Rehab

By Zogeta

Begun 8th October

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Disclaimer:

Clearly, I'm not making any money from this. If I were, I'd have a Sony Vaio laptop and a harem of beautiful men at my beck and call. I wouldn't be a starving university student then. I'm using the characters for the pleasure of myself and my readers and I will make sure that they get returned to their realm in good condition when I'm done.

Flamer Disclaimer:

I have decided that I will stop trying to please everyone. If you don't like the story because you don't like the idea of two men kissing or whatever, I suggest you pull your head out of your ass and get off the internet. However, I am open to constructive criticism of my grammar, style or POV's. If you are a silly little teenager who hasn't actually written anything before and wouldn't know a great novel if it read itself to you, please, PLEASE don't bother to correct me, especially with a review full of grammatical errors. I will not take you seriously and you'll be wasting everyone's time.

Flames (unconstructive and abusive condemnation) will be publicly ridiculed at the beginning of each story so that the world will see your arrogance for what it is: ignorance. I'm tired of being annoyed by kids who don't know the difference between a constructive review and a full-out flame. Saying you think that "gay guys are gross" just shows that you are a narrow-minded little asshole who has no right to judge the opinions of others. If you don't like the plot because it makes you uncomfortable, please leave without reviewing.

Remember: THIS ISN'T YOUR MOMMA'S HOUSE. BEHAVE APPROPRIATELY.

Now that the unpleasantries are out of the way…

Summary:

This story is a humble little fanfic. It contains swearing, substance abuse and a little angst. Vegeta has a problem. A problem with substances, with his spirit and its departure. It'll take longer than twenty eight days to make this right. Enter Kakarot and a radical, risky plan that he might, just might pull off.

There will be some cute and fluffy bits and I think that Kakarot and Geeters deserve a happy ending this time.

Kakarot: Yeah! Last time you killed Veggie! (pouts) We didn't even get around to having sex.

Vegeta: But you visited me in heaven and there was plenty of good loving. The ending wasn't entirely unhappy that time.

Kakarot: Yeah, but…this time I get to have you all to myself!

Vegeta: (smirks and wags tail) Indeed.

As always, thanks to my ed, GutterBall, and to Clarobell to her incredible support. She's the reason why I'm back on I was planning to kinda disappear forever after the last time I was on the site. I didn't enjoy being bullied by reviewers nor being paranoid about the site's rules. But hopefully, this should be smoother since I'm putting warnings up everywhere.

So, on with the chapter!

Warnings for this chapter:

Language, angst.

LAST CHANCE TO RUN AWAY, CHILDREN!

Alcohol drowns more people than water

And so the mighty fall

One

It wasn't always this way, was it?

Waking up with no memory. It's becoming a bad, recurring habit. I wonder how I got here, and where I got this bottle of cane spirit. Here I am, in some random corridor in Capsule Corp, in a torn training suit covered in stains I don't want to think about, clutching an empty bottle of alcohol and half the Saiyan I used to be. It wasn't always this bad, I swear it wasn't. I was fine, I think. Was I? I don't know. Hard to remember anything now. And I used to have such a good memory, better than I wanted it to be.

I think I became…the way I am…not that I have a problem, or whatever, after that whole thing with Majin Buu. I'm not entirely sure what it is I'm trying to forget or ignore, but it must've been pretty bad if I'm working my way to the bottom of a bottle every hour or so.

I roll onto my back, pillowing the empty bottle in my arm. It's such a good friend to me, though I feel like I'm being hit hard in the back of my head for my own…weakness. It wasn't always like this, was it? No. I used to deal with things in other ways. Violence. Eating. Binging. Throwing up. Training. Cutting myself to ribbons. Such a bundle of problems, Vegeta-sama. I suppose alcohol is as good as any other way to blot out…whatever it is.

Well, it's doing a damn good job. Hah.

Poor little prince with a hangover. Half-functional alcoholic and failure at everything else. The only thing I do well is drink. Oh, I can put it away like no one else. With my metabolism, it takes two bottles of tequila before I start smiling. As a Saiyan, it takes a lot more before I start drooling and giggling before collapsing into much needed tears. If I'm lucky, there's no one around when I put my hands over my face and sob into my scarred, branded hands. Hands with Frieza's crest scarred into my palms and cuts webbing from my wrists up to my elbows. They ask why I wear gloves, the fools. But then I drink some more, and some more, and then I'm happy because I can't remember my name, much less my problems.

Ah, gods, I need a drink. Another one. I'm thinking again, and that's always a bad thing. I'm no good when I think. Because when I think, I remember, and then there's not much point to drinking, is there? Makes all the liquid a waste, doesn't it? I like to not think. I thought for too much of my life. Thought about everything that went wrong and how I let it go wrong because I was weak and…bah, thinking is for fuckbags. I don't want to think about this. About the waste my life has become. Punishing myself for my previous weakness by giving in to the blissful void that is alcohol. Trading one weakness for another.

For all my purported intelligence, I feel pretty fucking stupid when I'm sober.

I sit up, putting a hand (gloved) to my forehead and breathing slowly, the inside of my mouth thickly lined with god knows what slime build-up and my brain flopped on the floor of my skull, wondering where next it'll get a fix. My stomach is growling and nausea ebbs in and out of my throat. No wonder I hate being sober.

None of this is my fault. I think. No, don't think. Drink. Mmm. Drinking is good, Vegeta. It takes all the pain away. Takes away your broken spirit and lost honour. Drowns out the very last shreds of dignity you managed to find in the five years before Kakarot came back. When you were someone's daddy and someone's wife, not a fucking waste drinking enough to drown a whale. Fucking waste of genetics I am. If I'm not binging on pastries then I'm throwing it all up, if I'm not training for god knows what then I'm slicing my wrists and ankles open in the shower and watching the blood dance down the drain.

Fuck all of this. If I drink, it'll go away. I can make it go away. I won't let it matter, won't let anything hurt. Throw my pain into a sea of whiskey because I don't know what else to do with it. Drown it all in sorrows and regret and Jack Daniels. Drown and die, Vegeta. You're not worth fuck to anyone. When was the last time someone spoke to you, shit-for-brains? Worthless, pathetic prince? Still nothing more than Frieza's favourite whore and a useless father. Can't even remember the last time I saw Trunks or the woman.

Gotta focus on the next drink. Gotta get up and get me some vodka. I can pass clear spirits off as water in the morning. I'll have beer with lunch and whiskey to warm me at night. Don't think about anything else. They don't need you, you don't need them. Go find your friend Jonny Walker. He'll make it all better, Vegeta no Ouji. Make you forget about everything that matters. Talk to Jose Cuervo. Make it all fade away into the happy white oblivion because you don't know how else to cope.

I'm just trying to wipe out all the pain of decades of imprisonment, of sorrow and loss and degradation of self and race. I'm so tired of sucking it all up and soldiering on. Acting like nothing's wrong; that the great Vegeta, pinnacle of a warrior race, feels no pain and has no horrors. A prince that always thought too much and felt too much and never thought of giving in to the overwhelming desperation eating at the inside of the ego. Vegeta, who always had to be strong for Raditz and Nappa, who had to be strong for Kakarot, for his son, for his wife and never for himself.

I took their punishments. I took the beatings for Raditz and Nappa when they were late with purges or started fights with Frieza's favourites. I carried Bulma through her grieving over Kakarot, ignoring my own sorrow at my abrupt loneliness and loss of my rival. I tried to buy Kakarot time, dying because he took longer to heal than he was supposed to. Frieza finally had me broken at his feet, truly defeated after nearly three decades of abuse. He finally made me cry when the agony of whips and rape and broken tailbones had had no effect before.

Always so strong for others, always fighting against my odds and coming out the far end only to be greeted by indifference. I bled and fought so hard for my subjects, for my family, and I have yet to receive the same sort of unwavering support from anyone. Not my family, not Kakarot.

And why do I give in now, after so many years of being strong for no one who cared for it?

Because you're pathetic, Vegeta. That's why I'm here in this corridor, craving alcohol because I'm so tired of bearing my pain. I'm so tired of being independent and trying to deal with my multitude of sins and sorrows without outside help. Finally gave in to my weakness, finally took help in the form of a narcotic because there's no one who cares enough to step into my life and look past the personality I put before the world to see the wrecked, crushed, wretched weakling cowering from his own demons.

Well, no use flogging a dead Icejin over the matter, is there? Let's go have a bloody Mary, or Harvey Wallbanger. Those drinks that look like juice with a lovely kick to make it all worthwhile. Shame and pride are things I can no longer afford, no longer own. What does it matter anymore?

At the end of it all, I'd rather not remember how so very wrong things are.