Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Shadow ❯ Shadow ( One-Shot )

Never. Never.

 

Restless weeping restrained him, tied him away from the peace that the others now enjoyed.

 

He couldn't just sit idle and do nothing…

 

…But there was nothing he could do.

 

Vegeta wept.

 

He wept often, but always when no one was looking. Well, that was often. Bulma was afraid of him now, and if she didn't want to bother him, there was no one alive who would.

 

It was all falling apart.

 

No, it already had.

 

Vegeta loathed not the stony weights he had shed, but the fact that he had shed them. He flailed and struggled and tripped and wept. Life without the singular goal was far more painful than anything else. Pain, he was used to. Self-imposed for decades…or, more recently, years…he could handle pain. It was only when he had given up all his efforts in utter disappointment that he discovered what was worse than the shallower suffering.

 

Loss of self. Complete and total absence of identity. A nothing in a well-honed, deteriorating body - for he still had a shadow.

 

And how he hated it.

 

Vegeta glared icily at the darkness he cast upon the wall.

 

The wasted years…the endless work, to come to this pathetic end. Biting back the sickness, taking everything he could handle and more, always straining himself, always an inch from preferring suicide…only to lose it all to a dead man and a child.

 

If he had known…if he had given up…if he had chosen another path, instead of this one that ended in destruction of character…what would he have had a chance to become? What would he have become?

 

And would he like it more than what he was now?

 

Vegeta growled to himself and focused on the shadow. There he was, always hovering behind him, or beside him, or all around him.

 

Goku had defeated Vegeta more soundly than any of his other foes.

 

The prince sunk to the ground.

 

He was without his rank in life. After all the exertion he had put into achieving it, only to fail so thoroughly, he knew he would never regain it.

 

Never.

 

He would never fight again.

 

 

 

And the grief.

 

The time he could never have back weighed down on him. The one last thing he had tried to cling to, only to reluctantly but forcefully release…where was he now? Who was he now?

 

A man with a shadow that haunted him all the way from Heaven.

 

He would snarl the man's name in his fitful sleep. He was the body to the shadow. Perhaps that was all his existence was destined for, now. Hate. Hating Kakarrot - but more, himself. Hating fate, cursing gods and stars and anyone who crossed his path, because nothing could change, and all he could do was hate.

 

Hate and grieve.

 

Accepting the thought that he would never have a last shot at defeating Kakarrot - that he would not even have the heart to try if he had the chance - that was possibly the most difficult thing.

 

Accepting the thought that the man's offspring, the undeserving, naïve half-blood - and another to come, he sensed - overpowered him effortlessly - that was equally as difficult.

 

Accepting the thought that Kakarrot would nevermore be there to grate on his nerves, to spur him on to work harder, to smile and be the fool he was, to share the last remaining blood of the once-proud race - for whatever reason, Vegeta found that to be the most difficult.

 

Stuck in the routine he had followed for so long, Vegeta often found himself sleepwalking to the gravity room in the early morning hours. He almost started training, every time it happened, but then he looked down, and saw his shadow on the floor, and felt the sum of his failures, and retched.

 

Unredeemable.

 

 

 

But he was a warrior, and no amount of hate or despair could change his blood.

 

He stepped into the gravity room, and collapsed. “Leave me alone,” he whimpered to the shadow. “Kakarrot, my life is framed entirely by yours. What more can you want? How much deeper will you knife me?”

 

The shadow caught Vegeta's tears. He smacked it.

 

“I need to fight…I need to train…” he pleaded, a hawk barred by his own cage. “Let me go!”

 

And he swung a punch through the air, and another. And another. He closed his eyes, and he was suddenly snapping Goku's bones, drawing blood, glorious blood.

 

He opened his eyes, and realized it could never happen.

 

He closed his eyes quickly once more, and continued. Soon, he was mocking Kakarrot, babying him, dressing his wounds, egging him on, encouraging him like an adult would a helpless child. He grinned and reveled in the sweetness of superiority.

 

He opened his eyes and looked down at his shadow.

 

Perhaps he ought to live a while with his eyes closed.

 

 

 

Vegeta fell backward, a feral grin gracing his features. “Take that, Kakarrot,” he breathed to the shadow. “Your son's been slacking off. I'm far stronger now, even stronger than he used to be when he trained often. And you, Kakarrot - I'll overcome you next.” He was accustomed now to ignoring the fact that he would never be able to test this.

 

His training sessions invigorated him, lifted his spirit. He could sleep now, without collapsing in on the void that filled him.

 

Slowly, Vegeta was building a new structure into his life. Perhaps it was feebler than the old one; perhaps it hurt him to accept the fact that he was giving it up. But each day, it felt better.

 

“What was that, Dad?” Trunks tilted his head.

 

“Nothing, boy,” Vegeta snapped, maintaining his smirk. “I was just thinking…of how you'll never be able to give me a square punch to the gut.”

 

“What?” he shouted in disbelief, charging his father.

 

Yes, each day, he recovered a bit. Trunks helped. He swelled with pride each time the boy surprised him with a new attack; couldn't help but take satisfaction in his offspring's strength.

 

Better, Trunks seemed to enjoy taking on the challenges his father posed to him. The usual reward of a trip to the amusement park probably didn't hurt, either. Vegeta chortled. He hated that place, but for his son, he would tolerate it now and then.

 

Trunks caught the prince off-guard as he mused, and Vegeta pretended to be furious with him for the successful hit. “You got lucky,” he grunted, and Trunks grinned.

 

 

 

 

The shadow still haunted him, but with a different game in mind now.

 

Vegeta sat on the edge of his bed and gazed at the dark spot cast by the sun slipping through the blinds. He sighed deeply and stood up. The blurry shadow became crisp and clear as he neared it, but the image he saw was not his own. The prince reached out and touched it gingerly.

 

Even after moving past his unwillingness to fight, he was still subjected to some grief. He suffered from the occasional hallucination - and always they involved the same subject. He would glance at his shadow, at any shadow, even at other people…and before his eyes, they would flicker, flicker, and take the form of the inflictor of his angst. Vegeta knew his shadow did not resemble Kakarrot…but…

 

He leaned against the wall.

 

He was creating a new structure for his life, but something was still missing.

 

Kakarrot had annoyed him often. Vegeta did not need his pity or his sympathy, and the man was a complete and utter moron. But their first battle had been so electric, and he longed to feel like that again. And the fool accepted him - never pushed him to change, like all the others, never berated him for the pride he had in his race.

 

He must have possessed some sort of freak charisma. His warm smile was as intriguing and alluring as his cool smirk. Despite all reason and sanity, Vegeta found himself being helplessly drawn toward the man. He wanted to learn how his mind worked; to discover the cobwebbed alleys that no one trod in; to reveal those of which even Goku himself was not aware; to reach out and stir the thoughts and memories that he hid from everyone else.

 

And now, he couldn't. The object of his obsession and fascination had slipped from his grasp forever. Besides the fact that he no longer had the chance to claim a victory over Goku, it also grated on his heart that he would never be able to speak to him again, that he would never be able to gaze into those inviting eyes. The sole man who had the potential to maybe, maybe understand him…gone. Gone to the one place to which he knew he would never be able to go.

 

Tears streaked down Vegeta's face when he realized it, hard as it was to admit. “I miss you, Kakarrot,” he murmured to the shadow. “So much. Come back…”

 

 

 

Half-covered by the blotches of darkness cast by a tree's swaying branches, Vegeta's shadow seemed to dance.

 

If he were a less dignified man, he might have done the same. But as he was, he simply smirked at how fitting the shadow's dancing was.

 

At the sound of Goku's voice echoing the good news through the gravity room earlier that afternoon, his heart had nearly exploded from his chest. Simultaneously, anger - anger that, in recent years, he had been largely successful at suppressing - sprang into his consciousness once more.

 

The feelings might reawaken, but he knew that this time, he would be able to talk about them. There would be finality; there would be a chance for the long-awaited victory; there would be everything that he had wished and begged and wept for. Twenty-four sweet hours, and he would make sure that the fool was in his sight for each and every second.

 

And this time, Kakarrot, he balled a fist determinedly, you're mine.