This is a Mirai timeline story. Just to avoid any confusion.

Rain

The unimpressive scenery flew past him, failing to impress Vegeta as he passed by it at an unusually slow speed. He went slowly as he was going nowhere in particular.

Lately it was getting harder and harder to find any sense of purpose or to set any particular goal for himself. What with all the events that had transpired. (Though if he had to be completely honest, there was only one event in particular that had bothered him as hugely.)

Nowadays all he did was just meander through the Capsule Corporation compound aimlessly, not really in a mood to vent his frustrations in the gravity chamber. He had already failed to achieve one of his greatest goals in life—defeating the wretched bastard who had destroyed his people and robbed him of his pride before decimating his heart—and, frankly, he saw no point in trying harder to achieve anything else lately.

Not with Kakarot dead.

Somehow that tiny little detail had succeeded to excellently cripple any and all incentive the Saiyan prince may have had to do anything. He didn't feel like training anymore. He didn't feel much like becoming the legendary for he would have no proper opponent to test it on afterwards. There was no one to stop him if he damn well pleased to incinerate the entire planet even, and yet he couldn't bring himself to care enough to do it. Nothing mattered much to him any longer.

Feeling like a caged animal on Capsule Corporation grounds, he had begun to take these little expeditions of his across the globe more often lately. He flew and flew and flew, the wind blowing past him and ruffling his tall onyx spikes of hair, as he sped towards nowhere. He flew and flew and flew until he tired of that as well, usually landing somewhere in the middle of nothing. There he spent a good several hours thinking about how things had fucked up so royally for him over the course of so little time. When that activity lost its appeal as well, he always went back to Capsule Corporation where there was a sense of quiet, unspoken gloom hanging over all of its inhabitants.

It was insufferable. No one really said anything but he could feel it poignantly hanging in the air of the premises where Bulma and her family were – his human hosts were stricken by a profound sense of loss and grief that he could neither commiserate with nor cared to stay around for.

With Kakarot dead, his purpose for staying on Earth was kind of defeated. And what with his housemates being more than he was willing to handle lately, Vegeta was beginning to think that maybe it was high time that he returned to space: at least there he would feel the numbing sense of familiarity and calming emptiness.

The fleeting thought became a solid decision the more he mulled it over. There was no worth in his staying on this mud ball of a planet anymore, just as there was no use dealing with any of the earthlings it was home to. The thought of being a free man, conquering worlds as his own and beginning to rise to power as a ruler over the universe didn't have the same appeal it used to but at least he found some sense of worth in trying out for it.

When the rain began to pelt on him, Vegeta's mind was already made.

He was going to leave Earth as soon as the woman and her old man could ready him a spaceship to go off with. The saiyan was more than certain the female and her parents would be more than pleased to be rid of him – after all, he was a wildcard and a potential hazard to their lives.

It was early evening when Vegeta landed on the backyard lawn of the Capsule Corporation compound. He was so busy making a mental list of necessities for his departure that he almost completely disregarded the figure a bit further away from him. However, when it moved, it drew his attention.

The prince's brows narrowed in confusion.

"Woman, what in the hell are you doing there?" he demanded sourly, crossing his arms over his chest.

He regarded the earthling's hunched back facing him and her upturned head as it stared into the sky above. She made no move to acknowledge him for a while which made him stomp over to stand in front of her now, fully intending to reiterate his demand much more forcefully than before.

His will to do so siphoned out of him when he saw the broken expression on the heiress' face. Although he rarely passed up the chance to remind Bulma of her physical weakness, he had been quite awed on many occasions by her mental strength. She may not have had the brawn, but she most certainly had the guts. And that was one of the reasons why he had ever given her his time of day to begin with.

Seeing her like this though… It wasn't right. It didn't feel right to see a woman as strong reduced to such a state. It tore at him just looking at her, sitting there, pitifully staring at nothing in particular.

When she turned her gaze to finally fix it on him, he visibly flinched. Gone completely was her usual fervour, to be replaced with a look of sorrow so deep it would've probably played upon his heart strings if he'd only had such. She looked so lost and helpless, sitting there on the grass next to her abandoned project, her hands hanging limply by her sides. From the way her clothes were soaked to the bone it was easy to tell she had been out a while and hadn't moved to find shelter at all since the rain had begun.

And as the droplets of the rain cascaded down to her face they mixed perfectly with the droplets falling from her eyes, masking her act of weakness perfectly.

She stared at him with her wide, imploring empty eyes for what felt like an eternity. And even though seeing her like this disconcerted him to no end, he found himself unable to tear his eyes away from her form in the grass, so powerless she almost seemed lifeless.

"Vegeta," she rasped out then, trying to speak for the first time since his arrival.

Had she only just now noticed his presence, he couldn't help but wonder when she did.

"He… He's…" The dry sobs raked her body. She shook with the effort of suppressing them but the saiyan could see she was fighting a losing battle. "He's gone…"

She said—could say—nothing more as her voice broke. She needed to say nothing further anyway because Vegeta knew perfectly well whom she meant.

He turned his gaze away from her, unable to maintain the contact anymore as his own ghosts rose to haunt him once more.

The woman seated at his feet was shaking, her body almost convulsing with the intensity of her sobs. Her tears fell down her sides unbridled and unnoticed as they mixed with the rain, which was chilling her to the bone.

The proud Saiyan prince turned his eyes away from her, feeling distinctly uncomfortable in the situation he currently found himself in. What he found even more vexing than being out of his element was that there was nothing he could bring himself to say in this situation. Any commentary he could make would be along the lines of offensive at the very least and yet… For the first time since he could remember, he just couldn't bring himself to be, well, himself. He didn't want to say something highly inappropriate or scathing to the pitiful human. He didn't feel like verbally beating her down further when she was already as low as she could get spiritually.

When he turned on his heel to leave her to her own devices though, he found himself unable to do so. The small hand that had grabbed him by a fistful of his jeans barred him from doing so. The man cocked a confused brow at the appendage on his pants' leg. He looked at Bulma questioningly but she said nothing, nor did she look at him. Her gaze was pinned to his feet, her short fringe hiding her face from view.

Was she serious? Did she expect him to comfort her perhaps? Was she utterly insane? And, even if she expected no comfort from him—she'd have to be completely crazy to expect otherwise—why was she making him endure this… this ridiculous situation? What in the world possessed her to believe that he would suffer through this stupidity? And for the sake of what exactly?

The questions chased each other in his head, each one making him more annoyed than the other, wearing his patience thin. Staying outside in the rain with a woman gone mad with grief was not one of his priorities – not then, not ever. He was more eager than he'd ever been to just pry her fingers off of his clothes and walk back inside, not to take a glance back at her again.

He crossed his arms over his chest in a miffed way, eyeing her with a sneer on his features. He was just about ready to tell her that if she wanted to whine and snivel to someone, he was the worst person to do it to. But then he caught sight of her heart-wrenching expression again. He also noticed that the hand on his jeans leg was shaking with emotion.

He stayed standing there for what felt like forever. After a fierce mental debate, Vegeta heaved a defeated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose with his hand.

He stepped away from her hand holding his clothing garment easily. Before the woman could voice her protest though, he sat down on the wet grass next to her instead of leaving like she had thought he would.

He was facing away from her as he turned to look up at the clouds above as well, one arm propped up on his bent knee while his other leg was stretched out in front of him.

As he did so, Vegeta wondered if maybe the rain hadn't chilled him a bit more than he was willing to believe. After all, temporary insanity is the only reason he could think to attribute to his current actions.

Before he could ponder when exactly had his insanity begun, he felt the weight and heat of Bulma's body resting against his back. He took a look at her over his shoulder briefly before turning his head up to the sky again, refusing to acknowledge her presence any further.

He stayed like that, unmoving and unspeaking, until her voice was hoarse with her crying. He stayed until the tremors stopped shaking her form. He stayed until she cried her eyes dry under the rain. He stayed because she only calmed after she had cried herself to sleep or unconsciousness—which of the two he wasn't quite certain.

Once he was sure she was out cold for the time being, Vegeta exhaled in defeat again. He turned around carefully, putting his arms around the frail human woman almost tenderly as he picked her up from the ground. He rose to his feet slowly and carried off the drenched, unconscious Bulma towards her room.

At that point, he was absolutely sure he must've lost his mind somewhere along the way. Not just for humouring her throughout this fiasco. But mostly because of the fact that he had actually found her completely unguarded, grief-ridden expression breath-taking and thought just for a moment just how exquisite this odd creature was in her sorrow.

As Vegeta entered the Capsule Corporation building, he took a fleeting look at the woman in his arms and he knew.

He knew that he would have to put off going back out in space for the time being.

A/N: I liked writing this one, so you guys probably won't like it. It took me an eternity to come up with a story for this prompt for some reason. Even though I can think of two or three times that Vegeta has wallowed in self-pity or seethed with fury under the rain, I wanted it to be something about both of them. Thus, my continued trying until I came up with this. Hope you like.

Chapter Prompt: Theme Set Alpha, #6: Rain.