Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Lab Monkey ❯ Wrath ( Chapter 33 )

Disclaimer: I do not own anything to do with DBZ. The Lullaby incorporated is from the CD Oyasumi by Aiko Shimada, voice by Elizabeth Falconer. The name of the song is Aiko's Lullaby. I used the English translation in the story, but for those who are interested I put the original Japanese version at the end of the chapter. Many thanks to Wolfie from DBZ Salon for the wonderful translation. Thanks to LisaB for her beta skills.

 

A/N: As a side note, this is not the way this chapter was supposed to unfold. I recently reread my story to locate any loose ends that I needed to tie up, and I suddenly became irrationally angry at Bulma and her behavior. Is it possible to get angry at a fictional character? No matter. What's worse, I think I'm even angrier at Vegeta, especially now. Hmm, perhaps I should just go pick a fight with my husband….*wanders off aimlessly*

 

 

Chapter Thirty-Three

Wrath

 

 

The silence that fell over the room was deafening—thick and choking, like poisonous gas. The stillness was so intense it seemed as though the air itself had stopped moving, as if all the protons and electrons had skid to a dead stop and dropped to the floor, filling the room.

 

Then deep inside the stillness was movement. Slowly it seeped out into a ring of malice, until waves of anger reinforced it, swamping the stagnant room. Bulma tried to breath, but the pure menace stole streams of oxygen from her lungs. She tried to speak, but the thickness of the air paralyzed her body. Time elapsed; eternity sped by; only her heartbeat kept rhythm with indeterminable seconds.

 

As suddenly as the stillness had descended, it erupted. An explosion of movement left her gasping for long denied air, adrenaline spiking her heart rate until her pulse pounded in her ears.

 

Vegeta shot up from his chair, sweeping his arm wide to clear the dishes from the table. Delicate china hit the cold cement floor, shards of white bone splintering off in all directions, some ricocheting with near deadly accuracy for vulnerable parts of her human body. She tried to protect her eyes, but he was upon her before she could move.

 

His fingers wrapped around her biceps, his skin burning hot and searing her to the bone. She tried to scream, but the sound was ripped away as he whipped her around, lifting her up off the ground until the backs of her legs hit the ledge of the table. He stepped into her, bending her back until her elbows were braced on the newly stained white linen.

 

“Why did you do it?”

 

The anger that ravaged his face was nothing compared to the stark rawness of his words. Though they were softly spoken, they were filled with such cruelty that she was relieved that words couldn't do physical harm. If they had been daggers they would have sliced clean through her.

 

Bulma's eyes welled up with the sorrow that had been plaguing her since they left King Cold's ship. How many times would she have to apologize before Vegeta forgave her, before he believed her? What else could she do to make amends?

 

“I did it for you. I can't stand that I've hurt you. I would have never cut it off in the first place, but I didn't have a choice. I'm so sor---“

 

Her apology was choked off at Vegeta's expression. She had never seen someone so angry in her life. The vein at his temple distended and throbbed, his face turning ruddy with barely suppressed rage. The tip of his tongue peeked out from between his teeth, and she was struck the sudden fascinating fear that he was going to bite it off in a fit.

 

She didn't have time to contemplate the gruesome possibility of having a severed tongue in her lap before Vegeta began to shake her in the manner of a frustrated dog with a half-chewed rag doll.

 

“Do you think I'm stupid?” he spat with such venom that Bulma was stunned. “Have I ever given you any indication that I'm a total fucking moron?”

 

He stopped shaking her long enough for her to stutter a shocked, barely formed reply. The negative had barely passed over her lips before he began shaking her again. A dull, thudding ache blossomed at the center of her skull radiating out behind her eyeballs as the world rattled by her. She latched her small hands onto his forearms, attempting to anchor herself in the storm of his wrath. She felt his fingers tighten around her biceps, bruising her nearly to the bone, but at her unspoken plea he ceased shaking her, settling for barking words into her blanched face.

 

“Do you think because you are such a fucking genius that I can't grasp the simplest of concepts? Do you really think that poorly of me, Bulma? Damn, it must be such a god-damn trial even speaking in my general direction!”

 

“N-no! No, Vegeta I don't think that about you at all. In fact, you are the only person who has ever listened to me. I think---“

 

“Shut up! I can't stand your whining, putrid voice. It's like razors across my brain. Don't you ever shut up?” As abruptly as he had grabbed her, he pushed her away, spinning a half-step until his back was to her. She watched, open-mouthed, as he thrust his fingers into his hair in a rare, mind-boggling display of utter frustration that made her feel completely out of her element. She had no idea how to respond to this Vegeta, to this man who was displaying such raw, open emotion that it practically seeped into the cement floors and steel walls.

 

He swung back towards her, his hard mask partially in place, but she could see the ragged edges of his pain undulating beneath, the agony that burned in his black, glassy eyes as he glared dangerously down at her.

 

“I know why you took my tail, Bulma. Freiza pinned you into a corner you made for yourself, and you had no way out. I can blame you for how you got there, but not for what you did. If it hadn't been you then it would have been someone else, and then my tail would be rotting in a dung heap somewhere instead of floating in some sort of viscous muck waiting to be reattached. I never doubted that you could fix your fuck up, but that's not what I asked you, now is it?”

 

Bulma opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water. She had no idea how to respond. If he understood why had she cut off his tail, why had he been punishing her for all these months with his cold, distant attitude? If he knew that she had done it under duress, then why was he so angry? Had she been apologizing for the wrong thing all this time? How could she have done something so heinous that Vegeta was unable to forgive her and not know what it was? What had she done?

 

“I don't understand, Vegeta? I—what did I do?”

 

She barely had time to spit out the words before he leapt on her, pushing her back onto the table. The heat of his body radiated off him, reminding her of a nuclear reactor-- unstable, unstoppable, and deadly from the inside out.

 

“Why did you leave me that night?”

 

“What?” Bulma could feel the air leave her body in a rush. Of all the things he could have said to her that was not what she had expected. The blood rushed from her already pale skin, leaving her feeling light-headed at the loss.

 

“With, Zarbon. Why did you do it?”

 

If she lived to be a hundred, Bulma would never have expected to see such agonizing emotion in Vegeta's eyes, and she doubted she would see it again if she lived a hundred more. Vegeta's suffering was a once in a life time event, it would never come again, nor she suspected, had anyone before her witnessed such a thing. She had a front row seat to one of the worst occurrences in Vegeta's existence, and to know that she was the cause of it shattered her very soul.

 

“I told you. I wanted to save you.” She stuttered her explanation, completely unable to fathom how this event was the one that had made him so unreasonably angry. She thought his wrath with her all this time had been over his tail. She had been wrong. A deep sense of betrayal been born on the night she walked out on him with Zarbon at her side.

 

“Save me? You? What ever gave you the idea that I needed saving? And how did you arrive at the conclusion that you had the right to do anything of the sort?” His hand slashed so close to her face in frustration that he nearly struck her.

 

“Zarbon seemed so much stronger than you. More powerful---” Too late she realized how condemning her words were. By uttering those few syllables she had done the unforgivable---she had stolen his pride from him, rendering him nearly impotent as a warrior.

 

Vegeta glared at the distraught woman as if she were a bug waiting to be crushed under his heel. His all-consuming anger at her was barely contained beneath a tattered veil of self-control. In his entire existence he had never given a thought to how other people perceived him. He was the Prince of Vegeta-sei, the last heir to a dead race, the living face of their pride and strength. All that had ever mattered was that he comport himself in a manner that would have made his people proud, and to hell with everyone else.

 

But with Bulma it was different. Somehow, somewhere, her opinion of him had started to matter. He had allowed her to believe that he had let the poisonous trader live because he couldn't face the shadowed condemnation in her eyes. Her estimation of him mattered. Her thoughts for him mattered. Her feelings mattered. And in the end, the truth was that she had no faith in him as a man or a warrior. She had no trust in him or his ability to protect himself, much less her.

 

She dared to sacrifice herself for him, belittling him with her every action. Even if a fight with Zarbon would have meant his death, she had no right to steal that away from him. She had no right to place herself in danger because she had some misplaced sense of responsibility to him. She treated him with such deep and abiding disrespect that he could barely stomach her presence. And that wasn't even her worst crime against him.

 

“So you sacrificed yourself to him, like some sort of self-righteous martyr. Well, aren't you so much better than everyone else in the universe? You're damn-near angelic, aren't you? How hard it must be to down here with the rest of us mere mortals as we muck through life.”

 

Bulma opened her mouth to speak, but Vegeta cut her off, his fury uncontained, the words spilling from his mouth before he could check them with his pride.

 

“You always behave like you're better than everyone else. That your soul is more valuable,” Vegeta spat the word with derision, clearly not believing or caring for the concept of spiritual immortality as she did.

 

“Now look at you. Walking around like some sort of brainless zombie. Whining over the littlest thing, begging for forgiveness that you don't even believe that you deserve. You have no sense of self-preservation, no sense of honor. Instead, you punish everyone around you---you punish me for the loss of something you probably never had---your pathetic, imaginary soul.”

 

There was the true root of his anger. The center of it all. The responsibility she made him feel for her fall from grace. To protect him, to save him, she had murdered a man in cold blood---touched her lips to his, and watched him die at her feet. She walked away from his protection, side by side with a man who could have easily tore her apart limb from limb, raping her mercilessly as she screamed for absolution, all because she didn't think he was strong enough to fend for himself. She had blown apart hundreds, littering a small corner of the universe with chunks burned flesh to save him from torture and imprisonment, all in the name of her LOVE for him.

 

And then she dared to come to him and ask for his forgiveness.

 

This was not the woman he had first met, the woman that had enticed him with the curve of her red lips, and the scent of her blood. That woman had faced him down in the war zone of her lab and convinced him to spare her world, her friends, and her life, if only for a while. That woman had been brave, passionately wild, and nearly untamable. She had been a goddess of self conviction and confidence, but this woman who stood before him was nothing but a soulless, mewling weakling, a mere shadow of herself.

 

Worse, even in her current state, she was still undeniably attractive to him. Even now he wanted her, needed her---craved her. For two years he had sworn to kill her nearly every day, a dark promise made to her in the heat of his passion, but now, even after all her betrayals, he couldn't bring himself to raise a hand to her. She had gelded him with the knife of her emotions, making him helpless to her will.

 

“I'm not trying to punish you, Vegeta. Truly, I'm not. I can't help the way I feel, this emptiness that is inside of me. I'm sorry…”

 

“Shut up!” If she apologized to him one more time in the same sickly, sappy voice she used every second of the day, he swore to all that was unholy he would blow her entire, worthless mud ball of a planet apart and leave her to weep for the dead.

 

He advanced on her, and she cowered down at his feet. For the first time, she was truly afraid. His rage was overpowering, swamping her with dread. He glared down at her, sneering at her shaking form, his anger becoming deeper and darker with every tremble of her body.

 

“Because of you, I am caged by your side---forced to protect a world that I would rather see blown apart. On my honor, by the blood of my family I have no choice but to live day in and day out in another form of slavery, because you bid it so. Because no matter how much I loathe you, I'm still bound to you. Every stinking, filthy word from your lips is my gospel, because I can't turn my back on you. At times, I think that if I can tear the skin from my body that I might be free of you, but I know it not to be true. Only you can release me, and you'll never do so.”

 

Bulma looked up at Vegeta with eyes so wide and blue that the entire world could fall into them and become lost. With a distant sense of awe she listened to Vegeta's words, felt the pain that reverberated inside her with every growled syllable. The hole where her soul used to be began to fill up with the deepest, bone-rending agony imaginable.

 

She never realized that Vegeta felt so strongly about her. She knew that he was angry at her, that he quite possibly didn't love her, but that he hated her with such all-consuming conviction never occurred to her. The fact that he felt chained to her side, enslaved by his promise to her, broke what remained of her wilting heart. She would never knowingly inflict that kind of emotional torture on Vegeta. She would never willingly hurt him.

 

“I'm sor---,” she stopped herself before she could say the words that would only further condemn her in his eyes. She tried to draw herself up, to find the person that she had once been before the beginning of this travesty, but that woman that had disappeared, leaving behind a terrified, tearful woman.

 

Outside, she was a leather-clad, gun-toting, female crusader, but in Vegeta's presence she became something else entirely. Somehow she had managed to lose a piece of herself back on King Cold's ship. She was so concerned with salvaging her relationship with Vegeta, with winning him back, that she had lost sight of the very thing that she took pride in being---a confident, capable woman.

 

She cleared her throat, steadying her nerves. Deep inside the woman she had been was still elusive, but she strove to imitate her---to become what she once was, if only for this one moment when it was so important.

 

“Then I release you. Allow me to repair the damage that I have done to you, then you may go to find your own way in life.”

 

She had thought that his terrible words had been the worse agony of her life, but freeing Vegeta from his oath was far more painful. It felt as if she were ripping a piece of herself away. She couldn't imagine the agony being any worse if she had torn her heart out of her chest herself.

 

Vegeta stared down at her, making her feel smaller than she actually was. She struggled to stand, to breathe substance into her frail body so he might see her as a human being instead of the object of his loathing. With pride she had long forgotten, she walked away from him towards her laboratory, pausing when he didn't follow. She turned back towards him, resisting the urge to reach out her hand to him.

 

“Please, Vegeta. Let me heal you.”

 

His full lips tightened, and she knew once more that she had said something wrong. She sighed, the exhaustion of just living weighing on her.

 

“This changes nothing between us. All of your attempts to make it right will not heal this,” he waved his hand at her, obviously at a loss for words, “this thing that we have.”

 

“I know, but it will go a long way towards healing me.”

 

He shook his head briefly as if he were disagreeing with her, or maybe he was disagreeing with himself. He stalked towards her, every smooth line of his body full of menace. They moved together, walking towards her laboratory.

 

Without being told, Vegeta stripped off his clothes and lay back on the cold, stainless steel table. For a moment, Bulma felt a frisson of hope. For no one else would Vegeta ever lie back and allow them free reign to his unprotected body. For all of his hatred of her, he trusted her to heal him, to make him whole once again. No amount of anger could ever take that away, and for the little time they had left together she would make sure that she did nothing to betray his trust in her.

 

She urged him onto his side, sealing his already thawed tail to his spine with some temporary bioorganic gel. She couldn't resist the urge to brush her fingers along the swell of his hip, but the stiffening of his body quickly warned her away. Closing her eyes in remorse, she turned to pick up the jar of silver liquid.

 

“This will hurt.” She wanted to tell him that it would be okay for him to cry out, that she would tell no one if he voiced his pain, but she knew that he would never do so. No matter the agony, he would endure it silently. His warrior pride would allow nothing less.

 

Slowly she poured the nanites over his wound until they spread like a mercury blanket down his tail, and up his lower back. Instantly Vegeta became rigid, his muscles bulging in response to the intense pain she knew that he must be feeling. A slight sheen of sweat broke out over his body, polishing his bronze skin to a glistening shine under the sterile white lights.

 

Knowing it would take hours for the nanites to complete their meticulous work, Bulma took a seat near Vegeta's head. She felt helpless that she was unable to alleviate Vegeta's agony, and heartbroken that he wouldn't allow her to comfort him as she desired. Shivers began to wrack his body, and she watched as he screwed his eyes tightly shut, taking the pain of the reattachment of his nerves stoically.

 

Finally, unable to stand it any longer, she gave way her longings to comfort him, and began to croon the words to a nearly forgotten lullaby that her mother used to sing to her. Almost mindlessly, her fingers sought out Vegeta's thick hair, combing though the inky strands soothingly.

 

The children on the tropical islands

Drawn by the mother night sky

Go to see the stars

 

Don't cry, don't cry

Look up

And see the starry sky

Scary things and worrisome things

All disappear

The light from thousands of years ago

 

Closing the small door

I cried until it hurt

After I saw the

Endless universe

My tears stopped

 

Don't cry, don't cry

Look up

And see the starry sky

 

Bulma was struck by how sad the song was, how it reminded her of Vegeta. Did he ever look up into the sky, to the pinprick of starlight that was his home and long for the comfort of his mother's arms, or the reassurance of his father's shadow? Did he ever look up into the night and dream away the scary things that haunted his supposedly non-existent soul?

 

How she ached for him, agonized for him. Helpless tears began to slip down her cheeks, falling onto the cold steel of his table. She wished that she could take all his pain and suffering away, that she could repair so much more than his injured tail. She wanted to reach beyond the armor of his pride and heal the wounds of his heart and soul, to repair his broken psyche. He deserved so much more out of life than just the remnants of his people's honor.

 

Somewhere, deep inside, a small part of her cried that she deserved much more as well. She deserved more than his cruelty and derision, but she pushed the thought away, instead centering her thoughts on the wrongs that she had perpetrated against the man she loved.

 

“Please forgive me,” she whispered, but only silence and his pained, labored breathing was her answer.

 

 

 

 

A/N

Original Japanese Version

 

Minamino shimanisumu nakijakuru kodomotachiwa

Yoruhahani tsurerarete

Hoshio miniyuku

 

Nakunayo, nakunayo

Mitegoran

Kono hosizora wo

Kowaimonomo nayamimo

Kieteyuku

Nanzennenmo maeno hikari

 

Chiisaitoki doao shime

Kurushiihodo naitakedo

Hatenonai kono uchuo

Mita atowa

Namidamo tomatta