Chapter Three



He twisted in tumultuous darkness.

Grey fingers tore at him, grasping at his limbs, spinning him wildly. Thick billows of clouds swallowed him whole, then spat him out into great forests of lightning. It tore through him, lighting his skin and hair with sparks of electricity, coursing through his veins like fire-blood. He didn't fight it. He didn't want to. He let it grip him, let it toss and roll him in its angry gullet, letting it eat of him.

He cried aloud in suffering, as the spears of the storm pierced him, wrenching him through truculent winds. He was trapped within himself, voices screaming in his mind, rising, falling, the storm an echo of his raging emotions. Banshees wailed to either side of him, shrieking their nonsensical curses into empty ears, fantasies of his own fabrication. Tongues in vociferation spat at him, blamed him, accused him. He was lost within the voices of his mind, assailed by the hysteria and violence of his inner-self. Memories, unbidden, cried their blueprints, beckoned his recognition. His father's voice, shouting from beyond the grave, rose among the crescendos.

"I don't know where you got it into your head that there's something wrong with you, 'cause there's not!"

Tossed within the storm, he felt himself falling; his arms splayed as if he knew the clouds would catch him. /Oh, dad, how I wish I could believe you./

The wind tore him up and spun him savagely into darkness.

"You've saved my life and our friends lives so many times!"

/Not true./ His own voice, as weak and as quiet as a sparrow's breath spoke from within the turmoil that was his consciousness. /Only Vegeta's, and only once./

"I'm so proud of you, son."

He struggled against the insubstantial fingers that gripped him with brutal strength. /Lies!/ his mind cried. /If you were so proud of me why didn't you come home? Why did you want to stay dead? That you were afraid that you were causing all the trouble was just an excuse! You were disgusted with me, weren't you? With what I did, what I felt. Did I really offend you that much?/

The storm ruptured with a massive discharge of lightning. His eardrums almost bursting with the force of being inside the thunder, the thick, bilious clouds convulsing and twisting, lifting him and throwing him into the upheaval of primal skies.

"Take care of your mother for me."

He was blind and falling. The wails grew to fever-pitch, bursting, cleaving his brain into segments. /I always have!/ The strengthening voice of himself shouted from within. /You never gave me much of a choice. Someone had to care for her, and you were never there!/ Through sightless eyes images swum, of the time he was taken by Garlic Junior and the monster had attacked his mother. His father hadn't been there then. And he'd been too young to know how to defend her.

"I love you, son."

The storm whispered to him, mockingly repeating his father's untruths.

/Yeah, right./ His laugh was torn from his mouth before his pained ears were even aware of it. /What a laugh. My mind must be playing tricks on me - you've never said you loved me. Not that I can remember./ Incorporeal hands grasped for him, and missed. /If you truly loved me and mum you never would have left. We needed you, kassan still does, but you're never there. And even now that you're back, I doubt things will change./ The sky convulsed again, the clouds changing. /Mum will still be alone, and Goten without a father./ Another spear of lightning slashed through the mass of gray closest to him. The wind halted, the air chilled, the sky froze within a nebulae of spinning, swarming colours that flooded from out of the black between moments. Within the blink of an eye it had had come, and then gone. With exploding force the lightning finished its flash and the wind gripped him. /Goten. Would you have left so readily if you'd known that mum was pregnant with Goten?/

Another jolt sent him tumbling.

"Let it out, Gohan! Do it now!" The voice of his father screamed as he became vaguely aware of being thrown from the mass of clouds into grey sky pummelled with pelting frozen rain.

His mental cry tore from him, bellowing into the darkness that flooded his senses.

/DON'T YOU LOVE ME?!/

Through the sky he plummeted, the storms grip on him lost. It rushed past him, vague, senseless, just an endless flood of grey. Fathom less. Never-ending.

He was unaware of the buildings as he fell past them.

He was unaware of their windowless, dark faces.

And he was unaware when he hit.


***