Rehab: Vegeta's Last Stand

Murdock was perched on the edge of a rocky outcrop, tossing stones into the valley below him when I arrived ablaze with power. I tried to ignore the fact that I had not eaten or slept for two days, and it was easier to do when Murdock smirked. What an infuriating fucker.

"So, is he dead yet? Ready to join me on a universe-wide purge, Prince Vegeta?"

"Go fuck yourself, Murdock," I growled, flaring my energy. "I might have let you go before, but now nothing would make me happier than turning you into a smear on the landscape."

Murdock floated away from the cliff's edge, black energy building up around him. "Now you sound more like the blood-soaked prince I remember. You've gone soft, Vegeta. You used to have an edge but now…well, now I'd have to say that you're as washed up as you are irrelevant."

"Spare me," is all I said before I disappeared, whipping through the air to fly up from below him. But he flipped backwards, his heel catching me under the jaw and snapping my head back.

"I'm hardly threatened by a toothless monkey," he said as I regained my balance. He flung out a wide energy ball, which I batted back before disappearing again, moving farther away. I was in an even worse condition than our last fight, and he looked better than ever before.

Fuck.

If I didn't kill him and take his blood back, Kakarot would die. I had saved the world before, but the task had never felt as impossible as this. Perhaps it was because this was the first time that Kakarot wouldn't be able to help me.

I barely managed to deflect a kick aimed at my head, firing an energy blast into Murdock's torso. But he flicked it away and returned one of his own into my side. I tried to shift to the side but it burnt through my shirt easily, tearing open the skin and splattering blood against us both. I gritted my teeth as I jetted backwards, but Murdock's foot smashed into my spine, sending me staggering forward. I spun around and shot out a blast of energy, which he casually sidestepped before spinning around, sending a spray of those dangerous, terrible feathers flying. I hurriedly threw up an energy barrier, but as the first wave crumbled against the energy, he reappeared behind me, one hand grabbing my outstretched hand and the other clamping around my neck.

"Well played, sweet Prince. But now, it's time you learned that you do not get to run away whenever it suits you."

And with the white-hot pain of a sun flare, Murdock embedded hundreds of feathers across my shoulders and neck. He stepped back and let go, and I could do nothing but fall a hundred feet to the ground, barely managing to reduce the impact by flaring my pitiful energy a split second before hitting the ground. But still it met me with enough impact to jar every injury ten times over and I could not hold back the howl of pain. Murdock's feet appeared in my blurring vision as each poisonous barb leaked acid into my blood. I panted, and Murdock lifted my chin with his boot.

"And so here you are, Vegeta. Here, lying broken at my feet. You were once such a maelstrom of strength, the most feared Saiyan of them all! And now? I wouldn't stoop to rutting with you. But you know, I look forward to watching you die. You will never save anyone, Vegeta, least of all your latest little toy. Kakarot, yes? Oh, look at the venom in those eyes! A bit misplaced, don't you think?"

I tried to push to my hands and knees but Murdock pushed his foot against my neck, pinning me to the ground. In the bottomless morass of pain I was drowning in, the only coherent thought I could hold onto was that I was going to die here, die because I would never be strong enough, incapable of defending myself, my planet, and the only person who had ever risked everything to help me.

No wonder I had started drinking.

It wasn't so bad if I died here. It was about what I deserved. But for Kakarot to die because of my weakness…

Despair overwhelmed the physical pain, and I shut my eyes against it. I had failed him so utterly, so many times. But all those times, he had survived to forgive me. Kakarot had never put himself in harm's way except to help others, but this time I had put him there through my weakness, through my failed strength.

As my body began to break apart, as black fire broke down each nerve with ruthless precision, I could only see the times I failed. When I had lost to Frieza, and Cell. To Majin Buu, to Kid Buu, all the times my strength and pride had failed to be enough. When I had created the monster Cell that had killed Kakarot, and when my failure to obliterate Buu had led to the death of this planet, of my own beloved son.

Death would have been a mercy, if only I were not dragging Kakarot down with me.

Murdock sat down, reaching to swipe blood off my face and draw runes in the dust with it. "You are surprisingly resilient, Vegeta. I've never seen anyone take such a huge dose before and live longer than a minute. I'm almost impressed."

The curses were too heavy to leave my tongue, and as my heart beat slower and slower, each beat a wave of agony, I only managed a sigh. Moments away from death, and I couldn't even say something to mark my passing.

How pathetic.

And then, with the finality of the earth's mantle cracking, Kakarot's presence in my mind utterly vanished.

For a moment, the entire universe paused. Then it erupted, and in the howling, burning anguish, I became incandescent with pain and rage. Kakarot was gone, and suddenly the weight of every bitter failure, every lost fight, every day that he had given me back and every piece of my life he had salvaged, imploded into the kind of power that blasted the rock below me into dust. Murdock stumbled back as I rose, the pain disappearing under the wash of overwhelming power that burnt through me. I felt my hair tumble down my back, my body obliterating the poison with the star-hot power that threatened to tear me apart if I did not control it.

Murdock trembled, and without even thinking about moving, I crossed the space between us and sank my fist into his face, sending him shooting backwards, the ground tearing below him before he was embedded in the side of the mountain. With a flicker of power I had him dangling by his ankle, and I kicked him up into the sky. I appeared above him before his momentum stopped, axe-handling him back into the ground. With no effort, I was able to snap his spine, open up his stomach. Black blood trailed through the air after him, his body easily crumbling. With a simple, easy thought, he could be annihilated. I had enough power to shame the sun and he deserved to have this dearly-bought strength smashed through his being. It took all of my will not to turn him to ashes, but it was simple work to separate his head from his body with a tug. It was like pulling a cherry off its stem.

I dropped the body and looked at the head. It may be too late for Kakarot, but the antidote needed to be made. It was worth keeping in store in case his kind found this planet and we were not here to defend it.

I was too afraid to let go of this power, because once it left me I would no longer be able to ignore my injuries, the damage the poison had already done. If all I could manage before I disappeared forever was this last gift to the earth, then I needed to hold on. And all I needed to do was remind myself of the price of it.

Goku died at four o'clock on a beautiful summer's day in spite of all the desperate effort we had made to save him. As soon as Vegeta had left, he had deteriorated. We watched our oldest friend rapidly spiral into heart failure as Vegeta's power dropped off the planet. The last two Saiyans died within moments of each other. The father of my child had died first, Piccolo had told me, his head hanging as he sensed Vegeta's energy plummet and disappear. My oldest friend died little more than a minute later, and all of my technology and all of Dende's power could not tether him to this world.

And then Vegeta had roared back to life, powered by the kind of rage and terrible despair that had made Piccolo's hands shake. We had regained one, but no one had the heart to say that it would only last as long as Vegeta's ignorance of Goku's death. That we had all known years ago that Vegeta had only survived his Kakarot's death because of Trunks, and because there was that tiny chance Kakarot could be wished back.

This time, I would lose him for the third and final time, and there was nothing anyone could say or do to change that.

When Vegeta's earth-shaking power made its way back in minutes after reappearing, I braced myself for his terrible discovery, and for saying my last goodbye. I wish Trunks would answer his phone and come back home. Perhaps he was on his way already. Maybe even with the dragonballs.

The glass doors onto the balcony shattered as Vegeta approached them, magnificent in a form that only Goku had ever truly wielded. Hair hung to his knees and almost suffocating power enrobed him. He had a head dangling from his hand, which he tossed to the ground.

"The antidote, for what its worth," he rasped.

He went over to Goku, who was so still and absent. Vegeta bent over the body, his forehead pressed to Goku's collarbone as his fists clenched in his top. He shook, his mane falling over them both as electricity snapped through the room, bouncing from machine to machine. We stood back silently. Vegeta had told me that Saiyans should not suffer alone, and as unbearable as his pain was, I could not desert him. Not now. Not after everything he had gone through.

"Kakarot, I'm back, you should have known I'd come back. I always come back for you, you're the lighthouse that guides me home," I heard him say, and my knees nearly gave out. I slumped back against the wall, Vegeta's grief tangible in the small room.

"You're not supposed to die, Kakarot. I'm the one that always loses, but at least I've nearly always lost in the right way. And I'm fine with that, because at least it was with you, and for you. Always for you. Kakarot, you have to come back this time. One more time, for me. You said you wouldn't give up, and you never have before."

Vegeta spread his hand over Goku's heart, and poured his energy into it, suffusing Goku's body with light. We all waited, we all hoped, and when it seemed that not even the boundless power of a Super Saiyan three could bring Goku back, his back arched as his heart lurched, and he gasped as he fell back onto the bed, his eyes scrunched tight as his body was reanimated. A sob broke out of my throat and Piccolo covered his face with his hands as his shoulders slumped, his relief palpable. Vegeta kept his hand over Goku's heart, and perhaps his power was enough to sustain Goku until I could create the antidote. Piccolo threw his cape over the head, bundled it up safely and left the room with Dende and I. Now it was our turn to save the day.

"Vegeta?" he rasped, and I have never heard my name said with such relief.

"I beat Murdock, Kakarot. I beat him for you. Bulma's making an antidote right now; you have to be strong for a little longer. I can give you power until then."

He smiled, and reached up to touch the veritable waterfall of hair that fell around us. "You are the most wonderful thing I've ever seen."

I leaned down, he tilted his chin up and within the cocoon of my power and our undefeatable belief in each other, we made a promise that this was the absolute last time anything would tear us asunder again.

The universe would never survive it.