How very strange. How very, terribly, ridiculously strange; my grandson is growing a tail.
It wouldn't have been strange forty years ago, or sixty, or a hundred; hell, even at the beginning of all of this, it wouldn't have been so weird, but then, he would have been closer to the source. I don't really know why he's growing a tail; I'm not even sure how because he wasn't born with one - but I do find myself thinking that if my mother were alive, she'd get a real kick out of taking his genes apart.
Mm... mother. You died last, of the humans involved; bitch to the end - how I loved you. And how it would have hurt you to see papa waste away after you were gone. He didn't even want to fight Gokou anymore, can you believe it! Just told him to go pound sand - in much cruder terms, of course.
I guess it doesn't surprise me that of the original stock, Gokou died last. He WOULD die last; hanging on til the end, like he just forgot that he was supposed to age and die and so didn't do it until someone reminded him. He was sad when Chi Chi left, but not bereft; to be honest, though I know he didn't forget about her... it sure seemed that way sometimes.
Of course, in his idiot-savant fashion, he indebted us to him by being the first to notice.
I will NEVER forget the look on Gohan's face... Hey, Gohan! You don't have any grey hair! - just so casually, you know, like it didn't mean anything to anybody, Gokou just had to say it because it came into his head to say, and forgot about it because he was hungry right after. I HAD noticed it before. I wasn't getting grey, either; neither were Goten or Bra, but hey, I'm never the first one to speak.
Gohan... gods, his eyes bugged.
Naturally, he went on an immediate "research excursion" - kami knows when he coined that one - and went off to the mountains somewhere to test his theory, although he eventually had to come back and use Bulma's lab like I told him to do in the first place. And it didn't take him terribly long; even when exposed to radiation and intense ultra-violet light, our cells remained the same. They just... weren't aging.
Funny, huh? You'd think the weirdo fact that human combined with Saiyan made people stronger and ageless would be nice, but I already saw the difficulties. I knew what was going to happen, and I knew - because I was already married, and Gohan was working on his second kid - that something was going to happen to us over, and over, and over again that should never happen at all, though it was too late to warn them.
Nobody's ever supposed to have to watch their children die.
I stopped with one. Although my one had seven, and it just spread from there; that's not really my grandson, after all, who's growing the tail now, but there are so many "greats" involved that it really isn't worth the effort. Besides - he looks older than I do.
Gohan had three; so, three times the pain. Bra had a whole bunch, but not in the biological sense - after she took over that orphanage (and was sainted last year, I might add) she's had to watch it again, and again, and again - and I wouldn't be in her place for anything. Goten tried; his first wife miscarried, and so did his second, and when he ended up dying in that avalanche in Sweden I was almost jealous. He didn't have to watch it happen over and over again.
I think it was easier when my wife died. I can never be sure.
At any rate, only half Saiyan, half human results in no age, so after all this time it's still just the three of us. And I don't know why I'm still in touch with my family; you'd think I'd become numb, or crazy, just with the pain of watching it again and again. I know it's penance; and I also know I've paid for whatever sins I and my parents ever did in this world, and so does Gohan. We've paid our dues; we've bought our graves. And who better to finally take care of you than the one you trust most?
I only have one regret about the two of us ending it now....
I'll never know what was happening with Borocori and his tail.
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