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Title: The Triumph of Blood
Rating: At least PG-13, for maybe rather disturbing content
Pairing: None. Just Vegeta
Summary: If you could go back in time, to a critical point in your life, to tell yourself *one* thing ... what would it be?
Warnings: Not mine. Violent. Again, rather savage. He just comes that way! Not my fault!
The Triumph of Blood
If you could go back to the past, to a critical point in your life, just long enough to tell yourself one thing, what would it be?
Vegeta spat. What kind of stupid question was that? And what kind of idiot quest was this? He stared down at the huddled ball of his younger self, tucked away in a corner of his quarters, battered and bloody and shaking in silent agony. A critical point in his life. Oh, yes. He remembered. The night Frieza had broken him for the first and only time, the last night of true weakness he had ever known. The night he had become more than just the brat prince of a dead people. The night he had become Vegeta, warrior, killer, Saiyan no Ouiji. Everything he had been when he arrived on earth for the first time. And he was supposed to say something, to this half-formed child-man, to this thing he had been? What?
A noise interrupted his snarled musings. The child-man wasn't yet aware of his presence. Of course not. He wasn't even really there, just a solid shadow clinging vaguely to the edge of this time, only real when he opened his mouth to say whatever inane insight they wanted him to say. The noise the young prince made was not directed at him. But he remembered it.
There is a sound, that people make when they have been hurt just enough to realise that it's never going to stop, that pain is going to be all they will ever know. A sick, dull, nauseating whine of pain and fear and misery, half-strangled by the wall of tears that they have begun to understand they can never shed, made into a low hollow keening. It is an ugly sound, a sound that has no meaning beyond an expression of dumb, pulsating despair, a sound that is hideous beyond power to explain. That was the sound the young prince made.
And it ripped through Vegeta in a thunderbolt of fury like nothing he had felt for a very, very long time. He hated that sound, hated it all the more for remembering that he had made it, for remembering being hunched over, huddled around that hideous noise as if it were the last real thing in the universe, hated it with a violent passion only matched by his hatred for the one who'd caused it.
It was the last straw. With a violence that was rare for him now, but never quite as far from him as they hoped, he lunged at the smaller figure, seized it roughly by the shoulders and yanked the young saiyan upright, viciously pulling him away from that sound. He moved before he really thought, entirely on instinct, and froze as he stared down into the confused features of his younger self, twisted by fear and pain and confusion.
If you could tell yourself one thing, what would it be?
He didn't know. Kami, but he didn't. He stared down into the ugly, stupid features of his younger self, the child-thing that for an instant, this night, had truly belonged to Frieza, the first and only time. The one time he had truly been defeated. He looked down at those blind, hateful features, and wondering what you could say, what anyone could possibly say.
He thought about what he had now that this creature didn't, about everything he had learnt that this boy had never known. He thought about Bulma, and the incredible strength he had found in her beautiful, stubborn fragility. He thought about Trunks, his glorious, powerful son, his son who had come from the future to avenge him, to kill Frieza and lay the path for his strength. He thought of Kakarott, of the strength and glory of their strange, hah, friendship, of fights won and lost and power gained together. He thought about their families, of Kakarott's boys, of Gohan on Namek, of Goten playing with Trunks. He thought of the strange collection of people who had inexplicably gathered around him, of snide exchanges with the Namek, of asking and trusting the monk to wound him, of sneers and fights and wrested understandings.
He thought of every desperate thing he had learned on this long, bloody journey of his, everything he had learned in his life that this pathetic brat had no chance of understanding no matter how much he explained. Because this child-man knew only pain and hate and violence, and in this moment of defeat could no more hope to understand the safety he had learned than he could hope to convince Kakarott to hate him. At this moment, in this place, there had been no hope for him. None at all.
His younger self stared up at him, terrified, confused, sneering, and whimpered in pain beneath the clench of his hands on the thin shoulders. That small sound infuriated him all over again, and he slapped the already bruised features harshly, decision made.
"No!" he commanded, bitterly forceful. "Do not make that sound again, do you understand? Do you?" He shook the brat, hard, and for a second the fierce pride he remembered feeling burst to the fore, and the young prince shrugged his hand away to land a vicious, if ineffectual, punch to his stomach. Vegeta grinned fiercely, and snapped his hand down to grab the retreating wrist and clench his hand painfully around it. The boy snarled in pain, fear bright in his eyes. Vegeta sneered at him.
"Look at you!" he spat, contempt dripping from his tone, and watched as the child flinched. "Look at what you've become, Saiyan no Ouiji." He loaded as much mockery as he knew how into those words, wrapped them and delivered them with intent to wound. "Look at what you've let him take!"
The child screamed at him, pouring all of his tiny, useless strength into an attempt to wrest his arm free, to strike at Vegeta. "You don't understand!" his young self panted, that damned sound hovering in the back of his throat, beneath panicked anger. "You don't know what he did!"
Vegeta snarled at him. "I don't care," he spat. "I don't care what he is, what he did, what he made you do. Do you get it? I don't care! It doesn't matter! All that matters is what you did, what you have allowed! What you have become!" He twisted his hand on the small wrist, pressing until his nails gouged into the skin and bright blood flowed from between his fingers. The boy howled, and fought to get away from him. "Listen to me!" Vegeta bellowed at him, and the frantic struggles instantly ceased as his younger self stared at him in awe.
"Listen," Vegeta continued, more softly. "Look." He lifted the boy's torn wrist, spread his fingers so the prince could see the bright pulse of blood as it flowed out of him. "This is what matters. This is what counts, Saiyan no Ouiji. This blood. Your blood. The blood of our people."
The young prince stared at him with a mix of confusion and revulsion, watching in fascination as his own blood welled and flowed. "All that matters is that I'm hurt?" he asked, bitterly, and Vegeta repressed an urge to hug him, as if he were Trunks instead of just a bad memory.
"Baka," he snarled, oddly gentle. "No. You don't understand. This is your blood. It's your father's blood, your mother's blood, the blood of all saiyans, the blood of a prince. It's your blood, the blood of our people pounding through your veins, the indelible blueprint of who and what you are! Your blood, to be shed on their behalf. Your blood, to spatter the ground in your every battle, to signify every wound that makes you stronger. Your blood, that can never be taken!" His voice rose, ringing with pride and power. "He can never take it away. No matter how much he spills, no matter how much he takes, there is always more blood. As long as you live, to your last breath, he cannot take that. He can never take from you who you are. We are Saiyan! We are born in blood, we live in blood, we die in blood! We are who we are, Saiyan no Ouiji, the best, the strongest, and it is more than any stupid lizard can steal from us!"
He stopped himself with a snarl, every instant of pride and rage and passion pouring back through him in fierce remembrance, and damn them all, it was magnificent! What he was now was greater, gentler, more powerful, but there had been a kind of stark and brutal glory to what he'd been then that still resonated with something inside him. He was still, deep inside, the man this child would become, the black warrior, the slave prince. He was still in part the man that had done his damnedest to destroy Kakarott. Everything he said struck a cord, deep inside him, of remembered pride.
He looked down again, at the harsh features of the boy, at the expression of arrogant resolve that slowly formed on them, and smiled bitterly. With something that might be called tenderness, with the closest thing to that wonderous gift that this child would recieve for many years to come, he lifted the torn wrist to his lips and bit down, gently, without quite knowing why. He grasped the boy's head between his hands, and the gleaming eyes stared up at him with solemn awe, and Vegeta smiled fiercely, leaning forward to press his bloody mouth to the boy's forehead, in the manner of kings, a searing benediction.
"Saiyan no Ouiji," he whispered, as he pulled back, and looked down into the angry, determined pride that crystallised on those cold young features with a kind of sad pity. It was all he could give. Of everything he had learned, that pride was the only thing he could give that was strong enough to survive what was coming. The only thing he could tell him. But that was all right. There would be others to teach him the rest. There would be Kakarott, and Bulma, and the brats, and the Namek, and earth. Sooner or later, he would learn to become everything they had taught him to be.
But here and now, in Frieza's hands, there could only be what he had taught himself. What he had learned in pain and despair and battle. In this moment, he could only be what he had made himself, with that fierce and desperate pride that was the only thing he knew to give in order to survive to see the rest. But it was enough. It would be enough.
As the past faded around him, as whatever stupid wish they had asked faded away, completed, he smiled. The old smile, proud and bitter and magnificent. He was who he was, Saiyan no Ouiji, and no-one had ever succeeded in taking that from him. They couldn't.
It was in his blood.
