Oceans

Piccolo was slowly coming to realize that he wasn’t dead. At first, he thought he should probably be at least a little happy about that fact. Then there was the little matter of the pain. The pain that ate at his chest like a swarm of termites. The pain that forced a growl out of his throat before he could even manage to open his eyes.

He shifted a little…or tried to…to ease the burning in his chest, but something was wrong. His limbs were so sluggish, laboring as if through water. Come to think of it, he couldn’t feel anything solid…he wasn’t lying on anything…

Piccolo’s eyes snapped open. His first thought was that he must be drowning again in the great ocean of Namekusei – the world was wavery and blue around him. For one of the few times in his life, he experienced a moment of pure panic. His lungs clenched…and then he realized that he was breathing. How? He brought his hands up to his face, wincing at the pull on his torn muscles. They encountered metal.

A mask. Over his mouth and nose. Feeding him oxygen. At his surprised hiss, a spray of bubbles danced past his face in erratic spirals. What in the HELL? He reached out with his hands, though not far – the palms flattened against some sort of smooth, curved surface. Tube. He was in some kind of tube, or tank.

Some sort of containment device? Or…or what? There was no way of knowing. And the others…where…several visions of his recent comrades lying in pieces around the Namekseijin landscape, just like the Namekseijinn warriors, just like the farmers and children. Son Goku, half in, half out of the water, eyes milky...Son Gohan dangling from one of his small, small hands...and even the small human, Krillen, or something that was once him...

Piccolo slit his eyes and did his best to stare through the water. He couldn’t see much at all, just distorted blurs through the glass...there was no help for it. He was going to have to try to get out of the damn thing, if only to see what happened. To see if he could. Closing his eyes, he leveled a hand at the curved glass and, with as much focus as he could muster, he pushed the energy out of his hand and into the wall before him.

The world ended. Or at least it felt like that. The water around him electrified, glowing briefly like liquid sunlight, cutting into him – even as a gurgle erupted in his ears, the hose filling with water, his mouth and lungs filling with it…then he was on a tiled floor on his hands and knees, washed up and out of the tank like a piece of beach debris, coughing and gagging as his shoulders heaved. His arms shook, holding him up. Then there was the cold, which hit him like a bucketful of ice as soon as the water ran off…his next inhalation was more a sharp gasp than a breath, and his lungs ached.

There was a flurry of movement beside the tank he’d just come out of – the familiar sound of someone konking his head on something. Then, “Piccolo?!” a familiar voice asked, close – very close, maybe even right next to him. “What the heck are you trying to do, give me a heart attack?”

It took him a minute for his lips to remember how to part. “Son?” he asked softly – and in his own ears, his voice was like dusty gravel.

The Saiyan spoke again, relief clear in his voice – and Piccolo felt a hand on his arm. “Man, you really had me scared for a while there. You wouldn’t wake up, and it took FOREVER to get the bleeding to stop, and that’s not even the half of it. There was NO moving you for days, and I…”

Piccolo moved his hand a little...gods, but he burned…like when a limb goes to sleep, but for the whole body…and closed his hand around Son’s wrist. “What…in the Hell is going on,” he managed at last.

“Ah…well…that’s kinda hard to explain.”

Piccolo groaned internally. He’d only been working with the man for a short time – but already, he knew that those words meant nothing good. “Frieza?...”

“Oh…Frieza. Don’t worry about him.”

Piccolo blinked and, when that didn’t help, swiped the back of his hand across his eyes to try to get the water out of them. “He’s…he’s dead? How?”

“Well…I don’t know for sure. That he’s dead, I mean. We been wrong about that before, ya know? But he’s definitely not happy if he isn’t, I can promise you that.”

Piccolo finally managed to focus his eyes – feeling an unwelcome surge of awe in spite of himself as the tiles slowly became distinct. “Was it…did you…” he turned his head slightly, and stopped talking altogether.

Son Goku’s eyes were blue. There was no mistaking them – that sort of look could only come from one face – but they were blue. Sky blue. And the hair that fell down in front of one of those eyes wasn’t the familiar crow’s-wing sable. It was instead an electric gold, bouncing the fluorescent light back toward the ceiling like the reflection from a watch. Not quite believing, Piccolo extended his hand slowly, until the back of his index finger brushed a strand of hair. It was cool to the touch, but it tingled faintly too, as if it were laced with static.

“What the Hell?” Piccolo managed after several seconds.

Son rocked back on his heels, putting his hand behind his head – a gesture that was familiar, at least, in spite of how strange he looked – and in spite of the slightly harder cast his face seemed to have taken. “I dunno. I guess this is that Super Saiyan thing Vegeta kept talking about.” Then, a little more sheepishly, “I haven’t really figured out if I can change back yet.”

Making an effort to get to his knees, at least, Piccolo asked, “How did it happen?” Water from the regeneration tank ran down his arm in streams, icy cold in the artificial airflow of the ship. He was surprised to realize that he was shivering, something that had only very rarely happened to him, even in the Tsumi Tsubris.

Rather than answer, Goku rolled his eyes up and to the left…shifted a little…and shook his head. “We’ll talk about it later, Pic. I’ll be honest, here – you don’t look so good.”

“Well, how the Hell am I supposed to look, idiot?” the former demon growled.

“Yeesh, touchy,” Son responded as he slid Piccolo’s arm over his shoulder, shifting to kneel beside him. “At least let’s get you off the floor.”

Piccolo recoiled immediately – though he wasn’t sure whether he was pulling away because it *was* Son Goku or because it *wasn’t* – making an effort to shove the other to at least an arm’s length. “Get OFF me already,” he snapped. “I can walk just fine.”

Goku blinked at him with big green-blue eyes as if he had just proposed a new theory of relativity…and then, as he usually did, ignored the outburst entirely. “Sure you can. This is just easier, s’all.”

“That doesn’t mean I want you touching me,” Piccolo growled as the Saiyan hauled him – easily, he noticed with some surprise – to his feet. “What the Hell do you think I am, anyway, a…” the former demon paused then. He couldn’t help but notice that something was wrong. The air was too cool, too immediate, and Son’s arm was lying against bare shoulders.

Once upon a time, Piccolo would have been either completely furious or embarrassed or both. But Piccolo was, much to his annoyance, getting used to having weird things happen to him for no good reason that he could think of, other than the fact that god hated him, literally. “Son,” he said in his ‘calm’ voice. “Where are my clothes?”

Goku shrugged one shoulder. “They were pretty torn up, Pic. Woulda just gotten in the way, and…well…I was in a hurry as you were sorta…well…you were bleeding a lot, you know.”

“Son,” Piccolo said warningly.

“Can’t you just make more?” Goku asked, changing the subject with a degree of tact that a five-year-old child might be proud of.

“Eventually,” Piccolo growled. “Which doesn’t help me NOW, does it?”

“Aw, Pic, s’no big deal. There’s nobody on this ship but you’n me, right?”

It was Piccolo’s turn to blink. “Then everyone else is…”

Goku laughed. “On another ship, Piccolo – they’re okay, I think. I’d know if they weren’t.”

Piccolo snorted. “So how’d I get stuck with you?”

“Well, I told them to go after…you know. It was too dangerous. We didn’t think you were still alive until I was starting to leave, and um…I checked. So then I picked you up, and…”

Piccolo held up a hand. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Didn’t mean what?”

“I wasn’t. Really. Asking. It was hypothetical.”

“Oh.” Son Goku turned his head to look up at him, even as he started to forcibly drag him down the hallway. Piccolo couldn’t help but notice that the smile hadn’t changed at all – not even with the different eyes, the different hair. “I gotcha.”

Piccolo nodded once, and made it a point to look at the hallway in front of them. It kept him from thinking too much about what had and hadn’t changed. Though it didn’t do a thing to help with his other persisting thoughts. Which were mostly centered on how strange it felt to lean against the other like this. How he wasn’t walking, so much as helping the other to drag him. How…well…weak he felt, especially next to this…

“Hey, Pic?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s hypo-whatical?”

“…oh for crying out loud.”

Son tilted his head at him again. “You want me to?”

“NO. I…it means I was just asking to ask, is all. I didn’t want any answer.”

“Oooh. Kinda like when somebody says, ‘what are you doing with my wife?’”

“…yeah, Son…just about like that,” Piccolo said, finally admitting to himself that teaching the other vocabulary was probably going to be one of his jobs for at least the foreseeable future. Then…wait a minute… “And just how in the Hell would you come up with THAT for an example?”

“Yamcha,” Goku replied easily.

“Oh.” Piccolo was inexplicably relieved.

“Why, what’d you think?” Goku asked as he sidled up to the wall next to a door, pinning Piccolo there carefully to keep him upright while he used his other hand to turn the knob.

Piccolo carefully put away a very scary mental image he’d been entertaining – damn his imagination, anyway – that involved Son Goku slipping out of some random window in what would definitely be a compromising state of dress, only to run into a rolling-pin-wielding Chichi. “…No reason,” he said.

Goku looked at him oddly, but didn’t press, nudging the door open with his foot. He then repositioned his arm around Piccolo’s waist – which was, for Piccolo at least, pretty weird – and half-carried him into the room. “It’s no palace or anything,” the Saiyan said apologetically, “but at least it’ll be warm.”

So the monkey had apparently noticed the shivering; Piccolo had been hoping that it’d go by more or less quietly. Still, it wasn’t a real surprise that he’d caught it; it’d moved from a slight tremor to a whole-body shaking. It was only with an effort of will – and some jaw-clenching - that Piccolo managed to keep his teeth from chattering. “Fine,” he said. He thought, but did not say, “I’m used to worse, whatever it is.”

The room was small – that much he noticed right away – like a cabin on a battleship. It was built for efficiency, not luxury, which was just as well. Piccolo doubted he would’ve been comfortable at all in anything sumptuous. Even the bed was a small, functional thing. It was only a little wider than a twin and settled neatly in the corner along the wall.

Son Goku leaned the both of them against the bed long enough to pull the covers back. Then, with the awkwardness of someone who hadn’t really thought the maneuver through, he helped Piccolo to sit down on the edge of the bed by bending his own knees down and sitting beside him. Piccolo leaned back a little, starting to edge toward the wall, but of course, his body wasn’t cooperating as well as it should have. He was exhausted from just the simple trip down the hallway.

Son leaned down without saying a word about it, and put his forearm under Piccolo’s knees, causing Piccolo to jump slightly at the unexpected contact. “Sorry,” Goku said sheepishly. “This is probably easier…” the Saiyan lifted his legs then, as easily as he would have a newborn child’s, and helped him to stretch out. He then drew the sheet up over him, taking especial care not to pull it too hard.

Of course, it was a natural enough thing to do – Son Goku helping him into bed. What WAS unusual, at least as far as Piccolo was concerned, was the way that he was doing it. The other man touched him so carefully, as if he expected even the slightest pressure to dent his skin. Gently, that was the word. As if he really DID care that much about not hurting him. No one, so long as Piccolo had been alive, had ever worried about that. And it was making him sort of uncomfortable. “M’not gonna break, you know,” he said, maybe more gruffly than he’d meant to.

“I know,” Goku replied, unfazed.

“You don’t have to…”

“I know.” The Saiyan smiled that smile of his…the one where his eyes almost disappeared. “It’s okay. I want to.” He slid a hand behind Piccolo’s shoulders, helping to ease him down onto his back.

And being on his back suddenly made the situation different. Piccolo was very acutely aware of being below the other…of being vulnerable…and it made an irrational knot swell up in his stomach. “Son,” he protested, trying to sit up. “I’m…”

The Saiyan put a hand on his chest, keeping him down easily, which made the knot noticeably worse. “Take it easy now,” Son said, his voice a mix between confusion and reassurance. “You need to rest.”

Piccolo growled. “I do NOT need to…”

“Shh,” Son said, cutting him off. “What’s got you so worked up, anyway? You know I’m not gonna hurt you.”

That was true. Even at his most paranoid, Piccolo couldn’t imagine Son Goku causing him any kind of harm on purpose. And Piccolo didn’t know whether that made it better or worse to be lying there like that, with the other’s hands on him. Either way, his heart was beating faster than usual. He closed his eyes. “That is NOT the point,” he said severely, even as he forced himself to breathe…to calm down.

“Yell at me later, okay?” Goku said. “When you get your energy back. You’ll be a lot louder that way.”

Piccolo smirked in spite of himself, feeling that knot dissipate somewhat. “Fine,” he said. He opened his eyes to see the other leaning over him, hair still that strange golden color. Son appeared to be looking at a spot on his chest.

Piccolo jumped a little when the other actually touched it – realizing a moment later that the other was looking at the star-shaped scar where Frieza’s energy beam had ripped through him.

“Does it still hurt?” the Saiyan asked softly. He pressed his palm against the spot, lightly, as he did before to stem the flow of blood.

“Not much.”

“Oh.”

There was a pause, slightly awkward, in which Piccolo wondered if the other was going to ask him why he'd done it – Son was definitely looking at him as if he were trying to figure him out. But finally, the other just removed his hand from the scar, met his eyes, and said one word: “Thankyou.”

The former demon had no social protocol programmed in for being thanked…to tell the truth, it was sort of embarrassing…so he responded by making a noncommittal noise and turning his head away so that he wouldn’t have to look at the other’s eyes.

Piccolo heard the Saiyan laugh at that. “Same old Piccolo,” he said, tone oddly cheerful. “Guess some things don’t change.”

The mattress shifted a little as Son Goku toed off his boots and leaned back against the wall that was sort of serving as a headboard. Piccolo found himself wondering if the other planned to stay there. He wasn’t sure whether he hoped he did or didn’t. The other made a lot of noise, and occasionally, Piccolo felt uncomfortable around him – but he was something familiar in this strange ship, and he did put out a lot of heat, which was good since that strange chill from the regeneration tank hadn’t gone away yet. “So,” Son continued. “What do you think – could you get used to this whole ‘saving the world’ business?”

Piccolo rolled his eyes. “It’s not my style,” he said.

“I dunno – seems to me you’re getting pretty good at it.”

“All I’m getting good at is keeping you idiots out of trouble.”

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to,” Goku responded without much concern, leaning back against that wall and putting his hands behind his head as if he were watching clouds in a field. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed or anything, but we’re not real great at doing it ourselves.”

“Better be someone with a good insurance plan,” Piccolo growled half under his breath, turning onto his side to face away from the other…and, hopefully, to conserve a bit of heat.

Son Goku wasn’t fooled. “Man, still?” He asked.

Piccolo very pointedly did not answer – he wasn’t some child who couldn’t deal with a chill.

“Stay put,” the Saiyan said as he got up. Piccolo didn’t bother turning over. He could easily trace the other’s motions with his ears – could easily pinpoint the soft slaps of the other’s bare feet against the metal cabin floor.

A few seconds later, a door opened, and Son Goku was coming back. Piccolo huffed softly as something was dropped on him – an extra blanket or something that the other was taking the time to arrange. “Vegeta mentioned something about this back when I went in one – said the tank kinda freezes you when you first start healing to slow your systems down. Makes it easier to stop bleeding, and keeps you from dying while you heal.” The other chuckled softly. “I’m guessin’ you broke the thing before you had time to thaw out all the way.”

Piccolo wasn’t sure whether he was more shocked that Vegeta had said something useful or that Son Goku had proposed a halfway-sensible explanation of what had happened. He decided not to address either issue. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said.

“Sure it did.” Goku knelt beside him and put the back of his hand to his cheek – ostensibly to check his temperature. “This doesn’t look like it’s helping,” he said after a moment. “Do you want me to go run you a bath or something?”

That was a whole MESS of awkward, Piccolo decided, that he had no desire to deal with. “No,” he growled.

“Alright, then…how about this?” the Saiyan asked, and Piccolo heard a slight rustling of fabric before the other slipped under the covers with him. He jumped slightly as the other settled against him, back to back.

“What is this,” Piccolo growled, “the arctic circle?”

“Nah, but it seems like a good idea anyway, doesn’t it?”

Piccolo shook his head at that – but was really too tired for witty comebacks. And he did have to admit that the other was putting out a lot of heat. “Y’know if you tell anybody about this, ever…”

“Right, right, you’ll rip me apart with your bare hands and hang me up for the crows, I’ll pay dearly, yadda yadda. I know.” Far from sounding angry or hurt, the Saiyan sounded amused at the prospect.

“S’the general idea,” Piccolo growled, albeit not with his usual venom…and allowed himself, a little, to lean back against the other.

By way of response, he felt Son shift behind him…and suddenly there was an arm around his waist as the other – still dressed, fortunately – was curled in a C-shape around his back. Granted, he was up a bit so that his chest was almost at the back of Piccolo’s neck – but he was as far around him as their height difference would have allowed. It was strange, Piccolo decided, to feel that protected. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

“Don’t bother,” Goku said before Piccolo could manage even a growl. “S’for your own good, and you know it.”

Huffing a sigh, Piccolo decided that he’d be better off to put up with it for now, but…the other still felt staticky, like lying next to a fully-charged wire. “Think you can at least tone it down a little?” he said.

“I can try…” and then there was an abrupt sensation like standing next to a vacuum…before the air around them seemed to relax again. Piccolo glanced back, oddly relieved to notice that the other’s hair was black again, and that the unnaturally-powerful aura was, for the moment, gone.

And, he noticed after a moment, so was his companion. Son Goku, apparently more tired by the transformation than he’d let on, was sleeping.

“Just like that, huh?” the former demon asked quietly of the room at large. “I save your life once, and all of a sudden it doesn’t matter that I tried to kill you at least a dozen times.”

Son didn’t answer at all. He merely smiled as if to himself, and exhaled his way into deeper sleep. And maybe that was an answer, too, in its own way.