Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Free My Heart ❯ Chapter 2

DISCLAIMER: I don't own or profit from DBZ

A/N: Thank you so much for your kind reviews. I know I've been missing for a while, and honestly I never expected to be writing DBZ again, or frankly much of anything. But my muse, bless her heart, has seen fit to grace me with her presence once again. And I have learned when she visits you in a dream, its best to write down what she says before it slips away.

I'm sorry if this story or my writing seems too similar to my previous work. I guess if you have a style it's hard to change it. I'll try to make this as interesting as possible.

 

Free My Heart

Vegeta sat on the floor in the corner of the tiny room, lulling his head back against the wall so he could stare at the ceiling. Outside he could hear the woman screaming, but he fought hard to push it into the background. Screams, curses, sadistic laughter. His entire life was a symphony of terror. For once he would just like to indulge in pure, sweet silence. No pained weeping in the distance, or groveling at his feet. Just blessed, merciful silence.

The steel door opened with an ear-piercing screech, and Vegeta closed his eyes in the vain hope of blocking it out. The woman's weeping became louder, and Zarbon's laughter bounced off the cold walls. Vegeta listened with closed eyes as something soft and fragile was dumped on the ground. Just as abruptly the door slammed shut, cutting off the laughter, but the crying remained. It was siren loud, splitting Vegeta's skull open like an axe. He kept his eyes closed, trying not to hear, to feel or to see, just trying to get back to before--before Frieza, before his father, before there was even light. Every night he tried to go back as far as he could, back to the womb. Surely there, in that safe place, there would have been silence.

The crying deepened to bone-wracking sobs. The kind, which sound like wet gasping breathes, and although Vegeta had heard those cries many times before, this time he couldn't drown them out. His focus kept coming back to her with gut-jarring intensity. He knew the reason wasn't just because she was in the room with him. It was her. The woman. There was something about her that held his attention like nothing ever had before in his thirty years. She was crying, and he didn't like it.

He fingered the collar around his neck. If he had the power he would have blasted her. Then she would be silent and he could finally have a little peace, but he was powerless while wearing his chain. Perhaps he could just snap her neck? He dropped his chin, opening his eyes to glare down at the pile of blue hair and white skin on the steel floor.

Like him she was completely naked, except while he was able to withstand the cold, she could not. She was shivering violently, her entire body rocking with the force of her tremors and sobs of pity. And that was what it was, self pity. In Vegeta's experience that's all tears were. You either cried because you were in pain and didn't have the self control to withstand it or you were feeling sorry for yourself and your situation. Someone once told him that people cried because of sorrow. Because they had lost someone they loved, but Vegeta thought that was just self pity as well. Obviously whoever was dead was better off, and the survivor was just moaning about having to suffer through life like everyone else.

Slowly he stood up, his tail slithering out from between his legs where it was keeping his genitals warm and wrapping around his waist. He stared down at the woman who was curled up in the fetal position. His eyes traveled from the tip of her pink painted toes, up her long legs, and around the curve of her tight ass to the arch of her back. Her thin arms were crossed protectively over her chest, and her long blue hair covered her face and spilled out across the stainless steel floor. She was much too skinny for him. He could see every bump of her spine along her back, and the branching of her ribs. The woman was in dire need of a meal.

He came up behind her, watching has she hunched her shoulders, trying to curl up into herself even tighter. He couldn't help the sneer of disgust lifting his lip. Instead of springing to her feet to defend herself she was just laying there waiting to get kicked. She was nothing but a pathetic victim and she was never going to be anything different unless she stood up for herself. Briskly he bent down, and grabbed her up. He expected her to be light, but she was ridiculously so.

“No! Get your fucking hands off me, you bastard!” she screamed, bucking wildly in his arms. He bounced her slightly, getting a better grip before talking a few steps across the room.

“Don't get your hopes up, woman. I wouldn't lower myself to fuck such a disgusting creature like yourself.”

He abruptly tossed her on the single cot in the room, and turned on his heel, returning to his corner. Bulma sat up, whipping her mass of hair out of her eyes to glare daggers at him. Vegeta ignored her as he slid down the wall, coming to rest on the floor with one knee modestly raised. He propped up his arm, and Bulma watched as his muscles bunched over his chest. A streak of crimson blood bisected his flat brown nipple, prompting her to gently touch her wounded lips.

He wore her blood on his chest like a badge, and it made something strange and warm quiver in the bottom of her belly. She dipped her head, and seeing he wasn't intent on doing her harm at the moment, made quick work of wrapping the room's only blanket around her body. Ugly, gray and coarse, it made her itch like mad, but she ignored it the best she could.

The act of doing something, no matter how mundane, stilled the flow of her tears. When Zarbon and Jeice had stripped her down outside, she had been terrified. She thought for sure they were going to rape her horribly. Instead they had just laughed and thrown her in the room with Vegeta. The tears she cried on the floor had been partly out of fear, but mostly it was from grief. The last few days, she had watched as everything and everyone she loved was destroyed. She had fought hard to squelch the wave of invaders, but no weapons could stop them. The rest of the Z warriors had been killed almost immediately, and Goku never made his promised appearance. That left the rest of the human populace to fight the aliens off, but it had been useless. Even with every experimental trick in her lab's arsenal, the military was still no match for them. Soon everything was a smoking ruin with only a few survivors.

The soldiers had laid waste to her compound in a matter of moments. Capsule Corporations buildings were leveled and her labs destroyed. She had been in the living quarters when they came for her, squatting next to her parents bodies, which were half buried beneath a fallen beam. She fought, screamed and scratched with all her might, but it seemed beauty was enough to get you a one way ticket to hell, or as they called it, Lord Frieza's ship.

She and a parade of other women had been brought down to the lower levels for `reprogramming' when Jeice had signaled her out from the crowd. Weary and half-lifeless with sorrow, they brought her to stand over Vegeta to begin their sick, twisted games.

“Why are they doing this?” she whispered without really expecting an answer.

“They want to see how long it will take me to fall on you like some rutting animal. They think if they throw us in this cell together naked it will just be a matter of time. As if I, the Prince of All Saiyans, would ever have so little self control as that.”

Bulma glanced at him then quickly looked away, tightening the blanket around her shoulders. She had never seen someone so comfortable with their own skin as he. He just sat there with no consideration of physical discomfort or how he looked. He just accepted with quiet dignity his circumstances. Waiting, she was certain, for the moment when he could spring up and claim his bloody revenge. She glanced at him again, noting how he watched the door to the cell, like a lion waiting in the grass for an antelope to wander by.

“So I needn't worry about you then?”

Vegeta snorted, and she could see his ivory teeth from beneath the curl of his lip.

“As I said, I would never fuck something so ugly.” The contempt in his voice was thick enough to make Bulma's own lip curl back into a snarl.

“I'll have you know, Vegeta, I'm the most beautiful woman on my planet.”

Vegeta glanced over at her, his black eyes casually examining her.

“Really? You're going to advertise that now? Do you want me to rape you?”

Bulma gasped in outrage, and the cuts on her lips stung as her jaw dropped.

“Of course not,” she snapped back.

“Then what the fuck are you talking about?” Vegeta asked pointedly, and Bulma felt heat suffusing her cheeks.

“Nothing. Never mind. I'm very ugly.” She dropped her gaze to her lap, her lower lip protruding. Her entire life had been destroyed, and now she couldn't even cling to the one thing she had left; her beauty.

“Butt-ass ugly. Swamp thing ugly. Disgusting, maggot-infested---“

“All right! I get it. Shut the fuck up already,” Bulma snapped, her sapphire eyes narrowing dangerously, but Vegeta wasn't looking at her anymore. He was back to staring intently at the door.

They lapsed into silence, and Bulma lay back on the bed, curled up as tightly as she could. The all metal room was cold, and the thin blanket was hardly warm. She glanced at Vegeta but he was motionless and seemingly unaffected by the chill in the air or by the cold metal he was sitting on. She was about to close her eyes, when she heard a repetitive clicking sound from down the hall, rushing nearer.

As she sat up, the bright overhead lights shut off, drenching them in thick darkness. She let out a muffled shriek, and pulled her knees to her chest.

“What's going on?” she whimpered, looking around for Vegeta, but the darkness was so complete she couldn't even see her hand in front of her face.

“Lights out.”

“Just like that? No warning?”

“Just like that.” Vegeta's voice was cold in the darkness, and it made Bulma feel even more alone. Now she was without sight, she couldn't help but to remember that she was alone in the dark with a killer. A monster who slaughtered people for recreation, and the only thing stopping him from raping her was his word.

“No dinner?” she asked, grasping for any straw. She didn't want to be here. She wanted to be home in her own bed, with her parents just down the hall and the knowledge that she would wake up to a beautiful day.

“Guess not.”

“Can they do that? It's not right.”

“Fuck woman, you are stupid. What do you want? A bed time story too? Just shut up and go to sleep.”

Bulma buried her face in her knees, and tried not to think about the darkness. Her hot tears soaked the blanket untill eventually she couldn't keep her sobs silent.

Vegeta heard her ragged breaths and the muffled sobs. It made him want to gorge his ear drums out. What was worse was that with his night vision he could see her shadow cowering on the bed. She was so small, almost child-like. He never had mercy for child, so he couldn't understand what it was about her tears that made his throat close up and his chest hurt.

“Why are you carrying on now?” he snapped.

It was a long time before she answered, and her tears only seemed to get worse.

“I'm afraid.” She finally choked out. “I'm afraid of going to sleep. I'm afraid of dreaming of summer days and strawberries. I'm afraid of the nightmares I'll have of the things I've seen the last couple of days. I'm afraid you're lying and really are going to hurt me. But mostly I'm afraid of waking up in the morning, and for just a split second forgetting everything and thinking I'm back home, only to have to live through the moment of realization that I'm not.”

Vegeta closed his eyes against her words, and tilted his head back against the steel wall. He swallowed the hard lump scouring the inside of his throat.

“I won't hurt you.”

There was only the sound of her slowly lessening sobs drifting between them. Vegeta kept his eyes closed, counting silently between breaths, calming his senses.

“You promise?” she whispered to her knees, and Vegeta had to strain to hear.

He opened his eyes, staring into the darkness. He couldn't take away her dreams or nightmares. Or the one terrible moment upon waking. He couldn't do that for her, because he couldn't do it for himself. For twenty years, since his father placed him with Frieza, he had been living through the same moment. So, no, he couldn't take that away for her, but he could give her his promise that he wouldn't hurt her. If it would take away her tears, at least for a short while, then he could do that.

“I promise.”

Her ragged breaths evened out, and he watched as she lay back on the cot. She curled up into a ball, and he knew it was less about the cold and more about trying to ward off the darkness. He sat there, listening as her breathing deepened and she fell into sleep. Once she was finally still, he went back to watching the door. Staring. Waiting. Stalking.