Chapter 21. Deranged

Her sanity retreated with every passing second. Images kept flashing before her mind's eye, snippets of scenes she had forced herself to forget. She heard things as well. Distant voices, the cackling of evil laughter, jeering, a screaming crowd, pleas falling from blood stained and numb lips. Her lips... The sudden smell of fire and corpses and decay made her gag.

Her fever was back in all seriousness. This futon. It was too hot. Akane whined and slipped to the floor where she lay convulsing instead, the wooden surface cool against her hot cheek. The spandex of her suit suffocated her and she moved to take it off. All she managed was to remove her gloves, boots and armour and she threw one of the white boots through the room with a livid cry, her bashed shoulder searing as she did. Why couldn't she just sleep? She was so tired.

The smells and sounds and images were leaving her. They made place for a feeling of dread so profound she couldn't breathe and she was horrified when tears suddenly started slipping from her eyes, the noxious thing that had been hanging over her all day finally breaking. Utterly defeated she gave up on being strong and wept unrestrained for the first time in many years. She had not shed a single tear since it all started. The nightmare that began when the Marauder was overtaken by Cold. Her men falling left and right and being slaughtered like beasts, her capture, the loss of her King and the genocide of their people, her years of slavery in the WTO. She had allowed none of it in, focused on surviving as she had been. It had finally caught up with her and came out now, at last all of it being released through violent sobs. Surely she would never stop weeping again.

Why now? The horrors were over. Cold was dead, she was free. She made it. She had gotten Ringo and Turles out like she promised them. They had even managed to find back their long lost Prince, the mission with which all of it once started. She should feel blessed, yet she had never been more afflicted and dispossessed in her life. She envied Kakarot with his light heart and she envied her men who seemed to have found peace on this foreign planet. There was no peace in her, only anguish. She was at last coming apart and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Her muddled senses came alive when she picked up on the Prince entering the back compound. He was heading straight for her. Akane couldn't bear to face him now. Not like this. Not while she lay here in pieces. She had to pull herself together, get up from the floor and hide her tears. Yet when the door was thrown open resolutely, she had not moved at all.

"Get your shit, we're leav..." Vegeta broke off in the middle of his sentence upon finding her on the floor. He crouched with her. "What's wrong?"

Akane whimpered when he pulled her into a sitting position. He brushed the drying tears from her face with his deft, elegant hands, but all that this gesture elicited were fresh ones.

"Please stop that, little one." Vegeta pleaded with unusual disquietness in his low voice as he made to wipe away more of her tears.

Akane slapped his hands away. She hated him. Hated him so much. "Away and shite! Go piss up a rope! I don't need your fucking sympathy!"

She rammed her fists against his chest, provoking him to strike her in return. He refused to fight back. Her blows didn't harm him at all with the fever having drained her from all her strength and the beaten state of her body made it impossible for her to put any real force behind her pummels. The understanding in his dark eyes only intensified her fury. He understood what? That she couldn't live with what she had been for the WTO? That all the years of rape and abuse were finally taking their toll? That she was loosing her fucking mind? That she hated how much she loved him?

"Fight me, you bleeder!" Akane fumed, her fists still pounding on his chest. "Fight back!"

Whatever his comment was, it got lost in her helpless screaming. All he did was sit there across from her, bearing her assault unmoved and seemingly accepting that she needed to let this out. Why didn't he stop her? Why didn't she stop herself? Those eyes. Those cursed, knowing eyes. She wanted to rip him to shreds.

Vegeta only reacted when she went for his face and his fingers clasped around her wrists like shackles. She struggled when he pulled her against his strong body without effort, holding her while he waited for her to rage out. Her shoulder seared and silver spots appeared before her eyes, yet she continued kicking and squirming and setting free the wroth of all those times where she had been unable to defend herself, had been forced to do things that beset her in her sleep and had things done to her that were forever edged in her mind.

When her rage finally failed her, she put her forehead against his broad chest. Her Prince received her without reservations, his strong arms embracing her, shielding her.

"I... hate... this... fucking... place." Akane managed to put forth between gulps of air.

"It's a good thing we're leaving then." Vegeta said.

Akane drew herself together to a ball on her knees before him and dragged her hands through her hair, wanting to rip it out of her skull. She cried her despair and rammed her fist into the floor again and again, the wooden floor boards splintering beneath her knuckles.

"I hate this whole fucking planet! I don't want to be here! I want to go home!"

His hands stiffened where they had come to rest on her back. If Akane hadn't known him better, she could have sworn she felt them tremble.

"I know." his low voice was very muted.

Akane sat back up and the forlorn look she found in his eyes was gone so fast she wasn't sure that she had seen it right.

"Come." Vegeta trailed his fingers down the length of the scar at her temple and rose. "Get your men ready. We have to go."

He was already on his way back to the door.

"Go where?!" Akane screamed after him. "There is nowhere to go! You said it yourself! You are the King of nothing, the Prince of a race that no longer exists! Vegetasei is gone! Our people are gone! There is nothing for us here!" she let out a miserable wail. "Why would you ask me to bear you a son? Why would you do this to me? Force me to go on while everything that has any meaning to me is in my past? I don't want the future you offer me! I want it to end!"

The Prince's untouchability lessened with every word she screamed at him until he was left a mere man before her. He looked down on her aghast. Akane wanted to fall apart. Why was she being so cruel to him? She loved him. The hurt in his dark eyes was soon replaced by smouldering flames of anger. He was with her on the floor again and grabbed her by the upper arms.

"Pull yourself together." Vegeta hissed. Then he brushed the hair back from her sweating forehead forcefully, roughly yet not at all without affection. "This isn't where you give up, you silly tosspot. This is where you fight."

Akane was deaf to his bracing words, numb to his affection, her affliction so complete that there was room for neither. When she spoke again, it was in a dead voice. "You're not dragging me into this. I do not wish to have my life or my bloodline continued on this kack stain. If you have any regard for me you let me decide myself what happens to my legacy. I want it to end with me."

Vegeta was shaking her by the arms now, shaking her so roughly that the silver spots before her eyes swelled into fat blossoming flowers. When they faded she found the expression on his handsome face so violent that it almost spoiled his beauty. Almost. She wanted to cower before his feet.

"It's not just your legacy! It's mine!" Vegeta shouted in her face.

"This whelp won't bring our people back!" Akane yelled right back.

She felt his magnificent body tremble while he battled urges that his ever stoic face could no longer hide. His murderous eyes stared right through her. This was what the WTO had made him into. It had never left him, like it still lived in her. She wanted to take it all back, thoroughly hating herself for reanimating the things in him he had fought so hard to leave behind.

Suddenly he burst out in loud, convulsive laughter. Akane stared at him dumbstruck. Had he lost his mind? And he called her a tosspot.

"Blood, Akane!" Vegeta exclaimed. "You're a fucking genius! Why didn't I think of this? It's brilliant! We bring them back with the dragonballs. Our people, our planet. We restore Vegetasei."

"Bring them back with the dragon… balls?" Akane echoed incredulously.

"Yes!" Vegeta rose from the floor again. "I will explain later. Meet me outside in ten minutes." He turned one last time in the doorway. "And Akane, you agreed to bear me a child. It is not something you can go back on. I will forget what was said here, but the next time you go mental, you leave my daughter out of it because I promise you, if you ever threaten her again, I will personally see you out if this world once you have brought her into it. Now get your arse into gear."

Akane watched how he strode out of the room laughing like a maniac again. There was no doubt about it, the Prince had lost his mind.

"Daughter?" she repeated as her hand moved to rest on her lower abdomen. A quick scan of her ki told her that it was indeed a girl nestled beneath the surface. "Forgive me, kitten."

.

.

.

Trunks' troubled face appeared behind the window of his bedroom. The boy looked down to the darkened front lawn frantically, his searching blue eyes stopping at Vegeta. Even from this distance Vegeta could see how his son was fighting his tears. It hurt. It was as if he was beholding his young self staring out into the vastness of space through a small window on Frieza's ship, bereaved and unable to accept that his own father had abandoned him. He hadn't been that much older than his son was now, a boy on the cusp of coming of age.

Vegeta would never leave his son. He would find a way somehow to keep Trunks close. And Bra too. Although Vegeta told his son this just minutes earlier when he went to say his goodbyes, still there the boy was staring at him as if this was the last time he would ever see his father.

"You have to trust me." Vegeta didn't need to raise his voice much, the boy heard him perfectly fine with his sensitive hearing.

A repressed sob and uncertain nod were Trunks' answer from behind the window on the second floor.

The Saiyajins came out of the back compound, Ringo and Turles carrying pillow cases over their shoulder filled with the little possessions they owned and doing fruitless attempts to support their staggering Captain. Akane was barking at them that she didn't need their bleeding help and threatened to blast them both to the afterlife. She appeared to have regained her mental capacity, but her physical condition was all the worse for wear. Going off her head had depleted her last reserves.

"Explain." was all she snarled when she froze in front of him struggling for breath. It wasn't out of hostility, it was clear that she simply couldn't summon the energy to utter more words.

Just as Vegeta made to answer, the woman came storming out of the house, followed closely by the weakling and Kakarot. It was just what he needed to complete this bleeding circus.

"You're not taking the gravity-tank!" Bulma screamed in her last wrathful spasms.

This wasn't at all unexpected, but it could become a problem down the road. If Vegeta succeeded in wishing back their homeplanet, they needed space transportation to actually get there and the gravity tank was the only operating space ship left on Earth so far as he knew.

"Go back inside woman. The boy doesn't deserve to witness this." he said dead calm, motioning to the window on the second floor where his son was still watching the scene.

Bulma's head snapped back. She froze in her tracks when she found Trunks in the window. This was probably the first time he and the woman agreed on something. She threw him a spiteful glare instead, thoroughly ignoring Kakarot who was still trying to talk her down. When her eyes fell on Akane, her composure instantly gave way.

Vegeta had a hard time believing it when the woman actually made to charge at his little concubine. It was becoming quite plain to him that he had a preference for deranged, suicidal women without him ever having been aware of it.

Yamcha grabbed Bulma's shoulders to stop her, but set her loose with a yelp when she stomped on his foot. That fucking weakling really was a waste of space.

Bulma shrieked back into Yamcha's chest after taking a mere step in Akane's direction when the two male Saiyajins moved in to block her path. They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of their Captain to protect her.

"Nope." Turles said easily.

"Oh where is your sense of humour, Turles. Shift your arse, let her have a crack at me." Akane made an effort to put her hands on her hips, the cripling exhaustion clear on her flushed face.

Her men refused to move out of the way and Goku put his hand on Bulma's shoulder to pull her back.

Before the situation could escalate further, Vegeta grabbed hold of Akane's wrist and yanked her towards him roughly. She stumbled into him with a glare, aggressively folding her arms when he clasped his arm around her waist and dug his fingers hard in her flesh to keep her on her feet, ready to take to the air. She wasn't going to be able to use her ki for flight right now, that was obvious.

"We're going." he dictated.

Akane snorted. "Fine. Turles, Ringo let's go."

"Coming too, little brother?" Turles asked.

"I think I'll stay here a while." Goku said, his arm now around Bulma's shaking shoulders.

Vegeta took one last look at his son behind the window. The tears were falling freely down Trunks' cheeks now. Akane followed his gaze and the ire was erased from her fierce face instantly. She didn't say anything. Her hand slid to his wrist where he was holding her waist, a mute evince of understanding. Then she closed her eyes and hung her head in exhaustion. Vegeta was thankful for that because at that moment he didn't think he had the power to hide his pain from her.