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emmaekay · 7 years

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Kotonari V - Train, part one

AN: Omg it’s been a freaking week since I updated. Or more? Christ. I’ve been fuckin beat. “Train” will come in parts throughout this week. Remember that when last we left this world, Vegeta had just thrown his father off a castle roof while fighting Nappa and Daiku. Queen Pea was showing “The Boy” his mom’s memory of the lullaby. We rejoin immediately after that memory. Enjoy!

Kotonari V – Train

The memory was cut off abruptly. The Boy jumped to his feet in a flash, as lightning cracked the sky outside, and he stared at his grandmother, whose ki had ceased it’s regular, soft, mist-like flow over Bulma and his own form. Now, it was spiking out from around her in every direction.

It’s happened. The Boy thought. My father has killed the king. “Queen Pea?” he tried to draw her attention. You must not leave!

The Queen swallowed, throat suddenly closed and dry. “Yes, child?”

“It’s the King, isn’t it?”

“Yes, child.” Tears began to burn the corners of her eyes – what now should she do? Every fiber of her being burned to fly out of this room, out of this house, across the estate and to her beloved as fast as she had ever flown in her life. But now she knew - she never could again.

It was no longer just a choice between her heart and her head – nor was it a choice between her children and her love… it was now a choice between her selfishness, the ferocity of her love and the lives of all her people. One on side of the scales, that heartdeep, lifedeep love for her husband and King. On the other, existence itself. Everything, everything she had done, every bloody battle and dark decision she had ever made was for the Saiyan people. How, now, could she turn her back on that responsibility? She knew that it meant the end of the Saiyans if she obeyed her heart.

“I’m going.” The Boy stood. He squeezed his grandmother’s hand. “I didn’t come here only to lay my pain at your feet. I came here … to save my people. To save my sister. And,” he paused and looked again at the slight, thin body laying on the bed, “to save my mother.”

“Child, don’t. The King… my husband was stronger than you. You don’t know how to access your true power. If you could… but you can’t, and I can’t train you now, and –“

“Queen Pea.” The Boy interrupted, an already fond smile creeping across his lips. “I don’t know how to access the power I’m supposed to have as half of the Saiyan Gemini, that’s true.” His kind smile spread, eyes soft. He remembered the song from his mother’s dream, his father’s true voice – a lullaby he had always, always needed. The holes in his heart – mother, sister, peace, safety, people – were rent wider and wider and wider by the sweet memory, and every stab of pain was dear to him. This is my mother. These are my people. He felt rage, a dragon roaring in the cage of his heart, building up, ready to burst forth; still he smiled kindly at his grandmother. “I don’t know how any of that works. But I’m alive. And I must try.”

And like a shot, he was through the open doorway, through the bathing chamber where he was born, and out through the hole the Queen herself had kicked in the roof, and out into the darkness of the night.

Pea sat, the heaviest stone in a raging river, as her ki stormed around her. She reached out to the King through their bond again and again, and found only darkness each time, only void where her lover’s voice should be.

Inside and out, the storm raged.

---

“All hail the King!” The darkness in Vegeta cackled with its stolen voice. Daiku and Nappa were on either side of the Prince on the battlement, the narrow corridor of stone setting them up for a pincer attack. They rushed him, screaming their fury.

Up Vegeta shot into the starless night, up they shot to chase him. Storm clouds swirled. Lightning flashed. Rain beat down upon them as the thunder cleared its mighty throat, like knives of fire as they drove themselves up, up, up into the dark chasing the Dark Prince. He stopped dead in the air, snatching Nappa up like an errant leaf in the strom, crushing his windpipe in a stranglehold. Daiku, never stopping, hurled his body into them both. Down and down they plummeted with the rain, a clot of fists and teeth and fury.

They struck the ground like an asteroid, crater in their wake. Still the battle raged – fists flew, feet kicked out in furious blows, again and again they flashed like the lightning above, blasting each other with the force of their lives. Daiku remembered the blow to the back of Vegeta’s head, lain there by his father only a day before. He clasped the fingers of both hands together, arms a sledgehammer now, and bore down with all his strength on the spot.

Pain radiated out in a poison spiderweb, out from the impact to Vegeta’s skull. He staggered. He stopped.

He laughed.

The storm raged around them.

Vegeta threw himself at Daiku, snarling in too many voices at once, carving a trench in the ground as his ki cut the earth he flew over. Nappa flew in from the side, smashing Vegeta to the ground in a tackle, holding him there, holding him there. The rain raged and Vegeta flew up, up in a tight spiral as Nappa crushed and crushed his chest in thick arms like steel cables. Nappa’s legs swung wildly, blood and rain blinding him and one of Vegeta’s elbows smashing again and again on his head.

Nappa let go.

He burned a trail through the rain, hot on Vegeta’s tail as the Dark Prince answered a ki blast from Daiku with a thousand burning shots of his own. As Nappa crossed paths with the blast, he felt himself begin to burn, as if he’d flown into the sun itself. Vegeta had taken the blow from Daiku’s blast and redirected his own scatter of shots to center on Nappa, who found himself engulfed. Nappa could smell his own skin, see his Prince’s face twisted up into the most horrible grin… and fell, flat to the ground.

Daiku rushed the Prince once more, but now he was fighting one on one. Even when Vegeta had been in his right mind, Daiku had been no match. But something in him, some flame, became an inferno. My Beri? Killed? My princess dead? My little prince destroyed by his own father? My people eradicated? What Dark Prince? What fool ever dared? His rage spurred him forward and he knew no pain. Fists and feet and teeth. Crush. Kill. Stop at all costs. This was the last song in Daiku’s heart.

From Nappa’s place on the ground, he watched a star fall – lavender and lightning, it grew and grew, closer and quicker until it was not a star, but a man. A boy.

The Boy’s hair stood up on end, he glowed with his strange aubergine ki, and he screamed in a voice made mighty by rage, “VEGETA!”

Daiku and Vegeta’s brawl paused and the Dark Prince hung there in the air, burning up with his fury. Fury feeding the monster inside him. The monster feeding the fury more strength as it grew. An endless, self-fulfilling prophesy of destructive strength.

Behind The Boy was the Crown’s Battalion in full battle armor, 50 Saiyans – strong and brutal fighters, all. These were the men and women handpicked by King Vegeta and Queen Pea to defend their home and their lives from all comers. Each of these 50 were brutal fighters - they did not compete in arena matches, they did not honor fight - their only fighting experience was real world, life or death. Their bodies didn’t know how to pull a punch - every blow would be unleashed with lethal force. In a fight for your life, he who hits hardest, lives longest. These Saiyans had been tested within an inch of their lives many times over.

The darkness that had invaded and enslaved Vegeta’s mind was malevolent, but intelligent. It knew. The Dark Prince stood no chance against 50. This should have been ambush, an assassination, something easy to pin on another, the kindling for a glorious war. Now, it would be only moments, moments now before Vegeta was clapped in chains and tossed in the deepest hole ever dug. The miasma saw its chance slipping away and made a choice.

The Dark Prince snatched Daiku up by the hair with one hand – he was unguarded, shocked by The Boy’s arrival. With the other hand, the Dark Prince whipped a knife from his boot and tore it across Daiku’s throat.

He tossed him to the ground.

Lightning flashed and the rain pounded harder and harder still.

The Boy flew from the sky to catch his sensei’s body before it was too late.

The darkness swirled around them. The starless sky screamed with wind and rain and thunder. At the next crack of lightning, Vegeta was gone.

---

The Boy shredded his shirt and wrapped it around Daiku’s throat tightly. Two of the Crown’s Battalion landed next to him. Blood and muddy rain soaked The Boy. “Sensei! Sensei!”

“The –“ Daiku choked, blood flowing from his mouth. “Don’t talk! Don’t talk!” The Boy was frantic now. Which memory would be worse – never knowing how his sensei had died in the past, or watching him die right now?

“-mekian.” Daiku choked out again.

“What? What?”

Now, The Boy heard a woman’s voice screaming orders behind him. It was Beri, drawn from her fitful sleep by the pain her husband felt. No one was faster than she, and Beri had set a new airspeed record as she fled the Prince’s estate and to her lover’s side. “Give him to me!” she screamed at The Boy, who kept his hands wrapped around the makeshift bandage on Daiku’s throat.

The Boy looked up at Beri in her battle armor, one arm reaching down to her fallen husband, one arm carrying a bundle. Lightning lit up the muddy field and he saw that the bundle was Dende. Beri shoved The Boy to the side, sending him sprawling in a puddle. She dropped Dende, who began to glow. “Please!” she cried out. “Please!”

The little Namekian swayed side to side in his strange way, hands aglow and gently around Daiku’s throat. His sensei began to breathe more easily. And then, after minutes that felt like hours, sat up. Beri collapsed into his huge lap, his arms dwarfing her as he tucked her against his chest. The bloody bandage fell away, soaked in his blood. His throat still bore an angry choker of blood, but it was no longer flowing out of him.

“The King?” Daiku asked The Boy.

“I don’t – I don’t know.” He stuttered, never having seen Namekian healing at work first hand.

Daiku got to his feet, dislodging Beri from his lap. “Beri, take Dende and find Nappa. He’s somewhere close, in bad shape. Then go back to the estate as fast as you can.” Beri’s ki burned, lighting her path like a lamp, and she picked Dende up under one arm before taking to the air to find Nappa.

Daiku turned to the two Saiyans from the Crown’s Battalion, who had stood next to The Boy dumbly, doing nothing, mouths foolishly agape at the Namekian’s healing powers. “You two! Take the Battalion and use your ki to light the foot of the castle’s southern battlement. The King was thrown from there. Find him and bring him to the Prince’s estate.”

“Sir!” The Saiyans snapped to attention, saluting for just a heartbeat before flying back into the sky to communicate their orders to the rest of the Battalion.

“And you,” Daiku looked down at The Boy, still sitting in the puddle Beri had thrown him into, “Which way did your father go?”

“I’m not sure.” Shame burned The Boy’s ears. He had come to help, but had accomplished nothing. “Between the lightning flashes, he slit your throat and threw you down. He extinguished his ki and seemed to disappear into the dark.

“Then he’s on foot. Come on, we need to find The King.”

---

The door to the bedroom smashed open and Queen Pea couldn’t help herself – she jumped up from the chair next to Bulma and ran to her husband. He was barely breathing. Arms, legs and spine all crushed from the fall. Welts and bruises around his throat where the chain had strangled him. He would soon be dead.

Bulma would die without the Queen’s ki sustaining her lifeforce.

The King would die without someone keeping his lifeforce attached to his body.

What do I do? The Queen knew she couldn’t save them both. She had been awake for almost two days, and her strength was not infinite.

“What do I do?” The Boy asked, echoing her own thought.

“What?” She asked, still clutching the King to her chest.

“First,” Dende spoke now, forcing his way between Beri and Daiku, who were blocking the doorway, “you should all get out of my way. Just lay the King out flat, please,” he instructed the Queen and Daiku, each half holding the fallen monarch.

They obeyed the little man, laying the King out on the floor. Dende set to work immediately and the Queen couldn’t stop herself – she withdrew her ki from Bulma and wrapped it instead around her husband. He hadn’t died – his soul was still present in his body, and this wouldn’t take long. The Queen could only hope that she’d have enough energy left to sustain Bulma.

“Queen Pea,” the Boy demanded, “Tell me what to do!” He gestured at his mother, dying now on the bed.

“I’m sorry, boy. I… I made a choice.”

“That’s not what I asked! I’m asking you how to save her!” Bulma’s chest shuddered as her breathing became more ragged as the King’s became steadier.

“You’re not a super Saiyan, child. You cannot do this.” The Queen confessed sadly. Forgive me, forgive me. I’m sorry, children.

“But I AM one of the Saiyan Gemini! I can do this!”

“I’m sorry.”

The Boy clicked his teeth, looking and sounding like his father now. Whatever, he thought, I’ve been in there once. I can do it again.

And like a traveler who was shown the way only once, but who paid careful attention on the trip, The Boy spread his ki over his mother, gently, gently. He let it soak into her skin, flow through her veins and through his own. He filled her lungs with the same electric impulse that filled her own. She felt… like home. And of course, this had been his first home. His ki and his spirit knew this place, and settled in to where he used to belong. He pulled her along in his heartbeat, in his breath, in his soul.

They were linked, the whole room lit in a lavender light. Bulma’s breathing matched The Boy’s. He felt himself falling down into memory.

---

Bulma sat on the plush couch next to Vegeta, after Queen Pea left the room. They both stared at the door, as if it could provide any more information than the Queen had already done. Pregnant? ...Pregnant? Twins? Her head spun. The Prince’s hands had not moved from their place on her belly, and they trembled just slightly.

I’m going to be a father? He thought. How… is that possible?

Bulma smiled thinly at Vegeta. “So. Babies.”

“Is that -” he turned toward her, eyes a little wider than normal, “is it - do you - are you - Saiyan women do not - that is, this is my fault, I promise I will do my best as a mate and a father.”

Bulma took his hand. “Yes, you will. But Saiyan women do not, what, exactly?”

“Uh, Saiyan women do not become pregnant unless they wish to. And I knew you weren’t Saiyan, well of course you aren’t Saiyan, but I didn’t think…” Vegeta felt the air run out of his normally inflated ego. He felt surprisingly inadequate and lost. He always assumed he would produce heirs, multiple heirs, and that his children would be powerful. But had he assumed they would be legendary? And accidental?

“I’m happy, Vegeta.” Bulma snuggled into his side on the couch. “Very happy.”

He turned a little on the couch, angling his chest for his woman to rest her head, resting his own on the furniture’s overstuffed arm. She listened to his heartbeat, strong and steady, through his chest. “Vegeta… know what?”

His chin was atop her head and he tilted it to one side, breathing in the scent of her hair - sweat from the fight, soap from her earlier bath, and underneath that - just her. Just her own honey sweet scent, like a field of flowers under warm sunlight.

“Hm?”

“You know… how I ended up here?” She wrapped her arms around his waist.

“You made a wish.”

“Yep. You know what I wished for?”

“You know I don’t. You’ve kept it from me.”

She chuckled a little, vibrating against his chest. “Yep. But you know what? I’ll tell you.”

Vegeta cocked an eyebrow and looked down into her upturned eyes. “You said it was embarrassing.”

“It is… a little. I’m supposed to be a woman of science!”

“And..?” he prodded.

Bulma nestled in to Vegeta’s chest. Strong arms around her. The steady rise and fall of his chest. The way he inhaled so deeply, smelling her hair and writing the memory into his heart. Everything in this moment was perfect. “And what I wished for was not scientific. I felt so alone, so rejected, so angry. So I wished… I wished for the dragon to take me to the one man in the universe who needed me as much as I needed him. For the one man who would never abandon me, would never betray me. I wished for the dragon to send me to the man I was destined to be with.”

Vegeta’s heart had a stranglehold on his tongue.

“And then I turned up here. In your lap.”

Vegeta’s cheeks went red with the memory.

“You thought I was a whore.”

Vegeta’s ears felt like they were on fire. “You,” he accused, “thought I was a dream.”

Bulma giggled and nuzzled his chest. “You are. You are a dream. Everything I ever wanted in a lover, in a friend. Vegeta, you…”

“I’m not a good man, Bulma.”

“I disagree.” She sat up again, still folded into his lap, but staring into his eyes now. “I don’t think that’s true at all.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. And I should have told you, I should have told you before the antefasting battle, before you became -”

“Vegeta. I’ve read your mission logs.”

All the color drained out of Vegeta’s face and he turned to stone underneath her. “You. What.” His voice was flat, monotone.

“I’ve read them. All of them. I know what you’ve done.” “How?” He felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room, as if he were adrift in the stillness of space.

“Your mother. She gave them to me. All of them. You’ve done.... Terrible things - for your people.” Bulma grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. “Your mother said I’d find out about these things eventually, that the Keiyaku bond would eventually show me your nightmares and dreams. I’ve known for weeks.”

He stood up suddenly, sending Bulma falling to the floor. She put out a hand to stop herself and wrenched her wrist painfully, crying out. Vegeta stood robotically, feet away from her. “I never wanted you to know… I’m not an operative anymore. I thought I’d just… put that away. I never want our children to know.”

“Vegeta.” Bulma closed the distance between them, still rubbing her wrist with her uninjured hand. “You wake up screaming. I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time. Your mother just… answered the question. I still love you.”

When she spoke, Vegeta could feel it. The bond between them filled with warmth and wanting, steam and sugar. She still loved him.

“Why?” He let her close her arms around his narrow waist, under his armor and cape.

“I don’t know.” she was whispering now, into the nape of his neck as he held her. He smelled like cedarwood and lavender. “When I read those logs, I felt like I was being ripped apart. I imagined you in all those places, making those choices, trying to protect the people that you loved. I imagined the guilt. I felt… all of it.”

She was starting to cry ... because Vegeta felt his own heart breaking.

“That you bore all that alone… it’s not fair!”

“It was fair.” he insisted. “It was my burden to bear because I was the only one who could bear it.”

Bulma hugged him more tightly still. “All I wanted, when I made my wish, was a little loyalty. All I wanted, I have.”

Vegeta had never believed in destiny. What you made happen, or what you allowed to happen, were the only things that could shape reality. What you demanded, what you built, what you took, what you destroyed - these are the things that were. But what had he ever done, who had he ever touched, to deserve this gift?

Dragons, he supposed, were wiser than he. He opened his mouth to tell her that everything he loved was in his arms, that he would now choose a different path, that he would spare her every pain he could, that she was now the whole world he would give anything to protect. The words turned to ash in his mouth and he could only trust that she could feel their meaning through the Keiyaku… the way he could always feel her love.

#kotonari #vegebul #vegebul au

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