There was something equivocally appealing about the Earth.
He could never place it.
Somehow … it had crawled into his veins and settled there.
Since the first inhalation, he thought, fists clenched.
Here, up high, it reached him most. The places where civilization had not dipped its polluted fingers were always calling out to him. The places that remained fresh and clean, unsoiled by humanity.
The flora spread out beneath his eyes like a quilt. Tops of trees and plots of land became a patchwork of kelly green. How was it he could never recall such vibrancy in hue, anywhere in the galaxy?
Vegeta was worldly, in every sense of the word. He had seen more of this universe than half of the stars that winked from their stations trillions upon trillions of miles away.
This ball of rock and mud and water and otherwise absolutely insignificant life forms would have caught a pretty sum on the market. Potentiality was rife between the shifting plates that lay under the massive, stretching oceans, in every swell of air, in every branch of growth and green.
Potentiality. Untapped and wholly wasted.
The vigor of this planet was being warped and drained by its lowly inhabitants, day by day. Its virtues ever-squandered, Vegeta knew there were better, worthier realms.
And yet he couldn't find the effort to stray. He wanted to, desperately, sometimes. The urgency to evacuate would steal his breath away and he'd be left gasping. But intangible, powerful roots wound about his heels and held him fast.
It drove him mad.
His wills and wants battled and clawed and sank him constantly. It was dire, the need to expose the mysteries of Earth's quiet seduction. But they weren't really so mysterious, were they? It certainly wasn't the view alone that had left him speechless and gave moment for pause.
Vegeta bit his tongue sharply at the thought.
The Saiyajin no Ouji believed completely in destiny. His mind's eye had a crystal clear vision of what it should entail for him. Quadrants should kneel to his rule, civilizations should beg of his mercy (of which he would have none), and all should be in awe of his overwhelming power. And he had been made to watch as the achievability of that destiny slipped away from him. Vegeta was sickened by an astounding truth.
He had allowed it to fade away.
A fire erupted from his palm and in a haze of blue, the air stilled and crackled around him. The immense trunk across from him shredded apart like cloth.
Shouldn't he want for nothing? Shouldn't the universe and all its corners be his? Scant years ago, Vegeta was prepared to capture immortality and reign supreme – over this and all worlds. Miscalculations and hesitation had inevitably led to his fall and, rather than ascend again, he remained clinging to the bottom rung. It wasn't for fear. His entire youth spent underneath the deadliest of all the galaxies' dictators, Vegeta had come to fear little to none throughout the cosmos.
He thought of Kakarotto. That pathetic, third-class, sorry excuse for a Saiyan. Rage tore through him upon consideration of that stupid, inerasable smile – the one that lingered, even at death's door. The ultimate prize had belonged to the buffoon all along, hadn't it? Effortlessly, Kakarotto had succeeded in achieving what he, himself, always found unattainable.
True destiny, accomplished.
Kakarotto had been light years ahead of him. Vegeta, the prince of the mightiest race of warriors, left trailing in the wake of an outcast's glory.
His blood boiled under his skin, and Vegeta felt his scalp warming. Every follicle of hair tingled with his power.
Even with Kakarotto gone for good, Vegeta still refrained from rising to his rightful throne. That nagging tug on his boot again, keeping him down, reminded him. He seethed to himself.
Something bright blue had been violently scribbled over nearly twenty-five hundred days.
The fondness he had grown to experience toward the woman and the…ir child – he wasn't sure when it had spiraled into the dreadful cocktail that comprised his psyche.
Imagining her and how it was before all the complications, he recalled his frequent daydreams of putting a hand around her neck and squeezing until her light flickered out for good. He frowned to himself.
She had been consistently present throughout the duration of his inhabitance of her home. As though she had belonged there with him, living in the same world with him. As though she wanted to be there. Bulma's openness, the radiation of her unabashed warmth, and the brazen candidness with which she breezed through life had tempted him. And when she had offered, Vegeta unwittingly accepted her invitation.
What a mistake, he considered with frustration. A foolish mistake.
A smirk upturned his sour mouth as Vegeta peered over the cliff's edge, and he envisioned his son. It had initially been rather trifling and exasperating, allowing himself to be held to the 'father' role in that boy's world. Vague memories of his own father were all but withered throughout his aging, to none of which he could or would ever aspire. Over time, as his own pride had begun to sputter out, Trunks' adoration of him – and the boy's own promise to power - had quickly sparked him out of remission. While the boy was still young, he certainly saw a glimmer of possibility in him.
Whether he felt satisfaction or resentment toward such a realization varied often.
Something irrefutable twinged under his chest. Scowling, Vegeta kicked at a sizeable stone with the toe of his boot, knocking it down into the world again.
Vegeta heaved a hearty breath, his wide chest expanding and relaxing, as he struggled under the weight of his extensive considerations. Tilting his chin up toward the horizon, the dark irises of his eyes focused on the brushstrokes over the dusky sky.
He closed his eyes solemnly, and he sought them out across the world.
There, he placed them.
Tiny pinpricks of unmistakable familiarity in the distance.
Author's Note: Okay, soooo .... this chapter's all poetical-y, kind of, because it just seemed SO Vegeta-esque! I really used this chapter as a way to dig into his character for myself and see what I could find, to try and see if I could nail down my characterization of him a little better.
I have to say, the song for which this chapter was titled is my absolute favorite of Ayumi Hamasaki's and I think it's one of her more powerful songs. For this song, I really wanted to write a chapter that would do its message justice. Hopefully, I did just that.
Second part of my three-part "arc" or ... whatever you wanna call it. Still about 4-ish (closer to 5) years after the Cell Games. At one point in the chapter, Vegeta mentions "nearly twenty-five hundred days." I did the math and, assuming he was physically living on Earth - with Bulma - for a little over six years, it rounds up to about that. I'll say 6.5 years because I don't think he lived solely on Earth for the whole THREE YEARS period. I could be wrong; numbers aren't my forte. ;)