Prince of All
"Vegeta," she called, in that semi-saccharine tone she used whenever she knew he had better be prepared for her finger to wrap itself about his chest, gouge deep, deep, dark, tear something else asunder and reshape it.
What he hated most of all was that he didn't hate it.
He grunted in reply, but she'd already anticipated - rather, lived with - his taciturn nature, and impatiently marched over to where he'd been lounging after the day's ordeal.
Beerus had certainly done a number on them before leaving. Perhaps not as much as they'd feared, not as much as he'd promised. The planet was intact, but a whole host of things might not have been, not least of which were the mounds and mounds of discarded leftovers which lay strewn in the God of Destruction's wake, not least of which were the discarded shreds of what self-respect Vegeta had left.
Bulma's birthday was, not unexpectedly when it came to who her friends were, a veritable storm of the supernatural. Scorch marks serrated the ground, but to her it was another weekend.
"So," she drawled, dimples faint and eyes curled in the standard irritation when it came to one's significant other pointedly ignoring what one had to say. Or maybe it was fondness; Vegeta could sometimes hardly tell one from the other.
Happiness was like a bag of nettles when it came to Bulma.
Knowing from years of experience she'd never relent until he gave, he growled.
"What is it?"
Years before, it would have been what is it woman.
"Now," she chewed her lip. "You're probably going to get mad at me."
It was a testament to how well they knew each other that she didn't plead for him not to get mad in the first place. It was pointless with him.
"Spit it out."
"Well, okay. Uh, how to start? I mean it's not too important to talk about it now, or ever, really, I just - "
"Spit. It. Out."
The patio around them was littered with scraps and debris. A few upended tables, and the picnic chair Vegeta was using sagged a little under his heft. The sky, fathomless. An abyss of blue stretched above, wide and unblemished blue, blue, blue -
"Okay. Okay, Goku is a truer Saiyan than you'll ever be."
He choked on nothing, red and disbelief colored his expression and he swear his neck snapped from how quickly he swiveled to face her.
"Come...again?" his grit teeth a sieve for the gravel that was his voice.
Bulma sighed.
"Look, you can get angry, but if you'll hear me out - "
"No, go on," he seethed. "Go on, woman." Ah, there it was. "Go on and take what you know to be my life's ambition and weakness and strip it to nothing in front of me. I have…"
She swears he was turning purple.
"Slaved - no, literally slaved under a tyrant - away my entire existence to...to be strong, to keep what was left of me alive. My pride was all I had, but Kakarot comes in and undermines it like nothing, like it weighed nothing, and here you are, telling me…"
He struggled, and his hands twitched, but she knew he wouldn't hurt her.
"You know," he sat up, hair like needles as it brushed her, turned the other way. "What does it matter. I made a total fool out of myself in front of the strongest being alive today, so what does anyone care about my goddamned pride."
"Vegeta," she implored, grabbing his wrist to stop him from retreating. "I told you to hear me out."
Three years ago, he would have told her to stuff herself. Seven years ago, he would probably have blown her to smithereens.
Ten years ago, he definitely would have blown her to smithereens.
Today, he stopped. His feet were like roots in the ground and he a rigid, absolute statue but he stopped.
He said nothing, of course.
"I've been thinking," she sucked in hoarse lungfuls of breath. "Of what exactly it means to be a Saiyan. I've sorta been researching you guys as much as a girl could research you without actually doing any tests on your bodies."
"Meaning you conjured up irrational theories about us like a giddy inane schoolgirl without any proof to validate a thing."
She'd taught him that one. Giddy schoolgirl.
"Exactly," she smiled. "And well, you've told me a few things. Like how all pure Saiyans have black hair. And said hair never grows any longer than necessary. I've come to the conclusion that Saiyans retain their physical prime for as long as possible, since you live for battle."
"That's obvious," he muttered.
Surrounding them was a canopy of chatter, of lingering party-goers and songbirds alike.
"I mean, think about it. You are bred for combat. Every single cell comes alive with it. Every bit of your soul screams for it. I don't think it would be a stretch for me to think that nothing else comes first, including family. I assume your people didn't really marry? Or even have static partners? You probably reproduced out of a bare necessity to keep the population going, but that's it. A royal bloodline, clearly, but little else."
He grumbled something unintelligible. It was true, of course, but he wouldn't give her the satisfaction.
"I've seen it in Goku, you know," she said quietly. "And in you. The time you blast off to space for whoever knows how long over the obsession you had with him. With being stronger than he was."
"Your point?" he snapped. His patience wore thin, but she knew that.
"My point is that Goku is probably the purest, most noble man I know, but he is so irrefutably, unequivocally Saiyan that it scares me sometimes. It's that shimmer in his eyes. The way he's so eager for new opponents, so excited to test himself that he forgets what's close to him. Saiyans are honestly atom bombs, but Goku is a force of nature."
She pulled him gently down to the grass and lay perpendicular to his prone body, her hair blue like the sky and propped against his neck.
"He cares so much about the world. About protecting it, and keeping it safe. But that's not why he fights. And you know that better than I do."
He did.
"Chi-Chi once told me she married a battle-maniac," Bulma laughed. "He skimped for a year before coming back from defeating Freeza, so he could learn to teleport. For another, training Gohan in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Didn't once consider what Piccolo did, that Gohan was not a weapon, but a boy. When he was dead, and allowed a day back here, he didn't spend it quietly with his family, but with everyone, at the tournament."
She touched a hand to his, absentmindedly stroking the faded scars.
"A force of nature," she repeated, murmuring. "Who wanted the world safe."
"And you!" she pointed, almost accusingly, at his bicep. His superhuman sense didn't allow him to be startled by much anymore, but Bulma seemed to live to upset his expectations.
"You're a piece of work, buddy. You come here with your bald friend to kill us all and take our Dragonballs, and when you fail, you come back by yourself and have the gall to live in my house and boss me around."
He snorted.
"Earlier," she sniffed. "You mentioned how you made a fool of yourself, acting like a monkey to mollify Beerus. Well, that's kind of my point. You are the Prince of all Saiyans. You were raised by a despot bent on universal conquest, who worked and whipped you half to death and could only have encouraged your tendencies to tear apart everything in sight. You had your indomitable pride, you came and raised absolute hell and enjoyed every second of it."
She craned her neck until it was painful, so she could search his eyes with hers. They were twin, black pits. A sordid darkness that told a sordid story. Pools and pools of it, until she felt she would fall in, until it was like seared charcoal, like it would reach for her and she'd never return.
"Can you imagine," she whispered. "Just imagine? Someone like that acting like he did today, groveling beneath someone's feet, casting away his pride, so he could save people? Back when you willingly let yourself be overtaken by Bobbidi's spell, even after you killed all those people at the stadium, you dragged yourself back from it. From the hell. And you made a choice."
Telling him this, her mouth tasted like ash. Her words, plumes of smoke. Her heart, scorching.
"You sacrificed yourself, against all instincts of survival, of hunger for battle, of being a Saiyan, so you could stop Buu. That wasn't your nature. That was your choice."
Her head lolled back, dipping into morning dew, blades of grass tickling her cheeks.
"You've been brought up on nothing but destruction and blood, but you pulled yourself back and became my husband. Honestly, I see right through you. You still don't care a lick about protecting this world."
He finally moved, adjusting his shoulder to make her more comfortable in that imperceptible way that would have fooled anyone but her.
"You've only ever fought to protect what's important to you. Me. And Trunks. And maybe Goku himself."
She purses her lips, as if her next words were sour.
"He...He's not a guy who puts his family first. He loves them, yes. But he'll save everyone. He still has those glimpses of no restraint. That glint in his eyes, that lust for the next fight. You,"
She lightly flicked him on his chestplate.
"Care only about your family. Gohan, too, is so unlike his father."
She got up. Stretched, so her shirt lifted and exposed her navel briefly.
"Goku is my oldest friend. He's like the planet's heartbeat. A true, unadulterated Saiyan who looks elsewhere from us. Looks beyond us."
"You, the Prince of all Saiyans, are different. I'm a bad influence on you, honestly."
She took on a rare, sober countenance. No grin teasing the corners of her mouth, no contorted fury that beckoned a fight.
"Vegeta, what you put yourself through today...embarrassing yourself like that for me. Being so angry on my behalf. It meant a lot. I'm serious. I...I just wanted you to know that you're my family too.
He lay there, prone. A little deflated.
He sighed.
"Woman, you are the worst thing that has ever happened to me."
"Oh, don't I know it." The grin returned.
Above him loomed blue. Stretched so far, blanketing so much, the world so impossibly large that no one would stop to think anywhere else existed.
Author's Note: Oh god, Bulma threw up so many words. I am so out of practice, but I was struck by something of a need to write about Dragonball and Akira Toriyama's somewhat half-accidental(?) brilliant characterization that sorta came out of nowhere. I'm talking about Vegeta and Goku. This takes place right after the Battle of Gods movie, as I hope was evident enough. I thought it was a good setting to show how far Vegeta's come and whatnot. Ewwwww the blocks of dialogue, I dunno.
Anyway, review? Tell me what you thought!