Chapter Text
On the wall hung the only picture of the two of them together. At least, it was the only one that’s existence he’d ever known. Framed and placed in the the most inconspicuous spot on the wall. Now covered with other pictures of friends and family, the picture looked like an outdated whisper of a memory that he couldn’t quite grasp. Two people, who didn’t quite look like they belonged, yet somehow remained comfortable and marginally civil in the moments it took them to take the picture. A stern, sour scowl, and a big goofy grin.
Both of these things were familiar to him, and he recognized them both; knew them and understood them intimately with clarity that should have made the picture feel less like a mental abduction, every time he glanced at it. He knew both of these people, but he’d never technically met both of these people. Pressing fingers to the glass and blocking out the image never made the flickering of thoughts vanish or the whisperings of words quiet.
Though he was composed of two people, he didn’t have the pure cognizance of either of them. He was not Goku—or Kakarot, however he was called—nor was he Vegeta. He was somewhere between them, borrowing the thoughts and feelings and the impulses, but none of the experiences that made them different from him. They were who they were, because they lived their lives, where he was a body with limited experience of his own.
Not that he was a hollow shell, he knew the history of both of the bodies that made him. But time made every whisper of memory start to slip, like waking from a dream. Details he knew of each man on an individual basis became less and less clear with each passing day. Separating them from himself, slowly became a task too difficult to accomplish without the reminder on the wall. But the reminder on the wall also served as a disjointing sensation that made him want to block it out.
When did we take that picture?
No, when did—they—take that picture?
I am not them.
He could not remember the details of the photo he looked at often. Once, he did, but he no longer could conjure up the memory. The information vanished, floating away with the rest of the lost notes in the back of his mind, dying in the collapsing orchestra. Why was it happening?
He was powerful, strong beyond all measure. The strongest the universe had offered. The desperation fueled necessity to see an enemy to its knees, had led to this form and he’d brought everything to lay at his feet since. He was told it would be permanent, or they were the ones informed rather, and they’d agreed—by whatever means it took to push them together. The magic of the Potara earrings should have been enough to keep them stable, if they were just mortals. But then why did he feel shifting? Why did the the tone start slipping out of line. Asynchronous.
His body had one heartbeat, but he felt the rhythm of two. Two drums, beating against each other’s. Unsteady pounding in his ears felt thunderous at times. Sometimes, even with a hand on his chest to feel the slow thrum of one singular pulse, he could feel the violent melody untethering somewhere within him. And like one bad chord being corrected, something would draw it back into place, as if the whole event was a figment of his imagination or temporary.
The sound of his wife—whichever one, they both were his wives now—or his sons, his daughter, his grand daughter, his friends….any of their voices seemed to claw into him and draw him back from the haze. But to look at the pictures on the wall, was to look at strangers. Their voices brought him back, but he knew none of them. He knew of them, he could conjure up some of the memories of them, but he held none of the feelings. And, in the true nature of the sum of his parts, he had no functional skills at explaining this to them. They called to him and he smiled and came to them.
But he couldn’t feel connected.
I love and cherish all of you, and I’m here because of all of you. But I know none of you. You are all strangers to me.
The glass cracked under his fingers from the pressure. They made the decision that led to his existence, but he knew the necessity of it. Consciously, he could still pull the thoughts and feelings of both of them if he focused, digging deep within him, and he could pick apart the pros and cons their fusion. They lost themselves in the process, but their families were safe and in some manner, they weren’t entirely gone. That had been how they’d seen it.
But he wasn’t them.
Fragments split along the frame and he lifted his palm, looking at the faces of the two who built his own. Each moment came played like a violin bow drawn across strings that snapped halfway, one by one—pristine notes snapped into wretched sounds. Asynchronized again. Heavy beats in sync to two completely different songs throbbing in his ears.
What caused it? The power that flooded his body, unmatched? No one could challenge him anymore. The listlessness overwhelmed him, but he could feel something else leaving a void behind. They were all safe as long as he remained just as he was, but he wasn’t remaining the same. The struggle to maintain the tranquility left him standing in the empty hall, with shards of glass clattering around his feet—a single photo being burned under his hot touch. He wanted to erase it. Erase them.
But they didn’t exist anymore. He wasn’t them, but he was them.
“Vegito?”
His name on her lips clawed through the noisy chords in his head and he anticipated it pulling him back. He prepared to turn to face her—Chi Chi, Goku’s wife—with a smile more resembling that aspect of himself, but he found he had nothing. The smile he could give her, usually turned up at a corner of his mouth, couldn’t find itself on his face and the pounding in his chest didn’t dissolve even slightly.
“...Hey...Are you alright?” Her eyes flickered from his face, across his arm, to the wall and the broken picture—the curling remains of a photo he funneled his ki into to watch it burn.
He knew he should answer her and tell her that he was fine, to comfort her and give her no reason to believe the threads were weakening. The concern in her sweet voice, had never failed before, but he could not form the words he needed to deliver to her to ease her worries. He didn’t even try. Perhaps it was the Vegeta aspect within him that was done with the false pretenses. Or maybe fragments of Goku left him unable to catch himself, when he’d lost sight of his own strength.
No, he was neither of them—
Crackles along the wall led to the shattering of more glass from the other pictures—ones he wasn’t touching—from the intensity of his aura. He hadn’t reeled it back in and he had not considered the merit of doing so. Frames dropped and crashed at his feet, one by one, until the only one left on the wall was the one burned into its place, melted by his...contempt? Was that the sensation he was feeling? Anger to the ones who forced his existence, with no intention of experiencing the repercussions of their action.
I am made of you, but I am left with a void in the place of you.
The emptiness of what he was left with, enraged him. His personality was not even his, but drawn from instincts to replicate another’s. His memories were fading and leaving him with nothing but to draw on wisps and echoes that may resemble outlines of things that might connect him to the people who were supposed to matter most to him. His wife—wives—children, were all strangers. They tried, he tried. But they did not know how to interact with him any better than he knew.
No amount of years softened the difference. No amount of working through it would make them act less like he was the walking tombstone of their loved ones. Infuriated. It left him with a hole in his chest, where his own heart should be beating—where all he could feel was the thundering drumming of the two of who would not stop haunting him.
“Chi Chi, you need to back away,” another spoke, and he knew who it was without much guesswork. Even if he had not already seen the figure behind her, he would have known Piccolo’s cautioned tone. He recognized danger when he saw it. He was smart.
“Wha...why, what’s wrong—” She tried, but he pulled her back, putting his body between them. “Picco—”
“What’s going on with you?” He ignored her, addressing him directly. Eyes trailed along the wall, surveying the damage, taking in every flicker of ki that he hadn’t bothered to control. “I felt you from a long way away.”
“I wasn’t attempting to hide it.” The answer was honest, even if concerning.
“So what, what’s going on? Do you need to work this out?”
Vegito turned, leaning against the wall, tilting his head back to look at him. Piccolo’s body language was that of someone who was deeply concerned, possibly...afraid. The protective stance he held between he and Chi Chi, Goku’s wife, led to a perception of mistrust. Was he giving off that level of disorder around him? He tipped his head down, feet crunching the glass slivers below, and tilting them to reflect the glow of his aura back at him. Golden hair went ignored in his vision, but he saw it in the bits and pieces shining up at him.
“I am working this out,” he answered, voice steady, despite the sour notes shrieking through his mind, in a horrid disarray.
“Yeah…? Tell me how that’s going?” Piccolo turned his body and ushered Chi Chi away from him and out the door, very clearly not wanting her anywhere close to the chaos that was pooling around him. Vegito could barely feel it, until Piccolo’s alarm showed it apparent that he was making a cause for concern.
“How do you think this should be going?” He folded his arms across his chest, closing his eyes. “There’s no one there to answer for the grievances I have.”
“You mean Goku and Vegeta, I’m guessing. Yeah, they’re not here anymore, but you are,” he tried, but his words only served to draw a fierce snarl from Vegito.
“That does nothing to solve my issue at hand. Neither of them considered the result, and what I’m supposed to do now in the aftermath,” his fist tightened and shot back into the wall, cracking into the remnants of the picture, exploding the ashes of it into the air around him—filling his vision with little flecks of embers. Nothing left of them. Nothing left of the memory.
I can’t feel them. How dare they leave me this way, to suffer the hollow existence with nothing but the repetition of a desolate symphony. I am tired of this song.
“You know why they did this.They gave up their individuality to win. That wasn’t an easy decision to make. I know that. I do. I have been there. If you need help to cope, then that’s fine, I can help you. But you have to calm down. You’re losing it.”
“I’ve been losing it, for years. Stuck. Like this. None of you can hear it. The constant sound of two different forces grindin’ against each other. You say you get it, but you don’t. Your fusions are complete. I am not complete. I am missing something. I have a void that I cannot fill. And I cannot even ask them what that void is. I have everyone here, and none of them fulfill that condition. I cannot be them and have them grant me the answer. The life of them is the death of me. I am not them, I am Vegito. I am not a replacement for their absence. They are dead to all of you, and you continue to pretend that I am not a symbol of that.”
“Talking about it, is a start. You never had to let it get this far…” The defensive position of Piccolo’s body led to laughter bubbling up from deep within Vegito. Despite his words, there was nothing any of them could actually do. “If you were suffering, then you should have—”
“Talk it out? It’s doin’ nothing for me now,” he perched himself, crossing a leg over the other and allowing the force of his ki float his body. “I am alone. In a universe with nothing left to challenge me. Where I will go stale, with a gaping hole in a chest that feels like two hearts beat where only one should be. I am Vegito!” He could feel the sparks off his body, tearing into the foundation of the building in his declaration. “They’re not me. They were complete people.” He ground his teeth together, fingers gripping his shirt over his chest.
“You are a complete person, too. You’re just not adjusted to being your own person.”
“How can I be my own person? Tell me how to do that, Piccolo?” He asked, seeking an answer earnestly, but feeling a tone of disregard seeping through, simultaneously. No real solution would come, he already knew. “Tell me how to erase the remnants of what made me?”
“That’s like trying to absolve yourself of your parents, Vegito.”
“That isn’t it at all. If that was it, then this would be simpler.”
“Well, nothing was simple with Vegeta, at least, it’s easy to assume you took in some of that when the two of them became you. Come down, we can work you through this...We can’t bring them back to make them answer what you’re missing, but we can work this out. What are you going to do if you go off the rails now?” Fear didn’t stop Piccolo from trying, but his words barely reached him.
“I have no intentions of harming any of you, relax,” his eyes caught a reflective glint off an object in the room, casting his focus away—distant, hazy. He could not bring himself to care about to the topic any longer. “I...simply...no longer want to be...here.” His eyes could not shake away from the connection he was making, falling over the glassy, spherical face of a dragon ball.
“Vegito…? You—”
He teleported without another word, closing the distance between himself and the orb. The answer, possibly, had been in plain sight all along; he had just never considered it until that moment. Curling his fingers around the four star ball that always remained in possession of this household for safekeeping, he claimed it as his own. He just needed the rest of them.
“What are you going to do…? We tried that, and it didn’t defuse yo—”
He turned his eyes to the tall green man, steeled and dispassionate. Everything he said only served to annoy him at that particular moment. There was no one to which he had to give any answers. Who was going to stop him? The Namekian who couldn’t even bring himself to come within arm’s reach? He would be destroyed if Vegito had any desire at all to harm them. If any of the original wicked tendencies resurfaced from the half Vegeta provided him, he could easily obliterate the whole lot of them and do whatever he pleased.
But that was not what he wanted. All he wanted was the discord to stop. All he wanted was to understand why the beats could not align to a singular rhythm. Without them, he would have none of that. No matter how he contended with it in this world of his, he could never bridge the gap they left him. The impossibility of the task they left him with was maddening.
—Coexist within myself without understanding what it is you’ve left me without. You fucking sons of bitches.
“I’m gonna go find the rest of them, if you don’t mind,” he smiled, leaving Piccolo with no real argument to give. How could he make an attempt in the wake of his conviction, when his words also held a faint hint of threat to them if he even tried to hinder him? “Make up some reason for my disappearance, won’t you?”
“Wait—”
He did not wait. Teleportation took him to the next logical place to go, where he knew he could find the shortcut to the rest of the dragon balls. Collecting them was no longer the chore it once was. The process of gathering them would be decidedly short, with no desire to mess around. He committed himself entirely, at the very moment the thought had even passed through his mind. That was every bit of the Goku that made half of him. Consequences be damned.
If he could not address the components that brought him his life, in his own world, and force them to tune the snapping strings of his sanity...then he would simply have to find ones he could address.
And make—them—fill the void.