Blue Roses

She was beautiful. Somehow it always came down to that, in the very end. Life was short, live in the moment, right? Stop and smell the roses, something cliché like that? Why wouldn't he just appreciate her on that simple little characteristic alone?

Besides, her beauty went deeper than her skin. You could tell she was beautiful even if you were blind. Even through her constant sorrow, her sad blue eyes, and her messy teal hair she had this aura about her that championed grace prettily. She had a son to worry for though, yielding no time to worry about herself anymore. She loyally stood by his side, nursed him when he got sick, fed him well, clothed him nicely, loved him infinitely. To her, he was all she had left. How wrong she was. She had someone else, too. With old, faded logo sweaters and grease-stained aprons, with her tired but feisty, yet sad, helpless, almost hopeless nature, he loved her.

But he was not the one you'd think he was, our hero. He wasn't her son. He watched her from afar, always keeping just enough distance to remain dignified and polite. He envied how she constantly worried for her son and he ached for her attention... Like so many years ago...

Faintly he feels his mind float away to another time and place. Back in the time when her husband wasn't dead, wasn't even her husband, and his own father wasn't even dead. He looked down a few moments. His father, too, had loved the woman. But he was too fool, too naïve to have her. To even feel that way about her.

He shouldn't have. She was a widow, with a son of her own and still in love with... him. Vegeta. He could hardly bear to think his name. Since he was a child, the crush turned into something much more, as, sadly, it always does. Since he was a child, and his world had been turned upside down.

She was older than his father. On virtue of this, this older woman ought to be deemed by far too old for him. At least in her late forties, she surely saw him as a kid, anyway. As for our hero? He's a becoming young man of eighteen, maybe nineteen. He was still new to the world even though he felt like a veteran.

Either way, age had been kind to her. Her form, still flawless, if anything she'd become slightly rigid. He could tell when he would see her in loose lab coats. There were deep bags around her eyes, and apparently they were there because she didn't sleep at night. But she was still beautiful to him. There weren't many alive to look at her, and it shamed him, but he was glad.

In his mind, she was his, after all. This was his greatest folly of all, despite himself, over the years he had taken to thinking of her in this almost possessive light. It made his stomach curl. And the more he came to love her, the more he began to hate himself.

One might argue, after all, that she was never his in any way at all. He was kidding himself, and he was hurting her.

And now it seemed like fate was cruel when he stood and looked her son in the eyes. They were kind of Bulma's and kind of Vegeta's. There was a queer seriousness about them, something like the evidence of a childhood of constant stress and worry. But they also seemed youthful and idealistic. He loved Trunks, he hated him, and he even envied the boy. He loved him for he was her son. He looked like her. His icy blue eyes that were fixed on that worried, tired face reminded Gohan so of Bulma. He hated Trunks all at the same time, for he was the spawn of Vegeta- the very certain product of their love-making. The symbol, and the scar, of their passionate summer nights spent together. He stared at the boy, but thought of the boy's father. The woman deserved love, attention, security… and what she got was…

The sadistic irony of it all killed him, for she was fantastic, a respectable woman (proud, somewhat arrogant), and she fell for the dark and dangerous Saiyajin Prince. He wasn't a man, but a monster, the sort of monster that won the grand prize and stood about gloating over it in the form of a thirteen year old boy.

He remembered that night... long ago, when he was still a child, he slept over at Capsule Corporation. He remembered the moans, mainly hers, her pleads, soft begging, and grunts from him. But mostly, he remembered how jealous he was. The woman, the sheer representation of perfection, had fallen for the primitive prince.

It wasn't fair. Somehow his mind always came back to this.

It never was. It was supposed to end, a stupid crush on the only female he'd ever been around-not counting his mother. It was expected. Natural, even. But it was also expected that he grew out of it, matured past such a thing. It was probably expected that he be cool and sexless like his father was. His innocence was guaranteed on virtue of the creator of his birth, similar to the way that young Trunks was guaranteed to be trouble from birth. But that would come later. Before Trunks became Gohan's biggest problem, they expected him to give up his love for her.

He looked around him. It is said that rebirth and destruction go hand in hand. Not here, not now. The statement was false, as well as any hope. He tried to feel like was hope. The last hope. But these days, in this land of havoc and desolation, he was fading, slowly, dying.

What was there to fight for?

Immediately his mind jerks to answer his own question:

His mother, his grandfather, the innocent people, the woman he loved, for the memory of his friends… Still, stubbornly, he refused to fight for the one he should have called his prince. He refused to fight for the one memory of the prince the woman had left of him.

He sighed again. He had been too late to save any lives... Everyone about the pair was dead. Destruction was everywhere, and now it was eerie and silent. Gohan wanted to honor these people badly. It would appear that someone else would want to honor them with him. He barely heard Bulma's young son cry out, "Gohan! Why are they doing this? Killing all these innocent people!"

He could do little more than scan the boy. He failed. He wasn't there on time to stop the dreaded androids. A whole city died and it was entirely his fault. But his eyes were cold and old, and he continued to stare down at the boy, to force stoicism in tragedy, and say calmly, "Because they're monsters, Trunks. That's they know."

Vegeta's death was quick and, hopefully, relatively painful. I don't mean that. Anyway, I can remember the day clearly. Still wounded by Piccolo's swift death, I stood in the background watching in horror alongside Yamucha and Krillin as Vegeta battled the dark android. The android Juuhachi was gloating over her victory on the sidelines. It drove me mad, I will never forget how playful she was, how lightly she took my dear mentor's life. Everything was ruined in an instant. All I could think about was that now the Dragonballs were gone. No one can come back, and worst of all Piccolo himself was gone. A void suddenly opened up in my life in a way that it hadn't since my own father had died. I was shot back to life by the sound of Vegeta coughing. He wasn't doing too well. The android Juunana stepped forward, his cold blue eyes were like two diamonds that had set their eyes on the prince standing before him.

Vegeta's eyes and face were somehow widened. Like he knew he was about to die and the thought alarmed him, but he was trying really hard to not let it show. In the corner of his eye he saw me. He does something like tilt his head to the side. I blinked a little bit, but was cut off by Juunana's harsh laughter filling the air.

In retrospect I think I see. The prince died a noble death. Never fear, fans of Vegeta. He died protecting me, and Bulma, and maybe even little Trunks that day. Vegeta, whatever his reasons were, intended entirely on securing my life, even at the expense of his own. This was his final atonement, maybe a debt paid back to my father, or something sentimental about me being the last Saiya-Jin. But he wanted me to leave that day, and something tells me that even before Juunana really noticed I was there, Vegeta was trying to buy time for me to escape.

"Why Vegeta, I can taste your fear." He's smirking now as he's creating an energy blast. Vegeta just stands there. This I can say about the Saiya-Jin prince, in that instant before his death I saw in his face something kind of opened up about him. It's hard to explain. Sure, there was fear. But I also detected this little bit of resignation and regret. This is how I've come to the conclusion that Vegeta meant something by saving my life.

Vegeta, bloodied and weary from the battle, hacks up some blood. He looks in my direction once more. His eyes widen a little, as though he's trying to insist something.

Still I shook my head.

"Oh, him? Don't worry about him, Vegeta. He's next." He lunges forward, landing a punch on Vegeta's face. He passes through a tree and still comes flying back towards Juunana.

"Feel Vegeta's wrath!"

The androids chased me halfway home before they got bored. I lived to fight on, but mother never quite understood why I spent days in bed even after the doctor came. Mother had to get Grandpa to pay for the fee of a house-call, these were dangerous times. But she didn't understand that my body didn't get sick when Piccolo, Krillin, and Yamcha died. My heart did. And now that I was the only one left, I didn't know how I was going to survive long enough to get strong enough to take the androids. I wished my dad was there. He would know what to do.

I didn't want to leave at first. It was Yamucha who escorted me home. He died outside of Capsule Corporations that day as well. I remember Bulma was just standing there with Trunks in her arms. She got a glimpse of Juunana, and he of her. With a bit of a smirk, he winked at Vegeta, "That your woman? She's cute."

Vegeta growled, but Juunana must have been done with it. Yamucha, with a panic stricken face half yanked my arm away. The next thing I knew I was flying off in some obscure direction. "Don't let them follow you back, kid," He mutters under his breath.

Behind me I can feel Juuhachi's eyes, and Vegeta's ki signal disappear forever. And I know he did it so that I might get away. I know that, that day, Vegeta's concern was his house, and for that day I was included in that. I know Vegeta felt a connection to me before he died. And yet I dishonor his name by loving his wife. Krillin and Yamucha would die protecting Bulma, Dr. Briefs, and the baby inside. Mrs. Briefs will soon die in an accident when the androids attacked the city. Dr. Briefs can't take it without her and passes on a year after that. It's really sort of romantic, in a tragic and bizarre sort of way, and Bulma continues to raise her son alone.

Don't take my thoughts on Vegeta's heroics that day too seriously. Not that I haven't used my praise quite sparingly either way. But it is true that there is something I will always respect, if not admire, about Vegeta. Still I would come to learn of his callousness towards Bulma and his own son. In a few shorts years I would learn about how Vegeta never told Bulma he loved her, and that she only told people that they were an item so that people didn't think that Trunks was someone's bastard child. I guess you could say maybe in another time or place I would think of Bulma in a similar way that I see my own mother: just another woman always there for me. But I purr when she hugs me, I linger in her scent. I cannot let this go. Vegeta or no.

Disclaimer: I do not own DragonBall Z or its related characters. Thank you.

Next Time: Trunks briefly remembers an emotional night and realizes he has feelings that are very dangerous to himself and others