Disclaimer: Akira Toriyama owns it everything in the palms of his hands. Gracias siempre, Maestro.
Malignity
» A before and after «
( ~ ~ ~ )
Nappa's last cry resonates in his mind at the center of his dreams, hoarse and pitiful and cruel to the ears: when the old Saiyan fails to defeat Goku in the most embarrassing way possible, Vegeta decided in the bottom of a non-existing heart what his destiny would be.
"Maybe you won't be such a disappointment… when you're dead!"
And Nappa doesn't need anything else to know what's going to happen: he saw it in his smile, ruthless and malicious and absent of heart, floating over the hand that Vegeta extended towards him for the last time. When he is tossed into the air, Nappa feels the truth of all those years together as companions falling over him, of those years follow him loyally. Every second at his side, behind his back had been a self-deception.
For Vegeta, he was never more than a human nuisance.
It had been a mistake to think that, in his heart, there was something else aside coldness: Prince Vegeta was a being with no soul.
.
.
.
Vegeta wakes up: Nappa's final scream still echoes in his ears, in the memories that, several decades afterward, are still present on him.
First a mercenary from space, a noted genocidal with a wicked grin; then a family man in the form of Bulma's husband and father of two versions of Trunks, as well as the defender of a planet he once swore to destroy, the scenery of the biggest humiliation of his life, the one that made his royal blood boil: Vegeta is no fool nor blind to the actions of his past, and to the radical changes in his life. Nobody knows his truth better than himself.
"I… can't believe it… He completely obliterated is own team-mate."
It takes him a full minute to remember the reason why he wakes up in a bed surrounded by blank walls, instead of by Bulma's side: he was in The Hyperbolic Time Chamber for the third time in his life, training elbow-against-elbow with Kakarot for a new kind of tournament, this time for their universe's sake: they will battle against the warriors that conformed Champa's team, Universe 6 God of Destruction, and Kami helped the two of them if they dared to lose (Lord Beerus had certainly made them know that he didn't wish to lose against his brother).
Resting his back against the wall, Vegeta silently stares at his bare hands, rough and covered by scars, those same hands that so commonly remain hidden behind his gloves: to calculate how many lives they had put an end to, since the most distant part of his childhood, it's an impossible thing to do.
Vegeta does recognize, however, the embrace that his hands gave to Trunks just mere moments before he made himself explode.
"If you two were still alive… Raditz, Nappa, what would you have done with your lives…?"
Asking himself that has to be the most useless thing he has done in a while.
In the crucial moment of metamorphosis of his life, that damned M tattooed in his forehead was the symbolism of a power that had lost its importance a long time ago, unleashing the worst decision, the most idiotic one (the most unfair against the humans) that he had made. And Nappa's blood, the blood of the man that was more of a father to him than what that imposing, icy king had the chance to ever be, staining his hands was the firm remainder of the person he no longer is, and must never become again.
He wasn't under the reddish, hostile sky of Planet Vegeta anymore: living on Earth (blue, peaceful, perfect), things couldn't be any easier.
Now, the only thing that mattered to him was to train with all they had, in the name of a cause that didn't have a thread of evilness in it; the one that used to fill his heart (well, that, and fighting with tooth and nail so that Kakarot didn't gobbled down the limited and insipid food they had inside that place).
(***)
Author's note: Hello! Thank you so much for taking the time to read this; I hope it wasn't so bad. I keep practicing my English-skills by translating my own works originally in Spanish from time to time, so, if you see any mistakes or a phrase that could have a better structure, you're more than welcome to pointed it out. About this little piece of Geez: well, the scene of Nappa's murder has always seemed very interesting to me. It's definitely a strong moment if we take into account the fact that he was, somehow, Vegeta's own father; he raised him. He was by his side since he was a little boy, a Prince without a planet to return to. I wanted to reflect on it, because i've always wondered "What would Vegeta think of this, years later and being himself a different person?". This was my attempt on it; it isn't such a big deal, but all I hope it's that you had enjoyed it.
THANK YOU for your time! Please, take care and have a good day.