Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ A Light in the Darkness ❯ Vegeta's Reaction ( Chapter 24 )

 

A Light in the Darkness - part 24: Vegeta's Reaction
by Mia Skywalker & Wataruo

PAIRING: Vegeta/Bulma
RATING: PG
WARNINGS: Angst
DISCLAIMER: Neither of us owns any of the DBZ characters or anything about DBZ, but we both wish we owned the Saiyans. All of them. At least all of the ones with hair. These characters are owned by Toei, Viz, Akira Toriyama, and FUNimation. We do own what we've written here, and our specific storyline, just not Dragonball itself. We make no money off of any of these guys, nor off this fic. We just have fun writing it.
SUMMARY: Vegeta's reaction to Bulma's confession
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Thanks to saiyengerl for the beta!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Vegeta went completely still as he overheard Bulma's confession. She must have forgotten about Saiyan hearing, he thought numbly. But he was far from emotionless as he let the water hit him in the face. NO! She didn't love him. She was imagining things.

 

He closed his eyes and sighed. He didn't want her love. He didn't need her. But why then did he want to rush out there and force her to tell him that to his face? He wanted to see the expression in her eyes as she told him, and he wanted to tell her he.....

 

::Snap out of it!:: he commanded himself sternly. ::You are a warrior. You do not need that woman.::

 

He placed both arms out in front of him, palms flat against the shower stall wall, then leaned forward and thumped his forehead against the tile, causing it to snap and chip in several places.

 

::Then why do you feel like this?:: a little voice nagged. ::Why do you feel the need to comfort her, to hold her against you and say that you need her too?::

 

::SHUT UP!:: he commanded the voice. ::She will get over it. I will get over it.::

 

::Are you sure?:: That voice once again insisted.

 

::YES! Now be quiet.::

 

The voice went silent. He did not want that pale scrawny creature, let alone... He thumped his head against the wall a few more times. But the position reminded him too much of a condemned man, which was far closer to the truth than he would like to admit. He stepped back and turned the shower off. He took a few deep breaths and forced himself to be calm. He could handle this. He didn't notice as he left that there were blood streaks on the wall where his head had thumped against it.

 

Bulma didn't hear Vegeta returning from the shower, as she continued to weep soundlessly. She had learned this past year to make no sound when crying; if Vegeta heard her weeping, he always insulted her mercilessly for her weakness, and she never wanted to give him any reason to insult her any more than he already did.

 

It wasn't until she realized that the shower had been off for several minutes that she stilled, her face against her knees, holding her breath in sudden fear. Her stomach clenched, as she knew he was in the room with her, watching her, well aware that she had been crying. She had no idea what he was thinking, since he had yet to make a sound. The fact that he had seen her weeping....

 

Her tears were a weapon in his hands; she was too intelligent to simply hand him one without a fight, yet it seemed that somehow she had. She slowly raised her head to look at him, tears still glistening on her cheeks, unaware of the look of panic on her face as she stared at him.

 

Vegeta stared back at her panicky expression and was suddenly angry. How dare she? How dare she do this to him? He did not need her ...ugh... he couldn't even bring himself to think the word. It was the most forbidden of all feelings on Vegeta-sei. No one cared for anyone else; the strong survived and the weak died.

 

"Shower is free," he said unemotionally and walked out of the work shed, completely ignoring her.

 

As Vegeta shut the door behind him, Bulma burst into a fresh spate of tears, no longer able to keep them silent. She ran to the shower and turned it on, letting the water wash her tears down her face as she sobbed brokenly. How long she remained under the water she wasn't entirely sure, but she stayed there until the water had washed away her tears, and she felt drained and exhausted, but at least no longer weepy.

 

It was as she was washing off finally that she noticed the cracked and broken tiles in the shower. She touched them curiously, frowning in thought. What had Vegeta been doing in here? Training again? He was destroying her shower for no reason? What the hell was on that Saiyan's mind?

 

Distracted from her tears, her irritation rising, she scrubbed herself off quickly, got dressed, and stormed into the house to confront him about it.

 

~~*~~

 

Gohan was already sitting at the table, eating a hamburger, when Vegeta came into the dining room. He looked curiously at Vegeta. "You washed off? Was I supposed to clean up too?"

 

"Not at all," he muttered at the boy and helped himself to the pile of hamburgers that was in front of Gohan. He was still angry. Angry that Bulma was now an unacceptable weakness.

 

If he had been on Vegeta-sei, she would have been killed for her confession. No one was allowed a personal attachment to the Prince. Nor was he allowed one with a female. It was considered a weakness, one that others could exploit, which is why Saiyan nobility no longer married. They had females that they used for pleasure, but as for offspring they simply used the gene banks and made themselves heirs. That way there would be no impurities in the family line. It had made sense to him at the time but now he wondered if that thinking was somehow flawed. He was so lost in thought he didn't even notice when Bulma stormed in.

 

Bulma slammed the door behind her, and glared at the Saiyan prince that was making himself so at home after making a mess of her shower. She glowered at him, her eyes narrowed and flashing fire.

 

"You... you... you...!" she sputtered, almost at a loss for what to say.

 

Gohan blinked up at her, wondering what had made her so angry. But she wasn't angry at him, so he wasn't all that worried about it.

 

Bulma stalked up to Vegeta, getting practically into his face, her nose to his. As usual when she was this angry, she was not in the slightest bit intimidated by him, and in fact she looked almost frightening when she was this furious. She might have been described as a harpy, as a virago, but Vegeta found it strangely arousing.

 

"You JERK!" she screamed at him, unconcerned about the worried look on her mother's face. Her father, who happened to be eating lunch with them as well, looked up briefly from his scientific magazine, then deliberately buried his nose back in it, trying to pretend he didn't know what was going on.

 

Bulma poked Vegeta in the chest ungently. "What the HELL were you doing in my shower? You tore the tile apart! What the hell were you doing? TRAINING?!? If you're going to train, you do NOT have to do it in MY SHOWER!"

 

"Nani?" Vegeta asked, strangely fascinated by her anger. "Training in your shower? Baka. If I was training in your shower, your shower would be in pieces right now, along with that tin-can you call a work shed," he said deliberately baiting her.

 

He was still angry at her and he was aware that his anger was unwarranted, and that made him even more furious at himself. But Vegeta was convinced that he wasn't to blame that she was stupid enough to fall in love with him. His stomach clenched. He had no idea why he felt the urge to reciprocate her feelings when he thought about it. He did not want her, he told himself sternly. It was hormones, he would get over it.

 

"THEN WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING?" she shouted at him furiously. She dropped several pieces of crushed tile deliberately into the food on his plate as she continued to glare daggers at him. "THIS is what you did to my shower! Why the HELL did you do that? Were you just having FUN?!? Is that your idea of having fun?"

 

Suddenly all her frustration, all her heartbreak, came out in a single burst. "Do you need to destroy everything you touch, everything that comes near you? Any time anyone is nice to you, you just kick them aside or kill them? You don't give a damn about anything or anyone other than yourself, do you? Just when you have something good, something that just MIGHT give you some happiness, you shove it aside, you feel the need to destroy it, to break it. Well, you won't break ME! I want you OUT of here, Vegeta! As of this moment, you are no longer welcome here! Take your clothes, I don't care where you go, just get the HELL out of my house and out of my life!"

 

Vegeta felt as though she had slapped him, but he wasn't about to argue. He pushed back from the table, stood and glared at her a few moments before replying. "Woman, there is nothing here that I would want to take with me," he growled at her then walked out the door and out of her life.

 

Vegeta had no idea where he was going when he left, but he just flew aimlessly for several hours before coming to rest in the most unwelcome place imaginable. He landed on a mountainside and plopped down into a snow drift, just staring blankly at the horizon. He was still feeling numb. Where had her anger come from? he wondered as he regained his wits. Was the tile really what was bothering her? And more importantly why did he care? The thought of never seeing Bulma again was simply unacceptable. He didn't know why he felt that way but he would figure it out. Even if it killed him.

 

Bulma stared sightlessly at the door where Vegeta had stormed out, her face and mind numb with pain. It was several minutes before her mind started working again. What had she done? she thought to herself in despair. She was afraid he would leave her, so she threw him out?

 

She realized with a kind of dead shock that he hadn't even tried to argue her out of it; obviously it hadn't mattered to him whether or not he stayed. She had been right before; he didn't care about her. He had seduced her because she was available and effortless, and when she had succumbed to him so easily, she had been fair game. He had wanted a woman to assuage his needs, and she had been far too willing, far too easy a conquest for him.

 

His words rang over and over in her head. 'Nothing here that I want... nothing I want... nothing....' Her legs buckled under her, and she dropped to her knees on the floor. Gohan stared in confusion, wondering why Bulma was so upset at Vegeta for having broken some tiles in her shower, while Bulma's mother moved swiftly to her daughter and wrapped an arm around the young woman's shoulders. Bulma didn't even seem to react to that contact.

 

Bulma felt that all light had gone out, that all feeling was gone from her body and heart. She couldn't think, she couldn't feel.... She stood up abruptly, and without looking at anything, walked upstairs to her room as though in a trance.

 

"Oh dear...." Mrs. Briefs murmured, watching her daughter leave with deep concern. This was a development she hadn't expected. She didn't know what had set Bulma off, but suspected that something had happened, something she was sure Bulma was not about to reveal to her. She started to go up the stairs after her regardless, but Gohan's voice arrested her, forcing her to realize that others were around, others that probably Bulma would not want knowing about her personal problems.

 

"Why is Bulma so mad at Vegeta?" Gohan asked.

 

Mrs. Briefs immediately put on her vacuous smile as she looked towards the little Saiyan boy. "I don't know. Maybe she's in a bad mood. Why don't you go upstairs and play some more on the Playtendo?"

 

Gohan slid out of his chair, frowning at the door. He had wanted to train some more with Vegeta, but didn't know if the older man wanted to train right now. Vegeta had seemed angry, and Gohan was smart enough not to want to bother him when he was angry that way, even if Gohan didn't know why Vegeta was so angry.

 

"Hai," he said, nodding simply, sounding slightly disappointed, then picked up two of the plates of hamburgers that were still on the table and headed upstairs.

 

He passed by Bulma's room on the way too his own, and frowned, puzzled, when he heard her crying. He still didn't know why she was so angry with Vegeta - why Vegeta was so angry at her - but he didn't want to bother her and make her angrier. He headed to his own room with the food and went to play games.

 

~~*~~

 

Bulma walked to her room in a trancelike state, and stared at the bed as she shut the door behind her. The imprint of their bodies was still on the bed, even though it had been hours since they had lain there. Memories of the way the two had lain together, both in passion and then later entwined together almost lovingly, washed over her. Her heart felt like it was breaking again at the thought. Vegeta had been so tender, so gentle and passionate, almost loving... it was so hard to believe that this was the same man who had stormed out earlier, saying there was nothing more he wanted here.

 

Bulma collapsed helplessly on the bed and sobbed brokenly, feeling that all the light had gone from the world, that all hope was gone from the universe, that she would never feel anything again but pain. She didn't bother to muffle her sobs; there was no one to keep them silent for. She simply lay there, crying hopelessly, feeling her heart shatter forever.

 

~~~*~~~

 

Vegeta was not sure how long he sat there, pondering this recent development, but knew that if he didn't get inside soon, he would most likely freeze to death. That would probably make her happy, wouldn't it? he thought, irritated. Then he couldn't break her, could he?

 

The warrior stood and almost headed back to Capsule Corp when he knew he wasn't going to go back. She had thrown him out, and his pride was preventing him from going back and apologizing. The thought of never seeing Bulma again left him feeling empty. Empty and alone. Vegeta realized that he had been alone all his life, he hadn't even considered Nappa and Radditz his equals. He had never spoken to them other than to give them orders, but Bulma...

 

Things had been different from the beginning. Even though they had argued most of the time, he realized that he could sense her. He knew where she was at all times, even though her ki was one of the lowest he had ever come across, and the warrior didn't understand why this was.

 

Vegeta flew for at least an hour before a small island caught his attention. From his position up above he could tell that it was not inhabited by anyone. It was too wild, with too much vegetation, and out in the middle of nowhere. His curiosity piqued, he regulated his ki so he could land.

 

Almost unwillingly he was impressed. The place was beautiful. A white sand beach, untouched by anything but wildlife, was a sharp contrast to the clear blue water of the ocean and the deep greens of the surrounding trees. Vegeta strolled along and found a natural path in the vegetation, and stopped when he saw a waterfall that emptied into a clear pool. The surrounding foliage and outcropping of rocks gave it a feeling of privacy.

 

::Bulma would love it here,:: he thought with a grin. But when he realized of whom he was thinking, a deep longing shot through him and he dropped to his knees.

 

For the second time in his life, Vegeta, prince of the Saiyans, wept.

 

To be continued.....

~~~*~~~

And in the next exciting episode of DragonBall Z: A Light in the Darkness... Broken hearts.