Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Ouji-Sama Wo Oikakete ❯ Mitsuketa Saiyajin ( Chapter 3 )

Warning: This fic contains Yaoi (male/male relationships), so if you don't approve, please leave now.

Warnings for this chapter: Violence, swearing, fluff, crying Goku ^^;

Vegeta's POV. All thoughts are in italics.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Z-boys, they belong to Akira Toriyama. I just like playing with them, but if someone's willing to sell them to me… >)

Ouji-sama Wo Oikakete

Chapter 3: Mitsuketa Saiyajin (Discovered Saiyajin)

*

Not again, you bastard, not again…!

Over and over and over and over and over.

*

My eyes snap open and meet Kakarotto's wide ones inches from my own. Through a haze of tears I see them soften with damnable pity - I knew it - and I harshly shove him away from me.

"How DARE you make me live that again!?" I roar, landing a punch to his jaw with punishing force. I catch him completely off guard, and he arches backwards to go crashing through a tree several metres away. I pant, half-sobbing, with the force of my emotions and scrub a hand angrily across my face to rid myself of the cursed tears blurring my vision. I can feel Kakarotto's Ki among the ruined splinters of tree, but he remains silent and unseen where he landed. Familiar fury rises in me again, and I embrace it as an old friend, donning it like a blanket to cover my ragged emotions.

"Damn you!" I launch myself at him again, hurling my Ki in front of me to incinerate the foliage hiding him. "You will NOT PITY ME!!" A flash of orange, and he is revealed to me. Damn it, damn it, damn it! I chant in my mind as I throw barely controlled kicks and punches at him. He narrowly dodges them in time, and is forced to power up to Super Saiyajin. I scream and feel my power rise to match his, then go beyond as I reach level two. Electricity-charged air whips my clothes and hair in my own personal wind. I resume my attack, my face contorted with blind anger and hurt. He betrayed me. A kick whistles past his ear. How could he? My gloved fist is caught and held by his hand, and he ascends to my level. Oh Kami-sama, he knows. He knows everything.

Kakarotto is shouting something at me, but I don't want to listen. I drive my knee into his midsection, but feel none of the satisfaction that would normally come from a successful attack. He doubles over, gaping like a landed fish. I draw back for an axehandle blow to his back, but suddenly he is gone. The Instant Transmission! Behind me! There is a sharp pain at the base of my skull - and I know no more…

I slowly make the transition to consciousness. My eyes slit open, then I close them again. It is night, firelight flickers on my eyelids, and I am warm and completely relaxed. There is a hand running slowly and gently through my hair - Bulma, I think lazily - and I realise with mild surprise that I am purring. I rarely purr, and it is a rough, unfamiliar rumble that vibrates from low in my throat now. I must have woken myself with it. My back is pressed against something warm and slightly yielding. A faint scent of cinnamon and something unidentifiable twists around me; it is vaguely familiar, but frankly I am too comfortable to care.

I remain as I am for a long time, drifting in and out of sleep as her soothing fingers continue to thread through the thick strands of my hair. She strokes them warmly across my scalp and upwards, and the purr bursts from my throat afresh. Unexpectedly, an answering rumble shakes against my back and shoulders, and the fingers freeze. So does my purr.

Was that… a STOMACH?!

I open my eyes and inch them upwards. A face topped by unruly black hair appears, smiling down at me.

"Hey, `Geta. Did I wake you? Sorry."

"Kakarotto! What the hell do you think you are doing?"

"Well gee, I didn't mean to. It's just that it's almost dinnertime, so I was getting kind of hungry…"

"Not that, you idiot! Ah, just get off me!" I hurriedly disentangle myself from where I'd been - Kami-sama - lying against the other Saiyajin with my head on his chest. I gingerly pry his tail loose from around my forearm, all the while struggling to force away the heat rising in my face from touching it however innocently. Fortunately, he seems not to notice as he rises from where he was resting against a boulder. A short distance away is a small campfire; this is one of the grassy plains where we come to train.

"Are you… okay now?" He asks anxiously, stretching out a hand as if I am a nervous beast about to bolt. My gloved hand slaps it away, and I suppress a wince as he flinches.

"Of course not," I snap, taking a step backwards and tilting my face so it is shadowed from the firelight. "I stink like you." It is the truth; my hair and hands are permeated by the spicy scent I'd noticed earlier. My tail wraps around my waist and I lick my lips nervously; I can still taste him too… The thought of his kiss brings a tiny thrill, but at the same time I feel a plummeting sensation in my stomach. He knows! He reached into my mind and saw everything… My past, my weakness, my… darkness. It is as I thought: He could never, never love me now. Not one such as I, and one such as he.

The pain caused by that thought is almost unbearable, and unable to fight it, I throw words at it instead.

"Are you satisfied, Kakarotto? Did you find what you seek, damn you?!"

"Vegeta, I-"

"Shut up! I will have no pithy words from you! Was beating me in battle not enough for you, that you had to rape my mind as well?! Well now you know, and may it rot your mind until you are even more of a half-wit than you already are!"

Kakarotto takes me by the shoulders and shakes me hard enough to silence me. "Vegeta, will you listen to me!? I didn't know it would hurt you, the Dragon didn't tell me that. I just wanted to know more about you, to be closer to you and understand you-"

I backhand him hard enough to snap his head around. My shoulders shake with incredulous laughter. Who would have known the gentle, golden Kakarotto was possessed of such poisonous cruelty? I whirl to throw myself into the sky, tail lashing the air, and flare my Ki. A warm hand on mine restrains my escape.

"Vegeta, don't," Kakarotto's voice breaks on my name, and I turn slowly to look at his face, tilted down and away from me. Pain shines in his dark eyes, reflecting the firelight like tears. "Don't. Don't go. Please…"

My anger slowly dissipates at the sound of his voice - the hurt, and the longing - and I close my eyes and allow myself to be drawn down into his simple embrace.

Kakarotto sinks to his knees and clutches me to him as if I am some ephemeral thing to be kept at all costs. I should feel stifled, but the jumpy, panicky itch to retreat from this closeness does not come. I am uncertain as to what to do with my hands; I risk a tentative touch to his shoulder before resting them softly against his lower back. By the time his brief scattering of tears have seeped through my ripped shirt and made themselves known, he is speaking quietly, haltingly. His words, muffled by my hair and shoulder, blow warm against the skin of my neck.

"… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. If I'd known - or expected - what they'd done to you, I wouldn't have done that. I felt it, I… I shouldn't have done that, I'm so stupid, all the time making things worse when I only want to make everything better. But I can't, I…" - His voice breaks off and he clutches me closer - "Last night I asked the Dragon to teach me about the Saiyajin, I thought you'd approve, or be happy, or something. You always seem so lonely, like you're the only one who things and acts like a Saiyajin, and you can't understand anything else, so I wanted to help you, I wanted to know… just what it is you mourn every night out under the stars. And now I know what a Saiyajin is, what our customs and values and abilities were, I wanted to share it with you… So you'd know… That you're not alone… But it all went wrong, I didn't know it would hurt you, I didn't know…"His voice trails off.

We sit for a moment in silence, I staring at the ground beside us, he remaining with his face pressed against my neck. I can feel his tail wrapped tightly around my ankle. It amuses me, somehow, that I am the unlikely comforter in this situation. My humour is dark and perverse as usual, but I shove it to the back of my mind. I am not sure of what to do or say, and resort to my usual brusqueness in the hope that Kakarotto knows me well enough by now to see past my words to the meaning beneath.

"Baka. It's not like I hadn't felt it before." I say in a low voice. "It was my pain, something I have relived many times, and it isn't something I wanted to share."

Especially not with you, I add silently.

"But Vegeta - "

I break in, my voice hardening. "Kakarotto! I am not some weak, pathetic girl-child to be consoled! I have always lived with this darkness inside me, and I never asked for your help!" I draw a deep breath and continue more smoothly. "I have already avenged myself against Jeice, and Frieza is rotting in Hell thanks to my own son. Do not forget who I am!"

I feel him smile, even though I cannot see it. "Yes, Vegeta. I won't forget."

Good. He understands.

I steel myself against him and push him away. "We will never speak of this again," I look at Kakarotto steadily until he drops his eyes and gives a tiny nod. I pull him to his feet as I stand, and walk a few paces away. I will my defences back to me and use my body language to enforce it, my tail wrapping itself around my waist as I fold my arms.

I glance at the sky, and the fur on my tail fluffs involuntarily in a tiny shiver. "So, you wasted a wish on me?" I allow some humour to seep into my voice. "What was your other wish?"

"I, uh, wished the moon back. After I knew what it was for, I couldn't really not…" He grins sheepishly and scratches the back of his head.

"I see. Well, that leaves me in debt to you." More amusement creeps into my voice, and I swiftly close the space between us. Kakarotto's eyes go wide, and I crush him to me, reaching up blindly to seek his mouth with mine. I kiss him as passionately as I know how, tasting his scent of dark cinnamon and spice, and then I relinquish his mouth to whirl myself into the night, laughing wildly and freely.

I leave him there, catching his breath and gaping after me as I disappear into the darkness under the brilliant crescent moon.

~ The End. ~

Hooray! Hooray for happy endings! Hooray for no lemons! Bwahahaha! *runs away happy that the fic is finished, hugging Goku and Vegeta plushies* ^__^ Review, please! I'd love to know what you thought!