Trying this journal thing again.

I realize I never talked about what my actual escape was, yesterday.

It would be so easy. I could do it and never look back. No one would fault me but my own conscience. Or rather, I wouldn't be able to hear the billions of voices faulting me. They'd be effectively erased from my reality.

Not that Bulma wouldn't be able to send me back eventually, anyway. Give or take a few years.

This is my escape: taking a one-way trip back to the other timeline and destroying the time machine.

I dream about it sometimes. When the depression's at its worst, the dreams are so vivid I wake up thinking I'm actually in the other timeline, in the huge room Bulma gave me in the family quarters near Gramps, Grandma and mini-me. But it's always too quiet, and that's what brings me back to reality. There isn't anyone in this house but me. Hasn't been since I nearly killed Kestrel after that one nightmare.

The other timeline isn't perfect, I know. It's unhealthy to idealize it as some sort of paradise where no one dies and the world has no problems. The world still has a shit ton of problems and its fair share of galactic villains visiting every now and then. Not to mention regular Earth problems like terrorism, war and global warming.

The other timeline isn't perfect, but no one knows me there. There's no role I have to fill. I'm not a hero, not a figurehead, not the man everyone wants to be President. That kind of freedom is something I don't dare to imagine. I don't even know how I'd feel if someone handed it to me, a magic wand that could wipe my face from collective memory. So I try not to think about it. Which naturally leads me to think about it all the time.

I haven't visited in five years. I don't trust myself to.

The time machine has been sitting there gathering dust, beneath layers of the tightest security systems Mom could cook up. I know all the passwords by heart. The scanners know my brain, my ki signature, my fingerprints, my voice and my retinas. The embedded tracker monitors my vitals and my location at all times. I'm the only one who can go down there and make use of the most revolutionary technology this half-dead world will never know about. It's rigged to self-destruct if I die.

I'm dying by slow degrees anyway. Knowing it's there makes me hate myself all the more for my cowardice, having this secret escape path that I could use if I hit really dire straits. No one else gets to make an exit like that and start over. There are no Dragonballs in this timeline, after all. Just the time machine.

I've thought about how the escape would play out. I'd land in a secluded place and shield myself for a while, get my sanity together, away from them all. Get accustomed to the idea that I'd actually left it all behind, and before the guilt would settle too deeply, I'd destroy the machine. Then I'd find Gohan. He's the person who still understands me the best, no matter how old he is. He'd understand the pressure, the burdens we take on because we're expected to, the burdens we don't dare set down because the world would break if we did. He'd understand that I'd broken first.

Bulma would smother me as usual. And I'd tell her enough of what happened, but not everything. Mom was always so strong, taking the world on her shoulders like it belonged there. Bulma's basically her, untested, but with that same core strength. She wouldn't get what I feel in its entirety. But she would welcome me and we'd be family. Sort of.

I'd avoid Vegeta for a while.

And I guess I'd meet mini-me and get to know him. He's around ten now, no longer an overactive little kindergartener. I wonder what he's like these days. Knowing Bulma, he's probably a spoiled, genius brat who's skipped a few grades already. No hardship to temper him in their timeline. Add Vegeta's influence, and he's probably more than a bit destructive.

And that's as far as I allow myself to imagine. I'm mired so deep in work that I don't know what I'd really do given an extended period of rest. Or in this scenario, an indefinite period of rest.

I know I'm not going to escape. I don't have it in me. Even with this, I'd need someone else to push me out of inertia and force my hand.

Trouble is, there isn't anyone who could pressure me. Mom was the only other person who knew about the time machine, though people have wondered and theorized for years how I grew strong enough to kill the cyborgs. No one ever came up with "traveling to an alternate timeline and training for a year with my alien father in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber" as a valid theory.

I'd have to make the decision myself to go. And I wouldn't trust myself not to set everything behind me on fire.

I'm not free, no matter what my therapist says. And with just the second entry of this audiojournal, I've managed to shut myself in again, even from her. I can't risk anyone hearing this. I'll put only slightly less security on this journal than the time machine has. Voice activation as the first layer, obviously.