To Truly See
By: Chocolate-chan
Warnings/spoilers: Sorry sorry sorry... ::wonders who will be ticked off after this and the next part:: I would kill people and sacrifice my yaoi muses for feedback on any of these parts so far.

"Goten, come home."
Trunks sighed and paced the attic. His papers fluttered softly at his passage. "Come home right away. Whatever went wrong can be fixed." He bit his lip, dusky blue sweeping the confines of the small room. The attic had become more familiar than any other room in the house. At first he had come up here when a series of difficult new projects had swamped him all at once, then when he and his mate began fighting off and on he would escape to the very top of the house, where Goten's or Tsuki's crying wouldn't reach him. Tsuki always used to cry during the fights, when he was younger.
For some reason, it seemed as though he had missed something. He thought he was being merciful, leaving Goten to his own devices for a while. He didn't like fighting any more than anyone else in the family, and he figured there wouldn't be such a big clash of wills if he wasn't always around to make the careless mistakes.
He didn't know it was seen as abandonment.
Of course Goten wouldn't say anything; he wasn't the confrontational type, and they both knew it. Trunks felt repeatedly whenever the subject came up in his mind, (truth to tell, it never left,) that he should have paid more attention, to everything. It wasn't that he didn't love Goten any less....
Was it? He felt the absence keenly. At first he stopped to ask himself why. I never see him anyway, so what does it matter if I don't smell him or hear him or.... hands fisted in his hair as he dropped into his chair. Maybe he had felt somewhat dispassionate towards him lately. Maybe he was disgusted with both of their childlike behaviour.
Maybe he didn't love Goten anymore.
That cannot be true! I do love him, I- Trunks tapped the edge of the table with his fingertips. He was seriously considering picking up that disgusting habit of his mother's. He had always wondered at the remarkable speed with which she calmed down after a cigarrette.
Maybe Goten didn't love Trunks anymore.
That's more possible. I deliberately avoided him at first.... and then I did it unconsciously, and it was so easy... he didn't want to fight either.... I wonder how often he cried himself to sleep. Maybe that was what had driven Trunks to sleep in the attic those months... maybe about a year ago now. He used to lie awake and wonder why Goten was so still and tense, and then the younger man would cry aloud in his sleep and Trunks didn't know what to do, he never did anything right...
And Goten was right. He could remember having these feelings before, after the baby died. Goten had not spoken to him for days. It hadn't been a conscious act to ignore or hurt him, there was just... nothing to say anymore. Trunks remembered how he had felt then; recalled with detail the despair he had felt. Goten had slept on the couch for a few days, claiming he didn't want to hurt the older man in his sleep. It was true; Trunks had been sick for several weeks, and his abdomen painfully sensitive during that time. He had thought Goten wouldn't come back to him again but the youngest Son had seemed willing to reconcile.
As long as they didn't talk about it. Maybe that was the wrong move.
And so it was a thing that sat between them, almost as though they were afraid to leave each other, afraid to abandon their relationship; and they were most definitely afraid to work it out. It had driven him crazy, and so he had done something about it. Had gotten himself pregnant again.
"That's it, Trunks. That is the last straw. How dare you? How could you do something like this? And not tell me?" Goten had shaken his head and walked away. Within ten minutes he was out the door and Trunks didn't see hide nor hair of him for two and a half weeks.
"Didn't what happened last time mean anything for you?" He wondered if Goten thought him a monster.
And when Goten came back it was a compromise. "For the baby," he had said. And they hadn't spoken of it. Goten had been everything to Tsuki that he had been to the other kids, but it wasn't the same between the two men.
I'll always feel like that first baby was my fault.
"I let this happen."
But he had no idea what in the world he would do about it.

"Tsukishiro, get your things together."
"Hunh?"
"You're coming to stay with me."
"Hunh."
"Don't 'hunh' me, kid." Marron grabbed a fistful of his tangled raven mane and shook his whole head with it. "Mama said, so come on. O-jii-san said it's okay."
"What if Papa calls?" He asked, in a whisper, not bothering to look up from the manga figures that his Uncle Keisuke had taught him to draw.
"Then your father can tell him where you are. Don't worry, kid... hey, I think they need to talk anyway, right?"
"They won't," he told her with certainty. "As soon as Father tells him he'll hang up. Father won't just go and say something to him... he won't do anything to make it better. He doesn't care." He ground the pencil point into the paper.
"Hey... Mama wasn't kiddin'. You really do blame Jii-san, doncha?" Marron sat down next to him on the bed and he heard her bracelets chinkle in her lap. She was wearing something that smelled sweet, but it wasn't overpowering... it was almost comforting. The pencil point was broken now, so he threw it away. Marron's hand worked into the demi-Saiyan's mane, the other hand cupping his cheek, and she drew him to her in a maternal way. "Everything's alright, kay? I know how hard this must be for you... hell, you think I like seeing them like this? It's nobody's fault; not yours and not your Papa's and not your Father's... it's just that they have some things to work through, moon-head. Assigning blame won't help."
"Leamme alone, Marron," he told her resentfully, but let his head rest against her shoulder as his eyes blurred.
"Come on, kid. It's time to go." She helped him pack and they took his bag down to the car. In the hallway, Trunks rounded the corner.
"Marron-chan, I didn't realize you were already here." He leaned down to eye level with Tsuki, even though the boy didn't look at him. "You be good, alright? Listen to your sister." He reached out to hug the boy, but Tsuki stopped him.
"Don't touch me." It wasn't even angry anymore.
"Alright, fine. Call me if you need anything, Marron." And he left them there, eyes clouded.

Papa...
Goten woke. He sat up, eyes straining against the dark at first. It was a surreal dream. He hadn't even been totally sure who was calling his name, although only his son addressed him as "Papa." He laid back down and turned over to bury himself back into the warm blankets. It hit him like a load whenever he woke, and for some reason his patterns had adjusted over the past couple of weeks so that he slept half the day and night and was awake for half of each.
Suddenly a noise echoed through the silent Son home. A pounding, and Goten rose to slip feet into his house slippers left by the bed, his robe guarding him from the chill in the air. He couldn't readily imagine who it would be... his parents were long dead and Gohan lived in the city. No one supposedly knew he was here.
"Papa!" The door nearly burst in on its hinges, and something that bore a chill wrapped around him... something that was internally warm. A quivering ball of Son and Briefs genes embraced him and begged, "Don't make me go back, I wanna stay here with you, Papa, please...."
Goten sighed and pushed the door closed, wrapping his arms around the boy. He was silent until Tsuki stopped shaking and begging, and he lifted the boy and took him to the kitchen. He threw together some hot chocolate (^_^), one of the boy's favorites, and handed it to the young teen where he sat on the counter.
"What are you doing here, Tsuki?"
The boy gulped down about half of it and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "I don't like being there without you. I hate it now that you've left. I want you to come home."
"I'm sorry, I'm not coming home now." Goten didn't bother to look at his young son, presenting him with only a solemn profile view as he mixed some more for both of them.
"But it's lonely..."
"Your father doesn't-"
"No, that's not it. I don't really wanna talk to him though. Why should I want to?" It wasn't disdainful or hurt.... Tsuki really didn't seem to see any reason to ever address his father. "I just want you. So when Marron came and took me to Ai-nee-chan's... I sneaked away to come find you. I knew you would be here."
"And how did you know that?"
"You wanted to think. So you would come where no one would bother you. But I won't bother you, Papa, I promise I'll be really good. We don't have to do anything... I just want it to be like it always is. It's scary without you around."
"Scary? Tsuki, it's your very own house."
The boy shrugged. "Doesn't feel like it."
Goten knew sometimes that it was the people that made the home... the young demi-Saiyan just wouldn't have any words to express that. "You should've at least waited till morning."
"They'da caught me."
"Not if you really wanted out; you can't fool me. No one could stop you if you didn't wanna be stopped. You get that from your father. It's too cold to be running away."
"So I could run away as long as I don't catch cold."
"Sure. Now drink up, cause you're going straight to bed." Tsuki did as he was told, and went to change. Goten climbed into his bed again, and his son soon hopped in by him, shivering and trying to steal his father's warmth from the blankets.
Shoulda known about you. Too much like me, aren't you. Goten reached around to tuck the blankets around him... he was already asleep.
The few moments over the past eight years or so that Trunks, Goten, and Tsukishiro had felt like a real family were sparse and cherished in the hearts of all of them. Goten pulled his book into his lap and felt Tsuki shift into him. He had surprised himself with how he'd taken to books over the past few years, only truly able to forget reality through them. He had raided Trunks' library (most psychology, technology and philosophy) and then plundered the public libraries in a twenty-mile radius of Capsule Corporation looking for something that would simply hypnotically induce him away from the real world and its detrimental effects.
This was now one of the most comfortable sensations to him, lying in bed lulled asleep by fine black print and feeling his son's reassuring warmth by him. He used to take his son into his bed all the time when he was young, even when he still slept with Trunks. When they fought it was welcome, because Trunks would face away from him and the boy would get nightmares from the fighting at his tender age. So his son cuddled between them and by morning the two men were forced into a grudging truce.
I hope you have some idea of how much I love you, kid. He had told the truth when he had told Tsukishiro that he hadn't wanted him; had in fact spent a long time... even after returning to his mate, sitting and biting his fingernails and wondering why and what would happen to them in the future. Maybe things would have been easier if something had happened to Tsuki, because Goten would have left Trunks and never come back, and he wouldn't be feeling this kind of emotional torment now.
But that was the last thing he would wish for, having anything happen to his dear children. Tsuki in particular was something special to him, in his own way. His first daughter taught him everything about being both a parent and once again a child. When he needed to know something, when he wanted a reliable opinion, when he desired even nothing more than a good listener.... when he needed a doctor.... he still went to Ai. She was more adult than he would ever be, and he looked at her with the kind of respect and admiration that was usually reserved for Gohan.
But Tsuki was his life preserver, as guilty as he felt about that; he could take every kind of pleasure in his successes and was there to see the boy through his failures. At this stage in his life he needed to be needed, and Tsuki fulfilled that need totally. He often saw the same expression when his son looked at him as when he had seen in himself, looking at Gohan as a child. That was an important trust to him, because he had always looked to Gohan as a parent and was both relieved and scared that Tsuki did the same for him. Funny... he hardly ever looked past Goten to Trunks. It was an oversight that was entirely caused by their familial relationship, and it was something which was a continual source of resentment between the two elder demi-Saiyans. Even if Trunks didn't recognize it as such.
Poor little man... Goten tapped a fingertip onto the book to save his place and turned to regard his son's slack and relaxed visage. He was worn out.
Goten realized that tomorrow he would have to take the boy out... have a father/son day of some type. Tsuki needed to know that everything was okay in their relationship. And it was; telling Tsuki his story had not upset him with the teen or anyone but himself.
Maybe Trunks. But not really.
For a moment, the mere eyeblink in the span of Goten's potential lifetime that the last couple weeks had been, he had wondered. He had lulled. Wanting to start over, in a painful refreshing invigorating way.... and so dearly afraid to leave the things behind that he loved... his mate, his children, his life... Goten had realized that his entire history was wrapped up in Capsule Corporation; he had grown up there and returned after a sojourn to find himself. The time that he had spent in Kyoto was a pause... A decade was nothing to sneeze at, but it had faded into a period he didn't remember, the time before his childhood love had seen fit to bring sunlight to him.
Goten used to look back on that captured sunshine in his soul and tell himself that it wouldn't die, then he had wrapped it around himself as he cried softly even into sleep. But he was so sick of the patched and broken blanket of love and its feeble double-edged protection. He was sick of the necessity of it, and he told his soul that soon... soon there would be a place where it could crawl out of its diamond-hard barriers and roam safely. His soul didn't quite believe his reassurances after all this time, but as Goten turned out the light and rolled over to put himself to sleep, he made his vow to himself.
One way or another.

"What the hell's wrong with you, boy?" Vegeta actually slapped his son. Several times.
"Papa...?" Trunks shook the dizzies from his head and stepped out of the short old man's range.
"Where's Goten?"
"Wakarimasen, Tou-san...." Trunks looked down at his feet. He had of course had to explain to his father why Capsule Corp. was so quiet. Even Vegeta would wonder why nothing stirred in the halls that had known so much life. His shoes threatened to blur before him, but he blinked and forced them into focus again. I'm so lost...
It wasn't helpful when Vegeta took another step and struck him again.
"Do you think I would really come here to see just you?"
"I have no clue actually, not a single idea why you'd show up now, Father." Trunks shrugged and looked down at him, not retreating from the blows. Vegeta glared up at him in his own brand of supreme annoyance and crossed his arms. Wow... he was old. Even as he spoke Trunks was mostly thinking about his extreme age. But his features mostly didn't give it away except for when he was as angry as he currently was.
Wow... he's old.
"Are you even listening to me boy?"
"I'm sorry... what were you talking about?" Amazing even though it was that a man just past the century mark would form so many coherent sentances and still pack such a punch to boot. But then, Vegeta could live hundreds of years for all he knew.
"Goten!" Vegeta threw up his hands and walked away, a habit he had formed with people like his family whom it would do no good to beat up. Trunks thought the man might leave him be and stop hitting him, but Vegeta only put more distance between them. "Goten is more of a Saiyan than you. I suppose it's more than understandable that you would have your dysfunctional moments, but I never thought that you would be stupid enough to let him walk out the door. Didn't you learn anything from the first time?"
"I was pregnant and confused and really really doped up on all sorts of anti-rejection drugs," he told his father honestly. "I barely remember that time at all."
"And worse you let him leave and take your son with!"
"He's more Goten's son than he is mine," Trunks admitted at last, and pressed his lips together to withstand Vegeta's glare in silence. "Truthfully I understand why Goten left him here, to make sure he was provided for. The Son family never needed that much. I used to envy them. No... the boy went after Goten on his own. He all but hates me and has no practical use for me. I'm not surprised, nor disappointed that he did. It's the love that matters more than the money. Goten knew that but he had to make what he felt was the right decision at the time."
"Stop talking that way about yourself!" Vegeta snapped loudly. "The sheer depth of your self-pity is infuriating!"
Knowing the best method was catering to his father's whims, Trunks simply nodded. "I shall endeavor to be more of a hard-ass in the grand family tradtion." He sketched a mocking bow.
"Don't make me come over there."
"Hai."
"You're disgusting. I don't know where I went wrong."
"Well, I kinda take my relationship with Tsukishiro like the one you and I had. So that means I'm not there and he doesn't really mind that much. Goten raises him while I separate myself from the family."
Vegeta raised an eyebrow delicately. "Finished?"
"Yes." The hateful streak subsided to wherever it had first emerged and he dipped his head. "But good lord, Father... I didn't think you liked Goten that much."
"Well, you can't tell him, but I've come to like him better than you." Vegeta had the air of a man admitting his deepest secrets. "I wondered about him at first, it's true; being so perpetually happy and being Kakarott's spawn... two strikes right there. But I decided I would not kill him and look where we are. Demi-saiyan heirs are almost as good as full Saiyan heirs... better than nothing..."
"You mean better than ningen. You didn't care for Marron that much, did you." He was aware that he had asked his father this question before in similar form. No matter the dark-haired prince's roundabout responses, which Trunks really gleaned nothing from anyway, he felt a sense of inadequacy... still that perpetual need for his father's respect.
"I liked your damn woman fine, okay?!" Vegeta sighed profoundly and Trunks wondered what, exactly, he thought of when he acted like that. "Good kami, boy. When the hell are you going to get that mate of yours back? I don't want to talk to you. You can't make tea worth shit."
Trunks blinked a time or two in thought. He hadn't been aware of his father's taste in Goten's tea, but he knew it had been one of the things he always remembered enjoying about their married life. Goten had learned at a fairly young age to make good tea, so Trunks had never gotten hooked on coffee. Even after the start of his first marriage. Goten was gone and Marron poisoned tea by looking at it. It was the one thing that she could never make right. He was sure if he had not had Goten's to compare he wouldn't have minded so much. A lot of his best memories of Goten began or ended with a cup of his tea. He could sit for hours tense, working and unable to sleep and was knocked out with nearly the first sip, against Goten's shoulder. He found himself smiling suddenly as he recalled. They weren't made for this shit... he and his adorable Chibi.
"I want to see the kid," Vegeta was saying at that moment.
"What?" Trunks blinked back to reality. "You want to see Tsukishiro? I didn't think..." He had no way to finish.
"I want you to bring them back."
Trunks stiffened slightly when he recognized Vegeta's most commanding tone. The man was usually able to get whatever he wanted from his son and anyone else just by using that tone and crossing his arms... there it went. The man looked to be maybe in his late fifties. With that kind of lifetime range Trunks wouldn't be surprised if he hit two hundred. If he hadn't known better he would say his father was a man his own age, and was about to give him a fight. Every now and then Vegeta would play the dodgy old man for the amusement of shocking others around him, and the family was used to either way by now. He was very old... but even when he played it up he still wasn't as old as he should be.
Maybe there was something good about this. He could more easily tell himself that his father was just a normal man.
"No."
"What?"
"I said no. I'm not going, father. Goten is not some silly little child that needs to be fetched for running away from home because he might hurt himself. He would not appreciate me treating him that way. Besides, this is between me and him. Not you, and not any of our kids. You trying to speed things up won't help him- won't help us at all. So as far as I'm concerned, you need to back the fuck off." Trunks could see now how he might have scared Goten a time or two. He had never felt so totally cold as he did at the moment, but the pose he stood in, the sentiments he uttered- it was familiar. He could only imagine how often he had unconsciously turned that expression on his lover.
"Well why don't you do something right for a change, you worthless whelp?" Vegeta didn't seem as angry as Trunks imagined he might be... mellowing in his old age? "You tell that boy of yours, though... you tell him I want to see him." Vegeta sat himself down at the table and arranged his arms in front of him. "You're supposed to show respect for your elders, you little brat. I at least want that one here. He's too much like Goten, for one thing. He needs to know he's a member of my family as well. Obviously you didn't do a very good job teaching him that."
"I'll call," Trunks said at last, in a whisper. He had a feeling where Goten would be. "But only for Tsuki."

"Papa, I don't want to." Tsuki drank his water quietly as he sat at the table. Goten looked at him closely for a moment. He wondered if his father would have liked the picture of his grandson sitting at the table that Goku himself had made. The boy sat in Goten's childhood place, back to the window. What caught Goten was where Tsukishiro would normally have put up a fit and cried, loudly, that he did not want to go back to Capsule Corp., now he sat subdued and told Goten in no uncertain terms that he did not want to see his father and grandfather, and that was, as they say, that.
"Dammit, Tsuki...." Goten slung another sandwich onto the plate, he tossed another one upside down with a spatula. Hot roast beef and cheese. He hadn't taken that much money with him, so this was a welcome break from the fish that Goten was teaching the young man to catch in the river. "Lissen, I wouldn't make you go if I didn't know it was probably better for you in the long run."
Tsuki did not appear to care.
"Look, you can't spend this time, hell, the rest of your life maybe, taking sides between me and your father over this and every other stupid issue we come across." Goten set the plate in front of the boy and leaned forward over the table to look him directly into uncertain baby blues. "I did not go through everything I've been through so that you would be forced to pick and choose which parent you love over the other. That is that last thing I ever wanted for you. You just have to accept that this isn't about you, and there's nothing you can do about it. There is no really good reason for you to be mad at him. You act as though you hate him now but I know damn well you don't. I don't even hate him."
"I hate him for the way he's been," Tsuki insisted in a soft voice. "And he has no idea. You're wrong, Papa.. I have a stake in this too. You don't think I missed him too? He hasn't realized yet that you and me are family... and he.." the boy shrugged. "Just isn't. He made himself that way. I'm not stupid. I'm sorry if you don't think I understand everything that's going on here, but I do, and I support everything you're doing now cause it's about damn time you did something that wasn't for someone else." The boy picked up his food and began to eat, leaving his dark-headed father clearly astonished. He picked the most interesting times to suddenly be mature.
"You're so blind," Goten told him. "Ahh, to be young again... you speak as though I can do no wrong. I've been selfish too, and I know that." I could see he was hurting when I left. But if he's not even going to come out and say so... "And everything is not his fault. There are a million things I could have done and he could have done that might have prevented this. It isn't fair for you to blame everything on Trunks. He loves you very much, you know that," he admonished, gently at last.
"I'm sorry, Papa," he said at last. "Do I have to go?"
"Yes you do." Goten decided he wasn't hungry and threw his spatula in the sink. "You know if your grandfather wants you it must be some reasoning behind everything that makes it important, even if only in the long run."
"I'm comin' back, you know."
"I know. I can't force you to do anything you don't want to do. Sometimes I have to wonder who you really get that from." Goten looked at the sullen young teenager picking at the last scraps of food on his plate and sighed at last. The hardest part of this is him...He found himself on his knees in front of the boy and took his hands.
"..Papa?"
"Give him a chance, Tsuki. Maybe he hasn't been the perfect parent, maybe he lacks in a lot of areas, but that doesn't make him any less of a person, and he is a good person. Forgive him, okay?" He saw the clouded blue eyes- So like Trunks- and sighed again, a little softer. "Or if you don't, at least try. You and he are family as much as we are."
"We're all a family, Papa. Why don't either of you seem to understand that?" Tsuki dipped his head and a tear fell onto Goten's hands.
"I know, but... nothing lasts forever, you know? Everything has a time. There's no way to know if this is our time yet, but no matter what happens, I love you, and.. I love him, stupid son of a bitch. And we're your parents, so you gotta love us both. That's the rules, kiddo. I know he loves you. Even if things are different in the future, some things will stay the same."
"I hate you when you get like this."
"I know, right?" Goten hugged the boy fiercely and rubbed at his face. "Now you gotta get goin', alright? I promised you'd be there in time for dinner. Be good, for me, kay?"
The boy nodded at last. "Alright. If I have to."
"I never got the chance to give you your other present. It's in the master bedroom, and you can get it once you get a free moment, kay? Actually, it's from me and your brothers and sisters, but we didn't get a chance to give it to you all together. So you can go ahead and have it." Tsuki smiled a bit.
"Love you, Papa. I won't be gone too long." He stood after a moment and picked up his bag, looking back once over his shoulder at Goten before he closed the door behind him.

Part 2