Rights: All rights belong to Akira Toriyama, Toyotarou and Toei Animation

This is based on the manga cannon, so there may be some discrepancies with the anime.

WARNINGS: This story is very, very dark, with a large amount of violence, gore, and sexual references, including references to non-consensual sex, and to a certain extent, scenes. It has been given the highest rating for a reason – you have been warned.

As this explains some of Vegeta's worst nightmares, you may imagine that it is MUCH WORSE than the Necromancer's Legacy in this regard.

A/N This is a side-story which follows alongside the events of The Necromancer's Legacy, and will make no sense when read independently, as key events are missed here. I am sure that many people have their own theories about The Necromancer's Legacy which might be better than what I came up with (like 'his tail is a Go'uld and is possessing them via the coffee', which is one of my favourite theories from my beta reader). Due to this, many readers might be disappointed with the 'truth' and prefer a more creative reality. I can understand that, since my readership is likely more imaginative than I am, but please note that the sequel cannot be read without reading this story first. It follows along directly from TNL and makes no secret of the revelations contained here. It also sprung out of a very minor loose end which ought to have been a one-shot but unravelled into 49 chapters.

Oops.

Anyway, I wrote this as one continuous story with page breaks, so I have now broken it up into 'bite-size' pieces according mostly to the number of words. It may seem a little disjointed because of this.

It was an agonising way to die.

No, he thought desperately.

Bulma's face swam before him, vivid and real. Was this what it meant when people talked about their lives flashing before their eyes? Vegeta hoped his wouldn't – he wasn't proud of much of it, and the happier moments would only make him sad as he realised he was leaving it all behind.

Leaving his family. His beautiful Bulma, his adorable young daughter, and his stalwart son.

No.

Her smile took up his vision, clouding over the face of the puppet killing him.

No.

Bulma…

No…it couldn't end here…

It…couldn't…

Air rushed into his lungs as suddenly there was no more pressure blocking his throat. The hand on his neck was gone, and various signals were being sent to his brain in quick succession, a multitude of observations fighting for attention as he struggled with returned consciousness.

He was kneeling

He was in pain, but not in the same areas as previously

He was holding onto something

He had a long-forgotten limb protruding from his tailbone

Vegeta's vision cleared, eyes reconnecting with his mind and giving him his first picture of the outside world.

What.

His mind may have been sluggish but even he knew something was astonishingly wrong. Gaze blurry but rapidly recovering, Vegeta took note of his situation, the breath leaving his lungs rapidly as his consciousness reeled.

It was impossible. What he was seeing was surely impossible.

There was a figure below him, whose neck his hands were wrapped around. A figure which looked remarkably like himself. The same crest of midnight hair, the same build, and if those eyes were open he was certain, despite his own mental lethargy, they would be pitch black. But more to the point, the individual was pale as moonlight, lips tinged blue, eyes closed and limbs wilted, and motionless in his grasp.

There was no pulse traveling past his fingers.

Strangled to death, which was ultimately unsurprising. That wasn't the issue here, because the figure didn't just look like him, it had been him up until...a few moments previously.

Vegeta had experienced some weird events in his multiple lifetimes but this one...something about...a sweet of some sort. He couldn't remember.

"What?" came a startled question behind him, causing him to swivel around, vertigo unsettling him as his mind whirled.

Eucalypt was sitting up, watching him with wide eyes, disbelief marring her features.

Vegeta frowned as his mind struggle to work, trying to catch up with the present, to analyse...He couldn't believe it had taken him this long to reach the realisation which stumped him for a moment.

He was in the First One's body.

He was…he was dead and he had somehow relocated to the First One's body.

What? His mind repeated her question. Although the more mystifying question was of course 'how?' How had he done that? He wasn't Ginyu. He knew from unwanted experience this wasn't the proper pathway for the dead. And he had died, so he should be grumbling as he waited in the afterlife's endless cue, not here on this forsaken planet atop his own remains. Had he been let out on bail to await sentencing? He was fairly certain that didn't usually happen.

Vegeta's hands rose to his head, feeling the familiar coarse hair of a saiyan as he rubbed his scalp, world spinning around him. Breaths coming in shallow pants, he became aware of his fast heart rate, the pain in his stomach, duller than he had expected. But it faded over time, didn't it?

He was starving.

Thin hands shook in front of his eyes, skin loose, pale as he watched, still kneeling on his cooling body. With a shudder, he shuffled off the corpse, rubbing his arms as a sudden chill swept through him, pulling forth his ki to warm himself, befuddled mind not realising that might be interpreted as a threatening gesture, especially since he had more strength than he knew what to deal with, and didn't even notice that the grass underneath him was starting to char.

He felt movement beside him, an oncoming attack, and reacted instinctively, letting lose a highly charged blast at his assailant, energy burning through his cool veins.

It was hard to breathe as he recognised the charred flesh falling back into the dirt, black and red like the saiyan royal colours that body had been born to wear. It would have been unrecognisable to anyone else, just a small bundle of body and limbs scorched and sizzling. Grotesque as he remembered such cadavers being, long ago when that had been his job.

To burn everything.

Vegeta heaved, but his empty stomach had nothing in it to bring up, making it simply clench painfully within him.

But that wasn't to be the end of it, because Eucalypt could command corpses of any state, he supposed. The charred flesh, stench hitting his nose full force, began to move, throwing a punch at Vegeta. Vertigo hit him again as he dodged, rolling onto the ground as if that was what he meant to do. Eucalypt joined the assault despite her injuries, throwing a series of blows which did nothing more than vex him.

He retaliated with a simple punch—

-knocking her head clean off.

"Wah!" Vegeta cried, leaping backwards as two bodies toppled to the floor.

He couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe that he had lost control of his strength yet again.

He had killed her. So very, very easily. And unintentionally, more to the point.

How powerful was the First One, to murder someone so effortlessly?

He stared down at his hands, hands which were no longer his. Hands which had done so many things, worse things than Vegeta, he knew, but he wasn't ready to delve into the trove of memories waiting beneath the surface.

Memories which weren't his.

Or were they?

They felt real, so terribly and vividly real. Every emotion, every single sickening emotion, every movement he had made and every life he had taken. They were certainly real, and unfortunately, it was his conviction that they were more than an off-chance inheritance. He knew they were his, knew in the depths of his enlarged mind, his wider knowledge and experience, that this body could only be inhabited by its rightful soul. Its original owner. A simple question in his mind had his neurons pull up the relevant memory, out of the expanse of billions of years of existence. The First One had modified his own body to steadfastly reject any other soul, after witnessing a minor deity succumb to the spirit-swapping technique similar to the one Ginyu had favoured.

And that meant...

"No…" he whispered, as the sight of Eucalypt, beheaded, brought forth a memory he had never seen before, only he had because these were all his experiences. A memory of another decapitation, gruesome, merciless, as he had played amongst the blood which sprayed out, lapping it up and grinning at the horrified family.

He had never felt so sick, recalling what he had done to that body in front of them, revelling in the pleasure, and the sight of their futile wrath. But the genuine emotions he had experienced shook him even to his core, the vile cocktail of lust and satisfaction, all beyond his own limited comprehension. A travesty of joy.

There was no way they could know. Not his family, not his friends, not anyone. No way he could tell them what he had become, what he had once been. Even if they knew about his past, they didn't really know it all. Would never be able to understand it.

And then there was the problem of Beerus, the Angels and other deities. They would have a vendetta against him, he was sure, from either his past actions or the inevitable competition. Beerus especially, because he had an inkling he had done some terrible things to that species. But he blocked out the oncoming recollection for the moment.

Fortunately, in the depths of those unwanted memories Vegeta discovered the technique which would save him.

A disguise. The First One had never perfected it, but his meagre talent would do for the moment. It couldn't change him drastically, but the appearance of god and prince were similar enough for the subterfuge to work.

He was so slow…

Everything was…slow…

Sitting in the chair he had been guided towards, all he could do was stare out into space.

Not even contemplating how these depths had once been his home, and his only escape from Frieza. His brain wasn't responding to internal or external prompts, and if he could concentrate, such an experience would have disconcerted him.

But time passed unacknowledged as Vegeta's mind lay dormant. He should have been reflecting on the body near the exit hatch.

The body which had served him well. The body he had been born in, welcomed to the world by a father looking for a legacy rather than a son, in a time Vegeta couldn't remember. The body which had been handed to Frieza by that same parent, as collateral for his planet's safety. The body which had been dealt countless blows, innumerable tortures, and had unleashed its fury and violence in turn. The body which had fought Kakarot, which had now died three times, once to a tyrant, once to his self-sacrificial gamble, and once...to the hands that were now his own. The body which had coupled with his wife, which had held his children. Marred by scars, traced by soft fingers.

The piece of smouldering wreckage had been his vessel through it all. Love, hate, war and peace. Everything.

And now it was to be ejected into the endless volume of the cosmos, gone forever. Lost.

If Vegeta had been thinking clearly, he would have realised that the stinking cadaver had no integrity, was decaying rapidly, and would soon disintegrate in the vast cosmos, completely irretrievable. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have realised that such an event was going to thoroughly disturb his wife.

Vegeta should have been contemplating that body, and the one he was currently in. Considering the sins he had acquired, he had performed so many millions of years before in another life time.

But the cogs in Vegeta's brain were turning so slowly he couldn't ponder any of it.

He thought he was hungry, was convinced he was from the pain in his stomach, unexpectedly feeble in spite of the eons unsustained existence. But he found it difficult to eat, hand shuddering from weakness as he held the utensils. Found it difficult to swallow, gag reflex threatening him from within. He kept going, forcing himself onwards, because he knew he needed food, even though he found it difficult to know anything at present. He continued, coercing the vegetables, chewing the meat into a squishy mess to follow down his oesophagus.

Until, all of a sudden, it went the other way.

Gohan had his back to him, but the situation still did not feel private enough for Vegeta's tastes. Waiting a few moments, scrutinising the younger saiyan to ensure that he was indeed not looking, Vegeta began to undress, struggling with the usually simple task. The new clothing was peeled off, identical to the version he had welded onto that scorched body that…had they deployed it without telling him?

He didn't think so, but he couldn't smell any charred flesh over the stench of his own vomit.

As he pulled his fresh boots off, something caught his eye by his calf.

Something long…furry…

His tail, Vegeta remembered, cursing the sluggishness of his muddled brain.

His tail…with its soft brown fur that Vegeta had enjoyed stroking as a boy, artificial, soothing calmness racing through his bloodstream in his moments of weakness. Moments when he had felt so lost, abandoned by the world. So…victimised, and vulnerable…helpless against an oppressor far greater than he.

His tail had been his comfort…his drug in those early days before Vegeta had learned to shut it all away. All his anxiety, his pain, his sorrows.

He had fed them all into his tail, tracing down its soft pelt.

That tail was the mark of a saiyan, the only thing, apart from his immense power and changing hair colours, which truly differentiated him from the humans. The reminder that he was one of the last of a mighty race. His pleasure and comfort, a symbol of his pride as a saiyan. A companion through his worst years, sliced off, he had assumed permanently after so long, at the hands of a feeble human.

It would have to go.

He couldn't keep it, no matter how much he wanted to. No matter how much he thought stroking that fur might be just what he needed as another round of vertigo hit him.

It was too much of a give-away.

Wrapping his hand around the fluffy down, he gripped hard enough to send a spike of pain up its nerve endings. With a grunt, he tore it out his tail, ripping it from his flesh, ignoring the sharp sting, disregarding the tears pricking at his eyes.

It shouldn't be affecting him like this. He had mourned the symbolic appendage years ago, after a long and gruesome battle with Frieza failed to trigger its re-growth, letting him know that he had lost something vital to his identity.

Only moments before he had lost his life.

Tailless, unidentifiable as a saiyan, certainly unrecognisable as the saiyan prince, heir to the throne and last of his line, buried in an unmarked grave on a doomed planet.

His backside tingled in a way he had never experienced, and he reached down to rub the hole he had produced when –

Another tail burst out, long, lean and coated in brown fur.

He hadn't even been in battle, just standing in a bathroom, contemplating his limbs with a dim mind.

But it had grown back.

Confused, but still determined, Vegeta tried again.

And again.

It wasn't going away, was it? He considered, wrapping the appendage around his waist like times long past, and heading to the waste receptacle. He had to envy the First One his regenerative abilities even as he gave up on his near-perfect subterfuge. An excuse would be necessary. But not yet. No one could see him now, not Gohan, with his eyes clenched shut.

He would need to avoid his wife's advances, at least until he could think of something.

Thinking was very difficult.

As Gohan left the rooftop room, Vegeta tried to focus on the doctor before him, thick moustache reminding him of his father-in-law.

Had he missed the man's birthday again?

Focus! He told himself sternly, resisting the compelling urge to let go, to drift off into the realms of sleep. He felt so heavy, limbs refusing his orders, eyelids lowering. His vision was blurred, making the bushy moustache the only feature on his helper that he was noticing.

Gosh, how he yearned to just sleep, but he wanted to be better even more.

"I'm…starving…" he whispered, lips struggling to form the words.

"I'm sorry?"

"Starving…"

"You're weak from hunger?" the doctor enquired, reaching out to take his pulse, "I must say the symptoms are a little severe for that."

"Starving."

The man frowned, beginning to understand what Vegeta was alluding to.

"But…you don't look—"

"Looks…can be deceiving."

They certainly could, Vegeta thought, eyelids closing.

He didn't notice himself drifting away into sleep's alluring embrace.

Prone on the hospital bed, body still lacking the energy for anything remotely exerting, Vegeta found himself occupied once more with sorting out his restored mind more than anything else. Pumped up on nutrients, his brain functions had been the first to return to normalcy, embarrassingly before his bowels, which continued to refuse normal operations. The doctors had been discussing something called 'laxatives' with him, some sort of medication he thought he was supposed to be familiar with, but being an alien, had never heard of before. He wondered if it would even work, considering that Vegeta himself had possessed a very high resistance to Earth remedies.

Medication was not something necessary in his early life as part of Frieza's forces, nor later as sensu beans and magic proved more effective. He was ashamed to be needing the primitive recovery-agents at all, but he couldn't really by faulted for his current predicament. He had no idea he was going to be transferred into the First One's body. Really though, whatever happened to prisoner welfare and rights? So much for justice and all of those ideals, the Galactic Patrol hadn't even bothered to feed their captive. He supposed they might have been excused when one considered that the First One could feel nothing, being reincarnated into a new body, and he was immortal in any case but still…

Duty of care and all.

A few different doctors had tried to pry the story from them, but he had lied effectively, convincing them that he had just been away. He suspected that they were concerned about abuse. Well, that wasn't a problem anymore. Vegeta thought he would never have to go hungry again with Bulma's plentiful pantry open to him, pockets brimming with the wealth needed to keep up with a saiyan's insatiable appetite. He couldn't wait to return home, safe in the knowledge that he was surrounded by loved ones…and food.

He'd thought he had escaped that part of his past, but instead woken up worse than he had ever been in the body of a starved god.

Said body was rejuvenating fast, though, shocking the hospital staff with its speed of recovery. But not Vegeta. If anything, he was disappointed. This was the fearsome First One, who had terrorised the populace in his never-ending prime? Buu could regenerate faster. And he wasn't an Old God, as far as Vegeta and the First One were aware.

He didn't like having unfettered access to the First One's memories. The illusion technique was convenient, and saved him a lot of awkward questions and explanations he did not want to delve into. The ki-disguise as well, although he hadn't been able to manage mortal ki, which he considered a major giveaway. But he hadn't wanted to investigate any further into those vile depths.

Whisperings from his childhood had given him some warning of what he would find in those memories – worse acts than even Vegeta had performed. And at least he had the excuse of being enslaved to a psychopath.

It was an excuse he had been clinging to desperately in the last few months, feeling as if his sins would swallow him whole. Facing the depravities of his past head-on, forced into truly seeing them as they were, with fresh, sympathetic eyes, had been a challenge enough. His acts against the namekians had haunted him throughout his training on Yardrat, driving him to train even harder than his usual arduous habits. Because he had to claim victory in the upcoming battle, it had to be him. It had to be him because he needed to atone for his past, needed to redeem himself by saving the universe yet again, by reviving the peace-loving namekians he had been so cruel to.

He had managed to restore them, and he had contributed more than the other 'sidekicks' of Kakarot. But that had not been enough to assuage his throbbing conscience.

And then, arriving on Frieza Planet 95. That had been torture, pure torture, but no less, he supposed, than he deserved. It had been one of his last conquests, so the Vegeta which had trawled the planet for victims had not a hint of mercy to spare. Destruction had followed his path, grim satisfaction filling him as he took in the carnage.

He kept seeing it all as he landed. The helpless people begging him for clemency, his own feelings of apathy, of nothingness. He hadn't hated them, hadn't loathed them, hadn't cared about them at all. They were just another statistic, just another target in his mission. He no longer considered their plights, their lives, anything.

All that had mattered was surviving. Surviving, and gaining strength enough to kill Frieza. Somewhere along the line he had added the supplementary goal of reigning in the tyrant's place, restoring a new saiyan empire to last his life-time, a last hurrah for his people to watch from Shindakan.

Those feelings, those thoughts sickened him as they had risen within him, echoes from a time he had wanted to leave behind. A time which he had run from, racing away from the terror, the pain, the blood and the depravity on all sides that had characterised his youth.

A wife, children, a beautiful and safe home; he had thought he had left it behind him. Started fresh. But the planet was a knife twisting in his abdomen, ghosts lacerating his mind as images of spraying blood, of sightless eyes and still bodies played against a backdrop of crimson carnage.

Have mercy, please!

Words he had been deaf to then later chilled him to the bone.

His past, his terrible history, rearing its ugly head just when he thought he had buried the last reminder of that time. Just when he thought he was a new person, a better person, convinced himself it was all over.

Everything was coming back. All his misdeeds, all his sins. Phantoms leaping out of the depths of his mind to terrorise his every sleeping moment.

And his past was just the tip of the iceberg, now. Just the very beginning of the crimes now existing in his brain. In his memories. Both sets were so real, vivid, that he found it difficult to tell them apart, sometimes.

He only wanted to deal with the ones committed by his former hands. Didn't want to consider the new acts recently made available to him, lurking, waiting for him to delve into them.

He had done his best to stay away.

But they reared up just the same, dogging his sleep like hounds going in for the kill. The degeneracy laid bare in his dreams, making nightmares of the recollections he wanted so desperately to avoid. He would always wake, screaming, horrified at the feelings of sadism within him, so terribly real in a way which Vegeta had never felt before his relocation. Nurses streamed in to investigate his elevated heart rate, and in the solitude of his own head he had to confess his own terror.

At the blood, the violence, the depravity.

At himself and his feelings.

He tried to convince himself that they weren't real, but he knew they were. As real as his sins under Frieza's command. As real as anything else in his life. Those people he saw in his nightmares had been real, lived in the past. Died horribly, in the past. Might still be waiting in the afterlife for their revenge. After what he had done to them, he would make no judgement.

And he had done those things, no matter whose body he had come to reside in, no matter the person he had become reborn. He saw no difference between the wrongdoings of Vegeta's past and those of the First One. They shared the same soul.

They shared the same soul.

And he himself had created that soul, had created that body with all of its vile instincts and desires. The First One was an Old God because he willed himself into existence; he wasn't created, but Creator. And he had designed himself in such a way as to become a monster. Had chosen it.

How could Vegeta ever look at himself in the mirror again, knowing he looked so similar to his past self? Knowing those eyes staring back were identical to that sadistic maniac who had terrorised the omniverse with his senseless violence and cruelty? How could he acknowledge his own image, how could he hold his head up, how could he feel any pride, knowing that the First One, that he had broken all codes of honour which had remained in Vegeta's mind despite Frieza's best efforts? That he had performed such despicable acts as to make the Prince of All Saiyans, destroyer of worlds, wake in a cold sweat.

It wasn't the deed of killing, per se. That was life for a saiyan. No, it was the method, the pleasure he drew from the pain of others, not from the physical act of fighting. It was the psychotic laughter which reminded him so much of Frieza. It was the way he tormented his victims emotionally, driving them to madness or suicide.

It was the horrendous activities which Vegeta couldn't name even in his own mind. The lines he would never have crossed, as a prince, as a proud warrior.

At least, that is what he told himself.

Vegeta could hardly comprehend the evil demonstrated by those memories, and he had seen some terrible things in his time.

It was too much.

And his mind kept coming back to how evil his soul must be, how irredeemable, to have lived such atrocious lives. Both, his two chances that he knew of. Even after being resurrected it still lingered, the evil within him. The evil that existed within at his own behest. The evil he had created, designed as his spiritual host.

How many lives had he led to the detriment of others, if these were the only examples he had?

Was he doomed to be wicked, determined from birth?

Was this all he could ever amount to? Would he always relapse, fall back on that darkness festering within him?

Would it always repeat, evil upon evil, ad eternum, since the halls of Shindakan could not hold him?

The nurses had told him that he should discuss his problems with someone, but he knew he would never do such a thing. A human therapist would not understand, and there was no way he was going to burden Bulma was this. He already couldn't comprehend her compassion, supporting him, loving him even in spite of a horrific past she was well aware of. But how could she possibly accept this?

He didn't want to admit his failure to her. Didn't want to admit how he had lost, how he had given up the body she had made love to, the body she had married, the body which had conceived her children.

How would she feel, knowing that? Would she grieve? He didn't want to see her tears, didn't want to make her cry.

Didn't want her to look at him suspiciously when she thought he wasn't watching, wondering if he was different now, wondering about the incurable evil of his soul.

Surely even she would understand what this said about him.

And those memories, there was absolutely no way he would disclose their contents to her, innocent as she was of the depravities of the world, of the depths to which malevolence could sink. He did not think she would be able to cope with such knowledge, didn't think she would be able to absorb it and not have it affect their relationship.

He wanted things to return to normal, wanted to ignore all of this, forget it had ever happened. He wanted to shove the First One's memories away where they could never be found, and just enjoy his time with his family.

This wouldn't change anything, he determined. Things would go back to normal, and no one would be any the wiser.

And eventually he too would acclimatise.