Son Gokou appeared out of the blinding white nothing that always flashed before his eyes and sawed through the fabric of his other senses in that non-existent second of shunkan idou’s nothingness that was neither here nor there. He had materialized a few meters from the edge of a granite precipice that looked out on the rust-colored desert flats. The warm wind whipped at his hair. It smelled cinnamony and heavy with the resin of the thick pollens the winds were throwing down from the Red Mountains to the west.

A sandstorm was brewing where the violent rifts and eddies of air currents crashed against the high, sheer walls of those mountains, like breezes fluttering into a building alcove, whirling together in the beginnings of rotation. The Red Mountains sent twisters tumbling away from its bluffs like dust motes from the edge of a horseshoe temple wall. They picked up sand and speed rolling down to the lowlands, whirling into storms that would strip the skin off a normal man’s bones.

Gokou smiled, nearly beaming. Goten was sitting on the edge of the rock ledge, his legs hanging over the side like a small boy about to dip his feet in a river. He was rocking something small and wriggling in both arms. The sound of Goten’s voice road the rising currents of air, sailing upward into the russet and crimson of the evening sky. The clear, sweet tenor tugged at something deep inside Gokou’s chest, but he shivered lightly a heartbeat later. The words of the song were not the lilting strains of Nipon or of any language native to Chikyuu…yet Gokou understood them. The tongue had been ingrained within him, bone deep, before he could walk.

A woman went out on a red Moontime Eve,
Cast off her gold armor and spurned the Elite,
She met with a warrior in tattered array,
As he held out his hand, these words he did say:

"Come out ‘neath the red moon
That rules a strong tide,
Come into to my arms, Lady,
Be my moonbride."

Goten’s sound broke off abruptly. He turned from where he sat, his face unsurprised to see his father behind him. "Toussan." He smiled, so much like the sweet child he had once been Gokou’s heart ached.

Goten stood, more than half levitating upward to his feet, to keep from jostling the small burden in his arms. Gokou crossed the short distance between them and lay a hand on the younger man’s shoulder, peering down into the downy blanket at the baby in his son’s arms. He grinned even wider. The baby’s hair pattern matched neither of her grandfathers’. It grew in a high widow’s peak, flaring upward and back like a tiny lion’s mane. It was blue. The girl yawned and frowned in her sleep, one thumb seeking her mouth.

"How did you know?" Goten’s voice broke through his father’s happy reverie as he imagined the reaction of both grandmothers when they saw this newest addition to the family.

"I…" Gokou frowned. He didn’t know how to put it into words. "I…sort of dreamed about it."

"We didn’t tell anyone because of the complications," Goten said quietly. "I should have told you. I think you’re the only grandparent involved that wouldn’t have been a basket case or just in a rage at us for taking such a risk.."

"What complications?" Gokou’s stomach lurched at the memory of the dream. He had woken in the dead of night, shivering, trembling from head to toe with the sure knowledge that both Goten and Bra had come a heartbeat from death somehow. Worse, he had spent the two days before jumping from Chikyuu to Madran, and then Tsiru-sei, then back again, all with the use is shunkan idou. He had been "out of gas", in Krillan’s words, and had been forced to wait two days for whatever energy he’s spent to rebuild inside his mind. It wasn’t Ki….shunkan idou drew from something….else. He wasn’t quite sure what. He really should ask Elder S’Taushk while he was here on Yardrat-sei.

Goten crossed his legs in midair and sat back down, and Gokou silently did the same.

"She almost died."

"And you?" Gokou frowned in confusion. "Why did you seem to be dying too?"

"The moonbond, Toussan," Goten said, looking away, deliberately avoiding his father’s eyes. "I don’t know too much about it. On Vegita-sei, they had drugs that prevented it, but I don’t know what they were. It was said that when one moonbound mate dies, the bond will draw the other into death as well."

The nagging question both men had avoided for the better part of three years, the question of how Goten knew that such a thing had been said on Vegita-sei, was abruptly shoved from Gokou’s mind by a horrified thought. "So, when I died on Shikaji, if I had stayed dead for more than a few moments, Chi-Chi would have---"

"It didn’t happen, Toussan. And Bra’s fine now," his son said. "She…we almost…." He growled softly. "I couldn’t talk her out of it. She’s like Bulma-san when she’s set on doing something. Let me start at the beginning. When Bra turned sixteen, Vegita-san told her some things about the Saiyan Royal line that didn’t phase her much at the time. It was the custom of the King’s of Vegita-sei to have one heir. One. They had a fear and distrust of genetic engineering, but on one point, the royal house made a concession several centuries ago. All females of the royal line were sterile. No royal siblings or cousins duking it out over the succession. The heir must be male to be fertile. Any daughters born to the throne were bargaining chips to bind strong allies closer or to be sold to other worlds in political marriage with the understanding that no issue could come from these barren women."

"That’s…" Gokou frowned darkly. "Sickening."

"Yes," Goten agreed softly. "Like I said, when Vegita-san told her this, Bra said, ‘Good. I can’t stand babies.’ Her father said he hoped she would always feel that way and never feel the loss of what she couldn’t have. After we were mated…well, she changed her mind. We didn’t worry about it until Shikaji, we figured we had years to find a solution, and why have a baby this young when we could wait. At least that’s what I thought. But the wish for a child, for our child, was churning inside her in a place so deep I didn’t even sense it through the moonbond. I think it’s the whole reason she made the Blue Dragon Balls. To use them to change that. After Shikaji…she broke down and told me what she wanted. I said we should wait. That the Arrak-jin were coming and we shouldn’t bring a baby into a possibly doomed galaxy. She got that Briefs "I mean to have what I want" look, and I knew arguing was useless. So, we went to Inlu-sei. The doctors there did all kinds of things and they finally found a solution. Don’t ask me the medical specifics of what they did. Bra understands them, I don’t. So, we got pregnant. Then we learned that there were….all kinds of fail-safe triggers genetically hardwired into Bra’s entire nervous system and the Ki centers of her brain, designed to keep a daughter of the royal house from doing what we were doing. She’s had to stay off her feet for the last five months to keep from losing the baby. Her Ki went down to lower than Chikyuu-jin norm. And when labor began two nights ago….We came to Yardrat-sei because they have psychic healing abilities great than the Inlu-jin in some ways. And they were able to hold the baby’s Ki down during birth so she wouldn’t kill Bra as he was being born. The Inlu-jin couldn’t have done that. And…at the end, when she went into labor, we discovered that sometime in the last few days before , she had developed a kind of hemophiliac condition. She nearly bled to death. She…." He took a deep breath, gazing up at his father, tears standing in his eyes. "The Yardratsei-jin Elders saved her. They saved us. And she’s fine. And the baby is…she’s fine." His arms tightened around the child in his arms, gentle and protective. "I wouldn’t hold her at first. I was so mad at her for nearly killing Bra. Bra threw me out of our adobe this morning and told me to take the baby for the day. Gave me a capsule bottle and nappies and told me to ‘go bond with your daughter, dammit.’." Goten gazed down at the small sleeping face and blinked rapidly, forcing tears back.. "It took me about an hour to fall in love. I feel like a real asshole."

Gokou was silent for a moment. "They’ll all be really mad at you both for not telling them," he said finally. "I’d keep both ears well out of your mother’s reach until she’s calmed down. "

Goten laughed weakly. "But not you?"

"Not me." Gokou frowned thoughtfully. "I wouldn’t tell Vegita all the details you told me if I were you. He might see it as you having put his little girl in danger---"

His son made a noise of mild horror. "Gods, I hadn’t thought about that at all. He’ll blame me for the whole thing, tell me I should have not let her endanger herself and

kept my mate in hand better, and.---"

His father grinned. "He won’t say that in front of Bulma if he knows what’s good for him. Don’t worry. This is Bulma and Vegita’s first grandchild. They’ll get over being mad the instant they see---what’s her name, Goten?"

Goten turned his eyes back to the face of his daughter. "Romayna."

Something stirred in Gokou’s memory, in that deep, instinct-laden place of memory he had lost in that serendipitous fall he had taken from Ojjiisan’s back sling so many years ago….Romayna….Romayna….Romayna.

Gokou blinked and shook himself. He gazed into his son’s eyes…And in the dark, suddenly eerie depths of Goten’s gaze, he saw the thing he had begun to fear with a chill of growing dread since they had met again on Shikaji three years ago. There was

a stranger melded inextricably within the metal of his son’s soul. Melded so deep and permanent, because the hard-eyed stranger and his sweet son shared the same soul---the man who was and the man who had been. But one man.

"Romayna," Gokou repeated in a remarkably steady voice. "For my mother." It wasn’t a question. He took a deep breath and asked the question he knew he must.

"How much to you remember, Goten?"

One side of his son’s mouth quirked up in a wry smirk. One of the most marked changes in Goten after Gurasia’s touch of remembrance had been the way his physical mannerisms, his turns of speech, even the way he carried himself, had altered overnight. So many of these things had seemed hauntingly similar to Vegita’s expressions and habits. It came to Gokou suddenly that these were not born of a childhood broken and destroyed on Tsiru-sei. They were cultural---habit, movement and attitude, born of a childhood on Vegita-sei.

"Not everything," Goten said. "I’m still me. It’s just that…that my memory goes back a lot farther than it used to. But it’s always me, Toussan. There’s no one in here but me."

"I know," Gokou said softly. "But…gods, Goten, it can’t be right either. Or good for you. When we die, the gods take out memories of our last life for a reason. Maybe Dende could---"

"I asked him," Goten murmured. "I asked him if it would…well…drive me crazy or something, to have more than one life’s memories. He said, ‘Everything happens for a reason, my friend.’ I think---no, I’m sure now, that there are things I need to remember from my last life that we’ll need to know when the Arrak-jin come. I think…Toussan, has it ever occurred to you that Dende, Piccalo and the rest of Them let Gurasia run amok when he first came to Chikyuu, because they wanted my memory and yours restored. Or more specifically, your…um…"

"Full set of brains?" Gokou chuckled outright at the look on his youngest son’s face. "Yes. I got sort of a unique perspective on…everything, during that one day I spent in Jouten’s Realm. I saw Time itself at one point, spread out beneath me like---like---"

"An infinitely branching tree?"

Gokou nodded mutely, feeling another chill ripple down his spine. That was it. That was it exactly. "I saw that, in some way, that Go-chan and Gita needed to be born, as well, if we want to win."

The younger man’s eyes grew hollow, reflecting the shadows of dark memory, grief and timeless regret. "I’ve seen that Tree. The Tree of Eternity. But I was looking up at it from…from underneath. When you see it from that angle, you can see all the branches of possibility that died because of things you did during your life, all the evil you did and the wrong choices you made, all the billions upon billions of lives you snuffed out with no more thought than you would give stepping on a---"

"Goten---!" Gokou shook his head. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He reached out across the distance of less than two feet that divided his son and himself. He shook the younger man lightly, not waking the child who slept in Goten’s arms. Goten tensed against him, as though fighting some knee-jerk reaction against this kind of comfort. But Gokou didn’t let go, turning the light grip into an embrace, drawing Goten’s head forward to touch his own. His eyes stung with tears. "Stop. Stop it. This is your life now. All your sins were washed clean before you were sent back as innocent and blameless as any child I’ve ever known. This is not right! They have to help you! It’s against all the universal laws of Judgment that you should have guilt for what you did before this life!"

"It’s not forever, Toussan," Goten said. "They’ll take the memories away when this is all over. If we win. If we lose…well, then it won’t matter. This is my part of the fight, Toussan. I have to do it. It’s not all bad. There are so many things that were lost when Vegita-sei was destroyed…I can help us recover the things that were good, that shouldn’t be forgotten. I can look at my daughter and know that she looks like a copy of her namesake, repainted in blue. I can look at you, Toussan, and see how…how when you smile, you look just like you mother. She loved you. She would have kept you, the old laws be damned, and raised you at home, if I hadn’t---Toussan…gods…" Goten clinched his eyes shut, his shoulder shaking. "I know you’ve known for a long time. I was…I was so afraid you’d hate me now, or be angry and hurt. I’m sorry. I sent you away! I---"

Gokou gave the younger man another light shake. "If you hadn’t, I’d have died with everybody else. When you were in Enma’s kingdom, you asked to come back to me. I found that out while I was dead. You wanted to be born to Chi-Chi and me. And you were sorry. So…so, it’s okay. I love you, Goten."

Goten’s jaw seemed to clenched of it own accord against the words, but he forced them out. "I love you, Toussan," he whispered. Then softer, "Ji'sattsu, Kakarotto."

Then, finally, the tears came, for both of them.

A length of time passed, as Yadratsei’s sun dipped lower in the west, vanishing behind the blood colored mountains, silhouetting the growing sand storm as it began to move over the plains like an earthen tidal wave of a landborn hurricane, bearing down on the two men who sat on the rocky bluff.

"We need to get Roma-chan back to Bra before full night," Goten said hoarsely. He raised his head and smiled at his father. And for an instant, he seemed to be the sweet boy Gokou had raised to manhood and nothing more. "She told me she’d skin me like a targ rat if I didn’t."

"How much time do we have before the funnel gets here?" Gokou asked, eyeing the still distant cloud.

Goten frowned thoughtfully. "Another hour at least."

"Let’s get back then. Can I hold her?"

The younger man grinned, easing the baby into her grandfather’s arms gently. She opened her eyes and frowned up at him. He made a face and she reached up one tiny fist, grasping for his nose. "Roma-chan…She’s beautiful." Her father leaned over the baby as well, grinned lopsidedly. "Goten?"

"Hm?"

"What was she like?"

"Who?"

"My mother."

They sat a little while longer and talked. But only for a little while.

There was a great storm on its way.