Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Black and Blue ❯ Black and Blue ( One-Shot )

Black and Blue

When they drug her in all black and blue and tossed her into the adjacent cell, her body hitting the floor with a meaty thump and her cheek burning across the wet cement, he rolled his eyes and curled deeper into the wall.

Even as the guards, rough and tumble and with blackened teeth jutting from uneven sneers, even as they laughed their hard laughs and ran their cretinous, coarse fingers through his newest neighbor's hair to hang her and shake her like a marionette, her eyes watering with the exquisitely dumb pain before they swatted her back by her shoulder like play yard bullies, even still, she was shoving herself back up with shaky arms and spitting curses.

"I'll see you in Hell!" She was yelling, blasting toward the doorway in a flurry of feet and disoriented swaying and banging her palms against the metal door even as they shut it firmly in her face. "You'll pay!" She walloped the door with her small fist. "You'll pay for cutting my hair!"

Her frustrated shriek bounced around in this hollow, dank prison and ricocheted inside his head, causing his impassive features to drop their usual pretext of indifference and collapse into a heavy scowl, his ears throbbing in protest. This near-lightless toilet of Frieza's ship, cells queued one after the other after the other after the other that ended abruptly with his cell just like their lives ended abruptly once thrown in here. Even his sharp preservation instincts and the tenets of his dogged warrior's training were decaying in the dark down here, the mildew setting up camp in his lungs, the hopelessness that he'd fortified himself against for years finding purchase in his heart. He was a machine honed by culture and genetics, and even he leaned against the cold wall and breathed in the damp air, faintly wheezing, and thought that it might be meaningless to fight back.

"Ugh!" She kicked the door as hard as she could before yowling and hopping around on one foot with pain. Vegeta watched her from the corner of his eyes inside the shadows of his cell.

She paced around indignantly before settling against the wall with a huff, folding in on herself, her arms crossing atop her knees. The only sound in the thick silence of this prison for turncoats was the drip drip drip of some leak ignored, the soundtrack to the last year of his life, a moribund arpeggio which didn't last long before the woman shot up to pace again. So far, her song and dance.

He'd give her a week. This was the place dissenters were sent to rot.

He sniffed and turned his head toward the wall, black and empty, his mirror's reflection in which he focused day in day out, braiding dark thoughts and malevolent plans without egress or interruption. Cathartic fantasies of spilled blood and spoiled crowning-ceremonies, revenge and rampage heating his blood with a however-diminishing lust for life. His chains clanked against each other despite the small movement, and she turned, then, toward him and his cell, peering past the thick bars and into the darkness to spy a shadow lingering.

"Hello?" She called. Her voice trembled with a mixture of anger and fear, and he leaned his heavy head against the stone with an ascetic's self flagellating pride.

She crawled then, all fours and tenderly, her hands and knees scraped up from her treatment by the guards, before placing her head against the bars that separated them irreverently. His mind skipped around thoughtlessly, probably fading in and out of awareness with hunger.

"What are you in for?" Her soft, feminine voice shimmied past the bars and ribboned towards him, settling uncomfortably on his hunched shoulders.

Her almost maternal inquisitiveness seemed so out of place that he turned toward it dumbfounded, halfway between insult and laughter, just in time to see her hair slide across her cheek, cup her chin and obscure her face. Even in the dim glow of their cells he could see that they'd given her the typical prisoner's shave but left it half done to taunt her vanity, the locks choppy and uneven and hardly effeminate. She looked at him with a measure of commiseration and curiosity, unknowingly painting a stark vision, her eyes and hair so vibrant against the prison bars and brackish light of their cells. He moved towards her sleekly. Her bright features seemed so wild against the motley black and blue bruises on her face and it seemed so funny that she would bother bringing them here.

"Hello?" Her voice like a skylark climbing the buffeting wind, smoothing down the broken things, and as far as his chains allowed he leaned his face toward her own panicked visage growing rapidly close before the chain length abruptly ended and jerked him to a halt just before the bars.

As bleak and incisive as a nightmare he was, and his lean muscles stretched as he neared her trembling lip ruby with someone else's fist, and it was startling, like looking in a mirror when she peered upward from underneath loosely knitted eyebrows with grim defiance, trying to focus on his features through the darkness.

For a moment, he leaned his head against the bars, and her breath caught as silently their hair curled against the other's, glaring blue against black like silk strands caught against burrs brought home as a child from trampling through wild grasses. She saw only the curve of a bronze shoulder and an oft-darned, loose shirt hanging off it, and his hair lying against it, weighted down and unwashed, surprisingly unfamiliar to him, and he glared at her in the darkness before turning away.

Turning away from her ultramarines and sea greens, distinctive and alien juxtaposed against the barren whites and rusty reds of his desert world, turning away from the siren's call of her energy and audacity and drifting back into the black, the harsh and withering black paint strokes all over his cell and his heart, over his once gutsy contempt and defiance of the annexation of his home world to Frieza's icy clutches, where he waited in an empty hum for all this to end.

Sensing his reluctance to speak, she sat her back against the wall and sighed, glancing now and again into the shadows where he lurked, silent, the phantom of a people all but extinct.

He gave her a week.

Trading Sins For Salvation

It was impossible to tell time down here in the dark, but one could try and measure it by the sins of the lives that moldered around him.

Away from the routine of Frieza's ship, away from the bosom of Frieza's barbed benevolence and into the deeps of his icy discipline, the guards traded shifts every six hours. Six shifts had come and gone, six shifts had teased the woman in the cell beside him until she was red with indignation. And so, when her door opened with all the familiar clangs of bolts sliding and bumping against metal, amid the familiar shouting of the guards as they dictated each action in real time as protocol called, the woman threw her empty lunch tray at the door that yawned open.

Curled in the corner, his bored, watchful eyes flickered between the two figures in the next cell with new and acute attention. Their identical surprise at her visitor quickly junctured as he growled mutely at her visitor with apoplectic violence and she jumped up and threw her arms around his waist.

Though he could bear to think of no similarities between them, excepting that they were like two retrograde planets orbiting Frieza's retribution through misfortune and happenstance, he and the woman finally shared a similar expression of shock: A Saiyajin, a veritable, living and breathing Saiyan, slid inside her cell, and no less of a Saiyajin than Turles.

"Turles!" Her chest heaved against the Saiyan's, and for the first time in so very long he felt a roiling anger settling in his throat.

Why was Turles not lost in space, drifting in exile and angst? The marauding twin of Bardock whose paltry qualms with selling sensitive Saiyan technology got him absconded from his family and his planet? His disloyalty and disinterest in Saiyan culture had been so very unSaiyan that his departure had left no one wounded.

He sniffed as though catching a terrible odor. His regard of the woman took a sudden nose dive.

She took a step back to regard the much taller Saiyan, clutching her hands together plaintively. "Please tell me Bardock is safe and sound. Please tell me I've been pardoned and we can leave this fiasco behind us."

"We don't have much time," Turles replied cautiously.

"What's going on? When are they going to let me out?" Her white pant suit was a sooty grey from making her home on the floor the last few days, and she crossed her arms testily over her chest. She tossed her head to the side with a small jerk to dislodge the single long lock of hair that still stubbornly clung to her cheeks. He observed Turles' deference of her with gut dropping fascination.

"I can't take much more of this," she argued. "I've got a crook in my neck from sleeping sitting up and I don't know how much longer I can go without a shower!"

"Relax, we're taking care of it. The negotiations are already taking place with Lord Zarbon. You'll be out in a few days, tops."

"A few days!?" She sighed, gazing at the ground with a sallow expression. He watched her waver. Three days without much other than crumbs would do that, though she was doing her best to hide it. "Oh, Kami, I hope that pickled rube hurries up with the paperwork. How is Bardock? Do they know yet of the extent of our plans? They must not if they are freeing me." She chuckled humorlessly.

Someone banged on the door. "Time's up, Saiyajin!" The door swung open and Turles backed away from her. "I'll be back. Not much longer now."

The guard leered at the woman from behind the Saiyan, and she brought her middle finger up stormily as Turles exited.

Once the door swung shut with a clang, the woman proceeded to pace.

Vegeta bristled with fresh indignation. The serenity he'd worked so hard to cultivate finally punctured.

Clearly, there was to be no peace for him until she was gone.

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

She hadn't stopped talking. First as words of encouragement to herself, but now he suspected she was blowing so much hot air to create a buoy against despair. A mellifluous thing, but temperamental, too- -he listened to it wax, cutting and full throated when the guards teased her, tossing bugs at her through the doors and laughing as she blustered, stomping and cursing them and their mothers and their wives. They shoved rodents through the tray slot and she shrieked kingdom come on them all before erupting into self immolating sobs. He'd watched her through bored, glassy eyes as she approached the rusted toilet with laughable fright before braving it enough to sit down.

"You better not sneak a peek, buddy," she snapped in his direction as pee trickled into the little ceramic basin and echoed in the corridor of cells. "Don't try any funny stuff with me."

He almost rolled his eyes.

He'd never had a cell mate spit and sputter the way she did, and he found her animation repulsive and her volume obnoxious. He wanted fiercely for her to lay down and die already.

Instead, she spoke to him.

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

Vegeta's gaze burned into her from the shadows.

They were headed towards the seventeenth shift.

She was recounting a story this time about a girl, a rabbit, and a looking glass.

As much as he wished her gone, she finally seemed to be wilting, lying on the floor on her back, staring up at the ceiling, affecting the cheeky timbre of the thing she called the Cheshire Cat, which had gradually been losing much of its impertinent wit and sparkle. He wasn't sure if she was losing hope or conserving energy. She lay there, no doubt hoping for her Saiyajin to bring her salvation even as the Queen ordered the execution of the hero of her story.

Although the guards had given up pestering and baiting her, they shoved scraps of food in only on occasion, and she'd wolfed down the unanticipated gruel and molded cheese almost instantly before settling on the floor near the bars and, instead of storytelling this time, sluggishly related her life out loud and to no one at all, of the woman that existed before the ambitions of Icejin Empirism.

He assumed she'd gotten used to her silent interlocutor, considered him harmless even, because she'd given up trying to snag a glance of him while he was shoveling his ration of food in his face that day or devolving into the strenuous body weight exercises he performed mindlessly each shift.

The dark was a punishment just for him; it was only within the first few shifts of his extended vacation here in the bowels of Frieza's ship that they had cut the power to the cell blocks when he'd killed his guards three shifts in a row and clapped him in ki-disabling irons to prevent anymore...electrical insurrections. They learned quickly that Saiyans didn't depends on guns and 'ki technology' to scare others. Frieza thought himself the only one in the whole universe who could split open a planet like a pumpkin while supine on his throne, until they'd finally met. Frieza's resentment was palpable: it tasted like day old gruel and actuated like choking panic with only mildewed stones and inky dark for comfort.

There was only much he or the woman could see or do, but he knew with strong conviction that he hated it every time a guard neared his door. Every time they narrated their work he hated their freedom, every time they scurried away from the tray slit like he might reach out and grab them.

But it must have been a rancorous mixture of hunger and leached hope which had seized her, because she had been talking to him for the last three shifts straight from beside the bars and it was working at his grim serenity like a thorn.

Although he listened. He did, curious if she'd talk about Turles and Bardock and the reason she was down here. And she did- -she peeled away the things that made her her like a slow strip tease each time she regaled the silence and darkness with a story, and each time she told one of the guards to fuck off and every time she detailed the way in which she'd organized an actual standing army rebellion against the Icejin Empire to the blackout silence around her- -he still couldn't believe it- -she, an anemic, entitled woman, capturing the attention of Saiyajins and Frieza himself- -it was a morsel as he remembered what made him, him.

Though her Alice was whiny and petulant as she tried navigating her way through a surreal and perilous Wonderland, she drew a deep understanding and power from those around her, and he began to feel the rusted, cobwebbed cogs of his mind grate against each other and try to ferret out some elusive, enigmatic answer that hung over all of this between them.

He didn't want her to stop talking.

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

The twenty second guard shift saw deliverance.

"A visitor for the little lady," the guards giggled, opening her door and scurrying back.

And with a swish of a braid and cape and the nauseating scent of peonies came Frieza's lackey Zarbon, looking every bit disgusted that it was happening as Vegeta felt at his sudden appearance.

Only with the most disciplined, objective control was he able to resist tearing through the bars that separated their cells and crushing the skull of Frieza's most favorite minion with his bare hands. He had promised Zarbon he would break every bone in his body the next time it was their fortune to meet, beginning with his toes and ending with the palate of his skull. "There are 426 bones in the body of your first form and I am planning on crippling each and every one of them," he had rasped as they drug him away from Frieza's brood for the last time, his limbs catching on the lifeless bodies of his captors as it took several men to transport him through the throne room. Ever while locking eyes with the Icejin Emperor, who regarded him with chilled, ruby eyes, lips thinned fractionally.

The hacking laughter that erupted out of him knew no second thoughts- -it scented Frieza's fear beneath his cruelty, and it was a scent that the predator in him would never disengage from. His bloodline called out for it in a chorus of hellish keening; retribution and justice reverberated in his skull and wove its way around the coil of his DNA.

"As much as it pains me to tell you this," Zarbon began, stripping his hands of his ivory white gloves, "you are not to see freedom ever again. Frieza bade me tell you," he sing songed, "so that I may regale him with the satisfaction of spectating the hope as it dims from your eyes." He gazed on the woman with disinterest as she rose to meet him.

With hitched breath, he waited for a signal from Zarbon that he knew Vegeta lingered beyond the bars of her cell, even some smug acknowledgment to justify the berserking he planned visiting on the two-faced right-hand of Winter and Darkness.

Instead, Zarbon made no move of acknowledgement toward him. He stood loosely in front of the woman's cell door and regarded her with severe distaste.

"What?" The woman balked. "What do you mean, I am-"

"You've been tried and convicted. For conspiring against the Icejin throne, you are sentenced to life here, in this...lovely...place you call residence." Zarbon's voice was soft, snotty, and never in a million years did he wish to visit patricide on another nobleman so badly.

"But Turles!-"

"You stupid wretch," came the thick and grinding, harrowing voice from a maw that had temporarily replaced Zarbon's own delicate, chiseled one, shuttering and trembling with a transformation barely halted. The woman froze, and all of the muscles in Vegeta's body tightened with anticipation. "Turles is the one who notified his Lord Frieza of your role in this treachery! Turles sold your rebellion for a position in Frieza's Elite Squad, you insufferable peasant."

"But he was my friend," she muttered rapidly in shock, though her eyes already betrayed her better wisdom. Vegeta turned his head away.

"Better you learn here that friendship is a nursery tale," the thing spat in her face, breath as pungent and vile as a corpse decomposing in leafy grass, "than meet the same fate as Bardock and Vejitasei, blown to dust as easily as one-two-three." Vegeta yanked against the chains involuntarily, though his mouth gaped open even further when, with a cry, the woman leveled a slap against Zarbon's beryl, poreless skin.

Zarbon quickly rebuffed and sent her flying towards the bars of his cell, his own riposte imitating swatting a fly, but with the finesse and familiarity of an experienced sadist, and with that, he flung open the door and was gone, though Vegeta smelt the familiar ozone and heard the music of ki incinerating bodies that meant Zarbon was in a fine state and killing guards as he went.

First Turles, then Zarbon.

He had been forgotten.

He realized with an aching thrum in his jaw that he was gritting his teeth painfully. There was a pinching in his chest that he couldn't place, and he glanced down first at his chest, then at the woman, who slumped against the bars to his cell, breathing shallowly.

After a minute, with great difficulty, she sat up, pressing her face against the bars, which already blossomed with new bruises over the ones which had finally begun to pale.

He watched her suck in air through her teeth and sit up straight before knocking her head against the bar behind it. She clenched her teeth around a sob which never escaped.

"I have a plan," she told him finally, turning her head fractionally to regard the tormented darkness where he loitered.

He would not be forgotten yet.

"Tell me," he grated, and inside him the predator's cheshire grin gleamed.

Surrendering To War

The words spilled out of her mouth.

"You're cuffed to the wall, are you not?" She didn't bother to wait for his response. "You cannot approach the bars fully, anyway. I can almost guarantee you I can pick the lock to your cuffs, if you could only manage to scoot close enough to me."

"It's not possible."

"I assure you, it is possible. You only have to save your silverware from your next meal. I am small enough that I should be able to stretch my arms through the bars and reach your cuffs."

His voice, low and full, rang new and unfamiliar in the vacuum of their tiny world. It had a deep hum that could have been sensuous under different circumstances. "Not possible. The chains are vytanium, the silverware is a paper byproduct. The prison wards have insured themselves against conspiracy."

"It doesn't matter. I can pick it," she assured.

He snorted.

"Believe me," she grit through her teeth, "I can."

"You plan to pick the locks on my cuffs why?" There was a hint of an aristocratic stroke to his speech that appeared alongside his incredulity towards her.

"You have the brawn, and the quick reflexes, to escape. Knock the guard upside the head and walk out the door! You can free me once you've freed yourself."

Laughter billowed up from some nasty place in his gut. "Why should I?"

Her face slackened before pinkening with fury.

"Are you a scoundrel as well as a political prisoner?"

His face darkened. She took the silence as victory.

"I thought not. Save your silverware. I'll pick your locks. You will escape the next time the guard opens your door. You will unlock my own door. The spaceport is only across the upper level. I will hot wire a pod and we will have won this small battle against them. I know plenty of quadrants that will allow us sanctuary."

He took a stab at her pride. "You are not as peace-loving as you'd like to think, I'd say, wanting me to bludgeon the guards."

"No. I am not." Her agreement was hushed, but firm. "But it's my opinion that they don't deserve any more compassion than Kami has already given them having allowed them to live." She spared the darkness of his cell a sharp look. "I will not tolerate their existence while I still draw breath."

Something aligned in his chest and he felt a new strength flood him. "Let's do it."

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

It took a few meals to gather enough silverware to weave together into a lock pick. He didn't know what he expected, but not this, with the woman hunched over their used, disposable silverware in the corner of her cell, peeling the threads of each spoon apart and slicking each with her spit with the pink tip of her tongue.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" He demanded impatiently, his back against the far wall, watchful.

She sent the darkness a sharp look. "Of course I do," she retorted. "I have done this before, the first time I was captive after the Imperial Army raided my planet." Her voice softened. "It didn't take me long to discover that the silverware they gave us was Goitten reeds, which have a compound that causes it to stiffen with the acids in ones saliva. My first cellmate was from planet Goitten and she said they used to chew it like gum until it became like chewing gravel and they'd have to spit it out." She clucked her tongue as she rolled the thick threads between her palms and began the tedious task of braiding them into the others. The braids became stiffer and stiffer as she worked, hopefully rigid enough to withstand unlatching each of the four cuffs at his ankles and wrists. "And that is how I first broke out of prison, and how I earned my first lashing and my first assignation." Her tone grew dark.

His eyes narrowed fractionally.

So, it was true. It was a whore's life for the women of the diaspora that the Empire had planted and sewn with its greed. How had a whore forged the ties to form an able resistance? How had she spanned the craters and crevices that Frieza had left in the hearts of all refugees and convinced them all to risk their lives to overthrow an impossibly powerful, exceptionally defended Emperor? Had the women of his planet even been given that small, bleak chance at life after death? Or had Frieza turned them into dust to more thoroughly humiliate him? When Frieza walked, did the wind whistle through the place where his heart would be?

She tucked her legs underneath her bottom and continued braiding, her profile expressionless. They had neglected to yet bring her the jumpsuit that all inmates received, so she'd taken to washing her clothes in the sparse, cold water of the toilet, and her once white suit was now thinning and wrinkled, reeking of mildew. But despite her haggard appearance, she continued to carry herself upright, and Vegeta was reminded of the fairy tale he'd been told as a kid, of the small Saiyan who braved the giant that tormented his village when no one else would, and the blue-hued seraph that appeared at his side to usher him to victory.

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

He should have known that the plan was doomed to fail as soon as he heard the footsteps outside their doors in the middle of the fifty fifth shift.

The woman's door began its song of clangs and clacks as she hurried to stuff the now nearly solid pick into her shirt, to fall into the space where it was tucked into her waistband.

"Here kitty kitty," came the gut wrenching peal of one of the guards, and Bulma stood to meet them.

"We've come bearing gifts," him hawed the other, and in he lumbered, carrying something folded in his arms. "Clothing." He held it up under his cragged face and toothless leer, and it unfolded, a slender gray jumpsuit. "Strip, little kitty."

"Absolutely not." She stood stiffly in front of them.

"Ya don't have a choice," quipped the other guard. "Either ya strip, or it be ripped."

"I am not undressing in front of you. Place the clothing on the floor and be gone."

"It ain't gonna work like that, honey."

He watched her mouth purse and her expression darken dramatically. "Don't call me honey."

It was then that the guards bumrushed her, flanking her and roping her wrists at the small of her back, and then tearing at her blazer and her pants front.

She kicked and hit, pinioning between them as she sought to outmaneuver them, but she was hungry and small, and they were big and cruel.

They ripped her blazer off, wrenching her arms in the process, and pulled her shirt over her head, laughing at her temporary blindness.

Vegeta watched the pick fall soundlessly to the ground near their scuffling feet.

Her muffled screams rung painfully throughout their cells, and just as Vegeta moved to turn away from the scene with that terrible, carnivorous helplessness that had inhabited his belly ever since he'd watched Frieza slay the Royal Family, he watched her place her heel on the pick and then, smoothly, slide the pick with as much force as she could, into his cell.

His eyes widened.

They pinned her to the ground and dressed her, palming her unabashedly and slapping her when she bucked against their hands, wrenching the rope tight to watch her clammy face screw with the pain of their power.

Eventually, she was dressed, and they both kissed her mouth and laughed as they left her there, arms pulled tightly behind her under her back.

"It's war!" She railed, sobbing now with the clawing sobs of a child in the sticky center of a nightmare. "War, you fucks." The spat threats fell like rocks from her mouth.

He was no stranger to his infallible pride paving the way into a self made grave.

Still, he looked away politely, giving her the privacy to grieve.

But not before palming the pick.

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

She'd fallen into drowsing against the icy floor, when he hissed again. "Woman."

Her puffy eyelids opened slowly, and he watched her try to focus in on the darkness.

"Woman. Come here."

For a moment, she lay there, staring unseeing. His heart began to flutter. Had she finally lost it? Not when they were so close!

"Ugh. So demanding," she muttered dully into the floor, and she wiggled her way toward him slowly until, with a grunt, she pulled her torso up and leaned heavily against the bars that separated their cells.

"All is not lost. But...I'm going to need you to...to be a man and grit your teeth through some pain," he tried explaining. He still wasn't very good at asking and not just taking, it seemed.

"I'm as strong as any man," she contested hotly, looking daggers into the darkness that loomed just beyond the bars.

"As strong as a Saiyan then," he corrected impatiently.

She snorted and kicked her feet, pouty, against the floor.

"Are you weak or are you strong?" He snapped.

Her eyes filled with tears, then, as he hit some nerve, but she pressed her face to the bars and grimaced with anger.

"Are you weak or strong?" He bellowed.

"I'm strong," she cried out, strained.

"Good. I need you to put your back to the bars. I'm going to get you out of that rope, but...it's going to hurt."

Fear flashed in her eyes.

"I don't want to hurt you," he assured her gravely. "But it's the only way."

She stared into the darkness with profound clarity. "You're going to dislocate my shoulder."

"Yes."

"Can you reach?"

"Yes," he assured. "But only if you squeeze your shoulder between the bars."

She nodded, looking sick. "Okay," she confirmed weakly.

Although straining, she was able to squeeze her round shoulder between the bars, wrenching her head to the opposite side and sucking in air to make herself as thin as possible. "Damned breasts," she fussed, wiggling back and forth to ease herself between the bars as much possible.

He snorted. "The impressive size of her breasts is not something a woman usually complains about."

"That's because you've probably only been in the position for you both to enjoy them. Tell me, how many women have you known who were comfortable enough with you to detail all of the pains of being a woman, huh?"

He thought of his mother.

"Are you as close to me as you can get?" He issued grudgingly.

With her head wrenched to the other side, he couldn't see her face, but irritation pervaded the air around them.

"I'm as close as I'm going to get before I surrender the ability to breathe."

The corner of his mouth crooked before thinning. "Are you ready?"

"I'm about as ready as I'm going to be, you heartless- -OWWW!" She shrieked with pain before swallowing it in a gulp.

"Anger is the best pain suppressor," he informed her tonelessly. "I'm going to loosen the rope now."

She was breathing fast now.

"Don't pass out!" He barked. "Take deep breaths. Slowly. Count to ten. Count to ten in Saiyago. Ready?"

She whimpered her acquiescence.

Together they counted slowly in his native language, and jagged as her answers were as she repeated after him like a child, he could tell she was using all of her energy to concentrate on the task.

With the last few inches of his tail, he was able to tug the rope off her wrists inch by inch, now possible with her arm hanging limply between the bars, fingers dragging on the asphalt.

A feeling of unaccustomed success shot through him as the ropes fell limply to the ground.

"This is the last part, okay?" His voice was rough, but not unkind. "Here."

Slowly, he was able to place the pick into her good hand with the tip of his tail. She gazed at the wall uncomprehending.

"Pick my cuffs. The sooner you get it done the closer we are to putting your shoulder back in place."

Her good hand clutched the pick but she made no effort to move.

"PICK ME!" He hollered, and she jumped, her head swiveling against the bars, sliding sweatily as she tried pinning the darkness around him with a furious glare.

She didn't answer him, only reached jerkily for his cuffs. He stretched both his arms and his tail out and guided her fingers towards the left cuff's key hole with his tail. When she started fiddling with the pick against the hole, they both held their breaths, listening to it scratch along the metal, feel it jump out of the hole a few times only to sink back in. After a minute, she seemed to get her groove, and with less shaking and more surety she dipped the pick into the lock, through the locking mechanisms, and jerkily pulled it back.

The cuff opened and slid off without complaint.

Vegeta held back laughter. He gazed at his wrist in the darkness with wonder.

"Next," she rasped, and he swiftly grabbed her hand and guided it toward the key hole, grasping it loosely with encouragement so her hand didn't shake.

The pain was leeching her focus, and this one took longer, but after an impossibly long few minutes, the lock teeth clicked, the cuff opened, and then rattled to the floor.

This time, Vegeta laughed irreverently, and he gripped the bars she was stuck between with shaking hands, and pulled.

The bars bent outward with hollow complaint, and with a welp, the woman fell in between them, her body hitting the floor of his cell.

She let out a howl as her dislocated shoulder hit the ground with a smack. With the extra length afforded him by the lack of wristlets, he first stretched his arms outward with a pained groan, and then carefully gripped her under her armpits and pulled her the rest of the way through the bars.

She was sobbing silently now, and he sat her up against the bars, her head lolling on her shoulders. He made sure she was propped firmly before shoving her arm upwards without preamble, where it slid back into her socket with an audible click.

She inhaled with a gulp and wrested her head in his direction. "Oh my god you beast!" She fell to the floor on her back, taking in gulping breaths and shakily running her hands over her face and through her ragged locks.

He leaned over her.

"Now my legs."

"Can't you just wait a second?"

"We only have an hour or less until shift change."

She let out an exasperated breath and sat up testily.

That's when they realized just how near they were, his hot breath hitting her face.

The dark was almost impenetrable, but from the low light over her cell door, she was able to make out the profile of his face, at least, the strong shoulders rising and falling in front of her with his breaths. He was humanoid. She wasn't sure why, but the fact relieved her. "How did you get used to the dark?" She asked in a whisper, without thinking.

"My race are natural predators. We are able to see in the dark, go long lengths without eating, and endure long periods of trauma and isolation."

"How fortunate," she murmured with evident sarcasm.

"Yes. This is intentional."

"Why are you here?" She questioned him softly.

He outstretched his legs, and she settled beside them. Her hands grazed his skin as she pushed the coarse fabric of the jumpsuit over his calves and squinted down through the dark at the cuffs. His leg hair was fine and soft, and she leaned over him, chewing her lip and inserting the lock pick, until the left ankle cuff broke open.

He automatically pulled his leg toward his chest and gripped his ankle, worn red where the cuff had rubbed him raw over his pant legs for a year.

Vegeta's eyes slid to the periphery of his vision. "The same reason you're here."

"What? Being caught leading a ragtag army against the throne?" She asked with a chuckle in her throat.

"Something like that."

She looked up. "You're being deceptive," she accused him softly.

"You're not hurrying," he complained.

"I don't know if it's going to hold up," she informed him worrisomely, slicking the pick again with her tongue and blowing on it to bolster the softening thing before plunging it back in the hole. Finally, with a resounding click, the cuff yawned open, and Vegeta bolted upwards and stood for the first time in a year.

She stood, too, holding her hands out in the event that he toppled over. "Is the blood rushing to your head?" She asked wryly.

He stretched, and that's when she realized how well built he was. Not barrel chested or egregiously muscled, but his wide chest tapered into a slender, compact waist, and as he crooked his head to pop his neck, she could make out his defined jawline above his thick, corded neck. For the first time since he lashed out at her the first night she spent in her cell, she experienced a twinge of fear.

She was alone in the dark with a convict.

And with a humorless laugh, the man in front of her lit up into fire.

Her eyes narrowed against the light, and she raised her hand to shield her eyes. The room rumbled with his smug laughter, and the hot blast of ki energy whipped the air around them.

Just as quickly, it was extinguished, and she felt her wrist being grabbed as he drug her to the door.

"It would be safest to make our break from it now, when they're not worrying about being engaged. Stay behind me. We'll make our way through the tunnels to the front. I'm not sparing anyone," he warned her.

She nodded meekly.

"I smell your fear," he interrupted.

She gazed at his shaded silhouette with wide eyes.

"Are you afraid of what's to come?" He paused. "Or are you afraid of me?"

"Both," she whispered.

"Are you strong or are you weak?" He pressured her, shaking her by her wrist.

She felt panic burbling in her chest.

"I-"

She felt something else wrap itself around her waist, and his grip tightened almost painfully on her wrist. She let out a scared sound as she patted her waist instinctively, and her mouth gaped as she felt warmth and fur. She grasped it, and it stiffened, before whipping away and curling back around his own waist protectively.

"You're Saiyan!"

"I'm the Prince of all Saiyans," he replied ominously, "and I'm about to blow this place to smithereens. Are you ready?"

Before she could issue a yes or no, he was already pounding down his door with ease and dragging her into the hallway.

Between Pleasure And Pain

Tripping over her own heavy feet as Vegeta dragged her behind him, the concrete walls and iron cell doors whizzed past, one closed cell door after the other after the other. The air was sweetly rank with the damp dregs of the ship, and the lights queued from their end of the cell block stretching outward and endlessly before them were causing them both to squint painfully. She struggled to take in breath and put one foot in front of the other, cursing herself desperately for having mastered the skill of using her own two legs so long ago, and now, of all times, failing miserably at it.

Her wrist clutched in his grip prevented her from being anything other than a kite gaining air behind him. All she could see of him was his broad back stretching the grimy gray jumpsuit as their footsteps pounded the pavement.

Their long strides must have measured a quarter of a mile when the orange glow of the incandescent bulbs above them was replaced by the bright clean light of fluorescents, and she swung around his form, pulling against her wrist clamped in his grip with the need to see. The hallway emptied out into a foyer up ahead. Her heart stumbled over itself.

They spilled out into the foyer and he skidded to a halt, causing her to smack into his back. He released her wrist, and automatically she stepped to his side to see what it was that he had stopped for. She stuttered with confusion.

There was no one there.

"Why have we stopped? Where is-"

He spun her to the side and pointed his finger to a corridor. She tensed, assuming he must have heard a noise or spied the silhouette of a guard. Instinctually, she gripped the back of his shirt and peered out from behind him.

Instead, the tip of his finger lit her vision up, bathing her face a brilliant, catalina blue. Bulma's eyes widened.

How long had it been since she'd seen a blue like that? A deep blue, forbidding. Electric, but cool and controlled. Dreamy as an ocean that she'd splashed around in with small feet, and as thoughtful a blue as the sky above her to lay beneath and ponder with the powerful sincerity only childhood could claim. Something was in her chest as she stared at the blue energy in his hands, an acute pain that could only come from remembering something as sweet and faraway as the unadulterated pleasure of childhood.

Her hair began to rise, and she clutched him with white knuckles as his pointer finger lowered, aiming at a distant doorway, and slowly, they watched as a guard meandered out from a doorway, turning their way and then coming to a halt uncertainly before them.

The thick, long finger glowed a searing white blue before it jumped, emitting a string of dazzling electric energy that surged forward, whipping back and forth like a serpent to plunge straight into the chest of the guard.

He dropped.

She held her breath around a shriek.

"MOVE," he hollered, except he was high tailing it towards the guard and the hall. A dozen different protests over the logic of his decision burbled up into her mouth, but she chased after him.

His stride was nothing but powerful even having just been uncaged, and they were dumped into another foyer, with less luck this time. Guards, guards everywhere- -they all stood, rigid and disbelieving, as she and her fellow escapee poured into the room, their jumpsuits easily giving their identities away.

They were surrounded. She stepped closer to the Saiyan as the guards all stood from their chairs along the walls, regarding the spectacle they'd created in the center of the room.

"They're unarmed," she whispered, unable to turn her gaze away as each guard dropped into an uncertain defensive stance, knees and fists bobbing.

"The sins of the prideful revealed," came his answering rumble, and liquid energy began condensing inside his palms. "Get behind me and stay there."

She scurried behind him and grabbed at the hips of his jumpsuit with less trepidation than she'd ever like to admit.

Like dominoes falling, the guards began their descent, falling towards them one foot after the other, and the energy roiling in his fists became wild and ragged before its unruly ambitions became too much and the stunning microcosm imploded in on itself. It trembled violently once before condensing into a thick ball of blue light skipping over his skin. The Saiyan began turning circles gracefully on his heels. She followed behind him, failing to mirror his own footwork. "Hurry up already!" She griped as the guards drew nearer.

She was jolted when the Saiyan lit up into flames, and the energy rushed over him like waves, torrents gushing from some untapped source. She gaped. She'd spent years fighting an enemy that held the universe in its palm like some sort of kitsch token won at a carnival. Without any luster at all, without any respect at all, they crushed it in their hands like cruel boys.

But here was this thing that wasn't supposed to be, this earthly phenomenon, this fairy tale Bardock and Turles had spoken of existing before the Icejins arrived on Vejitasei like a remorseless north wind. They'd told her about ki energy, oh sure, they'd assured her when she shook her head dismissively of its realness, of its vitality, of their ability to use it like a shepherd with a living tool. Of course, Frieza had taken it away from them as soon as touching down on Vejitasei and felling the Royal Family. Snipping it like they'd hacked off their tails, cutting off its course by cutting their wiring just above their spine in their skulls. The only race in all of the galaxies to be able to harness, tame, and grow the energy of their spirits beyond the Icejin, now powerless eunuchs, impaired and profoundly tormented for Frieza's small pleasure.

Why wasn't this one castrated as well?

It was hot, his ki was, and it smelled like ozone and made its home in her sinuses like the dried out heat that came from an old furnace, causing what was left of her hair to stand on end with static. It rolled off of him into the sky without seeming to take anything away from him, rushing out and then upwards like a momentary secret from Kami, too lofty for sharing with earthly folk. It warmed her toes and hands in a way she'd gone without since she'd left port just before being captured, when she still had the small pleasure of heat and sleeping between sheets and a job to do each day in relative freedom, sorting through refugees and arming a coup.

Hadn't the emotion strangled inside her, watching them straggle in and give thanks to the Resistance effort for sanctuary and activism, remembering when she had been a fresh refugee, the raw despair and pleas for help still on her tongue? She'd watched women, jumpy, avoiding her men and close spaces and understood their caution deeply. Many women were given as toys to the Imperial Army. It was the Icejin's superstition that women were good for nothing but pleasure, but trinkets in the boudouir. Some luckless women, like herself, were given to the Elites to bounce upon the waters like a skipping stone before finally sinking. The Elites, the top guns in the Imperial Army, were the truly depraved. They had honed a sadism that the foot soldiers lacked. It was how she had met Zarbon. The memory churned her gut. The real currency the Empire dealt by was pain, trading the estrangement and angst of subjugated people's into a pleasuredome.

Once she'd finally made her final and first-successful escape from the Empire, she'd made it very clear when she'd pinned the note to Frieza on the lifeless body of the man she'd first had an 'assignation' with that calling her a 'whore' leading a 'Whore's Army' was misleading. She was nobody's whore. She was the Empire's misbegotten nightmares.

That kind of resistance, that kind of rejection of the definitions Frieza had made for them all, was her deepest pleasure. Much like the conceptualizing and devising she did with her father at Capsule Corporation before the Earth's demise, this was engineering on an even grander scale.

The Saiyan reached his hands out benevolently before facing his palms outward at the guards, who seemed seconds away from rushing them. And with a downward sweep, energy burst from his palms with a spurious sizzling, and whipping like barely contained lightning, he swept it through the guards midsections one by one in an eardrum bursting adagio.

As the guards fell to their knees and then into lifeless disarray like marrionettes freed from their strings, the Saiyan closed the requiem with a last, brilliantly blue burst, and then the roiling energy at his palms was gone, escaped, the energy around him folding up and disappearing inside him.

The few dozen guards lay silent, entrails weeping.

The Saiyan strode towards the final hallway, energy flaring around him delusory.

Bulma tried hard to keep her last meal from tumbling out and followed him blindly.

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

Frieza waited for them at the heart of the bay of ships they'd hoped to escape from, several dozen guards at its perimeter and his upper Elites at his side.

She and the Saiyan stopped side by side at the opening of the port's mouth, absorbing it.

"The Prince has returned," Frieza said with a sickeningly smug smile. He was all contradictions, all stone and evil inside a deceptively saccharine delivery.

Her thoughts stuttered. Prince? The Saiyan Prince? He hadn't been jesting? But...the Prince was dead. Wasn't he?

His bottomless stare spoke volumes of his belief that he was being sullied just by having to personally put down this mutiny.

Did he fear, somewhere deep down, that he couldn't? Did he exist so far in his conceited wonderland that he believed he was too big to be touched? Was he here just because he was so deeply offended that someone would try?

"It seems that you have regained your faculties," the Emperor mentioned like it were tripe, in repose, and in response, the Saiyan powered up, whipping her hair and buffeting her feet.

"You would have had me rot with them still intact, after all," the Saiyan snapped.

A smile that didn't reach his eyes crept up the Emperor's face. "It was merely the first phase of your stay here. You have many, many more phases to go before I even think of killing you. I will no longer hide you from the masses, I think, not so much because your decay on display will surely melt even the most powerful resolve, but because there are no more Saiyans left for your existence to impact." An icy tremor betrayed his anger.

"Half right, you dickless joke," the Saiyan answered in a guileless baritone beside her. "There is one Saiyan left, and he is standing on two feet in front of you." His cyclone of energy doubled swiftly in width. "And your error has ushered in thelast phase of my incarceration: that of your death." He had seemed to have forgotten all about her now, and his ki pushed her backwards to its proximate limits, several feet behind him. Frieza's talon-like toes flexed against the floor at the end of the Saiyan's speech, and he crossed his arms over his sleek white torso in a chillingly human pantomime of consideration.

"I don't think I can reject your offer, even though I long to crush your spirit for years and years to come. Saiyans are not so long lived that I'd even get a fraction of full satisfaction at your duress, but at least I've made certain that you will never have another moment of pleasure in the presence of another Saiyan, or on your hellish home soil."

The answering flare of ki from the Prince managed to knock her and the guards to their backs. She caught herself clumsily with her palm behind her but sank with a painful knock to her knees, staring upwards at the back of the Saiyan with a powerful plea she didn't even recognize giving. Was this the moment? They stood in front of evil itself and were cast to sink or swim. All of her work was for this moment, transpired in a way she could have never imagined or planned for. The Saiyan Prince lived, his legendary power was evident. But was it enough to end the Empire?

With a brief burst of energy that blinded her for a terrifying moment, the Prince knocked the guards from their positions once more, this time for good, his ki cutting a swath through their necks. In disfigured poses, they gaped up at the ceiling with awkward moues. All around her were the bodies of the dead that only took the Prince the briefest flare of ki, and she gaped, kneeling in a parody of a curtsy. Through the bright light of his energy, she could see through its trembling, viscous substantiality the faces of some of the Elites, wavering.

She seemed to have been forgotten by all behind him, and with no one left to bother with her, she gave a moment's thought to crawling to some safe space to wait for this impromptu, flaming refrain that was sure to come to come to its end.

She thought she heard the Prince say cavalierly, "I will have all the pleasure of a lifetime soon once I've dispatched you to Hell."

Something in front of the blue wall his energy had created burst into a vivid, ripe purple, and she understood from the tick tock of her heart and the leaping of her gut that this was it, this was the end.

There was a tremor she felt through her palms on the floor, and the blue and purple ki battered at the other as the beings in the center of it powered up to their fullest heights.

The keening whistle of ki whipping upwards, the tremors ransacking the ship became an all consuming white noise, and her heart pounded to its rhythm. Not something stately or gracious, no, but grand anyways, as she watched the half dozen Elites seek to surround the Prince, whose attention was on their sovereign.

In the heart of the place where she sat, mouth dry with dumb shock, her eyes followed the spattering of Elites still alive as they manuvered around the press of the Prince's royal blue ki, unable to breach it, but pacing like ants.

And that's when she saw it.

A single ki rifle, banging against the side of one of the doddering Elites.

She crawled towards him without thinking.

There was a flash, followed on its tail by a shrieking siren's song of immense power, and Bulma understood then that the fight had begun, though she couldn't make them out. Bardock had explained to her that Saiyans fought at impressive speeds. The only thing that proved that the Saiyan and the Emperor even existed in the same space was the occasional whine of air as their kicks and fists sliced it, and the occasional meaty crack of a fist making impact.

She stalled then, worrying her lip as she tried without success to make out whether the Prince was okay. Let him be okay, she prayed. The feeling was unfamiliar to her. Faith in the logic of the universe was long lost to her. Let him live, she thought urgently, anyways.

It seemed so selfish a thing to pray for. Though wasn't the very act of praying self centered anyway? But if there was anything to stake her faith on, her life on, it was this, wasn't it? It was the Saiyan Prince.

A few of the Elites had already been slain, lying askew on the floor, and she crab crawled around them. She glanced around frantically. Where had the one with the gun gone? She didn't recognize him, the little green thing with the bulbous eyes. There. He sat clutching his chest, weapon falling out of its holster as he drew in breaths from a hole in his neck.

She could have laughed in savage glee. She pressed forward.

She neared him and reached out, small pale hands closing around the butt of the rifle. "This is outstanding," she breathed. Ki technology wasn't something anyone had ever entertained. Ki was a legend! And besides, they were lightyears away from this kind of stuff. She should have known, should have listened to Bardock and Turles instead of dismissing their stories. Stupid! Of course, it must be the very thing Frieza feared in the Saiyans! The weight of the gun pressed against her hands and she lifted it with reverence. Lifted it, and put the stock to her shoulder, and aimed without thinking, with old familiarity at the nearest thing that moved.

The kickback was brutal, causing her to slide back on the floor a few feet and crack the back of her head against it, speckling her vision. She laughed raggedly as the smell of soot and ozone greeted her.

"You," came the sweet cruel voice of the Icejin Emperor, and she opened her eyes to see him gazing down at her, blood seeping from the corner of his pouting, unhinged mouth.

"Did I do that?" She asked reverently.

"You should have stayed with the whores," he said to her, and she fought to breathe.

He pointed one slender white finger at her.

Amid the raucous of her emotions, she understood poignantly.

His long fingernail shimmered with his misleadingly beautiful, mauve ki.

She could only stare helplessly above her at that pointed face that had haunted her since the 'harvesting' of her planet, with every boarish Elite grunting above her, with every mother forever separated from her children weeping into the crook of her neck, with every curse in Saiyago Bardock would choke out beside her in his sleep.

"You should have killed me when you had the chance," came a sonorous answer somewhere above her, a winged thing that seemed to pluck the diamond from the rough of all her thoughts and answer for her, and with a speed too immediate to process, an angel appeared out of the air, bathed in golden light, and plunged his knee into Frieza's back, a string of surprised purple spittle hurling above her head.

She sat up with panic to watch the Prince's gripped fists coming down on the head of the Emperor, who crumpled to the ground, though he countered with much less controlled movements to deliver a fist to the Prince's midsection.

The Prince was on his hands and knees, and with cold regard, the Emperor turned towards her. Their eyes met as he leveled his finger in her direction.

"Bang," the Emperor mouthed, firing off a single burst of ki just a moment before something ripped through her shoulder and her world winked black.

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

The Prince let out a loud growl in abject rejection as he watched her body collapse a dozen feet from them, before tearing the offending hand right off Frieza's body. Frieza let out a shriek and stared upwards into the halo emitted around him, pupils contracting with fear.

"No." The Emperor rejected stiffly. "No. I will give you anything. A position at my side? Anything, tell me what will buy you." The words were now tumbling brokenly from his mouth, which hung loosely, thanks to the woman, from his face.

"Tell me first," the Prince said above the Icejinn, "does an Icejinn like you experience fear?"

Guessing by the terrified grimace on Frieza's face as his vision took in the golden aura of energy crowning the Prince, he must have been capable of feeling something like it.

"Good," the Prince purred before plunging his fist through Frieza's skull.

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

All he could hear was the roar of enervated energy in his ears and things crashing down around him, and he stood shakily, listing sideways a bit, blood dripping from his fists.

He surveyed the room, now strewn with flames and rubble, and he heard the tale tell sound of the ship's engine whining before they exploded next to the fuel tanks. The room was conspicuously empty, until he remembered that everyone who'd once inhabited the ship had been slain, the stark evidence of it all over the floor.

He had half a mind to incinerate the Emperor and all that remained before the naggling at the back of his mind manifested before him in a pool of blue hair and blood lying a few feet away from him.

He was there in an instant, tripping over himself as he kneeled beside her. Her eyes were open, unseeing, and he shook her, noting the hole in her shoulder.

Something jumped inside him when her gaze found his.

A small smile appeared on her face.

"Did we get him?" She rasped with child-like uncertainty.

"Yes," he struggled to say, his jaw tightening.

A small fist rose in his vision, her fist, clenched in solidarity, and a dazzling smile stretched across her face. Blue eyes, blue as the deepest velvet gracing the throne of Vejitasei, and he covered her fist with his hand and smirked back at her.

"We did it," she said.

Nose to nose, they smiled at one another, before her eyes rolled upwards and she sunk into darkness, helpless in his arms.

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

EPILOGUE

It was between pleasure and pain that they hauled the bodies from the pod and rushed them to the wall of regen tanks below deck, submerging the limp things in a panic and slamming their palms on the 'ON' buttons even as they fumbled with the oxygen masks and the switches to latch the doors.

Shouts tripped along the walls as they fought with untangling the puzzle that the two bodies had left them. Frowning white with fear because they knew who it was that lay pale on twin stretchers, jostled as they were rushed down the hallways, and not knowing why. It wasn't until, just moments later, they got the call from another fob from another quadrant with news that the Icejin ship had gone up in a silent, grave supernova.

Was the Emperor on it? They had all questioned, disbelieving.

"The Emperor is dead," the fob grimly answered.

The Emperor was dead, his ship blown to kingdom come, and the Empire with it, and two desperados floated soundlessly in the regen tanks below deck, with all of the answers locked behind their closed eyes.

How their hearts had jumped for joy- -he'd hugged his captain and his star navigator more than once- -but soon plummeted, smothered with the awareness of the high cost, embodied in two bodies that floated somewhere between life and death.

Indeed, their healing tanks chirrupped like normally, alerting them to the rhythm of their heartbeats and to the levels of the oxygen and to the naked urgency of the situation. The familiar sounds of the regen tanks seemed much more grave this time, much more prone to error and imbued with more of an ominous chirp than any other time in memory. His helmsman put in the call. The Emperor is dead. The Prince lives. The Blue Lady lives. But prayers for their lives are in order.

Lives tattered by the Empire's masochism, just as all of their lives were. One day, they'd been living each day with only a complaint about what was for supper or the alarm clock sounding in the dark, and the next day they'd then been living with their children's blood awash on their tunics, their home planet's dust skimming the horizon at night, where they hammered out sixteen hour days in labor camps, trying hard not to glance at the stars, where their wives never to be seen again, wishing for death under some Elite's savage thrusts.

Should we hold a wake? The gunner had asked.

They shook their heads roughly and cupped his ears, growling with displeasure.

Only prayers would be heeded. Only prayers, no epilogues, no fears, no funerals.

After all, it was without reservation that the two had taken up the helm of the resistance. The memory of the Dead Prince and the magnetism of the Blue Lady collecting them all in their arms and setting them on a new path of meaning. No, their lives would never be the same. There was no one in the whole wide universe that could give that back to them. What the Empire had taken away was permanent. The scars on their hearts would forever be there, itching, aching hollowly in cold weather, where they'd rub at it, the damn things pestering them, and continue with their day as if nothing in the world had been ripped from under them.

But they had been given another chance at living, a living beyond their scars instead of never leaving their residence, scratching them raw.

Prayers, and prayers only. Nothing else would be heeded.

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

It was natural for her memory to be clouded and her cognition fuzzy upon coming out of the regen tank, the women assured her. She stood under the spray of the shower numbly, running her hand through her hair with unfamiliarity. Do you want to cut it? One of the women asked when she stepped out of the shower and onto the towel, where they hovered, observing her cautiously. A towel made its way over her shoulders. Cut what? She'd asked, frowning slightly. The women glanced at each other. Had she suffered brain damage? It was apparently what they were thinking. She made a face. Sit down, Ms. Briefs, one of the women laughed. We'll trim your hair for you. It's grown a bit longer since you been in there, anyway. We'll give you something short and sassy and feminine. Something real cute.

She sat in the chair and let them do whatever it was to her.

Care to pick your outfit? They asked. She felt a twinge of memory, something loosen. "Clothes?" She asked and then felt stupid for it. Don't feel stupid, the women laughed good-naturedly. We're all just tickled you're alive.

She felt another twinge, a memory loosen but hold.

"I'll dress myself, thank you," she snarled tiredly.

Taking in, then, the amount of outfits at her perusal, she tamped down the anxiety coursing through her and turned back around. Thankfully, the women still hovered at the seams of her vision. They seemed to sense the overwhelmed misgivings pouring over her.

One of the women stepped forward. "Would you like some help?"

Ms. Briefs, still visibly out of it, nodded regally, seeming to understand that it wasn't damaging to her pride if she was being asked respectfully.

Much like the Prince had been, the women thought with a chuckle.

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

She stood in the center of the cabin, shaking hands and enduring a good many grown men tearfully thanking her.

It was receiving their gratitude firstly, and then she was to meet with the captain to hear reports of current events and discern what it was she wanted to do next. It didn't seem to be high on his list of priorities, though. She'd have thought he'd want to know what happened, whether the Emperor lived. But since she wasn't sure herself, she guessed that they wouldn't push it.

She was beginning to grow tired. That's natural, the captain assured her, offering her his seat, which she delicately refused. You've been in there quiet awhile, and a visit to the regen tank that long would pull the wool over anyone's eyes awhile. We're all just happy you're alive and well. She scowled, seemingly annoyed but only annoyed with herself. She was growing impatient to be functional again. She felt another tear inside, this one letting some kind of regret seep through, some kind of anger at herself because she couldn't properly receive their thanks without understanding exactly why.

She tugged at the slim collar of her blazer and endured the throbbing of her feet from her heels.

The Captain's voice breached her thoughts. Ms. Briefs, you've done more than enough for us, we won't put you out any longer. We have a room ready for you before you depart. Would you like to rest?

Her brow furrowed. All she heard was that her weakness was evident. She didn't want to rest, though her aching body definitely did. She wanted to demand her memory to return and feel like flesh and blood again, not this ghost of a woman before whatever trauma occurred before the regen tank.

Ma'am? Is there something bothering you? The smallest cadet asked her.

"I feel," Bulma croaked, her voice unused, "I feel like something is missing." She gazed out the cockpit windshield, where all the stars in this quadrant hung suspended, flickering silently.

Yes, ma'am, likely your memories.

Bulma gazed forlornly, stubbornly out the window, lips pulled taut with some unnamed, not understood emotion. The cadet's voice softened. Don't worry, they'll be back in good time-

A hush fell over the cabin, and after a moment, a twinge sounded again inside Bulma, this time unrelenting. Understanding the moment had gone on too long for silence, she turned her head over her shoulder with a contemplative, delicate frown.

There, where she had stood only moments ago shaking hands with the crew, was The Saiyan.

He regarded her from black eyes set in an imposing, noble face. Scrubbed clean, his skin was bronze and smooth, his cheeks wide and high and pronounced, his jawline sharp above his thick, strong neck. A crisply white breastplate caused his dusky coloring to stand out, the vivid red emblem of Vejitasei Royalty imprinted on his breast. A deep red cape hung gracefully around him, capped at the streamlined shoulders of his breastplate with gold links, matching the pointed toes of his snow white boots. His tail wrapped tightly around his waist as he stood rigidly under her regard, white gloved hands, with military precision, hanging at his hips.

She moved, and there she was, in front of him, and she placed her hand on his jaw to make sure he was real. He stiffened, but his eyes never left hers. "You're alive," she breathed, a smile cracking her troubled face.

"As alive as you are," he muttered, his eyes downcast before meeting hers again.

She grabbed at his hand and held it up in front of her face, the smooth, white glove in her grip. "Why didn't you tell me who you were?" She asked, and she couldn't wipe the smile off her face.

He scowled, but betrayed his discomposure with a slight blush. "What difference would it have made."

To his surprise, she laughed softly. "None at all," she admitted, smiling up at him, and he smiled down at her, his pleasure a handsome, quiet thing that lightened his intimidating expression. It added another level of complexity to him, as it was a bit crooked and wry. She smiled upwards at him with her own sharp, knowing smile and clutched his hand in her own against her chest.

"Welcome to your new life, Prince..." She drew out the title and leveled a quizzical look at him.

"Vegeta."

She stepped back, relinquishing his hand, before holding out her hand again to him with a warm smile. He clasped his in hers, shaking it slowly.

"Bulma. Bulma Briefs."