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Vegeta can feel himself slipping away as soon as Gogeta breaks apart. His soul is thinning, deteriorating, and it’s infuriating, but that’s just the way it is. Goku rushes over to him with that foolishly concerned expression on his face, hoisting him up with an arm around his waist.
“Vegeta! Are you—” Goku pales when he realizes his fingers are going through Vegeta’s side, not resting on the slope of its surface. “You’re…”
“Yes, Kakarot,” Vegeta spits, detaching himself from the other man. “I’m disappearing. We defeated that freak, so it’s only natural I regress to my former state of nothingness.”
And Goku—Goku looks crestfallen. Idiotically heartbroken. His fingers twitch at his sides when he whispers, “Oh.”
Vegeta stares at him, and then he rolls his shoulders. “Well, I’d rather walk myself back down to hell if that’s where my soul is headed anyway.” Goku doesn’t seem to catch the hint, shoulders sagging with his sadness, so Vegeta clears his throat and asks, “Would you care to join me?”
It’s not by a lot, but Goku lights up at the proposition. “Sure, Vegeta.” He steps forward, leaning into Vegeta’s space. “I would love to.”
“Good,” Vegeta mutters, turning his back as the telltale sensation of a flush prickles across the back of his neck. He doesn’t even have a physical form anymore, he can’t blush. How dumb. “Let’s go, then.”
Goku is at his heels like a loyal dog. Faithful to a fault. “Right,” he says, still burning Vegeta alive with that raw gentleness in his gaze. (Ha. Burning alive. Neither of them are alive anymore.) Goku’s hand lingers close to Vegeta’s like he’s aching to reach out and hold it, but there’s really nothing left to hold, anymore. Vegeta is glad he doesn’t try. It would just be rubbing salt on the wound.
They’re about half of the way there, trekking through the mountains when Goku says, “I could ask King Yemma to let you keep your body.”
Vegeta pauses. He’s holding on by sheer willpower, at this point. He’s the only bastard who could. “What?” he inquires, voice tearing from his mouth harshly.
Goku exhales. “He could— He’d do it, if I asked him,” he continues, rounding Vegeta’s side and looking at him with so much pleading in his eyes it actually smarts to hold his stare. “It isn’t like you don’t deserve it. You’ve helped out your fair share on Earth. And I would have never defeated Janemba if it weren’t for you.”
“Kakarot,” Vegeta says. Goku’s mouth hangs open, suspended in motion. Always so obedient, isn’t he. Vegeta’s tone is absolute when he says, “Stop it.”
Goku bites his lip. “But why? Vegeta, don’t you want—”
“You have no right to overwrite the sins I’ve committed,” Vegeta interrupts him, stone cold. “I’ve taken countless lives. Women, children, families, entire civilizations, dead at my hands. Hell is what I deserve. I’m not so prideless that I would ask for something I have no right to.”
“Vegeta,” Goku croaks, and he sounds like he might start crying. “Vegeta, that’s— that isn’t you anymore, you’ve changed, you aren’t—”
“Changing doesn’t erase what I’ve done,” Vegeta counters, not leaving any room for the redemption Goku so desperately wants to see in him, for some reason. “Just drop it, Kakarot. That isn’t what I want.”
Goku looks like a kicked puppy. Vegeta rolls his eyes and says, “You won’t disrespect my last wish, I hope.”
“I won’t,” Goku tells him, eyes downcast.
“Come on, then. We’re almost there,” Vegeta hums, already stalking off without him, resisting the fond smirk that’s itching at the corners of his lips. He slows down until Goku catches up to him, and then they’re walking side by side again, the air heavy between him. And as tragic as it is, Vegeta is oddly glad he’s returning to dust. Gods know he doesn’t have the emotional stamina to sort out wherever the hell he and Goku stand. At least this way, he doesn’t ever have to worry about it. Doesn’t have to worry about ruining somebody as stupidly good as Goku with all of the seething rage that runs through his veins like blood.
Hell’s Bloody Pond doesn’t look half as terrifying as it should objectively be after all the shit they’ve been through. Goku walks with him all the way until they reach the shore, standing there like he’s fucking—dropping him off back home after a date, standing on his porch steps, tilting his head up for one last kiss goodnight, waiting for him to go in through his front door, like in those human films Vegeta recalls watching with Bulma on her couch past midnight. Except the reality of it all isn’t anything as romantic as that. They’re dead men saying their last farewells. Goku’s eyes are huge and shiny. Vegeta wants to punch him in the face when he smiles at him, so tender and loving and full of affection Vegeta hasn’t earned in the slightest.
“Well.” Vegeta cracks his neck. “I suppose this is goodbye, Kakarot.”
“Yeah,” Goku says, looking at Vegeta like he’s trying to burn the image of him, battered and bloody and fading away, stacked against Hell’s brilliant crimson landscape, into the back of his mind forever. “I’ll… I’ll miss you, Vegeta.”
Vegeta works his jaw. “Bah.” He averts his eyes. “You’ll get over it.”
Goku laughs wetly. “Maybe,” he agrees, quietly. “Vegeta, I…” He swallows. The apples of his cheeks are cherry red, and he’s fiddling with his sash. Vegeta should just disappear before Goku says something he’ll have no goddamn clue how to respond to. He doesn’t know why he’s clinging to the last bits of existence he’s got left in him so hard.
But he stays. For some fucking reason. And when Goku looks up again, all damp lashes and pink lips, Vegeta can’t bring himself to stop gripping onto the final remnants of his soul, feels himself become semi physical by some miracle only Son Goku could work when he’s grabbed by the shoulders, pulled forward.
Goku kisses him. And Vegeta shouldn’t feel it, by all of the universe’s logic, but he does. Soft lips on his, regrettably chaste, a soft, fleeting thing. Goku pulls away like it’s the last thing he wants to do, still standing close enough to Vegeta to be breathing into his mouth.
“Clown,” Vegeta says, and even he can hear the adoring way it leaves his lips. “Cheap of you to use a move like that on me when you know I can’t fight back.”
Goku chuckles. He beams at him, sweet and dimpled. “Sneak attack.”
“Feh. Cheater,” Vegeta snarks, and he can’t help it, he grins back. Good thing he’s going to cease to exist in about ten seconds. Dealing with the aftermath of any of this would probably kill him a second time, anyway. Goku releases his phantom grip on him and takes a step back, squaring his shoulders.
“Vegeta,” he murmurs, smile unwavering, “thanks.”
“For what?” Vegeta huffs, smirk broadening across his face. “I should be thanking you, Kakarot.”
He’s waning. Losing his grasp on his sentience. His vision is growing blurry, and Goku is a hash of familiar lines Vegeta would recognize from light years away.
“Nah, what do you mean? I loved every minute.” Goku doesn’t look upset. Good. That’s good. And as Vegeta feels himself being ripped away from his actuality, the last thing he hears is this: “Goodbye, my friend.”
Yes. It’s a good way to go, Vegeta thinks.