Semaphore

AN: A short AU one-shot, taking place about a year or so after the Cell Games. It's unbeta'd so forgive me if I have terrible mistakes littering the piece, but I just wanted to get this up, before other things take up my time entirely.

Gosh, Chichi is such an underrated character.

When she found the fourth dragon ball, she was overcome by a sudden wave of fear and loss, and she almost threw the ball away, almost went back home. Gohan would be wondering why she had been gone so long. All she had said to her son was that she needed some groceries, and no, he didn't have to help her, but that she would borrow Nimbus for a while. She hid the dragonball radar in her pocket. She didn't think her son knew she was in possession of it in the first place. She had asked Bulma a while back. Her friend did not ask what she wanted it for, but with a five-month old baby at her hip, Chichi looked like could use the wish for anything. Anything.

It might have irked her, a long time ago, to be seen by others as needy and deserving of charity. But the pride of a princess with lost glory had long withered into something almost unrecognizable, partly self-loathing, partly apathy, and another with no name. And Chichi knew that deep down, battered with stress and heartache as she already was, she only had room for one of those feelings.

She set the orange orb on her lap, rolling it, wondering. There was no harm in trying. The best that could happen was that Shenron would say her wish could not be granted. The worst the could happen was if he said he could, but she knew that by then she would not care.

Nimbus floated nearby.

Chichi stuffed the dragonball with the three others in her bag, then stood up and walked over to the golden cloud. She stared for a moment.

Truly this was a test.

Nimbus had upheld her and saved her from the hungry grasp of gravity for the last three and a half-hours, even as the weight on her back increased, a weight that foretold greed and selfishness. She cocked her head and reached out, feeling the cool misty texture of the golden mystery. Goku never told her what Nimbus was, and how it was able to tell those who were pure-hearted from those who weren't. But if the last decade had taught Chichi anything, it was that some things existed for no particular reason. Things happened with no meaning.

She pushed her weight onto the cloud, and found that it bore her with ease, allowing her to settle herself at its center.

"We shall see," she whispered to it. "If by the time I'm done today, you would still let me ride you."

And off she went to where the pulsating light on the radar indicated the fifth dragonball.

She almost felt nauseated. The strong wind currents sprinting past them almost threw her off balance. Chichi wondered briefly what it was like to fall, but she threw that out of her head, because she realized she already knew. And besides, it wouldn't do for a new mother to be thinking these things.

Chichi had to be strong, but somewhere along a line punctuated by alien invasions and intergalactic battles, strength had begun to take a new meaning and a new form. Strength was not in the conviction in her bones, the love in her heart. Strength did not mean the sense in her head, or the hope stored in a fragile spot in her mind.

Strength was a ten digit number, and she found herself strangely at the bottom, in possession of only two. There were no longer many ways to be strong. Not in this kind of world. Hers had been a thing of fairy tales and romance stories, and there was no place for such things in the real world.

Nimbus took her to a dense jungle, where she navigated the cloud around trees as thick as ten of her bodies put together. Vines swung down to tangle in her hair, and she heard strange noises, perhaps predators zealous to see an ignorant newcomer. She had a pocket knife. If that wasn't enough, well... what were, these days?

She sighed as Nimbus deposited her upon a muddy bank, where she could see the orange glint of the top of a dragonball, as it lay almost submerged in the watery soil. This would be a messy job, and she felt the embers of irritation stir in her.

Once upon a time, a fire spirit came crashing from the heavens, and engulfed her home on Mount Frypan. Goku and her father and Roshi had obliterated the flames, but she knew that the fire spirit never died. She was convinced it found a way inside her.

She had been angry, she knew, almost at everyone. She had been angry with her son, with Bulma, Yamucha, Roshi. Krillin. Dozens of others. She flung fury at anyone she could, regardless of whether they deserved it or not. But she cultivated and stoked that anger, held onto its warmth like a desperate lifeline. Because that anger sometimes was the only thing that reminded her she still cared. And she feared the absence of that anger more than anything, for what else could it imply?

She did not want to be angry anymore.

She did not want to be the witch on the mountain, the new fire of Mount Frypan, the new ogre terrorizing children's bedtime stories. She had once known what she wanted to be, but that person could not possibly exist anymore. Sometimes she felt the loss of it even more painful than the loss of her husband, and those were the times she wondered why Nimbus still allowed her to ride it.

Chichi's arms were tainted with mud by the time she was finished. The hem of her dress, as well as the part of her pants covering her calves were dirtied with sticky, dark brown muck. She would spend hours scrubbing herself and her clothes clean when she got home. But maybe things would be better then.

When she stuffed the dragonball inside her bag, she only took a moment to take a sip of water. Sitting on Nimbus, she again wondered about going home. She felt tired, worn, stretched to her limits. Why had she gone out today? Why had she climbed out of bed? She was so stupid. She was a mother. She had tons of things to occupy her at home. And here she was, playing merry-go-round around the world like a single hot-shot.

Well. She was single now.

But maybe it was the point of all this. Maybe she didn't come out here hoping for a wish after all. Maybe all she wanted was to roam the world, imagining herself as someone she was not. A second chance at girlhood. An escapist dream. Maybe she even wanted to meet a new prince charming.

Grief struck her like an energy blast, more potent than any other she had felt in a while. The second day after Gohan came back from the Cell Games, she had fainted from the consumption of one too many senzu beans. Nobody told her it only cured physical damages. Then she found out she was pregnant, and she cried torrents of tears, enough to shame those waterfalls whose currents Goku used to reverse for training. She was an idiot. She was reckless. She was a bad, selfish woman.

Fortunately Goten came out fine. Chubby and playful, and how Gohan doted on his little brother!

But there was a bag of senzu beans stored away in her closet. After a year, she was convinced it would only be for emergencies, for her sons when they get into a scrape.

The grief helped her solidify her resolve. Just two more dragonballs. And she would be the perfect mother, one who did not let loneliness impede her senses. And her sons would have someone loving to care for them.

"Well, Nimbus, just two more," she said, as she clicked the button on the radar to locate the next nearest dragonball. "Two more, and you'll be rid of me. Probably forever."

She only realized her bun had been torn loose when the wind hit her again. Nimbus soared above the towering trees of the jungle, and the afternoon sun shone with a joyful glee. The golden rays gave a yellow highlight to her bangs, and for a moment, Chichi thought about what it would be like to turn super Saiyan.

The hardest part of the news had been when she saw the world rejoicing. Someone died and nobody cared. His friends shrugged and commended Goku's selflessness. It's just like him, Chichi! We should be happy, because Goku's sarifice would be in vain if we're not enjoying ourselves. He did it for us. Gohan insisted it had been his father's choice, but she knew that his poor little heart was breaking with guilt, and everyone else just laughed. People across the world heralded a fake hero, monuments were ordered to be built, textbooks were rewritten. The world spun and spun with energetic zeal, while she and her son picked up the pieces under the world's torturous cacophony. Perhaps it had been fortunate, after all that Chichi was weak, because she knew that if she had held half the power her son possessed in his pinky, she would have blasted Earth into the other world.

She broke the TV. The radio fell off the face of the Earth. Nobody could find the telephone. But she let Gohan leave whenever he wanted, because she knew he had other ways of grieving, and if that included sparring with a green friend, well let it be. If she could take his pain and carry it for him, she would.

Chichi couldn't quite remember how long it had been when she had contact from anyone other than Gohan or her father, but one day Krillin showed up at their doorstep. She didn't recall much from that visit, but she knew she treated him unkindly, staying true to her reputation as resident banshee. Then Yamucha came too. One by one they all visited, but if anyone deserved the credit for getting her out of bed, around and about attending to house chores again, it wouldn't be one of them.

Nimbus set her down on a farm. In the distance, she could see the farmer loading his truck with harvested crops. She would have to be careful retrieving the dragonball this time. The radar indicated that her target was in the barn... which meant, she'd most likely have to deal with animals. Sneaking slowly around the shed, she sprinted to the barn while the farmer had his back turned in her direction. When she sneaked inside, snorts of pigs filled her ears. Then a squealing began, and Chichi began to panic.

"Shh!" she ordered, but when it didn't work, she realized how silly she was being. She quickly felt for any food in her pockets, and she found a half-eaten sandwich, which she tossed to the angry pig. The others around it crowded around the lone piece of meal, as they fought for bits and pieces.

Quickly, Chichi glanced at the radar to find the location of the dragonball. At the corner of the barn sat a squat shelf, littered with various hand held farm tools and cleaning supplies. On the bottom shelf, there the dragonball waited, coated with a thick covering of dust, that she almost did not recognize it without its usual orange gleam. She picked it up, exited through the open window, and jumped onto Nimbus, just in time as the farmer turned around.

Only one more, and once again, her resolve threatened to fall apart. But she had to do it, because while the world continued to revolve around the sun, she was rooted in the same spot, anchored by the death of a man who she knew would never feel the same had she been the one to perish.

When the Saiyans came to Earth, pain and confusion shook their world, but with those came a quiet, unwanted understanding. She knew then, she understood, why Goku was the way he was. And she felt a loss even before the news of his death came, because she knew that her hoping had been futile, that no, Goku would not wake up one day to acknowledge the romance between them, would not realize why she had wanted and desired him. Those concepts weren't just foreign to him, weren't just something that he had yet to learn. They were entirely incompatible with his blood and his brain.

And she had decided that it did not matter. She would love him anyway.

Chichi opened the duffel back where the other five balls were stored. She gently packed the new one with them, before checking the radar where she had to go next.

In the end, it did matter. And it took her a stupidly long time to get over her childish, romantic notions.

The sun was about to set. She knew Gohan would be worried. She had never left for this long. And she lied to him too! Chichi sighed; not only was she a foolish, terrible mother, she was a hypocrite too. How many times had she berated Gohan for lying? She always told him the importance of truth, the value of honesty, and here she was, lying straight to his face. But he would not understand. He would just be hurt if he knew what his mother was trying to do, and that boy already had carried the sorrow of someone twice his age ten times over.

I'm sorry, son, she thought. I couldn't be the mother you need.

The last dragonball was wedged so tightly among the fallen rocks at the bottom of a high, craggy cliff. Chichi decided that instead of collecting it, and making her wish elsewhere, she might as well summon Shenron here. It's as good a place as any. She only thought that she might have to relocate, because she honestly feared that Nimbus would no longer want to take her home. But she saw above the cliffs a lighthouse, and she knew that despite her fighter's body having entropied in the last few years, she would still be able to scale the side of the cliff and ask for help.

She took her bag and poured out the dragonballs in a heap surrounding the one wedged among the rocks. Light began to pulse from within each of them. The sky darkened to a deep gray, as if bearing a storm, yet the sun, half swallowed by the horizon, glowed in furious stubbornness that lighted the area with an eerie orange. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and lightning struck, and the waves of the ocean beside the cliff began to rage as if woken from long, dormant passivity.

Chichi took a deep breath, eying the seven dragonballs, now orbs of intense light. She closed her eyes and stated the summoning invocation, after which a blinding flash, accompanied by a boom so loud, struck the dragonballs before her.

And when she opened her eyes, there Shenron was, an enormous godlike figure with its serpentine shape curving and twisting about itself.

"I am Shenron. Choose your words carefully. I would make two of your wishes come true," the sonorous voice informed her.

Salvation was in the palm of her hands, yet now, fear kept her unmoving like a statue. She knew Shenron was not a patient dragon, and her own desperation clamored inside her guts, inside her chest, urging her to open her mouth and rid herself of the poison that's brewing.

"I..." she began, but her throat clenched, and she felt a sting begin behind her eyes. The merciless wind howled about them, tossing her hair which and every way, blinding her much like how her tears threatened to.

But she could end it now. She could put a stop to the lachrymose nights, to the endless days, to the sudden bursts of pain that paralyzed her just when she thought she was going to be fine.

He won't come back anyway. She told herself. He left.

"I wish..." she trailed off, knowing that after this, she would never be the same again. That the only way to return to her current self was another wish, one she knew she would never make.

But she doubted herself, doubted if this was something she could allow herself to do. It was true, not everyone deserved a happy ending. She knew that. But just because she wasn't getting one, it didn't mean she would readily accept a lonely ever after either.

Bulma had once told her, amidst the jargon of science and mechanics and theory, that it was possible for an entire system to fail because of starvation. Short circuit? She had asked naively, but the scientist shook her head. It was different. Starvation occurred when a process was denied access to a resource it needed. Then the thing loops forever, infinitely waiting. There were guards against this, of course, because processes that waited too long were damaging, wasteful and harmful to the system.

Everyone told her that time would eventually heal all wounds. She was done waiting.

Inside she screamed. I wish I never loved Goku! I wish I would stop, that I wouldn't love him anymore.

She didn't want to be angry. She didn't want to be sad. But she couldn't just ask Shenron to take anger and sadness away, because they would always bubble to the surface, unless their very source was truncated at its root.

And she didn't know what she said, if her thoughts found themselves flowing out of her mouth with desperation, or if she had said something else entirely.

But she watched as the dragon's eyes glowed bright yellow, and the wind grew so strong that it pelted her face with pebbles and sand, and her hair obstructed her view. She felt the ground beneath her heave, as the waves crashed angrily against the cliff. Her mouth tasted of ash and her heart burst with flames so hot, she thought she would throw up fire.

And even before Shenron began to speak again, she found that her eyes were now dry.

AN: So, I cannot believe I used programming to create a metaphor for Chichi and Goku's romance. It would be more effective, I think, if it had been about Bulma, but I'm not nearly as interested in her as I am in Videl or Chichi.

I have been wanting to write a story like this for a long, long time. Chichi's sorrow was something that I was really curious about, but all my attempts before had dissolved into something quite rambly and forced. And perhaps this one turned out that way too, but I think it's the best I've ever done.

Due to the nature of the DBZ world, I think things like grief and sorrow and sadness are downplayed a lot, because there are always the dragonballs to help fix things. Things like death, fear and loss don't mean much. And that's certainly true for the DBZ fighters, but normal people are probably less affected by this nonchalance. And Chichi, I think, is such an overlooked character in how she handles her suffering, which is, in my opinion, on an entirely different level than the suffering any other character experienced in the show.

Please let me know if there are glaring mistakes! I will fix them right away.