That first taste of water had pushed him to wake, but he didn't think all of him had come back from the deep, healing sleep that Saiyans were pulled into once terribly injured. He felt – half aware, as if his thoughts and movements were made sluggish by a world spun from the stuff of dreams. His body was heavy, his emotions seemed half formed and blunted. His was operating on instinct. It did little to know all this because he couldn't change it. Once the sleep had taken him, he was condemned to have to wait for his body to recover before he was fully aware again. If that meant shuffling along only half alert, there was nothing to be done about it. The weary beast inside him – oddly – was content with this. It felt….. safe, somehow.

The only anchor he had to the world was the single familiar awareness that was ever close to him. In his current state, the animal in him trusted it. The mental link was constant, now, though it seemed resistant to his efforts to break into it. He wanted to dig into it and bury himself within it; his instinct demanded the shield of a fully-awake mental sheath to protect him while he was so vulnerable. He was distantly confused and upset that his only security would resist his need. When the presence was closest to him, the beast within him lashed out – tried to force a stronger connection with blood and saliva.

He couldn't fully understand, even had he been wholly aware, the nature of this impulse. Saiyan saliva contained a venom of sorts. A bite would trigger the sacks under his tongue to fill his mouth with this venom so he could inject it through puncture wounds caused by sharp teeth. It would act as a lubricant, enabling his ki to easily flow through her body after the venom had spread. It also acted as a suppressant; the ki of the one being bitten would accept the infiltrating ki of the biter instead of fighting it – like fooling the immune response into thinking the foreign ki was organic instead of external. The flow of the biter's ki would align the two physical bodies and put them in-tune with each other. This would extend the range of telepathic contact, and over time and hundreds of bites, strengthen and extend it imeasurably.

The taste of blood flowing over the tongue of the biter triggered the venom sacks to produce. Exposure to the same blood, over time, would alter the chemistry of the venom to match the chemistry of the bitten; in essence, the venom would customize itself to target the bitten, increasing in potency as well as effectiveness. A bite containing perfectly matched venom would have great effect the one being bitten; ki from the biter could be absorbed and manipulated by the bitten. Such was necessary when coupling. Sharing and controlling each other's ki prevented two Saiyans from damaging each other accidentally. It also allowed two Saiyans a complete and seamless mental connection.

In his half asleep state, he was trying to create a place in which his consciousness could rest safely, deep in the mind of something his animal self couldn't resist. The contact was a balm to the beast and it didn't want to, even if it could, let go of it. Had Vegeta dozens of other Saiyan minds to protect him as he slept, he'd have felt a similar cocoon of safety, but all his life, he had only had Nappa and Radditz. They had shaped his mind as he aged from childhood to adulthood, but they had shaped it in such a way to both protect him from and ruthlessly attack outside threats.

No one had ever prepared him from an attack from within himself. Inside, the suppressed, frightened, lonely animal cried out for comfort and peace it had only felt for the first time in the last days. And the source of that peace opposed him. Angry and forsaken, the beast raged.

And that is how Vegeta finally awoke.

When the woman sighed in her sleep, his eyes opened. Blinking, he took in the scene without moving his head, and he tasted the air with open lips. He wasn't certain exactly where he was, how long he had been here, or why. But for the first time, he felt as though he were thinking clearly in a long while. Searching his memory, he tried to recall the last events before his body had succumbed to the sleep of the Khep'njuhr.

He remembered being on Earth and confronting the woman. He knew he had killed Zarbon – he grinned at this – and he distantly recalled being shot with an impossibly powerful energy rifle. As he stared at the back of the head of the woman three or four feet away from him, he scowled. They had been her weapons. Why hadn't he killed her for being responsible for an attack on him?

He narrowed his eyes. The memories were growing more dreamlike and far away, but he pushed through the cob webs. The woman had protected him. He blinked into the darkness at this discovery. The same suspicion and confusion he had felt in those moments bubbled up from his spine and broke into his brain. He didn't know what to make of it, so he placed it to the side to dissect later in favor of completing an inventory of his memories.

There had been a cage made of steel bars – where the woman had shown him what the contraptions on her wrist could do. And she had bandaged him. Cui had come and had brought them here, for what purpose, he didn't know.

The human had protected him from an orange blob with something she had made.. and.. and?

She had given him water.

He remembered nothing else. But it had been enough to make his mind whorl. He didn't know why, but as he studied her form as she slept, he felt betrayed by her. He couldn't make sense of this. One had to trust another to feel betrayed. He neither knew nor trusted this woman. He couldn't fathom why he should feel small and lost… alone… or why he felt the stab of rejection. The constant feeling of confusion irritated him and made solitude, no matter how alone he was, seem preferable. He wanted nothing from her except to be rid of her.

In fact, his presence here began with her. Radditz had gone to Earth and died there, and Vegeta had also gone to Earth and nearly followed Radditz unto death. Her weapon had wounded him – the sheer amount of power her rifle had expelled confounded him. He wasn't as strong as some, but he was stronger than most. He had bested Zarbon, even in the lizzard's hideous transformed state. True, Vegeta had almost gone above the limit of control he had with his overly-charged, wildly fluctuating ki, but he hadn't and now Zarbon was dead.

His mind took a sudden turn and he wondered. Now that he had mostly healed from such a wounded state, could he now tap into the legendary golden form? Even if he could, would he be able to control it? Or would it do as it had done to Brolly a thousand years ago? Brolly had been raised with hundreds of Saiyans to help him learn control, and yet when he had ascended, control had failed him. Vegeta had been raised with only two, and could hardly control his ki when he was powered up too high or overcome with emotion.

He sighed deeply and let the air rush out through his nose. That line of thinking was pointless, especially now, collared as he was. Instead, he continued to survey the room. The bay was enormous and swathed in darkness, but his eyes could easily discern what most could not. Likely this place was intended to be used as a rock and mineral transport; a mining ship. The walls looked to be reinforced to prevent leaks off of materials that had been exposed to the radiated vacuum of space or poisonous environment of uninhabitable planets. It was perfect for trafficking beings. If the craft were boarded to be inspected, areas such as these would be avoided because most often, these kinds of areas were contaminated.

The woman sighed again, and shifted in her sleep. His attention was pulled from examining their cage to studying her prone form. Her back had been towards him, but now she faced him. In the darkness, her coloring was bleached and monotone, but her features were clear. Under her eyelids, her eyes danced; she was dreaming. At first, the temptation to look into her mind was so natural and impulsive, he found himself deep inside her thoughts before he realized it. The alarm of this easy penetration – and the fact that he had desired to do so at all in the first place - was so intense, he fiercely pulled himself back. The withdraw was so fierce and absolute, it left him reeling. Pulled off balance, he felt ill.

Horrified, he lay there doing nothing for long minutes. What had happened while he had slept? How had his mind so completely infiltrated hers? It was as if he had somehow found every dark corner, every seam, every crack - and filled it with himself. Without the foundations of her mind, he felt his own mind falter. Looking at her sleeping, he knew she felt it, too. In her slumber, her face was scrunched up in pain, her body was tense and shaking, and her hands had spread like claws, scratching at her own skin like she was trying to tear the sensation of mental devastation away.

Furious – at her, at himself.. at everything – he reestablished a connection; the weakest one he could manage. He could and would expel himself completely, but it would take some time to do so without causing her damage. He didn't care if he hurt her, but if he pulled out too quickly, she would fight him. Even if it were unintentional, she had grown accustomed to his presence in her mind. And, if he extracted himself too quickly, her mind would scrape and slash against his while looking for footholds to keep his consciousness entwined with her own. And that would damage him.

Breathing heavily and sweating – even the slight withdraw he had managed was difficult – he put his head down to rest and tried to force his body to stop shaking. He lowered his eyebrows and pinched his nose between a thumb and finger. He shouldn't be surprised. In his wounded state, his subconscious had reached out to the only familiar mind he could find. Growling, exasperated and revolted, he stared at the ceiling. How the hell could he have even been able to do this? She was HUMAN. She wasn't even telepathic. His unconscious efforts should have broken her mind, if not killed her.

Instead, he found himself half sick with a headache that made him feel like his brain had been pulled out of his skull from his ears and left to rot in the sun. His eyes fluttered as he tried to focus through double vision to settle on the distant ceiling. When something trickled down his cheek, he wasn't surprised to see that it was blood when he brushed his nose with his fingertips. The last time he had been so tied with other minds, the ripping aftershocks of those connections being severed all at once as those minds died had nearly killed him. But he had been a very young child. His mind had been more malleable back then. He had survived and adapted, even if he had never quite recovered.

Turning his head to study the blue-haired female, he saw that her face was, if not as peaceful as before, was not crumpled in pain, either. In that moment he was afraid of and despised her because he needed her. At least for a little while – long enough to pull himself free.

He turned his back to her and tried to sleep. After minutes of failure, he grudgingly flipped back to face her. He stayed like this for many minutes, unmoving and breathing deeply. When he could stand the restlessness no longer, he tentatively, gently pushed at her mind with his own and closed his eyes.

She was dreaming about sunshine.