Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Perfection ❯ Chapter 14 ( Chapter 14 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

"But Krillin I'm NOT crazy!" I hollered, hating how positively cowardice that man had become, slinking around his pathetic living establishment and watching the years go by. Oh yes, by God, Krillin was good at watching. "She is ALIVE and I saw her!"


His eyes looked tired, though from what I knew, the sabbath was still in full swing.


"I saw her die myself Goku," He rubbed his palms over his eyes, looking much older than I'd ever recalled him looking. "She was dead."


I growled, marching within the tiny expanse of his home, Yamcha's gun following my movements. How ridiculous. You can imagine, I was surprised to find the human still alive, apparently incapable of kicking it when he ought to, now watching every one of my movements like I was some sort of poisonous serpent. Sensu beans had brought him back, the lesson still learned as he winced at my every step.


"The dragon then!" I snapped my fingers. "He said that it began to bring people back wrong. Maybe that's what happened. He wished her back."
Krillin just sunk his head, shaking it in dismay.


"He would never have wished her back Goku," He sighed. "He's fucking evil."


"He's not evil," I said in a very soft, scoffing voice, mostly to myself as I gazed up.


"No," Yamcha said seriously, addressing me like a child. "He IS. And if you weren't so busy being psycho's cabana boy, you might have seen it."


I scowled at him, crossing my arms and being sure to throw in just the slightest amount of intimidation. He sulked, looking like he wanted to roll his eyes and instead, just glaring at me.


"The very real truth is," Krillin looked up at me. "is that you really don't know him at all Goku. Don't be so arrogant as to think that just because you're both the same person, that time hasn't completely altered that. Goku," He swallowed. "He knows YOU. He lived in your shoes for most of his life, he went through every feeling, every reaction, every gesture, every everything. But Goku, you DON'T know him. You haven't seen what he's seen or done what he's done. He knows PRECISELY how to behave around you, how to gain your trust, how to make you do anything he wants.


"But don't make the mistake of seeing yourself in him. That part is LONG ago and its only more apparent to me that you're entirely out of your element, ESPECIALLY if you think that bastard would EVER have wished her back."


"Then who?" I snapped, turning on him. "Who would have brought her back? Her father maybe? Kakarot told me that the dragon balls had begun to bring things back and before that I...." I lowered my head. "I heard a conversation between him and Dr. Briefs I think. I think Dr. Briefs maybe brought her to life wrong or something."


"What in hell are you talking about?" Yamcha groaned, adjusting his hold on the trigger. "No one has made a wish in years. No one can."


"But Kakarot told me that after his family died-.."
"After his family died, Kakarot did shit," He spat detestably. "He ruined the world. He didn't try to save it or even save them with the dragon balls."


"What?" I felt my eyebrows lower, glancing to Krillin. "He didn't.... make a wish? He didn't even try to?"


The both just stared at me like I was a mute, screaming at the top of my lungs to an unhearing audience.


"He told me the dragon balls became jaded, wishing people back half dead, half alive. He told me they were of no use any longer and that no one had used them in ages." I told them.


Yamcha smiled, a very humorless grin, renewing my dislike of him.


"The dragon balls never became jaded," He told me, sounding everything out like I was too insolent to hear them as they were. "People never came back zombies or whatever. But it is true, that no one has used them in ages."
I glanced to Krillin, demanding a reason for this.


"No one has used them," He sighed, his head resting on his palm. "Because no one can find them."


I left in a state of more confusion than ever, finding that this seemed to be a constant in my life, if nothing else was. I just flew for a while, reflecting on the complete absurd shit stain that had become my existence. I let myself sum up the last month as spent in a void of logic. I'd made a fucking stupid wish, creating a really fucked up world, met myself in the worst fucking state I could have EVER imagined, and now, I was flying around like a fucking IDIOT, with no clue about what to do except sum things up with the F-word. Oh lord, if only things could be routine, just one more time, and feeling like a dumbass wouldn't be the only thing I could count on as a constant.

So this is what I knew, and I began to make a mental note of it, planning to write it all down later so as the facts didn't get messed up. I knew that I'd met myself, and that self, was basically everything incarnate that I'd never allowed myself to be: evil, hollow, conniving, SECRETIVE, sexually promiscuous and illogically violent. Good. Now that that was solved, what the FUCK WAS GOING ON?!!

I scowled, huffing angrily. I'd never really pretended to know all the answers but the plan hadn't exactly been to get more questions in the meantime.


I knew only a few things and that was that Bulma was alive, after being told she was dead, the dragon balls still existed, after being told they were corrupt and evil, and the two people I had adulterized myself for, were not at all the people I thought they were.


Good, now wasn't I just looking like the poster boy for the mentally challenged...


I flew to my cave, reflecting on everything. My one special spot away from the world that I constantly was growing to hate, my one place away from everything and everyone I didn't understand. And I began to write, as Kakarot had once began to write, hoping the futility of his gesture wouldn't somehow become mine.


And that, is where my story really begins. Because I'm still writing and I still have no idea what's going on.


I know he's still out there, and I know he searches for me. I feel him in everything, in the times when I'm angry, in the times where I get frustrated enough to want to kill, and that reminds me that in all my stewing and dwelling in the confines of darkness, I'm no further now than when I first arrived here.


So I made a wish to a dragon to never see him again and I met a monster. And that monster.... is me.


I can feel his frustration and anger, because it's exactly like mine when I think of how fucked up things have become. I should have never had sex with him, yet I'm still craving it. That complete lack of self and the thing I become when I let him push inside of me for the first time. I miss the ceaselessness of thought and the indulgence in every wicked thing my body tells me is true love. Because that isn't love. I don't even like the nihilistic moments when I want to pretend it is.


Is real evil the pursuit of wickedness? Or just the absence of anything good? Is real evil doing bad things, or just refusing to do anything good?


Or, as I saw in the vacancy of goodness that reflected from Kakarot's sexual gaze, was it simply hollowness? The lack of anything at all?


Oh, how I knew now why Kakarot wanted drugs, half the reason Columbia still existed at all. Because I fucking wanted drugs right about now, THAT'S WHY! I craved his sex like he craved heroine. I needed that fascinating euphoria where all my questions maybe weren't answered so much as just didn't mean shit. I was content, in the moments I threw myself within him, hearing his gasps as I tore my way upwards fiercely, breaking tissue and everything else, just to force myself deeper inside of stupidity. Because that's what it is, to want all knowledge gone. It's the desiring of stupidity.


As much as I found the saying "ignorance is bliss" as pathetically overused, I still wanted to use it.


But why? Why would Kakarot have hidden the dragon balls? In all of his self discovery that came from loss, in all of the damage and sacrifice of self, why the hell wouldn't he have reversed it all with a wish, if he knew he could?


Oh yes, Krillin's words came back suddenly. As much as he knew me from his past, I certainly didn't understand him or any of his motives.


I knew he was angry with me. For leaving, for abandoning him to the questions that no doubt wrecked his world. Why wasn't he happy, he must have wondered. I was his messiah, his means for all the answers. The being he had known and waited for his entire life. I was meant to heal it all, to be beside him while all the cruelties were forgotten and his utopia was erected for everyone.


But nothing had really changed for him and I sensed all frustration in this. He was horrified that nothing had been fixed. He looked into my eyes and it was as though his soul spoke to me. And every word, it said, broke something inside of myself when it was voiced.

"You can," It promised. "You can save me if you want to."


I was Fate's Promise to him and yet I failed him in the moments I didn't return. In every second we had spent, having awesome sex and then never being sated, he had begun to wonder. Every moment he pushed a needle deeper inside bruised, tired veins, never contented, he began to wonder. Every moment he spent now, deep inside a stranger, knowing he should be thinking of me, and not? He was beginning to wonder.


And deep down, deep deep down where he pushed all the questions and hid them with drugs, he was beginning to wonder why that sense of missing something, why it wasn't gone.


Oh yes, he was beginning to truly, truly wonder indeed.


I watched a sunrise for the first time in a very long time. And it was somewhat jaded to me. I watched the beautiful oranges and yellows streak across the blues of the sky, the first touches of light moving upwards in the same dance they have been doing since the dawn of time. And I wondered within myself how something so constant, so scheduled, could still be so ultimately beautiful that it'd leave one breathless.


I thought for a moment, in my mind of mind's, how a sunset and a sunrise are only so beautiful because they're constantly changing. Because you can take a hundred pictures of a sunrise and paint a hundred canvases of such, but you'll never really be able to keep one. Not even a memory can sustain a sunrise.


And I can't say it was ruined by the storm, only contrasted dramatically, when dark clouds crept over the darker side of the sky and rain and thunder and all of it cracked down from the heavens. Still, a part of the sky, despite the approaching darkness, was beautiful and untouched, unafraid of what was coming. As promised, it just continued to rise, even when covered with gray.


I smiled faintly, knowing that behind dark clouds, behind the sheets of rain and flashes of lightening, a beautiful, soft sunrise still existed, as though nothing really had changed at all.


I felt for where he would be, knowing he was awake and closing my eyes. I didn't know what I would say, or what I would even do at this point. I knew only that I needed to see him, to end all of this, one way or another.


I followed the dark clouds, sifting through their smokey depths as I searched for him. Over seas he had made beautiful, through air he had cleansed, I reminded myself that I needed to hate him. I needed the age-old fury that sparked my justice, as it had for years.


Yet, as I found him, all my hardening ceased and I just looked on, through the stones that spoke people's names, through old, wilted, tear stained flowers, and I saw him standing. The cemetery seemed suddenly so hideous, as the sky felt like it was falling over us, the rain and wind touching their cold fingertips over the headstones of so many lost souls. I knew quite abruptly where we were and it melted any resolve I had thought I had.


"So... you can cry." I spoke softly, not even looking towards his reaction. We both just stared forwards, our eyes unfocused over the names so familiar on granite headstones. Small tear tracks ran from the dark lids of his eyes, his mouth held tight as he gazed down. The black locks of his hair dangled over his eyebrows, wilting, it seemed, from the heavy rain.


"Can't you?" He asked me, voice low.


"I suppose," I answered softly, shrugging. "From time to time."


"Then why couldn't I?" He paused. "We're not so different you know."


I looked at him halfheartedly.


"Yes we are." I breathed, my voice raspy. "I have to believe we are."


There was silence as I lowered my head, hardening my own resolve and scraping together the pieces of it.


"I have to believe the things you've done are things I'm entirely incapable of doing myself." I told him softly. "I have to think I'm greater than a man that drowns himself in sexual debauchery and the inability to accept life without resorting to death."


He met my gaze, no animosity in his look though I could tell I'd hit a cord somewhere within him.
"You just wish we were different," he finally answered, looking away. "You couldn't handle the part of yourself that reminds you of me. We're the same person, believe that. But we're also only as sane as our options. You hate what I've become because you see that part of yourself and you fear it. I understand this because I am you."


I scoffed at that, unwilling to believe him.


"You fail to see the bigger picture, Goku," He sighed, exasperated with me. "I wouldn't have either if I hadn't seen what I have seen in this world. I could bask in my ignorance forever, like you do. I could drown my fears with promises of heroism. But I don't have that commodity anymore, that privilege of stupidity. I wish you could see things my way."


"I'm glad that I don't." I told him.


"Of course you are," He answered, still gazing softly at his surroundings. "You see cruelty when you look at me. You see a beautiful monster that resembles the man you see in the mirror. But you separate yourself from that. You don't see the gifts I'm giving humanity."
"And what gifts would those be?" I asked accusingly. "Death? Fear? Hatred? Cruelty? Slavery? Not much of a Christmas List if you ask me."


He chuckled with little humor, his shoulders shaking a tad.


"A future," He breathed. "A future where the earth is free of pollution. Where there is no untimely death or mass destruction. A time when values and morals are set in stone and cruelty untolerated as it has been in the human legal system. A future with justice."
"Acquired from the slavery of its inhabitants." I spat.


"The humans now hate it..." He shrugged. "I get that. But I'm promising something they never could have provided for their children, locked away in their four foot cubicles with their petty, mauled ideals of 'freedom for all'. Their children will see a world the earth has not seen for centuries. Animals once thought to be extinct will flourish yet again, eagles souring the skies like common robins. Tigers and lions and elephants uncollected by greed, roaming the world in numbers unseen since the dawn of civilization. Think of it." He looked into my eyes. "A world untouched by overpopulation, the fears of global warming completely forgotten. Natural disaster the only real evil left. I can give that to them. I can promise them that."


"Through fear," I told him. "Through tyranny and fear. No. Peace was never truly accomplished by warfare. I have to believe there is a better way to achieve freedom then through slavery. I have to believe there is a better way than this."


"Well go ahead," He shrugged me off. "you keep to your beliefs and I'll continue with action. Think until you wither off the face of the earth and see how much my fear over the world will have improved it by that time."


I shook my head.


"You can't rule with fear." I said softly.


"Is there any other way?" He asked me, raising an eyebrow. "If there is one thing global religions have taught me it is that fear is the only means to induce action. Fear is the only language understood by all tongues. So you bore them with your petty ideals of 'playing nice' and I'll do what is NECESSARY to make this world a better place."


He breathed a shaky sigh, all the tension and hardness of his body leaving as he suddenly cracked to his knees, falling backwards to the ground and sitting with his legs crossed. I joined him, feeling the grass cold beneath my fingertips as I shifted them through the blades. We sat in our contemplation of each other and ourselves, both probably deciding that at this point, there would be no conclusion to this argument. I guess I realized at that moment that in all my figuring I didn't understand anything at all about him, the more I was realizing, I didn't know much about myself either.


His eyes were glued to the dusty headstones, ChiChi's name and Gohan's left with no last name. It seemed crude to me yet appropriate. Names forgotten yet legendary. No one that worked their 14 hours in the fields would know the impact these two simple names had had on their ultimate fate. No one would stare harshly at dirtied fingernails and understand the passion behind the monster. No one would ever look into the eyes of the slave master and see that two simple names on ugly gray headstones could push him to the very brink of his own sanity.


No one would ever really know.


"I think the only time in my life I ever prayed was when she started to cry tears of blood," He whispered suddenly, surprising me. He seemed completely worn out, face pale and drawn back as he just sat, shoulders slumped as though the whole world rested on them.


"I don't even know who I was praying to." He shook his head. "I've been this side of the world and the other, I've died and risen again; and I still don't know who ultimately holds my soul or where I go after this. Will I see them ever again?"


He swallowed hard, blinking his eyes.


"I think not."


"You don't know that," I told him, shaking my head.


"I think I do," he sighed. "I think they reside now in a place far better than this one. I tell myself that my wife would be proud of me, of the results despite the means. But I don't really know that. I see a world where my son could run free without the fears of pedophiles or kidnappers but then I realize.... everything," He looked up. "All this. He'll never really see it. I can change a billion futures by myself, in fact, change an entire world single handedly. But that doesn't give me the power to show him this beautiful world. No force of future can change the past."


I thought of the dragon balls, of their disappearance. I thought of all the mysteries he still held and I just let them die for a moment. I let him sit in his silence, thinking of my own family. In some ways, maybe he was the better man, the man I should have been. I took my family for granted. I did. I saw my wife as an impediment to the life I really wanted to live. I saw my son as boring and someone I could never understand. But I envied Kakarot in some ways. He would forever remember his family in a way I never would and he would appreciate every memory he had left. Me? I looked back even now and saw days with them as wasted.


"I dream of her now," He told me in a raspy whisper. "Even last night. I guess it's wishful thinking that she's proud of me. She looks as she always did, untouched by sickness and death. She says something to me. But I can't..." He swallowed, choking back tears. "I can't make out what she's saying."


I watched his features, as he tried to gulp down the pain, the sadness and loneliness. I could recognize every pained feature because they were my own. I touched my hand to his back, expecting him to shrug it off. He leaned slightly into it, to my surprise.


"I can't hear her," He told me. "I never could understand why. Why? What was she saying? Why couldn't I make it out?"


Tears escaped his eyes and he tilted his head towards the sky as he cried.


"And then I knew," He sobbed, shoulders shaking hard. "It's because......I've forgotten."
I pulled him in a crushing embrace against me, feeling every inch of his body rocked by the sobs.

"I can't remember what she sounds like!" He screamed in agony. "I can't remember her voice."


I held him to me, blinking away my own tears at the thought. He just screamed against me, sobbing until his voice sounded bloody and hoarse; until he hadn't the strength to cry anymore. And still, in his agony and in his defeat, he kept saying it over and over.


"I can't remember," He bawled. "I just can't remember."