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Atavism	By : ctsama Category: Dragon Ball Z > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 9192 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragonball, Dragonball Z, Dragonball Super, Resurrection 'F', or Battle of Gods or the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Righteous Wrath

Whis and Piccolo watched anxiously as Vegeta’s twin daughters maneuvered their much larger father effortlessly.

“What did they mean about not being able to feel him? I know they’re not in constant communication with each other-”

“It’s more of an awareness they have of each other. Like background noise,” Piccolo murmured absently. Vegeta still hadn’t made a move on his own and he was getting rattled.

“What the hell is wrong with him? And why isn’t Goku here flipping the fuck out? This makes no sense-”

“Papa Goku kinda… clogged up their bond and pushed him away,” Pima said softly. “We don’t think he meant to. But Daddy’s all alone in there now. And he can’t be alone, not anymore.”

“I guess that explains that,” Piccolo murmured. And more than that it explained why Goku hadn’t just told someone else the way he normally would have. Just as Goku’s influence allowed Vegeta to cope with emotional stresses, Vegeta’s influence had evolved Goku’s problem-solving skills beyond ‘punch it in the face and/or befriend it.’ The subtleties required for this convoluted situation with Gohan needed to come from the one person Goku was shutting out.

While Pima spoke Shishi pushed Piccolo and Whis into their places on either side of their father in the couch. When she was satisfied with their placement she pulled the glove off the hand in her own. Then, to Whis’ surprise she gestured for his hand as well. When he complied with the unspoken demand she moved to put Vegeta’s hand into his.

Vegeta flinched, almost pulling his hand away but she and Shishi both plied him with reassurance, pressing his hand the rest of the way until Whis’ long fingers curled around it. Once it was done they quietly left the room to give them some privacy.

Whis watched them in confusion. “Did they say anything?”

“They just said that… you have to pull him out of there before he gets swallowed up.”

All Whis could feel from Vegeta were carefully constructed walls woven from the pain of his injured body. He moved to kneel in front of Vegeta, looking as deeply as he could into that vacant gaze. What he found wasn’t promising, and his beautiful face was a study in sadness when he turned to a similarly worried Piccolo. “He’s walled himself off in there so well that I can’t reach him, not without damaging his mind. I have no bond with him, no other way in besides attacking his defenses,” Whis said helplessly.

“Yes, you do. Forget this Saiyan bonding nonsense, there are other bonds, like friendship, trust, love… Goku may have had the benefit of some of the strongest teachers available, but Vegeta’s always been on his own… until you took him on. You taught him. No one’s ever done that for him before, and he didn’t think anyone ever would. That’s no small thing to him. That’s the reason the twins expect you to do this instead of me; I may be close to him, but he can tell me to go fuck myself. You and the twins are the only people whose words he can’t dismiss.”

Whis swallowed hard. “I didn’t realize it meant that much to him. He told you all that?”

“In less words,” Piccolo shrugged. “But yeah. He is my friend. ...And if you tell him I said that I’ll find a way to kill you.”

Whis startled the both of them with a chuckle. “Almost the exact same sentiment came out of his mouth not too long ago. …Oh dear. I suppose that means he’ll kill me now.”

“Yeah, well. I guess your secret’s safe with me. Now help him before the girls come back in here to tell us off for taking too long.”

Whis nodded, thinking about what to say. Vegeta hadn’t moved on his own since they’d arrived. He squeezed the hand still clutched tightly in his own. “Vegeta-”

“No. Up here,” Piccolo said, tapping his head. “There’s no way he won’t hear you. And if the girls are right and Goku hasn’t been with him…. he’ll need it.”

Whis nodded to him with a small smile, grateful for Piccolo’s insights.

Vegeta. Before you called me friend, you called me ‘teacher.’ A thin shred of indignation answered his statement, along with the word ‘still.’ Whis smiled in relief; at least now he knew he was getting through that daunting shield. You call me teacher still, my apologies. If I have your trust the way I once did, you’ll let the walls go now that I’m here. Let me help you.

Vegeta hesitated. At a time in his life he thought himself worthless this powerful being had chosen to spend time and effort training him. Their relationship had changed since then, but that reverence would never fully disappear. He wanted to do as his teacher asked but he knew he couldn’t handle the emotions held at bay - not without Goku.

We both know what it’s like to turn off our emotions, to not feel certain things just to be able to survive. But we both changed, we both chose to let others in, to care about others again. I think the hardest part is accepting that others feel the same way toward us. There’s no need for you to bear all these burdens alone anymore; there are people who care about you. I care, Vegeta, I care. I can’t - I won’t see you like this and do nothing. I can help you, I want to help you. Show me what’s been going on.

Guilt, humiliation, heartache, despair… enough to send Vegeta back into a cell of horrid memories, and enough to potentially damage the developing minds within him. It was all there, waiting.

Since coming clean about his original motivations for wanting to train him and Goku, Whis had never again lied to him in any way. If he said he could help…

Nothing happened for so long Whis and Piccolo looked at each other anxiously over the top of Vegeta’s head. Their attention snapped back when Vegeta shuddered, and a second later a burst of raw images flooded into Whis’ mind. It seemed to be everything that had happened with him from his first meeting with Gohan. Sorting through the images was a simple - if horrifying - task, but keeping all that turmoil from overwhelming Vegeta’s currently fragile psyche wasn’t so easy and he struggled to hold it all back from his friend.

Everything he was receiving told Whis things were worse than he could have imagined. Vegeta’s bond with Goku was badly unbalanced. In all his years of observing others of Vegeta’s kind he’d seen it happen before, but never to this degree… and they were both suffering from it.

A wave of almost physical sickness hit him and Whis grimaced. Vegeta’s self-blame was astonishing. To Vegeta, confiding these things to anyone - even his teacher - felt like a betrayal of the highest order.

“No, you’ve got it wrong. This is no betrayal. Honoring your bond with Goku doesn’t mean never seeking help outside it! I know what needs to be done. You both need help and you’re going to get it.” This was the right thing. You’re tired and hurt-

Another wave of that thick, all-encompassing pain swallowed his words. “I deserve it. I let him down,” Vegeta finally said, barely a whisper. “I let him down.”

Whis moved to eye level, pinning him with that soft lavender gaze and not letting him look away.

No my dearest friend, that is not so. It will all be well soon, I promise you. Leave it to me. Sleep now.

Vegeta tried to resist Whis’ compulsion but he was too exhausted and hurt to put up a fight. Whis’ thoughts lost the form that molded them into words until there was nothing left but the soothing music. He slumped forward, falling against Whis’ shoulder in the first restful sleep he’d gotten in almost a week.

Piccolo knew better than to try and stop Whis when he was on a mission, but as he silently gathered Vegeta up Piccolo’s own anxiety drove him to interrupt the now grim-faced elder. “Well? Mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

“Their bond is damaged,” Whis answered shortly, not pausing in his movements, forcing Piccolo to keep up with his long strides as he headed to the stairs.

“I thought a bond like that was for life-”

“It is. But it can get out of balance. Typically these problems are self-correcting but in the worst case a bond can become unstable, which is happening now. In brief, Vegeta is the brains and Goku is the heart. Neither one of them is functioning properly without the other; they can’t fix this on their own.”

“So what’s the plan? We can’t just do nothing!”

“Vegeta is exhausted, malnourished and injured,” Whis snapped, his frustration at the state of the too-light body in his arms breaking through his trademark calm. ‘I’ve carried him like this too many times.’ “Dende needs to look him over, if you would be so kind. Then I need you to get me to Gohan. Quickly.”

Piccolo stumbled backward in disbelief. “Gohan? No. I can’t believe he had anything to do with this! He’s been there for Videl, he’s shown no signs of violence toward Vegeta, even the girls are beginning to warm up to him-”

“No, that’s not it at all. Gohan is the only one who can fix this mess.”

__________________________________________________________________________________
“...and this little piggy cried ‘wee, wee, wee, all the way home!”

Pan giggled, rolling on the floor as Gohan pinched her little toes in turn. “Geez, how does your mother do this all day,” he mumbled with a smile. “How many times is that now? Ten?”

“Not enough! Again!” she grinned, and Gohan couldn’t refuse her.

“All right, one more time then-” A sudden energy spike both startled and pleased both of them. Pan gasped out Piccolo’s name through her giggles.

Gohan turned, his smile fading at the sight of the being he could finally sense only thanks to Vegeta’s tutelage. ‘What is he doing here?’

Piccolo patted him on the shoulder but passed him up for Pan. “Hey there. Want to go see-”

“Pima an’ Sheesh!” she squealed, already throwing herself at him. “Bye, Daddy!” she waved from Piccolo’s arms, and they were gone before Gohan could even question it. He turned to face Whis, whose hands were clasped behind his back and a determined look in his lavender eyes.

Gohan’s heart dropped, fearing that he knew the reason for this sudden visit.

“Where’s Vegeta?”

He met Whis’ knowing look with shame. “He is with Dende. And I can’t leave him for long, so I’ll be as direct as possible.”

“Okay,” Gohan responded shakily, heart pounding in his chest. “If Dende is… tell me the babies are all right Whis, please.”

“They’re fine. Vegeta alone has borne the brunt of Goku’s rages, though he’s had to work to keep it that way. I take it you understand some of what’s happening.”

“I… I do. I wish I could have done something more about it but Vegeta didn’t want me to.”

“I understand. But things are more complicated than both of you knew. His bond with your father is still intact, but it is badly damaged. And as you have probably guessed, you are the cause. I’ve seen this type of thing before with your people; serious challenges over a bonded mate weren’t commonplace but they did happen. Dealing with it was as straightforward as you might imagine.”

Gohan sighed, nodded. “Son or not, Dad should have killed me, right?”

“Precisely. Your people weren’t big on sharing or forgiveness. But that’s only part of the problem. Your father is… a special case. A more pure heart I’ve never met in all my years. But that means he has no idea how to process the feelings you bring up in him now. You’re his son. He loves you. And he also hates you for trying to force Vegeta away from him, and for what you did to him while trying to accomplish that goal. You’re going to have to go against Vegeta’s wishes and confront your father, for both their sakes. There is no other way.”

Whis glanced over at Gohan and saw his indecision. While he understood Gohan’s dilemma, he wasn’t going to let the young man off without understanding the consequences of inaction. “When Vegeta and Goku first came to me for training, Goku’s care and attention were all that held Vegeta together. Bringing him back took a lot of work, and sometimes I wondered if he would even be able to recover. Had Goku’s life not been dependent upon his own I would have feared that he might end his own life. Do you understand?”

Gohan paled. That he had driven such a proud, fierce man to such depths was devastating.

“You did that to him. You, who loved him. How did it feel? To come back to yourself and see what you had done to him, to discover the depths of violence and cruelty - even hatred that lay within you?”

Gohan grimaced, thinking of those days spent in near catatonia. “It was the worst feeling I’ve ever had, realizing how badly I’d hurt the people I loved so much. It was so bad I just hid out at first. I refused to face what I’d done; I even felt sorry for myself that my actions had put Vegeta so far out of my reach… I just ended up making the fallout even worse for the people around me. I think I would have stayed in bed until I shriveled up and died.”

“So what changed?”

“Piccolo. Really he’s the closest thing to a father I knew growing up. His training methods might have been brutal but I could always feel how much I meant to him… When he figured out what I was doing he came to me and kicked my ass with the reality boot to make me- Oh. Oh I get it… Dad is stuck, running from the pain just like I was. And Vegeta won’t make him face it, he’ll just keep taking whatever my father dishes out… he probably thinks this whole thing is his fault. Dad can’t face this without help.”

“And like you, Goku will keep hurting those around him until someone makes him do otherwise. He has a good heart but he is in over his head here. So you see. Your father can’t do this on his own. You have to be the one to find a way to heal the rift between you.”

“You don’t understand, I can’t do anything! Vegeta is just beginning to trust me again… I can’t lose that, Whis! Not again. I’ll do whatever I can within his bounds but I won’t go against his wishes!”

Whis’ expression darkened but Gohan held his ground. “So be it,” Whis said, his voice ice. He tapped his staff against the ground and a hazy image formed above the orb.

“I suggest you get used to seeing this until the children are born. After that you’ll find yourself remembering this sight as ‘the good old days.’”

The hazy image resolved and Gohan found that breathing had become nearly impossible. He walked forward without thinking, getting closer and wishing he could stop himself. Dende was removing Vegeta’s high-necked sweater that was too warm for the day and the tightly-belted pants only to recoil at what he found. His gentle friend never could take the sight of suffering and immediately he stretched out his arms, sending his healing energies into the damaged body.

Those energies were working their magic, but not quickly enough to spare Gohan the full impact of the toll this last week had taken on Vegeta. Just… a week, one single week. He swallowed thickly around a lump in his throat.

It was wrong, it was all wrong.

Goku wouldn’t do this, wasn’t even capable of this… Vegeta wasn’t protecting Goku from outside scrutiny so much as he was protecting Goku from himself, and no wonder. If he knew what he’d done to Vegeta he would never be able to forgive himself. And yet, Gohan’s own anger flared. He tried to curb it, realizing how hypocritical it was to feel anger with Goku at Vegeta’s condition after everything he’d done to the man.

But after a moment’s thought Gohan let it grow. If his father’s battles had taught him anything it was that sometimes reckless fury needed to be countered with righteous wrath.

“I’ll fix this,” he breathed. “I don’t care what it takes. This can’t go on.”

___________________________________________________________________________________
Goku sat on the banks of a tumultuous river somewhere in he-didn’t-care-where. The roaring sound of the rapids helped to drown out the roaring in his own mind… though it didn’t help much. He threw stone after stone into the cascading waters, watching in envy as the water accepted the intrusions with a minimum of disruption to its workings.

He’d tried training. Tried blowing up a few poor, innocent rock formations. He’d even tried yelling and cursing at the sky but nothing worked. The hatred in his heart just kept fueling the fires of his anger, refusing to let them die.

‘I need to go back and apologize, to make this up to him… somehow. How the hell can I do that if I can’t even think straight?!’

What began as a sigh of frustration ended in a growl of pure aggression as his son’s presence appeared behind him. “Go away, Gohan. I don’t want you here.”

“Tough. This has gone on for far too long. We really need to talk.”

“Not now. I have enough on my mind.”

“No. I’m tired of you running away from how you feel about me.”

Goku shoved himself off the ground to face his son in incredulous anger. “You’re tired?! Well, I’m tired of you!”

“Oh? How is that? You haven’t even seen me in months.”

“Vegeta’s seen you enough for the both of us, hasn’t he? You want him, you keep tying your life into his just to stay connected to him. You won’t leave him the hell alone! He keeps leaving me to spend time with you and I’m just supposed to accept it… Well I don’t! He may not see what you’re doing, but I do. You couldn’t force him away from me so now you’re trying to seduce him away. It isn’t right… everything was fine before you butted in!”

“So,” Gohan said with a sigh. This wasn’t going to be pretty. It might even kill him.

But he was in a good place with Vegeta, all three of his children were truly family, and now it was finally time to deal with his father, no matter the cost. “You figured it out.”

“...What?”

“I could never have made him love me, I knew that before you even realized how he felt about you. But I figured out that all I had to do was wait for you to push him right to me. I must say, you’re doing a great job of it. And much faster than I expected.”

Gohan didn’t bother looking at his father, feeling his shock and growing rage without even turning. He chuckled, still looking off into the distance. “You keep taking out your frustrations with me and this entire situation on him, and of the three of us he’s the only one who doesn’t deserve any blame. He’s destroyed everyone who’s ever laid a hand on him, but he lets me live, the one who came closest to breaking him? Come on, Dad. He wanted to make peace with me for your sake alone at first, and here you are, punishing him for it.”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. It’s not like you could ever give him what he needs anyway. I’m the only one who can,” Goku spat. He began to walk away but Gohan wouldn’t let him, brazenly moving to block his path.

“Can’t I…?” He powered up, to the form he’d only reached in the past week. Goku’s eyes widened to see him pushing through into Super Saiyan God. Maybe his father could walk away from him, but he was incapable of walking away from a good fight. ‘That’s right, you can’t ignore this, you never expected me to get this strong this quickly. No way you’re getting away from me Dad. Not this time.’

As if in response to his thoughts Goku scoffed, turning to square off with his son. “If that’s the best you can do this won’t even be worth my time.”

“Don’t be so sure. Remember who’s been teaching me. If I didn’t know better I’d say he was training me for this fight. I guess he knew that at some point he knew he’d need me to protect him from you.”

“I don’t care what he’s taught you. Have you forgotten what you’re up against? You’re no match for me. Go home and play house with your wife. You’ve already lost in every way that counts.”

“Ah, there’s that cocky asshole I remember,” Gohan sneered back. “I may not be a god but I’m as strong as one now. As for playing house, well… Vegeta’s spent more time with me lately than you, hasn’t he?” Goku flinched, enough to show him that he’d struck a nerve and he pressed it. “I gave him children that he treasures. I’ve seen how he is with them, how he treats differently than the rest. I’ll bet you can’t help but wonder if that’s because of what they went through together, or if it’s because they’re mine. We’re developing quite the family unit, you know. Without you, by your own stupid choice. Videl cares about him too. So keep up the good work, Dad. It’ll be nice to have them both under the same roof. With me.”

“It’ll never happen,” Goku growled. “Vegeta is mine no matter what you say!” His anger was a palpable thing. The air pressure was rising by the second, and even the mighty river’s water had slowed in its roiling course.

“Oh, cut the shit, Dad,” Gohan went on, clenching his fists and enjoying the rush of power in his veins. “He didn’t even know how to be forgiving, but he tried so fucking hard, for you. He even thought you would help him, but all you seem to do is make him suffer for it. So now… Now despite everything I put him through, I get to be the good guy, all thanks to you. He already sees me as trustworthy, as a protector. How much longer until he runs to me every time you do something stupid and break him down? He doesn’t flinch or pull away when I touch him. He just accepts it, lets me do it. But you knew that already, didn’t you? When I’m with him you can smell me all over him. I can’t imagine how much you hate that. That’s why you hurt him so badly last time. He took off his armor, touched my mind, held me close. You knew it. And you couldn’t stand it.”

“No! I… I said, shut. Up, Gohan!”

Goku’s muscles were tense, energy crackling off him but Gohan ignored the danger and pressed on. Even though he understood what was happening he couldn’t deny his own feelings, and he let some of that carefully controlled anger out. “Why, just because you don’t want to hear the truth? No way. But don’t worry, I know how long you two are going to live. Do you think when Vegeta leans on me that I’ll be dumb enough to push him away?”

“It doesn’t matter, none of that matters! He’s mine, my mate and that will never change!”

“You think I don’t know that?! He may be mated to you and I know he’ll never leave you. But there’s nothing that says he can’t make love to me, and when he comes to me I’ll use everything I know about him to make sure he thinks of me to escape the pain you’re pounding into him and he’ll finally be mine the way he should have been all along! But don’t worry. You can have him back… after I’m dead, not that it will make a difference. No matter how long you both live, you will never, ever live up to my memory!”

All the emotional tinder he’d been laying ignited faster than Gohan could have tracked before Vegeta helped him attain god ki. As it was he narrowly avoided the attack and countered with one of his own. He’d discovered a newfound love of the fight once he’d embraced the power in his blood and he let it loose now. Though Piccolo, Goku, even Old Kai and The Grand Elder had worked to bring out and maximize his full potential, Vegeta had taught him how to fight when he was outclassed.

He used every bit of that training now against the overwhelming power Goku possessed. He wasn’t going to win and he knew it, but he was more than capable of making Goku work for his victory. Though he hadn’t had time yet to master the Super Saiyan Blue form, Vegeta had taught him to use it for short bursts. Victory aside, Goku would damn sure know he’d been in a fight when it was all over.

The look of pained surprise on Goku’s face when Gohan caught him off guard, flaring quickly into Super Saiyan Blue for a jarring punch gave him a shameful kind of satisfaction, but he embraced it, used it to boost his own strength. The next time there was no shame, and the time after that he sought to injure. He roared, gathering his anger and pain and using as only a Saiyan could. He launched himself at Goku again, this time following through on a punch that drove Goku to the ground. He was on his father before he could rise again, driving his own pain into his father relentlessly with both his fists and his words.

The things that came pouring out of his mouth weren’t planned, weren’t designed to provoke his father into his rage. They simply came from deep inside of him, truths he had held there - some since childhood. “Where the hell were you, Dad?! I had no father, Vegeta had no mate and you, you stayed away! I was there for him in that half-life you condemned him to, not you! Where were you when Beerus had him?! I saved him, me, not you! And where were you when I was tearing him apart? Where were you then?!”

Though his hits compacted the ground around them somewhere in his mind Gohan realized it wasn’t his physical hits keeping his father pinned underneath him. “You were gone, twiddling your godsdamned thumbs, waiting for him to come to you! Face it Dad, you do a better job protecting people you’ve never even met than you do protecting your own family! You let your son destroy your mate, Goku, Mighty Savior of Earth! Why didn’t you protect us?! How could you let me do that to him?!”

Much, much later Gohan would recognize the horrible cry that came from his father’s mouth as being partly rage, and partly a deep, deep fear of loss. As it was he had no time to question it. Goku exploded from the ground and Gohan shielded himself as best he could, but the pain of the deep purple aura blasting him backward almost knocked him senseless.

He kept fighting, standing up against his father’s pummeling even though he knew the battle was over. A few hits was all it took, and between one breath and the next Gohan was simply on his back, a terrified and enraged god looming over him, fist poised to strike. To his own surprise Gohan didn’t feel the need to struggle. He remained splayed out on the ground where his father had put him.

He easily let go of the god form that he’d been so proud of achieving.

Though the unfamiliar, dusky-violet eyes glaring down at him were filled with hatred it was the first time Goku had really looked him in the eye since the day he’d returned from his two-year absence on Beerus’ planet. Despite the situation it made him happy deep down. He smiled, not the sarcastic thing he’d created for his momentary fiction, but a real smile. It was enough to punch through the chaotic rage in Goku’s mind, enough to give him pause. And in that space he realized what his son had done. “You… lied?”

“If it’s easier to believe than the truth, then take it as truth, please. Kill me if you have to. If it brings the two of you some peace I- I think it’s worth it. He won’t tell me what you’re doing to him after he sees me, but I saw him, Dad. I saw him and it’s… just terrible. It’s not just that you aren’t taking care of him. You’re hurting him. You smell me on him, you feel that I made him happy and you can’t take it. And while you’re in crisis all that lovely Saiyan instinct comes out and you’re too conflicted to fight it, and bam. You end up hurting the person you care most about. Believe me,” he chuckled sadly, sympathetically. “That’s a subject I know something about.”

“No. No, that’s bullshit. We’re bonded, and his mind is stronger than mine. Even though he’s pregnant he could still overshadow me, shut me down if he wanted to. And he doesn’t. He never does because I’m not hurting him like you say. I could never do that to him!”

Gohan looked up at him and Goku could swear his son saw straight through his flimsy denials, and straight through him. “Are you sure about that? Really sure? I know it’s not easy without Vegeta but you need to think it through.”

Goku’s chest clenched, his aura beginning to return to normal. Had he really been treating Vegeta that badly? When he woke up, sated and content in a way that spoke of amazing sex with no memory of it he found ways to tell himself it wasn’t as bad as he thought. It helped that there was always evidence of Vegeta’s completion as well.

But Gohan kept watching him, a mixture of pity and patience in his eyes and Goku’s brain kept spinning though he would much rather have rested with his happy conclusions. As he ran through their encounters Goku realized Vegeta consistently tried to get him to agree to see his son, only to be rebuffed or ignored every time. And Vegeta refused to really talk about those times his rampaging emotions had overcome him on his mate’s return from seeing Gohan.

Goku had managed to convince himself that the awful dreams he’d been having were just baseless nightmares. They had to be. In those nightmares no matter what he did, no matter how rough - how violent he was in their coupling Vegeta never pushed back, never fought him as he knew his headstrong mate would most certainly have done no matter what Gohan said. He would never put up with that kind of treatment-

Pain welled up in his chest and he choked on it. His fist began to shake and Gohan nodded, encouraging and it shamefully gave him the nerve to keep going.

He remembered Vegeta up, showered and dressed before he rose most mornings. He remembered waking up on fresh sheets that last time when his body spoke of vigorous sex.

And he thought about Vegeta’s jumpiness lately, how stiffly he moved on occasion, the unaccustomed clothes he’d begun to wear, how long it took for his mate to look him in the eye sometimes.

A cold chill gripped his heart and squeezed hard. The worst of it hadn’t been a nightmare after all. He truly had heard that beloved voice raised in a panic, screaming out his Earth name in disbelief and horror in a desperate attempt to make him power down so he didn’t hurt their unborn children.

‘It’s too much!’ he’d said, a plea, warm, gentle hands on either side of his face. ‘Hear me, just fucking hear me! You’re going to hurt our children. You have to stop!’

His eyes had radiated pain, the smell of blood in the air yet somehow he’d spoken only of the children. But he’d wanted to keep going after that, Vegeta had begged him to keep going, to make it feel good, to ‘make it okay.’ And he had, with a shudder he remembered licking Vegeta’s spilled seed off his fingers, remembered how the taste of his mate had calmed him, remembered speaking… whispering in his ear, what had he said…

‘Mine…’

“Oh no, no, no… It’s my fault,” Goku whimpered. “When we bonded he thought sex was supposed to hurt, that pain was normal so I told him that as long as there was pleasure in the pain it was all right! It was just supposed to help him until he got used to us and how things are supposed to be, but I… I guess he just held on to that...”

Gohan flinched at the awful kind of sense it made, it had been Vegeta’s mental self-defense against something he absolutely could not handle. “So he tells himself that as long as you’re getting him off you aren’t raping him.”

“But why?!” Goku cried. “It’s not like him to put up with being treated badly… why didn’t he stop me?!”

His son shook his head sadly. “Dad, I don’t care what excuses he makes or why he told himself it was okay for you to abuse him. The truth is that he let you do it because deep down he really believes he deserves it. After he changed himself he knew there was something dangerous about it, but he didn’t think for even a second that it might be me. All the horrors I put him through… it wasn’t because I wanted him and I wouldn’t accept ‘no’ for an answer. It’s because he failed to stop me. Everything that happened was because he allowed it to happen.”

“That’s crazy! There was no way he could have known how he was going to affect you, and even if he did the way you were hunting him down, you would have gotten to him sooner or later-”

“We know that. But you have to know by now that Vegeta doesn’t think like that. To him every loss is a personal failure, every personal failure a perfect invitation for endless punishment. It’s always been that way for him, you should know that. He believes you alone have the right to deal out his punishment for this failure and he takes your abuse as such. But one day soon you are going to go too far and he will let you. And he’ll never come back from that.”

Goku’s thoughts whirled, trying to find some flaw in Gohan’s logic, something he got wrong but nothing was forthcoming. Finally he roared his frustration and the earth beneath Gohan’s back shook with the force of it.

Gohan’s heart ached. He knew this moment, knew the pain in it. “It’s okay, Dad. If you can’t work through it, if killing me is all you can do then do it,” he said, tilting his head back and making it clear he didn’t intend to fight anymore. “I think I’ve finally said all I need to say to you. Just take care of Videl and Pan for me. Keep them safe and help Pan to be as strong as she needs to be. And… please, don’t stop listening to Vegeta like this again. He’s been through enough. All he wants is to help you and you have to let him; very few people know more about beating darkness in the soul than he does. I love you so much, Dad. I’m glad I could talk to you… one last time. I’ve really… I missed you so much.” He closed his eyes and waited.

Goku felt like he’d been slapped. ‘What the hell have I been doing? Punishing Vegeta for what Gohan did to him, punishing Gohan… for what? Not fighting harder against a heritage - my heritage - that terrified him? Or for being strong enough to face his wrongs and make them right?’

He could feel Gohan’s acceptance… no, more than that. Part of him actually desired this end, wished that he had died years ago by his father’s hand for what he did to Vegeta. He believed it to be the justice that would have spared them much pain and suffering.

Perhaps he was correct.

But this was his family, his firstborn son lying there so welcoming of the death his father would bring him…

…As Vegeta kept trying to tell him, family was everything. He finally began to see what Vegeta saw when he looked at Gohan now. The creature he’d seen violating his mate in mind in body began to fade. That hadn’t been his son. This was his son, this selfless man willing to die to give the people he loved a chance to heal.

The hatred, the chaotic rage clouding his thoughts finally lifted. Sorrow and regret rushed in to take its place.

‘What have I done…?!’

Gohan fully expected his life to end there in his father’s grasp. So he was shocked to feel his father’s trembling hands at his shoulders, pulling him off the ground into a fierce hug.

“Gohan, I’m sorry. I get it now, I’m sorry I stayed away so long, I should have done better by you and by Vegeta. I love you, I’m sorry!”

Limp arms gradually remembered their strength, returned the embrace and Gohan found himself sobbing into that familiar gi.

*I missed you so much!*

*************************************************************************************************************************
Next: Goku is willing to do whatever it takes to regain Vegeta’s trust. That is, if Vegeta’s guardian angel is willing to let him try.

Forgive me, but any RR I tried to do would be nonsense from a fragged brain at the moment. :)
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Atavism