Trunks walked slowly through the deprived ghetto, feet kicking dirty old cans and slidding over wet cigarette butts. The rain tainted the writing on the paper, the blue ink running down and dripping to the soaked earth beneath. For once, Trunks' vanity was forgotten as his hair lay in limp tussles over his forehead, the polluted water stinging his eyes. Somewhere in the distance a baby cried, abandoned it seemed as its desperate calls were never answered, its shrill cries becoming faint until almost entirely drowned out by the falling rain and crackling thunder.
Lightening lit up the blackened sky, illuminating a dead body, stashed beneath an iron stairwell with only a thin leg peeping beneath what seemed to be wallpaper that covered up the tired corpse of a heroin addict. In the distance, Trunks could make out the sounds of laughter coming from the inside of a dank, old, brick building. Looking at the address on the paper, written so slobbishly by an officer, Trunks glanced up again, walking towards the sounds.
"Not enough evidence," he'd been told. "Not enough proof."
Suddenly the door opened and a drunk man stumbled out into the rain, lightening cracking above as he spotted Trunks standing there, staring at him with a wet piece of paper clutched in his shapely hands.
"What do you want?" The dark haired drunk stammered out, stumbling sideways as he walked.
Trunks could only smile, his eyes revealing a sudden madness that unnerved the drunk. Pearly white teeth reflected the lightening that struck once more in the sky, quickly followed by thunder and beautiful burgundy lips saying only one word.
"Nothing."
........................................
"Mirai, sit down." Gohan instructed, pointing towards the overturned table. Mirai lifted it into standing position, quickly pulling out an old wooden chair and taking a seat. The dark haired man, did the same, rolling up his worn sleeves and placing his elbows on the table.
"I'm going to presume this isn't a courtesy call," The young man breathed, eyes looking tired and worn from lack of sleep. Mirai could only stare in disappointment at Gohan's appearance, the fire and courage all but burnt away in his eyes. The once shining white skin now clung to thin, sunken cheeks, pale and dirty. Hair that once stood as proudly and as inappropriately as his father's now lay worn and greasy against Gohan's face that despite its cruel negligence and horrible five o'clock shadow, still retained its inherit beauty.
"Please don't look at me that way Mirai," Gohan breathed in a voice that seemed seldom used. "I know you didn't come all of this way to stare at my remains so get out with it. I don't have all day."
"Actually," Mirai cocked his head towards the mountains of books that lay everywhere. "I think you do."
"Hm," Gohan grunted with slight humor. "Touche."
He feebly raised himself from the table, walking with his back turned towards Mirai.
"You came to talk to me about Trunks, didn't you?" He asked. "You're trying to save him, to fix him."
The words were spoken with unconcealed animosity and Mirai inwardly winced at their harshness.
"I simply want to know a few things, old friend," Mirai answered. "And since I'm convinced you don't get many visitors on a regular occasion, I didn't expect you'd turn me away."
"Mirai," Gohan breathed. "you can't fix something that was never broken in the first place."
"I know that," the other answered, tracing designs nervously ontop the wooden surface of the table. "I only want to understand it all. To understand....your part in everything."
Gohan grunted in humor, thin shoulders shaking with it.
"Can't put it together can you?" He laughed with little humor. "Can't for the life of you understand how a straight, family man such as myself could do such a thing."
He took a seat once more across from Mirai, folding his hands on the table.
"You want to know the story don't you?" He asked. "You want to understand it but what you FIRST must understand and come to grips with is that Trunks never made me gay. He couldn't have. He doesn't have that sort of power."
"I understand," Mirai nodded. "One experience doesn't make you g-.."
"No." Gohan interrupted. "What you need to understand is that I was always gay."
Mirai sat back in his chair, taking in the admittance. Gohan sat patiently, watching the other man's reaction with unconcealed interest, waiting for the confession to sink in.
"That's right Mirai," He whispered. "And know that I was never in love with Trunks. I never felt anything for him, not even at the time. I fear now that if I were to ever see him again, my reaction would be precisely the one you met with only a few moments ago. Only, I can promise I would not miss if it were him."
Mirai nodded, goading Gohan to continue.
"I suppose I should tell you my story from the beginning," Gohan sighed. "I ought to tell you that I was always gay, that from a young age I realized that I had no interest in women whatsoever. I suppose my darling mother, rest her soul, played her own part in my disinterest and my beautiful father taunted it. I was constantly around attractive men, raised amongst their chiseled bodies and alluring faces. For the longest time I felt as though I might fall in love with my tutor, Piccolo, as he showed me affection that wasn't a direct result of being related to me. He was my father, my brother, my best friend and in my own capacity, my future lover. Of course, that never panned out for reasons that are of no concern to you so I'll skip them.
"I was confused for the longest time, unable to accept this growing need for attachment, for sex, for everything else that ought not to be shared between two men. And as much as I assumed I would never love anything or anyone in the same way that I loved my teacher, I was cruelly and coldly mistaken. I fell in love with someone Mirai," Gohan got to his feet. "I fell as hard as I've ever fell, for someone that I knew even at the time I could never truly have, I could never possess. Perhaps that was part of the attraction, the need to be broken and be forever miserable; a slave to the one I wanted more than anything I could think of. As a direct result of this useless, one-sided love affair, I was to make the two biggest mistakes of my life.
"My first mistake was to marry myself to Videl and the other to fall prey to Trunks."
"Then who was it?" Mirai asked, sitting forward on the table. "It doesn't make any sense. How could your affection for someone make you prey to Trunks? I'm not understanding you."
"Of course you don't," Gohan answered, turning to look at the handsome Saiyan. "But you will when I tell you the victim of my faulty infatuation."
"Who then?" Mirai pleaded. "Who?"
"Who else could hold my obsession so completely?" The dark haired man smiled. "Who else could make me prey to such a monster? Who else other than the one that resembled the monster so completely that I could fool myself purposefully into believing it was my obsession himself?"
"What are you saying?" Mirai asked. "You speak in riddles Gohan."
The dark head shook itself in frustration.
"You," He answered flatly. "I was in love with you Mirai."
Blue eyes stretched themselves to their limit as Mirai's lids flew open and he stammered so quickly to his feet that the chair beneath him was nearly embedded into a wall.
"Oh don't make a fuss of it," Gohan sighed, waving the other away. "I've long since given up on such stupidity and desperation. You could even say I've adopted Trunks' horrid beliefs on love and the uselessness of it all. But yes, I fell in love with you as surely as anyone throughout history has fallen. Before anyone else knew you, I trusted you. Before anyone else had any concept of who you truly were, I was prideful enough to believe I did. I saw your heart, Mirai," Gohan whispered. "I saw it right through your shirt and it was golden and beautiful and full of goodness."
Mirai remained quiet, uneasy as Gohan paced the room, speaking in his own riddles.
"I could have written countless poems to you, but it would have done no good." He continued. "I could have promised you stars and sunrises, yet it would all have been in vain. And so I watched you quietly, seeking a way to gain your approval, to be seen through your beauteous eyes as something worthy of admiration and even, perhaps later, adoration. But you didn't. You never did. You couldn't see me the way I wanted you to. You believed above all in goodness and in the power of physical strength. For an entire year I trained with my father, believing that if only I could be strong enough, I could stand out to you.
"You even died before I could show you my true strengths and I thought in those moments that as your heart lay in bloody pieces that mine had been shattered and blown from my body as well. It was the loss of you that made me fight so hard, though others would believe differently. No, I loved you more than I even loved my own father, as atrocious as that may strike some. And when I won, people believed it was my father's strength that spurned me on. But it wasn't. It was the strength of my rage and the power of my loss that drove me to demolish the monster that had cost me, what seemed at the time to be, everything.
"And yet, even when you were brought back to me, as healthy as the day I'd first met you, you said nothing but dull, droned out praise that might have been set aside for anyone. My father chose to leave and yet I didn't mourn his loss as much as the day I realized you would leave, go back to your time and would probably think nothing of me. I think every version of me must have fallen in love with you Mirai. I even imagine that the Gohan of your time could not have spent so many hours gazing into your eyes and not be filled with an ethereal wonderment.
"But you left me Mirai, and I believed I would never see you again. I drowned myself into work and books and writing to ease the feelings of betrayal that overwhelmed me. I learned to smile even when I felt that inside I was laying in multiple pieces upon the ground, watching some drone entertain and please people with my body. But everywhere I looked, I saw your face. You would stare out at me from the screen of a computer, reach with your fingertips through pages of books and in my dreams you haunted me until I truly believed I was losing my mind.
"I even married the first person who showed any interest for just that reason. Because Videl seemed interested and the pain of your rejection had left me feeling as naked and insecure as I had ever felt. Was it true that no one could love me? And yet, here a young girl promised just such a thing and I was overwhelmed by it. I succumb to her as surely as I succumb to Trunks.
"Even when my daughter was born, I couldn't love her. I couldn't care for her as much as I cared for you. You think it would have faded by then but her blue eyes could only remind me of yours and so I remained cold even towards my own flesh and blood.
"Trunks could only impress me with his brashness, never control me with it. The things he would say could shock and appall yet never make me a slave towards it. I respected his open world, his absolute refusal to be tamed by human social expectancy, refusal to care about his own sexual preference. I think I even envied it, or perhaps, was embittered by it simply because if THIS Trunks was gay than, I could only reason, you must have been as well. Maybe if only I'd had Trunks' boldness, I concluded with myself, then, perhaps, I would have had the strength enough to reveal the truth to you. But that is all in the past and not to be pondered over again."
Mirai nodded solemnly, unsure what to feel at the moment. He had never for once imagined or believed such a thing. Gohan had been exactly as Gohan had described; nothing really. Mirai HAD ignored him, HAD overlooked him. In fact, had never really given him a second's thought afterwards. He'd only been a child when Mirai had known him in this time and though powerful, still, in the body of an 11 year old. How was he to know that as physically strong as Gohan was, he loved just as powerfully?
"But then how did it happen? How did you and Trunks....?"
"Ah," Gohan nodded. "I was sure I would have to answer this question and yet, now I'm uncertain as to how. I suppose the truth would be the best way yet I'm compelled to create and justify reasons. As horrible as it was to marry Videl when I never truly loved her in ANY sense of the word, the following story is much harder to confess, let alone relive.
"As I watched my mother die, it created within me a great deal of pain. For a while there, I felt as though the pain of losing her would engulf the pain of losing you. In fact, I think it did. I would watch her, the skin barely clinging to her feeble bones and I would feel as though the outward rotten, festering result of sickness that she displayed was what I, on a regular basis, felt on the inside. She was the portrayal of my inward pain and when she died, it was though, if I perhaps didn't look at her any longer, maybe I could forget the maggot infested sores that littered my subconscious. It didn't work of course, but it numbed the pain until it could be replaced by a different emotion.
"And soon enough it was as Goten, goaded on by my animosity, revealed to me that my own father had betrayed my mother with Trunks. It is selfish of me to feel, but I honestly felt as though he had betrayed me, caring nothing for MY pain in losing her. I should have known and maybe I had in my own way, but when it was all revealed to me, anger replaced all sadness and completely consumed me.
"I thought for sure that I would kill my father. In fact, I wanted to and had he moved in any which direction, I might have; all the pain, all the sadness burnt and disintegrated by my rage. I hardly even remember flying towards Trunks and I don't even recall if there were words that passed between us before I began hammering away at his beautiful face that was yours and that had betrayed me. There was hardly a distinction between you, as he was the age then that you were when I had met you for the first time, and I didn't know which one of you I hated more.
"Only after some time did he begin fighting back and though I had every intention of quite literally sending him to hell, I learned quickly, I couldn't."
"Because your goodness wouldn't let you?" Mirai asked.
"Oh no," Gohan laughed. "If I had any goodness in me at the time it was too far away to be recalled. No, I mean only that physically, Trunks is stronger."
Mirai gasped, nearly jumping up from his chair once more. How could that be? It hardly seemed logical since Gohan had undoubtedly been the strongest when he had left and the Trunks of this time seemed to have little, to no interest in gaining physical strength through training. Not only that, but Mirai was more than certain that Vegeta would have rather died than spend that much time with Trunks.
"You look as surprised as I was." Gohan continued. "It still escapes me how he could have so easily beaten me to the ground. Perhaps I was weakened by his appearance, unable to defeat or kill anything that so closely resembled you. But no. No, I don't believe it was that at all, since in my insanity and rage, I would have killed you just the same. No, Trunks is the strongest now, second only to perhaps Vegeta or my father, though neither can I be sure. He had beaten me to the ground holding me beneath him and pinning my arms to my sides. And then he said the words that sent my mind on a mental rollercoaster.
" 'Stop fighting me. And mostly, stop fighting yourself Gohan'.
"I had never thought of it that way. That all this sadness, all this anger; it wasn't towards him! It wasn't towards my father or my mother or you or anyone else. I was angry and in denial about who I was. I had fallen in love with the unattainable simply because it WAS that. Something to punish myself with, something to make me hate every fabric of my being. I was so in denial and ashamed at who I truly was that I would go to the length of marrying a heterosexual woman to hide it.
"And when Trunks kissed me...." Gohan paused, looking thoughtfully at nothing. "When Trunks kissed me it was the first and the last time I ever truly felt alive."
Mirai remained respectfully quiet, watching as Gohan's face for only a second resembled its old self, the life and light returning to his cheeks and his eyes blinking away the dullness for just a moment.
"It was as though he were God Himself, breathing life into my lungs and opening my eyes for the first time. It was almost as though when I opened them, I saw color in the world as though I'd never seen it before. Like he had painted the sky just for me. Like the flowers and trees and grass and everything about me was living and breathing because he had made them that way. Like I was this thriving, living, moving creation that had once been only a lifeless statue walking amongst the beauty of the world. And I succumb to it and I was consumed by it.
"I let him control me completely, like the hands that held my strings and made me dance for them. As much freedom as I can remember feeling, I was his slave in every sense of the word. The things he made me do, the things he made me think, the way he made me feel." Gohan shook his head. "How can that be life? How can that be the moment that I felt as though I'd just broken out of my own coffin? Yet it was. I suppose I owe him gratitude for that yet he'll never get it. No, Trunks made me live but it was a borrowed life. It was his life and I believe he gave that to me in those few moments that we spent as one person. Perhaps that's why he offers no apologies and no regrets for the life that he lives. Because I received in those moments only a taste of his life and it is as unbelievable and inconceivable as anything the world can offer you. How in any way, could he ever feel regret for that which I will envy until the very last breath I take?"