Just A Face

Just a Face

By Noel Bak

(This story is told mainly in a flash back. This little thing ~<*>~ is where it starts and that will also indicate when the flash back ends)

**I in no way own the characters. For that matter I do not know the omnipotent creator. (Unfortunately), therefore suing me would do you no good. For I am a poor college student who is spending her spare time creating stories based on her childish infatuation with the fictional protectors of Earth.**

A face. Just a simple face. Just a mass of flesh and muscle with the capability to contort and twist. It can express emotion, show the very soul in which is hidden deep within. A face is nothing more than a well fitted mask. A mask so thick it may take years, centuries even, to peal away.

A face can be beautiful, plain, ugly. While the person behind it may be the exact opposite. The beautiful are often ugly and plain glamorous, while the ugly are beautiful. But on rare occasions, the kind you spend your whole life searching for, you find that beautiful face with a soul to match. I have a beautiful face, but my soul is dark, uncaring, unforgiving.

But his, his is beautiful. He is the face and the soul of beauty. Absolute caring. He is pure.

I don’t know when it was I figured this out, it could have been when I tried to kill him for the first time, and all the times after, he just shrugged it off. Let me live in his world. Let me have the respect I did not deserve. The life that should have been taken. Or maybe it was when I watched him fight. I was not the only one he granted mercy to. The purger of planets. The taker of lives, my life. He let him walk free, only a bruised ego as punishment. Then there was his family. A wife who screams at him for being who he is. For being more beautiful than she, although I am sure she does not see him that way. For the way he loves his children, she screams. He tries to teach them the way of his people, our people. He tries to show them the way to live if the world turns on you, the way it would turn on us if it only knew. If it could only see who we are.

The world is an ugly place, yet it holds his great beauty.

Hn. Then I think of myself. A murderer, praised for my killings. I have bathed in the blood and drank from the carnage. I found myself there. I loved the feeling, the balance of life resting in my hands. I showed no mercy, I still don’t. Not even to my son. My disgusting half-breed son. A son who I could never have told my father about. A son who I claim to like but deeply despise. A half-breed daughter, with hideous blue hair. A daughter who adores me, as she should her father and future king. A daughter I can not stand. I too have a wife. But unlike his mine is beautiful, her face so expressive, her soul fire. Though I can not love her. I never have. She was convenient. She was simply there.

I have never done anything to be beautiful and yet I pine for the one who is. I long for the taste of his beauty. I have never wanted anything more. Not the crown, my race, my pride, my power, none of it is important when I see him. When I see that face. The face of Kakorot. The face of a third, class, idiot, clown. The face of my life’s longing.

That is where my story starts, it is where it will inevitably end. With his face. With those glistening brown eyes. His pale, little, lips. His short but perfect nose, and the wild Saiyan hair that frames his face. It is the glue that holds me together and my utter undoing.

~<*>~

I watched with an unwarranted infatuation as his muscles ripple under his taunt skin while his wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His chest heaved, gasping for breath. He smiled at me, but not truly at me. He smiled simply for the fact that we were sparing.

I lost. I always do. I don’t know why I think it will be any different. I am a walking definition of insanity. I do the same things and expect different results. I spar with Kakorot almost every day, I expect to win and I never do. I pretend to hate him, thinking I could have him some day. But why woul go go to someone who hates him? I ignore my family and demand respect. Why give respect when it is not given? I am insanity. And yet I have such sane desires. The same desires as everyone else, the same longings, the same needs. This is when I stop to think, what is insanity? Is it simply living, breathing, longing? Or is it more?

I felt his eyes on my back, the innocents that radiates through him. It nearly touched me, but shied away. Why would innocents want to rest with corruption? It wouldn’t. I know this now.

“Whatcha thinkin’, Geta?” He asked me as we drifted to the ground. I merely grunted, trying to fine woe words to explain my thoughts to him. Words that he would understand. For the first time I am at a loss, how could I make him see, how could I make him understand?

“Nothing of importance.” That seemed to appease him. I can’t understand why I just don’t tell him. He has not passed judgment on me thus far and I know that would not change with my simple thoughts. Thoughts of him and his beauty. Thoughts of my corruption. The thought of molding the two together, joining them in a way that they could never break apart. Letting corruption love beauty and innocents, and vice versa. No I will not tell him that, not yet.

“Oh. You hungry? Chichi is cooking dinner. I am sure she wont mind if you come over.” I smirk at that thought. Chichi is harpy mate, allowing me, evil, into her home. Allowing the very thought of me to cross that thresh hold and inevitably corrupt her happy and diluted existence. This could be both fun and interesting. Am I willing to play nice and listen to her shrill voice and unnerving comments in my ears for the duration of the meal, all to see her squirm in my presents? Will I allow myself to step foot in that ramshackle shed of a house, all for the simple pleasure of her discomfort? Why not?

“Fine.” Why do I do that? Why must I always act like everything he does is a burden to me? It is not. No not in the least. I love when he bothers me. I love feeling superior and needed. Me the almighty Prince of the Saiyans, likes to be needed. How pathetic.
flewflew behind him, just enough to not be next to him but not dragging behind. The trees below us blur into masses of greens and browns. His home, so small and quaint, is completely out of the way. The city is miles out of reach. I love it here. It is everything that I have never wanted and yet here I am longing for it.

We touch down, jogging a few stepsore ore we can come to a complete stop. I can hear his woman bustling around inside, pots clanking, her humming. I guess tomorrow dinner will be at my home.

I watch as he raised his arm and turned the door handle. Even with that slight movement his muscles rippled. I can feel the saliva in my mouth pour, filling it to the point that I had to spit. He wrinkled his nose in disgust and I shrugged.

“Thought I would do that before we got inside.”

He laughed and scratched the back of his head. He is so easily amused. I wonder how much of that is an act and how much is truly brain damage. Perhaps that is something I will never find out, but I can still wonder.

“Chichi I’m home. I brought Vegeta with me.” The clanking stopped, the humming stopped, the bustling stopped. I know she is standing at the sink, or the stove, or maybe even the counter, where ever she may be her mouth is hanging open and rage is filling her eyes. She hates me and I it. it. Now I am in her home. I have marred her sacred land with my malevolence.

She walked out to great us, a fake smile plastered to her face. She bowed in my general direction and then proceeded to grab Kakorot by the ear. She yanked him into the kitchen, all the while smiling. I stayed were I was. I do not need to go closer to hear her banshee voice.

“How could you bring that thing here?” She hissed and I had to smirk, so I am a thing. Not even worthy of a gender or name. Nice, perhaps she isn’t as bad as I had thought.

“Chichi he is my friend. We were hungry and I came home for dinner, would it have been better if we went to Capsule......”

“It would have been better if you stopped hanging around that, that thing.” She was screaming now. This was better than I thought, my presents truly.....what was that? It sounded like flesh on flesh. Bone breaking bone. Her screaming stopped.

“Kakorot?” He did not answer my call. I could feel innocents slipping away from the house. I could feel the fading Ki that was once his wife as that sound echoed through the house again.

I walked quickly into the small kitchen with a Senzu Bean in my hand. I know when his anger faded he would regret this. What I saw made even my stomach turn. What I saw was not Goku, not my Earth raised Saiyan. Goku was gone. What I saw was the real Kakorot. His face twisted in hatred and anger. All the innocents that was ever there was gone. The mask I thought I would have to spend our millenniums together removing, was gone.

I caught his hand before he landed it on Chichi’s once beautiful face again. “Enough Kakorot! You have made your point.” His lips twitched into a snarl, one I matched, one I have perfected over the years, one that still scared him. He stepped back and his features softened. I watched a transformation, his hate shifted into terror as I lifted his wife from the floor.

Her blood covered my torn clothing as I carried her to their bedroom. I laid her on the bed with such a gentle hand, that even I was shocked. I felt Kakorot in the doorway, heard his tears, felt the pain and disbelief that was radiating off of his large body. I pressed the bean, that was meant for my battered body, into her bleeding mouth. “Chew and swallow.” She had to hear, she had to follow my directions. Kakorot would die if she didn’t, either he would destroy himself or I would have to do it for him. I would have to destroy the perfection that was my Kakorot.

I sat on the bed with her, holding her bleeding head just off the pillow. I watched in wonderment as the blood oozed backwards, her scull reformed, her lips healed, her breathing returned to normal, and her eyes fluttered open. “Goku?” She pleaded for him, even after everything, she still wanted what was mine. “Vegeta?!”

I smirked, let her head rest on the pillow, and brushed a strand of raven hair from her eyes before I stood. I opened their closet and pulled out a duffle bag, one I remembered him using on more than one occasion. I threw it at the sobbing fool. “Pack your things.” I could not let this happen again. What if next time I was not here, I could not let my innocent Saiyan jade his perfect life.

I turned back to the woman who watched me with tear filled eyes, “Rest then, go see Bulma. Get checked.” She nodded, her once hardened and angry face as innocent as the man packing his bag. “Hurry up Kakorot, we have a housebuilbuilt today.” He nodded and shoved a few more things in the bag before he turned to Chichi, tears streaming down his face. This was the first time I had ever seen this man cry. It tore at my heart, but what I was doing was for the best. “When you see her, tell Bulma I will stop by when I can.”

She smiled. I was almost out of the room, when I felt her fingers on my arm. Kakorot was standing by the front door, his head hung in shame. Well deserved shame. “Thank you Vegeta. Take care of him.” She hugged me. The woman who hated me for every breath I had ever taken, hugged me. I hugged back. She deserved that much.

“Contrary to what you may believe, Saiyans do not hit their mates. I would not and do not allow that.”

“Had you not been here...”

“I was here. Now go lay down, wait until we are gone and then go see the woman.”

She nodded and let go of my neck. Her frail body never looked as weak as it did right now. Her strength seemed to seep from her limbs. For the first time I felt pity for this woman. Her husband could kill me on a whim, obliterate her with a thought and yet she fought back as much as she could.

I walked down the stairs and glared at the one with the innocents. Something I no longer wanted. Looking at the blood on his hands, remembering that face, I did not want this. Innocents what not worth that. Nothing was worth the level of insanity that surpassed mine. Life was not even worth that.


***Sighs* yet another story started by me. Lets see if I can do it all. I have the VP challenge, Dominus De Cupiditas, a compilation story with all my favorite authors, and now Face. I hope you enjoyed this. I am not really sure where it is going, if anywhere. There are three possible Pairings here all revolving around Vegeta so until I figure where I want this to go I wont post it in the slash category, but it may go there. Who knows......I may try something new V/C***