The Horse with No Name
Chapter Fifty-One
Wading
Through smog, blue light shines like a beacon.
The whirring of power can be heard from its burial. It emits from a sapphire aura bundled in between creviced layers of rockery and sand, with Goku centre of it. His energy shield collapses inwards and he takes a deep breath, sweaty and twitching with locked joints for holding the position for too long.
He suffers winding, there's a splutter of held anticipation for the next wave of power.
It's over… and… I'm still alive, he realizes.
Good.
That's one good thing right now.
It takes a moment for Goku to recall what just happened. It'd been so fast, so wickedly violent from one breath to the next. Quell had… Goku swallows, choking on the tragedy of the situation. After that, Gohan just seemed to explode. The raw magnitude to power had rocked his bones, had stolen Goku's breath – never so quickly has he felt anyone go from zero to a hundred so fast. The divine ki Gohan had–
There's a nearby murmur.
Well, there's some good luck at least. Rixas remains unconscious, a rag doll at the mercy of chaos but still nonetheless none aware to what's just transpired. Back in the Room of Spirit and Time, he'd explained to Goku about the Collective's connection and what it was like once broken. He'd experienced it twice already having recalled Mori's fake-out death with immense displeasure. At least he'd been spared the pain of Quell's, which can't be said for Gohan.
Goku had seen the simmering of the explosion before it spilled over. He'd tried to break through to Gohan but even then yet there'd been nothing there, only the imminence of destruction.
He'd called his son's name a last time, the fog dispelling so briefly that Goku had been hopeful, before the inescapable torrent of power then burst out from Gohan surged Goku backwards. The explosion followed with swords splaying in formation, ones forged from the suppressed rage and piercing any who got too close. Goku hadn't the choice but to take Rixas and prepare a defensive shield, forgoing protecting Quell's body or even looking for Goten. He can only hope he escaped with Piccolo.
Or at least took cover…
Hell is a mess with it somehow being worse than before. Goku sees no derelict buildings, the lake is gone, even the coliseum has been stripped to bare bones, and who knows what happened to all the First Ones after Gohan killed that big monster Vegeta became. So much sand seems to be missing too, giving the ground a cracked stone effect that reminds Goku of the dried lava within a volcano summit.
He taps it experimentally, foot paused mid-raise when he hears nearby movement.
In the depths of smoke, Goku can now spot two silhouettes; Gohan one, Haed another, and in a panic that Goku remembers that awful poniard, the one Haed had used to slay first Byleath and then Quell, the very same he could use right now in a duplicate crime.
But common sense dictates Goku not be rash. Haed needs Gohan. He'd admitted it.
He watches as the two move forward and into the obscurity of Hell, smoke claiming both.
This can't be good. His feet move instinctively and he nearly stumbles over Rixas as a result. Should he leave him here? What will happen when he wakes up? Will he feel the broken Connection? Will he explode like Gohan did? Rixas already doesn't look well; his chest is barely rising and falling, and he is pale despite being absolutely smothered in blood.
Looking at his friend, Goku feels a great wave of sympathy for him. There is nothing worse than discovering someone you love has died, and now Rixas will have to do that when alone and broken.
With a sudden need to do something, Goku turns away in steed of Gohan. He clambers out of the debris and onto higher ground, momentarily stopping upon feeling something with no earthly business in Hell.
Under his foot lies a mask. White and gold and very pretty.
Goku gapes.
"If it is Mori to end my existence then I can find acceptance in that."
What a bastard.
He grits his teeth, collecting the mask and glaring at it with deeply discomforting feelings Goku can't bring himself to understand. In mind, a flourish of blond batters about messily in the wind, a final smoulder casts and the gold blazes.
"Now make yourself useful, you tragic excuse for mass. Call upon that Saiyan power!"
The mask sits innocently and Goku imagines Quell looking at him through the empty eye holes, wearing that same purposeful stare he'd given Goku just as his light burned a final time.
Goku's chest is oddly heavy for a man who despised him.
"Quell…"
Their relationship had been built on the affection for the same person, of the trust they had in one another because of that. Goku couldn't say he disliked him. He'd loved too honestly, too passionately to look away from, and Goku cannot hate anyone who dedicated themselves like this.
This could have been him, addresses another thought. Goku would have done the same thing for Gohan. He would have thrown away everything at a chance of saving him.
He will take that chance now.
Quell's resolve strengthens him and he clenches that mask as he goes in lieu of the dragon.
He walks the journey alone, debris burning up on contact, sand retreating, stone cracking. No other fighters are left to join his march.
It's him and Gohan.
It feels like it was always going to come down to this, prophetic.
When he reaches the dragon, Haed skulks in direction of him, smiling and entirely welcoming as if he planned for the occasion. Gohan doesn't so much as look at him, his focus very much so on the dragon, with a sort of gaunt, harrowing expression Goku aches seeing his son wear.
"Mortal perseverance is something to be revered," Haed greets, "I see you, Goku Son. Divine, yet not. Wholly powerful. Pure. That eagerness to thwart my ambition..."
Here Goku would normally quip something witty, but right now there's only bile in his mouth.
"Alas, your time existing beyond that of sand within my hourglass is coming to an end."
"Gohan—"
His son turns to him so despondently that Goku's words dry up. He could be a corpse walking, he could be just another one of Haed's creatures. This is a golden husk without a shred of what makes Gohan Gohan.
He clenches his fists, ready in case Gohan makes the first move.
"The ascended Super Saiyan God," Haed reflects, drinking in the scene, "Against that of the true Super Saiyan God, the one of Revelation. I am in for quite the treat..." He steps aside. "Mori, with one disturbance dealt with accordingly, would you mind in ridding us of the second? Then, we can make the w—"
Goku punches him.
Gohan's snagged by what's left of his robe shirt before Haed even hits the ground.
"Do you not realize what's happened?!" Goku screams, millimetres away from that soulless stare. He shakes his son – his broken boy – and spittle flies freely when he can't control the abrupt, unadulterated rage in his gut. "Quell is DEAD, Gohan!"
Dazedly, Gohan blinks.
"Don't you ca—?"
Haed moves without the precision of a seasoned warrior, making him predictable. Goku needn't let go of Gohan when the bastard reaches for his poniard. It'd landed next to him and Goku simply kicks it away and into the stretch of Hell. There's a despairing laugh from the ground. Goku ignores it, his anger visually building as his Super Saiyan God aura lashes out. It flares, and Goku's blue and Gohan's gold fight for dominance as they overlap into a deep shade of emerald.
"I warned you all," Gohan finally responds, hoarse.
He punches Gohan too.
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"Quell…"
Gohan feels the hand in his hair loosen, the gold fades from his brother's gaze.
In his arms is a corpse.
The world burns.
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Gohan drifts.
Silence is not soundless. It is a loud, cruel thundering sensation which encapsulates the mind of the mentally insufficient. You can drown in it, silence, – in its copious eternity – in its anticipation to break; a limbo with a lack of perpetuity that keeps you holding your breath.
Yes.
It's a stilt until the next moment, until the inevitable moment when the eye of the storm passes, and for such a time Gohan has been situated in its heart, in its gales; in this silence which frenzies beyond the walls keeping him prisoner, all in lieu of Revelation.
The eternity of nothing breaks when a single thread snaps.
Connection. Their connection.
Quell. Quell… Quell.
Gohan hears himself suck in air. It's a rasping sound. Clogged and rattling.
Never before has something so simple been so loud, louder than even the eon stretched solitude.
Truly, it's all deafening. It's every instance of contradiction. Everything unnatural. Everything unholy. All is ugly and maddening and far too much all at once. The red spittle – the blood coating his cheeks – is loud too. It's the only thing Gohan can focus on in the moment; hot and wet and sticky between his fingers.
He breathes again.
In and out. Yes. Oxygen he does not need. Deep breath. Another choke of air – he's breathing, ragged, so ragged – and metallic.
Experimentally, he flexes his hand and watches as the blood clots.
Something snaps.
Just like that, the nothing, the supposed silence, shatters and the world screams.
Gohan screams.
He cannot hear but he can feel his vocal chords shred. Heat pours down his throat as though the air is molten, drowning him, suffocating him. His chest compresses in on itself. Gohan is succumbing. He feels it. His body is withdrawing into nothing and – and – he hurts.
God.
Fuck. Please… Please.
The inexpressible agony.
His heart tears at its own flesh with self-mutilating ambition. Gohan can feel its fervency as it climbs up his throat and out of it as little blackened chunks – they swell within his windpipe – they have him claw at them.
Quell.
His brother. His – NO. Why? It can't be – NO! Why does this hurt so fucking much?
His skull – it's going to explode… It's – God!
Someone is shouting at him with cloggy, faraway words through the mist but his brain is now magma slinking from out of his ears, slithering into his mouth like a serpent, coiling and choking and hissing with Quell's inflection. There's no hearing through the storm.
It only consumes. The agony. The breakage of the Connection.
The death.
Quell. QuellQuellQuell—
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The silence has found him once more.
"Oh… Gohan."
He shivers, recognizing his own name after the timeless stretch of nothing. The void. The chasm. The— "You have certainly been busy," continues the voice, breaking the episode. "Are you not even going to look at me? How discourteous. Why not spare a moment for your origin?"
Gohan dares not move, even as cool tips run trails along his skin, gliding upwards, framing his jawline and carrying along to his mouth. Finally, Gohan does look if only due to the discomfort of someone's fingers being so intimately close.
Familiar gold reach Gohan's own, twinkling under twilight.
"Quell met his end by our means after all," Mori tells him, head tilted with the weight of immeasurable knowledge and self-satisfaction. Gohan doesn't know how to react to this separate entity that is supposed be sewed into his very being and not out here, conversing. How is this happening? Surely, with how reincarnation works this should not be—
"Do not overthink it," Mori continues with Gohan's own voice. He brushes the stray hair from Gohan's face, holding it, admiring. "For you to take it seriously at all is to consider this moment real. Why should you when you have continually thought of me as but a nasty fabrication of your imagination? A way to cope, as it were – is that not what you once told Doctor Jivel?"
Just as Gohan goes to answer, there's a hush of moving liquid that has him still. Only then does he notice their surroundings. It's unreal. Mori is shadowed by its entirety, by both the radiance of the setting sun and by the placid, sapphire ocean they both stand atop of. Gohan clutches his chest from the surprise of it. They're standing on the water.
He notices a school of fish swimming beneath in harmonious symphony. Coral against blue…
And against gold.
Gohan swivels, shielding his eyes from the sun.
That hand comes to rest on Gohan's neck, his firm – almost comforting – pressure against Gohan's agonizing pulse.
"The Almighty," Mori murmurs, "Quell has returned home."
A moment passes, or mayhap a millennia. Gohan watches as the waves knead at his boots, his cloak gliding atop without it swallowing the moisture. From beneath the fabric, one foot advances, and then the other.
"Don't bother. You cannot yet join him."
Gohan halts, the fish orbiting where his foot ripples against the water.
"Why?" he rasps desperately. Can Mori not feel the pull of their shackles, of the line of connectivity to their Almighty?
"Mmm… Yes. It is most excruciating, isn't it?" There's a flourish of the hand. "No matter that for now. Come, sit." Mori drops low, layers of robes folding inward until he melts into a starfish atop the current. His head lolls with the wave, the long blond trickling over his smile. "Gohan?"
How can Mori expect him to join him – after everything – after watching that happen to Quell? After feeling the tearing of his soul? After witnessing—
Gohan breathes hard.
"Oh, really," sighs Mori, "You manifested this to escape the tribulations of the outside yet you still... Well, let's say that that's quite the wobbly upper lip you have there. But why bother wasting tears over this? You knew the possibility of this happening when you set course for Revelation. Come now, Gohan…"
"Can you not feel this?"
"The severing of the Collective? No. I saw to that with your birth. Had I been bothered about controlling the reins of our being, emotions and all, then I would not have endeavoured reincarnation in the first place." There follows a derisive smirk. "Moreover, you do enough feeling for the both of us… enough griping too. Oh. Please, stop now."
But Gohan can't breathe. He doesn't need oxygen but how his body suddenly yearns for it, how the desperation ruins him.
Mori shouldn't even be here. They are one.
God. The silence; Gohan wants the torturous, safe silence once more, this noise – Mori – is too much. The reality of what's happened is too much. But more so than that, so truly, wholly so, Gohan wants to, in this moment, die and return alongside Quell. He wants the Almighty to welcome him too.
Right now. Please. Anyone. Make it end. Make this stop.
The whisper reminds him what it is all for. You are not finished, my child.
Be quiet, Gohan insists. Just for a fucking moment. Whilst he breaks, why can't the divinity allow him to crumble just for a moment? Please, just…
Revelation awaits, it breathes.
"Let it go."
Gohan stills at the echo. It's a parody of some of Quell's last words, and also of the order that was once given to him as a boy in face of another monster.
"You should," Mori agrees, expression now impassive, eyes boring into the sky. "Let it go. It is so much easier to succumb than to fight it, like you are trying to now. Do not let the grief ruin this. You would know better than anyone how beautiful a sensation it is to gift yourself to duty. Selfless Gohan… Kind, nice Gohan… "
At some point Gohan did choose to lie down beside his mirror image. He only notices because the golden hour has evolved into a milky spill of stars, and he finds himself staring at the river of them, admiring the undulation as the lights cascade.
"That is why you stayed on Earth," Mori elaborates smoothly. "You felt indebted to your Earth family and to Goten most of all. You wished to serve your duty as his rightful guardian, to right the wrongs your selfish father committed. This is boundless servitude to what is right."
Yet.
"You think this is about them, Mori?" Quell had once seethed, "It's not. Whatever retched little hole within you has made itself known, whatever void you're trying to fill, know that this is entirely about you. This is what you want to sacrifice this collective – your life – for; your own immature and selfish principles."
"Forget such mendacities. Quell always crafted his own narrative to suit his own ambitions, or lack thereof."
"Don't talk about him like that."
"Oh?" Mori sits up, playful. "A glutton for masochism are you? Did he bully you enough to blunt all your edges, Gohan? Did you allow him to make you feel like the villain of your own tale?"
"He kept me grounded."
"Controlled."
"Accountable."
"For what? Serving the Collective? The Almighty? …Your family?"
"To stop me from becoming you."
"Don't be ridiculous. He adored me. He controlled you and you flourished within those parameters because the boundaries made you feel safe. Well, until the restrictions stopped you from serving your duty that is, until you regained some self-respect, and some more of me, I suppose —"
"That's not how that happened and you know it. I hated the boundaries—"
"So you admit it," he points out, a hand so sweetly returning to Gohan's dark locks. "The boundaries you had to break in order to achieve justice."
Gohan swallows, unsure, and Mori barks a great laugh.
"How you must hate the circle you have journeyed… Poor, precious Gohan. What a mess you are." Mori, so suddenly, leans down, breath frosty. "Do you feel bad?"
Gohan stills and Mori draws ever nearer.
"One wish," Mori then whispers, lips suddenly far too close to Gohan's own, "That is all it will take now. Then that shall be all. There will be no duty for the soldier at the end of war…"
He leans in.
"You'll be free… finally."
The kiss is harsh and unforgiving, and for some reason Gohan finds himself responding. It's a hateful sensation. So utterly wrong yet he cannot bring himself to stop. The hand knotted in his hair keeps him prisoner, it is the reason he cannot bring himself to escape, it is the reason he allows his other half to pry his mouth open without reservation.
He becomes paralyzed in the motion and how much time passes remains unknown. He only jilts when, so suddenly, the tongue in his mouth engorges, and like a serpent it coils, choking him as it glides down his throat and along an eternal journey all its own.
It's too much.
When he tries to push back he finds himself wading through liquid.
His eyes open.
Mori is gone. There is only the ocean water in which he's drowning.
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Panicked, Gohan squeezes his eyes closed once more and when he opens them again, he is still very much alone. No longer is he atop the ocean or beneath the stars, but now instead within the confines of his own bath, the large one adjoining his room at the estate. He pushes against the marble as the sweltering water lashes out, standing amidst the churning fog.
It could be a dream, he persuades himself. He could emerge through the door where Myra would be awaiting him with news to meet with Quell, Rixas or even Roarg. It so often happened.
When he tries to leave, the door remains locked no matter the effort, until soon enough beneath his grip the handle itself dissolves into a sheet of water.
"You were warned... of these attachments."
The voice echoes around the bathroom and Gohan tries to find the source, sloshing around pitifully in his ruined robes.
"A wintery heart has nothing to stand for and nothing to protect."
"Quell?"
"By acting more than an instrument of the Almighty you only hurt yourself."
Gohan spins. Who's there?
"Mori, just… let it go."
Let what go? Gohan doesn't understand. He has nothing left except for his devotion! He has given everything else away. The Almighty has everything, even Quell! He splutters a sob, wrenching his head into the depths of the water. What more can he give? What more is there?
My child, my branch to Change, my Mori of Revelation, you must perform the wish.
But it hurts to go back outside.
Then let it go…
He screams, so helplessly lost, and bubbles fill his ears and clog his head until it's ready to explode. And that it does. Gohan cries out until the water becomes torrents that lash out and upwards through the ceiling of the estate. So much of it detonates; an infinite amount of it perhaps, pulsating like a manic heartbeat and out into a pitch of white.
"Believe this, Mori, you'll realize one day that the love you feel for others will inhibit your ambitions."
Quell…
Gohan is drifting, floating along the stream.
That is it, my child.
Numbness blossoms from his toes all along and through his legs and his midsection until reaching his chest where it is most welcome.
Close your eyes for you must be weary.
Gohan's eyes flutter tiredly. He obeys.
How well you have performed so far, how magnificently you have served. You deserve res—
"Gohan!"
The beautiful numbness is interrupted, the Almighty is cast aside. Gohan isn't deaf to the beyond and the number of things he thinks of saying all at once nearly suffocates him. He calls for his brother and then even for Mori.
The voice is familiar.
"—he… wer is—"
Then, he hears it again. Conversation, as though faraway. He sits up and looks around the white yet he remains alone. Mori hadn't followed, Quell isn't here.
"—han—"
Static.
"—an y… e? Sna… of… Are—?"
Somehow, he realizes that someone is trying to talk to him, outside, away from the silence, away from all this in its baritone, incomprehensible distortion.
"GOHAN!"
He stumbles, breath haggard and his eyes thaw open to a completely different reality.
Hell…
No more is the desert red. No more is the sand mountainous. Instead, there sits a begrimed void with thousands of energy infused blades between Gohan and it. They're of his own design. He recognizes them, so organically his and whizzing around like many angry wasps.
The constricting in his chest returns.
He pants in sync with the swords' mania, wheezing with sporadic, uncontrollable panic and turning along with the blades, watching as their blurs grow deadly.
No, Mori. Return to me or make haste. The wish—
Cut me, Gohan instead urges his own blades. Please make this stop.
Instead, they pierce the black of the void, threading into them much like little needles would through satin, stitching messily before disappearing altogether and destroying the tempest. By the end, he stands, alone, clawing at his chest to release the devil. The Connection has been broken. A piece is missing. Where there should be four there are now two. It feels wrong, as though a limb has been stricken.
…Let it go, comes the whisper, Grasp freedom. Let the divinity to take you.
Gohan hears a noise from the depth of his throat, a stillborn sob.
He needs to think. For a second. But his own panic is contagious and the moment drowns him. He collapses to a knee, sobbing and the clatter of steel follows like a shadow. Any remaining swords have fallen. Despair disarms him so completely.
The realization of it all makes the dark of Hell churn like coffee spiralling down a drain, and he spirals along with it.
"Ah. There is beauty in misery."
Gohan stiffens.
Haed, so refined with not so much as a single misplaced hair, saunters leisurely in line for an audience. "What a vision you are, Mori. And the show you delivered here within the confines of my garden? Wondrous. I am grateful to be able to witness such a thing of marvel. It had been akin to turning on a light in a room I had not known was dark."
Gohan's vision blurs in the way it would usually when he'd suffer true rage. It should be there in his gut but still he remains numb to such trivializations even now, with only the wrath of immense agony coursing through his veins.
"Alas, I remember observing the break of a Collective once before. Oh yes. It had been long before your time, my sweet." Haed hums, gaze distant. "It'd been a sight then too. But I also lost my dear Luxun that eve so not everything had been teeming with delight, I am afraid."
Through the grit of his teeth, Gohan finds his voice. "Why?"
"Why had Luxun died? Or had the Connection broken?"
"Quell?"
Haed smiles thinly.
"Now, now, Mori, let us remember that it had been you who had suggested being rid of him all those years ago. Revelation could not have been achieved with such a fervent heretic nipping at your heels. Only this time, you lacked the conviction so I was your strength, as you are mine in the eyes of the most divine dragon. Yes… It is time for you to face your debt, my sweet, for the countless First Ones I sacrificed for you in the confrontation against your kin today. The price, as you said. Nothing too egregious, I assure you. You shall pay it with your capability to communicate with the dragon where I cannot, as by the Divine right. You will use the words I give you, using the language I taught you."
"Revelation—"
"—will be achieved. Our enterprise will see to that, but… why stop there, Mori, especially when we can achieve so much more? Let us bring down more than just the ki of the mortals. Why not the entirety of it? Why not Revelation itself? More."
"…More?"
"More." His face splits into two ugly, equal halves. "The unveiling of the end. Revelation is misinterpreted as the Great Change – of death and rebirth – of the hopeful phoenix occupying the flames which scorched the masses, burned the world and flew beautifully above the rest in its eternal flight. Yet, the truth is rooted not in these romantic ideals. I saw into the soul of the movement when the Upperworld was raped by the movement, I saw death.
"…I saw you."
Haed approaches closer, the stench of decay a shadow and sending Gohan ever dizzier.
"The God of Revelation – of Death. You bring the permanence of calamity. You are the keeper of ki, of life force itself. You are everything I need to see justice for Luxun."
Gohan manages to find his voice. "I don't serve vengeance."
"No, you serve Revelation." Haed laughs so fully, so joyously. "What greater Revelation can be found than this? You shall have rid of your ki, Mori, alongside all the other atrocities plaguing this retched, disgusting existence. I have seen evil since its conception; I have feasted upon its bones and savoured the flesh just to comprehend this twisted universe we have come to serve. If Revelation sought to destroy the Upperworld all those eons ago then what good is there? What is more pure than heaven itself?
"Why not cleanse this putrid place and end its suffering? All of it? And with it, Revelation too can be completed. No more will you be a slave—"
"I am no slave—"
"Do it and you will have completed your duty wholly."
In mind, Mori's gaze lingers. "There will be no duty for the soldier at the end of the war."
Gohan's feet are cement in the ground, his throat filled with horror as Haed brings his blade up between them.
"Let us traverse this circle together. I had been the first Revelation and I shall be the last."
The prick of Haed's ghastly poniard greets in a thin line from one side of Gohan's cheek to another. "I only wish Luxun could feast on such a visage alongside me," he whispers, "It has taken many a generation of Gods of Revelation but ultimately I was rewarded for my patience and gifted you, the Almighty's truest disciple, so malleable and lovely; my sweet, vicious Mori. The true God of Revelation.
"How you have cooperated beautifully, your evolution especially so exquisite to behold after I gently guided you along and into the pupa, and oh my, such a powerful mortal you became." There's a break for appreciation. "One might say that power corrupts but my belief has always held that it reveals, and that it has here today. Regrettably, it has revealed your weakness of will. No matter the power attained, you were so nearly derailed by Quell, and became so disgustingly close to casting aside the Almighty's Revelation in name of your fabricated relation to a creature underserving to be called a god.
"I am disappointed in you in this regard. But… by achieving True Revelation, the extinction of Evil will redeem your inadequacies born from mortality. Love will not inhibit desolation. Look at me, Mori."
The glide of the poniard's edge rests under his chin and Gohan is forced to look into the eyes of the man who is asking for everything.
"Such emptiness," he continues, pleased, "I see nothing behind your eyes. For that, you should be thankful. Had you not consumed the sandstone then you would be in much worse a state after my severing of the Collective."
With this dull horror comes the sudden wave of forgotten fatigue. Gohan slips and Haed snatches back his weapon.
"Oh, Mori, do be wary now," he says like one might to a small child, "This blade has been known to slay even the gods. Would you believe it?" He takes Gohan by the arm, mirthful. "We must make haste to the dragon. How the beast has waited. How… I have waited."
Revelation…
The Final endeavour.
He looks over the remainder of the desert, of the abyss that once contained his enemies.
Mori, comes the siren whisper of his Almighty, alight with warning. There's an anchor of expectation for Gohan to do something in steed of this new information. Whether that is to contest Haed or to follow him into the abyss of unknown Gohan remains unsure. But it's all giving him a pounding, relentless headache that has him lost only feet away from the dragon.
The misdemeanour of the living, of the dead, or the immortal that rules over… Gohan has murdered Kai, he has slain mortals. He has reaped already.
His judgement is just. It is preordained.
Gohan is Death.
But… is he the Death?
Existing becomes a blur or intricacies that pass him by, flickering like a picture book from one moment to a next until one Goku Son comes to stand aside them.
"Mortal perseverance is something to be revered," receives Haed with oozing pleasure, "I see you, Goku Son. Divine yet not. Wholly powerful. Pure. That eagerness to thwart my ambition... Nevertheless, your time existing beyond that of sand within my hourglass is coming to an end."
"Gohan—"
Goku Son, his father, Gohan acknowledges dully, has reached beyond that of the preliminary form of Super Saiyan God with that dreadful, insatiable appetite for strength. The ambition is obnoxious, the appropriation of divinity even worse.
The two talk and Gohan watches them without attention. Time passes him. Nothing of it matters if only because Gohan is but seconds away from his dream becoming reality.
"Quell is DEAD, Gohan!"
Gohan is shaken, quite literally, and in the next moment he comes to discover Haed organizing himself in the dirt. His father still has him, still shakes him. He's angry but Gohan doesn't know what the fool had expected when he'd been told so many times over not to be involved.
"I warned you all."
Gohan takes the punch as well as to be expected. His neck cranes backwards and his nose cracks, but there's little else.
"You won't stop this," he tells him, "Revelation is fated."
Maddened, his father punches him again, and then again. The fourth is captured.
"Even with this ascension, you remain weaker than me." And then, the truth is steam in the air. "I am the Divine."
The seized fist splits in what must be agony, a blade striking through the centre. But his father is stubborn. He refuses to react and pants through the pain, eyes firm on the prize. The ki blade has cleanly cut through the tendon, it must hurt even with this blue monstrosity of a transformation equipped. Nothing is above being ruined by Gohan's energy.
"I refuse to give up on you," his father says after a stretch of silence, "Even now."
Then he curves a knee into Gohan's gut.
Gohan hadn't expected it, and the strike is more wounding than it should with him drawing back messily and giving his father an opening. It's taken with greedy aggression. Struck once more, Gohan soars backwards into a rock face, away from both Haed and the dragon. He witnesses his father tumble boulders from a nearby ledge. He sees from his groove, witnessing Haed's entrapment beneath the one now crushing his leg.
Gohan stands to attention.
Boots crunching, his father approaches.
He stops.
Gold and blue.
There's a moment of weighing one another up. They're exhausted, yet undoubtedly both stand at their absolute peak in terms of power attained. The divine energy circulating throughout Hell must be felt all the way in Otherworld, perhaps even in the Realm of the Almighty.
Gohan notices his father favouring his left. An injury, perhaps, though Gohan remembers little of giving him anything to cause a limp. There are also several deep gashes Gohan could exploit. A cut along the thigh that looks especially tender. Khlōros would finish this quickly, but if his father once more avoids it with Instant Transmission then that's yet more wasted energy, and his reserves are already running low as it is.
There's a rumble of thunder the moment his father charges. Gohan is ready this time, meeting him as the sky crackles with clashing divinity. Shockwaves shred the land with quickened tempo and hot air causes the air to applaud. Back and forth they dance.
The ascension has made all the difference for his father. He's able to match Gohan in terms of avoidance, but the speed is still lacking. Gohan's Holy Super Saiyan doesn't adhere to anything as common as physics, and soon enough the birth of power between them is obvious.
It's in desperation that his father throws out a torrent of unsophisticated energy. Gohan had thought he'd learnt by now not to bother. His pitiful energy cannot hurt him. Lazily, Gohan bats the spheres aside. The last is repurposed into an attack of his own will.
The ki detonates before it strikes his father, leaving no room for a retreat. The smell of singed flesh overloads the senses, certifying Gohan's hit, before becoming so overpowering that he realizes too late his father had pushed through it in spite of injury.
The kick nearly lands but doesn't, if only by a margin.
Gohan skids backwards in lieu of the dragon. Looking up, he admires what his future so holds for him. His wish. Revelation.
The final… Revelation?
So suddenly, his patience comes to an end. He's done with this ridiculous fighting.
Khlōros.
This has gone on long enough. It is time to end Goku Son, fulfilling the ambition of every enemy who has come before him. Gohan will do what no one else could.
Yes, even Qu—
His father lands feet ahead. He must know that something's different now, that he's pushed Gohan to do what he'd never wanted to – but he will, for Revelation, for the Almighty. Khlōros begins its budding journey between Gohan's hands yet there's no mind paid to it. However, there's a cutting way to how his father examines Gohan, to then how he turns back to Haed of who awaits Gohan from under the rocks.
"You once advised me to be careful of who to trust."
Khlōros hangs between them, licking at the air.
His father continues nonetheless, unmoved. "This was just after I watched Quell kill one of your Zealites back on Geo. Do you remember?"
Without consent, memories pull to the front. Gohan remembers the house, hot chocolate, his father's terribly masked fear. They're foggy now. Everything feels foggy and Gohan still feels like he's drifting whenever he stands still for longer than a minute.
"You remember," his father asserts, "I wonder what went through your brain when I told you about Famis. I think back to that. Was that the moment everything changed? Or was it before? When did this campaign for violence come together in your head?"
From his entrapment, Haed wetly laughs. "There was no catalyst, Goku Son. Mori has always been—"
There's an uncharacteristic, most foreign sneer contorting his face. "Shut up! I didn't ask you!" he bites out. "Gohan, only hours before that, you arrived home to the house, you'd been so mad at me about something, something I can't remember." The words start picking up pace, tripping over one another in an emotion tumble. "But, I remember waking up after all the Geo stuff and you'd made sure I was comfortable when you found me exhausted. You care in spite of your own feelings. We wished you home. You stayed. God, Gohan, you came home and tried so hard to fix everything I screwed up. You held me accountable as a dad. You listened to my worries—"
Gohan brings Khlōros forward and centre—
"You are good," his father perseveres regardless as he, for whatever reason, reaches into the knot of his obi. "You are kind. You are thoughtful and brilliant. And most importantly, Gohan, you are full of love."
The green energy churns, growing—
"And… you inspire those around you to love too."
Then something clatters all the way along to the tip of Gohan's boots.
Instantly, Khlōros dies.
"But Gohan," continues his father, striding in trail of what he'd just thrown, "Something I've come to learn through you, through Rixas and even through Quell, is that love and kindness and mercy are not… always the right answer. That night when I told you about Famis, I'd been at a loss after watching Quell refuse mercy to the soldier, but now I think I understand that not everyone can be saved. Not everyone should be."
Blue boots stand either side of Quell's mask.
"Gohan…"
Gohan looks up to see his father's sea foam blue eyes boring into his own.
"Quell is dead because of that man over there," he says so simply that even the fog cannot confuse it. Gohan's chest tightens at the raw truth of it, his head vibrates. "Do you understand?"
Let it go…
"You told me to be careful of who to trust that same night. Now, I'm telling you the same thing." Two hands grasp Gohan's shoulder and he speaks very slowly and deliberately. "Haed is a bad person. He murdered your brother in cold blood. Quell'd nearly been out for the count yet Haed plunged that knife into his back when he had no reason to."
Haed's composure is never tested. "That is not true, Mori. We have already spoken—"
"He sees you as a tool for his own ambitions."
"You know the truth. Think of Revelation. True Revelation."
Looking at his father becomes too much, the air becomes thick and suffocating and all too much. He wants to disappear back into his Almighty. Mori is there, his other half. The ocean is beautiful. Gohan can—
Somehow, the mask has found its way into Gohan's hands. They're shaking.
And they're wet. The tears have returned even though his heart hasn't.
"Serve justice, Gohan."
The shock is so strong that it can be felt even in this numbed reality. Is Goku Son really suggesting this?
The white and gold is unavoidable in his grasp. The mask is proof that Quell is gone, truly gone and never coming back. The only way they'll be reunited is when Gohan himself dies and returns into the Almighty's fold. There's a squeak at the back of his throat, swallowing sobs. He works to contain them, to self-regulate just as Quell would instruct – which then makes him all the more upset at the thought. He whines, so worked up and yet so unable to release any of it.
"Let it go, Gohan," his father guides, "It's not a weakness to love. To feel."
But it's so, so painful. Gohan breathes labouredly into his brother's mask, wheezing. The Connection drags at his chest like a ball and chain.
"That anger, that hatred. Use it."
It's a foreign concept. Hearing his father say these words. This odious drive. Through the haze, he watches Gohan with such serious expectation that it becomes too much to look at, like staring into a star.
Haed is speaking but the words have melded into sticky sludge. Poison.
His headache worsens and Gohan can't contain the cries of agony anymore. He palms at his temples, hitting himself. Wet slaps echo as he assaults the muddy tears carving down his face.
Over and over, his brain betrays him with the final memories of Quell he'd tried to bury within the fog.
The hand loosening in his hair, Gohan feels it in an infinite loop. He reaches that very same spot just to see if he can feel Quell's limp hand, just to see if he can hold it one last time.
"Why do you do this to yourself?" Mori asks, head to palm, resigned and only an arm's reach away from his father. He leans against the rockery. "Torturing oneself over water under bridge is hardly the way to achieve Revelation, is it?"
You loved him! Why do you not care?
Gohan tries to shout back, but his voice has locked away in the cell somewhere between his chest and his throat.
Mori is amused by Gohan's antics, by the pain. "Oh. I see. Want me to kiss it better again?"
No! No! He wills the apparition dead. Mori isn't real, not in this corporeal, evil fucking way. A scream rips from his already aching windpipe and Mori streaks out of existence as white, hot flashes of anguish make Gohan lose his mind.
Yes…
Let it go.
"Let it go, Gohan!"
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.
.
He lets go.
In the nearby distance, far but not too far, a sapling evolves into a beautiful tree of ivory. The leaves shimmer gold and gently surf the wind. It is out of place in Hell, ethereal and innocent and so totally unaware to the violence it is about to suffer.
Goten looks up at the ritual's offering. He's panting and dirt stained, and in awe of the delicate beauty of the foliage.
The representation of Gohan's divinity, born from the seed of his bones.
The Supreme Kai stares, breath stolen and equally as taken aback. "The gardener must ply the roots before they are truly free of the rotten trunk," he eventually says, "…It will not take much. Divinity is fragile after all."
"Will it hurt him?"
"I do not know."
Goten turns to Piccolo for final guidance only to find mirroring anxiety.
The Supreme Kai admires a final time. "Are you ready?"
Piccolo closes his eyes. "Yes."
"…Goten?"
Goten stares at the diamond in the depths of Hell, watching it gently sway in the melody of its swan song.
"Yes."
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(Did you just read self-cest? I think you did.)
This is out a bit later than planned… whoops. The good news is that C52 is already done (except for beta – which I'm doing myself this time to comb through any plot issues so prepare for some grammar errors lmao). So two chapters make up for the wait, right? Next one is about double the length so that's why it's taken as long as it has. Anyway, I'll post it this weekend coming – or sooner if you hit me up to 440 reviews (puppy eyes). Actually, the feedback was absolutely brilliant last chapter. Thank you so much! It was a monumental chapter and one I'd been anxious about doing as to do it justice.
Another reason for the chapter delay was because I extended my stay in the UK. I was there a month and it was divine. Can't believe the elusive sun made an appearance too – up north no less! I feel like this has been the busiest year of my life so that's why the updates aren't as fast. I'm moving to a new part of China next month so there might be bit of a delay around then too. There's also the fact that this "arc" finishes in C52 and I'll need to piece together what's left of the story into a cohesive finish (the complexities of the fucker being another reason chapters take longer too). I'm actually working on C53 now so hopefully it won't be too long.
Anyway, yes. A moment of silence for the queen that was Quell. I mentioned it in a couple review replies but Quell hadn't always been destined to die. Originally, it'd been Rixas to die here but organically the plot evolved and it was sadly Quell who had to go.
Oh. So I am finally caught up on Attack on Titan and (spoilies) I FINALLY get why my Gohan is being compared to Eren. Watching it I was like "Ooooh…" and then... "Oooh... Well, this is shite."
Cheers for sticking with me to this point, and also shout out to Kags for beta-ing this chapter. She's been great. Speaking of, I've had a lot of help over this chapter and the next, especially from both her and EmeraldSaiyan!
Catch you on the next one!
(I'm going to go play Zelda now)