Author's Note: Hello, hello, I am back like I was never gone! So, have I been dragging my feet, not writing a damn thing in my three and a half months absence? No! As well as finishing this chapter, I began a new fic that I am co-writing with Froglady15. We've been each other's beta readers for some time now, and when the Vegebulocracy challenge Time After Time came around, we decided to pull the trigger on the collab we'd been talking about. So if you haven't checked it out yet, it's called The Ace of Her Heart, and it is ONLY on Archive of Our Own (not fanfiction net). It is a World War One romantic drama and there are 5 chapters so far. If you're reading this story on fanfiction net, you should know that AO3 is the only place where all my stories exist, including the un-edited version of Monkey Business and the entirety of Illuminary Inc. I only continue to post this story on fan fiction net because historically I had more readers on this site (because I've literally been writing this fic for 10 years!), so if you've never checked out my profile there, I suggest you go now.

Anyhow, I did wonder if this chapter needed trigger warnings. Not for anything sexual or violent, but there are other things. I also don't like spoilers though, so I've decided to put trigger warnings at the end of this chapter in the foot note. If you're someone who needs trigger warnings for certain things, you might want to scroll down and check. But if you survived my other chapters I'm sure you'll survive this one.

Thanks again to Froglady15 for the beta read.

Last time on Never Ever Land: Bulma and Vegeta discovered that the wormhole generator they had used to escape the supernova that vaporized Planet Namek had left them stranded millions of light years from a decent hotel, mobile phone reception, or even a scrap of matter of any sort. After navigating their way closer to the Galaxies by way of random wormhole jumps, they were tantalizingly close of a Galaxy, and finally ready to come out from behind their neuroses and start properly communicating again, a bunch of which they did with no clothes on.

The instant Vegeta awoke he knew something was wrong. His back was cold. His front, where he was wrapped around Bulma was warm, but she was shivering.

He opened his eyes. It was still early, but the lights were on their sunrise cycle. When he breathed out his breath misted in the air above him.

Fuck.

'Bulma?'

She didn't stir, but continued shivering. He touched her cold shoulder, shaking her gently. At some point in the night the sleeping bag had become insufficient. Even the cushions below them felt cool instead of warm. They were in trouble.

'Hey, wake up!'

She roused slowly, rubbing her arms, stuttering his name to incomprehensibility between chattering teeth.

Vegeta cast about, looking for the clothes that had been scattered around their bed. Spying them, he fetched them and returned, shoving the chilled items over the sleeping bag.

'Come on, get dressed.'

'It's f-f-f-f-freezng,' she said, not unwrapping herself.

'Obviously. Which is why you need more clothes on!'

She began to try with small, jerky movements. Vegeta unleashed his hold on his power and pushed his chi into the air, heating it. Sensing the warmth, Bulma rolled over and attached herself to him.

'That G-galaxy had better be a reachable d-d-distance away!'

Vegeta silently prayed for the same thing, then urged her into the now-warmed clothing. When she was up, Bulma rushed to the bulky clothing she'd laid out on the sofa the night before.

'Put these on,' she said, shoving padded pants and a jacket at him. 'It's ski gear, to keep you warm.'

They were an obnoxious shade of orange and too long on the arms and legs, but using his chi to warm himself would use more energy than wearing the ugly clothing.

'What is skiing?' he asked, putting them on over his Capsule Corp clothes.

'Wintersport. Sliding down snowy mountains on sticks.'

'Sounds pointless.'

'I'm not exactly shocked that you think so. It's fun.'

He grunted in acknowledgement. A great many things that people of the Galaxy found fun were pointless. But that was all the thought he gave it. As soon as they were wrapped up, they hurried upstairs.

'One point seven years!' they cried together as they read the location data that the ship had gathered the previous evening. The nearest civilised planet was within range!

Bulma squeezed him tight, sagging against him in relief.

'Let's program the attack pod,' he said, not letting go of all his concern yet.

They went downstairs to the airlock. When it opened, Vegeta was greeted with the familiar, abattoir stench of spoiled blood. They had not cleaned up the inside of the attack pod. When he looked inside the open pod door he could see that half the upholstery was stained dark, with a pool congealed in the footwell. A lot of blood. His blood. The sight was disquieting.

'Oh, jeez…'

He turned to see Bulma clinging to the door frame, looking pale, then she bolted. He followed her out of the airlock and watched her stumble across the lounge and up to the kitchen where she stood in front of the sink, convulsing. He thought she was crying for a moment, until she heaved and retched into the sink. His own stomach lurched.

'What's wrong?'

'The smell' she grasped, then retched again. 'Close the door!'

He shut the airlock again and approached her slowly. 'It's not a pleasant smell, but…'

Shuddering, she hunched over the sink. 'Reminded me of what happened to you, and to Tarble. Trying to clean the ship after Nappa—' She retched again, spitting up bile. She didn't have to say anything more. A prickle washed over him, like the shade of the horror she was reliving.

When Bulma was done puking she sat on the kitchen floor, wondering how she could force herself into the pod.

I only have to endure it long enough for the hypersleep to kick in, she reassured herself.

Then she saw Vegeta exit the airlock, both arms extended, with a bloody seat cushion in each hand. He headed for the far end of the corridor, and she heard him go into the laundry and throw the cushions in the cleaning pods.

'Woman, I need your help if you are able!'

He was washing his hands in the laundry sink. She eyed the upholstery in the pods.

'They can be washed?' she asked.

'Of course. Coming back from a mission bloodied was not uncommon for some soldiers. How do you operate this thing?'

She shook her head. 'I knew you didn't know how to use the washing machine! Helpless male.'

'I take it you're feeling better, then?'

'A bit.' She put the machine on and watched Vegeta hunt through the cleaning cupboard supplies. Actually, she was starting to feel quite hungry.

Vegeta presented an armload of cleaning sprays, cloths and sponges.

'Which ones do I use?'

Bulma munched her way through a ration bar on the flight deck, happy to let Vegeta finally clean up for her and not the other way around. The sight of the nearby Galaxy gave her an appetite despite the disturbing things that the diagnostics were telling her. There was no diagnostic available for the life-support heating unit. Perhaps it had stopped working? That would make sense with the temperature readout in the lower hull envelope. It had been trending down, but at some point yesterday evening the falloff had become more rapid, and was halfway between freezing and absolute zero. The cabin temperature was warmer - just below freezing - but without the life support unit to maintain it, it was radiating the remaining heat energy out into space, minute by minute. The water would soon be freezing in the pipes. They should be leaving the ship very soon, but if there was a delay for some reason…

In an over-abundance of precaution, she went downstairs again to fill some vessels with water. There was only one dented, badly scorched pot left in the kitchen, so she filled that, as well as the collapsible bucket/wash basin from her camping kit, and left them on the bench. They would freeze eventually, too, but at least they would be able to melt it again, and it wouldn't just be stuck in the pipes. The sewage system was already freezing. When she took a tinkle her urine pooled on top of the thin layer of ice before melting it's way through, and when she flushed, nothing happened except for a muffled clunking sound from the wall.

'Shitty tin can,' she muttered to the cursed cruiser. It had kept them alive all this time, but barely.

…

The pod smelt of sharp and unpleasant cleaning fluids now, but it was better, or at least different, from the smell of rotting blood.

Vegeta climbed inside the pod, closed the door and pressed through the menu on the tiny screen. The hypersleep gas reservoir was 85% full.

'Pod Alpha Three Zero, plot a course for Cereallea Four.'

'Course plotted,' the tiny computer voice replied. Vegeta relaxed a little. If the pod had accepted the plot it meant that there was enough hypersleep gas and oxygen supply for the journey. He left the pod and went looking for Bulma.

She was coming out of the laundry with the cleaned upholstery.

'Pack up your stuff,' he told her. 'The pod is ready.'

They hurriedly packed up the pallets of food, and Bulma retrieved her laptop from the flight deck. Then they squeezed into the pod, the padded jackets puffing around them, Bulma's capsules stowed in the footwell. When he closed the pod door he finally let himself relax. The tight space of the attack pod was reassuring. He had trusted his life to attack pods more times than he could count. Cereallea Four was a mining planet with some full service cities, and they had plenty of credits. There was a decent bed and a good meal waiting for them on the other end of this ride.

He looked over at Bulma; even with her eyes a little wild with anxiety, she was so beautiful. His breath caught for a moment, remembering last night. He had tried to push her away, and instead he'd ended up more tangled in her net than ever. She clung to him stubbornly, woke things in him he didn't understand. He felt his cheeks warming, thinking about the things he had said, and the frenzy she had brought him to. He partly wished to take it all back, but even more so, he wanted to do it again. He was in awe of her. He didn't deserve her.

Well, he wouldn't get to keep her, which was fitting.

'Are you ready?'

She nodded and took his hand. 'Ready for this to be over, that's for sure.'

'Good. Pod Alpha Three Zero, set course for Cereallea Four.'

The computer didn't reply right away, but then… 'Unable to set course for Cereallea Four.'

Vegeta's heart nearly exited his body.

'Why not?' Bulma demanded, her voice a shade off hysterical.

'Pod Alpha Three Zero, why can the course not be plotted?'

'There is insufficient hypersleep gas supply.'

'But a few minutes ago there was!' Vegeta protested, then had to rephrase his exclamation into a question so the clunky pod AI could understand.

'Biomass and respiration rate for current occupancy is now higher. At current occupancy biomass and respiration, the range is limited to one point zero nine years.'

'Fuck!'

'No!' Bulma cried, grabbing the door release and leaping from the pod. Vegeta followed her. She snatched the emergency spacesuit from its cradle on the airlock wall.

'Time for extreme measures!'

When Vegeta had towed Bulma out of the airlock in the flimsy spacesuit she had been as warm as she had in the ship - that was, not very - and as the minutes passed she started to feel colder and colder. The emergency spacesuit was reflective inside and out, but not actively heated, and so thin she couldn't imagine it would stand up to the slightest snag or tear.

The hole in the hull was only the size of a fingertip - which was probably exactly what had made it. She opened the plastic bag she had brought with her, and fished out a metal plate and passed it to Vegeta. His skin and hair were rimmed with a fuzzy layer of delicate water crystals that glittered in the light of his chi sphere. The faint light of the galaxy was not enough to see by, and Bulma's flashlight had failed off within seconds of exiting the airlock, so Vegeta's chi was the only way to see what they were doing.

She reached into the plastic bag and captured some of the balled up scraps of paper she had prepared. Then she inserted them into the hole. It was no easy task in zero gravity, wearing a spacesuit. She lost nearly half of them, and when she pressed the balls into the hole she launched herself away from the ship. Vegeta had to fetch her back to repeat the process several times until the hole was full. As primitive as it was, this would be their insulation later.

She took the tube of glue from the bag…and hesitated. It was no longer tube-shaped, but a swollen ovoid with a crimped pucker at one end. The lack of pressure around the tube had caused the tube to inflate. She wondered what the state of the glue inside it was. She had a feeling that this was all about to go horribly wrong.

Holding the top of the tube directly in front of the metal plate she turned the cap with her clumsy gloved fingers. Glue exploded from the tube in a spray, hitting the plate, and she was launched backwards, fired off into space by the force of boiling glue.

'Shit!'

Vegeta had turned his head to avoid getting a faceful, but he was frantically rubbing at his ear and neck with his sleeve. He stopped, quickly pressed the plate over the hole and then apparently decided he needed to return to the airlock.

'No, come get me first!' she cried, though the sound could carry no further than the skin of her spacesuit. Without Vegeta's light she could only just see the edge of the ship, enough to know she was travelling further and further from it. All she could hear was the sound of her own panicky breathing and the pounding of her heart. She knew she shouldn't begrudge him his trip back to the airlock - he'd just been splashed with glue, and he was holding his breath and using his chi as a pressure barrier to keep the liquids inside his own body boiling. He would come back for her once he got himself sorted out, she knew he would, but for minutes that seemed like an eternity all she had was herself and cold and darkness, not even an up or down.

This is it, her Earth-born mammal brain screamed. This is how we die!

The edge of the ship grew smaller and so dim to her eyes she was no longer sure if she could see it.

'Vegeta, come back! How will you find me?'

A tiny orb of pale blue chi appeared, curved around the outside of the ship and then veered unerringly towards her. Chi-senseing! Of course. But she had a hard time reining in the snorting, blubbering tears of terror. She could do nothing but let the snot run down her lip as Vegeta towed her back to the ship.

Back at the hull, she tried plan B, though she had little hope for it. From her plastic bag she produced a roll of duct tape, its cut edge folded over to make pulling the tape out easier in the spacesuit. She yanked on the tape, unspooling more than enough to cover the hole. A fine, glittering mist seemed to evanesse from the adhesive side of the tape. She had problems tearing it off, so Vegeta did it for her, pressing the length over the hole. When he took his hand away, the tape drifted after it.

'Stick, you motherfucker!'

She reached out and took her own turn trying to pat the tape into place, but it didn't stick whatsoever. The adhesive was boiling in the low pressure and then instantly freezing again.

'No! No! You fucking piece of shit'

Vegeta ate a dozen ration bars before he could stop shivering. It was not so much that this spacewalk had been colder than any other - he hadn't noticed any particular difference between this and any other patch of space a good distance from a star. It was that once the airlock refilled, the air of the ship was too cold to warm him back up.

Bulma sat pressed up against him, huddled for warmth in the pod. She had stopped swearing now, but her face was a picture of sullen determination.

'Are you ready now?' she asked bluntly the moment he discarded the last wrapper.

He nodded, still chewing, and she led the way back up to the flightdeck.

She reinstated her laptop and they began jumping aimlessly through space again, neither of them speaking aside from Bulma declaring the space around them barren after each jump. They had to get within range of a civilised star system before it got much colder on board, and their minds were fully occupied with that grim fact. Bulma checked the diagnostics from the lower hull envelope frequently, and didn't look happy about what she saw.

When Vegeta's stomach was growling again they stopped for more food. Bulma melted the pot of ice in the heating unit so they had water to drink.

They jumped on and on through the afternoon, past the time when they should have stopped for dinner, through the sunset cycle of the ship. Vegeta took quick bites from bars he had stashed in his jacket pockets. He knew he should eat properly, but there wasn't much point in trying to sleep tonight. Maybe once they were exhausted they could curl up in the attack pod. Bulma was on her feet much of the time, hopping from foot to foot, walking in a tight circle and blowing on her hands. He was worried about how much she could take. The cold was uncomfortable to him, but a way off being dangerous. For her human body, who knew? Last night their salvation had felt so close, and now it was on a knife edge. Every time he looked at her pale, anxious face he feared he might not be able to deliver on his promise to get her back to Earth.

Once, they came close to a galaxy, but could quickly see it wasn't close enough. How many jumps had they done today? Three hundred? Four? More? He could feel the edges of exhaustion creeping in, and each time they jumped he told himself it would be the last one before he insisted they stop and rest, and each time they jumped into blackness he decided to do one more before stopping.

'Jumping.'

The dome of the flightdeck was flooded with light. They both cried out and blinked as the dome and their eyes adjusted. Before them was a star, brighter than any they had seen since leaving the Namek system, and behind it the thick band of a galaxy, side-on to the ship.

They looked at each other, mouths open, and then at the ship's console, not daring to ask the question. Bulma quickly closed the diagnostic page and returned to the navigation home. They both stared at the loading icon while the ship looked for any signal from a beacon. Half a minute slipped by with nothing.

'I'm going to check around us,' Bulma announced, sitting and taking the pilot's yoke. Slowly the star and Galaxy slipped below the edge of the ship, and the dome showed nothing until first the galaxy and then the star reappeared behind them, curved overhead and settled in front of them, as Bulma set the ship on a direct path to the star. They were on the very outer edge of one of the galaxies.

The navigation home page was suddenly populated with information.

'Computer, where are we?' she demanded.

'Outside the third sector of the Eastern Galaxy, on approach to exo-star WSA-4340. WSA-4340 is two hours, forty minutes away at current velocity. We will enter the Oort cloud and asteroid field in 68 minutes unless evasive action is taken.'

'What's an exo-star?' Vegeta asked.

'A star that lies outside the main boundary of a galaxy,' the computer answered.

Bulma and Vegeta exchanged a glance of worry. Maybe they weren't actually on the home stretch after all.

'Tell us about the system,' Bulma requested the computer.

'WSA-4340 is an unsurveyed system consisting of a dwarf star orbited by three planets contained within a dense oort cloud and asteroid field. Spectral analysis shows that the second planet of the system has surface water, and has an atmosphere consisting of 45% argon, 37% nitrogen, 8% oxygen, and 8% mixture of other gases, both inert and reactive. Its size and atmospheric density has earmarked WSA-4340 as a potentially life-sustaining planet, though no life has been detected as of the latest directory update. Ownership is claimed by Cooler Real Estate, and potential buyers are advised to contact the nearest Cooler Real Estate branch to negotiate purchase. Due to its accessibility problems and atmospheric composition that places it outside the survivability zone for many species, WSA-4340 presents a bargain for the right buyer willing to invest in clearing a passage through the asteroid field and making any necessary alterations to the atmosphere for comfort and survival.'

'Well that's useless to us,' Bulma hissed.

'Computer,' Vegeta cut in, 'how far to the nearest civilised planet?'

'One point five years at warp speeds.' The disappointment was so heavy it took his breath away for a moment.

'How does that compare to the range of the hypersleep gas supply?' Bulma asked him.

Even though he knew it was too far, they marched downstairs anyway to check. He was praying he was wrong, but the pod's computer confirmed it.

'Course cannot be plotted with current occupancy.'

'No!' Bulma cried, dissolving into tears of despair.

'We need to keep trying,' Vegeta insisted, pushing her out of the pod ahead of him, and practically carrying her out of the airlock.

'How long have we already been trying?' she wailed.

And at that moment the lights went out and the gravity turned off.

Bulma screamed, and then they collided with the ceiling, Vegeta's last step propelling them onwards through the darkness.

Vegeta was so shocked that for a moment he forgot he could fly in zero gravity. When he regained control of himself he flew through the ship and towed Bulma up the steps to the flight deck.

Light from the star still lit the flight deck with weak, cold rays.

'Fuck, fuck, fuck,' Bulma was repeating over and over under her breath. He placed her bodily in one of the pilot chairs and held her down.

'Can you fix it?'

'Fix it?' she repeated. 'Vegeta, all the power is off on the whole ship! The computer didn't give a warning - it just shut off!' She slapped the black glass of the console, rubbed her hands over it and nothing lit up. 'Everything is dead! The ship is too cold - everything has shut down!'

Almost on top of saying that, she swiped her finger over the touch screen of her laptop and it woke up, making them both blink at its comparative brightness.

'It has power,' he pointed out. 'The wormhole generator draws its power from me. With the momentum of the ship, we could continue jumping.'

'For how long though?' she snapped. 'Look, the power has been off for only a minute and the battery is already at 91%! The laptop battery can't take the cold any better than the ship! We'd get two jumps max! And how long has it taken us to get even this close to a galaxy? Look! 88% now!'

'Then what?' Vegeta shouted back. 'We do nothing? We die?'

'I don't know!'

She stood up and looked out the window at the unwelcoming star system.

'We go there, then,' Vegeta concluded.

'Were you not listening to that Cooler Real Estate spiel earlier? It's got 8% oxygen and no guarantee of life. I don't know about a Saiyan, but I don't think I could survive long on less than half the amount of oxygen I was evolved to breathe! And there's no passage through to the planet anyway!'

'We could navigate the Oort cloud and asteroid field slowly in the pod,' Vegeta suggested.

'Is that something you've ever done before? Navigated a pod through a dense asteroid field manually?'

'No.'

'If it's so dense that it's considered impregnable, how slow do you think we will need to be going in order to steer around every obstacle?'

'Who knows?'

'Well, I know! We're doing a tenth of the speed of light right now, and by the time we saw an itty bitty rock that could take us out, it would have smashed through the pod and killed us. Even a hundred, or a thousandth of the speed of light - we'd never see the debris coming at us fast enough to dodge.'

'Then we go one ten thousandth of the speed of light!'

'Then we'll run out of oxygen in the pod long before we make it!'

'Shit!' Vegeta roared, realising she was right. In hypersleep, the pod could support the two of them for over a year. But awake, while they navigated an asteroid field, they would have maybe a day's supply of oxygen.

Bulma was taking absolutely no pleasure in winning the argument though. 'Oh my god. Oh my god! What are we going to do?' She beat her fists on the console, causing her to float up off the chair, then began clawing the air, scrambling for an anchor when there was none in reach, her jagged breathing breaking down into breathless sobs. 'I don't want to die!'

Neither did Vegeta, he now realised with clarity. But he was all out of ideas, and Bulma was gripped with panic.

He plucked her out of the air and turned her to face him, then held her face between his hands and forced her to look at him.

'Bulma. Bulma, look at me.' She continued crying, little spheres of water popping off the ends of her eyelashes to drift in the space between them. 'Bulma, calm down. Open your eyes and look at me, dammit.'

That seemed to do the trick. She opened her eyes and looked at him with rekindled hope.

'What is it? Did you think of something else to try?'

'No. But you are a gods-damned, galaxy-class genius. If you stop panicking and start thinking, you'll figure something out.'

'I'll figure something out?' she cried.

'You will figure something out. I know you will - you always do. So just think!'

Her expression wavered around between disbelief and despair. He stared at her, trying to convey the faith he had in her abilities and hoping she didn't see that it wasn't complete. But that brain of hers gave them a fighting chance.

Maybe it worked. She took a deep breath, her face coming under control. Then she pulled Vegeta in and hugged him with her arms and legs.

'You're right. I am a fucking genius, and we're not going to die right this second. There must be a way out of this.'

He hugged her back, feeling warmth grow where their bundled bodies touched. Her breaths were still fast, and he could hear her heart pounding away, but it was slowing. He wondered how long this hug would need to take and miserly subtracted the seconds from the time they had left before the ship failed to keep them alive.

After another few moments he asked, 'Are you thinking?'

'Yes, shut up.'

Shortly, she let go of him, turned and faced the approaching sun. A strange haze was visible around it now, making it look like the glass of the dome was filthy. 'How long until we hit that Oort cloud?'

Vegeta couldn't quite remember what the computer had said earlier. 'Sixty minutes?'

'Let's get an accurate time from the pod. And bring my laptop.'

Vegeta plucked the laptop from its cradle and towed it and Bulma back down to the airlock. Then they both squeezed into the pod and floated above the seat, knees and elbows bumping into each other.

'Close the door,' Bulma instructed him. 'Conserve our heat.'

He did so, and they were wrapped into the soft darkness of the pod, lit by the red glow of the buttons under the tiny screen.

'Pod Alpha Three Zero, how long until we reach the Oort Cloud surrounding the nearest star system?'

'At current trajectory and velocity, fifty one minutes, though outlying debris may be encountered earlier. An evasive course is recommended.'

'Okay, I have an idea,' Bulma announced. 'The pod is small - maybe what is unnavigable for a cruiser or frigate is still navigable for the pod. I don't think I can survive on that planet, based on the oxygen level alone, but if we can get to it, and you think you could survive there, I could leave you all the food, and take the pod back to civilisation, and somehow get another ship back here to pick you up as soon as I can.'

Vegeta thought about the time frames involved. At least three galactic years for Bulma's travel alone, plus however long it took for her to secure a ship… Three years alone on the surface of a planet that might or might not harbour life, with a few weeks worth of food. He felt the cold of the ship penetrate into his heart. He nodded like the plan made perfect sense to him instead of filling him with howling anxiety. Well, it was a solution, if it could be implemented.

'Pod Alpha Three Zero,' he spoke. 'Plot a course through the Oort cloud and asteroid field to the second planet of the system.'

They both waited listening for a confirmation that didn't come.

'Alpha Three Zero, did you register the last request?'

'Affirmative. Calculating course to the second planet of WSA-4340.'

They waited longer, and Vegeta began cursing under his breath with impatience.

'Does it usually take this long?' Bulma asked.

'No.'

'It probably can't work it out,' she concluded. 'There must be too many variables with all those collision objects. Alpha Three Zero, how long will your calculations take?'

'Estimated calculation time, three days, four hours, five hours, six hours, 7 hours—'

'Oh jeez! I'm glad I asked!'

'Pod Alpha Three Zero, cease calculation. Fuck!'

'Okay, that was always going to be a long shot,' Bulma said shakily, but sounding calmer than Vegeta felt.

'Do you cut through the hull to patch it from the inside now?' Vegeta asked.

Bulma shook her head. 'It's too late. We'd lose all the air on the ship. We've only got one spacesuit, and without power the airlock isn't operating, so you couldn't just pop in and out of the airlock to breathe while I'm fixing the hole. Besides which, I'm not even sure all the systems would come back online if we managed it. Wait, how much air is left in this thing?'

She struggled out of the spacesuit again in the confines of the pod. Vegeta turned on the overhead light so that she could read the gauge on the canister attached to the back. It was ¾ full, but after muttering some quick calculations aloud, Bulma announced that, 'it's not even a tenth of what we'd need to repressurise the ship.'

They lapsed into silence again. Bulma curled tight into a ball, her hands covering her eyes. Her lips were pressed tight, but sometimes she grimaced. Then she began swearing under her breath, which was surely a bad sign. He wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but didn't dare interrupt. Anyway, it didn't look hopeful.

A crack rang through the ship, and Bulma uncurled.

'What was that?' she asked, and then answered her own question. 'An outlier from the asteroid field. Shit, we are running out of time! Did it penetrate the hull?'

Cautiously, Vegeta opened the pod door, but there was no sucking vacuum outside.

'Close the airlock,' Bulma ordered. 'If the ship is penetrated we will at least preserve the air in the airlock.'

She didn't mention what would happen if the pod was penetrated, but Vegeta supposed that the ship was a much larger target, so more likely to be hit. He closed the airlock and got back inside the pod. Bulma was biting her knuckles, looking like she might puke again. He tried closing his eyes and forcing his mind out of the moment, because he knew that asking her if she had thought of something every half a minute would not help.

The longest ten minutes of his life passed.

Bulma made a whining sound. His eyes flew open.

'Have you thought of anything yet?' he asked, unable to help himself any longer.

Instead of answering, she dissolved into tears, She grabbed hold of him, fighting her way into his lap to wrap her arms and legs around him again. Oh gods, they really were going to die out here together. He had followed this path seeking vengeance and spiteful glory, and it had all come to nought, to failure, to an unmourned death, and he suddenly regretted every minute of it, because the only important thing to him now was that he and Bulma would get to go on breathing.

There was another, softer crack, and Bulma lost it, crying without restraint. Vegeta wrapped his own arms around her, with some last, pathetic instinct to project her. A tremor took his body, emanating from the core he'd always felt was strong and hard, but now felt weak and insubstantial.

'We should detach the pod and set course for civilisation,' he suggested. 'Before we get any deeper into the field.'

'No!' she cried. 'If we do that now, we will definitely both die on the way!'

'What other option is there?'

Her hands dug into his back even through the layers of clothes and ski jacket. 'The obvious option! The option I don't want to have to take!'

'What's obvious?'

She pulled away slightly, enough so that she could look him in the eyes, hiccupping and choking back on her tears. She stared and stared, like she was looking for something. 'Vegeta…'

'What is the obvious option?'

She took a deep breath. 'One of us will have to-to die, and then the other will have to find the Namekian dragon balls and wish them back to life.'

Vegeta was not normally affected by zero-gravity, but right then he felt a sickening lack of anchoring of his body and soul to reality; his head reeled and his stomach flipped. Had she really just said that?

'There's no other way,' she insisted. 'The pod can get one of us out of this situation, but not both, and there's pretty much nothing else left in our list of resources that is useful right now.'

'And you think the best way out of this is for one of us to die?' He was angry at her for even suggesting it.

'Yes!'

'And what if the balls can't be used? They already let us down on Planet Namek when you wished to remove Frieza's immortality, or wished to make Brolly sane again. And what if they can't be found? We don't even know where the Namekians are!'

'We do know where the Namekians are. I sent them to Salda's planet. They needed a place to go, and it was the only place I could think of at that moment that would be safe for them, where they wouldn't be bothered by the inhabitants and vice versa. And Porunga only failed to grant those wishes because Brolly and Frieza are stronger than he is, and he couldn't change them without their co-operation. We did wish Tarble back to life though! It is possible!'

'This is insane,' he said, though deep down he knew it was stone-cold sane.

'It's the only way I can think of!'

They both jumped as another speck of space rock pinged off the ship's hull.

'That would be around…three or four galactic years spent dead,' Vegeta pointed out. 'Tarble was only dead for a couple of months.'

'I don't think time will have any bearing.'

'It will have a bearing in the pod. Hypersleep only works on living, respiring bodies that can breathe the gas in. The temperature and oxygen drops, but it won't completely stop a dead body decomposing. If you'd seen some of the messes that returned from Frieza Force missions, you would know.'

Bulma covered her mouth as her stomach tried to turn inside-out again. Even just revealing her plan to Vegeta made her feel faint, and that detail was too much. Whether she imagined herself waking up with Vegeta's rotting corpse curled against her, or him waking up to her oozing carcass… Her stomach heaved again, but she took deep breaths through her nose, refusing to let her nausea win. They did not need to also be dealing with floating blobs of puke on top of everything else.

Instead she closed her eyes and thought of her mother's smile, and the softness of Scratch's fur as she petted him, and her father's delighted laugh of astonishment when he made a breakthrough with his work.

'Then the one who dies will be left here,' she said. 'And two wishes will need to be made - one to bring the body to Salda's planet, and the second to bring them back to life.'

'And which one of us dies?' Vegeta's voice sounded strange.

Bulma forced her eyes open. She needed to see his face, to look into his eyes and read his soul, if she could. She was scared; so scared that she didn't want to say the words or put her plan in motion. She wanted Vegeta to stop her and turn it around. But that wasn't their best chance of success.

'B-Before we decide, we have to swear that-that the person left behind will do absolutely everything they can to bring the other back to life.'

Vegeta looked back at her, his eyes dark, his mouth part way open in shock or anger, she wasn't sure.

'To bring them back without delay, and, and t-to keep themself safe in order to d-do so.'

He jerked her roughly. 'This is nonsense! There has to be another way you can think of!'

'There isn't!' she shouted back, trying to break through his denial. 'This is the only way! This is the solution, and it WILL work if we make it work!' Then she broke down again, unable to maintain composure the instant the fire left her. 'But we've got to swear to it, okay? Because one of us is going to put their life in the other's hands more completely than they ever have before, and they need to trust that the other isn't going to forget about them and move on, or g-get themselves killed in pursuit of some other goal along the way.'

Vegeta's jaw clenched tight, and she could feel his chest rise and fall, fast and heavy. His eyes glittered like black ice, and she would have sworn he was furious except that tears began to brim his eyes. He blinked them back.

'Your solution is bullshit, Bulma!'

'I didn't say I was happy with it either! Swear it. Please! Swear you'll do everything to bring me back and not get killed on the way.'

He shoved her away from him, holding her at arm's length. 'I don't need to swear, because you are not dying!'

She couldn't see him now, she was crying so hard. Wiping tears away with the sleeve of her jacket, she said, 'But it has to be me! We've got no idea what we'll encounter in the Eastern Galaxy. The person that lives will have to get more hypersleep gas somehow, on an unknown planet. I doubt it's any more available there than it is in the Northern Galaxy. There could be any number of barriers to that. And you…you could do anything that needs to be done to get it. You're strong enough, you're invulnerable, you don't need a Saiyan babysitter just to go shopping in the bad part of town! I can't guarantee that I can get what we need without being imprisoned or mugged or just…run over crossing the fucking road! I'm weak, Vegeta! We can't trust everything to me alone, that's a bad bet!'

He scowled. "I am not invulnerable, and you are not helpless, as you have demonstrated time and again! The planet you end up on might not have any access to the hypersleep technology, which would halt me in my tracks, but I'm sure given a little time you could manufacture the damn hypersleep chemical yourself; something I could never hope to do.'

'But you could steal a new ship and go to a different planet until you found what you needed. You've been doing military operations since you were a child, and been running your own gang of space pirates since before you finished puberty, all while being chased by Freiza! We don't know what we'll encounter on the way, but it's pretty clear to me that whatever it is, you'll be better at overcoming more obstacles than I am!'

His expression of horror and outrage didn't change.

'Oh, god, Vegeta, please just swear! Don't argue! I'm already freaking out, and I can't stand it if you—'

'I swear!' he said.

She stopped still, searching his eyes. Could she believe him? Could she trust him?

'If you die,' he said, his voice low and hoarse with emotion. 'I swear I will not let you lie dead for a moment longer than I have to. But it should be me that dies.'

The cowardly part of Bulma wanted to give up right then and let him take the burden of this. But the same part of her also baulked at the thought of heading to an alien planet alone, to complete a task of unknown difficulty and timeframe. She might spend the rest of her life trying to get back to Salda's planet, all the while hauling around the guilt and pain of knowing Vegeta remained dead because of her.

'You're here in this ship because of me,' he said. 'This situation is my fault. So I should be the one that dies.'

Vegeta was already imagining months on end of the worst feeling. Of the consequences of failing in the task. The path that had brought them to this point was his path, not hers. If the price of that path was death, it should be him that paid it.

'How is this your fault?' she asked. 'This is my fault! I made a wormhole generator without even understanding the scale of the universe, and then I used it, untested, with no navigational system. I should have just woken you up and asked you how to program the pod to take us to safety! For that dumbass decision, one of us now has to die!'

'You wouldn't even be in space making decisions like that if I hadn't kidnapped you from your home.'

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. 'If you hadn't, I'd already be long dead, and no one on Earth would have any chance at being resurrected. And I came with you willingly, because I wanted to save the Earth!'

'You didn't have any choice. Your planet was only even in Frieza's sights because he followed me there. I tried to kill him and failed. I ran, dragging Nappa and Raditz along with me, then Tarble and Brolly, and then you, Kakarott, Krillin and Puar…all because of me, for my aims, not any choosing of yours.'

She gazed at him with an open mouth, looking like she didn't believe him. Vegeta found he could not keep looking at her. The shame that followed that admission was too great. He'd always known that the others were only there because of him, and he'd used to think that it was his right to use those weaker than himself. It was only after his fall from the pedestal of Strongest Saiyan, and after Zarbon had abducted Bulma and the others, that he had realised the responsibility he had ignored for those he had led. How he'd used them absolutely selfishly and given essentially nothing back. Even Bulma, who meant more to him than any being in the universe. He had hurt her immensely just by arriving in her life.

Another crack made them both brace themselves.

'We're running out of time,' Bulma cried. 'Fuck, we have to do this!'

Vegeta nodded in reluctant agreement, and before he could second guess himself, he shoved Bulma back into the seat and pushed himself out the open door of the pod in one move.

'No!' she screamed, pushing herself after him as he tried to close the pod door. She ended up wedged, her feet against the back of the seat and her hands pushing against the ruby glass. Vegeta could have forced it shut, but then he realised he hadn't even programmed the pod. He let it open again, and Bulma burst out, shouting.

'Think about this logically, Vegeta!'

'I am,' he replied. 'I've died before, or as close as one can come, and I can do it again!' Big words that only conjured the terrifying loneliness and pain of Frieza's beatdown of a few days before. He couldn't suppress the shudder that wracked him, and Bulma saw it.

'That's irrelevant!' She grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to look at her. 'You are stronger than me a million times over. You can see better, hear better, smell better! You can sense chi, you can use chi, you can fucking fly and even survive in the vacuum of space for a short time. You can stomach more foods than I can, survive in worse conditions. And yeah, I am better with tech, and yeah, I am a genius, but you're no dummy yourself! And you know more about the way the Galaxys work than I do! We might know nothing about where the pod will land, but you have more experience to help you figure things out, and if you can't, you can blast some fuckers to the next dimension. I can't do any of that. You were a soldier and a leader - you must see that I am not the best choice for this mission!'

He could see, but he didn't want to imagine the next steps that must come if he was the one that had to live.

'Why are you so keen to die?' he asked, angry at her for forcing him to this decision.

'I'm not! I'm fucking terrified!' She burst into tears once more. 'If you don't come through—'

'Of course I'll come through!' he yelled at her, furious that she would question his commitment at this point. He instantly regretted it, seeing how hard she was shaking, how white her face was. Even through the many layers of clothing, the reek of anxiety she was giving off was reaching an all-time high. He cursed himself and pulled her into his arms. She felt like trembling sticks wrapped in a duvet. So weak and frail. Gods, if they fucked up, this might be the last time he held her.

'I'm sorry,' he said more quietly. 'I will come through. I swear upon my life.'

'Don't try and find Brolly or Frieza. If they find you, run, don't fight, please!'

It stung him that she doubted his ability to survive, but he understood her concern, and her doubt was well-founded. 'I swear upon my pride I will not fight them before I get you back.'

'Good. I want it to be quick,' she whispered in his ear, starting to hyperventilate. 'Please. I don't want to feel any pain. Can you do it fast? B-break my neck or something, so fast I don't see it c-coming.'

He let go of her, sickened to the point that he gagged. She closed her eyes, expectant of some killing blow.

'No, Bulma! I am not killing you!'

She opened her eyes a crack. 'I can't kill myself! And I don't want to just die when the ship gets torn to pieces. I'm too scared! Please, you've killed so many people.'

Visceral memories of bones cracking and crunching under his hands, death gurgles, final sighs, the reek of bladders and bowels loosened by the severing of spinal cord all erupted into Vegeta's mind, reimagined with Bulma's face, her body limp in his hands, her soul ripped from its physical embodiment.

'I remember, and I don't want to have the memory of killing you, also!'

'You don't need to use your hands - maybe you could use chi to—'

'No!'

'Then how is this going to work?' she pleaded.

'You figure it out, or it's me that dies,' he said, his throat hurting with the roughness of the emotions tearing through him. He wondered how he would do it. Merely wait until the ship was destroyed like she's said? Step out into space and let his blood boil? Could he plunge a chi blade through his own heart? Was that possible?

While he was still pondering that question, Bulma returned to the pod and rooted through her capsule bag, spilling capsules into the air. She came up with one, caught and packed the others away again, and floated out into the airlock, bumping into Vegeta. She turned and threw the capsule against the wall, and with a puff of smoke, medical equipment and medicines exploded into the space of the airlock, ricocheting off every surface. She started clumsily bouncing around the airlock, snatching items and discarding them.

'What are you doing?' he asked weakly.

'Looking for the sedative spray,' she replied. She found it, fumbled the canister, and then pocketed it before bouncing her way to the airlock door. Vegeta helped her with the heavy mechanical lock, wondering why she suddenly needed to go out there, when she puked out the door the moment it was open. She started to pull it shut again, and then apparently fainted.

This is a nightmare I am having, Vegeta thought, pulling her unconscious form back into the airlock and closing the pressure lock again. He towed her into the pod once more, holding her against this chest, her head resting on his shoulder. Let me wake up!

Bulma came around, taking deep breaths. For some moments she was confused about the place and time. It seemed like the place she had just been was a pleasant one - safer and more real than finding herself weighless in the dark in some alien space pod, her alien's arms around her, his face wet against her neck. Slowly she remembered what she had to do, and dug the sedative out of her pocket. Her hand trembled, but she felt a little calmer now, like maybe what lay on the other side of her task was not so bad, if she could get through it.

'Do you really mean to do this?' Vegeta asked, and she knew he was crying by the strangled tone of his voice.

'We have no choice.' She brought the sedative to her face. Her hand was shaking very badly now. 'Can you help me? It-it should take four squirts or so, b-but make it six to be sure. If I can't do all the squirts before I pass out, make sure I get the rest. Okay?'

'No, it's not fucking okay!' But he didn't resist when she pulled his hand from her waist and wrapped it around her hand that held the sedative canister.

'Together.'

She took a deep breath, like she was going for a dive, but her finger wouldn't press the spray cap. Shit, it was like a high dive, standing high above the pool, her whole body freaking out and refusing to obey the command to take the jump. It knew what was best for it, and it wasn't this. She took another breath. Vegeta buried his face against her neck, hiding his eyes. But her finger still would not fire the dose.

Another sharp crack sounded through the ship, the biggest so far. Its reverberation passed through the hull and through the walls of the pod still clamped to the side of it. They both jumped with fright, and in that second of fear over something outside herself, Bulma pressed the trigger, once, the acerbic stuff tingling her mouth; twice, numbness washing through her mouth and her head began to spin. Three times…

Vegeta felt her body relax, raised his head and saw her finger slide from the trigger before she could administer the third spray. His hand tightened around hers, raising it back to her face to finish the job.

But he could not.

Just as she'd hesitated and found she couldn't pull the trigger on her life, he found he couldn't either. He couldn't hold her while she died in his arms by his own hand. Even if it was only temporary, and it might not be temporary. Did she factor that properly into her analysis of who would die? She had volunteered. She had argued and pleaded for it to be her, so why was he unable? She was right - he had killed so many. The fact that there would be one more death on his hands should mean nothing, especially if he was blameless in it, merely carrying out his part in a desperate plan.

Why can't I do this? he asked himself.

But really he knew. He'd been growing into the realization for some time now. She was more important to him than anyone else. Even himself. They had fulfilled every condition that he had ever read in a book, and everything that Raditz had mentioned.

She was his mate.

And he couldn't let her chance real death. Forever death. He couldn't do it. He'd rather face it himself.

He turned her slightly, memorising the soft planes of her face, now ever so slightly sharper than when he had met her. He let go of the sedative and stroked the back of his finger down the curve of her cheek, like the first morning after he had forced her to volunteer for his revenge mission, when he had lain next to her on the bed in the master bedroom and yearned for someone so soft and pretty to be his to touch and hold and know. He'd gotten his wish. And with it came the consequences.

Reluctantly he unwrapped himself from Bulma and pulled himself from the pod. Then he settled her against the seat, arranging her arms and legs so that she wouldn't wake up with painfully cramped limbs or a cricked neck. Beautiful. He couldn't get over how beautiful she was.

A sense of calm was coming over him now that he had made the decision for both of them. Bulma would be safe, and the panic receded, unlocking his mind. Their plan had no detail, and now that he had the room to think, he realized it didn't have to end at what Bulma had laid out. She was right, someone did have to go in the pod alone, but he was right too; one of them didn't necessarily have to die, at least if it was her in the pod and he left behind. But first, he had to see her as safe as he could.

'Pod Alpha Three Zero, what is the nearest spacefaring planet?'

'The nearest planet is Mutiny Five.'

'Is that planet under Cold Law?'

'No.'

'Do they accept Cold credits?'

'Yes.'

'Is it safe for an unarmed civilian?'

'Mutiny Five is known for its historically high crime rate during the early centuries of settlement and mining operations, but in recent decades burgeoning city settlements and growing wealth have led to increased security and policing. The main centres are considered safe in the wealthier neighbourhoods. As well as metropolitan police forces there are a range of private and personal security companies, trade union enforcement officers, civilian and trade courts.'

'Does anyone deal hypersleep gas on the planet?'

'Data is restricted.'

He then got it to list all the civilised planets within one and a half years travel to see if any of those sounded better. One held a Cooler Real Estate outpost, so was probably not a good option. There were a couple of Cold-Aligned planets renowned for shopping and cuisine, and as tourist destinations, but they sounded expensive and highly controlled. Would a planet like Grenouillea Two be safe for Bulma, or would it entangle her with all the red tape and security checks she would encounter there? The last one was a mining town with limited settlements. Mutiny 5 began to sound like the best option after all.

'Pod Alpha Three Zero, what is the population of Mutiny Five?'

'Last updated population count is approximately 870 million.'

'Is there a blackmarket on Mutiny Five?'

'Unregulated trading is known to occur on Mutiny Five.'

Well, that was something at least.

He then looked through the bag of capsules until he recognised the two that held the ration bars and infant food. He took them, shoving them into the pocket of the "ski jacket." Bulma would have the credits, she wouldn't need these.

He closed and replaced the capsule kit in the tightly packed cloud of belongings floating around the side of the pod, dislodging his journal. He should take it. Or should he leave it in case he didn't make it? He cringed to think of the inanities, petty complaints and revealing thoughts he had noted in there. He plucked it from the air, opened it, then slid the pencil he used from its place on the spine and turned to an empty page at the back.

He scrawled a quick note on it, then ripped it out of the book, folded it, and pressed it into Bulma's hand, curling her fingers around it so she would find it when she awoke. He left the journal in the pod.

Then he pulled on the discarded spacesuit.

'Pod Alpha Three Zero, when the pod door is closed, detach from the dock and set a course for Mutiny Five. Administer hypersleep as usual.'

'Understood.'

He took a last, long look at her, and found it hard to stop. She looked peacefully asleep, and it would be a long sleep, much longer than he had ever had.

Don't fail me, he thought, and then crushed the ignoble sentiment. He had put this on her, and he knew she would try her hardest, just like she had tried for the people of Earth, but he would never blame her if she failed.

Another crack of space debris striking the ship spurred him back into action. He needed to send her off before it was too late.

He put the spacesuit helmet on, then closed the pod door. Immediately the pod shot away, taking all the air in the airlock with it in an explosive gasp. Vegeta manually closed the pod hatch door before opening the airlock to the rest of the ship, pushing the door open against the pressure of the ship's atmosphere until the airlock equalised. Then he flew up to the flight deck.

He wasn't sure how this would go. He expected that the ship would provide some protection for a little while longer, and when it failed, he would go it alone. Maybe a ship couldn't navigate the asteroid field. Maybe a pod couldn't. But maybe he could blast his way through it. If the air in the spacesuit held out, he could fly himself to the planet. He was already going a tenth of the speed of light thanks to the momentum of the ship. Maybe that was enough? At least he could try.

On the flight deck the dome was already crazed by an impact. Another crack pinged, and then another. Very soon, the ship sounded like it was in a hailstorm from hell, and he still couldn't see any of the material that was striking it. Up ahead, all he could see was a haze, literally just a mist of light scattered a million times by fine debris he couldn't discern. There was a crash from downstairs, and then suddenly the sounds of the hailstorm disappeared and the spacesuit puffed outwards, expanding to its limit - something had pierced the hull and all the air had left.

Hair prickling up over his entire body, Vegeta now realised what Bulma had meant about not being able to see what was coming to avoid being killed by it. He would have to blindly annihilate whatever was before him, continually. No sooner had he come to this realisation than the dome on one side of him was obliterated. It happened so fast that for a split second he couldn't understand why he was knocked to the side, peppered with dull shards of tempered glass dome.

'Shit.'

He leaped forward from the ship; it was not a refuge now but a danger, and put his hands out before him, charging them with chi. He sent the blast ahead of him in a fat cone of energy, watching the strange spectacle of it travelling ahead of him, glowing, slowing and spreading as it incinerated tiny pieces of space rock, and then was almost immediately whipped behind him. He blasted again. Movement in the corner of his helmet made him turn, and he saw the ship behind him, torn right in half, both halves spinning madly. It had been hit by something big, something Vegeta hadn't seen coming, and as he watched it shattered from another impact; pieces flying in all directions and receding into the distance as their momentum slowed compared to his.

'Fuck!'

His helmet resounded with a crack, and the right side of it became opaque with the fine crazing of the impact. He hurriedly returned to the task of keeping himself alive. He raised his projected chi like a shield, covering his suit as well as his skin, and charged and sent another wave, and another, and another. He began to sweat, pouring out effort on top of the effort he had already expended that day on operating the wormhole. He could see nothing ahead or around him but the haze with the bright spot of the sun behind it, and it didn't seem to be thinning. How long could he keep this up? His heart was beating fast, his breath already gasping. At this rate he would be done in minutes.

Blast and after blast, wave after wave, blue energy lighting up and left behind; he was a distress flare that no one would see. His waves were getting weaker, not going so far before they faded to nothing. Gods damn it, maybe there was a reason Bulma hadn't suggested he fly to the planet himself. Well, of course there was! It was ludicrous for him to have thought this long shot would work.

One of his blasts seemed to explode in his face, and then Vegeta was spun, hit by a stunning force in his side, bouncing off and through his shield. He twisted, trying to orientate himself towards the sun again, the skin down his left side stinging, and an ominous blossoming of pain in his ribs. He felt his last breath being sucked out of him between his lips…

He clamped his mouth shut, gathering his chi again to hold himself in and the dust and rocks out. The spacesuit must have been shredded. He felt the dust scouring him, smashing relentlessly against his chi shield, and he had the space of one held breath to make it to safety.

Please, gods! Do not let me die out here! he found himself begging, despite not believing in any Saiyan god, and certainly not looking to the likes of King Kai for deliverance. He had to save himself.

He sent another diminished wave of chi from himself, and another. He couldn't die now. Frieza and Brolly could both still be out there…and if they were, they would win. They would capture Bulma, gain everything he wanted, and he would be gone and forgotten, a footnote of a cocky, over-confident challenger who disappeared from history.

He felt his thoughts growing fuzzy, and the glow in front of him started to dim. His next wave of chi faltered, his concentration slipping as he unleashed it, and he was pummelled by another wave of dust before he remembered to keep his chi shield up. He could barely see anything, and he realised that the helmet's visor was so scoured that it was almost opaque. He reached up with one hand to tear the helmet off.

Before him he could now clearly see the star ahead. Hope leapt anew when he realised that his vision had not been dimming - he was nearly through the Oort cloud, and that's why the haze was fading. Now if only he could find the planet in time!

He continued blasting ahead while he strained his eyes to see the reflection of the stars light off any planet. His heart pounded, his lungs burned; more than any stinging or pain from broken ribs, the pain of not breathing was soon overcoming any other sensation. His next energy wave sailed away, not hitting anything ahead, as did the next. He was free of the cloud.

His eyes swivelled around, searching. There, below him, almost, was the pale crescent of a blue planet reflecting the dwarf sun's light. It was tiny, much smaller than the size of a pea in his field of vision. almost a pinhead. How could he know that it was the right planet? He couldn't, but it was the only planet he could see. It was beyond his capabilities at this moment to estimate the distance, he just knew he needed more speed, more power, if he was to make it.

Come on!

Heart racing, he dug deeper, grasping at any gate of energy inside himself, and tearing, crushing it open, desperate for any scrap of power left untapped inside himself, but he was giving everything, everything, and the planet looked as far away as it had when he spotted it.

'It was like a gate unlocking inside of him. And I feel like I have the same sort of gate inside of me…'

In that moment, he couldn't remember who had said those words, or why they came back to him now, but he looked inside himself for a locked gate, his last hope. For all his heroics, and all his maudlin, suicidal thoughts, he didn't want to die. His mind didn't want to risk his continued existence to Bulma's efforts. His soul was scared of what awaited him on the other side of the veil. His body didn't want to die at all, period.

His vision truly was darkening now, his focus on the planet ahead flickering as dream-like thoughts passed across his mind. He was deep inside himself, the dark fortress under the mountain where he had been born, the heavy wooden doors bound with brass and gold and flung wide open. Every hall, every chamber, even the door to his parent's bedroom… And there were no more doors left to open. Only the walls, impossibly thick, immovable rock - the fortress's very strength and defence, and if he tore those down he would surely destroy himself in the process.

But he was about to die anyway.

He flew at the wall, trying to smash through it, and made…just a crack. He imagined himself pushing through, tearing the edges of the crack wider, and felt like he was tearing himself apart. Pain wracked his body. Vegeta came to, still hurtling through space, the planet ever so slightly closer. That was it, he just needed more.

Please, please!

Something crumbled inside himself, and heat surged through him. It seemed like golden light sprang up around him, flame flowing from within, following the pain and washing it away in a roar of power and joy. He accelerated, hope burning higher, his heart beating faster, harder, pushing the blood to cells screaming for the oxygen that it no longer carried—

The golden flames stuttered and went out. The vision of the planet ahead faded. Vegeta's eyes slid shut, his chi shield dissipating, all thought of where he was and what he was trying to do receding into unconsciousness. A vapor of moisture escaped his slack lips as the vacuum dragged the gases from his bloodstream out through his lungs, freezing instantly into a glittering cloud.

In an uninhabited exo-system outside an unfamiliar galaxy, the first and last Prince of the Saiyans drifted in open space, cooling…

Freezing…

Frozen…

...

..

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Author's Note: I hate to say this, but I think the next chapter is going to be a way off. I have a lot of paths to consider, because despite having this story on simmer in my brain the last 10 years, I haven't decided on a path through this next section to the end. I have many ideas.

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Trigger Warnings: Discussion of death and of making the ultimate sacrifice. Discussion of assisted suicide, Death of a major character. Crap, that makes it sound worse than it actually was.