That kid thoroughly creeped me out, I decided, shaking my head as I stormed through the hallways of the asylum. More and more I looked at him and saw Vegeta's face. More and more I looked at the contours of his features and knew he wasn't my child. Ask Bulma for a paternity test? And what then? Confirm everyone's unspoken suspicions that we were harboring the fucking anti-christ?
Cute.
Was this what fate had planned for me? Maybe the purpose of everything WAS for me to defeat Vegeta, to kill him. Maybe the plans of fate WERE for the entire world to die, birthing and raising the devil's son to eventually end the masquerade humans considered a life. But then, maybe a million things. Maybe there was no real fate at all and despite the probable paternal blood flowing through his veins, Trunks would grow to be considerably normal. And also, maybe I saw a lot of things I wanted to see.
Was it stupid of me to want him to be Vegeta's? Because he was cold and scary and withdrawn from everything, maybe I wanted to believe he couldn't be mine. I never wanted to see a son come after me that felt as detached and isolated from the world as I was. But perhaps, he was more a son of mine than even Gohan was. Gohan embraced a human half that Trunks hardly seemed to even possess.
And THEN--as if there weren't enough trying questions to expand my brain--what if I just wanted him to be Vegeta's because it was something that he could have left to the world? A last remnant of proof that he existed, that everything between us wasn't just a dream and that once upon a time.... a devil fell in love with me.
Bulma's parenting was a charade of constant stupidity. I loved the woman, but it was the truth. She could turn her head from a thousand monstrosities the little bastard threw at her yet she couldn't deny there was something seriously wrong with him. But would she do anything about it? Absolutely not. In her never-ending quest to completely alienate her own parenting from her father's, she refused to punish the child in ANY way. Trunks' terrorizing antics were never scolded and his abuse of animals was written off as something our generation could never comprehend.
I was never allowed to spank or scold or even question anything the boy did and in this, he became the foreboding creature that haunted the halls of capsule corp, constantly astounding everyone with new ways to make blood run cold.
I found myself staring at thick plexi-glass, criss-crossed, as I gazed at the naked back of Gohan. The presence of the familiar doctor came next to me, the film of his glasses reflecting light. His mustache twitched, the crows feet of his eyes expanding when he looked at me, looking back just as quickly when he shrugged.
"Same as always," He said simply, making me like him as I always had. Dr. Crasling had never been your stereotypical, soap-opera doctor; always bending the rules and saying the things a doctor ought not to say. His bluntness earned him respect as it always came with the best intentions and always with honesty that most physician's ultimately lacked. When no other doctor would say that Gohan would probably never recover, the warmth of Dr. Crasling's hand had come over my shoulders, the reflection of my tears in his glasses as he told me that honestly, my son's mind had come crashing down.
Dr. Crasling had also been one of the only people I'd ever told the whole story of Sin to, one of the few that had been willing to laugh at my embarrassment when relaying certain aspects and one of the few that had encouraged me to use whatever detailing I felt necessary in spots that normally I would have felt too uncomfortable to. In some ways, Dr. Crasling was just that: a doctor. But in all the right ways, he was a mortal and in using that word, I mean that he was more than just a man and more than just a human.
"He gets anxious sometimes," he told me, running a pointer-figure over the shell of his ear, pushing back graying strands of brown hair. "Like he's beginning to understand his predicament, like he realizes his mind isn't what it ought to be."
I nodded, never looking away from the light and shadows that created my son's back, the muscles in his shoulders contorting as he bent forwards and backwards to an unheard rythm. Ten years ago, I would have been nervous, gazing at the inhuman muscles that grew and formed and became like granite beneath poreless, alien flesh. I would have become anxious, having doctors study a body that seldom moved yet expanded daily with muscles as though he were a body builder. Saiyan genes demanded powerful bodies and Gohan's puberty had provided expansion ten times the rate of a human child.
Now that the secret had long since been revealed, the doctors only marveled at the son of the savior, never questioning the obvious. What was only a 15 year old had the face and body of a human man's at a calculated 23 years of age; yet inside, still the mind of a child.
"He's never going to recover, is he." I stated rather than asked. I probably said the same thing every time I went to the asylum.
"We don't know that," Dr. Crasling replied with another shrug. "We're entirely out of our element here. Before Sin, I knew everything there was to know about mental illness. Give me a 5 minute conversation with anyone and I could have diagnosed a hundred medications for what ailed them. Now? Gohan?" He shook his head. "I'm not arrogant enough to give you any answers Goku. You've shown the world the impossible an impossible amount of times. I don't have the commodity of answers anymore."
I sat quietly for a second, thinking of how humbled the world had been. Everything we thought had been so concrete, everything that would never fail or die or stop, had. We were reminded of our frailty, of our countable years.
"We still don't even understand why he fell into this," Dr. Crasling continued. "Medical science will never understand the effects of something supernatural. How that ring possessed your son and how he came crashing down to nothing afterward? We don't know any of it. A mind sent into deep hypnosis CAN break if not handled properly and perhaps that's what occured. Gohan was sent into a hypnotic state he'll never wake up from. He was sent into the mind of his childhood self and for all we know, he exists now in a time and place that he saw the world when he was 5. Do I think there is a way to pull him up? Maybe. But do we know it as of yet? Absolutely not."
"Can I see him?" I finally asked, seeing him sigh slightly.
"For a few, then we've got to put the place to sleep you know."
I nodded, hearing the metal grind against itself as the door was automatically opened, Dr. Crasling giving a slight nod of his head before leaving us. I swallowed, lowering my head as I walked towards the simple cot, Gohan's weight pushing the springs towards the floor. The black and white tile seemed so eerie to me suddenly, Gohan's melancholy presence catching me on-edge.
"Gohan," I addressed him, hoping against hope that he'd talk to me this time. His eyes never lingered from their position on the floor, his firm arms wrapped like iron around his stomach. His lips were frantically moving, yet saying and forming nothing, as if he were having an urgent conversation with someone yet was mute to voice the words.
I studied his face, moving probably too close as I gazed at him, sitting down on the bed beside his rocking body. He was beautiful, just as ChiChi had been beautiful and just as I was beautiful. Age had blessed Gohan, that was for sure. What had 5 years ago been a wide eyed, excitable child, was now a very dark complected, handsome young man. Perhaps he was the best of both worlds, handsome, in fact, undoubtedly so, yet also somewhat androgynous, his eyes gleaming and syrupy and his mouth very full and dark pigmented.
Yet despite the beauty and beneath the soft, powerful skin, was sickness. Gohan's eyes were permanently blood-shot, to the point where he could take people off guard, as though the lids of his eyes appeared to be bleeding. Blackness and burgundy stretched low beneath the shades of his lashes and jagged needle marks etched over the tender skin of his forearms, kisses of syringes stealing beauty.
Against what my better judgement told me, I reached out to him, touching a finger over the sharp contour of his cheek, tracing it down. His skin was like velvet marble, very smooth to the touch yet rock hard to penetrate, a hundred times the thickness of a human's. His eyes slowly lifted to mine, registering another person in his vicinity yet probably having no real idea who I was.
"Gohan," I breathed it again, connecting eyes with him. "I am so sorry."
I'd probably told him that a million times and a million times he'd probably forgotten it. Yet perhaps in my own selfishness, I needed to say it again. Yes, it made me feel better to say it and it was more for me than it was even for him.
"I was bad to you and mommy." I spoke softly. "I was a bad bad man."
His features contorted into confusion, his dark eyes regarding me with distrust. I was afraid suddenly that in this small moment of understanding, he might be triggered into another one of his fits of rage, the traumatizing aspects of the last one not so easily forgotten.
"No." He said suddenly, catching me off guard. "You're a hero. You're always a hero."
He slowly lifted a hand to cup my face, the flesh of his palm cold against my cheek.
"Never a bad man." He whispered.
I lowered my head, resting it against his palm. I sighed into the intimacy he was showing me, not having had anything even resembling this moment in a very long time. I found I missed real contact, moments with Bulma that of a stereotypical man and wife. Sex seemed to be scheduled these days and seconds of real, instinctual feelings were rare if ever. Times spent in the silence of contemplation, in the seconds ticking where two people honestly felt the incentive for closeness seemed a long passed memory of my life before.
"I could have been better," I told him honestly, hoping against everything science and medicine told me that he understood. "I should have protected you and mommy better. But I was weak. I wasn't a hero Gohan."
He looked at me like I was the crazy one and I wanted to hug him for it.
"I wish you would wake up," I whispered honestly, tracing my fingers through his jet-black hair and marveling at the contrast. "I wish you could believe me when I say I'm sorry and I wish you understood why I was."
I let my head rest against his, loving the smell and feel of his body, the small traces of love for me that drifted from his aura, however misled they were.
"I love you Gohan," I told him, feeling my heart ache suddenly. "I loved you then and I love you now. I don't care who you are or why things became they way they have. I'm so proud of you. I always have been."
"I want to wake up," He said suddenly, almost cutting me off. I sat up, staring at him in shock. "I want to be real."
I stared at him, seeing the same eerie understanding in his eyes that I had before when he'd been unleashed to his rage and wreaked havoc on the hospital. Only this time, the acknowledgement of his predicament had come without the terror of what he was or where he was. He simply understood, as the doctor had said, that his mind wasn't what it should have been.
And quite quickly I was faced with the horror of something I hadn't thought of. Perhaps Gohan's indulgence in childhood wasn't even a real result of Vegeta's impact at all. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism, born from the need to see a world contradictory to the one that existed. Perhaps this delving into a child-like mind and living in a fantasy world was his own way of seeing the earth as he wanted to, rather than accepting it for what it was.
If that was true, by God, how I wished I could join him.
"Gohan," I whispered, chastely kissing his cheek. "I love you."
I stood up, my hand still cupping his cheek.
"But don't wake up."
He glanced up to me, his face suddenly concealed in shadows that crept over every contour. His eyes gleamed with an unnatural understanding, all child-like aspects wiped away like they'd never been there in the first place. In fact, every child-like facade seemed almost laughable instantly, like the very concept of this man sitting before me behaving in any manner contradictory to this was hilariously false.
I stepped back from it, hating this awful feeling that rose in my gut, the room seeming to collapse around me, like the walls (so cliche to describe them so) were caving in. Flickering fluorescent light somehow seemed shadowy and false, like some sort of dream world or drug induced vision. The horrible tiled floor crept up towards me, seeming now like waves of a very morbid ocean.
"Ok," He said in a deep voice I hadn't recalled him every using before. "Kakarot."
I blinked and with that blink, the room had returned to normal, nothing out of place. I shook my head predictably, clearing away the eerie sensations. By God, how this place could drive a person absolutely, clinically insane.
I looked down at Gohan once more, everything gone from his face. All understanding, all grasp of any sort of reality was purged from his features and he was again, a beautiful man with the mind of a five year old. It was a sour feeling, to actually breathe a sigh of relief at my son's descendance into madness once more.
I left the room before I could say another word, hating myself, hating everything.
Sometimes, I wondered if it was easier to hate the whole world than to embrace the festering sore it had become. Sometimes, I wondered if I hated the whole world because I saw what once had been as a fantastical idea that never really was at all. Wasn't I a brooding, unhappy force of nature before Sin? I swallowed hard, leaving the hospital, if it could even be considered that. Wasn't a hospital a place where people got better? Yet just being in the place made me feel sicker than when I'd come. No one left Raven Cove Asylum. No one got better and waved happily to the concrete walls when they left. It was like a nursing home, the last establishment, built to steal lifeless years.
I hated everything didn't I?
I suddenly wondered if the world even HAD been better before. Or maybe, had I just never looked at it...
Sin had forced me to grasp the concepts of good and evil and to accept that both existed. When people had so long ago called me naive and stupid and all the other words I hated, I guess I realized then, maybe I was for a good while. I had pretended for years to be so stupid and now? I felt so stupid.
I felt empty and rotten inside. I had felt like a pretentious dumbass for so long and now I looked back and loved that feeling. People always talked so terrible about movie critics and book critics and all of the awful things they said about talented people. "How do you handle the critics?" interviewers would ask the victims. But I understood suddenly, everyone has critics. The world was full of them.
To the people that called their peers fat and ugly, to the politicians that tore apart their competition. From the day a heavy set girl steps foot into a junior high, SHE understands more so than ANY writer or movie star, what a critic really is. And me? I was the hardest critic in my life. I hated who I was because I was the only person who DID know who I was.
To the world? Oh lord, I was the conquering hero with all the fucking answers to any fucking question in the whole fucking universe. To my wife, I was the father of her son and the one man in all the galaxy that she KNEW would never hit her. And that was a wonderful thing I supposed. But that really wasn't who I was.
I wasn't stupid Goku anymore and maybe I often felt the timeless need to go back to that role. Because being stupid was easier than being the man that everyone went to for answers.
As God of earth, I was bombarded with letters and prayers and this may come as something of a shock, but to me? It was terrible. To have people reaching out with questions like "where is my husband?" "Will my little brother be burning in hell for what he did?" "Did Sin make me a monster?" "If I kill myself, can I see my family again?" made me want to vomit. No fucking wonder God had long since detached himself from humans. Giving a shit about them was like selling your soul for a handful of grass.
Who was I? I guess that was a journey I was still embarking on. I wondered if I'd ever really know or if that really was just the concept of life; the few years we're giving to concrete who and what we are before we bid farewell to everyone left behind. I just knew that in every way that I had no idea who I was, I knew one thing: whoever Goku was, he missed someone very badly.
Maybe my missing Vegeta defined me. Look at me! I was constantly searching for proof that he'd come back. Constantly analyzing an insane world for little cute hints that Satan gave enough of a shit about a stupid fucking mortal that he'd broken all the rules of the universe to return. Where was he? Oh, probably back in hell, long having since forgotten the foolish mortal that he'd left behind, ruling his Godless world along side the real Vegeta and engaging in whatever amount of sexual debauchery he felt like indulging in.
And here was stupid, stupid Goku, thinking about him for the gagillionth time.
I thought suddenly of how Bulma had killed her father. I wondered what it felt like for her to reach fingers around the tubes that kept that bastard alive, yanking away plastic that stole the breath from a monster. How easily she'd done it, staring down in fascination as his bloodshot eyes darted up at her, knowing, understanding, grasping that his own daughter wanted to laugh aloud as he died. I'd just looked on in horror of it, detached from reality as I was in those days after Sin. I probably should have done something, anything really. But I didn't. I don't think even now I would have.
She killed him because her heart told her to. And to say that "following your heart" is always a good decision is quite a tainted belief. Affairs of the heart are often corrupt. But she had killed him, placing a pillow over his eyes to take the piece of shit out just that much quicker. I guess I don't really understand the ultimate betrayal that abusing a child can be. I guess anyone that hasn't lived with that sort of thing stands on the outside of a train-wreck, watching it happen over and over again with every step the person takes.
Does childhood abuse define a person?
Maybe.
But why was it that I had killed Vegeta, Bulma had killed her father, yet she was free and I wasn't? Was it because I loved Vegeta and she hated her father? Was it because I had been left with no real choice and she had willingly watched herself kill him? Maybe, it was because when Bulma had taken a life, she also restored one. Her love was directed to another person, her eyes beholding Trunks and all questions of right and wrong were silenced.
Bulma loved Trunks more than she could ever love me or anyone else for that matter. Yet me? I didn't really have anyone. I don't mean to say that and sound like a sociopathic shit. Yes, I had two sons so to speak. Yes, I had a beautiful, capable wife, hell, I'd had two. But I didn't really love either one. No, fate hated me and I hated myself enough to fuck up that little concept.
No, I guess I was forever doomed to punish myself by loving someone that could never love me back. And that was the way of the world that I hated.
I walked the empty streets, blocks from the asylum and ages from anywhere I probably should have been, catching the toe of my shoes on the cement beneath. The scrapping sounds echoed in the midst of the lonely allies that I wandered, the loneliness always my only companion. Sometimes I wondered to myself, why it felt better being alone then even with my own wife and children? Why it felt more honest and more safe then being around those who I loved?
Was it because I still maintained my old 'happy go-lucky' façade with them? Was it because I knew they needed that old familiarity, at least one normalcy in the middle of all this after-shock chaos? And why shouldn’t they want me the way I was? After dealing with the world falling down around their ankles, it was to be expected that they’d want their old hero exactly as they remembered him prior.
But it wasn’t fair and I couldn’t always keep it up. Like running a marathon every day, trying to compete with the old person I was and struggling to suppress the true me.
Oh, but didn’t the “true me” have so many connotations. Who was the true me? Did I even know on any level? Or was the warped, sadistic personification of me according to the Devil accurate? Or just a believable illusion at the time?
Maybe I wanted to believe I was all that he imagined me to be: Beautiful, powerful, intelligent. Who wouldn’t want such flatteries? And yet, try as I might, without his reinforcement, I found myself lacking in each category.
No, I was still beautiful. I realized it every time I watched myself on Television, hardly believing that I had missed out on all of its uses for so much of my lifetime. How had I missed the strong, captivating eyes, the sculpted cheekbones and full lips? I had always figured I was average until I saw myself through his eyes. Until, he essentially opened mine to who I was.
But as far as powerful and intelligent? I was beginning to doubt myself.
I missed him. You already know that but I’m inclined to elaborate on the fact. I missed him every moment, of every second, of every day. When I was with others, I longed to escape into the darkness with him. When I was alone, I could have screamed for his companionship. When I was just angry or sad or even happy; I wanted him there to share it with me.
‘Come back’, I would think illogically. ‘Bring it all back to me. Remind me who I am. Give me my life back.’
It was the worst when I would see him in the faces of others, or hear even the slightest accent in someone’s voice that reminded me of his. Because then, the loneliness and the acceptance was irrefutable. I’d have to openly acknowledge that it wasn’t him and in that, the memories would torment me.
You killed him. You destroyed his body and unleashed him to Hell. You killed him!
You killed yourself!!
“Kakarot,” I heard a whisper, my hands flying out of my pockets as I turned towards the offending title.
I stood there, arms out to my sides as I readied myself for some sort of attack. My eyes darted accusingly this way and that: still I saw nothing of the stranger who had called me by my Saiyan name. Was I going crazy? Had the loneliness finally driven me to madness?
I heard it again -directly behind me- as if a whisper spoken right against the back of my neck. I shivered, whirling to see nothingness behind me. Just old, crumpled pieces of paper scurrying across the wet ground of a narrow alley-way. Oh yeah--I was going out of my mind.
“Kakarot,” I was CERTAIN I’d heard it that time, spoken more loudly. I turned rapidly, seeing only the outline of a man standing at the very end of the alley. Shadows and mist from the gutters clouded his facial features, but I knew enough by his arrogant posture and height who it was. He regarded me calmly, his hands tucked nonchalantly into the pockets of his posh, black leather coat.
I gasped, wanting to wipe my eyes (how cliché) to be certain someone was truly there. I couldn't even breathe! Every nerve ending in my body felt like someone was pelting it with dry-ice, everything numb and trembling.
I just stared, perfectly stupefied by this turn of events. I couldn’t be crazy: yet this was impossible! I couldn’t believe my eyes and yet, there he was, wearing an amazing get-up only he could pull off so flawlessly. A hundred people had described the feelings of ultimate disbelief to me yet I'd never really accepted that it could leave you feeling like a lump of stupid quite like it did at that moment.
“Satan,” I whispered in disbelief, unable to grasp how idiotic I probably sounded. “You’re…. you’re…..alive?”
The mist cleared and I could make out only a sinister grin stretching his gorgeous face; an almost threatening smirk that made my blood run colder, if that was even possible in that moment.
“Soon.” was all he breathed, blowing a kiss before a wind whisked his appearance away.
I spent the remainder of the night wandering around and inwardly battling myself. Had I seen him? Had I not?
And if I had…. was it wrong to be so excited about it?
