Rock Your World
Part 2 – Save Me

I'll never forget that the first of my songs he heard was also the worst, most painful one I've ever written.

Vegeta had never heard me play; I doubted he even knew that I did, but the shock, the near-revulsion and panic in his eyes as he listened to me obliviously pour out my soul still haunts me to this day.

The worst part wasn't that he heard, wasn't that, at the time, I didn't even know he was listening. The worst part was that the song he happened to listen in on was about him. About how much I desperately wanted him, how much he obviously hated me, and how much I hated him for that.

…Let me back up; the day of ChiChi's funeral, almost three years ago today. I didn't cry, that much I know, for she had asked me not to. As I knelt beside her deathbed, clasping one of her fragile hands in my two bigger ones, I listened to her choke out her last words as an unnamed virus stole her draining life. She made me promise to take care of our sons, she made me promise to keep protecting the world, and she made me promise not to cry. All three times I said "I promise" with as much conviction as I could muster.

Then she was gone, and on that day I watched the people in black, whom I didn't even know by name, carry her casket down an aisle and set it in a roughly-hewn hole that had been dug in the earth. This time, she couldn't be wished back. She had died naturally and nothing would bring her back. This time, she would be buried; although, I hated to think of my wife, trapped and suffocating, beneath the weight of the soil above her head. Someone murmured some meaningless words and more black-clothed people filled in the hole with earth. I remember Goten took my hand in his and squeezed, as though the child could comfort the father, instead of the other way around. I remember almost breaking my promise to ChiChi and succumbing to tears at the thought. Gohan stood, stock-still and stiff, expressionless, the entire time. I don't remember if I was proud or disturbed by this, but I do remember that we both said absolutely nothing to each other that day. Why, I haven't a clue, even now.

He was there. Vegeta had come to my wife's funeral. It confuses me now as it confused me then that he'd show up to something that didn't involve either his pride or some form of violence. Without even being asked, without being invited. After the ceremony, he gave me a brief nod of what might have been either regret or comfort and turned on his heel to leave. I remember a bizarre urge to grab him by the arm and sob uncontrollably into his shoulder. But I did no such thing, and he walked away, tail flicking indifferently.

It was then that I discovered the true meaning of love; the brutality of it.

I thought I had loved ChiChi in any way I could, but I'd never seen this crueler, harsher side to the four-letter word that still makes me uncomfortable to say out loud. I had never loved anyone but ChiChi in the way I was considering; and it hit me that she'd never refused my efforts to show that affection. Never once had she told me "no" when I attempted to express my feelings that even now, I don't fully understand.

I'd never loved someone who didn't love me back. It tore me apart, realizing what had been in front of my very nose this entire time, and realizing that it could, should, never be.

I realized that day that I loved Vegeta.

I still played my guitar Ongaku relentlessly, hell, I even sliced open four of the fingers on my left hand for playing it too hard, but my song-writing was different now. It was darker, it was more twisted. I wondered if I was going insane half the time, as I scribbled down lyrics that I thought I'd never utter, as I pounded out notes on strings too flimsy to take my pain. Strings that shredded, snapped, and cut; my own instrument betraying me in its own small way. I wrote out my sorrow for the wife that abandoned me, for the family, the "friends" of mine, that didn't understand me or even pretend to care anymore. I wrote out my anger, at myself, at the world, at the man that I'd come to love and even obsess over. And one night in September, as I recall, I actually finished one of these dark, twisted songs. And somehow, Vegeta was listening on the night I decided to actually play it, just once.

It wasn't raining, per se. No, it was screaming; it was a screaming thunderstorm that echoed and reflected my black mood. And I decided, hell with it, to add my own scream to the fray.

Ongaku didn't mind being wet, neither did I. Lightning ricocheted off of boiling black clouds and the wind shrieked between the buildings as I found a place to be; half-standing, half-kneeling, on a battered fire escape between to abandoned buildings. I didn't like the city, but at least this place was desolate, free of onlookers…. How wrong I was.

Tuned up and ready to go, Ongaku responded eagerly to the riff opening my composition. It was ragged, rough and harsh, like my breathing just then. The piercing notes reverberated off brick walls and rebounded, forming an eerie, fading echo that didn't take away from the soul-jarring music. If you could call it music. I can't explain the melody, it was too chaotic and complex, but I can explain a taste of the lyrics I wrote. This was the first verse and refrain:

"Your eyes could peel my skin away

Could burn me up, and tear, and flay

You need no weapon, for you're the knife

That rends my soul asunder

If I weren't choking I still wouldn't breathe

You don't even know that you're strangling me

But you turn away, just throw me off

Falling, to Hell, but that's not what's under

Me….

Bleeding, battered, broken, if I could find my voice

I'd scream….

Someone save me, someone take me, someone end this

Agony.

Someone stop me, someone hurt me, and someone,

Undeniably….

Must. Be. You. "

TBC