From what Vegeta could tell, the sun had just begun to rise. The sky had lost its deep blackness, and a dim indigo gradually brightened on the horizon. The room's primary source of light came from a desk lamp not too far from his bed.
He was not alone in the room. Bulma sat at the desk, breathing the deep breaths of one fast asleep. She cushioned her head with the hollow of her arm. Still open, her laptop lay off to her side, and beside it stood a half-drunk mug of coffee. She wore a casual top and a pair of jeans—either she had changed clothes or another full day or more had passed since Vegeta last woke. Very slightly, his heart rate increased as he recalled what had transpired when last he was conscious.
He remembered feeling dazed and weightless; he remembered the woman's presence, and he remembered how she had spoken to him of a drug that had dulled his senses. As far as he could tell, his mind seemed much clearer than it had before, but he drew his arm into his line of sight, wanting to assure himself that the needle embedded there had gone. To his chagrin, however, there it still resided, taped to his wrist. What anger its presence had failed to incur before returned to him three-fold, and he nearly snarled audibly. The humans—that woman—thought they could meddle with his mind, and he scorned them for it.
His hands unsteady with rage, he sat up and tore the medical tape from his arm. He glared at Bulma's sleeping face. "How dare you!" he growled gutturally. With more violence than necessary, he ripped the needle from his skin. A droplet of blood gathered at the entry wound.
Bulma snapped awake at the sound of his voice. Surprise and terror quickly spread across her face. "Vegeta! What the hell are you doing?"
With a scream, he hurled the needle and its tubing against the wall. The rack that suspended his IV went clattering to the floor.
"Calm down right now! That was just your medicine—I told you about it already. Calm the fuck down, Vegeta!" Bulma had scrambled out of her chair. In the process, she had knocked her mug off of the desk, and it shattered at her feet. She held one hand out in front of her, whether as a reinforcement of her words or as a means of defense Vegeta did not know.
He flung back the blanket and sheets that covered him. Someone had dressed him in a smock of flimsy fabric, and he tossed it away unceremoniously. Everything that touched him seemed an affront to his person; he would get out of this hateful room as swiftly as he could. He searched himself for any offending medical attachments.
"Stop!" Bulma yelled.
"Quiet, woman! Get out of my—" a cry interrupted his speech. Wincing and gritting his teeth, he yanked a catheter from himself. After a moment of hesitation resulting from the sudden, sharp pain, he leaped to his feet. He flipped the bed onto its side out of sheer wrath.
"What the fuck! Now you've really lost it!" Bulma cried, backing herself into a corner. "Calm down!"
Sputtering lividly, Vegeta scanned the floor for a clear path to the door. The smooth tiles had become a field of hazards, cluttered with an assortment of broken ceramic and medical equipment and newly slick with an admixture of saline solution, urine, and lukewarm coffee. The sight of all the chaos itself only angered the Saiyan further, and with a few hastily-planned strides, he fled into the hallway. The woman's footsteps echoed behind him; she followed him as he had expected.
"Vegeta!" she called out after him. "Are you out of your fucking mind?"
Before he knew where his feet carried him, Vegeta had escaped onto the Capsule Corp. lawn. He stood still for a moment, turning his head every which way in search of somewhere to go. His ship—Capsule No. 3—it rested in its usual place; someone had cleared away the rubble and had at least begun a reconstruction. He darted for it.
"You can't be serious!" Bulma screeched.
Within a matter of seconds, Vegeta had disappeared into the bowels of the ship, locking the hatch behind him. He fumbled with the switches at the main console, hoping that he could get the gravity simulator online. Outside, he could hear Bulma pounding the ship's hull furiously. He did not care. Once the gravity simulator's screen flickered on, he commanded it to carry out a sequence set at four hundred times Earth's gravity. He fetched threw on a pair of athletic shorts sloppily as the computer processed his request.
As the machine began to hum, Vegeta noted that he could no longer hear Bulma knocking. Perhaps she had finally acquired enough sense to realize that he did not want her anywhere near him presently. A little relieved, the Saiyan tried to catch his breath. Although his chest still ached, he found he could breathe deeply without an unreasonable amount of discomfort. He wondered how long he had lain recovering; he had no way of knowing.
After a couple minutes, Vegeta realized that the gravity simulator had maxed out at fifty times normal gravity. Dr. Briefs had not finished his reconstruction, apparently. The Saiyan was angry enough about everything else that it did not matter to him whether the gravity reached the level he desired. The familiarity of pressure and routine alone sufficed in comforting him. He sighed as he focused his energy and lifted himself into the air.
But only seconds later, Bulma's face flashed before him, projected by the satellite communicator. Vegeta ground his molars together.
"Stop it, Vegeta!" she yelled, her words hoarse with emotion. "You're in no condition to be doing this right now. You could get yourself killed. I know you don't want to believe it, but you are made of flesh and blood. You can get hurt, and you have weaknesses just like everybody else! Why are you doing this to yourself?"
Vegeta could feel his pulse in his head. "You dare to pester me, woman, after all you have done? Leave me alone!"
"You know I'm right! Why don't you just listen to me? You're hurt, Vegeta—hurt."
His focus slipping away, he collapsed. He fell on his side.
Bulma gasped. "Why don't you admit to yourself that you're hurt? Everybody knows it but you. Nothing to say? Admit that I'm right! Listen to me—get out of there right now and go back to bed!"
His side sending stabs of agony through his body, Vegeta clawed at the ground to keep himself from crying out. "No—no, you listen!" he rasped. "Leave me—alone!" The cry he had tried to suppress came out with those words. His eyes burned and throbbed with the hot blood that flooded through every capillary.
Bulma whimpered as if on the verge of tears. Vegeta hated it, hated her. He hated himself; why couldn't he get up? He screamed into the floor with the high-pitched screech of a child. He smashed his fist against the ground, the force of it shaking out the water that had collected in his eyes. The light from the projection had gone; at least the woman had ended her transmission. At least he didn't have to see or hear her anymore. At least no one was there to watch him like this, sobbing in quivering heap like a broken man. And he lay there like that for a time he would never care to estimate.
Vegeta heard a heavy crash. The hum of the gravity simulator slowed, then ceased entirely. The hatch had been unlocked and opened. Someone had gained admittance into the ship, someone had come for him; he knew who it was. Even with the pressure lifted, he remained motionless. His rage had melted away into apathy.
Bulma ran awkwardly to his side, then knelt. Vegeta glanced at her lethargically; more than anything, she seemed afraid. She had stretched her hand toward his face, but she let it hover motionlessly a couple inches above his cheek as if she had not decided whether to touch him or not. "Vegeta—" she muttered.
He blinked the tears from his eyes. "What business is it of yours," he began with a bitter whisper, "what business is it of yours if I die, if I choose to end my life? Do you know what I have done? Do you know what I have left undone? Do you know how I have failed?" He raised his voice with every syllable. "I should have died! What does it matter? Everything was taken from me—everything. Even Frieza was taken from me. Even my hatred. Even my death was taken—stolen from me! Not even that wish was granted."
Bulma only listened. Her hand still hovered over him incredulously.
"Yes." He nodded manically. "Yes, I admit it. I am broken. I am hurt. I pretend that I don't believe it, but I really do. I pretend that you are wrong. Because if lose my pride and give up my pretending, then I am nothing. My life is lies, a mistake—in truth, I am nothing. I am destroyed. I am dead. I have been nothing for a very long time, and Frieza loved me for it." His tone had dropped to a sharp, cutting hiss. "I never wanted immortality." He spat the word as if it disgusted him. "I only wanted to kill Frieza; immortality was a means to an end. And now that he's gone, what do I have? I have Kakarot—just Kakarot, the one who took my reason for living. And yet he's the one who—out of mercy—gave me life!"
Tears had risen to Bulma's eyes. Her hand trembled.
"Look at me!" he said. "This is who I really am." He took her hand in his own, then pressed it to his cheek. She trembled still. "You've known it all along. Is it what you expected? Did you want to be right about this? Because you are. I hope you're satisfied, woman. You even proved it to me in a way I'd never expected. From your little experiment, I learned that my race was no more than a handful of humans Frieza's people took, broke, and then destroyed!"
"Vegeta, I—I don't know what to say."
A single dark laugh escaped his throat. "For once, you have nothing to say. You've finally pried me open, but you have nothing to say about it. You just wanted to tamper with me; you just wanted to see which one of your little tools could loosen my screws. You wanted to get into my head and play with it—just like Frieza."
"No. That's not it at all—!"
"Don't mock me. I do not need your insult. This whole planet is an insult to me—its beauty, its peace, its people, its women. This planet is just another thing taken from me. My people should have never left this solar system! I am nothing. Who am I to appreciate this world? No one—all I can do is destroy and unmake, just as Frieza intended. I'm a murderer, a pervert, a vandal, a lunatic, a sinner."
Both sat in silence. Vegeta cried, and Bulma let him. The first yellow light of morning crept through the open hatch.
"Vegeta," Bulma said at last. "I can't even begin to understand what you're feeling. I probably never will. It would be silly of me to think I could. I'm sorry about what's happened, and I'm sorry for anything wrong I've done to you. I'm in way over my head, and I know it. All I can do is be here, so that's what I'm doing."
Countless sensations, emotions, memories, and thoughts harassed Vegeta's mind, each one screaming for Vegeta's undivided attention. In doing so, however, they drowned out all the others, and their collective voices amounted to little more than white noise. The soft din brought on a peculiar numbness; it soothed tense muscles, and it let the subconscious breathe the open air for a brief time. Whatever Vegeta had said—and he would never remember all of it—had poured itself out; he had expelled it like foul-tasting poison. Almost instantly, his condition improved, bringing him the beginnings clarity and composure.
The woman's hand lay limp along his face, and her thumb rested just beyond the outer corner of one eye. What did she think she was doing? A downward turn weighed on her pretty lip, and her glassy blue eyes seemed smaller, burdened by the confusion and concern that knit her brow. Everything about her was distracting—her beauty, her expression, her voice, her touch. Vegeta did not often welcome distractions freely, but he welcomed this one. This time, he had the self-awareness to recognize just how much he welcomed it. He wished the woman would say something. For once, he did not want to focus on himself and his person and his wretchedness.
Bulma smiled weakly. "You going to be okay? You seem a bit better. It probably felt good to get that out of your system. How you kept it in there so long is beyond me. I'll stay here with you as long as you need me to. At least it looks like you've recovered enough to walk around! That's great. It didn't take long. Maybe you'll be healed by the time my dad finishes fixing the ship. Then you can start your training again. Sound good?"
Vegeta did not respond. He didn't want to have to dig into his mind to conjure up an answer. He preferred to listen only and let her distract him.
"How about we get you to your room? I mean the guestroom, not the infirmary. It's a bit hectic in there now, to say the least. Or do you want to stay here a bit longer? We'll be keeping my dad out if we stay, though."
The Saiyan gathered his knees beneath him, indicating that he was preparing to get up. He didn't require her help in standing.
"Okay, let's go." Together, they left the capsule ship, and Vegeta followed Bulma across the grounds and to his room. He had walked behind her, watching her. She opened his door for him, but did not enter his space. "I'm going to get some shuteye in, if you don't mind. I stayed up most of the night. But you know where my room is. It's really close. You can find me there if you need me. You're going to get in bed and rest, right?"
Although he gave no indication in the affirmative, he had every intention of doing what Bulma had just proposed.
Before she turned to leave, the woman wrapped one arm around his neck. Vegeta could tell she had made a conscious effort to avoid touching his badly bruised chest. "We care about you, Vegeta—me and my family. Keep trying to get better." When she spoke, she stood close enough to him for him to feel her breath brush his shoulder.