Bulma was numb as she watched him leave. It didn't last long. She crumpled to the ground in a boneless heap as a tidal wave of frozen fire consumed her core. She felt unreal.. disconnected from reality. No one was meant to survive such devastation. Her body felt like caving in on itself but her soul felt as though it were blowing apart.
She rocked back and forth on the floor, her arms wrapped around herself as if they alone held her together.
She didn't know how long she sat there, or when awareness started trickling back in. Thoughts were sluggish – as if coming from somewhere far away, and not from within.
She wasn't aware of time; didn't notice the ship around her come to life. It wasn't until one of her many assistants tried to enter the lab that some alien part of her reared up and took control of her body. It flung her to the door and accessed a side panel there, and used her fingers to type in a string of code locking everyone out.
She stared at those fingers, then at the hands… the wrists, the arms. She looked down and saw a body she couldn't feel – but realized that she could see it. That meant the automated lights – programmed to follow the Galactic standard of 28 hour days – had buzzed to life.
Thoughts, plans, frantic ideas – so many they drowned out everything else - came crashing into her brain. She didn't have much time.
When the tattered remnants of her jeans slid down her legs, she kicked them away as she ran to an overflowing work table. In a single swoop, she cleared anything that had been on its surface, not seeing or caring what crashed to the floor. When the sleeves of her fraying lab coat slid down her arms, she tore the jacket off and let it fall to her feet.
She stormed through the lab, tearing pieces of equipment, wiring, plating, bio-organic programmed chips, and anything else that looked to have potential as she passed. She didn't feel the slices and nicks from sharp edges or burns from chemicals as she flew from one station to the next, cannibalizing everything she had slaved over the past six weeks. It was all useless junk. None of it had solved her problem, and she knew none of it ever would. She had known that almost two weeks ago, but had refused to accept. it
There was absolutely no way to reopen the worm hole. It may on its own in a few millennia – but until then, it was truly and absolutely gone. Without it, her friends were also gone. Without it, she had nowhere to go that was out of the reach of Frieza. She had nowhere to run – nowhere safe. No place to regroup. Nowhere to take Vegeta. All the gadgets she had made, preparing for escape – anticipating whatever may lay on the other side – were useless.
With no reason to keep anything, she overlooked items only if she couldn't think of a way to repurpose their parts.
Never before had her genius flowed so awesomely from concept to construct. Her fingers danced over pieces and parts, creating a masterpiece that crossed computer with corporal, biology and program. It was a living thing she made, without self-awareness but possessing a consciousness nonetheless. It could learn and adapt, subtly self-reinforce, and misdirect to self-protect. It was by far, her greatest work.
It was well into the night cycle of the second turn when she finished. 40 hours. 40 hours to invent the best and the worst device she had ever made.
She stood, shaky. She hadn't eaten or slept, and though she still felt too numb to feel hunger, her limbs prickled with sensation after 2 days of restricted blood flow. It was odd… to have been obsessively consumed – possessed – with the insane need to finish. And now, she was done.
She suddenly felt heavy, but resisted the urge to fall right where she stood and allow sleep to wash over her. She shook off a wave of light-headedness and instead stretched her neck and rolled her shoulders. Letting her head fall back, she stared at the ceiling briefly before looking to her left out of a corner of her eye. It was then she saw what she had done – how completely she had destroyed most of her projects.
She barked in laughter, feeling a little crazy and a lot of sadness.
Sighing, she again walked through the picked over left overs of all her hard work, this time, assessing damage – but not because she mourned for all that was lost. Strangely, she felt nothing more than a distant regret that so much time had been put into things that would never become anything. Mostly, she felt the hollowness of not caring. This, more than anything, sparked a small desire to save something. She had cared deeply about these things… all of them… days ago? It seemed so much longer than that.
Here and there, she found odds and ends – contraptions meant for the utterly unknown in preparation for going through a worm hole that didn't exist. This thing, like the mask Vegeta had worn that first time she had seen him on Earth, filtered gasses and other substances into something breathable. This version was small and limited; it fit into and over the mouth, could only function for a short time, and didn't allow the ability to see in different light spectrums.
In the corner, she found the collar Vegeta had been wearing. It had been the first project Frieza had insisted she work on. She had known it to be a test; if she was able to fix and improve upon the design, Frieza would then allow her the freedom to choose her own projects. She had been reluctant, but capitulated quickly because – at the time – she had believed it didn't matter. She and Vegeta would be on the other side of the wormhole. So, she had improved the design – made it more stable. Vegeta had been able to overload and partially destroy it, and this was the design flaw Frieza wanted repaired. Bulma had learned quite a lot about the collar when she dissected it; the thing was able to grow in strength as Vegeta grew in strength. When it had first been placed around the Saiyan's neck, it had been relatively easy for him to overload it. Over time, it had adapted; not only did it use ki to reinforce itself, it used the strength of Vegeta's ki to suppress his ki. In essence, Newton's 3rd law: the more ki Vegeta tried to use, the more that very same ki was turned in on itself to suppress. This was why it had become increasingly difficult for Vegeta to finally overpower it. The Saiyan had literally broken physics to do so.
It had made her sick to reinvent the collar, even if the science was fascinating. She didn't believe she'd ever see one again, despite Frieza's mass distribution to prison planets he owned. And whoever else would pay a high enough price for them. She never planned on seeing the collar again, but she wasn't stupid. She had made certain to build in a hidden flaw only she could exploit, should she ever chose to do so. If she ever deactivated a single collar, every collar would simply… stop functioning. Depending on distance, not a single collar would be of any use within days after the first went offline. Merry Christmas, Lizard Lord.
She hastily encapsulated the tools she had used to manipulate the collar's innards. She'd rather have them and never need them than need them…
She found other items tucked here and there and, because it had been in her original plan to do so and she had no reason to do otherwise now, she capsulated the items and hung them like pill-charms on her bracelet. After a year, most of the charms were empty. Somehow, it felt good to have something inside them again. It was a small measure of control. If nothing else, it was a secret stash. She may never use these things, but it was something only she knew about. That alone felt like a kind of victory when she had nothing else.
And now… Vegeta.
She couldn't even imagine how he had gotten into her labs. Yet, even had she left a sign on the door, inviting him in, she hadn't expected him to come find her – at least – not so soon. She knew he could be self- destructive, but she hadn't wanted to believe his subconscious, animal brain would be so full of rage and need, it would rather damage the whole of Vegeta's mind in the effort to find her than to allow it's want to be suppressed. She thought she had more time… It had completely taken her off guard when he had suddenly appeared. She hadn't been prepared for mental contact, and her sleeping mind had reacted instinctively. It wanted him and he was there. So.. it had latched onto him and pulled him in. And…. He had let her.
The rush of joy had woken her – and she shoved him out before either of them had a chance to reestablish a connection. It was so unnatural and abhorrent to her subconscious mind, expelling him was like forcing herself to breathe water. It had been much worse for him.
She should have made him forget the encounter; rewrap his memories so that his subconscious was a quiet whisper instead of a low roar only he'd be stubborn enough to hear. But…
When he held up his hand, she could feel the ki sparking between his fingers. His ki! Never before had she felt his ki with her own flesh using her own senses. It was electric and hot as it buzzed against her skin, slightly painful but wholly sensual in the way it paved jolting sparks up her spine and through the nerves of her body. There was no struggle for him, no agonizing reach for power just to be swallowed in a gulf of nothingness, cut off from his life essence by a cold contraption around his neck.
It was Vegeta in a way she had never experienced before; his soul touching her, flowing through her.
She wasn't frightened. How could she be? She could feel the eager caress of his animal side in that pulse of ki at her back – and she knew it recognized her. She felt its frantic desire to join with her again and longed to give in to it. She knew these things, but Vegeta could not know them. Not consciously.. So she decided to put things the way they should be – at least until she could figure out a way for them to escape. She was about to turn around, but he beat her to it. When he spun her to face him, she saw the look on his face and she forgot everything.
Anguish, rage, betrayal, regret, longing, despair….
His fingertips lightly kissed the tattoo on her chin, and she suddenly understood why Frieza had done this to her. She hadn't known at the time; she had just been told it was something to protect her. She knew it was a mark of some kind – a slave's brand, likely – that set her apart. She hadn't considered it was a message to anyone. Especially not to Vegeta. Yet, he stood before her, transfixed, a hollow sadness radiating from his every pore.
And then, it was gone. He snatched his hand away and backed away from her, suddenly wary and suspicious of her. Again, he lifted his arm and a ball of ki formed in the palm of his hand. He seemed calm – as if he couldn't be bothered with finding a desire to kill her – and this seemed to perplex him. He stepped forward in an attempt to threaten her - perhaps force her to respond to him in a way that was familiar to him? Yet instead, she calmly watched him and did nothing to defend herself. After a few moments of his unease and confusion, she took his hand between her own and stepped into his touch. He needed to understand that he wasn't confused.. he simply would not - could not - hurt her. Only then would he stop hurting himself by trying so hard to do something his subconscious refused to allow.
His hand on her chest was hot, and her heartbeat under it leapt in joy. He swallowed his ki before it could burn her, but the split second of contact had been deliciously thrilling. Her body ached to wrap itself around him.
When he spoke to her in Saiy-go, she hadn't been surprised by his question. Of course he couldn't kill her. The fact that he had asked her why proved that he knew he couldn't – but it also proved that he believed she knew him well enough to know why. It was a show of vulnerability and submission to admit that she had knowledge he did not, that he believed she would not use the information against him, and most importantly, he was asking for her help because – even if she were his enemy – he trusted her more than he trusted himself.
Somehow, he knew she had understood his words. The look of warning in his eyes and his curling lip around bared teeth told her that if she wanted his animal side to stay on her side, she couldn't lie to him. So, she compromised. She would answer him, but she wouldn't speak. She would whisper. There were already breaches in the cocoon holding his memories at bay. If she poked any more holes in it, the wall holding those memories in place would collapse. The rush of images, sensations, experiences… everything from the past year descending upon him all at once - could do unpredictable things.
Yet.. when he had demanded to know what she was to him…
She could feel his torment.
And she could deny him nothing.
The moment her voice spilled over her lips and caressed his ears, she sensed the immediate change in him. His entire body lurched as if his soul were fighting to be released from its corporeal cage. It reached right through her blood and bone and wrapped itself around her own spirit, filling her with warmth and life she had denied herself the moment she severed their telepathic link. All thought had vanished as her pseudo-Saiyan cells responded more forcefully than her mind could ever hope to overpower.
When he pushed away from her, she only ached for his touch to be returned to her. It was only when he had snarled at her in rage that her mind had cleared.
And she knew he knew.
Enough of the wall holding back the tidal wave of his memories had crumbled. It wasn't much, but it was just enough for him to remember utter and complete betrayal. It wasn't his anger, or the threat of retribution. It wasn't even how close he had come to biting her hand – which he very well could have done had he not purposefully withheld his speed. None of these things she feared.
It was the total look of hurt on his face that filled her with terror. She would have preferred a ki blast crushing her heart. But now he knew what she was capable of. His trust in her was a lie.
He hated her.
But what sliced her belly open and pulled her guts out onto the floor was that, despite hating her….
He still wanted her.
And he hated himself for it.
So, she had spent the better part of two days concocting a way to fix it. She was a scientist. Hadn't she told Frieza she could make anything if it could be imagined?
But she owed it to Vegeta to try it his way, first - Plan A. She would go to him. She would allow him to exact his revenge on her in any way he wished. The collar seemed to have trained his ki to snuff out just as it was about to explode, so she had a few seconds before it reignited to snap him out of it before she disintegrated. It wasn't impossible…. If she survived the encounter, she would dedicate everything… everything.. to finding a way out for them. If she didn't survive, well..Plan B. It really wouldn't matter, would it? She'd simply haunt Vegeta until he died and could punish her for eternity in the afterlife.
The only alternative to either of plan A or B was.. what she had spent two days designing.
So well into the hours when it was quiet and most were sleeping – which still surprised her considering the plethora of alien life on board; she had believed that from such a large number of species, at least some would have varied sleep cycles – she crept out of her labs. She wore only a lab coat; it would be pointless to wear more than that. In her pocket, her invention was tucked away inside of a capsule. She hadn't connected it to her charm bracelet. Instead, she rolled it between her thumb and fingers and felt its cool, indifferent hardness.
She didn't think as she followed her feet to Vegeta's room. She wasn't even sure how she knew where it was. She had purposefully avoided looking in on him. She supposed that with all of the inescapable news trickling in regarding the starship's most volatile, hot-blooded warrior, she had been able to subconsciously piece it together.
Or, more likely... her heart knew what it wanted. Somehow...she could just... sense him.
She approached his door languidly, but her heart was pounding so powerfully, she could feel it in her toes. When she was just outside – close enough to knock should she chose – the door.. simply opened. Vegeta appeared and glared down at her with hard, unreadable eyes. His gaze dropped to take note of her garb, allowing her to do the same to him. Apparently, Saiyans slept naked when they weren't sharing a cave or a transport ship with dozens of aliens. Her insides twisted hotly and she forced her eyes up. He noticed – but his expression remained completely stoic. After a few moments of silence that seemed both too long and too short, he stepped to the side and allowed her to enter. She strode past him lightly, clutching her lab coat closed in front of her.
The bed on the far wall was neatly made on one side, if 'neat' or 'made' were accurate words for blankets that were thrown on to the mattress and left as they lay. It was the other side of the bed that caught her attention. It was crumpled as if the Saiyan had been dozing there, but the blankets weren't mussed in such a way she would expect after a year of watching the way he slept. She was intrigued; the bed was clearly too small for him to have accidentally left one side untouched. So he had… left it that way purposefully… for her to occupy it?
The thought disappeared as Vegeta pressed the length of his body against her back. His breath was hot on her neck, sending chills down her spine. He wrapped his arms around her and gently grabbed her wrists and squeezed them gently. She complied with his demand and she released her hold on the lab coat, allowing it to fall open at the front. He pulled it from her shoulders and tugged it from her body, letting it fall to the floor in a pool at her feet. As he walked towards the waiting bed, she was pushed ahead of him. Before her shins could hit the frame, he grabbed her waist and turned her to face him before lifting her from the floor and dropping her to bounce on the mattress. Before she settled, he was leaning over her, knees between her thighs. Grabbing her hips, he yanked her towards him and, holding her in place with his tail wrapped around one thigh, used his newly freed hand to position himself at her opening.
Grabbing her thigh again, he glided his hand down her leg to her ankle, and slid her calf into place around the small of his back. Then, leaning over her, he bit painfully into the meat of her neck and thrust himself fully into her in the same moment.
The shock of nothingness to all of him – both in mind and in body for the first time - was absolute. Her mind stretched and broke around him just at traumatically as her flesh. Her body surged with twisted electricity. Her mind, suddenly hazy and incoherent, could do nothing but ride the tide as the searing throb of his heat burned through her. Her back arched in an involuntary shudder and forced its way up her spine in a sick collision of pleasure and pain that was impossible to distinguish. They coexisted, each augmenting the other. Both welled within her until she was overwhelmed.
Vegeta had memories of this... but they were incomplete. He did not remember that those memories had been made within his mind. If she had any hope of surviving this before, it vanished a little more with every heave of his body against hers.
She held him close and blinked when her eyes filled with tears, releasing them to pave two hot paths to drip on the blankets beneath her. She had told him once that if she were to meet death, she would rather it be him who killed her. She had meant it.
Relaxing his jaw, he released her from his bite. He groaned in her ear and chuffed, and she dug her nails into his back as and tossed her head to the side to hide her face. She didn't want him to see she was in pain. Not yet. Not until she had to.
Another rolling wave of ki blasted through her body. The sensual agony was a liquid drug that flowed through her veins and seared her synapses. His very essence vibrated against hers, forcing her to reverberate with such violence, she felt as though she were coming apart. He seared through her veins, scorching away her fragile humanity, leaving her soul utterly exposed.
It was too much! Too much! He was filling her with too much ki and her body was slowly melting from the inside -
A shriek tore through her burning throat and cracked lips. Shuddering, she tried pushing him away with muscles that were far too decimated to comply with her efforts. When another, more powerful surge of ki sizzled through Vegeta and was pulled back, she knew she had seconds before it erupted outwards again in an explosive blast that would burn her to ash.
She lost her mind to fear and pain. Distantly, she heard the sounds of terrified, soul shattering screaming. Everything started to quake. The blankets under her whipped violently in a hot wind, and were ripped from beneath her to be shredded in the maelstrom of the electric storm. Everything was on fire with angry lightning as it hungrily cascaded in forks of brilliant color that burned her retinas. The pressure was crushing, and though she felt her eardrums burst, it did nothing to quiet the thunderous vibration that was so loud in her bones, she'd have heard it even without ears. Her voice had long since gone out, and still she continued to scream. It wasn't until she heard a far away a voice not her own, louder even than reality shattering around her, that she was pulled from the brink of madness. His voice filled her mind and flooded her with a different kind of fear. As alien as he was – more beast than man - never before had she imagined such a being could scream the way he was screaming.
With the last of her strength, she bit down on a pill casing she had put in her mouth before leaving her lab. It was one of the designs she had saved at the last moment, but hadn't safely tucked away in her charm bracelet. Though a derivative of the healing pod's liquid; bio-engineered for instant healing, it was flawed. It healed completely, but unlike the senzu beans she had been trying to recreate, her formula was only a temporary fix. She had saved it, anyway, knowing a few minutes could provide time to find a regen tank - another project in her lab she had taken on and upgraded. Now, she was grateful to have thought to bring the pill along.
The capsule fractured between her teeth, and the liquid flooded her mouth. She swallowed the bitter taste and pushed herself over the side of the bed before the formula had taken full effect. She landed in a heap with a hard thud, but pushed the sensation of pain and heaviness desperately to the side. She drug herself to Vegeta on the far side of the small room. The force of flinging himself off of her had caused the metal wall behind him to dent. His back was pressed tightly to the corner, but still he continued to push against the floor with his feet in an attempt to get further away from her. His head was thrown back, and his bared teeth were clenched tightly closed, as were his eyes. Every vein stood out against shaking muscles. The effort of pulling in his ki was so monumental, bloody sweat trickled from his pores as capillaries burst.
Every second felt like an eternity as he fought for control.
She knew better than to touch him, but she couldn't watch him struggle and do nothing. Out of desperation and completely on an impulse she acted upon before she even realized she was doing it, she reached inside herself and tried to manifest her own ki. She had been inside his mind for a year and had felt him do it more times than she could count..
Her ki rose to meet her like a soft, gentle wave. She had no idea how to manipulate it, but she knew how to wrap her mind around his. This was no different.
She blanketed herself around his wildly fluctuating energy, not allowing herself to be thwarted by fear. Immediately, he tried to block her, but just as quickly, resistance fell away. If it was because he couldn't fight both himself and her at the same time, or if it was because he recognized what she gave, she didn't know. It didn't matter. She flowed into him and completely gave herself over to his control. He seized her life's essence, tugging more and more for much needed strength until she felt as though she would be left a pillar of ashes. Still, she did not let him go.
At last, he released her. She oozed back into herself, thick and slow, and utterly depleted. She must have lost consciousness briefly once or twice, but she couldn't be certain. She was dizzy and she felt heavy. She had pulled herself to sit against the wall near his legs and was thankful for it; the wall was the only thing holding her upright. She leaned her head back and nearly fell asleep, but a soft keening startled her awake.
She didn't recognize the sound, but something about it… it tore right through the part of her that was human and sang to the part of her that was Saiyan. The part of her that was nothing but instinct and feeling. It cracked open her rib cage and made her bleed. It was horrible and haunting. It was the manifestation of every sorrow ever known and expressed in a single sound.
A strangled sob burst from her lips and she swung her head towards Vegeta. Tears had erupted the moment she had heard him and continued to stream down her face. Though the anatomy of his eyes didn't allow him this release, the sound of his keening was much, much, more agonizing to bear.
She couldn't speak. Fighting to regain control, she choked once or twice before she couldn't hold it any longer. She flung herself at him, wrapped her arms around his slumped form, and buried her head in his chest. There, she cried tears for them both. The healing formula she had taken would take time to wear off completely, but her muscles were starting to ache. She ignored it and stayed curled against Vegeta. Though he didn't hold her in return, he didn't push her away, either.
And every few breaths, the quiet, undulating, high-pitched sound of his keening would tear through her body and cut her soul….
She couldn't stand it.
She pushed herself away from him and grabbed his face in her hands. His expression was listless and unchanging, but his eyes were swimming in grief, failure, loss.. pain. When he whined softly again, she broke.
"Stop it.. Stop it, Vegeta!" She forced through a throat choked with tears.
She leaned her forehead against his. "You're breaking my heart," she whispered.
His breath rasped in his chest and she could feel him swallow. His eyelids fluttered as he focused on her, and she lifted her head from his. He reached his hands and took her wrists gently in his grasp, lowering her hands from his face. Then, light as a feather, caressed the tattoo on her chin with the pad of his thumb.
"It is beyond my reach…" he said softly. She didn't know exactly what significance the tattoo held, but she knew he was talking about her. About freedom, about life… about everything he had ever wanted.
She closed her eyes, and two more tears paved paths down her cheeks.
As she had crawled over to him, she had retrieved her lab coat on the way and had pulled a capsule from the pocket. She had nearly given her life for want of any other way – but there was no other way.
She pressed the button on the capsule. It didn't pop open like any of her other capsules; it was designed to stay small. The contents were microscopic, anyway. No – pressing the button released a tiny, protruding needle. She sucked in her breath and held it, afraid that if she let it out, she would start sobbing uncontrollably.
Leaning towards him, she brushed her lips against his and plunged the needle into the flesh between his jaw and his ear. She stood quickly, then, and picked up her lab coat and threw it on quickly before reaching the door. She paused but didn't look back before walking through it.
She practically ran back to her lab. She needed to finish this.
She had written a program into microscopic, self-replicating, bio-genetic robots. The nano-robots would act like neurons that would suppress pathways in the brain and form new, synthetic pathways to bypass those that were organic. Over time, the organic pathways would deteriorate all together from lack of use. The synthetic pathways would stimulate the brain, and organic neurons would replace the synthetic. It wasn't blocking memories, it was eradicating access to memory until the brain could completely rewire itself. It wouldn't be painful, and even the subconscious couldn't bypass the process. It was the perfect way to eliminate her from his mind completely without damaging him. The beauty and the horror was, if there were holes, his mind would automatically, subconsciously invent ways to fill the missing pieces. Because he invented those fillers himself, he wouldn't resist them.
Unless the organic pathways were to somehow become so stimulated they overwhelmed any new synthetic pathways, there was no coming back from this. After time – maybe a month, give or take a couple – nothing at all could restore the memories. You cannot regain what does not exist any longer.
She made it to her lab and slammed the door behind her and leaned against it. She slid down until she sat at its base and cradled her knees between her arms while she rocked back and forth.
For this to work, there could be no exposure. Nothing to remind him of her. Nothing that could make him suspicious, or he'd come hunting for what was lost. He had to have time for the synthetic synapses to take root. The only way to do that would be to send him away.
She stood and walked to a computer consul and pressed the activation button. Tomorrow, Vegeta would get orders sending him to a planetary system resistant to Frieza. On the front line of war, he'd be too distracted to notice if anything was strange or if there were gaps in his memory. Eventually, there would no longer be holes.
She stripped her lab coat and let it fall to the ground. Pressing a second activation code, she watched as the regen tank filled with fluid. Then, with shaking hands, she clicked the button of a second capsule, and plunged the needle into the flesh behind her jaw next to her ear. It wasn't about just surviving, anymore. It was about giving him what he always wanted and couldn't have if he had any memory of her.
She was letting him go.
She was giving him freedom.
She slid into the tank and closed the lid.
