Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Fixation ❯ Chapter Seven ( Chapter 7 )

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A/N: Check out a second unexpected installment of Scandalous.

Fixation

Chapter Seven

Vegeta's sigh rattled around in his hollow chest when the Gravity Room inexplicably powered down, triggered from an outside source. He knew it wasn't the woman. He could feel her beneath him, twitching around with manic energy. She was the reason for his bad mood. He had been immersed in her for the last week. She was everywhere, beneath him during the day, outside the room where he slept at night. The smell of her was embedded in his sheets, spawning dark, rich dreams of skin and hair, and breathy little moans. All things he did not want to desire with every fiber of his being. He stared at the darken ceiling of his room, learning too much about miracle cleansers and closet spacers, while the woman gyred downward into sleepless paranoia, pulling him with her.

He zeroed in on the bright, sunshine ki outside the door, turning away to shrug on a shirt as it slid open. Vegeta had learned, first from his mother the queen, then from the rare encounters with ice-jinn females that matriarchs were always to be respected, no matter what you thought of them personally. Bulma's mother was the most vacuous creature he had ever met, but that did nothing to diminish her status as wife to a wealthy man who was considered a king among the scientific community.

Mrs. Briefs always fluttered in a way that reminded him of yellow canaries trapped in a cage. As if she was always on the verge of flight from the pandemonium that was her mind. People like her made him nervous. Unpredictability was not a trait he admired in others.

“There you are dearie.”

Vegeta raised a dark brow, for clearly he had never been lost.

“I brought you a snack.”

He watched as she placed a large plate of delicious smelling chocolate chip cookies on the control panel, precariously close to the gravity regulator. He continued to stare as she fussed with the arrangement, turning the plate just so while he assumed she worked up the courage to speak her mind. It would have been easier to oust her from his training room, but then there would be screeching, and tears, and probably more screeching from the other female, and of course there was her position to be considered.

She spun away from the plate in a flurry of determination, and looked him dead in the eye. His estimation of her increased by a notch. Only the bravest or craziest of beings looked him in the eye.

“So I understand that you are staying with Bulma in her rooms.”

Vegeta crossed his arms. If she was going to cry foul, then she was about to bite off more than she could chew. Her daughter was the one to invite him in, and despite his nighttime fantasies, he was not going to be engaging in any sort of relations with the crazy, blue-haired woman, sexual or otherwise. He set his face into a scowl that would have warned off the most hardened of warriors, but Mrs. Briefs was disturbingly unaffected as she suddenly crossed the distance between them, her hands clasped together in near prayer.

“Is she okay? Is she eating? How does she look?”

Taken aback, Vegeta uncrossed his arms, readying himself to push her away if necessary, and put some distance between them.

“You don't know?”

She clamped a trembling hand over her mouth, turning away. Vegeta could smell salt in the air.

“No. She hasn't let me in for weeks. Somewhere, somehow I failed her. I was too young. Too spoiled. I should have been a better mother. Now, she needs me, and she won't let me help.”

Vegeta shifted his weight, glancing at the door. He could most definitely take his training elsewhere.

“When she ordered all those groceries to be sent up to her room. I was relieved. I thought she finally got her appetite back. But now I see it was just for you.”

Vegeta thought of their evenings together. How she fixed him large meals. How she talked to him between bites while he ate in silence.

“She eats.”

Mrs. Briefs shot him a smile full of liquid sunshine.

“And is she sleeping?”

Vegeta shrugged, looking away. From the corner of his eye he watched her smile dim.

“Is she still covering her neck?”

Vegeta didn't reply. Mrs. Briefs frowned, lost in her thoughts.

“When she sees herself in the mirror she becomes so distressed.”

Her gaze sharpened on him, and he realized for the first time that she had the same bright, blue eyes as Bulma.

“She must trust you an awful lot to allow you into her rooms.”

Alarm squirreled its way through Vegeta's guts.

“I don't' think—“

“You must do something for me.” She placed a small hand on his chest. Vegeta was appalled. What was it with humans and touching? “Watch over my baby. Make sure she eats, and gets some sleep. Try to encourage her to come out of her rooms to see her family or just out. Humans need sunshine to be happy and healthy.”

Vegeta swatted her hand away, feeling the oppressive weight of her pleas in its wake.

“I am not a nanny. I am merely fulfilling a bargain. Your daughter's health is of no concern to me. If you want to cluck then I suggest you do it face to face. She's downstairs now.”

She brightened, and it felt like the sun had found its way into the room. She fluttered with excited energy, and Vegeta could hear the rustle of bird feathers. “She's out of her room? That's wonderful, Vegeta! I knew you were a good boy.” Before he could stop her, she planted a kiss on his cheek. He rubbed at the gummy, pink smear as if it was infused with poison, his face plastered with a look of absolute disgust. She failed to notice as she skipped across the room, and disappeared down the hatch.

It was dark before she left, and cookies were a distant memory digesting in Vegeta's stomach. As tasty as they had been, they did nothing to assuage Vegeta's anger. He had been forced to do nothing, but katas on the lawn while she visited with her crazy daughter. He couldn't figure out how she turned off the gravity room, much less how to turn it back on, and he wasn't about to go ask. He glared silent daggers at her back as she traipsed into the house, humming a happy little tune.

He was standing alone on the darkened lawn, looking at the yellow squares of light on the grass pouring from the windows of the house. He was bone-deep tired. Not just from his current situation, but from everything. His entire life there had always been something to do. A new mission to complete. Revenge to plot. Subordinates to humiliate. Now there was nothing. His life was nothing. He had nothing of his own, and nowhere to go. He had spent his adulthood, fearing that Frieza would grow tired of his insubordination, and kill him on the spot before he could complete his revenge, but now Vegeta found himself in the very precarious position of being unable to die if he wanted to. The only acceptable way to die for a Saiyan was in battle, and the only being strong enough to kill him would rather play buddy-buddy than do him in like he should.

It would seem the sentence for his crimes was life.

Vegeta never would admit that he wanted to die. For it just to be done and over with. Hell, he didn't really even admit it to himself, but there was the exhaustion. That bone-deep need for sleep. The kind of sleep you never wake from.

He shook himself, turning to face the space-ship. The woman was waiting for him inside. Waiting for him to be some sort of white knight. She had better not hold her breathe, he decided in a flash of anger. He levitated off the ground, flying towards his new room. As soon as he touched down on the balcony, something started to twist in the pit of his stomach. He ignored it, and strode with single-mindedness to the bathroom, where he stripped his clothes to take a shower.

Tonight, he was going to take a little break. He needed to get a full night's sleep to throw off the funk he was in. A shower, a meal, and sleep were all he needed. He would feel better in the morning. He stood, his face upturned towards the spray as it washed the sweat from his body. From beneath his closed lids, his eyes moved rapidly as he checked for the ki of the woman still beneath his training room, trapped there by her own inability to conquer the fear that left her incapable of leaving the tiny room without him by her side. He cranked the water off, nearly crushing the knobs as he realized what he was doing, and stepped out of the shower.

With a flare of ki he dried himself as he crossed the room, uncaring that he left footsteps of water back on the bathroom floor. By the time he reached the dresser there wasn't a lick of water left on him. He pulled on a dark pair of sweats, leaving his chest bare since there was no woman's sense of propriety to be concerned with.

He moved through the suite with the lights off. In the kitchen he rooted around the fridge, his eyes slit against the light. He found some cheese tortellini, and he ate it cold, right out of the bowl, while leaning against the sink. His eyes swept the living area, relishing the quiet around him. He tossed the empty bowl into the sink, stretching his arms above his head, smiling a little as he thought of the deep sleep about to come. He tried to leave the sick feeling in his stomach behind with the dirty dishes.

The bedroom looked blue in the dark. The French doors were open to the breeze, and he could smell jasmine and lilac in the air. The gravity room was powered down so the only thing he could hear was a dog barking in the distance, and the chirping of crickets in the grass. The sheets were cool, and felt soothing against his skin. He lay on his back, his hands folded beneath his head as he watched the shadows play on the ceiling. There was an angry shout, and the dog grew quiet. The crickets continued to chip, and an owl signaled its intent to hunt. He watched the shadows, but his eyes didn't grow heavy, and the squirming his belly worsened. In the deepest pools of darkness he saw faces and places he had hoped to forget, and when the wind kicked up the shadows wavered looking like flames.

An hour later, Vegeta was sitting up with a growl, and the room was dancing with an angry, blue light. There was only one thing that Radditz had taught his young prince about Saiyan heritage, and that was every curse word known to their language. Vegeta was repeating every single one as he forced open the door to the living quarters beneath the gravity chamber.

Light exploded in front of him, and projectiles that he couldn't dodge slammed into his chest with a burst of fire and sulfur. Electricity jolted him with enough juice to down a rushing bull elephant, and sizzle its tail right off its gargantuan body. Vegeta shot back through the doorway, hitting the far wall with a crack. He was barely able to stop his knees from buckling as he leaned against the wall for support. His chest was blackened, and the bottoms of his feet were raw and blistered. When the smoke cleared, he could see the rubble of exploded, homemade missiles launched from a jerry-rigged contraption in the center of the room. Tapped to the floor was a live wire that was ripped straight from the electrical conduit in the wall. There was no sign of Bulma.

Cautiously, he righted himself, swallowing his wince as he put his full weight on his burnt feet. His wounds were already starting to heal, but that did nothing to assuage his anger.

“Woman,” he bellowed loud enough to shake the walls.

He felt her ki fluctuate, and he pinpointed her in the bathroom on the other side of the room. Sweeping the newly renovated office for anymore booby-traps, he crossed the distance quickly, pausing at the doorway, to check the bathroom. Seeing nothing dangerous, he easily found the woman huddled inside the barren shower that had no door. She was squatting on the dry, cold tile, looking at him from between her fingers that were cupping her face. A tight muscle in his jaw ticked. Carefully he stepped into the room, avoiding the shards of shattered glass from the broken mirror above the sink.

“You left me!”

He was half way across the room before she flung the accusation at him. He was a little stunned at her brassiness. After all, he was giving serious thought to killing her.

“What the fuck was that shit all about?” He yelled, sweeping his hand behind him towards the other room.

“If you weren't going to protect me then I had to do it myself.”

He stared at her. That was the first sane thing he'd heard her utter in a while. It was about time she starting taking responsibility for her own safety. If she had known how to protect herself in the first place, then she wouldn't be in this shit-fuck state now, would she?

“And what was your plan after? Plead pathetically for your life as you wallowed in your own piss?”

She shot to her feet, her face pinched with anger.

“What do you mean? My missiles were ingenious. I built those little babies out of nothing. Just junk that was laying around. Freaking brilliant of me. It's not my fault you are impossible to kill.”

Vegeta crossed his arms, glaring at her. “Well it seems like they were a failure just like everything else you do.” Too late he realized he pushed too far. The newborn confidence in her delicate features shattered, and she slumped back down, looping her arms around her knees, and hiding her face.

“You're right, it wouldn't have killed him.”

Vegeta cursed himself, and shook his head. Glancing around the room, looking at anything but her, he focused at the fragment of mirror at his feet.

“Of course it would have killed him. Like you said, I'm a God, and he's just some puke of a human.

She lifted her head, so she might peak at him with big, blue eyes.

“I am positive the words, “You're a God,” have never crossed my lips.”

He lifted a corner of his mouth in a smile that he knew from experience most women liked. Her eyes widened, and she dropped her face back into the crook of her arms. Vegeta rolled his eyes, mentally smacking himself. He absolutely was not flirting with the bat-shit crazy human.

“Why did you leave me, Vegeta?”

Her voice was muffled, and that sick little squirm was back in his belly.

“I didn't. I was merely doing a perimeter sweep.” Vegeta had lied so many times in his life that they tasted no different than truths. This time there was bile, and he wondered why his tongue felt swollen.

“You were?” She was eying his sweats and bare chest, and he wondered if she discerned his lie. The idea of her knowing that he lied made something awkward flip in his chest. Why was he protecting her from the truth? Why did he care if she knew he lied? What was caring?

He looked her in the eye, raising his chin a notch.

“The Prince of All Saiyans does not lower himself to lie.”

“Oh.” Her face clouded, and he was relieved when she looked away. Her hair was growing out, and he could see powder blue along the line of her scalp on the top of her head.

He toed the fragment of mirror, seeing only a reflection of one dark eye.

“What's with your war on mirrors? Going to purge every last one of them from existence?”

She swallowed, and rubbed her throat with a trembling hand. At her action he had a moment of perfect clarity. He looked around, knowing that he was as alone as he was ever going to be with someone. He bent down to pick up the large shard, and walked over to the defeated woman. With a steady hand at her elbow, he stood her up. She looked at him with questioning eyes. He stared into them, and wondered exactly what color they were. They weren't just blue. They were something more. Something deeper.

“When resurrected, the body is healed completely. There are no open wounds or scars. Everything is pristine.”

She shifted towards him, her face upraised in rapture as if he was speaking the gospel of some wondrous unknown god.

“But the soul is still damaged.”

She tightened her delicate hand around her neck, and nodded. He brought the mirror up to breast level, angling it so they could both see the reflection of his chest. She saw only smooth, caramel skin. Vegeta saw something more.

“These soul-wounds are only visible to the resurrected. They fade in time, but when I first came back I could see the bloody hole where Frieza struck me down.” He stared into the mirror for a long time, Bulma silent beside him. Finally he tossed the mirror away, and it shattered against the wall. Neither of them moved at the gun-shot loud pop.

He looked down at her, and for the first time he realized she had wrapped her cool fingers around his wrist.

“Soon your soul-wound will cease to bleed, and there will only be a scar left. Perhaps even that will be gone someday as well.” The last part was a hopeful plea on his part.

“Thank you, Vegeta.”

She blinked, and he was released from her spell. He shook her off, and crossed the room to lead her out.

“Don't cut your feet on the glass, weakling.”

Bulma smiled, following him home while watching where she stepped.