Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ You've Got a Hold On Me ❯ Chapter One - So F*cking What? ( Chapter 1 )

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

The ‘Incident’, as everyone present had begun to refer to it, hadn’t been so much an explosion as it was a thundering, pulsing echo of displaced energy followed by a soul-wrenching, sonic boom of infuriated, obsessive madness.  It had only been seconds before the roof of the GSR blast out, but everyone had heard the deafening roar—and they all knew who it belonged to.  But as Bulma watched him, the perpetrator of all that insanity sleeping fitfully in the guest bed across the room, she felt a very sudden, shattering sense of pity.
His body, bandaged to the gills and compact as it was, looked so broken there that she was hard-pressed to see the madman who’d come to Earth just less than two years ago with fire blazing in his obsidian glare.  His form commanded respect though, even from this angle, and Bulma wondered at the scars that dashed mercilessly across his powerful chest.  Her brow furrowed as she observed the Saiyan Prince in the dim light of the guest room.  A tall shadow cast into the room from behind her, and she felt Yamcha’s hard stare at the back of her head before she even turned to see it.
“I know what you’re thinking.”  His voice was a low growl behind her.  Without facing him, Bulma took a deep breath and leaned against the door frame.
“Do you?”  She asked.  The words dripped with warning.  “Do you still know that, Yamcha?”  
“You’re thinking that he doesn’t look all that evil, lying there like that.”
The warrior behind her was tense with caution, and yes, a rush of jealousy.  She didn’t need to be a genius to sense it.  They hadn’t really been a couple since his resurrection, but…  Well, he still needed her, didn’t he?  It was she who had moved on a little too quickly, a little too graciously.  Bulma turned and gazed up at the man she would have married.  
Yamcha watched her with concern, and just a smidge of desire, she thought.  His once unruly mane of thick, black waves had been tamed into a straight-laced cut that just brushed the hard line of his jaw.  The scars on his handsome face, though still a mute testimony to his past, had faded to a dull pink over the years.  It was the only thing left of him that still blazed against the beaten path.  Everything else, well…  He was so like his hair cut:  tame and soft.  Bulma drew a breath, because it looked as though Yamcha wanted to speak.
“He almost died, Yamcha.”
“It was his own fault, and he almost killed all of us in the process!”
“That wasn’t his intention--!”
“But he wouldn’t have blinked twice if he took us out with him, Bulma!  You think he’s so pitiable, that you could almost forgive him.”
Bulma took another deep breath and felt her nostrils flare.  Something about Yamcha’s mini-tirade masked his true intentions in visiting her wing of the compound tonight.  Sure, he would say it was to make sure she didn’t overdo it tonight in her lab, repairing what was left of the GSR and beginning her plans to reconstruct it.  He would probably even tell her that he’d wanted to see how things were going with Vegeta; if the arrogant, hateful son of a bitch was being a suitable patient.
“What did you really come here to tell me?”  Bulma asked, finally devoid of patience.
Her one-time love inhaled deeply through his nose, and the muscles in his neck twitched with irritation.  The silence between them was punctuated only by the soft song of crickets outside the guest room window, and the soft whir of Vegeta’s oxygen tank.
“I’m telling you that I can see what’s going on here.”  Yamcha’s words were as close to a whisper as they could be.  “You always think you can diffuse any situation with your looks, your smarts.  Just this once, Bulma, admit you can’t charm your way out of this one.  He’s a dick, and he doesn’t care about you, about your family, or us.  You can’t flirt with a potentially homicidal, maniac alien--!”
“Fuck off, Yamcha.”  She cut him off with a deadly growl, put both fists on her hips and turned from his accusatory glare.
Bulma hadn’t wanted it to end that way, really she hadn’t.  Despite their current differences of opinion, Yamcha was a friend and one that she didn’t want to lose.  It was difficult to remember that now, though, as he began to follow her down the hallway.
“You can’t shrug this off, Bulma--!”  He snarled at her.  She stopped abruptly, craned her neck to glower at him and tried not to remember that he had loved her once…  Desperately.  Her wide blue eyes narrowed.
“I said, ‘fuck off, Yamcha’.”  She replied through clenched teeth.
And that was that, she thought grudgingly as her feet carried her the rest of the way down the hallway into the east residential wing.  This time, he did not follow her.  Bulma wondered if Yamcha was still outside the doorway of Vegeta’s room, contemplating subterfuge and assassination.  He’d never do it, she mused, but the thought was probably racing through the part of his mind that still remembered his days as a desert bandit.
Bulma arrived at her own rooms none too soon, and when she shut the door quietly behind her she sighed and leaned against it.  The whole, mad day had been exhausting and defending herself against Yamcha’s inane accusations had made supernovae of her nerve endings.  She reached up and plunged all five fingers into the mess of puffy curls on her head, sliding the headband off so that it dropped to the ground, forgotten.
Even in the comfort of her own bedroom, and later in the hot, steamy rush of water inside the shower, Bulma could not shake the image of Vegeta’s prostrate form.  Because even on Namek, when he’d shown up to kife Krillin’s dragonball in battered, broken armor and fresh from a regen tank, his stance had commanded respect.  It was what had made her cower shamefully against the wall of rock behind her.  Something in his body, whether it was sheer power or simply veiled overconfidence, demanded obedience.
Well, he was a prince, she thought as the hot water streamed down her naked back and soothed the tired muscles there.  And it seemed that whether he was the prince of a virtually dead race of warriors, or of a massive following that bowed to his every whim seemed immaterial to Vegeta.  His arrogance wasn’t just infuriating, it was admirable.  Bulma sighed, droplets of water spraying from her refreshed lips, and finished washing her hair.
Yamcha’s allegation that she had some kind of fixation on Vegeta echoed in the recesses of her exhausted brain.  Her teeth clenched together at the complete audacity he’d displayed in the hallway.  The idea was ridiculous, and yet…  Yet, the Saiyan Prince’s entire fate – his very existence in her life – seemed to resonate in her soul with urgency, and resolution.  Unwittingly, Bulma’s lips quirked into an upturned sneer.  If she couldn’t stop thinking about the bastard, maybe she shouldn’t.  She wondered if Yamcha knew that his declaration had sparked something of a challenge in her gut.  And Bulma Briefs loved a challenge.
Maybe she could flirt with a potentially homicidal, maniac alien.  Wouldn’t that shock her friends out of their goddamn training boots?

The dream was always the same.  Sometimes, it began with a soft whisper:  a tendril of horror that slid insidiously into the crevices of his mind and corrupted every thought that came after.  Then sometimes it began with a thunderous boom that exploded all peaceful darkness and left him a cowering mess in a nameless corner, shrinking from the torture as he had always wanted to do but had not allowed himself the luxury.  But regardless of its beginnings the dream was invariably, excruciatingly, the same.
As Vegeta lay at the edge of consciousness, remembering the explosion that had left him a bruised, bleeding heap among piles of debris, this time was no different.  Tonight, the tendrils of gentle memory flooded his senses and brought back every agonizing vision since childhood that had ever once plagued him.  The first visitor was always the one who had given him the nightmares in the first place.  It was always that one.  
Even in death, Frieza haunted the abandoned castles of Saiyan pride:  Vegeta’s last bastion of self-worth.  He stood at the other corner of that nameless room, cackling with maniacal glee at the broken Monkey Prince who puffed out his chest in mock courage at his lizard overlord.  That courage had never been rewarded with praise or encouragement.  No.  Vegeta was always paid, in kind, for his unfailing audacity with a vicious snarl and a scornful, torturous beating.  And it was the beatings that visited him most frequently in sleep, when he was most vulnerable.
This time, though, someone else visited him.  If having nearly killed himself in the pursuit of surpassing said visitor was not enough, Vegeta couldn’t help but allow himself a subconscious ‘huff’ of disdain for the vision of Kakarot – shining like a golden fucking god as he attained something Vegeta was born for but had never found.
He struggled in vain as the image of that bumbling, shit excuse for a Saiyan came closer.  But who was that by his side?  The young stranger who had come to visit, claiming Saiyan heritage with a transformation that came so easily it made Vegeta ill at the sight.  Bastard!  
If only he could move properly, he could get up from his corner and incinerate the both of them – prove once and for all that he was their PRINCE.  The one who, above any of them, deserved the prize of Frieza’s death cry at his hands.  But something kept him there, held him crouched in that corner like a cowardly, low-born brat.  Gods above, if he could only move!
Vegeta dug both hands at the ground beneath him, and his fingers met nothing but cold resistance:  a sticky, melting resistance that felt a lot like the spilled guts of Zarbon as he’d blasted a hole eight inches wide into him.  The beast of Oozaru howled inside him, but the nameless room was cavernous and the sound echoed out into oblivion.  And then the tears came, just like the ones he’d shed on Namek, just before that ignominious cheap shot had pierced his heart and sent him tumbling into the dark tunnels of hell.
He could see Kakarot and that little bastard moving closer now.  They laughed…  They laughed at him, at their prince!  Vegeta wept, and he roared, but the power inside him would not crest.  The Super Saiyan that slept in his soul stayed quiet – still.
When his eyes snapped open, the room he lay in was dim but for the distant call of sunlight outside in the east.  He stared at the ceiling for a moment and remembered where he was, where he had been for a few weeks now.  Yes, the gravity simulator.  The explosion of his poorly aimed and misfired ki blast that had nearly destroyed everything in a quarter mile radius…
The room was quiet, and Vegeta realized dimly that he had knocked off a mask from the front of his face.  Air streamed out of it and hissed gently at his ear.  Every last gods damned part of his body ached.  The whole of it moaned in protest; he had probably been struggling in his unconscious fever.  Though it hurt very much to do so, he pressed both lips together and inched his neck from side to side so he could gain back the ability to use it.
A sudden, yet gentle, shuffling bounced off of the walls in the room and sparked his awareness.  Vegeta’s eyes flew open, and his neck snapped painfully to the side of his bed opposite the wall.  In the weak, burgeoning light of dawn he could see her.  It was that blue-haired female, Bulma:  the earth woman who had brought him here, whose father had allowed his continued use of the space capsule that housed the GSR.  The one who had known Kakarot since childhood.  What in the hell was she doing here?
She was lost to the oblivion of sleep, snoring delicately with her head rested on the desk next to his bed.  Her face was a vision of peace.  The utter assurance of safety that graced her brow was astounding to him; it wove around her softly rounded face like the threads of a fleece he would never touch.  What would it be like, he wondered, to sleep with such abandon?  Such utter disregard for your surroundings?
Surely, he would never know.  And this, female could certainly never teach him.  She’d already tried, vehemently if he remembered correctly.  Is that why she was here now, he thought?  Was it genuine concern that had led her to this room, to lay at his side whilst he recovered and wait for him to see that she worried for his well-being…?  No one had ever really given a shit before, he reasoned.  Why should anyone give a shit now?  He grunted, and a spike of pain shot through his core like a lance of ki flame.  Vegeta grimaced and looked away from the fine, dim silhouette of Bulma Briefs.  The only other sound in the room now was the mingled rhythm of his breathing, and hers.  So what if she did care.  So what if her sea-blue eyes sparkled like the rarest gems in seven galaxies every time she shrieked at him.  So fucking what.
Vegeta blinked in the brightening light of dawn, and his eyes narrowed.  So what.