Gohan's Ghost

Author: Mystic Dodo

Originally Published: 2009

Revised: 2015

A/N: I was looking through my external hard drive and found a whole bunch of fanfics I thought I had lost. One of them was this! This is based after the Cell Saga. When Trunks was about to return to his timeline, Goku placed a hand on Gohan's shoulder. I'm a sucker for Gohan angst so this was born. Gohan is roughly 14 years old.

Warnings: mentions of suicidal feelings. Also, I tried to make the flow quite jumbled to match Gohan's state of mind.

Another restless night, and yet another day...

Gohan sighed heavily, feeling the emptiness eat at his heart. It was slowly wearing away at him, eroding him and his emotions until he barely felt anything. What was it like to smile? Could he remember how to laugh? The memories of the past where he felt happy and motivated and even hopeful were nothing but what they were; reminiscences. Often he dreamt of those times, and for the briefest of moments could empathise, could actually feel those long lost feelings that didn't seem real to him anymore... yet upon waking, and remembering, they melted into nothing, as though never there in the first place.

Two years had passed since That Day. Two long years, where the colours slowly began to fade, and the passion began to depart. It felt as though a life time had passed during that period of time, yet also at the same time it felt as though it only just happened, and the scene was re-enacting itself in his head, around and around, becoming stronger and more prominent with each replay, lost in shock and burning with guilt.

He closed his ebony eyes tight, and took a deep breath.

He wouldn't cry.

Yet even as he told himself that, the familiar sensation of an obtrusive lump was forming at the back of his throat, and the tingling in his eyes only made him want to hate himself more. Weak. So weak. The emptiness began to fill with the almost even more unbearable cocktail of shame, guilt, sadness, longing... and he couldn't breathe. He was suffocating within the pool of his own emotions, and underneath his eyelashes liquid began to seep out. His lips trembled, and Gohan bit down hard, hard enough to draw blood.

No. He mustn't. Not again.

What would his father say if he could see him now, on the verge of tears, shaking under the sheer force of his tumbling emotions and ready to do what he was taught never to perform? His hand had the burning itch again, and he clenched it tight close, his blunt fingernails digging into his hard, tender flesh. His father would be ashamed, and he could hear his voice, disappointed, humiliated and disgusted at having such a weakling as a son stating "I should have let Radditz take you."

The unheard accusation haunted him.

He couldn't take it anymore.

Each day he was constantly reminded of his mishap. Every night he was plagued by dreams, memories, flash backs and made up creations of similar scenarios. There was no escape, he had no way out. Two years... two years of self torture, of overpowering agony, of remembrance... any normal man would have cracked under the pressure and have lost themselves by now, yet Gohan wasn't any ordinary man. He was a Saiyan. He was a human. He was a teenager... and he was a murderer.

How could his innocent younger brother stand to worship him the way that he did? How could his mother, the widow, dare to still smile at him with the caring love in her eyes? How could his friends – no, his father's friends – still greet Gohan with the same warmth and pride in their voices? How could they bare to even visit him anymore, concern and worry painted on the edge of their smiles?

He destroyed the most important person in this World to them, and himself. He didn't listen. He had laughed, laughed, at the forthcoming danger until realisation and rationality kicked him, screaming in his face, but by then it was too late; a few crucial seconds, but ones that cost him everything... and his traitorous mind reminded him of that fact persistently.

Gohan found himself snorting.

They called his one track mind "obsessive thoughts." And when he awoke during the night, screaming with tears glazing his face, somebody held him down. He was stronger than he was, physically... but emotionally, he was drained, and frail. It slowly sapped at his energy until he could manage no more than the rare nod at his family and friends when they wasted some of their precious time to visit him. It had decreased, recently, and soon Gohan was left in his room, staring at the bare ceiling, staring into the eyes of his father... before they vanished with a flash of light. His own cry echoed in his head.

They got people in to try to talk to him. They tried to help. They tried to ease his whirlwind of emotions.

He wanted to blow them up.

What could they understand? What could they do to help somebody as evil as him?

There was no point in talking to them.

His father's friends and his mother attempted to do what the professionals could not; it was just as pointless. They wouldn't understand either. Nobody could. Nobody would. How might they when he did not?

All he knew was that there was endless pain... endless pain, unimaginable feelings and they tumbled into a black hole of numb. The irony didn't amuse him. Nothing did. He couldn't smile. He couldn't laugh. Yet he could cry. Sometimes he didn't even realise. It was only when Bulma's voice came through the intercom, full of concern, did he realise that his eyes were streaming, his chest was heaving, and sobs replaced his unsaid begs of "help me".

Help. Help. Help.

Help me forget.

Help me escape.

Help me feel normal.

Help me make it stop.

Help me make him go away!

He could feel him now, touching him. He could smell him. He could feel the warmth of his heavy hand, and the bruises that it was causing. He could feel sharp nails digging into his flesh. At the beginning it would come and go... yet as time passed, as the two long years passed, it didn't. It grew heavier, and heavier. It would leave for seconds before returning and the sensation of his collar bone being crushed made him wince. Often the pain blinded him and he would scream into the night, thrashing and trying to ease the hand off, begging and pleading, apologising over and over as tears spilled from his panicked and glazed eyes.

More than once, Vegeta had to go into the room and secure Gohan down as he shot ki blasts at the room, inconsolable. He'd yell over Gohan's bellows, he'd get bruised by his flying fists, but these fits only lasted a few tense dangerous minutes. Afterwards, the teenager would be in a ball, trembling, muttering under his breath as a robotic caretaker injected his dotted arm with a strong sedative.

With the slightest of trembles, Gohan raised his hand and lightly touched the one that was on his shoulder. It was starting to become painful, yet it could never rival the guilt settled deep within his very soul. Tears had damped his face, and blood dribbled down his chin from his abused lip. He looked pathetic. He acted pathetic.

No wonder his father hated him.

No wonder everybody had locked him up.

They visited him, yes; quite often, in fact. But it didn't change the fact that he was locked within a specially built padded room conjoining with Capsule Corporation, with cameras watching him and a robot which injected him when he felt a little more emotional than normal. It was stupid. He didn't belong here. He wasn't crazy. He was guilty. He was lonely. He was full of self loathing, and maybe he had done a few stupid things in the past two years... but that didn't give his family and their friends the right to lock him up!

Yet maybe it did. It was his own prison. He was being punished for being a murderer. His father saw to that and they did to.

He didn't know what to think or believe anymore.

All he knew was that there was pain. There was emptiness. There was The Hand... his father... and the sweet release that had been taken away from him.

Except...

Slowly and deliberately, making sure that he was facing the camera, Gohan slowly formed a ki blast in his hand. His joints creaked from lack of use, but soon the blast was shining dull and pulsating in rhythm with his heart. It illuminated his flat eyes, and his pale gaunt face. All he had to do was to aim that at himself and it would all be over. It would all be over. There would be nothing. He would be sent to nothingness after his death due to suicide. No heaven. No HFIL. Just nothingness. It would almost be like what things were now; dreary, dull, lifeless... only nobody would be able to stop him should he want to self destruct.

Yet it wouldn't happen.

Gohan could hear Vegeta approaching his 'special room', no doubt preparing to hold Gohan down to prevent a suicide attempt. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Nobody would leave him alone; his father, his mother, his father's friends, his mind, his thoughts... He wanted his solitude. He wanted his freedom. He wanted his control. He didn't want isolation. He didn't want to be stared at like a zoo animal. He didn't want pretence, nor fake smiles and promises that he would soon be okay.

Those damn psychiatrists and therapists knew nothing.

Nobody did.

Not even himself.

The door to his secure room opened, and Gohan could hear Vegeta approaching. He kept his eyes locked on the ki blast; would he dare...?

"Okay, Gohan. Put that away."

Why should he? Yet he obliged. "Can I go yet?" He asked monotonously.

"Not until you're well." Vegeta said. Gohan stared back, unblinking, unmoving, and after a few tense moments Vegeta turned his back on the demi-saiyan and swiftly walked back out, disappearing from view. He, along with everybody else, didn't know what to do or how to act around the teenager; that was plainly obvious.

The hand on his shoulder tightened mockingly, and Gohan gripped at it hard with a snarl.