#poor future gohan

So, I don’t like the anime ending of the Goku Black arc. Not because it feels tacked on (though it does) but because of the other implications of it.

When Lord Zeno destroys Future Trunks’ timeline to destroy Zamasu and Goku Black, they are not all he destroyed.

OOO

It came with a wave of warm light.

Just a pinprick in the distance to be honest. Easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it but Gohan had never taken his eyes off of the struggles of the earth he left behind. In a way, he never forgave himself for leaving Trunks behind even though there wasn’t much to be done about it. He’d not been strong enough and he knew it. But there hadn’t been much choice left.

Seeing how Trunks has prevailed since then...well, Gohan didn’t know if it was possible to be more proud than he was. While you couldn’t see everything from the Afterlife, you could see quite a bit and when he got the chance, he would look down on him.

King Yemma had said something was amiss on the Earth and not just the Earth but all over the universe. Something that had divine energy and yet not. He mentioned a set of Dragonballs that Gohan had never heard of and that had left an ominous feeling in Gohan’s heart.

Then Bulma had come through the Check In Station.

Oh, it felt like forever since anyone had seen her! Gohan knew it felt like that for him! As sad as the prospect of her death was, he was glad to see her again.

Then she’d recoiled from his dad like he was some kind of monster. The look that took on Goku’s eyes was heartbreaking; Bulma was his oldest friend. Not his only friend, not by far, but their relationship had always been a unique one.

Seeing her try to scramble away until Gohan had managed to talk her down, Goku had all but collapsed to the ground. When she finally managed to look at him again without utter terror in her eyes...it was unnerving.

Then Bulma had started talking.

About this Goku Black. What a horrific concept, Gohan thought. His father, despite his Saiyan blood, had always been a protector, someone that would risk himself for someone else. That someone was using his father’s image to commit atrocities made Gohan see red.

“Trunks will take care of him.”

He meant that. He meant that with every fiber of his being. He knew the depths of Trunks’ passion. If there was a means to destroy this Goku Black then Trunks would find it.

Yet as Gohan stood on the edge of Grand Kai’s planet, trying to sense what he could sense, he felt...fear.

So many dead. So much anxiety. So much hopelessness and the darkness of one ki—or was it two? Hard to tell—they felt identical but were separate and one had the ki of his father’s body—or a version of his father’s body—worn like a sick mask. The sickness underneath it bled through.

And he really wasn’t sure he was feeling ki. It was more like...well, like something was there and was vibrating with such a dark feeling that he was catching waves off of it rather than the source. Like a black hole was found by the reactions around it and not the hole itself.

“It’s Lord Zeno! He has deemed us no longer worthy!”

That statement, uttered by one of the Kaio, Gohan wasn’t sure which, was enough to produce mass hysteria. People shouting, running, pleading, asking for mercy.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

Looking up, he felt a sense of warmth at seeing his father there.

“Do you know who Zeno is, Dad?” He finally asked.

“Nope. Big shot, by the looks of it.” Goku faced that speck of white light that Gohan had been monitoring and closed his eyes. “I think I know why the panic though.”

Frowning, Gohan followed his father’s look. It was a rare thing to see his father’s face so serious and melancholy. But as Gohan focused his senses, he began to see why.

Ki. Vanishing. Just gone. Not dead. That was a different feeling. That was a transfer of energy. This was just...utter erasure. Completely and fully and in the blink of an eye. Human, animal, tree, rock, water.

Just...gone. Ceased. Emptiness in its place. Void.

And it all centered on that white light that was spreading like an all encompassing ocean, dissolving whatever it touched and spreading.

Inching over land, sky and everything in between. Down beyond what the mind could sense, into the bowels of the ocean. Leaving just empty whiteness in its wake.

Zeno...Gohan pondered the word. He knew there were a lot of possibilities but given everything, he didn’t think his assessment was wrong.

‘King of All.’

The warm light was getting closer and it carried a terrible wind with it, almost as if announcing utter oblivion. Despite its warmth, there was no joy to be had in it and fear took Gohan down to the depth of his soul.

Dying, he could handle. He’d done it without a second thought to protect this world and the people within it. He would gladly do it again. Because it left behind people to carry on in his place. People that would succeed where he failed.

But this?

This looming permanence of nothingness. Of being...of not being. Not just him but everyone, everything, everything that had ever been!

“Trunks got away.”

Goku’s words were spoken calmly without much gumption. “I felt his ki disappear but not like this. It kinda...popped. So, he went somewhere else. Not here.”

Oh course. The Time Machine he’d used to jump timelines. Made sense it could jump...well, wherever it jumped to. “Trunks is alive.”

Goku nodded, wrapped an arm around his son’s shoulders. “He’s got a good memory. He’ll make sure we ain’t gonna just...be gone.”

It was so close now. Hot, almost burning. Gohan trembled before it. “But...all we did. All we fought for. All for nothing.”

“Not nothing, Son. Everything you learned you gave to Trunks. He ain’t here. Not for nothing.”

Gohan could almost taste it. The emptiness that closed in on them like a wave that could not be stopped. He saw the pathway leading up to the planet vanish as if it had never been. He saw small figures, fighters he’d grown fond of, disappear and just...cease.

Fear took his heart. Fear unlike any he’d felt before and he wanted to run and scream and cry. He wanted to...well, he was dead so not live but exist. To be. To just...

His voice was quaking though he wasn’t talking. Not really. More like letting sounds come from his throat that he had not made in years.

Tears.

Yes, he was crying.

A hand fell on his empty sleeve and another cupped his cheek and turned him away from that white wave that looked ever closer.

Goku...his father...looked on him with eyes full of warmth and love. “Look at me. Not at that. Look at me.”

He did. He lost himself in those eyes he’d seen close forever that fateful day so long ago. Before that war against the Androids. Before losing everyone he cared about. Before losing the world he loved...

“...Daddy.”

He’d not called him that since the day Goku died. It felt so alien now. But right.

Goku pulled his son tight into his chest, one arm over his head and effectively blocking his sight. If this was how it was to end, his son would not go looking eternal death in the face.

“I’m here, son. I’m here.”

Gohan squeezed his eyes tight even as he held his father so close he swore they should have merged into one another.

“I’ll always be here.”

So many people liked my “Fear, Love and Oblivion” that I had to do this one.

The final day of Future Son Gohan's life, in his final stand against the Androids, he remembers and is distressed by what is no longer crystal clear.

***

Gohan laid there, the rain drenching his skin even as blood leaked out of the millions of tiny fractures in his flesh. He had known it would come to this. He had known it for a while. As strong as he had grown, it was not enough. 

 Now, he knew, it was time. The impact of the ki-like attacks of the two Androids  was relentless and he could feel his life being bombarded. His ki, despite how much he tried to raise it, despite how much he tried to force himself back up, tell himself to run or dodge or to do absolutely anything…

 He was too damaged and the attack was too focused. There was no mistaking it. This attack was going to take his life.

 Gohan felt at an impasse at such a realization.

 He had been fighting, non-stop, nearly all his life. First against the Saiyans, then on Namek and now…he had been fighting since the Androids had come and it had been a relentless, endless onslaught since that day all his friends fell.

 Since that day, it had been traveling, fighting and struggling to catch up with the people he had loved. The power his father had possessed. Had he surpassed him? No, he was fairly certain of that.  If he had, it would have been the Androids lying here, dying, not him.

 Maybe a stupid thing to do as you were dying. Think over what you didn’t accomplish but what else could he do as he waited for the inevitable? Some truth to that old tale over seeing your life flash past your eyes as you died. He’d asked his father about it, about the death against Raditz, especially after their adventure on Namek. Goku had smiled, said that he didn’t see everything. Just the things most important to him. That was why he had tried to keep his focus on him and on Krillin as he died.

 His father had been a lot more introspective than people thought. He thought outside the box, he came up with radical ideas, he had more resources than anyone could have imagined. They might be unorthodox and seem insane but they never had failed them. 

 He could have used him now.

 His father…

 That had been the hardest part of this life. Not the surviving. He knew how to catch food, he knew how to find water. He knew how to create shelter. He knew how to track. He knew how to make himself hard to find.

 But knowing his father was gone and there would be no welcoming smile, no welcoming hug, no squealing of how proud of him he was, that was the hardest part of the new reality to accept.  He used to go to his mother and they would discuss it, talk about the man…

 But when the Androids became so active, when the dying and killing became every day, Gohan couldn’t risk bringing them back to Mount Paouz. They never bothered to venture out there. His mother and Grandfather, for the most part, were safest out there.

 For Gohan, the living in the woods was a welcomed memory. Much as the training with Piccolo was harsh, it was also the period of his life when he learned what he was truly capable of.  Of what he could do. Of the true limits he had and also of how he could burst through them. 

 The earth responded to being attacked poorly. The lack of people able to control the technological issues or chemical spills meant that the world’s air and ground began to deteriorate. The Androids, especially the boy, took pleasure in making that as bad as he could. 

 Gohan, barely fourteen, had plowed into a nuclear meltdown to save as many people as he could. It had been a miniscule amount; far less than his father would have been able to save he was certain. It had been a life though. 

 And that day had shown the Androids that there was someone out there refusing to accept things as they were. Someone out there that would stand against them. Gohan had wanted to plow after them the day all his friends were slaughtered but logic had won out—he would have just given them another victim.

 Now…it had taken them a great many years but they were going to be triumphant over him.

 Yet also a relief for the half-Saiyan. A relief from the days full of blood, death and fear. The day that had his heart pounding so harshly and his body aching even if he had not fought…his body ached from the constant adrenaline pouring through his veins and he had no means of alleviating it. 

 Nights were a reprieve for Gohan. At least for a time.

 Sleep was fractured, in short bursts and there was always a faint bit of his ki that was forever alert. But in the short pieces where his mind could wander, it always went to the same place. His childhood, when his father was alive.

 When the man would laugh and toss him skyward, so high that he could wave to the birds. When they would take turns splashing one another in the lake. When they would compete with each other for the largest fish catch.

 It took about three years before they began to fade.

 The first time it happened, it had been powerful enough to wake Gohan with a shout that likely would have killed him if Androids had been there to hear. 

 The realization had hit him with the strength of a punch to the gut.

 His father’s face, so clear in his mind and heart, was beginning to fade.  Like a photograph left out in the sun.  He could still see the hair, the grin, the strong stature. Yet, the deeper details—the ways his lips would curl up or the glimmer in his eyes…that was suddenly far from Gohan’s memory.

 “I don’t quite remember.” He had said, sobs choking his throat. “I’m forgetting.  He’s Daddy! I’m supposed to always remember. I SWORE to always remember.” 

 Curled up on himself, shaking, sobbing silently, he had spent the rest of the night awake plowing through his memories, trying to replenish that which could not be replenished.  He tried to cling to his most powerful memories, the ones so present in his mind. Morning had come with bruises on Gohan’s head and temple from his many blows against them in utter desperation.  Desperation as he tried to fill the emptiness in his chest with a mist of what had once been there.

Photographs at home had not had the effect he wanted. Photographs were frozen in time and all emotion was lost over time. He had taken the first chance he had to obtain paper and paint and had, to the best of his ability, to replicate that which was in his head.

 But as he had come to the image of his father’s face, he had broken down in sobs again. 

 “I don’t quite remember.”

 He could remember the man laughing. But WHAT the laugh sounded like…it was fading.

 He could remember the man smiling. But the WARMTH of it was gone.

 He could remember his father’s eyes. Welcoming, happy. But what shade had they been? 

 His father’s touch. Always full of love but…rough? But soft too? Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

 It used to be that he could recall his father’s scent like it was his own. Bamboo, grass and…and…

 He couldn’t quite remember. 

 The dreams became less poignant. They became less clear. As if he was looking at them through a lens that grew more scratched, broken and muddy with each passing day. Enough that now what had once been so clear and vibrant was little more than a shadow.

 The gi had been his final grasp. The final clutching at what memory remained, at the memory of what once was.  The final attempt…

 Wrapping himself in memory.

 That was truly what the gi had meant to him. He had been honest when he’d told Trunks he hoped it gave him strength. He truly did pray for that. But the reason had been much more selfish; his father’s gi was still strong in his mind. If he wrapped himself in it, perhaps…perhaps…it would keep what memory he had left fresh and clear.

 It hadn’t.

 Tears sprung up in Gohan’s eyes and not from the pain of his dying body and of his spirit trying to depart. Of the feeling that he had failed. He had not kept what was most vital in his heart. He had forgotten. He had not meant to. He had done whatever he could think of to do. He had clung to whatever piece of his father had had left with bleeding fingernails. Yet time, with her endless cruelty, had stripped it away and all he had left was a visage of once was. 

 Lonely.

 So lonely.

 Scared.

 Cold.

 He was going to die and he was afraid. 

 He was going to die and he was afraid.

 He was going to die.

 He could still see them. Their smug faces. The darkness in their eyes that sucked all warmth from the atmosphere. The laughing of suffering and the way they nonchalantly disregarded anything that was not for their own amusement. He was going to die looking in the faces of two murderers that would count his life for nothing.

 The blasts were hot, bright. Two separate blows that seemed to merge into one that flooded all his consciousness. Solid white, nothing but whiteness and pain. So much pain. He had never died before; he never imagined it was this way—long, drawn out, and so terribly lonesome.

 Trunks was still alive and that gave him some comfort . It meant that there was still hope for the future and that not everything they had done had been for naught. It meant there would be someone left to extract justice.

 That left him though. 

 And he was afraid. He had lived through so much. He had endured so much. He had tried so hard. 

 And now, he was alone for his death.

 So hot. Bright. Blinding.

 Gohan…

 A voice. So close yet so far. He could just barely make out something, something before him. Not the Androids. Not Trunks. He could still feel the bombardment of ki, he could still feel his body being all but shredded, inch by inch. He could still feel the rain sizzling as it met skin that was quite literally being boiled alive.

 But in-between those blasts, in between those endless pillars of power, he saw something else. Heard something else. 

 He couldn’t place it. It was like trying to hear through water. Muffled. Distorted.

 Gohan.

 It was a man. A shadow of a man and he extended a hand out to Gohan.  He was an eclipse against the sun of the two Androids. Yet everything passed through him as if he was not there at all. Nothing was touching this visitor, whomever he was. 

 But as the next phrase left the figure’s mouth, Gohan’s heart stopped.

 Come on, little man.

 Gohan reached out in response, his hand suddenly no longer restrained by the pressure of the attack pinning him to the ground. Fingers entrapped his with the pressure of clouds but with the undeniable strength of steel behind them, hidden behind a tenderness that was wielded with expert precision.

 The form pulled him forward and Gohan’s vision cleared.

 Spiky black hair that never seemed to stand still or remain in the position for longer than a minute with tiny wisps of black that always escaped around the ears. It framed his face, centered by two dark black eyes that were wide with love and energy. The entire universe was in those eyes.

 The scent of bamboo, grass, water and the gentle dusting of sweat amid sawdust invaded his senses and the sound of old laughter flooded his mind. Warm, but low yet with a high chortling that would sneak in near the end of the laugh and a snort that would come if it went on too long. 

 That smile. The smile he had not seen in years. The tiny wrinkles that would curl around the corner of the mouth and how you could barely see his teeth through them. The way the very essence of the man wrapped around you as if it was alive.

 “Da-da-dd…”

 Those strong arms pulled him close and with the one arm he had left, Gohan clung to the man before him with all the strength in the world. One hand fell into his hair and he buried his face into the chest that rose and fell though not with air any longer. 

 Gohan’s entire body filled with a sense of connection he had not felt in years. The missing piece of his life, the missing warmth that turned all pain away and made all struggle worth it. Because now he was here. He was here.

 Back in his father’s arms.

 “I’m so proud of you, little man.”