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Sacrifice	By : xerosky Category: Dragon Ball Z > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 8290 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Dragon Ball Z is the property of Akira Toriyama. No money is being made from this work of fan fiction.

Chapter List
- 7
- 8
Sacrifice

By Xero Sky

Pairing: Kakkarot x Vejiita

Rating: NC-17

Warnings (for the entire fic): Slash, non- or dub- con, sex, violence, profanity, death, angst. AU, time travel.

Summary:   Rejecting your fate is a privilege of power. Sometimes, however, the price may be too high to pay.

Chapter 8

The prince’s staff fled.

They were professionals, experienced in the art of dealing with the prince in all his moods, and yet they bolted when the outer doors to the prince’s suite slammed open, and stayed scarce after the inner doors to his sleeping chamber slammed shut. Their duty, of course, was to stay put, continuing to work in the adjacent offices and awaiting any requests the prince might have. Self-preservation dictated otherwise.

It wasn’t that the prince had ever intentionally injured his staff, and the last incidental injuries had been years ago, when a 12-year old prince had destroyed his quarters entirely. The king had made him apologize to each of the injured, and then sleep in the common Guard barracks for a full lunar cycle afterwards while the rooms were rebuilt. It wasn’t the lingering memory of this incident that made them cautious, so much as the fact that the prince in a rage could be as impersonal and terrifying as a firestorm.

Usually, though, he worked out his rage on the training grounds before returning to his rooms simmering but mostly sated. It happened often enough that his staff took it in stride, simply getting out of his way and pretending they weren’t there so that he could pretend the same. Any collateral damage was then swiftly and routinely repaired.

Over the last few weeks, however, Vejiita’s rages had become less frequent but much more intense, and even catching his eye during those times seemed like a terrifying prospect. All the doors in his suite had been replaced, three times, with increasingly tougher materials; the frame of his bedroom doors was now made of the same alloy as starship hulls, and if the prince managed to break that, the structural integrity of that entire floor might be compromised. All the repairs were done when the prince was gone, and the bills were still within his household budget, so there was no sign yet if he even realized how much damage he’d done, or whether he’d give a damn. The doors would thunder open and his staff would scatter like troops evacuating a crippled transport. They’d gotten exceedingly good at it.

This afternoon was no different.

Neither was the new trigger for royal rage.

That cause turned up about 15 minutes later. Although Kakkarot was also angry, the staff knew they simply had to stay out of his actual path, and then only to keep from being run over. He was equally terrifying, but seemed less likely to cause grievous bodily harm, unless it was by accident. He was just so focused on Vejiita that he didn’t seem to see anyone else.

He was easier on the doors, though, since he rarely ever bothered to close them. They would creak shut on their own, and the click of the locks engaging would be the all-clear sign. Then the staff would go about the business of repairing whatever damage had been done. Today the smoldering carpet was replaced and yet another structural soundness check of the door frames was ordered, all within several minutes of the whirlwind passing through. Practice, after all, made perfect.

********

“Get out!” Vejiita barked, without deigning to look at him. The prince was already in the showers, rinsing the last of the lather from his hair and tail.

Kakkarot, still fully clothed, advanced on him, stopping with only the width of a shower stream between them. “No. Not until you tell me what I’ve done to piss off the mighty Vejiita this time!”

The prince’s face flushed as he flashed from annoyance to rage. The water began to steam off his skin. “Stop mocking me!!”

Kakkarot growled in response, but then hesitated as he realized what he’d just done. ‘The mighty Vejiita’ was an insult from a different time, meant to be thrown back into the face of a prince who had proven his prowess and matured into his strength. The first prince would have simply kicked him in the head for it; this Vejiita, young and manifestly not powerful enough to control his destiny, saw it as simple ridicule.

“I’m not making fun of you,” Kakkarot said, letting out a deep breath. “I just don’t understand what I keep doing to piss you off.”

Vejiita visibly tried to rein back his anger and come up with an answer other than ‘Breathing’. Eventually, he gave up and just turned his back, using the excuse of rinsing the last of the soap from his hair.

The hand at the base of his tail made him freeze in place.

“If I make you so angry, shouldn’t you tell me why?” Kakkarot ducked under the water stream and stood closely behind him. “I’m not doing it on purpose.”

The hand squeezed his tail very lightly and then let go completely.

Vejiita closed his eyes for a moment. He was naked and alone with the bane of his existence, who held enough power to destroy the entire planet without even having to think about it much… and he was tired of this shit.

He rounded on Kakkarot and jabbed a finger at his face. “If you want to be my consort, you’ll do your damned job! What did you think I did all day, train? I’ve got duties to see to, and you--! You’re late for everything but meals! You never watch your briefing vids, so everything has to be explained to you after we get there. You won’t learn protocol, so the staff has to keep telling you what to do. You waste so much fucking time that we’ve got appointments delayed for over a week now!”

Vehement and outraged, the prince could have been Chichi. Kakkarot felt himself pulling back, disengaging his thoughts from the moment much the same way he had with her when she was in full cry. The thing was, Chichi’s complaints came from him failing to match her ideal of a perfectly normal family. That family could never have existed – not between a saiyajin and a demon princess and their half-breed sons -- but he’d humored her by accepting the blame whenever she wanted to pin it on someone.

Vejiita wasn’t asking for the impossible, though, and he hadn’t even put in enough effort to humor him, had he? The meetings, ceremonies, demonstrations, planning sessions and almost everything else the prince did bored Kakkarot senseless. He was expected to be present for everything but the most high-level sessions, and he never seemed to know what was going on. He had watched the video briefings the staff put together for him, but they never seemed to help all that much; he could speak the language (mostly), but he lacked the cultural context to understand a lot of things that everyone took for granted. His grasp of history was rudimentary, and he almost never got the ‘big picture’ without help. He wasn’t stupid, but he was in way over his head. He really hadn’t given any thought at all to what Vejiita did all day, because the first prince really had spent all of his time training.

How empty his hours must have been.

And what had Kakkarot done under the weight of less responsibility than this teenage prince carried every day? Instead of fighting his way through it, he’d given up.

This morning, he hadn’t even shown up for the diplomatic conference with the Asyr high command. It was an important meeting for working out territorial boundaries with a species the saiyajins were almost allied with, and Kakkarot knew he’d have nothing to do but sit there for four hours trying to not fall asleep. He hadn’t even understood half of what the briefing vid had said about it. Orbital boundaries? Lagrange points? He didn’t have a fucking clue. And it had been such a beautiful day outside…

Before the conference started, he excused himself to the bathroom, and literally escaped through a window. He’d felt freer than he had in weeks, tearing through the clouds and letting the winds strip away his frustration and boredom.

In retrospect, he could see that through Vejiita’s eyes – the royal consort fleeing through a bathroom window, dodging his responsibilities – and he felt his cheeks burn.

“I’m sorry,” he said, bowing his head. “You’re right. I don’t really understand what you do here, and I guess I sorta stopped trying. I apologize.”

Vejiita stared at him, fists clenching and unclenching with a sort of confused rage. He was sorry? He was wrong, and he was sorry? How the hell was Vejiita supposed to respond to that? He’d expected defensiveness, even aggression, but certainly not contrition. Off-balance yet again, Vejiita snarled at Kakkarot, showing his teeth. The big bastard constantly did this to him, keeping him off-balance.

He understood that palace life was completely alien to Kakkarot. The memories that had been shoved into his head were slowly fading, but he knew the saiyajin had lived a rural life, mostly unaffected by the lives of the local inhabitants. Kakkarot had no reason to know what it might be like here. Vejiita didn’t really care, though: he just wanted the asshole to do his job. He’d pushed his way into Vejiita’s life, and he was going to have to get his shit together if he wanted to stay there.

But why was it so goddamned hard to stay angry at him, even though he absolutely deserved it?

Fuck Kakkarot and his honest dark eyes, and the sincerity of his damned apology.

Because even now, he didn’t doubt for a second that he meant every word.

Damn him.

Kakkarot looked up and caught his eye before he was ready. “You know where I came from,” he started.

“More than I could ever want to,” Vejiita snapped at him. He stopped, surprised, when Kakkarot laid two fingers against his mouth, stopping the prince from speaking. It was an alien gesture, and unfamiliar; the audacity of it actually did the trick more than anything else.

“Hush,” Kakkarot said firmly. “Let me finish. You’re right. I stopped trying, and I’m sorry. That isn’t like me. I told you I’d do anything to make this work, and I will, but I need your help.”

“How much more help do you need? Watch your damned briefings and pay attention! Show up on time! It’s not magic!” Vejiita shook his head free.

“I do watch the briefings! They last maybe 10 minutes, and from that I’m supposed to learn enough about biomechanics or the cult of Dacca or whatever the hell it is to talk about it?” His frustration started to surface. “I don’t get half the words anyway, and everyone acts like I just pissed myself if I ask for help. And all you do is try as hard as you can to pretend I don’t exist!!”

“Can you blame me??” Vejiita responded, their voices rising steadily.

“Yes!!”

“What more do you want from me?!”

“A fair chance to prove myself, and a little help, if it wouldn’t kill you,” Kakkarot huffed, crossing his arms and glaring.

“Why should I?!”

“Because I’m asking you!”

They were shouting at each other. Vejiita was naked and still wet, standing with his arms crossed and his tail tightly wrapped. Kakkarot’s fine clothing clung wetly to his skin as he stood with his fists clenched, his own tail lashing behind him. Angry, wet saiyajins in close proximity, these particular saiyajins…

Vejiita felt it first, the sudden awareness of his bare skin and the provocative closeness of the other male. He was angry, his heart was beating faster, and his blood surged, making his tail ripple as the fur rose. He saw Kakkarot’s eyes darken in reaction.

Breathe in. Breathe out. He picked up the faint scent of musk in the humid air and knew it was both of them. It reeked of inevitability, and Vejiita felt his body surge forward in reaction before he even considered moving. Brace, shift weight, set the power in motion -- he watched his fist catch Kakkarot in the face with a sort of detached approval. He saw the shock ripple across the flesh, saw the skin split over the high cheekbone and the whole head snap to one side.   He saw it all with perfect clarity, and drew his fist back to see it again.

The dreamy moment fell apart, fracturing the second Kakkarot caught his wrist on the back swing. He had to glance at it a second time to see what happened – it felt like his arm had simply lost the ability to move.   There were rough, pale fingers wrapped around his wrist, and he followed them with his eyes, to the wrist, the elbow, the arm and shoulder and up to the face. There was no anger there, and no hostility, just intensity.

Kakkarot met his gaze steadily as he slowly drew the prince’s fist back so that he could brush his lips gently across the back of his hand.

Vejiita drew in a ragged breath, his clarity vanishing. “Stop touching me,” he said, his voice lower and less certain than he could have wished.

“Until today, until now,” Kakkarot said, murmuring against his skin, “I haven’t touched you in weeks.”

He couldn’t have broken Kakkarot’s gaze if he’d tried.

“I sleep on your couch. I keep my hands to myself,” Kakkarot said, slowly kissing a knuckle. “I haven’t asked you for anything.”

“W-what do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m sorry, Vejiita, but you’re beautiful,” Kakkarot said, his voice slurring slightly as he purred.

“Don’t,” Vejiita said softly. He refused to pull at his wrist, because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get it free.

“I won’t do anything you don’t want,” the Legendary said, and with one last, lingering lick, he let go entirely of his prince’s wrist.

Vejiita’s eyes were drawn to the drop of blood sliding slowly down the flushed skin of his consort’s cheek, blood that he had drawn.

The urge to taste was almost overwhelming. Not exactly blood-lust, but the desire to experience it, to know it, to know him…

He was the prince of saiyajins. It was his right.

He wanted…

Kakkarot’s mouth touched his.

What did he want?

Warmth against his lips, and against his skin as arms wrapped around his waist and pulled him close, bringing a flush of new heat between them.

The kiss was deep and unrelenting; Kakkarot cupped the back of his head with one large hand, holding him in place. The lush tail curled around his thigh, tugging him closer, and the soft rasp of velvet against his skin reminded him of all his bare skin. He felt vulnerable and yet utterly safe, and it gave him a strange feeling of power.

And that…

None of that was anything he should be feeling with Kakkarot.

He pushed away, not violently but hard, and, to his surprise, Kakkarot finished the kiss and let go of him. Vejiita was left achingly hard and cold, but he was standing on his own two feet, and his head began to clear.

Kakkarot leaned forward and swiftly took hold of Vejiita’s tail, but before he could truly react, Kakkarot merely pressed a soft kiss to the tip of it before letting it be lashed out of his hand.

The prince crossed his arms and wrapped his tail, but he didn’t back off. He couldn’t. His pride wouldn’t allow it, and his lingering confusion blocked the anger that usually came to his rescue.

Kakkarot, fortunately, seemed to feel no such difficulties. With a strange, gentle smile, he made a small bow, the kind demanded by basic manners, and turned to leave. “We’ll talk about this later, yeah?” he said over his shoulder, his words lacking any kind of threat.

“Yes,” Vejiita said, almost involuntarily. He watched stonily as Kakkarot stripped his wet clothes off and pulled a towel from the niche, wrapping it around high around his waist to cover his tail. The prince watched the shift and pull of well-defined muscles as his consort-to-be moved, unsure of why he couldn’t seem to look away. He knew it was lust – why wouldn’t it be? – but he wasn’t used to having his objects of lust so intimately close and… accessible. In fact, he’d never been with anyone else but Kakkarot, and only in the abbreviated, fully-clothed version of their sole encounter.

The humid, damp length of the room, filled with the sounds of splashing water, lit with the diffused light from above, seemed vast between them, and yet quietly claustrophobic.

Then, with a last half-smile over his shoulder, Kakkarot was gone.

Willing his erection away, Vejiita flipped the cold water on, and leaned against the wall. When that eventually did the job, he turned the water off and went to sit on the edge of the warm pool in the center of the room, letting his feet dangle.

Of all the things about Kakkarot that troubled him – and there were many – perhaps the worst was simply this feeling of muddled confusion. He had lived a life that for the most part was clean and clearly cut, and that included his own emotions. He was proud, he hated, he loved, he resented – all of these things were drawn in broad strokes. Only Kakkarot could turn his feelings so murky. His anger from earlier seemed insubstantial now, and hard to regain.

Of all the things he’d expected from Kakkarot, he’d never guessed that the man would be such an enormous pain in the ass.

*******

The next morning, Kakkarot woke to find himself looking at an irritated, dark-haired woman. Over the course of his life, this was not an unusual thing for him to see first thing in the morning. He blinked repeatedly, fairly certain that there was something wrong with this scenario anyway.

The dark-haired woman resolved into a saiyajin woman of perhaps thirty years, her face creased into a frown. She was wearing a red uniform with a standing collar and gold trim, with the insignia of the Prince’s Household on it. A black tail with faint highlights of blue was wrapped neatly around her waist. The dark hair was also shorter than Chichi’s had ever been.

The expression was completely familiar though. The only difference was that this woman tried to hide her annoyance as soon as he woke up.

“Lord Kakkarot?”

“Yes?” he said, stretching out under the covers.

“My name is Minari. I have been assigned to you as your personal aide.”

He blinked and sat up, yawning. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’m here to assist you with whatever you require to meet your obligations.”

“Like?”

“Like reminding you that you have 45 minutes to get up, get dressed, and meet his Highness at the Skanyo testing range for an airborne weapons system demonstration.”

With a curse, Kakkarot jumped off the couch and grabbed for the clothes he’d worn last night. Minari smoothly intercepted, handing him a new set and then ushering him towards Vejiita’s bedroom and the bathroom beyond. Fifteen minutes later, freshly scrubbed and perfectly dressed, he was on his way to the palace hangar. Minari kept pace, briefing him as they went, and occasionally tugging his collar or sash or cuffs into a more suitable arrangement.

By the time he settled back into a plush seat on the air shuttle, a table loaded with breakfast was being pulled up, and Minari had cued up the briefing vid on the cabin’s main screen. As he ate, she ran him through it, adding commentary and explanations whenever he raised an eyebrow. He didn’t understand many of the technical details, but she broke it down for him easily. By the time the shuttle landed at the Skanyo airfield, he had a better idea of what was going on than he’d had in weeks.

“So where did you come from?” he asked her.

“Prince Vejiita ordered a personal assistant for you last night. I was in orbit on the Devastator, or I would’ve been here earlier.”

“He ordered it? Really?”

“Really.”

“Hunh.”

Ten minutes later, feeling more confident than he had in days, Kakkarot stepped up onto the viewing platform next to Vejiita. Minari, he noticed, stayed nearby, speaking with someone through her scouter and making notes on a tablet. The prince didn’t so much as glance at him, but when Kakkarot thanked him for his help, he nodded, all of his attention apparently, but not really, fixed on the presentation beginning below.

As incapable of hiding his emotions as usual, Kakkarot grinned. His lightened mood would prove infectious, affecting most of those in attendance, and in the end, the army staff would go away thinking they’d just made the best airborne weapons systems demonstrations in the history of the world.

The prince watched his consort talk with the officials, asking good questions and making jokes. Kakkarot was a little clumsy and not at all smoothly polished as far as his people-handling skills went, but the roughness seemed to make him more appealing to the crowd. Vejiita couldn’t help but be impressed with the difference in Kakkarot this morning. Perhaps it was his new assistant, or new confidence. Assigning him a personal handler/assistant seemed like the most efficient way to handle the situation, and he was pleased that it seemed to be working.

It didn’t occur to Vejiita that Kakkarot was simply happy that the prince had been helped him; it was the first truly voluntary sympathetic gesture Vejiita had made. He might not have believed it if he’d known.

*******

“So, what have we learned?”

“Shut up.”

“Okay, then what progress have we made?”

“Is there something about shutting up that you don’t understand? The words too long?”

“Awww, is total failure making you grumpy?”

“Goddamnit, Nappa, shut up!”

Entirely outside of Turles’ field of vision, Nappa grinned. His cousin was scowling at a tablet he had synced to his scouter, scanning multiple video and data feeds at the same time. His need for concentration was too tempting a target for Nappa to leave alone, even though he was also interested in whatever Turles was digging up.

He put his feet up on his desk and busied himself running through several data notices that had come in while he was tormenting his cousin. It was mostly judicial punishments looking for his signature; they were still going through the absent-without-leave cases from the night of Kakkarot’s stunt. Nappa was starting to nurse a grudge against the bastard just on account of the paperwork he’d generated.

“Fuck.”

With that pronouncement, Turles threw his tablet on the desk and pulled his scouter off.

“Anything new?”

“Nothing that’s not on his public profile. There’s no birth record, but half the purgers that came back are the same way. No one cared enough since they were being shipped off right after they were whelped,” Turles said in disgust.

Nappa passed over a beer, which Turles took gratefully. Both men had been insanely busy during the last couple of weeks, and they hadn’t made much progress at all on the Kakkarot problem.

“You know what bothers me, though?”

“Everything?” Nappa asked, grabbing his own drink.

“Fuck off. If he lost all his memories, how the hell does he know his father’s name?”

Nappa laughed. “How is he so powerful? There’s a lot of annoying little questions with this one.”

“’Annoying’ sums the prick up perfectly,” Turles groused. “Still, I may have a bit of good news. I know somebody on his Highness’ staff.”

“What’s her name?”

Turles shot him a look. “How do you know it’s a she?”

“Just a guess,” Nappa said, smirking.

“I’m not hooking you up either way, so don’t get all excited.”

“Like I need your help. So how good a source is this?”

“I knew them back when they were young and stupid, and I remember a few… inconvenient things they’ve done. Nothing dangerous to the prince, of course, but embarrassing anyway. It might be enough leverage to get some info, at least.”

Nappa sighed and leaned back. “It’s a pity we can’t just grab Kakkarot by the neck and crack his tail a few times.”

Turles looked mournful.

If the prince had put off his engagement ceremony even a couple of days, both saiyajins were confident that they could’ve gotten Kakkarot alone and extracted the truth out of him. Now, though, he was untouchable. Assaulting a royal, even an honorary one, could get you put to death right on the spot. So the cousins were forced to be sneaky; they could do it, but it just wasn’t as satisfying. Neither one was willing to go to the king without more evidence than the biometric data and a bad feeling. If the prince really was in love with this guy, then showing up with anything less than proof of… something was going to be bad for their health. That left them to try to ferret out whatever information they could on Kakkarot the old-fashioned, non-violent way. It was boring, and so far it had been unproductive.

“You ready for some more bad news?” Turles asked, massaging his temples. “Radditz’s ship passed the outer markers last night. At sublight, he’ll be here in two or three weeks, give or take.”

“Fuck.”

“You know, we’re going to have to sit on him as soon as he gets here. He’s going to freak out about all this ‘son of Bardock’ crap. Last thing we need is him losing his shit in front of the king.”

“Any ideas?”

“House arrest? Long-term sedation? Hells, I don’t know. Maybe being off by himself has mellowed him out,” Nappa offered.

“Maybe,” Turles said doubtfully. “If we don’t keep him quiet, then all this secrecy bullshit is for nothing. We might as well show up at open Court and accuse Kakkarot of being our retarded great-aunt for all the impact it’ll have.”

Nappa’s scouter started beeping, and he picked it up. As he began fixing it over his ear, he grinned at his cousin. “Keep your hopes up. Maybe we’ll both get assigned to the same punishment battalion.”

“Not even the king is that cruel.”

“No, but the prince is.”

Turles shuddered.

*******

The prince’s enemy faltered. His stance was too shallow and he was off-center, offering too much of his torso as a target. He was tired, or he wouldn’t have been so sloppy against such an opponent. Fists smashing into his belly reminded him of his error, and a casual boot to his lowered head drove the point home. Spinning off to the side, he hit the ground and stayed there, showing wisdom at last.

Stripped down to a pair of shorts, the prince stood over his foe with fists clenched and teeth bared, sweat dripping down his chest. “Get up!” he snarled.

“Vejiita,” the king said, trying to get his attention.

The prince planted a boot in his fallen opponent’s side, breaking a handful of ribs and sending him skidding several feet across the blood-stained sand of the training ground. “Useless,” the prince spat after him.

“Vejiita!” the king said, his voice over the scouter finally catching the prince’s attention.

“What?!” the prince snapped irritably, looking for his next opponent. Although the arena was full of warriors, suddenly not one of them would make eye contact with him.   Medics were already attending to his last opponent, and the prospect for another fight seemed dim. With a snort and a sigh, he turned on his heel and left, paying no attention to anyone left behind him.

“Come see me, now. My quarters.”

“Of course, Father. Immediately,” Vejiita said, all business. The other warriors knew better than to be in his way when he was in that mode; he didn’t even notice how they cleared the way for him.

He made it to his father’s chambers in a few minutes. He wasn’t worried about being reprimanded – if mauling an opponent in the arena was a punishable offense, he would’ve discovered that fact somewhere before hitting puberty. He was simply eager for something new to take his mind off the constant frustration that was life with Kakkarot.

The king of all saiyajins was sprawled on a low divan, wearing nothing but a cloth tied around his waist. He was leaning back with a glass of green wine in one hand, being fed small bites of something delectable by his concubine while a pair of medicos repaired his torn and broken foot, propped up on a blood-stained ottoman before him. The king’s attendants bowed their heads as the prince came into the room, but kept their attention on the royal patient.

“What did you do to yourself, Father?” Vejiita said, sitting down across from him. He waved off a servant inquiring whether he wanted something to eat or drink.

“Your uncle challenged me to a race,” the elder said, waving it off.

The prince arched an inquisitive brow at him, but it was his concubine Anju who gave him the details, of course. Anju had been with his father for almost as long as Vejiita could remember, since a few years after Vejiita’s mother had died, and had earned, among other privileges, the right to make snarky commentary.

“The two of them were drunk and when his cragga threw him, he was laughing too hard to keep it from trying to eat him,” she said.

The king sipped his wine and looked regally off into the near distance as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

There was a crack as a medico snapped one of the king’s toes back into place. Like many of the most powerful saiyajins, he healed quite fast on his own, but sometimes bones were forced out of position as the flesh rushed to knit itself together again. Much of the job of being a royal physician was making sure that everything went back where it was supposed to at the end of the day. The pair at work was efficient and professionally ruthless, and three other toes were snapped back in place in short order. That done, they wrapped the foot and leg in a gel bandage and finished up, instructing Anju to check it in about an hour, throwing it away when the gouges filled in. Knowing their patient, they bowed out without further comment, leaving him to pretend that none of this had ever happened. Other servants cleaned up after them.

“Leave us, please,” the king said to Anju, leaning over for a kiss. Instead, she popped the last bite of food into his mouth and stood up, gracefully evading a groping hand as she bowed and left the room, shutting the doors behind her. The elder Vegeta watched her go with an affectionate grin, and the prince rolled his eyes.

“How may I serve?” the prince asked, more formally than necessary.

His father snorted.

“Where’s Kakkarot?”

“You interrupted my training to ask me that?”

“Training? That was more like an anatomy lesson.”

“He’s an Elite. He knew what he was getting into,” Vejiita said, but there wasn’t much heat in his voice.

“So Kakkarot is where?”

“Getting his flight certification, but I’m pretty sure you knew that already.”

“I heard,” his father said, stretching out on the divan. He wasn’t particularly careful with his foot, and winced when it slid across the upholstery. His son didn’t look sympathetic. “The question,” the king continued, “is why he’s bothering?”

“Because he doesn’t know anything about it,” Vejiita said.

“So? Is he planning on getting a job as a pilot?”

“I couldn’t care less what he does.”

“Vejiita,” his father said, “your courtship has less than five weeks left, and you still don’t know a goddamned thing about him, do you?”

His son gave a bark of unhappy laughter. “I know more about him than anyone else alive.”

“You know more about where he’s been and what he’s done, but it’s what he does now that counts. He can fly! He can pilot a time machine! Why the hell is he getting his military pilot’s license?

Vejiita growled in frustration. He didn’t want to talk about Kakkarot at all, but he knew that look in his father’s eye: the man wasn’t going to let this go. He also felt challenged to prove that he knew better than anyone else what was going on with his “consort”, as if that was something to be envied. Knowing his father, that challenge was completely intentional, and it irked Vejiita no end that it was going to work, again.

“He’s trying to prove himself,” the prince said grudgingly. “He wasn’t meeting his duties, and I called him on it. I got him an assistant, and he studies all the goddamned time now. I don’t think he’s ever worked so hard at something that didn’t involve fighting.”

“So the flight license is…”

“So he can understand aerospace issues.”

“Ah.”

There was an awkward silence, but such things weren’t really in their nature, and the king moved on.

“And you? How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine.”

“That’s why you’ve sent sixteen people to the regeneration tanks this week alone?”

Vejiita snorted. “Quit pretending that’s the worst I’ve ever done.”

“You were twelve the last time this happened. I keep hoping you’ve matured,” his father said dryly.

“I have the right, and I have my reasons,” Vejiita said, quietly, but with more intensity than his father had expected.

“Are you still considering it?” he asked, leaning forward.

“Of course I am! And it makes no more goddamned difference now than it did the last time we talked about it,” Vejiita growled, rising to his feet so he could prowl restlessly towards the windows.

“Have you changed your mind, then?”

Vejiita stared out over a courtyard some stories below, where troops of some kind were being put through drills. Over and over, pairs charged each other, trading blows and then retreating to their starting positions. Victory through mind-numbing repetition, driving the motions so deep into their brains that they would no longer have to think them through. It worked. Just watching it filled the prince with a kind of despair.

He hadn’t told his father about everything he’d learned from Kakkarot’s memories; for example, the parts about mating with an alien, no matter how compatible, and spawning halfbreeds was simply too embarrassing. That other prince’s ascension, though, was far too important to keep to himself. If that Vegeta could do it, so, it stood to reason, could he. The potential must run in their bloodline.

The only problem was the price that Kakkarot’s first prince had paid for his ascension. Even through Kakkarot’s scattered observations, it was clear to the present Vejiita that the other had reached his breaking point only after years of tragedy and hatred. Kakkarot’s ascension had come from a single, sharp agony, but his prince’s breaking point was much higher: he’d lived through decades of tragedies, many inflicted by his own hand, and his inner defenses had grown impossibly tough.

It was possible that jealousy had played a role in provoking that prince’s ascension, and he’d certainly convinced others to think that it had, but more likely it was the pain and confusion of finding his half-remembered soulmate again, and seeing that he was utterly unrecognized. Kakkarot didn’t know him at all, and the bitterness of being truly alone, the last of his kind, may have been what drove him over the edge.

This prince, in this time, understood the price his predecessor had paid – and he was unwilling to pay it himself. Who would he have to lose? How many would have to die? He was a saiyajin and knew the surest way of gaining greater power, but was he willing to let Kakkarot beat him almost to death over and over so he could gain ascension? He was not. He didn’t think he was as obsessed about his pride as the other prince had been, but Vejiita would be damned before he let himself be that weak in front of Kakkarot.

So the potential for godhood lurked in his blood, and Vejiita refused to pay the price of unleashing it. It burned him inside, sinking a little deeper into his soul each time Kakkarot smiled at him, but he knew he was right. His father, seeing the alternatives, had fully agreed with him, supporting his decision in every way.

That didn’t mean Vejiita wanted to talk about it.

“I’m not trying for it, if that’s what you’re asking. I live with an idiot, and he’s getting on my last nerve, and since there’s no point in trying to take it out of his hide, I’m looking for substitutes. Is there really a problem with that?” the prince asked, his head held high. He still sounded a little plaintive, although he didn’t seem to realize it, and his father relented.

“Living with him hasn’t gotten any better?” he asked, changing the subject smoothly, if not subtly.

“It has,” Vejiita admitted grudgingly, recognizing that he’d said as much earlier. “But that isn’t saying much.”

“He still sleeping on your couch?” As soon as he said it, the elder Vegeta realized he’d gone too far; his son literally bristled at the question, with his tail hairs lifting in agitation before he regained his composure.

“He does whatever pleases him,” Vejiita said stiffly. “It’s not my concern.”

If Kakkarot wasn’t on the couch, the implication was that he was in Vejiita’s bed, and it was clear that his son wasn’t going to be talking about that with his father any sooner than he had to. That would be never, if he had anything to say about it.

The king decided to let it go. He felt it was entirely his business, but he understood why his son would disagree.

“Well, whatever he’s doing, I trust you’ll stop victimizing my Elites, yes?”

Vejiita snorted. “What victims? They line up for a chance with me.”

“Of course, it’s as close as they’ll ever get to the great prince,” the king said with a smirk. He leaned down to worry at his bandage, and his son smirked in return. “But as I have need of them, please stop filling the regeneration tanks with them every afternoon.”

The prince nodded, but his father noted that he’d regained some of his swagger. “If we’re done, I’ll send Anju back in to keep an eye on you.”

“Fine, leave me,” the king waved him off. “Abandon your father to the barbarians.”

From the spreading red stain underneath the bandages, it was apparent that they should have been left alone some time longer. The medicos were destined to make a return visit, it seemed.

“Fortune and glory, father,” Vejiita wished him, bowing in farewell.

On his way out, he found Anju idling outside the doors, with the medical team already on hand. All of them attempted to hide their knowing smiles, but it was tougher work for some than others.

Vejiita sighed softly. If only the rest of his life was so predictable...

~to be continued~
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Sacrifice