Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Wish For The Past ❯ Wounded Birds ( Chapter 40 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer: *sprints across the screen waving a big sign that says "I DON'T OWN DBZ."* Sorry, can't talk! Gotta go! Bye! *dashes off the screen with Bardock, Radditz, Bulma, Chi-Chi, Gohan, Goten, Trunks, and a whole horde of other angry characters chasing after her* Eeeeep! *frantically dodges a few ki blasts*

Lightning slashed through the pitch black clouds, turning the sky an angry, bruised purple for a few brief seconds. The ensuing thunder crashed into the air with the sheer force of a tidal wave, threatening to crack the very world with its power. As though that had been a signal, the ferocity of the storm intensified until the rain sliced through the air like frozen daggers that attempted to thrash everything they touched to shreds, then leave what was left to drown miserably in an icy puddle.

Oblivious to the freezing rain, Bardock realized he had a major problem barring him in his search: It was too dark to see the shapes of the treetops clearly enough to be able to distinguish one tree from another. Refusing to allow such a thing as the dark to hinder him in finding his son, the warrior held his hand up in the air and gathered his ki in it, shoving everything he had into the glowing yellow ball until it burned with the intensity of the sun. Not good enough. While the light it provided was enough to reveal the landscape around him for a fair distance, the ki ball's light did not extend nearly as far as he would need. Hot, salty tears poured down his face, mingling with the rain that drenched him, and he focused on his pain and sorrow, drawing energy from the strength of his grief. Giving an anguished scream as he envisioned the broken form of his son, Bardock felt his ki spike higher and higher, searing his body as it pulsed up into his raised hand until, finally, the sphere was so bright that it illuminated the world around him almost as far as he could see.

The air around him began to steam as the rain that came too close to the intense heat of Bardock's ki evaporated before it could even come in contact with him. Satisfied, the Saiyan stared down into the forest below, drifting through the air as quickly as he dared and still be sure that he had examined every tree. The strain of having to hold such a huge amount of energy taxed his body, sweat dripping from every pore from both the heat and the stress of constantly siphoning his ki to power the miniature nova. None of that mattered to him, though. All that he cared about was reaching his son before his terrible vision had a chance to come true.

Another memory slid across his mind, a memory of another storm and another desperate search. This is just like it was with Sereri... Bardock shuddered, tears flowing freshly down his cheeks, remembering how that search had ended. I promise you, Goku, I won't let it end like that! Not this time! I'll find you, I swear it. Swallowing a painful lump in his throat, he added, I won't let you die!!

Something at the edge of the light shed by his ki orb caught his attention, a faint outline of a tree that rose above the others, and an ominous sense of foreboding suddenly prickled his skin. With his stomach twisting in knots, the Saiyan blasted through the cloudy sky, leaving a blazing trail in his wake. His heart pounded wildly in his ears, drowning out the distant thunder, and it felt like a wild animal was trapped within his gut, scrabbling frantically to get free. Hope fluttered in the back of his mind like a wounded bird as he drew near enough to be able to count the lobes of the tree. Three. Three lobes in a clover shape. And a fourth. A fallen branch that could almost have qualified as a fully grown tree in its own right, splintered away from its parent by the force of the storm.

Bardock gave a strangled cry and dropped from the sky like a stone, releasing the built up energy of the ki ball as he did so. That's the tree I saw in my vision! And if the branch is already on the ground, that means... it means that... "NO!! GOKU!!!" His feet had barely touched the ground before he was sprinting forward, desperately shoving aside the broken and splintered branches that lay in his path, until he caught sight of what he had prayed he would not see.

His son.

Just as he had seen in his vision, Goku lay sprawled out on the ground, barely visible beneath the massive branch that had fallen across his chest, almost crushing it with its weight. A piece of the limb had broken away and now impaled the child, angling into his side just below his ribs and all the way through until it emerged from his back. One leg was badly mangled, broken and twisted in a way that was far from natural and had to have hurt like hell when it had been snapped. Blood was everywhere, watered down by the rain, which had abated somewhat until it was nothing more than a depressing, bone-chilling drizzle. It stained everything near the boy with shades of red and pink that slowly faded as the rain continued to mix with it.

"No..." Bardock whispered hoarsely, collapsing to his knees next to the motionless form of his youngest son. He reached a trembling hand out to caress the boy's bloodless, clammy cheek and was suddenly wracked by shuddering sobs. "No...." There was no warmth, no life in Goku's pain contorted face. He was too late. "Nooo," he moaned, using a carefully controlled ki blast to incinerate the branch where it had pinned his son to the ground. Tears spilled from his stinging eyes like a salty river, nearly blinding him as he gently pulled the wooden stake from the ragged, gaping wound in the boy's side. Tossing the bloodied object to one side, he tenderly gathered his son's limp, broken body in his arms, rocking him back and forth as grief overtook him. "Nooo...," he sobbed, bowing his head and clutching Goku's cold, battered form to his chest and burying his face in the boy's spiky, matted hair.

Once again, he had been too late, and now he had lost his precious son. He would never hear his carefree laughter, would never see his innocent smile, would never feel his warm arms encircle his neck. None of those things would ever happen again, and it was all his fault. His fault for being too slow. His fault for not stopping Vegeta before the prince could reveal the harsh truth of Gohan's death. His fault for abandoning Goku in the first place. He had failed his son just as he had failed his mate seven years ago.

As Bardock cried into his son's hair, his tears soaking the midnight strands, the heavens continued to openly weep with him, the pace of the rain picking up once more to a steady downpour, ensuring that he remained thoroughly drenched, leaching all the warmth from his body. He didn't care. His son was dead. Compared to that, nothing in the entire universe mattered anymore. "Goku.... my son...." he choked out, feeling as though his heart was about to break like spun glass that had been carelessly knocked off a shelf. And like that figurative shattered glass, he knew that there would be no way to mend his broken heart. "My son..."

Oblivious to the rain, Bardock trudged dispiritedly back towards the capsule house, still cradling Goku against his chest, the blood from his son's wounds staining his pink shirt crimson. Bardock didn't even notice, nor would he have cared if he had. His mind was numb, his grief having washed away all form of conscious thought. Tired, cold, wet, miserable, and feeling pretty hopeless, all he wanted was to go home, collapse in a warm, dry bed, and grieve for his lost son. He could worry about everything else later.

In fact, he was paying so little attention to the world around him that he didn't even notice when Goku's seven year old hand twitched and curled around a fistful of Bardock's shirt. Nor did he notice when his son's head shifted ever so slightly to rest more easily against his father's broad chest. Goku's eyes flickered open sleepily, taking a few moments to be able to focus properly.

"O... tou... san?" he whispered faintly, barely audible even to Saiya-jin ears. Drained by the effort to say even that much, his eyes slid shut again.

Bardock jerked to a halt in mid stride, nearly tripping over his own feet as stunned disbelief nearly shorted out his nervous system. His son.... his dead son... He... was... talking? His eyes widened in shock and, unconsciously, his mouth dropped open. However, his vocal cords had constricted painfully to the point of uselessness, and nothing came out except his own ragged breathing. Closing his mouth, all he could do was stare in dazed amazement at the child he held in his arms.

To his surprise, he found that he was crying again. He had thought that he had no more tears with which to cry, but apparently he was wrong. This time, though, the tears were ones of joy, trailing down his cheeks to collect in the corners of his broad grin. His heart felt like it had stopped beating, swelling to twice its normal size, and he had to concentrate just to keep breathing. Letting out a wild whoop, he twirled around gleefully, then leapt into the air and blasted off, eager to get back to the capsule house where he could tend his son's wounds.

It was probably a very shocking sight to behold when Bardock raced into the house, sopping wet, covered in blood, holding a half-dead and even bloodier Goku in his arms, and grinning madly the entire time. Bulma and Radditz, the only two who were still awake, openly gaped at him. They had decided to wait as long as they could for Bardock to get back and had been contemplating giving up for the night when the Saiyan in question ran through the entrance. Since the door had been beyond repair, it had been propped up against the wall and out of the way. Judging by how recklessly Bardock had entered, that was probably a good thing, since it would most likely have been damaged even further if they had tried to put it back into its original place.

"He's alive!" Bardock announced happily as he stood in the middle of the room, a large puddle of water forming beneath his feet. Oblivious to the stares he was getting from the two children, he walked over to the table and gently laid his son on the surface, stripping the boy's blue gi off. "However," he continued, turning completely serious as he surveyed the extent of the damage. "He's pretty badly injured. I need you two to help me get him cleaned up. Bulma, find whatever it is you Chikyuu-jin use to clean and bind wounds. Radditz, I need you to pin Goku down while I snap those broken bones back in place." Involuntarily glancing at the mangled leg that Bardock indicated, Bulma paled, feeling as though she was going to be sick. She quickly looked away and hurried off to get the bandages and antiseptic from the first aid kit, assuming it would be in the bathroom where such things were normally kept.

Waiting until Radditz had firmly trapped his little brother with his arms, Bardock studied the bones in Goku's leg again, judging how what angle and how much pressure would be needed to force them back into their correct position. It was a sobering sight, to say the least. When he cleaned the wound, he would have to be careful to get all of the mud out, and there were a few bone splinters that would have to be removed before the wound could be bandaged. Glancing around, he plucked a thin pillow from one of the couches and placed it between Goku's teeth. "Okay, I'm ready," he said, to Radditz and himself. Radditz pressed down on the boy's shoulders hard enough to keep him in place, careful not to injure him further. Bardock counted to three silently, grasping the two parts of his son's broken leg, then swiftly twisted his hands and snapped the bones back into place.

A heart rending scream pierced the air as the sudden pain jolted Goku into momentary consciousness, thrashing futilely against his older brother's grip. If Bardock and Radditz had not both been there to hold down both his upper and lower body, his struggles might have done even more damage to the gaping hole in his side, not to mention his broken and as-yet unbound leg. Once the initial shock wore off, though, the boy collapsed and fell back into unconsciousness, breathing heavily and occasionally whimpering.

Bulma returned, medical supplies in hand, looking shaken after listening to her young friend's screaming. As she placed the items on the table next to the wounded chibi and went to fill a bowl of water in the sink, Radditz settled onto the couch and watched, knowing that he would be of no use at this point since he had no nursing skills whatsoever. Grabbing a clean rag from the pile of supplies, Bulma began to wipe away the blood and mud, explaining the uses of the various creams, cleansers, and antibiotics she had brought. She bit her lip as she came across the hole in Goku's side, feeling tears pricking at the corners of her eyes in sympathetic pain. "What happened?" she asked, momentarily looking away from her work in order to catch Bardock's black eyes with her own.

"A tree limb fell on him," he explained, shaking his head slightly before hunching over Goku's leg again. Using a pair of tweezers, he deftly removed another bone shard and laid it to one side in a small pile of debris that had been pulled from the injury. "I didn't get to him until after it had happened, so I don't know any more than that." Satisfied that he had removed any and all foreign objects and bone slivers from his son's leg, he set aside the tweezers and grabbed a bottle of alcohol from the kit. Figuring the best thing to do was to thoroughly douse the wound, he opened the bottle and upended half the contents onto the raw, broken flesh, eliciting another whimper from the sleeping Goku. He once again examined the leg, then nodded to himself. He had done the best he could do with the materials provided, so all that was left was splinting and binding the injured leg. Fortunately, the first aid kit happened to have a splint that would work for Goku's little leg.

Once he had finished wrapping and splinting the leg, Bardock glanced over at Bulma's progress and found that she was nearly done placing the bandages over both the entrance and exit wounds caused by the splintered branch. He nodded his approval and set about wiping down the rest of his son's body, cleaning minor scratches and generally removing the dirt, twigs, and leaves from his skin. By the time he had finished this task, Bulma had completed her work as well and was now sitting back in a chair, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. The Saiya-jin caught her attention and gave her a grateful look before he gathered his naked son into his arms.

"I'm going to take him to his room," he said. Goku would need to be kept warm, and he would probably end up sleeping for several days before he was recovered to any real extent of the word.

"I'll clean up here," Bulma offered, gesturing to indicate the entire room. "So you can stay with him."

Giving the girl a fleeting smile, Bardock turned and left the room. Walking down the halls, he suddenly wondered where the other three boys were. He had thought Goku's screams had been loud enough to wake the dead, let alone the living! Maybe the walls of this building are soundproofed... He shook his head, knowing he would find no answers this night. Right now, he needed to get his son into a bed, and then get some sleep himself. There would be time enough for curiosity when morning came.

Walking into a vacant bedroom, he laid his sleeping son on the bed and pulled the covers over his small, bare body. A tiny smile crept across his face, sighing with relief now that the crisis was over, and he ruffled the child's hair affectionately, careful not to wake him. He collapsed into a chair next to the bed and watched the steady rise and fall of the chibi Saiyan's chest until an exhausted sleep overtook him.

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