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.
*This chapter includes VERY graphic depictions of violence.*
Every Eye Will See
Chapter Twenty: The Angel
Vegeta remembered the day Trunks was born with perfect clarity.
A servant—though apparently the more appropriate term was 'employee', as if that made any sort of difference—had been sent to inform him. From the outside of the gravity chamber, her voice barely heard over the hum of 400 times the gravity of Earth, she had told him that Bulma was in the beginning stages of labor.
She did not say that Bulma had asked for his presence, and he had no desire to go. He stayed and trained that whole night.
The same woman came again the next morning, saying that there had been complications, but Bulma was stable in the medical wing of the building and would likely be released by the end of the week.
She also handed him a letter. It was short and written in Bulma's handwriting.
The baby is healthy and has your face. I named him Vegeta because he is a saiyan prince and I won't take that away from him, even if his father is the worst jerk in the whole universe. That being said, I refuse to look at a baby and call him such a dreadful name every day. In this region, people commonly have middle names. His middle name will be Trunks and that is what he will go by.
Vegeta had been irritated by both the insult and the 'middle name'. Trunks was the most ridiculous name he had ever heard of.
Then he had stomped down the annoyance and reminded himself that he did not care what that woman named her child.
Later that night, he had gone to the healing room where Bulma was residing. She had been asleep, her hair an unruly mess against her pillows, with the dull scent of her blood still lingering in the air. Her skin had been so pale she could have been dead, the entirety of her body glowing like a spirit in the light of the moon.
He did not give her a second glance.
In the cradle next to the bed, his son lied awake, cooing and waving fists the size of Vegeta's thumbs. He supposed it looked like him, but not too much. Clearly a half-breed, but if Kakarot's brat's power was anything to go by, that did not necessarily have to be a shortcoming.
The Fifth in the Line of Vegeta. Perhaps it would prove itself worthy of the name.
Not it. He.
When the clouds parted and the moonlight shone further into the room, he saw that the baby's eyes were bright blue, like Bulma's. A safe color. Not at all like before.
He destroyed the thought the moment it manifested. There had been nothing before.
He had banished the thought, buried it deep down back where it belonged, but unease had already begun to poison his body.
He left them then, flew off from that window with no intent of ever returning. Despite his seeming resolve, he had always felt a distinctive pull towards them, so real it was nearly physical. The pull allowed him to fly off to space not long after, but not to a planet that was overly far away. The pull kept that woman and her child in his thoughts. The pull eventually brought him home and kept him there.
He felt that same pull now. He could feel it grow stronger the more he walked, like a magnet finding its other end. It was a fierce pull, and it was no longer content to remain hidden within him.
The pull—and the map—bring him to an enormous gate, framed on both sides by barbed, metal fences that went on for miles in both directions. The gate doors were both spread wide open, though if men usually guarded it, they were long gone now. Above the doors was a large sign, hanging precariously from where it was once sturdily attached to the posts.
DIVISION III, it read.
When Vegeta crossed through the opening, he was met with a warzone.
The dark smoke clouds, clinging to the air in a thick fog, painted the camp a grim shade. What once must have been flat ground was now an ocean of destroyed stones and jagged crevices leading down into where it was too dark to see. Precariously placed rocks fell from the cliffsides, crashing into the battered ground below with impacts so loud his ears nearly rung from the volume. If any life had survived what must have been the heart of the energy explosion the dragon balls caused, they had long since fled. All that was left were corpses, dressed in navy uniforms and grey garbs alike.
On closer inspection, it was not quite like a warzone. There were no men draped across their wives, no mothers draped across their children. In place of weapons, there were hoes and pickaxes in their deaden grips. Those in war usually at least knew their deaths were imminent. These people had not even had a chance to be afraid.
He thought of when he saw his own son, Trunks, motionless, bathed in the magenta light promising his death. Unconscious, yes, but still alive, and then suddenly not. Unaware, the boy had been, but Vegeta had known, had watched his child in his final moments and was not able to save him, was not even able to hold him—
Vegeta thought that maybe their ignorance was a blessing.
He stepped through the carnage. The energy in the air was still strong here. It zapped at his skin like sharp kisses, like an opening act before the main event, like a tease before the climax. He stepped over bodies and uneven stones but did not bother to avoid the pools of blood dominating every inch of the ground. Red seeped further up the sides of his boots like the stains of watercolor. He imagined this soilage would not wash out so easily.
As he walked, he came across a building, larger and more lavish than the rest. Despite its sumptuous design, he thought it was rather ugly. That it was nearly completely destroyed seemed only to be an improvement. Any building with brass doors deserved to crumble to the ground.
What did they call that building? A headquarters? A gatehouse? He thought he might have gone inside that very same building, but he would never remember such a niche detail. It was no doubt the most important one in the Division, so he must have.
Had the boy ever been in there, he wondered? He must have been, certainly. He might have even been raised there; after all, they could not very well put an infant to hard labor, could they? He must have been cared for by someone at some point before then.
Who did it? He could not help but to wonder that too. Who nursed the boy when he was hungry? Who cleaned him when he soiled himself? Who taught him language and how to bathe himself and how to hold utensils and how to dress himself? Certainly not Ziloh—that man would never lower himself to such domiciliary care. Nurses, then? A Surrogate? Whomever bothered to peek into his cradle? Who raised his boy and let him walk out those doors into this hell?
The rage, it was there again, pulsating underneath his skin in time with his beating heart. He pushed it back, but not so far this time. It was still close enough that his blood grew warmer from its presence. It was still close enough that he could hear its whispers like soft wind in his ears.
You are so close, it told him. So close.
But will you get close enough?
I will, he thought back firmly, almost savage in his certainty. He would, he knew that he would.
He knew that he would, and somewhere inside of him, deep down where his pride could not reach, it made him feel the inklings of fear.
It was ridiculous, preposterous, so unbelievably shameful he nearly choked under the weight of it. Who feared their own child? He was reclaiming what had always been his and he dared to be frightened?
Still, as much as he berated himself, his heart still pounded a beat so hard his chest could hardly contain it. What would he say, he thought? What would he do? What would the boy—Vegeta would sooner rip out his own tongue before he ever said that horrid name—do? He was thirteen years old now. In two years, he would be considered an adult by saiyan standards. Even by human standards, the boy was passing out of childhood.
Thirteen years. Thirteen years for anger to brew, for the wounds of betrayal to fester, for the thirst for blood to rise. His own desire to see Frieza die screaming had manifested in far less time.
Vegeta thought back to that day that seemed so long ago, when the boy had been so close that he could have reached out and touched him. He remembered meeting those eyes but nothing that came after. What had the boy's face looked like then? It had most likely worn shock at first, but what after? Relief? A smile, perhaps? Or had it been contempt?
Or maybe he had looked upon the one who bore him and there had been no recognition at all.
Was that better? The sting of longing could not exist when one did not know there was something to be missed. Of course, that could just as easily be a different pain altogether—living so lowly you never knew that there could ever be more. Which was worse?
Vegeta did not know.
What Vegeta did know was that the boy was close. He was close enough that Vegeta could feel him in truth. Throughout his trek through the decimated Division, he had sensed little more than the smallest bits of life energy amongst the chaos that tainted the air—rodents and insects and other such miniscule, yet resistant creatures.
Now, like the shades of lamps had been removed, two lifeforms shined brightly above all the rest. One life was his. Vegeta did not need to study it, did not need to consciously commit it to memory the way he had done for Bulma, for Kakarot, for all the rest of the earthlings they called friends. He just knew it, like he had always known Trunks.
The other was darker in aura, familiar in its twistedness, and ugly beyond acceptance. It was also incredibly weak in power. Insignificant, not at all worthy of the sins that bastard excuse for a man had done.
(Vegeta held more power in one finger than that man had in his whole body. Vegeta had no doubts on how their encounter would end.)
He began to run, all the care he had for watching his steps long gone now. He ran through a camp of collapsing barracks. He ran through a field of ruined grains. He ran along a miles high fence that somehow, despite everything, still hummed with electricity. He ran. He ran. He ran.
He ran until he was there.
Then he saw them.
He saw the boy, black hair sprawled out in the dirt, face bare of the blindfold but his eyes screwed shut.
He saw where his pants were stripped down, saw where his ankles were pushed up by his ears.
He saw Ziloh, his face bloody and his eyes wild, scooting his naked hips closer to his boy, his son, his baby—
Something breaks, and it is only his ears that hear the deafening snap.
It is this type of moment here that has taught him the difference between being cold-blooded, and to have bloodlust.
Vegeta has known many blood thirsty men in his lifetime. He has known some soldiers who counted every kill, some who even marked their bodies like a canvas to hold the tallies, proud of each life claimed by their hands. Vegeta had never cared to list the faces and names, could not see why he should even bother to try and remember. Whatever his kill count was, it was absurdly high. Families, civilizations, entire planets worth of people have met their ends by his hands. What use was there in counting, in committing faces and names to memory when the number was astronomical?
He has murdered more souls than he will ever know, and yet he can count easily enough the number of people that he truly wanted to see dead. Frieza. Zarbon and Dodoria. The Ginyu Force. The androids. Cell. Maijin Buu. Kakarot and his band of fools. That was scarcely more than a handful of people whose eyes he personally wanted to watch the light fade from, when compared to just how many dead bodies his actions were actually responsible for.
He does not have bloodlust, because he cannot spare that type of desire on just any person.
He has always been a killer. He has never hesitated before delivering a final blow, never shuddered at the sight of life blood, never was tormented by the screams he caused, even when he heard them in his dreams some nights. He could rip a woman's beating heart from her chest, could crush the skull of a weeping child and carry no remorse when all was said and done.
Blasé though he may be regarding the value of life, it is not as though he wanted them dead in particular. It could have just as easily been another woman, or a different child that he killed, and he would not have known the difference. They were not special in any way. A job needed to be done, and they happened to be somewhere they should not have been when the time came.
Frieza, once Kakarot, and all those he called his enemies were all special, deserving of meeting their demises at the receiving end of his power.
Ziloh, too, is special.
Whether because the sound of the energy exuding off of Vegeta alerts him or because he can sense his death coming for him, Ziloh looks towards him. The motion is so quick that his expression does not have time to change before his face is up and on display. It is only for a moment, the split second before the terror (and oh how beautiful the terror is) sets in, but Vegeta sees it. He sees the wicked, foulness of the smile sharpening his cheeks, the predatory gleam in his eyes—the glisten that comes just before the devouring of prey.
But he is no real predator. He is a weak man, the kind who barks and snarls but does not bite. He is a sheep playing a wolf, but a pretender cannot uphold the façade when faced with true power.
The expression is gone now, completely overtaken by horror and Vegeta loves it, relishes it. The sight makes the very blood in his veins sing. The tune of it is beautiful, a melody he has not heard in so long (far, far too long). It grows louder with every step he takes. It rises at every trembling muscle, every quivering lip of the man before him.
The song grows to a booming fortissimo when Vegeta's fist punches through Ziloh's gut.
It is a devastating blow. He can feel the heat of it left over on his hand. When he looks, he sees the white of his glove is gone and replaced by dark blood and viscera. Even the bastard's very nature is a lie. His outside looks like stone, but on the inside, it seems, he is soft. He plays as though he is a god and yet he is held together by weak, fragile parts just like any other man.
Not entirely weak, it seems, for when he looks up, he sees that Ziloh is still living. The blow had thrown him back into an impossibly tall boulder, the impact smashing a dent perfectly shaped around his body. His hands are held tight against his torso, holding in the innards that threaten to spill out. His eyes have lost the all-consuming fear they once held and now simply look shocked, as if he cannot believe that there is a hole in his stomach, and all Vegeta thinks is, he is still breathing.
Vegeta does not see much—does not see the way the stones tremble from his radiating power, does not see his own golden hair growing past his shoulders—but he sees that. He sees Ziloh's chest still heaving, taking in air that he does not deserve. Vegeta can see him there, still living the life he forfeited the moment he had taken his son, had tortured and tormented his son, had tried to rape his son right before his eyes—
His vision blanks.
Then his hand is locked around Ziloh's throat.
Not so tight at first. He can still hear the faraway, echoing of words that leave his mouth. "I saved his life! They wanted him dead, but I vouched for him! Please! I made sure he was fed. I made sure he was safe. I was good to him! Please!" Vegeta hears the words, but the concept of language is long lost to him. They are just noises, meaningless squeaking from a dead man, insignificant when the sweet song playing in his ears has reached its crescendo.
Vegeta squeezes until the noises stop. He squeezes until the whites of the man's eyes fill with pools of blood that ooze down his cracked cheeks. He squeezes until the thrashing stops and bone crunches beneath his hand. He squeezes until there is hardly anything left holding the head and body together and everything that was Ziloh, descended from the third blood of His Imperial Majesty Hikso, the Warden of Division III is gone and only a corpse remains. He squeezes and squeezes and squeezes because it is not enough. There should be nothing left of him in this plane of existence.
Vegeta drops the body. Before the feet can touch the ground, he points his palm at it and blasts it all away. Every detail is illuminated in the light of the energy, down to the color of the clothes and the lifelessness in the eyes. He sees every particle fade away to nothing, until even the place where his body had dented the boulder is obliterated.
It is over.
But it is not over. How could it be over when the rage still burns inside of him this way? It swims right under his skin still, the strokes so powerful it turns what should be a calm sea into a nightmare of tumultuous waves. The boiling of his blood has not lessened, nor has the red dimmed from his vision. The music is stuck right at the climax, unsatisfied, unwilling to fade out when there is more, there has to be more, because this rage has long surpassed what can be contained, and it won't stop burning until everything around him, the air, the very ground beneath his feet is gone, blown away until there is nothing left—
The sound of whimpering was quiet, so low it might as well not have happened at all but Vegeta heard it. The pitiful sound brought the music to a dead halt, like a turntable needle suddenly lifting off a vinyl record. The sound sliced through the rage, cut through the power still radiating off his body, made his hair shorten and turn back to black.
Vegeta turned around.
The boy was a bit further away, but not too far from him, not even a whole twenty feet. Still on the ground, like it had not even occurred to him to move aside from drawing up his pants. He was curled up like a fetus, his hands wrapped tight around his legs and his face buried deep in his knees, trembling in the dirt. His tail had enveloped itself protectively around him, as if it were his last line of defense. He could not have looked more afraid if he tried.
Vegeta looked at him, saw his son, the one he had held first, the one he had given up for dead, the one he had failed so spectacularly, and felt fear too.
He walked slowly, cautiously, doing his best not to seem like the threat that he undoubtedly was. The boy did not even look up to notice. He kept his face buried, even when Vegeta was right beside him. He did not move even when Vegeta crouched down next to him. The fear had his heart pumping so madly he was nearly dizzy, but Vegeta pushed past it. He looked at the boy and did not know what to say.
"Boy," he settled with, and what a truly idiotic thing to say. Regardless, there was no reaction.
"It is over now," he said next, but was that even a comfort coming from him? It did not seem to be. The boy stayed locked in his position, like he thought so long as his face was not seen then he was not seen but Vegeta did see him. He saw his boy hurting and afraid and did not know what to do.
"He was abused in probably the worst ways imaginable..." Bulma's voice reminded him. "Do you know what that kind of treatment does to a person? To a child? He's probably never known love in his whole life."
Vegeta nearly reached out, before he stopped himself, berating himself for his thoughtlessness. He peeled off the blood-stained glove and tossed it away. He will not let that man, dead or otherwise, sully his child ever again.
He reached out again and laid a hand in his hair. The movement was awkward, and the moment he did it, he wanted to snatch it away, but he didn't. Trunks seemed to like it when Bulma did it to him. He would smile, even when she ruffled all of his efforts with a comb away, like her touch made it all worth it.
The boy did not smile at him. He went rigid underneath his palm, his whole body somehow tensing even more, like he was bracing for a hit. A hit that was so certain to come that even his fear could not motivate him to try to run from it.
The rage simmered, but he cut the fire and closed the lid before it could boil over. There was no time for that now. Instead, he focused on stroking his hand over his hair, let the rough, straw-like locks slip through his fingers over and over. He kept the touch calm, hopefully soothing. He did not touch where the blindfold was tangled in the knotted strands.
He leaned in closer to make sure his words were heard when he said, "I will not hurt you. I swear it."
The boy said nothing, but after a while, his body started to loosen. The hands around his legs don't hold so tight and his knees softened their rigid cover over his face enough that Vegeta could see it. He saw the boy's eyes squeezed almost impossibly shut, he saw the twin lines that trailed down his cheeks. He took in his nose and chin and ears and the shape of his cheekbones. He knew that logically, this face was the very same one he had seen all those years ago, but the features Vegeta was met with now sparked almost no recognition.
His stomach sunk down low under the weight of his dismay. The eyes that he could not yet see were familiar, as was he supposed the hair color, but that was all. He had not remembered, not truly, what his child looked like.
Suddenly, a loud bang rung through his ears and the ground beneath them shook. The rumbling eventually subsided, but the point was clear—the planet was on its last legs of life.
"We need to go," he told him. Once more, the boy did not seem to register the words. Vegeta took his one hand off his hair, and with both he reached down and grasped the boy's arms. The boy was tensing again, and the whimpering started anew. Vegeta kept the motions slow, easy. He could not remember the last time he was this gentle. Not since Trunks was an infant, he thought, during the rare times he bothered to hold him.
"Are you willing to be a father?"
He brought the boy in close. The motions were awkward and abnormal, but he did not stop until the boy was pressed up against his chest. The boy did not fight him, but he vibrated with tension. Tears were slipping down his cheeks despite how tightly his eyes were clenched, little sobs hitching in his little chest.
The boy was so very afraid and Vegeta held him through it. he held him until the whimpering quieted and his body relaxed again. He held him until the tightness of his eyelids loosened and his breathing slowed. He held him and watched the adrenaline fall away and leave an exhaustion so great that the boy had no choice but to fall into sleep.
He kept holding him because he was finally holding him after so, so long.
"It's not too late to do better."
He thought of the man he was and the delusions he tricked himself into believing not even three days ago, thought about how it was no longer a baby he was holding in his arms, thought of each and every one of the last thirteen years. He wanted to beg to differ. He wanted to know how he could possibly believe such a thing to be possible. What was the point in doing better when the damage had already been done?
He wanted to know, but he did not ask, because the longer he held him, the more a pain began to come to life. It was a strange pain—not like what the rage felt like when it grew too fast and too hot, not like the pain of this failure. It was something different. Profoundly different, like the lingering sting after a crushing weight had been lifted from his lungs.
It might be a good ache; he could not really tell. Whatever kind it was, it made his eyes sting. He felt the heat of tears and closed his eyes before they could come to the forefront.
He swallowed back the tears.
He took in a single deep breath.
Then, before anything else, he wrapped his fingers around the blindfold.
He frowned at the cloth in his hand. The fabric was itchy, and just as filthy—if not more so—as the rest of the boy. He wondered how long he had been wearing this particular blindfold. Had it been months, or had it been years since this piece of cloth was first wrapped around his eyes? How long had this blindfold been hiding the red eyes beneath them? Was this the same one that had hid him from Vegeta that day, would have kept hiding him had the boy not been brave enough to look?
Vegeta supposed it did not really matter. This would be the last blindfold to ever wrap itself around his son's face.
With a tentative grip, he did his best to ease the fabric from where it was tangled in his knotted hair. Once it was free, however, he was no longer gentle. He did not even spare it a longer consideration, before it was burning up in his power, disintegrating away until nothing was left.
Then, he stood.
He directed his energy to his feet until he was no longer on the ground. He raised his power until his hair was golden again. He used the light he generated to guide him back to the ruins of their spaceship. He flew as fast as he dared with something so fragile, so precious in his arms.
The boy slept and Vegeta told himself that it was not too late. It was not too late because he was here, and so was the boy, alive and breathing and safe now.
It was not too late, because Vegeta had found his son and he would never lose him again.
TBC
I originally wrote this back before Dragon Ball Super when super saiyan 3 was still relevant.
I am not afraid to say that this is the chapter I am most proud of. Also, sorry for the gruesomeness y'all but I could not be satisfied with anything less.