Chapter 46. Forgiveness
The majestic throne was ever empty. Vegeta had chosen to take a place in one of the chairs at the massive hearth of the hall rather than take up the high seat after his return from the Marauder. The gloom and biting cold that had inhabited the throne room were chased away by a blazing fire in the broad hearth that took up half the wall on the far side. The tall flames licked and crackled in a lazy dance and his eyes couldn't quite leave the spectacle. While he stared at it his eyes soon became sightless and he mused. Mused on his sudden succession and the abdication of his father.
It was obvious that Akane's talk with the staff had been successful in making them come back to life not just from the roaring fire to which Vegeta was spellbound. Apart from making that, the servants had also taken to other duties again. There was no more dust on the black marble floors so that the veins of silver rippling through it shone almost blindingly in the glare of the fire. The whole of the throne room looked as impeccable as Vegeta remembered it had done so many years ago. It wasn't all that surprising that the staff showed this kind of diligence in returning the place to its normal state. If there was anyone capable of rekindling the people's spirit, it was his fierce mate. His father was right, Akane was going to be make an outstanding Queen. Not a courteous or gentle one perhaps, but a just one all the same.
His daughter was safely asleep in his old apartments, the doors to those chambers guarded by Turles and Ringo who Vegeta had left behind looking more lethal than he had yet seen them. That Aina was safe with them needed no doubt. They took their task as the Royal Guard deadly seriously. Vegeta didn't think his daughter was under any threat inside the palace, or anywhere else on his home planet for that matter. He had no concubines scheming for the succession of the throne and Aina's Royal Guard consisted of Saiyajins who had some of the highest battle powers in the Empire. Remnant of their time serving under Cold. It pleased him that Akane's men again showed such competence and it was no secret that he had come to feel regard for them both during the long journey to their home planet.
Someone else he still felt much regard for was his father's confidant Tragus. The man had reported in earlier that he sent messengers to all the cities and tribes. Every high lord had been ordered to come to the palace after declaring the war was over to the common folk of the places they reigned. Tragus said he had been forced to use men of the Marauder because the soldiers of the Ground Forces – ashamed as he had been to admit it – were in no fit state to travel. After finishing his report Tragus left the throne room to help Akane with the soldiers and the people that started to turn up in the capital. They had yet to return from that task.
Out of the tall windows behind the dais where stood the abandoned throne Vegeta could see that the sky, which had been streaked with orange when he last looked, had now turned the deepest shade of black. It was nearing midnight. His head ached from the events of this day. Challenging his father and gaining kingship were not every day experiences and neither was having to vie with the man that had given him life for the love of his mate. His belief in their bond was fortified again, yet at the moment when Akane had been put in the position to choose between the two most important men in her life, Vegeta had truly feared losing her to his father. Such alone had been enough to utterly wear him out.
What had further drained him was the day long conversation he had with his father. Vegeta had taken him to the city where he could witness the wretchedness with his own eyes. He reckoned, and had been right, that his father was sadly ignorant of the state their people were in. For moons the abdicated King had been shacked up in his throne room awaiting his doom, issuing the maddest of commands to the people and soldiers at the gates. Seeing what his actions had caused made the abdicated King regret what he had done and while it was conveyed with much grandeur and drama, his father had shown sincere remorse for the damage he had done.
Now he sat with his father at the blazing hearth, the abdicated King enjoying a cup of wine Vegeta had passed off although he could honestly use something to numb the severe throbbing in his head. He told himself that this was hardly the time to break the habit of not drinking as there were more things that needed his attention and he required a clear head to deal with them. Notwithstanding oblivion sounded like song to his ears right now. Perhaps his actions had been too rash. He had not foreseen he would become King right after his arrival. He had come home with the notion that there would be years left to ready himself for his succession.
What did he know about kingship having spent so long a time serving under Frieza? All he had learned from that experience was how to become merciless. His years on Earth after that had done nothing to prepare him for this either. He had spent his days training and gaining on Kakarot and in time had come to abandon his indignation for being treated without the honour he should receive as a Prince since none of the bleeding Earthlings had given a toss.
Akane had changed that for him. His little mate had reawakened the Prince in him. That was why he was here. He could have made the wish to restore Vegetasei years earlier, but he had never cared to give thought to it before Akane came along and reminded him of who he was meant to be. He could recall it vividly. Her indignation that day in the mess hall of the back compound. The indignation that had abandoned him over the years. That little Captain had possessed enough for them both. She had provoked him, drawn it out of him. She had taken pride in him that day and it had never left her again.
He had taken pride in himself as well, achieved as he had been in submitting her to him. He took pride in that every day. His conquest for her had been a successful one. Yet he feared that his current venture was too bold an undertaking for him. The years of his youth where he had been groomed for his succession were but faint echoes to him. He could hardly recall any of what he had been taught. It was true that he could not manage his kingship without his little mate. He needed that fire of hers, that unwavering confidence she had in him because for all his pride he had serious doubt that he would be accomplished as a King. And he needed his father's guidance as much.
"Do you still wish to die?" Vegeta had been putting off the question, afraid of the answer, but he had to know whether his father would take his own life soon as he was out of sight.
Perhaps there was something he could do for his father, some way of reasoning with him. Despite the hardship he had caused, Vegeta still loved him. The fact that the man had been with his mate did not change this either. Turles and Ringo had been with her and Vegeta had not killed them for it. He had even come around to liking those pricks. He would come to terms with the history between his father and his mate as well. Somehow. In any case he was not ready to lose his father so shortly after being reunited with him. The man was needed for more than the guidance in kingship alone. Honestly, Vegeta just wanted back the father he had lost. He might by a man grown, he might have been one for three decades, he was still this man's son.
The abdicated King looked at him with determination on his noble face.
"Son, I can live with the wish to die. I have done so for quite some time. What I cannot live with is the suffering that I brought our people. I will not give in to my wish for death until I have undone my transgressions." He put forth a clumsy smile. "And I owe you. I must make this right with you, Vegeta. It may not take away the suffering all this has caused you, but I want to be a father to you as I have once been."
Vegeta, unable to make any remark, ruffled his hair in such a boyish gesture that it made his father smile in earnest then. The man laughed as he gave Vegeta a playful whack on the thigh. Vegeta snickered in turn automatically, remembering how contagious his father's laughter had always been to him.
"I would like that, father."
"I simply cannot believe that this nightmare is finally over." his father said after a while and he stretched his muscled limbs with a very deep sigh, his brown eyes fixing on the night sky outside the window behind the dais.
It had taken Vegeta hours to recapture everything that had happened after he went into service under Frieza. About his life in the WTO, the destruction of Vegetasei, his death and revival on Namek, his time on Earth with the woman and the babes he had fathered there, the demise of Cold en Frieza by his son's hand, the meeting of Akane and her men years later in the abandoned shipwreck and ultimately the restoring of their planet with the use of the dragonballs.
"Dragons, wishes? A tall tale you tell indeed, lad!" His father had exclaimed outraged, but as Vegeta presented indisputable explanations to the man's many questions, the abdicated King eventually had to accept that the dragons and their power to grand wishes were not a tall tale.
The abdicated King transferred his attention from the night sky outside to the cup of wine in his hand. He looked at it long and hard in silence, slowly swirling the contents under his gaze. His grief truly had never left him and it was edged deep in his once so youthful face. It did make him look older than he was, like the death of his mate had cost him years of his own life. Vegeta recognized that bitter shadow from his own reflection, the frown and grim twitch in the corner of the mouth. Yet his face could be smoothened out and the pain erased, especially since Akane had come into his life. Mother Victory knew she made him smile like a bleeding boy.
His father's distortion was permanent. The horrors that had made up Vegeta's existence once had not wounded him half as much as the loss of his mate had marred his father. Vegeta comprehended the full extend of that grief now that he was bonded himself and had come so close to loosing Akane when she gave birth to their daughter. That sort of bereavement was not mendable.
"You can bring mother back to life with the dragon's help."
His father gave a snort of humourless laughter. "I hardly deserve such mercy."
"You did not deserve to loose her in such fashion either." Vegeta rebounded. "Akane thinks that she didn't die of illness but was killed by the woman you later took for your first concubine."
"She could very well be right. I never saw that traitorous cunt for what she was until she took away my boys." That his father resorted to such crude means of expressing himself proved his ire. He laughed grimly as he resumed: "Your mate took care of that in a most satisfying fashion, I must say. I gather no rabid bitch that may seek to take her place at your side would be quite as well achieved in bringing about her downfall."
Vegeta knew that for a fact. He was more like to turn Great Ape without a tail than happen upon anyone mighty enough to match themselves with his little mate. Be it in power of body or mind, they would be hard pressed in getting the better of Akane. She could sniff out a ploy like that of his father's main woman from miles off and now that she had ascended there wasn't a warrior on the planet that could hope to defeat her. No, he feared for the safety of his futere Queen as little as he did for that of his daughter.
"It would be selfish to bring back your mother from her eternal slumber." his father said after careful deliberation. "I am not the man she left behind. She will not recognize who I have become and I dare say she could never love me in the way she did then. Should I force her to live with me for the purpose of stilling my own sorrow? I think not. You understand the purity of a blood bond now that you are bonded yourself. It is not so for me anymore. The knowledge of my women and the babes I fathered with them would break your poor mother's heart. We belong together in her world, not in the one mine has become after her passing."
"Mother will not remember." Vegeta refuted. "She will be restored to the moment before her passing and any recollection of her afterlife will be erased."
"Exactly. I have no memories of my afterlife. I came back to the very moment before Frieza's stroke fell on my neck and Vegetasei was dying under my knees. When your mother comes back, she will return to the time where I was her mate, while I have moved on. I cannot do that to her. It would be cruel. I know you miss her, lad, but she belongs in the afterlife."
Vegeta sighed. He did miss his mother and he would have been happy to get her back, but his father was right, she would not be happy in turn. If he pictured himself in her place, coming back to the now while his mate had moved on, he didn't believe he would be able to cope with it any better than his mother would.
His father returned to staring out of the high window as he admitted: "You were right earlier. I did want the the top position the WTO promised me, even if it meant that you would have to put in two years of service. All top members sent off sons to the WTO. The power made me at least feel something after your mother died. My women weren't enough to fill that void in me anymore. What folly. The WTO's demands became so outrageous after that... Ordering me to take away babes from their mothers' breast to be sent off for planet purging. I understood then that I had made a mistake, but it could no longer be made undone. Cold would not let me recede from the organisation. I plotted a revolt, conspired with other under lords to overthrow the WTO. Before we could act they demanded your two years of service. It was too soon. You weren't supposed to take up that position until you were a man grown. It was like they knew about our plans. The under lords backed out. I told them that it no longer mattered and that we only had more reason to be swift in the execution of our plans. None listened. The spineless traitors. I was forced to act on my own. I demanded your safe return and when they denied me, I declared war on Frieza."
"Knowing you could never win it." Vegeta mused.
"I put you there." His father was fighting tears now. "I expected to bring you back with the help of the other lords. I knew that if I refused Frieza when he came to collect you, he would wipe us off of the face of the universe right there and then. He said as much. I... I had no other choice..."
Vegeta wanted to weep himself. Would he have made a different choice? A son in exchange for his people's safety? One life to save a whole race from extinction? He didn't know. It was an impossible decision to make.
"I never knew." Vegeta said, his own voice weak and ready to break.
His father grabbed his shoulder tightly, answering his gaze with such guilt and regret and pain that Vegeta was lost for words. The two men sat looking at each other, noble face to noble face with the shadows of the hearth's flames dancing on identical pale skin, much alikened too in their handsome features, both powerfully built and innately elegant, yet also manly and still very much in their prime. There was a world of unspoken hurts in between them that Vegeta would not utter and his father dared not address. It was in this moment that Vegeta found it in him to truly let go of his grudges and forgiveness stole over him. The abdicated King too had been no more than one of the oppressed. He gave his father the slightest nod. It was well.
His mind gave him no time to dwell on it long as a horrible realisation hit him. What if Cold's old allies were still running the WTO? What if this nightmare wasn't over at all?
"Have you received news about any of the under lords in the past moons. The moons after the destruction… or your vision, if you will?"
"There haven't been messengers since this war started. The other under lords avoided me like the plague after it commenced. Probably feared to be dragged into the fray. They are all cravens, Vegeta. And none of them trustworthy."
"I didn't mean messages from your former allies. It has been many years since your original revolt. If they are still around I assume the under lords believe our planet is gone." Vegeta pointed out trying to keep his patience. He understood how difficult it must be for his father to adjust to the timeline since it hadn't been decades but mere moons for him. He couldn't waste time lingering on the subject though, he needed to know if the WTO still posed a threat. "Have you sent out scouts or messengers of your own since your vision?"
"None. I didn't figure any of the under lords would come to my aid and I hadn't the men to spare for scout missions." the abdicated King scratched his kempt brown beard in contemplation. "If it has been decades I don't know whether they even are under lords still. Could be they have been replaced by their successors by now. Could very well be they are all dead."
"How many under lords where originally part of the plan to overthrow Cold?"
"Seven. There would have been more if our negotiations hadn't been cut off prematurely. I know the Murodians had a mind to join us. Their leader wasn't happy with the strain the WTO's demands for commodities put on his own economy. And the rulers of Sunstrewn lost over half their forces marching on the Skoga Galaxy, they wanted out as well. Of the Tanjins I am not certain, but they ever complained on how things were run in the WTO. We planned to approach them later in the process, after the revolt was in place. They made bad negotiators and we…"
Vegeta held up a hand to silence his father.
"Can you make a list of all the under lords in the WTO and, if you are certain, which side they would have been on. I want to make sure the organisation is gone and that there are no under lords or successors left we should worry about."
"You believe we might still have something to fear from them after all these years? With their leader and strongman gone it is not likely the organisation is still in business."
Vegeta had to disagree with his father. He had met enough under lords who would be willing to fill any gaps in the regime.
"Frieza wasn't the only strongman in the WTO. There were other leaders who would have been glad to seize power after Cold's downfall. For all we know the organisation is still operating." He swallowed to rid himself of the sudden taste of bile in his throat. "And if that proves to be so I will not be able to give our people the peace they deserve."
Vegeta sighed again and made to wearily rub his face with his gloved hands. His headache was really becoming unmanageable.
His father squeezed his shoulder in a bracing gesture. "The people will understand if you go to war." he said and when Vegeta failed to reply he rose and announced: "I will get you that list on the morrow. Try to get some sleep in the mean time, lad. There is no sense in wearing yourself down with the ifs and hows before we know what kind of threat it is we have to face. If the Sweet Mother wills it there might be no threat at all. Our own lords will be arriving soon. Pray you get enough rest before they do because they will haunt your every step while they seek for ways to come in good favour with their new King."