AN: My first attempt at any kind of fanfic poetry. This is free verse, so there's no (purposeful) rhyming done here. It's just a little thing I scribbled down while half-listening to my English teacher prattle on about the symbolism in Death of A Salesman. I don't own DBZ.

Twin Fires

A child sits alone inside a cave

Listening to the sounds of ran and thunder outside

Lightning brightens the night sky overhead

But the child doesn't hear or see any of it

At five, he is braver than many grown men

Alone in the world at the age of four, now five,

But no part marks it, no celebration to announce

That a child had added another year to his life

Especially when there might not be another

The child is waiting for the battle

At the age of five, thrown onto the battlefield

And still alone, except for the person

Who killed his father and kidnapped him

The man who's training him

A cold, stoic, uncaring man without a friend in the world

Indifference against a child's naivety, innocence, and cheerfulness

Wearing each other down

But at the moment, the child is alone

Thinking about a father who died for him

And the mother he might never see again

As he scratches algebra equations into the dirt

Outside, the storm rages

But inside the stone nook

Twin fires burn

One offers light, warming the air around him

Chasing the darkness away

The other…

The other can only be seen in the child's eyes

Warming him from within, burning in his heart

A child's spirit, it can be bent but not broken

As the child falls to sleep, he know that tomorrow

Will be more of the same, working, training, pain, sweat

But he will survive, just as he's survived these past months

And the twin fires continue to burn

One eventually dies

The other never will