(A/N: Alright, peeps, here's the epilogue. I really hope you like it - it's short, sweet, and to the point. Enjoy.)

Epilogue

Teraynia watched with glimmering green eyes as her son and his chosen disappeared into the fabrics of space, returning through the pathways of magic to the world she herself had left behind. Silence descended as the dais grew dark and every whirling maelstrom flowed from raging storm to a breeze to a whisper, then finally trailed away to nothing. Infinite shadows fell once again upon the departure of the Super Saiyan glow, ready to send its two inhabitants into the eternal sleep that awaited them. Teraynia tilted her head back, as if daring the darkness to come and bear her away to the next life. When the abyss made no immediate reply, a smirk brushed her lips as she tossed her hair the color of boiling magma into the stagnant air. Bringing a gloved hand up to rest gently over her mouth, she stifled a silent chuckle.

"You have grown up to be the great Saiyan I always knew you would be, my one and only son," she murmured, gaze traveling to a drop of crimson blood fading into blackening dais. "You have made your race proud."

"There is no race left to pride."

Turning slightly into the shadows, she cocked her head and shot a scathing look into the abyss just beyond the battered edge of the platform. "And whose fault is that, Vegeta?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow.

The king stepped up onto the dais, burning black eyes cast unusually upon the ground. "Frieza's," he replied quietly, a muscle under his eyes jumping as if in protest to his faulty affirmation. "He is the one who destroyed us."

"He is the one who destroyed our bodies," Teraynia corrected harshly, twisting back around to face once more into the eternal abyss. The chasm was already beginning to dissolve; the magic knew that the last of its people had passed through its sacred halls. "But you were the one who destroyed our souls."

"You know I do not believe in souls!"

Teraynia's eyes twitched in momentary anguish before slamming the iron mask of indifference back into place. "Then believe in pride, Vegeta," she grated. "Believe in the honor I once thought you possessed." Shifting slowly, she turned to face him, leafy irises glittering in the waning light. "You destroyed our honor," she said softly, catching his gaze and holding it fast with chains of emerald steel. "And in doing so you destroyed your race: for honor was all we had left."

"So you waited this long just to accuse me!" he demanded, throwing his silken cape over his shoulder in a furious wave of satin. "That is just like you, Teraynia! I should have known that you remained in this godforsaken world of this godforsaken ritual simply to bind me to an eternity of darkness--!"

"I waited this long to see my son," she interrupted calmly, folding her arms, "and the man I knew he would become." She watched a sizzling strip of time and space fall to the stone floor beside her feet. "Just like his father."

"You make no sense, woman!" the king spat. "First you ridicule me, then you accredit me with the so called greatness of that boy? The kid is just as arrogant as Frieza and twice as stupid! He bound himself to a human woman--!"

"Oh, would you shut up! God, just listening to you is giving me a headache. And I wasn't accrediting you with the success of my son. I was accrediting his father."

Vegeta's eyes glittered ominously. "So now you're telling me that the brat isn't even mine?" he demanded.

Teraynia met his gaze with a tiny smile. "No, he is not yours." But before the king could explode, she held up her hand. "But neither does he belong to anyone else. Hear me out; everything will become clear."

The king cast a furious glance around him at the crumbling abyss. "Fine," he spat, settling himself on the edge of the dais in a flurry of ruby fabric. Spreading his arms wide, he added sarcastically, "Tell me everything, my queen."

"As you wish." Teraynia sidestepped a falling bit of debris and came to stand beside her mate. Allowing her hands to fall to her hips, she glared down her pretty nose into his smoldering onyx eyes.

"My son belongs to the Saiyan man with whom I performed the Sairiea," she began. "That man would have sacrificed anything and everything to bring his people glory. That man understood that, as a race, our only chance to extend our lives into the future was to keep fighting, fighting…always fighting…"

"And I understood that when I submitted to Frieza!" he sputtered, casting her a furious glance. "It was either fight for him or not at all!"

"I told you to keep your mouth shut, fool," Teraynia said icily.

"I will speak when I see fit!"

"Then you will not hear what I have to say." She began to turn away. "You are lucky I stayed here with you at all."

"And why is that?" he hissed.

"Because had I not remained in this realm with you - had I not accepted the responsibility of the last initiator - you would have gone to hell."

"Feh. And?" the king snorted, crossing his own muscular arms firmly across his breastplate. "It would have been better than eternal boredom." A piece of the dais, which had begun to chip itself away into the abyss, landed on his shoulder, and he incinerated it with a crook of his finger. "Besides: what would it have mattered to you anyway? You despise me, and I know it. I am strong enough to survive the fires of hell. You needn't have wasted your time."
"You wouldn't have lasted one minute in hell," Teraynia rumbled, disgusted. "Not where you were headed."

Vegeta sniffed incredulously. "And you would know this how, woman?"

"Because I lived it, that's how!" she exploded. She appeared in front of her mate with deadly speed, grasping him by the collar of his underarmor and dragging him to his feet with the force of her fury. "What do you think it was like, living day after day, watching the only one you cared about become weaker and weaker, and know there is nothing you can do about it! What do you think it was like to see your king, whom you once admired most in the entire galaxy for his strength and honor, crumble from the inside out like a man made of dust? What do you think it was like--" she grated, clenched fist shaking as it clutched the ancient fabric of the armor, "--to see the man, who finally revived in you what your race had lost over the millennia past, fall to a tyrant's trickery, fading to a whisper of himself before your very eyes?" Her death grip on his collar slackened as her head tilted forward to rest against his chest in a sudden show of emotion. "I was almost glad to be gone," she whispered. "But could you blame me? How could I live on, knowing that with every dying breath you took, our race was dwindling into oblivion?"

Vegeta stared down at her for a moment, then hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his fighting outfit and gazed off over her shoulder. "Get a hold of yourself, Teraynia," he said gruffly, taking a quick step back. "The solitude has gone to your head."

Teraynia allowed herself a glittering laugh, much the way she had done on the last night of her life, and Vegeta jumped in surprise.

"Solitude will never go to my head," she murmured, meeting his eyes with unwavering confidence. "There was only ever one day when I wasn't alone. However, though it may never drive me to the point of insanity, my solitude can pain me until the end of time; for even though it was for a mere ritual, I once knew what it was like to have someone standing beside me in a world of blood and tears."

Vegeta chuckled softly, returning her gaze with only a hint of ridicule. "Hollow words, Teraynia," he said quietly.

"Only hollow enough to echo the pain one more time." Teraynia turned away, watching the slow disintegration of the abyss as it sank towards oblivion.

Silence overcame the pair as they stared off into the dissolving expanse of the Sairiea. They stood close enough to be companionable, but far enough to remain as strangers upon the dais on which the lifeblood of Saiyan honor had been spilled time and time again, only to be forgotten as the strange void crumbled into nothingness. Teraynia tapped the toe of her boot against the roiling platform, only the faintest ghost of emotion lighting her face as she watched it chip away under her foot. Then she felt a strong, calloused hand come to rest upon her forearm.

"We're watching the very foundations of our race collapse beneath our feet, Teraynia," Vegeta said softly, dark eyes flickering across the broken landscape. "This was the last Sairiea the universe will ever know."
"Yes, I know that," she replied, eying his hand with only remote disgust. "We will now ascend to the next stop on the road that winds on before us."

"Or descend," he retorted bitterly, gaze falling momentarily to the floor. "For those of us who signed the death warrant of so many valiant warriors."

Teraynia raised an eyebrow. "So you admit it?"

"Bah. I knew it the moment I gave Frieza my answer." The king released his grip on her arm and whirled away from her, black maned head lowering in self contempt. Both hands clenched into fists as he glared angrily into the shadows. "But any decision I could have made would have ended up with the same result," he grated, watching his tendons begin to quake as he squeezed them ever tighter. "But…I thought…if there were some way to buy us more time…some way to help us get stronger without Frieza realizing it…then we could win."

"And it didn't work," Teraynia murmured, eyes training themselves upon her mate's back in sudden realization. "So you defended your actions, not wanting the rest of us to know that your final plan was to go behind the tyrant's back and stab him from behind."

"Rrr, don't say it like that!" he roared. "I wanted…I thought…" he trailed off, finally letting his hands fall limp to his sides. "I don't know what I was thinking," he muttered at last. "It would have been better to let them die in honor than in chains." A small smirk twisted his lips. "Even my son, who was barely old enough to know what had happened, understands that. And just like you, he hates me for it."

"I have never hated you, you fool," Teraynia growled, taking a step toward him. Then the hard lines that creased her brow softened, and she laid a gentle hand upon his shoulder. "I have only missed you." Leaning forward ever so slightly, she let her forehead fall to rest against his shoulder, burning red hair tumbling idly into her face.

"Feh." The king closed his eyes and crossed his arms, letting the warmth of her unspoken forgiveness course through his veins, once more setting them afire with the pride he had presumed lost. At last she pulled away, and he sighed as the heat of her proximity faded with the empty space that separated them once more.

"Time is fading fast," he said quietly. "Soon you will proceed to the world of the great warriors. You must feel honored, my queen. Not many Saiyans receive that privilege."

"Honored?" She laughed. "Hardly."

He flicked her a confused glance. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not going to the world of the Kais." She spread her arms wide. "I'm going with you."

"To the underworld! You're insane, woman!" he cried, black eyes wide with shock. "I've already put you through a living hell! Why opt to go through it a second time!"

"I'll deal with it," she said idly. The floor of the abyss began to open up beneath them. Tongues of flame slithered through the cracks, tasting the two Saiyans' boots with hungry whips of fire. "Oh, come now, don't you remember my pledge?" she asked teasingly, ignoring a blast of sparks as it singed the skin of her leg.

"Courage," the king muttered, crossing his arms a little tighter and meeting her gaze. "How could I forget?"

"And do you remember yours?" she prodded, planting her hands on her hips.

The king mumbled something unintelligible.

"That's right," she chuckled. "Exactly the same as your son. I'll bet that would piss him off big time if he knew." Then she held out her hand. "So are you ready?"

Vegeta smirked and cracked his knuckles, then brushed past her to head toward the heart of the inferno. "Let's go find that lizard man and give him my revised reply to his impudent question." Without looking back, he stepped into the blaze and was gone.

Teraynia started after him, then hesitated only a moment, casting a swift glance over her shoulder into the crumbling twilight of the Sairiea.

"You've done well, my son," she whispered. "Just like your father, you've made your mistakes…and you've atoned for them. Make your human woman happy; her blood will bear our blood into eternity." Then she followed her husband into hell, with nothing short of ecstasy staining her crimson cheeks.

(A/N: That's it. Story over. Now go read the Last of the Saiyans. I promise you won't be disappointed.)