Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Requiem in Blue ❯ Chapter Nineteen: Tal’id ( Chapter 19 )

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

Hellooooo! Haha… four years with no update and now two in one week? You're not dealing with the average Saiyan anymore, Frieza! It's the thing you fear the most..! * cough * "A-hem!"
Sorry, got a bit carried away there. But anyway, please enjoy this chapter. After a decade, we're almost done!
I would like to thank everyone for reviewing this over the years. I wish I could send a personal thank you card to everyone because it means so much to me. All the words of encouragement, support, constructive criticism, everything... it means the world to any author and I thank you all. You are all the reason I decided to come back in the first place. Please continue to let me know your thoughts, your joys and your disappointments with my work, lol. Thank you again and enjoy!

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Days had passed, probably.  Perhaps even a week had gone by, but Bulma could not be sure.  The cell she had been confined to once returning to the Saiya-jin fleet ship had no windows into space, so she could not see how far Mizukashi’s third-cycle moon had come in its orbit around the planet.  Nor had anyone come to see or speak to her, but for the guard who was given the esteemed privilege of feeding her.  Only a small, single window on the cell door gave a bleak shower of light from the hallway outside.  She sat in the darkness, knees hugged against her chest and her back glued to the corner of her cell, as she had for most of her time here.   Well, there was not much else to do was there?  There was not much else to think about either, other than her impending death and the events that had led inevitably to it.
Should she be surprised?  Probably not.  Had she unconsciously wished for death this past decade?  Probably so.  But Bulma found herself wishing earnestly for a second chance:  one that would save her indefinitely from the wrath of the Saiya-jin prince and his newly-formed ‘War Council’.  She sighed; loathe to think of the many ways in which this ‘Council’ could condemn her.  Surely, she had earned it, though.  In fact, Bulma imagined that a smirk had grown unbridled across her lips as she sat here in the dark and remembered her schemes and betrayals.  But it faded when she thought of Brolli’s crumpled, defeated form lying on the floor of the Aisu-jin hangar, professing his love for her until his last breath.  Bulma pursed her lips together.  Fool that he was…
Nothing could have prepared her for Raditsu’s reception, though.  For nothing had been as crippling, and as withering, as the regret and resentment in his gaze.  Had she expected gratitude for her valiant attempt at redemption?  Perhaps…  But not even her rescue of the Prince, nor her destruction of the Aisu-jin cloaking field had saved her the agony of Raditsu’s rejection.  Why, she wondered?  Why, after all this time had his judgments come so harshly?
With that question, Bulma’s desire for forgiveness had quickly turned to panic at the thought of death.  There was still so much left to do, so many things to learn!  If anything, Raditsu’s scornful glare had given life to a new desire inside her.  It was that desire to live that now made the darkness so very smothering, and so very cold.  Sweat began to bead on her forehead, despite the chill, and Bulma buried her face behind her knees.
The sound of the security panel cracked the silence open like a broken jar.  Bulma’s head came up and though she only expected her evening meal, all the keys on the panel flashed green.  Someone was coming in.  She pressed both hands against the wall behind her and struggled to her feet; there was no galaxy in existence where she would face her accusers while cowering in a corner.
Bulma was surprised to see that it was not one, but several female Mizuka-jin house servants who entered the cell.  She recognized their status by the conLinks around their wrists.  Her memory of that torturous device would never fade…
They approached her warily, as though she had never been one of them—as though she was not one of them now.  A girl at the forefront stepped forward and produced a small, folded piece of soft fabric.  It looked like a towel.  She addressed Bulma in stilted Saiya-go:
“Bulma-kalzan, we are here to take you to the West Quarter.”
The West Quarter of the Kuraoh would of course be, as it was on all ships, the slave quarter.  But Bulma’s spirits lifted ever so slightly; the slave quarter would be a bold step up from her current lodgings.  She watched the Mizuka-jin girl’s wide black eyes for a moment and suddenly wished to trade places with her.  Bulma nodded, aware that compared to these high-class house servants, she must smell and look terribly.  Her milky white hair was tousled about her face, and she brushed her hands against the same pants and tunic she’d been wearing since the plasma assault on the receiving dock.  She nodded.
“Alright.”  The Saiya-jin word slid off her lips as easily as her own language may have.  She reached out to take the cloth from the slave-girl, and they gestured toward the door.
Bulma was not surprised to see the tall Saiya-jin guards positioned to follow her once she left the cell.  The Mizuka-jin girls walked quickly; clearly they had been tasked with seeing Bulma to her destination in an efficient manner.  She followed dutifully through the long, sterile hallways of the ship, catching the suspicious glance of a guard or a soldier every now and again.  They seemed to regard her with a distant regret, for it was true she had made many “friends” in her life as a Saiya-jin citizen.  Now, it seemed as though the humanoid aliens were more foreign to her than the serpent-like Mizuka-jin.
When they reached the West Quarter Bulma was taken straight away to the showers.  Thank the gods…  She put a hand on the arm of one Mizuka-jin female.
“Thank you.”  She said in Mizukago.  The alien in front of her stiffened ever so slightly at the sound of anything other than Saiyago.  But Bulma tightened her hold on the tall girl’s arm and leaned in to speak softly.  “I do not have any other clothing.  Is it possible I could at least be given slave garb?”
The Mizuka-jin paused, a clear expression of pity etched into her scaly face.  Bulma swallowed deeply and squeezed on the girl’s arm.  How she hated pity!  All the gods how she hated it!  The Mizuka-jin nodded brusquely and left, surrounding Bulma in the silence and solitude of the showers.
The water was so comforting that Bulma could have bent to her knees and cried.  Instead, she pressed both hands against the hard wall and let the steaming water cascade down her back like waves of a tiny waterfall.  Her muscles relaxed, and the knot of fear in her stomach loosened as easily as if someone had greased it open.  Bulma sighed, remembering another time when a hot bath had made her feel so human again, as this one did now…
After she had washed with the standard issue soap, she wrapped the rough towel she’d been given around herself and stepped from the shower.  To her delight, a slave’s standard issue body suit and tunic had been placed on the metal bench next to the shower stall.  She donned it with all the care she would have given to the luxurious gowns and wraps that Brolli, and Raditsu before him, had given her.  When she was finished, the guards appeared at the shower entrance expectantly.  Of course, they had seen her on the security vid screen; there would be no privacy for her now.  But Bulma was shocked to find that she appreciated from them the courtesy of waiting until she had dressed.
“Bulma-kalzan,” one of them said, his voice clipped and authoritative.    “You will come with us now.”
She nodded, crossed both dry, un-shaking hands in front of her and followed.  As they made their way down the halls again, Bulma became slowly aware that they were leaving the West Quarter.  The walls were still quite bland but a bit less forbidding, as though the ship itself told her that they were no longer in the presence of slaves but in the presence of warriors.  Confusion crept across her shoulders and lodged in her chest.  All the gods…  Who were they taking her to see?
Finally, horribly, they stopped.  The quarters in front of her were nondescript, and it unnerved her.  Was she ready to face Vejiita?  And what exactly would his presence cause to surge inside of her?  Fear?  Anger…?  Defensive hatred?  Bulma took a very deep breath and sighed.  Condensation collected on the cool door in front of her as the guard to her right reached forward to touch the security panel.
There was no answer to the call, and the door opened; no one was inside.  A rush of pure, unadulterated relief washed over her as they stepped inside.  Relief at the prospect of regained solitude, at the idea of forever leaving that dark, dark prison cell behind…  The creeping icicles on her spine began to dissipate ever so slightly.
Once inside the quarters, Bulma’s eyes took in the most beautiful sight she could imagine; all the gods, it was a window.  Heedless of her escorts, she stepped through the nicely appointed room and up to the glass, pressing her fingers against it with girlish glee.
The stars spread out before her in a field of twinkling diamonds.  She had forgotten the beauty of outer space, and the promise of renewal and hope that a glance of it could bring.  It stirred a memory of fear though, for to her left lay a grisly reminder of that very dread.
Bulma pressed the tip of her nose to the glass.  It was cool and sterile.  The Aisu-jin fleet ship, Shafuri, floated in ruins.  Its hull was cracked and torn near the generators, and bits of the once magnificent war ship orbited the wreckage like a pack of pups circling a dead she-wolf.  Bulma gulped; not a sign of life emanated from the ruins.  The hull had been completely breached by Raditsu’s attack, and by her estimation the rescue party had escaped with but seconds to spare.  It occurred to her though, that the escape pod docks were empty.  Someone had left the Shafuri before it died…
“In case you’re wondering,” a very familiar voice said behind her, “Furiza is gone.  He escaped after we transmitted your rescue party…  Bulma-kalzan.”
She blinked, but did not turn.  The wreckage outside the ship seemed now but a metaphor for the shell of her good soul, wherever it had gone.  Bulma felt her lips turn up into a grim smile, and she turned to Raditsu, her hands folded in front of her.
“I should have known…”  She said to him, forgetting her status.  She noted also that the guards were not present.
“Should have known to be grateful that you aren’t bowing before a war council yet?”  Raditsu’s voice, although not completely affectionate, conveyed more warmth than did his words.  Bulma smiled and lowered her eyes.
“Yes…”  She said it:  a world of loss in that one word.  “You have always been a great advocate of my dignity, Raditsu.  I thank you…”
He crossed the space between them slowly, agonizingly, and Bulma’s arms tensed at her sides.  The tall, brooding Saiya-jin soldier looked at her, and he sighed.  His eyebrows lifted suddenly, but furrowed again in what seemed like realization.  He smelled like a Saiya-jin, clean but close to the earth they were born to, musky and hot.
“From the day I brought you into my house on Vejiita-sei, I think you wanted to kill me.”  Raditsu mused aloud.  “But you never tried…  You never tried to kill me, as you had your previous master.  Instead you let me seduce you, wormed your way into my confidence and broke it down bit by bit until I wanted to give you away.  And you did the same to Brolli, I think.
“How could something—someone—so beautiful be so poisonous?”
Bulma smiled at him and let her arms relax only slightly.  Raditsu’s shock of long, raven black hair was a stark contrast to the white tunic he wore, emblazoned on the breast with the Royal Seal of Vejiita-sei.  His broad chest was still; he was holding his breath.
“It’s true, I wanted to kill you.”  Bulma told him, forthright.  His mouth twitched visibly, but he did not smirk.  “But it wasn’t just about you, Raditsu…  It never was.”
“Then what was it about, Bulma?”  He asked her then.  “What was it?  Your maniacal need for vengeance?  The humiliation of your ego?  You couldn’t just accept your fate like so many others before you had, could you?”
“My fate was not to be decided by you!”  Bulma found herself unable to stop the snipe of words that shot from her lips, though her heart clenched at the memories he awakened in her.
“But it was!”  Raditsu shot back, closer to her now than he had been for years.  “And you fought too long and too hard to reclaim control.  You failed.”
“No…”  She whispered, and swallowed hard to stop the swell of tears that now threatened her steady voice.  “No.  I have reclaimed my honor from your people.  Without me Vejiita would never have returned.”
“Without you he would never have been on that ship to begin with!”  Raditsu stepped an arm’s length away from her, and Bulma found herself panicking at the loss of heat.  “Without you, the Kassha’hal Brolli would still be alive.  And unless you can convince the War Council that your loyalties have changed, I don’t see how you will escape from this with your life, Bulma-kalzan.”
Despite her best efforts, Raditsu’s words bit at the last vestiges of strength in her gut.  Since leaving Brolli in the hangar aboard Shafuri, she had not shed a tear and now…  Now a rebellious bead of sorrow fell unchecked from her azure eye.
“There were days when I prayed for death…”
“You may yet see your prayers answered!”  Raditsu bellowed, his voice muted by the small but well-insulated room.  The sound of his voice echoed in her hollow chest.
“Perhaps…”  She whispered again, this time looking away as though she spoke to someone else.  She blinked, and more of those rebellious tears trickled over her cheeks.
There was silence then, for a few precious moments.  Silence during which Bulma had no choice but to calm the seizing grief in her chest or risk her knees buckling because of it.  But she would not do that for Raditsu.  No… even now she would not do that for any of them.  She looked back to Raditsu, and she looked him in the eye until he again closed the distance between them.  He crossed both arms on his chest and breathed deeply.
“You have seven hours to think of a plea,” he said quietly, almost gently.  And then, to her dismay, he reached out to cup her cheek in the palm of his big hand.  He dragged his thumb against her tear-stained cheek.  “If I were you I would beg for mercy.”
Bulma stepped back from him with reeling urgency.  She regained her footing and stood with her back straight as he dropped both arms at his side and smiled.  He actually smiled…!  Raditsu went to the door of the room and accessed the security panel, but when the door swished open there were no guards, and he did not motion for her to follow.  Instead she was left again to solitude.  But this time…  This time the gorgeous window at her back beckoned, and, despite that Raditsu’s words had left a hole in her heart the size of the Videon Galaxy, she went back to it.
There were still marks on the glass from where her palms had pressed up against it only moments earlier.  But this time she sat, her bottom comfortably nestled in the lounge chair in front of the window.  Before long, the infinite expanse of space had lulled her to a regretfully restless sleep, where dreams of Earth echoed like poltergeists in the sorrow of her mind.  But in the midst of her memory and in her last plea for comfort, something touched her with such complete abandon that her chest expanded to take in all the air she could breathe so as not to miss a moment of it.  Her eyes flitted open.
The light in the room had not changed, but by the position of the stars in the window she could see that an hour, maybe two, had passed.  A voice from the back rest of the chair startled her up on the palms of her hands.
“In sleep you are like Mil’fah, the Water Goddess.  She is known for her purity of spirit and body…”  Vejiita sat perched on the back rest above her, reclined slightly.  He spoke to her and yet, his eyes were closed.  Bulma drew in a breath, and she smelled him:  clean and fresh from a regen tank and clothed in the most freshly laundered tunic and body suit.
“Zarshi-kalan,” she began quietly.  “I think you know better than that.”
When Vejiita opened his eyes and smirked down at her, Bulma thought it was the most wonderful thing she had ever seen.  Her heart ached in a way she had not allowed it to for many years.
“You are a wanted female, Bulma-kalzan.”  He said.  “Already, the War Council discusses your fate.”
Bulma pushed herself back up on her bottom and gazed out the window, at the wreckage of Furiza’s ship.  Surely, in that graveyard of engineering, every Saiya-jin could see the empty hole of space where Vejiita-sei once orbited:  proud and defiant in her scope and grandeur.  Just as she could see the hole of Earth’s empty grave…
“What did you come here for, Vejiita?”  She asked him, unmindful of his title or of her place in this new world.  “Is this your offer of comfort?”
His fingers found their way deep into the tousle of her hair and cradled the base of her head as one would a small child.  Bulma found the crease in her brow lifting, but she gazed up at him, startled.  Something in his grip made it seem as though he had never touched her before—as though he had never driven himself inside her, made her utterly his prisoner, or caged the raging demons in her soul.  His smile had not changed; Vejiita would not change.  But he stroked the base of her neck now as though he had become something more than a king.  A god…
“I think you know that I could never offer you that.”  He said.  And Bulma knew it was the truth.  It was just as shattering as the first night they’d rutted like wild myr cats in the holding cell; he had laid her soul bare for all to see and she could not have realized it even if he had said it out loud.  
“I’ve known that since the day you tried to steal me away from Brolli.”
“But you thought I would fold…  Just like him, just like Raditsu.”  Vejiita threw both legs over the back of the couch and enclosed her between them.  He cupped her face in both hands and drew her up toward him the way a sun would draw a flower.  She drank in his fiery warmth, though it burned.  Bulma nodded to him.
“You knew that from the beginning.  You knew I would try.”  She said.
Vejiita chuckled deeply, and the sound rolled in his chest.  Bulma allowed the sound to reverberate through her and into the warm hollow between her legs.  Even now, she thought, even now his power over her was too much.  Her chest heaved uncontrollably, and for once she did not care.  Vejiita drew her further up towards him and feathered his warm fingers over the pulse in her neck.  Her mouth parted, and he pressed against her trembling bottom lip with his other thumb.
“I was the only one who saw you for what you really were, Shall’la.  Even you could not see...”  He whispered, and his cool breath against her mouth sent goose bumps flaring down her arms and breasts.  Bulma nodded, unable to speak for fear that he would let her go.  The gods damn him…!  Damn him, because every word was true.  It was how he had broken her:  how she had let him break her resolve without knowing it.
Vejiita fingered the collar of her tunic, and pushed it off her shoulders with the ease of familiarity.  He pressed one palm against her back, and without much insistence Bulma arched into him.  Her breasts already tingled with the anticipation of his touch, and she knew finally that she had lost herself completely to him.
His fingers drew lazy circles around one pert nipple, drawing pants of breath from her as though she were already naked.  Vejiita breathed against her mouth heavily and pressed into her back again.  Her stomach crushed against the hard, molten heat between his legs, and he groaned.  A throaty chuckle followed, and he leaned into her ear.
“You were right though, Bulma-kalzan…”  He growled pleasantly.  “You were right when you told me I still wanted you.  I want you because of what you are.”  He kissed her deeply, sucking on her bottom lip as though he might have drawn nectar.  “And I do want to be the one who punishes you.”
Her gaze lifted until she was looking him right in the eye, and in those deep, black depths she could see that the desire there would not be sated by anything less than that punishment.  His lip curled into a vicious smirk, sending a shudder of longing through her very core.  Bulma’s tongue slid out until she could lick her top lip.  The words were coming now… slowly.
“Then… let this be the real judgment.  Do it, Vejiita, because there is no one else I would take it from!”
Vejiita’s mouth broadened to a smile, a real smile that sent a stroke of real and utter joy through her soul.  He kissed her again, possessing and heavy.  His hand snaked around the flare of her hip, and he twisted her around until her cheek pushed up against the couch.  The body suit she had been so kindly given was torn straight down the middle of her back, and the coolness of the air inside the room was replaced by the heat of Vejiita’s hands on the low swell near her bottom.  The same hands slid up the plane of her stomach and over her bare and tingling breasts until he squeezed them painfully, deliciously, pulling her flush against his newly bare chest.
Like this, with his mouth pressed into her neck and his fingers exploring her as if for the first time, Bulma knew; it was what she had always wanted.  Yes… he did know her for what she was.  He could see all of those things that made her the genius scientist who could have destroyed them with her mind.  The vengeful hellcat, the cool seductress…  The cowering slave…
Bulma felt Vejiita push his knee under hers, lifting her leg up onto the couch so that she sat haphazardly on his lap, close to the bare, searing hot warmth that now pressed against her backside.  She was so close to death, Bulma thought.  She was so close, when all he had to do was snap his fingers and send her to a council who would eat her alive.  The realization made her desperate for life – for the life he ignited in her when he touched her; the one she had thought long gone. Vejiita brushed the cascade of her hair off her shoulder and pressed his lips into her ear.
“Remember that I can see you, Chikyuu-jin,” he whispered, gravelly and low, “and show me how much you want to live.”
When he pushed into her, full and hot, Bulma gasped.  Her breath came out on a sob, and he wrapped his fingers gently around her throat.  He held her there, sighing and sobbing as she was, and rocked her against him with the rhythm of a sweet song.  He panted in her ear, the heat of his breath every so often ending with a groan, and finally let go of her neck so he could brace her up against the couch and batter into her the way he had always wanted to.  
And she cried out for him, heedless of who would hear, because if this were the last time…  If it was the last time, she could not take him inside her far enough to feel whole.  The tears came, though she hated them still, and when he began to roar out his climax she sobbed out the crest of her own with him.  She was riding with him, this one; the one who had broken her vengeance and written her requiem.
Afterward, when the haze of sex had cleared from her mind and she was nestled in the crook of his arm, Bulma brushed bare feet against the soft fabric of the couch.  Her forehead was pressed against his chest, and she drew lazy lines down the hard valley of his stomach.
“I almost left you there, Shall’la.”  Vejiita said then, his face expressionless.  “On the dock, when Brolli was dying and you realized it was all your doing.”
Bulma stopped her ministrations and placed a palm flat on his abdomen.  His skin was still hot to the touch, and she could feel small electric shocks of ki dancing over her hand.
“I know,” she said finally.  And then a soft laugh.  “Perhaps you should have.”
Vejiita’s finger came to her chin, and he propped it up until she could see the black nadir of his gaze again.  His brow creased, and his nose wrinkled as if he could sense something foul.
“You will need to plead innocence to the council, Bulma.  If you do not, I don’t know how I can save you.”
She did not answer at first, only looked away and blinked away some of those stinging, evil tears.  A sad smile crept its way over her swollen lips, and she drew in a breath.  His fingers dropped to her neck, and then her bare breast, tracing circles there.
“When Raditsu found me in the science division on Vejiita-sei, when he discovered my work, destroyed it and took me as his slave, I thought I would die of rage.  I wanted to…”  She paused, and swallowed a lump of that familiar rage down her throat.  “And then, he didn’t know it, but then he showed me how powerful I really was.”
Vejiita snorted quietly and pressed his probing fingers against the soft skin on her belly.
“He didn’t know what he was dealing with.”  He said, deathly quiet.  Bulma shifted her head and looked back into his probing, piercing eyes.  He bit the tip of her nose.
“When he left me on Mizukashi with Brolli,” she continued, “then I really knew.  I knew I had to live.  I had to survive if I wanted the pain to stop.  Because wishing I was dead, with all of my friends and family, only made the pain worse.”
Something in Vejiita’s gaze flickered at her words.  Bulma watched with fascination the curve of his mouth as he looked at her, and reached up to touch his lips with unthinking fingers.  He caught her wrist in his hand with usual, terrifying speed.
“Save it.”  He said to her.  There was heat between his legs again, hardening and pressing against the insides of her thighs with excitement.  “Save it for them, for the council.  I already know you.”
Vejiita’s mouth was already on her skin again, leaving little trails of desire on her neck and her collar bone.  But she slid a hand through his coarse black hair and gripped tightly.  It did little to deter him.
“No…” she breathed, “no.”
“Enough…” he growled, nipping and kissing at her breasts.
The hot, solid length of him nudged at her for entrance again.  And with a cry she closed her eyes and let him.  Through his quiet, feverish thrusts he pressed his forehead against hers.
“Open your eyes, Bulma-kalzan.”  He told her, his voice gruff with desire.  She did, and in the overwhelming heat of his love-making she gasped.
“They must see you as I see you.”  He whispered, sliding a hand under her bottom so she could meet him more easily.  “Because you need us…  You need this.  You need to live.  Show them you need to live!”
Bulma cried out, his name choking on a sob as she came under him.  She cursed him in the same breath, because he was right.  He was right, and he had been right all along.  The need for them, for him, grew in her again.  Bulma held on to him, and knew without a doubt that her vengeance was forever, horribly and sinfully, lost.  
Later, when they were both sated and Vejiita lay sleeping and nuzzled against her neck, Bulma watched as the motion-sensor lights dimmed and the room around her blurred against the bright starlight from the window.  The remains of Shafuri floated next to Kuraoh like a partner who hadn’t yet learned the steps of the dance, and Bulma swallowed.  If she could not convince this council that she deserved to live, perhaps it was the last glimpse of starlight she would ever see.