:

the echo or the answer.

–Anonymous

Piccolo had never been one to embrace change. He was a creature of habit; of discipline and obligation. He did not ebb and flow like water. That was what humans did, and he was anything but. Piccolo was more like stone, unyielding and unwanting of change.

So needless to say, the amount of very significant, very disruptive changes happening lately were wearing thin.

Now, yet another had reared its head. At first it had been negligible, but after two days, there was no doubt something deeper was amiss. It was unusual, and it was growing rapidly old.

Piccolo, unenthused, hunched beside the fire like a vulture and tried to pick apart his student with nothing but a glare. For two days now, Gohan had neither spoken unnecessarily nor finished a meal. Two things Piccolo would have considered impossible until they started happening.

Tonight was no different. At the moment, Gohan was picking halfheartedly at a large fish he'd caught sometime that evening, eyes unfocused as he stared into some middle distance. He hadn't spoken a word since before the fire was lit.

On every account, such silence should have been enjoyable—Piccolo had hoped countless times before for a break from the incessant chatter. Now at last, he had received one, but he found himself hating it almost as much.

The sound of boots scuffing on dirt drew Piccolo out of his thoughts. Gohan was on his feet, dragging the half-eaten fish to the sheerest side of the mountain. Unceremoniously, he tossed it to the desert floor to join the one from the previous night, and the other from the night before that. Piccolo's frown deepened.

"If I hear one gripe tomorrow about how hungry you are, expect no pity from me."

Gohan started, blinking as if he'd only just realized his mentor was there.

"Huh? I—yeah. Okay."

No exclamations, no childish retort, but numb acceptance. A growl wavered just on the verge of audible in the demon's throat.

"Is that all you have to say?" he snapped, earning another jolt from his student.

"I," Gohan stammered. "… yes?"

Piccolo made an incensed noise through his teeth as he hunched further, glaring into his own middle distance. To hell with it.

"I may not know what's going on with you," he growled, "and you're stupid if you think I give a damn, but this idiotic moping is going to end even if I have to beat it out of you. You have until dawn until I do."

That garnered a reaction.

"Wh-what? But I thought I was doing better..."

Piccolo cursed himself, wishing he'd said nothing at all. Gohan was right; he'd been doing far better as far as training went. Wasn't that what mattered most? Wasn't that all he had come here to do?

"Are you refuting me?!" he roared, shoving those questions down. "Better or not, you don't have to be pathetic at combat to get on my last nerve!"

Piccolo could hear the way Gohan's clothes shuffled as he curled in on himself, wrapping his arms around his knees. He also heard the telltale hitch in his breathing.

Oh, Kais smite me…

He took everything back. Silence was infinitely preferable to crying. Hunching further, Piccolo growled low and braced for the impending meltdown, but it never came.

Only the slightest of hiccups met his ears, and before he could school himself into ignoring it, Piccolo found himself turning to look at his student.

Gohan was slumped to one side in a ball, cheek leaning on tightly-folded arms and knees. No doubt that accursed tail would be wrapped around his legs if he still possessed it.

All these things on their own were nothing unusual, but what took Piccolo aback were his eyes. They were glazed over, molten with unshed tears reflecting the firelight. Aside from that, Gohan looked almost stricken.

Piccolo was not an emotional being. He never had been, nor would he ever pretend to be, but he had no trouble identifying despair. Not simple fear or grief, but the raw emptiness of dread. The kind that withered the spirit and dulled the mind. It was an odd thing to see on such a young face. On Gohan's face.

Were he a bit more soft and a tick less sane, Piccolo would go so far as to call it concerning.

If, of course, he was concerned.

At this point, Piccolo considered himself adept at reading Gohan's emotions, but he could find no discernable explanation for this. His training was progressing well (even earning a rare bit of praise here and there, loath as he was to admit), and he was coming out of the days with less and less injuries. This behavior simply defied logic.

"What is this?" Piccolo snapped. "Are you sick? If you drank standing water again…"

Gohan shook his head before he even finished speaking, sending two giant tears rolling down his cheeks.

Piccolo was officially at an impasse. The kid wasn't being bothersome enough to warrant harsher admonishing, but this was insufferable nonetheless. Leaving the mountain was always an option. Or—

"Piccolo?" Gohan croaked.

His tangled thoughts evaporated, and once again he turned his pointed glare on Gohan to show he was listening.

Gohan's eyes flicked sheepishly from him to the ground, more tears falling. It was strange how just one or two made him look more distraught than with the yowling fits Piccolo had endured at the start of all this. Eventually, Gohan seemed to find his voice.

"Do you…" he whimpered, "do you ever miss him?"

"Miss who."

Gohan tucked his head into his arms and gasped a sob. Piccolo fought the urge to groan aloud. Humans and their ceaseless melodrama...

Beside him, something unintelligible resonated from within the shaking ball of limbs.

"Louder."

"Your... Your dad," Gohan hiccupped. "I said—I said 'your dad.' Do you miss him?"

Piccolo blinked. Of all the things...

"You did have a dad, right? My dad said you did…"

A beat.

Slowly, Piccolo turned, eyes nothing more than two dangerous slits. Gohan tucked his chin.

"I'm sorry," he whimpered. "I shouldn't have said anything."

They lapsed into silence, save the crackling of the fire. Piccolo eventually turned away again, staring at the unseen horizon where the sun would soon be making its appearance.

"Not that it matters," he grumbled, relenting, "but my father was already dead when I came into being. One soul cannot exist in two vessels."

Gohan's quiet sniveling ceased at once. The silence stretched on for so long that once again, Piccolo turned to look at him. The kid had gone pale, eyes wide as moons.

"Wait but… so… who took care of you?"

"No one."

"But… how did you survive all by yourself?"

Piccolo raised a brow.

"How did you?"

Gohan blinked, mouth open to retort, but then he glanced down at the desert floor and took in his own small, calloused hands. The longer he looked, the more those hands began to shake. Piccolo watched the understanding take root, dread filling his expression.

"So… since you were born…?"

Piccolo sighed, more exasperated than angered. Gohan, even here in the wilderness, still had no idea how fortunate he was.

"Did you just think that everyone has the same cushy life you do?"

Gohan blanched.

"N—No! Never! But… how did you not get lonely? Or sad?"

Piccolo scoffed. "Why do you care?"

Gohan opened his mouth, only to close ita moment later with a look that said he had an answer—he just didn't know how to phrase it. Not for the first time, it struck Piccolo just how much Gohan differed from his father.

Son Goku crashed headfirst through life, unbidden and untroubled by anything that came at him. He lived squarely in the present, laughing at the danger when it reared its head and chasing it down himself when it didn't.

Son Gohan was quiet and contemplative. He didn't barrel through life, he strolled. He catastrophized. He got distracted watching starlings while they were supposed to be sparring, and he tried to explain to Piccolo how the water cycle worked even after being told to stop. Several times.

He hummed to himself. He splashed in puddles. He asked questions.

For a half-Saiyan, Gohan was... so human.

Maybe this was how all humans were, but Piccolo would probably never understand.

Probably.

Gohan's voice got his attention again.

"I read something in a book once—I took it from Mom's room. I don't think I was supposed to see it... But I read that if you take a baby from it's mom too soon... It can just die. Even if you do everything right, it can just die from that, and nothing else." A visible tremor ran through him, matching the waver in his voice. "And I can't stop thinking—am I going to die too? Am I going to go to sleep, and just never wake up?"

Piccolo only stared, not looking fully at Gohan. There was nothing he could say.

"I just… I just can't imagine not having a family. Even if I had nothing—no house, no food… It wouldn't matter. My mom and my dad are the most important things to me, and I feel like I could be happy anywhere as long as they were there. And even though I'm used to a hard life now, the one thing I don't think I'll ever get used to is not having them here. With me…"

By the time Gohan weakly concluded his little monologue, his eyes were leaden with tears again. Once more, he hid in his arms and sniffled.

"And I guess—" he hiccupped, "I guess I care because I can't imagine living my whole life like that." He lifted his head to meet his mentor's eyes, cheeks blotchy and cut through with tear tracks. "And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Piccolo."

Something he had no name for twinged in his chest, and Piccolo brushed it aside before it had a chance to grow.

"I don't need your pity," he snapped, less harshly than he had the heart for. "You can't miss what you never had, and what I went without has made me stronger than any coddled life ever could. You're wasting your worries—and it's foolish to hang your mental stability so completely upon the presence of other people! Maybe if you weren't all so soft, you could actually defend this pathetic world, instead of relying on one idiot with a death wish!"

Piccolo narrowed his eyes, voice dipping. "And don't you forget about my promise to him," he snarled. "I'm defending this planet only as a hawk safeguards its kill. As soon as the Saiyans are dead, this little truce between us is over."

It was hardly the first time Piccolo had preached this manifesto, but each time, it felt more and more like he was trying to reassure himself as well.

Piccolo had already killed his father's killer, but it hadn't been the great triumph he had always fantasized about. Instead, it had felt hollow and underwhelming, and doubt had long-since hooked its claws in him about taking the Earth as well.

The sky did not collapse when Piccolo experienced such doubts. Nor did Hell open up underneath him, and his father's vengeful spirit was nowhere but in Piccolo's own private fears.

And what did that mean—that he was even capable of doubting his fate? Demons did not second-guess themselves, or feel things unassociated with the burning, instinctual drive to conquer and consume.

At least, that was the knowledge Piccolo had inherited from his late father; the creature who lusted for carnage and power more than any other. In his deepest trances, Piccolo could almost feel the heat of his father's hatred burning him from the inside out. If any such law or truth on the matter existed, Piccolo Daimao would know it.

Piccolo himself had experienced that druglike stupor of rage only once—five years before, and all of it had been directed at the man who murdered his father. The man who, in an indirect way, was responsible for Piccolo's own inception.

Now, at last, that man was dead, and all of Piccolo's bloodlust, it seemed, had gone with him when he died.

'You're more grumpy now than evil,' Gohan had said once. It wasn't far from the truth; Piccolo was the reincarnation of his father, yet he felt different. Set apart.

Despite the inherent, extensive knowledge Piccolo possessed about the man, the ancient demon from days past felt almost like a stranger. Even this child, who scarcely came up to his knees, could see it.

But if Piccolo wasn't the second coming of the Demon King, what would that make him? Who would that make him?

Gohan, of course, chose this moment to speak up again, but between his atrocious mumbling and Piccolo's turbulent thoughts, he didn't catch it.

"Speak up!" he barked, aggravation boiling over.

Gohan started and promptly faced away from his mentor, who scoffed.

Fine. See if I care.

The wind picked up, carrying flickering embers into the night air where they winked out. As the minutes passed, he kept expecting Gohan to lie down or drift off, but the boy's heartbeat never slowed. Just when Piccolo was thinking of going somewhere else, the silence was broken again by a quiet voice, hoarse with tears.

"I don't think… I'm going to live," Gohan croaked. Piccolo opened his eyes. "And I don't think you even expect me to, but if—" he sniffed, "if you ever feel lonely—you know, after… You can come visit me. I don't really have friends, and I play in the woods a lot already. We wouldn't have to talk, and my parents wouldn't know… but you wouldn't be alone."

It took a moment for the words to absorb. Normally, when this kid spouted something that threw him off, Piccolo just snapped at him to be quiet.

Right now, he couldn't quite make the words line up in his head. It felt like any willingness to say them had been scattered by a tumult of anger, confusion, and a myriad of other feelings Piccolo couldn't name. It was like some load-bearing wall within himself had come loose, letting even more of his once-rigid sense of self crumble away.

I have to leave, the thought thundered.

Gohan shuddered with a deep, gasping sob.

"I know. I'm sorry. I never should have—should have said anything. Please don't go…"

Piccolo started. Had he spoken aloud? He was certain he hadn't…

A growl rose in his throat to meet Gohan's quiet weeping, unexpected fury blooming in his chest like a cloud of smoke. There was only so much of this nonsense he could stand.

"What the hell is the matter with you?" he bellowed. "We have a little over a month! That is it! Do you honestly think you can fight the Saiyans as this—basket case? Do you?!"

Gohan flinched, curling even tighter into himself. He didn't make a sound, save for the tiny heartbeat pounding in Piccolo's ears.

"I'm… I… I…"

"What?"

Gohan didn't answer. At least not intelligibly. The same stream of I, I, I, tumbling from his jaws like aimless water.

Slowly, dangerously, Piccolo stood. There was no moon to cast any shadow upon his student; no light in the black to frame the silhouette that still stalked the nightmares of his parents' generation. And yet, the son of Daimao's killer cowered. Crouched like a worm with his too-small hands over his head like they could save him. He was shaking.

Piccolo seethed with disgust—half of it towards himself—and deep below that, some kind of apprehension lurked.

"You are going to look me in the eye," he said with a softness Gohan had learned to fear far more than any shouting. "And you are going to tell me where the hell this is all coming from. The silence, the eating—everything."

That thrumming rabbit-heart skipped a beat.

"I…"

"Spit it out!"

At once, Gohan shot up on his knees, fists snagging in his hair. Anguish contorted his features, haloed by crackling energy as he finally howled:

"I'm SCARED!"

The volume of his scream almost made Piccolo step back. Almost. Before it even finished echoing through the valley Gohan was shouting again, and tears flooded down his cheeks as he hunched, still clawing into his own scalp.

"I'm scared, and I miss my parents, and we're running out of time, and I'm not strong enough! I'm not going to be strong enough! And I don't want to die, but I know I will, and so do you!"

Gohan hacked a tremendous sob, covering his streaming eyes with abrupt, uncoordinated movements.

"So there! That's what's wrong with me! If you weren't such a big jerk, then maybe you could have figured it out on your own!"

When Piccolo's initial surprise at the outburst faded, annoyance rose in its place—then fury.

"Are you serious?" he roared. "Your father laid down his life for you—and everyone else on this blasted sphere—without hesitation!"

"I know!" Gohan howled, yanking his bangs. "I know. That's not the problem!" A storm of hiccups shook him as he folded in on himself again. "I'm not," he hiccupped, "I'm not afraid of fighting… or dying… I'm afraid of being dead! And of not being good enough!"

He buried his face in his hands, trembling so hard that Piccolo couldn't tell if he was still sobbing or not.

"Even if they wish me back, they won't even be able to for another year! What if I lose my body and my soul gets all changed up and forget everything? Or what if I get reincarnated before I can even be wished back? Will I even be able to come back if my body r-rots first? And what if we don't even beat the Saiyans? What then?!" He gasped something that sounded like a sob. "What then? If other people die, I probably won't be brought back first. I'm not good enough. I'm not… You know I'm not! I'm nothing but a coward!"

When Gohan had finally finished, he sagged like a puppet with cut strings, gulping deep, rapid breaths.

"I'm deadweight…" he panted. "I'm just deadweight..."

Piccolo stepped forward, doffing his cloak. He could take no more.

Gohan yelped when he dropped the training weight on his shoulders. Lurching forward, the boy posted himself on his hands with a strangled sound. It was an amusing sight; the shoulder pads were a bit lopsided considering how small he was, and he was drowning in the collar.

"Alright," Piccolo barked, crossing his arms. "You already know how to fight and fend for yourself, and now you are going to learn how to deal with… this." He gestured vaguely. "Because I refuse to."

Gohan stared straight ahead without moving, still gasping shuddering breaths like a fish without water. His arms trembled.

"Feel the weight on your shoulders," Piccolo commanded. "Feel how it comresses your body, and how your body retaliates in turn. I want you to concentrate only on that."

Gohan panted, nodding shakily. "How—how do you even move in this?" he gasped. "I feel—like I'm—being crushed!"

"Quiet. It's heavy, yes, but no more than you can manage. Now, I want—"

"Hey—give me a second!" Gohan barked, neck snapping up as much as it could with Piccolo's cloak weighing it down. The demon didn't know whether to scold him or laugh at the display.

"Do you want my help or not?" he snipped. "Because I would be content to keep my pride and leave this instant if you'd rather."

There was another strangled gasp, and then Gohan let his head drop. Yielding. Piccolo gave a satisfied huff.

"As I was saying. Sit up."

Up snapped the head again. This time, Gohan met his eyes, dreadful disbelief filling his own.

"You heard me," Piccolo said. "Do it."

As if about to protest, Gohan opened his mouth, but a piercing glare from his mentor silenced him preemptively.

Brow furrowed in concentration, the boy stared at his hands planted on the ground and began to walk them back towards himself. Piccolo watched him strain until eventually he was sitting upright, hands now braced on his outstretched legs instead of the ground.

It was working, even if Gohan didn't realize it yet. The anguish from earlier had shifted into focus and frustration, and his labored breathing was no longer out of distress—just simple straining. Piccolo observed all of this with a critical eye.

"It's heavy, isn't it."

Gohan gave him a bemused look, but nodded. "Y-yeah. I do think it's helping, though. It's al—it's almost like a hug. It's nice." Piccolo pinched his brow.

We are doomed, a voice in the back of his head sighed.

"Whatever you want to call it. This cloak has a greater purpose than mere strength conditioning." In one fluid motion, he dropped into a lotus position before his apprentice. "It's a good damper for the senses, and it gives your body something to focus on. Burgeoning your mind is just the next step above that." He smirked. "The strength training is just a little bonus."

Gohan nodded hesitantly, brow furrowing.

"I always thought it was the other way around. I mean, that's how it is—was... for my dad. Always has been."

"That hardly surprises me," Piccolo scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Goku doesn't have a meditative bone in his body."

For the first time in what felt like ages, Gohan smiled. And it was genuine, if sad. "No," he said wistfully. "No, he doesn't."

For a somber moment, neither of them spoke.

"I really miss him," Gohan murmured. "That's why I asked earlier about…"

Piccolo broke him off.

"Mirror me," he ordered. "You can clearly sit up steadily now. This should be easy."

Gohan gave Piccolo a sidelong, almost suspicious look, eying his form shortly after. Slowly, the boy managed to pull his own legs in to match it.

"Like this?"

Piccolo shook his head. "You're just crossing your legs," he corrected. "Look at how I'm sitting and do it correctly."

Gohan did so, grunting with the effort of positioning his legs correctly while also keeping his balance. Eventually, he got it. Mostly.

"Is this okay?"

Piccolo narrowed his eyes. "Your back isn't straight enough. And get your hands off your knees. You look ridiculous."

Gohan frowned at him, folding his hands upward in his lap.

"Now you're just nitpicking…"

Piccolo growled.

"If you're going to do it, do it right! I don't meditate for fun—it's as disciplined an act as flying or combat. Now close your eyes!"

Gohan obeyed without objection.

"The point of this is not to stop thinking, or to think any more than you usually do. It's merely to center yourself and observe your own mind—without getting caught up in your emotions. It makes future complications easier to manage, and it helps you identify sources of distress you might not notice otherwise."

Gohan nodded, looking only somewhat confused.

"Why... are you telling me all this?" he eventually asked.

"Because I have nothing to say regarding that bout of hysteria earlier. I have no more knowledge of the afterlife than you do, and I cannot predict the future. If you're worried so much about how you're going to fare in this battle, good. Maybe now you'll get serious about fighting, instead of watching birds. Personally, I think you are strong enough to survive, but how you use that strength will be the true deciding factor in your fate. I cannot control that; only you can."

Gohan took all of this in without reaction or commentary, and he didn't speak for a long while after, either. Piccolo gave him time to think, lapsing into reflection himself.

The moon being gone was irksome. More irksome than he'd initially anticipated; but then, there were more urgent matters at hand. Piccolo was of the night; of the cold, hard, emptiness of the world. Once, the moon had been a veritable beacon for him—as well as a clock, a calendar, and a compass.

Now, Piccolo had to rely on the stars alone to tell how long the night would last. He looked up. Cygnus was still high above them. They had time.

"Piccolo?"

He blinked.

"Hm."

"What kinds of things do you meditate about?"

Piccolo tensed. His father's ossified memories filled his head—picture-perfect scenes of gore, conquest, and ceaseless, glorious death. More still, Piccolo's undying justification of it, all in a desperate effort to school himself down the same path.

This is your purpose, he thought—again and again and again. Sometimes his thoughts sounded more like the voices of a family he'd never known. Five sets of claws just like his, dragging him down to join them.

This is what you are, they seemed to sing. This is what you will be. Never stray the path. Kill them. Kill them all...

"... Nothing you need to know, kid."

"Would it scare me?"

Gohan's eyes were still closed, but there was no judgement in his voice. No suspicion. His posture was open and relaxed—not fitting behavior for whom he was conversing with. For some reason, Piccolo answered.

"Yes. It probably would."

"Oh… I'm sorry."

Piccolo tensed. It wasn't 'I'm sorry for asking,' or 'Im sorry I bothered,' but 'I'm sorry you are troubled.' Plain as day.

And there it was again—that uncomfortable twinge in Piccolo's gut. In the end, he elected not to respond.

"Alright," he said instead, standing. "That's enough."

Gohan opened his eyes.

"D—did I do something wrong?"

"No. It's getting late, and I am not about to put up with you whining about being tired tomorrow. Take it off."

Gohan started, staring up at him again in disbelief.

"Do it," Piccolo snapped, patience dwindling. "We both know you can."

Gohan opened his mouth as if to argue before apparently thinking better of it, edging his hands under the lip of the cowl instead. With thinning patience, Piccolo watched him struggle to lift it past his neck before his arms quaked and he stuttered to a stop—only halfway.

"Oh, come on!" he groused. "If you can't at least do this, why am I even bothering?"

"Hey! I'm way smaller than you!"

"Then tell me how you were able to haul a wild boar up a mountain on your back last winter. I didn't hear you whining then."

Gohan's struggling stopped, and then two dark eyes peeked over the collar of Piccolo's cloak.

"You saw that?"

"Yes."

Those wide eyes blinked, glancing sheepishly to the side.

"Well I—I was hungry..."

An unexpected feeling almost like amusement unfurled in Piccolo's chest—but it wasn't. It was something else entirely. Something warmer.

He was so caught up in trying to identify it that he didn't notice Gohan's second attempt; at least not until a triumphant grunt caught his attention. His student was now on his feet, cloak teetering precariously atop his outstretched arms.

Piccolo took the garment before the kid could drop it on his head, leaving Gohan to recover his bearings.

"Thanks," the boy sighed, sitting down again beside the dimming fire. Piccolo nodded.

"Fear is a heavy thing. It may hinder you, but you can turn it to your advantage, if you're willing."

To demonstrate, Piccolo took a deep breath and let the well of energy in the pit of his chest overflow. The grass bent out from the shockwave in a ring around them, and Gohan shrank back.

When he'd sufficiently made his point, Piccolo returned the cloak to his own shoulders. His ki was quick to sink back down beneath the weight.

"Just like this mantle, fear is something you must learn to carry without letting it bend you. If you can do that, strength will follow."

Piccolo sat down in his place beside the fire, folded his arms again, and said no more. Gohan stared at him for an uncomfortable amount of time.

"I… That's…" He seemed to think for a moment, looking at his hands. "... Thanks."

Piccolo only nodded.

"Mm."

The night stretched on. Satellites traced unblinking paths across the sky while a gallimimus cried in the distance, and Gohan settled down where he always settled down—which was just barely too close to Piccolo's leg.

The boy still had something to say, somehow. Piccolo could tell judging by how he kept rolling over, and by the unsubtle eyes that kept glancing up at him. Eventually, he grew weary of the game.

"Out with it," he sighed, once he was sure Gohan wasn't going to sleep otherwise.

The boy started, looking away sheepishly. Piccolo watched him through half-lidded eyes, annoyance and curiosity fighting it out in his mind. Gohan turned around, and their eyes met.

"Are you… Do you… get scared, too?" he eventually asked, looking up at Piccolo as if he'd hung the stars. Like so many things, the look spurred a foreign and uncomfortable pang in his chest. He sighed.

A vision, seldom explored, surfaced in Piccolo's mind: himself, dead at the feet of that insufferable Goku (or, in his more unsettling thoughts, Gohan), leaving his not-yet throne vanquished and his father's three-hundred year conquest null.

Beyond that, he saw the check-in station he knew from Kami's dreams, and the unfortunate sentence he surely would receive there.

And worse still than any looming damnation was the idea that the Daimao and his Demon Clan might be down there in hell. Waiting. Piccolo had already lived his father's life, and he already knew there existed no mercy in the ancient demon's soul.

Over and over, he pictured five identical sets of claws tearing into him; father and siblings alike sending their failed heir to his second death.

And then, oblivion. Terrible, unknowable oblivion.

The date was fast-approaching, according to his counterpart's omens. Very soon, Piccolo would be discovering just how real his fears might be. He closed his eyes.

"You are... not the only one who thinks about these things, Gohan."

The boy lifted his head, eyes wide. He always got that look when Piccolo called him by name.

The demon sighed, scowling at the slow-dying fire. He picked up the limb they'd been using to stoke it and turned over a log, watching a flurry of sparks erupt into the black sky.

"Existential dread is a cold bastard," he muttered. "You learn to live with it. Just be glad you have people who would wish you back at all."

Gohan hummed acknowledgement, eyelids drooping. He probably didn't even know what 'existential' meant yet. Then again, he was a bookish child, unlike his father (and Piccolo himself). Maybe he did understand.

Maybe he was the only one who could ever understand.

Silence settled between them again, and it was a welcome one this time. Not once in eleven months could Piccolo remember a conversation lasting half as long. He had no idea how six billion people lived like this; so close. So vocal. It was exhausting.

"I would."

Piccolo's eyes shot open.

"What?"

Gohan had rolled over. Fresh tears reflected the firelight as he bored into Piccolo's soul with innocent eyes.

"I would bring you back."

The words hung in space for a heartbeat, heavier and more solemn than anything he could recall Gohan ever saying.

Piccolo was too stunned to respond. He could only watch and listen as his student rolled over again. Over the next several minutes, his breathing finally began to even out, but even then, he felt paralyzed.

What… are you doing to me? What have you already done?

Piccolo reached for him.

He stopped just short of grazing the boy's head, snatching his hand back. He hadn't even thought before moving; it was an action so instinctual, so simple, that Piccolo had no idea what it was he was even attempting. All he had been thinking was 'You wouldn't have to be alone, and 'I would bring you back,' and 'I care.'

And his hand had moved.

Hardly a day passed where Piccolo did not threaten Gohan's life in some way. Oftentimes, the empty words felt like the only way to get the boy to follow orders. Or at least, the only way Piccolo knew of.

Do you want to die?! he'd roar. Do you want those bastards to kill you?!

(At some point he couldn't place, Piccolo had stopped threatening Gohan's life personally, and had shifted the act to the Saiyans.)

For the first time despite all he'd said, Piccolo actually considered the possibility that Gohan might die. He could even envision it if he tried; a small, broken body at the feet of two figures he couldn't discern.

The idea of Gohan dying shouldn't have affected him. Gohan, who always sat too close. Gohan, who could probably fit in the crook of his arm. Gohan, who dared to love monsters.

Damn it.

His hair was softer than it looked. Much softer. Piccolo had never paid it any heed before, but then it was harder to notice when you were trying to land a good hit. Now, he took subconscious care to keep his talons from touching him.

Asleep as he was, Piccolo didn't expect a reaction, but was startled when Gohan's eyelids twitched, and his breathing deepened even more. Experimentally, he carded his claws through his hair, slowing when his thumb brushed his temple. There was a vein there. Piccolo could feel Gohan's pulse tapping against his skin, slow with sleep.

It would be so easy to kill him like this. How many children had he slaughtered in his previous life? How many, just like Gohan, who dreamed, loved, and lived as only humans could?

Piccolo did not sleep. He did not dream, but these humans—for hours, they closed their senses to the world and offered themselves up to anything that might strike them down. Not even his deepest meditative trance did the same; even with his senses muted, there was still an amount of awareness he carried.

It was a foolish, dangerous ritual that Piccolo would never completely understand. He understood even less how Gohan could choose to sleep so close to him.

Didn't he know that his master was the most dangerous thing in this desert?

Piccolo's father wanted him to finish what he'd started. He had practically hatched with the king's last words still ringing in his ears, a demand that his son complete his legacy. A legacy which, in no uncertain terms, ended with the destruction of the human race.

The idea of Gohan aiding him in that conquest was a fantasy Piccolo had long since abandoned. The boy simply didn't hate. No matter what he said or did, Gohan still followed him; vied for his attention. Talked to him.

It made no sense. Nothing about these humans made any sense. Gohan should loathe him; the boy surely had more right to that than any human alive, so why?

Sentimentality defied logic. Completely defied it. Gohan didn't even realize the magnitude of what he was saying—he hadn't seen cities razed to nothing, nations toppled, life extinguished without so much as a second glance. He had no way to grasp all that Piccolo was tasked to do. All that he'd already done.

Who cares if it was in this life or the last? This world is ours-yours-mine. You've killed so many. What's one more? Ten more? A thousand?

He shuddered. Glancing over Gohan's sleeping form, Piccolo took in the swatch of scars, scrapes, and bruises—all of it painting muscle that looked wrong on a child so young.

(And when, he wondered, had it begun to look wrong to him?)

A sound startled Piccolo out of his spiral. Gohan had shifted onto his side—closer still—and was currently leaning his head into his palm. The feeling stirred something in his chest.

An image came to mind; scenes that bled through from his other half, or perhaps from his own imagination. Piccolo wasn't sure. A life lived squarely in the present was a luxury he had not been granted; it was hard to tell sometimes what was premonition, memory, or just his own thoughts.

Right now, Piccolo pictured a boundless plain teeming with departed souls, and among them, a frightened child no older than five, searching for his father.

The same child who lay beside him now. The boy who looked a monster in the eyes and said he would waste a miracle on him.

It hit him then—just how much he didn't want Gohan to die.

Before he could coach himself out of it, Piccolo decided that he would not allow the vision to become real. A new promise burned in his mind, deeper than any paltry vow to a dead man. Talons still tangled in Gohan's hair, Piccolo swore a silent oath to protect what was his. What had, in some impossible way, become his.

Damn it, he thought. God damn it.

He felt further from his purpose than ever. Even if he didn't break that promise, he doubted even Gohan would be willing to forgive him if he carried out his father's will. At best, the boy would come to loathe Piccolo, but even that possibility stung him in a way he never anticipated. Would he have the strength to betray the boy who had so stubbornly found a way into his heart?

For a moment, Piccolo doubted it. Then he caught himself.

What—what the hell am I thinking?

It was like startling out of a freefall. Piccolo had officially backed himself into a corner. Frustrated, he shut his eyes with more force than was needed.

It was time to seek answers. After all, his father had been just that. A father. Surely there had to be some loophole, some middle road ahead that wouldn't end in disaster or death.

Piccolo closed his eyes.

His father's memories were like a deep, twisting cave. Piccolo himself existed somewhere outside of it, but the mouth yawned nonetheless—a black, twisting throat in the depths of his subconscious. It was as if the King of demons had his own personal corner of Hell carved out for himself.

Centering himself, Piccolo let the world around him drop away. The borders between his body and mind slowly bled together, and when it was time, he let that yawning pit open up to greet him.

He rarely let himself sink this deep, but it was hardly the first time Piccolo had ventured to this place in search of answers. He had grown up in total isolation, with no one to turn to for knowledge except the cold black sky. That, and this far colder, far darker place.

It was a harsher environment than Gohan could ever dream of.

The further down Piccolo traversed into his father's remnant memories, the dimmer the grasp on his own senses grew. In time, the whole world became his father's memories, and it was hard to tell where he ended and Daimao began.

While lucid, the totality of his past life was mostly inaccessible, save for fragmented visuals and a fleeting sense of dejà vu. One physical mind could not handle the strain of two lifetimes, despite the nature of his soul. He was two bodies of water—separated by land, but fed from the same source.

But here, in this place, he could access and relive the entirety of King Piccolo Daimao's life if he wanted. 300 years, right at his disposal.

He did not have the time for such things; he was here for one purpose. Time-frosted images of people, young and old, flooded his mind in quick bursts. All of their faces were contorted in fear—the kind of fear that only showed itself in the face of death.

Did you feel anything? Piccolo wondered, asking a cavernous dark that could not respond. Did you feel any remorse or hesitation for them at all?

Of course, he knew the answer.

Just one instance in thousands, Piccolo watched through his father's eyes as rain pelted the prone form of a child who looked like Gohan. He also felt the grin plastered on his late father's face as he'd pressed an identical hand to his chest and found no pulse.

"The boy's heart has gone cold…"

There had been nothing behind that smile. No guilt. No pause. It was something Piccolo feared and envied all at once; the unshakeable knowledge that what you were doing was correct.

He had felt that same certainty, not so long ago. What happened?

… And then that heartbeat tapped against his palm again—just beyond the wall of his subconscious. Piccolo hadn't even noticed he'd neglected to take his hand away.

Gohan, he thought. Gohan had happened.

Somehow, Piccolo estimated it wouldn't have, had Gohan been any other age than he was right now. He was old enough to know who he was; to not be swayed or corrupted like the plan originally called for. But he was also too young, it seemed, to be truly resentful of anything.

True innocence. That must have been it. And wasn't it always? Thinking about it now, it seemed less foolish than it did a year ago. Begrudgingly, he supposed any alternate date was less favorable than what had ended up happening. If Gohan were to make an enemy of him, if they ever came to blows...

Piccolo wished he could forget what it felt like to murder a child. He wanted to erase that phantom touch of a lifeless body and replace it with this. Maybe that made him a hypocrite. Maybe it made him the biggest fool on this planet of fools.

And maybe it was sacrilege to crave something warmer for once, but it couldn't be worse than murder.

... Could it?

Piccolo groaned, breaking form to rake his talons down his temples. He barely felt the cuts reseal under his fingertips. Everything was suddenly too much, and he let the deep well of memories seal shut again. Like a river to the ocean, all Piccolo had seen receded back into his subconscious.

He opened his eyes.

The stars had all shifted, and the dawn light spilling over the craggy horizon looked like blood. Another day had come and gone, and with each one, the heaviness weighing him down only grew stronger.

Six weeks to go, Piccolo thought. Six weeks, and everything changes.

They still had time. So why did he feel so uneasy?

Piccolo didn't give himself the chance to wonder, opting instead to nudge his student roughly with the side of his foot.

"Get up."

Gohan started with a little gasp, blinking up at his mentor with bleary eyes. When he sat up, part of his already unkempt hair was sticking up where he'd slept on it.

Something deep in Piccolo's chest fluttered like a bird, more insistent than it had the morning before. He shoved it down deep. No. He refused to succumb to such lunacy again, especially now that Gohan was awake.

But that didn't stop Piccolo from pausing, from debating for the slightest moment if he could brush those unruly bangs back into place again.

Then Gohan stood and walked away, and Piccolo snarled at his own foolishnes

Idiot, he admonished himself. Soft goddamn fool.

But that didn't stop the quiet 'what if' in the back of Piccolo's mind, and if he turned a blind eye while Gohan caught himself another fish, there was no one else around to see it.

On all accounts, the dawn was peaceful, but the looming sense of dread never left Piccolo.

It didn't leave him for hours into the morning, and it didn't leave him when the sky turned black as night. Like frost in the dead of winter, like the teeth of hunting dogs, it struck deep, and it held.

Piccolo was of the night. He knew the paths of all the satellites in the sky, and how the moon rode higher in the winter than the spring. Cold, dark, and impossibly lonely was the world he knew best, and the dread still gripped him in its claws when he learned the true depth of his connection to the cold stars.

For the first time in his life, Piccolo felt no claws around him. Perhaps they had never even been there to begin with.

And as light, brighter and hotter than everything he knew enveloped him, the Demon King's son felt just the slightest bit closer to being human.

Gohan screamed.

A/N

Canon always shows Piccolo meditating, but never what he's meditating about.

Title is from Glowing, by the Oh Hellos. It has a very Gohan vibe to me—especially the latter half.

This got a lot wordier than I meant it to considering I didn't outline, but honestly I find that works better for conversation-heavy works like this. After all, realistic conversations don't have too much structure to them either; they kind of just flow.

I tend to find inner conflict difficult to write realistically; I hope it came across well enough here. I hope I got their mannerisms down as well; these characters have been important to me for a very long time, so

If you enjoyed this, please leave a review! I normally write bnha fics, but I have a couple more DBZ ideas similar to this one that I've been wanting to write. I've been going through a rough patch life-wise and I'm back to college as well, so I'd love to hear your feedback.

Come talk to me or look at art on my tumblr, birdantlers