Summary: Before Earth, before his change of heart and before his family, there had been a son he'd never wanted, made from Frieza's seed and born from his body. Then he was dead, and Vegeta made sure to forget he had ever been there at all. Only, he isn't dead. He is alive. Tormented and abused, but alive, and now Vegeta will do what he couldn't have done the first time. He will save him.
Warnings: Rated M for language, abuse, sexual violence, depictions of rape, mpreg, etc.
Every Eye Will See
Chapter Eighteen: The Fall
The first time Chill ever fell, he had thought he was going to die.
He had been very young then, still living in the grand building. He had been assisting in the kitchens that day, and a cook had ordered him to retrieve a pot from a tall cabinet. It had been nothing new—Chill had climbed onto that counter a hundred times before. He had liked it even, being given such a task. Climbing the counter was fun, and it made him feel very adult to reach a place that should have been too high for him.
Something went wrong that day, though. His foot could have caught on his pant leg or perhaps the counter had been wet—the memory would not say. All he knew for certain was that right after he had grabbed the pot, he had pitched over and fallen.
The fall, in retrospect, could not have been more than three feet, but it was nonetheless a bad one. He had landed on his arm and heard it crunch in that split second before his head smacked against the ground.
He had felt odd after that. The pain in his head was fierce and heavy, like there was some type of pressure squeezing on his brain. He had felt dizzy when he was yanked to his feet, and so sick to his stomach that he had vomited all over his boots.
That was the first time he had ever feared for his own life.
He had agonized over it, cried and sobbed all the way down to the Healer's Sector. He had begged and pleaded not to go, already familiar with stories of prisoners passing through those doors and never returning. In the same breath, he begged for someone, anyone, to fix the break in his brain before that killed him instead.
Naturally, he had finally been assured that he would not die. He had felt the sweet kind of relief that could only be born in the aftermath of true terror.
And he had been—terrified, that was, beyond belief. The first time he fell was also the first time he had felt true fear.
He did not feel it now.
It was a long fall, much longer than the countertop had been. There was the force of wind this time, for one thing, whipping against his face and pulling his skin taut against his bones. The falling made his stomach drop deep into his gut, and his heart pump madly.
Still, there was no fear.
It reminded Chill of Earth. He was reminded of that moment in the forest, where the air was wet and the animals were loud, and he had fallen out of the tree. There were differences, of course. This time, air that was hot instead of cool slapped against his skin, rushing through his hair and clothes. This time, the small mercy of grass and dirt would now only be the unforgiving might of rock and stone.
He was not sure how long he had been falling; it felt like forever. He wondered if the drop was too high—there was no other way to explain the length of time. He wondered if Neeila's efforts were pointless, if his body would simply hit the ground and shatter; every bone ruined beyond recognition; broken shards piercing his lungs, his heart—wherever was fatal. Gravity was not forgiving, no matter what Neeila wanted.
Abruptly, he hit the ground.
Though it was not really the ground. It was slanted, whatever it was, more like a hill. The second his feet planted, his body over-balanced and he was falling back one more. Only this time instead of a free fall, it was an amalgam of stone and gravity.
It seemed like everything was happening all at once. He could not tell up from down, not with how fast his body was moving, scrapping brutally against the sharp rocks of the cliffside as he rolled down it. On and on it went, and once again he wondered if it would ever end.
Eventually, it did end. He knew simply by the way he landed that he had finally reached stable ground. He continued to roll a few more times, not even bothering to fight the last bits of momentum still controlling his body. He was motionless for not even a few seconds when his ears, despite the impossible spinning of his head, were assaulted with the deafening crunch above him.
The congregation of rocks from which he had just been delivered had finally come undone.
His body was fleeing before he could even command it too. He could hear the rocks banging loudly as they crashed down the same hill he himself had just endured. Each crash filled his ears until he was sure he would hear nothing else ever again. Their hollering took over his mind, deafening him with their promises.
They were coming for him, they said. They would get him, they said.
Run, he thought. Live.
He kept moving until he could no longer hear the ominous words. By the time he stopped, his mind was clear again, and the adrenaline that had been coursing through his veins left him just as quickly as it came. He curled in on himself, feeling the pain then. His skin was scraped, and his bones were rattled from the hillside. His brain was pounding against the back of his skull where it must have hit the ground. He only then realized that his escape had not been a run, but rather a hasty crawl. His scraped palms, profusely bleeding knees, and certainly broken feet were a testament to that.
His body slumped forward as if it were boneless. He took in deep ragged breaths, but still felt as if he were getting no air at all. He felt nauseous, his head spinning as he nearly succumbed to his fatigue.
He quite wanted too. Nothing sounded better than letting himself drift off into unconsciousness. He found that awareness was a lot more trouble than it was worth. If he was asleep, he would not have to worry about the dizziness he felt despite remaining motionless. He would not have to worry about whether or not he could breathe, either. Perhaps if he were lucky, he would sleep and never wake up again.
Neeila.
Her name was like a bucket of cold water. He jolted up and strained his ears to hear past the loud ringing that currently consumed them. He strained them to hear anything at all.
He heard nothing. Only the distant, miles away cries of anguish belonging to those who meant nothing to him.
He turned back towards the way he had come. His legs refused to move, though his arms still obeyed him. It was taxing work, pulling his weight on such feeble and bruised limbs. Every move had him near blacking out, but he could not stop. He refused to stop. He had to find her. He had to find her because maybe somehow, someway, she was still there, still breathing under the stones that had tried to claim her. Perhaps he was her only hope of survival. Perhaps she was waiting for him, clinging to the thinnest threads of life until he came to pull her free.
Chill knew how to find her, too. Even now, without physical touch, he could feel her. He felt her presence, deep within him. Her presence was strong—it had to be. How else would it have managed to keep together what long should have been broken within him?
Her presence guided him over the rocks that had once been a powerful, daunting cliff, but now embellished the ground in a stone garden. She led him until he was right above her. She gave him strength while he pushed aside the rocks that crushed her with his arms and Mind Power. He could smell her, then. Dirty, like the rest of them, but underneath was a subtle, unique scent. It was like the trees on Earth, or the freshness of air. It was something all her own.
Then he truly felt her. A hand, he found. A hand so broken it hardly was a hand at all anymore.
No pulse beat against the fingertips holding her wrist.
For the second time that day, he broke his vow. He pulled up his blindfold, forcing the tight fabric up until it bunched on his forehead. He knew he shouldn't; he knew he was not allowed, but he just did not care. He had to see her, or it would not be real.
He saw just what he had expected to see. A hand misshapen nearly beyond recognition. Five fingers that bent in ways they never should. Blood that covered every inch of what should have been pale skin. A snapped wrist that held no life—not even the smallest flutter.
A lump formed in his throat. Hopelessness filled his center. He had never felt so sick.
Neeila. He shook her wrist, willing life back into it. Neeila.
His lip trembled. His vision blurred. Whimpers spilled from his throat.
Neeila, come back!
Hot tears dripped down his cheeks, though neither the lump in his throat nor the weight in his chest lessened. He had never felt this way before. It was painful; more so than broken bones or torn skin ever had.
Please, come back, make it better. Make it go away!
He pressed frantic kisses against her hand, trying with all his might to mimic the fire she had invoked in him through his lips. All he tasted was blood.
His chest heaved as he let out a sob. Tears soaking his cheeks without end. He tried to speak, but all that came out was nonsensical whines. He wanted her. He wanted to see her smile; hear her laugh; feel her unbroken hand against his cheek. He wanted her to feed him; to carry him on her back; to tell him it was okay. It was okay because she was there and always would be.
Please, he begged. Don't leave me here. I don't want to be alone.
His pleads were for nothing. She could not hear him anymore. She was not Neeila anymore. She was nothing more than a lump of broken and dead flesh.
Still, he held onto that dead flesh. He curled his fingers tightly through the lifeless ones and cuddled the hand against his face. He would hold onto these remains. He would hold onto it until he was dead flesh himself. There was no other place for him but here, protecting her until he joined her. It was only a matter of waiting now.
"What do you hate most about this place?" she had asked once.
Everything, he should have said, would never have the chance to say again.
Everything but you.
The search was taking Goku far too long.
He had collected three of the dragon balls so far and was near the fourth. He probably would have had them all by now if the radar were working as accurately as it usually would. At first, he had thought that perhaps it was broken, but he could not imagine Bulma lending him any sort of faulty device, particularly for a mission as crucial as this one.
He realized eventually that it was the world itself that was tampering with the radar. There was too much chaotic energy for the... what was the word? 'Electromagnetic'. There was too much chaotic energy for the electromagnetic pulses to be more accurate in their findings. He could at most narrow the findings down to about a one-mile radius—not at all convenient for a man working against the clock.
Sometimes it was easy to find the balls. Its bright orange color often shone like a beacon against the dreary background of the rest of the landscape, but that was only if it was lying out in the open like the seven-star ball had been. If the ball was hidden underneath rocks and stones, or otherwise placed where his spot in the sky held no advantage, then the searching process took much longer. For the other two, he had had to dig and crawl, trying his best to pinpoint where their energy was directing him.
It was taking far too long. He needed to move faster. He could feel each second of the clock ticking further and further past. Just as he could feel the energy of the balls, he could feel the energy of the planet. It was a very ugly energy, twisted and dark and growing in its chaos.
The inhabitants were feeling it as well. During his search he had passed over countless towns, full of buildings demolished by crumbling cliffsides and harsh quakes in the ground. He saw the people themselves running frantically in the wreckage, screaming from the pain of wounds and the weight of fear alike. He had seen some people—slightly more composed but only just—piling into large spacecrafts, assumedly for evacuation.
They would need to move faster, the natives as well as Vegeta and himself, he thought. The planet's life force was being pushed to its limit. It was only a matter of time before it snapped, and this entire celestial rock and everything one it was reduced to nothing but dust floating through space.
He shook those grim thoughts from his head as he dropped out of the sky. That manner of thinking was not going to make the balls any easier to find or give him more time.
The ground his feet touched down onto was shaking like the aftershocks of an earthquake, but he did not let it deter him. He steadied himself as he stuffed the radar back into the safety of his pocket and set out on his search. Luckily, there were not too many places the ball could be hiding in this particular location—only two large piles of stone that had once made up a clifftop served as potential hiding spots.
The first pile he checked turned up nothing but pebbles and dirt. The second pile was the jackpot—he only had to move two rocks before his eyes caught onto the familiar bright orange color. He did not fight the relieved smile that crept onto his face as he stuffed the one-star ball into his bag alongside its brothers. Only three more and then Goku could find Vegeta, who hopefully would have found his son by now—
"Help!"
Goku froze. He whipped his head around and saw a woman sprinting towards him. She was like the other Tenas with brown hair and rock for skin. She was wearing a navy outfit, and it took him a moment to recognize it as the same uniform that the guards who had come to Earth were wearing.
He thought he should be angry at the sight of it, and part of him was, but mostly he was distracted by how she was barreling towards him like she's got fire on her heels and he was a pail of water.
He saw the look in her eyes, the muted horrified and undercover of urgency, and thought that maybe he was.
She skids to a stop in front of him, her momentum nearly sending her toppling into him. She was surprisingly tall—Goku hasn't been eye to eye with a woman since he had met that deity at Mount Five Elements so many years ago. It was a bit jarring, and in the face of her distress, he was not sure what to say, "Uh—"
"My children," she said, answering what probably should have been his question. "They are trapped. Under boulders. I saw you move those ones," she gestured to the pile of displaced rocks behind him. "You are strong. You must help me."
Goku hesitated.
Her face cracked. Not literally, but her hard expression did fall. Her stoicism crumbled away like sawdust, and it was only once the mask had fallen that he realized one was even there in the first place. Her face hid nothing now. It showed the fear, the desperation she felt without a hint of shame.
Her outfit betrayed her, but without it, Goku would not have thought she was a guard. She did not look like the ones he had seen before, the ones who marched together in federation on his planet like their hate and their cruelty belonged there. She did not look like the ones who had led children along in chains, who saw their wounds and their bruises, listened to their stomachs growl and did nothing to help them all for the sake of following orders. She did not look like someone who would watch children suffer and justify it by calling it a difference of morals, by saying it was something that just had to be accepted.
But she was that person. There was no difference between her and the others. She could have been one of the guards from before for all he knew, blending into the group of complacent monsters like another piece of the puzzle.
But that was not what Goku saw. He did not see one cog, but a single machine. He saw her face, open and vulnerable with nothing to shield her. He saw her eyes—a deep green color, one with the sclera stained red from a broken blood vessel. Both were filled with tears that were not quite spilling over but were plentiful enough that the cracked corners of her eyes were tinged a darker shade of grey where the moisture had touched them.
She looked familiar, and he realized that she looked like Chi-Chi. He remembered that look on his wife's face, after the saiyans attacked and she had arrived to a battlefield she never wanted her son to be on and was met with his tiny body wrecked in a way no child should ever experience.
This woman looked like she had seen her children in a state no person ever should.
This woman looked like a mother.
"Please!" she said, and Goku followed her, because it is what he does. He forgives those who do the unforgivable and helps those who don't deserve mercy. Even so, in this moment, he did not begrudge his nature. How could Goku deny someone who so badly needed him?
The fire at her heels had turned into the Devil himself. Goku found he almost had trouble keeping up with her. She paid no mind to how he lagged, nor did she seem deterred by the endless quaking of the ground beneath them. She focused only on getting back to her kids.
She stopped so suddenly that Goku didn't have time to stop himself before he rammed into the back of her. She stumbled, and Goku grabbed the crook of her elbow before she could fall. His mouth was opening, ready to apologize, but she was already shrugging him off and dropping down to her knees before he got the chance.
She scooted closer to the pile of rocks before her. The boulders weren't much taller than himself, and he realized that the ground must have caved in. He realized also, with a clench to his chest, that there were little sobs coming from the pile.
The woman dropped her face down close to the small opening between the rocks. "Sazio, Choca!" she shouted down. "I am here. You will be free in a moment, I promise!"
Goku dropped down to his knees, nudging the woman aside as he scooted closer. The hole was small, but large enough that he could see two terrified, tiny faces peering back at him. One boy and one girl, he thought, if their hair lengths were anything to go by (however, he had been wrong before), both with watery eyes the same green as their mother's. Beside them he noticed a longer, fuller body of a man dressed in clothes that look more like the tunic and leggings the children were wearing, as opposed to the woman's uniform.
Bile tickled at the back of his throat when he saw that the man's skull was completely crushed underneath a rock.
The bomb's clock was still ticking, so he tucked the sight far inside the back of his head. Instead, he inspected the rocks, how steady they were and which ones he would need to move.
It would not be easy, he decided. The problem was not his strength (he certainly had more than enough of that) but rather an issue of timing. If he moved the wrong rock at the wrong time, the others surrounding it could become unsettled and fall onto the children.
Of course, he was fast enough to move the kids if that became the case, however he had since learned that it was not always in the best interest of those far weaker than him to be moved at the same rates he could handle. Once, he had tried flying with Chi-Chi at super saiyan speed and nearly given her whiplash. Since then, he's decided that using that kind of power with other people should be a last resort.
He looked down at their wet, frightened faces. Immediately their eyes latched onto him, terrified and trusting, and he faltered.
He remembers the first time Gohan came to him for protection. Gohan had been very young at the time and had only just begun to sleep in his own bedroom. Goku had woken in the middle of the night to a teary-faced toddler clinging to him, telling desperate tales of a monster that was trying to eat him alive. Several moments after, when Gohan was fast asleep in his usual spot between them, he had asked Chi-Chi why Gohan came running to them in the first place.
Didn't you ever have nightmares as a child?
He had of course, but he always took nightmares as a challenge. Why would he want his grandfather to fight the monsters away when he could train and become stronger and defeat them himself?
Well, most children aren't quite so courageous as you, Goku, she had said. Most kids are scared easily, and it's our job as adults to fight their fears away.
It had taken him a while to wrap his head around what she told him, but he thought he understood now.
Still, looking down at these kids, it was a bit daunting. By the time the monsters became a reality, Gohan was independent enough to take care of himself, and if Goten was still scared by nightmares, he never felt the need to share that with him.
Goku never had to fight away nightmares that were this real.
He put on what he hoped was a comforting smile and said, "Hi, my name is Goku. What are your names?"
The one that looked like a boy sniffled a couple times before responding, "Sazio."
The girl, who must be Choca, did not respond at all, staring at him with almost eerily blank eyes. She did, however, stop heaving, and Goku considered that a win.
"Sazio. That's an interesting name. I don't think we have names like that on Earth," he said as he carefully lifted one rock and set it aside. It was louder than intended when he set it down, like a piano falling from a crane. The girl stiffened and the boy whimpered, and Goku hastened to add, "I have two sons named Gohan and Goten. Gohan is named after my grandfather. I didn't name Goten, but I still think his name is pretty cool too. I think Goten might be the same age as you two. How old are y'all?"
"We are six," Sazio said as he rubbed at the snot under his nose.
"Same age?" Goku asked while moving aside another rock. The boy nodded. "Are you two twins, then?"
"Yea—"
"Papa is dead," the girl said, and the suddenness of her voice shocked him to the point that he nearly lost his grip on the rock he was holding. Now that Goku looked, he could see her tiny hands clutched around a larger, lifeless one.
Goku didn't know what to say to that, but the girl continued on now that the gates were open, and her flood of words could flow freely. "He's dead and won't get up. We can't leave him here. We have to bury him so his soul can pass on."
Goku said nothing but the girl seemed unbothered. She went on about the afterlife and a burial site next to a grandmother so they can visit him, and you'll get him out right? You don't want Papa to be lonely, do you?
Goku focused on the rocks. There was only one left now. All he had to do was move it just right...
He barely touched it, yet it made an ominous crunching sound against the others pressed against it. The rocks began to shift and Goku wasted no more time. He tossed it aside, so hard it cracked the ground where it landed. He did not give the other rocks a chance to overbalance before he reached down, grabbed two little shirt collars, and hoisted them out of the hole.
Panic nearly consumed him when their clothing was suddenly ripped from his hands. Thankfully, though, the children have not fallen back into the hole, but instead were now wrapped up in the arms of their mother.
"We can't leave Papa!" he heard the girl say against her mother's shoulder.
"I could—" Goku began but the woman was already running away. Goku watched them until he could no longer see her, until the last echoes of the little girl's wailings died out.
Goku looked back at where the father's body lied and realized he could no longer see it. The rocks had fallen and closed the opening.
How much more time did that broken family have left, he wondered. Would they make it too wherever they were running too? Would some other danger he would not be there to save them from be their end? Or would they go when finally, the planet had endured all it could and destroyed itself?
It was pointless. What use was saving children that were going to die anyway?
Because I can't stand back and do nothing when someone needs me, was what he wanted to say, but that was what he was doing, was it not? All he had done was give that woman hope she had no business having.
I could save them, he thought, they couldn't have gotten too far. I could bring them back with us.
Sure, he could save what remained of that little family, but what about the other families? What about the other daughters and sons and mothers and fathers whose skulls hadn't yet been crushed in? Could he waste every precious second he had to find the balls that were destroying this place to save one little family, as if that could in any way make up for the billions of lives that he would not save?
Goku did not know what to do.
People always spoke in awe of his pure heart, like it was a good thing. It rarely dawned on him that it might not always be.
What would Vegeta feel right now?
Probably nothing. Vegeta would never have even stopped to help the woman; would've sneered in her face in all likelihood. Or maybe Vegeta would not have done something so terrible, but even so, Goku knew that the emotions he was feeling right now were not ones Vegeta would be feeling.
Times like these make Goku wish he could be more... detached? He did not want to feel sympathy for a planet full of torturers. He did not want to be so plagued by little faces that may not survive because the choices their leader made and the choices Goku wasn't making.
He did not want to see those small children and see his own small son within them. He did not want to see those children with a mother who would so clearly fight to her last breath to protect them, and think about how his own sons were cursed with a father that had more than once not put their lives above all else.
He swallowed hard against the lump that formed in his throat and the weight that suddenly sat on his chest. Now was not the time to think about his failures in parenting, not when the planet had no qualms about exploding around him.
He floated back into the air and pulled out the radar. His stomach sunk when he saw that the final three balls were all in different corners of the planet. Stressing over it would not make them any closer, though, so with no further delay, he flew off toward the southern part of the planet.
As the wind whipped against his face and through his golden spikes, he tried to think of nothing at all.
TBC