Geni(us)

~10~

Vegeta materialized back at his lamp. It was, after all, the only place he could teleport to when not fulfilling a wish.

Still fuming from the events at the farm, he paced Bulma's basement. Agitation sizzled across his skin, sticky and uncomfortable. He tore off the garments she had given him and magicked on his own, needing the familiarity of his uniform to settle his nerves.

His world was upside down. Little of what happened this day made any sense. A surviving djinn child? Freed of his lamp? And her. He didn't know what to do with any of it, especially the heavy feeling of betrayal she evoked within him; alarming, given it meant that in a matter of mere hours he'd come to trust he9r. How the fuck had that happened? How the fuck had he allowed it? Hadn't he learned his lesson after his last master?

Frustration boiling over, Vegeta picked up his lamp and threw it across the room. Or tried to. His hands dissipated through the object. A genie could not possess his own lamp.

Breathing hard through his nose, he surveyed the room for a better target of his fury. There were many to be had. The room was filled with miscellany: tools, robotics, computers, scientific equipment and so on. An underground lab of the highest calibre.

I am a genius, heiress and inventor to Capsule Corporation.

So, she hadn't been lying about that.

However, where the majority of the room was filled with crisp whites and fancy electronics, a desk in a recessed corner at the far back was covered in old maps and yellowed books. Vegeta was drawn to it, spying a tome decorated in the cursive script of the djinn. He picked it up and brushed his thumbs along the ancient frayed leather and remnants of gold gilding. Cracking the book open, his nostrils filled with dust and weathered parchment. He was thrown back in time and space to the library of his father's palace. He could almost smell the sand and carnations on the air. His heart squeezed painfully. Vegeta sank to a seat before the desk and ran his eyes over the melange of treasures Bulma had collected.

She had been doing her homework. There were resources from all over the world in various languages on mythology and history, all related to relics and magical treasures that supposedly granted wishes. Her handwritten notes were scrawled all over, translations and memos she had jotted down in her studies. There was a personal journal too. Flipping through those pages revealed a very young Bulma starting out on her adventures, looking for something called 'the dragon balls' until she accidentally encountered 'a weird boy in a strange teapot'. The entries spanned years, and though they grew less frequent over time, they also grew more insightful as the woman writing them matured and honed her analytical mind. A lot of her notes ended with question marks or half-scratched out theories. The most recent entry read:

Goku just returned from his year of training with that weird old hermit we tracked down. I know Chi Chi wasn't happy to be parted from her husband for so long, but seeing how confident and in control Goku is now, I can tell it was a worthwhile sacrifice. It's reassuring to know he'll be less of a danger to himself and others. What's more, Goku tells me the old man claims to know some lore about genies. Apparently there used to be many more, but now they're almost extinct. This would explain why a lot of my research has turned up dead ends. And what's more, the old man says he knows where an active lamp resides!

I'm chasing this one down on my own. Chi Chi isn't going to let Goku out of her sights so soon again. Besides, it'll probably just lead to another dead end like all the others. Still…it would be nice to finally get some real answers about where Goku came from. He said I could wait until he was available to help, but what if there IS another poor soul trapped in a lamp out there all alone like he was?

Vegeta frowned and checked the date. It was fairly recent, but that didn't make sense. She made it sound like she knew almost nothing of genies. Why hadn't Goku told her everything?

Time slipped away from him as he lost himself reading all her notes and the scraps of history that remained of his people.

He felt her arrival before he heard her enter the room. Tensing, he didn't look up, letting her make the first move.

"I'm sorry."

His mouth thinned and he set the journal down, turning to face her. Bulma looked more composed than when he'd left her, a serious expression on her face which he met with his own. He did not want nor care for an apology.

"I got excited and didn't think about how all this might affect you," she continued when he said nothing. "It's just…we don't really know much about where Goku came from. When I found him as a boy…he wasn't right."

Vegeta raised a questioning brow.

Her expression turned troubled. "He was quite feral. Turns out, no one had ever released him from the lamp until just before I came along."

Vegeta let that sink in. "You're telling me a child was trapped in the void of the lamp, unsocialized, for millennia?"

She nodded.

His brow pulled down. The lamp was not for the faint of heart. It could wear down even the most disciplined of adult minds. To think what such a place could do to a child and for so long…No wonder Goku was a little off. It was remarkable he could function at all.

"Luckily, a kind old man found him and helped raise him," Bulma explained. "He taught Goku, helped temper him. But Goku had lost all his memories — if he ever had any to begin with. He doesn't know who he was or where he came from, and he had very little control or understanding over his abilities. He ended up killing the old man by accident. I found him shortly after."

Vegeta frowned. "Djinn cannot kill their masters."

She shrugged. "Well, I don't think it was on purpose. I'm just telling you what Goku told me. If you want more details you'll have to ask him."

Vegeta was in no hurry to do that. It still chaffed him to think that Bulma had another djinn to call on. And the story was still hard to believe. "If Goku is a genie like you claim, how is it that he's aged?"

She blinked, her brow furrowing. "Er…Should he not have?"

"No," Vegeta replied flatly. "Once bound to a lamp, genies are immortal. Ageless, unchanging."

"Huh, that does make sense…Maybe freeing him undid that? I don't really know, that's my point. There's so much about all this we don't know. That's why I sought you out. We need answers to better understand who Goku is."

"Tch. And why should I care?" He snapped, unable to keep the churlish tone from his voice.

"Because he's one of your own," she pleaded, stepping closer towards him. "And because I can help you too in the process."

"I did not ask for any help."

"Oh please, like you'd ever ask," she countered with a heavy eye-roll.

His cheek ticked. She was too good at reading him. Best to steer the conversation back to something less personal. "You could have just wished for me to give you the knowledge you sought."

She sighed, running a hand through her hair. "And use you like some slave. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm really not into that."

He huffed and looked away. "Who are you kidding? Whether you ask me nicely or command it, makes no difference. Either way I'm stuck at your side until you've gotten what you want from me."

"That's not true," she blurted out, her cheeks flushing with indignation. "Have I once forced you to do anything? You could have left any time you liked. I told you again and again that I don't want any wishes, but you're the one who keeps insisting on them!"

He turned towards her, lips peeling back to reveal white canines. "Because I have no choice! I cannot leave until you've made your damn wishes."

"…Oh." She blinked, looking genuinely surprised. "I didn't know that."

"Tch. Typical ignorant human," he grouched, crossing his arms.

"Well to be fair, you never made that very clear."

"It's never been necessary before," he ground out with exasperation.

With that out in the open, the rising tension in the room fizzled away. She pursed her lips in thought. "Okay, so…I, Bulma Briefs, officially release you of your wish granting duties." She waved her hands strangely in the air.

He felt a vein in his temple throb. "What are you doing?"

Her arms paused mid-air. "Um, freeing you of your obligations?"

"…You can't be serious."

She dropped her hands to rest on her hips, growing pink. "It was worth a shot."

His eyebrow winged. "And you're supposed to be a genius?"

"Well I don't see you coming up with any better ideas."

"I've already told you my idea. Make your three wishes."

"I don't think so, bub. We're doing this the good ol' fashioned way."

Fucking great.

He glared at her, but there wasn't much heat behind it. Bulma was even struggling not smile and he found to his surprise that he was doing the same. He huffed and tried to get a better handle over his emotions, but that all fell apart as she came closer towards him.

"I never meant to upset you, Vegeta. I really do want to help you, and Goku." When he grimaced at the other djinn's name, she hurriedly pled her case. "Please, try to imagine what it was like for him going his whole life never knowing who he was or where he came from."

A stillness washed over him as he put himself in Goku's shoes, never having to endure the eternity within the lamp with the faces of those he'd failed haunting him day and night. Never having to grant the wishes of his masters while his own wish went forever unfulfilled.

Color and warmth bled away, leaving Vegeta cold and empty. His fingers tightened painfully on his arms. "Tch. Then he had it easy. Better to be left in the dark than to know exactly who you are and what you lost, knowing you were too weak to stop it from being taken from you." He glared resentfully at the floor, mouth thinning and tasting of ash.

She closed the gap between them, stopping just a whisper away to put her hands on his. Her fingers were so delicate and pale, her touch cool and soft. With a gentle tug she pulled on his hands, and after a moment's hesitation, he allowed her to take them.

"Hmm." She turned his palms up for inspection. "Seem like good, strong, capable hands to me. If they couldn't stop something from happening, it was of no fault of their own, or their owner. Sometimes, the other guy is just stronger."

Her words struck him in a way he didn't think capable, slicing through centuries of guilt and self-reproach, ripping off the badly healed scab of his loss and letting it finally air. He swallowed thickly, momentarily overcome, and stared at their hands lest she see the crumbling emotion in his eyes.

Her thumbs soothingly rubbed over his palms, and he fixated on the sensation to keep himself from falling apart.

~xox~