2 - HEATED GLANCES
For a while there was only darkness, as if the Otherworld had swallowed him up into his own private abyss. Vegeta floated in the vastness of space, thinking he must of died again and feeling strangely at peace with it. Yet as his mental awareness sharpened, so too, did the knowledge that he was still bound to his body.
He was not dead after all. Only the living could experience physical pain, and when that sensation came rushing back to him with his consciousness, it made his eyes snap open and his mouth part in a soundless gasp that was trapped within his ruined chest. The simple act of drawing and exhaling breath was almost unbearable.
He was grievously injured, even for him. Alarmed, he blinked away the haze to assess his situation, his world going from black to white as he realized that he was staring at a blank paneled ceiling. He tilted his head to the left, staring at the IV by his bedside, his gaze following the tubing down to where it met his taped hand. He would have groaned if his crushed ribs had been capable of taking a deep enough breath to do so.
He was not laid out on some battlefield after an epic war. He was not about to die an honorable warrior's death, or gather the last of his strength to regroup and wreak havoc against his foes. No, he was still stuck on Earth, his pride as shattered as his body, being cared for like a helpless infant in Capsule Corps' med bay. Indeed, he was not surprised when he turned his head to the right and saw the woman, fast asleep and partially reclined in a chair at his side.
He remembered heading out to the rebuilt gravity chamber after it had blown up on him. Going from this exact bed, away from this exact woman and her hovering, and pushing himself beyond his limits as his bandages had unraveled under the pull of 400x Earth's gravity. "Leave me alone!" Those had been the last words he had spoken to her, as she'd hassled him not to train while injured, so of course she was right there. Not only that, but her hand was resting on his.
As a rule, he did not like to be touched. Outside of fighting, training or medical treatment, the only creatures that had sought to touch him had done so with malicious intent for their own amusement. Anyone strong enough to torment him had left him with little choice but to endure, and everyone else had been too afraid of him to attempt casual contact.
Except her. A creature so weak that the first time he'd tried to track her by her ki, he'd led himself to a house cat.
Idiot woman. If he had clenched his fingers together while he'd been unconscious, it would have broken her hand.
He had mixed feelings about the sight of her delicate hand draped over his. A touch meant to comfort. It was as alien to him as he was to her.
The effort it took to extricate his hand from under hers led him to believe that he was heavily drugged. He wanted to be angry about it, but didn't have the energy. His leaden hand didn't travel far, and when it flopped back into place it resettled over hers, engulfing it completely.
His eyes flicked up to her face to see if it had disturbed her sleep, but she remained motionless. She looked tranquil, her strange blue lashes accenting her porcelain skin, and her pink lips parted ever so slightly. He had been to a lot of planets, and had seen many of species of aliens, but it was remarkable how closely humans resembled Saiyans in appearance, and he had to admit that she was quite beautiful by the standards of either race.
He thought about trying to talk, to wake her up and demand that she cut off whatever painkillers and sedatives she was doping him with this instant, but already he felt the pull of sleep, the weight of his eyelids. He drifted off into the darkness once again, but it was not the peaceful haven of unconsciousness he had been hoping for. It was a fitful sleep from which he couldn't quite fully wake, plagued by a combination of nightmares and memories.
The infuriating dream he'd had the last time he was injured, of Goku and the other supposed Saiyan from the future taunting him, recurred many times. That dream left him feeling hopeless and exhausted even within his own mind, as they powered up their golden auras and left him behind. No matter how hard he tried, he could not catch up to them.
And who was that boy from the future, anyways, the one who's power had easily outclassed Frieza and King Cold? Three Saiyans here on earth, or at least there would be in the near future, and Vegeta was somehow the weakest one. The only one who couldn't ascend. Their Prince. It was the cruelest joke the universe had ever told, besides the fact that both of these Super Saiyans had now killed Frieza for him, robbing him of even simple revenge.
In a fit of bellowing rage, he powered up an energy attack and blasted it at their laughing faces, dispersing their images.
"Vegeta?"
The sound of his name broke through the barrier of the dream realm, and he thrashed awake abruptly. A high-pitched squeal in very close proximity gave him a start, and he sat up in bed in time to see the woman stumbling back from him in surprise.
"What are you doing?" he demanded, his voice low and rough from his parched throat.
"You seemed like you were having a nightmare," she said, catching her breath, one hand clutched over her heart, "so I woke you up."
He bit back the groan of pain sitting up had caused, like a hot lance through his chest, and regarded her blankly. One small blast of ki, one careless fist flung into her while he was semi-conscious, could have done so much damage. She was damned lucky she had been able to dodge his flailing limbs. "Are you suicidal?" he yelled, finding his voice.
"Like you're one to talk!" she hollered back, her face instantly ablaze with anger. "You had me so worried! I told you that you were in no condition to train, but do you ever listen to reason? Noooo."
"Is that why you drugged me into complacency against my will this time around?" he seethed. The IV had been removed from him, and his stomach clenched with stress as he wondered how many days had passed since his last lucid moment.
"Against your will?" she said incredulously. "You were on death's door, you had no will! You took a huge hit to your chest, which still hadn't healed from last time. You cracked your sternum, a few more ribs, punctured a lung. And the gravity level was so high, it just kept bearing down on you…" She trailed off and shuddered at the memory. "If you had even moved the wrong way, you would have collapsed a lung or deepened the fracture, you big dummy!"
"It is nothing I haven't faced before, Earthling," he growled.
"We don't have regeneration tanks here," she hissed. "I know you heal at a remarkable rate, but you aren't invincible. You were literally dying ."
He tossed aside the thin hospital blanket in disgust, and swung his legs around so he was sitting on the edge of the bed. His entire chest was wound tightly with fresh, white bindings to help brace and support his rib cage. Other than that, he was only wearing a pair of black boxers, and he looked down at this bare legs, one thigh crisscrossed with stitches, the other wrapped from knee to ankle in thick gauze. He didn't care. He was determined to stand and walk the hell out of there, but the woman sprung back into action.
"Absolutely not!" she yelled, exasperated. She planted herself in front of him and dared to press a hand on one shoulder in a laughable effort to restrain him. "You are going to kill yourself before the androids even get here."
Vegeta considered pushing through her, even outright throttling her for a second, but was struck by the effect her touch had him, that cool, soothing energy she seemed to exude. He stilled, closing his eyes, suddenly exhausted with all of this. "I know what I am doing, woman," he stated tiredly. "Stop your incessant and misguided pestering. I will still be here for you to use as weapon against the androids when they arrive, and I will destroy them, alone."
He felt a sharp shift in her ki, and he opened his eyes to find that she had leaned in a bit closer. Her face was still flushed red but her expression was softer, no longer an angry mask of hellfire.
"Is that what you think you are to me?" she asked gently. "A weapon to use?"
"Of course," he snorted. The pain and fatigue were making it difficult to sit up, but he was loathe to show it and he wished she would just go away.
"I'm helping you because I care about you, not because I want a cannon to shoot when a crisis appears. You demanded facilities to train and volunteered to fight the androids, I never asked."
"And I never asked for your help," he said quietly, uncomfortably aware of how she was standing between his knees with her palm still spread out flat against his shoulder.
"You didn't have to ask. Friends and family stick together here, we take care of one another."
"Tch. I have neither, and it's just as well."
"You do have a friend," she said cheerfully, standing up straight to preen, her hand finally leaving him. "A beautiful Earthling who's a genius to boot."
"Lucky me," he quipped, starting to shift in the bed so he could get up without knocking her over.
"Two days!" she said frantically, moving to block him again and nearly falling into his lap. She steadied herself with one hand on his knee, her face inches from his. "Rest for two more days, please? I can't handle seeing you in that state again so soon. Hear me out, okay?"
At this proximity, there was a heat between them that Vegeta had never experienced before. He tried to muster the energy to protest but her blue eyes were so troubled, so distraught at the idea of him coming to any further harm that it boggled his mind. I care about you. He wanted to shake her and ask her why, why the hell did she care about a broken monster like himself?
"I've sent Gohan to pick up some Senzu beans," she continued, apparently taking his muteness for acquiescence. "He will be here with as many as he can get, but it will take him two days," she said, slowly easing back from him but no doubt ready to pounce once more if he so much as twitched a muscle. "I know you Saiyans gain a great boost to your power levels whenever you come close to death," she continued, "and I am not naïve enough to believe that you aren't going to push yourself to that brink again. So I'm keeping a stash of Senzu beans on hand for those occasions, which will give me some peace of mind and keep you out of this hospital bed."
It was brilliant. The beans worked within seconds, making them far superior to even the technology of the regeneration tanks. "That is…acceptable," he sighed.
She smiled brightly, her entire countenance lighting up. "Good! I'll let you rest now, I have a lot of work to catch up on, but I'll be by in a little bit with a proper meal for you, okay?"
He grunted noncommittally as she prepared to leave, and just as she was about to cross the threshold she stopped at the doorway and turned to him with a stern look, pointing two fingers at her eyes and then at him to indicate she would be keeping tabs on him. "Two. Days."