Disclaimer: I don't own Dragonball Z.
A/N: Oh man, apologies about the delay between chapters! I've been working full time and studying part time this year (yay to 60+ hour weeks! Not.) so it's safe to say 2017 has been kicking my butt and I had to drop out of fandom for a while. Hopefully this makes it up to you. :)
- Pic
Bulma
Year 756
Noise pulls her from her sleep with a jolt, and she blinks into the darkness, disorientated. The noise, she realises, is Vegeta; he's groaning, almost whimpering in his sleep, and she knows at once that he's having another nightmare.
She resists the temptation to reach out and touch him. She's made that mistake once before, and ended up in a crumpled heap on the floor before he came to and realised that he'd attacked her, and not the foe in his night terrors.
Instead she rises out of bed, taking a pillow with her, and crosses the room to manually switch on the light. "Vegeta," she says softly. He tosses his head, groaning once more. "Vegeta," she says a little louder, "wake up."
He stills, and she thinks for a moment that it is over, that she's safe to get back into bed. It's not; he screams and she jumps at the noise, flinging the pillow across the room at him. It hits him square in the chest and he screams again, in anger this time, and in a flurry of movement the pillow is destroyed, torn and blasted to shreds. She steps forward, quickly brushing out a small flame on the bedcover, the room suddenly filled with the stench of scorched feathers.
He's awake now, sitting upright, his breathing heavy. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye as she bends to pick up the majority of the loose feathers, noting the shell-shocked look on his face, but does not acknowledge him. She knows how much it bothers him to be seen like this. This is the Vegeta he keeps hidden from everyone, even her; the tortured soul, the man whose mind cannot escape Frieza's wrath.
And she understands, because she can't escape Frieza either. He haunts her dreams, along with Zarbon, along with her dead friends and her burning planet, and Vegeta has saved her from her nightmares more times than she can count.
It's 4am, but neither of them will sleep now. "I'm going to go take a shower," she says, looking him in the eye for the first time. "Wanna join me?" She knows already that he'll accept her offer; her body is the only solace he seems to find on nights like these.
The tortured look on his face recedes as he slides that part of him away and out of reach once more. He nods once, and follows her, naked, down the hall.
. . .
She remains under the stream of hot water as he peels himself away from her, her eyes scanning the hard muscles of his back as he turns and disposes the used condom in the bin. He catches her gaze in the reflection of the mirror and huffs, glancing away as he washes his hands and reaches for his toothbrush. Despite the sex, the air is tense; it has been for days now, and she knows why.
He's hit a plateau.
She has monitored his training every day for the past year. In that time she has watched his power increase steadily as he has pushed through, twenty, fifty, one hundred, three hundred, four hundred times standard gravity. His power level has increased beyond anything that she could have ever imagined. It is an amazing achievement.
But it's not enough. The set of his shoulders is as tense as ever as he steps back into the shower cubicle, and for a moment he reminds her of how he used to be, back on Frieza's ship, wound tight enough that she feared he might explode. She shifts to the side, allows him to step under the stream of water as she massages a dollop of conditioner into her hair. It's another one of their items that is getting low in stock, and she makes a mental note to remind Raditz not to waste it on his crazy hair.
She bites at her bottom lip, toying with the idea of saying anything. She's never been one to hold back her words with him, but it has been two weeks since his power last increased, and she's been exercising her patience, waiting for him to talk about it.
"What?" he sneers.
She passes him the shampoo bottle, and they switch places once more, so she can rinse her hair.
"I think, with the training, that maybe you need to try something different," she says, closing her eyes as the hot water runs over her face. In truth, she's hiding from his murderous expression. Perhaps the shower wasn't the best place for this conversation.
"You think." Her eyes are still closed, but she can hear the disdain in his voice, the volume amplified within the cubicle.
"It's been two weeks since you've made progress." Her eyes are open now, and she places her hands on his shoulders, not in pity, but in a vain attempt to hold his brimming anger at bay. "You are fifty times stronger than you were a year ago. It's something to be proud of. But it's tapered off. Maybe…"
"Maybe what?"
"I don't know." An awful thought – that he's reached the limit of his abilities – plays at the edge of her mind, but she won't give voice to it. She pulls her hands away and steps around him completely, reaching for her towel.
"The Legendary is real," he says.
She doesn't meet his eye as she begins to dry herself. "I never said that it isn't."
"But you think it!" he yells suddenly, loud enough to make her jump, his voice echoing in the small bathroom. He looks at her as if she has betrayed him.
And here it is; the crux of the matter. She is a glutton for punishment, because she cannot help herself. "There is no concrete evidence of it, Vegeta," she tells him. "I am a scientist. I look for facts. That's what I base my judgements on. I have searched all of the databases I can, and there is no known evidence of any Super Saiyan. It's all hearsay."
They are silent, the spray of the shower the only noise in the room. "I'm not saying you can't get stronger," she adds quietly.
She's hurt him; for a moment she can see the raw pain, the fear, behind his eyes. In an instant it is gone, replaced with a snarl and barely-leashed tension. "Get. Out."
She doesn't like being told what to do, and she hates not having the last word, but she knows she's already said too much. Wrapping her towel tight around her, she leaves the bathroom. She's angry now; angry because everything was going to plan and for a time she had actually believed that they would do it, that Vegeta's power would supersede Frieza's and they'd all be safe. Bitter tears sting at the back of her eyes.
She stops short of her room as Raditz steps into the hall in nothing but his underwear. He takes one look at her, his nostrils flaring, and screws his nose up in disgust. "Aww come on!" he moans. "Is there no place on this ship that is sacred? Now I have to take a dump with the bathroom smelling like you and Vegeta fucking."
"Not now Raditz," she hisses, moving to step around him. He cuts her off, and although she knows he's teasing, she snaps. "Get the fuck out of my way!"
She pushes past him, holding her tears back until the bedroom slides closed behind her. She sinks to the ground.
Head pressed to her knees, she whispers to herself. "What are we going to do?"
. . .
Raditz is sporting a fresh black eye when she sees him next. "You could have warned me Vegeta was still in the bathroom," he mutters between mouthfuls of rehydrated grain pudding.
"You could have used your brain," she retorts, mixing up her own batch of pudding for breakfast. After months of eating the stuff she's sick of it, but it's a hundred times better than the shit they used to feed her on Frieza's ship, so she can't complain.
"He's in a bad mood," Raditz continues.
"No shit, Sherlock."
"He flew off a while back."
"I figured."
She finishes her single bowl in silence, while Raditz polishes off another four. With a sigh, she picks up her garden scissors from where she left them the night before. It's time to harvest some more beans, and although she's never been a fan of greens, she's thankful that it'll be a break from their monotonous menu.
"So that's it, then."
"What?" She turns to find Raditz frowning down at her, his arms crossed over his massive chest. "What's 'it'?" she asks. She's in no mood for riddles.
"We're fucked. Vegeta's not strong enough."
"Not strong enough yet," she hisses. "His power level has jumped from 18,000 to 900,000 in the space of a year. There has to be more." She can't push her gravity belt any higher, though, and she knows that's part of the problem. Gravity training just isn't enough anymore.
"Maybe we can shoot him through the stomach again."
"No!" She shudders at the thought. Six months ago she came in to find Vegeta being loaded into the regeneration tank, a gaping hole carved right through his middle. And yes, his power increased dramatically after that, but the terror of him coming so close to death was not worth it.
"Frieza's power is over a million."
"I know."
"You need to figure out a way to get him stronger."
"Why me?" she demands. "I'm not a Saiyan! Why don't you figure it out?"
"Because you're the one who sold him this crackpot story that he could actually beat Frieza," Nappa interjects. She whirls around and finds him towering over her. "So you need to fix it. Pray to your little Human god if you must," he sneers. "Oh that's right, you can't. He's dead."
She shakes her head, regretting that she ever told them that she met Kami on the night before Zarbon captured her. "You're a fucking bastard, Nappa." She wants to stab him with her scissors.
She heads for the garden instead.
. . .
She can't get the thought of Kami out of her head. As the heat of the day burns away into a cool evening breeze, she continues to hack at her garden, decapitating plants that threaten to bolt to seed, and digging new holes for her seedlings. All the while the memory of her old god bothers her; as if there's something important that she's supposed to remember.
He was the creator of the Dragonballs. She's seen them work; she's seen Shenron. If Kami was still alive, there'd be another way out of this mess.
"Why don't we wish for all of Frieza's men to die?" she'd asked him, on the eve of battle. "Shenron could kill them."
"No, he can't. His power is tied to mine."
"Then why are you here?" she'd snapped at him bitterly. "If you know we're all going to die tomorrow, why the hell did you bother training Goku?!"
"Because not all of you are going to die." Kami had replied. "Some of you will live, and travel to space. Don't be afraid. It's where I'm from, you know."
She hisses, pulling a wayward thorn out of her thumb, and bites down on her wound. The iron tang of blood floods her mouth, but she barely notices it. She stares at the setting sun, glowing as bright as Shenron in the sky, and shakes her head. It's where I'm from, you know.
Space. She can't believe she never saw it before. Kami wasn't a god. He was an alien. "Fucking Kami," she swears, but she doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. It's a longshot, but perhaps – just perhaps – there's more like Kami out there.
. . .
She pushes her modified night-vision goggles over her face – she's added a built-in scouter to the design – and takes her hover bike out over the grassy plains. Vegeta's only half an hour's ride away, by the nearest lake, and she's made this trip a number of times before.
He doesn't move from his place when she finds him, perched on a flat rock that juts out over the edge of the water. She scrambles up the bank to sit beside him, her legs dangling off of the edge. She takes off her goggles, her eyes slowly adjusting to the light from the crescent moon. It's peaceful here, with the slow chirp of insects, and the odd call of an animal in the night.
It's lonely, too. She was never much of a people person before, but she misses people now. She misses the city, the flashing neon and honking car horns, and even the streets that smell like piss. This land is too empty.
It's lonely, but she no longer feels alone. She places her hand on Vegeta's knee, feels him tense for a moment, before he allows her to lean into him.
"Vegeta," she whispers, her heart pounding because once she says it there's no going back. "If you could have one wish, what would it be?"