Number Thirty-Two
Dawn coloured the room rosy as the sun mounted the trees. Even in the hospital, bandaged and restricted, Goku had found himself appreciative of a new day, even if it meant, finally, his son and friends would go onto Namek before him.
Gohan had stayed with him that night, curled into a tight ball, fingers knotted into Goku's hospital gown. His hands had been tiny—bigger and stronger than before his training with Piccolo, yes—but still so small and so young that Goku had been mesmerized with how much power they held. He'd rolled the chubby fingers between his own coarse ones, contemplative over his decision to allow Gohan to journey into space.
God, they'd been so, so small.
How now he wishes he'd forced him to stay.
"I won't let you down, Dad."
It'd startled Goku to see Gohan there, awake, and so intensely focused on Goku that perhaps nobody else could have existed during sunrise. He'd sensed Goku's reassessment. Gohan was always smart like that.
Goku'd squeezed those fingers.
"You would never let me down," he replies, still weighed down by morning grogginess.
Gohan however was not groggy. He'd been ready for his next adventure.
"I won't let Mr. Piccolo down, either."
In the moment, Goku had been so proud.
He hadn't even realized that, in the light of dawn, he'd just allowed everything to go to ruin.
Chapter Nineteen
The Palms of his Hands
The knife bounces when thrown, travelling along the floor in a tumble.
And slowly, blood oozes out from the wound. Not as much as imagined, but still, against such pale skin, the colour is stark. Goku affectionately thumbs this deep red away at the incision central of the forehead. It smears. Goku stares, really taking his son in. It's strange. To think he'd be so broken about "Thirty-Two's" death—to hurt this much—was unimaginable only a couple of days ago. Goku hadn't even known he loved him.
His son. Gohan.
The empty gaze runs ever emptier. Stroking sweat-soaked strands away, Goku takes in those dark, vacant eyes, and then he closes them with a brush of his fingers.
Now, it looks like he's sleeping.
They'll call the Earth dragon and demand to bring Gohan back, and then, when it works (because it must—they have the body!), Goku will take him home where this will never happen to him again. Goku'll protect him. He'll make sure Gohan never has to step foot onto a ship like this one again. He'll hide him away. He'll… He'll…
Goku breathes, throat hitching.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he whispers, "I could have protected you."
He hadn't the first time. Goku knows that—and he knows Gohan knew that, too—Gohan recognized that Goku had failed him all those years ago, and so hadn't wanted to give him the opportunity to repeat history. He hadn't been able to trust Goku anymore. Or anyone—Goku had ruined Gohan, and by doing so, allowed him to die today.
"I'm sorry, Gohan," he whispers.
He'll say it again when, and not if, Gohan returns back to life. Every day if he must. Yes, Goku will reprieve daily for everything his son—his perfect little boy—went through at that horrid facility, and even today for the death he didn't deserve. Gohan was…is good. Goku knows that. Gohan had spared him at the tavern, he'd helped Bulma and then the others with saving the ship, and he'd helped everyone before all that with everything he did on Earth and Namek.
The wish will work.
It will.
It has to.
God, Goku needs it to work this time. Please.
By now, Goku's taken Gohan's hand into his own and is desperately rubbing warmth into ice-cold fingers. They're no longer tiny and fragile like Goku remembers. They're abrasive to the touch, like his own, with long, spindly fingers that remind Goku of Chi-Chi's piano playing hands. He pulls them up and rests his cheek against them and then his forehead when he bows against them. He mourns. Not necessarily just for the death, but also for the person Gohan has suffered to become.
"Kakarot…" Vegeta says slowly from the door. Piccolo and Vegeta had allowed him some privacy back in the reception area, where Goku had carried Gohan to himself, in his arms as opposed to over his back like last time. He'd laid him out on the floor.
"What?" Goku asks, throat tight.
"The dragon balls aren't here," he says, carefully, his tone unusually non-hostile.
He's insinuating that Gohan was tortured to a point that he did in fact hand them over. Goku strokes his son's hair back just the once, a wry smile present. There's no way he would have given them up. Unfortunately, Gohan has this awful, unmatched pain tolerance that comes from years of endurance—and after wanting the dragon balls for so long? Goku can't imagine he just passed them along, torture or not.
"There's a shock plate back there," Vegeta neutrally adds.
Goku remains silent.
"And other appliances."
"I get it."
"If Cooler has the dragon balls—."
"I get it."
"Then we need to—."
"To what, Vegeta?" he bites out, holding the hand of his dead child between his own shaking pair. "They don't work without Gohan and I'm not doing anything else until we summon the Earth's dragon."
Vegeta doesn't reply, which is unlike him.
"Just say what you wanna' say."
"And if calling the dragon doesn't work?"
Goku takes a deep breath. "It will," he says on the release.
Vegeta leaves him alone thereafter, and Goku sits with Gohan, imaging that hand in his own growing warmer—imaging Gohan waking up and dealing with Goku berating him for misleading them for as long as he did. Finally, Goku found his son and he'd never known in an awful, evil twist of fate until it was too late. There's a sense of finality to this moment—as though everything had been leading up to this, up to Goku holding the cold dead body of the sole purpose of his existence.
His shoulders shake and his jaw aches with the foreign sensation Goku barely recognizes. He touches his cheek and sure enough, it's wet. There have been very few times Goku has cried throughout his life. Self-pity isn't something he likes to wallow in for long, and whilst he has become discouraged many, many a time about Gohan's disappearance, he has never let it swallow him up. That's counterproductive. That would have just taken away from finding him. A bad use of his time.
But now, with Gohan in his arms, it all feels so anticlimactic.
It feels like it's the end.
Goku chokes on his fear, still holding his son's hands. They don't feel like ice anymore. Goku has given them his warmth—the only thing he was able to give him.
"Gohan," he mangles, "I'm here."
He wills himself not to succumb to despair, to regain faith, to believe, as that is what led him to Gohan in the first place. Wiping damp cheeks, he forces a smile.
"I know it's been a long time, but I'm here now."
It's hard to leave the body but Goku does. It's placed in the fetal position on the couch, so it looks like he's just having a nice, quick rest. The plan is to contact Dr. Briefs and have them use one of the Earth's dragon's wishes to restore Gohan back to life, but for now, he needs to regroup with Piccolo and Vegeta.
Upon re-entering, he immediately notices Piccolo, who seems to be in a world of his own, staring up at the metal on which Gohan died upon. He looks haunted. Lost like Goku.
Around, the torture devices are grotesque and plentiful, layered over one another against the wall and smeared in blood that mustn't just belong to Gohan; although that's not say they didn't take their fair share from him. Where Gohan had been hung, leans over a pooled shadow of red, and in it, pin-prick sharp blades lay scattered, along with several of those knives indistinguishable from the one Goku had drawn from Gohan's forehead.
"The boy tolerated a lot," Vegeta says on the approach, almost considerately, "You should be proud."
Goku isn't—not of that, at least, not of the insinuation of strength in the face of torture. He shares a look with Piccolo, who looks similarly disturbed at this praise. If anything, Goku is horrified for what Gohan has suffered through. Similarly, he would have been horrified even if "Thirty-Two" hadn't turned out to be Gohan.
He watches Vegeta pick through the instruments of torture without so much a hint of revulsion, remembering, in that moment, Pyrak's casual mentioning of the "Pit" and how normal it was to suffer such conditions. How Vegeta and Gohan hadn't so much as blinked upon discovering the bodies at the crèche. How easily Gohan murdered Krillin.
How, even after everything, Vegeta adheres to the toxic values of the Frost Empire. Yes, Gohan tolerated his torture, but Goku isn't proud—he's sickened. This is evil. Unacceptable. Stuff like this shouldn't happen—and not to kind, good-hearted people like his son!
Goku kicks the instruments away, breathing hard.
He thinks of Gohan, more specifically, of Gohan's body which is curled in eternal sleep. He thinks of how pale it'd looked. How tired.
He'd gone through so much.
"There's nothing left for us here, Son," Piccolo says, "We should go."
It's true. The Namekian dragon balls are long gone. Perhaps, in the end, Gohan really did hand them over—maybe, he'd been too tired, and so, so sick of everything he's gone through.
Hadn't they said Gohan had tried killing himself—many a time?
Goku thinks back to the morning of his son's departure to Namek, to the bright, burning ambition in his son's eyes—his eagerness—and compares it to the listlessness he'd think of when watching "Thirty-Two".
In a way, Gohan had succeeded.
"The ship was attacked," Vegeta points out, "There's a chance the balls were intercepted."
"They might be in the upper levels," Piccolo responds.
Vegeta hums. "Unless the thieves escaped with a lifeship."
Goku looks up at Gohan's cross, at where his hands were once pierced to its metal. Crisp, dried blood lines the sharp edges. God, there's so much blood. How could one body hold this much?
"How would they even know what they were stealing," Piccolo then points out.
"I've already told you what I thought. Ytvl!"
"And he organized for the Youth Program to be attacked when he was dead centre in the middle of it, hmn?"
"I didn't say he was smart!"
"You're not thinking this through."
"It's the only option which makes sense. Who else knows about the balls?"
"Lya and whoever she chose to tell. Why are you so quick to blame Ytvl?"
"Because he was obviously still serving Cooler! Kakarot, I know you did not trust him. Knock some sense into this fool and tell him that—."
Piccolo scoffs. "You thought Gohan was serving Hailer."
There's a pause, and even though Goku isn't looking at them, he can imagine Vegeta's expression a fine replica of a tight, tart lemon. The fact he contained himself is a testament to his own growth of character—but it's insufficient, because even though Vegeta didn't say what he wanted to, the fact he thought it was enough.
"Gohan did not work for Hailer," Goku snaps, still staring up at the cross.
"Kak—."
"Don't," Piccolo says.
Vegeta doesn't.
"Let's check the upper levels," ultimately, Piccolo continues, "Being here is obvi—."
He pauses.
"What is it?" Vegeta eventually asks as the silence lingers. "Did you hear something?"
"No…" Piccolo doesn't sound so sure, conversely. "It's not that… I just… did you feel…?"
"Feel what?"
"I'm not sure."
"Let's return to our ship first," Goku suggests, and by suggests, he means orders, because Shenron needs to be called as soon as possible. "We'll figure out the Namekian dragon balls when Gohan is back and can tell us what happened."
Vegeta makes a hissing noise with his teeth—as though he hadn't just demanded for the dragon to be called for Bulma. His qualm isn't about that, however. "Let's say the dragon balls work and we manage to bring him back, then what? Do you think he'll just miraculously cooperate with us? Gohan is Thirty-Two. He knew about everything and still kept his trap shut. Kakarot, the boy is Frost Empire. Regardless of his connection to you, he is not trustworthy. He obviously wanted the balls for a reason."
"You're being hateful," Goku returns, resting his hand along the metal.
"I'm being realistic."
Piccolo snarls. "Vegeta. Hold your tongue."
"You both need to remember what we're dealing with here."
"Not everyone is the enemy."
"Out here, yes, they are. You—."
The voices grow distant, and Goku focuses on the rusted melted beneath his glove. He thinks of holding his son's hands just moments before, he thinks of the caked blood and filth, and he thinks of the wounds he saw on… Hold up, wounds?
Wait.
Goku looks up at the crisped blood and then down at the pools. His own boots are submerged.
Looking back to the reception, he envisions the body he'd positioned on the couch; it'd been grim, sure, but not so fatally wounded that it would disgorge this much blood. The hands he'd held had not even the faintest markings of being punctured.
"What is it, Goku?"
His heart is in his throat, and for whatever natural reason, his legs carry him back towards the reception. Piccolo had just felt something—something that nobody else could feel. When he throws open the door, Goku faces exactly what he suspected to see.
Nothing.
The couch is empty.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"Disgraced."
Thirty-Two's mind races with a thousand thoughts, each one competing for attention in the cacophony of his spiralling thoughts. What if he falls ever deeper into the black unknown? What if he can't regain himself? Fear grips his heart like a vice, squeezing out rationality as he teeters on the edge of the abyss.
Every empty sound of nothingness is amplified, every sensation heightened to a painful degree. The void becomes a blur of silence and motion, a relentless assault on his senses that threatens to overwhelm his fragile grasp on that voice that breaks through the in-between of nothing and everything.
"You are unworthy."
Desperately, Thirty-Two tries to focus, to find some semblance of stability in the frenzy of his mind. He closes his eyes, willing himself to find inner calm amidst the storm. Slowly, the spinning begins to subside, the tumultuous whirlwind gradually giving way to dull, throbbing ache.
"MORTAL."
Thirty-Two wakes with a start.
His head pounds, and immediately he reaches up to the source of his headache—the blood smeared point where Thirty-Two remembers being fatally knifed by his torturer. There is little more than freshly healed skin under a thin layer of grime—unsurprising, all things considered.
He sighs, sitting up, slow.
Reviving is a dizzying process, after all.
One by one, he flexes his fingers. They bend in languid formation. There is a hoarse gasp when he takes in his first purposeful breath, and then his lungs do that god-awful thing where they expel excess fluid taken on from the internal bleeding of a beating. He swivels and spits out a blob of deep red from over the other side of the couch, rasping.
Disgusting.
He wipes his mouth.
Okay.
It's time to assess his situation.
Imbedded blades usually mean a longer revival procedure as the blade must be removed from vital organs, such as the brain or heart, for Thirty-Two's body to heal. Which means…
He's not alone.
Thirty-Two stands—wobbles—to attention upon hearing voices.
Arguing?
"You're being hateful," Thirty-Two hears from the next room over. He stalks closer in clumsy stumble and peaks through the gap between the door and doorframe. There are three figures in the nearby distance.
"I'm being realistic."
"Vegeta. Hold your tongue."
Thirty-Two quickly flattens himself against the wall and away from the door. How the hell did they manage to track him?
"You both need to remember what we're dealing with here."
Thirty-Two dares a single last glance, his gaze settling on Goku in particular, who seems as disinterested in the argument as Thirty-Two is. He's staring up at the Executioner's Cross. Is it the one Thirty-Two had been attached to? By the way he's examining it; Thirty-Two would bet money that it is, and that Goku had been the one to plunge the knife from out of Thirty-Two's skull upon finding him dangling up there.
How was it for him, Thirty-Two wonders, to have found his son dead after all these years?
Will he now give up?
Can he just… leave Thirty-Two alone?
He rests his head against the wall, willing himself the energy to move.
Thirty-Two has a wish to make, after all.
By the time they've burst into the reception, Thirty-Two is already a floor up and accessing the lifeship port.
Thirty-Two realized he was immortal the seventh time he put himself in the hospital.
The suicidal immortal.
The irony hadn't been lost on him, and in his hospital bed, he'd laughed and laughed—he'd laughed until he'd cried, until he'd pooled his thoughts desperately over how to escape such a fucking evil curse. It'd been difficult to rally hazy memories. To recall what happened to make him this way. How could he be expected to piece it all together when the Program's ambition had been to beat out all sense of his previous distinctiveness? It's not that Thirty-Two had wanted to return to who he'd been once before—he'd simply wanted to understand so he could finally free himself of this retched place and cause no more evil than he already had.
He'd soon connected the bizarre reoccurring nightmares he suffers to his curse, the awful ones where he'd be donned unworthy or disgraceful, or other degrading adjectives. Sometimes, the language would be foreign but Thirty-Two was sure the sentiment was the same. The voice would be deep, protruding and so haunting that it would follow Thirty-Two throughout the next day, reminding him of his sinful existence. He'd be sick or find himself unable to eat, or simply, he would further try to see himself out of this life. At one stage, he used to think it was simply his conscience punishing him for all the murder he'd committed in his fledgling albeit gory career, but as the years went by, Thirty-Two found the presence in his mind alien.
Whatever or whoever it is who plagues Thirty-Two with these dissociative episodes does so especially on the days Thirty-Two revives. In the black, he would hang in the in-between, listening about how finite he is. His mortality. His wretched unworthiness. If not careful, a cycle could be created.
Thirty-Two believes it is down to his connection with Namek. After all, Namekians find him as repugnant as the voice inside his head does. They sense the evil, rotting truth to his nature, and even their dragon balls react—although, Thirty-Two hadn't suspected them to spark to life for him—which further demonstrates his correctly followed suspicion. For a long time, he'd wanted to visit Namek and find the dragon balls—to make his wish. That'd been the one memory he'd held onto. In the end, everything connected back to Namek, and so, he always knew it would come down to finding it, then the dragon balls.
Then, he'd make his wish.
Now sat alone in his spacepod, he dares freeing the dragon balls from their hiding place. Absently, as he flies, he notices the Capsule Corp. ship embedded into the gut of the mothership he'd just evacuated, and wonders if the group has yet figured out the truth of the dragon balls. Better yet, he wonders how they found him in the first place.
As the concerns run through his mind, he reaches into the cabinet above, pulling down the safety kit. All spacepods have them, as they do multi-tools. On this one provided, of course, is attached is a knife, and with it, he traces the precise setting of his stomach.
Thirty-Two has only one suspect of who could have handed over his location—but that would not make any sense, as it'd been him to hand Thirty-Two over to those torturous Lord Cooler serving fuckers in the first place. The knife neatly incisions into skin the moment Thirty-Two derides the name.
Ytvl.
He hisses through the pain, and then digs his fingers into wet flesh. Finding the capsule in his stomach is a deeply uncomfortable process, and relief finds him when, ultimately, the smooth touch of something foreign slots between his fingertips. He frees the capsule and places his hand over his wound so not to bleed more than necessary. It'll heal itself soon enough.
Thirty-Two inspects the capsule, breaths shallow but relieved.
Seven dragon balls hide within.
Tiredly, he smirks.
Ytvl hadn't been able to get them, had he?
"Deploy sleeping gas," Thirty-Two croakily orders the spacepod, tucking the capsule under the firm spandex aside his collar bone. He'll sleep this whole ordeal off, and when he wakes up, he can pretend that this entire excursion never happened.
The familiar hiss of expelling gas settles him only somewhat. Despite urging himself to forget about everything, he can't help but be reminded of his actions by the sleeping gas itself, about how, on the last night aboard the ship, he'd managed to dose everyone into a long, fretless sleep with gas stolen from the facility. It's strange. He feels uneasy about what he did. Worse than he has for a long time—is it guilt? It'd been the only way to successfully accumulate the dragon balls, however. If Thirty-Two hadn't gassed them through the sprinklers then he wouldn't have been able to rummage about their private rooms undisturbed. Because of this, he'd been able to find all seven dragon balls over the stretched out evening—at the cost of his own sleep, and at the cost of nearly being caught in the early morning by Goku.
Goku's dragon ball had been the hardest to find. It'd also been the last. Thirty-Two remembers sitting in the dark, laughing without amusement after plying up the floor to find the four-star hidden in a graveled out compartment. How similar they are…
Thirty-Two had carefully realigned the floor, dressing it so it appeared completely undisturbed, as nearby, Goku slept, snoring softly on his side. The others had been sleeping at a further distance from their dragon balls. Most were tucked away in wardrobes or under clothes atop the desks, as though fabric was ever going to dissuade Thirty-Two's sticky fingers.
Yes, the four-star had required Thirty-Two to act very, very quietly, and it'd been with utmost relief that he'd deposited it into the capsule he'd also stolen. At that point, he could have left.
He hadn't.
Embarrassingly, Thirty-Two had sat there in the shadows, on the floor, back against the bedframe, knees to chin, listening to Goku snore. Time had drawn on and Thirty-Two had found himself cemented even though common sense had dictated him to move. But he couldn't. His body would not.
He mumbles in his sleep—Goku, that is. Most of all, he likes to mutter the names of people, and Thirty-Two had sat and waited, knowing what to expect, and still, he'd tortured himself as he listened to Goku repeat over and over Thirty-Two's dead name with more urgency each time he'd said it.
At one point, Thirty-Two became concerned that Goku would wake. He hadn't, but it'd been close when dreaming something most feverishly, and he'd thrown up an arm in sleep, turning Thirty-Two to stone as a result. Only then, the sprinklers had quenched the room with yet more sleeping gas and Goku had dropped the arm, the hand flopping over the side of the bed and hitting Thirty-Two hard across the shoulder.
Thirty-Two had taken a deep breath through his oxygen mask.
It'd been the shock to the system. He'd needed to move.
But still, he wouldn't. Couldn't.
Ludicrously, instead, Thirty-Two uncertainly reached towards the hand which struck him. He'd even removed his glove to do so. Call it curiousity, call it stupidity, but Thirty-Two had been driven by something he hadn't understood but felt that he must serve.
Experimentally, Thirty-Two had grazed the skin, reflecting as he so very rarely ever does. He'd reflected about how many times he would have held this hand as a small boy. He'd considered how, back then, he would never have appreciated the simplicity of having a father. Of being loved. Of having a family. A unit. An identity.
The last time Thirty-Two had held this hand—this exact hand he'd just wrapped his fingers around—he hadn't known he was going to become a number. He hadn't known he was going to be a soldier—a slave—and he hadn't known he was going to spend so much of his life hating what the Youth Program warped him into. He hadn't known he would become evil.
There, in the dark…
It'd been so warm.
He'd sat, momentarily drunk on nostalgia of memories he could and can no longer recall. In another world, Thirty-Two would have been an incredibly fortunate son, with a father who cared and loved him and who was so wholly good that growing up with him would bring wondrous experiences. At the facility, he'd read about family values, and he'd read about the bond between children and their parents, and love. He'd read about that, too. Thirty-Two had dared to believe he may have been loved once before, and with the potential to be happy should he never have been taken for the Program. No, he wouldn't have been a serial-murderer and instead would have had a name and a home, and, most importantly to him in this strange twist of events, he would have had a father. His father.
Father.
Dad.
He'd looked at the hand again, the one belonging to a kind and good man.
It'd been at this point, that finally, Thirty-Two had admitted to himself how much he really liked Goku.
And then, he'd let go.
And left.
And died.
Now alive once more, Thirty-Two looks down at his hand in its once again gloveless state. It's bloodstained and blue-tinted from the cold. Even as he grows drowsy from the sleeping gas, Thirty-Two's mind never tires; barreling images over and over of his time aboard the Capsule Corp. ship he'd now just deserted, along with the people who inhabited it, some of who are dead.
Bulma.
She'd died unknowing of her fate.
Eyelids heavy, Thirty-Two feels his chest ache for some reason.
"Tomorrow," she'd urged him to promise, not knowing that to be her final day.
Good people never survive the Frost Empire—it's not fair.
For as much as he'd tried to be good, he'd always survived. Because he's cursed. Or perhaps it's because he's so bad that he doesn't deserve anything less.
Sleep slowly starts to take him.
When will it be his turn?
His head dips.
When will his wish come true?
To die.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
This chapter has been brought to you by Covid19. To be fair, it's not been entirely horrific because I actually managed to rest (I have mild symptoms now so don't worry!). I'm back to work tomorrow so I thought I'd get this out before I return to the grind! This time, I don't leave you on as much as cliffhanger. Well, I mean, I do, but not as much as the last two! I'm so impressed with a couple of readers for accurately guessing Gohan's "condition". I have sprinkled a few little hints here and there throughout the story, but to have guessed it-bravo! All things considered, it's a very sad state for Gohan to be in, and in tackling such themes, I've wanted to be careful not to sensationalize his suicidal tendencies or make a cliché out of the story line. Gohan is a functioning and intelligent (and well-humoured, tbf) person, but he is horrifically depressed. A complaint from the writer (me) is that Gohan can be really hard to write because whilst he has a lot of emotions going on, he is stoic. He tries to overlook them or bury them but at the same time he is very self-aware, and he punishes himself for simply having feelings. He lives an exhausting life. Poor guy.
Big thanks to all the support. We're getting closer and closer to the end :)
P.S
I'm tired so pls forgive typos. thx