Stars twinkled above in the deep, dark blue sky by the time Dende was done.
As soon as he arrived, he began working on the new dragon balls. It took his entire concentration channeling his energy to breathe new life into the magical relics. Goku and Piccolo watched expectantly, trying to distract themselves with long walks around the Lookout while Dende continued.
He worked through the night, and then through the entire next day only taking breaks to close his eyes for a brief moment of respite. Every time the veil of sleep threatened Dende, he pulled himself to his feet, shook off the tiredness and continued to work. To make a set of dragon balls required near constant concentration. One had to channel loads of energy through the dragon's spirit to capture the magic, and then strain that amorphous magic once more through a dimension that made it tangible.
Dende had seen the elders do it with their dragon balls after Namek had succumbed to the battle between Frieza and Goku. Making new dragon balls was a sacred tradition among the Namekians, and when the elders invited a select few to watch, he could not ignore the invitation.
His watchful eye studied the elders with an intensity that the other children didn't understand. He saw how their fingers quaked, how their eyes clamped shut in agonizing pain as their body became a conduit for the powerful magic of the dragon balls. He could smell the smoldering tinge of metal drifting into the still air.
Now, he was the one gritting his teeth in this ritual.
But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Dende could feel the magic getting thicker and thicker, its pulsating cloud now becoming solid. With one more push, he knew he would be successful in transferring the ethereal energy surging through his body into the magical orbs in front of him. His hands ached and his eyes strained against his head. Encased in glass, the figurine of Shenron twitched with anticipation, glowing with every pulse of Dende's power shoved up against it.
When they were finally done, he let out a shout and Goku and Piccolo rushed to his side. The rocks that had once been the dragon balls were glowing again, and the glossy, impenetrable finish they normally had flickered across the stone. Sweat poured down Dende's head and he heaved backward, his hands shaking and pointed at the balls, when one last puff of energy released from him.
He fell backward and finally managed to close his eyes,
A brilliant light emanated from the stones and they rose into the air, spinning like tops as they danced against the blanket of moonlight bathing the Lookout. Piccolo and Goku stood breathless as they watched them fly off into the distance.
Goku let out a victorious shout and turned to Dende, who was splayed out on the floor in exhaustion.
"Dende!" He whooped. "You did it!"
A smile formed across the boy's face. He had done it.
Dawn was hanging on the horizon as Goku landed at Capsule Corp. To find the dragon balls, he would need the dragon radar, but it was so early in the morning he didn't want to wake Bulma. She was his oldest friend, and he knew she could forgive her for breaking in like this. He entered her laboratory and let out a sigh.
The last time he was there, he was engulfed in the healing chamber, humming away while everyone else tried their hand against the androids. His mind flickered to that final showdown with Cell. The battle had been hard fought and their win had come with a great price. Even with three years of training under his belt, Goku felt unprepared. Next time, he told himself, he would be ready for whatever threat touched down. He would spend however long it took to give himself the edge he needed: physically, mentally, emotionally.
He scanned the lab quickly, thinking of what might be an obvious place for the dragon radar to stay. He didn't have the first clue. First, he looked through her tools. Set in a metal frame, her tool drawers rose all the way to Goku's eyes, each drawer chocked full of wrenches and sockets, metal contraptions he had never seen before, and loose screws and wires.
As he pulled out the tools one by one, he tried as carefully as he could to not make much noise. But Goku was not known for his deftness off the battlefield. It was the clanging that masked the footsteps coming into the workshop.
"Kakarot."
Vegeta's voice was low and curious. With a sheepish grin, Goku slowly turned to look at him and removed his hand from one of the cabinet drawers.
"Oh, hi Vegeta!" Goku's voice was light.
The Saiyan prince crossed his arms and furrowed his brow. Goku could tell he looked tired-his eyes were still sunken and blue, and his body seemed slightly hunched, a far departure from his normal rigidness. But something else gave Goku pause. Instead of the enigmatic presence Vegeta usually commanded, he was met with a man who was more demure, more careful and cautious.
"May I ask what you're doing in my house?"
My house. Goku had most certainly caught Vegeta's words. He didn't know whether it was a slip of the tongue, or whether Vegeta was trying to assert his dominance, but either way, he noticed it as he said it. It made Goku happy. Something about Vegeta considering Earth his home made Goku feel oddly at ease.
Despite being rivals, Goku had always considered Vegeta more of an equal, and as they teamed up together over the years, he thought they were beginning to form a friendship. And, most importantly, he seemed to make Bulma happy. If he considered this home, Goku was glad for it—even if just for his dear friend Bulma.
"What are you smiling at?" Vegeta hissed. Goku chuckled to himself and shook his head. Vegeta looked on and rolled his eyes. "Well? What are you doing here?"
"I'm looking for the dragon radar, but I didn't want to wake Bulma," he said.
Vegeta's eyes bulged, and then he gave an inquisitive look. That was the last thing he was expecting Kakarot to say. But he was curious, so he did not protest. Vegeta walked over to Bulma's desk, opened a drawer that was filled to the brim with odds and ends and plucked the radar from its depths. He examined it and then looked back over to Goku who stood there with an impossibly quizzical look on his face.
"Why do you want this?" Vegeta said somberly. "I thought the dragon balls were gone."
"That's the thing," Goku smiled. "Mr. Popo figured it out. We just had to go to New Namek and—"
"I don't care about the details." Vegeta was curt. Running his thumb across the dragon radar's face, he watched it with an ominous intensity. Goku studied him, searching for some sign of understanding, waiting for the Saiyan price to pass the radar over to him. "So they're back?"
"Yes," Goku said.
"And you can guarantee they work?"
Goku nodded enthusiastically. Vegeta turned over the radar in his hand once more and then flicked it over to Goku. Catching it with one hand, Goku smiled and turned to pivot on his foot, swinging his way back outdoors to start his furtive search for the balls.
"Wait," Vegeta said. Goku's arm was in mid swing, hoisting itself up as he began his charge out of the room, and he came to a complete stop. With raised eyebrows, he turned to Vegeta. The older Saiyan looked tired, almost as if he had aged several years in a matter of hours. His normal bombastic bravado had shriveled to a dull roar. He was small and meager.
Goku waited for him to say something more, but he didn't. He just stood here with his arms crossed and his gaze stoic.
"What is it?" Goku prompted.
"Will we always rely on these relics?" Vegeta cleared his throat. "Will we always be at their mercy?"
Goku blinked. He didn't know what Vegeta meant: The dragon balls had come in handy year after year, crisis after crisis, and when they were lost, it did feel as if they had been severely impacted. But he couldn't determine what prompted Vegeta to ask. Shouldn't he be happy the balls had been restored, that peace would come to Earth once more?
Wasn't he happy that Bulla would be alive?
"I don't understand," Goku said softly. Vegeta shook his head.
"What if we couldn't bring back the dragon balls?" His voice grew more fierce. "What if all the damage that Cell and the androids had done was permanent, just like it was in the future?"
"But it's not," Goku reassured. "It all worked out in the end, so why does it—"
"It matters, Kakarot," Vegeta hissed. "Everything is dependent on them. It's a crutch that we're allowing ourselves to fall back on."
Frustration flared in Goku. His life had flourished once he began his journey for the dragon balls. It's how he met Chi-Chi, it's how he met Bulma and all his other friends. To reduce them to something so negative seemed too unfair.
"They're not a crutch," he said. "They're a tool—they're to help us."
"We should've been strong enough on our own to survive." Vegeta clenched his fist. "But we weren't. No matter how hard we trained or how hard we wanted it, he still managed to take something from us."
The two stopped speaking, allowing the errant buzz of a machine in the back of the lab to fill the void. Goku still didn't understand. Vegeta saw the dragon balls as an obstacle now, and he didn't see why. If anything, the dragon balls were a motivator—not a crutch. No matter what happened Goku was always going to try and perfect himself, regardless of the dragon balls. He loved the fight for the fight, he wanted the thrill of battle.
If Vegeta considered dragon balls the easy way out, Goku couldn't relate. He considered them more of a contingency plan. He was never unwilling to do the work, but if the plan didn't unfold the way they hoped, the dragon balls were always there to fill in the gaps.
"We don't decide whether dragon balls exist or not," Goku offered as a means of explanation. "If I can't change that, well, then I will keep using them. Not as a way to make things easy, but as a way to make things less hard."
"And when that plan fails?' Vegeta eyed Goku. He shrugged.
"If it fails, then we face it head on," he said. "We would deal with it."
Vegeta nodded his head, not as if he accepted the answer, more so that he understood. He leaned against the side of Bulma's desk, crossed his arms over his broad chest, and closed his eyes. The realization that the dragon balls were back should've comforted him—it should've made him feel as though there was another glimmer of hope. Bulla would be alive again, she could travel home to her life and back to her mother, but her loss had already taken its toll.
Without the dragon balls, he was forced to endure her death the way most men would suffer the loss of a child. The emptiness snaked through him and sent him down a river of anger and confusion and fear. For the past several hours he had allowed his shield to soften, giving himself permission to grieve like a mere mortal, not a Saiyan prince.
Yet, suddenly he was supposed to be relieved? He wasn't. Bringing her back would subside the guilt he felt for not protecting her, but he had already been ripped in two. This new version of himself could never be put back in the box of emotional ignorance. While he was still far in his understanding of love, he was now at least open to it. How could he not be after feeling all the ways he had felt?
The Z Fighters had always used the dragon balls as a means to right the wrongs inflicted by their enemies. He had once benefitted from their magic himself. Somehow, though, he couldn't muster his excitement. What had been done to his soul could never be reversed and the searing vision of his daughter's lifeless body drifting from the sky was something he could never unsee.
The dragon balls could erase the past for the betterment of man, but they could not absolve those who wished upon them of their memories.
"Vegeta." Goku walked toward him, his arm outstretched tentatively. "Are you okay?"
"The dragon balls just don't make everything right," Vegeta said coldly. "She will be alive but I will never forget her death."
"The dragon balls aren't made for us to forget, Vegeta," Goku said. "They're meant for us to do right when the innocent have been wronged."
"I've already mourned her—accepted her death," he shouted. "So I am just to turn around and forget? Go on as if none of this happened?"
Goku shook his head. In all his years using the dragon balls, he had never thought of it like that. Using them did not invalidate the pain and suffering they felt, it only made it slightly easier to swallow.
For the first time in his life, Vegeta was entrenched in feelings that weren't doused in hatred. Goku could see how acutely that affected him. Goku had always danced through life, somewhat aloof, sometimes naive, but he always felt. He might've not always understood, but his heart beat with love and lust, his soul was filled with envy and dreams and contentedness at any given time of day.
As he watched his family grow, he began to understand a new type of feeling—unconditional love. He also saw the pain it brought, the burden of loving someone more than yourself, the anticipation of every achievement and milestone. Those were the things that made him a man and those were the things that made fighting feel worth it.
His role as a warrior transcended so much more through the eyes of his wife and son, and because of them, he found a fountain of strength even in the darkest of days.
But for Vegeta, this was the first hurt in what would come to be many. A family can bring a man as much pain as it does comfort.
"We learn from our losses, Vegeta," Goku said. "And we learn to love what we have while it is with us."
Vegeta said nothing. Instead, he looked downward to the laboratory floor, counting the specks of debris that littered the glossy whiteness.
"You will never forget this feeling, my friend," Goku continued. "But it's going to help you understand what it means to live."
Goku waited for a few seconds for a response, but Vegeta did not move. His eyes remained fixed on the floor below him, shallow and heavy, as if they were on the verge of tears.
Author's Note: It's always been my headcanon that Goku was a lot more emotionally intelligent then people gave him credit for. Definitely not ~on brand~ but hey, this whole story is different :) So why not!
