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As Loyalty Can Be	By : Kimmy Category: Dragon Ball Z > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 6353 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragonball Z, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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(3)

Vegeta walked restlessly back and forth in the empty kitchen. He opened the
refrigerator, but closed it again when nothing inside managed to catch his
interest. Turning around, he saw the water boiler and turned it on, thinking
that he could make some tea, in case someone had bothered to fill the thing
with water. If it was empty, he could burn some dust. Whatever.

The plastic boiler gave a wet huff and almost immediately he could hear the
bubbling of overheated water. He looked into the sink, and sure enough there
laid a small tea-strainer filled with soaked leaves. Bulma.
She had been drinking a lot of tea lately, and she only did that when she was
brooding.

Thinking, she often did that in her lab in front of a screen or with tools in
her hands. Brooding, she did that in the lab too, holding a cup of tea. She
would just stare at her unfinished projects, and sometimes she would reach out
to grab one of the fragile constructions and let it fall on the floor. Broken. A thought tried and rejected. Not all of her
inventions ever amounted to anything.

He knew her habits.

Vegeta let his gaze glide over the slick white surfaces of the well-lit room,
only pausing when it fell upon the darkened window. Already, it was night. He
couldn�t see outside though, only the same room reflected in the glass - its
dark twin. He saw his own reflection; his face looked pale in contrast to his
dark hair, to the darkness outside.

He wondered how he had looked to the others when he had walked into their party
today. Had he looked like a blundering child? Had he looked like he didn�t know
what he was doing? Perhaps they had been thinking (still) about the way
that he had looked when he first set foot on their planet, dressed in the
armour of Frieza, laughing at their weakness, earning the hate of them all.

Or had they just seen the same thing that he did now, studying his own
reflection? Those particular lines of his face, that arch of his
eyebrow, that angle of his shoulders and that way that his hair
cut the air, perhaps this was all they saw.

Guarded and glassy, the eyes of his reflection stared back at him.

To hell with it. Vegeta abruptly turned his back to
the window and took a cup from the dish-rack. He poured steaming water over the
already used leaves, coloring the water and not much more. The simple task
suddenly frustrated him beyond belief. He had no patience for this!

Stupid little sieve, with the small handle that he had to hold between the tip
of his thumb and forefinger! Stupid water that he had to pour so annoyingly slow! Stupid idea in the first place.
What good was tea, anyway?

He walked out of
the kitchen, leaving the cup untouched on the counter. Almost out of habit, he
turned in the direction of the gravity chamber, but his steps slowed to a halt.
Something inside him was screaming out the negative. He decided to search out
Bulma in the lab instead.

He wondered if he could bring himself to talk to her. To actually tell her:
�Kakarott smiled at me today, and I noticed his kindness where I once only saw
my own anger�.

What was happening to him? He doubted he could explain it to her; not when he
couldn�t explain it to himself. He couldn�t make sense of the strange new
thought that was rising up in him. The impulse to join the others in their
celebration, the nearly overwhelming feelings of... gratitude... by Kakarott�s
welcome, as well as actual hurt by the others� rejection. Where had it come
from?

He ought to curse himself for this weakness, to lash out in anger and deny it
all. But he didn�t. His ever-vigilant anger seemed to have gone to sleep. He
shook his head at this realization. It was� weird - deeply unsettling, in fact.
Without the anger, without the rage eating inside of him... who was he? He
stopped walking, stunned when he heard the question in his own mind.

Who was he?

Once, when he was just a small child, he happened to step into a room with zero
gravity by mistake. He was still living on his birth planet, a quick and
inquisitive child, who couldn�t leave one door unopened, not one room unexplored.
He took a step into the chamber with the unfamiliar symbol on the entrance, one
leap... and he didn�t land.

Agonizingly slow, he tumbled to the centre of the room, where he finally came
to a stop. Disoriented, he was not able to tell what was up and what was down,
and this feeling only increased as time went by and no one came to his help. He
had tried to move, only to find that he couldn�t. There was nothing to hold on
to, only empty air - up and down had ceased to exist.

For some reason Vegeta was reminded of that incident now, as he was standing in
one of the empty corridors of Capsule Corporation. He recalled the sudden and
unexpected loss of all direction, the nightmarish sensation of reaching and
reaching without finding anything to hold on to, a feeling that had made him
scream and holler for help. Of course he had been rescued; he had also been
laughed at, but never mind that. The next day he had
gone back to the same room, zero gravity just another thing to explore and
eventually to master.

Taking the last step to Bulma�s lab, Vegeta pushed open the door without
knocking.

�Hey,� he said in way of greeting, and Bulma turned around. She was standing by
a large screen, staring into it, although it showed nothing but the CC logo,
slowly spinning against the dark background.

�Hey, Vegeta.� She looked a bit startled to see him
there, and she tugged at her skirt, nervously smoothing it down.

He joined her by the screen, sidestepping a few tables, all laden with
complicated equipment and strange designs. He glanced at the table next to her,
on which stood a cup of tea, still full and apparently untouched.

�I burned my tongue,� she said, noticing his glance. Briefly she stuck out her
tongue, showing him. It did indeed look slightly reddened.

�Hn.�

�I...� Bulma hesitated, looked almost beseechingly at the screen, before
taking a deep breath and turned to face him once again. �There�s something that
I had been meaning to talk to you about. It�s really important.�

�Yes?� he said when she fell silent, unhappiness
shadowing her features.

�Vegeta,� she paused again before continuing. �I don�t think we should be
together anymore.�

He just stared at her, at her earnest, open face. He heard the regret in her
voice, as well as the steel, but the words didn�t quite process.

�What?�

�I�m breaking up with you.� She registered his blank look. �Let me put this in
layman terms. The idea of us as a couple no longer exists. It is over. I�m
sorry if I sound harsh,� she added. �I just want to be perfectly clear about
this.�

�But... why?� His
voice was hardly more than a dazed whisper. �Is there someone else?�

�That�s so typically male, to ask that question! No, there isn�t someone else.
If I�m leaving you for someone, it�s for Trunks.�

�For Trunks,� he echoed his voice the same whisper.

�Yeah. I really want to give him a chance to have a
proper father in his life. Let�s face it, Vegeta, you are a lousy boyfriend,
and I don�t think you are any better as a father.�

Anger. Hello old friend.

�If that�s what you think, why didn�t you just tell me to get
the hell out of here from the beginning?!�

�Because I loved you, you dickhead!� Her voice instantly lowered
again, became wistful, �I loved you, but perhaps that wasn�t enough. I
think...when you died back there... I let go. I could feel it, you know, like
something tearing inside my chest. I grieved - I cried. And then I...� She fell
silent for a moment and slowly shook her head. �Perhaps it had been dying for a
long time. I don�t know.�

He found he couldn�t be angry with her after all. One blue strand of hair had
been caught in her mouth, he saw, and without really thinking about it, he
reached out, hooked one finger around the wayward strand and slowly pulled it
out.

It was like pulling out her tears at the same time. Hooking
them. They fell from her clear eyes, made tiny tracks down her cheeks.

�This is the right thing,� she whispered so low that he almost didn�t hear. She
wiped her hands across her cheeks, taking away all signs of tears. �We couldn�t
just go on as we had been, it was no real
relationship, just two people getting by their lives.� She looked at him and
sighed. �You don�t really understand what I�m talking about, do you? But being
a couple is so much more then that, it�s about sharing, and talking, and being
friends.�

�

�I could do that,� he muttered.

�Vegeta,� she
continued, frank and kind of ruthless, sparing neither of them. �The only time
you behaved like we were a couple were when we were making love. You... you
used to touch me so tenderly, like you were afraid that I might break. I really
think it was those glimpses of tenderness that made me stay with you for so
long. But I want more than that. I want the real thing.�

�Bulma...� Surely there was something he could say.

�No, Vegeta. Listen to me. This has been coming for a long time now.
I�m tired of your moods and your silences. I�m tired of hoping for something
that may never happen. Most of all, I�m tired of always coming in second place.
For nearly nine years, I�ve had to deal with your obsession, this all-consuming
drive of yours, to be stronger than Goku, than your �Kakarott�. In truth...it
has always felt like I was the girl on the side, while you in reality were
married to your obsession.�

She raised her hand, stopping him when he was about to speak. �There�s no
longer any choice. It�s over, it has to be. It�s a matter of pride.�

Pride. She always did use that as a final argument
against him. He felt like he was falling. No. Like he had stepped into a room
where everything he had really counted on had turned out to be a lie.

Zero gravity. No handholds.
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As Loyalty Can Be