“So are you going to tell me how Gohan found out?” Mirai asked, having waited for several minutes for Goten to speak. The young man had simply sat staring, legs crossed underneath him as he gnawed his lips into a dark red color. “Or is it difficult for you to tell me that part?”
“No,” Goten shook his head numbly, eyes never having left their staring spot. “That part isn’t hard to tell you. It became obvious after a while; Gohan coming to visit, noticing dad’s absence, wondering why it felt that Trunks and him were sparring at all hours of the day. It came to the point where I would make excuses for them, claiming that Trunks had asked Goku to train him (like Vegeta couldn’t do it). But it wasn’t exactly like Trunk’s promiscuous, homosexual reputation was much of a secret, even from my reclusive brother and eventually….”
He turned away.
“I’ve never seen him look that way; when I finally told him. It’s like he just stood there blankly for about five minutes, ignoring as I pounded out excuses, reasons, justifications. ‘Dad needed it, Dad was just as much to blame’. I even jumped to the conclusion that it was a ‘Saiyan thing that we didn’t understand completely’. Gohan just seemed appalled by me. I didn’t realize that in his silence, Gohan was putting two and two together; realizing very gradually why it was that even on the day of my mother’s funeral, the two had “sparred” in the cemetery. I think ‘horrified’ is the best way to explain his reaction.”
Goten got to his feet slowly, clumsily walking away from Mirai and staring off into the distance.
“When my dad came home, I thought it was going to be war of the worlds. That’s how terrifying it was. If dad hadn’t been so passive, I swear, Gohan might have….” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I didn’t even think my brother knew words like the ones he said. He couldn’t even form sentences, screaming incoherently as he trashed our house, burning to cinders my mother’s belongings.”
The last words were choked and Mirai cursed himself, realizing that Goten was on the verge of tears, relaying this.
“He was screaming so loud, he didn’t even realize when he had powered up into super Saiyan, crying like a child when he threw my mother’s clothes into the bathtub and lit them on fire. All I could hear him say was that he couldn’t believe my dad was capable of such a travesty. That he couldn’t believe dad could ever have claimed to love my mother. ‘This is what your love amounts to’ he had bawled, shattering my father’s wedding ring until it was powder in his fist. ‘This is what she means to you in the end.’ I thought I was crying blood from the pain I was enduring.”
“Goten,” Mirai breathed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-.”
“ ‘You might as well have killed her’ Gohan screamed to my dad,” Goten continued, ignoring Mirai. “ ‘You should have just burned her heart to ashes as she lay dying. You think she doesn’t see what you’ve been doing? You think you haven’t killed her again? You killed her with her love!’ I think my dad’s silence infuriated Gohan more. I don’t know what he had expected: tears, admittance, apologies? Gohan ranted and raved, some of his accusations perfectly absurd, though others, I am horrified to say, I almost could agree with.
“ ‘You left her!’ He kept crying. ‘You left her a thousand times, abandoning her and me, not even knowing that you had Goten until you came back from a death you ALLOWED yourself to go to. Were we that terrible dad?’ He sobbed. ‘Were we that awful that you couldn’t have stayed? Was I that much of a failure as your son?’ My dad had stood up at that part, the first bit of compassion touching his eyes.
“ ‘Gohan,’ he had said softly. ‘you’re going too far.’
“ ‘Was she that terrible of a wife that you would spit on her grave like this?’ Gohan screamed, scaring me, as for the first time, I saw traces of madness in his eyes. He was losing it and fast, his voice hoarse with rage. ‘Was she so undeserving that you would FUCK ON HER GRAVE?!’
“My dad had stepped forward, anger contorting his features. I almost feared for the safety of our house, preparing, thinking that any minute the two would virtually disintegrate the place. Gohan had thrown my father down, the tiled of the kitchen crackling with the force. His eyes burned with so much hatred, so much pain; so many things he’d held onto for so long that had been pent up for years.
“ ‘If you stand up again,’ He said in the most fearsome voice I’ve ever heard. ‘God save me, I will fucking demolish you!’ And for the first time, I really, sincerely believed my brother could. My father looked so young, staring at Gohan like a scared teenager. I think in that moment, by the way their age was hidden so well by Saiyan genes, Gohan appeared to be much older than my father. He seemed to be the angry, overpowering adult and my dad the horrified victim of child abuse or something. If I hadn’t been so terrified, I might have felt sorry for him.
“After that, Gohan had turned to me, almost looking satanic in his irate, sporadic behavior. It was then I knew. He was going after Trunks and God so help me, I didn’t figure my old flame would survive it. Little did I know, he was expecting it: inviting it.”
“What do you mean?” Mirai asked, stepping forward. “You think that was Trunk’s plan all along? To get Gohan as well?”
“I don’t think even the devil himself could have planned it out so perfectly.” Goten sighed, sitting down again and righting himself. “He had figured on Gohan’s intelligence, knowing eventually he would find out. Trunks had even known Gohan’s mentality would be so far off, so enraged and chaotic that all thought process would be meager at best. He preyed on the fact that my brother had quite literally lost his mind.
“I don’t know how it all went about. Only that my father and I sat quietly together on the kitchen floor for over thirty minutes, our hearts in our throats as we felt them battling it out. And it didn’t take me long to figure out why my father’s face suddenly paled and he whispered an audible ‘shit’ before covering his eyes with his palms. Gohan and Trunk’s fight had turned from a violent, deadly brawl into sadistic, earth shattering sex. And from Trunk’s pulsating energy, apparently, it was phenomenal.”