Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Black and White ❯ 01 ( Chapter 1 )

"Boy."

 

He shook at the voice, but continued working on his homework.

 

"Trunks."

 

This time he looked up. "What do you want, Dad?"

 

Vegeta paced around to stand beside his son at his place at the table. "I—I think you want to talk about something," he muttered, glancing to the side awkwardly; however skilled he was at projecting confidence in any other situation, he always faltered with his son when serious matters were at hand.

 

"What makes you think that?" he mumbled into his assignment, scrawling down more numbers and keeping his eyes averted.

 

"Well—" the prince paused. He'd guessed at what his son and Goten had been discussing that day—beside the glowing dragon balls that had brought him back to Earth from being stranded on New Vegeta. One moment, Vegeta had been face to face with the woman who had dared share his name, and more—who had then disgraced it, with what she had done to Goku—one moment, he had been face to face with her; the next, he was crushing the royal medallion—she was bleeding, then dead, and she got what she deserved. But there was Trunks—so near tears. A sinking stomach told Vegeta that he knew why. "You're acting differently."

 

"No shit."

 

"Language, boy."

 

"Whatever."

 

Vegeta took a seat and pulled Trunks' homework away, glancing over it. It was covered in problems—just math. No musings of techniques, no scribblings of strategies. Trunks reached for it, and Vegeta slid it further away, to his other side. "Talk."

 

"Dad, I really don't wanna—"

 

"Now."

 

 

...

 

 

Goku suppressed his ki as he heard quiet discussion nearby, hoping no one had noticed and that they wouldn't think he was intruding. He had decided to teleport to somewhere near Vegeta's ki, but not too close, both out of normal practice—he was now certain that he had seen Bulma naked more times than he could count, which was to say, at least ten—and because he and Vegeta had spent some weeks apart, hardly communicating.

 

Things had gotten better between them—but still, any time Goku visited Vegeta since he had been brought back from New Vegeta, he had seemed thoughtful, introverted. The prince would shift in discomfort at Goku's presence, and Goku could tell that he was biting back words. What the words were, Goku wasn't sure—but Vegeta certainly hadn't been unkind to him, so they couldn't have been too bad. There was something Vegeta wanted to tell him, to be certain—but he had never been good at guessing at this type of thing, so Goku opted to err on the side of caution, hoping desperately that he wouldn't accidentally upset Vegeta and send him into another whirl of rage, another gap of time in which they wouldn't see each other. Still, he ached to spar again—Goten's drive to train with him had died down substantially of late, as he spent more and more time having quiet, private discussions with Trunks.

 

But this time, Goku noticed as he listened around the corner, it was Vegeta having a quiet, private discussion with Trunks. He'd told himself that if he'd teleported into the middle of something that wasn't his business, he'd leave and wait at the front door—his usual policy, after Bulma suggested it to him one evening, nudging him away from yet another awkward situation—but he caught the words before he could turn away to leave.

 

"It's...I...I just thought," Trunks was mumbling, and Vegeta watched with careful eyes. "I thought you were, y'know, better. Better than them. You got better, right? Mom told me about how you were when you first started living on Earth, but—you have us now, and..."

 

Peeking subtly around the corner as he hid his hair behind an ornamental palm tree, Goku saw Vegeta nod, swallowing.

 

"And those other Vegetas," now Trunks seemed to swallow, with substantial effort, "when Goten and I fought them." Goku raised his eyebrows, waiting—was this what his and Vegeta's sons had been discussing all this time? "They were brutal—I—I—"

 

"I saw," Vegeta rasped quietly, "from Hell." He placed a hand against Trunks' shoulder for a moment, but pulled it away quickly, picking up a pencil from the table and flicking it between his uneasy fingers. Goku felt his eyes stinging as he remembered the sight of his own son's death, the violent stomach wound. He had never died in such a disfigured state, slowly, conscious, young and afraid, and suddenly felt much younger than his son.

 

"Vejata, it was her fault it happened," Trunks spoke quietly. Vegeta seemed to accept this. "And I heard how she killed you—in that awful way."

 

"It was quick," Vegeta admitted. Goku scratched at his neck—his death at Vejata's hands had been quick, too—faster than he could realize what was going on.

 

"But when you fought her," Trunks continued, "when you fought her, you didn't do it quick. And you didn't just beat her up—she—she—" he took a breath in slowly, chest shaking, "I didn't think you would ever...d-do that...Dad..."

 

Vegeta sat still, ribcage rising and falling steadily.

 

"It was so ugly...it was just as bad as the other Vegetas." Trunks bit his lip as he turned to look his father in the eyes. "You're as bad as them—aren't you?"

 

The prince stood abruptly, and Goku felt Vegeta's ki spike as he lost control of it momentarily. He shoved the chair back against the table roughly, turning away from Trunks. Vegeta flexed his fingers and glanced over one arm—the arm that Trunks had lost, lips twitching as he attempted to restrain a growl, but it still made its way through his teeth.

 

But as Vegeta remained still in this position, Goku replayed Trunks' words—was Vegeta really as bad as the copies that had wreaked havoc on their section of the universe? Certainly Vegeta had killed his share of innocents, but— Then, Vejata was bad, too, for different reasons; she had tricked Goku and used him in the last way that he would have thought possible, willingly destroying their friendship—well, he was pretty sure it had been a friendship. Goku shivered—was still disturbed that even now he did not regret not wishing Vejata back to life. It was scary—to know that his well of forgiveness was not bottomless.

 

Was everyone who was like Vegeta destined to be evil in some way? Trunks was right—even now, Vegeta was capable of doing terrible things. Could any amount of time in peace, on Earth, undo the possibility that he would do something like this again? If this was Vegeta's natural state—perhaps he should have tried harder, to forgive Vejata, if she couldn't help it, her ghastly acts.

 

"I don't know, Trunks," Vegeta finally whispered, snapping Goku back to the scene before him. Vegeta was still turned away from his son, who was looking desperately into the back of his father's head. "I'm sorry." Trunks bit his lip, trying to steel his gaze. The prince took a few more deep breaths and strode toward the doorway. Goku watched as he approached, and as Vegeta began to round the corner, he realized—

 

"Kakarotto," Vegeta snarled, though quietly, his voice still subdued from his words with his son. "I ought to slam you to the other side of the universe. Have you ever heard of privacy?"

 

"S-sorry," Goku stuttered, frozen to the wall. "It was an accident, I—"

 

"I felt you appear," he muttered, "and I thought I felt you disappear, too."

 

"M-masked my ki," Goku admitted. "I'm...I'm really sorry, Vegeta, if I had known I—"

 

"Fuck, Kakarrot," he hissed, "I don't care." When he turned to face the man, Goku noticed that Vegeta's eyes were pained, glassy. "I don't give a damn what you do."

 

"Vegeta," Goku whispered, swerving down the hallway that lead to the gravity room in the hopes that Vegeta would follow. He did. "I just, I want you to know I'm real sorry. That was a personal moment, and—"

 

"My own goddamn son calling me out as a monster—yes, very personal," Vegeta snapped. "Get over your sentiment and move on. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?"

 

"Look, Vegeta," Goku persisted, pausing at the gravity room door. Unconsciously, Vegeta punched in the code to open it, and before he realized what he was doing, meandered in. Goku followed, copying the pattern to close the door. "I—I kinda get it. I ain't such a good dad myself—"

 

"Dammit, Kakarrot, but the difference is that I tried—" Vegeta slammed one fist against the wall, clenching it tightly. Goku dialed the gravity up, and with its increase, the prince seemed to calm slightly. "You show up after seven years and they take you back into their arms. It took me eight years of swallowing my pride down and two unbelievably powerful enemies before I managed to hug the boy."

 

"He knows you love him," Goku smiled, leaning against the console, struggling not to pat Vegeta on the shoulder to comfort him.

 

"I've failed him," Vegeta breathed slowly. "After all the trouble of deciding to try—I was almost—better—he—he was hardly around when I let Babadi bring out my power," he sighed, "he never really saw it. And that—was different to him—this I did of my own volition..."

 

Goku bit his lip. "Say, yeah, what did you do, exactly?"

 

"I killed Vejata," Vegeta strode over to the console as well, to dial the gravity past where Goku had put it. He paused beside the man. "Much more slowly and painfully than was necessary to get the job done."

 

"And it reminded him of when..."

 

"Yes."

 

"Vegeta," Goku finally laid one arm across the man's shoulders. "It'll be okay. He'll forgive you, sometime. You know, I'll bet it means a lot to him that you really decided to put your whole self into being a better guy for him."

 

"Would you forgive me—if you were him?" Vegeta ducked away from Goku, beginning to throw punches into the air. They were sloppy, Goku noticed, and poorly paced, in Vegeta's turmoil.

 

Goku opened his mouth to say yes, of course—but paused as he remembered Vejata, the finiteness of his mercy. Vegeta paused his motions to stare as Goku struggled to form the right words. "I—I don't know."