Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Dragonscales ❯ Hero ( Chapter 11 )

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

 

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

***

 

A boy died yesterday because of you. What is your defense?

 

I…I'm sorry. Goku was dreaming, but in the afterlife, dreams were pretty much the same as reality. Incorporeal and abstract, but truth nonetheless. There was no falsehood in the spirit realm.

 

He was genuinely sorry. He had never been anything other than genuine anyway. He wondered fleetingly if he could present that as a tidbit of defense. The thought was quickly swept away by the inflexible knowledge that the voice speaking to him saw through excuses as through polished glass. Somehow he had always known that there was a voice greater than Enma Daio's, issuing into the hearts of man from some place in eternity. When it had begun speaking to him in his dreams, he had realized this farcical `heaven' where his soul dwelled now was in many ways merely another plane of mortality.

 

The voice seemed to be waiting for him to say something.

 

He took a breath (proverbially) and began. I wish I could go back and change things. Be a better husband and father…I didn't know he'd sink so far down, enough to take his own life… He broke off, intensely perturbed by the reality of it. My son…

 

A measureless moment passed. But I thought I chose the best way to save him…and everyone. By dying in his place, he finished hollowly.

 

You died a hero's death. Your motives were indeed pure, the voice acknowledged. But…?

 

Goku sighed. I thought sacrificing my life was enough.

 

A lengthy pause, allowing him just enough time to realize what he should have realized back when the dragon had approached him in the aftermath of the Cell Games, its vast, unfathomable mind brushing his limited sphere of consciousness for a brief moment.

 

He had turned it down with the reasoning that his permanent death would solve the incessant invasion problem that had plagued Earth and its six billion residents since his birth. It was the `hero' thing to do. Heroes sacrificed themselves for others, and the greatest sacrifice he could have made was his own life.

 

But now you know that there is a greater sacrifice.

 

Goku nodded, not trusting himself to speak under the weight steadily pressing upon his spirit.

 

Six billion in exchange for one.

 

Silence.

 

Was it worth it?