Chapter Text
The Cell Games, as well as the new global holiday now dubbed Victorious Satan Day, have come and gone, and it's now a month later, with the first signs of autumn starting to show in the forests of Mount Paozu.
The sun sets on the horizon, a chill breeze slips through the open window of the living room, and Gohan thinks that he can smell a rainstorm coming. Tomorrow morning, maybe, or during the night. It will be good for their latest crops, after the sweltering summer that’s just ended, and for the mountains themselves too.
Gohan smiles as he watches the sunset through the window of the kitchen.
Life… Life is good these days, here on Earth.
It was worth it.
His left arm twinges.
And there’s a low hum in his ear.
“Still set on ignoring me, are you, brat ?”
Gohan does not flinch - he just keeps on humming along the familiar notes of the lullaby he learned from his mother back when he was only about three years-old, one he’s taken to often murmur to himself while studying or training or cooking - and the only sign that he’s hearing the voice at all, much less acknowledging it, is the low simmer of aggravation that blankets his thoughts for a moment.
“You ought to stop with this denial, really. Don’t you know it’s not healthy to keep it all in ? Always better to let it go.”
And the simmer flits closer to a boil, for a fraction of a second, before Gohan forces it back down. Its target does not seem to perceive the shift. If he does, he does not comment on it, still more focused on the words leaving his mouth than anything that doesn't pertain to his own self. He's nothing if not consistent.
“You seem to be getting used to this too, for all your pretending, yes ? No more squeaks, or flinching, not even a little twitch anymore, ”, and he hums, as though contemplative, like this is just a normal everyday exchange. “ Am I losing my touch, do you think, Gohan ? ” and the question is barely one, and he keeps going without leaving any space for an answer, something they both know Gohan wouldn't have given him anyways. “ You used to be oh so scared of me. ”
He’s not wrong, Gohan supposes, though he does not let the thought form into solid enough of an image to be perceived by the other - in the way he’d learned to shield his thoughts from Piccolo and Dendé, the former through intensive training back when he was a toddler and the latter so that the new guardian wouldn’t be plagued by distractions every time Gohan began to think a little too loud.
He used to be scared.
He used to get angry too.
Nowadays, he finds he’s just tired.
The boy dries his hands, the dishes neatly stacked into the cupboard, and wipes down the little counter of their kitchen one last time before he nods to himself. Everything is spotless, save for the pan with charred residue stuck to its bottom, and he’ll tackle it in the morning. He shuts off the light and slips back into the living room to join his mother instead.
For the next few minutes, as he leans over the back of the couch and kisses his mother’s cheek, and then fondly endures her own cheek pinching in return, there is blessed quiet - both in and out of his head.
Of course, like all things - some of them bad, most of them good - it does not last.
Shame the same cannot be said for Cell.
“ Hell really isn't all it was made out to be. ”
Chichi and Gohan are on the other side of the living room by now, sitting in front of the shared vanity of the Son-Gyumao family, for the usual night-time routine the two of them have had since before Gohan had even known how to walk. Their shared long hair had been a point of bonding for forever, from a time where Chichi was helping Gohan carefully tie a ribbon around her ponytail, and still to this day as they spent some time every evening combing and braiding and tidying each other’s hair after a long day of work, study and chores. It’s something the Gyumao used to do, before and after Grandmother’s passing, even in the midst of the fire.
Chichi’s finished up with his own hair - too short nowadays for anything intricate especially after his mother had neatened it up from the choppy haircut he’d sported since the Chamber with a few quick snips of her scissors just a handful of days before - and they switch places with practiced ease between the seat and stool of the vanity.
This is what peace feels like, Gohan muses, even with the underlying grief that inhabits their home as much as they do.
“ Maybe the bureaucrats out there thought this would be the best sentence - but really, I’m having more fun than anything, disregarding the lack of mobility. Aren’t you ? ”
And the irritating unwanted guest too.
Gohan ignores him as dutifully as he has from the moment he first showed up in his head, and keeps his focus on his mother instead, while she pulls on the ribbon holding her hair up with a sigh. Today really was a long day for the both of them - between the last bouts of revision before he has to test out of 10th grade next week, the fields they'd needed to finish plowing for the autumn seedings, and the day to day chores they split and shared.
This small moment is as much about good hair care and familial bonding as it is about unwinding from the day, in both body and mind.
Too bad the parasite in his brain doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo on that one.
It almost feels like divine punishment.
“ Now, there's a thought ! ”
Gohan reaches around his mother’s side for the various tools laid out on the vanity, bypassing the heavy duty hairbrush Bulma had offered him on his seventh birthday in favour of the wide-toothed wooden comb Chichi inherited from her mother.
He wonders if Grandmother would have liked him, sometimes, in the quiet of a darkened cold house.
He doesn't think so.
“ It's fitting really, considering ,” the smooth baritone echoes in his head, while Gohan brushes the old well-loved comb through his mother’s hair one last time.
“ I mean, that day was always going to haunt you, wasn't it ? I was always going to haunt you. Fitting that I'm actually here to do it. Poetic even, ” it continues, the voice as solid as if its owner was in the room with them, even when Gohan knows it's only he and his mother in their little house up in the mountains, if not for dozens of miles around too.
Well, the two of them, and the little sibling that's apparently going to join them about seven months from now.
“Really, either those otherworld bureaucrats are out of touch, or…”
Gohan’s been preparing nearly as much as Chichi, parenting books strewn about his desk.
“This is more your personal Hell than mine.”
He doesn't dare to hope that the voice will be gone by then.
He does not answer - focuses instead on the way the braid he's started on is slightly lopsided, and how he can fix it by incorporating it into his mother’s bun instead of starting over, because he can see her begin to nod off after their long day of chores.
His lack of reactions does not discourage the voice in his head - rather, it seems only to be an incentive, because he hears an annoyed chuckle, and the inane chattering just keeps on coming.
“ Maybe that’s the crux of this whole situation : the punishment wasn’t for me ! ”
Maybe.
The gods know Gohan deserves to pay.
But he won't give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him aloud.
The laughter in his head still turns manic when he pulls his attention away.
The pre-teen sits back on the stool, legs folded under him lest he be a little too short to reach up comfortably - he lay have grown a lot over these past few days, but he's still nowhere near as tall as his mother, even now.
It’s a comfort, that height difference, whenever he notices it.
Gohan has grown in the blink of an eye - in the most literal of sense, both for Chichi who only took her eyes of him for 24 hours without knowing she’d miss nearly a year of his life in that time, and for him who lived through those long months yet can barely remember much more than the blur of fighting-training-aching interspersed with small moments of fear and conversations and haircuts - but he’s still shorter than his mom.
It's strange, he can't help but think, to still be so small. To realize, every day when he notes the difference, that he's still a child in some ways, even when he's stopped being one in so many others years ago. That he's still barely crossed into double digits.
That he's still his mother’s little boy at least in height.
(That, no matter what he’s done only a little over a month ago…)
(Gohan is not all grown up just yet.)
(He still has some childhood years left to live.)
“Gohan ?”, his mother calls out softly, and he blinks back into full focus, after having spaced out for what he hopes was only a handful of seconds, “are you alright, honey ?”
For a split second, he considers telling her about the thoughts that crossed his mind just now.
“Or about me, umh, son ?”
Gohan clenches his left fist tight, and the muscles twinge nearly as painfully as they had when it had been mangled, and it's only weeks of training that keep him from injuring himself with the strength he can feel buzzing under his skin.
“Sorry, mom, long day,” he settles on instead, a small smile on his face as they look at each other in the mirror, while he bites the inside of his cheek so hard blood pools in his mouth almost immediately. “I think I haven't pulled so many weeds off the field in months ! These parasites seem unkillable sometimes.”
And it makes her chuckle, just as he'd intended - “Oh, I'm quite sure the pests won’t be back for another round this time, honey.” - while the voice in his head huffs in mild offense, likely taking to heart Chichi’s words as some imagined pique directed towards him.
“Mph.”