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 Twenty-One: The Red
Am I dead?
He must be, because why else would he be lying down this way? The ground beneath him was soft. It was softer than the malleable sand on Earth's beach that his boots had nearly sunk straight through. It was softer than the feel of Neeila's hair against his face, softer than her hair had been when he dared to touch it with his hands.
I am certainly dead.
It was most definitely not the solid wood of the barrack bunks he was lying on, so it was not the period of rest that came at the end of the day. He should be working right now, digging an axe into walls of coal, or pushing carts full to the brim along the tracks, or doing whatever menial task his betters saw him fit to do that day.
He tried to think why he might be lying here uselessly this way. Perhaps there had been an explosion in the mines, and the impact had stunned him. He had never experienced one, but he had heard of how devastatingly fatal they were. One mistake or malfunction and whole teams of miners and their guards were blown to bits and buried underneath unending piles of rubble.
He took in a breath, but instead of the thick taste of dust and exhaust, the air he inhaled was clean, fresh. Besides, he doubted he would be alive enough to wonder if that had occurred.
I do not think I am dead.
The more time that passed, the more the aches in his body made their presences known. The sensation was so profound that somehow even just the thought of moving made the pain flare to near astronomical heights.
Still, he did it. He willed life back into his bones because if he was not dead then he was alive and if he was alive then he must move. If he did not move, he would be left for dead, stripped of his clothing and any spare food he was carrying, and piled along with the rest of the deceased. He would be carted off and dumped into a mass grave dug solely to dispose of those that were no longer useful. He would be stuck there, swimming through a sea of corpses until they covered him under layer after layer of dirt—
The chills the thought gave him was more than enough of an encouragement to move. It was a struggle. The weight holding him down refused to relent. It sat right where his lungs were, the hold so tight he felt like he was suffocating. He was breathing. He could feel the air sliding from his mouth and into his throat, but from there it seemed to disappear, vanishing before his lungs could even get a taste. It was an unfamiliar and a familiar pain all at once.
It was awful. It was truly, truly awful.
I should be dead.
But he was not, and so he would move.
Yet, when his synapses screamed at his body to move, it was not his muscles that answer the call. At least, not the right ones. His hands did not move to brace his weight. His back did not rise from the plushness beneath him. His feet did not take him far, far away from wherever the Hell he was.
His eyes, though, they opened.
There was a bright light directly above him, and he did not manage to close his eyes fast enough to prevent the sting. The pain was useful, however. It gave him something else to focus on other than the sudden, frantic beating of his heart.
His blindfold was gone.
Now that he realized it, he could very much feel that the familiarity of a snug cloth was absent. The skin around his eyes was so bare, so utterly and uncomfortably naked. He wondered how he had not noticed something so completely wrong before now.
He entertained for a moment that perhaps the concealing fabric was not too far; it would not be the first time circumstances had pushed it askew. No matter how hard he focused, though, he did not feel it pushed up to his forehead, nor did he feel it tangled in his hair.
His blindfold was truly gone.
He told himself not to panic. He told himself that there must be a rational explanation as to why he was exposed in this way.
He could not think of one.
What should he do? Finding a new one was obviously the priority, but where? How could he find one when he did not even know where he was? He did not have the luxury of time. Sooner or later, his absence would be noticed. He could waste not even a moment, not when punishment was just on the horizon.
He could not afford to wait, he told his heart as it began to beat heavily in his chest. He needed to be fast and efficient, and he knew the only way to achieve that was to use his sight.
The prospect was horrifying. Stolen glimpses were one thing, but too just... see? Was it worth the risk to avoid punishment?
He thought of a hot knife through his leg. He thought of burning powder in his eyes. He thought of the heat of fire on his skin. He thought of all the ways it could be so much worse, and decided that yes, it was worth the risk.
Slowly, he cracked open his eyes. Even though he made an effort to look away from the light, the overall brightness in the room was still painfully intense. He pushed through it and took in as much of his surroundings as he could with a quick, surreptitious glance. Above him he saw a ceiling made of light grey tiles. Below him, he saw the surface beneath his body was covered in a soft, brown blanket. On his left, he saw a man standing by the window. He saw spandex clothing, intimidatingly large and tight muscles, hair styled like a black flame...
It all came back to him in a rush of memories. Neeila... Falling... Crawling... Being found... Gagging... Slipping away... The angel…
He bit his teeth down hard on his lip to keep the noise he nearly made inside. The sudden rush of panic at least made the weight on his chest feel less oppressive.
He thought, what is he doing here? Then he thought with even more panic, what am I doing here?
Vegeta's back was to him, but it was so clearly him that Chill did not bother to deny it. What was he looking at? What would he look like when he turned around? Chill asked himself all these things, but he did not really want to know. He wanted—no he needed to get away. He needed to go before Vegeta saw him, before he had a chance to do whatever it was he had brought him here to do. He needed to get back to the Warden wherever he was, even though everything inside of him wanted to stay far away. He needed to leave now.
He rose from the bed. Slowly, both so the bed would not creak, and so his muscles would not scream too loudly in protest. Vegeta did not seem to notice the motions. Whatever he was staring at out the window, it was blessedly distracting enough to render his peripheral vision useless.
Chill crept to the edge of the bed, the side farthest from the windows. He slid off the edge cautiously, then dropped his legs to the floor so gently the impact made no sound. Immediately he ducked down until the whole front of his body was pressed firm against the tiles.
The motion made his entire body ache fiercely. There was a physical aspect of it, of course—his feet and back had been bandaged and the knife wound in his leg had been stitched but they still buzzed with the lingers of pain. The ache was also something deeper, though. His muscles had turned into a mush of cereal left in a pot too long, and his eyes seemed to be one blink away from the darkness of sleep.
He was exhausted, he realized. He felt the sudden, powerful desire to climb back into the softness of the blankets, let their warmth wrap snug around his body, and just... stop.
He did not climb back into the bed because Vegeta still stood on the other side. He could not sleep now because when he would wake, his eyes would still be naked, bared for all to see, and no sleep was worth the consequences of that.
With his strange new ability of sight, he scanned the area around him. There was not much to look at, at least not in this corner of the room. Much of everything looked the same—just a lot of floor and walls. At the end of the wall, however, there was a single rectangular-shaped section that did not look like the rest. It was darker, with an odd circle sticking from it, and slits tracing all around it.
He pondered it for a moment, before he realized that must be what a door looked like.
The motion he managed was not quite a crawl—that would require his legs, and all the neurons must be disconnected from his brain for how useless they were right now. His arms took the bulk of the work and dragged his body towards the door. It was hard, and his elbows quickly began to spark with pain from the weight, but he made it.
He was pleased to see the door was slightly ajar; he had not even thought about how he would have opened it without Vegeta noticing, much less how he would have reached the knob. He pressed his palm against it and pushed gently. The door parted without a sound, revealing the room in slow, careful snippets.
When the door was out of the way, he saw that the room was very small, shaped with square walls as opposed to the circular ones from before. There were odd objects in the room, like a round bowl made of smooth, almost shiny material, as well as an even larger basin whose insides were hidden by a barrier made of dark, flowy material held up by hooks on a bar. The objects peck at something in his memory, but he did not have the time to try and match his knowledge with what he saw.
Thankfully, next to the shiny bowl, there was a roll of white tissues bolted to the wall. They look flimsy, and part of him was very hesitant to touch that which he had not been permitted too, but it was better than the alternative. The white paper would have to do until he was given a more appropriate eye cover.
He reached for it. However, just as his hand closed around one of the soft squares, his eyes caught movement just out the corners. Fear clenched around his heart suddenly, certain that Vegeta has caught him, and uncertain what he would do about it.
It was not Vegeta he saw, however. There was glass next to him, not see-through but reflective. It was tall, stretching from ceiling to floor and all he saw was himself.
Blood red eyes stare back at him.
Mindful as Vegeta was of the little life in his arms, it took almost as long to reach the ship as it had when he had been flying about aimlessly before. With his speed diminished and his mind coasting on one track, his vision of the world around him was clearer, easier for him to comprehend.
Not that it was much of a view. Everything was in ruins. Houses and barracks alike were crushed to near nothing underneath rocks and boulders. Fire raged amongst the debris like icing on a cake, the smoke of it so thick he could taste it.
He imagined that the Tenas had probably built their towns inside the confines of the cliffs because they felt safest that way. How sweet the irony was that those same strong, imposing cliffsides had become the very weapons to bring about their mass destruction.
This far away from the heart of the explosion, there were still survivors. They swarmed around one another like bees in a hive. Only in appearance though—they severely lacked the organization of bees. They were just lost, panicked people running about with no real direction, unknowing or unwilling to accept their inevitable fate. Their anguished screams echoed throughout his ears. It was a pleasant sound.
Damn you guards who brought pain onto my son, he thought, savagely. Damn you prisoners for not shielding my son from every strike and blow. Damn you civilians for profiting off my son's suffering. Damn you all.
Irrational, his mind said, in a voice he could not place. You let your rage turn you into a fool.
Damn you as well, Vegeta, the fool, responded.
Eventually, the battered buildings and hordes of people fade away to the rocky valley he and Kakarot had first landed in. The ship was in worse shape than before. The surface underneath had degraded into a mass of jagged rocks, their sharp edges bending and piercing through what was nearly impenetrable metal. The ship was not completely damaged, but its integrity had been compromised enough that it would certainly never fly again without serious repairs.
It was not the safest place to bring such a fragile child, he acknowledged, but it was the meeting point he and Kakarot had agreed upon. In any case, was there really anywhere else on this forsaken world that offered any better security? Vegeta doubted it.
He found the door and dropped down inside. Thankfully, the ship had not tilted overly much, and he was able to walk across the floor with relative ease. The power had gone out, however, and the only light came from the static energy that zapped along the walls every so often.
He directed himself down the stairs. When he found the bed, he leaned over it and laid the boy gently down onto it. The boy did not so much twitch, continuing on in what may be a peaceful sleep, but Vegeta wouldn't really know the difference for him, would he?
With the light so low, Vegeta could not give the boy a proper look over. He wanted to, needed to, really, so he opened his hand and concentrated a cache of his energy there. A small, luminous light blossomed in the center of his palm. He lifted it up until it was stuck to the center of the ceiling and bathing the room in its bright glow.
Vegeta turned his eyes back to the bed and just... looked.
He did not think he had ever seen a child his age so tiny. Despite the five-year age gap, he almost certainly matched Trunks in height. That could possibly be chalked up to genetics (neither Vegeta nor Frieza were particularly tall, after all), but the same could not be said for his weight.
And pitiful his weight was. His arms and legs were nothing more than bones with a layer of skin stretched over them. His stomach was so concave that Vegeta would not have been surprised if the boy had never known the satiation of a full belly in his life. His face was no better, with the bruised and bloody skin practically suctioned around his sharp cheekbones. His thin lips were so chapped they were cracked and peeling, and the bruised, misshapen quality of his nose told Vegeta that it was likely broken, and not for the first time.
His clothes were like poorly hung drapes over his frame and did little to preserve his modesty. Bruises, cut marks, rash bumps—they all decorated his neck and collarbone like a layered necklace. Peeking from the collar of the boy's shirt, Vegeta could see the beginnings of a harsh brush burn along his shoulder until it disappeared towards his back.
Trailing his eyes further down, Vegeta saw that the palm of his right hand was a mess of shredded skin, and his fingers were bent so unnaturally he could scarcely bear to look at them. Between his legs, he could see that his furless tail was still just as crooked and broken as it had been when he first regarded it. Vegeta's stomach turned, though, when it became clear that the tail had been tied in a knot at one point.
With his eyes so far down, he could now see the thick, black band locked around his ankle. It did not take much for him to realize it was a locator device, likely the thing that had led Vegeta to him in the first place.
He immediately broke it off, revealing the discolored skin underneath. It dawned on him that in his haste, he might have hurt the boy. A glance up showed he still slept, however, quiet and still, like a corpse.
He had no doubt that there were more, probably worse injuries on his body, hidden underneath the bandages that had long since lost their white color to the stains of dirt and blood. There were scars too—old, new, and everywhere. Each one was the remnant of the same trauma he could see now. Each one was a story that never should have been told.
Vegeta felt the burning of regret, and the heat of anger. I should have killed him slower. I should have given him pain to match every scar. I should have snapped all his fingers and shredded the skin from his hands. I should have kept him long enough for his body to waste away from hunger and despair. I should have crushed him until he no longer had the strength to beg for mercy. I should have broken him until he knew that even his death would bring him no reprieve. I should have—
Breathe, he told himself, until his teeth were no longer grinding together. Breathe, he told himself as he willed his nails to unclench from the wounds they have embedded in his palms. Breathe, he told himself until his dim reflection in the window no longer showed blond hair and electric green eyes.
Bulma used to tease him a lot about it. She would say that he 'liked being angry', because he was allegedly always angry, but that was not anger. He may frequently be in a less than pleasant mood, but the anger she thought she saw was not his true rage. He could never show her that. It was too awful for anyone who did not deserve his wrath to witness.
Vegeta had only felt this level of true, unaltered rage a handful of moments in his life. It had always been there, of course, simmering just below the surface, biding its time until he was ready for it, or until it would stay hidden no longer. This, however, was something special. This was the rage of being left behind, excluded from the level power that was his birthright. This was the rage of losing Bulma and knowing that he could have saved her had he not made the choices that kept him from being at her side. This was the rage he had felt towards Kakarot when he had let their sons die.
He burned just as he had then, but still it was not the same. He could blame something, anything else for the rage he felt then. He could blame the gods for bestowing gifts on others that should have been for him. He could blame Maijin Buu for straying him away from what was truly important. He could blame Kakarot for a great many things.
This, he could blame on no one but himself.
What could he do with this rage? It burned for days now and already it felt like a lifetime. It burned and burned and there was no way it could end. He had humored the thought before, but faced with it in truth, how could he possibly amend this wrong? Ziloh was dead, but the damage was still here.
He would feel this way every time he looked at the boy, he knew. It would be here so long as he had eyes to see him, had ears to hear his voice, had hands to touch all the scars that he allowed to come to pass.
The rage was digging too deep. It reached past his thoughts and down to his spirit. This anger closed around him, trapping him, until all he knew was the wrath that thundered within him.
It was rapidly becoming more than he could handle and he realized that he needed to leave.
His mind rejected it instantly—how could you possibly leave him? If you take your eyes off him, he'll be gone, taken from you again just like before—but his body was what had control. His feet carried him away from the bed, up the staircase, and out the door. They took him to the air, flying him so high he became engulfed by the thick blanket of mahogany clouds.
Power coursed thickly through his veins and he could not bear to have it inside of him for even a moment longer. He reared his hands back, then he threw them forward with a booming yell. Energy burst from his palms in an enormous display of light, the sky glowing around the blast as it cut through it like a tsunami against a beaver's dam. It did not stop even when it reached the end of the atmosphere. It carried on as if it did not notice, going on and on until Vegeta could see it no more.
It was not enough. There was still too much rage.
He flung his head back and screamed. He screamed and screamed, and he cried too. He thought not even blood would be as hot as the tears that burned rivers down his face.
He hated so many things, so many places, so many people. He hated this most of all—this poison he had injected into his own blood.
It was too much, he thought. It was all too much.
He did not notice he had lost control of his energy until he was already on the ground. His hands flew out to save him from toppling onto his face, but they managed little else. His lungs struggled with every breath. his body vibrated with wrath, and something else too.
His arms grew too weak. As he shifted to fall back, he realized that the other thing he felt was complete and utter sadness.
He stared up at the clouds, but he did not see them. All he could see was the watery film of tears that refilled his eyes. He did not even get the satisfaction of calling these angry tears. These were tears of unbridled anguish.
Weak, whispered in his mind as he let the tears run wetly from the corners of his eyes and soak his ears. But it was just that—a whisper. It was a word that held no candle to the sweet ache of pain leaving him with every tear that flows.
He did not know how long he laid there, crying out in the open for anyone to see. Eventually, though, the tears began to subside. His lungs started to accept slow drawls of air. His vision cleared to see the nightmare sky above.
He felt... he could not use the word 'better' because it would be a lie. Perhaps lighter. Less like he was splitting down the middle. He supposed he ought to be thankful to that.
Mostly, he was just tired.
... And more than a little disgusted at how drenched his face was.
He pushed himself to his feet, the task feeling more akin to climbing a mountain then simply standing. His eyes gravitate to the ship, but it looks just as it had before. He senses the boy's energy, and it was the same as it had always been thus far—slow, steady, and eased. He was still sleeping.
Vegeta took a step towards the ship, but then abruptly stopped. His ears suddenly registered the buzz of faraway noises. He focused and the buzz began to clear.
He could hear the whir of an engine. He could hear the cacophony of voices.
He turned towards the direction it came from. The thing that he saw was distant, far enough away that it passed as a mountain or cliffside at first glance. Now that he knew to look, however, his eyes caught the unnatural color of it, the smooth quality of it, the lights that glowed from it...
It was a Tene spacecraft. He doubted they were receiving new prisoners at a time like this, and in any case, it was at least three times the size of the one they had brought to Earth.
They must be using it to escape.
He looked back at the craft that held the boy, before he turned away. He flew towards the other ship, though he took care to continue monitoring the boy's energy as he did so.
When he was close enough, his suspicions were confirmed. The crowd of people looked as though they were only just barely restraining from shoving one another in their hysteria. Some were so wounded they hardly even seemed to notice the others around them who held them upright. Just about everyone had blood staining somewhere on their clothing.
He did not see anyone in the group wearing prisoner garbs. All he saw were guard uniforms and the casual style the civilians wore.
The door to the ship opened with a hiss. The bridge lowered to the ground and a man stepped forward towards it. The guards around him held flags with a symbol of three digits on them. On his chest, he wore a gold pin with the same insignia on it. his navy eyes held a haunted look and seemed so eerily familiar.
He recalled then that Ziloh had a son. He then recalled that that son's name was Reiko.
Vegeta only vaguely remembered the man. They were similarly aged, but Vegeta had had no reason to conduct business with him the first time he had come to this accursed planet. As far as he could remember, Reiko had only stood at his father's side like an observant pupil. If they had ever spoken during that time, the conversation had not been memorable.
Reiko did not look at all like an adolescent failing to show the awe he felt for his father, as he had before. He looked like a man broken both in body and spirit. Battered and bloodied, he limped up the bridge alone, no father before him, no siblings or spouse beside him, no children behind him. He was the last remnant of the third blood of Hikso.
The last piece of the powers that be, the powers that made his son suffer.
Vegeta's eyes locked on the man as his palm raised. If killing Ziloh was not enough, then killing his son would likely not bring him anymore satisfaction. Even so, he doubted it would make him feel any worse. The desire to kill had been a constant, and it did not waver now.
Reiko, like his father, seemed to have a knack for knowing when his demise was upon him. His eyes trailed over, and despite the distance, their gazes met. Horror dawned over his visage and Vegeta gave him a twisted, nasty smirk in return.
There was no one left alive who was more deserving of it now. The very blood that flowed through Reiko's veins was enough to earn him his death. This family line, the third blood of Hikso no longer deserved to persist in this world. He would wipe it from existence, until their blood was nothing more than a bad memory.
The finest of poetry, he thought. Just as his son had paid for the sins of his fathers, so would Reiko.
He was gathering the energy in his palm when suddenly he could feel the boy's energy spike. It spiked again and Vegeta was already gone, zipping back to the ship so fast the air cracked. His feet do not touch the ground again until he was once more at his bedside.
Upon arrival, though, he saw that the boy had not awoken. His face had scrunched up though, and his chest had begun to rise and fall faster.
Vegeta did not know if he was feeling the pain of his injuries or experiencing some sort of ill dream, but in either case he did not know what to do.
He did nothing more than watch the boy, feeling foolish and useless until whatever prompted this reaction subsides. He watched the boy long after he had calmed, watched the slow breath he sucked in through his nose, watched how his lashes did not stir once from their spots on his cheeks. He watched until the boy was just as he had left him: wounded, unconscious, and broken.
Eventually, when he could bear to look no more, he moved to stand by the window. The sight out there was no better—just the same rocks, stones, and hideous sky.
The desire to see green grass hit him suddenly, near ferociously. He wanted to see tall, bright buildings. He wanted to see white clouds and a soft, blue sky. He wanted to see his son. He wanted to see his wife.
He wanted to go home.
He watched ugly cliffsides crumble apart from another quake, watched the proof of time running out and willed Kakarot to hurry up.
He saw something shift in the corner of his eye, and all thoughts of Kakarot and home flee from his mind. He whipped around and was met with an empty bed.
Sick panic came next, but before it could consume him, his eyes caught the opened door leading to the bathroom. From the threshold, he saw the dim makings of a child's shadow.
Chill could count each time he ever took off his blindfold.
Each time, he remembered every detail of everything he saw. He remembered the gritty look of stones. He remembered the brightness of flames. He remembered the sky.
He remembered how dark the tar pits looked when his sticky hand accidently lifted the blindfold from his eyes. He remembered the way they sizzled and bubbled, the way people in garbs like his looked as they pleaded and pleaded to be set free.
He remembered when once he had tripped and his arm landed in a puddle left over from an acid storm. He remembered the pain had been so great that he could not sleep. With his back to his bedmates and his body pressed tight against the wall, he spent the night studying it. He remembered wondering many questions to himself, like what made his skin that color, and why the burn looked so moist and shiny and bumpy, and why bodies felt pain, and if it would ever stop hurting.
He remembered risking a glance at a corpse once because he wanted to know what death looked like and why it was so scary. He remembered wishing he hadn't because his dreams had never been visual before and yet he saw that more times than he could count.
He remembered every time he saw Ziloh's face. He remembered the way that lust looked in his eyes. He remembered that sometimes his eyes would become so twisted and dark that he thought in those moments his Master might not even be a person anymore and hated himself for ever thinking such a thing.
He remembered Neeila. He remembered the light that shone from her hair and every mark and blemish on her skin. He remembered seeing every fleck in her green eyes and thought he never needed to see anything else again.
He had never seen this before. He knew what it was even before he moved his hand towards it and the being in the glass copied the motion. He knew it the moment his gaze darted over.
The thing he was looking at was himself.
Just as he remembered everything else, he remembered what blood looked like. He remembered how thick it looked spilling from a wound, how it seeped through rocks and pebbles when it reached the ground. He remembered the rich, deep color.
It seemed that in this regard, everyone was telling the truth. His eyes were the exact same color as blood.
Blood outside of the body was never a good thing, he knew that much. That only meant bad things. It meant injuries. It meant pain. It meant all the things that brought about death. Did that not mean his eyes meant the same thing? Everyone seemed to think so. Even Neeila, who cared for him in a way no one else ever had. No matter how badly she had not wanted to, she had seen in his eyes what everyone else saw.
Yet no matter how hard he looked, but he could not see it. he could not see the blood of opened skin. He could not see the blood that encrusted itself on the guards' whips or their batons once they were done utilizing them. He could not see the last blood that took life as it drained away.
He could not even see the ugliness he had always thought would be there, not truly. His scleras were ugly, he supposed; what ought to be pure white was clearly not, marred by stark vessels as they were. As for his irises, though?
All he saw was red.
He could not stop staring at his eyes, not even when they start to sting and water. What would happen if he looked away, he thought? They might change—no, they would change, surely, because all those awful things had to be in there somewhere. He kept looking because he did not want them too. He wanted them to stay this way: base, unthreatening, normal.
But what did he gain by deluding himself?
Nothing, he accepted, and glanced away. When he glanced back, his eyes were still the same. Still red, still shining in the light spilling through the doorway, still empty of everything else.
In his mind, he tried to picture the eyes on the man who gave them to him. It was not easy, as he had no memories of the Tyrant. All he had was what seemed like a vivid description that Neeila had given him once (and why did he never wonder exactly how she knew what he looked like?). She had told him of his skin colored pink, and how menacing the horns jutting from his head were. She told him of a thick tail, strong enough to crush in a skull with one swipe. She told him of how his feet never touched the floor, and how his face was bitter cold even when he smiled.
Chill did not think he matched the description, but the image before him morphed all the same.
He saw it then. He saw what dwelled inside of him, what everyone already knew was there. He saw who his eyes truly belonged to, who lived within of him, who was always a part of him.
He saw his eyes.
He saw their eyes.
Disgust, utter revulsion sours him from the inside out. Suddenly, he could not look anymore. He could no longer bear to see the demon that the looking glass had brought to life.
He jerked his eyes away to the side, and saw Vegeta standing in the doorway.
The first thing Chill thought was that Vegeta's eyes were even blacker than he remembered. Chill had never seen black eyes before that day. Not that he had seen many eyes in his life, but the color stood out to him, nonetheless. His eyes were darker than the tar pits. They were even darker than coal. He did not know what to compare them to, in truth.
They were as dark as the deepest parts of the mines, he thought. He had looked once, but hardly saw anything worth seeing in the little light that flickered overhead. When he looked down to his side, however, the path ended in a wall of darkness. The sight had scared him, his little mind wary of what could be lurking just where the light ended.
These eyes were like that, the kind of color someone could get lost in.
Yet, they did not scare him. Instead, they nearly captivated him. He had never seen something so compelling as this. Intimidating, but not menacing. Deep, but not daunting. Not kind, but just as equally not cruel.
Black was not the same as red, the color that beget fire and blood. Black was not limited to all things painful and terrible. Black could mean death, could mean bruises and the infection of disease, yes, but it could also mean... quiet. The end of the day. The bliss of sleep.
Black looked like something that he could drown in and there would be no pain. Yes, that described it best. It would be peaceful, like slipping away and simply never coming back.
All these thoughts occur to him in the span of a second, because in the very next it dawned on him that he was staring at Vegeta and Vegeta was staring back and this could not be happening.
His hands slapped over his eyes so hard the impact nearly echoed in the tiny room. His body lurched to the side because his hands were not enough to shield what no one—what Vegeta most of all—should never have to see. It hurt when his body hit the floor, but he did not care. He hardly felt it, even when his knees drew up tightly to hide his face.
It was not enough. He could hide his eyes and he could hide his face, but what about his hair? His nails? His torso and legs and feet and tail? He was still here, tainting Vegeta's eyes with his presence. How long until the saiyan prince was ready to wipe out the stain on his legacy?
He could not die, he thought. He did not use the word 'want', because he has not had the time to ponder whether or not that would be a lie. He knew that he could not however, because behind the cover of his hands he could see Neeila's pale, gaunt face smudged with dirt and blood. He saw her eyes and her smile and her desire for him to live. It was a stupid desire and he hated her for it, but she wanted it. how could he disappoint her already?
Time passed. He heard when Vegeta moved, the tap-tap of his boots against the hard floor. Soon he stopped and Chill could feel him, mere inches from where he laid. It was a wonder how even with the beat of his heart blasting in his ears, he could still hear the soft rustle of Vegeta's clothing as he crouched down.
"You need to get back in the bed," Vegeta told him.
Everything in Chill stopped. There was that voice again, the low and thick growl of a hostile dog, nothing like the voice he pictured in his mind. What should he do in the face of something that was so dangerous?
"You have too many injuries to be crawling around," he went on. "You need to get back into bed."
Chill did not move. Silence ensued.
"I will not hurt you."
Chill barely registered the words. By the time he made sense of them, he felt fingers brush his shoulder and they mean nothing at all.
He jerked away so hard his back slammed into the basin. It was useless, and he berated himself for it. When Vegeta finally delivered the blow, no amount of flinching would stop it. all he was doing was shaming himself, making himself look weak. He was weak, but was that what Vegeta deserved to see? He should buck up, take what was coming like a man would, show Vegeta that even if the thing before him was a disgraceful wretch, his saiyan blood was not so tainted by all the other poisons in his veins.
He wanted to. He wanted to have that kind of bravery, but he didn't. All he had was cowardly, mind-numbing fear. He did not want to feel the strikes or the blows. He did not want to die, and not just because of the promise he made to Neeila, he could finally admit.
After another bout of silence that Chill hardly even noticed, Vegeta said, "I am going to take you to the bed. I am going to carry you there. I will not hurt you."
Liar, Chill, thought, and the thought sickened him, horrified him—how dare you think that of the one who mothered you—but it must be true. Either way the fact from before remained the same. There was no use fighting against a man who could destroy him in a blink of an eye.
The next time a hand touched his shoulder, he did not fight it. he did not resist when two hands pulled him up, though he did not unclench the guard his body had adopted to make the movement easier. Vegeta did not try to unravel his limbs. Instead, he placed a hand between his shoulder blades and wormed another into the small space where the squeeze of his legs did not cover.
Then Chill was lifted into the air. He spent several moments feeling weightless, before he was pressed up against a hard chest. This close, he had no choice but to listen to the beat of Vegeta's heart. It was pumping alarmingly fast, as if each beat was a single raindrop in a thunderstorm. The sound of it shocked him, so much so that he nearly did not notice when they started moving. He did not know what to make of the frenetic pounding that nearly matched his own heart.
He was grateful when Vegeta finally set him down. The descent was gentle, as were the sheets beneath him. Even so, he hissed on impact, the padding of the bandages on his back not nearly sufficient enough to cushion the burn wounds.
Vegeta seemed to hesitate at that, before his hands disappeared altogether.
The ensuing silence was tense, and he could not tell if it was worse or better than it had been before. He thought it might be worse. After all, Vegeta now had placed him where he was so determined to have him.
He wondered suddenly if Vegeta brought him to the bed so he could... could do what Ziloh liked to do.
Sick horror tied his gut into a nauseous knot. He did not want that. He did not want it even more than he had when Ziloh did it. He had never thought it any worse than any other kind of punishment, but suddenly it sounded like the worst thing that could ever happen. It was different, with Ziloh. The Warden was his Master, but Vegeta...
It would not be the same. It would be so much worse.
Please, he wanted to say. Hit me. Hurt me. Kill me, but please don't do that to me.
He said nothing. He laid there waiting, pleading to his own useless ears.
What Vegeta eventually said was, "Look at me."
Chill took in the words, absorbed them, analyzed them. He picked each one apart, pondered each individual meaning, then put them all back together.
Oh, he thought when it clicked. Vegeta was going to tear his eyes out.
He wanted to throw up. He nearly did, his chest heaving in time with the clench of his empty stomach. Vegeta did not have to do this. No one had to do this. If his hands were not enough, then he could cover them with a new blindfold. It had not been his fault that the blindfold had disappeared. They did not need to scream at him. They did not need to beat him. They did not need to pour the poison powder in his eyes. They did not need to mutilate him.
It would hurt. He had said that would be a fine alternative but faced with the reality he did not want that either. It would hurt so badly that his eye sockets would not be able to contain the pain. The pain would be everywhere. The pain was everywhere, and he just wanted it to stop. What did he need to do? He would kiss their boots. He would beg for mercy. But no, that had never been enough. What else could he do? Anything other than endure because he couldn't, he just couldn't anymore. He couldn't take the pain, and he didn't want his eyes ripped out but maybe they should just do it, just get it over with so it would all stop—
The phantom grip around his wrist morphed into something more real. The hands pinned his wrists to the bed, on either side of his thrashing head. He heard words that sound like "stop it" and "calm down" and he realized that they sounded so incomprehensible because his own screaming was nearly drowning out everything else.
Despite the revelation, it was not until a finger brushed the space behind his ear that his mind began to ease. The fingers were not like Neeila's—too thick and not as gentle, but it was grounding, nonetheless. Every rub took a bit of tension, a bit of the panic, until his lungs were suddenly breathing right again.
It took a while, but eventually the strings of his puppet body were cut, and he fell slack.
His eyes stayed closed, but when the hands pulled away, he did not move to wrap his arms around his face. The light overhead softened the darkness of his inner eyelids to a dull grey. He felt nearly lightheaded, spent of all energy. He felt the same way he had felt ever since he had awoken in this bed: irrevocably exhausted.
He did not sleep. He waited for Vegeta to speak, because he surely had something to say before he started to tear him apart.
"I'm sorry," was what he said. Chill had no expectations and still it was the last thing he imagined he would hear.
"I did not mean to... upset you," Vegeta went on, and if Chill did not know better, he would say that the tone of his voice was almost contrite. "I don't know what you're thinking, but I am not trying to trick you, and I meant it when I said I would not hurt you."
There was a momentary pause, then, "I want to look you in the eyes when I say what I must say to you. That is all."
For the umpteenth time that day, the world stopped spinning.
Once more, he dissected the words, contemplated each meaning in his mind. Try as he might, he could not come up with any other interpretation than what had literally been said.
He thought a great many things in that moment. First, he thought that it must be a trick, but when silence ensued, he was no longer sure. Then he thought, why? Why would Vegeta want to see such a thing? What did he gain by subjecting himself to such a sight?
He thought that he did not want too.
He thought that he would be a fool to think he had a choice.
He reminded himself that resistance was useless. If he ran, he would get nowhere. If he fought, he would be defeated.
He thought that Vegeta was the type of man to get what he wanted, and who was Chill to try and deny him?
He thought that he was scared, that he did not want to see what would happen when he did open his eyes.
He thought that maybe he could be brave though, that maybe there was no bravery without fear before it.
He thought all that and more as he turned to face Vegeta, and opened his eyes.
TBC
Hopefully this is common sense, but I'll say this just in case: don't follow Vegeta's example. If someone is having a panic attack, it would probably not be helpful to pin them down and rub their ears.