Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The word ‘immortal’ had some common misconceptions about it, sometimes confused with ‘eternal’ or ‘invincible’.

No, that’s not how it was.

Foolish knew that better than almost anyone.

Immortals hadn’t always existed - he himself hadn’t been born until 2000 BC, but until he was in his early twenties nobody had thought much about him at all. Then when year after year went by and he didn’t change a bit, never aging and only changing at all when he let himself be hurt enough to scar or when he decided to bulk up a bit on muscle.

Some people’s immortality hit when they were older than that - and some when they were younger. Foolish was younger than most when it happened, but he knew some unlucky souls had been claimed as children, never aging a day past their tenth birthday or so. 

His daughter, adopted, was one of those - though he hadn’t met her until he’d met his husband, who was frozen at thirty-four. 

But immortal did not mean eternal, and it did not mean invincible. 

If he’d had his way, when disaster struck, he would have scoured every inch of that damned town of rubble until he found enough of Vegetta to put back together and pray it would work. But he had Leo, and they needed to get out of there, and a quick scan and the years of questions following after told him one thing.

Immortals could die, they just usually didn’t.

Most stories about it stemmed from moments like this, from the industrial revolution when humans got too cocky and too violent and an immortal didn’t realize what was headed their way until their body was too destroyed to pick itself back up.

It had been a wonderful few thousand years, though, with Vegetta at his side and Leo in their arms as they traveled the world and learned and grew and collected, oh, how they’d collected things. 

Memories, mostly. Artifacts and things that humans would want to put in museums or sell for hundreds of thousands of units in whatever currency they dealt with…

But the three of them collected it all, keeping it stored away across several countries for whenever they wanted to visit.

They were spoken of in whispers, back then, the rogue immortals who didn’t join a ‘family’ or a commune of the others, wandering and risking to expose their existence to the world.

But it was what they wanted to do, and Foolish had never thought that their isolation and exploration would cause something like this .

Vegetta had shielded them from the explosion, and while it seemed he’d been blown to smithereens along with the buildings around them, Foolish only sustained a few flesh wounds, and Leo had been held to his chest and hardly had a scratch.

He joined a throng of refugees a few weeks later, tear-stained as the rest of them as he fled back to one of their smaller, newer storehouses across the ocean, young daughter (who was, in reality, a few thousand years old) at his side, earning sympathetic looks from anyone they passed by who weren’t too distracted by their own grief. 

It was there that he ran across an old friend, an immortal even older than himself, who saw the hundred-yard stare and the way Leo clung to his arm and the empty space beside them- and Bad was never involved with human shit like this. He never bothered with wars or any trivial efforts at all but this…

For this, he sent word across the world to the few contacts he had, but another fifty years passed and the war ended and new ones started and Vegetta hadn’t shown back up.

Part of Foolish expected him to, those first few decades. It wasn’t unheard of that they’d get separated or part ways when they wanted to do different things but that was never more than what, five years? Eight at the most, aside from this time now.

It felt like an awful limbo, then, shut into tiny city apartments and spending the money he’d hoarded to keep him and Leo alive, keep partial ownership of a building ‘his father had built’ and just… waiting.

“This place isn’t good for you,” Bad said one day, stopping in to visit with another set of responses that there was nothing to be found, that he was probably in some mass human grave or hadn’t even had enough bits to bury afterward.

“What?” he blinked back, still feeling numb from the aftershocks of the bomb fifty years back, from the loss and the emptiness.

“This place, this city,” Bad gestured around to smoke-stained windows, cracked floorboards, and the bustling, noisy road outside.

Foolish was starting to despise human inventions.

“I told you before,” he said gently. “About that place, up north. You and Leo could make a life there, fresh air and- and new memories.”

“The commune?”

“It's a community, these days,” Bad grinned. “People are all worried about cults and stuff, we can’t stay as exclusive anymore.” as if Bad himself hadn’t led a good few cults back in the day when humans were easier to isolate. “There are humans there, but they all either know and don’t care or they’re too stupid to figure it out. Leo could have friends, she could make a place for herself. You could make a place for yourself.”

“I…” Foolish spared a look over to Leo, who was pretending not to listen as she busied herself with some drawing or other. 

These days, he knew children immortals were seen as tragic. Alive for thousands of years, frozen between being wise and immature as they’d been halted before their brain fully finished maturing. Or some bullshit like that, he didn’t know, but he wouldn’t want her any other way. He hadn’t wanted anything any different, he hadn’t wanted…

“Just tell me you’ll think about it,” Bad said, reaching to put a hand on his shoulder. “There’s a big old house on main street, you can fill it with all your… uh, junk and stuff. Say the word and it's yours, I just bought it from a widow who moved in with her grandson out of state and it's empty and perfect for you and Leo.” 

“I don’t know…”

“At least come visit once, to see it.” Bad insisted. “Windows, big rooms, big porch, fresh air… I know you have to feel trapped here.”

“He wouldn’t know where to find us.” Foolish finally whispered, dropping his gaze. “He- this- this apartment has been in our name for- for seventy years, since the building was made. But I… if we leave it, he won’t know where to find us.”

“You can leave a note or something,” Bad said bracingly, shoving the papers of messages saying it was a lost cause back into his bag. Foolish didn’t need to read them anyway, he knew what they said. “Just come up for a visit and then decide, okay? Wouldn’t that be fun, Leo, a trip to the countryside?”

She picked herself up and walked over then, and Foolish smiled weakly as he combed her hair back, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“Papá, podemos irnos?” she tugged at his hand gently. “Solo para ver?”

They all knew a good few languages, but she and Vegetta had fallen in love with Spanish way back in the 14th century or so, and Foolish did his best to maintain it despite being surrounded by mostly English speakers these days.

It had been easier when Vegetta was still around.

Everything had been easier when Vegetta was still around.

“You want to go?” he asked softly, heart crumbling a bit further into dust at the very idea. “Quieres ir? With- with Tio Bad?”

“With you,” she tugged more on his hands, shaking her head. “Always juntos.”

Damn him, and his soft spot for her and that little phrase they’d parroted back and forth ever since the day their lives fell apart. 

“You’ve got enough to keep a hold of this place for years,” Bad said reasonably. “You can leave him a note here, or one of the other places, while you move stuff over. Wouldn’t it be nice to have all your- your stuff in the same place?”

And he was right about that, they had so many memories preserved in hidden hoards across the world. This building had more modern objects, all the photographs and new-age gadgets Vegetta had fallen in love with and wanted to keep for memory's sake.

He’d fall in love with all the new modern things as well if he was here.

But it was a human invention that had killed him, and so Foolish couldn't get himself to look very fondly on the modern world at all.

All of the sudden, the idea of being out where fewer cars would disturb them and less loud planes would fly overhead making him think their world was about to be turned upside-down once again… it sounded wonderful.

“Okay,” he dropped his head down, resting it on Leo’s, and her tiny ageless hands wrapped him in a hug. “We can go. You have to help me- help me move all our stuff. I’m not leaving any of it.”

As much as he hated the modern world - Vegetta had loved it, and that collection was all of him Foolish had left.

Dully, Foolish was aware that he was both a younger and older immortal than most that currently existed - at least publicly in the communities of them. Twenty-four was a young age to change, but the sheer number of years he’d lived was more than most.

Bad was older than him, as was Phil who turned out to live in the same small town he’d been dragged up to. The others, who he’d never really met before, were all at least a few years older than he’d been when immortality hit but they hadn’t even been born until a few thousand years after him.

Wilbur, Charlie, even a few children taken under their wings, Tallullah and Chayenne and Dapper… Foolish hadn’t realized there were others in Leo’s situation before, but he was happy to have someone for her to relate to at least. 

He also knew very well that most of these other immortals had known of the whispers of his family, and then known that the whispers stopped in the midst of a bloody war.

So the expressions on their faces when Bad introduced him, surprise and pity, should have been expected.

“Kinda thought Bad was kidding, when he said he was your old friend,” Charlie told him, helping to carry boxes in from a truck to the massive house Bad had given to him. “Most of us I’ve met know of you but never met you . Where’ve you been hiding out?”

“Oh y'know,” Foolish glanced over, relieved to find Leo within sight in the grass, sitting and making daisy chains with Dapper. “New York City, for the past fifty years.”

“I thought you never stayed in one place for that long!” 

And something about that just pressed the wrong button and Foolish sighed, dropping the box a bit early to let it squash Charlie’s fingers on the table.

“You don’t know me.” 

“What the hell- ow, man!” he had the audacity to just laugh at it, and Foolish turned to walk out without another word.

Maybe this had been a mistake. 

Suddenly suffocated by the lack of walls around him, the lack of smoke, and the self-imposed isolation and noise he hated so much - Foolish abandoned the moving efforts just for a moment, taking off across the grass around to the back of the house.

It was charming, large and spacious, and well-kept for something of its age.

Perfect for him, Bad had said.

He couldn't help but scoff at the comparison, at how he’d let himself waste away into what he was now, earning those sad looks from even people who didn’t know the situation. They could just tell. Like there was a sign above his head that said ‘Look, this one’s broken.’ and no matter what he did, it wasn’t going to go away.

The backyard was big, especially for a house in the center of town (if you could call this tiny place such a thing) and he let himself get lost between a row of trees and an old shed, sliding down the wall to sit in the pine needles. 

It was so damn quiet here, and he hated the loud noises but now he was tense for no reason . Usually, he kept himself braced for the sound of cars honking, or planes overhead, or some random banging noises from neighboring apartments but here…

It was just so damn quiet .

It hadn’t felt this quiet since that day, when his eardrums had gotten fucked up and it took him nearly an hour to be able to fully hear Leonarda’s sobs.

Fifty years seemed like the blink of an eye, even though he knew it was most of a normal person’s lifetime. So many damn people he knew had experienced what he had were dead and gone already - not that he’d gotten to know them all that much.

The quiet… he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It choked him and terrified him and he longed for the chaos that he hated so much because at least then he’d know why he was upset. But then again, some long-lasting tug of anxiety in his chest felt lower already and that almost felt like a betrayal to himself.

“Found yourself a hiding spot, I see.” Phil’s feet hadn’t made a sound as they walked across soft grass, but now crunched when he hit the pine needles. “Charlie already annoyed you that much?” 

“Gee, how’d you know?” Foolish cast a halfhearted glare. “Why is he even here?”

“Bad figured he might help,” Phil sat beside him, matching his stare into the grass and trees. “Told us you were a lot like him, actually. Guess that’s changed.”

“What?”

“Oh, yeah, he always bragged about knowing one of the famous rogue immortals.” Phil nodded. “Said you were cheerful and eccentric, that’s why you never settled down anywhere. From what I remember, you were all smiles whenever I saw you.”

“That was a long time ago.” 

“Well, you’ve got a lot more life left, too.”

And damn, if that wasn’t the awful truth.

He’d tried to change that, but he hadn’t tried very hard with Leonarda around, and- well, it was almost impossible for an immortal to kill themselves anyway. It was hard for them to die at all. But god, some days, that’s all Foolish wanted to do.

“Why are you over here?” he asked softly, closing his eyes. “There are probably seven billion other people on this planet you’d have a better time talking to than me.”

“Foolish…” he sighed. “We’ve all lost people. Even Charlie has, and he’s only a few decades old still.”

“That explains why he gets on my nerves so much.” he was too close to just some other human. 

“Oh, he’s just a lot.” Phil chuckled. “But everyone here knows, at least in some way, what you’re feeling.”

Foolish doubted that. He really, really doubted that.

Most of his memories sat in boxes for a good few months, maybe a year, he didn’t really count the time so much. He hated to admit that Bad had been right, but Leo was thriving with new friends to talk to and a yard to play in, and just a chance to feel the sun again after the past long while. A bit socially awkward, and Foolish figured that was his fault, but she was accepted into the strange fold of half-children immortals that lived here. 

She came home one day with a camera Dapper had given her, and Foolish’s heart twisted .

Vegetta’s collection of ancient, giant, box-like cameras and the fragile plates their faces were imprinted on was here, still boxed up. And his collection of newer ones, of undeveloped film and paper images in black and white was beside them in crates and boxes taped over and over again to keep them safe. 

“¡Sonríe, papá!” she held up the camera and smiled, waiting for him to do the same, and he thought of the hundreds of times Vegetta had made them sit and pose - and later when he’d snapped pictures with abandon, saying one day they’d get them developed and have the memories preserved.

He smiled weakly, for the first time in what felt like years, and the flash of Leo’s camera blinded him.

He cornered Bad the next week, outside the general store in town.

“Foolish!” he seemed elated but worried. Foolish hadn’t left the house since they moved in - he probably looked half-dead. “You’re out and about! How’s Leo?”

“I need shelves.”

“O…kay…” Bad still smiled, more just seeming confused. The bare walls and few surfaces of their home wouldn’t do - not if he wanted to set the old cameras up where they could be seen , if only by himself and Leo. “What kind?”

“What do you mean what kind?” Foolish sighed, unreasonably irritated. “The- the kind you put stuff on, Bad! What do you think I need shelves for? Just to sit around empty?”

“I guess that’s a good point!” Bad laughed. “I think we’ve got at least a few shelves we don’t need in the back of the store, and we can buy some more next time someone goes into a bigger city. Let me go see what we have on hand, and I can help you set them up.”

“Right now?” that was faster than he’d have hoped, and Bad shrugged.

“Might as well, I’m not really busy.” he dropped the cigarette he’d been smoking - barely - and stomped it out before leading Foolish around into the store. 

Charlie and Wilbur sat behind the counter, the latter playing idly on a guitar and Charlie talking about some random thing or another. They both fell silent in surprise when Foolish stepped in, but he ignored them and followed Bad back through a door marked ‘employees only’.

An hour and a few trips later, they were in Foolish’s house trying to set up the simple shelves based on stupid instructions. Foolish had a feeling that Bad was purposefully misunderstanding the steps to annoy him, but Leo and Dapper had turned up and taken over.

Bad’s kid was good with his hands, and tools, and Foolish wished everything in the world didn’t remind him of Vegetta.

But here he was, getting help to set up shelves to hold his husband's most recent collection. The rest still hadn’t arrived from overseas, it was a complicated thing trying to sneak thousands of years worth of artifacts here as private property but Phil had been helping the process along with a few contacts in customs.

“Para que son estos, pa?” Leo asked, standing back once she and Dapper had set up the first set of shelves, spaced well enough that the cameras would fit, and nestled back into a corner of the mostly-empty living room.

“La colección de tu padre,” he replied softly, turning to the boxes stacked neatly across the other wall. “Le gustaban las cámaras, como tú.”

She squealed in excitement, running to the boxes as he waved a hand to Bad.

“Come help me with these? I- I don’t want any of them to break…” 

“Yeah, sure, what’s in here anyway?” Bad leaned on the wall while Foolish pried layers of tape up, brittle cardboard still holding fast in some miracle of fate. “Whoa- neat camera collection! I didn’t know you were into this stuff.”

“I’m not.” 

Bad didn’t know much Spanish, despite having lived longer than most languages, and so he hadn’t understood a word of what Foolish just said to Leo.

“Look!” Leo reached out, gently plucking out an old daguerreotype of the three of them, holding it up for Bad to see. “Papa Vegetta, that’s him!”

“Oh,” Bad’s voice softened, and Foolish could see pity and sadness take over his expression. “This is his stuff, huh? You’ve never been that into tech at all.”

“Be careful,” Foolish’s stomach twisted in anxiety as Leo found a folder of old, but pristine photographs taken back before they’d left on that trip through Europe to visit old sites and then- well, they’d lost track of what was going on in the world.

Damn, he didn’t want to think about all that.

“Dapper! Mirar! este soy yo y mi otro papa,” Leo sat herself on the floor and her friend sat to join her, looking curiously at the old photographs.  

“You want to put these on the shelves,” Bad asked gently, poking Foolish’s arm. “Better there than in these boxes, don’tcha think?”

“Yeah.” Foolish cleared his throat, turning to help Bad lift version after version of camera out of the boxes, lining them up in chronological order as best he could remember. It was probably inaccurate, but he did his best based on painful memories of Vegetta’s delight whenever a new one was created.

“Whoa… you’ve got like, a ton of undeveloped film here,” Bad noted, eyeing the dark capsules that held the rolls of it. “Are there pictures on all of it?”

“I think so.” 

“Do- do you want to develop it?”

“I don’t know how,” Foolish sighed, not sure what to do with the trays of film just waiting to be made into pictures. “He was going to.” 

“I can,” Bad offered. “Dapper’s got a darkroom, or I can send them off to a professional. Or you can keep it like this if you want to.”

“I…” Foolish hesitated, unsure. “It's really old, what if- what if it's too late, and it's already ruined, I- I don’t know what I’d do if I ruined his pictures.”

“Just leave it then,” Bad said gently, stacking the trays all in one box and closing it, setting it on the lowest shelf. “We’ll figure out a way to make sure it doesn’t get ruined.”

“Leo,” Foolish turned, smiling at her and how slowly she was handling the different photos. “When- when you’re done, put them on the shelf okay?”

“Si!” She beamed at him, and Dapper smiled as well, showing off the permanent missing tooth he’d had when he became immortal.

Man. 

Life was so fucking strange.

A year went by, then another, and Foolish found himself roped into holiday parties and ‘city council’ decisions as the world grew and changed but their small part of the world stayed the same.

Mostly the same, though the gas station was upgraded and the general store got a better computer at the counter and a few of the newer homes were taken and made into a motel by Wilbur, who figured that they were a pit stop a lot of people would take on the way to sights more worth seeing.

And people did stop by, staying the night or filling up their gas tanks or buying snacks for themselves on the way to Canada or Niagara Falls or Maine or wherever it was they were driving.

Foolish still hated it. He still hated cars and their loud engines and the way that if someone was obnoxious or didn’t know what they were doing, it would sound like a gunshot or a bomb or a-

Well.

He knew it wasn’t, and the pit of anxiety in his chest grew smaller each passing year - five and then ten and then fifteen, and Bad made sure that all the land around them remained owned by the immortal residents, so no construction companies would ruin their piece of heaven.

His belongings from across the world would arrive whenever Phil managed to get things through for him, and the empty rooms and walls of their big house slowly filled with artifacts (the oldest were kept in the basement, out of sight and in good condition) and objects and keepsakes. Old portraits of themselves he’d forgotten they had were hung up on walls, and eventually, a sturdy barn was commissioned ‘by the city’ (he suspected Charlie, who made fun of him for having such a cluttered house) and offered to him as an extra storage space.

The guy was annoying, yes, but he was an immortal, and Foolish had to acknowledge that he was a thoughtful person at times. 

Foolish… tried to do his part. He was skilled as a carpenter, but newer tools were louder and he hated them and tried to stick with the basics - despite the fact it didn’t work as well. He helped in the store from time to time, but smiles and cheerful words still hurt when it wasn’t aimed at Vegetta, and he could only really muster them for Leo these days.

There were a few new faces, as well, at community events he was forced to attend (he went willingly, but usually left early). Jaiden, who came with her own kid Bobby who’d been immortalized even younger than Leo and Dapper at the ripe old age of six. He was a skilled painter, though, and soon enough the walls of the general store would sport murals that changed every few months.

Jaiden herself was kind, and she didn’t seem to think Foolish was crazy for holding onto so many things and for grieving a man that at this point had been dead for almost seventy years. She was there for the turn of the century, which Bad insisted on celebrating despite having seen literal empires rise and fall while he was still relatively young.

Foolish had never even gotten used to writing his years with a nineteen, and now he had to try and do them with a twenty instead, and he usually just scrapped the whole thing and wrote it out in Roman numerals to annoy whoever he was writing something for. This usually ended up being Charlie or Wilbur or Bad, and despite his best efforts they never really seemed to be annoyed.

They did get annoyed once when he wrote an entire grocery order out in Egyptian hieroglyphics, but Wilbur had seen this as more of a challenge then anything else and started studying up the languages that Foolish knew - which was most of the dead ones, and many of the others - just to pass notes back in some obscure tongue he hadn’t spoken in decades.

Somehow, despite his resistance, Foolish found himself dragged into the community.

It made him hate himself so much more than he had when he made himself be alone.

How could he just move on, how could he betray Vegetta by smiling and even laughing (to the shock of those around him) every now and again? How could he go on living this life, when Vegetta had lost it?

That’s what brought him out late one night, staring up at stars that had ever so slowly changed in the constellations since he’d first learned them thousands of years prior.

Why couldn't he just… die?

Surely, with all the hundreds of religions he’d heard of, there had to be some kind of afterlife.

Some kind of second chance, some kind of place where he could see Vegetta again that wasn’t in a painting or a photograph or a memory. 

That’s where Jaiden found him, sitting off in the park that Leo and Tallullah and Chayenne had been cultivating - with gardens and trees and a swing set for the group of them. 

“Hey, man.” She sat on the bench, bundled in a jacket while she eyed his arms lined with goosebumps. “What’s going on?”

He debated for a moment just not answering her, staying quiet until she gave up and left like he had done for months after moving here, though that never really had dissuaded Charlie after all had it?

“How long have you been alive?” he couldn't help but wonder, and she laughed softly.

“Oh, boy… that's a tough one. 400 AD? Give or take, I guess. Awhile.” She didn’t seem so old, one of the older ones here, but then again Jaiden seemed to pick up on new things much better than Foolish ever had. Slang, technology, fashion… he was still stuck so far in the past.

Stuck in some town in Germany in the wrong year, month, week, day, and hour to have been in Germany, and now…

“What about you?” Jaiden laughed at him, a gentle elbow to his side pulling Foolish out of his thoughts. “How long have you been moping around like this?”

“Two different answers to that.” Foolish huffed. “2000 BC, or I guess that’s not what we called it then but it was right around there.”

“Oh, damn, you’re old old.” She laughed softly at him. “I hope the moping hasn’t been all that long.”

“It hasn’t.” Foolish said. “Most of my life was actually rather nice, for a while. Spent a lot of it in Europe, Asia, Africa…”

“I’ve seen your collection, I guess I should have known.” she mused. “What was your favorite place?”

“Oh…” Foolish sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Spain, I guess.” 

“You just guess?”

“There’s a lot of places in the world, I dunno. I spent a lot of time there around the fourteenth, fifteenth centuries.” Foolish shrugged. Vegetta had fallen in love with the place, so they’d stayed for… at least a few hundred years, if not over a thousand.

“I take it that was before you got all sad and stuff?” she teased a bit, but a sympathetic smile fell onto her face and for the first time, it didn’t feel like pity. “What happened?”

When Charlie had asked that, Foolish threw him out of the house. When Phil did he’d just given the silent treatment. Wilbur never had, seeming to catch on, and…

“My husband died.”
“Oh.” This had, evidently, not been what Jaiden expected to hear. “I-I’m sorry. How old was he?”

“Gosh,” Foolish laughed. “A bit older than me, I think… we really lost count, y’know?”

“Wait so-” she blinked at him. “He was one of us? He was an immortal?”

“Mhm.” Foolish hummed. “You haven’t heard all the gossip?”

“I try not to listen to gossip if I can help it.” Jaiden laughed. “Even if it can be really interesting, at times. I’d rather hear it from you if you’re okay telling me.”

“Hm. I haven’t walked away yet, so…” Foolish sighed, gesturing for her to ask whatever it was she wanted to know.

“What happened to him?”

Ah.

“We were in Europe, in the forties.” Foolish murmured. “Bad timing, we were out of touch with things, going to pick up some stuff from a storage place…”

“Oh, no…”

“Air raid, most of the people around died or got seriously messed up.” Foolish said dully. “The scars on my arms, and my legs if you’ve seen ‘em - from that. Got more on my back, too. Leo didn’t get too hurt, but… he was just gone .”

“How long were you two together?”

“Hah,” Foolish smiled, thoughts drifting back to oh-so-long ago when he’d met Vegetta. “A long, long time. Rome was in its heyday, I think. I dunno, we were traveling a lot back then. I had a little over a thousand years under my belt, he had just gotten to two. Already had Leo with him, when I met them.”

“You’re getting all sappy,” Jaiden chuckled. “I’ve never seen you smile like that before.”

“I miss him.” Foolish sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know how to live without him, Jaiden. I shut myself into a New York apartment for fifty years, until Bad dragged me out here. Every day I thought, y’know, maybe he isn’t really gone. If I just- if I just stay at a place we both knew, he’ll turn up.”

“What would he want you to do?”

“I-” goddamnit, now he was going to cry. “I don’t know . Probably not this- this shit I’ve been doing. But I don’t even want to live without him. I wish it wasn’t so hard to die sometimes, y’know?”

Well there it was, the reason he was out here wishing he could go without blowing himself up or decapitating himself or however else he was meant to die. 

He’d never mentioned those thoughts out loud before, and he wasn’t eager to turn and see the expression on Jaidens face.

“Yeah, I know.” she leaned onto his shoulder, and Foolish just sat stiffly for a moment, then did his best to wrap his arm around her in some kind of comforting way. He could comfort Leo, a child, but he rarely actually touched other people more than brief handshakes. 

“He really, really loved what humanity was starting to make.” Foolish said quietly. “He loved the cars and the planes and the cameras, gosh he loved to take pictures of the three of us. I never really cared that much one way or another but now… now I hate it, I hate technology. I hate anything with an engine, and computers are confusing and I just… I can’t believe that I hate stuff he would have loved.”

“He loved stuff that ended up killing him,” Jaiden murmured. “I don’t think you’re a bad person for not liking it.”

“I haven’t even-” Foolish laughed bitterly. “I haven’t even developed half the pictures he took of us. More than half, hell, most of them are just still on film. He always wanted to, and I just keep them in goddamn boxes.”

“Do you want to?”

“ He wanted to.” Foolish whispered. “I owe him that much, don’t I?”

“Hey, man!” Charlie was, as usual, too loud and cheerful when he bounced up the steps of Foolish’s house. “You’ve got this package in at the post office, Bad asked me to bring it to you!”

“A package?” Foolish sighed, opening the screen door to let Charlie inside, where he presented the thing with a flourish. One look at the address and Foolish’s stomach dropped, the professional photo restoration place (he didn’t know, he just knew Jaiden knew and he trusted her) where they’d sent two boxes of Vegetta’s film.

Taking it without another word, he ignored Charlie as he followed Foolish into the kitchen, seating himself on a barstool like he owned the place.

Foolish didn’t really mind, cutting open the tape on the package and opening it up to find envelopes full of what must be the pictures.

“What is it? More old junk?” Charlie asked curiously, leaning to get a better look.

“No,” Foolish couldn't help but smile widely at the first picture he pulled out, of Vegetta and Leo that he’d been talked into taking for them. He’d never been as good at pictures, and they weren’t centered and it had apparently been tilted…

But there they were.

Oh, he was going to cry.

“Oh, wait,” Charlie’s eyes widened - probably recalling other incidents in which he brought up Foolish’s past that ended… less than well. “Is that…”

“Look at that,” Foolish breathed as he leafed through the photos, letting Charlie see them once he’d gotten a look. “Seventy years in a box, and it still turned out great. Oh, he’d love these…”

“Do you-” The guy’s face lit up, and Foolish prepared himself for some kind of accidentally insensitive question. “Do you want a photo album? Bad’s got all these empty ones selling in the general store and nobody ever buys em, don’t know why he still tries. But I can-”

“A- a photo album…”

“Yeah like- a book. So you can keep them safe but label them and look through.” Charlie chuckled. “I can go grab a few if you want…”

“Would you?” Foolish looked up, thrown off by the thoughtfulness, and Charlie just grinned and adjusted his glasses.

“Yeah of course! I’ll be right back, okay, don't turn all grumpy again while I’m gone!” and just like that he’d darted away, and with Leo out at the park with her friends Foolish was alone with the dozens of pictures. 

A good few of them, he realized with a bit of a blush, were more intimate than he’d thought they’d be. He’d forgotten, somehow, Vegetta’s smirk when he suggested a photo session just for the two of them and…

Yeah, it was a good thing Charlie had left when he did. Foolish didn’t need the whole community gossiping about these.

Photo albums took up an entire bookcase in his bedroom, and all the treasured keepsakes had been moved, rearranged into the back or upper rooms of the house.

The front, under Bad’s suggestion and Foolish’s own boredom, had been transformed. An antique shop, most of the prices outrageous enough that even the memories he didn’t particularly need to keep were safe for a good few years after he opened the place up. Half the things for sale weren’t even his collections, but random things his friends had decided they didn’t need but knew someone would pay a pretty penny for…

And so an eclectic shop of old things and antiques joined the repertoire of their tiny town turned tourist stop, with Wilbur’s motel a bit bigger than before and a mountain nearby becoming a popular tourist spot with new hiking trails and campsites opening up, they were a stop on the way if someone was coming in from the south. 

Even so, it was a rare day that Foolish actually got a customer.

And really, that’s how he liked it.

Things had been better, in the years since he started to try and live again, with developed pictures and a business to run, and a daughter running the new diner down the road. She was still young, but with Wilbur or Charlie there ‘supervising’ most tourists seemed to think it was cute to have a family business with a kid behind the counter.

But he spent most of his days in his house, still, surrounded by his collections and his memories. A few well-developed pictures of him and Vegetta and Leo lined the walls and the counter/desk he’d installed in the shop portion of the house, though he’d only just started to sort out things from his and Vegetta’s collections to put a price tag on and see what he could get.

The most important things, obviously, would never be sold. But some they had multiple of, and some weren’t as sentimental as they were impulse grabbing, so they were set out on shelves waiting for some enthusiast or idiot with a large wallet to take a liking to.

But today would not be that day, according to Bad their motel was booked out by a group of other immortals he’d invited to get to know. Something about making lasting connections or whatever, which Foolish both understood and did not really care for. But either way, he’d more likely be getting more donations than he would be making any sales.

Until Bad or Charlie or Jaiden came over to drag him out and make him socialize, Foolish planned on staying right here in his chair.

And when the bell rang above his door, he expected it to be one of them.

Chapter Text

The hospital staff didn’t speak Spanish. He knew they were doing their best, knew they apparently had a lot of patients to deal with, and knew that… something terrible had happened?

He didn’t know much more than that. Something told him he should be able to communicate in some other way, but he had no idea what that would be. So he sat in the dull agony while they took hours to find a translator, and he listened to the screams and cries of the other people who were dying from their injuries.

He didn’t end up dying, though through the translator he learned that they’d expected him to. His recovery was considered a miracle from god, and for the life of him… he didn’t know if he believed in a god at all.

They said he had amnesia, that nobody really knew who he was or where he’d come from, but that ‘the war’ had brought a bomb down onto them and most people had eventually perished or fled. He’d been on the edge of it for weeks but managed to pull through.

Really, he supposed it was his own stubbornness that had done it. Either way, he was alive, and for the most part, he had no idea what had brought him here or where he needed to go to find himself at home.

But some kind soul got him a ticket to Spain, which was a fair assumption since he only knew Spanish anyway. 

It took a few weeks after that, setting himself up under the thin resources there were for people ‘in this situation’ (by which he assumed were the people with their lives ruined by some pointless war), for any memories to return.

His name was one of the first, and it was a bit of relief to be able to actually introduce himself as Vegetta, rather than just… well, not being able to introduce himself at all.

Next, and less fortunate, was the profound sense of loss .

What he’d lost, Vegetta had no idea at all. But he knew he had, and that was enough to leave a void in his chest. There were dreams, sometimes, of faceless people and a child and his heart broke every morning when he woke up and lost them again, but there had been no other Spaniards in that hospital. Not that had survived, and he hadn’t remembered them until months after moving on anyway.

Whoever they were, they were gone.

And Vegetta was alone.

Years seemed to drag on, finding odd jobs in a mechanics shop or a warehouse or something while the scars healed over and never faded, until he’d found himself in yet another town on the coast in search of work, and he suddenly found himself face to face with…

Well, memory was hard these days, but he could have sworn that the man staring back at him had been there in the hospital to translate, years ago.

And he hadn’t aged a day .

“I know you,” Vegetta said to him, a bit surprised. 

“You’re that guy,” the man said, pointing as if accusing Vegetta of something. “That- that miracle life, aren’t you?”

“My name is Vegetta,” he smiled wearily, curious. “You look the same as you did then.”

“So do you,” came the reply, and Vegetta honestly didn’t know if that was true or not. “I’m Maximus, I don’t think I introduced myself back then. It was a busy time.”

“Maximus,” Vegetta repeated, trying his best to commit it to memory. “It was, I… Well, thank you for the help back then.”

“I think…” Maximus looked over his face critically. “I think there are some people I can introduce you to, if you have the time.”

And no work had been panning out and he didn’t have a place to stay, so Vegetta didn’t really have a reason to say no.

That’s when he learned of immortals, of people who stopped aging at some random point in time and who were very difficult to kill. Maximus was one of these, in a group calling themselves a family and who stayed together throughout the times.

And they said Vegetta must be one of them, frozen in the year following the air raid that almost killed him as if the universe wanted to apologize for the near miss and instead gave him so many more years of loneliness and aches and pains.

But they had a place for him to sleep, and food and friendship, so he found a place for himself there amongst the immortal ones. 

It was less lonely than before, though the sense of loss had never faded.

The years dragged a bit less, a bit faster than before, and their small group traveled a bit as needed. It felt nostalgic and sad, but for lack of anything else to do Vegetta let himself be brought along with these people he now called his family.

Memory was hard, but trinkets helped his recall enough that soon even if he forgot to pick one up someplace, Roier or Max or Luzu would end up slipping one into his hands at the end of the night, and the backpack he tried to keep with him became filled with bits and bobbles that brought a smile to his face.

Someone he knew once would have loved them, the keychains and postcards. 

He didn’t keep track of the years so much as he did the things humans were making, electric boxes and mechanical tools and strange clothing. Cameras were a wonder, and modern vehicles as time progressed only became more efficient, and he found himself stopping in at textbook depositories and libraries in most cities they visited.

Engineering, modern science, mechanics, it felt like a wonder even though he’d been growing up during the discovery of it all, he didn’t remember that. Hell, sometimes he thought he could have been some kind of engineer already and just needed to re-learn everything.

“Have you ever thought of, I dunno,” Roier chuckled at him one day, when he struggled to pack each book and trinket and small tinkering project he had for their next bout of traveling. “Settling down somewhere? There’s a lot of groups who do that, I feel bad for dragging you around when you want to work instead.”

“Why would I do that? How would I see the world if I didn’t travel?” Vegetta rolled his eyes, shoving one last time to be able to close his suitcase. “Where would I even settle, anyway?”

“There are a lot more stationary groups in the Americas,” Roier pointed out. “In the United States, in Brazil, that’s where my fiance lives, you know.”

“Yes, yes,” he rolled his eyes a bit. “A fiance for how long, now?”

“Only fifteen years,” Roier shrugged. “That’s not so long, in the grand scheme of things. We want to pick the right time to do it.”

And part of Vegetta wanted to disagree, tell him that even in thousands of years every single moment mattered because you never knew when something would be ripped away from you.

But the boy’s fiance was an immortal as well, and despite that feeling, he couldn't find a logical reason to be so skeptical. 

“I feel restless when I stay in one place too long,” Vegetta finally shrugged. “Maybe one day, that will change. But for now, I can bring what I need with us, we have enough saved to pay extra baggage anyway, don’t we?”

“Well, yeah.” Roier chuckled. “I guess we do. I’m not carrying anything for you this time, though, that’s all on you.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage,” Vegetta said drily, though it brought about that sense of utter loneliness, despite being surrounded by friends.

It was another one of those dreams. Even after several decades, he still woke with that feeling of loss in his heart and their faces already gone from his mind.

God

Who had they been to him? Family, certainly more than just friends. Why couldn't he just remember or forget these last details? Remember the rest, or forget the fragments he’d been left so at least he wouldn't be tortured by it all.

How cruel of the universe, to take his near-death experience as the moment to freeze him in time. Not that he wanted to die - far from it. Just this week he’d discovered the portable cellphone and bought one just to take it apart, much to Max and Quackity’s amusement when putting it back together proved to be a harder task. The world was full of wonderful sights and creations, and he wanted to see them all.

But whenever he had a dream like this, it felt like a part of him was missing .

Restless, Vegetta pulled himself out of bed and set himself up in the kitchen of their current rented home, prying the screen and plastic casing off of a broken computer he’d found himself to try and see what was wrong with it. 

These were more complex than the mechanical things, but he loved them all the same, and he lost himself in the tiny pieces and electrical wires for a good few hours. It didn’t do much to ease the void in his chest, but it distracted his mind enough that he didn’t fall into despair.

That’s where Max found him, as the sun rose and he wandered out to brew a cup of coffee. It earned a hearty chuckle from the man, who sat to join him as he watched Vegetta pry pieces up and inspect their connections.

“You’re an odd one, Vegetta,” he informed him - not the first time by a long shot.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Vegetta narrowed his eyes as he tried to slot a wire back into its place, bent over with his head partly inside the large box that made up the device. 

“You’re more into all this than most regular people I’ve met, let alone an immortal.” Max shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so easy to please as you, all you need is something to mess with and you’re happy.”

“I am not happy.” The wire finally fit into place and he smiled, satisfied, before looking up at Maximus’s surprised expression. “Though after meeting you and the others, I’d say I’m closer to it than I was for a good few years.” he hadn’t intended to be so honest - but then again, this hadn’t really come up before. Talking about feelings and happiness was a rare thing, and usually, Vegetta was on the outskirts of such a conversation and didn’t need to contribute.

“What do you mean?” Max seemed dismayed. 

“I suppose I’m content,” hmm, even that word seemed wrong and Vegetta sighed. “I feel happiness sometimes, more often than I thought I would, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy . I- I don’t know who I am, Maximus. How could I be happy without knowing that?”

“I know who you are,” he protested. “You’re my friend, Vegetta, that guy who likes to tinker and collect things and learn. Generous, kind, smart, that’s you.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Vegetta huffed, inspecting the next piece he needed to put back into the computer, in hopes that whatever he’d done to it would fix it. “You met me in the hospital, you know I lost my past to the explosion.”

“You…” Max’s confidence faltered. “You never remembered anything ?”

“I know my name,” there was that. “But other than that, no.” 

“Oh my god-” Max ran a hand down his face. “Vegetta, why haven’t you said anything? Why- why haven’t you… we could have helped!”

“What were you going to do about it?” Vegetta chuckled, setting the parts aside for the moment to give Max his full attention. “You didn’t know me before then, either.” 

“That’s really…” Max seemed heartbroken that Vegetta hadn’t told him this sooner, but honestly, Vegetta had forgotten that everyone around him didn’t know.

“You know how my memory is,” he pointed out. “Part of me thinks I wasn’t so absentminded before it happened.”

“You’re very smart, you just spend too much time in your head.” Max huffed. “And your memory has gotten better over the years. I… I’d have thought that would include your past.”

“I can remember facts and information. But memories themselves are still hard, you know that… As for my past, no.” Vegetta shook his head. “Nothing real, aside from feelings. I know I had a life, obviously, but the details…”

The details were a cloud of rubble and smoke, then the hospital. The details were knowing there had been a family he never did anything without, and that meant they’d probably died.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Vegetta turned back to the computer, frowning at the mess he’d made of it. “There’s nothing we could do, even if I did know more.” 

“If it keeps you from being happy, I feel like it might matter.” 

“Are you happy?” Vegetta countered, bending a bit of plastic back into shape. “Nothing about your past haunts you?”

“Of course it does.” The coffee mug was set down a bit too harshly, and Vegetta glanced at him again. “But at least I- I remember it. I’m able to process it and move on and I am happy now, you know this.”

“I’m learning, and I’m working,” Vegetta sighed. “I keep myself busy and I enjoy what I do, why must I be perfectly happy? I don’t even know how I would be - I’m not completely sure what all I’m missing.”

“You’ll just let yourself sit in limbo for a thousand years?” Max asked skeptically. “Or more than that?”

And… in his head, for some reason, a thousand years didn’t sound so long.

“Yes.”

“Vegetta, this is my fiance!” Roier pulled him through the door, waving a hand forward toward an entire group of people. Vegetta had seen pictures of Cellbit so it was easy to pick him out, but the motion still made him chuckle.

“You’re here!” He spoke in Portuguese, but Vegetta had been trying to learn it for the sake of this trip to Brazil, and it was similar enough to Spanish that he didn’t have an awful time. Not that learning any language was impossible, he was nearly fluent in French now and working on English, but still. It was nice to at least have something similar.

“Cellbit,” Roier wrapped him in a hug, and Vegetta stood back with a smile as the others in their family entered behind them, and the other Brazilians called greetings toward them as well. “This is Vegetta, he’s basically my adopted father even though he’s younger than most of us.”

And something about that statement didn’t feel right , but Vegetta pushed the thought away and chuckled.

“You need someone to keep an eye on you,” he reasoned. 

“Well it's nice to meet you,” Cellbit tilted his head, seeming thoughtful. “Unless we’ve met before, your name sounds familiar?”

“Yeah, because I talk about him enough.” Roier huffed, moving on to greet a young boy with an oversized jacket and wild hair. 

The sight of a child amongst immortals gave him vertigo, but something deep in Vegetta’s chest told him it wasn’t an unfamiliar image. He’d never thought of the possibility of a child being frozen so young, but thinking about it now it just seemed to make sense. Sad, but it made sense.

The groups had decided to get together to celebrate the new year - new century - and Vegetta went along like he had the last few decades with them. So he found himself in Brazil, surrounded by people who all knew each other while he didn’t even know himself.

What a silly thought, he reminded himself of how Max had been trying to comfort him recently saying even if he didn’t know his past, he knew his own intentions and desires here in the present. That was good enough for him - it had to be because otherwise, the emptiness in his chest would consume him.

So he followed his friend's lead, sitting into conversations of the two groups mingling and catching up after a few decades without visiting each other all at once.  

The night moved on, and Vegetta found himself a bit drunk for the first time in a small while but not to the extent that he either became too sad or tired. For the most part, just content, letting the room move around him as he sat and listened to the chaos.

The child came to sit with him at one point - Richarlyson. From what Vegetta could tell, immortalized at eight years old, seemingly mute (or just quiet), and spent most of his time sitting next to Vegetta on a handheld little computer - a gameboy, he thought it was called. He watched idly at the colored pixels moving on the screen, and painfully unable to keep from noticing how one of the buttons was prone to sticking.

“Do you want me to fix that for you?” he did his best with Portuguese, and Richarlyson looked up at him with wide delighted eyes. “I can, hold on…” 

A tiny screwdriver was his best friend, always kept in one of the pockets of his jacket, so when the boy handed over his game Vegetta did his best to be gentle as he took the front plastic off and found the sticky residue that was keeping the button from working.

“Oh, there he does it again - Richas, you sure you trust him with that thing?” Roier groaned when the corner of the coffee table was turned into his workspace, but Vegetta ignored him as he used a napkin to gently clean the inside of the device.

“Don’t spill anything more on that, or it’ll happen again,” he advised the boy as he screwed it back on. “If it gets in on the wires it would be much harder to clean, you know, and I won’t be here next time to fix it.”

He handed it back over after turning it on, and Richarlyson’s face split into a grin, and moments later he was wrapped in a hug of tiny arms. Oh, how adorable, this boy almost reminded him of her -

It was like cold water doused the inside of Vegetta’s lungs and he grasped at the thought, though it went no further than that.

Her . 

Another child, another hug, and another wide grin - but a little girl, hadn’t it been?

A daughter.

Blurred, dusty memories with blacked-out faces and people in them tried to come forward, stopped by the sound of bricks tumbling and explosions shattering nearby windows, and screams .

The noise of the small party around him mixed into it, and his ears were ringing in the chaos of what happened.

He was lost in that, in the rubble and darkness, when someone gently pried his hands from Richarlyson’s shoulders. Lost in the pain that had ebbed through him when he was crushed, then pulled out of the rubble and shipped off to some hospital far from any of the fighting. Lost in the loneliness, the dull acceptance that his life was missing from him, that his child was no longer in his arms-

“-never seen him like that,” Max was saying, voice dull but familiar and the first legible words he’d heard after waking up in the hospital-

But he wasn’t there now, was he? Vegetta found himself out on a balcony, a light breeze brushing over his face as he sat against the banister, while Max and Roier spoke to two of the Brazilians - Cellbit and- and who was that, Mike? He didn’t know, names were so hard.

“ Seems like shell shock, he was mixed up in shit in Berlin back in world war two,” Max continued. “But I haven’t seen it hit him like that before, he doesn’t remember most of it. Not sure why it was Richarlyson, are you sure he’s alright?”

“Yes, he’s fine,” Cellbit chuckled. “More worried, I think, aren’t you Richas?”

“We’ve all seen our share of shit,” Mike said. “You said he’s a new one though, right?”

“He didn’t know he was immortal when we met,” Max explained. “I only figured it out when I saw him again ten years after that - same face, scars barely healed. He froze soon after he left the hospital, as far as I can tell.” 

They were talking about him. It was a vague realization, lifting one hand to look at the twisted, somewhat faded scars from the injuries he’d had.

They were healed, immortals healed from things like that slower, but they’d healed more over the decades.

He wasn’t back there. He was safe, he was fine-

He’d had a daughter.

His friends and the others were still talking in hushed tones, giving him whatever space they thought necessary for this… ‘shell shock’. But the pattering of little feet brought his head up, and Richarlyson smiled at him before sitting in front of him, almost on his lap, and holding up the game to show as he played through it - the key didn’t stick anymore. 

“I’m sorry,” Vegetta whispered to him, resting his head upon the mass of hair on the boy to watch him play. 

He didn’t know if he hated or loved this - the feeling of deja vu for something he didn’t remember . But he accepted the child’s comfort, in this way of sharing something he enjoyed, and he sat there with him until Richarlyson fell asleep against his chest, console dead from hours of use, and the only other person out here with them was Maximus who had promised to keep an eye on them.

Vegetta may have pretended not to hear them speaking, or the things posed toward him because he very much did not want to talk about this. 

But now the boy was asleep, and he had a bed to get to, so Vegetta gently set his game to the side and picked him up, standing unsteadily. 

“Whoa,” Max was at his side in an instant, helping to steady him. “You alright, Vegetta?”

“I am fine.”

“ Bullshit .” Max grinned. “But let's get him in, to his parents, then we’ll talk.” it didn't seem like he was going to give Vegetta a choice, so he just sighed and went along with it and handed Richas off to Mike to bring to bed.

And then he found himself back out in the night air on the balcony, with a water instead of a glass of wine, and Max leaned on the banister beside him.

“So uh… wanna explain what that was?” he asked after a moment, and Vegetta sighed.

“You seemed to have it figured out,” he said. “Shell shock.”

“From a kids hug? There’s more to it than what happened in Berlin. Talk to me, Vegetta, I just want to be able to help you.”

Damn, he’d been found out.

“Whenever I try to think of something from before, ” Vegetta said quietly. “All I can think of is that day, and the dust and the smoke and the pain. I see people in my dreams, sometimes, but they never have faces. If they do, I can’t remember them.”

Max nodded in encouragement, face a mask of worry and thoughtfulness.

“It's been a long time since I spent time with a little one,” Vegetta breathed, closing his eyes. “But he reminded me of her and- and I can’t even remember her face . If I try, I just…”

“Who?” Max prodded gently.

“My- my little girl. My daughter, I think. I- I can’t remember , Max. It's been sixty years and I only just now even thought of that word , and I still don’t know her face.” he mourned, taking a drink from the water just to have something to do. “I- I fear she was with me that day, and I lost her to the tragedy. If not… she thinks I’m dead, or she is now too. And even if I saw her, I wouldn’t know her or her name or-”

“Breathe,” Max rubbed his back, face grim. “I-I understand.” 

“I didn’t keep her safe,” Vegetta whispered. “I don’t- I don’t even know why I was in that damned city, let alone the country, and I…”

“What, you think you knew that bombs were about to be dropped out of the sky on top of you?” Max questioned. “And countless other innocent civilians? Vegetta, that wouldn’t be your fault .” 

Logic agreed.

The loss and pain and emptiness in his chest did not.

For that night being a breakthrough, the next five or ten years fell into dull acceptance that the life and people he’d known were gone. He visited historical places and books, finding pictures of survivors of various things, but none felt similar to his eyes except his own photo in one of them he hadn’t realized existed, but listed as an unknown man.

Max helped, they talked more than ever before and while the dreams continued and the information thankfully didn’t fade - Vegetta didn’t remember anything else about his past.

Cellbit and Roier still hadn’t wed, saying the time wasn’t right, but trips between Spain and Brazil became more frequent as the years went on. Vegetta found himself going with them more often than not, taking up the joking title of ‘grandfather’ to Richarlyson with a smile and an aching heart.

Quackity, in all his wanderings, started to speak of a town full of immortals in New York. not the city but the state, Vegetta learned, and it was far from the business of anyone who would bother them. Their spokesperson - or at least this man Quackity kept referring to as ‘Bad’ - was an incredibly old and ancient immortal. And Quackity, in his eagerness to create connections, proposed a friendship or at least an attempt of one similar to what they had in Brazil.

So Vegetta found himself swept away to an English-speaking country, still one of his worse languages but he was confident enough that his only worry was meeting new people and making a fool of himself like he had with Cellbit’s family.

They hadn’t thought less of him for it, but the memory still made his gut twist in embarrassment.

It was a flight and a set of rented vans away, Vegetta finding space to tinker with a tiny robotics kit that Roier had gotten him as a joke, but had really found its way into his hands every day since then.

A keychain was picked out and purchased almost by instinct in the airport gift shop, hooked onto the long string of his collection within his bags. And when they approached the edge of a tiny town that matched most romanticized thoughts he’d ever seen of America, Vegetta told himself he’d find a postcard or something as well to remember this trip.

The vans found a place in a gravel parking lot, and Vegetta stepped out to squint down the picturesque main street. 

Most of it looked relatively modern if based around the vintage buildings they were originally built into.

The building that stood out the most was an old Victorian-style home, a sign boasted it was an antique shop though there was no parking lot, just a front yard that wrapped around toward what was probably a bigger back one (if his recollection of old American architecture styles held up, at least).

The idea of what might fill those walls, old technology and memories left to collect dust, pulled at his mind more than he’d expected. So while the group of his friends and found family chattered around, some trying to wrangle Richas and some trying to keep Roier in check, he wandered away across the street to the fence that lined the walkway up to the door.

There was a screen door closed, but the one behind it was open and he could see the vague silhouette of a man sitting at the counter, penciling something onto a paper. A sign on the door handle read ‘open’, and without really knowing why, Vegetta walked up and pulled the door open.

“Hey, what’s-” A sharp American accent met his ears, and the man looked up only to stop in the middle of his sentence. 

Up closer, the man was handsome , but he was pale as if he’d just seen a ghost. Maybe he was shy, or he hadn’t expected a stranger. So Vegetta gave him a moment to collect himself, turning instead to inspect photographs on the wall.

Old vintage ones, some seeming to have been converted into color after the fact, most with the same family of three.

Wait.

“Vegetta…” he hadn’t introduced himself, but this man knew his name.

But far more shocking, and interesting, was the fact that Vegetta saw himself in almost every photo on the wall - unscarred, usually holding the hands of a young girl and the very man he saw before him now, arms equally scarred from an explosion, who looked as if he was about to cry.

“I thought you were dead .”

Vegetta was not as fluent in English as he’d like to be - but that, he understood.

Chapter Text

Foolish

He was seeing things. He’d gone crazy. He’d finally, finally snapped - and now he was seeing the image of his dead husband in the bright entrance to his store.

The lookalike seemed startled - but it couldn't be a lookalike, that was him, it had to be him… scarred, weathered, exhausted, but that was Vegetta.

“Ah- I’m sorry,” more accented than it used to be, or maybe Foolish had just gotten used to American English, but his lover's voice brought more tears to his eyes than just the sight of him.

“Don’t apologize, god-” he stumbled around the counter to be closer, but too afraid to reach out and hug him in case he disappeared. “I-I looked everywhere for you that I could, where have you been? I-”

“I’m sorry,” the man stepped back, looking frazzled and apologetic. “I- ah… I am not perfect with English, my friend.” 

What? It felt like a record scratch, but Foolish forced himself to continue, swapping to something he figured Vegetta was more likely to have stuck with.

“Tu eres Vegetta, Si?” he stammered, knowing the accent was off and not caring when the man seemed delightfully surprised. “Espanol? I can- Yo hablo español, no te preocupes, I-I…”

“Okay, okay,” the man reached out and grasped one of his frantic hands and he was real and solid, and Foolish almost broke down. “You- you speak Spanish, I try English. A fun- a fun game, yes?”

Oh, god, if that wasn’t one of the endearingly stubborn things Vegetta would do, making things just a bit too complicated but fun at the same time. He nodded, holding onto the hand like a lifeline.

“You know me…” Vegetta said slowly, sadness creasing every bit of his face and Foolish felt his heart implode. “I-I do not know you. Your name?”

“Foolish.” What did that mean? Vegetta… didn’t know him? “Mi nombre es- es Foolish. Traté de encontrarte - Lo intenté durante años, qué pasó?” he didn’t want to let go of the hand Vegetta had given him, even realizing now that it was a kind gesture but in no way an intimate one.

“Qué pasó, yes…” Vegetta sighed, lowering his gaze. “I ah- I have… I do not remember things.” he hummed, seeming to struggle for words before giving up and switching back to spanish. Foolish didn’t mind, he was skilled enough at untangling Leo’s words. “Me lesioné y perdí la memoria de mi vida antes de eso. Tienes fotos mías... me conoces?”

“Si! Yes, pictures,” Foolish nodded, heart shattering, as he caught movement on the walk outside and found strangers, and Bad, who looked as shocked as he felt. “You took them, they’re yours , I… I…” 

“Oh?” Vegetta seemed fascinated for a moment, then followed his gaze out the door. “Ah! Mi familia, Foolish, come meet them.”

His family.

Was Foolish about to be even more broken-hearted than before? But Vegetta pulled on his hand, and who was he to say no to the husband he’d been grieving for the past eighty years? So he followed, despite not wanting to meet new strangers, despite the way he was falling apart on the inside at the news that Vegetta had no idea who he was.

“-looking for him for a long time-” Bad cut off his hurried explanation when they approached, though one of them did finish their translation when the two of them were in earshot.

“Vegetta! Who is this , man?” one of them beamed, looking Foolish up and down critically. “I thought you didn’t know anyone but us!”

“I-I’m Foolish…” Foolish didn’t know what to do, he looked at Bad with wide eyes, and his old friend just grimaced back, texting someone quickly before tucking his phone away. 

“¿Lo conoces?” one of the others murmured to Vegetta, probably unaware that Foolish could understand. 

“Hace mucho tiempo... creo que lo hice,” Vegetta turned his timid smile to Foolish, and he felt like he was melting. “He has- he has pictures, he knows me .” 

“Why don’t we go on to the diner,” Bad moved up to put a hand on Foolish’s shoulder. “Get something to eat, sit down and talk…”

The diner.

Leo.

“Oh my god- Leo,” Foolish wanted to pass out or cry or scream all over again. “Vegetta, do you know… you know Leo, right? You have to remember her, I…”

“Leo.” The love of his far-too-long life echoed, seemed mystified.

“Nuestra hija.” Foolish whispered, chest tight.

“Here?” Vegetta’s gaze brightened, hand growing loose in Foolish’s grasp, and finally, an ounce of recognition filled his eyes. “She is- she is here ? She is alright ?”

“Si.” Foolish nodded, starting forward as confidently as he could with the weight of the world crashing onto him. “Follow me, uh- sígueme, she’s here.” 

He knew he was being stared at - both by Vegetta’s family and his own friend, but what else was he meant to do? He still felt like this couldn't be real, but Vegetta had let him keep hold of his hand and that meant a lot considering Foolish might as well be a stranger to him.

Fuck .

He was going to fall apart if he thought about that too much more. 

“Foolish…” Bad trailed at his side as he led Vegetta toward the diner, but he obviously didn’t know what to say either. Foolish didn’t know if he was angry at Bad or thankful that he was here, but he knew he was one wrong word away from collapsing in on himself forever. 

He could hear others talking, though their words were lost on him as he kept one eye on Vegetta’s face and one on where he was walking. 

All too soon, but not soon enough, he led Vegetta into the diner and came face to face with gap-toothed Dapper at the counter.

“Hey, Uncle Foolish!” he waved a hand, eyes falling onto Vegetta for only a moment before he turned, darting back into the kitchen with Leo’s name the next word from his mouth.

“Everyone find a seat, um…” Bad seemed frazzled - he hadn’t expected their guests for another hour or so, and this had clearly not gone how he expected, but god knows if Foolish cared about that.

Leo appeared a moment later, while the newcomers found a place in a booth near the window.

“Leo,” Foolish smiled weakly, both gesturing to her for Vegetta and getting her attention with the word. She vaulted herself up over the counter (which he’d told her not to do a million times, but could make an exception this once), and Vegetta doubled over when she knocked the breath from his lungs.

“ Pa ,” she whispered, gripping him tightly. “Te extrañé, te extrañé…” And despite the recognition, there was still that curiosity and confusion swirling in his gaze and Foolish’s stomach fell further into the depths of the earth.

“Leo…” he whispered, fond but hesitant, as he returned the hug. Then looking up at Foolish, seeming desperately confused. “How…  pero la explosión? How?”

And that was it, the word that would break him, and Foolish fell apart .

Vegetta

In his defense, what had he been supposed to say? Ten minutes ago, Vegetta had been resigned to coming to meet strangers. He hadn’t expected to come across anyone who knew him from before.

There were so many questions in his head, but as soon as Foolish had mentioned their daughter he’d had to go see her and she was still a child and of course Foolish looked like a young man himself - they were immortals as well, but that didn’t make any sense.

But at his question, his reference to that day, Foolish absolutely crumpled.

“Oh- fudge,” Bad, their main contact before now, caught Foolish when he turned away, looking as if he were going to faint as panicked sobs echoed through the restaurant. “Okay, uh… Dapper, go get Phil and Wilbur, and uh… Quackity, I’m gonna get him someplace quiet. Just sit tight.”

“Yeah, no problem man…”

Vegetta knew this must look crazy to his family and his friends but- but holding this dear girl in his arms he knew she was his. Even without the pictures he’d seen, he just… knew . It was the same cold rush of air into his lungs that he’d felt when he was reminded of her without knowing. She still clung to him, crying into his shirt, and he found himself frozen on his knees on the floor of this American diner.

Only Max even knew he remembered the smallest bit of having a daughter - but all the rest of this seemed insane to comprehend. It was insane to comprehend - what did any of this mean at all?

“No llores, pequeña,” he did his best to soothe, rubbing a hand along the child's back. “Do not cry- it is fine, it is alright…”

“ No .” she seemed only upset further by this, shaking her head without stepping back. “Estabas muerto, Estabas muerto.”

“Oh, fuck , man…” The stranger who appeared from the kitchens now was an adult, but he looked just as shocked and disturbed as the rest of these people did when he laid eyes on Vegetta. “ He’s alive ?”

Did they all know him? How many of these people had he known and then forgotten?

“Charlieee,” Quackity greeted, halfheartedly cheerful as he waved. “We uh- I mean, I guess there’s stuff happening…”

Vegetta lowered his head, pressing a soft kiss to Leo’s hat. A moment later, and a steadying hand on his back, Max had knelt beside them. 

“Quieres encontrar un lugar para sentarte?” he asked gently. 

“Don’t go,” the girl’s hold on him tightened, and Vegetta felt like the worst person in the world. How could he forget people who so clearly cared for him? The looks on their faces, like they were seeing a ghost. And he’d made Foolish cry . Foolish… the name felt right in his head but there was nothing connected to it, floating freely in new information instead of what he should have known for years.

“No te dejaré,” he promised, but how could he promise such a thing? He stood slowly, keeping his arms down for Leo to hold onto before letting Max pull him over to a table - a bit away from the others, though their usual ruckus was quieter than usual as they whispered to each other.

What was he to do, now? It felt like everything had frozen still, and all the knowledge of mechanics and electronics and studying he’d done for decades was useless here, with a child in his arms and a supposed… What, old friend? It had seemed like far more than that, he’d said Leo was their daughter. Not just Vegetta’s. 

Fuck, this was fucked.

“Okay,” Bad’s voice interrupted the frozen time, stepping inside with another man and a few more children, who darted off behind the counter supposedly to join the boy they’d seen first. “He’s uh- he’s with Jaiden, Charlie, he’ll be okay for a bit.”

“Care to explain what’s going on?” Cellbit asked, looking from Vegetta to Bad and back again. 

And how could he explain? 

“Well I mean,” Bad laughed weakly. “I kinda want to know that too - it's Vegetta, right?” and he turned to Vegetta, and damnit.

“Si- yes, that is my name…” 

“So, yeah- I uh, I don’t know much Spanish,” he said apologetically, sliding into the chair across from him.

“That is fine, I- I can understand.” he would try his best, at least.

“From what I gather…” a glance to Max, who hovered nearby rather than rejoining the other table, then back to Vegetta. “You really don’t remember Foolish?”

“No…” and oh, how much he wished he did in this moment. If not to ease the past decades of emptiness, to mend the hearts he’d apparently broken as well. 

“What do you remember?”

“I…” A weak laugh escaped him, and he watched Leo start to play with his hands, still glued as close to him as possible, but still a child after all as she’d been immortalized as one. “I remember- remember waking up, in the hospital, after an explosion.”

“That- that’s it? ”

“Some days I can remember the explosion,” Vegetta offered with a wince. “But ah…” but he preferred not to. 

“Scary, Pa,” Leo tugged on his hands. “Nosotros te perdimos, scary.” 

So she had been there- but the scars on himself and Foolish weren’t on her small body, not what he could see, how could she have gotten out of such a thing unharmed?

How were any of them alive - how were all of them immortals?

“Okay,” Bad sighed slowly, putting his face in his hands. “Okay, okay, okay…”

“I…” Oh, how to explain, and in English no less? He would try, at least, for this apparent friend of his daughter and of Foolish. “I knew- I knew I had lost. I felt it missing, but I… by now, I thought they must be gone. No faces, no names- only that they weren’t beside me.”

“So- okay,” Bad hummed. “So I wasn’t there but I knew Foolish at least for a while before you guys ended up in Germany… you spent thousands of years together.”

“¿Qué?” Vegetta reeled back, shaking his head. He couldn't be that old, that was…

“No, no, Vegetta is new ,” Max protested. 

“Far from it!” Bad insisted. “You’re even older than Foolish, and he was born in like ancient Egypt or something I think . I don't know, might’ve been early Greece? I can’t remember,  it was a long time ago. I don’t know where you’re from, Vegetta- you and Foolish and Leo weren’t really connected to anyone other than each other. Even I only saw him once every couple hundred years, back then. So when you went missing… there weren’t a lot of people to help him look. I tried , but…”

And none of what Bad was saying sounded like it could be true but none of it sounded wrong either. Leo fit perfectly into his arms, and the empty gap in his chest the way nothing else ever had. Vegetta considered it, while Max seemed to be gearing up to argue more, and interrupted him before he could.

“If-” he chuckled. “If I lost my memory,” he reasoned for his own sake as well as theirs. “Then not knowing of immortals, when we met, Max, does that really mean I was new?”

He remembered offhand comments saying he was taking the news well, adjusting well, understanding the concept easier than any of them had when they first figured out what was happening. 

But this…

“When he lost you, it…” Bad sighed. “It destroyed him. He had to take Leo out of danger, but he kept looking as much as he could, and I helped him do it. When you didn’t show back up we were so sure you’d died… Where were you?”

“Ah… Spain.” Vegetta hummed, not sure what else to do. Bad smirked at this, shaking his head in some kind of disbelief. “Que?” 

“Of course, it was Spain,” Bad sighed. “He was always talking about how much you loved that place - when we could get him to talk about it at least.”

Foolish

“He doesn’t know me.” Foolish didn’t know what to do . He’d gotten Vegetta back and then lost him again within moments, and it felt like the sky had fallen down on him again and the world was spinning.

He'd only hardly gotten out of his panic attack flashback whatever it was when Bad handed him off to Jaiden, so he could return and talk to the people he'd invited to their town.

“We’ll figure it out,” Jaiden said easily. She was always so damn calm, it was infuriating and soothing all at once. “He’s here now, they were gonna spend some time here anyway, you have time now.”

“ Time .” God, he had so much fucking time because he couldn't just die and be at peace and now- “We already had thousands of years of time, Jaiden! Gone, forgotten, I’m nothing to him now and what’s the fucking point of it all? ”

“I mean- he’s still alive.”

Yeah, yeah he was. And Foolish was so fucking selfish, wasn’t he? Vegetta was alive and not dead and all he could think about was himself .

“He-” Fuck, he didn’t want to cry, he didn’t want to scream and fall apart but he knew if he went to see Vegetta again with that curious, confused, clueless look on his face… but he’d known Leo, hadn’t he? How could he know Leo but not Foolish? “What am I supposed to do?”

“I mean,” Jaiden hummed from her seat on his couch, watching as he paced past the shelves and pictures and artifacts around the room. “Do you still love him?”

What the fuck?

“I’ll throw you out of this house if you ever ask me that again.” he snapped, turning to glare at her - though, as always, she seemed unperturbed. “Nothing in the world could stop me from loving him.”

“I know,” She smiled, standing up to join him by a framed portrait - they’d had some guy paint it ages ago, back in the Renaissance period when anyone with some coin wanted one done. 

“I feel like I’m going insane,” he whispered, half expecting the house around him to burst into flames and collapse on top of them. “I always feel fucking crazy expecting him to walk in the door and this time he actually did. ”

“You’re not crazy,” Jaiden said, just like she had the million other times she’d somehow gotten Foolish to talk about his feelings. “Nobody thinks you’re crazy, Foolish. Look at your house, look at your life, look at this,” she gestured upward to the portrait, and Foolish cast a fond look over the stiff poses they’d sat in for the painting. 

“He really loved that little cape thing,” Foolish murmured. “He loved that whole time, all the fancy things he could get for us to wear.” 

“That’s what I’m trying to say!” Jaiden insisted. “You think just because his memories got knocked around, your time together was erased?”

It sure fucking felt like that.

“This entire house is a record of that life,” Jaiden told him. “You kept it safe, you maintained all of it and you have some little thing from every day of your life, which has been really fucking long.”

“It wasn’t daily , monthly at the most.” Foolish said stubbornly, but he couldn't help but find some spark of hope in her words. “And- and I did lose some of it, we lost the entire storage building in Berlin so…”

Fuck, no, why the hell was he trying to make a joke about that? His ears rang with the memory, and Jaiden just looked at him with that old sad expression on his face when he shook his head.

“But your life and his life, for the most part, were the same .” She said gently when the hairs on the back of his neck stopped standing up and he knew the screaming in the back of his head wasn’t real. “And you have that here for him, that could help.”

“He-” Maybe she was right. “He recognized Leo, I think.”

“See?” Jaiden smiled, pulling him into a gentle hug. He’d gotten more used to that again, too, hugs and comfort from someone other than Leo. “If he remembers Leo, even a little bit, that means it's not all gone. And even if it is, you have time now to rebuild it.”

“I…” god, he was gonna start crying again. “I don't want to- to have to start over. Is it so wrong to just want him back the way he was?”

“I don’t think it's wrong,” Jaiden said. “But I-I don’t know if you’re going to get it, man. You’re not how you were back then, either.”

“I-I could be,” he protested - only to flinch violently a moment later when her phone went off unexpectedly. It wasn’t a loud sound, but it had still startled him and proved him wrong in the same moment. 

“Ope, let me see…” Jaiden hummed curiously, a small smile on her face as she read a message. “How’re you feeling, Foolish?”

“A- I mean, still pretty bad.” He sent a halfhearted glare at the phone as if it had been the one to do all this. “But better.”

“Good, they’re on their way.”

“What?!” he couldn't help but squawk a bit, looking around the room. “ Here ?”

“Yeah, Leo apparently invited him to see all the pictures she’s been taking,” Jaiden chuckled. “Bad says they’ve talked a bit, he seems to think it’ll be okay.”

“But- but he can’t come in here!” Foolish gestured around, searching for some kind of excuse. “It's- it's a mess!”

That made her laugh, head tipping back a bit.

“You never care about what a mess this place is!”

“I-” Okay, fair, he never really did. “This is different! I care more about what he thinks of me than any of you jackasses,” not a complete lie, but still a bit rude. Jaiden just smiled again, patting his shoulder.
“You’ve probably got exactly a minute to clean up if that helps.”

“You’re the worst.” Foolish informed her, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. He hated how much she’d eased the pain, and now he was just nervous and he hated being nervous. He was wearing stupid modern clothes today, and if he’d known that he’d be seeing Vegetta a T-shirt would not have been his first choice. He probably looked awful, maybe the only reason Vegetta hadn’t recognized him was because he looked like shit.

It was a funny thought, but unfortunately not the truth.

But of course, if he’d known Vegetta would be here a lot about the past hour would be different. If only whatever friend of Bad had sent a list of their names and then they could have at least prepared for something like this-

And now there were voices coming up the walk, and he still probably looked like shit.

“Dunno if you can all go in,” Bad was saying as he started to listen in. “Don’t tell him I said this, but he’s a bit of a hoarder . So there’s not a lot of room…”

Oh, that bastard. Foolish’s annoyance was cut short by loud laughter from one of Vegetta’s friends.

“If he hoards too, he’s perfect for you Vegetta! You can hoard all your little things together, it would be cute-”

“I do not-” Vegetta huffed, and the fragments of Foolish’s shattered heart melted just the same. “I do not ‘hoard’- I am- I am a collector! It is not the same, Estúpido. Tienes que esperar afuera, ya no me gustas.” 

“Que? That’s not fair!”

Fuck, how was he going to do this? How rude of Vegetta to act as he always had, leaving Foolish to be in love with him while he didn’t remember what they had. Real dick move, yeah.

But he couldn't be angry with his husband, no matter the circumstance, and Jaiden’s smirk from beside him showed she’d heard the interaction as well.

“Foolish!” Bad called from the front door. “You in there?”

As if he ever went anywhere else.

Leo was less patient - though she did also live here, and walked in without a second thought. Coming around through the doorway from the store, Foolish felt like a deer in headlights when she appeared with Vegetta in tow. 

He smiled kindly, eyes trailing around the cluttered room but instead of the amused judgment Foolish’s friends saw the space with he just looked impressed .

“You- you collect?” he gestured around, getting Leo to pause on her beeline to the stairs up to her room. Foolish nodded, glancing around at it all as well.

“Yeah I- well,” Jaiden slipped out, shoving Bad back into the store from where he’d tried to follow and probably eavesdrop. Vegetta just tilted his head. Waiting for Foolish to find his words. “Half of this is yours .”

Vegetta

Leo’s insistence proved to be the push he needed, up out of the diner with Max and Roier insisting on following. Though they didn’t go inside the house with them (which proved to be a good idea, seeing how very full the building was with objects). She’d explained how many pictures she took, chattering on about how he loved cameras so much and she wanted to do what he’d done-

Vegetta didn’t really know what she was talking about, but he was willing to go see these pictures anyway. He wanted as much information as he could get about his daughter and Foolish, especially based on the things he’d just learned.

Most of which he didn’t want to get into, afraid that if he tried to remember anything from before it would end the same way.

Now that he thought of that, actually, mentioning the explosion was probably why Foolish had been sent over the edge as well. Especially if his memory was more intact.

“Pa,” Leo complained now, tugging on his hand as he surveyed the room. “Mis fotos están arriba, son nuevas. Ya viste todo esto!” whether she didn’t understand what amnesia was or she was in denial, he wasn’t sure.

“Puedes ir a buscarlos y traerlos aquí?” he asked, not wanting to leave the anxious man he’d apparently loved for millennium . Foolish still stood wringing his hands, and Vegetta smiled at him. “Quiero pasar tiempo con tu padre, ¿sí?”

Leo seemed irritated by this but did cast a worried glance toward Foolish before stomping up the stairs on her own, shoelaces untied and making him unreasonably nervous that she’d trip.

“Oh, you don’t- No tienes que quedarte conmigo si no quieres.” Foolish said, shaking his head. “It's- it's okay, esta bien.” 

“I do want to.” Vegetta turned back to him, glancing up in curiosity at the massive portrait Foolish was standing in front of. It was of the two of them, and it seemed incredibly old - probably valuable to any museum or art collector, and well taken care of.  

Everything here seemed well taken care of, actually. All of it was very old, relics of times that Vegetta almost remembered. But they, as was everything else, were obscured by smoke and dust and noise.

“This,” he turned back to the portrait, holding a hand to his chin as he nodded a bit more dramatically than he probably needed to. Foolish seemed so anxious, even holding his breath as Vegetta looked around, he needed a way to bring back those rambling words from before or this wouldn’t get them anywhere. “It is beautiful.”

“I-I mean yeah,” Foolish stammered. “Cualquier foto tuya es hermoso.” 

“Oh?” Vegetta chuckled, some long-dead feeling welling up in the void he’d been living with all these years. “Hace cuanto tiempo se hizo?” 

“This…” Foolish turned, finally relaxing just a bit as he smiled, eyes growing distant in recollection. “It was right before we left Spain in the fifteenth century, you loved that place but we wanted to go and see what was going on down in Italy.” 

“Oh, todavía amo España,” Vegetta admitted. “That ah- that is where I have been.”

“Really?”

“Si, y Francia,” Vegetta shrugged. “A- A bit of travel, but not so far . I did not think I was so old.”

This brought a delightful bubbling laugh out of Foolish, and Vegetta took that as a win . 

“I’m-” The laughter petered off, and Vegetta looked up at him curiously once more. “I- I’m sorry, I didn’t find you. No pude encontrarte.”

Ah…

“Eso no es tu culpa,” Vegetta reasoned softly. “I ah- hmm. Yo no estaba- I was not… I was not a person to find, no.”

“You’re the most important person to find.”

“No,” Vegetta wasn’t explaining this very well. “Ni siquiera me conocía a mí mismo, deambulé más de lo que viví durante mucho tiempo. Max - my friend, you saw him. He only found me by coincidence.”

And maybe that was the wrong thing to say because Foolish looked heartbroken to hear it, but before he could respond there were the loud thumps of Leo jumping down the stairs, a cardboard box held tightly in her hands, with an old Polaroid camera hanging around her neck on a lanyard.

“Papa!” She beamed, striding toward the both of them. “I learned to take pictures, igual que tú!”

“Like me?” He did enjoy cameras, though more interested in how they work than taking pictures themselves. Maybe, though, he’d have an easier time remembering events if he’d been taking pictures all this time. 

“Puedo mostrarte más tarde,” Foolish offered, while Leo had grabbed Vegetta’s wrist again and pulled him toward the couch - the one place in the room that wasn’t filled with antiques and artifacts.

And that is where they spent the next few hours, Leo showing off her photographs of what seemed to be the last two or three decades. The collection only started here, in this house and in places he’d glimpsed outside.

Had this been where Foolish and Leo moved after what happened in Berlin? It was possible, though the dates on Leo’s pictures didn’t go back that far. Most pictures showed herself and some people Vegetta didn’t recognize, as well as the ones he’d met in the diner. The young ones, some of the adults.

Only a few had Foolish in them, though he didn’t miss how Leo handled them like treasures, squealing in delight when he praised the way her photography skills had seemed to improve over time.

And in such a lazy, warm, quiet afternoon after the morning filled with chaos and confusion and tears, Vegetta felt more awake and alive than he had since he woke in that hospital bed. The young girl beside him, and the man who sat on her other side, they filled the empty gap perfectly in a way that no mechanical or electrical project ever had. No string of charms or stack of postcards or backpack full of textbooks had made him feel whole - but now here he was, though the memories still clouded over when he tried to access them.

How frustrating .

She was nodding off, tired, by the time they reached the most recent photographs from the day before. Foolish had been quiet for most of the time, happy to let her chatter away but answering softly whenever spoken to, and now he reached over to make sure no pictures fell on the floor when she fell asleep.

“Tomorrow,” Vegetta said to her and Foolish both, though he found it easier to look toward the child and avoid that haunted look in Foolish’s eyes. “Tomorrow I will show my collection, yes? Not as good as this, but I will show you.” 

“I’d like that.” Foolish smiled at him, setting aside Leo’s camera and the box of pictures before reaching to scoop her up. “Bedtime for you, isn’t it?”

She mumbled some protest that Vegetta couldn't quite hear, but Foolish just smiled.

“Of course,” he glanced at him and seemed to be waiting for an answer as well before realizing Vegetta hadn’t heard the question. “We’ll be- I- you’ll be here when she wakes up?”

Oh

“Si! Estaré aquí, eso es una promesa.” he assured her, and after a moment of sleepily squinting at him, she seemed to accept the response, cuddling back against Foolish’s chest and seeming far smaller and younger than she probably was.

“I’ll be right back,” Foolish carried her upstairs, leaving Vegetta alone in the room filled with objects and pictures he should remember.

But he didn’t.

No matter how he stared at a framed old photograph, or the portrait, or random old things that surely had a sentimental purpose, Vegetta didn’t remember it. He did know that the wide smile in every picture here had been missing from Foolish’s face, but he’d heard what Bad said just a few hours ago.

It destroyed him.

Not knowing his own past, not knowing the faces of the people he missed, it had haunted him for years. But Foolish, supposedly, remembered everything.

Hmm. Vegetta peered up at the portrait again, willing himself to remember.

He felt familiarity here, less so without the two people he’d been missing, but just as it was with them the joy and life was there without the substance of why .

He didn’t need a why, but it would certainly be nice right about now. 

It only took a few minutes for Foolish to come back down the stairs - he’d pulled his hair back and changed his shirt - oh, no, he’d only thrown a button-up over the t-shirt, but it was still endearing as he gave Vegetta another nervous smile.

“So um- we should probably uh… Deberíamos encontrar a los demás, no estoy seguro de dónde están ahora?” he gestured to the door and Vegetta shrugged, following his lead. He was right, he knew his own friends would want to know what was going on and Foolish’s were no doubt feeling similar.

It was dusk outside, the sun having set a few minutes prior, but still comfortably warm.

“They uh- they’ll probably either be at the park or the diner, I dunno.” Foolish chuckled, starting off down the street. 

Vegetta found himself enchanted by the way he didn’t move to try and call or text one of his friends - but then again, he hadn’t seen the man with a phone in his hand or pockets all day. And in the house, everything inside had been incredibly old. Even the counter acting as a shop register hadn’t had a computer on it, just a notebook and a set of binders full of what he assumed were receipts. The most modern thing, really, was the decade-old camera Leo had shown him.

So he pulled out his own, careful to keep in step with Foolish who glanced at it with a smile, and found he’d been messaged by his friends a good few times over the day.

“Ah- they seem to be at the diner,” he discovered. “Pero fueron al parque antes, antes de que los niños se fueran a la cama.”

Foolish just hummed in response, head tipped back to stare at the darkening sky, and Vegetta found himself overwhelmed by all the questions he had.

He wanted to know everything - but he should know it already .

Before he could find a way to even start to ask anything, they’d arrived at the diner to see the silhouettes of their friends mingling about inside. 

Stepping inside threw the room into silence. Foolish either acted or was oblivious to it, though Vegetta couldn't help but assume it was the first one. 

“Took you guys long enough,” Bad finally scoffed from behind the bar. “Come get something to eat, you two. I should’ve known you’d get all distracted.” 

Foolish took the offer willingly, though Maximus snagged onto the sleeve of Vegetta’s jacket before he could follow.

“¿Qué, no me digas que estás celoso? Fueron solo unas pocas horas,” he scolded lightheartedly, following Foolish with his eyes since he was held back from doing it with his feet.

“Ohh man,” Roier giggled at him. “Nunca pensé que te vería obsesionado con algo más que libros y máquinas.”

“Cómo te sientes?” Max asked, ignoring Roier’s (probably drunk) teasing, while Cellbit just seemed amused.

Vegetta couldn't help but smile at the question, tearing his gaze from Foolish to look over at his friend.

“I am happy .”

And he was. But this was not going to be that simple.

Foolish

“Soo, how’d it go?” Bad asked, leaning over the bar with a grin and always wanting gossip.

How did it go?

Foolish honestly had no idea.

Vegetta was just as Vegetta as ever, everything he said Foolish could have guessed a moment before he said it, and everything he did just made sense . If it weren't for the past eighty or so years spent grieving him and missing him, Foolish might be able to pretend that things were the same as they’d always been.

But even with the thousands of years he’d spent with Vegetta, the past eighty without him had seemed to drag on so much longer than that. It was stupid - he’d missed eighty years in the blink of an eye before everything changed.

And then it changed, and now he was a wreck of a man that his husband couldn't even recognize.

“That well, huh?” Bad’s smile had turned to a worried frown, and Foolish sighed as he picked at the food passed over to him.

“It went well,” he admitted. “I think. He- he’s Vegetta , how else could it go? He’s everything.” he glanced back, finding that Vegetta had immediately returned to speaking to his family - and his heart twisted.

“It's been half a day,” Bad said, twisting open a drink and offering it to him. “You have plenty of time to figure this out.”

Foolish was really getting tired of people talking about how much time he had.

“And uh-” Bad suddenly seemed genuinely sheepish, and Foolish looked back up at him in surprise. “I owe you an apology, I guess. You and him, but I’ll get to him later.”

“An apology?” Foolish scoffed. “What for? All you’ve ever done was be a pain in my ass.”

“I made you stop looking for him, I tried to make you move on.” 

Well, that was just stupid.

“I was the one who agreed to it, you were trying to help.” being angry at Bad would be incredibly easy right now, but it also seemed exhausting. So he’d save that for some other day, about something less important than this. 

“If you say so,” Bad glanced over his shoulder with a chuckle. “I forgot why I was always avoiding the two of you, you’re too obsessed with each other.”

“Yeah, you can stick it up your-”

“Foolish!” Vegetta slid up to the counter next to him, still all smiles and curious looks, and Foolish managed one back, turning away from Bad immediately. That probably just proved his point, but Foolish couldn't care less. “¿Quien es tu amigo? dime todo, quiero saber!” 

“Bad? El no es mi amigo, lo odio.” Foolish said drily, earning a confused smile from Bad.

“Aw, amigo? You called us friends!”

“Yeah, Bad, sure. Go away.” 

Knowing him, he probably would have stuck around to be a nuisance. Luckily someone dropped a plate across the room and Foolish winced, closing his eyes as if that would make the panic go away any quicker, and when he opened them Bad was hurrying off to clean it.

“Not your friend?” Vegetta asked, smile a bit smaller as his eyes scanned Foolish’s face. It felt like he could see right through him, just like all the rest of the world. Though with Vegetta, he figured he didn’t mind it as much.

“Nah, he’s my friend,” Foolish shrugged. “But I wanna kill him sometimes, too.”

“ Ah , I see.” he gave a knowing smile - and god, now Foolish just wanted to ask him how much he really remembered. If the afternoon spent with Leo had done anything at all, or if they were still strangers.

But he was still more on edge than usual from hearing the plate fall, and the new people around, and if he started in on a conversation like that he might not be able to take it.

That was so stupid, but it was the way it was. He sighed softly, rubbing his eyes, and wished for a moment he had time to sit and think .

“Lo siento, te estoy poniendo triste…” the man beside him mourned softly, just quiet enough that nobody else heard it, and Foolish felt worse than ever.

“No es tu culpa,” Foolish shook his head. “I’m just like this.”

“Hmm,” he seemed skeptical, mouth twisted up the way it always was when Vegetta heard some bullshit. “No- No, Eso no es cierto.”

“What,” Foolish grinned despite himself. “You don’t believe it?”

He probably didn’t want to spend a thousand years with someone who was stuck in the past like this. It was a sad thought, but Foolish couldn't really blame him.

“Mira, mira-” Vegetta gestured to him. “There you are- a lovely smile! Perfecto.” 

“Perfecto,” Foolish echoed, not even really meaning to. But Vegetta nodded as if they’d just made some kind of agreement, and even without knowing what it was, Foolish wanted to keep to his side of it.

Whatever that meant, he had thousands of years to try not to fuck it up.

Vegetta

He had a dream of smoke and dust and rubble. Of screams, and shattering glass, and of the pain that ebbed through him where he lay stuck beneath it all. He tried to stay within it, push further back, before the bombs fell and before the sky was clouded but lucid dreaming had never been a skill he possessed, and it proved impossible now.

All it really accomplished was prolonging the pain before he woke, phantom pains of the explosion crawling through him even after so long. 

And he woke in a new place, in a small American town, where down the road a man claimed to have known him for thousands of years.

Maximus had gotten better over the years, picking up on when Vegetta was feeling particularly stuck in that day. Today was no exception, though it may be more expected than most of the times when he'd fall back into the past.

“Cómo has dormido?” he asked when he found Vegetta out on the small patio of their motel room as if he couldn't take a wild guess and see the bags under his eyes and figure things out himself.

“Cómo te sentirías si esto te pasara a ti?” he wondered, staring down the road to the large tree in Foolish’s front yard, though he couldn't quite see the house itself from here.

“Si descubro que mi hijo todavía está vivo?” Max asked, seeming amused.  “Estaría encantado. Aunque lo recuerdo. Entonces, ¿cómo te sientes?”

That was fair. As much as Maximus missed his son, as they’d spoken of briefly just a few times, he’d grieved and gotten some kind of acceptance.

But Vegetta didn’t know anything about these people aside from the fact he knew he loved them, and the few things he’d picked up yesterday. He hadn’t been able to grieve them, he’d just wanted to remember them first.

Foolish remembered, though-

Foolish and Leo must have grieved him .

Somehow, that realization only made him feel worse. What was he supposed to do here? Standing at Foolish’s side, sitting with Leo, it had felt right . But there had been those things about them, the way Foolish struggled to smile and the fear Leo held about him leaving again, that Vegetta’s gut told him was wrong .

It had been eighty years, give or take, since Vegetta woke with no name and no past, and no family. He’d remembered his name, and he’d gained a family even if it didn’t feel like the one he’d lost - but his past, he’d never recovered. 

And now here it sat, waiting, grieving him, and he… he just wanted to remember it.

“El sueño tenía algo nuevo, anoche?” Maximus asked when he stayed silent. Because of course, he did, and of course, he must know that Vegetta would push his own limits to try and solve this.

“No.”

“Te mira como si fueras la única estrella en el cielo,” Max mused. “Te mira como si fuera la última vez que tendrá la oportunidad.”

“En mi corazón sé que es mío, lo conozco,” Vegetta said, annoyed with himself and his absent, rattled mind. “Pero en mi cabeza, él es un extraño.”

His mind had been what he’d relied on, despite its shortcomings. His heart and his gut couldn't tell him how to build a machine or fix a computer or how an airplane flew - that was all his head . But this, all he had was the filled-in gap in his chest that his brain was stubbornly refusing to do the same with. 

The empty feeling was gone, or it had been when Foolish was with him. But the blank empty spaces clouded in dust and smoke were as empty as ever, taunting him like the world had done this on purpose. 

“Le dijiste eso?” Max asked, and Vegetta shook his head. “Creo que deberías decirle eso. Una vez que entienda, podrás volver a conocerlo.”

So it was with that advice in mind that Vegetta watched two figures, one tall and one short, emerge from the fence around Foolish’s house. Still a bit before sunrise, but Leo seemed to be firmly set on something as she pulled the man down the road toward the diner they’d eaten at the day before.

She’d been back in the kitchen when he got there, hadn’t she? Maybe she enjoyed cooking, or maybe she took after himself and was helping fix some kitchen appliance or another. Either way, they didn’t seem to spot himself and Max before disappearing into the building, and a few moments later the neon sign flickered to life to signal it was open. 

“Vas a ir a saludar? o mirar como un asqueroso?” Max laughed at him once they were gone, and Vegetta huffed indignantly. He needed to bring his backpack, to show them his collections of places he’d gone to visit. That had been his promise, after all, since Leo showed him hers he should only return the favor.

And then, maybe, Foolish would do the same with the things he’d kept from their past.

So he gathered his things and made his way to the diner, though nobody in their group but Max had even woken up yet. Foolish was behind the counter now, though leaning on it to face backward into the kitchen.

He was dressed up far more than he had been the day before, as well, and Vegetta wondered if that was because of his presence, or if Foolish rotated through various styles daily just for the sake of it. The vintage suit was a good fit on him, probably tailored specifically.

Foolish seemed startled when the door opened, and though Vegetta didn’t know how he could have prevented that he did feel a bit bad to see him so tense. It only lasted a moment, because his face lit up when he turned and made eye contact.

“Vegetta! Buen día! You uh- you’re up early!”

“So are you,” Vegetta reasoned, finding a seat at the bar and dropping his backpack by his feet. “¿Siempre te levantas tan temprano?” 

“Oh, uh… it depends.” Foolish hummed a bit, glancing back into the kitchen for a moment before continuing. “This morning it's because Leo wanted to make you and- and your family breakfast. So she woke me up. I-I’m no good in the kitchen, but she wanted me to come.”

And Vegetta didn’t miss the way he stuttered on the word ‘family’, and he didn’t miss the way his words seemed like a thinly veiled lie, but considering the circumstance he couldn't really be upset about either of them.

“I never sleep well, either,” he replied to the truth instead of directly calling it out, and Foolish’s grin turned sheepish. “Tengo demasiados sueños.” 

“Sueños… yeah..” Foolish sighed softly. “Well uh- I… I didn’t think you’d be up so early, what brings you here right away? Uh…” 

“ You .” Vegetta chuckled, tilting his head. “We… we did not get to talk.”

“Oh.” a pause, and something in his heart was already expecting the pout that took over Foolish’s face. “Do we have to?” 

“I want to,” Vegetta chuckled at him. “But ah- if not, it's okay.” 

“We should probably talk.” Foolish relented easily. “I-I uh… I know you don’t remember me but I'm- I’m glad you’re okay .”

“I…” 

Vegetta hated talking about this. He hated talking about it even with Maximus, who had become his good friend over the years. But they had to - he had to - he wanted to know. 

“I remember missing someone . My mind lets things go, yes, but my heart has remembered you…” how did he even explain this in Spanish, let alone English? “I’m glad you’re okay, si. No me he sentido despierto hasta que te encontré aquí.” 

Foolish listened intently, eyes darting over Vegetta’s face as he spoke. Oh, he hoped any of this was making sense. He didn’t want to bring up Berlin quite yet, not with how Foolish had reacted the day before, but he wanted to be able to put the story together for the both of them. 

“And you- so you’ve been in Spain ,” Foolish said softly. “I tried to look there, I-I did! But I can’t travel and my letters never panned out and- and-”

Can't travel? Vegetta glanced over him, trying to take stock of any injury that would cause such a thing to find none. Maybe it was internal, or something with his ears and the pressure?

“Even my name,” Vegetta said gently. “I did not recall for months. Ah… letters sent to hospitals? Would not know me. It is not your fault, I… did not exist.”

“But you do exist.” Foolish looked at him, and Vegetta couldn't help but smile at the way his eyes skated over him. “You- you’re here and you’re alive… you’ve been traveling and making friends and- and you have this- this big new family so-”

 “Foolish,” Vegetta wanted to hear him ramble on, but not on topics so depressing. “They are my family, si, but in the way that your- your friends here are your family.”  

“My friends here are a bunch of assholes.” Foolish griped sourly, and Vegetta laughed.

“ Exactly .”

Foolish

Once Leo finished cooking, and more people started to arrive (Charlie and Wilbur being far too dramatic about seeing him two days in a row), Vegetta pulled open his bag to show them his collections.

He couldn't help the fondness, looking at the keychains and the postcards and tiny things Vegetta had been gathering. He always loved a good souvenir. That’s why Foolish got into the habit of keeping and collecting things in the first place, because of Vegetta.

Their discussion had gone well, though Foolish had no way to accurately explain what he was feeling - he understood what Vegetta told him. 

It was… heartbreaking, to say the least, to imagine the love of his life not knowing anything about who he was. And it answered enough questions, why no hospital or refugee center had a record of his name because he hadn’t known it either. But as much as it now made sense, he still hated it.

But Vegetta said that his heart knew them, and Foolish could only hope to bring back real memories as well. And sitting here as he explained to Leo about each little trinket he had, he was starting to think it was more possible than expected.

“Olvido las cosas tan fácilmente, hija mía, pero estas pequeñas cosas me ayudan a recordar,” he was saying to her now, letting small hands hold the long line of keychains all hooked together. “Obtengo algo de todos los lugares a los que voy, así que no me olvido.” 

Maybe Jaiden’s kind words yesterday had been more than just that - if these trinkets helped Vegetta remember recent events, who’s to say that old artifacts wouldn’t at least help jog old memories? It was worth a shot if Vegetta was interested in seeing them all at least. 

“Papá Foolich tiene una gran memoria!” Leo informed him, beaming over at Foolish. “¡Él recuerda todo!” 

“That’s a bit of an overstatement,” Foolish hummed, finding Vegetta looking at him with a worried frown. “I-I remember most things. I’m sure there’s something I’ve forgotten, at some point.” 

“No,” Leo shook her head. “Everything.” 

“I mean…” and he obviously wouldn’t even know if he’d forgotten something, so he couldn't really argue with her about this. “Yeah, I guess.”

“What is your favorite?” Vegetta asked, leaning over the table towards him.

“My- my favorite?” Favorite what? Foolish looked down at the postcards he was holding, figuring that’s what Vegetta meant. 

“Your favorite memory.”

Oh, well that was easy .

“The day I met you.” Foolish couldn't help but smile now, thinking back on it. “Both of you, I guess. Gosh, it was ages ago. The day itself wasn’t so strange from anything else. I was trying to catch a boat going out of Athens, you guys had just come in on one, right Leo?”

“Boats.” Leo narrowed her eyes, stacking the postcards gently into a card tower. “Mi peor enemigo.” 

“You still liked them back then,” Foolish reminded her. Though he kept one eye on Vegetta, hoping to see recognition as he spoke. “It was… I mean, it was a normal day I suppose. Sunny, a bit windy, if I remember correctly you were trying to get directions to somewhere but you didn’t know Mycenaean Greek very well. Not for a lack of effort, but since we both knew Latin I was able to help you out. One thing turned into another and I ended up tagging along with you… Never did end up getting on that boat of mine.” 

“And-” Vegetta paused, looking thoughtful. “Leo- I had her before then?”

“Yep,” Foolish wished that question didn’t hurt his chest so much to hear. “Picked her up about a hundred or so years before I met you, from what you two told me back then.”

“Si! Pa Vegetta was my first pa.” Leo nodded matter of factly. “Ya lo sabías, papá. Estás siendo tan tonto.”

“Leo…” Foolish winced. She hadn’t yet brought up her thoughts on… the situation . But maybe he should have talked to her last night or this morning before now. 

“Hija mía, ya te dije que tengo mala memoria.” Vegetta said gently. “He olvidado muchas cosas.” 

“No.” Leo sent him her most withering glare - usually amusing, but at times like this… “Mi padre nunca se olvidaría de mí .”  

“ Leo , that’s not-” She didn’t stick around for Foolish’s scolding, sliding out of the booth and stomping back into the kitchen. 

Fuck . What was he supposed to do about that? It had certainly upset Vegetta, if Foolish still knew the man at all, but he couldn't just let Leo go off and-

Bad held up a hand, ducking into the kitchen after her, so Foolish figured that was covered for now . 

“I ah…” Vegetta was standing when he turned back, and his hands shook the way they always had whenever he got frustrated or upset. The one thing he couldn't regulate about his own emotions on even the best days. “I will- I will go, and-”

“Just wait ,” Foolish reached for him without thinking, holding one hand with both of his own to stop the trembling. Fuck, fuck, fuck. If he let Vegetta walk out that door, who was to say he’d ever come back?

He knew that was just the trauma speaking, but he still couldn't let it happen.

“We- we can go on a walk,” he breathed desperately, while Vegetta looked up at him with watery eyes. “Bad’ll take care of her for now, he’s- he’s good with the kids. We can go on a walk.” 

Just please don’t leave.

“A- a walk.” Vegetta nodded slowly, and Foolish wanted to collapse in relief. But that was the opposite of walking, so he just nodded as well and pulled Vegetta with him out of the diner, with all the other’s eyes burning into them as they left.

It was quiet outside. The street was mostly empty, as usual, with the sign by the highway saying their motel had no vacancy nobody pulled off to stop. Foolish was afraid to let go of Vegetta’s hand, but like the day before he seemed content to be held tightly despite the fact it was probably painful. 

“I-I’m sorry about Leo,” he said after a few minutes, walking with Vegetta down toward the park. “Sh-she’s just…”

“I understand,” Vegetta murmured. “A- A good father would not forget…”

“Wha- no, Vegetta , that’s not…” Foolish didn’t know how his heart could break so many times and still keep beating. “She’s upset and she has every right to be, this is hard. But that doesn’t mean you’re not a good father.”

“I-I would like to be…” Vegetta sighed. “I knew I was one, I-I knew I had lost a child, una hija. But I can’t…”

“We thought you were dead .” Foolish stopped, pulling Vegetta around so they could look at each other. “We- for eighty years we thought you were gone forever, and you’re here now. That’s- that’s enough.”

He looked skeptical, and Foolish knew it was hard to believe when he struggled just the same with the fact that his husband didn’t know him. But he couldn't let Vegetta think he was a bad person because of this.

“Do you-” he never wanted to think or talk about that day again. But for Vegetta, he would do anything. So Foolish pushed past the echoes and the ringing in his ears, and continued. “Wh-what do you remember about that day? About- about the bombs?”

He frowned at this, eyes flickering away from Foolish’s face as he pulled a bit away. But Foolish held fast to his hand, refusing to let go like he had decades ago.

“Foolish, I- I can’t…”

“You know there was an explosion, you remembered that before I ever mentioned it.” Foolish insisted, swallowing past the terror that crept up into his throat at the very topic of that day. “Just- just try.

“Smoke, dust.” Vegetta finally whispered. “Screaming, pain… Chaos .”

“Before that. Do you remember anything before that?” he had to at least have some idea, he had to know that he was good . 

“I was…” Vegetta shook his head, gaze distant in a way Foolish recognized from how it must feel . He was on the edge of such a feeling even now, but he held it back for Vegetta’s sake. “I was with someone . Los llevé a un lugar peligroso… y luego se fueron. There is just- just smoke. Just darkness.” 

“That was us,” Foolish nodded. “That was- that was Leo and I. You- you didn’t take us there, Vegetta, we all wanted to go.”

“ Why ?”

“Well-” they’d been idiots, really. “We- we didn’t pay any attention to humans, love. It was just the three of us, nothing else, and… and we didn’t realize their weapons were so powerful like that. We didn’t even realize how- how bad their war was until we got to the city.”

“Por qué fuimos allí?”

“To- to pick some stuff up,” Foolish said weakly. “It was only supposed to be a few days.”

A few days that had sent him into the worst eighty years of his life.

A few days that had stolen Vegetta’s entire existence from him, making him start from scratch.

Fuck, Foolish hated this.

“When we realized what was happening…” Foolish didn’t even know how to describe what that realization had been. Not enough, but the panic of those around them had been enough for them to seek some kind of shelter. “We- we just tried to get somewhere safe. But I- I let go of your hand to hold onto Leo. You were right there , trying to shield us from whatever was about to happen but neither of us had seen something like that before. You were there and then you were gone and…”

And he’d been gone forever but now he was here and he thought he was a bad father for this, and that would kill Foolish more than the past eighty years had.

“And it's not your fault .” he managed to continue through tears. “You’re good . You were trying to keep us safe, and if I- if I hadn’t let go of you or if I’d been able to find you, maybe you- you’d be able to remember. You wouldn’t have had to be alone , but I…” 

“No llores ahora, te escucho…” Vegetta’s hands, as gentle and calloused as ever, reached up to hold his face. “Si no me culpas yo nunca te culparia - it is okay, it's alright…”

“It’s not alright.” Foolish hated crying, especially in front of people. “You were dead .”

“Finding you makes me feel alive,” Vegetta said, pulling him down to eye level, so their foreheads rested together. Foolish felt so stupid, crying like this, but Vegetta’s own face wasn’t free of tears either. “I didn’t know what I was missing and now- now I do. If you say I am good… you are the same. Yes?”

“I’m sorry for- for being like this.” Foolish whispered. “I-I wanted to- to be the same for you, to help…” 

His ears still rang falsely, his brain insisting to him that retelling the story had made it happen all over again.

But it was the first time he’d told the actual specifics of that day out loud all at once. It was strangely relieving to get through it, and Vegetta was here now.

“No deberías ser nada más que lo que eres.” Vegetta said, and their closeness only grew as he fully hugged Foolish and god he’d missed this hug. “Do not hide yourself for my sake.” 

“I-I can try,” Foolish said, muffled as he buried himself in Vegetta’s arms. Part of it felt wrong, knowing Vegetta didn’t remember the thousands of years they’d held each other for - but he’d offered it and initiated it and who was Foolish to deny his husband of that?

“We both try,” Vegetta said decisively, voice congested but not quite as unintelligible as Foolish’s must be. “That is all we can do.”

Vegetta

The gap in his mind was being filled in, slowly. Not by memories, not exactly, but by the words Foolish painted through the air when he recalled something from their shared past.

The first had been their meeting, and the next had been their parting - and there were over three thousand years between the two that Vegetta desperately wanted to learn.

But there was also the present - the here and now, where his daughter was quite upset with him for something out of anyone’s control. He understood that, and from how familiar the glares she gave him felt he figured it was just in Leo’s nature to be so ornery when something didn’t go her way. 

As for Foolish… his clinginess had only grown more apparent after they cried together on the street (Vegetta was secretly thankful that no friends had followed after them, he didn’t really want to be witnessed in such a way). Foolish was touching him for the whole rest of the day, leaning on his shoulder or holding his hand or sitting just close enough that their legs were against each other.

And from what he’d said, from his account of the day Vegetta ‘died’, it made sense why he would act that way. 

The retelling was appreciated, though Vegetta hated how just speaking of it seemed to hurt Foolish. But he’d insisted on telling the story, and Vegetta would be a liar if knowing the truth didn’t ease the guilt that had started to fill his lungs whenever he saw how hurt his love and daughter were by the past decades.

Still, he held back from asking for more stories of their life. They did have all the time in the world now, here in this sleepy little town, and they had a daughter to try and get back on their side.

It wasn’t as hard as it might have been, with offers of a cheeseburger from Foolish and a long hug from Vegetta. 

“It's the only thing I know how to cook very well,” Foolish admitted as he stood over the stove. He seemed wary of the heat and the clicking sound the stove had made to turn it on, but was resolute when Bad had offered to cook it for him. “It's her favorite, these days.”

“Haz uno para papá también! le gustará,” Leo said from her seat in Vegetta’s lap. 

They’d pulled a chair back into the kitchen so he could sit with her while Foolish cooked - though all of the Americans had seemed amused at the prospect. And seeing his overly careful motions, and his apparent fear of the stove, Vegetta figured that it was a rare event that Foolish did anything of the sort.

“I’m making one for all three of us,” Foolish rolled his eyes. “I’m hungry too, y’know.”

“Three?” Leo seemed dismayed. “But you cook slow !”

“I’ll make yours first, then.”

“Sé amable con tu padre,” Vegetta scolded lightly, poking her in the nose. “él está haciendo su mejor esfuerzo.”

She grumbled unintelligibly at this but didn’t seem to have any real argument as she decided to start and dig through the pockets of Vegetta’s jacket.

He didn’t really mind - really, part of him was surprised she hadn’t done it earlier. But she found all the bolts and screws and tiny versions of tools he kept there, as well as the tiny robot he’d forgotten about upon arriving here and finding Foolish. And upon her questioning it, Vegetta was happy to take it apart again and explain the components - though how much she understood, he had no idea.

He could feel Foolish watching, and a glance up showed that beautiful smile that had been missing for most of the day. It was filled with more fondness than even Max or Roier had ever pushed his way, and his fingers stumbled on the re-building of the tiny thing.

“ Qué ?” he asked, and Foolish just laughed.

“Every single time some human invented a new gadget or thingamabob,” Foolish chuckled as he turned back to the stove. “I thought ‘Vegetta would love this’ and I was right .”

“They’re interesting.” Vegetta didn’t really feel the need to defend himself if it wasn’t so strange to have someone seem to understand and accept that bit about him - Max and Roier accepted it of course, but not without questioning him teasingly. Foolish seemed to love it without a second thought, despite his obvious technophobic ways.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll take your word for it.” came another chuckle, and another ray of sun burst through the smoke in Vegetta’s head. Not enough for clarity, no, there was too much he still didn’t fully know. But for light, illumination, it would suffice for now. And the way things seemed to be headed, Vegetta could only hope more of it would come in time.

Time that, with his two loves, moved faster than he’d ever expected it to. Days didn't drag on from sunrise to sunset anymore, no, if he wasn’t careful Vegetta was afraid he would blink and miss the soft moments and the gentleness and the eccentricities of those he’d been missing for so long.

The week’s stay here passed too quickly. At the end of it, nobody seemed surprised at all when he opted to stay here ‘just a bit longer’ (they all knew that would turn into a lie). Roier teased him about finally settling down, and Max just smiled and gave him the tightest Max-hug in the world, and they promised to return and pick him up for a trip if he ever did get restless.

Vegetta was sure he probably would, but it would take longer here with such a lovely boy to occupy his time. 

He met Foolish’s friends officially, now (though Foolish said he hated them all except Jaiden, who seemed steady and soft-spoken as some counter Foolish’s rambling and anxieties. Vegetta was glad his boy had such a friend.)

There were more tears, of course, almost daily one of the trio broke down over something. Leo most often, accepting the truth even as Vegetta slowly recalled more fragments helped along by Foolish’s words and collections. 

Foolish’s lack of technology and travel was explained when the town opened for guests once again, and some car backfired out on the street and Vegetta found himself grabbed in a tight embrace by his shaking love.

“I know it's dumb to be afraid of all of it,” Foolish whispered that night after he’d explained. “But I can’t- I… I can hardly leave the house, to be honest.” (This Vegetta had already guessed, based on the dramatic ways his friends greeted Foolish whenever he went to the store or the park, or the diner.)

And Vegetta… Vegetta felt alive and awake and he knew more about himself than he had for most of the past century. There were photo albums full of the years leading up to the explosion, and shelves of artifacts and keepsakes for all the long years before that. The only gap was what had been stored in Berlin and destroyed, but Foolish had just as good a memory as Leo claimed he did, and could list off the things they’d lost easily if ever asked.

He only asked once, due to the way his voice had wavered and a hand had searched for Vegetta’s yet again, to make sure he wasn’t pulled away.

It was so strange, knowing almost everything Foolish was about to do before he did it - but not knowing where he’d learned of the habits in the first place. Things fell into his head now and again, pacing through the shop and the storage and flipping through photo albums, and Vegetta could only hope that a day would come when he could put together the entire puzzle.

The idea that such a long life would be impacted so severely by one day still made him laugh in disbelief - but he had all the proof he needed to believe it. 

But weeks dragged into months into over a year, and Vegetta didn’t get the urge to up and leave and see the world until the end of the year after that- and in that time, he’d settled quite nicely into the community that had taken care of his Foolish over the years.

Bad had an auto shop built for him to tinker at, to keep any engines or loud sounds from Foolish’s home, and though business was slow he was able to help a few tourists every now and again when they had car trouble on the road. 

Roier and Cellbit and Max and all of them visited quite regularly, tossing jokes his way as well as offers of an extra plane ticket or spot in their van, but Vegetta declined them all for the better part of three years.

Oh, time flew far too quickly with his loves here to keep the smoke away from his mind. 

But he was restless, Vegetta had a feeling he always had been due to how Foolish always spoke of the travels they took in their past life.  Leaving the two of them behind, though, felt cruel after knowing how they’d been torn apart. 

So he refused the invitations as long as he could, until Foolish had held him close the night after another offer from Max, and whispered that if he wanted to go, he should.

“I couldn't just leave you.” 

“And I couldn't go with,” came the reply. It was true, Vegetta had seen with his own eyes how even hearing a plane engine overhead made Foolish brace for the very worst. “But you love to travel.”

“I love you .” 

“I don’t want to hold you back.”

“Usted no es. Estoy feliz aquí contigo..”

“Well,” Foolish huffed a bit impatiently. “I already told Max I’d get you to change your mind, so this conversation might go in circles for longer than I thought.”

“You told him what ?”

“You’re all antsy,” Foolish said it as if it was obvious, even as his hands found Vegetta’s and held them as if he would never let go. “Just… come back after, yeah?” 

He could feel himself wanting to agree, even as another part of him hated the idea. But they had enough he could technically fly home whenever his heart desired - even if he got to the airport in Spain and decided right then and there to just turn around and return. 

“Estarás bien?”

“Leo’ll take care of me.” Foolish said, a smile in his voice even though Vegetta couldn't see his face in their dark bedroom. “Or Jaiden, or somebody. I’ll be okay as long as you are.” 

“Hmm…” Vegetta was split in half, and Foolish seemed to sense it. He always did. He knew Vegetta better than Vegetta knew himself, even after three years of trying to find his past. 

“You were made to travel the world,” Foolish nestled his chin over Vegetta’s shoulder. “Your eyes are too pretty to only see one corner of it.”

“Ahora solo estas coqueteando conmigo,” Vegetta said accusingly. “No puedes convencerme de todo solo con cumplidos.”

“Sure I can.” Foolish giggled a bit, though it faded quickly. “I-I can handle being away from you, if I know you’re happy and safe. Just- just call Leo’s phone whenever you can and… and we can still talk, it’ll be okay.”

“You could get your own,” Vegetta said halfheartedly, already knowing the answer.

“No.” Foolish pressed a kiss to his jaw, then settled further into the mattress. 

“I…” and his restless spirit urged him to agree, to relent to Foolish’s surprising insistence, and to leave with Max and Roier and Quackity in the morning. “I wouldn’t be gone very long. A few weeks.”

“I know.”

“Te traeré regalos.” 

“Eres el único regalo que necesito,” Foolish said, holding him tighter. “Just promise you’ll come back to me.” 

“I will,” Vegetta vowed. “I will come back.”

And he did.

FIN