Two Sides To A Story
Chapter Eight
Through the singing in his skull, he barely heard the words; "Vegeta! What the hell are you doing?!"
He didn't respond, so intent was he in maintaining his precarious state. Transforming into his Super Saiyan persona had been intended to raise his ki so that the suffering whelp might respond. He barely felt the baby clinging to his hand with panicked fingers, eagerly sucking on the blood so that the proffered power might suffuse his own depleted cells. It was an offering that no other person would be able to provide; a tradition of the royal family that bound each offspring to its unique lineage. This had been his state when he had been no older than Trunks, dependent on a blood gift from his sire to placate the wildness of his immature state. It was the final realization for the Saiyan prince that there could be no doubt that Trunks was his son.
That, perhaps, the House of Vegeta was not so lost after all…
There were more startled exclamations and someone pulled them apart. Vegeta's golden aura dissipated immediately although he had not consciously willed it. Stumbling backwards, he pressed the heel of his hand against his left temple in a vain attempt to hold the pounding agony at bay. The taste of copper was in his mouth and when he breathed through his nose, all that he snuffled back was slick blood. Almost gagging, he pulled a stained handkerchief out of his back pocket to try and staunch the nosebleed. The room seemed suddenly too bright for him and the surroundings were beginning to seesaw back and forth. There was someone beside him trying to wrap a towel around his still bleeding wrist and he kicked out instinctively. The person, a small, bald man he didn't recognize, flew backwards and upset a table with medical paraphernalia.
Struggling with nausea, Vegeta slowly edged his way towards the door even as the blurred figures were advancing on him. The heel of his boot crunched down on something and he spared a glance down at the floor in confusion. He caught sight of the remains of a needle and released a wail of terror at the reminder of its intent. Panicking, he bolted for the exit and bowled over several people wearing white lab coats. The similarities only further amplified his urgency.
He almost made it to the staircase when someone tackled him from behind. The pair slid into the wall in a tangle of arms and legs, the impact momentarily stunning him. His attacker managed to grab one of his arms and lever it behind his back before he could react.
"!!NO!!" Vegeta screamed. He thrashed against the grip that held him at bay until his shoulder threatened to pull from its socket. "No more poisons! No more prisons! Let me GO!"
Another face hovered on the periphery of his vision. He snapped his head around to confront this new threat, teeth bared in challenge. There was something vaguely familiar about that angelic face, framed by a mantle of odd blue hair. The name of that person struggled to pull itself free of the pounding between his ears. It seemed to take forever before he finally recognized her.
"Bulma," he rasped out and ceased his struggles at last.
When the monitor displaying Trunks' vitals went flat-line, it actually took several seconds for Bulma's brain to register the meaning. She probably would have continued to gape uncomprehendingly at the blank screen if a nurse hadn't barreled down the corridor, screaming: "Code White! Call security ASAP! There's a man in the ICU attacking one of the patients!"
Chi Chi reacted first. Snagging the heiresses sleeve, she got Bulma moving and the pair bolted for the Pediatric ward. The rest of the Z fighters were stepping out of the waiting room and trying to isolate the source of the rising commotion. The frenzied nurse repeated her distress and that got the empowered humans moving even before the security guards exited from the elevator.
Reaching the ICU first, Chi Chi and Bulma instinctively looked through the observation window. They saw a soldier leaning over Trunks' crib while a familiar figure stood placidly beside him. "Gohan!" the brunette hissed and charged into the room.
Lingering behind, Bulma placed her fingertips on the glass as she examined the new arrival. When the man raised his head to glance at Chi Chi's entrance, her initial suspicions were confirmed. It was Vegeta. She would not notice the differences in his appearance until later when her shock and fear began to abate. Now all that she cared about was that the Saiyan, who had never approved of her pregnancy, was here to seemingly finish the job.
When she caught sight of his bloody hand, she feared the worst. She collapsed to her knees, imploring him to spare their son. It wasn't until he burst into the golden embodiment of the Super Saiyan that it finally dawned on her that he was actually here to help. As ever, the transformation was a rare sight for her. Vegeta had only managed the feat just before the Cell Games, when he had trained in strict privacy. She could count on one hand the number of times she had witnessed him in this majestic state and was mesmerized by the golden aura that pulsated around him. His normally dark skin adopted a pallor that was not unattractive and the black of his eyes became a piercing teal color. Bulma looked to his hair for the characteristic blond spikes and saw only short, flaxen bristles beneath the cap he wore. The remnants of that nightmare in the Opera house came back to her, snapping her out of her wonderment. Getting to her feet, she ran over to the crib and immediately grimaced at the sight before her. Trunks appeared to have snapped out of his comatose state and was eagerly sucking on the Saiyan's self-inflicted wound. His little body was covered in crimson but he appeared to relish the grisly bath. His fingers rhythmically kneaded Vegeta's hand like a kitten basking in its mother's milk.
Looking up at the boy's savior with genuine gratitude, Bulma's initial apprehension over her vision returned with a vengeance when she caught sight of the Saiyan's bloody nose. Any words she might have said suddenly became a sour lump in her throat. Glancing across the crib at Gohan, she saw an expression of concern on the boy's face that mirrored her own.
"Vegeta! What the hell are you doing?!" Yamcha bellowed, striding into the room with the rest of the Special Forces.
"Ew- gross!" Oolong bawled and immediately started retching over in the corner.
"Tien, don't-" Bulma tried to stop her bald companion from interfering but was too late. The immense fighter pulled the Saiyan from the crib and Vegeta's transformed state extinguished itself the second he was separated from the infant. He appeared disorientated and was holding his head although she was certain that Tien had not struck him.
Before she could concentrate on Vegeta's welfare, she had to check on Trunks first. Chi Chi was staring at the baby with a rare look of genuine shock on her face. For the first time in four arduous long days, Bulma was finally able to manage a smile at last.
Gurgling his contentment, Trunks hiccuped once and then smiled up at his mother's face as if nothing had ever happened. He appeared to be his old, pleasant self once more and immediately held up his arms to her. Bulma wiped him clean as best she could with a spare towel and eagerly picked him up. "You're okay! My baby boy is okay! You sure had your mama going bugshit, little guy," Bulma cooed.
"Bahgsit!" Trunks spouted enthusiastically. Laughing, Bulma hugged him as tightly as she dared and rocked him, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks.
"Gohan, what's going on?" Chi Chi marveled in a stunned voice as she watched the pair.
"Vegeta came to help Trunks, mom," the boy said in a soft voice.
The disbelief was clear on the woman's face. "Vegeta?"
"He said that a Saiyan baby needed blood in his diet. He tried to offer him a piece of meat but Trunks was too far gone so he-he…" Gohan lapsed into troubled silence.
The rest of Chi Chi's questions were interrupted by the sound of a scuffle behind them. She turned just as Krillin collided with a table and Vegeta was making his way to the exit. Tien and the others appeared about to pounce on him and Bulma quickly handed Trunks over to the brunette so she could intervene. "Leave him alone. All of you! There's something wrong with him, can't you see that?"
There was a crunch of glass and Vegeta paused long enough to stare down at his foot. The rare confusion on his face dissolved into visible fear at the sight of the broken needle he had stepped on. It was an expression that Gokou adopted whenever he caught so much as a glimpse of his most feared object on earth. For some reason, Vegeta was now also stricken by that near debilitating phobia of needles. The horrified cry he released actually caused Bulma's heart to tremble in sympathy. When he sprinted out of the ICU, buffeting a doctor and nurse aside in his haste, she looked over at Yamcha. Her ex-lover and friend had sensed that something was wrong and seemed to be waiting for some sort of cue from her.
"Don't let him leave," she told him. "Be as gentle as you can."
It hadn't been easy by any stretch of the imagination. Vegeta screamed things that made little sense and didn't appear to recognize any of them in his panic. It wasn't until Bulma knelt down in front of him that he began to register her presence for the first time. The blankness left his crazed features and he finally stopped fighting the desperate hold Yamcha had on him. "Bulma," he said raggedly.
"Oh, Vegeta," she whispered in dismay. His cap had come off with his struggles and she plainly saw the close cropped bristles of his former mane. The mere sight was heartrending because she knew that the Saiyan wore his hair like a banner to display his royal lineage. The fact that someone had been able to get close enough to do this terrible deed was evidence enough that something horrible had happened to him. She touched the side of his face with trembling fingers and he recoiled violently from the contact. Yamcha let him go with a nod from her and the Saiyan scrambled back to his feet, backing away from them. He ran a hand through his hair, caught sight of his cap, and bent down to retrieve it. With a weary grunt, he dropped to one knee and shook his head to clear an onslaught of vertigo.
Watching all of this in silent horror, Bulma replayed the Saiyan's outburst in her mind: No more poisons. No more prisons. It all tied into his disorientated state, that three-month disappearance and her past nightmare. He was barely recognizable from the proud alien who had stormed out of the Headquarters building four months ago. Odd clothes aside, his pale features and slimmer build, not to mention shorn hair, altered his appearance into one that was almost a stranger to her.
The others, having witnessed Trunks' miraculous recuperation, now left the ICU to view the standoff in the corridor. Sensing their probing stares, Vegeta self-consciously replaced the cap, pulling the brim down low over his eyes. As if the hallway were suddenly too bright for him, he put on a pair of sunglasses. Bulma didn't like how the mirrored lenses hid her view of his eyes. She relied on them for valuable clues that the rest of his face would never betray.
Vegeta wiped his nose with the back of his hand and checked for fresh blood. The nosebleed had stopped but his wrist throbbed painfully with each heartbeat. He gripped the mangled flesh with a grimace and didn't acknowledge that a new presence was beside him until Gohan said, "Here, Vegeta." He held out a clean towel.
Snatching the offering from the boy, Vegeta wrapped it around his wrist to staunch the blood flow. Managing to get to his feet, he turned to the stairwell only to have Yamcha stand in his way. He glared at Bulma. "Call off your guard dog, woman. I'm leaving."
Through trembling lips, she managed, "I don't know how to thank you for what you've done-"
"Spare me the platitudes. I didn't do this for you."
"Vegeta, I have so many questions!"
"You're not worthy of the answers," he shot back. "You have the brat back, what more do you want? If it's a bother, I can easily take back what I gave."
Tien joined Yamcha's side and, as ever, felt a gloating satisfaction at the way the small alien had to tilt his head back to look up at him. "If that's how you feel about Trunks, why bother coming back at all?" The huge man rumbled out. "Why not just let him suffer?"
"His constant bawling was keeping me awake."
"He's been in a coma for three days!"
When the Saiyan didn't respond, Bulma spoke up, "You've been hearing him in your mind, haven't you? You have a mental bond with him."
"Not by choice. But then, that's something you're all too familiar with, isn't it?" he sneered with open contempt.
"Vegeta, he's your son!"
"If the boy was truly my son, he would have my name. If he were truly an heir of Vegetasei, he would still have his tail."
"Trunks wasn't born with a tail," Gohan supplied helpfully.
Vegeta glared at Bulma over the rim of his sunglasses. In a low, dangerous voice, he asked her in an accusing tone, "Is that what you told them?"
All of the moisture dried up in Bulma's mouth when she caught sight of the knowledge in those ebon depths. "You… you were there," she realized, barely aware that she had spoken the words out loud. "Ohmigod, you came back."
"Yes."
"B-but why?"
"That should be obvious, even to you."
Bulma collapsed into a nearby chair just as her legs gave out on her. The stares of her gathered friends were tracking back and forth from the Saiyan to her in clear confusion. Putting her hot face in her hands, her voice was muffled when she managed to get out: "You came back to kill me."
To her surprise, he offered her one brisk shake of his head. "I returned to correct the wrong you did to me. Our first confrontation was unresolved; you caught me by surprise. By the time I resolved to rectify that mistake, you had already given birth to it."
"What was to stop you from coming into the hospital and killing Trunks then?" Bulma asked dully.
"I DID come inside," Vegeta assured her and Bulma's head snapped up in shock. There was a muttered undercurrent among the others at the revelation. "Right after the flesh butchers had hacked off the boy's tail and were in the process of hiding the mark. This world has no moon. What could possibly have been your motive in disfiguring him in such a horrible way?"
Weighing her words very carefully, Bulma took a moment to evaluate the concern that Vegeta tried to hide with feigned indifference. It explained the terrible threats he had yelled at her just before he had left Capsule Corporation and the reason that he had avoided the baby up until now. Although he stoically coped with the loss, there wasn't a day that went by that Vegeta didn't mourn his severed tail. His identity as a Saiyan, and a Prince of the race no less, was severely compromised by its absence. That she had subjected Trunks to the same indignity was the reason for so much rage behind the Saiyan's past words and more than just a little hurt in his present admittance. Clearly, this outburst had been building since the moment he first laid eyes on her swollen belly but the catalyst for the overwhelming hatred had been the fate of the baby's tail. As much as she would have preferred to have this long overdue conversation in private, Vegeta had the right to give voice to his betrayal and she had to listen to it while her friends played witness. "Honestly? I was pissed off at you for leaving us. I didn't want any reminders of who or what you are."
"So you mutilated a newborn out of revenge for me?" Vegeta said in disbelief. His face showed only blank shock until it suffused with hatred. "!!YOU MALICIOUS BITCH!!" He thundered at the top of his lungs. "Do you have any concept of what you've done?! The tail is the most important appendage of a Saiyan warrior. How would you feel if I severed one of your arms or legs? The loss is the same. You never even allowed the boy a choice in the matter."
"Don't try to pass it off as if you care, Vegeta," Tien interjected coldly. "I remember when we were hunting Android 20 and it fired on Bulma's hoverjet. You never even made the effort to save either of them."
Vegeta fixed him with a level glare. "Why did the responsibility to step in on their behalf automatically fall on my shoulders? All of you were there standing around and scratching your asses while I was absorbed in the task of tracking 20 with my ki. Any one of you could have prevented the attack on your 'dear childhood friend'." The reminder of their relationship with Bulma hit home and even Tien backed off in surprise. The Saiyan glared next at Bulma and said through clenched teeth, "And you… You willfully endangered the boy by bringing him into a combat area. What were you thinking?"
Her cheeks flamed with shame over the incident. Yajirobi had been beside her in the cockpit and had pleaded repeatedly for her to turn away from the fighting. She had pressed stubbornly on, reverting back to her adventurous, carefree ways and oblivious of the possible threat to her infant son. In any judicial court, she would have been found guilty of child endangerment for the lapse, not that it would have mattered. If not for Mirai Trunks' intervention, they would have both been dead and it wouldn't have been Vegeta's fault.
It would have been hers.
"It's clear who shoulders the blame, but I'm the person everyone points the finger at whenever things go wrong," Vegeta continued, not bothering to wait for her response. "It wouldn't do me any good to try and tell them what you're really like, would it? Do you think they'd believe me if I tried to tell them that you're actually a lying, calculating, vindictive bitch?"
"That's enough, Vegeta," Yamcha interrupted. Things were getting way too tense out here in the hallway of the hospital. Staff and patients were congregating in large numbers to watch the show and if he was reading the Saiyan's body language correctly, that meant Vegeta was close to becoming violent.
"Vegeta, I'm sorry that I lied to you," Bulma said in a small voice. There was nothing else that she could possibly offer him in rebuttal. What he had said was true, every single word of it. "I'm really very sorry. It wasn't fair."
"No, it wasn't," the Saiyan amended in a softer voice. It would be the only thing that they would ever agree on. "Get the brat out of this prison and go about your lives. Leave me to mine. I don't want to see any of you ever again. Understand?"
Her acknowledgement came out as a soundless croak. Biting her lower lip to keep the tears at bay, she offered him one mute nod. Satisfied, Vegeta turned to face Yamcha and Tien who were still barring his exit. Wordlessly, the pair parted without any of their usual condescending banter and the Saiyan felt a fleeting sense of victory in their humble demeanor. The sensation passed quickly. There was nothing to gloat over in this conflict and there were no winners who emerged unscathed. Not from this fight.
Stepping past the fighters, he noticed Chi Chi's protruding stomach and immediately recognized the significance. "I'm curious," he said in a cold voice. "Was that one merely an accident? Or did you deliberately intend to trap Kakarott as Bulma trapped me?"
Before anyone could think of an answer, he opened the door to the stairwell and was gone from their sight.
Trunks was swiftly moved into a private room where a staff of physicians checked him over, marveling at his sudden recovery. The babe appeared to thrive on all of the attention he was receiving until a nurse attempted to draw some blood. Scowling at the needle, he began wailing his distress and Bulma stepped in quickly on his behalf. "No more of that. He's exhausted."
"But Ms. Briefs-" The doctor objected.
"I said NO!" Bulma snapped. "None of you were able to do a damn thing for him here. I'm taking him home after he gets some rest."
"Some bloodwork might be able to determine the cause of his illness," the physician persisted, eager to run some tests on the boy's apparently unique physiology. "Don't you want to know how to prevent a reoccurrence?"
Bulma was beginning to get frustrated by the other man's ignorance. Her nerves were frayed by too many days of stress and she would have exploded on the spot if Chi Chi weren't standing beside her. "If he starts having trouble again I'll just wave a steak under his nose. Now get OUT!" she screamed.
Muttering among themselves, the reluctant staff did as they were told and left the room. Chi Chi tried to put a comforting hand on Bulma's shoulder but the heiress only shook her head and deliberately shrugged it off. Leaning over the crib, Bulma wove a finger around one of the tiny lavender curls on the boy's head as the babe drifted off to sleep. For a long time, there was only the sound of Trunks gentle breathing until she spoke up with: "I thought I could tame him."
Chi Chi spared a glance at Trunks but understood whom her friend was talking about. "Vegeta?"
Bulma offered her friend a weary nod. There were alarming dark circles under her blue eyes, a combination of exhaustion and inexpressible grief. "When we were brought back from Namek, he was so feral, so full of anger but he was... lost, too. I don't know how to explain what I was thinking back then, 'Chi. All I saw was this lonely man who had no family, no friends, no home... no purpose to his life but to cause destruction. It was all that he knew. When we were alone together, I would catch a glimpse of a gentler side to him, something that Frieza and his brutes hadn't quite successively beaten out of him but it was barely a spark... and it was fading rapidly. So I made my choice and stopped taking the pill. I knew I wasn't getting any younger and I could afford to raise a child on my own, if it came to that. I thought it over very seriously before I made up my mind. But he was very careful when it came to matters like that and I ended up having to lie to him." She choked back a sob and stared up at her friend through a mask of tears. "I think that upset him the most, even more than my being pregnant. He finally lowered those guards of his and allowed himself to actually trust someone for probably the first time in decades and I ended up betraying him! You should have seen the hurt on his face when he saw that I was pregnant. You wouldn't have recognized him."
"I didn't recognize him when he was here," the brunette confessed. "I'm not going to pretend that I like Vegeta in any way, shape or form… but he did heal Trunks and I can't ignore that. I'll admit that I can't figure any other possible motive behind him doing that but out of a genuine intention to help. That's not the Saiyan I remember."
Privately pleased by the woman's confession, Bulma felt vindicated that someone had recognized Vegeta's selfless act on Trunks' behalf. "He's different," she said in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard by the other fighters milling around outside of the room. "It's only been four months and he's changed but it's not for the better. We have to find out what's happened."
"Bulma, he said that he want's to be left alone-"
"You saw him! There's something wrong, 'Chi. He's sick."
"He severed his own wrist, what do you expect? He was probably dizzy from the blood loss, that's all."
She could talk until her face was as blue as her hair but Bulma knew that she wasn't going to sway the other woman over to her line of thinking. Chi Chi still had too much resentment directed towards the Saiyan to be truly objective in this matter; Vegeta had come, saved the day and left, that was all that concerned her. Bulma knew that pushing people away was a life-long habit for the Saiyan. If he truly was ill, it was his nature to hole up somewhere and lick his wounds in private and without interruption. There was no other person who could read him as well as she could. Deep down inside, instinctively, she knew that something was terribly wrong.
As ever, in matters dealing with Vegeta, she knew she was on her own.
Freeing his immense girth from the elevator, Chi Chi's father, the Ox King, stepped into a gathering that seemed more like a wake than a celebration. The rest of the fighters were milling around in the waiting room, all in a sullen and down-spirited mood. They really weren't needed for moral support anymore but nobody wanted to make the first move and leave for fear of appearing selfish. Vegeta's words had carried a ring of truth despite the alien's brusque nature and they were all reluctantly evaluating their past actions. Particularly of their treatment of the Saiyan. Vegeta made a convenient target because of his combative and unrepentant nature. His very arrogance dismissed their criticism as soon as it was voiced, or so they had believed up until this moment. It had become brutally clear this afternoon that all they'd managed to do was fuel the Saiyan's inherent distrust of them. Now that he was a Super Saiyan and Gokou, his only true adversary, was dead, it could develop into a lethal oversight if someone didn't resolve that resentment quickly. Unfortunately, nobody was willing to step forward first.
Krillin was about to suggest that they draw lots to decide who gets picked for the task of trying to reason with the Saiyan when the Ox King lumbered into the room. "Hiya, everybody!" He greeted with his usual vacuous humor. "The doctors tell me that Trunks is going to be okay. Isn't that swell?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it's great news," Yamcha said, forcing a lopsided grin on his face.
Tipping his head to examine the faces of the gathered friends, the huge man commented, "Why is everybody so sad? Did I miss something?"
"It's alright," Krillin spoke up quickly, knowing that the man could get as excitable as his daughter could. "You just missed Vegeta, that's all. He made quite an… exit."
"Vegeta?…" The slow turning of the gears in the man's head was almost visible as he processed this new information with his usual tenacity. "Vegeta! Isn't that the nasty Saiyan who tried to invade the earth and beat up on little Gohan here?" He ruffled the boy's hair affectionately.
"The same one, grandpa," Gohan supplied. "He actually came to help Trunks this time. He's not bad anymore."
Standing off to the side, Tien opened his mouth at the comment, thought better of it and closed it again. He would never like Vegeta; after all, he had died in the initial invasion attempt just as Yamcha had. There were some things that could never be resolved and his own murder was one of them. However, giving voice to his misgivings in this circumstance would be a mistake. He had to come to terms with how he felt all on his own and not burden the others with it. At one time or another, they had all been on the receiving end of the Saiyan's cruelty. He would not be telling them something they didn't already know.
"Hnh," the Ox King mused. "I wish I could of seen him face to face."
"You wouldn't have recognized him," Yamcha said. "He was dressed in a military uniform complete with cap and Magnum boots. Even I didn't know who he was, at first. It was a helluva disguise."
Gohan's grandfather's eyes lit up in recognition. "The soldier man! Yeah, I saw him get into a jeep in the parking lot and drive away just as I was coming in."
Krillin was shaking his head. "Vegeta would never go for driving around in a car. That's just not his style. He would have flown."
The Ox King's face drooped in disappointment. "I guess you're right," he said at last. "After all, the poor guy looked hurt, what with a bloody towel wrapped around his right wrist and all. I guess that couldn't have been him…"
The stunned expressions of all of the gathered fighters spoke volumes until Master Roshi finally piped up: "Why would Vegeta choose to drive?"
Nobody had an answer.
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Chapter Nine: Insight into the 'life' the Saiyan has made for himself.
Chapter Eight
Through the singing in his skull, he barely heard the words; "Vegeta! What the hell are you doing?!"
He didn't respond, so intent was he in maintaining his precarious state. Transforming into his Super Saiyan persona had been intended to raise his ki so that the suffering whelp might respond. He barely felt the baby clinging to his hand with panicked fingers, eagerly sucking on the blood so that the proffered power might suffuse his own depleted cells. It was an offering that no other person would be able to provide; a tradition of the royal family that bound each offspring to its unique lineage. This had been his state when he had been no older than Trunks, dependent on a blood gift from his sire to placate the wildness of his immature state. It was the final realization for the Saiyan prince that there could be no doubt that Trunks was his son.
That, perhaps, the House of Vegeta was not so lost after all…
There were more startled exclamations and someone pulled them apart. Vegeta's golden aura dissipated immediately although he had not consciously willed it. Stumbling backwards, he pressed the heel of his hand against his left temple in a vain attempt to hold the pounding agony at bay. The taste of copper was in his mouth and when he breathed through his nose, all that he snuffled back was slick blood. Almost gagging, he pulled a stained handkerchief out of his back pocket to try and staunch the nosebleed. The room seemed suddenly too bright for him and the surroundings were beginning to seesaw back and forth. There was someone beside him trying to wrap a towel around his still bleeding wrist and he kicked out instinctively. The person, a small, bald man he didn't recognize, flew backwards and upset a table with medical paraphernalia.
Struggling with nausea, Vegeta slowly edged his way towards the door even as the blurred figures were advancing on him. The heel of his boot crunched down on something and he spared a glance down at the floor in confusion. He caught sight of the remains of a needle and released a wail of terror at the reminder of its intent. Panicking, he bolted for the exit and bowled over several people wearing white lab coats. The similarities only further amplified his urgency.
He almost made it to the staircase when someone tackled him from behind. The pair slid into the wall in a tangle of arms and legs, the impact momentarily stunning him. His attacker managed to grab one of his arms and lever it behind his back before he could react.
"!!NO!!" Vegeta screamed. He thrashed against the grip that held him at bay until his shoulder threatened to pull from its socket. "No more poisons! No more prisons! Let me GO!"
Another face hovered on the periphery of his vision. He snapped his head around to confront this new threat, teeth bared in challenge. There was something vaguely familiar about that angelic face, framed by a mantle of odd blue hair. The name of that person struggled to pull itself free of the pounding between his ears. It seemed to take forever before he finally recognized her.
"Bulma," he rasped out and ceased his struggles at last.
When the monitor displaying Trunks' vitals went flat-line, it actually took several seconds for Bulma's brain to register the meaning. She probably would have continued to gape uncomprehendingly at the blank screen if a nurse hadn't barreled down the corridor, screaming: "Code White! Call security ASAP! There's a man in the ICU attacking one of the patients!"
Chi Chi reacted first. Snagging the heiresses sleeve, she got Bulma moving and the pair bolted for the Pediatric ward. The rest of the Z fighters were stepping out of the waiting room and trying to isolate the source of the rising commotion. The frenzied nurse repeated her distress and that got the empowered humans moving even before the security guards exited from the elevator.
Reaching the ICU first, Chi Chi and Bulma instinctively looked through the observation window. They saw a soldier leaning over Trunks' crib while a familiar figure stood placidly beside him. "Gohan!" the brunette hissed and charged into the room.
Lingering behind, Bulma placed her fingertips on the glass as she examined the new arrival. When the man raised his head to glance at Chi Chi's entrance, her initial suspicions were confirmed. It was Vegeta. She would not notice the differences in his appearance until later when her shock and fear began to abate. Now all that she cared about was that the Saiyan, who had never approved of her pregnancy, was here to seemingly finish the job.
When she caught sight of his bloody hand, she feared the worst. She collapsed to her knees, imploring him to spare their son. It wasn't until he burst into the golden embodiment of the Super Saiyan that it finally dawned on her that he was actually here to help. As ever, the transformation was a rare sight for her. Vegeta had only managed the feat just before the Cell Games, when he had trained in strict privacy. She could count on one hand the number of times she had witnessed him in this majestic state and was mesmerized by the golden aura that pulsated around him. His normally dark skin adopted a pallor that was not unattractive and the black of his eyes became a piercing teal color. Bulma looked to his hair for the characteristic blond spikes and saw only short, flaxen bristles beneath the cap he wore. The remnants of that nightmare in the Opera house came back to her, snapping her out of her wonderment. Getting to her feet, she ran over to the crib and immediately grimaced at the sight before her. Trunks appeared to have snapped out of his comatose state and was eagerly sucking on the Saiyan's self-inflicted wound. His little body was covered in crimson but he appeared to relish the grisly bath. His fingers rhythmically kneaded Vegeta's hand like a kitten basking in its mother's milk.
Looking up at the boy's savior with genuine gratitude, Bulma's initial apprehension over her vision returned with a vengeance when she caught sight of the Saiyan's bloody nose. Any words she might have said suddenly became a sour lump in her throat. Glancing across the crib at Gohan, she saw an expression of concern on the boy's face that mirrored her own.
"Vegeta! What the hell are you doing?!" Yamcha bellowed, striding into the room with the rest of the Special Forces.
"Ew- gross!" Oolong bawled and immediately started retching over in the corner.
"Tien, don't-" Bulma tried to stop her bald companion from interfering but was too late. The immense fighter pulled the Saiyan from the crib and Vegeta's transformed state extinguished itself the second he was separated from the infant. He appeared disorientated and was holding his head although she was certain that Tien had not struck him.
Before she could concentrate on Vegeta's welfare, she had to check on Trunks first. Chi Chi was staring at the baby with a rare look of genuine shock on her face. For the first time in four arduous long days, Bulma was finally able to manage a smile at last.
Gurgling his contentment, Trunks hiccuped once and then smiled up at his mother's face as if nothing had ever happened. He appeared to be his old, pleasant self once more and immediately held up his arms to her. Bulma wiped him clean as best she could with a spare towel and eagerly picked him up. "You're okay! My baby boy is okay! You sure had your mama going bugshit, little guy," Bulma cooed.
"Bahgsit!" Trunks spouted enthusiastically. Laughing, Bulma hugged him as tightly as she dared and rocked him, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks.
"Gohan, what's going on?" Chi Chi marveled in a stunned voice as she watched the pair.
"Vegeta came to help Trunks, mom," the boy said in a soft voice.
The disbelief was clear on the woman's face. "Vegeta?"
"He said that a Saiyan baby needed blood in his diet. He tried to offer him a piece of meat but Trunks was too far gone so he-he…" Gohan lapsed into troubled silence.
The rest of Chi Chi's questions were interrupted by the sound of a scuffle behind them. She turned just as Krillin collided with a table and Vegeta was making his way to the exit. Tien and the others appeared about to pounce on him and Bulma quickly handed Trunks over to the brunette so she could intervene. "Leave him alone. All of you! There's something wrong with him, can't you see that?"
There was a crunch of glass and Vegeta paused long enough to stare down at his foot. The rare confusion on his face dissolved into visible fear at the sight of the broken needle he had stepped on. It was an expression that Gokou adopted whenever he caught so much as a glimpse of his most feared object on earth. For some reason, Vegeta was now also stricken by that near debilitating phobia of needles. The horrified cry he released actually caused Bulma's heart to tremble in sympathy. When he sprinted out of the ICU, buffeting a doctor and nurse aside in his haste, she looked over at Yamcha. Her ex-lover and friend had sensed that something was wrong and seemed to be waiting for some sort of cue from her.
"Don't let him leave," she told him. "Be as gentle as you can."
It hadn't been easy by any stretch of the imagination. Vegeta screamed things that made little sense and didn't appear to recognize any of them in his panic. It wasn't until Bulma knelt down in front of him that he began to register her presence for the first time. The blankness left his crazed features and he finally stopped fighting the desperate hold Yamcha had on him. "Bulma," he said raggedly.
"Oh, Vegeta," she whispered in dismay. His cap had come off with his struggles and she plainly saw the close cropped bristles of his former mane. The mere sight was heartrending because she knew that the Saiyan wore his hair like a banner to display his royal lineage. The fact that someone had been able to get close enough to do this terrible deed was evidence enough that something horrible had happened to him. She touched the side of his face with trembling fingers and he recoiled violently from the contact. Yamcha let him go with a nod from her and the Saiyan scrambled back to his feet, backing away from them. He ran a hand through his hair, caught sight of his cap, and bent down to retrieve it. With a weary grunt, he dropped to one knee and shook his head to clear an onslaught of vertigo.
Watching all of this in silent horror, Bulma replayed the Saiyan's outburst in her mind: No more poisons. No more prisons. It all tied into his disorientated state, that three-month disappearance and her past nightmare. He was barely recognizable from the proud alien who had stormed out of the Headquarters building four months ago. Odd clothes aside, his pale features and slimmer build, not to mention shorn hair, altered his appearance into one that was almost a stranger to her.
The others, having witnessed Trunks' miraculous recuperation, now left the ICU to view the standoff in the corridor. Sensing their probing stares, Vegeta self-consciously replaced the cap, pulling the brim down low over his eyes. As if the hallway were suddenly too bright for him, he put on a pair of sunglasses. Bulma didn't like how the mirrored lenses hid her view of his eyes. She relied on them for valuable clues that the rest of his face would never betray.
Vegeta wiped his nose with the back of his hand and checked for fresh blood. The nosebleed had stopped but his wrist throbbed painfully with each heartbeat. He gripped the mangled flesh with a grimace and didn't acknowledge that a new presence was beside him until Gohan said, "Here, Vegeta." He held out a clean towel.
Snatching the offering from the boy, Vegeta wrapped it around his wrist to staunch the blood flow. Managing to get to his feet, he turned to the stairwell only to have Yamcha stand in his way. He glared at Bulma. "Call off your guard dog, woman. I'm leaving."
Through trembling lips, she managed, "I don't know how to thank you for what you've done-"
"Spare me the platitudes. I didn't do this for you."
"Vegeta, I have so many questions!"
"You're not worthy of the answers," he shot back. "You have the brat back, what more do you want? If it's a bother, I can easily take back what I gave."
Tien joined Yamcha's side and, as ever, felt a gloating satisfaction at the way the small alien had to tilt his head back to look up at him. "If that's how you feel about Trunks, why bother coming back at all?" The huge man rumbled out. "Why not just let him suffer?"
"His constant bawling was keeping me awake."
"He's been in a coma for three days!"
When the Saiyan didn't respond, Bulma spoke up, "You've been hearing him in your mind, haven't you? You have a mental bond with him."
"Not by choice. But then, that's something you're all too familiar with, isn't it?" he sneered with open contempt.
"Vegeta, he's your son!"
"If the boy was truly my son, he would have my name. If he were truly an heir of Vegetasei, he would still have his tail."
"Trunks wasn't born with a tail," Gohan supplied helpfully.
Vegeta glared at Bulma over the rim of his sunglasses. In a low, dangerous voice, he asked her in an accusing tone, "Is that what you told them?"
All of the moisture dried up in Bulma's mouth when she caught sight of the knowledge in those ebon depths. "You… you were there," she realized, barely aware that she had spoken the words out loud. "Ohmigod, you came back."
"Yes."
"B-but why?"
"That should be obvious, even to you."
Bulma collapsed into a nearby chair just as her legs gave out on her. The stares of her gathered friends were tracking back and forth from the Saiyan to her in clear confusion. Putting her hot face in her hands, her voice was muffled when she managed to get out: "You came back to kill me."
To her surprise, he offered her one brisk shake of his head. "I returned to correct the wrong you did to me. Our first confrontation was unresolved; you caught me by surprise. By the time I resolved to rectify that mistake, you had already given birth to it."
"What was to stop you from coming into the hospital and killing Trunks then?" Bulma asked dully.
"I DID come inside," Vegeta assured her and Bulma's head snapped up in shock. There was a muttered undercurrent among the others at the revelation. "Right after the flesh butchers had hacked off the boy's tail and were in the process of hiding the mark. This world has no moon. What could possibly have been your motive in disfiguring him in such a horrible way?"
Weighing her words very carefully, Bulma took a moment to evaluate the concern that Vegeta tried to hide with feigned indifference. It explained the terrible threats he had yelled at her just before he had left Capsule Corporation and the reason that he had avoided the baby up until now. Although he stoically coped with the loss, there wasn't a day that went by that Vegeta didn't mourn his severed tail. His identity as a Saiyan, and a Prince of the race no less, was severely compromised by its absence. That she had subjected Trunks to the same indignity was the reason for so much rage behind the Saiyan's past words and more than just a little hurt in his present admittance. Clearly, this outburst had been building since the moment he first laid eyes on her swollen belly but the catalyst for the overwhelming hatred had been the fate of the baby's tail. As much as she would have preferred to have this long overdue conversation in private, Vegeta had the right to give voice to his betrayal and she had to listen to it while her friends played witness. "Honestly? I was pissed off at you for leaving us. I didn't want any reminders of who or what you are."
"So you mutilated a newborn out of revenge for me?" Vegeta said in disbelief. His face showed only blank shock until it suffused with hatred. "!!YOU MALICIOUS BITCH!!" He thundered at the top of his lungs. "Do you have any concept of what you've done?! The tail is the most important appendage of a Saiyan warrior. How would you feel if I severed one of your arms or legs? The loss is the same. You never even allowed the boy a choice in the matter."
"Don't try to pass it off as if you care, Vegeta," Tien interjected coldly. "I remember when we were hunting Android 20 and it fired on Bulma's hoverjet. You never even made the effort to save either of them."
Vegeta fixed him with a level glare. "Why did the responsibility to step in on their behalf automatically fall on my shoulders? All of you were there standing around and scratching your asses while I was absorbed in the task of tracking 20 with my ki. Any one of you could have prevented the attack on your 'dear childhood friend'." The reminder of their relationship with Bulma hit home and even Tien backed off in surprise. The Saiyan glared next at Bulma and said through clenched teeth, "And you… You willfully endangered the boy by bringing him into a combat area. What were you thinking?"
Her cheeks flamed with shame over the incident. Yajirobi had been beside her in the cockpit and had pleaded repeatedly for her to turn away from the fighting. She had pressed stubbornly on, reverting back to her adventurous, carefree ways and oblivious of the possible threat to her infant son. In any judicial court, she would have been found guilty of child endangerment for the lapse, not that it would have mattered. If not for Mirai Trunks' intervention, they would have both been dead and it wouldn't have been Vegeta's fault.
It would have been hers.
"It's clear who shoulders the blame, but I'm the person everyone points the finger at whenever things go wrong," Vegeta continued, not bothering to wait for her response. "It wouldn't do me any good to try and tell them what you're really like, would it? Do you think they'd believe me if I tried to tell them that you're actually a lying, calculating, vindictive bitch?"
"That's enough, Vegeta," Yamcha interrupted. Things were getting way too tense out here in the hallway of the hospital. Staff and patients were congregating in large numbers to watch the show and if he was reading the Saiyan's body language correctly, that meant Vegeta was close to becoming violent.
"Vegeta, I'm sorry that I lied to you," Bulma said in a small voice. There was nothing else that she could possibly offer him in rebuttal. What he had said was true, every single word of it. "I'm really very sorry. It wasn't fair."
"No, it wasn't," the Saiyan amended in a softer voice. It would be the only thing that they would ever agree on. "Get the brat out of this prison and go about your lives. Leave me to mine. I don't want to see any of you ever again. Understand?"
Her acknowledgement came out as a soundless croak. Biting her lower lip to keep the tears at bay, she offered him one mute nod. Satisfied, Vegeta turned to face Yamcha and Tien who were still barring his exit. Wordlessly, the pair parted without any of their usual condescending banter and the Saiyan felt a fleeting sense of victory in their humble demeanor. The sensation passed quickly. There was nothing to gloat over in this conflict and there were no winners who emerged unscathed. Not from this fight.
Stepping past the fighters, he noticed Chi Chi's protruding stomach and immediately recognized the significance. "I'm curious," he said in a cold voice. "Was that one merely an accident? Or did you deliberately intend to trap Kakarott as Bulma trapped me?"
Before anyone could think of an answer, he opened the door to the stairwell and was gone from their sight.
Trunks was swiftly moved into a private room where a staff of physicians checked him over, marveling at his sudden recovery. The babe appeared to thrive on all of the attention he was receiving until a nurse attempted to draw some blood. Scowling at the needle, he began wailing his distress and Bulma stepped in quickly on his behalf. "No more of that. He's exhausted."
"But Ms. Briefs-" The doctor objected.
"I said NO!" Bulma snapped. "None of you were able to do a damn thing for him here. I'm taking him home after he gets some rest."
"Some bloodwork might be able to determine the cause of his illness," the physician persisted, eager to run some tests on the boy's apparently unique physiology. "Don't you want to know how to prevent a reoccurrence?"
Bulma was beginning to get frustrated by the other man's ignorance. Her nerves were frayed by too many days of stress and she would have exploded on the spot if Chi Chi weren't standing beside her. "If he starts having trouble again I'll just wave a steak under his nose. Now get OUT!" she screamed.
Muttering among themselves, the reluctant staff did as they were told and left the room. Chi Chi tried to put a comforting hand on Bulma's shoulder but the heiress only shook her head and deliberately shrugged it off. Leaning over the crib, Bulma wove a finger around one of the tiny lavender curls on the boy's head as the babe drifted off to sleep. For a long time, there was only the sound of Trunks gentle breathing until she spoke up with: "I thought I could tame him."
Chi Chi spared a glance at Trunks but understood whom her friend was talking about. "Vegeta?"
Bulma offered her friend a weary nod. There were alarming dark circles under her blue eyes, a combination of exhaustion and inexpressible grief. "When we were brought back from Namek, he was so feral, so full of anger but he was... lost, too. I don't know how to explain what I was thinking back then, 'Chi. All I saw was this lonely man who had no family, no friends, no home... no purpose to his life but to cause destruction. It was all that he knew. When we were alone together, I would catch a glimpse of a gentler side to him, something that Frieza and his brutes hadn't quite successively beaten out of him but it was barely a spark... and it was fading rapidly. So I made my choice and stopped taking the pill. I knew I wasn't getting any younger and I could afford to raise a child on my own, if it came to that. I thought it over very seriously before I made up my mind. But he was very careful when it came to matters like that and I ended up having to lie to him." She choked back a sob and stared up at her friend through a mask of tears. "I think that upset him the most, even more than my being pregnant. He finally lowered those guards of his and allowed himself to actually trust someone for probably the first time in decades and I ended up betraying him! You should have seen the hurt on his face when he saw that I was pregnant. You wouldn't have recognized him."
"I didn't recognize him when he was here," the brunette confessed. "I'm not going to pretend that I like Vegeta in any way, shape or form… but he did heal Trunks and I can't ignore that. I'll admit that I can't figure any other possible motive behind him doing that but out of a genuine intention to help. That's not the Saiyan I remember."
Privately pleased by the woman's confession, Bulma felt vindicated that someone had recognized Vegeta's selfless act on Trunks' behalf. "He's different," she said in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard by the other fighters milling around outside of the room. "It's only been four months and he's changed but it's not for the better. We have to find out what's happened."
"Bulma, he said that he want's to be left alone-"
"You saw him! There's something wrong, 'Chi. He's sick."
"He severed his own wrist, what do you expect? He was probably dizzy from the blood loss, that's all."
She could talk until her face was as blue as her hair but Bulma knew that she wasn't going to sway the other woman over to her line of thinking. Chi Chi still had too much resentment directed towards the Saiyan to be truly objective in this matter; Vegeta had come, saved the day and left, that was all that concerned her. Bulma knew that pushing people away was a life-long habit for the Saiyan. If he truly was ill, it was his nature to hole up somewhere and lick his wounds in private and without interruption. There was no other person who could read him as well as she could. Deep down inside, instinctively, she knew that something was terribly wrong.
As ever, in matters dealing with Vegeta, she knew she was on her own.
Freeing his immense girth from the elevator, Chi Chi's father, the Ox King, stepped into a gathering that seemed more like a wake than a celebration. The rest of the fighters were milling around in the waiting room, all in a sullen and down-spirited mood. They really weren't needed for moral support anymore but nobody wanted to make the first move and leave for fear of appearing selfish. Vegeta's words had carried a ring of truth despite the alien's brusque nature and they were all reluctantly evaluating their past actions. Particularly of their treatment of the Saiyan. Vegeta made a convenient target because of his combative and unrepentant nature. His very arrogance dismissed their criticism as soon as it was voiced, or so they had believed up until this moment. It had become brutally clear this afternoon that all they'd managed to do was fuel the Saiyan's inherent distrust of them. Now that he was a Super Saiyan and Gokou, his only true adversary, was dead, it could develop into a lethal oversight if someone didn't resolve that resentment quickly. Unfortunately, nobody was willing to step forward first.
Krillin was about to suggest that they draw lots to decide who gets picked for the task of trying to reason with the Saiyan when the Ox King lumbered into the room. "Hiya, everybody!" He greeted with his usual vacuous humor. "The doctors tell me that Trunks is going to be okay. Isn't that swell?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it's great news," Yamcha said, forcing a lopsided grin on his face.
Tipping his head to examine the faces of the gathered friends, the huge man commented, "Why is everybody so sad? Did I miss something?"
"It's alright," Krillin spoke up quickly, knowing that the man could get as excitable as his daughter could. "You just missed Vegeta, that's all. He made quite an… exit."
"Vegeta?…" The slow turning of the gears in the man's head was almost visible as he processed this new information with his usual tenacity. "Vegeta! Isn't that the nasty Saiyan who tried to invade the earth and beat up on little Gohan here?" He ruffled the boy's hair affectionately.
"The same one, grandpa," Gohan supplied. "He actually came to help Trunks this time. He's not bad anymore."
Standing off to the side, Tien opened his mouth at the comment, thought better of it and closed it again. He would never like Vegeta; after all, he had died in the initial invasion attempt just as Yamcha had. There were some things that could never be resolved and his own murder was one of them. However, giving voice to his misgivings in this circumstance would be a mistake. He had to come to terms with how he felt all on his own and not burden the others with it. At one time or another, they had all been on the receiving end of the Saiyan's cruelty. He would not be telling them something they didn't already know.
"Hnh," the Ox King mused. "I wish I could of seen him face to face."
"You wouldn't have recognized him," Yamcha said. "He was dressed in a military uniform complete with cap and Magnum boots. Even I didn't know who he was, at first. It was a helluva disguise."
Gohan's grandfather's eyes lit up in recognition. "The soldier man! Yeah, I saw him get into a jeep in the parking lot and drive away just as I was coming in."
Krillin was shaking his head. "Vegeta would never go for driving around in a car. That's just not his style. He would have flown."
The Ox King's face drooped in disappointment. "I guess you're right," he said at last. "After all, the poor guy looked hurt, what with a bloody towel wrapped around his right wrist and all. I guess that couldn't have been him…"
The stunned expressions of all of the gathered fighters spoke volumes until Master Roshi finally piped up: "Why would Vegeta choose to drive?"
Nobody had an answer.
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Chapter Nine: Insight into the 'life' the Saiyan has made for himself.