Chapter Text
Trembling, Vegeta sat up, his breaths coming in uneven gasps. He turned and dropped his legs off the side of the bed, putting his back to the woman, who he saw was lightly stirring.
Shit, he’d woken her up again.
He dropped his head, his elbows resting on his knees as he tried in vain to get his emotions under control.
Damned fucking Freeza!
Damned fucking nightmares!
Suddenly he felt her there, draping her soft, warm body against his back. Her head rested against him. The dampness of her tears on his skin—she was crying for him, again. Gods, she felt so good, and her scent, so sweet, with the hint of her vanilla shampoo wafting to his senses. He took in a deep, shuddering breath.
But he just couldn’t handle it. Her attempts to comfort him only served to enrage him. He wasn’t going to allow such shows of weakness!
He pushed her off of him. “Don’t pity me.” He snarled. He hated that look in her eyes. That sad, disappointed, pitying look had clouded her bright fiery gaze.
“Vegeta.” She calmly, but insistently fought him, their ‘battle’ almost resorting to hand slapping as she tried to prevent him, from preventing her, from hugging him. “Vegeta, I don’t—I don’t pity… you.”
“Yes, you do. It’s right there, in your eyes!” In her stunning teal eyes, that tore his heart out each time they met his dark ones looking at him like that.
“I care deeply about you and want to be close to you. That’s all. When I see you suffering I need to hold you. It’s not pity. It’s compassion and empathy and … love. You just can’t see it, because you’ve never known it. All you see is pity, and you associate that with disdain and mockery. It’s not. Not from me, Vegeta.”
His hands stopped as his heart swelled in his chest, clenching so dramatically that it pushed burning tears up into his eyes. Damn it! He wouldn’t let that happen either! He refused to cry like some gods damned brat in front of her—but no matter how hard he tried to tamp it down, his fucked up emotions weren’t going to cooperate with him.
Defeated again by his ridiculous body, he abruptly stood up and ran away from her—yet another sign of fucking weakness—straight into her bathroom and closed the door before she could follow him. He didn’t want to leave her. He wanted to bury his head in her neck and never be separated from her warmth. But he couldn’t allow these blasted tears in front of her. No. Not again.
Choking as he struggled to contain the sobs that pushed at him relentlessly, the prince of Saiyans stood at the sink, holding his weight up by grasping its sides, keeping his head down to avoid seeing himself in the mirror.
The dream… That fucking dream… His mind kept running through it over and over again.
Earth.
The backwoods little ball of mud planet was finally getting purged for expansion of the Freeza empire. And for some ungodly reason, the disgusting little lizard himself was personally involving himself in this one, which made no sense, since Earth in no way was considered prime real estate.
Vegeta made his way to a summons by the creepy tyrant. It was the middle of his allotted sleep time and hours away from the scheduled attack on Earth, so why was he being called in now?
Lights on the ship were being kept very low, which also made no sense. Grumbling, the prince stomped through the unusually dark ship's corridors, wondering at how strange he was feeling being back there again. He’d never left Freeza’s service, had he? Then why did it feel like so much time had passed since he’d set foot on any of the creature’s ships?
He finally rounded the corner to the main deck where he’d been instructed to meet Freeza. Dodoria was there to ‘greet’ him. But wait, wasn’t that bastard Dodoria dead? Hadn’t he, himself, killed him on—“
“There you are, monkey boy.” The creepy-looking alien greeted Vegeta with a sneer.
“Can it, ugly,” Vegeta growled in retort.
The door was opened for him and the prince stepped in to find Freeza standing over a figure crouched on the floor.
“Ah, Prince Vegeta. You sure did take your time getting here.” That reedy, granny-like voice said, without the Furīza Shuzoku even having the courtesy to turn to look at the prince as he spoke.
“I came right away. I’m not late, my lord.” Vegeta grit his teeth and suppressed a growl.
“Perhaps your timepiece is off. You are months late, little monkey. But, No matter, I wanted you here for this interrogation.” Finally, the lizard turned and gave the royal Saiyan a smile that might have appeared warm if coming from nearly any other being. Instead, it sent shivers down Vegeta’s spine.
And what did he mean by ‘months late?’ Was he just exaggerating? That didn’t seem like him.
“This one is special, wouldn’t you say?” Freeza tilted his head down to look at the figure and smiled knowingly.
What was he talking about, special? What would be special to Vegeta about that cowering being?
“Confused, are we?” Freeza laughed.
Vegeta’s eyes moved to the crouched figure. It was small, though not that much smaller than Freeza, which wasn’t saying much. Its limbs seemed delicate. A woman? They were on their knees, bent forward with their arms tucked around their head, so it was impossible to tell whether they were male or female. But that hair…
Blue hair!
“W-who is that?” The prince scowled, keeping his eyes on the figure and suddenly feeling a cold chill run through his veins.
“Oh, just a prominent figure from Earth. Someone who has defied us countless times and needs to learn her lesson before I throw her to the wolves.”
“The wolves…?” Vegeta repeated in a distracted, airy voice. He was struggling to remember something. Something about this female. Something that was making him feel sickening bile rise up in his throat at seeing her… here. She did not belong here!
Suddenly Freeza grabbed the woman’s arm and dragged her up, finally revealing her very pretty face. She was wearing a lab coat that was torn in several places and quite filthy. Her face was bruised and cut, and she seemed to be barely conscious, or at least not fully aware of her surroundings.
Vegeta’s heart jolted. She looked familiar! But how? Who?
“Ah, monkey likes what he sees, eh?! Yes, very pretty, isn’t she? Do you want to fuck her before I break her, Vegeta?”
“What?”
Fuck her? But he’d done that many times already. No, how could he have? He’d never set foot on Earth before! He’d never even been this far out to the edges of this galaxy… Had he?
Then the woman’s large, striking blue eyes landed on him. Turning up to meet his black ones with…hope…in them? What? Did this female think that he was going to rescue her or something?
His heart literally stopped when he heard her voice in his head. Vegeta! Thank Kami. Help me! Please!
Her mouth hadn’t moved, but her words were clear as day. A memory? No. Telepathy? Maybe, but Earthlings weren’t known to have telepathic abilities. And how did she know his name? And why did her voice sound so familiar?
“W-who are you?” He stammered, feeling stupid for asking, he knew her, of course, he knew her.
That got Freeza to cackle loudly. “You truly don’t know who this is? Oh, Vegeta!” The bastard had her hand pulled up close to his face now, and after his laughter had died down he lifted her fingers to his mouth.
Vegeta thought Freeza was about to kiss her hand and he felt his body surge with jealous rage. But why? Why be jealous? Why feel anything for this Earth female? Still, his whole body raged as his mind struggled to comprehend what was happening.
But, instead of the kiss Vegeta had expected, the lizard bit down into her fingers, hard! The woman screamed as three of her delicate fingers were bitten completely off, then spit onto the floor.
Vegeta felt the room spinning. There were more screams and it took him a second to realize they were coming from him. Freeza cackled madly as the room spun and spun and Vegeta stumbled forward.
Blue hair.
Earth.
Bulma!
He heard bones cracking and her screams of agony. Stumbling forward, forward… he tried to get to her, but it was taking forever! He was slipping on blood now, could smell the acrid copper filling the air. Agonizing screams and shrill laughter assailed his ears as the soundtrack to a slow and merciless slaughter that he now saw right before him as if he were the one performing it himself. Bulma’s cries for mercy were ignored and answered only by icy, mean, cruel laughter.
His own laughter.
Freeza was gone and suddenly both Nappa and Raditz were there. His two closest companions—he wouldn’t call them friends—were cringing at the sight before them. Watching their prince slaughter this woman without an ounce of hesitation or remorse. It was too much even for those two hardened Saiyans to take.
Vegeta always prided himself on making the two of them cringe over the depths of cruelty he could dish out. The prince of Saiyans had always been a moody, grumpy kid, but when he reached his teen years his cruelty had escalated exponentially because he had to prove himself. He had to outdo Freeza at every turn. To exceed Freeza in literally every aspect. He strove to illicit shock and fear from those around him. So that news of the prince’s brutal exploits and immense power would always get back to the tyrant lizard and strike fear in him and in all of his underlings.
You think you can be cruel, you damned creepy fucking lizard, watch this! Was Vegeta’s only thought when faced with any opportunity to prove himself as the vilest of all villains. He had been a typical teen, acting out to extreme degrees due to his severe environment and his broken life.
Ever since the three of them had become an unwilling part of Freeza’s army, Vegeta had witnessed the change in both of his companions. But especially in Raditz. While none of them had been compassionate men—coming from the Saiyan race, war was their mantra and there was no compassion in war—there had still been a steep decline in whatever shreds of conscience they might have had prior to Freeza.
And as the years passed, Raditz had followed in Vegeta’s footsteps more than Nappa had. Raditz always tried to emulate the prince, to prove to him that he was worthy to accompany royalty on their assigned missions.
This impressed Prince Vegeta, though he never voiced it. Better to let the low-level, rabble Saiyan think he was never good enough for Prince Vegeta’s praise. That would serve to push the guy further and ultimately make him stronger. Because Vegeta needed his companions strong in his mission to ultimately defeat Freeza. Well, at least until he had no further use for them, because eventually, Vegeta would end that damned lizard tyrant’s miserable life all but himself!
Coming back to the present, Vegeta realized that the woman hadn’t pressed him. It remained quiet at the bathroom door. No pleading to come in. No encouraging, tempting words to bring him back out and into bed with her. He had never complied with those urgings when this had happened before. He had stubbornly rejected her and he would do it again now.
Shit, he felt like a dunce. How many damned times had this happened anyway? Too many to count! It was infuriating, embarrassing, pitiful! What must she really think of him? A damned charity case! She loved him…? Fat chance! She was confusing pity with love. Fucking weak, womanly, motherly instincts—she just can’t help but want to baby the poor, fucked up mess of a man.
Shit, now those damned tears were coming even heavier! It wasn’t helping that he was trying his damndest to keep quiet, either.
He should just stop staying in her bed with her after sex. Ever since he’d started doing that, at her insistence, he’d been caught in these miserably embarrassing situations. And yet he just couldn’t leave her. He always stayed with her now, despite this happening far too often, because he liked being there. He needed the warmth. He fucking needed her!
“Vegeta, I’m coming in, okay?” And there she was. Her soft voice trying to soothe him. Trying to calm the deadly beast separated from its prey by only a flimsy wooden door.
Her tender, sweet voice both sent a wash of relief through him and enraged him with its mockery. “Stay out.” He choked. Sounding like the pitiful wreck he knew he was. He cussed a stream of intergalactic swear words mentally at himself for opening his damned mouth and revealing his fragility.
“Quit being like that and let me hold you. You know you want it. Just let me do it.” She softly but firmly urged.
The doorknob turned. He hadn’t locked it. Why hadn’t he locked it?
He moved further into the bathroom, coming to the glass shower enclosure where he crossed his arms, resting them on the shower door, then laying his head on them. There was no escape without crossing paths with her now. Why did he even bother to move? Idiot!
He stiffened when her arms encircled his waist and her soft breasts pressed into his back. But despite his resistance, his tension let up slightly at her closeness.
“Mmm, see?” She sighed contentedly. “You like the feeling of my soft breasts pressed into your back.”
She was reading his mind again. Damned woman.
Bulma wasn’t sure how much she should say. Any little word could set him off and make him leave her again. But so much needed saying if she was ever going to convince him to let her in. “You don’t have to do it for anyone else, Vegeta.” She whispered.
What was she on about now? “Do what, woman?” His raspy, cry-drained voice irritated the hell out of him.
“Allow yourself to feel. Allow yourself to be comforted. Just show me those emotions. Just allow me to comfort you. Only me. Pick me alone for that, and keep your barriers, your walls, those damned chips on your shoulder, for everyone else but me.”
He took a deep breath. It was a tempting proposition. She had already witnessed far too many of his weaknesses. There was no going back from that now. His nightmares, with her involved, were only happening because of that too-close familiarity he had with her now. At least that’s what he told himself.
“Think about it, alright? We can make an agreement.” She continued in her soft and encouraging voice. Sensual yet practical. Calming yet urging. “You allow me to be near you when you are struggling, and I promise never to tell another soul what you go through.”
He grumbled but didn’t move a muscle. Maybe she was reaching him? “You are a strong, proud man, Vegeta. You are a man with a past that is…frankly terrifying for me to comprehend. But I am a strong woman who can handle it. And I love you. I care about you, even if you don’t understand why. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I stay with you, Vegeta.”
This woman! He thought—again—constantly baffled by her.
She moved cautiously, turning her body around his, ducking slowly under his arm, tucking herself into the space between him and that shower door. She refrained from looking up into his face. He wouldn’t want her to see his tears. It would take more coaxing to get to that stage. So she just hugged his waist and rested her head on his broad shoulder.
His eyes were closed and his breathing was now steady. The tears had stopped and his arms finally found their way around her, his cheek rested on her head as he breathed in the sweet fragrance of her hair.
Bulma hugged him tighter and heard him huff before he tightened his hug as well. She smiled into his chest.
This was progress.
Finally.
***
