Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Restraints and Liberations ❯ ~side-story~ Bedtime ( Chapter 6 )

A little side story to R&L, showing the other side, what's going on in the unseen half of the story thus far. If you enjoy this side story, please pass on all your thanks to my twin, Cleodasia Rihs at

dasiarihs@hotmail.com

Why, you may ask? Simply put, she wouldn't let me scrap this fic about four pages into it. I really wanted to, I wasn't happy with the flow, and grew disillusioned by it. Then my danglemate b onna sided with her,(thanks ever so much for the beta dearest danglemate o'mine!!!) and thus, you have...

Bedtime

Restraints and Liberations Side Story

By Talon

"Tora-chan, get in here, it's time you had a bath!!"

Toranksu frowned, looking up from his building block set in which he was constructing a complex series of various buildings of all types and sizes.

"Mama, I'm all clean," he called back, choosing an arced block and carefully counterbalancing it so it connected two of the smaller buildings.

"Don't bullshit me, Tora, Goten is already in here and I know you haven't bathed in three days. You're starting to really stink."

Sighing, Tora resigned himself to abandoning his construction, knowing the second he left his carefully built city it would be at the mercy of his older sibling, Gohan. He scowled. If Sage were here...but it was no good thinking that. Sage wasn't here, and it hurt to think about his biggest brother. And it made Mama and Papa really sad when he mentioned Sage. He knew sometimes Mama worried he and his brothers had forgotten Sage, but they hadn't. They talked about him all the time, wondering where he was, when he would come home, and who had taken him.

He stripped his clothing off and padded, bare, into the bathroom where he was greeted by his sebba, suds already decorating the spikes in his hair...spikes identical to his twin who was already giggling in the tub. Someone had told him once he and Goten couldn't be twins, 'cause twins always looked just alike. He had punched the meanie, an older cousin of theirs and gone crying straight to Sage, sobbing out his question and confusion. Sage always knew the answers, and he had then. Twins didn't mean always looking alike, he said, softly stroking Tora's deep black hair. Being twins meant you were carried at the same time by the same person, and birthed close together. It didn't matter Goten looked just like sebba, explained Sage, and Tora had much straighter, blacker hair, hair so deep a black it had lavish purple highlights in it, what mattered was they had grown together, under Sebba's heart.

"Tora-chan, hey, Tora…" The voice broke in his memory, causing him to shake his head slightly and look at where the voice had come from. His sebba was kneeling beside him, a worried look on his face. "Are you all right, baby?"

"Yes, Mama, I'm ok," replied Tora softly.

"What were you thinking about so hard, little one?" asked Sebba, stroking one of his cowlicks gently.

"Was thinking bout Sage-niichan," replied Tora without thinking. Then, realizing what he had just said, his eyes went wide, and both hands clasped over his mouth as his Sebba's face took on the horribly sad expression Sage's name brought to it.

"G...gomen, Sebba," said Tora hurriedly, flinging his arms around his birth-parent's neck. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to make you sad, honest!!!"

A soft sniffle from the tub added to Tora's plaintive pleading, as his twin felt his sibling's despair.

"Oh, baby, it's all right, you didn't make me sad."

"I did, I did!!! I said his name, and you always get sad when anyone says his name!!!"

"Whose name?"

Tora jumped in the circle of his sebba's arms as his father's voice echoed around the bathing chamber. Vegeta no Ouji strode in, devoid of the usual decorative armor he wore when he was on duty, and knelt beside his bond-mate.

Tora wasn't afraid of Papa, none of them were. But Papa could be scary when something was wrong with Sebba.

"It's ok Vegeta, Tora was just worried he had upset me by mentioning Sage. I'm trying to explain to him he didn't."

Papa's face didn't change, thought Tora, with a quick feeler thrust back at `ten, but his scent sure did. It went all sad and protective and helpless. He sighed. Now Papa too. Couldn't he do anything right??

"Child," his father's deep voice caressed his ears, he loved the sound of Papa's voice, even tinged with sadness. "Have you three," he glanced around, looking for Gohan, but not seeing him turned his attention back to the twins. "Have you been avoiding talking about your brother because you think it makes us sad? Or because it upsets us?"

In unison the twins nodded.

"It's my fault, `geta," said Kakkarott self-reproachfully. "I guess I don't have as much control as I thought I did."

"No," said Vegeta thoughtfully, "perhaps we are both at fault. After all, we've never really sat down and discussed this situation since shortly after he was kidnapped. Maybe it is time we should."

Kakkarott nodded slowly, and squeezing the elder twin tightly for a moment, lifted him into the tub to sit in the warm water beside `ten. "You're right, Vegeta," he said quietly. "It's time we discussed this...as a family."

That night, the family sat on the large, low bed in the boys' room, Gohan, Goten and Tora all clean and pajama'd were tucked under the covers as their parents sat on the edge of the bed.

"This talk is long overdue," began Vegeta, looking each of his sons in the eye, and feeling the pang in his heart as the memory of his eldest son's endless obsidian eyes flashed in his memory. "You all know what happened, of course, your brother was kidnapped on the eve of his tenth birthday, three years ago, just after his Naming ceremony and the announcement he was to be heir."

The trio nodded. They did know.

Vegeta continued. "You know we followed the leads by paying the ransom demand, and following the money back to the source in order to find Sage. And you know when we got there, Sage was gone, and the rescue team, which included your uncle Radditz, slaughtered the kidnappers they found there."

Again, they nodded.

"What you may not know, is since that time, the searches have never stopped, have never even slowed down. We have teams searching all over this system and the neighboring systems. All tradespersons, like your cousin, Turles, are constantly on the look out for Sage, or clues that might lead us to finding him."

Kakkarott broke in. "What we know for sure is he is still alive..."

Gohan interrupted. "We knew that, Mama," he glanced at his younger siblings, then continued. "We can still feel him, he's still back there...but we can't reach him." Gohan frowned. "It makes me lonely for him," he confessed.

"I know, baby," said Kakkarott, his heart breaking as he threaded his fingers through Gohan's long, spiky hair. "It makes us all lonely for him. But," he continued, not letting up on his gentle stroking, "it is a good thing, it means we know he is still alive. And where there is life, there is hope we will one day find him and bring him home."

Goten's unusually quite voice spoke up from where he was nestled between Gohan and his twin. "Papa, what do you think has happened to niichan?"

Vegeta hesitated. He actually had a good idea of what he thought had happened to his oldest child, and it wasn't pretty. He wanted to be honest with his children, but Goten was so young...the twins had only been three when Sage had been kidnapped...

"I think he is being held somewhere, far away from here against his will," said Vegeta after his moment's hesitation. "I think he is probably being ki-restrained in some way so he can't fight back or contact us."

Gohan shivered. He didn't think now was the time to tell his parents of the dreams he had had of Sage-niichan. He didn't really remember them, mostly, but they HURT. He especially didn't want to tell while the twins were here and awake, after all, they were still just babies...he was three whole years older then they were, and only four years younger than Sage. Next year, he would have his Naming too and get his adult name. But...he didn't want a ceremony if Sage wasn't home. He lifted his head as Papa began to speak again.

"Finally, I want you boys to know you can talk about Sage any time, to each other, and to us. Yes, we are sad Sage isn't here, and angry we haven't found him, and we couldn't protect him like we should have." Two long, thick tails twined together as Vegeta continued. "But your brother is alive, somewhere, and we will find him. All right?"

As one, the three brothers nodded.

Kissing each boy on the forehead, Kakkarott made sure they were snugly tucked in and comfy before he moved and let their father perform his own bedtime ritual with the brats.

"We'll find him," he heard Vegeta whisper once more to the boys who were already showing signs of drifting off to sleep. "I promise, we'll bring your oniichan back home."

The two parents watched for a few minutes as the three boys moved together in sleepy unison, curling and cuddling around each other, tails twining together beneath the blankets, holding tight to one another as they settled into slumber. Then, in the quiet sanctity of their own room, they held each other as Kakkarott wept for his lost baby. Vegeta did not cry, he had sworn to himself he would not. Crying would distract him from his primary purpose in his life, finding his child.

Sage had been their surprise baby, neither of them having had planned to have cubs for a few years yet. He had kept them on their toes from the moment of his conception, as Kakkarott's pregnancy with him had been fraught with complications, owing from him not knowing he had conceived and continuing his usual training and activities. That and a problem with the birthing notch opening too soon had confined him to bed rest for the majority of the pregnancy, brief as it had turned out to be.

They hadn't been certain the boy would live when he had been born, he had arrived prematurely, but until he had actually been born, the medics had been unable to determine HOW premature he was as they had no idea when he had been conceived.

The child had been tiny, fitting snugly in the palms of Vegeta's hands, his tiny, wet blue-black tail curling around his thumb...the faint indigo highlights already showing through the wet and mess of the birth, and his unmistakably royal hair...defying gravity and the damp of the birth to sweep up in the manner his father's and his grandfather's did. He was beautiful. And strong. And stubborn. From the very beginning he fought for every breath. During his first few moments of life his parents and the medics lived from one breath he drew into his lungs to the next, until it became apparent to everyone who had witnessed the birth the tiny cub had no intention of dying. And that's how he knew Sage would survive, no matter where he was, no matter what had or was happening to him. He was a fighter, and he would cling to life with his very last, gasping breath, already gearing up for the next even if Kami himself told him there wouldn't be another breath.

As he held his sobbing mate, Vegeta was unaware of the single tear sliding down his cheek. He would have denied it's existence had he noticed it. He was going to find their child. He would not succumb to tears any more than he would succumb to the growing pressure of a certain faction clambering for them to name another heir. It wasn't even because Sage was missing, though that had a part in it. A political faction had opposed Sage's placement as heir in the very beginning, owing to the fact the Prince's mate had bore and birthed the child. Traditionally, it was the Ou or Ouji himself in an onkru'kah mating who would carry and give birth to the heir. And normally that cub was the first born. Vegeta knew this, and it was one reason they had decided to wait on having chibis, Vegeta's own mother (The Queen) having advised the both of them on that matter. But despite Gohan's birth four years after Sage, Vegeta, Vegeta's father the Ou and Bardock, his father's lover and closest advisor, had all agreed with Naming Sage heir. The boy had been born to it, that was obvious. As long as Sage lived, no other heir would be named.

Kakkarott had fallen asleep with drying tear tracks littering his beautiful face, as he had so many of the nights since Sage had been taken. After Vegeta deftly undressed and slid his koi under the covers the Ouji left his slumbering mate briefly to stand on the balcony and gaze up at the stars.

Not for the first time he wondered if he had been right in allowing Kakkarott talk him out of trying for another cub. They had planned on trying for a girl after Sage's Naming, but after the kidnapping Kakkarott had said it felt too much like they were replacing Sage, and Vegeta had agreed. But times like this, he wished he had thought to convince his mate otherwise. A new baby, while it wouldn't make Sage's absence any easier or any less real, would distract Kakkarott, give him something to focus on. But...he did agree with his mate, when all was said and done...it smacked of replacement, and that he could not do.

Where are you, son? Where are you? Are you alone? Cold? Hungry? Frightened? Hurt? We miss you so much...please, Sage...hang on. Papa will find you. I swear it.

Sighing, Vegeta no Ouji crawled into bed beside his mate and lay for a long while, staring at the ceiling, feeling for his lost son until he could no longer fight off sleep, and succumbed.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Owari