Ten Days to Save the World, a dragon ball z fanfic

Gohan keeps a record of the days they've spent in the time sink, neat little lines burned into his bedpost. As the year draws to a close he finds himself counting not the days left on the inside but the hours left on the outside, and when his father decides that there's nothing more to be done with a month and a half - three hours - left, the end comes to Gohan with relief, mixed with a strange feeling he can't quite place, that tugs him towards the real world.

(It's simple algebra to convert the inside to the outside, but even simple algebra keeps him focused on why he's doing this to himself. Once, his father had said the power comes in response to a need. Later, he'd said remember, son, your power is not your need. Rather, your need is the source of your power.)

So he signs his name below his last mark and gathers his half-finished thoughts, finds his hope where he'd left it under his pillow. There are too many conflicting things lingering in him when eleven and a half months had been filled with nothing but get stronger and survive. He's still wondering if he wishes Cell to be alive or dead when they emerge. His father motions towards the door, and they push it open together -

(- Cell is still alive, and stronger than ever. Once he had felt like the father who had raised Gohan in the woods, like the Piccolo who had reluctantly shown the kindness beneath the stern facade. Now Cell feels like Frieza, like the Vegeta who had pointed his wrath towards the earth, like the Goku who had stood hard and unforgiving and green-eyed upon Namek and who had said do as I say, Gohan, take Piccolo and leave this planet. Everyone senses energy a little differently. Gohan feels it in his mouth, something pressing on his tongue, and he's rendered unable to speak. And yet -)

- Something in Gohan has all but forgotten the feeling of a breeze. He emerges ahead of his father, dumbstruck; his gaze flickers up to Piccolo, tall, immovable, awestruck. Lunch is served. Trunks tells them about a tournament in ten days' time. Gohan remembers how to speak, thinks of the evening with Chico and Pigero all those years ago and the way his voice always grows reluctant with time.

"Let's go home," Goku says, holding out his hand.

(He puts himself in Saiyan-sleep that night beneath a brilliant meteor shower. Saiyans sleep deep and in short bursts, easily woken by noise but not by light, like wounded animals. They dream of battles they have already fought and wake with renewed purpose. Humans sleep with stories in their minds, dream like wanderers, wake slowly and easily. Over the years he has trained himself to choose. He very rarely chooses his father's dreams.)

Gohan wakes to the deliriously blue dawn and the need to kill something. He'd dreamt of a planet that looked suspiciously like his home burning with dark green fire; his father glances at him over a breakfast of warm rice and suggests they spend the day by the lake.

Ages ago Piccolo had taught him how to swim, and not long after that his father had promised to one day take him fishing. Goku brings rods and reels and a pail of worms and shows him how to spear bait on a hook, nothing like the ways they caught fish while training for the Androids. This kind of fishing is a task that demands care and gentleness and patience, and if Krillin laughs at clumsy Saiyan hands unable to do something so simple, well, Gohan understands. He has always struggled to hold pencils, admired humans with their thin and delicate fingers. It is an admiration that comes with the smallest bit of jealousy.

Like this, Gohan's father says when asked how to take a nap - he places his hands behind his head and closes his eyes. Gohan's hair presses into the dirt, singeing the grass, and when they wake for lunch there's the distinct smell of ozone in the air and a patch of earth in the shape of their sleeping forms burnt black. Goku regards the ground with a faint smile on his lips, and he says we'll work on that.

The idea of working on napping like they might work on energy control or stamina seems almost absurd. Gohan has missed that dearly, the feeling of being at ease, living absurdly, warmed only by the sun.

After lunch he works on his penmanship. After all, his mother reminds him, when he applies for college there will no doubt be an entrance essay, and nobody likes a scholar with messy letters. Gohan can hardly comprehend a world that exists beyond the next nine days. Still, when he lays himself down that night he has soft and easy dreams.

"We should throw you a birthday party," Gohan's mother says during a breakfast of cold fish and pickled radishes. "Yes, that would be perfect. Tomorrow, let's throw you a birthday party."

"But mom, it's - it's not my birthday."

Her eyes always shine when she's made up her mind. "A birthday to make up for the one I missed while you were away with your father. Oh, there's so much - so much to do - I need to call my dad -" She picks up the phone, holds it to her ear with her shoulder while she scribbles some things down on a sheaf of paper with one hand and dials a number with the other. "Gohan, could you pick up a couple of things in town? Just some spices - I'll bake you a cake -"

The nearest town is deserted, its stores burned out and looted. As he picks through the rubble Gohan idly wonders where everyone went, how many are already dead, if this town was hit by Cell or if the chaos was caused by the flight to the countryside. Do they think they're safe out there, scattered and ashamed? Gohan's ears burn at the tips. While he's fishing and napping and celebrating a missed birthda the people of earth are dying and hiding, and worse, completely without hope. The next two towns are similarly abandoned, one of them completely gutted by fire. On his way to the fourth something flares up below him like a cry for help. It's a girl, a girl named Lime.

"Grandpa says there's no point in being scared," she says after an altercation in Chazke Village, her chin in her hands as Gohan chops wood. She lives with her grandfather in the rubble of their old lives. "He says that when my dad was little there was this guy, Piccolo, who did the same thing that Cell is doing. And then there was this other guy who came out of nowhere and beat up Piccolo til he stopped hurting people."

"Not that I'd condone sitting idly by," Lao adds. "But Lime is right - why should we get all worked up? The end might come in seven days, but at least we have this time to spend together."

(Later, sits in the woods with Lime, she takes his hand. They're eating strawberries and playing with squirrels.

"You'd never fight Cell. You're too gentle to fight," she says, as though it's obvious. Is he? There's a tingle at the base of his scalp and an itch in his fingers. Her skin is so soft, her bones like porcelain. He could kill her so easily. Sometimes he wakes in the middle of the night and finds himself digging beneath his fingernails, as though he's trying to get at dirt, or old blood.

Tao fires at Lime's grandfather, aiming to kill. It stings a little on Gohan's palms, and he directs his rage towards the massive structure Vodka had built in the woods, the shining beacon of false hope. Go and hide in your little shelters! See how well it serves you if Cell kills my father. Lao looks at him, narrow-eyed, as though he finally understands.

Gohan never wanted to be anyone's salvation.)

Gohan holds his plates and cups so delicately, so carefully, and still they shatter at his touch. It's hard! It's so hard. He does the same thing with pens and pencils and his mother's hands, repeating to himself, gentle, gentle. She sends him upstairs to study, and his father out to find dinner.

He leans back in his chair away from another set of algebra problems, order against chaos, balances his pen under his nose and enjoys the mild midsummer breeze. Derivatives come easily to him, the strange science of reaching into functions and tearing out their guts. The wind whistles among deciduous trees, the same trees that his father's grandfather had loved. He's feeling something strange in his chest, something light and fluffy, a caged bird struggling to get free. Is it the strain built up from months as a Super Saiyan? Is it the need to fight? No - he blinks a few times, shocked at the realization - this is happiness, however fleeting.

(And with happiness, of course, comes an onslaught of memories: the fear and dread and loneliness in the woods turning into grim acceptance, then a soft sort of joy; the smell of the air on Namek, strange flowers and ozone and freshly turned earth; the sight of his father emerging from a year lost in space. There are happy moments in his life that make difficult things a little easier to bear.)

There are twelve candles on his cake, ten for his years alive, one for the year with his father, one for good luck. He blows gently, gently, wishes for a future.

(Is he allowed to be happy when the end of the world is rushing towards them? Something cries in the distance, a bird, or a dinosaur. He gets a telescope for his birthday, to look to those same stars he had once rushed past in hopes of making a wish, restoring life to someone who had sacrificed theirs for his. Mister Piccolo left him in the woods when the end of the world was a year away. Maybe they'll be fine.

And elsewhere, keeping a vigil of a different kind, Cell is waiting for him.)

Krillin stretches to warm up, slowly and deliberately. It's not like the way Gohan's father warms up, quickly and impatiently - but with purpose, everything Gohan's father does is with purpose. When he catches Gohan staring Krillin misses a beat, trips and falls unceremoniously on his behind, laughs away his embarrassment.

"I'll teach you, if you want," he says, finally. "It helps me feel less stiff after a good workout. Not sure if Saiyans can get worn out, though - Goku never seemed to need to stretch much, even after Master Roshi had us run halfway around the world for milk!" and Goku laughs, and Krillin laughs, and Gohan laughs, and when they're done laughing Goku throws the first blow.

Pull your punches, Gohan, Goku breathes between thoughts, and Gohan does; reins himself in with an ease he finally recognizes is born of experience. He works up a sweat, finds a thrill in the internal struggle between needing to kill and keeping himself from grinding Krillin's paper bones to dust. Something fundamental is turning over in him, the physiological strain of staying Super Saiyan for so long becoming a strange sort of rush in his ears, a roaring like the sea.

Krillin walks him through a cool-down afterwards, some gentle stretching and thoughtful meditation he'd picked up during his childhood in Orin Temple.

(They'd done this before, when they were hanging upside-down in space, racing towards Namek. Krillin is a patient teacher, a courageous warrior, and a good friend, yet he holds himself in such low esteem; does he not know how he tempers everyone around him? Maybe there's more to being strong than just having strength.)

Just above the treetops Gohan shadow-boxes under the watchful eye of his father.

What are you fighting? Cell, of course. Are you certain? That's not his father's voice - it's Piccolo's, the old Piccolo, the one who caught him on a cliff longing to go home and asked him, What is your mission? Say it! To prepare for the Saiyans. To fight! And to beat them. In that moment he'd replaced fear with resignation, acceptance of his duty, the knowledge that he may never see his mother again; it had carried him through the next six months and then into space, to the shadow of Frieza on Namek.

Above him his father crosses his arms and cocks his head, as if in thought. When had he flipped upside-down? No, that's not right - it's Gohan who's upside-down, and gravity comes back to him like a memory, catches him mid-stride and sweeps his concentration out to sea.

(His father hadn't been there, back when the choice was to go home or face the Saiyans. He'd made that choice on his own. Piccolo's voice has changed since then. Has his?)

Gohan touches down to the forest floor gently, accepts a towel from his father. A bit of sweat has beaded on his forehead, but he's far more surprised to find fresh tears in the corners of his eyes. He's always been emotional - he realized in the time chamber that the fear and the rage and the loneliness are what make him strong. But what's this? Five days to the end of the world, to the greatest battle of their lives, and why's there sadness in him?

It's the waste of precious time, he thinks. His father put so much energy into training him, helping him overcome all of his small fears, and still that wall in him that he'd built, brick by brick. Still his father is stronger, because Gohan has He's afraid of his own power. It's Saiyan, the kind of strength that compels him to hurt things.

There had been this moment of clarity in the time chamber: he's not afraid of Raditz, he's afraid of becoming Raditz.)

"I wonder if there's nowhere left to go," Gohan says, into the night sky. He's tired beyond belief, a weight he feels in his ribs. His father had been particularly brutal that day. Pushed him right to the edge. Then Goku built a fire and cooked up a mountain of meat, as Gohan slowly came down from his high, until he lost that iciness at the edge of his vision and nothing was clear anymore. "No more power to gain. But if Cell's still stronger than you -"

(-Somewhere, somewhen, Piccolo is suffering -)

Goku turns to Gohan, a year lost in space in his eyes. "- You know better than that. It's not just about being strong, Gohan."

In that moment Gohan feels like he's looking at his father for the first time, becomes hyperaware in a way that is not very Saiyan of all his qualities - his strength, sure, but also his kindness, his even keel, his humour, his almost unbearable tenderness. They spent a year together and still his father is an enigma. Gohan loves him beyond reckoning.

He lies awake in bed that night, staring at the ceiling; seven nights past a year and the bed still feels foreign to him, like it's someone else's, or that he has become someone else. Gohan wants more than anything to believe that courage is as important as strength, but it's so hard to fathom when Recoome's kick had snapped his neck, left him breathless and dying on Namek. Hope is harder than despair.

(And still he's no closer to figuring out the secret of Goku's calm mood, those three days by the riverside, the casual get-together at Master Roshi's come morning, when they have four tomorrows left.)

En route to Kame House his mother fumbles for a radio station playing something other than static, to fill the silence of a drive through a deserted and desolate city. They find an emergency broadcast detailing the Earth's military in its ultimate engagement - an act of brotherhood and glory unlike anything the world had ever seen. No doubt they had been preparing for this since the Saiyan invasion. Over the din of a hundred million bullets, endless tons of metal better spent anywhere else, someone is claiming victory over something beyond humanity's comprehension.

(Surely someone had felt Frieza. There are people in the world who are naturally energy-sensitive, or people who have developed that skill over time, people like Krillin and Tien Shinhan and Yamcha - and Lime's grandfather. What are they making of this age of miracles, humanity in its final hours, a thing called Cell stalking the heavens? Do their eyes drift skyward when Gohan takes to the air, as they wonder if people can fly? Do they follow Goku's movements in their minds' eye, wondering, waiting, hoping against hopelessness?

Then there's a white-hot flame that bursts behind his eyes, sears his brain and short-circuits his nerve endings, and his Saiyan heart leaps at the thought of a fight, and his human heart sinks into his stomach. His mouth goes startlingly dry. Cell has made his peace with the military. All those people -)

His father flees to do his duty. He exits the car and presses two fingers to his temple and then he's gone, with only the faintest crackle of ozone in his wake. There's a long silence, punctuated only by the whispering of the wind in an empty city, the weightlessness of all the dead. Finally, his mother clears her throat.

"Well," she says. "The car's not going anywhere. Gohan, they're expecting us at Roshi's and despite everything your poor mother's been through I still can't fly -"

Dutifully and lovingly Gohan takes her by the arms, Krillin with an armload of gear as they lift skyward. Over ruined towns and empty cities they fly in silence, over roads crowded end-to-end with cars at near standstill, plumes of smoke and the endless, endless blaring of horns - and where are they going? The countryside is overrun, the cities are ruined, highways connect despair to despair. By the time they reach Master Roshi's Gohan's mood is almost foul.

Then there's something that vibrates like a sharp intake of air and Goku appears smelling like Namek and the afterlife. He holds out his hand; he has a surprise, a good surprise.

Gohan wakes to the thin air and incomprehensible blue of that palace at the end of the world, in a bed so comfortable he wonders, for a moment, if he's still dreaming. Then the door opens a crack and Dende shyly lets himself in and it is not a dream.

"Mister Popo made some breakfast," Dende says, gently. "Krillin's already eating. I mean, if you're hungry -"

Gohan's stomach growls. Of course he's hungry - he's always hungry. He hops out of bed and slips on the cape Mister Piccolo gave him. Dende offers his hand. Gohan takes it, and the two of them walk hand-in-hand down a pale stone hallway.

"It's a beautiful place," Dende says, as Gohan revels in the feeling of an alien hand, warm, dry, waxy. That year spent waiting for his father to return from Namek he'd sneak out on sleepless nights with Icarus and wrap himself in leaves, searching for Mister Piccolo's strong arms. He has a science textbook that talks about photosynthesis, and a book of poems that speaks of being cradled by trees.

Maybe Dende's bones are paper but his veins are full of bright red blood, like Gohan's, like Goku's, like Cell's -

"-Gohan?"

"-Huh?"

"You seem distracted."

"Just thinking about things." Namekians must age slowly because Dende looks exactly the same as Gohan remembers him from five - four - years earlier, but there's a certainty in his voice that is new, a power in his stride.

"It's a great honour, that the Elder thought of me when your father came looking," Dende says, after Gohan remarks on the way he walks. "The last Guardian of your planet had to overcome two great evils to get the title - one outside himself, and one inside himself - and all I had to do was agree to come here on the eve of a great battle."

Dende speaks with wisdom so far beyond his years, with softness and empathy, a playful lilt. What does it take for someone to lose their family, to witness the death of their world, and then to become responsible for a completely foreign planet two days before its end?

Breakfast is an array of dishes made from crops that Popo tends to in a garden, a strange room on the Lookout that is larger on the inside than the outside. Much like the Time Chamber, though it grows food, not warriors. Krillin makes jokes about the lack of meat, and Dende sips water from a porcelain cup.

They fritter away the day like that, Krillin meditating over cups of hot tea, Popo tending to the butterflies, Piccolo looking out at the clouds and saying nothing, Dende describing New Namek. The old ones had wept upon first seeing it; the soil is so fertile, the air so sweet. If only Guru could outlived his heartbreak to be there with them.

Below them Cell has been waiting for so long that Gohan has almost gotten used to the awful energy he radiates, a bone-white monster crouching in the forest he's grown in his spirit. As they sit on the Lookout's edge watching the sun set Gohan's thoughts drift to the future.

"Why do you think Cell gave us ten days?"

Dende's legs swing back and forth, back and forth, at the edge of the world. Sensing a mind ill at ease, he drifts to the past. "Frieza's men had killed so many of my brothers," he says, pensively. "We felt it, all of it, and then they came for us. They killed Moori, and then they killed Cargo, and then Dodoria turned to me. I had felt so scared for so long that when the moment came to run, I couldn't move. Until you and Krillin arrived."

"So Cell is - trying to scare us?"

"I think so. Cell has a lot of qualities - Vegeta's pride, and Piccolo's cunning, and Frieza's desire to conquer. This is part of his strategy. He thinks that if you make someone feel hopeless they won't bother fighting back."

Despite his best efforts, tears prick the corners of Gohan's eyes. For the first time in three hundred and twenty-eight days - not that he's been counting - he's afraid, genuinely afraid. The fight-or-flight in him, the caged bird in his ribs and the monster on his tongue, is killing him.

"Is that -" He swallows, hard. "Is that true?"

And the Nameless Namekian thinks, that's up to you, Gohan.

One day left and the hours slide by all too quickly. After a difficult night, Gohan's hands shake as he eats breakfast. Piccolo takes him into the woods.

Namekians are not is a misnomer, on two counts: it is not really mind-reading, and it is not an ability unique to Namekians, or innate in their species. Namekians are rather energy-sensitive, and thoughts are born of energy. Thought-hearing is empathetic ki-reading, and if Kami was particularly good at it, well, it was just something born of practice and talent.

(He knows. He's known this whole time - he knew from the moment the two of them stepped out of the Time Chamber, Goku's intentions clear as dawn. He does not agree. He cares for Gohan far too much to agree, but he trusts Goku, and if Goku needs to give Gohan that trust - well. It was never Piccolo's choice to make anyways.)

"Hey, I remember this place," Gohan says, motioning towards a cone-shaped trench in the earth. Grass and moss has overtaken the rubble. Give it ten years and you may not even know that there was once a mountain there. "Yeah, do you remember, Piccolo? You picked me up, and you -"

"- Yeah."

(Piccolo now is not the Piccolo from back then.)

And despite Goku's wishes Piccolo spends a bit of time training with Gohan, because he can't help but indulge the boy a little, and he can't think of any other way to get his mind of the looming shadow of tomorrow. They play at war until they find a good rhythm, blow-for-blow, passing their last few hours with the wind and the woods and the world.

"Perhaps your father feels responsible for Cell," Dende says much later, over a dinner of fish and rice. The sky is swathed in purples and dark blues; the galaxy hangs above them like a thumb dipped in green paint and streaked from horizon to horizon. He's found that certainty he'd been looking for, the choice between being scared and brave or just being scared. Gohan wishes he could chase the dawn but he needs his sleep.

"He's not, though," Gohan says. "This isn't his fault. And if we win, we can use the Dragon Balls to bring everyone who's died back."

"I know. But -" Dende's eyes drift downwards. "- Gohan, there's something you need to know about Shenron -"

Dende keeps an ajisa plant in a clay pot in his chambers, tends to it daily. It grows easily in the Earth's rich atmosphere, but he clings to the routine, regardless; there are songs to be sung as one aerates the roots, prayers to be whispered as the flower is watered. Useless as it is for anything but beauty, ajisa is called the memory plant for the ritual. Each day it leaves traces on his hands. He breathes in the sweet smell of Namek, the home-before-home.

"Your father was trying to teach you something," he says. Across the room Gohan is lying on the floor beside the bed Kami left behind, staring up at the stars hanging from the ceiling. Few things on the Lookout obey any laws but the laws governing desire.

(Shenron is a wish-granter in the Namekian sense. It can create things or move things or make bargains with Death, the old fool behind a mahogany desk - but it cannot change one's mind, or use its power on anyone unwilling. Just that morning, seemingly a lifetime ago, Dende had said, it will not bring back someone whom it has brought back before; that is an abomination, a mockery of death. Something had changed in Goku's face. He'd made a decision, his peace, a resignation to death.

And then - grovelling before Cell, five seconds to the end of the world, wallowing in the full impact of his failure - Gohan had turned his eyes up - seen his father, smiling, honest, uninhibited by pride or shame - asking for his forgiveness -)

Dende peers at him with wise eyes, already old beyond his years. "Your father was trying to teach you something," he repeats. "You spent a year training the Saiyan side of you. He had ten days to train the human side of you. Your father must have known." He pauses, and closes his eyes. "Cell had Saiyan in him, but none of the human part of you. Goku knew - he must have known - that Cell could only be killed by someone whom he was not."

(Dende understands. He lives on the Lookout in the shadow of Kami's life, brought from his planet to replace the Nameless Namekian, that long and bleak history of an internal struggle turned against one's own world. On the edge of the Lookout Piccolo does not turn from where he stands, staring down at the world that is not his, and grimaces. He knows, and he is sorry for them.)

"You're saying that it wasn't the Saiyan part of me, but the human part of me? - that defeated Cell?"

"You would know that better than I."

(He's right, of course. The Saiyan was ultimately responsible for his father's death; the human had, in a moment of absolute despair, found hope again, the hope he'd hidden under his pillow so many months ago, the hope he'd found in Chazke Village, by the riverside, on the Lookout. Gohan is both of those things, a warrior and a scholar, a killer and a saviour, equal parts Raditz and his mother with eyes shining, baking cakes in the mountains. It's the humans' planet, and if Goku had needed to leave it behind to remind them of what was theirs - well.

He has time now, an entire life ahead of him. He'll learn to cope.)