Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Two Sides to a Story ❯ Painful Revelations ( Chapter 8 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Two Sides To A Story
Chapter Eight


Through the singing in his skull, he barely heard the words;
"Vegeta! What the hell are you doing?!"

He didn't respond, so intent was he in maintaining his precarious
state. Transforming into his Super Saiyan persona had been intended to
raise his ki so that the suffering whelp might respond. He barely felt
the baby clinging to his hand with panicked fingers, eagerly sucking on
the blood so that the proffered power might suffuse his own depleted
cells. It was an offering that no other person would be able to
provide; a tradition of the royal family that bound each offspring to
its unique lineage. This had been his state when he had been no older
than Trunks, dependent on a blood gift from his sire to placate the
wildness of his immature state. It was the final realization for the
Saiyan prince that there could be no doubt that Trunks was his son.

That, perhaps, the House of Vegeta was not so lost after all…

There were more startled exclamations and someone pulled them
apart. Vegeta's golden aura dissipated immediately although he had not
consciously willed it. Stumbling backwards, he pressed the heel of his
hand against his left temple in a vain attempt to hold the pounding
agony at bay. The taste of copper was in his mouth and when he breathed
through his nose, all that he snuffled back was slick blood. Almost
gagging, he pulled a stained handkerchief out of his back pocket to try
and staunch the nosebleed. The room seemed suddenly too bright for him
and the surroundings were beginning to seesaw back and forth. There was
someone beside him trying to wrap a towel around his still bleeding
wrist and he kicked out instinctively. The person, a small, bald man he
didn't recognize, flew backwards and upset a table with medical
paraphernalia.

Struggling with nausea, Vegeta slowly edged his way towards the
door even as the blurred figures were advancing on him. The heel of his
boot crunched down on something and he spared a glance down at the
floor in confusion. He caught sight of the remains of a needle and
released a wail of terror at the reminder of its intent. Panicking, he
bolted for the exit and bowled over several people wearing white lab
coats. The similarities only further amplified his urgency.

He almost made it to the staircase when someone tackled him from
behind. The pair slid into the wall in a tangle of arms and legs, the
impact momentarily stunning him. His attacker managed to grab one of
his arms and lever it behind his back before he could react.

"!!NO!!" Vegeta screamed. He thrashed against the grip that held
him at bay until his shoulder threatened to pull from its socket. "No
more poisons! No more prisons! Let me GO!"

Another face hovered on the periphery of his vision. He snapped
his head around to confront this new threat, teeth bared in challenge.
There was something vaguely familiar about that angelic face, framed by
a mantle of odd blue hair. The name of that person struggled to pull
itself free of the pounding between his ears. It seemed to take forever
before he finally recognized her.

"Bulma," he rasped out and ceased his struggles at last.

>>>>>
When the monitor displaying Trunks' vitals went flat-line, it
actually took several seconds for Bulma's brain to register the
meaning. She probably would have continued to gape uncomprehendingly at
the blank screen if a nurse hadn't barreled down the corridor,
screaming: "Code White! Call security ASAP! There's a man in the ICU
attacking one of the patients!"

Chi Chi reacted first. Snagging the heiresses sleeve, she got
Bulma moving and the pair bolted for the Pediatric ward. The rest of
the Z fighters were stepping out of the waiting room and trying to
isolate the source of the rising commotion. The frenzied nurse repeated
her distress and that got the empowered humans moving even before the
security guards exited from the elevator.

Reaching the ICU first, Chi Chi and Bulma instinctively looked
through the observation window. They saw a soldier leaning over Trunks'
crib while a familiar figure stood placidly beside him. "Gohan!" the
brunette hissed and charged into the room.

Lingering behind, Bulma placed her fingertips on the glass as she
examined the new arrival. When the man raised his head to glance at Chi
Chi's entrance, her initial suspicions were confirmed. It was Vegeta.
She would not notice the differences in his appearance until later when
her shock and fear began to abate. Now all that she cared about was
that the Saiyan, who had never approved of her pregnancy, was here to
seemingly finish the job.

When she caught sight of his bloody hand, she feared the worst.
She collapsed to her knees, imploring him to spare their son. It wasn't
until he burst into the golden embodiment of the Super Saiyan that it
finally dawned on her that he was actually here to help. As ever, the
transformation was a rare sight for her. Vegeta had only managed the
feat just before the Cell Games, when he had trained in strict privacy.
She could count on one hand the number of times she had witnessed him
in this majestic state and was mesmerized by the golden aura that
pulsated around him. His normally dark skin adopted a pallor that was
not unattractive and the black of his eyes became a piercing teal
color. Bulma looked to his hair for the characteristic blond spikes and
saw only short, flaxen bristles beneath the cap he wore. The remnants
of that nightmare in the Opera house came back to her, snapping her out
of her wonderment. Getting to her feet, she ran over to the crib and
immediately grimaced at the sight before her. Trunks appeared to have
snapped out of his comatose state and was eagerly sucking on the
Saiyan's self-inflicted wound. His little body was covered in crimson
but he appeared to relish the grisly bath. His fingers rhythmically
kneaded Vegeta's hand like a kitten basking in its mother's milk.

Looking up at the boy's savior with genuine gratitude, Bulma's
initial apprehension over her vision returned with a vengeance when she
caught sight of the Saiyan's bloody nose. Any words she might have said
suddenly became a sour lump in her throat. Glancing across the crib at
Gohan, she saw an expression of concern on the boy's face that mirrored
her own.

"Vegeta! What the hell are you doing?!" Yamcha bellowed, striding
into the room with the rest of the Special Forces.

"Ew- gross!" Oolong bawled and immediately started retching over
in the corner.

"Tien, don't-" Bulma tried to stop her bald companion from
interfering but was too late. The immense fighter pulled the Saiyan
from the crib and Vegeta's transformed state extinguished itself the
second he was separated from the infant. He appeared disorientated and
was holding his head although she was certain that Tien had not struck
him.

Before she could concentrate on Vegeta's welfare, she had to
check on Trunks first. Chi Chi was staring at the baby with a rare look
of genuine shock on her face. For the first time in four arduous long
days, Bulma was finally able to manage a smile at last.

Gurgling his contentment, Trunks hiccuped once and then smiled up
at his mother's face as if nothing had ever happened. He appeared to be
his old, pleasant self once more and immediately held up his arms to
her. Bulma wiped him clean as best she could with a spare towel and
eagerly picked him up. "You're okay! My baby boy is okay! You sure had
your mama going bugshit, little guy," Bulma cooed.

"Bahgsit!" Trunks spouted enthusiastically. Laughing, Bulma
hugged him as tightly as she dared and rocked him, tears of joy
streaming down her cheeks.

"Gohan, what's going on?" Chi Chi marveled in a stunned voice as
she watched the pair.

"Vegeta came to help Trunks, mom," the boy said in a soft voice.

The disbelief was clear on the woman's face. "Vegeta?"

"He said that a Saiyan baby needed blood in his diet. He tried to
offer him a piece of meat but Trunks was too far gone so he-he…" Gohan
lapsed into troubled silence.

The rest of Chi Chi's questions were interrupted by the sound of
a scuffle behind them. She turned just as Krillin collided with a table
and Vegeta was making his way to the exit. Tien and the others appeared
about to pounce on him and Bulma quickly handed Trunks over to the
brunette so she could intervene. "Leave him alone. All of you! There's
something wrong with him, can't you see that?"

There was a crunch of glass and Vegeta paused long enough to
stare down at his foot. The rare confusion on his face dissolved into
visible fear at the sight of the broken needle he had stepped on. It
was an expression that Gokou adopted whenever he caught so much as a
glimpse of his most feared object on earth. For some reason, Vegeta was
now also stricken by that near debilitating phobia of needles. The
horrified cry he released actually caused Bulma's heart to tremble in
sympathy. When he sprinted out of the ICU, buffeting a doctor and nurse
aside in his haste, she looked over at Yamcha. Her ex-lover and friend
had sensed that something was wrong and seemed to be waiting for some
sort of cue from her.

"Don't let him leave," she told him. "Be as gentle as you can."

It hadn't been easy by any stretch of the imagination. Vegeta
screamed things that made little sense and didn't appear to recognize
any of them in his panic. It wasn't until Bulma knelt down in front of
him that he began to register her presence for the first time. The
blankness left his crazed features and he finally stopped fighting the
desperate hold Yamcha had on him. "Bulma," he said raggedly.

"Oh, Vegeta," she whispered in dismay. His cap had come off with
his struggles and she plainly saw the close cropped bristles of his
former mane. The mere sight was heartrending because she knew that the
Saiyan wore his hair like a banner to display his royal lineage. The
fact that someone had been able to get close enough to do this terrible
deed was evidence enough that something horrible had happened to him.
She touched the side of his face with trembling fingers and he recoiled
violently from the contact. Yamcha let him go with a nod from her and
the Saiyan scrambled back to his feet, backing away from them. He ran a
hand through his hair, caught sight of his cap, and bent down to
retrieve it. With a weary grunt, he dropped to one knee and shook his
head to clear an onslaught of vertigo.

Watching all of this in silent horror, Bulma replayed the
Saiyan's outburst in her mind: No more poisons. No more prisons. It all
tied into his disorientated state, that three-month disappearance and
her past nightmare. He was barely recognizable from the proud alien who
had stormed out of the Headquarters building four months ago. Odd
clothes aside, his pale features and slimmer build, not to mention
shorn hair, altered his appearance into one that was almost a stranger
to her.

The others, having witnessed Trunks' miraculous recuperation, now
left the ICU to view the standoff in the corridor. Sensing their
probing stares, Vegeta self-consciously replaced the cap, pulling the
brim down low over his eyes. As if the hallway were suddenly too bright
for him, he put on a pair of sunglasses. Bulma didn't like how the
mirrored lenses hid her view of his eyes. She relied on them for
valuable clues that the rest of his face would never betray.

Vegeta wiped his nose with the back of his hand and checked for
fresh blood. The nosebleed had stopped but his wrist throbbed painfully
with each heartbeat. He gripped the mangled flesh with a grimace and
didn't acknowledge that a new presence was beside him until Gohan said,
"Here, Vegeta." He held out a clean towel.

Snatching the offering from the boy, Vegeta wrapped it around his
wrist to staunch the blood flow. Managing to get to his feet, he turned
to the stairwell only to have Yamcha stand in his way. He glared at
Bulma. "Call off your guard dog, woman. I'm leaving."

Through trembling lips, she managed, "I don't know how to thank
you for what you've done-"

"Spare me the platitudes. I didn't do this for you."

"Vegeta, I have so many questions!"

"You're not worthy of the answers," he shot back. "You have the
brat back, what more do you want? If it's a bother, I can easily take
back what I gave."

Tien joined Yamcha's side and, as ever, felt a gloating
satisfaction at the way the small alien had to tilt his head back to
look up at him. "If that's how you feel about Trunks, why bother coming
back at all?" The huge man rumbled out. "Why not just let him suffer?"

"His constant bawling was keeping me awake."

"He's been in a coma for three days!"

When the Saiyan didn't respond, Bulma spoke up, "You've been
hearing him in your mind, haven't you? You have a mental bond with
him."

"Not by choice. But then, that's something you're all too
familiar with, isn't it?" he sneered with open contempt.

"Vegeta, he's your son!"

"If the boy was truly my son, he would have my name. If he were
truly an heir of Vegetasei, he would still have his tail."

"Trunks wasn't born with a tail," Gohan supplied helpfully.

Vegeta glared at Bulma over the rim of his sunglasses. In a low,
dangerous voice, he asked her in an accusing tone, "Is that what you
told them?"

All of the moisture dried up in Bulma's mouth when she caught
sight of the knowledge in those ebon depths. "You… you were there," she
realized, barely aware that she had spoken the words out loud.
"Ohmigod, you came back."

"Yes."

"B-but why?"

"That should be obvious, even to you."

Bulma collapsed into a nearby chair just as her legs gave out on
her. The stares of her gathered friends were tracking back and forth
from the Saiyan to her in clear confusion. Putting her hot face in her
hands, her voice was muffled when she managed to get out: "You came
back to kill me."

To her surprise, he offered her one brisk shake of his head. "I
returned to correct the wrong you did to me. Our first confrontation
was unresolved; you caught me by surprise. By the time I resolved to
rectify that mistake, you had already given birth to it."

"What was to stop you from coming into the hospital and killing
Trunks then?" Bulma asked dully.

"I DID come inside," Vegeta assured her and Bulma's head snapped
up in shock. There was a muttered undercurrent among the others at the
revelation. "Right after the flesh butchers had hacked off the boy's
tail and were in the process of hiding the mark. This world has no
moon. What could possibly have been your motive in disfiguring him in
such a horrible way?"

Weighing her words very carefully, Bulma took a moment to
evaluate the concern that Vegeta tried to hide with feigned
indifference. It explained the terrible threats he had yelled at her
just before he had left Capsule Corporation and the reason that he had
avoided the baby up until now. Although he stoically coped with the
loss, there wasn't a day that went by that Vegeta didn't mourn his
severed tail. His identity as a Saiyan, and a Prince of the race no
less, was severely compromised by its absence. That she had subjected
Trunks to the same indignity was the reason for so much rage behind the
Saiyan's past words and more than just a little hurt in his present
admittance. Clearly, this outburst had been building since the moment
he first laid eyes on her swollen belly but the catalyst for the
overwhelming hatred had been the fate of the baby's tail. As much as
she would have preferred to have this long overdue conversation in
private, Vegeta had the right to give voice to his betrayal and she had
to listen to it while her friends played witness. "Honestly? I was
pissed off at you for leaving us. I didn't want any reminders of who or
what you are."

"So you mutilated a newborn out of revenge for me?" Vegeta said
in disbelief. His face showed only blank shock until it suffused with
hatred. "!!YOU MALICIOUS BITCH!!" He thundered at the top of his lungs.
"Do you have any concept of what you've done?! The tail is the most
important appendage of a Saiyan warrior. How would you feel if I
severed one of your arms or legs? The loss is the same. You never even
allowed the boy a choice in the matter."

"Don't try to pass it off as if you care, Vegeta," Tien
interjected coldly. "I remember when we were hunting Android 20 and it
fired on Bulma's hoverjet. You never even made the effort to save
either of them."

Vegeta fixed him with a level glare. "Why did the responsibility
to step in on their behalf automatically fall on my shoulders? All of
you were there standing around and scratching your asses while I was
absorbed in the task of tracking 20 with my ki. Any one of you could
have prevented the attack on your 'dear childhood friend'." The
reminder of their relationship with Bulma hit home and even Tien backed
off in surprise. The Saiyan glared next at Bulma and said through
clenched teeth, "And you… You willfully endangered the boy by bringing
him into a combat area. What were you thinking?"

Her cheeks flamed with shame over the incident. Yajirobi had been
beside her in the cockpit and had pleaded repeatedly for her to turn
away from the fighting. She had pressed stubbornly on, reverting back
to her adventurous, carefree ways and oblivious of the possible threat
to her infant son. In any judicial court, she would have been found
guilty of child endangerment for the lapse, not that it would have
mattered. If not for Mirai Trunks' intervention, they would have both
been dead and it wouldn't have been Vegeta's fault.

It would have been hers.

"It's clear who shoulders the blame, but I'm the person everyone
points the finger at whenever things go wrong," Vegeta continued, not
bothering to wait for her response. "It wouldn't do me any good to try
and tell them what you're really like, would it? Do you think they'd
believe me if I tried to tell them that you're actually a lying,
calculating, vindictive bitch?"

"That's enough, Vegeta," Yamcha interrupted. Things were getting
way too tense out here in the hallway of the hospital. Staff and
patients were congregating in large numbers to watch the show and if he
was reading the Saiyan's body language correctly, that meant Vegeta was
close to becoming violent.

"Vegeta, I'm sorry that I lied to you," Bulma said in a small
voice. There was nothing else that she could possibly offer him in
rebuttal. What he had said was true, every single word of it. "I'm
really very sorry. It wasn't fair."

"No, it wasn't," the Saiyan amended in a softer voice. It would
be the only thing that they would ever agree on. "Get the brat out of
this prison and go about your lives. Leave me to mine. I don't want to
see any of you ever again. Understand?"

Her acknowledgement came out as a soundless croak. Biting her
lower lip to keep the tears at bay, she offered him one mute nod.
Satisfied, Vegeta turned to face Yamcha and Tien who were still barring
his exit. Wordlessly, the pair parted without any of their usual
condescending banter and the Saiyan felt a fleeting sense of victory in
their humble demeanor. The sensation passed quickly. There was nothing
to gloat over in this conflict and there were no winners who emerged
unscathed. Not from this fight.

Stepping past the fighters, he noticed Chi Chi's protruding
stomach and immediately recognized the significance. "I'm curious," he
said in a cold voice. "Was that one merely an accident? Or did you
deliberately intend to trap Kakarott as Bulma trapped me?"

Before anyone could think of an answer, he opened the door to the
stairwell and was gone from their sight.

>>>>>
Trunks was swiftly moved into a private room where a staff of
physicians checked him over, marveling at his sudden recovery. The babe
appeared to thrive on all of the attention he was receiving until a
nurse attempted to draw some blood. Scowling at the needle, he began
wailing his distress and Bulma stepped in quickly on his behalf. "No
more of that. He's exhausted."

"But Ms. Briefs-" The doctor objected.

"I said NO!" Bulma snapped. "None of you were able to do a damn
thing for him here. I'm taking him home after he gets some rest."

"Some bloodwork might be able to determine the cause of his
illness," the physician persisted, eager to run some tests on the boy's
apparently unique physiology. "Don't you want to know how to prevent a
reoccurrence?"

Bulma was beginning to get frustrated by the other man's
ignorance. Her nerves were frayed by too many days of stress and she
would have exploded on the spot if Chi Chi weren't standing beside her.
"If he starts having trouble again I'll just wave a steak under his
nose. Now get OUT!" she screamed.

Muttering among themselves, the reluctant staff did as they were
told and left the room. Chi Chi tried to put a comforting hand on
Bulma's shoulder but the heiress only shook her head and deliberately
shrugged it off. Leaning over the crib, Bulma wove a finger around one
of the tiny lavender curls on the boy's head as the babe drifted off to
sleep. For a long time, there was only the sound of Trunks gentle
breathing until she spoke up with: "I thought I could tame him."

Chi Chi spared a glance at Trunks but understood whom her friend
was talking about. "Vegeta?"

Bulma offered her friend a weary nod. There were alarming dark
circles under her blue eyes, a combination of exhaustion and
inexpressible grief. "When we were brought back from Namek, he was so
feral, so full of anger but he was... lost, too. I don't know how to
explain what I was thinking back then, 'Chi. All I saw was this lonely
man who had no family, no friends, no home... no purpose to his life
but to cause destruction. It was all that he knew. When we were alone
together, I would catch a glimpse of a gentler side to him, something
that Frieza and his brutes hadn't quite successively beaten out of him
but it was barely a spark... and it was fading rapidly. So I made my
choice and stopped taking the pill. I knew I wasn't getting any younger
and I could afford to raise a child on my own, if it came to that. I
thought it over very seriously before I made up my mind. But he was
very careful when it came to matters like that and I ended up having to
lie to him." She choked back a sob and stared up at her friend through
a mask of tears. "I think that upset him the most, even more than my
being pregnant. He finally lowered those guards of his and allowed
himself to actually trust someone for probably the first time in
decades and I ended up betraying him! You should have seen the hurt on
his face when he saw that I was pregnant. You wouldn't have recognized
him."

"I didn't recognize him when he was here," the brunette
confessed. "I'm not going to pretend that I like Vegeta in any way,
shape or form… but he did heal Trunks and I can't ignore that. I'll
admit that I can't figure any other possible motive behind him doing
that but out of a genuine intention to help. That's not the Saiyan I
remember."

Privately pleased by the woman's confession, Bulma felt
vindicated that someone had recognized Vegeta's selfless act on Trunks'
behalf. "He's different," she said in a low voice, as if afraid of
being overheard by the other fighters milling around outside of the
room. "It's only been four months and he's changed but it's not for the
better. We have to find out what's happened."

"Bulma, he said that he want's to be left alone-"

"You saw him! There's something wrong, 'Chi. He's sick."

"He severed his own wrist, what do you expect? He was probably
dizzy from the blood loss, that's all."

She could talk until her face was as blue as her hair but Bulma
knew that she wasn't going to sway the other woman over to her line of
thinking. Chi Chi still had too much resentment directed towards the
Saiyan to be truly objective in this matter; Vegeta had come, saved the
day and left, that was all that concerned her. Bulma knew that pushing
people away was a life-long habit for the Saiyan. If he truly was ill,
it was his nature to hole up somewhere and lick his wounds in private
and without interruption. There was no other person who could read him
as well as she could. Deep down inside, instinctively, she knew that
something was terribly wrong.

As ever, in matters dealing with Vegeta, she knew she was on her
own.

>>>>>
Freeing his immense girth from the elevator, Chi Chi's father,
the Ox King, stepped into a gathering that seemed more like a wake than
a celebration. The rest of the fighters were milling around in the
waiting room, all in a sullen and down-spirited mood. They really
weren't needed for moral support anymore but nobody wanted to make the
first move and leave for fear of appearing selfish. Vegeta's words had
carried a ring of truth despite the alien's brusque nature and they
were all reluctantly evaluating their past actions. Particularly of
their treatment of the Saiyan. Vegeta made a convenient target because
of his combative and unrepentant nature. His very arrogance dismissed
their criticism as soon as it was voiced, or so they had believed up
until this moment. It had become brutally clear this afternoon that all
they'd managed to do was fuel the Saiyan's inherent distrust of them.
Now that he was a Super Saiyan and Gokou, his only true adversary, was
dead, it could develop into a lethal oversight if someone didn't
resolve that resentment quickly. Unfortunately, nobody was willing to
step forward first.

Krillin was about to suggest that they draw lots to decide who
gets picked for the task of trying to reason with the Saiyan when the
Ox King lumbered into the room. "Hiya, everybody!" He greeted with his
usual vacuous humor. "The doctors tell me that Trunks is going to be
okay. Isn't that swell?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's great news," Yamcha said, forcing a lopsided
grin on his face.

Tipping his head to examine the faces of the gathered friends,
the huge man commented, "Why is everybody so sad? Did I miss
something?"

"It's alright," Krillin spoke up quickly, knowing that the man
could get as excitable as his daughter could. "You just missed Vegeta,
that's all. He made quite an… exit."

"Vegeta?…" The slow turning of the gears in the man's head was
almost visible as he processed this new information with his usual
tenacity. "Vegeta! Isn't that the nasty Saiyan who tried to invade the
earth and beat up on little Gohan here?" He ruffled the boy's hair
affectionately.

"The same one, grandpa," Gohan supplied. "He actually came to
help Trunks this time. He's not bad anymore."

Standing off to the side, Tien opened his mouth at the comment,
thought better of it and closed it again. He would never like Vegeta;
after all, he had died in the initial invasion attempt just as Yamcha
had. There were some things that could never be resolved and his own
murder was one of them. However, giving voice to his misgivings in this
circumstance would be a mistake. He had to come to terms with how he
felt all on his own and not burden the others with it. At one time or
another, they had all been on the receiving end of the Saiyan's
cruelty. He would not be telling them something they didn't already
know.

"Hnh," the Ox King mused. "I wish I could of seen him face to
face."

"You wouldn't have recognized him," Yamcha said. "He was dressed
in a military uniform complete with cap and Magnum boots. Even I didn't
know who he was, at first. It was a helluva disguise."

Gohan's grandfather's eyes lit up in recognition. "The soldier
man! Yeah, I saw him get into a jeep in the parking lot and drive away
just as I was coming in."

Krillin was shaking his head. "Vegeta would never go for driving
around in a car. That's just not his style. He would have flown."

The Ox King's face drooped in disappointment. "I guess you're
right," he said at last. "After all, the poor guy looked hurt, what
with a bloody towel wrapped around his right wrist and all. I guess
that couldn't have been him…"

The stunned expressions of all of the gathered fighters spoke
volumes until Master Roshi finally piped up: "Why would Vegeta choose
to drive?"

Nobody had an answer.



------------------------------------------------ ----------
Chapter Nine: Insight into the 'life' the Saiyan has made for himself.