Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Fixation ❯ Chapter Twelve ( Chapter 12 )

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

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from DBZ.
A/N:  I’m very sorry about the delay.  The last half of my semester was a complete monster, and then as if my body knew I had no more obligations I became seriously ill.  Though I’m not completely up to par, I’ve been dying to get this out to you guys.  Thank you so much for your patience.
Chapter Twelve
Vegeta didn’t train.  From the moment he left Bulma with the sharded remains of her bones until darkness had crept and crawled over everything bright with hope, he stood, staring sightlessly at the metal walls of his sanctuary, and remembered every vile, monstrous thing he had ever done.  He was truly terrible.  He had murdered men, women and children.  He had torn them limb from limb, snapped their necks, beat them bloody, and burned them to ash.  Screams had echoed around him in a cacophony of terror, the overture of his fearsomeness sung at every world he visited.  Pleas for mercy had been laughed at before being ruthlessly crushed.  Pity was ground to dust beneath his boot-heel.  Such things were for the weak, and Vegeta had never been weak.
His strength wasn’t something to be shared.  It was for him and him alone.  His men were expected to find their own for there was no safety in his shadow.  Those kneeling before him, pleading to be saved were kicked aside like the weak wretches they were.  Vegeta didn’t use his strength for the betterment of others.  His strength wasn’t a shield for those who couldn’t protect themselves.  His strength was for war, for vengeance, for his own personal greatness.  He felt no regret for how he lived his life.
A conscience was something you were born with.  Either you had it or you didn’t.  It wasn’t something that grew inside.  It wasn’t the product of spontaneous genesis.  There was no such thing as a sudden moral impediment coalescing in the heretofore unused portion of the villain’s brain right before he vanquished the hero.  A conscience was imbued in every hero and absent in every villain.  There was right and there was wrong.  A conscience is not the tool to understand which was which, but the ability to moralize and empathize.  A villain has no morality.  A villain has no empathy.
Vegeta did not care what happened to the woman.  Beyond the fact that she had the most kissable lips he had ever felt in six galaxies she was nothing to him.  Less than nothing.  She had no strength, neither physically or mentally.  She was one of the wretches to be kicked to the side.  Her tears were invisible to him, her sobs mute.  She was nothing more than a passing figment in the greatness that was him.  And that was why, after twelve hours of staring at the wall, he couldn’t even begin to fathom why he felt like ripping apart the city building by building until he found the fuck-head who had raped, tortured and murdered her.
Made an urn of her bones.  Who does something like that?  Vegeta’s life was, as he would scoffingly say, experience-rich.  He was confident that had met the worst of the worst in his life.  Vegeta, himself made the top five on the list.  But no one he had ever met, not even Frieza, had been that kind of sick.  It drew his mind down paths that he didn’t want to contemplate.  He found himself wondering what her life had been like those last few weeks.  How intense her suffering must have been.  He found himself moralizing on the actions of the villain.  Empathizing for the victim.
If he was doing this, then he was losing a fundamental part of himself.  Prince Vegeta of Vegeta-sai was a survivor.  He was ruthless.  He was powerful.  He did not tie himself to weaklings, and he did not protect the powerless.  Vegeta was here for one reason.  He needed to become strong enough to force Kakarot’s hand.  When, not if, but when he did so then either Kakarot would end him, and he would finally be able to find peace in Nurti’s Feasting Hall or he would defeat Kakarot, thus becoming the most powerful Saiyan to ever live.  He would restore honor to the house of Vegeta-sai, and obtain some measure of peace in his life.  This goal did not have to be obtained on Earth.  It could be done anywhere.  It could be done in a place where there was no danger of feeling anything except duty.
Habit returned him to the suite for dinner.  As he landed on the shadowy balcony he scanned the room, bile burning in his gut as he felt Max’s ki.  The man was a miserable failure of a guard, and if he had his way he would have fried him long ago.  First he allowed his charge to be kidnapped and murdered then he allowed the madman to terrorize her from afar. Fuck, he brought the man’s weapon, psychological as it may be, right to her.  Vegeta stomped into the common area, his dark eyes sweeping over Bulma who sat on the couch tucked up next to her mother.  His growl reverberated through the room.  With underlying threat alone, Vegeta herded the cowed man towards the door.  Behind him, he heard movement and the hollow between his shoulder blades twitched, but he didn’t turn.  He knew the women behind him were no threat.
Max cast desperate glances over Vegeta’s shoulder, and although the man was taller than the Prince, his demeanor made him small.  Slender fingers encircled his wrist, and he didn’t have to look down to see who’s they were.
“Don’t, Vegeta.  It wasn’t his fault.”
Vegeta shook her off with enough force to shove her back.  He turned on her, his eyes blazing.  His normally straight hair, ridged back like the hackles of a dog, and everyone in the room was aware of the white hot anger that was snapping from his fisted hands.
“I am not a dog for you to snap your fingers at.  I do not fetch, lie down or attack on command for you.  This male is in my territory and I told you before that he was never to be here again.”
His blatant aggression towards Bulma had stiffened Max’s spine, and he poised himself to attack, but at Vegeta’s final words he seemed to lose some of his vigor.  Bulma was staring at Vegeta open-mouthed, her previously dull eyes brightening.
“Vegeta, I—.”
He flexed forward, and her words died in her throat.  She didn’t flinch away, and Vegeta’s ivory fangs flashed under his grim smile.
“You disobeyed me, Bulma.  How do you think we should deal with that?”
Bulma paled, and her chest rose.  The air seemed to snap and hiss before falling deathly still.
“Oh my, a lover’s spat,” Bunny twittered as she pushed herself between the two.  With the grace of a debutant she encircled Max’s arm with her own.  “We should leave them to it.”
Max shot her a startled glance.
“Really, I don’t think-.”
“Come along, dear,” she cajoled in a sing song voice, but her grip on the man was anything but coaxing.
Vegeta held Bulma’s eyes until the door was shut, then he turned away with a sneer of disgust moving towards the kitchen where a pot of spaghetti awaited him.  
“I think it’s time I left.”  Not bothering with a plate, he scooped up the pot, and bracing his hips against the counter he dug in with a fork.  
“No!”  The force of her denial started them both.  He paused, watching as she rushed up, stopping on the other side of the island that separated the kitchen from the common area.
“Please, Vegeta.  You can’t leave.  I need you here.”
Something tight and visceral clenched in his stomach at her words.  No one had ever claimed to need him before.  No one had ever reacted with such emotion at the thought of his leaving.  He had to remind himself that it wasn’t him she wanted, just his strength.  She wanted to find protection in his shadow.  He looked away from the shimmer in her eyes, and focused on his food.
“Save you tears, woman.  Bawling won’t stop me if I decide to leave.”
She sniffed, and he had to physically resist the urge to look up.  “So you haven’t decided?”
He didn’t answer her.  Instead, he shoved forkfuls of tomato slathered noodles into his mouth, swallowing without tasting.  She fluttered nervously across from him, like a bird unsettled in a gilded cage.  Awkwardness stretched between them until Bulma was overcome with the need to fill the space.
“I spoke to the police.  They took the broken urn and the box for testing.  They might be able to find fingerprints or something.”
The room was heavy with Vegeta’s silence.  Bulma couldn’t bear to look at him, and focused on the countertop.  She had stopped biting her nails, and they had grown in pink and healthy.  She picked at the white grout of the counter near the edge.
“Now that they know he’s an artist, they say it will help narrow their search, and if they find him then—.”
Vegeta threw the pot into the sink with enough force the leftover spaghetti splattered onto the backsplash.  The loud clatter made Bulma jump back.  She clasped her hands to her chest, her big blue eyes widening in the pale oval of her face.  Vegeta advanced until he raged across the counter from her.  He vibrated with anger, his hair ridged back and the black tips quivered.
“Then what, Bulma?  They will imprison him for the rest of his miserable life.  Feed and water him.  Give him clothes and a place to piss?  He hunted you, tortured you, and slaughtered you like an animal.  There is a time and a place for mercy.  This is not it.”
Tears, already rimmed in her eyes, overflowed her cheeks.  With the sleeve of her sweatshirt, she roughly wiped them away, and huddled into herself with her shoulders hunched.
“That is our way, Vegeta.  When someone commits a crime, they are punished.”
“Punished?  Living out their life in luxury is not punishment.”
“Prison isn’t luxurious.  It’s a hard place, full of violence and---.”
Vegeta slashed his hand through the air cutting her off.
“I’ve explored the majority of your world, including your prisons, and I can assure you they are pleasure palaces compared to the everyday life that I’ve seen on other worlds.  He will know no hardship there, and he will not pay for his crime against you.”
Exasperated, she flung her hands up into the air.  Her anger at Vegeta cleared away her misery and sorrow.  There was no fear, only anger and a desire for satisfaction.  “Well, what would you suggest, Vegeta?  I can’t kill him.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, dread settled down around her shoulders.  She met Vegeta’s dark, fathomless eyes from across the room.  His countenance was grim and unyielding.  Nervousness strummed its way up her spine, and she had to clasp her arms across her chest to control the shivers that suddenly wracked her.  The room was ghostly silent, and only her startled breathing could be heard.  Slowly, she drew nearer to the island, close enough now that she could reach across it to touch Vegeta if she desired.
Their eyes still locked she whispered to him.  “What is it like to kill someone?”
A heartbeat passed and his eyes dropped away, breaking their connection.  He turned from her, and it seemed as if she could see a dark weight on his shoulders, folded across his back like a cloak of shadows, black feathers of sin.
Vegeta braced himself on the edge of the sink.  He stared passed the white lace curtain of the tiny window into the night sky.  The moon was fat and full.  Pain echoed across the barren stretch of his soul.  The first real emotion he had felt in a long time.  Without his tail he could not answer the call of the pale moonlight, but he could still hear it, singing through his blood, curling through his gut.  He wanted to shout and dance beneath her light, but it was gone from him forever.  Just like everything else in this life.  He was empty and alone.
“You’re asking the wrong person, Bulma.  I ceased to feel a long time ago.  Killing is nothing more than an action.  A bodily function, like pissing.”
He heard her moving behind him, felt her tiny hand flutter against his back, near the vulnerability of his spine.  Instead of stiffening, he felt something sweet and sad sweep through him.  He was a villain and she was a victim.  They weren’t meant to share the same air.  Their lives weren’t meant to brush up against each other.  But they did.  And as a result he felt empathy.
“As long as he lives, you’ll never be free of him.  Even if your laughable law enforcement capture and imprison him, he will still be able to haunt you.”  He turned so he could face her.  She didn’t withdraw her hand, and it resettled over his heart.  She looked up at him with blue eyes full of compassion, and he wondered how it was even possible.  Her ability to care for others should have been burned away with her body in the heat of the monster’s kiln, but somehow she retained it.  Magically, she chose to share it with him, a person who did not deserve it.  “He will continue to hunt you in your dreams.”
His words, softly spoken, were sharp with truth.  She dropped her gaze, and he was suddenly bereft.
“I wouldn’t know how to go about it.  He is too strong.  Too…,” she trailed off, her gaze centered on her hand that rested on his bare chest.
“Terrifying?” he finished for her.  She nodded, her blue hair sweeping forward over her shoulder.  Against his own volition he reached up to brush it back.  The silky hair slid over the backs of his scarred knuckles.  “He is nothing more than a human man.  He is scared, weak and small.  He preys on females because it is the only way he can feel powerful.  You can defeat him.  I will show you how, and I will be there with you.”
Her bright blue eyes shot up to meet his gaze and he felt of sunburst of light shower over him.  Her fingers curled over his chest, her nails lightly scraping over his sensitive skin.
“You’ll come?”  Her voice quivered with uncertainty.  Gently he cupped her jaw in the palms of his hands.  She rose up on her tiptoes, pulled towards the magnetism of his dark eyes.  He nodded and she swallowed.  “You’ll stay?”  His thumbs brushed the hollows of her cheeks, his lips hovering over hers.  In his unbroken gaze she saw shadows in the depths of his eyes.
“Till the job is done,” he whispered against her pink lips, before claiming them in a kiss.  She sunk into the swirling darkness of it.  Accepting the pact of murder made between them, sealed with a kiss.


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