A WARRIOR'S REFLECTION

I got this one in mind when I first read Nora's A Portrait of a Bitch as a Middle-Aged Woman, and I figured that it wouldn't take long at all to write. I keep the location of the place deliberately vague, but if you listen to the context clues you should be able to figure out where Son Goku is.  Be warned, though; this is not among my better writings, but here it is . . .

     He watches his descendants fight each other, his arms crossed, the power of the dragon inside of him. Here, in a world where his only legacy remained in his descendants. He had never wanted all the fame and fortune that Mr. Satan had thirsted for, or the adoration of the people of Earth, as Vegeta had wanted. He has seen many battles like and unlike this one.
     He recalls his first battle with someone from offplanet, and ironically he had been pitted against his own brother in the duel. His cruel, sadistic brother. How he had hated Radditz when he was fighting him, the brother that was evil enough to kill his own flesh and blood just for the sport of it.  He had never questioned his place in the grand scheme of things before that fateful day. After he had been killed, every morning he woke up with the same burning question in his mind--
     What am I doing here? What is my role in the galaxy? Why?
     Such questions nearly drove him over the edge time and again.
     It seemed that there had always been something to prepare for, some major battle that he was not yet ready to fight. Getting out of bed at four in the morning, leaving with his elder son to join Piccolo, while his wife stayed behind and worried about him.
     Time and again he crawled back into that same bed, long after Chichi had gone to sleep. And more often than not, he saw that her pillow was wet with tears. He wishes that he could have spent more time with her over the years, watched his sons develop more closely, instead of training day after day, night after night, raging against the world that forever sought to keep him from his loved ones. He had always loved to fight, but the thought that kept him going during those long, hard battles with people that seemed bent on destroying everyone on the planet was Chichi.
     During the three years that he spent preparing for the Androids, he only saw his wife awake ten or twelve times. Two of those times he had made love to her, but each time she had seemed more distant, as if he was not her husband but instead only someone that slept in her bed and ate her cold leftovers from dinner. He smiles to himself, recalling the time when she had decided that she wanted a car, and forced him to go to driving school. He knows that she could force anybody to do anything, simply using the fiery glare that seemed to make her more deadly than Cell or Majin Buu ever was.
     The two boys down in the arena remind him of his own two sons. One seems to be the spitting image of himself and his second son. Gohan, his first, had been raised to hate violence of any sort, and so naturally he had hated fighting. But when his Saiyan fighting instincts were aroused, the boy had been the deadliest fighter that he had ever seen.
     Chichi had spent all available time with Gohan as she tried to get her son to keep up on his studies as she believed he should. He wishes that he had gotten the chance to see more of his second son as well. Goten, had he been taller, could have passed for himself at any time in his life.
     Chichi had never quite forgiven him for pulling their sons away from their studies and herself, and deep down he wishes that there could have been some other way to do what had been done. In the ten years that he had trained with his student, he perhaps only saw the other members of his family twenty or thirty times.
     He watches his descendants fight, and feels the grief nearly overwhelm him as he remembers his family; the poor, neglected family that had been without a father more often than it had had a father; the neglected family whom he had been forced to leave time and time again as his fighting took him to other worlds, and even other dimensions, so that he could defend the Earth.
     He rages at night against the divine forces that have apparently decided to lay the burden of protecting the planet in his hands. Why couldn't they have entrusted the task to someone who would have relished doing it, like his rival?
     He had always loved to fight. Whether he was fighting to train, or fighting to decide the fate of the galaxy, the memories of his wife and family were the only things that urged him to press on, to throw that last punch, to put every last erg of power into his ki blasts.
     Chichi. He had been permitted to visit her many times as she grew established in the next realm; but the person living there did not seem to be the person that he had loved. Instead, she was the woman that he had first married, before the children, before the fighting that tore him from his home. He had stayed with her for the afterlife's equivalent of several years at first, and he had loved her more than ever.
     But then he was called away by the dragon inside of him, and when he returned, his wife had been as distant as she had ever been. He stayed with her again, but each time he was called away and returned, she had acted even more strangely until he had finally been forced to stop visiting her altogether.
     Or was he the one who had acted strangely, instead of her? Hadn't she welcomed him in to her house with open arms every time that he had stopped by? Hadn't her meals been as good as he remembered, and their lovemaking better than ever?
     He could blame it on the Dragon, he thinks. He could blame the dragon inside of him for giving his so much knowledge and power.
     Or he could blame his actions on those years he had spent training, growing apart then; gaining power, training with his friends and rivals.
     He looked at his granddaughter Pan from accross the stadium. She had Chichi's eyes, his short nose, and Gohan's ears that he had inherited from some side of Chichi's family.
     He looked at her, remembering when Gohan had first told him that he was now a grandfather; and had been for over three months. Now he looked, and saw not the mildly attractive teenager that he had known, but an old woman who had lived out her life here and looked like she was ready to begin her next one.
     He looked at her, and for the first time in a hundred years, she looked back at him. He saw a look of comprehension come over her face. She started walking towards him.
     He wanted to talk to her, wanted to see the rest of the fight, wanted to walk on the ground of his home again, but the dragon inside of him suddenly informed him that it was time to go back to where he had been before.
     When I see Chichi next, he thinks, I will try harder than I ever have to be the husband I promised I'd be on our wedding day.
     He smiles, and teleports to where she lives now, in this life. He pauses, unsure of what is going to happen now, but he stiffens, and knocks on the door. It opens, and he sees, for the first time in a long time, her lovely face.

THE END

Copyright 2000 by HoltRhenzai