Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Reflections of a King ❯ Chapter 2

Reflections of a King

(chapter 2)

I find it increasingly hilarious that the more I look at my life, at the choices that I made, the more I wonder at just what point the whole thing went directly to Hell.

What exactly was it that tipped the balance? Was it my giving Vegeta over to Frieza's care, knowing fully what I was sending the child into? Or perhaps my bringing him to our first meeting, letting Frieza see just how beautiful and proud the boy was. Maybe it was my refusal to even consider sending the child away, as Bardock had insisted on doing with Kakarrot. Should I have let his mother's family raise him, or another of the noble families? As time goes on, I begin to question even my smallest decisions.

Vegeta was a bastard child, born of a third-class warrior. It was a fact of which he was greatly ashamed as a boy. I fought for months after his birth for his right to be called my heir. However, despite all of my regrets, I can't bring myself to think of my life if he hadn't been in it. There was something about him, his eyes, his movements, his very being that mesmerized me from the very first time I laid eyes on him.

He was a beautiful baby, but he was also a huge pain in the ass. This was true from the moment he was conceived, I think. I had a lover, my guardsman, Bardock, and I had never before sought the company of a woman. But this one, she was amazing. I went with a group of lower-class soldiers to observe their techniques at, well, destroying stuff. It was a full moon, and while I was able to control the Oozaru transformation, I couldn't control its' effect on my libido. I saw her, I wanted her, I took her. She was a wild thing, and could have killed me if she had so wished. I was her king, however, and therefore she obeyed me without question. She was a black-haired, black-eyed witch, with a whirlwind temper and a lashing tongue. I never really knew her, but her spirit lives on in Vegeta.

Not until she was nearly six months pregnant did I realize that I had begotten an heir. The woman was severely ill, and her captain brought me the news that she was dying due to complications to her pregnancy. I was so shocked at the thought of having a child that I ran from the throne room without a word to my guards or advisors. I was shown into the woman's hospital room with much bowing and scraping. She had already fallen into a coma, one from which she would never awaken. Bardock followed in on my heels, but had the sense to keep quiet. I was in shock.

The doctors had taken the baby from her womb almost three and a half months before term. My small son lay inside a special incubator, hooked to so many tubes that I could hardly see any of his flesh. Needles in his hands, his feet, his stomach, even in the soft parts of his skull. Had I any doubts about his parentage, though, they were quickly erased. He was my spirit and image, as close to an exact double of myself as a child than could be imagined. But he was tiny, so incredibly tiny. Everyone was convinced that he couldn't possibly survive.

I had many theories thrown at me over the years as to why the mother had taken ill. The most ridiculous of these (and the one Vegeta had the misfortune to overhear when he was still a small boy) was that my blood and his mother's, being of two different classes, had warred inside her body and that he had survived (due to having elite-class blood) by poisoning his own mother.

Bullshit is what it was and I told them so. The woman had been relentless, and unstoppable. I found out from her captain that she had been out on a drill not a day before she had been hospitalized. Five and a half months pregnant, and she was still following the same rigorous training schedule as if nothing had changed. I was furious. Not only had she kept the knowledge of my son from me, but she had effectively killed herself and the baby as well. Her drive, her single-minded sense of purpose, these are the traits that Vegeta inherited from his mother.

The woman died when Vegeta was only a week old. Her family wanted to take him from me, but he was quite obviously my son. I had no intention of sharing, and never once entertained the idea of giving him up. I refused to let them even visit the child. I wasn't allowed to see him again until he was four weeks old, nor did I hold him until he was about three months old. By that time, he was bonded with no one, and was as cold and distant as a baby could be. And the way he looked at me…as if I were the bastard son, and he the Saiyan no Ou.

He was still so very small that I was afraid to take him away from the hospital, but three of his nurses had already handed in their resignations. When asked to give her reason for leaving, one of them said simply, "He's evil."

And he was. For something so small to cause so much damn trouble…it was amazing to me. He was loud, cranky, and demanding, but he was so cute that I couldn't drown him. Oh, that's horrible, I would think, and then he'd start in again. A high-pitched wailing that was like an axe through my skull. It was finally determined that Vegeta had inherited a genetic disease, common to the nobility (inbreeding NOT being a good idea) in which his joints ground together with every move he made. Vegeta raised so much hell, that I couldn't even get a nanny to stay with him…no amount of money could endear my son to them. In fact, Bardock was the only person, besides myself, who seemed to like the baby. I was forced to care for my son without nurses or nannies, without help of any kind, something none of the royal family had done in sixteen generations or more. I was completely clueless, and he knew it. He did what he wanted, got what he wanted, when he wanted it.

To be perfectly honest, Vegeta could be a spoiled little monster. He was two years old when I finally figured out the best way to punish him. I had tried spanking, yelling, pleading, bribing, and even crying and nothing had worked. His first word had been "NO" and it was also his favorite one.

One day I became so fed up with his tantrums that I just ignored him. Surprisingly enough, it worked like a charm. He broke my first advisor's nose, he bit my second advisor's hand (they still hadn't learned to stay away from him during one of his fits).

And still I ignored him.

He cried long and loud, but when nothing happened he finally just shut up. For the first time in two years, that little mouth closed.

Silence.

Then he finally did what I had told him to do (picking his shoes off the floor, I think). I learned something about Vegeta that day. He was small, he would always BE small. But as long as he could talk big and make a lot of noise, then someone would have to pay attention to him. By ignoring him, I was able to hurt him more than if I had beaten him black and blue.

He must have been about four when he began his training under Bardock, among many others. Vegeta was a warrior-child, a fighter from his first breath. Unbeknownst to me, Vegeta had a plan. A crazy plan, but coming from the mind of a four-year-old, it was sheer brilliance. Some fool (probably me) had mentioned to the boy that the closer a Saiyan gets to death, the higher his energy potential rises. So Vegeta made up his mind to get his ass kicked as often as possible, as badly as he could stand.

It wasn't that difficult, considering what a smart-ass mouth he had. Also, pain had been a constant companion of Vegeta's since his birth, and it probably still is. He never let it stop him from training, actually using the pain as a way to focus his energy. Beating after beating he took, and never fought back. I was at a complete loss, and was tempted to have the much-older children brought up on charges, no matter what Vegeta had said or done. Finally he told me of his plan to become a Super Saiyan. I was astounded, and actually quite proud of him. He wanted to augment his own naturally small potential, and to do so, he subjected himself to almost daily beatings. He was a bad little son-of-a-bitch. He knew it, too. It was with this attitude that he first attracted the attention of Lord Frieza.

For some unfathomable reason, I let the boy come with me the first time I met with the changeling, Frieza. It was a meeting, supposedly to contract a sort of business relationship, much as we had with other races. Destruction for hire. Something was different, I could feel it even then. He didn't want to partner with us, he wanted to own us. I was in denial, however, and was oblivious to the threat we faced. Had I known, I would have sent Vegeta to a planet so far away that Frieza could not have found him had he searched a million years.

To be continued