A/N: Thanks to lmamc (yeah, I was always planning on taking it there! Haha. It is a form built on protection, but what will it take for Vegeta?) for the review!

Chapter 29:

Zarbon eagerly went to the control room when he was alerted to communication with Cui and Dodoria, hoping that they would have something and Frieza would be assuaged enough to make a move. This waiting did not do any good for anyone… Unsure if the information would be sensitive, he cleared the room and snatched up the headset.

"This is Zarbon."

The static made it difficult, but he could hear that the voice was clearly Cui's. "Yeah Zarbon, lemme talk to Lord Frieza."

Zarbon sighed. "I'm not disturbing Lord Frieza with anything other than good news, so you need to tell me what you found and let me decide how to deliver it."

"Fine," Cui grunted, bowing to resistance as usual. "Yeah, so we got here …can't figure why the Ginyu's would have even landed here. There's nothing except frogs and mosquitoes and milky shit—I mean, it's really abandoned."

"Are you sure?" Zarbon asked needlessly. "What do you mean by 'abandoned'?"

"Somethin' must've lived here, 'cause of the houses but …everyone is gone."

"They couldn't be hiding?" Zarbon started to feel a rise in irritation. He didn't know if they should have entrusted this task to those two. Cui and Dodoria were never known for their deductive skills. But Frieza sent them and who was Zarbon to question that? "Nothing underground? In water? In the sky?"

"Just empty structures," Cui asserted with a grumble, picking up on the other lieutenant's lack of trust. "I'm telling ya, Dodoria and I were everywhere with our scouters! Nothing is coming up. I don't even think you could sell this place for a good credit."

"Any sign of a struggle?"

Cui groaned. "Are you kidding? We have to go through every blade of grass or something? Just what is Lord Frieza want with this—"

"Forget it, just get Dodoria in the ship and head back," Zarbon cut him off. "He wanted to know if there was any sign of the Ginyu Force and we have our answer. And I'm betting that Frieza wants you back as soon as possible."

"Sure, sure." Placated, Cui affirmed orders and clicked off. Zarbon prepared himself to deliver this news, which seemed to indicate that the Ginyu Force had indeed disappeared from the Frieza Force and either couldn't be found, or didn't want to be…

But Zarbon knew Ginyu and his loyalty. Something had gone wrong, Zarbon was sure of it. He was less sure of the Saiyans' guilt in all of this: that kid-prince had been paying the price over the course of these weeks, but what else was new?

Zarbon didn't particularly care about where they went next; but with this validation, Frieza's eyes were going to Vegeta-sei.

And nothing or nobody was going to stop him.

VBVBVBVBVBVBVBVBVBVB

For a couple of weeks now, Vegeta-sei's highest officials had one objective in mind, and Vegeta was, dare he say, pleased with how things were going.

Bulma had not surfaced from her absolute frenzy of inspiration; constructing weaponry that would serve them well against Frieza. She hardly slept or left her lab. And when she did, she was always babbling scientific nonsense that had Vegeta longing shove his mouth against hers, if only to shut her up. Sometimes, he did just that.

However, her willingness for intimacy had shrunken considerably since she had awoken to find their son gone. And Vegeta himself was often so tired that he didn't linger on that part of their relationship, for once.

He trained harder than he ever had in his life.

The feeling he had, that his planet's very existence was on the line, had pushed him to new heights. It still wasn't good enough, but he had no time to be disheartened! Frieza would know that his informant was gone before long, and he likely already did suspect. There was no time for Vegeta to complain about his failure to reach Legendary status when that threat loomed.

Bulma seemed confident that everything would be fine, and he didn't know whether that infuriated him or he appreciated her view of the situation. She had quite recently put some of the Elites under her spell, which had Vegeta rolling his eyes at the sheer ludicrousness of it. After all the whining and carrying-on about his consorting with the Woman, and now the very people who were so against her saw no fault in following her around and subjecting themselves to her experimentation!

They would claim that it was for the sake of the planet, but Vegeta himself was all too aware of the Woman's witchy ability to bring Saiyans under her thrall.

"Oh, so you're jealous," Bulma told him one night, trying and failing to sound bored, as she rooted around for one of her own robes. "But you can always volunteer to work one of my experiments, and you're choosing to do other things during the day, Vegeta. That isn't my fault."

"I'm a King," Vegeta retorted. "I don't have time to hang around your lab and wile away my hours getting blasted in the face!"

Bulma winked at him, a gesture that had become rarer in recent times and to his own mortification, made his heart beat faster against his chest. "Yes, gotta spruce up that power level, in case my plan doesn't work!"

"Your plan?" Vegeta shook his head. "I hope that you know, Woman, and have gotten through your little skull, that you will be nowhere near any battle that arises!" Bulma's mouth dropped, but Vegeta held up a hand to keep her silent so she could hear the rest. "If the Elites have been assisting you, with my permission, it is so they can wield your inventions with some competence. But you will certainly not be breathing the same air as Frieza as long as I'm alive."

Bulma turned away from the closet to face him fully, sending him a glare. "I wouldn't push your luck on that one, 'my King'. And how are you going to manage that one anyway? I hardly think that Frieza will politely aim his assault to your designated locations," she said dryly. "And I am not getting shoved into some underground bunker, so you can put that thought right out of your head!"

Vegeta smirked. "We'll see."

It had occurred to him more than once that Trunks would be back any day now, at least as far as he could calculate, given the time of his mother's revival. And if there was one thing they would likely agree on, it was the Woman's proximity to Frieza. Having an ally in that campaign would be useful…

"Yeah, we will see. I'm not gonna be the only person on this planet that doesn't get to—"

She must have realized how stupid she was about to sound, because her sentence broke off suddenly. Vegeta's head turned toward her. "'The only person who won't get to see Frieza'? Is that what you were going to say?"

"No," she lied, mouth set stubbornly.

"Yes," he mocked, walking toward her slowly. She squared her body back toward him, annoyed, as he approached. "Woman," he touched her cheek, swiping against the arched bone with his thumb. Her eyes flashed up at him, annoyance fading at his undertone. "…you have always been far too curious about things that could kill you."

"Lucky for you," she drawled, ignoring his ministrations.

Vegeta shook his head. "This isn't a game, Bulma. This isn't even anything like when I landed on that mudball planet."

"You can stop the lecture." She peered up at him curiously. "I know that Frieza is on a whole other level." She dropped her gaze then and the flirtation in her voice. "Which begs the question of how you could have given Geta—"

"Do not bring up—"

"—to that monster."

Her hands no sooner had fallen onto his chest that he had turned away from her, sore from the words that sounded too similar to his own imaginings of her when she was dead. The clone had done that. He was too furious to hear this from her, of all people! He took distance from her, grinding his teeth and doing his damnedest not to start shouting.

"I won't hear you defend that creature," he told her, the tremble of his temper beneath the words, "after what he did to you."

Bulma held off for a moment, and he knew that behavior signified that she realized he was very angry and was working out how to calm him. But she couldn't possibly realize that nothing would when it came to this subject.

"…I'm not defending him."

"Oh, really?" He found himself stalking her like prey, and she followed him with her eyes carefully. "Let me ask you, would you have preferred it if I had allowed our son to slaughter him? If I had ripped him limb from limb myself as I had wanted to do? What would you have wanted!" He was suddenly back in her space and her eyes widened. "What would you have preferred me to do?"

He had been wondering when she was going to bring this up again, having seen her face when she was told that Geta had been the one. He was astonished that it had taken her so long, but of course, her primary concern had been Trunks...

She shouldn't have been concerned with Geta at all! But he knew her better than that, which is why he had anticipated this very argument and did his best not to think about it…

"Did you really want to kill him, Vegeta? Or did you want him to suffer?" She watched his expression with her stupid, knowing look and he nearly breathed fire at it. "There are worse things than death …I think I would know."

"You have no idea," Vegeta seethed. "Is that what I should have told Trunks when he was holding you, Woman? Begging you to breathe?"

Bulma paled even more, but Vegeta was at his limit with this human stupidity!

"Death might have been just fine for you," he snapped, "but have a care for the ones you left behind!"

"That's not what I meant and you know it!" She protested, but her words lacked their former conviction. The mention of Trunks, predictably, had stunned her out of her righteous remarks.

"I won't discuss that traitorous brat or where he's gone. If he's lucky, he's dead right now, just like my brother ended up."

Bulma blinked. "Is that why you did it? Because you didn't want to kill himself yourself and you wanted to push it onto Frieza?"

Vegeta laughed. "I'm sure you wish that was the case, my little Queen." He shook his head. "I'm not as kindly or as cowardly as you would like me to be."

Bulma's mouth closed at that, not having the words to respond, but a knock at the door had them both turning. "Come in," Vegeta intoned. He welcomed the distraction, and from the look of Bulma, so did she. A guard poked his head in.

"Your Majesties. There's been word from the planetary border patrol. The Prince's ship is returned and requesting permission to dock."

"Trunks?" Bulma exhaled, and it felt in that breath that she had taken all of the air from the room. There was a moment of silence. Vegeta stiffened.

For some reason, his overwhelming emotion was shock that the boy was here, but the guard was dodging aside as the Woman made a run for it, dashing out into the hallway and disappearing before he registered it. The guard stared after her, unmoving, his mouth hanging open slightly.

"What in blazes are you doing?! Follow her!" Vegeta pinched his nose in stress as the guard hastened to obey. Like Bok, these fools better starting catching on to her antics, or the lot of them would be fired!

Vegeta, for his part, remained standing there for the moment, not feeling compelled to go after the Woman himself. The Boy wouldn't land for at least another twenty minutes, so there hadn't been any necessity to rush.

Trunks…

He hadn't seen Trunks in months.

Vegeta had known that this day was upon him, of course. But now that it was here, and their reunion was imminent …he wasn't sure how to handle it. He hadn't made a plan at all. He had been so consumed by Trunks' mother and her death, and how to handle the Elites and the informant, and preparing for Frieza …being a King.

The Boy was the Prince of All Saiyans, and he didn't know it.

"Does he want to be?" Bulma's voice ran through his head.

He took a moment to compose himself. He wasn't foolish enough to believe he didn't need it.

VBVBVBVBVBVBVBVBVBVB

Trunks was unexplainably, beyond nervous. Gohan and even Nappa kept shooting him looks as they prepared to dock on Vegeta-sei, at the royal palace. It had felt like time was creeping before. Now it couldn't slow down enough.

He would see his mother, alive. Wouldn't he? She'd be there, he was sure of it. He didn't think for a second that if she heard of his arrival that she wouldn't be there. Would she be angry with him? He glanced to the side, seeing his reflection in the shining metal of the ship interior. Would she even recognize him?

A week ago, Trunks had undergone, for lack of a better way of phrasing it: a growth spurt. Gohan had it too, on the exact same morning. And the experience, for two half-Saiyans who were far more knowledgeable about Earthling puberty, had been frightening—not to mention, embarrassing.

Once both boys had recovered from the extreme discomfort of their clothing being several sizes too small, and the horror of discovering why, they had shuffled into the control room for an explanation and what they had gotten was Nappa, laughing himself silly.

"Your faces!" he wheezed. "And the cl-clothes!"

"Shut up with the laughing and tell us what is going on!" Trunks ordered him, nearly ready tear his pants down the sides so they didn't feel as constricting. His tail had unfurled from his waist in the madness, and Gohan kept staring over at it in confusion, like he hadn't noticed it before.

After another two minutes, Nappa had regained enough composure to give a halfway-decent explanation. The gist of it, was that Saiyans had one large growth spurt that occurred so the Saiyan would be fully mature and battle-ready. Overnight, their bodies went from child to adult and would grow very little again after that.

"You're tall, brat," Nappa observed with approval, once he had the mind to. "I questioned whether you would be…"

"Why," Trunks raised an eyebrow. "…because Dad is short?"

Nappa glared at him, as if pointing out that Vegeta wasn't tall was the epitome of treason. But Gohan's hands flailed in distress, interrupting the tension. "I still don't get it! Trunks and I are almost four years apart! Why did we grow at the same time?!"

"Our Saiyan biology works to adjust itself to the circumstances of the individual Saiyan," Nappa sniffed. "If a Saiyan is in dangerous situations at a younger age, the body will proceed to adulthood faster. It's a protective reaction. I suspect that Namek did it for you."

"Too little, too late," Trunks grumbled, wondering if it was always going to be that way and he would get what he needed after he could have saved someone.

"Not for Frieza," Nappa raised an eyebrow at the boy's pessimism. "You should be thanking your lucky stars this happened now."

"Oh, that's an expression on Vegeta-sei too?"

"Who cares." Trunks laid a grumpy eye on Nappa. "We need better-fitting clothes. Do we have any?"

The mirth in Nappa's eyes re-ignited slightly, but he held it back this time. "Yeah, we should have suits made for travel of various sizes." He stalked off to look, still chuckling.

"Why the hell wouldn't Dad tell me about this?" Trunks muttered. Or his Mom …she knew about this, he betted. She knew a ton about Saiyan physiology, given what she had been dedicated to for years.

Gohan swallowed. "Probably didn't think you had to worry about it yet. And my dad probably didn't even realize that was what happened to him. You know how he is. But Mom," he moaned, his hands dropping to his sides. "…Mom is gonna flip!"

"Yeah, she will. But at least she'll blame Goku for it." Trunks frowned, imagining his own mother's reaction. For some reason, he thought that she'd be upset too that he was showing up like this. He decided to cast that aside without voicing it and had another thought. "The sword. It will fit my grip now, at least."

He had tested it, immediately after Nappa had found them proper clothing. With his size deferential, the learning curve improved dramatically to his delight. He ran it through its paces until he felt nearly competent at handling a blade without any proper master to show him, only concerned with it, and nothing else.

Now he was forced to consider his mother's reaction again. Not only that…

The King. His father. Vegeta.

That was the harder thing. He wasn't sure what he felt, or how he should feel about Vegeta now. He knew some things: that he was angry and resentful, for one. But he kept going back to That Night, when Geta did the unforgivable and his father let Trunks go, on the chance that he could save his mom.

He recalled every moment and word of their conversation, Vegeta stopping him from destroying his half-brother because she "wouldn't have wanted it". Every time he thought back, he saw it in differing lights, like it was a prism of a memory. He didn't know what the right conclusion was, or how he was supposed to act. He didn't even know his status on the planet, given the Vegeta was now King…

And the weirdest part of all were the occasional thoughts—questions …whether Vegeta would be proud of him. For succeeding. For growing.

For killing.

"Cleared for landing," buzzed a voice over the comm. "First terminal."

Trunks' heart jumped as the ship lowered to the ground. Oh geez, his stomach turned… "You think they'll be at the terminal?" He endured asking Nappa, who snorted.

"Of course they will! You think you're going to sneak in with a mother like yours?" Trunks wondered at the lack of malice in the Saiyan's tone, but only briefly. The ship jolted as it touched down.

"This is it," Gohan whispered.

Trunks felt like his heart was beating somewhere in his throat, painfully, as he found his feet and made his way down the ramp, suddenly conscious of tripping …putting one foot in front of the other. He almost didn't dare look.

Almost.

"TRUNKS!"

He was aware of nothing else except his mother, warm and frantic and loving and alive again, in his arms, everything about her familiar, down to her smell. The confirmative relief was so overwhelming that he couldn't even think of how to lift his arms and close them around her. He shuddered, and his eyes opened and filled with the blue of her hair.

"Trunks."

Buried fiercely against his chest (he was taller than her now, he realized), she was crying and he remembered how his arms worked to wrap them fully around her.

"Mom…"

"You did it," she cried, lifting her hands to put them on his cheeks. "You're here. You're alive!"

"I'm alive?" he choked, laughing in surprise at her. "Oh Kami."

Unthinkingly, he squeezed her too hard and she winced, but didn't let go. "Sorry," he said quickly, loosening his grip. But the person behind her moved forward and Trunks met eyes with him. His father finally made his presence known.

"Forgotten your own strength?" Vegeta eyed him up and down and Trunks saw no censure in his eyes. In fact, it was a floundering, awkward sort of approval that Trunks didn't know how to acknowledge.

"Not a chance," he replied, settling show of bravado.

"Trunks, you're HUGE!" his mother exclaimed, clenching both her son's biceps experimentally, interrupting Vegeta and Trunks' noteless moment. "How is this—what even happened? They said it's only been a few months!" To Vegeta, her eyes narrowed. "That's what you said."

"He had his growth spurt," Vegeta responded, with more patience than Trunks remembered him ever having. He seemed indifferent to her Earthling affection for their son, too. "Earlier than most, but you knew this would happen."

"Yes, but …he's not—he's so tall!"

Then she craned her neck back to look up at her son and Trunks felt a thickening in his eyes and throat. He could almost not believe that she was here, talking to him, accusing his father with such ease. He looked away before he could embarrass himself and saw the guards flanking on either side of them.

That was new.

"What's going on?" he frowned. It was almost as if he was in the middle of some inane Saiyan protocol. The guards were at attention, their eyes straight ahead and their backs straight.

Bulma waved that away. "It's nothing, I want to hear about you. And Gohan!" Her eyes found Goku's son with fond excitement, like he was stopping over for the weekend rather than travelling across the galaxy. Trunks almost smiled at how unperturbed his mother could be about things that would floor most people. She waved.

"What are you doing here?! How did you make it from Earth …and why?"

Gohan laughed sheepishly and focused entirely on Bulma, as if the prospect of seeing anything that distinctly belonged to Vegeta-sei would turn him to stone. He had been trying to make himself as small as possible, which had become a much harder task recently. He rubbed the back of his head and waved back.

"Hey Bulma, I'm glad to see you're okay." He didn't seem sure of how to explain, likely having expected Goku to do that. "We just …heard that Trunks needed an assist and we came along to help!"

"We?"

Gohan coughed in embarrassment. "Well, Dad and Krillin too, but—"

"Kakarot?" Vegeta growled. That piqued his interest…

"Goku!" his mother said with heaps more fondness.

"That idiot tried to pilot while the two midgets slept, and they are now nearly a day behind us," Nappa supplied smugly.

Aware of the story already, Trunks tuned it out and kept cutting his eyes back to the guards, feeling like there was something he was definitely missing here. Saiyans never stood ceremony on him or his mom before... What was this?

"Can we go somewhere else?" he asked Vegeta with a touch of annoyance. It was easy to call up that emotion with his father, and he had no reason to fear his temper now.

At Trunks' word, the guards stepped further back, in unison. Trunks gaped around at them, knowing he was missing something for certain. This time, the words came out forcefully.

"Alright. What's going on?"

He felt his mother's hand on the bottom corner of his space jacket, tugging. "Maybe we should go somewhere quieter, yeah?"

Vegeta appeared to be shifty now, as well. Trunks started looking for evidence as she started to tow him toward the exit, glancing at every corner of the hanger. It was his mother's clothing that ended up beginning to clue him in.

"Wait." He stopped short, looking at her from head to toe. "Is that a royal cape?! And—"

"Yes!" She turned to show it off a little too enthusiastically, meeting eyes with Vegeta as she did so and sending him a message that Trunks couldn't decipher. "Dress like the natives and all of that, you know! Let's go find a space to rest and—"

"Your Majesty," a guard approached from the head of the line of guards, inclining his head to his mother! "Bok will be arriving shortly to relieve me."

Silence.

"What did you say?" Trunks snapped, feeling both a mix of dread and disbelief. A picture was beginning to form …but it couldn't have possibly been what he thought. Nappa also reacted to that, his neck inclining toward his sovereign rigidly. Gohan shuffled somewhere nearby, but Trunks wouldn't tear his eyes from his father.

"What did he just say?"

"Trunks," his mother murmured. She tried to herd him again, but he ignored her. The glint in Vegeta's eyes was a smirk, but he wasn't smiling. It enraged Trunks and he stepped closer, almost threatening.

"What did he just say?"

"Tell him what you just said," Vegeta ordered the guard.

"Vegeta!" his mother said upbraidingly.

The guard hesitated only a moment before following the command, his body angling toward Trunks and his hand pounding briefly on his breastplate in respect. "I said… 'Bok will be arriving shortly to relieve me', my Prince."

Trunks' mouth dried of all moisture, and the bottom dropped out.

VBVBVBVBVBVBVBVB

Vegeta could have laughed at the expression on his son's face at that.

Of course, this was no time for laughing. Trunks was nose-to-nose with his father in a blink, and he appeared to be furious.

The first thing Vegeta had noticed about his son was the magnificent increase in his base power level. What had the boy gotten up to on this planet of Namek? He would require a full report from Nappa later. And the boy's growth spurt only compounded the mystery; the lines of his face were sharper, his form not lanky, but leaner than Vegeta's own (likely an inheritance from his mother).

The severe shape of his eyes was fully Vegeta's, but the ice of them weren't. "No," Trunks said.

"No what, boy?"

"I don't accept."

"It isn't for you to accept," Vegeta answered. "It just is."

Ice became blue flames. "I do not accept this!"

The pressure in the room was unbearable. Not even Bulma was intervening. And Vegeta knew his son, he saw what was behind his eyes, casting around for something to make this situation not be …and coming up with nothing.

"And Geta? What did you do with—"

Vegeta's lip curled, as Trunks had almost hit his mark. But not quite. "He's alive," the King lobbed back. "Which is more than you would have left him with, isn't it…?"

Vegeta had landed that blow. Trunks' chest heaved, and Bulma closed in on them, the only one intrepid enough.

"Stop this." She tried to push between them fruitlessly. "Let's go and—"

"Don't interfere, Bulma." Neither of them rerouted their stares.

"Don't tell her what to do!" Trunks demanded hotly; hackles raised.

"Guys—"

"I'll talk to my Queen how I please."

"SHE'S NOT YOUR QUEEN!" It was meant to be a powerful, imperious command, but somehow, it came out more like a plea; a dark and desperate plea.

"She is, though." Vegeta would not be cowed by his own cub, no matter how powerful he was.

In fact, it invigorated Vegeta: this unspeakable energy that was rising. "And she will not be ordered about by a child she brought into this world, throwing a tantrum. Look at me, Trunks."

Trunks' head had swiveled down to his mother, as if expected her to side with him, to tell him that this wasn't true and to bat down all of Vegeta's assertions. Instead, she had been glancing between them with concern, but staying out of it as far as Trunks could read. Feeling clearly helpless at the lack of intervention, Trunks did look back at his father.

Every line of his face commanded respect as he somehow stared down his nose at Trunks, despite his lesser height. Here was the King that Trunks had never seen. The muscles in his face momentarily went lax.

"Your body is that of a man," Vegeta said in a low voice. "You've fought men's battles. I can see that in your bearing…"

Trunks was under the spell of the words. He blinked, trying to will it away. But his flush at the insight and the compliment was obvious even in the constant haze of scarlet. Vegeta dropped his chin, his eyes clashing with his son's.

"But even with all of that …you are still the boy who left these halls."

Denying the insult would have made him sound childish, and Trunks somehow stopped himself from doing so. He clenched his fists and he caught his mother shaking her head, opening her mouth. Now she wanted to take his side? No. He had to do this himself.

"You can fight me …Father," Trunks responded with thinly-veiled outrage, not thinking at all about what he was doing. "And we'll see which one of us is a man."

Gohan made a small, nervous noise. Nappa laughed in anticipation, looking hungry. The guards didn't move an inch. Vegeta considered his son, and then grinned widely.

"Vegeta, don't." Bulma's voice rang out.

"What was it you said about my relationship with our son?" he asked her.

Predictably, that silenced his little Queen. Vegeta swept a hand out of the hanger, because Trunks, boy that he was in a man's body, had only done exactly when his father had wanted.

"Come, boy. I'll welcome a challenge from you…"

VBVBVBVBVBVBVBVBVB

He was walking, walking down that dark corridor again, and he knew what he would do before he did it. He saw her again. Lying there. What did his father see in her? What?

She was beautiful, he supposed. She was a good mother, but he didn't need a mother.

Trunks didn't need a mother either, Geta thought, with a pulse of hatred.

He did it again. He had to. And like it always did, the rescue came too late.

"Nonononononononononono!"

The Crown Prince and Geta's bastard half-brother, human features contorting into a mess and ugly sobs and then his father turning on him, and then the painful beating, blow after blow until his eyes would open.

…except they didn't this time.

Geta was slumped against a wall, too beaten to lift his head, and a golden glow assaulted his eyes without warning. It came too fast and had him closing them again, in a haze of agony that wasn't so bad …now that he had met Frieza.

Had this happened before? This golden glow? This energy that he choked on in its magnitude? It poured over him like a ton of bricks, making every wound throb all the more. Geta squinted against the light, fought to keep his eyes open. Fought to see past the shadow of his father …he didn't know what came next. What could he see?

Trunks.

The pressure in the room strangled him, made his lungs hurt and flattened him further against the wall. The glow was immense, and too bright to be painless. But the dark shape in the middle was Trunks, the bastard, the pretender! The weakling.

"YOU DID THIS!"

The room rumbled as Geta shot upward with a yell, careening out of bed and into the ceiling with the real lightness of the air. He had grown recently, and his body didn't properly gauge the distance anymore, but Geta didn't even feel the collision with his skull for the momentary relief. Just a dream.

Again.

Except…

The dream hadn't been exactly the same. Half-asleep, Geta was drenched in that feeling of awareness that something was significant, and he was missing it. He drifted back down to the bed, slowly as he tried to grasp it again.

What was it that had woken him up? …he had just seen it!The bedding was hard and cool as he peered into the darkness and envisioned it all, waking up a little more. A dim light floated before the scene, an irksome floater that distracted him.

But it was the shade of what blocked his eye that had him recalling the brilliant burst before he had opened his eyes.

And then he knew.

The golden light. And—

"Trunks?" Geta mouthed, floored.

No. That couldn't be right.

For months, Geta had been slammed from one side of Frieza's chamber to the other, for a lie he wasn't telling. He was still healing from the last beatdown—taking on all the sins that Frieza claimed were wrought by the Saiyans. He couldn't even remember what had happened!

And now he had. And the truth was more bitter than the ignorance of it, or the punishment he had been dealt because of it…

His mind's eye projected the display of mythical power so insistently, that it felt like the black room was illuminated with it… And there was that half-Earthling loser, so obviously the outline in the center that Geta wanted to be sick.

How?

Grandfather told him that it was a myth—that Vegeta was chasing after a fool's fairytale! He clenched his fingers in the bed covers. Geta knew in his heart what that golden glow was with instinct that might have been down to his very biology. It was what he had always pictured when he heard about the Legendary Warrior, or chanted that song when he was younger: an unstoppable, shining flame of pure power.

The Legendary form. Geta couldn't process this, staring at a wall in the dark. How could it have been that illegitimate, weak, half-human? Crying over that alien's body? How?!

No. But maybe it wasn't.

Geta's glare faded as he stared off into the nothingness, determined to understand. Maybe it hadn't been that at all. Maybe that was really just the dream, and not a memory. That was probably it. Because Trunks couldn't be…

No. Not if even Vegeta wasn't. It was laughable!

The more Geta sat with the idea, the more ridiculous it seemed. He shook his head, the denial firmly in place. Why did he assume that it had been real? Well, some dreams were like that... But now that he was more awake, it didn't make any sense at all. There was no way that Trunks was anything like that. That Legendary Warrior didn't even exist.

But if it did, Geta felt suddenly itchy and stood up. If it had existed, and Trunks was…

Would he have told Frieza?

Geta froze, needing to think. Needing to strategize. Could he still tell Frieza …whether it was true or not?

Would Frieza even believe him?

After all this time of Geta saying that he didn't know anything and that the Legendary Warrior was fake? Geta needed to think! He gripped the spikes of his hair too hard. It was too hard to think, because the idea of Trunks being the…

But he wasn't. He wasn't.

Because if he was, then Trunks, who was really entitled to nothing …would have everything.

Suddenly, Geta's mouth tasted bitter. These were not things he wanted to think about, but he felt forced to; just to survive, just to figure out how to deal with Frieza! And the truth was, that the King preferred Trunks as a son, even though Trunks had never done a thing to deserve it! And the woman who whelped him (which no son of a King had been in centuries!) always looked at him like he was so important, even though he wasn't!

While Geta languished in this hell-hole with the Cold Emperor …Trunks was free.

Grandfather hadn't killed him even though Trunks was a half-breed and should have died as soon as he landed on Vegeta-sei, because Grandfather had always been scared of Vegeta.

And Trunks always got what he didn't deserve. He always won, somehow...

No. Geta bruised his own hands as he curled them against the bedding. It wasn't possible for Trunks to get this, too. There's no way that the galaxy could be that unfair.

It wasn't possible.

Geta laid down again with something unsettling, boiling at the bottom of his stomach, refusing to go away and let him rest. So instead, he thought about if it were true...

And he tried to make a plan.

Unfortunately, he could only come up with one thing that he really wanted: for Trunks to go wherever his alien mother had gone; somewhere in the afterlife.

Where Geta would never have to think about him again.

A/N: I think I will have surprised some of you by not having the chaos of EVERYONE arriving at the same time! Happy to subvert your expectations ;) Will you get Bulma's POV about her psycho-boys in the next chapter? Yes, you will. Do they know how to express themselves properly? No, not really. Is Frieza headed their way? Yeah. If you enjoyed it or if you didn't, let me know what you thought!