Just some rambling about my Mirai AU wheelchair!Vegeta WIP…
Vegeta has a lot of issues in this fic besides being a wheelchair user. He’s chronically ill(thanks to Freeza) and he has epilepsy due to brain damage he sustained as a complication from surgery on his spine. The Androids injured him and he’s struggling with PTSD from that incident. Being triggered for him can be anything from an outburst of rage to total dissociation along with the outburst.
Btw Vegeta’s chronic illness isn’t a huge issue for him, since Saiyajins can spend decades in states of organ failure that would kill a human in days. He still has to be careful with certain medications that are toxic to the heart and kidneys, so everything he takes gets monitored. Bulma keeps reminding him that doctors check to make sure nothing is getting worse, because becoming disabled did make a few things a little worse!
Trunks grew up from a baby into a young boy seeing Bulma tend to Vegeta. He’s the only one who never knew Vegeta when he could walk and didn’t have seizures. Vegeta’s epilepsy is well controlled with meds, but certain upsets to his brain like passing out in the gravity room or autonomic dysreflexia lower his seizure threshold and he goes down in a tonic-clonic. Once medicated, his chances of having seizures are very low, but never zero.
So Trunks is a helper. He sort of copies his mom, but as he gets older he does it bedside he loves his dad. It’s not pity that moves him to help, it’s love. Sometimes seeing his dad dissociate or have a seizure is traumatic to him. He always worries about Vegeta’s health. There’s a really cute scene where he checks on Vegeta as he’s sleeping after a seizure and Vegeta wakes up because of the light shining on him. He reassures Trunks that the actual seizure doesn’t hurt because he’s “not there” for it and agrees to eat something because Trunks is worrying about him going hungry. Like I said, it’s sweet.
Bulma shielded Trunks from seeing Vegeta’s seizures when he was really little. Trunks has seen maybe three or four total (not counting the ones he sees in the fic) over a seven year period. Bulma saw Vegeta have over a hundred in the span of a single year until he got diagnosed and on a medication that works.
Vegeta kinda hates getting fussed over when he has a crisis due to his seizures or PTSD, and he despises when strangers see any of those happen. But he doesn’t mind it as much when it’s family doing the fussing. That’s an instance where he feels how much they love him and it’s touching for him…he’s just kinda bad at reciprocating beyond cooperating or the occasional compliment.
And Gohan, well…Gohan is not as close to Vegeta’s issues, so he ends up being the guy who makes accidental ableist mistakes and Vegeta is kinda mean to him. 😅 It’s not because I don’t like Mirai Gohan. He’s adorable. Vegeta just has huge beef with him for being Goku’s kid. But yes, poor Gohan witnesses one of Vegeta’s seizures and gets a better understanding of how serious some of his struggles are.
Vegeta and Gohan do bond a teeny tiny bit because Gohan loses an arm just like in the History of Trunks movie. (This story has some bits from that in it, they play out different because Vegeta is alive.) So they do have moments of mutual understanding.
Stuff goes down and Vegeta sees Trunks showing PTSD symptoms and that’s what gets him to realize how serious his own PTSD is. He has Bulma get Trunks diagnosed because he thinks Trunks is ‘early’ enough in it to get helped, but he gets told he’s not beyond help himself. It’s just a matter of him daring to reach out, and that’s where Vegeta is at the moment.
Bulma is trying to be the toughest one of all. She’s raising Trunks, building the time machine, taking care of Vegeta and managing to hold herself together. But she has trauma, too.
Everybody is dealing with their struggles in their own way.