Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Fathoming Love ❯ Chapter 20 ( Chapter 20 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

The white walls shone brightly around me, as if there were an internal light bulb to illuminate them. It was simply too bright in here, like the lights in a hospital, cold and foreboding. I cocked my head to the side, feeling tight and isolated, like my body was hooked down to a bed or something.

I moved my fingers ever so slightly, feeling the brush of a plastic straw against my finger tips. There came the pain, registering beyond the comprehension of thought, drowning my body in agony. It was hot and cold at the same time, like the lash of a belt against a naked back side, too painful to even scream. Like it took my breath straight out of my lungs and my mouth was just hanging open quietly.

My eyelids flew open, my mouth sucking in air as I tried to scream, a thousand tubes hooked to my body, blood draining and circulating through medical equipment. A mask was over my face, my body bruised and mangled, so much so that I was nearly indiscernible as human.

And over me stood my twin, a man just like me, face drawn up in a merciless smile, skin twisted and stretched with the wicked grimace. He pointed down towards me, even as I pleaded for him to free my body. Even as I pleaded with him to help me.

“Do it.” Said the man, laughing down at my misfortune. Shaking my head in horror, I tried to scream, the face of a masked doctor appearing over me, his fingers coiling around my throat. Oh God. He was choking me!

Screeching tires.

I flew upwards in bed, checking my body immediately, staring around in disbelief. I was in the darkness, the hospital lights gone. The damage healed. The scars and bruises vanished. I was home in my bed, Laura never stirring next to me, deep in her own nightmares no doubt.

Just a dream, I told myself. All just a dream.



“So where shall I begin now?” Vegeta questioned, raising a very characteristic eyebrow and smiling at me. I had grown accustomed to his strange, trademark attributes. The deep, throaty accent to his voice. The piercing, almost accusing look in his eyes. The way his mannerisms changed with his emotions. How his facial features smoothed out whenever he was feeling the most.

“Begin?” I asked curiously. “Vegeta, we’ve already begun the story haven’t we? After 19 tapes, you’d better not tell me that was just one big introduction!”

“And what if I did?” He countered playfully, sliding his chair back and lacing his fingers together on his lap. “Would you stop listening? Oh, now don’t you try to fool me Tazial Camden. I know you love me.”

“Oh how bloody presumptuous!” I grumbled, crossing my arms together over the table. “Alright Rico Suave, lets get this over with.”

“Indeed,” He grinned. “but there’s so much more to tell. Shall I go back and summarize the beginning? Should I still mourn the passing of Zarbon and Faraque, the broken pieces of my past? Perhaps not,” he nodded to himself. “for one can only wallow in his mistakes for so long before its time to make new ones no?”

I laughed at this. Well, that was an interesting way to put it.
“I’m tired of pondering over past loves. I’m tired of mulling out the “what if’s and “maybe”s. Its time to tell you the real beginning to my story. The end of who I was and the start of who I became.

“Like all good stories, it began with her. Her. The heroine of all fairytales. The beginning of the light and the darkness in every story. The problem and the solution. The her who became the very essence of myself. The her who transformed a hated monster into a somewhat civilized man.

“She was the beauty who tamed a beast.

“But, Tazial, not all beauties are what they seem. Unlike Walt Disney’s portrayal of a woman hero, mine was never tall and blonde. Mine was never quiet and soft spoken, a princess begging her father for more freedom and convinced she’s ready to be married to her “Prince Charming” at the ripe old age of 16. No, my heroine was of the realistic nature. And she might not have been what any man would expect her to be.

“On Namek, is where I found her. Threatening a ridiculously short bald guy, I was met by a voice that could have twisted the hair on any man’s chest. A shriek so aggravating, so inconceivably irritating, my toes curled in my boots, my very finger nails nearly falling off. Like the squeals of a dying rodent, the sound made my temples shudder, my ear drums battering my brain for an escape.


“And by all the stars in the heaven, had I never seen her face, never spoken a word to her after that, I would have been in love with her until eternity met its end. I know its hard to understand Tazial. That’s probably why I’ll make no attempts. But I knew, within myself, that this was unlike any other creature I had come in contact with. I knew that I would never meet anything so rare and so obviously despised by God to be cursed with such a suicidal voice.

“Of course, turning and seeing her for the first time…… well, that only managed to seal the deal.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, leaning in towards him.

“When I saw her eyes for the first time?” he smiled.

“Yes,” I insisted. “How did you feel?”

“How does the human man feel when he sees his first ocean?” Vegeta breathed. “Looking across the endless greens and blues and trying to fathom how even God himself could master such a display of beauty. She was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, her very skin beaming with health and strength, her mouth set in a tight scowl, as if to challenge me. One infinitely stronger then herself, she would dare to scream at! One who, with but a lift of a finger, could send her into a whole new dimension, she regarded like a child, scolding and shaking her finger.

“I think in those very first moments, as I ignored her completely, watching the way her lips moved to form mind blowing obscenities, I must have known that I wanted her. I wanted her in the worst way. In that erotic, explicit way. Like a boy at schools begins unwontedly to fantasize about his teacher, suddenly grabbing a nearby notebook when her skirt goes just a LITTLE too high. Every move that she made weakened me. With every curse, I became more and more her slave, my body awakening to that fierce, primal desire that hadn’t occurred since I’d met Faraque for the first time.

“Had my hatred for Frieza not been so strong, had my determination not been so overpowering, I might just have fallen prey to my desire, snatching her up and making for the closest nearby cave. She was the type of woman to make even a plumber spout lines of poetry. And she was beautiful, of course, but I think I’m focusing too much on that. You’re a married man Tazial. You know as well as any real man that beauty can only go so far. And oh, it went the extra mile for Bulma, I wont deny you that.

“But it was her mind, Tazial. Her strength. Her bravery and even a tad bit of ignorance that made me want her as I had never wanted anything before. I was infatuated from the very start, watching the way her pretty lips moved to form words, the way her eyes blazed every second longer that I just blatantly ignored her. The way her cheeks puffed out when she came to her last bout of patience. Funny how infatuation can spur the victim to appreciate even the most trivial of things, seeing the mundane as further proof of fate’s plan.

“And so I decided very quickly, that if I planned to get off this planet alive, I’d better include her. Where I planned to go? What I planned to eat? What I planned to fly? Leave that to a man’s judgment regarding maps. Lets just say, I intended to do it on my own and I wasn’t going to stop and ask for directions.

“As it turns out, fate was not with me that day, and after nearly 16 years of slavery, 16 years bent on hatred and revenge, I finally met Frieza on the battle field.”

I made a soft gasping noise, Vegeta’s eyes sliding to me suspiciously.

“Don’t get too excited Tazial.” He grumbled, letting out a small snort and leaning back in his chair. “As it was with my fight with Zarbon, nothing was as I had hoped it’d be. Frieza’s power level more than out seeded my expectations of it. His power level dwarfed it! Though I made no claims to understand or even guess how strong the tyrant was, the raw truth of it was too much to even calculate, and I was all too quickly enlightened to the fact that I had no chance of winning. No chance at all.

“All Saiyans went out fighting. We never really lingered on until death. For all I know, we could be immortal. I’ve never seen an old Saiyan. But when we were to go, we would do it fighting for all we were worth. A battle that seems hopeless could transform into an easy victory with the sacrifice of one warrior. One man could tip the scale. And whereas my honor and my pride screamed at me to fight it out, to battle for every breath I took in his captivity, in those moments, for the first time, I gave up.

“Had there been a white flag, I would have thrown it in, as you humans say. I didn’t even try. A thousand victories, a numberless amount dead, blood pouring down my fingertips, and yet the one I had done it all for, the one I truly wanted to kill, was the unattainable victory. And so I let him beat me until there was virtually not one bone in my body that didn’t bare his marks.

“I let him beat me until Kakarot came to save the day, our hero of the story, always there to save my ass when I got in too far over my head. But even for Kakarot, it was too late. By the time he came, there was hardly anything left of me to save.

“I lay on the ground by Frieza’s feet, blood leaking from what seemed to be every pore of my body. I was soaked in it, the back of my hair drenched in sticky, cold blood. And as I sobbed, crying for the first time in years, crying for all the loss along the way, I told him my secrets. I told him of his father, the noble Bardock, bent on saving a world and a planet that were doomed. I told him of a lost breed of warriors, his heritage, his kind, destroyed meaninglessly by a monster that had the power to take any life he wanted.

“And with that, I charged him with the vengeance for our species, laying MY responsibility on his shoulders. Forsaking my purpose in life, my reason for believing that there might be a way better than this. I gave him my last reason for another breath.

“And as I laid there dying, breathing in icy cold air, Kakarot’s large eyes tearing up from over me, I thought nothing of this life that I had made for myself. I thought nothing of the promises that might have met me along the way, or the life I might have found through freedom from Frieza. And in my last moments, I want you to know that I thought nothing of Faraque, or any of the beautiful memories we had shared.

“I cried for myself but mostly, I cried for Zarbon, for a lifetime wasted in hate, in death, in pain and in no regrets. Not a promising future, but a wasted past.

“And like he promised, Tazial, Zarbon was with me, in my heart through it all. Right there beside me, like he always said. Even though I couldn’t see him.”

The pause became too long for my tastes and I was quick to rectify the situation, watching his shadowy eyes spark up at my voice.

“But when did it change?” I insisted. “I mean, Kakarot must have saved you right? I mean…. well..” I laughed. “You’re here aren’t you!? How did it turn around?”

The darkness to his eyes deepened as he smiled, his face very thoughtful as he smirked at me.

“That’s just it,” he whispered, raising an eyebrow. “It never did turn around. Tazial……… I died.”